Missing Persons

68

Huh. What did Bill’s hasty exit mean? Why the overturned table and the open door? Had something happened while I was talking with Raoul, or was Bill making a statement about his frustration with me, or about his annoyance that I’d interrupted our meeting to take a phone call?

My relief that Diane was okay was so strong at that moment that I wasn’t particularly upset about whatever had prompted Bill’s departure, but I was perplexed. Why had he taken off so suddenly?

I was becoming more and more convinced that Mallory’s Christmas night disappearance had been accomplished with Bob’s help. What had happened next? I was guessing that she’d talked Bob into driving her somewhere and I was hoping that she’d somehow made it to Vegas to visit her mother. Where were mother and daughter right then? I didn’t know. Raoul’s story satisfied me that Bill’s boss, the by-then-dead Walter, hadn’t been successful in tracking them down in Vegas.

But where was Bob? If Sam had caught up with him, I was sure he would have called and let me know.

I straightened up the waiting room, walked back to my office, and phoned Bill Miller at his home. No answer. I left a message, and asked him to call me back on my pager. Then I called home. The girls were still out on their excursion. I left Lauren a message that I was going to run a few errands and that I’d be home in time for dinner.

As cold as it can be in Colorado in January, there are always respites, warm days in the high fifties or low sixties when the sun defies its low angle in the southern sky and the blue above is just a little bluer. I was surprised when I stepped outside to discover that the Chinooks had abated and left the day so much warmer than it had been earlier. The seat heaters in the Audi seemed superfluous. I flicked them off and drove east to begin my errands.

I felt the vibration of my pager while I was waiting in line to buy some fish for dinner at Whole Foods. Had Lauren asked for ono or opah? I couldn’t remember. I pulled the beeper off my belt and read Bill Miller’s familiar number. My turn at the fish counter had arrived, so I mentally flipped a coin and chose a good-sized piece of opah before I meandered over to the relative quiet of the dairy department to return Bill’s call.

“We need to talk,” he said.

“I went back out to the waiting room and-”

“I just got a call about Mallory.”

“From whom?”

“The Colorado State Patrol. They found a body, a girl, in a ditch near I-70 west of Grand Junction.”

“Oh my God,” I said. “What can I do?”

“I want to talk to you before whatever happens next. I need to make sure I’m thinking straight.”

“Bill, you just admitted that you’re using the therapy to shut me up. I don’t think I’m the right person to-”

“Fire me tomorrow. Tonight I need some help.” He sounded genuinely frantic. I couldn’t imagine his terror. I looked at my watch. “My office. Ten minutes,” I said.

“I have to be here, at home, if they call back. I can’t leave. Can you come over?”

“I’ll be right there,” I said. I tossed the opah on top of a display of organic butter in the dairy case, and sprinted to my car.