Songs for the Missing (6 page)

What was missing? Her purse. Her red hoodie. Her CD holders were all there, but her iPod wasn’t, and she wondered if they knew that.

Sometimes Kim kept money in her two-toned Chinese puzzle box. Lindsay had never taken any, but right after Kim’s graduation she’d stood in this same spot holding a remote-control-sized wad of twenties as thrilling as a gun in her hand, wondering where Kim had gotten it all. A week later it was gone.

Downstairs, the phone rang. Her father answered, his voice a murmur.

She crept a step closer to the dresser, worrying that she would leave fingerprints. Cooper watched her, confused. The box was easy once you knew the sequence, but the quiet made her nervous and she almost dropped it. She held it against herself, lining up the slots until the spring pushed the top free.

She half-expected the note she found—a torn sheet of looseleaf paper folded over and over until it was the size of a pill. As she opened it, she was wishing. She wanted Kim to tell her not to worry, to let everyone know she was okay. She could trust Lindsay to be her messenger. Her parents would hold her and cry as if she were Kim, grateful and devastated at the same time. Somehow the three of them would go on.

The paper was blank—or no, the writing was just tiny, two words nearly hidden in the very center. In her cutesy, rounded script, itty bitty, Kim had written: YOU SUCK.

Another Kind of Lie

Nina called him right after the detective left. “He’s probably on his way over there.”

“What did you tell him?” J.P. asked.

“About what?”

“What do you think?”

“I didn’t tell him anything.”

“Sorry, I’m just super paranoid right now.”

“He asked a lot about you,” Nina said.

“Like what?”

“Like did I ever see you get physical with her.”

“Jesus.”

“I told him you were a good guy.”

“I don’t know about that,” J.P. said.

“You are.”

Would Kim’s parents think so when they found out about the speed? Because they would. For a second he could feel the whole mess rising inside him, looking for a way out.

“This is so fucked up.”

“I know,” she said. “Me and Hinch are going over there later if you want to come.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“They’ll find her.”

He wasn’t that positive, but agreed.

When he was talking with Nina he was okay, but when he got off the fear set in again. He sat on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands and his eyes closed, as if he could block out everything, and still he could see his whole future crumbling—his job, college, all of it destroyed. He was so stupid. Why did he ever listen to Hinch?

On top of that, he knew that the secret they were keeping was nothing compared to Kim being missing, and felt selfish and small for protecting it. He’d told her mom the truth—he didn’t know of any reason she’d just take off—but she was so desperate that he wanted to be completely honest with her, as if that would suddenly make her like him.

“Brass monkey,”
his phone chimed,
“that funky monkey,”
and he flipped it open.

It was a local cellphone by the area code, and he sat up straight before answering.

It was Kim’s dad again, warning him about the detective.

“Nina already told me.”

“Do me a favor,” Kim’s dad said. “If there’s anything you can think of that’s suspicious, tell him, because right now it’s pretty clear he thinks she’s a runaway, and they’re not going to look for her the way they’d look for someone who’s been kidnapped. It’s a huge difference. If you can think of anything at all, let him know, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you think of anything?”

He could only think of the secret, how it wasn’t connected to Kim but sat off to one side, lurking. He wanted to tell him there was something, but that would just be another kind of lie.

Since he’d been going out with Kim he’d only spoken seriously with her dad once, at four in the morning after he brought her home late and shit-faced from the spring formal. Her dad was waiting in the dark kitchen and ambushed them, flicking the switch. Kim was swearing and incoherent under the bright lights, and they had to help her up to bed. Her dad gave him credit for driving, then asked him what he was doing while Kim was getting ripped. “If you really cared for her,” he said, “you wouldn’t let her do this to herself.” Kim always made fun of her mom, calling her a lush, drinking her bottle of wine every night, but J.P. stayed silent, not wanting to make things worse. Somewhere deep down her dad must have known there was no way they could stop either of them, all they could do was hold on and limit the damage. But her dad was right too. J.P. didn’t love her enough, and certainly not enough to sacrifice himself. The shame was, he would have if Kim had let him.

“No,” he said, “but I know she wouldn’t run away.”

“We told him that. It didn’t seem to do any good.”

“She was leaving in another month anyway.”

“That’s what we told him. She just bought all this stuff for college. There’s a whole bag of shampoo in her bathroom.”

J.P. didn’t know what to say to this.

“I think the problem is that he doesn’t know her. He thinks she’s some messed up teenager. He’s got to be in his sixties—you’ll see. I really think he just doesn’t get it.”

“Doesn’t sound like it.”

“We need to make him understand. Otherwise the cops are just going to sit on their asses when they should be out looking for her.”

“I’m going to come over later with Nina and Hinch.”

“Good. We’re going to need everybody we can get. Okay, I’ve got a call on the other line. You tell him whatever you have to.”

“I will,” J.P. said.

Nonfamily Abduction Sample

Connie told her to go online. “Right now, come on. If they’re not helping you, you’ve got to help yourself. What do we tell our people?”

“Information—”

“—is education. So get educated.”

Live Smarter was the hospital’s name for its patient outreach program. In their sillier, more cynical moments they called it Die Smarter, but Connie was right. The detective hadn’t gotten back to them, and Fran needed this pep talk. Connie gave her a direction, guiding her through sites dedicated to the missing.

Fran was amazed at how many there were for children. It was a kind of heavenly netherworld decorated with hearts and cherubs, yellow ribbons and white roses and scrolls of poetry. The Hope Network, 18-Wheel Angels, BringJoHome. In between the 800 numbers and links for national clearinghouses and private eyes, the lost smiled for the camera. Some of them had been missing for years.

She lagged behind Connie, her eye caught on a teenaged boy with Down syndrome from Indianapolis who disappeared after applying for a job at a Wendy’s. In the picture he wore a Colts hat and his mouth was slightly open, as if he’d forgotten what he was going to say. The forum had archived the news stories on him in order. The last headline read: KY. MAN ADMITS ’04 KILLING.

“Doubleclick on ‘Resources.’”

“Hang on,” Fran said. She hated this computer; it was so slow. At work she could bounce from screen to screen, but Kim and Lindsay’s music downloads and the attached spyware had choked their hard drive.

The page that came up was a manual,
Finding Your Child.
The corny clip art on the cover made it look out of date.

“They’re calling her an adult,” Fran said.

“Keep reading.”

The first section was titled “The First 24 Hours.” Step-by-step it described what they needed to do. There were links to pages where they could design their own flyers, with checklists of information. She wouldn’t have thought to include a second picture from a different angle, but it made sense. She was dazed and grateful.

Clear all released information with Law Enforcement.

Do not use your own phone number.

Review and proofread several times before reproducing.

Ask local printers to copy for free or at a discount rate.

“This is really good.”

“Good,” Connie said. “Bookmark it.”

It had tips on the best way to organize volunteers, and where to post flyers, how to get pizza places and video stores to tape them to their boxes. She printed out the whole section for Ed, drawing the deputy’s attention. Let him look, she thought.

Connie was ahead of her, on an entirely different site. “From what this lady’s saying, you want to bring in dogs as soon as possible. That’s what she wishes they’d done.”

“We’ll ask for them.” She was still trying to learn the rules about the different types of flyers—who could use NONFAMILY ABDUCTION instead of ENDANGERED MISSING, or worse, VOLUNTARY MISSING.

“The police have to request them. In this case they waited two months—”

“Two months?” She couldn’t imagine Kim being gone that long. She couldn’t really imagine what was happening now.

“That’s what she says—don’t wait, make a stink about it.”

She added the manual to her favorites before joining her at the Ohio K-9 site with its pictures of German shepherds in blaze orange halters. Along with search-and-rescue teams they offered cadaver dogs. Their homepage ran on and on, and she felt queasy from all the coffee, her mind spinning out ahead of her.

“I can’t read it. What does it say?”

“They’re nonprofit,” Connie said. “All the police have to do is call them.”

She printed it out and went back to the manual while Connie forged ahead.

Do not disturb or remove anything from your child’s room or bathroom, even and especially trash. Preserve all worn clothing as is. Pillowcases, sheets and towels may contain evidence. Secure your child’s comb, brush and toothbrush for fingerprinting and DNA testing.

The detective hadn’t said anything about this, and Fran made a note to save Kim’s towels, and the washcloth hanging in the shower, and the shower curtain, and the bath mat, and the garbage can. From what this said they should have closed off both rooms. Instead, she’d let Lindsay take her shower.

“Looks like Erie has a good horse team,” Connie said. “They’re supposed to be faster than dogs.”

“Can we do both?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“What’s the link?”

Find videotapes or movies of your child and make copies for law enforcement and the media.

Ask your child’s doctor and dentist for copies of recent X-rays.

Record a daily update on your answering machine to keep family members informed of your progress.

There were too many things to do, and the further she read, the more overwhelmed she felt.

“It says here the state police have helicopters that can see body heat,” Connie said.

“Do me a favor and print that out. And anything else you think we can use. I’ve got to get working on this flyer.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, if you can wait.”

“It looks pretty simple.”

“You’re going to need an alpha geek anyway.”

She loved Connie for trying to keep things light, even if she didn’t feel it. She wished Ed would joke with her, but she knew him too. He was so focused that he might misinterpret any attempt at humor on her part as distracting and inappropriate.

He hadn’t left the kitchen table. He sat with the phone directly in front of him, his cellphone to his ear. She clipped the printed pages of
The First 24 Hours
together and set them next to him. He looked up in acknowledgment, still talking to someone—his brother in Minnesota, it sounded like. Before she could leave he reached his free arm around her waist and she leaned into him, his head pressed against her rib cage. “We don’t know yet,” he said. “We don’t know anything.” His hair was thin and graying, his part growing wider by the month. When she’d met him his hair was blond and longer than hers, with a natural curl she envied. She smoothed what was left with a hand. He squeezed her once and patted her hip to release her, and though she wanted them to stay like that, she let him go.

Upstairs, Kim’s door was closed. So was Lindsay’s. She knocked, and when she didn’t get an answer she opened the door a foot and stuck her head in. Lindsay was on her bed, reading and listening to her iPod, Cooper half across her lap. She plucked out one earbud.

“Hey,” Fran said. “Don’t use your bathroom, okay? Use ours or the downstairs.”

“Okay.”

“Did you want to invite Dana or Micah over?”

“No, I’m good.”

“I’m not,” Fran said. “I don’t like this. We’re just going to have to deal with it, I guess. I’ve got to go make a flyer, I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

“Okay.” She held the earbud up to stick it back in.

“Okay,” Fran said, and shut the door.

On the stairs she felt herself frowning and tried to relax her face. She didn’t expect Lindsay to accept the invitation, but she wanted more out of her. The way she’d closed herself off lately reminded her of Kim, turning distant and dismissive. Maybe it was the age. Her own mother had accused Fran of being moody. “Smile,” she was always telling her, “you have such a nice smile,” as if she were withholding it out of spite.

Ed was still on the phone. The deputy was standing at the window over the sink and barely turned his head to see her sit down at the computer.

She went to the blank flyer and filled out the information line by line, stopping only to spellcheck Caucasian. When she was done the computer asked her to rename the file.

The first name that came to mind was Kim.

FLYER1, she typed.

In the folder with her pictures from graduation were a couple dozen shots from the party at Elise’s, none of them useful. Fran lingered briefly over each, reading her face, and the crowd around her. Beneath that file was the Fourth of July they’d spent on the lake, more recent, except Kim hadn’t gone with them. Fran had to go back to Easter to find a good one of her from the waist up. Kim’s hair was shorter and darker, but the dress showed off her neck and shoulders and gave a better sense of her presence. The gold chain with her butterfly was just a bonus.

She pulled them up side by side, trying them one way and then the other. She couldn’t wait until Ed was off, and waved him over. He leaned toward the screen and gave her the okay sign.