Dancing in the Dark (20 page)

The door to the hospital room was open. It was a double room, but
the bed closer to the door was empty. Shawn treaded quietly toward the
bed on the other side of the curtain.

“Arthur?” he whispered.

He opened his eyes and turned toward Shawn, his hair getting more
disheveled as it rubbed against the pillow. Arthur’s usually tanned
skin looked almost ashen against the faded cotton hospital gown.

“How you doin’, buddy?” Shawn asked.

Arthur didn’t answer.

“What’s wrong, Arthur? You can tell me, man,” Shawn urged.

“He hasn’t said a word since they brought him in here.”

Shawn jumped at the woman’s voice.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m Dr. Varga,” she said as
she walked around the bed and reached for Arthur’s wrist.

“I’m Shawn Ostrander.”

“A relative?”

“No, a friend.” There was no point in getting into the long story of
how his association with the mentally ill man had started as a research
project. Arthur had become more than that. “His relatives don’t have
anything to do with him anymore.”

The doctor nodded.

“What’s wrong with him?” Shawn asked.

“Nothing physically, but he’s not talking. When the police brought
him in, they filled us in on his mental status.”

“Yeah, Arthur is pretty well known around town.” Shawn smiled
crookedly.

The doctor scribbled a notation on the chart. “Fortunately, he had
his meds in his jacket pocket. We can’t be sure if he was taking them before he got here, but he’s
getting them now.”

“When will you let him go home?” Shawn asked.

“That depends,” answered Dr. Varga. “But I would suspect there is no
rush, is there?”

Shawn shook his head, thinking of the sad little room in the tired
boardinghouse that Arthur called home. “No, there isn’t any rush at
all,” he said.

The doctor patted Arthur’s arm before leaving the room. Shawn sat
down and held a one-sided conversation about the hot weather and how
crowded Ocean Grove was with all the summer visitors. He didn’t mention
the extra people who were streaming into town to cover Carly’s story.

“Okay, buddy,” he said, rising from the chair he had pulled
alongside the bed a half hour before. “I’m gonna get going for now. But
I’ll call the nurses’ desk later to see how you’re doing.” He put his
hand on Arthur’s shoulder. “You just rest now, Arthur. Don’t worry,
guy. Everything is going to be all right. Just rest, you hear me?”

Arthur’s watery eyes looked directly into Shawn’s, and he uttered
the only words he’d spoken since he’d been brought to the hospital.
“Okay, Shawn. I always do what you tell me to do.”

Diane, Matthew, and the crew stood on the sidewalk and asked the
lunch customers who came out of Nagle’s what they thought about the
state of affairs in Ocean Grove. There was no shortage of people
willing to talk, and their sentiments were all largely the same.

“I think it’s just awful. To think in a pretty little town like
this, such a terrible thing could happen. God help that poor girl’s
parents.”

“I’m scared to death. I have children, and I won’t let them out of
my sight. Plus, how do I explain something like this to them?”

“It’s horrible. We’re down here on vacation, but we’re thinking of
going home early. This isn’t what we had in mind when we were looking
for a peaceful week at the beach.”

Within half an hour they had plenty of reaction sound bites for the
Evening Headlines piece. Yet not one of the people said they had known
Carly Neath.

“I think we should go inside and see if anyone who actually worked with Carly will talk with us,” Diane
suggested. “Why don’t I find out if there’s anyone in there who will
talk, and I’ll see if we can get permission to shoot inside as well.”

The air-conditioned restaurant was a welcome relief from the heat
outside. Diane walked over to the counter and introduced herself to the
man operating the cash register.

“We’re doing a story on Carly Neath, and we’d like to talk to people
who actually knew her. Would it be all right if our camera crew came
inside?”

“I’d prefer not,” said the man. “People are all stirred up as it is.
They don’t need to be reminded of this horror while they eat their
lunch.”

“Of course. I understand,” said Diane, disappointed. “But would it
be all right with you if I asked some of Carly’s co-workers if they’d
be willing to be interviewed? They could come outside for a few
minutes, and we could do it out there.”

“Oh, all right.” The man sighed. “It’s a free country.”

“Let me start with you then, sir. Would you care to talk about
Carly?”

“No. I would not,” he answered shortly. Diane had long since learned
not to take the response personally. If they didn’t want to talk, they
didn’t want to talk. With rare exceptions, there was no use trying to
pressure them into it.

She looked down the counter. “How about her?” she asked, indicating
the young brunette pouring iced tea into a tall glass. “Did she know
Carly?”

“They both work the breakfast and lunch shifts,” he answered. “I
mean worked.”

“Think she’d be willing to talk with me?” Diane asked.

The man shrugged. “Ask her yourself.”

The slight young woman came out to the sidewalk, pushing her
lusterless brown hair behind her ears.

“Thank you for agreeing to do this,” Diane said. “It will only take
a few minutes.”

“That’s okay,” the waitress said in a sweet voice. “My shift is
really over now. The only thing I have to do is a doctor’s appointment,
but that isn’t until later.”

Diane smiled as Sammy signaled that the camera was rolling. “Okay.
First of all, will you state your name and spell it for me?”

“Anna Caprie. A-N-N-A C-A-P-R-I-E.”

“And where do you live, Anna?” Diane asked.

“Ocean Grove.”

“And you work right here at Nagle’s, the restaurant that Carly Neath
worked at?”

Anna nodded. “Um-hmm. Carly and I worked together sometimes, but not
always. Sometimes she would be on and I wasn’t. Sometimes I would be
scheduled and she wouldn’t.”

“When was the last time you saw Carly?” Diane asked.

“I saw her Friday morning. That was the last time.”

“So that was the day she disappeared.”

“Yes, that’s right.” Anna looked toward the ground.

“Did you talk much to Carly that day?” Diane asked.

“Not that much. The restaurant’s pretty busy in the summer. There’s
not usually time to talk.”

“Is there anything you remember about that day, Anna? Anything
different or unusual?”

Anna looked up, and Diane couldn’t be sure if the pink rising on her
face was from the sun or a blush. Either way, it suited the young
woman. Diane thought she was too pale. Too pale and too thin.

“Well…” Anna hesitated. “Not really. Carly’s new boyfriend came in
to talk to her, but he’d been by before.”

“Shawn Ostrander?” asked Diane.

“Um-hmm. Carly told me she really liked him but…” Anna’s voice
trailed off.

“But what, Anna?” Diane urged gently.

“I don’t know if I should be saying this, since Shawn was so nice to
me last week when my car wasn’t working. He and Carly dropped me off at
my doctor’s appointment, and they even waited to take me home
afterward,” said Anna, twisting a strand of her dull hair. “I don’t
want to say something that could hurt someone as nice as that.”

“I understand, Anna. Of course I do. But this is a serious
situation, and if you think you know something that might in some way help in finding out what happened to
Carly, you have to say it. If not to me, then to the police.”

Anna swallowed resolutely. “It’s just that Carly didn’t like it that
Shawn hadn’t looked for Leslie Patterson when she was missing. And she
told me she was going to tell that to Shawn when she saw him that
night.”

“Larry, I know it’s my first day back and everything, but I’m going
to leave early.”

The real estate agent looked up from his desk to see Leslie standing
in the doorway. It was always painful for him to look at her achingly
thin frame. “That’s all right, dear.” He gently smiled at her. “You
must be tired. Good work today.”

“You are so good to me, Larry. I didn’t do much work at all, and you
know it.”

“You did plenty. And there will be plenty more waiting for you
tomorrow, don’t you worry. Now just go home and eat a good dinner and
get some rest.”

Leslie walked back out to her desk and picked up the canvas tote bag from the floor. She was searching for
her car keys when Larry came out with a file in his hand.

“I was just going to leave this on your desk for tomorrow,” he
explained. His eyes caught the stuffed bear peeking out from the tote.
“Leslie, you aren’t going home, are you?”

“No,” she admitted. “I’m not. I have a therapy appointment. I didn’t
want to tell you because I know how you feel about therapy.”

Larry took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and let out a deep
sigh. “Oh, Leslie, Leslie, Leslie. I don’t know what to say anymore.
It’s not that I’m against therapy. That’s not it at all. But I think
you have to make sure you have the right person treating you.”

Diane was in the front seat of the satellite truck letting the cold
air from the air-conditioning vents blow directly on her face. She was
polishing her script when her cell phone rang. Owen Messinger’s
secretary was calling to say that the therapist could talk to her at
five o’clock.

“Gee, that’s going to be difficult for me to make,” said Diane as
she looked at her watch. “Could he fit me sometime tomorrow?”

“No, his schedule is completely booked for the next few days.”

“All right,” Diane reluctantly agreed. “We’ll be there.”

She turned to Matthew, who was screening the video they’d shot in
front of Nagle’s, taking time code on the sound bites Diane wanted to
use for her piece. “We need this interview with Messinger for the
Hourglass
piece, and if we don’t get it today we may not get it all. The
Evening Headlines
script is finished.
Let’s see if we can get an early approval from Range Bullock. I’ll
track and leave the narration here with you to feed to New York while the crew and I go to Messinger’s
office. If he sees me right on time, I should be done by five-thirty
and back here by about six. If anything breaks, I can update then for
the six-thirty broadcast.”

Matthew whistled. “Jesus, that’s cutting it close, Diane. I hate to
take a chance like that.”

“Ah, come on, Matthew. You’ve cut it closer.”

“All right,” he grudgingly agreed. “We need Messinger’s professional
perspective, and if this is the only time we can get it, we don’t have
much choice.”

Every one of the young women who sat in a circle in the therapy room
held a doll or a stuffed animal in her lap. Unsmiling and very thin,
all six of them were cutters.

Dr. Messinger started the session. “Since we last met, some painful
things have happened. Leslie was abducted and was missing for three
days, and then another young woman was abducted. Her body was found
last night.”

“I knew her,” a childlike voice piped up. “Carly Neath. I worked
with her.”

Owen glanced quickly from Anna to Leslie, who was already issuing
the response he could have predicted
.

“Earth to Anna. You may have
known
Carly
Neath, but I’m sitting here right in front of you. I think what I have
to work out today is a little more important than what you have to say
right now.”

Anna shrank back in her chair and stroked her black stuffed rabbit,
her face becoming as pink as the toy’s nose.

“How do you think Anna is feeling right now after hearing that your
experience is more important than hers?” Owen asked.

Chastened, Leslie plucked at her teddy bear’s ear. “I guess she
doesn’t feel too good. I’m sorry, Anna.”

“Do you want to talk about what happened to you, Leslie?”