***
Hobbs parked her car and reached the lobby of the police precinct just before the downpour. She could hear the rain tapping on the roof as she made her way to her desk and it reminded her of puddle jumping with her brothers in grade school. She was from Kansas – part of a large family inhabiting a patch of farmland in a town with one traffic light. When it had rained, Hobbs and her brothers would grab their slickers and boots and chase each other over grass and pasture land in the deluge. Perhaps this was why she loved the rain so much, the metallic smell of a storm, the current of distant lightning.
“Um…Detective Hobbs?” a voice said.
Hobbs had been sitting at her desk and staring down at her phone, absorbing nothing in particular. The voice was young and cautious, and when Hobbs turned around, she saw one of their newly hired officers behind her – a petite red-haired woman named Rochelle.
“Yes?”
“Sorry to interrupt. I wanted to let you know that the cell phone records arrived. I put them in the conference room.”
Hobbs nodded her acknowledgement and got up from her desk. In the conference room, there were a few stacks of papers – records for Tuck, Greta, Griffin and John. She took a seat and got to work.
An hour later, Ray Martinez showed up. He pulled up a chair next to her and pointed to the largest of the stacks of paper. “Hey partner. Are those the cell phone and text records?”
Hobbs smiled. “Yes. Those are Griffin Brock’s.”
“Have you gone through them yet?”
“No I haven’t. Still sorting through Greta’s. Knock yourself out.”
Martinez smiled back and pulled the top paper from the pile. They didn’t say another word to each other until the late morning.
***
The rain had completely abated by the time of their meeting with the Captain, and everything outside his office window looked like it was gleaming – the green tops of trees just starting to brown, the reflective glint from other buildings in their one-block radius of downtown Vetta Park. Even the Arch – visible only if she squinted and mentally connected silver patches – looked as though it was shining after a fresh wash.
“What have you got for me?” Weaver asked. He shifted in his seat and clasped his hands together.
Hobbs brought her gaze away from the window. She glanced at Martinez and then down at her notepad. The page that she’d set aside for all of her notes was nearly empty.
“We didn’t find much,” she said. “Greta’s cell phone has been turned off or discarded. We can’t track it. She hasn’t sent out any text messages or calls since they left. The few texts on her phone from before their departure aren’t meaningful. No indication that the family was in trouble or about to leave.”
“What about Tuck’s cell phone?”
“Well, yesterday a forensics team went through the house very carefully and did a second sweep. They found Tuck’s phone underneath the bed. So obviously, no texts have come from him since the family left.”
Weaver sat forward. “So Greta is presumably the only one who has a cell phone with her?”
“Correct.”
Weaver paused and looked up at the ceiling, deliberating. Whenever they got a piece of news or evidence that didn’t quite seem right, Weaver would take a deep breath and look skyward, exposing the fuzzy white stubble on his upper neck while he thought.
After she’d taken the call from forensics, Hobbs had done nearly the same thing – head held aloft, torso frozen while she thought. It was one thing to have John’s cell phone thoughtlessly left behind, but now Tuck’s as well? It was as though whoever was on the other end of the burner phone had instructed them to leave their devices behind – and the absence of Greta’s phone in the house made Hobbs wonder whether the woman had tacitly snuck hers along. At some future point in their searching, perhaps the Detectives would receive a ping from Greta’s phone – like a honing device that painted a rhumb from Vetta Park to their whereabouts.
“What about incoming texts to their cell phones?” Weaver asked. “Surely some messages have come their way.”
Martinez fielded the question this time. “Well…a few texts have come in – all to John. Those might be the best we have to go on.”
“Hmmm.” Weaver scratched his head and sat back in his chair. “Before we get to John, talk to me about the ex-husband. Griffin Brock. Anything interesting there?”
“We learned that Griffin is a grade-A asshole,” Martinez said. “Maybe we knew that already. There were no texts to, from, or about the Carpenter family – or John. Just a lot of flirtatious messages to various phone numbers. Maybe they were all to his pregnant wife but I doubt it. And there were a lot of disparaging and off-color texts too. The guy seems like a piece of work.”
“I see,” Weaver said. He thought about this for a few moments and then said, “Alright…so talk to me about John Brock.”
Hobbs cleared her throat. “John Brock. No outgoing texts from before he left. But he did receive three texts from a guy named Tai Gausman. A few weeks ago, Tai asked John to meet up to go to a rock concert. And then, after getting no response, he asked again on September 7 – the date of the disappearance, and then asked John where he was on September 12. Since then, he’s apparently given up.”
“Track down Tai and go knock on his door.”
“I’ve already located his address, Captain. It’s five miles south of here. Martinez and I were going to visit him after this meeting.”
“Take Adams with you instead,” Weaver instructed.
Hearing Adams’s name made Hobbs shudder. It was a reflex – one she hoped would go unnoticed. The thought of her on an assignment with Adams bothered her. The demarcation of professional from personal would be erased; the appearance of propriety would be tougher to maintain.
She decided to protest – lightly. “Captain, I asked Adams to take a look at the traffic files downstairs. I think Greta filed a report with the station about a traffic accident maybe ten years ago – and then she may have changed her mind about what she said the next day. Adams is looking into the files as we speak.”
“Roberta, it isn’t your responsibility to ferry out assignments. Rochelle can dig through the files. Lt. Adams is a good interviewer and young people have a strong rapport with him.”
Weaver’s voice was unusually stern and his eyes were narrowed and fixed at Hobbs as he spoke. The issue was not up for debate. Hobbs nodded her assent and Martinez concluded.
“Nothing else of interest turned up,” he said. “That’s all we’ve got.”
“Meaning you’ve got jack shit,” Weaver clarified. “And we had a few guys search the home again and they found jack shit too. Not one shred of evidence.”
Weaver smacked his desk with his fist. “We’ve got no bank or credit card activity since they left. The officer who went to Marcia Brock’s funeral saw no sign or mention of the family. The cell phone records are useless. No reliable tip has come through our tip line. I mean, what…did the earth open up and swallow them up?”
Hobbs shrugged even though she knew the question was meant to be rhetorical.
Weaver continued. “And now you say that Greta Brock provided a statement about a traffic accident a decade ago and then changed her story?”
Hobbs nodded.
“Are you serious with this? What, did this float down to you in a dream?”
Hobbs pressed her lips together and said nothing.
Weaver sighed heavily. “In my twenty years, I don’t think a case has ever provided so little to go on.”
“I know, Captain,” Hobbs said.
“Good luck with Tai,” Weaver said. “I hope you guys find something.”
***
Tai Gausman was spraying water at his pickup truck when the Vetta Park police showed up. Lanky and gruff-looking, he wore a green-checked, flannel shirt and loose jeans that hung from his frame.
Hobbs and Adams showed up in her unmarked car, but Tai seemed to recognize law enforcemen
t when he saw it. He turned off his hose – although he tightened his grip on it – and stiffened as he watched them approach.
“Are you Tai Gausman?” Hobbs asked. She had seen a mug shot of him from a previous narcotics arrest and he looked about the same.
“Yeah, that’s me,” Tai said. “What’s up?”
“My name is Detective Hobbs and this is Lieutenant Adams. We’re here to talk to you about John Brock.”
Tai gave them a half-smile. He walked towards the front of his one-story ranch house and pointed at two plastic chairs arranged on the concrete just in front of his front door. “Do y’all want to have a seat?” he asked. “My ma’s inside so we should stay out here.”
“We can stand right here. It’s fine,” Adams said.
Tai smiled vaguely again – as though he were indulging in an inside joke with himself – and dropped into one of the seats. “I guess I’ll sit down if none of y’all will,” he said.
“Tai, when is the last time you saw John Brock?” Hobbs asked.
“Is he in some kinda trouble?” Tai asked, squinting up at her.
Hobbs shook her head. “We’re not sure. That’s why we’re hoping you can help us out.”
“Uh,” Tai said – a grunted acknowledgement. He bowed forward in his chair, carefully fingering the laces of his sneakers with his head bent. This motion provided Hobbs with a view of his lower back. There were two tattoos – one a black cross, the other a black cat. There were also several red pimples poking through his skin. Hobbs swallowed and looked away.
“I can’t really help you out,” Tai said, pulling himself up and sitting back in the chair. “I ain’t seen him in a few years.”
“Did you call or text him recently?” Adams asked.
“Yeah, Legends of Death was playing at the Ampitheater. They’re a band. I thought he’d want to go but I didn’t hear back from him. Not too surprised.”
“How did you meet John?”
“We were in study hall and then we both dropped out of Vetta High at the same time – tenth grade I guess.”
“Why’d you drop out?”
“There wasn’t much for us, you know. The teachers just thought we was dumbasses or something.”
Hobbs took out her notepad and scribbled a few notes. “Was John able to read and write?” she asked, recalling her conversation with Richard Carpenter, John’s distant step-uncle.
“He could read but not much. Although he wasn’t dumb or nothin’.”
Hobbs stopped scrawling, looked up and asked, “Why did you stop hanging out with John?”
“It wasn’t me, it was him. I heard he got his ass kicked by a bunch of guys and then he avoided me after that even though I didn’t have nothin’ to do with it. At one point, I thought he moved away, but then I drove by his house and saw his car…so he’s still there. Or least, he was.”
“You’re saying he was beat up by a bunch of guys?” Adams asked.
“Yessir.”
“Who? And why?”
“I don’t have a freaking clue, officer. Maybe he pissed off the wrong kind of people. Maybe he looked at someone the wrong way. It don’t take much, does it?” Tai shifted forward, snatched a tiny circular object from his back pocket, and placed a wad of chewing tobacco in his left cheek.
Hobbs took a step back. “Do you know approximately when this incident happened?”
Tai excused himself, jogged inside his house and emerged with a yellow plastic cup. He spat into the cup and cleared his throat. “Sorry. Say what?”
“When John was attacked. Can you let us know approximately when that happened?”
Tai thought as his jaw rocked slightly. A few moments later he said, “I guess 2015…maybe spring?” He spat again.
“And was he hospitalized?” Hobbs pressed.
Tai shrugged. “I dunno. Like I said, he stopped hangin’ out with me and then someone told me he got his ass kicked in. I didn’t see it happen, so I can’t tell you no more about it. Sorry.”
A petite older woman jogged through the front of the house, slammed the front door behind her and positioned herself in between Tai and the police. She had long, gray-flecked greasy hair and pockmarked skin. She eyed Hobbs and Adams and then kicked one of Tai’s chair legs. “What’s goin’ on?” she demanded.
“Jesus, Mom. They was just asking me about John Brock!” Tai looked into his cup and then spat.
The woman kicked his chair leg again and then turned to face Adams. “Y’all ain’t allowed to talk to him unless he’s got his lawyer!” she yelled at Adams, her head angled back, her chin jutted forward. She was angry, but she looked diminutive next to Adams, and her chin – even extended to its fullest -- reached no higher than his neck.
“I’m sorry ma’am,” Adams said. “We were just leaving.” He waved to Tai – who was by then fully engrossed in his ritual of chewing, examining and spitting, and who failed to return the gesture.
In the car, Adams drove while Hobbs summarized what they learned. John Brock was a high school dropout, who was attacked at the age of sixteen for – most likely – pissing off the wrong kind of guys.
Hobbs felt a sense of apprehension but also a dose of relief as they made their way back to the station. At long last, their mystery had a path forward.
Chapter Ten
January 25, 2009
Greta waited patiently in the school counselor’s office of Edwardsville Elementary. After ten minutes passed, a young woman hurried into the room with a stack of papers in her hand. “I’m so sorry I’m late,” the woman said. When she held out her hand to shake Greta’s, silver and gold bracelets jangled on her arm. “My name is Brooke Tremble,” the counselor said. “Thanks so much for meeting with me, Mrs. Brock.”
“It’s Ms.,” Greta clarified – perhaps a bit too hastily. “My husband and I – John’s dad – are going through a divorce.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” Brooke said. “I know that can’t be easy.”
“We’ve been separated for four years, so we’re all used to it by now,” Greta said. She thought about the first time she knew with absolute certainty that she would be ending their marriage – the night she’d witnessed the car accident. What she had thought would be a quick break ended up being a slow churn. She hadn’t wanted to confront Griffin with a divorce, and surprisingly, she didn’t have to. The marriage could decay on its own accord through attrition.
For months after the car accident, Greta barely spoke to Griffin. She couldn’t shake the anger she felt about his quiet inner life – the secrets about his associates and work activities that he kept from her. She knew there were secrets about other women too – smells of perfume and lavender lotion that lingered on his clothes when she was doing the laundry.
The best way to avoid a confrontation was to disassociate from him, to view him as the occasional co-parent who shared a bed with her but satisfied his craving for intimacy elsewhere.
So Greta avoided Griffin and he acted like he didn’t notice. Initially, on the occasions they ate meals together and were forced to interact, they talked about John – always about John. Most of their earlier conversations followed the same cycle. She would express her worries about John and he would brush them aside, accuse Greta of excessive mothering and the conversation would end. After a few months of this, Greta learned they could quite civilly interact with each other as long as the topic was the weather, traffic or the St. Louis Cardinals. Such an untenable situation lasted for four years. They were separated while still living in the same house – living a life that could have been fodder for dramatic or comedic cinema except that they evaded instead of fought with each other.
One evening in the summer of 2008, Griffin came home and announced that he wanted to make it official. In quick succession, he hired a lawyer, moved out of their Avery Place home, and agreed to see John one weekend every other month.
This was a workable arrangement, and Greta was at first buoyed by the new set of circumstances. The eggshell
s she had so painstakenly tottered across for years were finally gone. She could decorate the house as she wished – speak as openly as she wanted about anything – even if she was just addressing the walls or a child who was too young to understand her. Everything seemed like it was moving in a positive direction – her life was finally moving forward – until two developments shattered her sanguine shell.
First came the realization that Griffin wasn’t going to provide any child support. For him, moving on was both an emotional and a physical state, and he didn’t want a schedule of monthly payments tethering him to his former life. Greta responded by taking out a loan in her own name and then retaining the counsel of Lucroy, Broxton & Hill. After four years of polite hostility, Brock vs. Brock was shaping up to be a battle.
The other shoe to drop was the phone call from the school. At age nine, and despite various well-intentioned interventions, John Brock was still unable to read and write. The school psychologist tested John for learning disabilities and then phoned Greta to come in and discuss the results. This is how Greta found herself in Brooke Tremble’s tiny office on a cold day in January – shivering slightly in her seat at the conference table and waiting to hear the results.
***
“John is quite a smart boy.” Brooke said. She addressed Greta while sorting through her stack of papers and pitching a few of them in front of Greta.
“None of us were surprised that his IQ was above average,” Brooke continued, with a smile. “So you should be happy about that.”
Greta nodded. “I’m not surprised.”
Brooke’s smile quickly faded and she gave Greta a look of concern. “However, with the academic testing, we saw that he was unable to decode letters – assigning sounds to assemble words. He wasn’t able to read a simple first-grade text. Usually he would take the first letter of a word and wildly guess what it said. He had great difficulty with selecting rhyming words, he wasn’t able to follow multi-step directions and he skipped some words altogether. In his writing prompt, he mixed up and reversed letters, avoided punctuation, spacing and capitalization, and almost everything he wrote was indecipherable – not only by the testing administrator but by John himself. He can’t read his own writing.”
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