Where Are You Now?

6

O n Monday afternoon, Detective Roy Barrott’s shift was up at four P.M. It had been a relatively slow day, and at three o’clock he realized that he had nothing to command his immediate attention. But something was bothering him. Like his tongue roving through his mouth to find the source of a sore spot, his mind began to retrace the day searching for the source of the discomfort.

When he remembered his interview with Carolyn MacKenzie, he knew that he had found it. The look of dismay and contempt he had seen in her eyes when she left him made him feel both ashamed and embarrassed now. She was desperately worried about her brother and had hoped that the note he’d left in the collection basket at church might be a step toward finding him. Although she hadn’t said it, she obviously thought he might be in some kind of trouble.

I brushed her off, Barrott thought. When she left she said she wouldn’t bother me again. That was the word she used, “bother.”

Now, as he leaned back in his desk chair in the crowded squad room, Barrott shut out the sounds of the ringing telephones that surrounded him. Then he shrugged. It wouldn’t kill me to take a look at the file, he decided. If nothing else, to satisfy myself that it’s nothing more than a guy who doesn’t want to be found, a guy who will one day change his mind, and end up on Dr. Phil being reunited with his mother and sister while everybody has a good cry.

Wincing at a touch of arthritis in his knee, he got up, went down to the records department, signed out the MacKenzie file, brought it back to his desk, and opened it. Besides the pile of official reports, and the statements from Charles MacKenzie Jr.’s family and friends, there was a legal-sized envelope filled with pictures. Barrott pulled them out and scattered them on his desk.

One immediately caught his eye. It was a Christmas card with the MacKenzie family standing in front of their Christmas tree. It reminded Barrott of the Christmas card that he and Beth had sent in December, the two of them with the kids, Melissa and Rick, standing in front of their Christmas tree. He still had that card in his desk somewhere.

The MacKenzies got a lot more dolled up for their picture than we did, Barrott thought. The father and son were in tuxedos, the mother and daughter in evening gowns. But the overall effect was the same. A smiling, happy family wishing their friends the joys of Christmas and greetings for the New Year. It had to be the last one they sent before the son disappeared.

Now Charles MacKenzie Jr. had been missing for ten years, and Charles MacKenzie Sr. had been dead since 9/11.

Barrott rummaged through some personal papers in his desk and pulled out his family’s card. He rested his elbows on the desk and held up the two Christmas cards, comparing them. I’m lucky, he thought. Rick has just finished his freshman year at Fordham on the dean’s list, and Melissa, another straight-A kid, is finishing her junior year at Cathedral High and going to a prom tonight. Beth and I are more than lucky. We’re blessed.

The thought crossed his mind, suppose something happened to me on this job, and Rick walked out of his dorm and disappeared. What if I wasn’t around to find him?

Rick wouldn’t do that to his mother and sister, not in one hundred thousand years, he told himself.

But that, in essence, is what Carolyn MacKenzie wants me to believe about her brother.

Slowly, Barrott closed the Charles MacKenzie Jr. file and slid it into the top drawer of his desk. I’ll look it over in the morning, he decided, and maybe drop in on some of those people who gave statements at that time. Can’t hurt to ask some questions and see if their memories got refreshed along the way.

It was four o’clock. Time to shove off. He wanted to be home in time to take pictures of Melissa in her prom dress with her date, Jason Kelly. A nice enough kid, Barrott reflected, but so thin that if he drank a glass of tomato juice, it would be as visible as mercury in a thermometer. I also want to have a little chat with the limo driver who’s picking up the kids. Just to get a look at his license and let him know that he’d better not even think of driving one mile over the speed limit. He stood and put on his jacket.

You take all the precautions you can to protect your children, Barrott thought, as he turned and yelled, “See you,” to the guys in the squad room and walked down the corridor. But sometimes no matter what you do, something goes wrong and your kid becomes involved in an accident or is the victim of foul play.

Please God, he prayed as he pushed the button for the elevator, don’t let it ever happen to us.