"One moment," I told her.
She whined at me and, when that still didn't work, flopped onto the floor in full doggy snit. I had received Bella in lieu of payment from a client four years ago. Bella had just destroyed the woman's favorite pair of Jimmy Choo heels, and the woman had had enough of the dog's high-strung behavior. Truthfully, Australian sheepdogs aren't good apartment dogs. If you don't keep them occupied, they do get in trouble.
But Bella and I did all right. Mostly because I liked to run and, even entering the middle-aged phase of a dog's life, Bella thought nothing of whipping out a quick six miles.
I would have to take her out soon, or risk losing one of my favorite throw pillows or perhaps a beloved bolt of fabric. Bella always knew how to make her point.
The search was done. My computer screen filled with a scrolling column of bright, happy faces. School photos, close-ups from the family album. Photos of missing children always showed them happy The whole point was to make you hurt worse.
Search results: fifteen.
I reached for the mouse and slowly worked my way down the column: Anna, Gisela,Jennifer,Janeeka, Sandy,Katherine,Katie…
It was hard for me to look at the pictures. Even with my doubts about my father, I always wondered if I might have become one of them. If we hadn't moved, if he hadn't been so obsessed.
I thought again about the locket. Where had it come from? And why, oh why, had I given it to Dori?
Her name did not appear on the list. I allowed myself to exhale. Bella perked up, sensing the release in tension, the possibility of beginning our normal nightly routine.
But then I noticed the dates. None of these cases were older than '97. Despite the open search parameters for time, the database must not go back that far. I chewed on my thumbnail again, debating options.
I could call the hotline, but that might raise too many questions. I preferred the anonymity of Internet searches. Well, at least the appearance of anonymity, since God knows the proliferation of spyware probably meant Big Brother, or at least a marketing mega-machine, was following my every move.
I knew another site to try. I didn't go there as much. It made me sad.
I typed into my Internet search engine: www.doenetwork.org. And in two seconds, I was there.
The Doe Network deals primarily with old missing-persons cases, trying to match skeletalized remains found in one location with a missing-persons report that might have been filed in another jurisdiction. Its motto: "There is no time limit to solving a mystery"
The thought gave me a chill as I sat, one hand now clasping the vial of my mother's ashes, the other hand typing in the search parameter: Massachusetts.
The very first hit sent me reeling. Three photos of the same boy, starting when he was ten, then age-progressed to twenty, then to thirty-five. He had gone missing in 1965 and was presumed dead. One minute he'd been playing in the yard, the next he was gone. A pedophile doing time in Connecticut claimed to have raped and murdered the child, but couldn't remember where he'd buried the body So the case remained open, the parents working as feverishly now to find their son's remains as they must have once worked, forty years ago, to find their child.
I wondered what it was like for the parents to have to look at these age-progressed photos. To get that glimpse of who their son might have been, had the mom not gone inside to answer the phone or the father not rolled under the car to change the oil. . .
Fight, my father always told me. Seventy-four percent of abducted children who are murdered are killed within the first three hours. Survive those three hours. Don't give the bastard a chance.
I was crying, I don't know why. I never knew this little boy. Most likely, he died over forty years ago. But I could understand his terror. I felt it every time my father started one of his lectures or training exercises. Fight? When you are a fifty-pound child against a two-hundred-pound male, whatever in the world can you do that will honestly make a difference? My father may have had his illusions, but I have always been a realist.
If you are a child and someone wants to hurt you, chances are, you'll wind up dead.
I moved to the next case: 1967. I looked at just the dates now; I didn't want to see the pictures. It took me five more clicks. Then, November 12,1982.
I was staring at Dori Petracelli. I was looking at her photo, age-progressed to thirty. I was reading the case study of what had happened to my best friend.
Then I went into the bathroom and vomited until I dry-heaved.
Later, twenty, forty, fifty minutes, I didn't know anymore, I had the leash in one hand, the Taser in the other. Bella danced around my feet, practically tripping me in her haste to get downstairs.