Disappeared

by Lucienne Diver

  She must have cried out, because Jared burst through her door a second later, hair sticking straight up, lines all over his face like he’d bolted straight out of bed and still had the imprint from the creases on his pillow. He stopped when he saw Emily half propped up on her bed. No blood. No emergency that he could see.

  “Em? What’s wrong? Everything okay?”

  His voice was still thick from sleep, as if his tongue hadn’t woken with the rest of him.

  “Migraine,” she said. He’d run in to rescue her, the least she could do was let him. “I just need medicine and to lie down.”

  One of her eyes, the one the pain had exploded behind, seemed to be twitching, and tiny prisms were starting to form at the edges of her vision. This was going to be a bad one.

  “Be right back.” Jared left more slowly than he’d come, and Emily considered sinking down on the bed, but she’d have to be upright to swallow the tablets, so she stayed, watching the door.

  She’d have to tell Jared. If there were pictures, they might be the reason someone besides them had been nosing around Mom’s social media. Someone might have been on a search and destroy mission. If so, any evidence had probably been erased already, like Mom’s Facebook messages. And no one would have any reason to do that but the person who’d hurt her. Dad.

  Sickness stirred in her stomach, and that acid that wanted to eat everything was suddenly clawing its way up her esophagus. She ran for the bathroom, flattening Jared against the wall as he returned with the meds. She got to the toilet just in time to empty her stomach into it. Nothing but acid. It burned out her throat as it poured out, until she was coughing from the rawness, bringing up more bile. Her stomach continued to clench and heave, long after it was empty, leaving her doubled over and miserable. Tears leaked from her eyes, snot dribbled from her nose. Her throat was a raw wound.

  She hadn’t managed to close the door behind her, and Jared came in now, helping her perch on the edge of the tub, flushing the toilet, handing her toilet paper so she could wipe her nose. He’d set the pills and the water he’d brought down on the counter, but Emily reached for the water, unable to speak what she wanted. Jared saw her outstretched hand and figured it out. He handed her the water. Then, once she’d taken a sip to soothe her throat, he handed her the pills.

  They scraped going down, and she took another sip of the water trying to ease their way. But only a small sip. Her stomach was already rebelling again, unsure whether it would keep its new contents.

  “Let’s get you back to bed,” Jared said.

  She could only nod. She risked one more small sip of the water before handing it back to him. He tried to take her arm, to help her back to her room, but he felt six million degrees hot, and she cried out in actual pain at the touch. It was a side effect of the migraine, she knew that. It made all stimuli feel like too much. Light was a supernova, sound was a brain-blast, touch was either scalding or freezing or pins and needles. Yeah, this was going to be a bad one.

  Jared drew back and watched her progress carefully, close enough that he could help if she needed him, but not enough to touch.

  When Emily laid down, he asked if she wanted him to cover her up, but even that seemed like too much. She shook her head, gingerly so the movement wouldn’t hurt and asked to be left alone.

  Jared withdrew and she prayed for sleep. Or death. Any kind of release from the pain.

  She woke some time later to voices outside her door. Her head still felt heavy and pressured, as though it had been filled up with sand. And slow, like thoughts had to filter through it and some got trapped along the way. She couldn’t make out any actual words at first, as though the sand stopped up her ears as well, but eventually she caught, “… wake her?”

  “‘M awake,” she said, semi-coherently.

  The voices outside stopped.

  “Emily?” her father asked. Almost gently.

  That had her worried.

  “Who did you expect?” she asked. Her throat protested.

  The door opened and her father’s face appeared. “You feeling any better?”

  “Some.” Maybe sitting up would let some of the heaviness drain away. Maybe.

  She started to rise to sitting, slowly, testing her head. The change of position made her dizzy. She stopped halfway up, let her stomach settle. By that time Dad was fully into her room with Jared looking in from the doorway.

  He settled on the edge of her bed, and reached to brush her sweat-dampened hair back from her forehead. She flinched away, afraid his touch would hurt like Jared’s. Not because she was afraid of him. Not because she truly believed …

  “Sorry,” she said, the word grating her throat. “Everything hurts right now.”

  He took back his hand, trying not to look hurt.

  “I understand,” he lied. “We were discussing whether or not to wake you. I wanted to let you sleep, but Jared thought … Well, we didn’t want you to hear things first on your phone, on your own. We thought it might be best coming from us.”

  She was suddenly all over chills.

  “Hear what?” she asked, before her imagination could run wild. Maybe it wasn’t what she thought. Maybe—

  “A body has been found,” Dad said, as gently as he could. “No one is saying it’s your mother, but … The news got wind of it, and they’re speculating. I’ve got a call in to Detective Anderson, but she hasn’t responded. Probably busy at the crime scene. Or maybe the local PD is handling that. I put a call in there as well.”

  “I’m getting up,” she said, starting to swing her legs around and hoping her father would move so it wouldn’t get awkward. He did.

  “Are you sure you’re up to it?”

  “I have to see.”

  And she didn’t want everyone crowding into her room, trying to watch on her small screen. She wanted them out as soon as possible. The bloody stain from the dropped razor was still on the sheets, and Dad could not see that. She should have changed the sheets and cleaned her room right away. She didn’t know what other evidence there might be. Jared had taken care of things, but had he gotten it all? She was too fuzzy-headed to be sure or cover her tracks now.

  “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  He looked at her doubtfully, but left the room, closing the door behind him, giving her privacy. A sob broke loose from her, broken off by the pain of it.

  Deep in her heart, she knew it was her mother. Their town was quiet. It wasn’t that they never had killings, but usually it was in the heat of the moment or drug related, and the perpetrator was caught then and there. No mystery. What were the chances one woman was missing and it was another woman’s body who turned up? And how could she hope it was someone else’s mother or daughter or sister who lay dead? Yet she did. She prayed it wasn’t her mother. But she knew … She knew.

  Her stomach clenched again, like someone squeezed it in a fist, sending the bile shooting upward. Emily ran for the bathroom for the second time that day. She only made it to the sink this time, and spewed everywhere, even into the hair that fell in front of her face. She was a mess. Sweaty, vomity, teary, snotty.

  She wanted to collapse onto the cool bathroom tile, but she couldn’t. If it was Mom, the police would come calling again. She had to pull herself together. Right now she couldn’t even stand herself. She needed to get cleaned up before she could go out there, as urgently as she felt the need to see what was going on.

  She started the shower, and while she waited for it to get warm, she scrubbed her teeth hard and fast. Then her tongue. Then her whole mouth. Everything she could reach. She had to get the taste of acid out of her mouth. She rinsed and spit, and then stepped under the shower and gargled the water pouring down on her before doing the fastest lather, rinse, and repeat in the history of her world.

  Her stomach miraculously stayed calm, and the water hardly hurt hitting her temperature-sensitive body. The towel felt like sandpaper as she dried off, but she felt a little better for being clean. She put on her softes
t sleeping pants and an oversized T-shirt her Mom had given her with a baby goats in pajamas pattern and padded out into the living room, where the horror on her father’s and brother’s faces stopped her in her tracks. She thought she wanted to know, but did she really? As long as she didn’t see, the police hadn’t called, there was a chance. Still a chance. Even though …

  She didn’t know what got her moving again. It was no conscious thought, but suddenly she was there in the living room. Her brother and father had taken either side of the couch, leaving her the middle, but she didn’t want to touch anyone right then, so she took the recliner. She didn’t recline, but sat there on the edge of her seat, watching the TV screen. It showed a park. And crime scene tape. And uniformed officers with their backs to the camera, standing between the reporter and any actual view of what was going on.

  It didn’t stop the reporter—male with a navy-blue windbreaker, hair blowing in the breeze that also swayed the one tree visible in the shot—from painting a word picture of what was going on.

  “—keep you apprised of this developing story. For those just tuning in, a body was discovered by a couple out walking their dog on this blustery Sunday morning. More accurately, the body was found by the dog, a golden retriever named Molly, who got curious about some underbrush and wouldn’t come when called.”

  Get to the point! She screamed internally. No one wants to hear about the dog! Except maybe their viewers. Certainly not the family the body might belong to.

  “When they went to check on what was holding her up, they discovered a woman’s shoeless foot, which quickly led to the discovery of the rest of the body, which had apparently been dragged into the underbrush.”

  Emily made a pained noise, but no one looked away from the television.

  “The police aren’t speculating at this point about the identity of the body or how long it has been there, but a source close to the investigation—”

  The reporter stopped as a voice off camera told the reporter he was going to have to move back, that they were expanding the perimeter, and the camera panned over to show a tall Latino man with a mane of hair and a beard and mustache that had gone too long untrimmed, like he’d been working for days straight. He had a badge hung around his neck, a gun at his waist and a jacket that didn’t do anything to hide it.

  Emily let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Not Detective Anderson. Maybe that meant this case wasn’t connected to their mother’s disappearance. Hope was a razor around her heart, allowing it to expand, but cutting each time with the edge of probability.

  When Dad’s phone rang, he jumped. Literally jumped. They all looked at each other, and Dad, remote in hand, paused the television to answer it.

  “Hello.”

  Pause.

  “Thank you for calling. I saw the news—”

  The police then. It had to be. Probably he wouldn’t have even answered for anyone else. Not right then.

  “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” He looked sharply at Jared and then Emily, who tried desperately to read what was happening on her father’s face. She wished he’d put the call on speakerphone.

  “Jared and Emily?”

  Jared and Emily, what? she wanted to scream.

  “Okay, yes, we’ll be there as soon as we can. Emily isn’t feeling so well, so give us a little time. Did she …” he stopped, closed his eyes, breathed through whatever he was going through. “Never mind. Not now. I’ll find out soon enough.”

  He hung up the phone, and Jared pounced. “Did she what?”

  Dad looked at them, his face drained of color, a horrible sadness falling like night over his features. “I don’t even know how to say this but to say it. I never thought—” he ran his hand roughly over his face, maybe as a stall. “Kids, that body they found, they think it might be your mother’s.”

  Emily didn’t even gasp this time. She was too numb. She thought she’d known, but suspecting and confirming were two different things. The worst had happened. She thought she should cry or collapse or something, but all she could do was sit there in stunned silence.

  “They want me to come down to the morgue to identify her body,” Dad continued. “So until then, we don’t really know.” Yes, they did. The police wouldn’t make a mistake like that. They wouldn’t traumatize the family if they weren’t pretty certain. “And they want you two down at the station. They have some questions. There’ll be an advocate there for you. I don’t like to let you go alone. I’m—we’re—all we’ve got now. Just the three of us.”

  He got up off the couch to sit on the coffee table, which swayed under his weight, but allowed him to reach for both Jared and Emily’s hands. Emily glanced at her brother, who looked … guilty? About what? Not wanting to take Dad’s hand? She led the way, taking Dad’s hand tentatively. What she really wanted was a hug, but she wanted it from Mom. Someone to comfort her and tell her it was all okay or, better yet, not even happening. But that was the one thing she could never have.

  “We’ve all got to help the police now in any way we can. We have to find out what happened to your mother.”

  But did he mean that really and truly?

  Twenty-One

  Jared

  They took Jared first. He’d thought they’d talk to him and Emily together. Or at least at the same time, so Emily wouldn’t be left alone in their waiting area, but for whatever reason, his name was the only one called. Maybe she’d be next and wouldn’t have long to wait.

  He squeezed her hand before he followed the officer who’d called him into an interrogation room. He didn’t have far to go. He and Emily had been sitting on a bench in the station, watching people at their desks or officers hurrying from one place to another with news sure to make or shatter someone else’s day. The room they took him to was different than the interrogation room he’d been in before—Detective Anderson’s … or her department’s, anyway. It was an industrial sort of gray instead of putty or dun or whatever they would have called the blah beige-brown slathered on the other station walls. And it had a popcorn ceiling painted white rather than acoustic tiles, but it was still boxy and without windows. This one didn’t even have a two-way mirror, proving that cop shows didn’t always get it right. Although, he supposed that if they filmed the interrogation, as they probably always did to cover their butts or collect evidence, no one had to be on the other side of a mirror. They could watch real-time on a screen somewhere or view the recording at their leisure.

  There were a man and woman already in the room. The man he recognized from the news they’d been watching when the call came in—the detective with the wild hair, tamed now that the wind wasn’t having its way. His badge was no longer hanging from a cord around his neck, and his gun had been tucked away somewhere, but otherwise, he looked just the same. He met Jared with a hand outstretched and introduced himself as Detective Diaz.

  The detective started to introduce the woman already seated at the table, but she rose and cut him off to introduce herself.

  “Hello, Jared. I’m Mrs. Kapoor from Child Protective Services. The police have requested that I be present in case you or your sister need my help.”

  That explained why the police were calling them one at a time, if CPS had sent only one advocate for them to share. Mrs. Kapoor was trim and tiny, wearing flats, Jared noticed, as if she didn’t need extra height to give her presence. She had on a power-red skirt, a dove-gray jacket—a way better gray than the walls—and a patterned shirt that tied them both together. She looked competent, but Jared’s anxiety didn’t ease. His mother was dead. He was being questioned. This wasn’t going to be anything but painful, with or without Mrs. Kapoor.

  Still, he was polite. He took her hand and thanked her for being there. Then he looked to the detective. “What happened? Can you tell me how my mother died? Whether she suffered?”

  “Please, sit,” the detective said, indicating the chairs at the table. There were four chairs and three of them, but he knew whe
re he would sit. The detective had chosen one side of the table and Mrs. Kapoor the other. The symbolism was clear. He sat beside his advocate.

  “Okay, I’m sitting. Please …”

  “We don’t know for certain yet that the woman we found is your mother. No identification was found on her.”

  “Then her purse was taken? It could have been a robbery?”

  “We’re not speculating at this point.”

  “But you must have some theory. How was she killed?”

  “Jared,” the detective said gently, “I didn’t ask you in so you could question me. Once we have more information, we’ll share it. For now, I have some questions I need to ask you.”

  Detective Diaz reached down beside his chair, and, for the first time, Jared noticed a bag there, a big paper shopping bag with no logo. But from it he pulled …

  Jared’s mouth went dry and he started to sweat all at the same time, making it clear where the moisture had gone.

  The detective held the pharmacy bag Jared had disposed of the other night. It had a hole torn into the side like the crows or whatever had gotten to it as they had the other exposed garbage, but that didn’t make any sense. The bag shouldn’t have been exposed. He’d been careful to cover it. Yet at least half the contents were gone … unless the detective was waiting to pull them out of the bag as well, waiting to catch Jared in a lie. The only thing he could see still there was the bloody towel.

  Diaz set the bag down on the table in front of Jared and let him look at it for a second. “Want to tell me about this?”

  “What is it?” Jared asked. He had to try twice. The first time he didn’t have enough moisture for more than a rasp.

  Diaz stared, his eyes practically boring into Jared. He’d bet Diaz was killer at staring contests. He didn’t even blink. “It’s a bag. With a towel drenched in blood. That you disposed of in your neighbor’s garbage.”

  Oh, holy hell. He knew. How?