Blood and Sand Page 6

  “You’ve never believed any of them could’ve done it?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “Not really. Not more than a passing doubt or suspicion. Same goes for Keith. They’ve all been so loyal to us, so supportive when the media turned the rest of the world against us . . . I guess I thought I owed them the same thing. And it’s been easy enough. I haven’t really ever believed them capable of something so . . . But now . . . I want you looking at all of us like one of us did it—because one of us has to have, right? No one else could have. There’s no other explanation. Our house wasn’t unlocked, didn’t have a basement window access with a suitcase beneath it.”

  I assume he’s referring to the Ramsey home and the JonBenet Ramsey murder case from 1996.

  “She wasn’t home alone and we didn’t find an open window in her room,” he continues.

  I assume he’s now referring to the circumstances around the disappearance of Madeleine McCann while on vacation with her family in Praia da Luz in May of 2007.

  “I’ve wanted it to be some fanciful explanation of someone somehow breaking in and taking her while we slept, but there’s just no evidence of that. We’re always so careful with security. Far more so when we had—when we got Magdalene. No one broke in. There’s no evidence of that whatsoever. It had to be one of us. I can’t imagine who and I don’t know why or what exactly happened, but . . . when you exclude the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. The truth is one of us, one of my closest friends in the world, took my little girl. You can’t imagine how hard that is to even say. As is often the case for an openly gay couple who are rejected or shunned by their blood relatives, our closest friends became our family, are our family, and I’m saying one of them did it, did this unimaginable thing. God, I feel so guilty sayin’ it, but fuck ’em. Fuck all of us. Finding Magdalene is all that matters.”

  Day 48

  Day 48

  * * *

  The strangest thing happened today.

  I’m not sure I can even describe it and I certainly know I can’t explain it.

  We were out in the woods searching for Magdalene and I began to get a panic attack. Derinda must have seen that something was wrong. She came over to me—quietly, cautiously, not drawing attention to me, not stopping any of the others from searching.

  As she was asking what was wrong, Brent and Charis joined us, but instead of asking what was wrong, they both put their hands on me and began to whisper prayers. Soon Derinda joined in and I began to feel more love and grace than I ever imagined possible. It was like I was absolutely and completely wrapped in love. I realize I can’t know exactly how this feels, but it felt like I was a fully developed child just before being born but still in its mother’s womb. And she was the most kind and loving mother, so pure and joyful. It was as if she was love itself and that the embryonic fluid I was in was liquid love.

  Eventually I realized that the mother was God and I was the child and that I was loved beyond description, that I wasn’t being judged, only loved.

  Something inside me shifted and I was able to let go of some of the guilt and shame and grief I’ve been carrying. I’m still sad, still broken, but I no longer feel guilty, I no longer want to die.

  It was the most amazing thing.

  Suddenly, I felt like if Magdalene was buried in these woods, it wasn’t a bad thing in and of itself. They are blessed woods. They are part of God. Full of grace and light. This ground is as holy as a church cemetery.

  I would never tell anyone any of this—not even Keith—but it was the most incredible experience of my life, and I will never be the same again.

  11

  On Monday morning Taylor and I go for a bike ride around Sandcastle.

  I don’t have a talk today, and I plan to spend the entire day with Taylor and Anna—and only work on Magdalene’s disappearance when they nap or after they go to bed tonight.

  There’s a possibility that Susan is going to let Johanna come tonight instead of later in the week, so our entire family will be together again. I can’t wait—even if it means that everything related to my talk preparation and Magdalene’s case will have to.

  Taylor is a smart, creative, fun four-year-old, but she is never more delightful than in the mornings.

  We talk and play and laugh, and have a wonderful time.

  In addition to the small, narrow streets of Sandcastle being conducive to bike riding, there are several bike paths through the undeveloped acres of scrub pine forest surrounding the master-planned community.

  For the most part I am fully present with Taylor, completely attentive and focused on her fun, but as we ride through the woods behind Sandcastle, I can’t help but wonder if little Magdalene Dacosta’s remains are buried somewhere out here.

  Additionally, I can’t help but think about Anna and what’s going on with her, and how it’s affecting us. It’s always in the back of my mind like a low-grade fever in an otherwise mostly healthy body.

  “Daddy, what’s wrong with Mommy?” Taylor asks.

  Evidently I’m not the only one who’s concerned about it.

  We have stopped at a bench in a small clearing beneath an oak tree along the bicycle path in the woods.

  “What do you mean, sweetie?” I ask.

  I want to hear what’s on her mind, what she has observed, what she is thinking, and what is concerning her before I say anything.

  She shrugs. “I don’t know.”

  She’s looking down, sipping on the blue popup straw of her water bottle, avoiding eye contact.

  When she doesn’t say anything else, I say, “What do you think is wrong with her?”

  She shrugs again.

  Suddenly, this fun, carefree, wild-at-heart child is sad and heavy.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I know you love Mommy more than anything. It’s okay to say when you think something’s wrong. What makes you think something’s wrong?”

  She shrugs again. “She’s . . . actin’ funny.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She shrugs yet again. “I don’t know.”

  “What do you think it is?” I ask. “It’s okay to tell me anything you want to.”

  “Are y’all getting a divorce?”

  I shake my head. “No, sweetie, we’re not going to get a divorce. You don’t have to worry about that. Everything is okay. Mommy’s just . . . She’s not feeling real good right now, but she will be again. Very soon she’ll be back to her old self.”

  “Is she mad at you?”

  Now it’s my turn to shrug. “She might be. I don’t know. But it’s okay if she is. You know how much you and Johanna love each other and what great sisters and friends y’all are, and how sometimes you still fuss or get upset with each other a little? All friends do that. And that’s okay. It doesn’t mean you love each other any less or that you’re not friends or sisters anymore.”

  She seems reassured, her little head lifting, her eyes actually drifting over to look at me.

  “I mean it,” I say. “Your mom and I are good. Our family is good. You and Johanna are safe and so loved and everything is okay.”

  She nods.

  “Do you want to ride back into town and get Mommy a treat and take it to her?”

  “Yes,” she says. “Let’s go get Mommy a treat.”

  Day 51

  Day 51

  I had no idea so many kids went missing each year.

  It’s staggering.

  As many as 8,000,000.

  The truth is we don’t really know exactly how many kids go missing. Some countries don’t even bother to keep records of such things.

  It’s possible the number could be higher—much higher.

  It’s also possible it could be lower, but even if it’s a lot lower, it’s still stunning.

  It’s an epidemic.

  Some reports say as many as 800,000 kids go missing in the US alone. That’s 2,000 a day. Every single day 2,000 children vanish.

  Others cont
end that the number is closer to 460,000, but regardless of which number it is, it’s surreal. Hard to even imagine.

  I can’t believe I have been so naively cocooned in my own little self-centered existence that I didn’t know any of this. It actually took my child being one of the missing for me to even become aware of the reality.

  Even without knowing any of this, Keith and I knew our most important job was to protect our little girl, which is why we had and still have such an elaborate security system in place. But not even that was enough. I still can’t figure out how it was compromised. It seems impossible. What went wrong? Where did we fail? Who could’ve breached the barrier of all our precautions?

  Of the kids that go missing each year, whatever the actual number is, about 92 percent are endangered runaways, 4 percent are family abductions, 3 percent are critically missing young adults, ages 18 to 20, less than 1 percent are non-family abductions, and around 1 percent are lost or injured.

  The so-called stranger abductions account for a very small percentage overall, but it’s still between 4,000 and 8,000 children—as many as 30 a day.

  15 to 30 children a day taken by a stranger.

  I have to believe that Magdalene has to be one of them because nobody we know would do this—not to her and not to us.

  12

  “I believe I have you to thank for encouraging Christopher to keep a journal,” I say to Henrique Arango.

  He looks up from the book he is reading, Havana Black by Leonardo Padura, and smiles and nods.

  It’s the first time I’ve seen him without a hat. His cancer-bald head has a pair of glasses pushed up on it that he wasn’t using to read, and it, like the rest of his skin, has an unnatural chemically created sallowness that smells like he just got out of too much time in a tanning bed.

  Taylor and I are in the town square searching for a gift for Anna when I see him on a bench on the green and walk over to him.

  I can tell he’s about to stand and I say, “Don’t get up.”

  But as befits a distinguished gentleman of a certain generation there’s no way he can remain seated with us standing.

  He pushes himself up, stands before me, and extends his hand—none of which seems particularly easy or effortless for him to do.

  “Trust me, my friend,” he says, “this getting old is not for cowards.”

  I nod and smile at him as I shake his hand.

  He is definitely in the winter of his life, but his physical difficulties seem to be the result of something far more sinister than just that—not that aging and dying aren’t sinister enough. No one has said anything to me, but I can tell he’s not well.

  “This pretty little thing has decades and decades before she’ll know anything of that, doesn’t she?” he says, bending down to shake Taylor’s hand.

  “Hello, Mr. ’Rique,” Taylor says.

  “Sweet, mannerly, and pretty,” he says.

  “Sorry to interrupt you,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “No interruption at all. I’m delighted you two stopped by to say hi. It’s usually far too hot for me to read out here, so I try to take advantage of it when it’s not. And among the joys of doing so is seeing friends.”

  “I just saw you and was thinking about how helpful having Christopher’s journal entries are to my look into what happened to Magdalene, and I had to thank you.”

  “I’ve always found writing to be particularly therapeutic,” he says. “I’m glad he took my gentle suggestion and I hope it was beneficial to him.”

  I nod. “There’s no question but that it was.”

  “He just gave it to you?” he asks.

  “A copy of it was included in a casebook he made for me.”

  “Fascinating,” he says. “My guess is you are the only person to have read what he has written.”

  As we’re standing there, Sarah Samuelson opens the door of her restaurant, The Sand Witch, and yells over to us. “I’ve just pulled a bread pudding out of the oven,” she says. “Could Taylor come taste test it for me? I have vanilla ice cream to go with it.”

  Taylor looks up at me. “Ice cream! Can I, Daddy?”

  “You’d rather do that than stand there and listen to us talk?” I say.

  She smiles.

  “I’ll watch you walk over there,” I say. “And I’ll come get you in just a few minutes, okay?”

  She lets go of my hand and starts running toward The Sand Witch.

  “Be sure to thank her,” I say. I turn back toward Sarah and raise the level of my voice. “She’s very excited. Thank you.”

  “Our pleasure,” she says.

  “It’s good of you to let her go,” Henrique says. “They had a grandchild get killed a few years back—their only one—and they take every opportunity to dote on little ones.”

  “Oh wow,” I say. “I’m so sorry to hear that. What happened?”

  “I’m not sure exactly. They never talk about it.”

  I nod and think about it.

  “Of course, we all know trauma and tragedy in one form or another, don’t we?” he says. “Not possible to get through life without it.”

  I wonder if he’s referring to his illness or something else—perhaps something closer to what Keith and Christopher are going through or what Clarence and Sarah Samuelson have experienced.

  “I’m sure you know what I mean,” he says.

  “All too well,” I say.

  “‘Man, born of woman, is of few days and full of troubles,’” he says.

  I nod and smile appreciatively. “Job certainly had his fair share, didn’t he?”

  “That he did.”

  “Since I’ve already interrupted your reading and Taylor is busy getting pudding,” I say, “mind if I ask you a few questions about the night of the solstice party when Magdalene was taken?”

  “Of course not,” he said, “but do you mind if we sit?”

  “Not at all,” I say, and indicate for him to sit down.

  After he is seated, I join him on the wooden bench. Before us is a view of the green and all the activities taking place on it—children playing, couples sitting and lying on blankets, young people playing beach volleyball and frisbee, readers reading, families strolling, dogs being walked—and beyond it, the beach and the Gulf.

  “What would you like to know?” he asks.

  “To begin with,” I say, “does anything stand out to you about that night? Anything different, unusual, off—that you thought of then or later after reflection.”

  “Not really, no,” he says. “It was a pretty normal night for us, for our solstice gathering at any rate. Everyone comes to it exhausted and with holiday fatigue but also excited to be together and ready to party. We’re more like a family than friends. We know each other very well and for the most part really enjoy one another’s company.”

  “No one acted out of character in any way that night?”

  “In little ways that don’t mean anything, sure, but not in a way that signals they’re a child abductor. Besides, Keith and Christopher already had Magdalene, so they’d have no need of abducting her.”

  “What was unusual about how they acted?”

  “Nothing really,” he says. “And it certainly wasn’t suspicious. They’re usually the most attentive of hosts—to an extreme really. This time they weren’t so much. They seemed to be even more tired and stressed than usual. That’s probably all there was to it. The holidays will do that to you. Plus they were new parents and probably weren’t sleeping as much and still adjusting to their new situation.”

  “Nothing more to it than that?”

  “You know how even when a couple acts or tries to act normal and even though outwardly everything seems fine you can still feel the tension and disconnect between them? Something was going on between them that night. I’m sure it was nothing big, but it was there. And it wasn’t just them. Everyone was more exhausted and more stressed. No one was in a great place. It was clear Clarence and Sarah were having a tiff to
o. All couples do from time to time, don’t they?”

  “We certainly do,” I say, and it comes out more enthusiastically than I intend it to.

  “Both couples disappeared for brief spells during the night,” he says.

  “Not brief enough not to notice,” I say.

  “True.”

  “At the same or different times?” I ask.

  “Different times. And Keith and Christopher did it a few times. The time they were gone the longest, they said they were going to look in on Magdalene, but when I stepped into the residence to tell them we were ready to open presents, they weren’t there. But here’s the thing . . . Magdalene was in her bed safe and sound. I could hear her soft little snore. And when I got back to the front parlor of the B&B, they were in there with everyone else. And they never left again until the next morning, so . . . I know they had nothing to do with it.”

  “How do you know they didn’t leave the parlor again?” I ask. “Did you stay in there all night?”

  He nods.

  “Awake?”

  “Mostly,” he says. “I was in one of the high-back chairs. Just couldn’t muster the energy and strength to get up and climb the stairs to my room. I’m sure I dozed some, but they were out—slept like bears hibernating all night. Everyone did.”

  “Did everyone stay downstairs all night?” I ask. “Did anyone go up to their room?”

  “I think most everyone did stay down—between the parlor and the dining room. Some slept with their heads on their hands on the dining table. Others just sprawled out on the floor. But most everyone was in a chair or on a couch in the parlor.”

  “Is that how y’all normally do it?”

  “In years past several of us would stay up all night and go up to our rooms as the sun was coming up. This year there was more catnapping and dozing. I’m tellin’ you everyone was utterly spent. Oh, I think Brooke went up to her room and maybe Rake at some point. I can’t be certain. But I’ll tell you what I am certain of. I’m certain that none of us had anything to do with whatever it was that happened to that sweet child. I’m old and sick and don’t have a ton of time left, but I’d bet my remaining days that none of us had anything to do with it. Like I said, I’m their alibi.”