“But that’s just it, Tom,” Abby said to me on one of the days Buster was going a few rounds with the cops. “He paid so much attention to Caitlin. Didn’t it seem out of character to you?”
It did. It really did. And I allowed the suspicions of the police and Abby’s doubts to become my own to such an extent that they never fully went away, even when the police finished with him and let him go. I still found myself returning to those questions again and again: Where was he that day? Why did he seem to care about Caitlin so much? Was his indecent exposure charge really just a drunken misunderstanding?
But if my doubts about Buster remained alive, even in the back of my mind, the police—absent any conclusive proof of his involvement—moved on to other things. They examined every scrap of mail, every phone call, every bill and financial statement we possessed, and none of it led anywhere—except for the computer we’d purchased for Caitlin, the one she used in her room. There were no unusual e-mails, no evidence that she made contact with a man who might have lured her away or taken her. But Caitlin had been searching the Web the day she disappeared, and in the hours before she walked out the door with Frosty, she’d visited Web sites for Seattle, horses, Amtrak, the U.S. presidency. I didn’t see anything nefarious or unusual in this list. A curious child surfed the Internet, following her train of thought wherever it might go. I do the same thing every day.
But the police jumped on two items from the list—Seattle and Amtrak—and decided there was a decent chance that Caitlin had run away. They questioned us about it, placing special emphasis on whether or not there were difficulties in the home. They asked her friends, her teachers, our neighbors, and many of them said that, while they didn’t believe anything was wrong, they did think Caitlin was something of a distant child, one who kept to herself, one who really didn’t allow others to know what she was thinking. All true, and all things Abby and I had told the police from the very beginning. We didn’t always know what Caitlin was thinking, but what parents of a twelve-year-old do?
From that point on, a slight rift grew between the police and us. They slowly drew down their resources—the SBI removed their consulting agent from the case, the New Cambridge PD cut back to one detective—and we sensed, both Abby and I, that the authorities were no longer taking us seriously, that we were being moved to the back burner as long as no new information came forward to propel the case along.
Did I really believe that Caitlin had run away? I like to tell myself I never did. But I have to admit there were nights—lying in bed, staring at the ceiling—when the results of those Internet searches cycled through my brain like trains themselves. And I had to ask myself, there in the dark: What was Caitlin really thinking or doing? Did anybody—even me—really know?
Chapter Five
The Fantasy Club was removed from all the respectable businesses, a small, sturdily built structure with a gravel parking lot and a blinking sign that promised ADULT ENTERTAINMENT—COUPLES WELCOME.
The lot was almost empty when I parked, my tires crunching over the gravel and kicking up a puff of white dust. The lack of windows made the place look a little like a fortress, a distant entertainment outpost. When I walked in, my eyes struggled to adjust to the gloom; no one tended the door or asked me to pay a cover charge. The stage was empty, the music off. The lone bartender and his only customer stood watch over a newspaper and a TV playing a daytime talk show. The bartender managed to pry his eyes away from the paper.
“Help you?”
My head was still buzzing a little from the beer I’d drunk with Buster, so I ordered a club soda. The corner of the bartender’s mouth curled a little.
“You want a lime with that? I’m all out of limes.”
“No lime.”
He sprayed the soda into a plastic cup and placed it on the bar. “We’re between shows,” he said, “so I won’t charge you for the drink.”
“That’s fine.” I dug around in my pocket and found a dollar bill, which I placed on the counter as a tip and a peace offering.
The bartender raised his eyebrows but didn’t pick it up. “Thanks,” he said.
I took a seat at the end of the bar. I drummed my fingers on the bar top and swallowed the club soda in less than a minute. I jabbed at the ice with my little red cocktail straw, tried to focus on the argument raging on the TV, then asked for a refill. The bartender provided it without looking up from his paper.
“Tonight we’re having a lingerie show,” he said. “You ought to stick around.”
“I have to face my wife at some point today.”
The bartender looked up and winked at me. “Hell, bring her. Didn’t you see the sign? Couples welcome.”
“You haven’t met my wife.”
The bartender and his customer both laughed at my joke, and for a moment I entered their masculine circle.