Missing Persons

46

I woke Sam. He wasn’t happy that I woke him. Once we managed to blunder past his unhappiness I began to explain to him why I’d interrupted his sleep. I tried to ease into it but his impatience forced me to admit earlier in the conversation than I wanted to that I had been inside Doyle’s house. “I pretended I was interested in buying the house; I got the agent to show it to me last night after work.”

“You woke me up to talk real estate?”

For a long moment he’d fooled me; I’d thought he’d sounded genuinely befuddled. “Sam, please. That house is at the center of something. It is.”

He wasn’t done poking at me. “You liked it? I found it overpriced, personally. Kitchen’s hardly bigger than mine. I don’t think Lauren would go for it, anyway. She’d be fretting about Grace and all that water in the backyard. And that bridge? With a toddler? Alan, you’d never have a moment’s peace.”

“Come on, Sam.”

“Okay, okay. Just remember that you’re the one who woke me up. So why did you feel this compelling need to sneak into the house next door to the Millers? It’s an empty friggin’ house. We’ve been in there.”

“Given all that’s happened, it seemed important to see it. I have this feeling that the Millers’ neighbor is key to all this.”

“All what?”

“Everything. Mallory, Diane, the guy Bob with the Camaro. The BOLO? Why are all these people missing, Sam? Three people are missing. Don’t you wonder about that? I mean, even-” I almost said, “Even Hannah Grant,” but I caught myself. The only link I could make to Hannah in all this was through Diane, and that wasn’t my privilege to abrogate.

“Three people are missing? Could be two. Could be one. Could be zero. But assuming I buy your premise that three people are missing, what does the neighbor’s house have to do with Diane?” Sam asked.

Sam wasn’t easily tricked. My obfuscation-by-shotgun-blast hadn’t fooled him for long. I stammered, “I don’t know. That part is once removed. But there’s a connection, there is. I can feel it.”

“Once removed? What the hell does that mean?”

“I can’t say.”

He sighed. “You were about to say something else. You said, ‘even’ and you stopped. Even what?”

“Everything.” Lame, but it was the best that I could do. “I was talking about everything.”

Sam yawned. “You know something else, right? Don’t you? Something you can’t tell me?”

I didn’t hesitate. I said, “I do.”

“Fuck,” he muttered. “What’s the point in talking to you about stuff like this? It’s all riddles. It’s like trying to get a politician to tell you what he really thinks.” I took some solace that Sam’s profanity had been mumbled and dull, and not sharply carved and poison-tipped. “I can’t start an investigation because you have some confidentiality bee in your butt, Alan. You know that. You do. We’ve been here before.”

“What about the snow thing?”

“Dear Lord, not the snow thing again.”

“Have you guys thought about those lines that you can string between trees and stuff? What are they called? What if they strung those between Mallory’s house and Doyle’s? What if they did that? What if that’s how she got out of her house without leaving any footprints?”

“A patient feed you this? She slid down one of those lines? That’s your latest theory? Are you nuts?”

Hearing it out loud, it sounded silly. All I was able to say was, “No. Maybe.” Sam had no way to know I’d answered his questions in order, skipping the second one and the final one.

“Why?” Sam asked.

“Why what?”

“If she’s running away, why would she care if she got out of the house without leaving any footprints? Why go to all that trouble? She didn’t know when the snow was going to start and stop; she didn’t know Fox was going to have a helicopter overhead. She’s a kid. If she runs, she runs. Everything else is crap and you know it.”

I hadn’t thought of questioning what motivation Mallory might have for trying to leave no trail behind-it was definitely an oversight in my thinking-but I found myself relieved that Sam was using the present tense to describe Mallory.

Sam wasn’t done. “Before, you said, ‘They’? Who’s ‘they’?”

“The neighbor and…”

“Mallory? Come on? They were in this together? Now you’re talking some conspiracy, right? Alan, I’ll forgive you for calling. It’s late. I know you’re upset about your friend.”

“Sam-”

“We searched the house. We talked to the neighbor. Nothing came of it. Let it go.”

“Remember when we were in the yard and someone was watching us from the upstairs window?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, why? Why was he watching us?”

“He?”

Sam was sharper three minutes after being woken from a sound sleep than I was at the end of a long day. “Has to be a he, right? It’s only Bill and his son who live there.”

“The Millers aren’t allowed to have guests? I didn’t know that. Boulder and its laws? Wouldn’t want to be a cop here-be arresting people for farting on the wrong side of the street.”

We’d moved from amused incredulity to aggravated sarcasm. Where Sam was concerned, that wasn’t a healthy progression. With some defensiveness creeping into my voice, I said, “I think it was a he.”

“Then what did you mean when you asked ‘why?’ What’s the big deal about somebody watching you from his own bedroom window? Maybe it was a neighborhood watch thing and Bill Miller’s the block captain. Who the hell knows? It’s not a crime to spy on your neighbor’s yard. We’d have to arrest half the old ladies in town if it was.”

“Did you talk to the neighbor yourself, Sam? You or Lucy?”

He forced patience into his voice. It was a tight fit. “Lucy and I were doing other things. You know that.”

“It was Slocum, wasn’t it?”

“Your point?”

“Talk to the neighbor yourself, please. I don’t trust Slocum.”

“I thought Jaris behaved himself tonight.”

“Barely. He was nervous. And you and Darrell were watching everything he did. I still don’t trust him.”

The silence that ensued suggested to me that Sam was considering saying something else about Jaris Slocum. He didn’t. He said, “You talk about this Camaro guy as though he’s a victim. You considered that he may be mixed up in all this, like criminally?”

“It doesn’t fit,” I said. “Psychologically.”

“And in your world people never act out of character?”

Sam actually asked that question with only the slightest hint of sarcasm. “Talk to the neighbor, Sam.”

“On what pretense do I do that?” he asked.

“You’re looking for that Camaro. You wanted a hook? That’s your hook. Now that the BOLO is out, you want to tie up a loose end. Slocum himself said he didn’t know about the Camaro during the first interview. You just have to make a call, one call, maybe go have a chat with the guy who owns the house and the garage.”

Ten minutes later I crawled into bed and sprawled on my side, facing my wife. Silently, Lauren backed toward me until I could feel the warmth from her nighttime flesh on the front of my naked thighs. I’d almost drifted off to sleep when a fresh thought forced me to snap open my eyes in the dark.

Maybe the secret has to do with Rachel Miller, not with Mallory.

Maybe this is all about Rachel.

That’s why Diane disappeared.

She knew something about Rachel. Or she was about to learn something about Rachel.

I climbed back out of bed, pulled on a pair of sweats, and used the kitchen phone to warn Raoul that when he’d walked into the Love In Las Vegas Wedding Chapel and met Reverend Howie he may have inadvertently walked into something that was extremely dangerous.

But Raoul didn’t answer his hotel room phone at the Venetian.

He didn’t answer his cell, either.

My next thought? Sam was going to kill me when I tried to explain Canada to him.