Chapter 97
T.K. Norton stood in the doorway of his daughter’s room while I pulled on a pair of disposable plastic gloves.
“Why are you wearing those?” T.K. asked. “Is it an evidence thing?”
“A politeness thing. I don’t think your teenage daughter needs a stranger touching her possessions directly.”
Brightwell, Brightwell.
I started with the bedside table, but even with gloves on, I tried to handle Mallory’s belongings as little and as tenderly as possible, preferring to use a fingertip to move items. T.
K. Norton watched me. He might have been keeping an eye on me—no father wants to give an unfamiliar man untrammeled access to his daughter’s environs—but he also wanted to talk, so I stayed quiet until he felt comfortable enough to begin.
“Is she for real?” he asked. “That woman, Sabine.”
“Yes,” I replied. I was going through the books on the shelves, one by one, checking between the pages.
I found movie tickets, receipts, a few cards and notes, but all were old and none struck me as important.
“Some would call what she has a gift, but she doesn’t. If she could, she’d rid herself of it.”
A photograph fell to the floor from an American Girl book: Meet Molly, the first in the series.
Everyone liked that book. Sam still had her copy.
The photo had been taken when Mallory was not yet a teenager.
It showed Mallory and her mother, nothing visible in the background, the two of them happy together.
I restored it to the book, where it would be safe.
“She says she can’t find any trace of our daughter,” said T.K., still speaking of Sabine. “That’s good, right? Because psychics, mediums, whatever, they deal with the dead. So if she can’t locate Mallory, it means she’s not dead.”
I wasn’t about to share with him what Sabine had told me back at the motel. It didn’t matter anyway. The truth was that almost no one knew for sure whether Mallory Norton was alive or dead, the exception being the person who might have taken her.
“I need her not to be dead, Mr Parker,” he said.
I could have offered him a platitude. I could have told him that a lot of people were trying their best to bring about that outcome, which was true, and it was why I was searching his daughter’s room. Instead I said: “I know.”
He pulled away from the door.
“I’m disturbing your focus.”
“No,” I said, “you should stay. I may have questions, or a detail I’d like clarified. And the company would be welcome, right?”
If he went downstairs, I knew he would not rejoin the two women in the living room.
He would go elsewhere to be alone with his fears.
I imagined that T. K. Norton was someone on whom a great many people relied: his family, his employees, his customers.
He might even have liked it that way. The problem with being that kind of man is you fall out of the habit of turning to others when you’re in trouble, or you never develop the habit to begin with. You suffer alone, and you suffer badly.
So I asked him about the pictures on the walls, and about his business.
He spoke more than I did, and when he went silent, I found something else to ask.
And all the time I moved methodically through the room, checking not only his daughter’s things but also the closet, the underside of the bed and mattress, even the baseboards, inspecting each item or section of the room thoroughly before proceeding to the next.
I left the clothing until last. To do the job right, I’d have to take out jeans, sweaters, and T-shirts to examine, pat down and, if necessary, refold.
I asked T. K. Norton to help with the refolding.
The underwear I did as discreetly as I could, and it didn’t take long, but Mallory Norton owned enough sweaters, tops, and T-shirts to clothe fifty teenagers, with enough left over for those feeling the cold to be able to double up.
Sometimes the revelations come fast and easy, and you find what you’re looking for right off the bat.
Those instances are rare. More usually, you ask ninety-nine questions for no good reply, then the hundredth provides an answer that advances the investigation a single, crucial step.
You knock on ninety-nine doors only to be told to go screw yourself, then the hundredth is opened by the person you’ve been looking for, even if you didn’t know their name or their face until that moment.
And once in a while, you spend an hour painstakingly searching the room of a girl who might be dead, and fear you’re going to leave with nothing, only to learn at the very end that the effort was worth it.
Persistence, if you’re fortunate, is rewarded.
Among the T-shirts was one more scruffy and stained than the rest. The shirt was off-white, and had been folded so it matched those above and below, but it was different.
It even smelled different because it was unwashed, so the scent of the person who had worn it, and who had gifted it to Mallory, would not fade.
The faintest hint of sweat and cheap male deodorant came from it.
I unfolded the shirt and held it to the bedroom light, haloing the logo of the Smiling Seed Company.