Rachel and I gave each other a quick glance. “How long ago was this?”
“Seven years ago. We started sending each other e-mails and stuff. Kat was living on a farm in Serbia. Her parents had nothing. She used to walk four miles to get computer access. I wanted to call too, you know, talk on the phone. But they didn’t even have one. She had to call me. Then one day, she says she’s coming over. To meet me.”
Verne put his hands up, as if to silence an interruption. “Now see, this is where the girls usually hit you up for some money, you know, dollars to buy a plane ticket and stuff. So I was ready for that. But Kat didn’t. She came over on her own. I drove up to New York City. We met. We were married three weeks later. Verne Junior came in a year. Perry three years after that.”
He took a deep sip of his beer. I did the same. The coldness felt wonderful sliding down my throat.
“Look, I know what you’re thinking,” Verne said. “But it ain’t like that. Kat and me, we’re real happy. I was married before to a grade-A American ball-buster. All she did was whine and complain. I wasn’t making enough money for her. She wanted to stay at home and do nothing. Ask her to do a load of laundry, she’d go all ballistic on me with that feminazi crap. Always tearing me down, telling me I’m a loser. With Kat, it ain’t like that. Do I like the fact that she makes a nice house and home? Sure, okay, that’s important to me. If I’m working outside and it’s hot, Kat’ll fetch me a beer without giving me aMs . magazine lecture. Is there anything wrong with that?”
Neither of us replied.
“Look, I want you to think about it, okay? Why are any two people attracted to each other? Looks maybe? Money? Because you have an important job? We all join up because we want to get something out of it. Give and take, am I right? I wanted a loving wife who’d help me raise children and take care of a home. I wanted a partner too, someone, I don’t know, who’d just be nice to me. I get that. Kat, she wanted out of a terrible life. I mean, they were so poor, dirt was a luxury. She and me, we got it good here. In January, we took the kids and went down to Disney World. We like hiking and canoeing. Verne Junior and Perry, they’re good kids. Hey, maybe I’m simple. Hell, I’mdefinitely simple. I like my guns, my hunting and fishing—and most of all, my family.”
Verne lowered his head. His mullet hair dropped like a curtain blocking his face. He started ripping the label off the beer. “Some places—probably most, I don’t know—marriages are arranged. That’s the way it’s always been. The parents decide. They force them. Well, no one forced Kat and me. She could walk away anytime. Me too. But it’s been seven years now. I’m happy. So is she.”
Then he shrugged his shoulders. “At least, I thought she was.”
We drank in silence.
“Verne?” I said.
“Yeah?”
“You’re an interesting man.”
He laughed, but I could see the fear. He took a swig of beer to hide it. He’d carved out a life for himself. A nice life. It’s funny. I am not a very good judge of people. My initial impressions are usually wrong. I see this gun-toting redneck with his hair and his bumper stickers and his monster-truck-rally ’tude. I hear he has a mail-order bride from Serbia. How can you not judge? But the more I listened to him, the more I liked him. I must be at least as alien to him. I’d crept up on his house with a gun. Yet as soon as I had started telling my story, Verne had acted. He knew that we were telling the truth.
We heard the car pull up. Verne moved to the window and looked out. There was a small, sad smile on his face. His family was pulling into the drive. He cherished them. Intruders had come to his home with guns, and he had done what he could to protect it. And now, maybe, in my attempt to bring my family together, I might tear apart his.
“Look! Daddy’s home!”
That had to be Katarina. The accent was unmistakably foreign, something in the Balkan–East European–Russian family. I am not linguist enough to know which. I heard the happy squeals of little children. Verne’s smile widened a bit. He stepped out onto the porch. Rachel and I stayed where we were. We could hear running feet on the steps. The greeting lasted a minute or two. I stared at my hands. I heard Verne say something about presents in the truck. The kids sprinted for them.
The door opened. Verne entered with his arm around his wife.
“Marc, Rachel, this here’s my wife, Kat.”
She was lovely. She wore her long hair straight down. Her yellow sundress left her shoulders exposed. Her skin was pure white, her eyes blue ice. She had that certain bearing so that I could have told, even if I hadn’t known, that she was foreign. Or maybe I was projecting. I tried to guess her age. She could pass for mid-twenties, but the age lines around the eyes told me I was probably a decade off.
“Hi,” I said.
We both stood and shook her hand. It was dainty, but there was steel in the grip. Katarina held on to the hostess smile, but it wasn’t easy. Her eyes stayed on Rachel, on the wounds. The sight, I guess, was rather shocking. I was almost getting used to it.
Still smiling, Katarina turned to Verne as if to ask a question. He said, “I’m trying to help them out.”
“Help them?” she repeated.
The children had located the presents and were hooting and hollering. Verne and Katarina didn’t seem to hear. They were looking at each other. He held her hand. “That man over there”—he gestured with his chin toward me—“somebody murdered his wife and took away his little girl.”
She put a hand to her mouth.
“They’re here trying to find his daughter.”
Katarina did not move. Verne turned to Rachel and nodded a go-ahead.
“Mrs. Dayton,” Rachel began, “did you make a phone call last night?”
Katarina’s head jerked as though she’d just been startled. She looked at me first, as if I were some kind of circus oddity. Then she turned her attention to Rachel. “I don’t understand.”
“We have a phone record,” Rachel said. “Last night at midnight, someone placed a call from this house to a certain cell phone. We assume it was you.”
“No, that’s not possible.” Katarina’s eyes started shifting as if seeking out an escape route. Verne still held her hand. He tried to meet her gaze, but she kept avoiding it. “Oh wait,” she said. “Maybe I know.”
We waited.