They're Gone

by E. A. Barres

  “Tasha’s probably at her boyfriend’s place,” Kim was saying. “At his townhouse.”

  “Okay,” Mary Beth said. “I need to get going. I’m sorry again, Kim.”

  After she left, Kim looked at Deb. “Is everyone going to be like that?”

  “That awkward? Yes.”

  “I guess it’s hard to know what to say.”

  They packed up Kim’s clothes, makeup, and a few books Kim decided she wanted to take home. Other students stopped by, and the awkward conversations were nearly identical. Usually a surprised “hello,” followed by an “I’m sorry,” maybe a hug, and then listlessness until they left.

  “I’m not going to meet Rebecca?” Deb asked.

  “She’s off campus,” Kim said.

  Deb wondered if Kim wanted to live off campus next semester and if that would be cheaper or more expensive than the dorm. She checked her e-mail on her phone. No job leads.

  They drove back that same day, arrived at night, had a quiet dinner. Deb wondered when she would get used to Grant not returning home, stop being jolted by the idea that she would hear him opening the front door, padding through the kitchen, opening the fridge to grab an apple. And, even as mad as she was, Deb wondered if she really wanted to stop remembering those sounds. To accept the silence.

  The next morning she left Kim lying on the couch, staring at Family Feud. She drove into Alexandria, pulled up to a small medical clinic she’d made an appointment at a couple of days prior. Commuters to DC and a surplus of high-paying jobs kept Northern Virginia routinely ranked as one of the richest communities in the nation, but this section of Alexandria had been ignored. Strip malls filled with quiet stores, rundown restaurants, a few people holding signs begging for money or food.

  Deb put her name on the patient log and sat in a corner of the waiting room. A Latino family with a red-eyed little girl was on the other side. An overweight white man slept sprawled on a chair.

  “Ms. Linh?”

  Deb followed the nurse practitioner to a small room, was weighed, had her blood temperature taken. She waited another twenty minutes for a doctor to show up.

  When the doctor finally knocked on the door and entered, Deb was nervously tapping a tongue depressor against her knee. She was relieved to see a woman.

  “I’m Dr. Suzette Franklin. Ms. Linh, right?”

  Dr. Franklin pronounced Linh like “lint,” but without the “t,” rather than the correct pronunciation, closer to “lean.” The same way Deb used to, before a Vietnamese friend in college corrected her.

  “Right.”

  Dr. Franklin glanced down at her clipboard. “I see that you’d like to get tested. For HIV?”

  “Yes,” Deb said, “and everything else.”

  “Sorry?”

  Deb uncrossed her arms from over her chest. She hadn’t realized how tightly she was holding herself. Her shoulders ached from stress.

  “I’d like to get tested for STDs,” she said. “As many as possible.”

  Dr. Franklin sat in a chair next to a computer. “Have you been having different symptoms?”

  “Like what?”

  “Painful urination, nausea, a rash, vaginal discomfort?”

  “No, no, and no. And no.”

  Dr. Franklin looked confused. “Then why do you need to get tested?”

  “I … I had unprotected sex.”

  “Well, we can certainly test you for HIV. How long ago did that encounter happen?”

  Deb bit her lip.

  Dr. Franklin waited.

  “My husband cheated on me. A while back.”

  Dr. Franklin’s expression dissolved into sympathy. “I understand. You’re not the first woman I’ve seen with similar concerns.”

  For some reason, that thought brought tears to Deb’s eyes.

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  The empathy was nice, but only for a moment. Now that she had admitted what happened to a stranger, Deb felt, more acutely than she had before, that her life was permanently something else. That she was someone else. She was one of those wives who have lost their husbands to another woman.

  And even worse, to a prostitute.

  Deb wished the woman had been a neighbor or friend or coworker of Grant’s, someone with whom the transgression could be explained by love. Someone who would have offered Grant a level of complexity, of understanding. A prostitute lessened him.

  And lessened her. Lessened her for believing in him, for being the type of wife who could be replaced by a hooker.

  “Do you know if he used a condom?” Dr. Franklin asked.

  “I don’t know. He died.”

  Dr. Franklin started. “From a sexually transmitted disease?”

  “Oh! No, sorry. He died because of something else. Not a disease. I only found out afterward about his affair.” Deb put her head in her hands, tried to blink back tears. “This is all so hard. He passed away almost a month ago, and I just found out about this. I don’t know how much else there is to learn. We had such a good relationship. I know you must hear that all the time, but it’s true. I really never knew anything was wrong. I keep thinking it can’t be true.”

  Dr. Franklin handed Deb a Kleenex. Deb pressed it against her eyes, let tears soak the tissue.

  “Shit,” Deb said. “Do other women unload on you like this?”

  Dr. Franklin smiled. “All the time.”

  Deb took another Kleenex.

  “You’re going through a lot.”

  Deb nodded.

  “We can certainly do the HIV test today, but I think it’d be best if you saw your regular doctor for any other concerns. Or I can give you a referral for some good doctors in the area. Would that be okay?”

  Deb kept nodding.

  * * *

  Deb sat in her car in the parking lot, fingered the Band-Aid on her forearm.

  She took her phone and a business card out of her purse.

  He answered after two rings.

  “This is Price.”

  “Agent Price? This is Deb Thomas.”

  “Deb?” She heard something on the other end of the line, a muffled thump.

  “Hello?”

  “Sorry!” Levi exclaimed. “Dropped the phone. How can I help you, Ms. Thomas?”

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I was running on the treadmill. If you hear me gasping, that’s why.”

  “I want to know the truth about my husband. About Grant. I want to know what happened with him. What he did. I feel like there’s more to the story. I know there’s more.”

  “Are you sure you’re not trying to learn why he did it?” Levi asked.

  “I think I’m trying to find out both.”

  Levi was silent for a moment. “I hate to say this, but it’s been my experience that you may not find out either. Motive is often circumstantial with the deceased.”

  “I know,” Deb conceded. “But I can’t just stay here. Emotionally. Does that make sense?”

  “It does.”

  “I’m desperate.” Deb held the phone tight. “Please.”

  A few more moments of silence.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to meet Maria.”

  CHAPTER

  15

  CESSY HAD JUST bitten into her hamburger when two men sat down at her table.

  She chewed quick, swallowed hard.

  The men were oddly similar. Both white, tall, thin, and bald, with small dark eyes and impassive expressions. One had a beard’s early shadow; the other was clean-shaven. Both wore long-sleeved shirts—one, a black shirt; the other, a white one—with dark blue jeans. Brown work boots.

  “Did you put Barry in the hospital?” one of them asked.

  Over the past two days since she and Anthony had left Barry in an unconscious heap outside the hospital’s doors, Cessy had expected to be questioned. But she still hadn’t figured out how to answer.

  Fear grew inside her like a swarm of roused bees.
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br />   She casually glanced around for help, avoided looking toward the restroom. The place, 203 Restaurant and Bar in Federal Hill, was nearly deserted. The only other people in the restaurant were an old guy reading a newspaper at the bar and a bored teenage waiter checking his phone in the corner. Not a lot of options.

  “He’s in the hospital?” Cessy asked, playing dumb. A phone call to the hospital had revealed Barry was still there, and alive, but that was it. The staff person she’d spoken with had warily refused to give her any more information.

  Cessy had been relieved he was alive.

  And then wondered if he deserved death.

  Maybe he did, and her relief was because his death wouldn’t come from her.

  “You already know where he is,” the other man said, “because you saw him last.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Two days ago, Barry texted he was going to see you. No one’s heard from him since.”

  “What are your names?” she asked, trying to change the subject.

  “Smith,” the clean-shaven man said.

  “Harris,” the other added.

  Cessy looked back and forth between them. “Those aren’t really your names, are they? Harris and Smith sound like an eighties cop show. Also, how are you not related?”

  “We’re not cops,” Smith said.

  “You don’t say.”

  “Or brothers.”

  Harris grinned. “I like her. She’s sarcastic.”

  “I don’t,” Smith replied.

  “Look,” Cessy said, fear edging her voice, “I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know where Barry is. I did see him that night. I was trying to work out a deal for the money Hector owed.”

  Smith reached across the table, started eating her fries.

  “What’d he tell you?” Harris asked.

  “He said he had to think about it.”

  “We can force you to tell us what really happened,” Harris told her. “You understand that, right?”

  That swarm of bees in Cessy’s gut grew loud.

  “I don’t have anything else to tell you.”

  “That answer’s not good enough. Or honest enough.”

  A sudden thought slammed into Cessy. Had there been cameras in Barry’s house? Hidden cameras she hadn’t seen, recording their fight?

  Did these two men know the truth?

  Were they just toying with her?

  Shit.

  “He didn’t say anything about where he was going afterward?” she asked.

  Neither man replied. Smith kept eating her French fries.

  “What about the money Hector owed?” Cessy went on, thinking fast as she spoke. “I told Barry I couldn’t pay and asked him if there was any way it can be less. Is there?”

  “That’s not our decision to make,” Harris said.

  “But maybe something can be worked out,” Smith added.

  Cessy kept thinking quickly. They still expected her to pay. That meant they didn’t plan on killing her.

  “I don’t have that kind of money.”

  “We’ll do installments,” Smith said. “Five hundred a week, and you got a week for that first payment.”

  “One week,” Harris put in, “and there’s only one way you get out of paying it.”

  “What’s that?” Cessy asked, wondering if they wanted what Barry had asked for.

  “We find out that you ended up putting our friend in the hospital,” Smith told her, “then we won’t just take the money.”

  Harris pushed back his chair and stood. “We’ll take everything else.”

  “I thought you liked me, Harris,” Cessy said hollowly.

  Harris smiled again. He and Smith walked out.

  Cessy sat at the table, stared at her food. Her fries were gone, but so was her appetite.

  It took almost a minute for Dana to return to the table from the bathroom.

  He sat down nervously, eyes on the door.

  “How do you know those guys?” he asked. “I saw you talking to them. No way I was coming out until they left.”

  Cessy picked up her water, took a drink. She hadn’t realized how dry her throat was.

  “My husband used to work with them. Well, ex-husband, I guess. The guy I was married to.”

  “He worked with Smith and Harris?”

  Cessy almost spit out her water. “How do you know their names?”

  Dana stared back at Cessy. “Your husband was a pimp?”

  A moment passed.

  “I think we need to start over,” Cessy said. “How do you know those guys?”

  Dana ran his hands over his head. His T-shirt seemed big on him, as if his body had shriveled from simply seeing those two men.

  “They ran me when I was working. They … they weren’t the nicest men.”

  “What do you mean, they ran you?”

  “Like I said, pimps. I didn’t work for anyone but me when I started. Kept the money to myself. Then they showed up one day, one day when I met this guy at his house, this politician. He and I were in his bedroom when we saw them standing in the door. He was just as surprised as I was.”

  “What’d they do?”

  “They told me I was working for them now. Said they’d tell his wife if he said anything. Made him pay to keep it quiet.”

  “And he did, right?”

  “Right. Then they offered me protection if I gave them a cut. I said I didn’t need protection. They said I needed it from them.”

  “How’d they even find you?”

  “There were rumors about this politician, some state senator. They were watching him. When they busted us, they asked me about my other clients. Started going after them. And I wasn’t the only one. A bunch of us—men and women—got taken over by them. All in the same way.” He paused. “You said your husband was working with them?”

  “Yeah. You ever run into a guy named Hector?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Cessy fished out her phone, pulled up a picture. “Him?”

  Dana squinted at the photo. “No.”

  Cessy felt relief, and the sensation surprised her. She reminded herself that Hector was far from innocent, but at least she hadn’t been married to a pimp.

  It was a low bar.

  “I don’t know what he was doing with them,” Cessy said. “But they worked with him. Until they killed him.”

  “They did?” Dana didn’t wait for her to answer. “So why’d they come see you?”

  “Hector owed them money. They want me to pay it.”

  Dana’s eyes widened. “How much?”

  “Fifteen thousand. By the way, do you have fifteen thousand dollars I can borrow?”

  Dana’s face was drawn, thin, almost skeletal. “Cessy, this is serious. Those guys, you can’t mess with them.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m serious!”

  Dana’s fear was starting to push something in Cessy, bring that panic in her to the surface. She remembered those pictures she’d found, those men standing around corpses.

  And she remembered her reluctant phone call to her brother, Chris, days earlier:

  “I need help.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “I’ll be okay,” Cessy said, trying to keep her voice calm, wishing she believed it. “I’ll think of something.”

  “I don’t mean to scare you. I just heard a lot about those guys when I was working for them. They always have blood on their hands.”

  CHAPTER

  16

  THE SILVER AUDI pulled up in front of Deb’s house at three in the afternoon. She was waiting for it, watching from the bay window in the living room.

  “I’ll be back,” Deb called out to Kim.

  “Don’t forget about dinner tonight!” Kim called back, sprawled on the couch in the family room, staring at an episode of the Real Housewives of some city. Deb knew she’d probably be in the same spot when she returned. But she was too preoccupied to care.

 
She hurried outside through a misty rain, yanked opened the passenger door, climbed inside.

  Agent Levi Price grimly looked at her from the driver’s seat.

  “You have no idea how much trouble I could get in for this,” he said. “No idea.”

  “I want to meet Maria,” Deb said resolutely.

  She buckled her seat belt as his car pulled away from the curb.

  “Like I told you,” Levi said, “you can’t say anything about me. You can’t tell her I put you in touch or even that I met with you.”

  “I got it. Tell her that I found her name and address hidden in some of Grant’s old files.”

  “Right.” Levi squinted through the windshield, turned on the wipers. “I could be fired for this, maybe even prosecuted.”

  “I’ll tell the same story I’m telling Maria to anyone else who asks. Your name will never come up.”

  “Good. And you can’t say anything about the suspect I mentioned, the vigilante prostitute. It’s an ongoing, classified investigation. Until we know more, please keep that to yourself.”

  “Do you have any leads?”

  “I can’t say.”

  The car headed onto I-66, the often-crowded interstate that ran past Northern Virginia’s confused mix of tangled small towns and suburbs, and straight to DC. Deb’s thoughts were rushing everywhere, but she couldn’t help noticing how miserable Levi seemed, despondently driving through the light rain, his mood matching the dreary gray day.

  “Really,” Deb said, “I won’t tell anyone what you’re doing for me.”

  He didn’t relax his posture. They drove for a few minutes in silence. It didn’t take long for traffic to slow. Taillights around them gleamed red.

  Deb felt like she needed to start a conversation.

  “How’d you end up in the FBI?”

  “Started there after college. And I haven’t left yet.”

  “That’s it?”

  Levi shrugged. “My brother was killed when I was in college. He was hanging with the wrong crowd, some really bad people, and they took him out. Those guys were arrested, but I ended up going into law enforcement after that. Wanted to see if I could help other people from ever feeling that way.”