Fragile

19

Wanda was dozing on the couch, and Charlie’s eyes were starting to ache in the glow of her computer screen. He’d been scrolling through a classic car site for hours, and all the cars were beginning to look the same. He’d never been a guy who knew about cars, though he had always wanted to be. Wanda, it turned out, was one of those guys. And it didn’t seem to bother her much that he didn’t know a fin from a fender. He’d seen a few barely suppressed smiles, but then her attention had started to wander, and eventually she’d drifted over to the couch, commenting from there until she fell asleep.

At this point he was pretty sure that the car he’d seen was a Chevelle. Or maybe it was a Pontiac GTO. Or maybe it was a Mustang. The truth was, it had been dark, he’d been a little sleepy, a little high on Wanda.

He stood and leaned back, listened to a series of cracks from his spine. The flowers he’d bought her earlier sat proud and purple in the vase at the center of the table. He didn’t know any more about flowers than he did about cars.

“Lilies!” Wanda had exclaimed. “They’re my favorite, Charlie. How did you know?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But when I looked at them, I thought of you.” It wasn’t a lie or a line. He’d never been good at that. It was the truth. He was rewarded with a tight embrace.

After dinner, he’d helped her clean the dishes. Not the kind of half-assed help his father used to offer his mother, that kind of befuddled, mystified carrying of a few dishes from the table to the kitchen only to quickly retire to the couch to watch football or the news. He’d helped her load the dishwasher, and then to wipe the table, put the place mats and cloth napkins in the laundry room.

Then, over a glass of wine, he’d told her. About the girl he saw last night. About Lily. When he mentioned her name, he saw Wanda’s eyes drift over to the flowers. He found himself reading her thoughts. Maybe that was why, on some subconscious level, he’d chosen them. But she didn’t say anything about it. Just listened and then offered the advice that had brought them to the station.

He looked at Wanda, who turned over in her sleep, putting her back to him. He moved to her, took the cozy throw blanket from the couch, and draped it over her slim body, admiring the rise of her hips, the dip of her ankle. She sighed in her deepening slumber.

He stepped out onto the porch. The light snow had stopped and not accumulated at all. The air was still and cold, the wind chimes silent. Empty planters hung, bereft until spring. There was an old ceramic cat by the door. On impulse, he lifted it and found a key. Without thinking, he pocketed it. He’d give it to her later and tell her he didn’t think it was safe, even in a safe town, to leave a key outside the door.

He looked out toward the street. Had it just been last night? He imagined the scene, watching her standing there with her punk hair and uncertain expression. Because that was what he saw on her face. It wasn’t fear, exactly, just uncertainty, as if she were doing something against her better judgment. Except this time, he called out to her, Hey, do you need any help? Maybe she would have said no, or flipped him the bird. But maybe she would have said yes. Maybe just that one sentence from him would have been enough to keep her from getting in the car.

He stepped onto the sidewalk. In the bay window of the red house across the street, the blue light of a television flickered. There was a heavy bass thump of music being played too loud somewhere. On the wire above him, a mourning dove cooed, low and inconsolable.

He walked across the street and stood approximately where the girl had stood and looked back at Wanda’s house. From where she’d been standing, she wouldn’t have been able to see him through the trees in Wanda’s yard. Across the street, an upstairs light glowed. Somewhere a car coughed to life, then roared off. The way the sound carried, he expected the car to approach and pass, but it never did.

What was she thinking as she stood here? Where is she now? He remembered asking himself those questions about Lily, standing like this in the place she was last seen. But it was the second question that hurt the most. Where is she now? His imaginings on the subject were grim and wild. Every year or so, he’d drop Lily’s mother an e-mail, ask how she was doing, really just wondering if there was any news of Lily. Even her skeletal remains would have offered some kind of relief after nearly two decades of dark wondering. She hadn’t answered his last message.

“She’s sick,” his mother had told him. “Cancer.”

“Cancer? That’s awful.”

“Is it any wonder?” she’d said, her voice nearly a whisper. “Grief like that can kill you, Charlie. A missing child? It’s an unimaginable horror.”

In the street, he noticed a slick, gleaming puddle. The fluid had a rainbow sheen to it. He felt a little jolt of excitement. The car he’d seen had idled there, and it had definitely not sounded healthy. He put his toe to the edge. The liquid was sticky, nearly dry. It was possible, wasn’t it, that it had leaked from the car he’d seen? Even though maybe a hundred cars had passed that way since last night. But it could be something. Was it enough to call that cop?

“Charlie?”

Wanda had come out after him. Just the way she looked beneath the amber glow of the streetlamp, so pretty even disheveled from sleep, even with a little worried frown on her forehead, made him think he was going to ask her to marry him.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked him.

“Look,” he said. He pointed to the liquid in the road.

“Hmm,” she answered. She bent down to squint at it. “Transmission fluid.”

“The engine of that car sounded pretty bad.”

“And to leak that much fluid in one spot, it would have had to idle here awhile. Not just any passing car would dump that much. The stop sign on Hydrangea is a good twenty feet away.”

“So what does it mean, when a car is leaking that much transmission fluid?”

“Well,” she said. She put a hand to her chin. “It means that it didn’t get very far.”

“We should call that cop,” he said. He kept his eyes on the stain on the road. “Do you think we should?”

“Definitely,” she said with a nod. “Yes.”

“It’s kind of late.” He glanced at his watch, a cheap Timex with a black leather band and roman numerals he’d bought at a drugstore nearly ten years ago. If some future version of himself (an out-of-shape pest control technician, no less) had appeared the day he bought it and told him that he’d still be wearing it almost a decade later, he’d have laughed in his own face.

When he looked back at Wanda, she said, “I don’t think people are getting much sleep when a girl is missing.”

He’d be embarrassed if he called that cop and then he said something like, “That could have come from any car in the last twenty-four hours.” He’d look like one of those buffs, guys who watched so much crime television that they thought they knew as much as detectives. Or worse, he’d look like someone guilty, someone who was trying to insert himself as a helpful person into the investigation in order to exert some control. He knew how it felt to be under suspicion.

“What?” Wanda said. She placed a hand on his arm and gave a little rub. “What are you thinking?”

“I just don’t want them to get the wrong idea about me, you know?”

“Why would they?” she said.

He issued a breath and sank to the curb. “There was a time, after Lily went missing, that suspicion fell on me.”

She sat beside him. “Really?”

“They did a locker search at school and found this notebook I kept. I had written her all these poems and love letters, things I’d never given her. We were friends; that was it. I knew that. But it didn’t keep me from dreaming.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, where a dull ache had settled.

“For a while, not for long, they had questions for me, for my family. They searched my room at home and found a scarf of hers. Something she’d left at my house. I kept it, even though I knew she was looking for it, slept with it in my pillowcase because it smelled of her. They thought I was obsessed with her, that maybe I’d hurt her because she didn’t love me, or whatever. Even though I was cleared, that suspicion followed me. I left town for college up here and never went back, except to visit my parents every so often.”

“I’m sorry, Charlie. That’s awful,” she said. She stared at the ground between her feet.

Too much baggage. He was dumping too much on her, too soon. They hadn’t even been together forty-eight hours. God, what was wrong with him? He was too embarrassed to even apologize for being such a mess.

“I still think we need to call,” she said. “It could be relevant. Better to be wrong and embarrassed than right and…” She let the sentence trail with a sad shake of her head. Then she stood up quickly, and he thought she was going to walk away from him. Instead, she held out her hand. When he took it, she pretended to use all her strength to haul him to his feet.

“Come on, cowboy. Let’s call,” she said, tugging him toward the house. He remembered how he’d felt last night over dinner, how he’d realized that she thought he was something special, and how he’d desperately wanted to be that for her. He would be that. He knew he could be.

Inside, he called the detective. He got voice mail and left a message, telling him about the stain on the road and how he’d narrowed it down to three possible car models. Wanda watched him from the couch, seemed to have something on her mind.

“That story,” she said when he came to join her on the couch.

“What story?” he asked, although he knew what she was talking about.

“About Lily. You should write about it.”

He settled back and looked into her eyes. He thought, Wanda, will you marry me? She’d say no, of course. Charlie, it’s too soon. I’ve been hurt before. Not without a ring. Something like that. But one day, she was going to say yes.

He said instead, “Wanda, I’ve been trying to write that story for twenty years.”

She made an affirming noise, as though she knew all about waiting for something.

“I have a feeling the time is now.”

“Are you satisfied, Jones? I mean, what did you think you were going to find-a bloody shirt, a smoking gun?”

No answer. He’d stopped talking about twenty minutes ago, which was probably a blessing. They’d arrived at that place in their argument where every word they uttered was designed to hurt and inflame. They were in the garage now. Jones was riffling through the garbage can, which simultaneously angered and disgusted her.

The tsunami in her chest made her think of the time after Ricky was born, when she thought she might ask Jones to leave. Parenthood was a crucible. The pressures revealed truths, resurrected buried childhood memories, unearthed hidden aspects of the personality. She’d seen it in her practice-couples changed so much by their new roles as parents that they were no longer compatible. She’d been afraid it was true for them. That dark place in Jones that she’d always found so intriguing was no longer attractive. In fact, it was repellent. The mother in her identified it as a threat. Sometimes, she actively hated him.

But the thought of leaving him had filled her with sorrow; so she’d stayed. And eventually a new marriage had unfolded. It was not as light and full of romance as it had been before Ricky. But there was something more true, more solid about loving someone through change. She thought maybe when marriage survives that shift from romance through friendship to partnership, it’s stronger. Maybe that’s when you go from being a couple to being a family.

“This search is more about you than it is about him. You realize that, right?”

He shut the lid on the trash can and turned to face her. He stripped the gardening gloves from his hands, put them on the workbench by the door. She’d bought the bench and a full set of tools for him two years ago. Once upon a time, he’d liked working with his hands, building shelves and things for the house… a coffee table, an Adirondack chair, a curio cabinet for the upstairs guest room. It brought him some kind of peace. When they’d learned about his high cholesterol and he’d started experiencing tightness in his chest, Maggie thought that it would help to get back to that old hobby, that it might lower his stress level. Everything still hung gleaming on its designated hook. He’d never touched it.

“What is that supposed to mean?” he said.

“It’s about your desire to control rather than to have faith.”

“Faith?” He practically spat the word, as if it tasted bad in his mouth. “What, like faith in God? Faith in the universe?”

She shook her head, released a disgusted breath. “Faith in our son. That we’ve taught him well, that he’s a good person. That he’d never hurt anyone’s feelings, never mind hurt anyone physically.”

Something sad flashed across her husband’s face, and she felt a flood of relief. He’d heard her. He buried his face in his hands. She moved closer to him and put a hand on his arm.

“He’s always been a good boy, Jones,” she said. “And he’s grown into a good man. You should have seen him tonight-strong, articulate, sincere. He’s just like his father.”

When he took his hands away from his face, his expression was so haunted and strange, she almost took a step back from him. She felt a black flower of dread open inside her.

“Jones. What is it?”

Then the doorbell was ringing and he moved away from her quickly. By the time she’d followed him to the door, he was shouldering on his jacket. Chuck was standing in the foyer, the dark circles under his eyes that she’d noticed earlier looking deeper. There was a ketchup stain on the collar of his barn jacket. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought he was wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing yesterday.

“What’s going on?”

Chuck looked at the ceiling above her. She followed his eyes to that hairline crack that always bothered her.

“A lead of sorts,” he said. “Might be nothing.”

She thought Jones might leave without saying anything to her, but instead he walked back and kissed her lightly on the mouth.

“Jones.”

“Keep looking,” he whispered, and then he was gone.

“You should have gone over there right away,” said Jones, climbing into the passenger seat of the vehicle. He didn’t let the other guys drive him, but he didn’t mind riding shotgun with Chuck for some reason.

“It didn’t seem like a priority.” Chuck’s tone was easy, not defensive. “Strout saw what he saw. There didn’t seem to be much else to it until I had other information.”

“You could have talked to the neighbors. Maybe someone else saw or heard something.”

Chuck gave an affirming nod. “It didn’t seem important at the time.”

They sat in the driveway, the car idling.

“What did seem important then? What other information?” Jones asked, rubbing at his eyes. He was so tired that his vision was blurry. His chest felt tight and uncomfortable again. He shouldn’t have had that double cheeseburger at lunch. It was not on the diet recommended by his doctor.

Chuck didn’t look like he felt much better. In the light shining from over the garage, he looked pasty and gray. They were both too old to be pulling all-nighters.

“After Strout left, I got access to Charlene Murray’s Facebook account and her e-mail. Her friend Britney had the log-in and passwords. She remembered she had them written in an old notebook, searched through and found them, gave me a call.”

“And?”

“I found a message that Charlene wrote, the last one on her account, asking Marshall Crosby if he could meet her on Hydrangea and Persimmon. She told him she needed a ride. This confirms what Strout saw.”

The news gave Jones a little rush of energy. He felt some strange combination of relief and dread.

“That was her last communication?”

“Yeah. After that, no other messages. If you don’t count those status bar updates.”

“Was there a message back from Marshall?”

“No.” Chuck held back a sneeze by squeezing his nose. He reached into the pocket of his coat for a tissue that looked overused already.

“So we don’t know if he read it,” Jones said.

“No, but we do know his father owns a green 1968 Chevelle.”

Jones knew that car well. Why hadn’t he thought about it before? Travis had been very proud of it, showing it off in the parking lot the day he got it a couple of years ago, taking some of the girls for a ride. But it was always in the shop with this problem or that. Just the other day, Jones had seen Marshall sitting in the driver’s seat, idling in front of the grocery store. Travis came out with a grocery sack that looked like it contained only a six-pack, climbed into the passenger seat.

Ricky drove a 1966 Pontiac GTO. It was a similar color; the body type might look like the Chevelle to someone who didn’t know about cars, but their GTO was mint; Jones knew that for a fact. For Ricky’s birthday last year, they’d researched the purchase together and finally driven to New Hope, Pennsylvania, to pick up the car from a guy who restored them for a living, just like Jones’s uncle had.

Jones remembered how excited he’d been about his Mustang when he’d turned sixteen. He could see that same thrill in his son. The guy who sold it to them had a few piercings, too. So Jones hadn’t felt self-conscious about Ricky’s hair and getup. It had been a good day for the two of them. They’d had fun, no fighting at all. It was the only day like that he could remember since Ricky had reached adolescence.

“How’s the transmission on the GTO?” Chuck asked. His tone was light, his attitude carefully casual.

“It’s in good shape,” Jones said quickly. “We just had it in for a tune-up last week. Everything in that car is brand-new.”

That’s why he came here instead of calling, Jones thought. That’s why he came here before going to Crosby’s or to check out the area where Strout spotted Charlene. Jones just wasn’t sure whether Chuck had come out of loyalty or suspicion. He was sure Chuck had inspected the driveway before even ringing the bell.

Chuck rubbed his sinuses. “Good.”

Jones told Chuck a little bit about Marshall Crosby, about his problems, some of the things Maggie had told him, like the status bar update. Marshall thinks bad people should be punished.

“When Charlie Strout left a message about the fluid on the street, I thought I’d go check it out after I stopped by the Crosby house to talk to Marshall.”

“Let’s split up,” said Jones. He reached for the door and pushed it open. “Get in touch with Katie, have her get a sample of that fluid. You go talk to Strout again. Knock on doors around the neighborhood.”

“Okay.” Chuck wiped his nose again.

“What was your read on him?” asked Jones.

“Strout? He seemed okay. A little jumpy. I ran a check on him. He’s squeaky clean, not even an outstanding parking ticket.”

Jones stepped back out of the car and closed the door. Chuck rolled down the window.

“I’ll go with you,” he said. “Strout can wait, right? Katie can get the sample without me.”

He had that look, as if Jones had asked him to fetch the water when he was good enough to pitch. They both knew Chuck deserved to go to the Crosby house. It was the more compelling lead, especially now that they had the information Maggie had provided, combined with the message Chuck had found. And really Chuck had been doing all the heavy lifting since Charlene disappeared. But Jones just couldn’t give it to him. If one of the Crosbys was involved in this, Jones needed to know first.

He knew Chuck would do what he was asked; that was one of the things he liked best about the guy. The younger detectives were all so full of themselves, mimicking attitudes and things they heard on television, always wanting the job to be something that it wasn’t, always mouthing off like there was a camera rolling somewhere. Chuck was a real cop, a quiet and careful observer, with an eye for detail and an ear for lies.

“I’ll call you if I need you,” said Jones.

Chuck opened his mouth, then snapped it into a tight line. “Okay,” he said.

The light snowfall had stopped as quickly as it began, nothing accumulating, though the driveway looked glassy and slick. Jones stepped carefully to his vehicle and waited for Chuck to pull out of the driveway, then followed him until their paths diverged at the next intersection.