AFTER
DETECTIVE BRETT PORTER
In my hands is the photograph that Ben Summers gave me. The woman in the photo stares up at me. Lightly tanned skin, bright green eyes, wide as she stares at the camera. Her hair stops just above her elbows, a chestnut brown that flows over her shoulders in loose waves. Her smile is kind, inviting. I look at the photo and see an enticing young woman who has her whole life ahead of her. She's beautiful.
She's missing.
Catalaina Kittridge: the puzzle that needs to be solved. One moment she was here, the next, she was gone.
I've been a detective for the Bridgeport PD for twelve years now, joined the academy straight out of college. My mother always told me I was never cut out for this type of job, but I never understood what she meant by that. Never cut out for having a job of high importance, or never cut out for having a job period?
My father honestly couldn't care much about what I did with my life, as long as I was making some sort of decent income. If I'm being honest here, I'll admit that I never once pictured myself in this line of work. A businessman, maybe. The idea of entrepreneurship always intrigued me. But sometimes we set goals for ourselves that we never accomplish. And sometimes our life-path takes us in a completely different direction than what we see fit. If I would have told my sixteen-year-old self that this was where I'd be today – thirty-four-years-old, flashing my badge and seeing corpses on a daily bases – well, I probably wouldn't have believed it. But what do you know, here I am.
In most cases, if we don't find this young woman soon and a body turns up, all fingers point to the fiancé. He's playing the victim card, but for all we know, he could have killed her and dumped the body by now. Hell, it could have been an accident even. He's covering his tracks, trying to appear as the good fiancé, calling the police when she didn't come home. But I'm not ruling anything out. She's been missing for almost thirty hours now. Still no word from her, and her cellphone is switched off or dead, so we can't get a trace.
Other than the fiancé angle, there's two other possible scenarios. The first – which would be the most viable option for everyone – is that she's taken off somewhere. Had a sudden change of heart in the middle of the night and disappeared. Perhaps she'll return soon, realize what a mistake she's made, and apologize for having worried everyone.
Then there's option B, which is that someone has taken her.
She's twenty-six years old. Over 260,000 women under the age of twenty-one went missing in the United States last year. 61,000 over the age of twenty-one. So the chances of a woman her age going missing or being abducted are significantly lower, however, not impossible. Someone could have taken her. Someone could have hurt her.
After speaking with the fiancé, it's imperative that I speak with the two people that know her better than anyone else in her life, and that would be her parents.
I show up at their house, which is just North of Bridgeport, around 1:00 p.m. Ben called them last night to ask if Catalaina was with them, as well as this morning. They are well aware of her absence.
A woman in her early to mid-fifties opens the door and recognizes who I must be immediately.
"Mrs. Kittridge?" I ask.
"Have you found her yet?"
"Not yet," I say. "I'm just here to talk to you and your husband, ask you some questions about Catalaina."
"Of course, of course." She ushers me into the house, offering me coffee or tea as she motions for me to have a seat on the couch in the living room.
I decline and wait for her to get her husband and settle in. They enter the room, looking tired and worried. Together, they sit on the couch across from me. In my hand I hold two things: my notepad, and the photograph.
"Catalaina," I say out loud. "Lovely name."
"Thank you," Mrs. Kittridge smiles slightly. "We spliced two names together – a hybrid of sorts. My mother, Catherine, and his mother, Elaine."
"Creative," I remark, then flip open the notepad. "When was the last time you spoke with your daughter?"
She thinks for a moment, then says, "It must have been Sunday. We spoke briefly on the phone Sunday evening."
"What did you talk about?"
"Oh, nothing in particular. We call each other to check in every now and then. Well, it's mostly me calling to check in on her. She doesn't call too often. I know she's busy with everything."
"When was the last time you saw her?"
"They were here a couple weeks ago," Mr. Kittridge says. "Her and Ben. They came for dinner. We try to get together with them a few times a month."
"How did Catalaina seem when you spoke to her on Sunday?" I ask her. "Normal? Stressed? Upset?"
"She seemed normal. From what I can recall of our conversation, everything was fine. She was doing laundry and getting things ready for work the next day. She likes to meal prep for the week, so she told me she was about to start cooking around nine."
"Did she say if she had any plans with anyone in particular this week?"
"Not that I can think of. Just the usual stuff with Ben."
"What's the usual stuff?"
"Work, dinner, movies, going for walks. Just mundane things. Everyday life together."
"Do you know anyone who would want to hurt Catalaina? Or if there might be any trouble she could have gotten herself into?"
Mrs. Kittridge makes a face. "I don't know what kind of trouble you could be referring to."
"Anything," I say. "Anything at all that would explain her sudden disappearance."
"Catalaina is a good girl," Mrs. Kittridge says. "She's never been one to conform to crowds. She's always been very independent and done her own thing. There were trouble makers, the ones who skipped school, did drugs, went out partying. But Catalaina was never like that. She preferred to stay in and study. She was very focused and diligent, even as a child. And to this day, she maintains a perfectionist lifestyle."
"Type-A, then, I presume?"
"Very. Most of the time, it works well for her. But other times, she gets so caught up in having everything perfect and her way that it stresses her out. I tell her to relax, to just let life happen. You can't control every single aspect. But that's what she believes."
"Does she have many friends?"
It's quiet for a moment. "She's had a few close friends here and there over the years. But you know..." Mrs. Kittridge pauses. "She always has falling outs with them. Off the top of my head, I honestly can't name a single friend of hers."
"Is that not concerning to you? As a parent?"
"Somewhat, yes. More so when she was younger. All I wanted was for her to go out and make friends and be social. Most of the time she preferred to stay in and be by herself. She's had a handful of friendships over the years. They just didn't last."
"And why do you think that is?"
Mrs. Kittridge sighs. "Catalaina gets sick of people very easily. It's a flaw of hers. She thinks everything in her life has to be perfect, and when someone comes along who isn't perfect, she rejects them. And just as soon as they enter her life, they're gone again."
"Not a healthy way to go through life," I remark.
"Indeed," she says. "She likes to keep people at arms-length. Close enough that they're there if she needs them, but not close enough to let herself get hurt. She's always been very distant from people. Detached, almost. Even as a child, she hated hugs and being held. My son, on the other hand, was so needy and demanding. He always wanted attention. Always wanted people to look at him and pay attention. He loved showing affection. But Catalaina was the opposite. She'd cry when we'd pick her up. She preferred to be left on her own."
"How is your relationship with your daughter?" I ask Mr. Kittridge, trying to shift the attention – and perhaps some of the conversation – to him.
"Good. Average. Healthy," he says. "She was a daddy's girl growing up. Always came to me whenever she had a problem or wanted to hang out. We've always been close."
"Would she come to you now if she had a problem?"
"I'd hope so," he says. "But I can't be too sure. She has Ben now. He's there for her more than I can be."
"What do you think of Ben?"
"He's a good guy," Mr. Kittridge says. "Wealthy, successful, kind."
"How about you?" I turn back to Mrs. Kittridge.
"Oh, he's a very wonderful man. He loves our daughter and would do anything for her. We adore him."
"When's the wedding?" I ask.
"In two months. End of July."
"Soon," I remark, jotting this down. "Could she be getting cold feet?"
Mrs. Kittridge gives me a look. "No. She loves Ben and wants to spend the rest of her life with him. But even if she was getting cold feet or changed her mind, I highly doubt she would run off in the middle of the night and not tell anyone. That's just out of character. She would never do that."
"So it's safe to say that something else has happened then," I conclude.
They both remain quiet.
She closes her eyes, brings her fingers to her forehead. "I always knew something like this would happen."
Her husband consoles her, and I stare at her. "What do you mean by that?"
She takes a moment to gather herself. Then she says, "It was almost as though she herself predicted this."
"Who, Catalaina?"
"Yes. She was foreshadowing her own life."
"What do you mean by that?"
"When she was a teenager, she was very melodramatic," Mrs. Kittridge begins. "She acted as though her life was a movie and everything that happened to her was destined to be. She was fascinated with crime and death. Most notably, murder. At first I thought it was because of some TV show or movie she liked, but as the years progressed, she remained intrigued by criminality. It was strange.
"I remember this one encounter specifically, when she was in her first year of university. She came home one weekend, and I was sitting in the kitchen, having a cup of coffee. Catalaina came in and laid out a series of photos on the counter. They were all of herself. She told me that I needed to choose one as a headshot that would go to the police if she ever went missing. I tried to dismiss her and told her to stop being ridiculous, but she was so serious, so adamant that I choose a photo. I ended up choosing one, simply to get her to drop the subject. But I told her we'd never have to use it because nothing was going to happen to her. All she said to me was, it's good to be prepared."
"And nothing ever happened after that?" I ask. "She didn't disappear or run off for a short period of time, perhaps for attention?"
"No, never," Mrs. Kittridge says. "It's not as if she was planning to go missing. But she wanted to have everything in order, just in case. She also had this sealed letter in her bedroom. On the front it said: only to be opened in the event of my death. But that was years ago. I haven't seen it since."
"Did you ever open it? See what she had inside?"
"No, she was very private and secretive about it. She said it was irrelevant if she was still alive. But also stressed the importance the letter possessed if she ever was to die."
"Did you find that odd – that she was always talking about her own death so nonchalantly?"
"Yes, of course. I always told her not to talk that way. It's morbid. But she was obsessed. Not in a strange way. Just in a meticulous way. Every time she went on an airplane, she'd say goodbye to everyone like it was the last time. It was as though she lived her life with the knowledge that she only had one day left to live."
"But nothing ever happened," I say.
"No," Mrs. Kittridge says. "Not until now."