Maggie
The house was pretty, well cared for. A Cape Cod with brown wood shutters softened to gray and a bright-yellow front door. His wife’s idea, stolen from a magazine? Or a nod to the school colors? Either was possible. The property it sat on wasn’t particularly large, and it sloped downward precariously, backing up on a public walking trail. The neighbors’ houses were fairly close by. People walked dogs up and down the sidewalks, heading to or from that trail, swinging small blue bags that were either empty or full of shit. It wasn’t, Maggie decided, a good neighborhood to house sex slaves. No. The houses were far too close together for trafficking underage girls, and there were too many stay-at-home moms to not notice something was amiss. If her daughter was being held somewhere, her appearance changed, Maggie certainly didn’t think it was here, but she hoped it would lead somewhere. Let Kaplan handle his angle; she would handle hers.
No Audi in the driveway, just a Subaru wagon. Green. A little muddy on the wheels, like it had just been driven up a dirt road. She glanced inside. No rope. No duct tape. No ball-peen hammer. She let out the breath she’d been holding, and it felt ancient, stale as a tomb. How long had she been holding that breath? How long since she’d brushed her teeth, combed her hair, slept?
She rang the doorbell, listened to it echo. Tile floors, she thought. Marble kitchen. Beautiful-looking but tinny and cold, the acoustics all wrong, and you didn’t realize it until after installation when you had people over and they started talking all at once, and your ears rang. Maggie had been in so many kitchens like that. She’d go back to her small, snug kitchen, with its butcher-block counters and rugs and cheerful lined curtains on the windows and be glad for all the softer, kinder surfaces. When people came to Maggie, she could hear them.
The woman who answered the door was pretty but ordinary. No makeup, blue eyes. Slight, small as a bird. Her smile was automatic but also miniature.
“Mrs. Grady?”
“Yes?”
The woman glanced at the folder Maggie had in her purse, as if it held a clue.
“I’m Maggie O’Farrell. My daughter is in your husband’s class.”
“Oh,” she said. “I never get involved in university business. If you have a problem with the grading curve or an issue, you have to call his secretary.”
“No, that’s not why I’m here.”
“Okay,” she said evenly.
“My daughter is missing.”
“Oh, I’m so very sorry. How worried you must be.”
“Your husband didn’t tell you one of his students was missing?”
She blinked twice. “No, I wasn’t aware.”
“You don’t think that’s unusual? That he wouldn’t mention all the flyers up outside his classroom? And that the police have interviewed him and searched for his car? The car that’s registered in your name?”
“I’m sorry, I’m due somewhere in fifteen minutes. You’ll have to excuse me—”
Maggie put a hand against the door. She knew she was strong, stronger than this small woman. If her head was in Maggie’s shampoo bowl, she could snap her skinny neck.
“No,” she said, “I will not excuse you.”
Mrs. Grady flinched, took a small step back. She glanced over her shoulder as if wondering where her phone was, a weapon, something. When she looked back, her polite smile was gone, her face set firmly, her jaw tight.
“You are going to have to leave right now!”
“Look, my daughter was investigating your husband, and he was threatening her, and now she’s missing! Do you really think that’s a coincidence? Do you even know the man who lives here?”
“Look, Mrs.—”
“O’Farrell. Maggie O’Farrell. Mother of Emma, who is in your husband’s Psychology 101 class, a straight-A scholarship student, daughter of a decorated cop who was gunned down in the line of duty, who sat in the first row and risked her life to write for the school paper.”
The woman’s face was a mask, yes, but her eyes were frightened. Maggie felt her power and also felt the risk she’d taken. She didn’t know this woman. The car was registered to her, not him. If Mrs. Grady was lying and had found out her husband was involved…if she had misread Emma’s intentions, was she strong enough to hurt her? Would she go that far to protect her husband? Maggie didn’t think so. She saw a softness in her, around the eyes. Not much, but a little.
“I am begging you, woman to woman, to tell me what you know about your husband and his students. I just want my daughter back, okay? That’s all.”
Mrs. Grady swallowed hard. “There was a girl who came here a few nights ago, making accusations, paranoid, high—”
“It must have been another student. My daughter would not be high—”
“With all due respect, once you drop them off at school, you have no idea what they become. Okay? My husband and I have seen it all. This girl was crazy, off her meds or something—”
“Well, that’s not possible. Was there someone else with her maybe? Waiting in the car?”
“She was alone, ranting and raving about my husband, so I called an ambulance.”
“An ambulance?”
“Yes. Her pupils were dilated, her clothes disheveled. She needed medical care.”
“Well, maybe she’d been held prisoner or harmed. You ever think about that?”
The woman blinked. Didn’t have an answer, but Maggie had hers. No, no, she had not.
“You don’t have kids, do you?”
“I have two sons.”
“Sons,” Maggie said. “Of course.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you walk through the world never knowing what it’s like to worry every time your child goes out for a run or to the gas station at night or to a party filled with drunk boys who outweigh her. You don’t know, and you’ll never know.”
The woman reached out her hand for the flyer. “Is that her picture?”
“Yes, this is my daughter.”
She looked at it briefly and shook her head. “No, that’s not her. The girl who was here had short, ragged hair. Like a little boy.”