Chasing Shadows (26 page)

My jaw drops. How to the point. I like her.
"Thanks for your time." I croak.

"Watch your ass." She replies and she stands up
turning to leave.

"Gwen!" She looks at me. Her eyes are shiny.
Shit she's crying. "Did you get the reporter's name?"

Gwen rolls her eyes. "Craig something, but it's
your funeral." And with that, she turns and stomps out of the
cafe.

I'm sitting there in contemplative silence when
whoosh
into the booth slides Ashley, of all people. I blink
a few times. "Hi." I offer.

"Hey." She says. "I see you're busy winning
friends and influencing people."

I smile. "Its what I do."

She smiles back. She's had a
haircut.

"I like your hair." I say.

"Thanks. I like yours."

"Thanks." And now it's quiet. "How've you
been?" I wonder if this means she's forgiven me.

Ashley shakes her head. "No, Meegan. I think
that's what went wrong." Okay that makes no sense. I give her a
questioning look. "I like to talk." She continues. "You know that,
and so you just let me talk all the time. You never told me
anything. So now its two years later, and people you've only just
met know you better than I do. That really hurts my feelings, but I
can see now that, while I still believe it's mostly your fault,
some of it was my fault." She sighs. It clearly took some effort
for her to say that.

"Thanks." I say. "I'm sorry."

She nods. "I know, but you see every time you
needed to do something, or you forgot our plans, or you forgot what
I'd already told you, I got mad. It hurt my feelings, not just
because you weren't paying attention. Also because you never, ever,
EVER, give me an excuse. You
never
told me what you were
doing, or where, or why, or anything!" She's getting loud now. This
really isn't going well. "Like your life was top secret, need to
know, covert shit and I couldn't be trusted with
any
of it.
You see how unfair that was?" She's shrieking, and I am sooo
embarrassed to be here right now. "And then you go and spill big,
GIANT secrets to total fucking strangers!"

I'm exasperated. I fucking hate scenes. "I told
them for you!" I whisper shout, and immediately realize how dumb it
sounds. "I figured I messed up with you, so I'd try to be more open
and flexible if anyone else on the planet saw fit to give me a
chance... I never would have told a single thing to anyone, ever
probably if you hadn't accused me of being selfish and 'emotionally
unavailable'." She sniffles. I press further. "I'm trying to be
better." I murmur. And failing miserably, I add silently. Not
completely though. Qasim likes me, and Schuyler puts up with me...
"Besides, I liked listening to you. Your life sounds so interesting
and normal and fun... going out with you is like watching a movie,
and I always hate it when people talk through a movie. It's rude to
interrupt."

Ashley rolls her eyes. "Whatever, that's a dumb
ass excuse. If I'm ever your friend again I'll expect full
discloser."

I suck in big breath. I can't promise her that
and I know it so I watch with a lost look on my face as she gets up
and leaves me alone with my coffee. I wonder if she noticed that
for all her complaining, she didn't even ask me how I'm doing, or
what's going on, or even why some random girl left crying from my
table. That's why I tell other people things. Other people ask
questions. Ha! That totally would have been a good point to make
but she's gone now. "Fuck it." I mutter. I have research to
do.

***

Ah... Back in my apartment. I've only been gone
an hour or so, but it seems like many, many days since I've had any
time to just hang out. Neighbor's home but even his thud, thud,
boom is pleasant to me tonight. The sun hasn't set yet, wonderful.
I toss my bag on the couch and head to the fridge. Hmmm... Precious
little. I check the freezer, still have four frozen dinners, so I
won't starve. I sigh and run some tap water. Tastes like the city.
I guess some research is in order.

I dig into my bag and pull out the netbook. Oh
tiny computer, how I've missed you. The netbook is an excellent
friend of mine. It looks cool, trendy, like I'm up on what's hot,
but it was also cheap! I like cheap. I turn it on and settle in to
wait while it powers up. I don't have a super cool background
picture like Schuyler does. I have the pastel colored lines that
came on the computer. Not that I'm against personalization, just
that I didn't read the fine print. It came with Windows 7 starter
edition, and with that starter edition you can't change the
background without updating to the home premium edition ,which
defeats the purpose of computing on the cheap.

I brew up some coffee and step outside to smoke
while I'm waiting for the machine to boot up. I've learned through
bitter, hair-pulling, experience to be patient while it does its
start up thing. Click on Explorer too soon, and everything takes
forever to load. I breathe deep, drawing the smoke all the way down
into my lungs. I'd hate it if just the top half of my lungs got
cancer. I smile. Gotta die of something.

The cigarette burns by all too fast. I head
back in and pour myself some coffee. It's good I guess. My tongue's
still burnt from Claudia's. I stretch my legs like a runner, pick
up the computer and head to the couch. I assume the usual position
which is cross legged with a stack of books on my lap, to hold up
the computer and keep it from burning my legs. I plug it in so it
doesn't die in the middle of something and hit Explorer. Ah,
Google, the fastest way to find yourself wading through slogs of
unrelated information.

I type in Kevin Geoffreys. Well, that's
pointless. There's one Kevin Geoffrey, not Geoffreys, and then it
jumps right to people named Kevin Jeffries. So... Kelly misspelled
her fiancé's name,
or
she used a made up name,
or
she
made up the fiancé entirely...
or
her man was never written
up in anything that went online. Yeah, not likely, everyone's
online. I switch to Yahoo. The first two sites listed offer
addresses and phone numbers for Kevin Geoffrey. 123 users... Damn.
So I begin scrolling through pages and pages of unlikely sites. I
switch the spelling to Jeffries. I find a congressman, and more
useless things. I get sidetracked a couple of times by pictures and
newspaper listings. By the time I'm disgusted, it's long since dark
out. Way to kill an evening. I'm about to give up, when I hear a
thud from the bedroom.

"What?" I ask the air... Nothing. There's a
sudden surge of static electricity and I feel my hair begin to
frizz. It's sticking to my face. I reach into my pocket, pull out a
pony tail holder and tie it back. Just for kicks I hit next page
one more time. Third entry down there's a Jeffries highlighted in
the small print, 'son of Joseph Burk and Annabelle Jeffries.
Services to be held...'

Okay. I'll bite. I click on it and find myself
on someone's blog. The highlighted text comes from an insert of an
obituary listing. I scan the page. The writer of the blog seems to
be a friend of the deceased. The deceased's name is Kevin Burk.
It's a pretty emotional piece about the tragedy of suicide, and the
guilt our writer feels as a survivor. I keep reading. Could this be
the guy? I get a shiver. I scroll back up and check the date,
2009... Inconclusive.

I go on for any clues as to the age of the
departed. I feel a chill on my foot. I look down and there's a
shade. This one is a sickly green color, and as I look at it I'm
hit with an overpowering sense of grief and hopelessness. It's
bleak. From the piece, Kevin sounds like he was in his twenties. It
mentions that his mother was diagnosed with major depression. Is
this the guy? I look to the smoky thing at my foot.

"Were you Kevin?" I ask softly. I feel a pull
on my ponytail. "Ow." Is that a confirmation? "Were you engaged to
Kelly?" And as the words escape my mouth the green shade
disappears. It doesn't evaporate or fade away, like I've seen them
do before. It just isn't there anymore. The chill is gone. The
hopelessness is gone too. I sit quietly and drink my coffee for a
moment wondering what this means. Maybe nothing, and maybe this is
Kelly's ex who killed himself after their breakup and her
disappearance... if she even disappeared. I look back to the entry
to find any mention of a girlfriend or ex-girlfriend... nothing. I
check out subsequent entries. The writer is female. Her name is
Veronica, or the name she's using is Veronica. See? The thing with
searching out someone you don't know is that it's almost never
conclusive, even with otherworldly intervention. I leave off the
effort with more questions than I had a few hours ago. A few
hours
! Oh my God what a waist of my life, but I had to
check. What if the first hit had been 'Kevin Geoffreys ex-fiancé of
missing sexual deviant, Kelly Morgan, offers cell phone number to
the world'? Stranger things have happened... lately. Fuck it, as
long as I'm on, I'll go check out some movie previews.

Chapter Twelve

I stare at gray carpet that's worn to threads
in the heavy traffic areas. Under the unhealthy glow of
fluorescents, it looks so dismal. I'm seated at the guest side of a
white metal desk with scuffs in the paint. The scuffs match the
carpeting. Decorating a la The State of Illinois. The desk is piled
at least a foot deep with papers, forms, and lord knows what. It's
inspiring that someone would care enough to work here. The gray
cubicle walls are decorated with family photos, religious
knickknacks, and some leftover Halloween garland. Sitting opposite
me is my social worker Melody Smith. She is rummaging through a
file cabinet, the contents of which make her desk seem Spartan.
Melody is in her mid to late forties. She has store bought auburn
hair, coiffed into a ladies hair helmet. Her eye makeup seems
designed to throw you off the trail, and she wears deep V necks so
visitors can see her slightly wrinkled cleavage. Melody is making
breathing-humming noises, like she does when she's nervous or
winded.

I love her. I love anyone who makes me their
pet project. Really it was
very
nice of her to stay late for
me. We are the only two souls I know about in this huge hulk of a
state building. Hmm, maybe I phrased that wrong. My shades could be
souls, and I'm coming to believe that they're around, if not
visible, all the time. So, Melody and I are the only two
conventionally defined human beings I can see in the
building.

Melody interrupts my reverie to sing a
triumphant "Found it! Cameron Morgan Murphy, missing since February
2008." She laughs because she wants to. I smile and nod. "Okay,
honey, check out this picture." Melody flips a black and white
photocopy over the desk in front of me. I grab it and stare. Yup,
it's a girl.

I shrug. "Can't really tell from that. I mean
if my nose has been broken, then maybe it would have looked like
that before the break."

Melody nods. "I thought so too. Can't rule it
out. So here I'm gonna read you some names, and you tell me if any
of them stick out."

"Okay." Deep breath, here we go.

"Phillip Murphy... Donna Murphy... Jessica
Murphy... Joy Holder... Kevin Godfrey." At the name Kevin I feel my
face twitch. Melody catches it. "What is it honey?"

I shake my head. "I was doing research, and I
ran across a Kevin Jeffries, who is actually Kevin Burns, but his
mom was named Jeffries. He's dead but it's nothing, not related to
this."

"What is it related to?" Melody
asks.

"Nothing, project for a friend." I can see
she's intrigued. I'm going to have to say something. "Can I see the
file?"

"Okay." She hands it to me.

"Are there any other pictures?"

"Why, Meegan? You remember
something?"

"No but..."

"But what?"

I sigh. "Its such a long shot, us finding me
after all this time. This girl doesn't even look as much like me as
some of them have. I wonder if more pictures, pictures of the
family... If we could see a resemblance, that might help. Where did
she go to spring break?"

"South Beach, it's so close to
home."

I shake my head. "Did she make hotel
reservations? Did she even get to South Beach? Was she seen there?
Which days? I mean, do we have any reason to believe this girl came
to Chicago?"

Melody bites her lip. "Why were you researching
a dead guy?"

Deflection, I recognize it because I use it so
often. I roll my eyes. "I do that. I run searches when I want to
know something. His name came up in some e-mails I was
reading."

She looks appalled. "E-mails? Don't tell me you
were reading other people's e-mails."

I shake my head dismissively. "Print outs, and
they were given to me."

Melody looks relieved. "Ah, good. So... tell
me. What's it about?"

"Can't, it's for a friend."

"Well you're no fun. Of course I'm going to
look it up myself now."

I roll my eyes. "Do what you want."

Melody growls, she's very expressive. "So you
think you could be Cameron?"

"As much as anybody."

"Enough to run DNA?"