Forget Me Not Page 12

  “Well, did you have time to wash your face?”

  “Did you ask me here to discuss personal hygiene?”

  “No, but maybe we should,” he said, smiling slightly, “seems like you might need a refresher course.”

  Ruby suddenly appeared with menus, and a cup of coffee for me, which I took gratefully. “It’s too early for this,” I said once she was gone, “can we just talk about what we came here to talk about?”

  “Well, you’re the one who texted me. What’s this all about?”

  I took out my phone and showed him the screenshot of the messages on Elle’s Facebook account I’d found the night before. His forehead creased as he scrolled through the photos, looking up at me occasionally.

  “I don’t get it, what exactly am I looking at?” he said finally.

  “Those were all sent to Elle in the few months leading up to her death. Going all the way back to her birthday in August.”

  Leo sighed and put the phone down, taking a sip from his coffee. “How did you get these?”

  I explained about signing in as Elle to Facebook, Leo emitting several low groans as I did so.

  “Look at those last few ones, they were sent on Thanksgiving. I was there, Leo, I was right there when she was getting them. And she was scared. I didn’t realize it at the time, I thought she was upset and angry about what was going on with her parents, but I think she was really freaked out by these.”

  Leo’s face had cleared as I spoke, and now he reached across the table towards me. I thought he was reaching for the phone, to take a closer look at the messages, but instead he took hold of my right hand. It felt warm and a little clammy in his, but he squeezed tight. “You’re feeling guilty, Maddie. That’s all this is. You feel bad that you couldn’t help Elle, that you couldn’t stop this from happening, but this isn’t the way to help now.”

  He was right, of course—I did feel guilty. But that wasn’t all it was. “So you don’t think those messages mean anything? You think they’re just some random creep, completely unrelated.”

  Leo leaned back in his seat, shrugging. “Honestly, I don’t know. I can pass this all on though if it makes you feel better.”

  “You can?”

  “Sure. I’m not involved in the investigation—I’m just a lowly police officer—but if you think it’s important, I’ll get it to where it needs to be.”

  I let out a deep breath. “Okay. Thanks.”

  “Make you feel better?”

  “A little, yeah.”

  “There’s nothing you could have done, Mads,” he said after a short pause. “What happened to Elle … it’s awful, should never have happened, but it wasn’t your fault, it wasn’t any of ours.”

  “You really think that?” I asked.

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “I guess I just can’t help thinking that if we’d done more when Nora went missing, if we’d found her, or found the person who hurt her, none of this would have happened.”

  “What could you have done? You were seventeen, a kid. There’s nothing you could have done.”

  I stared at him, his blue eyes turned gray in the flat light. Outside, the world was a blank witness, a field of gray. It seemed to have infested the room and everyone in it. I didn’t believe him, I couldn’t; maybe there was nothing I could have done, but I still hadn’t done enough. And now we were all paying for it, although it was Elle who had ended up paying the highest price of all. I could still see her, in that overly warm cabin on Sunday, when I’d interpreted her drawn face, and tired eyes, her blank looks as grief, but maybe what they had really been was fear. Fear of what, or who, I still wasn’t sure, but I knew I couldn’t be convinced of my innocence in all of it. There was no getting out from underneath all the guilt, at least not without a fight.

  They were waiting for me when I got home. Dad was chatting to them easily in the den when I walked in, and he called out my name.

  “You’ve got visitors,” he said, as I took my coat and boots off in the hallway, catching my reflection in the mirror that had always hung there. My eyes were rimmed dark purple and full of sleep, and I suddenly realized what Leo had been talking about back at the diner. But I followed Dad reluctantly through to the den, where they were both drinking coffee and sitting on the couch in the wintry sunshine.

  “Meet Detectives Lee and Gutierrez,” Dad said.

  “Actually,” the man said, standing to shake my hand, “it’s Agents Lee,” he pointed to himself, “and Gutierrez.” He pointed at the woman who had stayed sitting, but now stood, smoothing down the fabric of her pants, and also shook my hand.

  “Maddie,” I said.

  “Take a seat, Maddie,” Agent Gutierrez said, “we just have a few questions to ask you about Noelle Altman.”

  I looked back at Dad, who nodded at me before leaving the room. As I sat down on the other couch both agents proceeded to take their own seats, Lee making himself comfortable, leaning right back against the couch cushions. He smiled at me, dark eyes catching the low winter sun, and crossed one leg over the other, while Gutierrez sat forward in her seat, her knees angled towards me, hands clasped in her lap as she leaned forward.

  “When did you last see Noelle?” she asked.

  “On Sunday. For Nora’s anniversary memorial.”

  “And that was at the Altmans’ family lake house?” Gutierrez asked, looking down at the notepad that was also in her lap.

  “Yes.”

  “What time did you leave the event?”

  “It was about four, I guess. Ange—Angela Cairney—and I went to the bar after.”

  “Cool’s?” Lee asked, and I nodded. “Little early to start drinking,” he noted, and I turned my attention from Gutierrez to him.

  “We’d just marked the tenth anniversary of our friend’s disappearance.”

  Lee pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows, an expression that could have been apologetic or accusatory, I couldn’t tell.

  “What time did you make it home? After the bar?” Gutierrez prompted me.

  “It was probably a little after seven. Ange was having dinner with her parents, so I came home too. My dad might be more sure of what time it was exactly.”

  Gutierrez nodded. “We’ll be talking to him too. How much do you think you’d had to drink at that point?”

  I stared at her for a second or two before answering. “A couple bottles of wine maybe.”

  “Between the two of you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you drive home?”

  “No, I walked. It’s not far.”

  “It was cold though.”

  “I’m used to it,” I said, shrugging. “Plus, I’d had all that wine, right?” My voice grated the air and I looked between the two agents.

  “You certainly had,” Lee said.

  “Did you talk to Noelle or any other member of the Altman family in that time?” Gutierrez asked.

  “You mean on the phone?”

  “Or in the bar.”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t see or speak to Nathan Altman?”

  “Nate? No. He was still at the lake house when Ange and I left. They all were. The whole family. At least I think so.” A buzzing had begun in my head, one I was very familiar with. The palms of my hands itched but I was too scared to look down at them in case I would see them trembling. Instead, I buried them under my thighs, feeling like a kid being told off by the school principal.

  “So, you don’t know at what time he left the lake house?”

  “No, I don’t know when any of them left.”

  “Before Sunday, what was the last contact you had with Noelle?” Lee asked.

  I had to think for a second, to be sure of my answer before I said: “I saw her the day after Christmas. We met at CJ’s and I bought her a hot chocolate.”

  “Did you meet often?”

  “I tried to see her whenever I was in town. And we emailed each other semi-regularly. Text, WhatsApp, you know.”

&n
bsp; “How did she seem in these interactions?”

  “She seemed okay, I guess. Not great. She was really quiet on Sunday but that made sense to me at the time. I remember she went upstairs to lie down; she said she wasn’t feeling well.”

  “What about when you saw her at Christmas?”

  “She was pretty upbeat to be honest. She was happy Nate and her dad were both home. I mean, her parents were in the process of getting a divorce, but her dad spent the day with them, and that seemed to make her pretty happy,” I explained.

  “We know that, thanks, Maddie,” Lee said, smiling again.

  Then why bother asking, I thought mutinously.

  I tried to take a deep breath without revealing I was doing so and focused once again on Gutierrez. She was older than Lee, probably in her forties. Her eyes crinkled at their edges in a kind way. It made it look like she smiled a lot, but in her line of work that was hard to believe. She wore a black blazer, with a grey shirt underneath that was made of a silky looking material and she had black wool cigarette pants on that were tucked into black Sorels. She looked like a woman who might spend a decent amount of her paycheck on clothes; but what did I know really? At that moment I was wearing an old sweater with the words “Sunnydale High” stretched across my chest, and jeans I’d long been meaning to give to Goodwill.

  “So, she seemed happy?” Gutierrez said.

  “It was the day after Christmas. Her family was as whole as it ever got, she’d got a new computer from her parents, and she was drinking hot chocolate. In that moment, yes, she seemed pretty happy.”

  “And did that appear genuine to you, or did she seem preoccupied in some other way?”

  “It seemed genuine, I guess, but I didn’t have any reason to think it wasn’t. I do think you can have a lot of shit going on in your life and still find moments that make you feel good though.”

  “And that’s what you think was going on?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Maddie?” Gutierrez prompted me.

  “Look, I don’t know. Jenna said she’d seemed distracted, Elle, I mean, over the past few weeks, but she seemed okay when I saw her.”

  “We’ve already spoken to Miss Fairfax, thanks,” Lee said.

  “I know,” I said, and he raised his eyebrows.

  Gutierrez drew something from her notepad and passed it to me. Her card. “Would you give us a call if you think of anything else that might help our investigation?”

  I took the card and looked down at it:

  Stephanie Gutierrez

  Wisconsin Department of Justice, Special Agent, Wausau Office.

  “Of course. But can I ask you something?”

  “Yes,” Gutierrez said, giving her partner a little look before staring back at me.

  “Will you be reopening Nora’s case?”

  “There’s nothing to indicate, at this moment in time, that the two cases are related,” Lee said, as if on autopilot.

  “They’re sisters,” I said, my voice urgent all of a sudden, too sharp. “Not to mention she was found right where Nora’s car was abandoned, on the anniversary of her disappearance. You can’t seriously be telling me you think this is all coincidence? And what about the compass, huh? The one left in the snow?” I was rambling now, my voice jittery and jerky, giving myself away. I could practically hear them back at the precinct, their clinical, objective judgements sketching out an image of me I’d barely recognize. I drew a deep breath, and I was about to tell them about the messages I’d found on Elle’s Facebook, the ones I’d taken to Leo that morning, but there was something about the way they looked at me, their shared glances, that made me think twice about it. I could so easily imagine the look they’d give one another that I dreaded witnessing it in real life. I’d be just another paranoid bystander to them, someone to laugh at and roll their eyes over when the day was too long and they were looking at spending yet another night in a lonely, seedy motel room, so I just stayed silent.

  After a short, loaded pause Gutierrez said: “It’s an ongoing investigation, Maddie. As you know. We can’t comment on it. But if anything comes up you can be sure that we will do all we can to solve both cases.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Wisconsin Daily News

  Their Silence is Deafening: Why won’t Nora’s friends speak out?

  By Gloria Lewis

  February 9, 2008

  It’s been just over a month since Nora Altman disappeared from her home in Forest View one snowy night in January. As fears mount as to the teenager’s whereabouts, the town has held almost nightly vigils for the girl once voted “most likely to make it to Broadway.” Notably absent from these evenings of cold comfort and candlelit sympathy are some of Nora’s closest friends. While many of her classmates camp out by the side of the road where her car was found unmarked and locked up tight, but with no gas in the tank, it has been said that her two best friends feel themselves too superior to visit the memorial.

  “I’ve only seen her here once,” one of Nora’s classmates, Eliza Clarke, remarked regarding Nora’s best friend Madeline Fielder. “And she was basically only here to take Nora’s little sister away as far as I could tell. What’s wrong with the kid wanting to come and be with other people who are worried about her sister as well? I don’t get it.”

  Another thing these Waterstone High Schoolers don’t get is Fielder’s prolonged absence from school. “I understand she’s upset,” fellow senior, Ben Ludgate, opined, “but she’s clearly getting special treatment because her dad’s the principal. It’s not fair. Loads of us are worried about Nora but we’re still making it to class. Even Angela is, so why can’t Maddie?”

  “People think maybe she knows more than she’s letting on,” Eliza continued, “Maddie and Nora have been friends forever. If anyone knows where Nora is, it’s Maddie.”

  Insights from the two girls could certainly aid the investigation into Altman’s disappearance at this crucial juncture. As Ludgate pointed out, “Nora’s family thought she had spent the night at Maddie’s that night with Angela. So why didn’t they raise the alarm when she didn’t turn up? Maybe she would have been found by now if they’d known a little earlier that she was missing.”

  Ludgate raises a good point, one that hasn’t gone unremarked upon in preceding weeks; why didn’t anyone realize the 17-year-old was missing for a full twelve hours?

  A spokesperson from the local police department informed the Daily News that both Miss Cairney and Miss Fielder have been interviewed by the police regarding Nora’s disappearance and have been cooperative throughout. The investigation into the teenager’s disappearance is ongoing and anyone with any information is urged to contact the police at the number below.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The doorbell rang a little after seven that night. Nate was standing as far away from the front door as possible when I opened it, staring out into the whitewashed front yard. It was as if he hadn’t rung the doorbell at all, or perhaps as if he’d rung it and then forgotten why he was there.

  “Nate?” I called, my voice ringing in the cold air. “What are you doing here?”

  He turned towards me, his face a pale smudge between the double black of his ribbed beanie and North Face coat. “You wanna come for a drive?” he asked.

  I folded my arms across my chest, and glanced back inside to see if there was anyone else around. “A drive? Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just couldn’t stay in that house any longer, and this was the first place I thought of coming.”

  I swallowed, my face starting to go numb in the cold, while my heartbeat picked up. “Why don’t you come inside and we can talk?”

  “Not here. I’m sorry, Mads, I just can’t. I don’t want to have to see your parents, and talk to them about all this. Will you please just come with me?” He hadn’t moved any closer, he was still at the other end of the porch from me, but his voice was stretched thin and high. He sounded childlike almost, so young.

  “Yeah,
okay. I’ll come for a drive. Just let me put on some shoes and grab a coat.”

  He drove straight to the lake house, though, as if that was where he’d been planning to go all along, the headlights of his Land Cruiser cutting through the dark, touching on the purple ribbon tied around Nora’s tree. More bunches of flowers had appeared, a few soft toys, and there were even some candles, still lit, their fragile light guttering in the wind. I didn’t say anything as we approached the house, still so uncertain around him. I’d seen and spoken to Nate more in the past three days than I had in the past three years but that really wasn’t saying much. The silence felt taut still, stretched, but there was a chance it was relaxing slightly, maybe just a little. I looked over at him as he pulled the car to a stop.

  “Are we getting out?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “So, that’s it. Drive over?”

  Nate lifted his eyes to mine. “You can stay in the car if you want, but I’m going inside.”

  “Nate, what are we doing here?”

  “I just needed to be alone,” he said, and I couldn’t help letting out a shot of laughter.

  “But you’re not alone. I’m here.”

  “You don’t count.” A rock the size of a fist lodged itself inside my stomach. Seven or eight years ago that statement—you don’t count—wouldn’t have dislodged me quite so violently. I probably barely would have noticed it. Back then, Nate was one of the only people, more so than either of my sisters or even Ange, who I could be around without wanting to curl up and disappear. “You don’t count” had been a linguistic token between us, exchanged in moments when neither one of us could bear to be alone but, at the same time, couldn’t face anyone else. I hadn’t heard it in a long time; he hadn’t invoked it, and neither had I, and while I understood that with Elle gone these were different times, as much as I had wanted to accept that token, I wasn’t sure if I could just yet.