Page 31

CHAPTER THIRTY

We are ten minutes into the drive when Gary says, “There is something else you need to know. It came in while we were waiting on the police.”

“What?”

“Open up my iPad.”

I lift it out of the slot in the console between us and turn it on. When it comes to life, I recognize the old black-and-white still frame from the CCTV video of Victoria Belmond leaving McCabe’s Pub at 11:17 p.m. on December 31, 1999, the night she vanished.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“So we did a deeper dive into that old video footage.”

“Okay.”

“I know the FBI and other investigators did too back in the day, but the world is different now. Anyway, you see Victoria on the sidewalk, right?”

“Right.”

“When you hit play, you’ll see the next eight seconds after Victoria Belmond walks by. That’s all we have, but that’s all we need. There are other people on the street, of course. I think we counted fourteen. Not a surprise. Typical New York City street on New Year’s Eve. But eight seconds after Victoria walks by, you’ll see another woman hurrying in the same direction. Like she’s trying to catch her. Coming from the left, she’s the third woman to appear after Victoria Belmond. The screen will stop on her. Go ahead. Hit play.”

I do as he says and tap the play arrow with my index finger. Again the black-and-white images are blurry and shot from above and you mostly get Victoria’s back. I’ve seen this video before, of course, but something about it is bothering me this time. I can’t put my finger on it. But I don’t focus on that right now—no time—and now another girl walks by, moving quickly as though, as Gary pointed out, maybe she’s trying to catch up to Victoria.

The video freezes.

I squint. I use my fingers to zoom in, but that just makes the image blurrier. I can see the girl has blond hair and a ponytail, but like with Victoria Belmond, you really can’t see her face.

“So,” Gary continues, “like I said, there are fourteen people in this video. The Pink Panthers tried a new way to identify them.”

“How?” I ask.

“They took the high school yearbook and scanned every photo of girls in the same graduating class as Victoria into some kind of new AI image search program. It’s pretty beta and not precise yet, but it could tell, for example, what girls would match the general description and hairstyle.”

“I assume they found a match?”

“Only one,” Gary says, his eyes on the road. “Just this girl.”

“So who is she?”

“According to the AI program, there’s ninety-eight point seven percent likelihood that it’s Caroline Burkett.”

I fall back in my seat.

“Do you want to talk this out?” Gary asks.

“Not right now.”

I close my eyes and try to find the connections. Victoria Belmond leaves the party she’s throwing. Caroline Burkett, her cohostess, follows her.

Why?

I guess I’ll have to ask her.

We get off the highway, make too many quick turns, and then we drive down a long, narrow, tree-lined street until we reach an unmarked dead end. There are no visible structures on this road. No signs either. Nothing. If you don’t know where the Solemani Recovery Center is, you’re not supposed to find it. It’s that kind of place. We start up the small dirt drive until—yep, you guessed it—we reach a guard booth and a gate. The guard approaches Gary’s car as we slow down.

“May I help you?”

I roll down my window and do the talking. “I’m here to see Caroline Burkett.”

“Name?”

“Sami Kierce.”

The guard saunters back to his little hut. He picks up the phone, his baleful eyes on me as if worried I might steal the silverware. A moment later, he hangs up and comes back out. “Drive up to the guest lot. It’ll be on the right. Someone will meet you there.”

I salute him.

The guard leans into the car. “Sir?” He is talking now to Gary.

“Yes?”

“Please do not leave the vehicle for any reason.”

“Got it.”

The gate is one of those arms. The guard presses a button, and the arm lifts. We start up the drive.

“Suppose I have to pee,” Gary says.

“What did you do when you’d have to pee in the middle of a golf course?”

“Duck behind a tree.”

“Seriously?”

“Literally, every man does it. It’s almost a rite of passage.”

I shake my head. “Golfers are weird.”

Buildings of rain-gray stone emerge. Old buildings. Classy buildings. But you feel the solace, the refuge, the nature. If you’re rich and an addict, the Solemani seems like a pretty sweet getaway.

A young woman in a golf cart is waiting for us in the guest lot. She wears a peach aviation scarf like a flight attendant.

“May I see your ID, please?”

I hand her my driver’s license. She takes out her mobile phone, snaps a pic of my ID, and hands it back to me. Then she invites me to sit with her in the cart.

“Caroline is waiting for you in Brocklehurst Hall. I’ll take you there.”

As we drive up the hill, we pass a fountain with a statue of what looks like the Virgin Mother. I look at her. She smiles.

“Until 1978, this place was a Catholic convent. My understanding is it was full of nuns.”

Well, yes, I think. If it’d been a convent, there would indeed be nuns.

“All the nuns who lived here took a vow of poverty.”

“If you’re going to take a vow of poverty,” I say, “this seems a nice place to do it.”

She laughs at that and pulls up to yet another gray edifice.

“Here we are. Just go through the doors.”

I get buzzed in by yet another security guard. They make me walk through a metal detector, which seems more for show than anything else. Why now? Why didn’t you do that back at the gate? A woman meets me on the other side of the detector with a smile and a handshake.

“Hello, my name is Kate Boyd. I’m a facilitator at the Solemani. Caroline is waiting for you in the solarium. I’ll show you the way.”

Kate Boyd’s heels clack and echo in the empty corridor. Interesting. The place feels very much like a convent, all silent and stone, and yet Ms. Boyd chooses to wear heels that she has to know will echo in this corridor like a gunshot. Why? Why not wear something with a soft sole?

Caroline Burkett is already standing when I enter the room. She’s talking to a man I recognize as Christopher Swain. We never met before, Mr. Swain and I, but I know that he is yet another victim of the Burketts’ evil. I’m sad to see that a year later, Swain is still here. When he sees me, Swain takes both of Caroline’s hands in his. He looks at her and nods. She nods back. Then he turns, stares at me for a few long moments, and leaves without another word.

I expect Caroline to look as I’ve seen her before—mousy, reedy, frail, blinking a lot as though she’s about to be slapped. But she’s not any of that today. It’s a different Caroline Burkett. Her posture is straight. Her eyes are steady. I wonder whether this place has been good for her or if it is just that this is the first time I’ve seen her out of the presence of her mother.

“I’ll leave you two,” Kate Boyd says, “if that’s okay with you, Caroline.”

“It is,” she says.

“I’ll be nearby just in case. Just call if you want me to come back in.”

“Thank you, Kate,” Caroline says.

We both stand there as the heel clack fades away. Caroline wears a black turtleneck and matching pants. No jewelry. Very little makeup. Again this is a different woman than the one I saw when I would visit Farnwood.

Caroline says, “You’re here about Victoria.”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t know she’d been murdered until today. They don’t allow us to watch the news in here. No phones, no internet, no social media.”

“Sounds nice,” I say, and I try a smile.

Caroline returns it. “It is, yes.”

The solarium looked like a recent addition that’s trying to fit in but not quite working. The roof is domed. The plants look too green—I wonder whether they are fake. There are two leather chairs in the center of the room. Caroline invites me to sit. I do. She takes the other chair.

“What do you want to know, Mr. Kierce?”

I always carry one of those detective pads with me. Sometimes I use it, not because I won’t remember—I always remember the important stuff—but for effect. For some people, it relaxes them. For others, it makes them wary. Right now, I leave the pad and pen in my pocket and dive right in.

“When was the last time you saw Victoria?” I ask.

There is no hesitation in Caroline’s reply: “December thirty-first, 1999.”

“The day she went missing?”

“Missing,” Caroline repeats, and then tilts her head. “I thought Victoria was kidnapped.”

“She probably was,” I say.

“Probably?”

“There were a lot of blanks in her memory,” I say, but I don’t like the fact that suddenly I’m the one answering the questions. “You two were close friends, correct?”

“Yes. In high school.”

“In fact,” I continue, “I’m told that you two were the ones who arranged the New Year’s party at McCabe’s Pub.”

“That’s true.”

“Whose idea was the party?”

Caroline puts a hand to her chin. “You know something? I’m not sure. I think we were just talking about what we should do that night. It was a big deal, of course. New millennium and all that. We both figured there’d be a party—maybe at her house or, more likely, Farnwood. The Burketts threw a lot of parties there, as you might imagine. But my parents were having their own shindig, and Victoria and I wanted to do our thing. We wanted to feel like grown-ups, you know?”

“You said you hadn’t seen Victoria since the night of that party.”

“That’s right.”

“So eleven years later, when Victoria came back…?”

“No, I didn’t see her.”

“Why not? I mean, you two had been close friends. You must have been happy or at least relieved when you heard she’d been found?”

“I was. Very much so. And I did reach out to her. I think some of the other girls did too. At first, we were told she needed time to recover. She was in extensive therapy. At some point, the family made it clear that it could be harmful for Victoria to look backwards. After a while, I think we all just moved on.”

“You never bumped into her?”

“Never. For a while we heard rumors that she was living in Costa Rica. The Belmonds have an estate there. But I don’t know if that was true. I never saw her in town or at any restaurants, if that’s what you mean.”

I nod. “Can you tell me about the night Victoria vanished?”

Her face darkens. “It was really hard on me.”

“I’m sure it was,” I say, laying on the empathy with my best hangdog face. “You were close friends. You cohosted a party together. And then, poof, she just vanishes. That had to be traumatic for you.”

“It was.”

“Do you remember the last time you saw her that night?” When I see her stiffen, I backpedal a bit. “Or maybe start at the beginning. How did you and Victoria arrive at McCabe’s Pub?”

“Thomas. Her brother.”

“Thomas drove you?”

“Yes.” She makes a face. “He was drunk. We kept trying to get him to pull over so one of us could drive.”

“But he wouldn’t listen?”

“He wouldn’t listen,” she echoes. “I think back in those days, there used to be some rule about being nineteen in order to drive in Manhattan. Thomas may have mentioned that—that we were too young so even if we wanted to take the wheel, it wouldn’t have been legal.” She smiles. “I think Victoria countered by saying something like, ‘Well, drunk driving isn’t legal either.’”

“Touché,” I say, sharing in the joke. “Anything else you remember about that ride?”

Caroline thinks about it. “Not really. Victoria and Thomas were pretty tight. He was upset about something—I can’t remember what anymore…”

“Maybe a girl?”

“Yeah, maybe. Vic told him he should come to our party. I remember that. I was kind of mortified.”

“About her brother coming?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because he was too old and obnoxious and drunk.”

“Right,” I say. “So he drops you off at McCabe’s Pub. You and Victoria are the first there. So I guess you, what, set up?”

“Yes. It wasn’t a big deal. Some balloons. We ordered those glasses with the year 2000 on it. Hats, streamers, noisemakers. Like that.”

“And then your guests arrive.”

“Yes.”

“And the party gets going.”

“Yes.”

“Anything strange you remember?”

She starts squirming. “Nothing really.”

“What ‘not really’?”

“What? Oh. No. Nothing.”

“So what’s the next thing you remember?”

“I don’t know. It was just a party.”

Time to get to it. “When did you realize that Victoria was missing?”

“I’m not sure I ever really realized it.”

Her hands are in her lap now. She’s staring down at them.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I mean, I remember we turned on the TV and watched the countdown to midnight. Then we watched the ball drop in Times Square. Prince’s ‘1999’ was on. And I think maybe I looked for Victoria. To celebrate the moment with her. But I didn’t see her.”

“Did that surprise you?”

She shrugs. “I guess. I was a little tipsy by then. It didn’t seem like a huge deal.”

“How about at the end of the night? Did you notice her missing then?”

“I don’t really remember. I left with a big group of friends. There were a few other groups like that. I guess I thought she joined up with one of them.”

I nod. I meet her eye. She looks away.

“I’m debating my next move here, Caroline.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I know you’re lying to me.”

“What?”

“So,” I continue, “I’m wondering why. Did you do something to Victoria that night? What are you trying to cover up?”

“I’m not lying—”

“We have a CCTV of you following Victoria on the street outside the bar at 11:17 p.m.”

Her face goes white.

“I also know the police tried to interview you, but back then, your family blocked it. I don’t know why. I don’t even care why. But it’s been twenty-five years, Caroline. Victoria was your friend. She’s dead now.” Then I lay it on thick because why not. I lean in closer and almost take her hand. “This is about you too,” I say to her in a low voice. “Before that night, you were on a great life path. Success. Happiness. You were smart. People liked you. You liked them.” This is all bullshit, but I know she will buy into this narrative. We always buy into narratives we like. My mother was a private college guidance counselor. She used to give students a “personality” test. She always told them the same “result” when it was over: “You’re the kind of person who, if your mother tells you to do something like clean your room, you might not do it right away, but if you really want something, if you put your mind to it, you are the first to get something done.” My mother said this every time to every student, and every time the student and the student’s parents would nod in agreement because we all like this narrative for ourselves.

I was counting on Caroline wanting the same with this.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” I say. “Whatever happened, it stays between us. That’s a promise. But I need to know. And more than that, Caroline, you need to tell me. I don’t want to say the truth shall set you free, but—”

“You’re right.” The tears start flowing down her face. “It’s my fault.”

I sit back and wait.

“That night. It changed everything. I wanted to face it, tell the truth right away, but my mother… she told me never to speak of it. Insisted, really. So I jammed it inside of me. My mother even sent me away. Like now. Like whenever I have a problem—or should I say, when I am a problem. We Burketts don’t face up to our problems. We hide them here instead.”

I don’t say anything. Life and cop lesson: Don’t derail someone when they are on the right track.

“What happened to Victoria that night,” Caroline continues, “was my fault.”

I fight to stay still. I give Caroline Burkett my most open, trusting face. “I am with you,” this face says. “I get it. I will listen and respect you and not judge.” These are the things I am trying to manifest on my face. It has worked for me in the past. I’m hoping it will work again.

“This was 1999,” Caroline says. “Today, no big deal. But 1999…”

I still say nothing.

“Victoria and I were more than friends.”

She looks up to meet my eye. I hold it and try to encourage her to continue.

“That wouldn’t have played well in our high school. I was dating the varsity quarterback, like some stupid cliché. Buff Danelo. He was there that night. He didn’t know about me and Victoria, of course. No one did. Buff just thought I wanted to save myself. But he was my, I don’t know, I guess you’d call it a beard?” She looks off, over my shoulder, her head tilting to the left. “Victoria was my first love and when I think about it, when I think back on my entire life, maybe the only one I’ve ever had. Because I never got over losing her. We didn’t break up. We didn’t grow tired of one another or outgrow one another or fade away. None of that. One moment we were inseparable, hopelessly in love, hiding it behind the facade of being best friends. And the next moment, just when our relationship seemed to be at its best, Victoria was just—” Caroline stops, shrugs. “Gone.”

I still say nothing.

“I had too much to drink that night. That’s the excuse I use. But really, it was about that time in our lives. New year, new millennium, new me. And I just loved Victoria so much. It had been exciting keeping it a secret, but now it felt suffocating. Like I’d lose her if we didn’t take the next step. Do you know what I mean?”

“I do,” I say.

“I wanted to tell the whole world about us. I didn’t care. And Buff, ugh, he was all over me. Started grabbing my ass and slobbering in my ear about how we would start the new year off with a bang, ha ha, gross, and I look across the room and there’s Victoria, leaning against the bar. She’s talking on her phone, and she has that look on her face, this one she gets when she’s really really focused, and she’s so adorable wearing this white dress and she just looks so damn beautiful I thought my heart would burst out of my chest.” Caroline rubs her hands in her lap. “I don’t know why I did it. I should have known better. But I couldn’t stop myself. I just pushed Buff off me and I stormed over to Victoria and I grabbed her face and I told her that I loved her and then I kissed her. Just like that. I kissed her so hard and with such hunger, and do you want to know something?”

I keep my voice gentle. “Tell me.”

“She kissed me back.” Caroline’s smile is wistful. “It was the best kiss of my life.”

An old-school grandfather clock strikes the hour. It echoes off the solarium glass. In the distance I hear Kate Boyd’s heel-clacks again. I worry that she might interrupt our flow.

“That must have been a nice moment,” I say, just to keep things moving.

“It was.”

I still try to go with my most gentle voice. I feel as though my voice is trying to carry a bubble without making it pop. “So what happened after the kiss?”

“Buff. Buff happened.”

“Your boyfriend?”

“He runs over and he pushes me. Pushes me really hard. Right in the middle of the kiss. With my eyes closed. I stumble into her, and we both fell to the floor. Hard. And it was like reality hit when we hit the floor. You know? Our eyes opened. I looked up. Most people were wrapped up in their own stuff, but others were staring down at us now, and it was like we both knew nothing would ever be the same. One of Buff’s meathead friends started laughing at us. Another called us dykes and then I heard ‘lesbo’ and ‘lez be friends’ and what I really remember is the Goo Goo Dolls are on the boombox, that song ‘Slide,’ and they’re singing, ‘I wanna wake up where you are, I won’t say anything at all,’ and suddenly Victoria is up and she’s running toward the stairs. It’s like the jeers are chasing her, you know. She runs down the stairs to the first floor, where another party is happening, of course. Everyone is partying everywhere. There’s so much noise and everyone is drunk. She’s stumbling. I’m stumbling. I called her name. But she couldn’t hear it over all the noise. The Goo Goo Dolls were on downstairs too. I guess it was all one big music system, and now the singer, John something, I can never remember his last name, he’s panicked in the song and he’s asking this girl if she loves the life she killed and the priest is on the phone, your father hit the wall, your mother disowned you, and it’s like he’s singing to me, to us, and I’m swimming through people to try to find Victoria, to tell her it’s okay, that I’ll just tell our friends I was so drunk I thought she was Buff. That I’d protect her. But I couldn’t find her. And then, finally, I saw her by the door. So I tried to get there. Some guy grabbed me on the way, ‘Hey, what’s the rush, sweetcheeks.’ You’d get that all the time back in those days, and when I pushed him, he said, ‘Come on, be friendly, how about an end-of-the-year kiss’ and I pushed him harder and shouted, ‘Get off me,’ but by the time I broke free, Victoria was gone.”

Her eyes are closed as she tells me all this. Her hands mime pushing away the man who grabbed her. I’ve seen this before. Caroline is not just remembering—she is “there,” if you will, more reliving it than recalling it. It’s almost self-hypnosis.

Caroline’s face reddens from something akin to exertion. She takes a few deep breaths. They don’t seem to calm her. Her eyes stay closed.

“Caroline?”

Damn. It’s Kate Boyd.

Caroline’s eyes flutter open.

“Caroline, are you okay?”

It takes her a few moments to orient herself. I’m wondering about my play here.

“She’s fine,” I say. “This is just an emotional moment for both of us.”

“Caroline?” she says again.

“We’re fine, Kate,” Caroline finally spits out. “I don’t really appreciate you disturbing us.”

“I just wanted—”

“I told you I’d call you if I needed anything. This facility is supposed to be a two-way street when it comes to respect and privacy.”

Boyd bristles at that. “It is.”

“You’re not respecting my privacy right now, are you?”

“I wasn’t listening in, if that’s what you—”

“Please leave us. And don’t come back until we call you.”

Boyd almost bows as she exits. Caroline looks at me. I worry the moment is gone now. Her eyes are open. She’s back in this solarium instead of McCabe’s Pub.

I try to take her back. “You said Victoria ran outside?”

She says nothing for a moment. She just stares at me, as though I’ve just magically materialized in front of her, and she has no idea why.

“Victoria hurried past a CCTV camera,” I continue. “A few seconds later, you did too.”

Caroline keeps staring.

“And then,” I say, “Victoria vanished. Poof. Like that. You never saw her again, right?”

“Never,” she repeats.

I lean in closer. “What happened, Caroline?”

Silence.

“Did you catch up to her?” I ask.

Her voice is far away. “Yes.”

“And then?”

She blinks now, like the Caroline I knew at Farnwood. She starts gesturing and shrugging, as though she can’t quite get the words out. “Victoria hugged me,” Caroline says. “She said it would all be fine.”

I try to look the question at her rather than speaking one. She stays quiet, so I finally ask, “And then what happened?”

“She held up her phone.”

“Her phone?”

“She told me that Thomas was in a bad way.”

I feel the small chill start at the back of my neck. “What do you mean?”

“She loved him. You know that, right?”

“I do.”

“He was the older brother, but she was always the one looking out for him. I guess he called her. Drunk out of his mind. That’s who she’d been talking to when I went over and kissed her.”

I swallow. “Thomas was at home, right?”

“Home?”

“Yes. After he dropped you two at McCabe’s Pub, didn’t he go home?”

“Oh no,” Caroline says. “He was far too drunk. In fact, Victoria took his keys to make sure.”

I swallow again. “So where was he?”

“He was at another bar down the street. She figured he’d be safe there, but I guess he kept drinking and then he called her sobbing. Anyway, she said she was going to check up on him.”

“Did she?”

“Yes. I mean, I watched her go into the bar.”

“And then?”

Caroline shrugs. “That’s the last time I ever saw her.”