Songs for the Missing (20 page)

At work he concentrated on the smallest tasks, stocking the shelves as if he was being graded, and still she came to him. They all did—her mom and dad, Lindsay, Nina, the volunteers and the long days they spent searching the gorge. Kneeling in the aisles, he replayed those lost weeks as if he could go back and change the past. That last day, if only he’d convinced her to stay and blow off work. He’d even said it, but not strong enough, just a joke—except she never called in sick. She was like him that way, it was one of the things he liked about her. She was dependable, which only made the Wooze thing stranger. Obviously he thought he knew her better than he actually did. So he could sympathize with the Larsens. He knew how it felt to be lied to.

Since she’d been gone he’d probably thought about her more—and sometimes thought he loved her more—than when they were together. He wasn’t angry about Wooze. All he wanted was to talk to her and clear things up, even if that meant just saying good-bye.

In the same spirit he’d go to the beach tonight and say good-bye to Elise, another friend he should have appreciated more. If Hinch was there he’d clink beers with him and do his best not to think of Nina—which was crazy anyway. When he got home he’d e-mail Lindsay and tell her they had to stop. None of these resolutions seemed impossible, and after they closed the doors and pulled the canvas covers down over the coolers, he left work with a sense of purpose, even thinking he could look for a coat tomorrow.

He’d parked far out like he was supposed to, and as he walked across the lot he could see there was another car behind his. Someone was sitting in it, just the silhouette of a head.

All at once the high spotlights atop their stanchions died, darkness filling the empty space. The only sound was the wash of traffic on Route 7. He kept walking, using his car as a shield. He didn’t know Wooze that well, but he didn’t think the fucker would shoot him. He clenched his fists, ready to defend himself, and discovered that he wanted this to happen. It wasn’t Kim’s honor he’d be fighting for. It was his.

He was almost there when the door opened. It was Nina.

“What’s up?” he said, as if this was normal.

“I’m stalking you.”

“You’re doing a pretty good job of it.”

“When’d that happen?” She pointed to his car.

“Couple nights ago.” He shrugged like he didn’t remember.

“They got Hinch too.”

“Not you.”

“Not yet—knock wood.” She rapped her head twice.

They faced each other across the hood. He didn’t know why she was there, and didn’t know what to say. In the lull Benny passed them in his truck, waving out the open window, the radio blaring bad country, then gunned across the lot.

“We still on for the beach?” he asked.

“I need to talk to you first.” She came around the hood until she was right beside him, setting a hand on the fender. She looked up at him, her face half in shadow, and he was ready to confess everything.

“Promise you won’t be mad at me.” She wasn’t flirting, she was totally serious, a side of her he’d rarely seen. He felt privileged that she needed something from him.

“Why would I be mad at you?”

“I told the cops about Wooze.”

“So did I.”

“No,” she said. “Before that. I called the hotline. That’s how I knew things were going to happen the way they did.”

So she’d known Kim had been playing him all along. It made sense—she was her best friend, closer to her than he would ever be. She probably felt sorry for him. He wondered who else knew, and whether it had anything to do with their kiss, one secret unconsciously spawning another.

“I thought it would help,” she said.

“It could’ve.”

“No, it just fucked things up.” She gestured to the hood.

“It’s not your fault.”

“So you don’t hate me?”

No, he wanted to say, I love you. “You were just trying to help.”

“Thank you.” She took hold of his hand and squeezed it, then let go. “I had to tell you or I was going to go crazy.”

“I know how that feels.”

“All this shit is crazy. Elise is lucky. I can’t wait to get the fuck out of here.”

“Me too.”

“Okay”—she patted the hood and started walking away—“so I’ll see you down there.”

“Yep.”

She opened her door. “Thanks.”

He gave her a wave like it was no problem, then got in and sat an extra few seconds, flexing the hand she’d touched, letting her reach the exit before he started across the lot. He’d grown so accustomed to being alone that he needed solitude to think, though in this case there was no reason. He didn’t see any real option but to follow her.

They gathered at the DQ. Everyone was happy to see him, welcoming him back as if he’d been away on vacation. Hinch showed him his car as if it was a joke—treated to the same acid bath, the windshield cracked, the driver’s door kicked in. The peepers in the cemetery pond were shrilling. Across the street the sheriff’s cruiser sat in the darkened drive. They huddled, collecting money for a beer run, and J.P. thought it could be June. Nothing had changed except for Kim.

He drove his own car to the beach so he could leave early. It was chilly, the wind whipping his hair into his eyes. Far out over the lake a plane blinked between the stars. Nina was wearing Hinch’s hoodie, while Elise and Sam snuggled under a blanket. Everyone was coupled up except him and Marnie. She sat beside him on the log, peeling her label and flicking ashes into the fire. He thought she was bored because he had nothing to say to her, and he wanted to apologize. It wasn’t her.

The talk was all about college. Kenyon and Denison weren’t that far apart, and Nina and Elise promised they’d visit each other. J.P. should come too—Columbus was right there. They’d make it a Kingsville reunion weekend.

“Sure,” he said.

He nursed his beer, the cold and his own inwardness keeping him sober. When he was finished with it he stood and told them he had to get going. He didn’t want to worry his mom.

“One more,” Hinch said.

“I can’t.”

“Dude. When’s the next time we’re all going to be together?”

“Stop,” Nina said.

Elise got up to hug him, squashing the argument.

“I’ll miss you,” he said, and meant it, though he hadn’t talked to her in weeks. He’d see the rest of them before he left.

“You better,” Nina said.

In the car he thought he’d done what he’d come to do. Then why, all the way home, did he feel like he’d lost something?

His mom had left the lights on for him. He went through the house, turning them off. He was too tired to deal with Lindsay’s e-mails, and lay in the dark replaying his conversation with Nina. She was standing there looking up at him, asking him not to be mad. If he’d just taken her by the arms and kissed her. He couldn’t believe he was still thinking this way, and shook his head. Idiot. She was just worried about him, and all he could think of was the two of them together, as if that would make everything better.

He’d been so flat all day that he thought he’d sleep. It took him hours, and then in the middle of a dream of a huge, busy airport he woke to his phone buzzing on the nightstand.

“Are you okay?” Nina asked, way too loud. “You just took off.”

“I was tired.”

“You should’ve stayed. We got Elise to go skinny-dipping.”

“Wasn’t it a little cold?”

“Not after a couple shots of Jaeger. You should’ve seen her, she was hilarious.”

She sounded spacy and goofy like she was still drunk. Did she think she was being kind, calling him? Because it was torture. All he could do was play along and wait for her to say good night.

“Listen,” she said, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Wooze. Hones’ly.”

“It’s okay.”

“Kim didn’t even like him. I don’t know what she was thinking. She really liked you.”

“That’s good.”

“She could be such a fucking bitch sometimes. You’re a good guy, you know that?”

“I don’t know about that.”

“You are. I told her that too. I said you’re a nice guy and she should be nice to you.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I think you should probably go to sleep now.”

“You’re probably right. I just wanted to tell you that, that’s all.”

He thanked her again and shuffled her off, finally. It was his own fault for leaving his phone on, and he wondered if he’d wanted her to call, if somehow he’d counted on it the way he expected a couple of e-mails from Lindsay every time he opened his inbox. Again, he resolved to stop thinking of her and take care of his business. He only had two days left and he still had to pack.

The Long Weekend

He knew it was time to leave when the search teams switched to cadaver dogs, priming them with jars of death scent. The lieutenant warned him in advance, as if apologizing for the department’s lack of faith. Ed understood: It had been too long. If she was here they would have found her by now.

He gave them two days, following their progress in the chilled and windowless conference room of the ERV with Sergeant McKnight, praying it was a waste of time. She monitored the radio through a headset and calmly checked off the sectors with a dry-erase marker. At the end of the second day he thanked everyone, shaking their hands as they signed out, then went back to the Country Inn and emptied the drawers into his suitcase. He left the bill on his credit card, afraid of what their monthly statement would look like. Halfway to Cleveland he realized he was giving up on the only real lead they had. With every exit he passed he was leaving her behind.

While he was away, as if to make up for dragging his heels, Perry had personally overseen the search of Wozniak’s property and come up with nothing. Ed was angry that they’d done it without him. He didn’t care about the drugs, he wanted them to look for Kim. He wanted them to use dogs and the new ground sonar the lieutenant had shown him. He wanted them to drain ponds.

Wozniak was cooperative, Perry said, as if Ed was wasting his time.

“Then he won’t mind us looking again.”

After a pointed silence, Perry said, “I can ask.”

“Thank you,” Ed said.

In his absence Fran had cobbled together the reward—thirty thousand dollars, ten of which came from his brother. You couldn’t buy a rusting singlewide for that kind of money, but he understood, it was about publicity. They sent out a new flyer to the papers, Fran went on TV, and the tipline lit up. Along with the usual psychics, several private detectives offered their services—a temptation, since they were getting nowhere through official channels. He seriously considered it until he went to a few websites and saw what it would cost.

They could have used the money themselves. Among the bills on his desk was the invoice for Kim’s tuition, two weeks past due. For months he’d privately worried that they wouldn’t be able to cover both her and Lindsay’s education without resorting to a second mortgage. Now he wished he could just write the check and forget it. Instead, he took care of the smaller bills, waiting till the last possible day on their credit cards and then paying the minimum.

On top of everything else, he needed to see his mother. Summer was ending, and he’d promised. She was so close. They could take a day and visit her.

“You don’t have to convince me,” Fran said, because he was the one who couldn’t bear the hospital-like limbo of the retirement home. Besides her failing eyesight, his mother didn’t belong there, or hadn’t at first, when they could have taken her in (should have, his brother thought, an open rift between them). A series of strokes had left her frail but lucid, and while she insisted that she’d made friends and would hate to leave them, he’d been thinking of moving her somewhere closer.

“I’d like to see Grandma,” Lindsay said.

“What day were you thinking of?” Fran asked.

It seemed too easy, and he wondered if they were going along with it for his sake. After dinner Lindsay did the dishes without being asked. When he commented on it before bed, Fran said she’d been very helpful lately. She was worried that she was being too quiet.

More worrisome to him was the way Fran slept. In Sandusky he’d become used to staying up past midnight and then fighting the stiff pillows. Here his sleep was still fitful, while she lay motionless beside him, knocked out. He could turn on the light and she wouldn’t stir. He could nudge her—it was like a coma. In the morning he was achy and weak, lingering in the shower; by midafternoon he was ready to crash. She had enough pills for him, but every night he turned down her offer. She thought he was being macho. “The soldiers in Iraq take them,
because they need their sleep.
”

“I’m good,” he said, and then lay awake beside her.

Compared to Sandusky the days were long and empty. Part of it was the time of year. Normally they would have just come back from vacation and he’d have this last week to putter around on the boat, maybe drop by the office and scare up a partner for golf. This was his real vacation, the stressless solitude of fishing or walking to his drive replenishing him. Even if he had the time now, he was afraid these reliable pastimes wouldn’t save him, that, on the contrary, he’d ruin them forever.

He went to town hall and pulled the tax map for Wozniak’s property as if he were preparing to sell it. Like so much of the county, it was a derelict farm bought at auction for pennies on the dollar back in the eighties. The deed was in the name of Regina Holub, Wozniak’s grandmother, who apparently still lived there. Though he’d specifically been warned to stay away, Ed drove by the peeling Greek Revival, noting the pond and the vine-wrapped silo and blackened, leaning outbuildings, the fields running back to the woodline. The gravel drive was rutted, and held puddles. In an open shed a backhoe hunched like a spider. He was wrong, probably, but he had nothing else to go on.

Visiting his mother gave him something to look forward to. Otherwise the days were the same. Every morning he spoke with the detective and left messages for Perry. He copied flyers and ran errands and helped Fran with the details of the Kare-a-Van for Kim, a road rally two weekends away. Around five, Sergeant McKnight e-mailed him to say they’d found nothing new today. After supper he took Lindsay out driving, quizzing her from the manual as she practiced her turns. If the Indians were on, he watched them. They were winning, but it was too late, they’d never catch the White Sox. And then it was time for bed again, and the question of whether to take the pill or toss all night.