Previous
Chapter 8. Beth: The Station
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
Beth rejoins Michael and Allie in the car. As Allie drives, Michael asks whether she went to school with Derek and Alexander Sholt. She says she did, though they were a little older. Alexander went to boarding school for a while but returned after his grandfather, Oscar Sholt, spent too much of the family money preparing for the apocalypse he believed was coming. Alexander made a lot of that money back on the stock market as an adult. Beth, knowing Allie can’t hear her, suggests that Alexander made the money back dealing drugs or committing other crimes.
Many of the powerful people in town—rich man Alexander Sholt, police officers Derek and Allie—went to school together, which hints that in small towns, law-enforcement bias in favor of the privileged can be compounded by close personal relationships.
Themes
Allie praises Alexander Sholt’s charity, mentioning that some townspeople didn’t want him to set up the home. Others wanted to volunteer there, but unfortunately, they were told that by law, only people employed at the home could work there. Beth asks Michael whether that’s a real law. When he shakes his head slightly, she suggests that Alexander fabricated it to keep townspeople from the home.
While Michael suspects the local police of bias and corruption, Allie’s belief in a law that Alexander may have invented to keep people away from the home hints that she’s been duped, rather than being a participant in corruption or crime.
Themes
Allie praises Alexander Sholt’s decision to stay in town and suggests that, if she had money, she’d leave—but then corrects herself, saying that she’d stay. When Michael asks what changed, Allie explains that her childhood best friend, Sarah Blue, vanished “twenty years . . . seven months . . . six days” ago, at age 14, after getting off the school bus one day. Derek’s father (Gerry Bell), who investigated her disappearance, believed she’d run away, but Allie is convinced that Sarah wouldn’t have done that without telling her parents. Allie admits she still wants to find Sarah, though Derek has told her it’s a pipe dream.
Allie has been counting the years, months, and days since her friend Sarah disappeared. This obsessive focus betrays the depth both of Allie’s friendship and her trauma: her 14-year-old best friend’s disappearance has frozen part of her in time, similar to the way that Beth’s death has frozen Beth in time and kept Michael obsessed with the circumstances of her passing. Gerry Bell’s claim that Sarah had just run away implies that he wasn’t taking the disappearance of a young girl particularly seriously—which casts doubt on the quality of the local police department.
Themes
When Michael says that the police “never stop looking for the missing,” Allie fumblingly asks him to look at Sarah’s file. He agrees—and she admits that it’s in the glove compartment. Beth, laughing, suggests to her dad that Allie has had the file on her ever since she heard an experienced detective was coming to town. Michael nods, smiling, and Beth knows he approves of Allie’s determination. When he examines the file, Beth sneaks a look and sees a photo of Sarah, an Aboriginal girl with a fierce expression.
Prior to this point, Michael has been suspicious and covertly contemptuous of the local police department, which he fears will be full of bigots like his father. Yet his claim that the police “never stop looking for the missing” suggests he has an idealized image of what law enforcement could be, even if he doesn’t believe many police officers live up to it. Allie has clearly jumped on the chance for a seasoned detective to look at Sarah’s file, an eagerness that shows both her grief and the power of her friendship with Sarah.
Themes
Get the entire Catching Teller Crow LitChart as a printable PDF.
Michael suggests that Sarah Blue’s file is pretty scanty. Allie agrees. Derek claims his father, Gerry Bell, did everything he could, but when Allie talked to Gerry Bell about the case, he was standoffish. Allie thinks that Gerry believed Sarah would “be back anytime.” When she asks Michael how the case could be pursued in the present, he suggests doing all the legwork over again and offers to help Allie with it after the current case ends.
Here Allie makes explicit that she thinks Gerry Bell did a bad job with the initial investigation because he didn’t take Sarah’s disappearance seriously enough, claiming she’d be “back anytime.” Allie’s judgments reflect poorly on Gerry and Derek, while suggesting that Allie is a critical thinker, not blindly loyal to her boss Derek.
Themes
Allie smiles so intensely at Michael’s offer to help that Beth is shocked. Beth thinks that she’ll need to be more perceptive about people’s hidden qualities if she wants to follow in her father’s footsteps as a detective—and then realizes that’s not going to happen anyway, since she’s dead. She wonders about “mov[ing] on” but stops herself, blaming Catching for the thought. Instead she spins a fantasy that she’ll find her mom in the afterlife and bring her back to exist as a half-ghost family with her and her dad.
Michael isn’t the only one grieving: Beth is also grieving the life possibilities she lost when she died, such as the possibility of becoming a detective. The foreclosure of these possibilities makes Beth want to think about “mov[ing] on” to a new existence in the afterlife, but she forces herself to focus on an unlikely, backward-looking fantasy instead, because she’s not yet ready to grow and change.
Themes
The car reaches Alexander Sholt’s house, a large brick building. Beth notes that it wasn’t hard to locate the way Derek claimed and concludes that Derek sent Allie so she could spy for him. Likely thinking the same thing, Michael asks to interview Alexander alone. When Allie agrees without arguing, Beth concludes that she didn’t want to spy for Derek.
If Derek wants to spy on Michael’s investigation, it indicates that he didn’t want outside oversight of the case because he has something to hide. Allie jumps on the excuse not to spy, which bolsters readers’ suspicion that she’s innocent of whatever wrongdoing is going on in the local police force.
Themes
Michael knocks on the Sholt house’s door. A sickly, unfriendly old man opens it. When Michael asks for Alexander Sholt, the old man—who identifies himself as Alexander’s father, Charles Sholt—claims that Alexander departed for the city earlier that day. Michael indicates with a subtle eye movement that he wants Beth to search the house. Inside, she finds a bedroom on the second floor with a shattered window, a few black hairs stuck to the frame. She recalls that Director Cavanagh had black hair in the photo she saw and wonders whether he broke in.
Though Michael cares about justice, he’s not above sending his ghost daughter to search a suspect’s house without a warrant—a detail revealing that even well-meaning police officers sometimes abuse power they have access to, in small or large ways. The shattered window may be a coincidence, or it may suggest that Alexander and Charles Sholt are hiding some act of violence.
Themes
Beth, finding nothing else, returns to Michael and explains what she saw. Michael tells Charles Sholt he needs to go but leaves his card for Alexander. As he and Beth return to the car, he explains that he can’t search the house based on testimony from a ghost—but he does think that what she found is intriguing, and he’ll start investigating the Sholts more intensively. Beth is happily imagining her future as “Beth Teller, ghost-detective” when Allie jumps from the car, holding her phone, and tells Michael that two people have been discovered stabbed to death.
On the drive to the Sholt house, Beth acknowledged to herself that she has no future as a detective due to her early, accidental death—yet when she finds helpful information for Michael, she represses her knowledge that her death is irreversible and fantasizes about unlikely scenarios like “Beth Teller, ghost-detective.” This tendency reveals that Michael’s grief isn’t the only thing trapping Beth in the physical world; she is also unwilling to give up the future she thought she would have and move on to something else.
Themes
