Dancing in the Dark (21 page)

Owen Messinger listened to Leslie’s story and endeavored to watch
his other patients’ reactions to what was, by any estimation, a
harrowing ordeal. He made sure that each of the young women felt free
to ask Leslie questions and offer her support.

Anna Caprie confessed that, upon hearing about Leslie’s
disappearance, she’d locked herself in her bedroom. She’d wanted to join in on the town’s search but felt too
overwhelmed. “I took a straight pin from my mother’s sewing kit and cut
myself over and over.”

This was a good opportunity for the therapist to do some patient
education. Some of the girls had been in therapy for years, but none of
the more “accepted” therapeutic techniques seemed to be having any
salutary effect on them. They were still refusing to eat. And whenever
they felt powerless or out of control, they’d find anything sharp
enough to do the damage that, somehow, inexplicably, gave them relief.
He felt that something more drastic, more dramatic would convince these
young women that cutting themselves might bring short-term relief, but
in the long run it was an unsuccessful and, ultimately, very dangerous
coping mechanism.

As he had every week for the past three months, Owen handed out the
razor blades. At the start of the summer, he had instructed the girls
to run their fingers along the edges of the blades—without cutting
themselves—and to talk openly about how the sharpness made them feel.
As the weeks progressed, he tried to get them to “demystify” the razor
blades, to divest them of any power to help them.

Now it was time for the biggest lesson of all.

“Anna, why don’t you go first?” Owen suggested, gesturing toward the
stuffed animal in her lap.

“I couldn’t hurt Mr. Velvet. I just couldn’t.” Anna’s eyes teared up.

“Why not, Anna?” Owen asked. “You’ve cut yourself. Why won’t you cut
some fabric and stuffing?”

“Because Mr. Velvet means everything to me. I could never hurt him,”
Anna whined.

“But you can hurt yourself so easily, Anna. Aren’t you at least as
important as your stuffed rabbit? Aren’t you just as lovable?”

The tears were flowing freely down Anna’s cheeks now.

“Aren’t you?” he pressed.

“Anna doesn’t think she is,” Leslie called out. “She doesn’t think
she’s important at all.”

All eyes but the therapist’s turned to look at Leslie.Owen’s stare
continued to bore into Anna.

“How does what Leslie just said make you feel, Anna?”

Anna didn’t utter a word. Instead, she took the razor blade and slit
Mr. Velvet’s throat.

The girls coming out of the professional building looked
shell-shocked and exhausted. If therapy was supposed to make them feel
better, shouldn’t there have been a more lighthearted energy coming
from them? If they had unburdened themselves, why did they look like
they carried the weight of the world on their shoulders?

Larry slunk down in his seat so Leslie wouldn’t spot him. He’d taken
care to park next to another beige sedan at the far corner of the lot,
hoping that his vehicle wouldn’t stand out to her. He watched as she
approached her own car, a dark expression on her face, the stuffed bear
dangling by its arm as she held on to its paw.

He saw Leslie drive away but waited to get better looks at the
others. The little one, Anna, the waitress from Nagle’s, looked
especially distraught as she got into the waiting car. Larry assumed
that the middle-aged man at the wheel must be her father. The poor guy.
He leaned over to give his daughter a kiss on the cheek, and Larry
could imagine the words he was saying to
her, inquiring how everything had gone, asking her if she felt better.
Just as Larry had often asked his darling Jenna.

Larry felt the anger bubbling to the surface as he gripped the
steering wheel, his knuckles whitening. He wanted to strangle that
damned therapist.

Finally, all of the young women had been picked up or had driven
themselves away. Larry went to turn the key in the ignition when he
noticed a woman and two men carrying camera equipment walking toward
the entrance of the professional building. He leaned forward to get a
better look. He thought he recognized the woman. Yes, that was Diane
Mayfield. She was in town with the rest of the press corps that had
invaded.

On impulse, he opened the car door and got out.

“Hello there,” he called.

All three heads turned in his direction.

“Miss Mayfield?”

“Yes?”

“Hello. My name is Larry Belcaro. I have a real estate agency in
Ocean Grove.”

Diane shook his extended hand. She was used to people coming up to
her and introducing themselves. When you were on television, people
felt like they knew you. She always made it a point to be pleasant.
“Glad to meet you,” she said. “But I’m afraid I’m going to have to keep
right on going. I have a five o’clock appointment for an interview with
a doctor, and he and I are on very tight schedules.”

“It wouldn’t happen to be Dr. Messinger, would it?” Larry asked.

Diane looked at him curiously. “As a matter of fact, it would.”

“Talking to him about what’s happening in Ocean Grove, I guess?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, the real story, the story that should be exposed, is the
quackery that man practices. He should be in jail for all the havoc he
has wreaked, all the lives he has ruined, including that of my
daughter, Jenna.”

“Mr. Belcaro, I wish I could really talk with you now, but I can’t.
Do you have a number where I can reach you and maybe we can talk more
about this?”

Feeling he was getting the brush-off, Larry handed Diane his
business card, his shoulders slumped. “I’ve written my private number
on the back,” he said, with little hope that she would actually call
him.

While his sister lay on a beach towel with her eyes closed and his
aunt went for a walk down the beach, Anthony saw his opportunity to
take off in the other direction. He grabbed his camera and headed
north, toward Asbury Park and the old Casino.

Since he’d seen the man slip underneath the building yesterday,
Anthony had thought of little else. The guy had disappeared—just like
that. Where had he gone? What was in there?

He stopped to take a picture of the big brick structure, careful to
center it in the viewfinder. As the Casino loomed closer, Anthony
started to think better of his plan to explore inside. What if there
was a bad-ass gang or something living in there? What if they were
nasty and violent? What if they retaliated against him for trespassing
on their territory? What if his mother found out he’d taken such a risk?

Wait a minute
!
What was he? A
wuss?

He reached the base of the building and paused to look around. No
one seemed to be paying any attention to him. Anthony counted to three,
inhaled deeply, and ducked into the space between the concrete slab and
the sand.

At first, the sun’s bright rays seeped through, illuminating his
path, but as Anthony went farther, the light faded. As his eyes
adjusted to the dimness, he cautiously felt his way the last few yards.
Then he climbed through an opening.

Once again the sun was his friend as it tried to light the space by
way of a hole in the ceiling high above Anthony’s head. He looked
around, trying to figure out exactly what he was seeing. Moss-covered
bleachers and an empty stage, rusted chandeliers and a deserted
refreshment stand. He could imagine what the place had once been,
filled with happy fans cheering for the acts onstage. It was awesome to
think that now the auditorium was filled with their ghosts.

He clicked away, taking pictures of the secret world he had
discovered. Then he stopped to look at the tiny screen on the back of
the camera to see if the shots were coming out all right. The flash had
done its job. The images were clear.

Picking his way over debris and broken glass, Anthony climbed the
bleachers to get an aerial shot of the auditorium. From the elevated
vantage point, he spotted something he couldn’t identify sticking out
from the corner of the refreshment stand. Carefully, he hopped back
down to investigate.

Anthony peeked behind the stand. What he’d seen from above was the
edge of a Styrofoam cooler. Beside it, a dirty yellow blanket was
spread over the ground
.
Somebody must be
staying here
,
he thought. Maybe the military guy he had
seen yesterday.

On top of the blanket, next to a tattered magazine, lay a
maroon-colored ski jacket.
Does it get really
cold in here at night
?
Anthony wondered, because why else
would that jacket be here in the middle of this heat wave? He picked up
the garment and stuck his hand in the pockets, finding only a small
white card. Anthony’s eyes, now accustomed to the dim light, made out
“Surfside Realty” in dark lettering before sliding the card back into
the pocket.

Anthony snapped pictures of the mini-campsite from a few angles. And
then he got up the gumption to open the cooler. Inside were two cans of
diet soda, an orange, and a box of saltine crackers in a plastic
ziplock bag. There was also a package of some kind. He reached into the
cooler, pulled it out, and tore it open, excited by the sturdy plastic
strips that fell to the floor at his feet.

While the microphones were clipped on and the lights set up, Diane
chatted off camera with Owen Messinger.

“Thank you for fitting us in, Doctor,” she said.

“I’m glad we could work things out.” Owen smiled, a bit too toothy
for Diane’s taste. “The day started with a burglary here, and it’s been
nonstop since then.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Diane. “I hope nothing too valuable was taken.”

“Actually, I could never put a monetary value on the things that
were taken.” He nodded in the direction of the bookcase. “All the
patient notes that I had been keeping for a clinical study I’ve been
working on.”

Diane groaned. “How miserable for you. Will you be able to
reconstitute them?”

Owen frowned. “I’m not sure.”

Segueing to the interview, Diane explained what they were going to
be talking about. “As I told you in my phone message, Dr. Messinger,
Hourglass
is doing a story on ‘girls
who cry wolf—women, that is, who disappear
for a few days, only to show up falsely claiming that they’d been
kidnapped. I was originally sent down here to cover the Leslie
Patterson story, and though the abduction and death of Carly Neath
changes the dynamic, we still want the same questions answered for our
viewers.”

“Okay” the doctor said, smoothing back his hair. “I’ll do my best.”

Diane glanced at her camera crew. “Ready, guys?”

“Rolling,” Sammy confirmed.

Diane cleared her throat. “First of all, Dr. Messinger, research
shows that while kidnappings themselves may be on the decline,
falsified kidnappings are more common than anyone would suspect. More
often than not, these kinds of hoaxes are perpetrated by females.
What’s going on?”

“You’re right, Diane. Despite all the publicity and hysteria,
abductions by strangers have actually been falling for years.
Statistically, a child has a greater chance of dying of a heart attack
than of being kidnapped and killed by a stranger.”

“And what about the young women who are faking these things? Why
would a woman do that?”

“Many times, it’s a call for help. They crave attention. The woman
may feel unloved and uncared for. Invisible, as it were.” Owen reached
for his glass of water and took a swallow before continuing.
“Unfortunately, when a person makes a false report, it damages the
credibility of real victims, not to mention wasting police funds. It
also frightens the public.”

Diane knew she already had some solid sound bites. She crossed her
legs and continued. “Here in Ocean Grove, Leslie Patterson, the first
young woman to disappear, was
suspected
of
crying wolf until Carly Neath was abducted. What does it do to a person
who is telling the truth when people don’t believe her?”

“Well, I can’t comment on Leslie’s case specifically, but you can
imagine how you would feel, can’t you, Diane? Feelings of frustration
and even anger would be pronounced. And there is also a sense of
terrible isolation. You know you are proclaiming the truth, and yet no
one believes you. You feel totally alone, and you want vindication.”

At his last words, the doctor stared intensely into Diane’s eyes,
and she felt herself grow uncomfortable. Owen Messinger was a natural
for television. His answers were succinct and interesting. Yet there
was something she couldn’t quite put her finger on that disturbed her.
She thought of the middle-aged man who had pleaded for her attention as
she and the crew had arrived downstairs. Larry Belcaro didn’t think too
highly of Dr. Messinger. Suddenly Diane wanted to know why.

“Dr. Messinger, when we were in the parking lot here, we couldn’t
help but notice the group of young women who had just left this
building, Leslie Patterson among them. Were they all your patients?”

“I can’t really say.”

“Of course not,” said Diane. “Well, let me put it another way. Do
your patients usually leave weeping?”

“Therapy can be painful, Ms. Mayfield.”

“Anything new from the police?” Diane asked when she got back to the
satellite truck.

Matthew let out a deep breath, relieved that she was back. He didn’t
like to admit it, but he worried about her, about everything. That was
the producer’s job. He’d been taking a chance in agreeing that she
could run out and do the interview with that therapist. But he hadn’t
wanted to seem overly cautious. For the last hour he had been sitting
with a knot in his stomach, praying that something else wouldn’t break
in the Carly Neath case before she got back. He’d done his share of
“crash-and-burn” stories, the ones where the details came flying in up
to the last minute, the ones where there was precious little time to
get all your ducks in a row. He didn’t enjoy the adrenaline rush
anymore. That was why working on
Hourglass
s
uited him. He had time to plan and polish his stories, unlike
the day-of-air pieces that were done under incredible deadline pressure.