by Mark Lukens
I was up and walking before I knew it, stumbling down the hall toward the living room and the front door. Fragments of the dream flashed through my mind: I’d seen Michelle in the dream, I was sure of that. But I don’t think it was a nightmare. All I could see was her walking ahead of me in the darkness, turning around with that sexy smile on her face, her eyes reflecting a soft light from somewhere behind us. She was beckoning me to follow her.
Follow her where?
I didn’t even look out through the peephole before opening the door. On my front porch were two large men in suits and ties. Both flashed their badges at me.
“Zachery Hughes?” one of the men asked. His face was pale with bright red splotches on his cheeks. Hair buzzed short. Dark sunglasses.
“Zach,” I corrected.
“I’m Detective Hartwell and this is Detective Williams.” Both men tucked the wallets with their badges back into their suit coats at exactly the same time, moving like they were synchronized swimmers.
“Did you find Michelle?” I asked, hope erupting inside of me so hard it hurt.
“Can we come inside?”
I stepped back and opened the door wider. “Sure. Come on in. Did you find my wife?” As soon as I asked again, I was afraid of the answer. Why would two detectives be here? Had they found my wife’s body?
For a second I couldn’t seem to catch my breath.
The detectives entered my house, both of them taking their sunglasses off and slipping them into their suit coat pockets. I picked up the scent of cologne and mint chewing gum. I closed the door and gestured at the living room. “Please, take a seat if you want to.”
“We’d rather stand,” Detective Hartwell said.
Detective Williams nodded in agreement. Both men were staring me down.
“My wife,” I said, waiting for an explanation.
“That’s why we’re here, Mr. Hughes,” Detective Hartwell said. “You want to tell us what happened?”
I was sure they’d gotten the report from Officer Crowell, but I told them anyway. I told them how we’d driven to the restaurant. I told them how Michelle had gone to use the restroom while a hostess showed me to our table. I told them I had waited fifteen, or maybe twenty minutes before asking our waitress, Cindy, to check the women’s room for my wife. She’d come back to tell me that my wife wasn’t in there, but that someone had found a purse in the restroom.
“And that was your wife’s purse?” Detective Williams asked.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s over there in the kitchen.” I hitched a thumb at the archway that led into the kitchen just beyond the dining room.
“Was anything taken from the purse?” Detective Hartwell asked.
“No. Her wallet was still there. Her driver’s license. Her cell phone. Her car keys.”
“Money was all there? Credit cards?”
“Yes. I mean, I don’t know exactly how much money she had in there, but there was still money in the wallet. I haven’t counted it.”
Both men nodded slightly, both almost mirroring each other. I had the feeling that these two had worked together so long that they could practically communicate telepathically.
“Were you and your wife arguing last night?” Detective Williams asked.
I noticed that they seemed to take turns asking me questions. And again, I was sure they’d already gone over the answers I had given to Officer Crowell. But I played their game. “No. We never argued. Everything was fine.”
“So, you identify your wife’s purse,” Detective Hartwell said, gesturing at me impatiently to continue with my story.
“And I keep looking for her. A manager came. I think he wanted me to go outside, like I was bothering the other customers, but I didn’t. There was this old couple. Maybe in their seventies. The wife told me she saw my wife leave.”
Neither detective looked surprised at this.
“She said she saw my wife leave with a man. She said he was about my height. Brown hair. I think she said he was wearing dark pants and a white shirt. You could check with Officer Crowell. He took the woman’s statement.”
Detective Hartwell sighed. “Yes, that woman has been diagnosed with dementia.” He pulled out a small notebook from his suit coat pocket, flipping it open and reading for just a moment. “She claimed that the man walked out with your wife and that your wife didn’t look distressed.”
I nodded. Maybe we were starting to get somewhere. Maybe they were finally going to start looking for this man. I felt the weight of impatience pushing on me, but I resisted.
“She also claimed the man looked a lot like you,” Detective Hartwell added.
“Yeah,” I said, remembering now that she had said that, but not sure what it had to do with anything.
Perhaps Detective Hartwell sensed my confusion. “You think she might have seen you walk in with your wife and perhaps got the two memories mixed up?”
I just stood there, silent.
“You know,” Detective Williams said. “Because she has dementia.”
I hadn’t considered it. I could feel our train getting way off track suddenly. I wanted to steer us back to what was important. “I asked the manager about security cameras. He said they have them at the restaurant. Did you guys check them?”
Detective Hartwell nodded. “Yeah. We did. But they weren’t working last night. Some kind of glitch, I guess.”
I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. “Weren’t working?” The idea seemed impossible to me, the coincidence too great. My one piece of evidence had evaporated like a smoke ring.
“Mr. Hughes,” Detective Williams said, “do you think your wife might have been having an affair?”
“An affair?” I breathed out, startled by the sudden shift in our conversation. “No. Not at all. Why would you ask that?”
Detective Williams shrugged. “Would it make you angry if you thought your wife was cheating on you? Sleeping with some other guy?”
I didn’t answer. I could already see where this was going.
Detective Hartwell looked around at the living room as if noticing it for the first time. “Nice place you’ve got here.”
I didn’t bother saying thank you; I knew it wasn’t a compliment.
“Pretty remote here,” Detective Hartwell continued. “No other houses around, except for the empty one across the street.” He shrugged. “I mean, things could happen here and nobody would see anything.”
I kept my mouth shut, my balls crawling, my stomach sour, my mouth suddenly dry.
“You mind if we have a look around?” Detective Williams asked.
I could see that these two weren’t playing good cop, bad cop—they were playing bad cop, bad cop. They weren’t even trying to hide their suspicion. I wanted to try to appease them. I wanted to let them know that I understood the husband was always the first suspect in a disappearance. But I didn’t want to seem suspicious.
“We could come back with a search warrant,” Detective Williams said. “Wouldn’t take too long.”
“No,” I said and then cleared my throat a little. “No. Look around.”
Detective Williams started walking around, knocking lightly on the walls like he was listening for the hollow sound behind them.
“I didn’t do anything to my wife,” I said in the calmest tone of voice I could muster. “We went to a restaurant together.”
Detective Hartwell stood right in front of me. “See, that’s kind of the problem. Nobody saw you enter the restaurant with your wife.”
Again, I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. “That’s . . . that’s impossible. The hostess . . .”
“She remembers seating you. She remembers you telling her that your wife was with you. But she doesn’t remember seeing her.”
Detective Williams had disappeared down the hall, walking toward our bedroom.
“The old lady, she saw my wife leave,” I said.
“And I already told you that she’s not the most reliable of witnesses. And h
er husband hadn’t seen anything. Nobody else near the lobby saw anything.”
I felt panicky, like I was suddenly drowning. I needed something to hold on to. Then I found my life raft. “My wife’s purse. It was in the bathroom. A woman found it and turned it in.”
“Yeah,” Detective Hartwell said. “That’s true. But what if you came in and slipped it into the bathroom and then walked out to the hostess’s stand? From the hostess’s viewpoint, and if she was pretty busy, you could have slipped in and slipped back out without anyone noticing.”
“Why would I do that?” I asked. I wanted to ask why I would go to all of that trouble to get rid of my wife when I could do it right here in our rural neighborhood. But then I realized that I would need an airtight alibi. And if the cops were busy searching for a missing woman, then they wouldn’t bother searching my home.
But I was innocent. My wife was missing. She’d been abducted. And every second we spent suspecting me, trying to catch me in a slipup, the longer the delay was in looking for my wife. Again, I felt that boulder of impatience weighing down on me, and I was doing my best not to erupt in anger.
Detective Williams was back. “Doesn’t look like your wife packed anything.”
“Because she didn’t leave me. She was taken by someone.” I thought about the security cameras malfunctioning at the restaurant, and how strange that was—the one piece of evidence I needed wasn’t there.
“You mind if we look in your vehicles?” Detective Williams asked. “Your wife’s car?”
I shook my head no. I grabbed the keys for the vehicles in the kitchen and then I went outside, the detectives following me. The sun was blindingly bright, the day already hot and humid, insects buzzing in the trees and brush. I opened the doors to my truck, my company truck, and my wife’s car. I was glad there weren’t any neighbors within view to watch the police search my vehicles.
It took Detective Williams ten minutes to comb over everything in the three vehicles, but he spent the most time in my wife’s car, especially the trunk. He’d slipped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves and he took a few photos with his cell phone.
“We could get forensics here,” Detective Hartwell threatened. He looked away, surveying the surrounding area, staring for a moment at the house across the street, the house standing alone among the empty fields, the line of dark woods beyond it, the rotting wooden fence surrounding the back yard. “Probably will at some point.”
I knew I was close to being arrested, but I also knew they didn’t have enough yet or I would have already been in handcuffs and stuffed into the back of their black sedan.
Did I need a lawyer?
I couldn’t believe this. I knew I might be a suspect, but too much time was going to be wasted.
Finally, they were done. Detective Williams left all the car doors open as he walked back to me, pulling off his gloves and stuffing them down into his pants pockets.
“We’re done here for now,” Detective Hartwell said.
I waited for the warning about not leaving town.
“What about my wife?” I asked, and I felt like I might be pushing it a little, but I couldn’t help it. I was mad that they had their minds made up about me; I was scared they weren’t going to even try to look for Michelle.
“We’re doing our best,” Detective Hartwell said as Detective Williams walked to their sedan and got in. Detective Hartwell handed me his business card.
I took it, holding it with numb fingers.
Detective Hartwell got real close to me. I could smell his mint gum and cologne even more now. He had slipped his sunglasses back on, and I was kind of glad I couldn’t see his cold blue eyes right then. “You think of anything . . . anything at all . . . you give me a call. Okay?”
I just nodded, not sure if I could trust my voice at that moment.
Detective Hartwell got into the passenger side and then they drove away.
I was left standing there, feeling violated but also lucky I wasn’t at the police station looking up attorney phone numbers in the Yellow Pages.
CHAPTER FIVE
Two hours later I had showered, gotten dressed, and then managed to eat a little something. I had tried all the phone numbers again, but all I got were voicemails and ringing. I had no messages from Michelle, no texts from anyone, no emails. Nothing.
It took me a few hours to calm down from the interrogation I’d just been through. Obviously Detectives Hartwell and Williams were trying to rattle me, intimidate me into some kind of confession, trying to trip me up somehow. They’d been looking for some kind of evidence, something they could use to gain a search warrant. Had they found something, the flimsiest of evidence? Were they petitioning a judge right now?
I felt an overwhelming urge to flee the house. I was afraid of going to jail—I’ll admit that. I’d never been in jail, but with my history of panic attacks I could feel the anxiety building just at the thought of being handcuffed, being stuffed into a cell, locked inside, unable to escape. But what I was even more afraid of was the time wasted while they concentrated on me. I’d heard somewhere that police had about forty-eight hours to find an abducted person if they had any hopes of finding that person alive. I knew others had been found alive well past forty-eight hours, but I didn’t think it was many.
Time seemed to be ticking by. I had to do something. I had made all the phone calls again, but I had to do more.
I would go to Michelle’s work. I didn’t expect to find her there, but maybe I could talk to Kendra or Denise, or even Susan. Maybe they would know something. It was a longshot, but it was something.
Grabbing the keys to my work truck and my pickup, I went outside and moved the vehicles around, parking my work truck behind my wife’s car. I went back inside and dropped the keys to my work truck in the little tray. I checked to make sure I had everything turned off, and then I left my house and got into my truck.
I got a phone call while I was driving to the nursing home where Michelle worked. It was Steve, my boss.
“Zach, what’s going on? The police were just here.”
“The police?”
“Yeah. Two detectives. White guy and a black guy. Not the friendliest guys in the world.”
“Michelle went missing.”
There was silence on the phone for at least ten seconds. And then: “God, Zach. How?”
I explained briefly about going to the restaurant—he knew which restaurant I was talking about—and how Michelle had gone to the women’s room and then I’d never seen her again.
“Zach, I’m so sorry. I . . . I don’t know what to say.”
It seemed sincere enough. Steve knew Michelle. He’d met her at our Christmas parties. Everyone remembered Michelle after meeting her. Everyone always loved Michelle.
“What did they say?” I asked, trying not to sound guilty at all.
“They were asking a lot of questions,” Steve said, the tone of his voice changing just a bit, all business, any compassion he’d had gone now.
I waited, hoping I didn’t have to ask him what kind of questions they had asked.
“They asked if you complained about Michelle,” Steve said. “You know how guys bitch about their wives. They asked if I thought you two were having problems, or if either of you were cheating on the other. They asked if I knew about any money problems you might have. Stuff like that.”
I held the cell phone up to my ear as I came to a stop light, waiting for it to turn green. “Look, Steve, I know how this might look. But I didn’t do anything to Michelle.”
“God, Zach. I know that.” But I swore I heard the slightest bit of doubt in his voice.
“Somebody took her. A woman at the restaurant, an older woman, she saw Michelle leave with a man.” I left out the part about the woman being senile. “The police need to get out there and look for her.”
“You think she was taken by someone?”
“I don’t know. I think so. If she was going to leave me, or leave with some guy, I don’t thin
k a busy restaurant would be the best place to do it.”
Steve didn’t join in my defense.
“Look, I’m sorry the detectives went there. They came to see me this morning. Must have gone to see you right afterwards.”
“No. It’s okay. We all need to do everything we can to find Michelle.”
“Yeah, thanks, Steve.”
*
The nursing home where my wife worked wasn’t as large as some of the other nursing homes and assisted-living facilities in town, but it was a nice place. There were courtyards, and the rooms were pretty spacious. I’d only been there a few times in the last few years Michelle had worked there, and I felt a little ashamed about that, but she knew it could sometimes be a depressing place.
Michelle had a CNA certificate, but for the last two years she’d been in charge of activities for the residents there; she helped with the entertainment in the activities rooms. She helped bring in guests: singers, magicians, speakers, groups from local schools (she said the residents loved it when the kids came in to sing or put on a dance show). Sometimes Michelle even helped put on shows with some of the other CNAs and nurses. I remember one time they had put on some kind of Alice in Wonderland show and Michelle and Kendra had dressed up like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Just the memory of it nearly brought tears to my eyes.
As I parked, I saw a black sedan at the other end of the parking area. For just a moment I thought it might be the detectives’ car. But then I realized that it was a Lincoln.
But it got me thinking. If the detectives had already gone to my work and questioned my boss and coworkers, the next logical place to look might be here where Michelle worked. They might even be here right now. What if I ran into them?
So what? It wasn’t against the law for me to look for my wife, was it? And if the cops weren’t in any hurry to do it, then it might be up to me.
I got out and walked up to the entrance, a metal and glass door swishing open when I got within a few steps of it. The woman at the reception desk was friendly enough. I asked if Kendra was working today and reminded her that Kendra was my wife’s friend.