JULY 22
Dara
Sarah Snow and her best friend, Kennedy, were babysitting Madeline Snow on Sunday, July 19. Madeline was running a low fever. Still, she demanded ice cream from her favorite place on the shore, Big Scoop, and eventually Sarah and Kennedy gave in.
By the time they arrived, it was after 10:00 p.m. and Madeline had fallen asleep. Sarah and Kennedy went inside together, leaving Madeline in the backseat. Sarah may have locked the doors, but she may not have.
There was a long line. Big Scoop has been in business since the late seventies, and has become, for the residents of Shoreline County and the tens of thousands of vacationers who descend on the shore every summer, a landmark. It took twenty-five minutes for Sarah and Kennedy to get their order: Rum Pecan Punch for Kennedy; Double Trouble Chocolate for Sarah; Strawberries and Cream for Madeline.
But when they returned to the car, the back door was hanging open and Madeline was gone.
The cop who tells us all this, Lieutenant Frank Hernandez, doesn’t look like a cop, more like a weary dad trying to coach his son’s soccer team back from a really bad loss. He’s not even wearing a uniform, but scuffed-up sneakers and a dark-blue polo shirt. There’s mud on the cuffs of his jeans, and I wonder whether he was one of the guys at the Drink two nights ago, maybe even the cop who arrested Colin Dacey and made him spend the night sleeping it off at the boxy little station downtown. Rumor has it that the bust was related to Madeline’s disappearance. The cops start getting shit in the media—no leads, no suspects—so they decide to prove their worth by raiding a keg party.
Colin is here, looking miserable and pale, like a tortured saint; I spot Zoe Heddle and Hunter Dawes and assume both of them were forced to volunteer, too.
Even though Nick covered for me when the cop showed up on our front porch this morning, she made it clear she has no intention of taking the rap for a party she didn’t even attend.
This time, the note was on the toilet seat.
Cop busted “me” at the Drink. Thanks for asking whether you could borrow my sweatshirt. Since “I” went to a party, “I’m” volunteering today. Big Scoop parking lot, 4:00 p.m. Have fun.—N
“At this point, we’re still hoping for a positive outcome,” the cop says, in a tone of voice that suggests they’re fearing the opposite. He’s climbed up onto the concrete divider that separates the Big Scoop parking lot from the beach, and he speaks into the air above the crowd, which is larger than I’d expected. There must be two hundred people packed into the lot, along with three news vans and a cluster of journalists hefting heavy equipment and sweating in the sun. Maybe these are the same journalists who’ve been writing bad things about the Shoreline County cops and budget cuts and incompetence. With their cameras and boom lights and microphones, hovering at the edge of the crowd, they look like members of a futuristic army, waiting for the chance to attack.
Standing a short distance away is a couple I recognize from the news as the Snows. The man looks like he’s been standing all day in a raw wind: his face is red, chapped, and bloated-looking. The woman is swaying on her feet and keeps one hand gripped, clawlike, on the shoulder of a blond girl standing in front of her. Madeline’s older sister, Sarah. Next to her is Kennedy, the best friend. She has dark hair cut in a severe fringe across her forehead, and she’s wearing a bright-red tank top that looks surprisingly cheerful given the occasion.
I arrived early, when the crowd was thinner, and a few dozen people were milling around, keeping a careful distance from the yellow police tape marking off the scene of the disappearance. We all had to sign in, like we’re guests at someone’s really awful wedding. I’ve watched enough Law & Order to know the cops are probably hoping the pervert—if there is a pervert—will show up to get his rocks off and smirk about being smarter than the cops.
Reflexively I fish my cell phone from my bag. No further word from Nick. No texts from Parker, either. I’m not surprised, but I still get a little dip of disappointment in my stomach, like going over a hill too fast.
“This is how it’s going to go. We’re going to move east in a line. You should be close enough to touch your neighbors’ shoulders.” The cop holds out his arms like a drunk trying to steady his balance on the line. “Keep your eyes on the ground and look for anything and everything that doesn’t belong. A barrette, a cigarette stub, a headband, whatever. Maddie had a favorite bracelet—silver, with turquoise charms. She was wearing it when she disappeared. If you see something, give a shout.”
He hops off the concrete divider, and the crowd responds like a uniform pool of water, rippling outward, dispersing, breaking apart into smaller groups. The search party fans out across the beach, while cops shout orders and instructions and the camera crews click and buzz away. From above we might look like we’re playing a complicated game, an intricate pattern of Red Rover, all of us spread out in a line and silently calling for Madeline to come over, to come back. The sand is studded with the kind of trash that accumulates at the edge of parking lots: pulpy cigarette packs, plastic wrappers, soda cans. I wonder whether any of it is important. I imagine a featureless man sitting outside on Friday night, sipping a warm Coke, watching the firefly flicker of taillights in and out of the Big Scoop parking lot, watching two girls, Kennedy and Sarah, walking with their arms linked to the warm bright glow of the ice-cream shop, leaving a small girl huddled in the backseat.
I hope she’s alive. Even more: I believe. It strikes me that that’s the point of the search party. Not actually to turn up clues, but as if the power of our collective belief, our joint effort, will keep her alive. As if she’s Tinker Bell, and all we have to do is keep clapping.
At least it’s a little cooler when we move down toward the water, but the mosquitoes and the horseflies are worse, swarming up from hidden pockets and piles of beach wood. The going is painfully slow, but even so, moving across the sand is exhausting. Every few minutes someone shouts, and the cops rush over and squat, prodding at some garbage with long, white-gloved fingers: a tattered piece of fabric, an empty beer can, the remains of somebody’s fast-food lunch, probably chucked out of a passing car. The cops bag a silver bracelet, though I see Madeline Snow’s mother shaking her head, lips pressed together. The beach is barely a quarter mile wide; at no point are we out of sight of either the parking lot or the houses and motels perched high on the dunes. It seems impossible to imagine that anything bad could happen here, in this short strip of land, so close to the everyday churn of cars and restaurants and people sneaking outside to smoke cigarettes on the beach.
But something bad did happen here. Madeline Snow is gone. Nick and I used to pretend that there were goblins waiting in the woods; she told me that if I listened hard enough, I could hear them singing.
If you don’t watch out, they’ll grab you, she’d say, tickling me around the middle until I shrieked. They’ll take you to the underworld and turn you into a bride.
And just for a second, I imagine Madeline vanishing into thin air, lured by a song too soft for the rest of us to hear.
“You’re Sharon Warren’s daughter, aren’t you?” the woman on my left blurts out. She’s been blatantly staring at me for the past ten minutes, and I’ve been doing my best to ignore her. Her face is sugared with too-heavy makeup, and she’s been tottering along in wedge heels over the sand, windmilling her arms like she’s on a balance beam.
I almost deny it but decide there’s no point. “Uh-huh.”
“I’m Cookie,” she says, blinking at me, as if expecting me to know her. Of course her name is Cookie. No one who wears bright-pink lipstick and heels to search for a missing girl could possibly have any other name. “Cookie Hendrickson,” she adds, when I say nothing. “I live in Somerville, too. I did admin at MLK High when your mom was principal there. I knew your grandfather, too. Great man. I was”—she lowers her voice as if she’s telling me a secret—“at the funeral.”
Last December, three days after Christmas, my grandfather died. He’d lived in Somerville all his life and, in fact, worked for two summers for the last mill before it got shuttered in the fifties. Later on he coached Little League and even briefly got elected town chairman, a position he abdicated as soon as he, and the rest of town, realized that he didn’t give a shit about politics. Nick and I called him Paw-Paw, and half of Somerville was at his funeral in January. Everybody loved him.
Later that night Nick, Parker, and I got blitzed on SoCo in Parker’s basement. Nick went upstairs to get water, and I started crying, and Parker put his arm around me and I kissed him. When Nick came downstairs again she made the funniest face, like she’d just walked into a party where she didn’t know anyone.
Still, Nick and I slept together that night, side by side, the way we did when we were kids. It was the last time.
“How’s your mama doing?” She’s putting on the accent real thick, like we’re in Tennessee. Women do that, I’ve noticed, when they’re about to say something you won’t like, like dropping all the consonants makes it harder to hear what they’re saying. Sugared face, sugared words. “I know she went through a little . . . depression.” She says it like it’s a bad word.
“She’s fine,” I say. We’ve stopped moving again. We’re almost at the water now. The ocean shimmers like metal just beyond a short, dark strip of wet sand. A woman—a reporter?—has taken an interest in our conversation. She starts edging toward us, clutching a mini tape recorder. “We’re all fine.”
“That’s good to hear. You tell your mama Cookie says hello.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt.” The reporter has reached us and, without acknowledging Cookie, shoves her iPhone in my face, looking not at all sorry. She’s overweight, wearing a nylon suit with big sweat marks soaking the underarms. “I’m Margie. I work for the Shoreline Blotter.” She pauses, as if expecting me to applaud her. “I was just hoping to ask you a few questions,” she adds, when I say nothing. Cookie lets out a little chirp of surprise as the reporter, undeterred, steps in front of her, effectively blocking Cookie’s view.
“Aren’t you supposed to be doing something useful?” I cross my arms. “Like interviewing the Snows?”
“I’m looking for a variety of human interest stories,” she says smoothly. She has big eyes, weirdly protruding, and she doesn’t blink very much, giving her face the impassive look of a particularly stupid frog. But she’s not stupid. That I can tell right away. “I live just outside Somerville. You’re from Somerville, is that right? You were in that terrible accident. It wasn’t that far from here, was it?”
Cookie makes a disapproving noise. “I’m sure she doesn’t want to talk about all that,” she coos, but with a wink in my direction, as if she’s hoping I will anyway.
Sweat is moving freely down my back by now, and the horseflies are fat, droning in thick clusters. Suddenly all I want is to strip down and get clean, scrub off this day, scrub off Cookie and the reporter with her reptilian eyes, watching me lazily as if I’m an insect she’s waiting to swallow.
Down the beach, the cop who looks like a dad is waving his arms and shouting something I can’t hear. But the gesture’s clear enough. We’re done here, he’s saying. Pack up and go home. I feel an immense, overwhelming surge of relief.
“Look,” I say. My voice sounds high-pitched, foreign, and I clear my throat. “I just came to help out, like everybody else. I really think we should, you know, keep the focus on Madeline. Okay?”
Cookie murmurs something that manages to sound both appreciative and disappointed. The reporter, Margie, is still standing there clutching her stupid iPhone like it’s a magic wand. I turn around and start moving back toward the parking lot, as the crowd disperses into smaller groups, everyone speaking in low tones, reverent almost, as if church has just finished and we’re afraid to use our regular voices too soon.
“What do you think happened to Madeline Snow?” Margie calls after me, her voice loud and easy—too easy.
I freeze. It might be imagination, but I imagine that the crowd freezes too, that for a second the whole day stills and becomes a picture, filter: sepia, a whitewash of grays and yellows and a flat silver sea.
I turn around. Margie is still watching me, unblinking.
“Maybe she just got tired of everyone bothering her,” I say. My throat is raw from the heat and the salt. “Maybe she just wanted to be left alone.”