Page 9 of The Instruments of Darkness

“What did you do next?”

“I ran outside. I didn’t even stop to put on a robe. For some strange reason, I thought Henry might somehow have managed to open the window and climb out, even if there was no way he could have done that, none at all. I was calling his name, and Livvy came out to see what was happening.”

“Mrs. Gammett, the woman who lives in the house on the left? I’ve met her.”

“She’s a kind soul, but deaf, so I must have been shouting loudly for her to notice. She asked me what was wrong, and I told her Henry was gone. She said I should call the police, but I called Stephen first.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Well, I do, but you’ll think it’s foolish.”

“Nothing concerning what took place here is foolish.”

That smile ghosted across her face again, one wraith visiting another.

“I rely on Stephen a lot,” she said. “I’ve battled eating disorders over the years, and I suffered badly from postpartum depression until just a few months ago, when it finally began to ease. Stephen has been very patient with me, and considerate in his way. My instinct is to turn to him whenever there’s a problem. Not very feminist of me, is it?”

“I wasn’t aware that suffering was a feminist issue,” I said.

“I can offer you some books if you care to read up on it.”

I suspected she was serious.

“Thanks,” I said, “but I’ll pass.”

We went through the rest of what occurred that morning: the arrival of the police; her husband’s return from New York within hours; the evidential statements taken from her and Stephen; the subsequent appeals via the media; and the support from neighbors and the larger community, followed by its gradual diminution because of the perceived deficiencies in Colleen Clark’s response to the trauma of her son’s disappearance.

“There was—is—this numbness,” she said. “I can’t explain it, except to guess that the pain was so great, my mind wanted to shield me from it. It felt like everything was happening to someone else. Obviously, I knew it was happening to me, and Stephen, and Henry, but it seemed both real and unreal at the same time. Even though it’s all recent, I struggle to remember details. Hours, even days, are missing. It’s a blur of absence, with Henry at its heart. And then the blanket was found.”

“By your husband.”

“Yes. I had a flat tire, and as you can imagine”—she raised one slender arm—“I struggle with lug nuts. Stephen went outside to change the tire, and when he came back a few minutes later he was so ashen, I was sure he was going to faint. I went to help him, but he put up his hands to ward me off. I thought at first that he’d heard some news about Henry, bad news, but I couldn’t see any police, and they’d have come in person if anything had changed. I asked Stephen what was wrong, but he couldn’t speak. It took him three tries before he was able to produce any words.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘I found the blanket.’ Naturally, I asked him what he was talking about, and he told me what he’d discovered in the trunk. I asked to see it, and he said we should wait for the police. I tried to get by him. I wanted to take a look for myself, but he made me go into the living room. Initially, I believed he was trying to protect me from the sight of blood, and possibly there was a part of that to it, even then. I hope so.”

“What did you do while he made the call?”

“I waited. I didn’t have much choice. He’d locked me in. I figure he didn’t know what else to do with me. It’s not like it was a situation with which he had a great deal of experience.”

“Didn’t he ask for your side of the story?”

“He didn’t, but he got it anyway.”

“Through the locked door?”

“No, later, when the police came.”

“Mr. Castin told me that you agreed to speak to them without a lawyer present.”

“I didn’t have anything to hide,” she said. “Stephen and I both talked to them.”

She wouldn’t have been Mirandized, of course, because she hadn’t been under arrest, yet every statement she made was now part of the record. We’d find out at the discovery stage how the recording officer had chosen to parse her testimony.

Once again, I was struck by her solicitousness toward her husband. In her position, I might have been less forgiving of someone who had locked me in a room before throwing me to the police, not to mention his subsequent determination of my guilt. The benefit of the doubt might have been polite, at the minimum.

“May I ask, Mrs. Clark—”