Songs for the Missing (9 page)

“What does Mom want me to do?”

“You’ll have to ask her.”

“Fine,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll be down.”

“Thank you,” he said, but when he closed her door he thought he’d only made things worse.

On the porch Fran was briefing another team, two middle-aged women he didn’t recognize wearing fanny packs. One of the websites Connie had found said that abductors sometimes signed up as volunteers as a way of gloating or prolonging the thrill. The new rule was they had to take everyone’s picture and scan his or her driver’s license. They’d already started filling milk crates with files: A to L, M to Z.

“She’s coming down,” Ed said, amending the good news with a grimace. “She wanted to go look with me.”

“What did you tell her?”

“No.”

“Good.”

So at least he’d done that right.

His team gathered in the yard for a group picture, in case one of them got lost. He had a roll sheet, like a teacher. Most were Kim’s friends and teammates, dressed for heavy bushwhacking. Grant Hedrick was the other token oldster. He was ex-Merchant Marine and could handle a map and a compass. Ed planned on making him a squad leader. He’d take one side of the river, Grant could take the other.

Connie was still hung up on dogs, afraid the searchers would trample Kim’s scent, as if she’d suddenly become an expert. Ed listened to her with the proper concern, nodding. She was Fran’s best friend, and incredibly helpful, except she didn’t understand. This wasn’t Recordkeeping. She wasn’t in charge here.

“I appreciate what you’re saying,” he said, “but until we actually get some dogs we just have to work with what we’ve got.”

“Be careful,” Fran said as they filed onto the short bus, into the blasting air-conditioning. As their leader he was the last one in, and patted the driver on the shoulder to get going.

Kim’s teammates filled the back rows while her friends paired up in couples, leaving J.P. alone at the very front. Ed wanted to read shock and heartbreak in his posture. He slouched against the window with his head bowed so his bangs covered one eye, his arms crossed over his chest. In his third-generation Ramones T-shirt, he seemed skinny and defenseless, the ghost of the reckless kid Ed had been. Despite all of Connie’s paranoid warnings, he’d been relieved to see J.P.’s name at the top of the sign-in sheet. They’d both been out posting flyers and hadn’t talked face-to-face yet, and as if to physically apologize for his earlier opinion, Ed took the seat beside him.

J.P. had hoped he’d keep going down the aisle, but somehow knew he wouldn’t. It felt like a trap, as if he would turn and interrogate him the whole way there. He sat up straight to make room, aware of Nina and Hinch behind them.

“You going to be all right in those sneakers?” Kim’s dad asked.

“The only boots I have are for winter.”

“What size are you? I might have an old pair you can borrow.”

“That’s okay.”

“Seriously, you’re going to need a pair. I mean, I hope we don’t have to, but we could be doing this a lot, in a lot worse places.”

J.P. couldn’t tell if this was a trick. “Eleven-and-a-half?”

“Close enough. I’m a twelve. I’ll check when we get back.”

As they rolled onto Buffalo, Kim’s dad shifted sideways with his feet in the aisle and raised a hand for quiet. There was sunscreen and bug spray if people needed it, he announced. Everyone should take a bottle of water. They were going to search till they ran out of daylight. If they found anything that looked like evidence—this was critical—they shouldn’t touch it. He or Mr. Hedrick would document it for the police. He reminded them of what Kim had been wearing. Her blue shirt had been one of J.P.’s favorites, the ribbed sleeves snug about her muscled upper arms, and he looked out the window, latching on to a tree, a street sign, a fire hydrant.

All day his imagination had been coughing up snatches of slasher flicks, flashes of bloody floors and basement torture chambers, chains and gags and leather masks. He knew they were fake, just bad stage-craft. What lay beneath the clichés was worse: Kim’s skin.

He’d worshipped it gratefully, greedily, amazed each time that she would give herself to him. He felt like he was stealing from her. He really didn’t see what she was getting in return. The first time they made love she cried, and he didn’t understand. She was just happy, she said. He’d been flattered, as if it had something to do with him. It didn’t, just as, later, when she raged at him, he was merely the object of her anger, not the source. That she could treat him both ways confused him. Only slowly did he come to realize that in certain cases her emotions were so strong that, temporarily at least, she didn’t care how he felt. The next day she might apologize, but she’d also joke that he should have seen it coming, as if it was somehow his fault, so that occasionally he hated her, and himself for taking it. And then in his room she would slip off her clothes and totally overwhelm him, and they would start the cycle all over again. Even now he couldn’t stop himself from seeing her in bed, rising above him, and had to erase it.

The detective had asked him if he loved Kim. Immediately J.P said yes, on the strength of his feelings, but was that love? It was more like addiction, trading his self-respect for a temporary ecstasy.

His thoughts had gone too far, and he focused on a cloud about to cover the sun. The window tattooed the gray reflection of his face on the yards of passing houses. She was on every telephone pole, and people were driving down Main Street like nothing had happened.

Beside him Kim’s dad was marking a laminated map with a grease pencil. The topographic lines curved with the river, gathering in bands where the gorge narrowed. J.P. found the island and the turn below the boulder and worked his way back up to the hole.

“Are you looking for where we were?” J.P. asked.

“This isn’t it?”

J.P. pointed, leaning in. “Here’s where we usually go. There’s a path on the other side that runs down this way. It stops when it reaches this wall. People fish that pool there. The water’s not high enough right now.”

“Is there any way out on that side?”

“No, it’s too steep.”

Nina peeked her head between them. “Sometimes when she wanted to be alone she’d go sit on the boulder.”

“Is it possible she could have fallen off it and hurt herself?”

“I don’t think so,” Nina said.

J.P. had thought of her slipping on the rocks, hitting her head and drowning, but there was still the car to be accounted for, though he supposed if she’d left it overnight someone might have taken it. He’d skipped lunch and the air-conditioning smelled of burnt rubber. He couldn’t rely on things making sense, he just wanted to get out there and see what they could find. He was glad Kim’s dad was in charge. He knew he wouldn’t be able to do it.

At Route 7 the driver waited for the light instead of taking a right on red, then went the speed limit. They crossed the new bridge and dieseled up the long hill, angling off before they reached the top, then dipping down again in shadow, the bad road jolting the whole cabin. On their right, beyond the guardrail, the gorge fell away, giving them glimpses of the river between the trees. Kim’s dad leaned across him to see. J.P. looked with him, and became aware of the silence. As they descended, no one spoke, as if they were riding into battle.

They parked where Kim had last been seen, the team filing out and standing on the shoulder like new recruits. The bus left and they were surrounded by birdsong and the insistent buzzing of locusts. Kim’s dad split them into two groups. J.P. and Elise and Sam would go with him while Nina and Hinch would help guide Mr. Hedrick. The idea was to line up about ten feet apart and slowly sweep downstream. Once they got down there they should all find a good walking stick to probe the bushes. They needed to remember, they weren’t necessarily looking for Kim, they were looking for evidence. The littlest thing might be important.

After the pep talk, as J.P. was leading them down the path, he heard some girl in the back laugh, and a friend echo her. He understood they were nervous, maybe afraid, but the giggly brightness in their voices mystified him.

They came down out of the woods into the sun. Along the far shore, halfway up the cliffs, a brown swath of groundwater dripped, but the river was just as low as it had been yesterday. The current murmured as they crunched across the rocks. Farther down, where the channel narrowed, the surface glinted golden and hazy between dark walls of pines, the glare describing the tangled flights of bugs and dive-bombing swallows. They stopped to choose their walking staffs from a pile of old wrack and deadfall. The branches were bleached and dried light as bones, smoothed and seasoned, impossible to break. A cloud sailed over, cooling them for a second, turning the far wall dark. It passed, but the sky was flocked with them now. If it rained, would they keep looking?

J.P. didn’t believe they’d find anything, but now that they were here he was grasping at any excuse not to start, as if searching like this was admitting she was lying dead somewhere and it was just a matter of covering enough ground. While that was probably true, he didn’t want to believe it, yet at the same time he wanted—he thought he needed—to be the one who found her, alive or dead. Not to be a hero, or to prove to her parents he was innocent and that he really loved her, but for the simpler, more selfish reason that she’d left him and he wanted her back.

Out of habit he led them to the shelf above the swimming hole, where Kim’s dad gave them their final instructions. Keep your neighbors in sight. Take baby steps. Read the ground like you’re reading a newspaper. Elise and Sam were holding hands, Nina and Hinch standing side by side, and J.P. thought that just yesterday they were all here with Kim, and that that must mean something, but he couldn’t say what. Behind him a cellphone chimed, and Kim’s dad asked everyone to please turn theirs off for now.

“Remember,” he said, “it’s not a race. Do it right, and we only have to do it once.”

With the water so low, getting across was easy. Kim’s dad spread them out, giving J.P. the river’s edge and Elise and Sam the base of the wall while taking the middle himself. He raised his arm to show Mr. Hedrick they were ready, then brought it down and they all started forward.

They pushed through the weedy brush, snapping stalks, tromping the brittle grasses. The girl beside J.P., Ashley something, lagged behind him, looking over as if for help. Out of impatience as much as chivalry he cheated toward her, his staff sweeping half of her lane. He had to force himself to go slow, shuffling to stay even with Kim’s dad. He read the ground, noting an eyeless, dried-out sunfish, a scratched-up Gatorade bottle, a snarl of nylon line. His eyes skimmed from side to side, stopping just long enough to register an object before flitting off again. He was trying not to see a curled hand sticking out from under a bush, the purple toenails of a bare foot. He was trying not to see her shirt.

A few minutes in, a girl by Elise called out that she’d found something. Kim’s dad went to her and knelt down.

The line on the far side of the river kept moving. A breeze stirred the leaves, releasing a flurry of cottonwood fluff.

Word spread down the line: It was just a cigarette butt.

What kind? It could have been his or Nina’s or Elise’s. It probably meant nothing, yet he pictured someone spying on them yesterday, watching Kim lying on her towel. Guys were always checking her out, even when he was right there. After they’d taken her in, they’d do the same to J.P., measuring him. When he complained about it, she thought it was cute that he was jealous. She was right, but only partly. Though it hurt, he wasn’t tortured by the thought of her with someone else. What bothered him was the idea that it was obvious to everyone that he didn’t deserve her.

They moved on. A plastic bag, a bottle cap, the wrapper from someone’s Combos. The search took on a jerky rhythm that prevented them from getting anywhere. J.P. saw a bent Genesee Cream Ale can in the rocks, but it was so faded that he didn’t bother to call out.

The river hid nothing. A tire, a broom that looked like it had been gnawed on, a rusted, flaking paint can. What looked like a drowned cat resolved into a sopping paper bag. He wished he were in the middle with Kim’s dad. He could hear him thrashing the heavy brush with his stick as if it were the enemy.

Ashley was happy to trade spots, as was the girl beside her. They were wading through a buggy stand of brambles and stunted willows. J.P. hacked at the jungle on both sides. Again and again he parted the leaves and stuck his face into the humid tent of branches. He was sweating freely, and thorns had scratched bloody lines on his arms. Across the river someone called out. He listened for a second to make sure it was nothing, then went on. When he checked Kim’s dad’s progress, he saw that his hat was dotted with burs.

After the second hour they took a water break. After the third his water was gone, and Kim’s dad passed him his bottle. He should have eaten something earlier. It was muggy and his sinuses hurt. The biggest thing they’d found was an anklet with a blue pom-pom—definitely not hers. High above them a hawk turned, its wingtips defined against a gray sky. The cloud cover was solid now, with dark patches. The trees were flashing the undersides of their leaves. Kim’s dad called Mr. Hedrick. They agreed. This was probably not the spot they wanted to be in if a storm kicked up. To J.P., it felt like they were quitting.

He wasn’t alone—everyone wanted to go on.

“I appreciate that more than anyone,” Kim’s dad said, “but I’m also responsible for your safety.”

“We should at least check the boulder,” J.P. said.

“How far is it?”

“Two minutes.”

He didn’t have to convince him, and took this as proof that they were cool.

Elise and Sam headed the others back while he led Kim’s dad along the path, walking fast. Rain pattered around them, drops falling on his bare arms. On their left the cliff rose sheer, the wall amplifying the rush of the river. Without his stick he felt light and excited, as if they might actually find something.

Through the years people had worn a staircase into the rock, marking their territory with graffiti. J.P. stepped aside to let Kim’s dad by, then climbed up after him.