The Night My Sister Went Missing (6 page)

"And where was Mark Stern all this time?"

"In the toilet. That's what True says. She saw him go in there—"

"The toilet?" The captain raised his eyebrows, and she smirked with her head down.

"Okay, so we all know there's no functioning toilet on the pier. But there's that little remaining shell of the old ticket booth. If there's too many girls around and a guy doesn't want to take a leak over the side, they'll still go in there. It's shaped just like an outhouse. It totally stinks—"

"Fine, fine." Lutz jotted down something.

She leaned forward and flopped back, as if she was getting stiff from sitting. "Here's what I think. Stacy's been going a little crazy. Maybe her drunken father beat her once too often, who knows? I think maybe she got a gun to protect herself, in case he came back to the house on some bender one night and tried to beat her mom or the DeWinters to death. As for her being pregnant, she has told me a thousand times she would never sleep with anybody in high school. She said she could never stand to risk having an abortion. But Stern is such a polecat, and obviously he got her to cave in. When he breaks up with her, she's ... not okay, but she's making it, until she finds out she's pregnant. She wants him back, maybe wants a father for this baby, because she doesn't want to go through with an abortion like
she always said she was afraid of. But he's not coming back. Because of Casey Carmody. So ... you tell me the rest."

Lutz cleared his throat, watching Cecilly glance around again at the walls. Somehow I knew she was trying to spot a recorder.

"You don't have any idea where Stacy was coming from?" he finally asked.

She shook her head woefully. "The moon was tricky. Out and in and out ... I could barely see Casey fall. Stacy just ... materialized beside me. Look, I know it sounds like a total soap opera." She held up her hands defensively. "But just take away the gun for a minute. Take away the gun, and you've got the same normal high school, same normal small-town crap that goes on anywhere. I've been feeling like a freak all night because I touched a gun, but everyone did. It was just so normal the way it happened. I'm
not
a freak. We're not freaks. Okay?"

"Tell True to come in here," Lutz said to Cecilly, "and you can either wait for her outside or go along home."

"I'll wait," Cecilly said. I figured Cecilly wouldn't be happy until she'd heard every last version of what happened up there.

There was a commotion by the door. Cecilly was trying to hold it closed, but fingers were coming around trying to push it open.

"Captain Lutz!" Cecilly couldn't close the door all the way because of the fingers. "It's, um ... you know."

"Captain Lutz! I must have a word with you!"

The foreign accent that made her "with you" sound like "weese you." Drew must have recognized the voice. He laid all his weight on me to get me to move.

"Oh god. You definitely don't want to be here anymore, bro—"

I stood my ground as a face I knew peered over the officer's shoulder.

"Maybe Crazy Addy saw something and won't be talking crazy for once," I proposed.

"Ms. Gearta, please go home! I will call you, I don't have time right now—" Lutz's impatience rang through.

I stood hypnotized as Crazy Addy, aka Adeleena Gearta, managed to squeeze herself past Cecilly and go in. Her ice green eyes kind of glowed neon. Crazy Addy is in her thirties now and is a haint around these islands—someone whose voodoo store you go visit with a group of blasted friends when you want to know if your girlfriend is cheating or where you'll get accepted to college. Crazy Addy tossed crystals and then "looked in them," or she stirred up some birdbath-looking thing and said she saw things in it. We thought she was very cheesy, though the girls liked getting their future romances predicted.

At a serious time like this, Crazy Addy was as welcome as having a tooth drilled. After Eddie Van Doren's suicide four years ago, the fact that she had predicted it had permeated the island like the stink of clams. Crazy Addy felt her prediction about Eddie Van Doren's suicide should have given her word more respect with the police, though it got her nothing. The cops rarely if ever followed up on her "visions," though she came to them every couple months or
so, predicting some crime. Drew's dad had a lot of fun names for her: Chinese Water Torture, Crazy Migraine, etc.

Well, here she was, waving her arms.

"Captain, I have foreseen a death. Early this morning, it will come to pass if you don't listen to me. I can feel this girl's anguish! I have seen her injuries. But the police are looking for her in the wrong place. She is not in the water!"

"Adeleena, she fell in the water, so we're looking in the water. Of course, we're hoping she made it to land, that she's fine, and doesn't realize—"

"She is not fine! And she is not in the water! There is no blood, but her injuries are intense."

"Kurt, come away from there." Drew pulled at my arm.

"I want to hear."

"All right, Adeleena." Lutz rolled his shoulders uncomfortably. "If you know so much, where is she?"

"She moves. From place to place."

"From where to where? And why? If you ever want some credibility around here, give us something—sometime—that we can use!"

"She is in anguish. She doesn't know what she's doing"

"Where?" he asked again.

"There was sand under her feet, but now there is none. I saw her feet in the crystals!"

He threw his pen down in annoyance. "The island's a pretty big place. And last time you came in here, weren't you ranting that there would be a robbery if we didn't—"

"I can't tell you why the robbers didn't rob! They changed their minds!"

"For pete's sake." He scratched his forehead, and I felt sorry for him. "Look. I've got a dozen potential witnesses to—"

"I am not leaving until you listen to me. You won't listen? A girl dies!"

He stood up. "If I hear you tell one kid on this island that you know the Carmody girl is alive and suffering, I will have you locked up for ... disturbing the peace!"

"I cannot help what I see," she said. Her face was stirred up in some kind of anguish I didn't want to understand because I was creeped out enough. She added, "I cannot help what I am. You can thank the good Lord you are
you.
You are
safe.
"

After the door slammed shut behind her, Drew muttered, "Safe from what?"

The word
safe
echoed inside my head, maybe because I wrote a whole blog last week called "Unsafe." And I hadn't known what I had meant. I'd just kept writing. "... feels
unsafe
to walk around a corner on this island. I feel like something's going to jump out at me. I feel
unsafe
when I look somebody in the eye, like they're going to pass some wacky judgment. The water feels
unsafe,
like it's crawling with sharks, or the back bay is crawling with toads..." It was definitely a weird post, but I got some cool responses from people who felt irrationally unsafe
near everything from ponds and bogs to the bathrooms in school.

I decided to chase after her, but suddenly Drew was holding me instead of pushing me.

"If she says Casey's alive, I want to find out more!"

"You're asking for trouble." But he trotted along beside me back up the hallway and out the front door. I broke into a mad dash for the back of the building. I heard tires screech and saw the taillights as Crazy Addy's green van took off up the street.

I cursed, gripping my head, looking for sense.

"Let's just go back inside and wait for some news," Drew said. "You are
not
going down on that beach. And you are
not
going to chase after Crazy Addy."

I looked over and saw the lights from the beach and figured from the size of the glow, they must have a dozen spots on the water. I could hear a chopper in the distance but couldn't see it. I wondered how the hell far out at sea they were searching. It didn't sound good..."What did she say? Something about the officers were looking in the wrong place?"

Drew answered quietly, "Yes. And, um, nobody's dead yet, but that will change near morning. I don't suppose after you heard that much, you'll be satisfied until we go have a look in the back bay..."

We started toward the yacht club, which is where almost everyone we knew docks their boats.

"
Casey!
" A lone guy's voice floated over the water as we came around the side of the yacht club main building.

Lines of boats rested quietly dockside of four floating docks. The water was mirrorlike. The storm at sea had moved farther east, toward England, or broken up south of Greenland. The wind surely had died, which meant the ocean water was next—if it hadn't calmed already. The guy's voice was clear in the silence, and the boats were unmoving, save one thirty-footer at the end. Its mast was gently bobbing.

Drew and I ran down there to find Todd Barnes getting off the Sterns' thirty-foot sailboat. He reached a hand out.
Stern.

"Just us," Todd said, gesturing with disappointment at the bow, implying Casey was not inside.

"Guess we weren't the only ones with ideas to look back here." Drew shuddered. "You guys didn't get your idea to search back here from Crazy Addy, did you?"

"Hell no." Stern turned his chin to the masts for the sign of another one moving. "What's that warthog up to now? Don't tell me she's got something to say about all this."

I just screamed, "
Casey!
" up to the half moon. "
You are so not funny!
"

The silence that followed made me drop my face as I fought off the sudden feeling of spiraling. Three sets of bare feet moved around in awkwardness. Stern called out next.

After he got no response he said, "We came back here just a few minutes ago. Because of the sweatshirt."

I'd been afraid I might punch him out if I so much as glanced, but I looked full at him. His eyes had some hopeful glow. "They found her sweatshirt in the water."

I stepped closer. "My sweatshirt? White? Huge? Says
Naval Academy
on it?"

"Yeah. It washed up."

Before I could interpret that, Barnes took hold of my shoulder. "Yeah. And it was in one piece and guess what else? Just with their flashlights, the coast guard couldn't see any traces of blood on it."

"Well ... someone said she got shot in the neck," I forced myself to admit.

Todd shook his head like it didn't matter. "And the sweatshirt wasn't all twisted up, like she might have
drowned trying to get out of it. It looked like she just ... slipped out of it. Hopefully."

Drew read my mind. "So if she didn't get hit by a bullet, what made her fall into the water?"

"Well, here's the confusing part," Barnes said. "There was this little hole. Right about here." He pointed at his left shoulder.

I fought off panic by searching my head for what that could have meant. A hole but no blood. "Maybe it, like ... just grazed her—like, scared her," I said. "Maybe she stumbled backward and just ... lost her footing. She's been diving the tower at the pool since seventh grade. She's long been bragging about trying a dive off that pier, though I can't believe she'd do it ... especially when the water was so choppy and fierce. Still ... as long as she wasn't injured badly, I think she could have caught herself in time to cut the water, rather than slam it."

The three of them nodded in agreement, and I hoped it wasn't just to be polite.

"Maybe the hole is a barnacle bite." Drew shrugged. Barnacles are a type of shellfish, and their shells attach in multilayers to pilings. In places like the pier, which has been around for a couple generations, the razor-sharp barnacle shells are three layers deep. If Casey had been thrown against barnacles by the surf, there would have been blood on my sweatshirt.

The silence that followed was cut by Stern. "So then ... where is she?"

Barnes shook his head. "One theory on the beach was that a riptide sucked her out, and she was too tired to swim back very quickly. Coast guard was looking for the down-sea, but it's hard to find in the dark"

The down-sea is an area usually about a mile and a half out in the water, where the riptides from the piers and jetties finally calm. They shift with the weather and the water's mood. The only way to tell where the down-seas are is to look for the start of swells toward shore and strange debris you wouldn't expect to see a mile and a half out—a surfboard, a flip-flop, a kayak oar. Funny tales have been told of things found in the down-sea by boaters, especially if the riptides are bad—everything from beach umbrellas to dog dishes. You just can't imagine how some of this stuff could find its way to the water's edge to get sucked out there.

"If there had been any blood on your sweatshirt, Kurt, it was so little that it washed clean off before the forty minutes it took to catch a wave and roll in to shore," Barnes said. "They found it under the pier, which probably implies that she got out of it pretty close to shore. There's a northern undertow tonight. If she got out of it at the end of the pier, it probably would have washed up a couple blocks north."

"So she
is
alive," Drew said under his breath, and nudged me. "Down-seas, my ass. We're gonna string her up by her toes when we catch her."

I heaved a sigh, though not enough made sense yet. It looked like Casey was alive. But she was still missing, and
someone had fired a gun at her, and I was tired of having no answers.

"You should have heard, um, people ... swearing up and down that blood ran through her fingers and out her neck," I said, trying to ignore Drew knocking me in the ankle. He was probably nervous his dad could get in some trouble if word got out that we had been listening outside the questioning room. "Can seawater wash blood out of a sweatshirt?"

"Dunno," Todd said.

"Definitely not," Stern said. "It would definitely have been a little bit pink. I
think
..."

Drew shook his head in disgust. "Jeezus, we're all lifeguards. You would think at least one of us would know if salt water could wash blood out of a sweatshirt. They'll analyze it if she doesn't show up soon."