The Missing Place (11 page)

She paused, trying to gauge the effect her words were having, desperately hoping Jennie's mother wasn't one of those women who turned their nearly grown children out into the world with indifference, who'd parented her with resentment or worse. “If there's anything, any clue, to be found in his things, it's Ms. Capparelli who will be able to figure it out, don't you see? If there's something out of the ordinary, something that showed he strayed from his habits or got into something new—if there's names on his phone that she doesn't recognize—things like that.”

“But . . .” Jennie wouldn't look at her. “There could be DNA . . . all kinds of evidence. I don't think you're even supposed to touch stuff without gloves and, I don't know. It's supposed to be
processed.
”

Colleen nodded, wincing because the girl had a point. Maybe
she was making a mistake here, risking destroying clues that could lead to the truth.

But Weyant had been very clear: no one was lighting a fire to process the things Taylor had left behind. Even if they had the lab, the equipment, they weren't making an effort to examine a bunch of dirty laundry for clues. And they wouldn't, unless the unthinkable happened . . . and then, what would it matter?

And the other
, the terrible little voice inside her nagged. The other reason. The one she would
not
give credence to, that she would not entertain for one second, because it meant a breach of faith in her son so wide and deep that she wasn't sure she could ever come back from it.

“Sweetheart, I think that's mostly on TV,” Colleen said shakily. And then she told a lie which, since it was a point of some honor with her to be as truthful as she could, always—a core family value, so to speak—surprised her with the ease with which it tripped off her lips. “I saw a documentary where they were saying that eighty percent of what we see on those shows is either impossible or police departments aren't equipped to handle it. In most cases evidence ends up in lockers and is never even looked at unless a case goes to court, and even then it gets lost or damaged way more often than you'd think. And I just can't—Taylor's mom and I can't take the risk of that happening. You understand . . . don't you?”

Jennie bit her lip, but she didn't look away.

“There's one more thing,” Colleen said, reaching for her purse. “Now I know you'll try to say no, because I can tell you were raised the way I raised my own son. You want to help just out of decency, but I also know you're a young woman starting out, and it's so hard these days, isn't it? I am going to give this to you whether you decide to help me get Taylor's things or not. It, well, it means something to
me, more than you can imagine, that you remember Paul and that you—”

Her voice broke, and suddenly the line between lie and truth blurred, and she was speaking more deeply from her heart than she'd intended. “That you said he was a nice boy,” she finished in her broken voice. She took Jennie's hand and pressed the folded bills into her palm, closing her fingers over the money and squeezing. It was three hundred dollars, everything she'd withdrawn from the ATM.

“Oh, ma'am . . . I couldn't,” Jennie said.

“Yes. Yes, you can, sweetheart. Let me do this. Let me do a nice thing for you, it will help
me
, don't you see? I need—I need to do something nice for someone today. To make a difference, even a little. If you like, you can use it to buy a nice gift for your friend's baby,” she added with a smile.

For a moment their hands stayed clasped, and Colleen thought,
This—this is enough
, this knowing that she could be what a child needed.

But the young woman who tucked the bills into her jeans without looking to see how much, who stood up resolutely while digging the keys from her pocket, who paused with her hand on the door and turned to nod briefly at Colleen, was not a child at all.

“Stay here,” she said. “I'm going to get what you need.”

SHAY HAD MANAGED
not to smoke a second cigarette. Well, third, counting the one first thing in the morning. Just two, and it was almost noon. Half a day. Two in half a day, four in a whole day; if she could manage that, it was all right. Not perfect, not by a long shot, but under control.

She jumped when Colleen rapped on the passenger window. She turned the ignition on and leaned across to unlock the door, the automatic control having quit on her last year.

Colleen slid into the seat. In her hand was a large plastic Walmart bag.

“Is that the boys' things?”

“Yes,” Colleen said tensely. “But can we go? I don't want to look at them here.”

Shay headed up the road out of the camp and back through town. She focused on staying under the speed limit. Halfway back, Colleen spoke again. “It's only Taylor's. Paul's was—there wasn't anything in his room.”

“He took it all with him? Or someone cleaned it out?”

“Well, it wasn't there, that's all we know. Whether he took it or . . . or something else.”

There was something in her voice, some sharp splinter of fear, and Shay didn't push. Instead, she thought about what it might mean. The boys disappeared the same day, as far as anyone knew . . .
but the maid didn't come until Friday. Could Paul have stayed back, for some reason? Or—it seemed impossible—could it be unrelated, some fantastic coincidence, the boys deciding separately—for their own different reasons—to leave? Maybe not even aware that the other—

But that was insane, wasn't it? What was it Sherlock Holmes was supposed to have said—something about eliminating the impossible and whatever was left had to be the truth. Two boys, good friends, independently deciding to leave without a word, on the very same day—that was so unlikely as to be impossible.

But still. Events were splitting off into two directions. Differences were appearing. The two boys were
not
the same. Maybe they had made different choices. And even though Shay was no closer to knowing what had happened, she had to tread very carefully, never forgetting that the obvious could be a trick.

“I DON'T TRUST
that bitch,” Shay said, lowering the dented miniblinds over the motor home's long side window. Brenda's car was in the driveway. She'd worked the three-to-eleven every day this week, and apparently she had the same shift again today. Unless it was her day off, in which case they'd have to deal with her staring out the window at them all night.

Colleen set the Walmart bag on the table. Shay slid into the seat across from her and reached for the bag. “Okay,” she said, dumping out its contents. Clothes—wadded and faintly smelling of body odor and Axe—tumbled out. A paperback copy of
Game of Thrones
that looked like it hadn't been read. A baggie with two compact nuggets of weed, and a little glass pipe. Shay recognized that pipe—she'd threatened to throw it out over Christmas when she found it, to
which Taylor had said, “Really, Mom?” with that amused lazy smile of his, the one that said she was taking herself too seriously. Besides, it was only a couple of years since Taylor had found
her
little stash one day when he was looking for Advil and they'd had the talk about being grown up and respecting each other's choices and besides it was only very occasional and blah blah blah.

Shay glanced at Colleen, gauging her reaction. “Is that—” Colleen asked, then blushed. “I mean, I don't mean to judge. I don't—I know that—”

“Yes, it's what you think. It's marijuana. I knew he had it.” She set it aside, picking up a smaller Walmart bag, the top twisted and knotted, its contents clanking. Tearing the bag open, she felt a tendril of dread, but inside were only the things she would have expected—a toothbrush, toothpaste, dandruff shampoo, body wash, deodorant, condoms, ChapStick. She laid these things out in a row and the two women examined them together.

“Paul used that same body wash,” Colleen said. “That Axe brand. I always thought it smelled so nice. I was surprised, you know? That a . . . well, a drugstore brand could smell that good.”

“Seriously?” Shay poked her fingers into the corners of the plastic bag, turning it inside out. Nothing, not even leaked soap. “You don't buy your husband's soap at the drugstore?”

“I mean—yes, sure, it's just Kiehl's makes this really nice one—”

“What's missing?” Shay interrupted, a little more sharply than necessary. “His wallet. His keys. Sunglasses, except I think he always kept those in his truck. What else? What else do boys carry around with them?”

They were both silent for a moment. “Paul has a bottle-opener key chain,” Colleen said. “He got it when he was a freshman. But it would be with his keys.”

“Taylor has these flip-flops with the bottle opener built into the sole. But they're back home. He left all his summer stuff there. I kept his room just the way he left it. I mean, he's pretty neat, he wouldn't want me moving things around anyway.”

“Wow, not Paul. He's so careless with things. I wish— I should have made him do more. But we always had the cleaning ladies, and I never minded doing laundry. I kind of liked it, actually.” She looked so forlorn that Shay forgave her the cleaning lady comment. “Maybe that's from just having the one. Every stage, every birthday, you're always thinking how he's that much closer to leaving.”

Shay barked a laugh. “Hell, not me. I made Brittany learn to do her own laundry when she was eight. Taylor would have been four, and he used to help her. I had two jobs back then, and Frank, that was Taylor's father, he wasn't around much.”

“See,” Colleen said. “That was so good. They learned because they
had
to learn. With Paul, I never had the opportunity to teach him that kind of self-reliance. Everything was always done for him; he never really learned to look out for himself.”

“It wasn't that hard,” Shay said. “If they wanted to eat, they had to figure out how to make the macaroni and cheese. Don't you think I would have rather been home doing it all for them?” She shook her head at the memory. “I was supposed to take six weeks after Taylor was born, but my boss called me after three and paid me time and a half to come back early. We couldn't say no to that, not back then.” She dug back into the pile of Taylor's things. “Oh, this was his favorite shirt,” she exclaimed, holding it up. It was soft from being washed over and over again, a faded green cotton T-shirt he got from working at the Y sports camp. On the back was his name, Capparelli, spelled out in block letters.

She kept going through the clothes. There was the belt Brittany
gave him for Christmas. A pair of shorts. Socks paired and rolled, which made her smile—at home he just dumped them into his drawer, but here, so far from home, he'd adopted her habits.

She came across a shirt she didn't recognize, a silky collared shirt with a stripe of pale green against a navy background. She held it up to her face, but it smelled only of detergent. Had he bought it for going out? To show off for a girl? She closed her eyes and touched the soft fabric to her cheek, trying to conjure an image of the girl who'd caught his eye, who was special enough to warrant this kind of purchase.

She put it back on top of the other things, then put them all carefully back into the Walmart bag. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing out of the ordinary, anyway. I guess that was a bust.”

“I don't know.” Colleen folded her hands and rested her chin on them. “For now, maybe. But let's put it all aside and maybe later it will mean something. Let it—you know, let it simmer in your mind, in your subconscious, and maybe something will come to you.”

“So. You now know everything I do,” Shay said. “You've seen the cops and the
man camp. I was going to try to go out to the rig where the boys were supposed to be working, but Hunter-Cole won't tell me where it is. I looked on the Department of Mineral Resources website, and Hunter-Cole has got nine of the twenty-seven active rigs in Ramsey County. I mean, I guess we could start driving around to all of them, but it would take a while.”

“We'd have to find the crew right away if we want to talk to them,” Colleen said. “From what Paul told us when he left, they were supposed to work every day through the twenty-sixth. I put it in my calendar. Today's the twenty-second. That only gives us four days and then all the workers will scatter for the next couple of weeks.”

“Well, so we have to figure out how to find these guys. I think
going to the supervisors was the wrong angle. One-on-one, most of these guys are okay. We just have to get them on their own to talk to them.”

“Did Taylor tell you any of his friends' names? Other workers who might have known him well?”

“Yeah, but the problem is that they all go by nicknames like Dukey and Tailbone, and I never asked him for last names. I mean, why would I?”