Cast into Doubt (12 page)

Shelby could feel the outrage emanating from Janice – and from pages of the survivor’s accounts. ‘I don’t understand,’ said Shelby. She frowned at Janice. ‘What truth?’

‘That throwing someone off a cruise ship is the perfect crime,’ said Janice.

‘What?’

‘It is. As long as no one sees you do it, it’s foolproof.’

Shelby shuddered and shook her head. ‘Now, wait a minute—’

Janice leaned forward, her weary eyes suddenly fiery. ‘Just think about it. How long was it before the ship stopped, and headed back to search for your daughter?’

Shelby sighed. ‘Hours,’ she admitted.

Janice cradled her large pocketbook on her lap, and nodded sharply. ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘People think those boats stop and search for people. But unless someone actually sees it happen, it always takes hours before they even turn back. By that time, your loved one is long gone. The bodies are never recovered.’

‘Don’t say that,’ Shelby protested.

‘Sorry. I forgot. You’re still hoping.’

Shelby could hear the pity, bordering on scorn, in the other woman’s voice. She blinked at her and then looked away.

‘Look, I know this is a lot to take in,’ said Janice gently.

‘What do you want from me?’ asked Shelby.

‘First of all, I want you to know that you are not alone. That’s number one.’

‘Well, thank you,’ said Shelby without conviction.

‘And secondly, I want you to join us. I want you to look at our website. Read the other people’s stories. You’ll see what I mean. It doesn’t cost anything. We are just people who were blindsided by a sudden loss. We had our loved ones stolen from us. Their deaths have gone unavenged for far too long.’

Shelby looked at her suspiciously. ‘You want vengeance,’ said Shelby.

Janice grimaced at the word. ‘I prefer the word justice. But we don’t even hope for justice because there is none. We are hoping that there will be power in numbers so we can exert some influence.’

Shelby studied her skeptically. ‘Influence on what?’

‘Well, for one thing, on the way these incidents are investigated. It’s a disgrace the way they respond. As if a person going overboard were a minor annoyance. Where is the urgency to continue the cruise?’

Shelby recognized the painful truth in that question. She had wondered the exact same thing. ‘The captain told me that there are a lot of false alarms on these ships,’ she offered halfheartedly.

‘Yes,’ said Janice. ‘But they are indifferent when it turns out to be an actual disappearance. I’ll tell you why: the cruise lines don’t want anyone to know that people have died on these cruises. It’s bad for their image. You hardly see a thing about these disappearances in the papers.’

‘I noticed that with Chloe,’ Shelby admitted.

‘And you won’t,’ Janice insisted. ‘The cruise lines make sure of that. Their PR departments go into overdrive whitewashing these things.’

Shelby nodded slowly. ‘Looking at these stories . . . it’s so upsetting.’

‘We want to hold them accountable for what happens on these ships. For their lack of security and their inadequate response when a crime is committed. Of course, it’s difficult, because no one is ever prosecuted for these crimes. No body, no crime. No prosecution,’ said Janice.

‘I don’t see what you hope to accomplish,’ said Shelby.

‘We want to attack them where it hurts: in the pocketbook. We want to mount a class-action lawsuit against these giant cruise lines.’

Shelby recoiled. ‘Oh,’ she said. At last she understood. Albert Markson once said that suing was the way that Americans grieved. ‘Well, I’m not interested in suing anybody. I mean, if you can find a way to profit from your loss, all well and good—’

‘Profit from my loss! My husband needs constant care in a nursing home for the stroke he had. And it’s all because of what happened to our daughter on that ship,’ Janice protested. ‘If that’s your idea of
profiting
from something—’

‘Mrs Pryor, please,’ she said, standing up. ‘I didn’t mean to say that in an offensive way. I understand that you’ve suffered. Believe me. I guess I’m just not thinking in terms of liability at this point.’

Janice leaned forward, her forearms resting on her purse. ‘Do you think these cruise lines should be allowed to get away with this?’

‘Look, it would be a comfort if there was someone else to blame. But if there’s anyone to blame for my daughter’s death, it’s me,’ said Shelby earnestly. ‘I gave her and her husband the cruise as a present. If it weren’t for me, they never would have been on that ship. And if that weren’t enough, I saw my daughter on a regular basis and never knew that she had a drinking problem. But she did. Apparently, she did. She drank too much and she fell overboard. Blaming the cruise ship line is not going to bring her back. Or bring me any satisfaction. All I want is to be left alone with my grief.’

Janice sighed, and stood up as well. She looked at Shelby sadly. ‘Once you read what is on our website you may change your mind. And you should feel free to contact me. My information is all there.’

‘Yes, fine,’ said Shelby.

‘Just one more thing,’ Janice said. ‘You might not want to mention this visit to your son-in-law.’

‘Why not?’ Shelby demanded.

‘Well, he was there on that boat with Chloe. It’s possible that he could be . . . involved.’

At first Shelby was baffled and then, in the next moment, she was furious. Who was this stranger to accuse Rob? She might have had her own, fleeting doubts about her son-in-law, but she had heard him at night, in this house, weeping, when he thought that everyone else was asleep. ‘All right, that’s enough,’ said Shelby. ‘I won’t listen to this.’

Janice stood at the door for a moment. ‘I’m not going to say that you’ll thank me for this visit,’ she said. ‘But I hope you can stop blaming yourself and Chloe, and figure out where the blame really belongs.’

‘Good night, Mrs Pryor,’ said Shelby, closing the door behind the departing woman and leaning against it. She waited until she heard the woman’s footsteps fading, and then she peeked out the front window to be sure she was gone.

Once the car was out of sight, she angrily picked up the sheaf of papers that Janice Pryor had left on the chair and carried them through the house to the recycling bin where she dumped them. She emptied the ice cubes out of Janice Pryor’s glass, and put the glass out of sight in the dishwasher. She felt as if she wanted to remove any trace of the woman and her dismal visit.

Shelby was shaking from head to toe, freezing, despite the mildness of the night. She felt ready to weep, and dirty all over, as if she had been splattered with filth. She had not eaten and now she couldn’t eat because her stomach was in a knot. She couldn’t watch television because she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on a show. Why did I ever open that door, she thought?

There was only one thing she could think of that she wanted to do. She would take a long hot shower. In the shower, she could weep as loudly and as long as she wanted. Even if Rob and Jeremy came home early they wouldn’t hear her. Shelby locked the front door, and the back. But even as she jiggled the handle, to be sure that she was safe, she admitted to herself with a shudder that locking the door was no guarantee of safety. If someone evil wanted to get through, she thought, they could always find a way.

ELEVEN

S
helby, in her robe and pajamas, went down to the kitchen. She glanced at the clock and realized that Rob and Jeremy might soon be on their way home from the movie theater. She ate some cheese and crackers and went back up to Molly’s room to try to find something distracting to watch on television in the meantime.

But even as she flipped through the channels with the remote she was thinking about Janice Pryor’s visit. Forget about it, she chided herself. Forget that Janice Pryor ever barged into your life. But it was no use. When Chloe disappeared from that ship, Shelby became a de facto member of the Overboard group – whether she cared to admit it or not. These were the people on this earth, she thought, with whom she now had the most in common. These were all people who had wished their loved ones a cheery ‘bon voyage’, or ‘good night’, or ‘enjoy your jog around the deck’, never to set eyes on them again. How could she expect herself to resist their stories?

Finally, she climbed off the bed, went to her computer notebook, and punched in the word ‘Overboard.’ The website sprang up before her eyes. In spite of her better judgment, she began to read. After about half an hour, she heard the front door open downstairs and the sound of Rob and Jeremy’s voices in the house.

Shelby stayed very still, listening to snippets of their conversation as they wondered aloud if she were asleep and debated about waking her. Rob finally prevailed upon Jeremy to brush his teeth and get ready for bed.

‘But Shep has her light on,’ Jeremy protested.

‘She probably fell asleep with the light on,’ Rob reasoned.

‘Can we turn it off?’ Jeremy asked.

‘No. We might disturb her. Let her sleep. Shep is very tired,’ said Rob.

Shelby wasn’t sure why she didn’t go to the door and call out to them. It wasn’t as if she didn’t want to see them or hear about the movie. But when she thought about it, she had to admit that she didn’t want to tear herself away from the website. She wanted to continue poring over every story recounted there. At the same time, she was a little bit reluctant for them to know what she was doing. So she stayed silent.

Their voices grew fainter as Jeremy, distracted from thoughts of his grandmother, enthusiastically recalled his favorite parts of the movie while Rob murmured in response.

Once she could no longer hear them, Shelby resumed her reading. The fascination she felt for these stories was akin to rubbernecking at the sight of an accident. In this case, Shelby felt as if she were both rubbernecker and victim.

If the people who told their stories on the site were planning a lawsuit, it was not evident from the testimonies they gave. Instead, their stories were filled with frustration, grief, and disbelief.

There were a couple of cases where, Shelby thought, people just did not want to face facts about the missing person. There were stories of people who went on cruises to try to alleviate depression, and ended up leaving all their belongings in their cabin in a neat pile topped with a note of farewell. There were other cases that seemed to cry out for a criminal investigation. One victim was a middle-aged woman who did not approve of her son’s wealthy, dissolute admirer. She accepted an invitation to go on the cruise with them, at the expense of said admirer, and disappeared from the boat, never to be seen again.

One of the strangest cases was, as it turned out, the disappearance of Elise Pryor. Rejecting the official version of events, Janice Pryor and her husband had updated the account repeatedly as they sought out, and found, answers. There was, indeed, a convicted sex offender working as a steward on Elise’s ship. His history linked him to previous assaults on teenage girls. After Janice’s husband brought this fact to the attention of the cruise line, the steward was eventually dismissed, and his cabin was searched. Wedged between his bunk and the wall they found a bikini swimsuit top that had belonged to Elise Pryor. The police investigated, but finally insisted that this was not enough evidence to bring charges against the man. The steward was fired from his job for lying on his application, and he was put off the ship in Miami. After that, he disappeared.

Reading this account, Shelby felt a mounting fury on the Pryors’ behalf. She also felt guilty for having dismissed the bereaved mother out of hand. No one could understand how the Pryors felt the way that Shelby did. She had suffered the same loss, and been told the same lie. Yes, Shelby thought. The same lie. Now that she thought back on those terrible days in St Thomas, it did seem as if their first concern was to make this problem of Chloe’s disappearance go away. How better to make that happen than to blame it on the victim? To say that she tripped and fell in a drunken stupor. It was possible that Chloe had met with foul play. A cruise line that had hired one sexual predator might have hired others.

Shelby felt adrenalin coursing through her veins. Stunned by the revelation of Chloe’s drinking, she had accepted what the officials told her. Now, she felt ashamed for having agreed, on so little information, to blame her own daughter for her own demise. No, she thought. I need to find out if there was something else going on. But how, she wondered? There was no use in trying to explain this all to the Philadelphia police. The police in St Thomas and the FBI were satisfied with the existing explanation. She couldn’t investigate it herself – she wouldn’t know where to begin. She needed someone else – someone who would know how to proceed.

The thought of trying to hire a private detective filled her with a sense of futility. All she knew about private eyes was what she had seen on television, or read about in mystery novels. In fiction they were always rumpled guys who smoked and had problems with women and were barely able to stay sober long enough to solve the crime. It was almost laughable to imagine paying someone like that to help. In real life she imagined they were much less colorful. But she had no personal experience to go on. What was she supposed to do, pick a name out of the phone book?

And then, feeling a little thrill of hope, another thought occurred to her. She did know a detective. She knew one very well. Perry Wilcox, the head of security for the Markson stores, was a soft-spoken man who had been, for fifteen years, a homicide detective for the city of Philadelphia. But his daughter became ill with severe diabetes and Perry was often needed at home. He was no longer able to put in late and irregular hours on the job. He signed up for a course on computer crimes and surveillance techniques and found that he was interested in these burgeoning areas of security. He decided to opt out of police work and take a job in the private sector. He was hired by Albert Markson and had worked in the Markson stores for eight years, making sure that the security system was state of the art.