Dead Time

by Stephen White

“I see Wallace at professional meetings, occasionally at parties. Cassandra was at the reception, Meri. I may have been talking with her when you came up to say hello.”

  I heard the lilt of recognition spike in Merideth’s voice. She said, “Oh my God. She was Sandi, wasn’t she? Not Cassandra. I knew I didn’t forget that name.”

  “She’s Cassandra now,” I said.

  “She’s lost quite a bit of weight. Has she been ill?”

  “She started running. Doing marathons. She’s trying to qualify for Boston.”

  “She grew her hair out too. I never knew it was that…frizzy,” Merideth said. “People change.”

  I thought she said it with a little wonder in her voice. “I think Carmel’s still in L.A. Would you like me to call Wallace? Get in touch with her for you? Yes or no?”

  “Let me sleep on it,” she said.

  “Sleep sounds good,” I said.

  Sweet Jesus.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The man Merideth wanted me to enlist as an off-the-record private investigator was my closest friend of many years, a Boulder police detective named Sam Purdy. Our friendship had started in the months after my marriage to Merideth had ended, so he wasn’t part of the divided spoils of the relationship.

  That also meant that to get Sam’s help, Merideth needed mine.

  One of the many things Merideth did not know about my friendship with Sam was that he and I shared a recently minted confidence that was exerting gravity on our relationship in a way that was anything but subtle. From the moment that Sam shared what happened the night he had confronted a woman who was threatening our children the previous spring, we knew we were bound together by the woman’s fate.

  Our initial instinct was to create some distance. I stayed away from him to protect him from any stain of association with me. He stayed away from me to protect me from being darkened by the shadow of what he had done for us.

  The ions had their charge. Resistance, not attraction.

  I hadn’t spoken with Sam in more than three months. The last time we’d been together had been at Adrienne’s graveside service at Green Mountain in Boulder. I’d been at Jonas’s side that day. Sam had arrived late and hovered at the periphery of the gathering. At the end of the service I gripped one of Jonas’s hands as he used the other to toss a fistful of Colorado clay onto his mother’s coffin. By the time I’d looked around for Sam, he was gone. He had not come by the house later for the reception.

  I missed him.

  I didn’t know how Sam had been managing the suspension he’d received from his superiors. The boss cops knew nothing of the secret he and I shared. They were punishing him for a venial transgression that involved lust, bad judgment, and some secondary sins of omission he’d committed along the way.

  After his disciplinary hearing I’d called Sam to see how he was doing. He didn’t return my call. Money was always tight for Sam—Boulder isn’t an easy place to live on cop’s wages. I didn’t know if he had the financial resources to go six months without pay—I suspected he did not—or whether he’d found another job to carry him through the interim.

  I wondered too how he felt about breaking up with his longtime girlfriend, Carmen. The lust part of his transgression had broken the trust between them. I heard he’d flown out to where she lived in Orange County, California, to end it with her shortly after Adrienne’s funeral.

  I’d called him again a week or so after his suspension was handed down to offer him some money—a gift if he’d take it, a loan if he wouldn’t. Once again he hadn’t returned my call. I reached out to him one more time, a couple of weeks later, using a pay phone on Broadway only a few blocks from his North Boulder home. I knew he was there when I phoned; I’d just driven by his house and watched him reposition a sprinkler on his crappy front lawn.

  He’d lost weight. The shorts he was wearing hung on his hip bones in a way that caused me to avert my eyes when I saw he was about to bend over to move the hose.

  He didn’t answer the phone that time either.

  I wasn’t able to get back to sleep after Merideth called to tell me she’d decided she did indeed want me to talk to Carmel Poteet. She had also asked me to get in touch with Sam.

  I sat on the sofa and stared down 39th Street in the direction of the Hudson. The airconditioning in Ottavia’s apartment seemed to have two speeds—too low or too high. I like to sleep in cold rooms; at night I chose too high. To ward off the manufactured chill I wrapped myself in the comforter from Ottavia’s bed. It smelled of her.

  I continued to like that smell.

  New York didn’t begin to get sleepy until after three.

  I did the quick time-zone arithmetic and phoned Lauren and Grace in the Netherlands.

  “Alan?” Lauren said. “Can’t sleep?”

  “Something like that. Woke up, wanted to hear your voice.”

  “That’s sweet. Jonas is okay?” She was trying to keep alarm out of her voice.

  “Fine. Good. You know, it’s going better with him and his aunt and uncle than we could have hoped. I’m calling him more than he’s calling me. I think my being in New York may prove to be unnecessary. His aunt Kim is a good person.”

  “Better safe than sorry,” Lauren said.

  We were using a lot of clichés and platitudes with each other, trying our best not to argue. It’s hard to quarrel with moldy wisdom.

  “Any progress for you?” I asked. Lauren was trying to track down the adoptive parents of the daughter she’d given up after getting pregnant while she was doing a year abroad in Amsterdam in college. She was hoping to arrange a first-ever meeting with her child, now a teenager.

  “It’s slow going,” she said. “Lots of bureaucracy. Many things are easier in the Netherlands, but bureaucracy is the same everywhere. Even if I reach her family, they may refuse to let me see her, or she may choose not to meet me. It’s hard, the waiting. We’re trying to stay busy. Gracie and I are in line at the Anne Frank house right now. She is really excited to see it. We’ve been reading the diaries. Say hi?”

  I said, “Of course.”

  Gracie was helium for my moods. She and I chatted until the line started moving and it was time for them to buy tickets. She said good-bye to me in Dutch.

  That was what she told me she said anyway.

  I made the first call for Merideth around eleven o’clock the next morning. Wallace Poteet and I spoke a few times a year, so my call wasn’t a complete surprise. We spent a few minutes catching up. He asked how Jonas was doing, and what Grace’s reaction was to having a new brother. I asked about his three kids.

  His eldest, Mason, was a funeral director in Coral Gables. The youngest, Irene, was in her second year at Wake Forest. Carmel, the middle child, had finished school at Occidental and stayed in California. She was doing set design for a soap.

  “I can’t believe I have a kid in the business,” Wallace said.

  “Which business?” I asked. “Movies or funerals?”

  He laughed. “Either. Both,” he said. His tone changed. “You’re calling for a reason, Alan. What’s up?”

  “You’re good, Wallace.”

  “That and a dime,” he said. He waited. A conversation with one shrink always involves some dead time. A conversation between two involves a lot of dead time.

  “I’d like to talk to Carmel. I was hoping you could give me her number in L.A.”

  “Yeah? Why do you need to talk to my daughter? Wait, wait. Let me take my paternal temperature. Is this any of my business? One, two…Noooo, it’s not. Definitely not. Is my daughter a grown-up? Yes, she is. So…sure. Give me a second to find the number. Cassandra keeps a list, or at least she used to. As I get older, I’ve become addicted to speed dial. Cara’s five; that’s her lucky number. Doesn’t do you much good to know that, but…God, I’m hopeless.” He laughed at himself.

  Wallace’s personal process was rarely disguised, and he was never apologetic about putting it out there. It was one of the things I found so
attractive about him as a colleague, and a friend. I always knew where he stood. “I’m happy to tell you why I want to talk with her, Wallace. It’s a favor I’m doing for Merideth.”

  The pause that followed was poignant. “Your…Merideth?”

  “My…ex—Merideth, yes.”

  “If I can be candid, Alan, I’m surprised that Merideth remembers any of our kids. She didn’t exactly pay a lot of attention to them when they were young.”

  From Wallace Poteet, that was as pointed as criticism got.

  “Merideth would probably be the first to admit that now. She’s grown up, I think. This favor…is about something that’s happened in her life since she left Boulder. She’s involved with someone who crossed paths with Carmel a few years back. They have a mutual friend, apparently. Merideth is trying to get in touch with that person, and hopes that Carmel can help. That’s it.”

  My phone buzzed in my hand. I pulled it away from my face long enough to discover that another call was coming in. I had no faith in my ability to make call-waiting work. I was hopeless. I let the call go.

  Wallace said, “I found it. Here it is, Cara’s number.” He dictated ten digits. “That’s her cell. She doesn’t answer most of the time, but she’s pretty good about returning calls in a day or two.”

  I was going to leave things there and wait until I had a chance to connect with Carmel. But I said, “Thanks. Wallace, do you by chance know anything about some Grand Canyon trip from a few years back—a trip to the canyon floor that Carmel took with friends when she was still at Oxy?”

  It sounded as though Wallace dropped the phone. For about two seconds, I actually allowed myself the luxury of considering it a coincidence. Once he had the receiver back near his face, his voice had a breathless quality. The illusion of happenstance evaporated. He said, “Did they find that girl? Is that what this is? Is she dead? She is, isn’t she? They found her body. Criminy. Cara thought something had happened.”

  Words like “criminy” occasionally snuck into Wallace’s vocabulary. I wondered if they were relics of his conservative Iowa upbringing. I’d have to ask him about it sometime. Some other time. I said, “I don’t think—”

  “Merideth is doing a story?” He had resignation in his voice—the resignation of someone who has just reluctantly accepted the reality of hearing very bad news. “That’s why Merideth wants to talk with Cara? Tell me it’s not…Oh, Lord in heaven. She does prime time now, doesn’t she?”

  Wallace did seem to know a little something about the whole Grand Canyon thing. I tried to ease his mind about Merideth’s motives. “Wallace, no. No one found the missing girl that I’m aware of. And no, Merideth isn’t planning a story. Quite the opposite. Her interest in speaking with…Cara—is that what you guys call her now?—and whatever happened at the Grand Canyon is a personal thing for Merideth. Not work. You apparently know much more about it than I do.”

  “Personal?”

  “Merideth is engaged. Her fiancé was on the same trip. He was part of the group. I don’t know how he fits in, but it’s all become complicated for Merideth. She’s hoping that Carmel can help her track down one of the other people in the group. This is a personal favor for Merideth. Nothing more.”

  I could hear Wallace inhale through pursed lips before he said, “Do you mind waiting a day or so to call her? I should probably discuss this with Cassandra first. She has better instincts about these things than I do. Cara’s not as…strong as she appears sometimes. She has some…vulnerabilities. This Grand Canyon episode is one of them. It may end up that we decide to ask you to leave her out of this.”

  “Whatever you decide. I don’t mean to cause any upset.”

  He sighed. “The fallout from that Grand Canyon trip…I thought it was over. Healed wounds? Ancient family history? That was wishful thinking, I guess. You know?” I did know about those things—buried things that refuse to stay buried. “Cassandra and I were hoping that she’d…recovered. Then a week ago she was in tears with her mom about it again. And now…you want to talk with her.

  “Whatever happened on that trip was…difficult for Cara. That girl disappearing? She just vanished, Alan. That was bad enough, but the aftermath with her friends? It was so divisive. Cara was a wreck when she got back to L.A. Broke up with a boy she’d been serious about. She took a semester off at school. Went back into therapy.”

  “I’m sorry. I knew the girl went missing back then, but other than that I’m in the dark about what happened. I will certainly wait to hear back from you before I do anything else.”

  “You’re sure this isn’t about a story, right? Because if it is, the answer is a definite no—I would not want you to talk with Cara.”

  “Merideth is as reluctant to have any of this go public as you are.”

  “I appreciate hearing that. And yes—we mostly call her Cara. The family does, anyway. In Los Angeles she’s Mel. She says Carmel is too…something. Provincial? Cassandra and I messed that up, I guess. Anyway, I’ll give you a call after we talk.”

  “I’m in New York with Jonas, so call me on my cell. He’s visiting his…aunt and uncle. I’m staying close by in case things go south.”

  “Got it. Your number’s here on Cassandra’s list. I’ll be in touch. Good luck with Jonas. Our hearts go out to that kid. Anything we can do, you know…”

  “Thanks, Wallace. One more thing, if you don’t mind—who was the other person who brought up the Grand Canyon with Carmel recently?”

  “It was someone else who was there, in the canyon. A guy, maybe. It upset Cara. He said something to Cassandra about a video, I think. Sorry.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Merideth phoned me from a restaurant in Midtown that was a few blocks from Ottavia’s apartment. She’d excused herself from a business lunch and was calling me from outside the bathroom.

  “Meet me in fifteen minutes? I want to tell you what I’m thinking.”

  The tone of the summons felt familiar. I went anyway.

  I spotted her on the sidewalk, walked up behind her. “Merideth,” I said. I’d been outdoors for less than ten minutes, had walked only three blocks. I was sweating from pores I never used in Colorado, not even during a long summer bike ride.

  I thought that even my ears were sweating.

  Merideth pirouetted as though she’d known I was there and had been waiting for her cue. She air-kissed my left cheek. “I think she’s dead,” she whispered, declining to bother with a segue.

  “Lisa?” I said. Oh my God.

  “No. God, no. The girl from that camping trip. It has to have something to do with Lisa…leaving.”

  I took a half-step back. I asked, “Do you have a reason to think she’s dead?”

  Merideth tightened her jaw. “I’m not one of your patients.”

  I altered my voice, trying to find something less compassionate. “You’re afraid the woman is dead?”

  She nodded.

  “Did you learn something new? Or is it…just a feeling?”

  “It’s just a feeling. But don’t—”

  “Assuming you’re right”—experience had taught me that conversations went better with Merideth when I assumed she was right—“why would what happened back then have anything to do with Lisa—”

  She said, “Eric and Lisa were there. That’s all I have. That, and a bad feeling. I don’t get it often, but when I do, I trust it. I got it about us at the end.”

  “Okay,” I said. I would grant her the point. The set. Even the match, if it meant we didn’t have to go back and relive our ending.

  She held her mobile aloft. “My car’s on the other side of the block. It’s penned in by traffic. Walk with me.”

  A traffic blockade could last a minute in Midtown, or it could last twenty. We walked. I told her about my conversation with Wallace.

  She said, “You have to talk with Carmel.” Her voice was composed. She was coming up with an action plan. “Convince Wallace. Or ignore Wallace. Just talk with her. Find out what
happened back then. Find out what’s happening now. See what you can learn about that girl. See if she can help me find Lisa.”

  “I won’t speak with her against Wallace’s wishes, Merideth.”

  “Then persuade him. You’re good at it.”

  Compliment or accusation? I wondered. “I will do what I can,” I said.

  Did I mean it? The truth was I wanted to get Jonas and fly back to Colorado. I was ready to pretend that I had a viable practice, a stable family, and that my life had a satisfying, slightly boring routine.

  I wanted to see the dogs. I wanted to be in Spanish Hills at dusk to watch the sun shred into gold and red embers that tinted the high clouds above the Divide.

  “Did you call Sam Purdy for me?” she asked.

  I wanted to see Sam, too. I missed him.

  I considered lying to Merideth. But I wasn’t eager to raise any suspicion with her that Sam and I were avoiding each other. She could be tenacious when she smelled conflict—at least conflict that didn’t involve her. I didn’t lie. I said, “I was hoping it wouldn’t be necessary to bring him in. I thought I’d try Carmel first. I…I never expected this to get so complicated.”

  “It’s necessary. Okay? Please give him a call.”

  “Why not hire a private detective, Merideth? A firm.”

  “I told you that I want somebody from out of town. Somebody discreet.”

  “Hire somebody from out of town. I think that anyone who’s good will be discreet. That’s what they do.”

  “I’m hiring somebody from out of town—Sam. What’s going on with you, Alan? You have a problem with him?”

  “No,” I said. “But before I call him, I want to see what you have. Whatever is giving you the feeling the girl is dead. Lexis-Nexis. I don’t care.”

  She sighed. “That’s it? Then you’ll call Sam?”

  I immediately wondered what else I should have asked for. “Yes.”

  “I’ll messenger it over.”

  We got to her Town Car, still stuck in traffic. A cement mixer was parked on one side, emptying its load. A double-parked FreshDirect truck, steam pouring from its engine, was on the other. I opened the back door of the car for her. I said, “I’ll walk from here.” As soon as I said it, I realized she hadn’t planned to offer me a ride.