The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares (10 page)

The girl stared at Leah as if something very bright glared from Leah’s face that was both blinding and irresistible. She wiped nervously at her nose. “I . . . I want to say I’m sorry, for saying dumb things before. I guess I made things worse.”

Made things worse! Leah smiled angrily, this was so absurd.

“I mean, Denise and Anita and me, we wanted to help. We did the wrong thing, I guess. Coming to see you.”

“Were you the ‘unidentified witness’ who saw my daughter being pulled into a minivan?”

The girl blinked at Leah, blank-faced. For a long moment Leah would have sworn that she was about to speak, to say something urgent. Then she ducked her head, wiped again at her nose, shrugged self-consciously and muttered what sounded like, “I guess not.”

“All right. Good-bye. I’m leaving now.”

Leah frowned and turned away, her heart beating hard. How badly she wanted to be alone! But the rat-girl was too obtuse to comprehend. With the dogged persistence of an overgrown child she followed Leah at an uncomfortably close distance of about three feet, pedaling her bicycle awkwardly. The bicycle
was an expensive Italian make of the kind a serious adult cyclist might own.

At last Leah paused, to turn back. “
Do
you have something to tell me, Jude?”

The girl looked astonished.

“‘Jude’! You remember my name?”

Leah would recall afterward this strange moment. The exultant look in Jude Trahern’s face. Her chalky skin mottled with pleasure.

Leah said, “Your name is unusual, I remember unusual names. If you have something to tell me about Marissa, I wish you would.”

“Me? What would I know?”

“You aren’t the witness from school?”

“What witness?”

“A classmate of Marissa’s says she saw a male driver pull Marissa into his minivan on Fifteenth Street. But you aren’t that girl?”

Jude shook her head vehemently. “You can’t always believe ‘eyewitnesses,’ Mrs. Bantry.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s well known. It’s on TV all the time, police shows. An eyewitness swears she sees somebody, and she’s wrong. Like, with Mr. Zallman, people are all saying it’s him but, like, it might be somebody else.”

The girl spoke rapidly, fixing Leah with her widened shining eyes.

“Jude, what do you mean, somebody else? Who?”

Excited by Leah’s attention, Jude lost her balance on the bicycle, and nearly stumbled. Clumsily she began walking it again. Gripping the handlebars so tightly her bony knuckles gleamed white.

She was breathing quickly, lips parted. She spoke in a lowered conspiratorial voice.

“See, Mrs. Bantry, Mr. Zallman is like notorious. He comes on to girls if they’re pretty-pretty like Marissa. Like some of the kids were saying on TV, he’s got these laser eyes.” Jude shivered, thrilled.

Leah was shocked. “If everybody knows about Zallman, why didn’t anybody tell? Before this happened? How could a man like that be allowed to teach?” She paused, anxious. Thinking
Did Marissa know? Why didn’t she tell me?

Jude giggled. “You got to wonder why any of them
teach.
I mean, why’d anybody want to hang out with
kids
! Not just some weird guy, but females, too.” She smiled, seeming not to see how Leah stared at her. “Mr. Z. is kind of fun. He’s this ‘master’—he calls himself. On line, you can click onto him he’s ‘Master of Eyes.’ Little kids, girls, he’d come on to after school, and tell them be sure not to tell anybody, see. Or they’d be ‘real sorry.’” Jude made a twisting motion with her hands as if wringing an invisible neck. “He likes girls with nice long hair he can brush.”

“Brush?”

“Sure. Mr. Zallman has this wire brush, like. Calls it a little-doggy- brush. He runs it through your hair for fun. I mean, it used to be fun. I hope the cops took the brush when they
arrested him, like for evidence. Hell, he never came on to me, I’m not pretty-pretty.”

Jude spoke haughtily, with satisfaction. Fixing Leah with her curious stone-colored eyes.

Leah knew that she was expected to say, with maternal solicitude,
Oh, but you are pretty, Jude! One day, you will be.

In different circumstances she was meant to frame the rat-girl’s hot little face in her cool hands, comfort her.
One day you will be loved, Jude. Don’t feel bad.

“You were saying there might be—somebody else? Not Zallman but another person?”

Jude said, sniffing, “I wanted to tell you before, at your house, but you seemed, like, not to want to hear. And that other lady was kind of glaring at us. She didn’t want us to stay.”

“Jude, please. Who is this person you’re talking about?”

“Mrs. Branly, Bantry, like I said Marissa is a good friend of mine. She is! Some kids make fun of her, she’s a little slow they say but I don’t think Marissa is slow, not really. She tells me all kinds of secrets, see?” Jude paused, drawing a deep breath. “She said, she missed her dad.”

It was as if Jude had reached out to pinch her. Leah was speechless.

“Marissa was always saying she hates it here in Skatskill. She wanted to be with her dad, she said. Some place called ‘Berkeley’—in California. She wanted to go there to live.”

Jude spoke with the ingratiating air of one child informing on another to a parent. Her lips quivered, she was so excited.

Still Leah was unable to respond. Trying to think what to say except her brain seemed to be partly shutting down as if she’d had a small stroke.

Jude said innocently, “I guess you didn’t know this, Mrs. Bantry?” She bit at her thumbnail, squinting.

“Marissa told you that? She told you—those things?”

“Are you mad at me, Mrs. Bantry? You wanted me to tell.”

“Marissa told you—she wanted to live with her ‘dad’? Not with her mother but with her ‘dad’?”

Leah’s peripheral vision had narrowed. There was a shadowy funnel-shape at the center of which the girl with the chalky skin and frizzed hair squinted and grinned, in a show of repentance.

“I just thought you would want to know, see, Mrs. Bantry? Like, maybe Marissa ran away? Nobody is saying that, everybody thinks it’s Mr. Zallman, like the cops are thinking it’s got to be him. Sure, maybe it is. But—maybe!—Marissa called her dad, and asked him to come get her? Something weird like that? And it was a secret from you? See, a lot of times Marissa would talk that way, like a little kid. Like, not thinking about her mother’s feelings. And I told her, ‘Your mom, she’s real nice, she’d be hurt real bad, Marissa, if you—’”

Leah couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. It was as if she’d lost her daughter for the second time.

M
ISTAKES

His first was to assume that, since he knew nothing of the disappearance of Marissa Bantry, he could not be “involved” in it.

His second was not to contact a lawyer immediately. As soon as he realized exactly why he’d been brought into police headquarters for questioning.

His third seemed to be to have lived the wrong life.

Pervert. Sex off ender. Pedophile.

Kidnapper/rapist/murderer.

Mikal Zallman, thirty-one. Suspect.

“Mother, it’s Mikal. I hope you haven’t seen the news already, I have something very disturbing to tell you
. . .
”

Nothing! He knew nothing.

The name marissa bantry meant nothing to him.

Well, not initially. He couldn’t be sure.

In his agitated state, not knowing what the hell they were getting at with their questions, he couldn’t he sure.

“Why are you asking me? Has something happened to ‘Marissa Bantry’?”

Next, they showed him photographs of the girl.

Yes: now he recognized her. The long blond hair, that was sometimes plaited. One of the quieter pupils. Nice girl. He recognized the picture but could not have said the girl’s name because, look:
“I’m not these kids’ teacher, exactly. I’m a ‘consultant.’ I don’t have a homeroom. I don’t have regular classes with them. In the high school, one of the math instructors teaches computer science. I don’t get to know the kids by name, like their other instructors do.”

He was speaking quickly, an edge to his voice. It was uncomfortably cold in the room, yet he was perspiring.

As in a cartoon of police interrogation.
They sweated it out of the suspect.

Strictly speaking, it wasn’t true that Zallman didn’t know students’ names. He knew the names of many students. Certainly, he knew their faces. Especially the older students, some of whom were extremely bright, and engaging. But he had not known Marissa Bantry’s name, the shy little blond child had made so little an impression on him.

Nor had he spoken with her personally. He was certain.

“Why are you asking me about this girl? If she’s missing from home what is the connection with
me
?”

That edge to Zallman’s voice. Not yet angry, only just impatient.

He was willing to concede, yes: if a child has been missing for more than twenty-four hours that was serious. If eleven-year-old Marissa Bantry was missing, it was a terrible thing.

“But it has nothing to do with
me.
”

They allowed him to speak. They were tape recording his precious words. They did not appear to be passing judgment on him, he was not receiving the impression that they believed him involved with the disappearance, only just a few questions to put to him, to aid in their investigation. They
explained to him that it was in his best interests to cooperate fully with them, to straighten out the misunderstanding, or whatever it was, a misidentification perhaps, before he left police headquarters.

“Misidentification”? What was that?

He was becoming angry, defiant. Knowing he was God-damned innocent of any wrongdoing, no matter how trivial: traffic violations, parking tickets.
He was innocent!
So he insisted upon taking a lie-detector test.

Another mistake.

Seventeen hours later an aggressive stranger now retained as Mikal Zallman’s criminal lawyer was urging him, “Go home, Mikal. If you can, sleep. You will need your sleep. Don’t speak with anyone except people you know and trust and assume yourself under surveillance and whatever you do, man—don’t try to contact the missing girl’s mother.”

Please understand I am not the one. Not the madman who has taken your beautiful child. There has been some terrible misunderstanding but I swear I am innocent, Mrs. Bantry, we’ve never met but please allow me to commiserate with you, this nightmare we seem to be sharing.

Driving home to North Tarrytown. Oncoming headlights blinding his eyes. Tears streaming from his eyes. Now the adrenaline
rush was subsiding, leaking out like water in a clogged drain, he was beginning to feel a hammering in his head that was the worst headache pain he’d ever felt in his life.

Jesus! What if it was a cerebral hemorrhage
. . .

He would die. His life would be over. It would be judged that his guilt had provoked the hemorrhage. His name would never be cleared.

He’d been so cocky and arrogant coming into police headquarters, confident he’d be released within the hour, and now. A wounded animal limping for shelter. He could not keep up with traffic on route 9, he was so sick. Impatient drivers sounded their horns. A massive SUV pulled up to within inches of Zallman’s car bumper.

He knew! Ordinarily he was an impatient driver himself. Disgusted with overly cautious drivers on route 9 and now he’d become one of these, barely mobile at twenty miles an hour.

Whoever they were who hated him, who had entangled him in this nightmare, they had struck a first, powerful blow.

Zallman’s bad luck, one of his fellow tenants was in the rear lobby of his building, waiting for the elevator, when Zallman staggered inside. He was unshaven, disheveled, smelling frankly of his body. He saw the other man staring at him, at first startled, recognizing him; then with undisguised repugnance.

But I didn’t! I am not the one.

The police would not have released me if.

Zallman let his fellow tenant take the elevator up, alone.

Zallman lived on the fifth floor of the so-called condominium village. He had never thought of his three sparely furnished rooms as “home” nor did he think of his mother’s Upper East Side brownstone as “home” any longer: it was fair to say that Zallman had no home.

It was near midnight of an unnamed day. He’d lost days of his life. He could not have stated with confidence the month, the year. His head throbbed with pain. Fumbling with the key to his darkened apartment he heard the telephone inside ringing with the manic air of a telephone that has been ringing repeatedly.

Released for the time being. Keep your cell phone with you at all times for you may be contacted by police. Do not REPEAT DO NOT leave the area. A bench warrant will be issued for your arrest in the event that you attempt to leave the area.

“It isn’t that I am innocent, Mother. I know that I am innocent! The shock of it is, people seem to believe that I might not be. A lot of people.”

It was a fact. A lot of people.

He would have to live with that fact, and what it meant of Mikal Zallman’s place in the world, for a long time.

Keep your hands in sight, sir.

That had been the beginning. His wounded brain fixed obsessively upon that moment, at Bear Mountain.

The state troopers. Staring at him. As if.

(Would they have pulled their revolvers and shot him down, if he’d made a sudden ambiguous gesture? It made him sick to think so. It should have made him grateful that it had not happened but in fact it made him sick.)

Yet the troopers had asked him politely enough if they could search his vehicle. He’d hesitated only a moment before consenting. Sure it annoyed him as a private citizen who’d broken no laws and as a (lapsed) member of the ACLU but why not, he knew there was nothing in the minivan to catch the troopers’ eyes. He didn’t even smoke marijuana any longer. He’d never carried a concealed weapon, never even owned a gun. So the troopers looked through the van, and found nothing. No idea what the hell they were looking for but he’d felt a gloating sort of relief that they hadn’t found it. Seeing the way they were staring at the covers of the paperback books in the backseat he’d tossed there weeks ago and had more or less forgotten.