Songs for the Missing (25 page)

In the morning the first few minutes were like waking from sedation. Her body responded awkwardly, her mind wiped clean, like a sponged-off chalkboard. She had no memory of last night’s anxieties, or of Ed coming to bed, just a visceral appreciation for the blank, restorative hours in-between. It was only in the shower, the water pelting her, that the world returned, and by the time she toweled off and got dressed she was at the mercy of circumstances again, her lips pinched. Downstairs in the laundry room, she spilled Cooper’s food, one brick-colored nugget sinking to the bottom of his water dish. She stopped and sighed before fishing it out.

Lindsay was running late, and came down with wet hair and dark rings under her eyes, an erupted zit on one wing of her nose. Though it was the end of summer her skin was white as paste. Fran offered to make her eggs, but she just grabbed a Nutrigrain bar and stuck it in her backpack. If she noticed that Fran didn’t have the TV on, she didn’t say anything.

They kept the radio off while Lindsay drove. She was getting better, though Fran still watched the road as if she were at the wheel, alert to developments three or four cars ahead. As they neared the high school, they fell in line behind a bus, following along as it stopped to pick up her classmates, and only lost it when it swung into the circle by the front doors while they continued around back.

“Good job,” Fran said, as Lindsay set the emergency brake and they both unbuckled. The drop-off was as chaotic as an airport loading zone. Ahead and behind them kids were piling out of SUVs and minivans. The one rule was to keep the line moving. By the time Fran got around to her door, Lindsay was already walking away. “Have a good day,” Fran called after her. Lindsay flung a halfhearted wave over her shoulder and kept going.

In the car she was alone again, and though it had been her mission, as she drove home she thought it was wrong to feel relief at being rid of her. That was the exact opposite of what she wanted.

Ed was dressed and eating his cereal. He’d come to the same idea by himself: Should they go over there and wait?

She’d seen too many families keeping doomed vigils to think it would help, yet she was willing to go with him if he wanted. There was nothing that pressing here.

He sat back and covered his face, rubbing his eyebrows with his fingertips. “Let me call them first.”

She stood watching him dial, thinking, illogically, that she should have been more protective of her, kept a better eye on her friends, asked more questions. She should have been home more. She should have talked with her instead of getting upset and yelling.

It was taking too long. He shook his head at her, then turned and left a message.

“They probably send their tests out,” she said. “A place that small.”

“I wish they’d tell us
some
thing.”

They probably weren’t allowed to—just as Records weren’t allowed to give out patient information—but she said, “I know,” and held him.

“What are we going to do?” he said.

They waited. They worked. She found the body online, in that morning’s Geneva
Sentinel-Gazette
:

POLICE FIND BODY, SAY DEATH SUSPICIOUS

A body was found behind the former Driftwood Inn Tuesday and police say they are treating the death as “suspicious.” The state police Major Crime squad was aiding in the investigation.

Police said they were called to 96 Austinburg Road about 1 p.m. Tuesday. No information was available about the identity of the person or the cause of death.

 
Though it was no more than a police press release, she printed it out to show him.

“Well that’s helpful,” he said.

“I’m surprised the
Star-Beacon
hasn’t called.”

“You’re giving them too much credit.”

When the phone rang just after nine, she hoped it was them. She was closest, and picked up on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Is this Mrs. Larsen?” a man asked.

“Yes it is.”

“Mrs. Larsen, I’m Lieutenant Greer with the Geneva Police Department.” He paused as if it were a question. Ed was beside her now, leaning in to read her face. She nodded at him. “Mrs. Larsen?”

“Yes, sorry. My husband’s going to get on the other line.”

“That’s fine.”

“Okay,” Ed said from the living room.

“First off, I should let you know that right now I’ve got no news for you. At this point we’re still waiting on the lab results. I can’t give you a fix on when they’ll have those, I’m hoping this morning. What I’d like to do is ask you a few questions, if that’s all right.”

She wanted to ask him where he was yesterday, and why he didn’t have the decency to call them, but went along with it.

Her height, her weight, her hair and eyes, her birthdate. It seemed he was creating a whole new profile from scratch.

He asked about Kim’s clothes, as if they weren’t clearly listed on the flyer. Her shoes, her socks, her jeans, her underwear. His voice was flat and lulling, and as he slowly went over each item, her focus locked on a box of Fig Newtons in the basket on top of the microwave. He asked twice about her shirt, a baby blue Old Navy tee she’d bought for herself. Fran remembered saying she could buy a lifetime supply at Wal-Mart for that, and Kim giving her a put-upon look—sensible, out-of-touch Mom. Now, paralyzed by the Fig Newtons, she wondered if it was missing, or if she’d been strangled with it.

“Are you asking because your people have found something?” Ed asked.

“I’m just trying to verify the description.”

He was just being thorough, she supposed, but when they got off she wondered if he was fishing for something else, the long, offhand interrogation designed to isolate a single detail they might not think was meaningful.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“He didn’t ask about the jewelry.”

“Is that good?”

“Logically metal’s going to last longer than fabric.”

“Why was he so interested in the shirt?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it’s all they’ve got.”

Before she could block it, her mind flashed an image of Kim on the ground in just her shirt. Her hair covered her eyes, and her feet were dirty.

“I can’t do this,” she said.

“Maybe they’ve got a different shirt and want to make sure. That could explain it.”

“Stop.” He was trying to be hopeful for her. It only reminded her that for all of their research they knew nothing.

It was impossible to do any serious work, and she busied herself with laundry, sorting it from the hamper in their humid bedroom, aware of the phone on the night table and Ed downstairs in his office. Cooper nosed at the piles. When she came back up after starting the darks, he was splayed across the whites.

“I don’t think so,” she said, and then, when he didn’t understand, stomped her foot and shouted “Get!” and he slunk away like a coyote.

She tried not to watch the clock, but there were so many in the house that she couldn’t avoid them all, and anyway, there was no guarantee the results would be done by noon. Still, it felt like a countdown. Every second she expected the phone to ring, until she thought she would be relieved when it actually did.

She wasn’t. She was in the middle of changing their sheets, and froze, looking up from tucking in a corner. It rang only once, meaning Ed had picked up. She waited, listening, as if she could hear through the floor. The odds were that it was a false alarm—Connie or the
Star-Beacon
or Channel 12.

He was moving, headed for the front of the house. “Franny!” He sounded excited, and she thought that was good.

“What?” she called, playing dumb.

The stairs thundered. He was coming up fast—because he had to tell her face-to-face.

She didn’t go to meet him, she just stood by the unmade bed. He came rushing down the hall with the phone in one hand. She didn’t have to hear him say it. He was flushed and shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe what he’d heard.

“It’s not her.”

“It’s not her,” she said, to make sure.

“It’s not her.”

He hugged her as if they’d won something.

“Thank God,” she said.

He was still on the phone with the police. She let him go and sat down on the bed, her face in her hands, breathing in and out. The relief she felt was total, and though she knew that the body was someone else’s daughter, and this reprieve was only temporary, for now she was grateful. She squeezed her hands under her chin, fingers interlaced, like a child. “Thank you,” she said, ignoring Cooper’s puzzled look.

Three weeks later they would do it all over again.

Immediate Occupancy

In October, after a last, perfect weekend, the weather turned. The days were bright but the light was thin, the sun lower in the sky, and gone by dinnertime. The nights were cold, the radio broadcasting frost warnings. As if it were a signal, Fran went back to work. Reluctantly, he followed.

When he walked into the office, Peggy seemed surprised to see him. She came around her desk and hugged him, patting his back. He reciprocated to let her know he was okay. Behind her, Jeri and Phil had made their way up the aisle, waiting for their turn. It was more ceremony than he wanted—inescapable, he supposed, and their condolences were heartfelt. They all knew Kim. He couldn’t fault them for feeling sorry for him, even if he needed to resist it.

It was strange to be back at his desk after so long. The picture of the four of them on the boat from last Memorial Day stood prominently in the far corner, like an advertisement for the town. On the wall, neatly spaced, hung his softball teams. His Simpsons page-a-day calendar—a Christmas present from Lindsay—still displayed the date of Kim’s disappearance, and as he tore off wads of gags he would never laugh at, he wondered if his colleagues still registered it in passing, or if it was just one small facet of his absence.

The office itself was quiet. He’d missed the tail end of the season, the last-minute flurry to nail down a place before the school year started. The listings were skimpy: shabby prefabs out in the boonies, summer cottages and high-end leftovers whose owners had been slow to lower their prices. Jeri and Phil had brought in a few new-to-market exclusives, and while they were fair game and he was eager to get back into the action, he’d been gone so long that he didn’t want to straight vulture them. He needed to see what was out there and be patient.

That first day, he noticed everyone’s phone was ringing but his. Peggy probably thought she was protecting him. “Hey,” he said, sticking his head into the aisle. “I’m here too.”

“It’s like I’m the greenhorn,” he told Fran that night.

“They’re just worried about you.”

“I’m not there for the therapy.”

“The first day’s the hardest,” she said. “It’ll get better.”

It didn’t. The market was daunting for someone trying to make a new start, and though they did their best to make him feel welcome, he wasn’t fully there. He leaned toward the weekend and the promise of the next event, as if it might make a difference.

It was easier for Fran. Connie and Jocelyn had been part of the search from the beginning, and knew exactly where Fran was at. While he got along with everyone at his office, he didn’t consider them friends. He might shoot a round of golf with Phil, or take Jeri to lunch at the diner, and they’d bitch and gossip and have a laugh, but he never shared his problems with them. They were colleagues bound by circumstance and the common ambition to make money, but he didn’t know them, and they didn’t know him. It was how he’d lived his life since he was a child—how everyone lived, he’d thought—showing the world only as much as he felt was safe and keeping the rest to himself. Even in his worst moments, he tried to project the illusion that everything was fine—impossible now, yet he went on smiling and shaking hands and joking, all the time knowing that people realized it was a front. He could no longer be that Ed Larsen, but, through a lack of imagination or just sheer exhaustion, he couldn’t come up with a new one, and faked his way through the days like a bad actor, hardly believing himself.

Toward the end of a long afternoon during his second week, he was alone in the office when Peggy transferred a call. It was a woman in Pittsburgh whose mother had recently passed away: Anna DeMarco. Since he’d been back he regularly combed the death notices and probate cases, and he recognized the name. The daughter had grown up in the house and would have loved to keep it, but couldn’t realistically. He offered his sympathies and signed her to a six-month exclusive.

The house was on Buffalo, one in a row of Dutch Colonials across the park from the Railroad Museum, convenient to everything. Like most of Kingsville’s older neighborhoods, it dated from the steel boom of the twenties—cookie cutter houses on small lots for mill workers and their families. For all their charmless boxiness, the interiors had honest-to-God plaster walls and dark oak woodwork that builders couldn’t duplicate today. They also had the original 60 amp service with aluminum wiring and screw-in fuses. He’d handled dozens over the years, in varying condition. Mrs. DeMarco had lived alone there since the mid-seventies. He expected obsolete floral wallpaper, avocado appliances and a colony of squirrels in the eaves.

It was too late to get the keys from her lawyer, but he stopped by the place anyway. The first thing he noticed, besides the wooden wheelbarrow planter on the lawn, was that the grass was shaggy. He needed to get the landscapers over there before he could take a picture.

The roof looked new, the gutters and downspouts vinyl, meaning they’d been replaced recently. Beige vinyl siding, which would put off anyone looking for something quaint or historic. And yes, once he came closer, vinyl windows. Like so many elderly homeowners, Mrs. DeMarco had paid to make her house as ugly and maintenance-free as possible. He’d helped his mother do the same thing, covering the cracked and knotty clapboards that leaked whenever it stormed, permanently solving the problem. He regretted it every time he visited.

In back there was a mossy patio, a concrete birdbath coated with dried black slime, and beside the cinderblock garage at the far end of the yard, a wilted garden fenced with chickenwire. Hung from nylon fishing line strung between the corner posts, foil pie pans twisted in the wind. As he surveyed the yards on both sides—toys in one, dogshit in the other—he caught a shrunken old woman with a broom two houses down watching him from her stoop. He waved to show he was no threat. She bent her head and went back to sweeping. Again he thought of his mother and her neighborhood, how quickly it had turned over—so fast that he no longer knew anyone on their street, when as a child he could name every family, their houses and yards an extension of them.