Harmless Page 11

  sK8teR817: hey, u there?

  I sat and stared at those nine letters for what felt like hours. Yes, I was there; it was finally my turn to be there.

  I sent him back an IM saying only:

  AnnaBanana133: yeah

  And then:

  sK8teR817: u were really brave tonight Hendricks

  sK8teR817: I think that's cool.

  Since then we'd talked about everything. Well, not really talked, but instant-messaged about everything. We never talked at school. We didn't have any classes together and we sat with different people at lunch. But every day I came straight home after school—I wasn't hanging out with Emma and Mariah anymore—and I went up to my room and closed the door and turned on my computer and there he was.

  And through instant-messaging with Tobey, I discovered the second major event occurring in my life. It says a lot about Tobey and what he's like that he knew even before I did that David Allen had been arrested. My mom wasn't home yet that afternoon and I didn't check our voice mail and so it was Tobey who told me, because he picked something up on his scanner.

  Tobey was obsessed with crime. He had a police scanner in his room that he never turned off, he just turned it down at night when he was trying to sleep. He watched all these police shows, both real, like Cops, and fake, like reruns of NYPD Blue. He wanted to be one of those people who sketch scenes they show on the news when cameras aren't allowed in the courtroom. That, and a professional skateboarder.

  Tobey called me when he heard the stuff about the arrest on his scanner. Tobey IM'd me; he never called me. I saw ENDO, EUGENE on the caller ID and my hand shook as I picked up the phone.

  I was so surprised and excited to hear his voice that it took a while before it hit me that someone had been arrested for a crime that I, at least in part, invented. Maybe this should have occurred to me right away, but the truth is, it didn't, and I wasn't going to feel guilty about that, especially after learning what I learned later that day about David Allen.

  Mom came home from work and took me down to the po-lice station. David Allen had been arrested, but he hadn't been charged, and a public defender had been assigned to him and was going to be present when we identified him.

  He'd been picked up in Kapachuck. He was found sleeping in the woods behind a public park and when the officers asked him what he was doing there, instead of just answering, “Sleeping, what does it look like I'm doing?” he told them that he was usually down in Orsonville but that he'd come to Ka-pachuck because he'd heard that there was a new human-services agency that might be able to help him find a job and a place to live. Even though this turned out to be true, that there was a new agency called Family of Kapachuck, the fact that he said he was usually in Orsonville made a lightbulb go on over the arresting officer's head.

  So this officer called the cops down in Orsonville, and Detective Stevens and his boss, Detective Caputo, drove up to interview David Allen and they returned with David Allen sitting in the backseat of their unmarked car wearing a pair of handcuffs.

  He couldn't account for where he was on the day that Elinor Clements disappeared beyond saying that he was sleeping off too much Zima somewhere in the woods between Orsonville and Kapachuck. That wasn't much of an alibi. And when he was questioned about where he was the night that we were attacked, he stupidly said he couldn't be sure but he was probably sleeping somewhere near the banks of the Hudson River in the town of Orsonville.

  I recognized him right away. I'd seen him many times. I'd seen him almost every time I went near the river, except, as it happened, on the night we said we were attacked. He always wore the same black and red plaid wool jacket and brown hiking boots. He was bearded, with a deep rust-colored tan that didn't seem to fade and a layer of dirt on his face, but beyond this, David Allen was hard to describe. He was average height, average weight, and it was hard to tell exactly how old he was. His hair wasn't brown exactly or black or gray, it was some combination of dull earthy tones.

  We were asked if we had seen him before and we all said yes. And this was an absolute truth. When asked if we had seen him by the river, we all said yes. Another truth. When asked if he was the man who attacked us on that night in March when the sky was clear enough to show off its stars, we said we didn't know.

  Detective Caputo took the three of us into his office. The public defender, who had short white hair, round glasses and a wrinkled suit, wanted to come in too, but Detective Caputo said no. The public defender said something about how a meeting without his client's counsel present violated some kind of rule, but Detective Caputo closed the door while he was in midsentence. Detective Stevens wasn't invited to join us either, and I could see him through the window sitting at one of the many desks in the large detective area, pretending to do paperwork, sneaking glances in our direction.

  “Let me tell you what I think, ladies,” Detective Caputo said. “I think this guy did something unspeakable to that poor little girl in Kapachuck. I think he did what he did, and he doesn't give a rat's ass about it. Unfortunately for us, he didn't leave behind any kind of trace of what he did. And unfortu-nately for the Clements girl and her family, she isn't here to point the finger at him. But luckily, you guys are here. You got away from him. We can't nail him for murder, but we can get him for assault and at least that'll get him out of our lives and off the streets for a long, long time.”

  He peeled the fine silvery paper off a breath mint and popped it in his mouth.

  “I know these types,” he continued. “I've been at this job almost thirty years now. I know a predator when I see one, and this guy's got predator written all over him. The signs are there. No family. A loner. A loser. Never done anything with his life. And he's got a record. A long, quite colorful record.”

  Images of David Allen came back to me, times I'd noticed him hanging around.

  I know a predator when I see one.

  I'd never really looked at him or thought about him or worried that he might cause any trouble. He just lived in the background, out of focus. Now I wondered why I'd never stopped to think that he could have been dangerous.

  He's got a record. A long, quite colorful record.

  “So, how 'bout it, girls?” asked Detective Caputo. “Do you think we've got our man?”

  I looked at my hands in my lap. They looked small and weak.

  “Let me try this again,” he said. “You've all seen him before, right?”

  We nodded. Yes.

  “He hangs out by the river?”

  More nodding.

  “Now, I'm thinking … he fits the description. He's average size. No distinguishing features. It was dark, so you couldn't see his face, I understand that. But it all fits. He's a vagrant. He frequented the river. So, I'll ask again, do you think maybe he's the guy who attacked you that night?”

  Mariah spoke first. “I don't know … I don't think so.”

  “But can you rule him out? Can you say for certain that it wasn't him?”

  She paused. “Well … no … I guess I can't rule him out for certain … but …”

  “How about you, can you rule him out?”

  He was asking me.

  I wanted this to end. I wanted to leave this office and go back to my life and my school and my new table at lunchtime and IM'ing Tobey.

  This guy David Allen was trouble. He was a predator. He had a record. He probably did have something to do with Ellie Clements, at least that was what Detective Caputo thought, and I figured he must know more than any of us about these things.

  I took in a breath of the stale air. “No,” I said. “I can't rule him out.”

  We all turned to Emma. She started to say something, but then she stopped. She cupped her hands over her eyes, but I could see from where I was sitting that under her interlocking fingers her eyes were squeezed shut. Her face was flushed. She sighed, and she shook her head slowly back and forth.

  “Well then,” said Detective Caputo. “I guess that's enough for me.”

&nb
sp; Emma

  Here's something else I learned about Ellie Clements from reading about her. She had an older brother. He wasn't mentioned in any of the early articles, but once the stories about her started to read more like obituaries than calls for help, more of the details of her life came out.

  I hoped he was kind to her. I hoped he didn't get annoyed when she came knocking at the door to his room and that he let her borrow his things. I hoped he stayed home on some weekend nights to watch movies with her. I hoped he took her somewhere sometimes, just the two of them, so they could talk, or sit quietly side by side on a train with the river on their left.

  Ms. Malachy asked me how I felt about the arrest of David Allen. I was tired of being asked how I felt about things. Those were questions I didn't know how to answer. I'd lost most of my senses. I didn't taste food. I couldn't smell the fresh-cut grass in the school quad. And I didn't feel anything about David Allen. I didn't feel happy. I didn't feel relieved. I didn't feel “closure,” which was something Ms. Malachy said she was hoping I would feel. I just felt that white expanse of nothingness slowly spreading to the edges of me.

  “Is there something else going on?” she asked me. She was wearing a blue bandana in her hair and an Ecuadorian wool sweater even though her office felt hot, like it must feel at the equator, which made me wonder why they knit so many of those heavy wool sweaters in Ecuador.

  “Not really.”

  “How are things at home?”

  “I guess they're like they always are.” She stared at me. She needed more. “By which I mean they're fine.”

  I don't think I sounded very convincing. The truth was things weren't so great at home. After the march, after that girl with the red hair said those things about my father, after she gathered some of her friends and starting chanting, “Hey, ho, Raymond Calhoun has got to go,” after their voices rose above the crowd and people stopped to stare, after the school paper wrote about my father the next week and how he'd been given “safe haven” at the college after sexually harassing students at his previous job, things had been a little tense at home.

  It even seemed to be getting to Silas. I had come home one day and it was just Dad and Silas in the kitchen and when I walked in, Silas stormed out. Silas is not a stormer. He never has been. Dad looked at me and shrugged. I went to Silas's room but he didn't answer the door when I knocked. I paced up and down the hall for a few minutes and then went back to the kitchen to talk to Dad, but he was gone.

  “What about your friends? Anything new there?” Ms. Malachy asked.

  “I don't really have time for my friends right now.”

  “Really? What are you busy with?”

  “Stuff.”

  “Hmmm. Stuff. Do you have a boyfriend?”

  The picture of Owen knocking his hips into the hips of the tall, skinny girl with short brown hair came back to me. Touch, step. Touch, step. Touch, step. That is how they walked away, in sync with the loud beating of my heart.

  I opened my mouth to say “No, of course not,” but my words got caught in my throat. They lingered on my tongue. I couldn't spit them out. Like everything else, I couldn't even taste them.

  “So there is somebody,” she said.

  I stared at the design on her sweater. Interlocking brown and red diamonds with white trim. If you go to Ecuador and you go to the equator and you stand perfectly still, right on the line that divides the earth in two, at certain times in the year you have no shadow.

  “Tell me about him.”

  Touch, step. Touch, step. Touch, step. And there was the laughter. The way they shared something, a whisper, something that had a meaning only between the two of them.

  “His name is Owen,” I began. “And he isn't my boy-friend.”

  He whispered things to me too. I felt his hot breath in my ear, back when I could feel things. “I had sex with him.”

  Silence.

  “Wow. That's a pretty important event. Sharing that part of yourself with somebody.”

  “I guess so.”

  “So where is he now? What happened between you?”

  “Nothing really. It just wasn't … it just didn't work out.”

  “And you're okay with that?”

  “Sure.”

  “What was it like?”

  I started to feel something. A little trickle of a feeling. I took a deep breath. Closed my eyes. Willed it to stop.

  I smiled at her. “I'm sure you must know what it's like having sex.”

  “That's not what I mean, Emma, and I think you know that.”

  I looked at the clock. The minute hand had completed its full rotation. A perfect circle, like the earth. Our time was up.

  Mariah

  David Allen. Weren't guys like this, guys who got arrested for attacking young girls, supposed to have three names? Like David Allen Smith. Or maybe David Smith Allen. David Allen sounded like only part of a name. Like something had been cut away. Like something was missing.

  I couldn't stop thinking about him, sitting alone in his cell.

  DavidDavidDavidDavid. AllenAllenAllenAllen.

  More than anything, it just seemed like a lousy time of year to be locked up inside. It was May. Perfect weather. Not too hot. No rain. The river was swollen and the banks were lush with green, lavender, orange and yellow. I stood by the rushing water one day after school and smelled the air and watched a dragonfly, and it was as if, with the end of May, the clouds had been lifted away. They no longer hung low above our school, our town, or our community of concerned citizens. Darby O'Shea, Detective Caputo, even the mayor, had de-clared this chapter over. The world was safe again.

  Except for one nagging little piece of truth: David Allen was nowhere near us the night of the attack. Or, I should say, the night we said we were attacked. We said we were attacked. We weren't. There was no attacker. No staring evil in the face. No man with a knife who wasn't afraid to use it. No David Allen. Only a ghost we conjured out of the clear night air, a ghost we hoped would protect us.

  Two things kept me from going to Detective Stevens with the truth. Well, maybe three things. I'll take the first two first. One: a prison cell is a home, even if not the ideal one. Four walls. A roof. A bed. Three meals a day. David Allen had none of this before his arrest. Lame, I know, but this was a lie I told myself to make things easier. Two: David Allen had a record. Elinor Clements was missing. The cops were probably right. He was probably the one who snatched her away. Keeping him off the streets would keep other girls on the streets.

  I have to confess that the third thing that kept me from going to Detective Stevens was that I'm a big fat coward. I was afraid of what would become of us, of me, if we did tell the truth about that night. We were beyond grounding, beyond no phone, no TV, no allowance, don't leave your room for a month, you're going to boarding school. I didn't need to be Clarence Darrow to know that we had probably committed a crime. And I wasn't ready to cop to that. This was over. Wrapped up neatly and tucked away. Now David Allen had a bed and four walls and a roof over his head and I could have my life back.

  Silas and Bronwyn broke up. He got into Columbia like everyone knew he would and she was going to Smith College, which is all women, and why anyone would want to go to an all-women school made absolutely no sense to me. Smith hap-pened to be just a few hours away from New York City, but it might as well have been light-years away, because Silas de-cided he didn't want to have a girlfriend at another school. I knew this was coming. I knew he didn't love her the way he used to. I know these things about people. I pride myself on it. I'd learned some valuable lessons since my time with DJ. I can tell when there's an imbalance of love and affection between two people. Like, for instance, with Mom and Carl. He may be an asshole, but he worships her, and for that, she likes him just fine.

  I could tell it was over with Bronwyn by the way Silas talked to me, and the way he always managed to catch my eye in the hallway and touch my arm or shoulder as I passed by. He was using this Smith College excuse jus
t to let her down gently, which just goes to show you how sensitive a guy Silas Calhoun is.

  He found me after school; he was lurking by my locker and he asked if I wanted a ride home. I said sure and he said, “Great. I'll meet you at the corner of Spruce and McDonnell.” He flashed me a quick smile and then disappeared in the crowd of Odious students, all fighting their way out the doors for a taste of the sweet freedom that comes every day at three.

  The corner was only a few blocks from the main gate to campus and I didn't mind the walk because the day was per-fect, but it seemed kind of foolish to walk to Spruce and McDonnell because that basically cut in half the distance between school and my house. I hardly needed a ride, but I was pretty sure that wasn't what Silas was offering.

  He was waiting for me in his black Honda Civic. I threw my bag in the backseat, which I noticed was cramped and cluttered. He was listening to the college radio station's jazz hour. The car smelled like bubble gum.

  “How about a cup of coffee?” he asked.

  “Sounds perfect.”

  I assumed he'd head toward the Big Cup, but instead he turned onto the parkway and started driving north. The trees on either side of the road were full and created a big leafy tunnel that we drove through in near silence, with just some piano chords and the dlum dlum of a stand-up bass, and I didn't ask where we were going. I kind of hoped we'd drive all day and all night, out of Orsonville, past Kapachuck, away from the river, away from ghosts, across the New York border into Canada and beyond.

  But Silas pulled off in Greenfield, the small town you hit just after leaving Orsonville, and he parked at the Greek Corner, a shabby-looking diner. We ordered two plain coffees, and he got a grilled corn muffin. The booth was small and our knees almost touched under the table.

  “I'm confused,” he finally said to me. “And I don't know who else I can talk to about this other than you.”

  “So here I am.” I opened a small plastic creamer and dumped it in my coffee. The white disappeared in the thick black sludge. “You talk. I'll listen.” I looked up and caught him staring at me and the intensity in his eyes made me feel dizzy.