Lost Richard -Part 2
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Which is what lead me on Sunday to the Winston house. It was wedged between two others in the middle of the city and almost hidden by a line of cars. The white paint was peeling off the bricks and the windows were opaque with dirt. Christmas lights were peeking out from under the gutter and a faded welcome mat sunk into the cement porch in front of the door. I walked up to the door and knocked, but the woman who answered the door was not Charlotte.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
I flashed my identification. “I just want to check Richard’s room.”
“There’s nothing to find,” the woman said, but she moved out of the way for me to pass. I followed the contour of the hall to a bright yellow “Do Not Enter” sign.
“In here,” the woman said pointing to the door. “You’re lucky; Charlotte didn’t have the heart to move anything.”
It was hard to tell whether or not there had been a struggle in the room. Clothes were all over the floor, bed covers draped off the bed, and schoolbooks overflowed from the desk to the floor. But no furniture was overturned and the window wasn’t open.
I moved cautiously about the room. It looked like a typical teenager’s abode. I looked through a few papers, but they were all homework or notes home. There were a few unfinished letters to Feagle Publishing Company with stories and scripts, but no other clue of his disappearance. I took one last look around the room for good measure before going back out to the hall.
“Is Ms. Charlotte Winston here?” I asked a little more formally than I had originally intended.
“She’s in rehearsal,” the woman said as she moved back down the hall. We reached the living room and the woman sat down in the nearest chair before half-heartedly motioning for me to join her.
“Are you related to Ms. Winston?” I asked taking a seat on the couch across from her.
“Her sister,” the woman said pulling out a cigarette and lighting it. She let out a puff of smoke. “I hope you don’t mind if I smoke.”
“Um, no, I suppose not. What do you know about Richard’s disappearance?”
“The kid was smart and an excellent liar. As to why he would disappear, your guess is as good as mine.”
“How do you know he was an excellent liar?”
She let out a stream of smoke. “There was a time he snuck out of school and took the train downtown to see his father’s grave and when he got back to school he told them he was getting sick in the bathroom, when he blacked out and that’s why he was gone. So they sent him home and he spent the day watching TV and reading.”
“How do you know this?”
She shrugged. “Someone had to pick him up.”
At this point, I reassessed. Whatever story he gave to his disappearance was not necessarily reliable fact. The most obvious reason for his disappearance would be to a publishing company, but I didn’t know what Charlotte’s attitude was towards this endeavor. If she supported him, he wouldn’t have run away. He might have gotten fed up with the dynamics between his aunt and him mother, which was a clear possibility, and being a teenager, decided to run away. None of these reasons seemed like very good ones, but I was working with a teenage kid, not a mastermind.
Besides there was the larger issue of the gaping hole facing me: why would Richard visit his father’s grave if he didn’t know who his father was?
“I thought Charlotte didn’t know who the father was.”
“Is that what she told you?” Charlotte’s sister laughed. “She seems to like that story. Unfortunately she told the kid his father died in a car crash. That’s why he’s not allowed to drive.”
“What’s the truth?”
The woman shrugged. “You believe what you want to believe from what people tell you. The truth is irrelevant so long as the facts you know points to an answer.”
I seldom got frustrated. It was much harder to piece the facts together if your mind is automatically shutting out information. But, especially in cases of missing persons, I’ve had much better cooperation with the people I interview. I think what was really frustrating to me, though, was not that she wasn’t giving me information, but that she was right in her assessment.
I decided to go on another path that I wasn’t sure was fruitful. But I had to clear my head again. “What do you know about Richard wanting to get published?”
“He’s a good liar; he makes up good stories. He has a big ego sometimes and he’s got a bit of an irrational streak. I suppose he gets that from my sister.”
“Do you know of any problems at school that might cause him to run away?”
“No, he seems pretty satisfied all things considered.”
“Considering?”
“It’s his first year of high school.”
The door opened just then and Charlotte came into the room with a tote bag over her shoulder. She seemed tired and she was obviously displeased after discovering cigarette smoke in the air.
“Oh,” she exclaimed as she spotted me sitting on the couch. I didn’t think she should have been that surprised. “Did you find him?”
I shook my head. “I was just here to try and find more leads.”
Her face clouded. “Oh.”
She went into the kitchen and put down her bag with a thud on the table before joining her sister and myself in the living room. Charlotte let out a short but loud cough before sitting down and clearing her throat. Her sister leaned over and put her cigarette out in an ashtray on the table.
“Well what else do you need to know?” Charlotte asked.
“I was just wondering what you know about any problems he may be having at school. And I spotted some letters in his room about getting some things of his published; what do you know of that?”
“He loves school and all of his teachers think he’s a joy to have in class. As far as I know, he hasn’t had any problems at school with his friends; he seems to be adapting just fine. As for the publishing contract, well…I thought I made it quite clear that I did not want him to worry about that while he had school work…” she stopped and clasped her hand to her mouth, “you don’t think I was too hard on him, do you? I didn’t think he should have spent his time worrying about writing books when he should have been doing his homework!”
“No, no, I don’t think you were too hard on him,” I said. “You had a right as his mother to say that. It wasn’t over the top.” But this information did add to my theory of his rebelling to get published. It was improbable, I know, but I didn’t want to dismiss anything without a solid contradiction.
“For heavens sakes, Char! You told him that way before he ran away; you can’t even pretend to link the two!” her sister said.
“What happened the night before he left?”
Charlotte glanced at her sister. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”
Her sister rolled her eyes. “Oh no, sis! Nothing happened out of the ordinary.”
“Mm-hm,” I said. “What really happened?” I practically prayed someone would break down and share a little bit of the truth.
“He was going through the mail earlier that day and found a letter addressed to Charlotte,” Catherine said before Charlotte could stop her. Charlotte slapped her sister on her knee, but Catherine just continued. “When he gave her the mail, she whisked it away to her room and he was curious. So he snuck in and read it. She found him and they started fighting, so he left that night through the front door.”
“He left through the front door?!” Charlotte screeched. “Why didn’t you stop him?”
“He needed to let off a little steam; he’ll come back.”
“And has he? It’s been at least three days and he hasn’t come back!”
“Please,” I said. “May I see that letter?” I guess you could say arguing when I was gathering information was a pet peeve of mine.
Charlotte glared at her sister, who merely pulled out another cigarette and lit it before smirking back.
“He’ll be back.”
“May I see the letter?”
Charlotte got up from her chair and went down the hall. Catherine got up as well a little while after her sister, but walked over to the dining room and opened a window. She stayed by the open window and blew the smoke outside.
“He’ll come back,” she said quietly, “because he hasn’t really left.”
