Girl Taken: A Detective Kaitlyn Carr Mystery Read online

Trish opens her mouth to speak, but Karen cuts her off.

  "Derek has a big trust fund. He used to be an actor when he was a kid. He was in a lot of commercials, Disney shows."

  "Any I would know?" I ask.

  "Suite Life of Zack & Cody, iCarly."

  "Oh. Yeah. I do know of those," I say.

  "He wasn't one of the main actors," Trish interjects. "Usually played friends or guest starring roles. He did it for a while, and his parents put all that money away in a trust fund."

  “That’s smart.” I nod.

  "And where do his parents live now?"

  "They're dead," Trish says. "Passed away in a car accident two years back."

  "I'm really sorry to hear that."

  They both nod their heads as if they're doing a moment of silence.

  "I never met them, you know. It was before my time, and he is now part of our family."

  "One hundred percent," Karen says, giving her daughter a warm squeeze.

  They seem sweet and loving, and full of compassion and love.

  I want to talk a little bit more, but Trish says that she's starting to feel tired and has to take a little break.

  Karen invites me inside, and I tell them about the Islingtons, and how no one's heard from them for a week.

  20

  Violet has always been fascinated with books about time travel. I don't know why but the memory of her talking about it, thinking about it, came back to me at that moment standing here in the Carlsons’ living room.

  When Trish left to take a rest, I started to walk toward the front door to let myself out, but her mom surprised me and invited me in to have some fresh cookies that she had just baked. I can’t resist.

  Prior to walking to the back of the house, Karen asks me shyly if I could remove my shoes since this is a no-shoe household.

  "Of course, no problem.”

  As I bend down, I have a moment of déjà vu; me doing the exact same thing in my old home in Big Bear Lake. It was about two years ago, summer, those warm July days that have the most perfect weather, eighty degrees, no humidity in sight, and fires that have not yet started up in the mountains. The sky was blue, and I had just eaten a chocolate ice cream cone that I could still taste.

  Violet had just run in right after me, tossing her flip-flops haphazardly by the front door, her purple nail polish on her toenails peeling since it had been at least a month since she had applied it. She was out of breath from riding her bike from far away, her forehead drenched in sweat.

  She started talking almost immediately without bothering to say hello. She had read a new book about going back in time. It was by Stephen King. It was about an English teacher who goes back in time and tries to change the outcome of the Kennedy assassination. I hadn’t read it and she’d just started, but she rattled on and on about how exciting it would be to find a portal like that and walk back in time.

  She’s probably too young to read Stephen King, but she's read a couple of his books already, and I've stopped telling her that she is too young to read certain books a long time ago. She's always been wise beyond her years. The thing that catches me off guard, however, is the fact that a thirteen-year-old would even want to go back in time. I've always thought that the appeal of time travel was mainly for adults who had regrets. If anything, teenagers should want to travel forward to when they're older and they can move out and do what they want to do with their lives.

  "Where would you go? What would you do?" I asked Violet, walking over to the mirror in the living room and wiping a little bit of chocolate out of the corner of my mouth.

  My mom wasn't too keen on mirrors and the two that we owned, I bought myself at the thrift store in town. A long one for my room, full-length, and to be honest, it made me look a little bit skinnier, which made it even more of a success in my book. And the circular one for the foyer that resembled the one that I saw on The Real Housewives of New York or God knows what city.

  I watched all of those shows. I'm a reality show addict. Not something that I'm too keen to admit, but it's like sugar and potato chips. You promise yourself you'll just watch one episode and then you get sucked in and somehow you feel better about your crappy day at the end of it.

  "Where would you go?" I asked her again as she bent over, putting her head all the way into the refrigerator in search of something good to eat.

  "Well, to last week, maybe a couple of years ago. I'm always saying things that I don't exactly mean, hurting people's feelings, acting dumb."

  I narrowed my eyes.

  That couldn't be further from the truth about the girl that I knew. But then again, we all wear different faces and pretend to be different people with our friends and strangers.

  "But mainly I'd go back to the day that Dad died."

  A cold sweat ran down from my armpits. Violet didn’t pull her head out of the fridge, and I was glad that she didn’t because I was afraid she'd see me tearing up. I quickly wiped the corner of my eye and took a few deep breaths, thinking of the color blue. For some reason that had always made my waves of emotion a little slower and be able to hide my tears from others.

  "Dad," she said, her voice echoing in the fridge. I wondered if she was in there because she was trying to prevent me from seeing something. "Wouldn't it be nice to go back and to try and change that? What would our life be like if he were still around?"

  I noticed that she didn’t say to find out what happened, but instead to change it, whatever the outcome, murder or suicide. Violet closed the door, holding a small packet of blackberries in her hand.

  "Would you like to go back with me?” she asked.

  "Are you trying to tell me something?" I asked, knowing for certain that, of course, none of this is real. It was just a hypothetical conversation, but I couldn’t help but think what-if? What if it could be? What if it was actually possible to change something like that?

  "I think about him all the time," Violet said. "I know that I don't really remember him. I mean, whatever memories I have are filtered through you and Mom, but I think about him all the time and I think about what life would be like if he were still around. Would we be happier? Would Mom?"

  "Mom is a tossup," I said. "Perhaps she would be happier, but it is also a possibility that she wouldn't be."

  "How can you say that?" Violet said, placing the plastic box of blackberries with a little thump on the kitchen table. She took a small plate out of the cupboard, looking at me with disgust.

  "They fought a lot. They were always fighting, about money mainly. There was just never enough, and the things that Dad did to make some made her angry."

  "He was just doing it so we could live."

  "Yeah, I know, but there’re other ways to make money other than selling drugs."

  "You don't know how hard it was for him. I'm sure that he tried to do other things and just couldn’t,” she insisted.

  I agreed with her. The other thing that made it very difficult to get a job was his record. He’d been arrested and convicted, and after that, there weren't many places that were willing to give him an option, give him a job. And the few places that did, the money was just nowhere what he needed to pay for the mortgage on this house.

  "What do you think I would find if I went back there?" Violet asked, washing the blackberries in the sink, and then moving over to the recliner and tucking her feet up under her.

  This was her go-to position. This was how she was comfortable.

  This was where I saw her sitting, watching TV, doing her homework, everything else, texting and anything else that a teenage girl does on a daily basis. The internet was never that good in her room, and so she was here, a permanent fixture, like a sculpture.

  "I would do anything to go back there," Violet said, popping a blackberry into her mouth, a strand of her hair falling in her face, a little bit of razor burn right below her knee.

  She’d just started shaving her legs against Mom’s wishes, and if Dad were here, definitely against his.

&nb
sp; I told her how much he yelled at me when he found out that I shaved my legs. It was an unexpected thing. The nails and hair color, I knew that he wouldn't like. So I hid it, along with eyeliner and everything else that I did on the bus on the way to school. But shaving my legs, it never occurred to me that he would mind, but he did. That was the kind of thing that Violet didn’t know about him.

  "Are you trying to make him seem like a bad guy?" she snapped at me, her eyes wild, wide, and her left hand grabbing onto the recliner with such force that her knuckles were white.

  "No, not at all. I'm just trying to make him real."

  "Whatever," she said, leaning back in the chair, her body relaxing just a little bit.

  She wanted to know more. She didn’t want to leave, but she didn’t want to get hurt either.

  Sometimes it was better to have an idea of who someone was rather than the truth. But if she wanted to know, I’d tell her what I did know.

  No elaborations.

  No secrets.

  No lies.

  "He saw that I had shaved my legs mainly because I was rubbing them and touching how soft they were. I was a little bit younger than you, and he got pissed off. He threw a plate across the room. I thought he was so angry with me, but when I got older, I realized that 90% of what parents do has something to do with what’s going on in their lives. It doesn't really have anything to do with me. My shaved legs were just an excuse. It was a tipping point. But with him, there were a lot of tipping points. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I was walking on eggshells, not at all, but I definitely worried when I was with him. He was unpredictable.”

  Violet moved away from me but kept listening.

  "Then, later that afternoon, he took me downstairs and he showed me his collection of pulp novels from the 40s that he had collected, that he loved dearly. There were these detective stories mixed in with some fantasy and science-fiction. They were all printed on very thin paper. They were considered cheap novels. But when he read the beginning of one to me, his eyes lit up and I saw the kid that he used to be, that I saw images of in one of those old pictures with Grandma.

  “He was both of those people, Violet. I don't know how to make sense of it either. I think part of growing up is just realizing that most of the time your parents are going through their own stuff, enduring their own struggles and pain and it's not about you. Their blow-ups, their obsessions, whatever it is that they're going through. It's not about you. But as a kid, you think everything's about you. Every decision, every mistake. You live in this bubble, and that's fine and that's how it should be. But when you get older, you have some grace and acceptance and you believe that people are capable of mistakes."

  "Is that why you've forgiven him for selling drugs, for getting himself killed?” Violet asked.

  She used the words "getting himself killed" in that way without assigning blame. He was either murdered or he had killed himself. But even if he did commit suicide, he only did it because his life was so hard.

  "I don't know what happened. He seemed very happy for weeks,” I said. “His depression spells, his moping around and just being out of it, lying in bed for hours and hours, that was gone. Of course, if you research suicide, that often happens to people. They get really happy at the end when they’ve made the decision to do it, to put themselves out of their misery, and so they really enjoy the last bits of their life."

  “That's what Mom thinks,” Violet said.

  "Mom thinks the fact that he was happy is proof that he had killed himself and that he did what he intended to do."

  "That's not what you think," Violet said, popping another blackberry in her mouth, and as she bit down, a little bit of juice ran from her lips and down her chin. She caught it with the palm of her hand. She didn’t offer me any, but when I took one, she didn’t push me away either. It was sweet and sour. They were in season. This was one of my favorite things about summer, this, watermelon, and the warm weather.

  "No, I don't think he killed himself. I think he was murdered. I don't have proof. I just have suspicions."

  "Maybe you want to believe that because that would mean he didn't want to leave us," Violet said, and I’d thought about that possibility a number of times.

  "Yes, it could be true. I could be lying to myself, but there are a lot of unanswered questions. He was shot twice in his stomach. He bled out for a while. That's a very painful way to go."

  "Maybe he didn't know it would hurt so much.”

  "Let's say he didn't. But then when it happened, he needed to shoot himself again, but it just seems very unlikely."

  Violet and I had never talked about this in this manner before. She was always too young and Mom always wanted me to protect her, and maybe she was still too young, but I had to tell her the truth. She was demanding answers to questions she didn't have the answers to, and I was there to provide them if possible.

  I sat there for a while and I told her everything that I knew about our father's death, every detail, and everything that I didn't know either. I also told her that I never asked more questions.

  I never did any interviews. I never conducted an investigation like I did for numerous other victims, so I did not know. I was embarrassed by that, but I told her the truth.

  She asked me why, why didn't I pursue this? She told me that she thought that I went into law enforcement to get to the truth.

  "Partly yes, that was why, but I never got around to it because I was afraid. I was afraid of finding out what I didn't know and what I did know,” I said.

  Now, I am worried that I have waited too long, maybe now there's nothing to find out, and that scares me even more. That the truth now is somehow unknowable, and that it is my fault.

  21

  I walked through Trish’s mom's house. After leaving my shoes by the door, Karen shows me to the back where the kitchen is with a sliding door that faces the backyard. It's a bright sunny day in Los Angeles and the house, though not big, is quite luxurious and undoubtedly expensive, given the location.

  Her mom has wide sad eyes, a short hairstyle, and the demeanor of someone with nothing to hide. She's not putting on airs, and there's a kindness to her that I find almost uncomfortable.

  Most people that I'm around put their guard up as soon as they hear that I'm a police officer. It's like they present the best versions of themselves. It happens even when they just see my car and I'm driving down the freeway. Everyone slows down, clogging up traffic.

  I have no intentions of pulling anyone over who's only going ten miles above the speed limit, unless it's a school zone. But as soon as they see the lights on top of the SUV and the police department insignia, everyone comes to a crawl. I haven't driven a police car like that for a while, and it's definitely noticeable when you drive something unmarked.

  Karen is different. It's almost as if she doesn't have a filter. She smiles at me in a pleasant manner, and offers me a warm cookie, that I can't resist no matter how hard I try.

  The plate has antique flowers on it. It looks delicate. Something either from the thrift store or from long ago. Her nails are cut short and manicured. No acrylics, very little eye shadow, just a smudge of foundation, and some gloss on her lips.

  Trish comes out a little bit later, taking a seat at the bar next to me. She looks tired, exhausted from the pregnancy. Her skin is a little bit sallower than it was earlier, and she says that she still has nausea sometimes that comes on in waves.

  She grabs a cookie, takes a bite, picks off the chocolate a little bit, and then tells me how nice the Islingtons, whom she calls by their first names, Ruth and Deacon, were to her and Derek, and how easy they made the entire process of buying the boat.

  I glance over at Karen who smiles at me.

  "You know, I wasn't sure about all of this at first when Derek brought it up," Karen says, "but after seeing pictures of that boat, it's nicer than some of the apartments that they’ve lived in. I think it would be great."

  "You mentioned that you went o
n a test drive with them?” I ask.

  "Yes, we did. And they signed over all the paperwork after we paid."

  "Really?" I ask.

  Trish nods.

  She then walks over to her room, right off of the living room, and comes back with a stack of paperwork.

  "Here, you see, the boat's ours."

  I look at the papers. The signatures all seem to be there. The boat is described in detail, and everything has been notarized.

  "I'm just so confused about where they could be," Trish says, sitting back down on the bar stool, putting her head down, and then propping it back up with her hand. "I mean, what could have happened to them? Where could they have gone?"

  Karen walks over and drapes her arm over her daughter’s shoulder. They both look somewhere past me with forlorn long faces. I'm more confused than anything else.

  "How did they sign over this paperwork exactly?" I ask and a young man comes down the stairs.

  Tall, broad shouldered, quite attractive. His hair is a mess, and his eyes look bloodshot red, like he has just woken up with a hangover. I don't smell any booze.

  He stretches out his limbs, before coming in to shake my hand. He introduces himself as Derek Carlson, and Trish catches him up on everything that has happened. As soon as he hears about the Islingtons being missing, his expression changes, and he leans forward, shaking his head slightly from side to side.

  "I just can't believe that something could have happened. I mean, we were just on the boat with them."

  "I know, right?" Trish says.

  She had gotten up when he came out, but then cradling her belly again, she sits down on the bar stool. He moves a little to give her space. I ask my question again about signing over the paperwork, when and where it was done.

  Trish and her mom look over at Derek, who just shrugs.

  "Well, we have the cash. And after the sea trial, we just decided to go for it. The boat looked like it was in great working order, and we trusted them when they said everything was in working order. They promised that if something broke in six months, they'd fix it."