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Chapter 9. Beth: The Missing
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Catching Teller Crow, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Trauma and Grief
Abuse of Power, Racism, and the Law
Storytelling and Truth
Time
Female Friendship
Summary
Analysis
Allie, Michael, and Beth drive across town to a stormwater drain surrounded by a fence. Police cars are parked nearby. When they exit the car, Derek—looking shocked—informs them that the bodies found in the drain belong to Director Cavanagh and Nurse Flint, both stabbed to death. Beth wonders who the unidentified body belonged to, then. While Allie goes to reassure some townspeople gathering nearby, Derek tells Michael that the bodies weren’t killed here and takes him to look at the dumping site. As Michael walks away, he gives Beth a look warning her not to go near the murdered bodies.
Derek’s apparently genuine shock at Cavanagh and Flint’s deaths hints that whatever has made him so nervous about external oversight of the case, he may not be the two men’s murderer. Meanwhile, the revelation that the unidentified body in the home was not Nurse Flint reveals that the stories Michael has been trying to tell to explain the case have been inaccurate in an extremely important respect.
Themes
Beth wonders whether Cavanagh and Flint’s ghosts will appear because they were murdered, the way Catching thought Beth herself was haunting Michael because she’d been murdered. Somehow, though, she’s sure that their ghosts won’t appear and that they didn’t have any “unfinished business.”
Implicitly, Beth is acknowledging that unlike Flint and Cavanagh, she herself does have “unfinished business”—that is, it’s grief and trauma, rather than a choice, that’s frozen her in the physical world.
Themes
Michael returns, talking on the phone. Beth hears him say that “something [is] off.” When he hangs up, she asks him what he meant. He explains that Rachel is sending more police; he wants colleagues who don’t work for Derek, whom Michael believes is withholding information. When Beth implies that they should talk to the kids who were living in the home again, Michael says that they’re unlikely to talk to authorities—and that, according to Rachel, the kids seem oddly unconcerned about the case, as if “everything’s been taken care of.”
Michael’s request for his own colleagues suggests that Michael doesn’t distrust other police officers per se: he believes that corrupt or abusive policing may be a problem in Derek’s jurisdiction—and jurisdictions like Derek’s—in particular. The children’s apparent believe that “everything’s been taken care of” after the fire implies that they’re glad the home burned down—which, in turn, foreshadows ominous revelations about the home.
Themes
Beth thinks about the children isolated from the townspeople who wanted to help them and used as cover for drug dealing or some other criminal behavior. She blurts out that the situation at the children’s home was wrong. Michael agrees but says that Rachel will help the kids while he deals with the case in town. He mentions that the fence surrounding the drain was locked and they don’t know how the murderer got in to dump the bodies.
The vulnerability of parentless children to isolation and exploitation at government-approved children’s homes emphasizes that the law can create opportunities for abuse even when it intends to help people. The revelation that the murderer managed to dump bodies behind a locked fence highlights that the police don’t understand how the murderer is committing the crimes, or what connections the murderer might have.
Themes
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Allie walks up to Michael. When he asks whether she knew Cavanagh and Flint, she says they weren’t outgoing. Fixing her eyes on a bus stop past the drain, she mentions that that’s where Sarah Blue disembarked right before she disappeared. Beth shouts that the events must be connected—but realizes that Cavanagh and Flint, who weren’t from this town originally, likely never knew Sarah. When Michael asks whether anyone who lives nearby heard anything, Allie says that an old woman claims large wings were beating overhead the night before.
Beth immediately links Sarah Blue’s long-ago disappearance to the dumping of Cavanagh and Flint’s bodies because they occurred around the same place—which shows that she’s thinking like a detective, who distrusts coincidences, and not like a scientist, for whom correlation does not equal causation. Though Beth comes to doubt her first instinct, the novel may be hinting that Beth is right to trust detective-like, suspicious storytelling over rational scientific storytelling in this situation.
Themes
Beth thinks of Fetchers. When she mentions this to Michael, he shakes his head, but—terrified on Catching’s behalf—she teleports to Catching anyway. She babbles about the murders, wings, and Fetchers until Catching says, with total certainty, that Fetchers aren’t coming to get her. Seeing Beth’s disorientation, Catching tells her to sit and thanks her for the warning anyway. Beth says, “It’s what fr—” but cuts herself off before saying “friends.” When Catching finishes the phrase, Beth asks whether they’re friends. Catching says that they are: friends “always tell each other the truth. Even when it hurts,” and she told Beth the hurtful truth about her relationship to Michael.
Earlier, Beth decided not to tell Michael that Catching could see her because having a secret with Catching made her feel like they were friends. By implication, Beth wants friendships outside of her grief-suffocated family relationship to Michael. Here, readers learn that Catching reciprocates Beth’s desire to be friends: when she told Beth her truthful opinion about Michael, she was cementing their friendship. Catching’s insistence that friendship means telling the truth both emphasizes the importance of truth and implies that Catching thinks the fantastical story she has been telling Beth and Michael is true in some sense.
Themes
Beth says that Michael will probably follow her to the hospital and admits that she hasn’t told him that Catching can see her. Catching volunteers not to tell him either, because keeping secrets is another characteristic of friendship. She says that in “the beneath-place,” she had a friend who told her the truth “as she saw it.” When Beth asks whether these truths hurt, Catching instinctively fists her sheets. Beth becomes more certain that terrible things have happened to Catching, and she’s anxious about what happened to Catching’s friend too.
Earlier, when Michael asked Catching about whether she had any social support, she told him that she’d “got someone.” Now Catching reveals that she had a friend in “the beneath-place,” that is, the tunnels where the Fetchers took her. It’s not clear whether these two characters, Catching’s current social support and her friend in captivity, are one and the same. Catching’s claim that her friend told the truth “as she saw it” indicates that a person can try to tell the truth and still give other people false, incomplete, or biased stories: people’s perspectives are limited. Catching’s instinctive, pained reaction to Beth’s question, meanwhile, hints that Catching was harmed or abused during captivity.
Themes
Beth says that Michael can help Catching. Catching says her story isn’t a cry for help. When Beth asks why she’s telling it, Catching replies, “To be heard.” Beth suggests that that “sounds like” a cry for help and that Catching might need help even if she isn’t asking for it. The girls sit in silence for a moment, but it isn’t awkward. When Michael enters the hospital room, Catching asks whether he wants to hear more of her story. Michael asks whether she’s going to mention the fire, and she says no: “The next part is about my friend. And the grey.”
Catching claims that she is telling her story “to be heard,” which indicates that sometimes, people tell stories simply to express themselves or help listeners understand their perspective, not to get something from their listeners. When Beth suggests that wanting to be heard “sounds like” a cry for help, on the other hand, it suggests that sometimes people want to be heard and understood as a way of working through painful experiences such as traumas.
Themes
