“Yes.”
“A waste of time,” I say. These women won custody cases based in part on Rex’s DUI setup. They were not about to admit that. Their exes could use that illegality to reopen custody battles.
“Any ideas?” Reynolds asks.
“Might as well pay Simon Fraser a visit in person.”
“I think that too will be a waste of time.”
“I can go alone,” I say.
“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Then we go together. It’s your jurisdiction, so you can approach him as a law enforcement officer . . .”
“. . . while you play the role of interested civilian?”
“It’s the role I was born to play.”
“When?”
“I have to make a couple of stops on the way, but I’ll be up before lunch.”
“Text me when you get close.”
I hang up, shower, get dressed. I check my watch. According to David Rainiv, Hank starts his walk up the Path every morning at exactly eight thirty. I park in the teachers’ lot, which gives me an unobstructed view of the Path. It’s eight fifteen. I flip around the radio and land on Howard Stern for a while. It’s eight thirty now. I keep my eyes on the Path. No one approaches.
Where is Hank?
At nine, I give up and head to my second stop.
The shelter Ellie runs caters mostly to battered families. I meet her at one of the transitional residences, an old Victorian located on a quiet street in Morristown. This is a place for the battered women and children to hide from their abusers until we can figure out the next step, which is usually something better but not what anyone would consider desirable.
There are very few big victories here. That’s the tragedy. What Ellie does feels like emptying an ocean with a tablespoon. Still, she wades into the ocean tirelessly, time after time, day after day, and while she is no match for the evil in a man’s heart, Ellie makes the battle worth it.
“Beth Lashley took her husband’s name,” Ellie tells me. “She is now Dr. Beth Fletcher, a cardiologist in Ann Arbor.”
“How did you find that out?”
“It was harder than it should have been.”
“Meaning?”
“I contacted all her closest friends from high school. None keep in touch with Beth, which surprised me. I mean, she was pretty social. I reached out to her parents again. I told them we wanted to get Beth’s address for reunions and that kind of thing.”
“What did they say?”
“They wouldn’t give it to me. They said to mail anything pertinent to them.”
I don’t know what to make of that. But it’s not good. “So how were you able to track her down?”
“Through Ellen Mager. Do you remember her?”
“She was a year behind us,” I say, “but I think she was in my math class.”
“That’s Ellen. Anyway, she went to Rice University down in Houston.”
“Okay.”
“So did Beth Lashley. So I asked her to call the Rice alumni office and see if as a fellow alum she could get any information on her.”
That, I have to admit, is genius.
“Anyway, she got an email address with the Fletcher last name at the University of Michigan Medical Center. I did a little googling to find out the rest. Here’s her office number.” Ellie hands me a slip of paper.
I look at the slip of paper as though the phone number will give me a clue.
Ellie leans back. “How did it go with tracking down Hank?” she asks.
“Not well.”
“The plot thickens.”
“It does.”
“Oh, before you go, Marsha wanted to see you.”
“I’m on my way.”
I kiss Ellie on the cheek. Before I head to Ellie’s colleague Marsha Stein’s office, I veer left and take the stairs to the second level. There is a makeshift day care for the kids. I look inside and see Brenda’s youngest working on a coloring book. I continue down the corridor. The door to her bedroom is open. I knock lightly and look inside the small room. Two open suitcases sit on the bed. When Brenda sees me, she rushes over and wraps her arms around me. She has never done that before.
Brenda doesn’t say anything. I don’t say anything.
When she lets go, she looks up and gives me a small nod. I give her a small nod back.
We still don’t say anything.
When I head back into the corridor, Marsha Stein is waiting for me.
“Hey, Nap.”
When we were eight and nine years old, Marsha was our teenage babysitter. Do you remember, Leo? She was lithe and gorgeous, a ballerina, a singer, the star of every high school play. We had crushes on her, of course, but so did everyone. Our favorite activity when she babysat was helping her rehearse for her plays. We would read her lines. During her junior year, Dad took us to the high school to see her play Hodel, the beautiful daughter, in Fiddler on the Roof. Senior year, Marsha capped off her theater career playing the titular lead in Mame. You, my brother, got to play the part of Mame’s nephew, listed in the program as “Young Patrick.” Dad and I went four times, and Marsha deservedly got a standing ovation at every performance.
Back in those days, Marsha had a ruggedly handsome boyfriend named Dean who drove that black Trans Am and always, no matter how hot or cold the weather, wore his varsity wrestling jacket, the green one with the white sleeves. Marsha and Dean were the “Class Couple” in the Westbridge High School yearbook. They got married a year after graduation. Not long after that, Dean started to beat her. Savagely. Her eye socket is still caved in on the right. Her face looks disjointed now, off-kilter. The nose is too flat from the years of beating.
After ten years, Marsha finally found the courage to run away. As she often tells the abused women here, “You find the courage too late but it’s never too late and yes, that’s a contradiction.” She joined forces with another “child” she babysat in those days, Ellie, and together they formed these shelters.
Ellie is CEO. Marsha prefers to stay behind the scenes. They now operate one shelter and four transition homes like this. They also have three locations with addresses that are completely unknown to the public, for obvious reasons. They have a pretty good security system, but sometimes I chip in.
I kiss Marsha’s cheek. She isn’t beautiful anymore. She isn’t old, early forties—when life gets beaten out of those who shine brightest, they recover, but sometimes that light never quite comes all the way back. She still likes acting, by the way. The Westbridge Community Players is putting on Fiddler in May. Marsha plays Grandma Tzeitel.
She pulls me to the side. “Funny thing.”
“Oh?”
“I tell you about what a monster Trey is and suddenly he ends up in the hospital.”
I say nothing.
“A few months ago, I told you about how Wanda’s boyfriend sexually abused her four-year-old daughter. Suddenly he ends up—”
“I’m kind of in a rush, Marsha,” I say to stop her.
She looks at me.
“You can choose not to tell me your problems,” I say. “That’s up to you.”
“I pray first.”
“Okay.”
“But praying doesn’t work. That’s when I go to you.”
“Maybe you’re looking at it wrong,” I say.
“How’s that?”
I shrug. “Maybe I’m just the answer to those prayers.”
I cradle her face in both hands and kiss her cheek again. Then I hurry out before she can say more. You probably wonder how I, as a cop sworn to uphold the law, justify what I did to Trey. I don’t. I’m a hypocrite. We all are. I do believe in the rule of law, and I’m not a huge fan of vigilantism. But I don’t look at what I sometimes do that way. I look at it like the world is a bar and I see a man across the room beating the crap out of a woman, taunting her, laughing at her, cajoling her to give him one more try like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown, and then, after offering her this hope, cruelly smashing her in the face again. I look at it like I just stopped by a friend’s house and saw her boyfriend sexually assaulting her four-year-old daughter.
Is your blood boiling?
Should time and distance cool that?