Intervention

  Her irritated voice softened. “I wondered why she didn’t call me back. Missing, like how? We were supposed to hang out tonight, but she bailed on me and didn’t show up.”

  Barbara thought of telling her it was already morning, but it didn’t matter.

  “Who was she with?”

  Barbara wanted to be vague, but any minute now those pictures would be flashed across CNN. She told Paige about the intervention and Trish’s death.

  The girl listened with a series of Oh-my-Gods.

  “Does she have any friends in Atlanta?” Barbara asked.

  “Not that I know of. You gotta find her, Ms. Covington. She’s not like that. She’s the nicest person I know, even when she’s high or dope-sick.”

  Her words were small comfort. “Do me a favor, and don’t screen your calls for the next couple of days. Answer every one you get, even if you don’t know who it’s from. It could be Emily from a pay phone or someone else’s phone. And let me know the minute you hear from her.”

  “Okay, I’ll call you. Let me know what’s going on. She’s my best friend.”

  Resentment welled in Barbara’s heart as she hung up. Some friend. Paige was probably the one who had introduced Emily to her latest drugs. She might even be the dealer who provided them.

  She lay down for a moment, holding Emily’s journal against her. Her daughter was not a killer. Yes, she’d committed crimes. She had stolen from her mother, gotten credit cards in John’s name, hocked jewelry and keepsakes John had given Barbara for birthdays and anniversaries.

  Could a person go from being capable of stealing to support her habit, to killing to keep it going?

  It was possible for some addicts, Barbara told herself. The news was rife with reports of drug killings. But not for Emily. Emily’s brain may be messed up from all the drugs, but she hadn’t been turned into a killer.

  Sleep pulled at her and her head was bursting, but she fought it, unwilling to give in. She had to read the journals to find names of people and friends and connections who might lead Barbara to her daughter.

  Even as she picked up the journal, her head thronged with desperate urgency. The real killer may have found Emily already.

  eleven

  Aching all over, Barbara moved to the club chair by the window. She checked on Lance as she turned on the lamp; he didn’t seem disturbed. She opened Emily’s journal and saw her daughter’s perfect script. She’d won handwriting awards in elementary school, and in high school, she’d won contests for creative writing. Before she’d turned to other pastimes, Emily had been a voracious reader, and it was evident in her writing. Her prose, which was sometimes flamboyant and pushed a little too hard at sophistication, was still moving. But Emily only wrote when she was miserable.

  She read past pages of blame-throwing, wincing at each blow, then came to a section where Emily reflected on that blame.

  Fault is a funny thing. My friends are always blaming their parents for things they do, and in some cases, I can see it. Their parents use, or they drink a lot, or they abused them as children. But how do I blame my parents when one is dead and the other is a teetotaler who never lifted a finger to hurt me? What could I say? That I skinned my knee when she was dragging me to church?

  I could say that all the church-going screwed me up in the head, but not many people would buy that. It’s hard to get away with that when your best friend was locked in a closet for days at a time and raped by her own father.

  So my latest beef about my mother is that she didn’t give me a better excuse for the choices I’ve made. Kidding again. I know that would be really sick.

  When I’ve been in therapy, they’ve encouraged me not to admit that anything was my fault. I didn’t lose my job because I couldn’t get out of bed. I lost it because my boss had no compassion. I didn’t lose my boyfriend because I cheated on him. I lost him because he’s a jerk. My mother is on the flip side of the fault debate. She rages, sometimes, when we have this discussion, and tells me that things happened to me because I did certain things, took certain risks, put myself in certain places. Places she’s spent her entire life trying to keep me out of.

  She can be cold sometimes, so I guess I can pin that on her. That she doesn’t cry when I cry. She doesn’t grieve over the things that grieve me. She’s like a statue sometimes, with this pinched look that says, “I’m ready for whatever she throws at me next.” An ice statue.

  She’s cold, all right.

  Barbara stopped reading and looked up at the wall, feeling a chill stiffening her spine. She’d never thought of herself as cold. Just numb.

  She had felt warm when she rocked Emily to sleep way too many nights when she was young and refused to stay in bed. She had spoiled her with tighter hugs and more kisses.

  All wasted effort. Now Emily saw her as cold. Barbara blinked back the tears burning her eyes and read some more.

  I try to remember the time before Dad died, whether my mom was cold then. But I can’t remember what Mom’s face looked like before my dad got sick. I don’t remember whether it was pinched then.

  Sometimes I stay awake nights, trying to remember Dad’s smile, and the way his laugh lines wrinkled when he joked. I’ll never forgive God for forcing me to strain my brain for a memory.

  Then I’ll get his picture, study it, and say, “Yes, now I remember. He had that glint in his eyes. He smiled out of one side of his mouth.” My mom was always behind the camera, so I don’t have that many pictures of her. I can’t bring back to my memory her pre-cancer, pre-death, pre-drugs expressions.

  I guess if blame is going to be placed, she places it on me. I’ve turned her well-organized, well-designed, well-decorated life upside-down. She keeps her office so pretty and coordinated, smelling like vanilla. At home, while our house is neat as a pin, there’s chaos rippling.

  I guess that’s what I bring to our nicely set table.

  Barbara closed the journal and leaned her head back, self-indictments and recriminations battering at her psyche like metal blades of a fan … knocking her, knocking her, knocking her. Closing her eyes, she wondered if Emily ever would have imagined that her addictions would take her to where she was now.

  Lord, show me where that is.

  twelve

  Lance woke some time later and got up to go to the bathroom, startling Barbara awake. Rubbing her eyes, she realized she’d dozed off in the chair.

  Why had she wasted time sleeping? What was wrong with her? Now it was eight-thirty.

  Lance came back into the room. “Sorry I cratered on you, Mom.”

  “No problem. I cratered a little too.”

  “Did you talk to her friends?”

  “Only Paige. The rest of them haven’t called me back.”

  “Word’ll get around.”

  She rubbed her face, then slid her fingers down to her chin. “Do you think any of them will help us?”

  “Doubtful. They’ll figure Emily doesn’t want to be found.”

  “Even to save her life?”

  “Those people are selfish, Mom. If one of them ODs, they’ll let them die and take the body somewhere else to be found, because they don’t want to get in trouble.”

  The foot on her chest grew heavier. “How do you know this?”

  “Hey, I know some of those losers. Remember Mike Cramer, dude who used to play third base on my baseball team?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, he’s heavy into dope now. And when he’s high, he likes to talk about the drug culture, like it’s some really cool club he’s in.”

  “Why were you around him when he was high?”

  “Because I sit next to him in Science. He comes to school high. Gets wasted in the bathroom.”

  “What? Do the teachers and principal know?”

  “They know he’s hopped up on something, unless they’re blind. They’ve searched his locker and stuff, but they never find anything. He’s been suspended three times this year, but they haven’t expelled him yet.”
br />   Acid burned Barbara’s stomach.

  “What we need is a computer,” Lance said. “You should have brought your laptop.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we need to look on MySpace and Facebook and see what her friends are saying and whether she’s been in touch with them.”

  MySpace and Facebook were phenomena that Barbara hadn’t learned enough about. Why kids would spend hours a day spewing out their most personal thoughts for all the world to read was beyond her. “Do you really think that would help?”

  “Are you kidding? She writes more on there than in her journal. We might learn which friends could be helping her. And you know, that interventionist lady probably has a profile on those sites too. We could find out who her friends and enemies are.”

  Lance had a point. But she couldn’t fly back home to get her laptop. That would cost as much as buying a new one. And there was no time to get a friend to ship it.

  “All right,” she said. “We’re going shopping.”

  “For what?”

  “For a new laptop.”

  “For real? Sweet! Can I have your old one?”

  She sighed. “I don’t know, Lance. Just go change clothes. We’ve been in these since yesterday. Hurry. I’ll change after you.”

  While he was in the bathroom, she looked through the phone book for the nearest Best Buy and wrote down the address.

  But how would they get there? They needed a car. They would take the shuttle back to the airport and rent one.

  And when they got to the store, she’d have to buy a charger and car adapter for her phone, because she hadn’t brought hers. The battery was low, and she couldn’t take the chance of having Emily unable to reach her.

  She had left town totally unprepared.

  At the airport, the rental car agency was out of compacts, so she agreed to pay the price of an Expedition and gave them her American Express card. Her bill this month would be astronomical.

  Would Road Back return her thirty thousand dollars since Emily never made it there? Did a dead interventionist warrant a refund?

  She got Lance some breakfast from McDonald’s and tried to choke down an Egg McMuffin herself, even though her stomach churned. On her way to Best Buy, she pulled in at a 24-hour Kinko’s and ordered some posters with Emily’s picture. They told her they would be ready that afternoon. Then she navigated her way to Best Buy and ran in.

  There were at least twenty different laptop brands and models available. How did she know which one to buy? “Find the cheapest one,” she told Lance.

  Lance zeroed in on a popular brand. “You don’t want the cheapest one, Mom. You want one that’s better than the dinosaur you have at home. This one is hot. Jacob’s dad has one. If I were you, I’d go with it. Look at the gigabytes. The hard drive is primo. And it’s fast. You want fast, don’t you?”

  This model was almost a thousand dollars more than the cheapest ones, but she did need fast. She had even looked at this one online a few weeks ago, but had decided she couldn’t afford it.

  If she was going to invest in one, she might as well get one she liked. Maybe she could make up the difference by selling her old one on eBay.

  She grabbed the chargers she needed, then made the purchase as quickly as possible and headed back to the hotel. She hoped the new laptop didn’t have any bells and whistles that she’d have to learn to use. All she needed right now was the Internet so she could browse MySpace and Facebook. Then maybe she would be able to get inside her daughter’s head. And, perhaps more importantly, Trish’s.

  Lance grabbed a newspaper as they made their way back into the hotel. “Mom, check this out.”

  The headline read, “Woman Murdered in Airport Garage.”

  “It’s already started.” She began reading in the elevator. The reporter hadn’t gotten any more information than she had. The police had probably released Trish’s name right before deadline, and they hadn’t had time to dig into her life. Barbara read quickly through the article, looking for anything about Emily.

  “Here it is,” she said. “Ms. Massey, a drug interventionist, was accompanying a woman to Road Back Recovery Center in Emerson. Emily Covington, 18, fled from the scene. Police would not comment on whether Miss Covington is a person of interest in the murder.”

  “Oh, man,” Lance said. “If the newspapers are reporting it, it’ll be on TV too. Everybody who ever knew us is gonna think Emily killed her.”

  Yes, even people who had known them only as acquaintances would be coming out of the woodwork to get on television, to comment about Emily and her problems. All of those who grew up with Emily, the very ones who used to drink and party with her, then turned against her when her drinking and drugging got out of control, would suddenly claim they were her best friends.

  She could just hear it now. We knew she’d gotten into some pretty dark stuff, but we never thought she was capable of this.

  But there were times when she talked about wanting to kill her mother. We thought that was just talk, but maybe she did have murder in her all along.

  Barbara had tried to keep Emily’s addictions secret, but it was difficult when her daughter wrote about them on social networking sites that could be read internationally. To Barbara, it was like a banner waving, advertising her failures as a parent.

  But what did it matter? Long ago she’d given up her pride and gotten over the humiliation. Police cars in front of her house when Emily had been brought home high had cured her of that. And if that hadn’t done it, standing in line at the jail to bail her out after a DUI had hardened her to embarrassment.

  It just never ended. Clearly, Barbara had a little pride left in her, because God seemed to think she needed more refining as she descended deeper into public exposure.

  They got off the elevator and went up the hall to their room. As she stuck the key card in, her phone rang, startling her. Her heart stopped, and she grabbed it out of her purse pocket to see if it was Emily. She didn’t recognize the number, so she clicked it on. “Hello?”

  It was a man’s voice. “Mrs. Covington? This is Randall Ainsley from FOX News. I was wondering if I could talk with you for a minute.”

  Panicked, she hung up. “It’s FOX News.”

  “No way,” Lance said, setting the computer box down. “How’d they get your cell number? Why’d you hang up?”

  “Because I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to get Emily in more trouble. I need to think about this.”

  “Next time, let me talk to them,” he said. “I know what to say.”

  “No! You don’t say a word to them, do you hear me? I’m serious. If we say one wrong word, we could get Emily into a ton of trouble.”

  “Like she needs our help getting into trouble.”

  “I’m serious, Lance. Someone has given them my number, so it’s just a matter of time before they have yours too.”

  He grabbed the remote from the bed and turned on the television. He flipped around to the news channels. CNN was talking politics, and MSNBC was doing a segment about a Supreme Court case. He got to FOX and saw Emily’s picture on the screen.

  “There she is!” Lance yelled.

  Barbara’s throat closed as she listened to the details of the crime.

  “We have with us Ronald Miller, director of operations at Hartfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

  Mr. Miller, how was Miss Massey killed?”

  “My understanding is that the murder was committed inside her car.”

  “Airport parking garages are usually crowded after a flight has landed. Weren’t there witnesses?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “She was an interventionist traveling with eighteen-year-old Emily Covington, the drug addict who fled the scene. How is it that anyone could flee the scene of a crime like this, with all the security around the airport?”

  “That’s a question we’re trying to answer, but I assure you, we have stepped up security today. However, I hope travelers
will keep in mind that this wasn’t a terrorist attack, and despite all our security measures, there’s not a lot we can do about personal violence among our passengers. If we see it, we make an immediate arrest. In this case, it was done outside our terminals in the privacy of the car.”

  “Man, she’s wrecking my life!” Lance cried.

  “Your life?”

  “Look at this mess! How’m I gonna go back to school with people calling my sister a murderer? Junkie was bad enough!”

  “They call her junkie?”

  “She calls herself a junkie. Wait till you see her MySpace stuff.”

  The phone rang again. Barbara didn’t recognize the number, but she answered anyway. “Hello?”

  “Is this Barbara?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “I’m Bret Pendergrass from CNN … ”

  Barbara hung up. “CNN.”

  “Mom, come on!”

  “I don’t want to keep the phone tied up. How will Emily’s friends get through to us if we’re on it? Or Emily herself?”

  “Heard of call waiting?”

  “It doesn’t always work. I can’t take the chance.”

  Lance grunted and took the phone. “That’s not it. You’re just afraid of the press. At least we can add them to your phone’s address book, so we can see that it’s CNN and FOX when they call back.” She watched him add the phone numbers, then toss the phone back to her. Turning back to the computer, he opened the box, pulled out the laptop, and plugged it in. He turned it on, and the Welcome screen popped up.

  Quickly, he navigated his way through it, typing in the info to register. As he did, she flipped over to CNN. A similar story was already coming up, complete with file footage of the long-term parking area where the murder took place.

  She never should have given them pictures of Emily.

  No one seemed to care that her daughter was missing. Why didn’t they even consider that Emily could have been kidnapped by the killer? She’d heard of white slavery operations. They loved blue-eyed blondes, and the fact that Emily was an addict was a plus for them. They might be able to manipulate her as long as they kept her high.