Dear Wife

by Kimberly Belle

  My gaze sticks to a figure at the far edge of the lot. She’s everything a woman in a neighborhood like this one is not supposed to be: alone, half-hidden behind a holly bush, completely oblivious to her surroundings. Her head is down, her thumbs flying across her phone, and even from all the way across the lot I can tell she’s a perfect mark. Designer bag slung over her shoulder, a honker of a diamond on her finger. The stone winks in the afternoon sunlight, along with matching ones in each ear.

  A car slows alongside her, and one by one, the hairs on the back of my neck soldier to a stand.

  “Look up, lady. Look up look up look up,” I say into my empty car. No way she can hear me, but still. I say it loud and with authority, like anyone who’s ever taken a self-defense class would know to do. Straight punch to the throat, knee-kick to the groin, elbow in the nose. Basic moves, simple techniques every woman should have in her arsenal, both potent and effective.

  But this woman doesn’t look up, doesn’t even glance at the car. Las Tortas Locas is apparently a hotbed for criminal activity, and she might as well have hung a sign over her head, advertising herself as easy prey.

  “Shit, lady. Come on.”

  The car is completely stopped now, and I spot two shadowed figures behind the opaque windows who are not here for the taco special. I know it with everything inside me—my queasy stomach, my itchy skin, a cell-deep awareness that something is about to happen.

  Something bad.

  My fingers wander to my steering wheel, the heel of my hand hovering over the horn, while my brain shuffles through the scenarios. Leaning on the horn might scare off the bad guys and save the woman’s jewels, but it might also get me noticed. It would mean her asking my name, noting my license plate, looking at me as a hero or worse: a witness. Beth Murphy’s life would be over before it even began. This lady needs saving, but dammit, so do I.

  The passenger’s door swings open, and a man steps out. Pale skin, slouchy jeans, faded and ripped gray sweatshirt. No, not a man, a kid, tall and lanky, all shiny face and silly-putty limbs, probably no more than fourteen. He leaves the door open, and if that’s not a getaway move, I don’t know what is.

  He stalks straight at her, and I scream into my car, “Put down the stupid phone!”

  But as hard as I try, I can’t make my hand press on the horn.

  And so I sit, watching from fifty feet away while the kid whips out a gun and mugs her in broad daylight. Purse, phone, diamonds, watch, bracelets—she hands over everything with frantic, shaking hands. He forces her to the ground, his body language commanding her to hurry. She sputters and sobs but she obeys, lying flat with both hands shielding the back of her head. Behind him, the car’s tires squeal and smoke, and the kid lunges with his loot through the still-open door. The entire episode takes all of sixty seconds.

  As soon as the parking lot is quiet again, the woman clambers to her feet. “Help! Somebody help me. Help!”

  I tell myself it’s fine, that she’s fine. Scared and shaken, maybe, her white jeans smudged where they made contact with the dirty asphalt. But otherwise, everybody is fine. Everybody but me, trapped here in this lot. The woman is standing between me and the only exit.

  A gaggle of sorority types push out the restaurant’s double doors, talking and laughing. They hear the woman’s cries and stop on the concrete, their happy expressions falling into surprise.

  “I was robbed!” the woman screams at them. “He pointed a gun at my head and he took my wedding ring. He took everything. Oh my God, don’t just stand there. Somebody call the police!”

  A tall blonde pulls out a cell phone, and I eyeball the curb height to the street, trying to judge if it’s too high for the Buick to plow over without blowing out a tire. Would the women even notice? Would they jot down my license plate and hand it to the cops as a potential witness?

  And what if I don’t leave, then what? What will I say when the police find me sitting here, hiding in my car? I glance at the clock on the dash. Less than ten minutes until I’m supposed to meet Jorge. Even if I ditched my car and ran, I’d never make it on time.

  The women are all babbling now, gesturing and talking over each other, their expressions tight with the near miss, and guilt pushes up from somewhere deep inside me. All my life, I’ve believed in karma, in the universal principle of cause and effect. Do good, and good comes to you. Do bad, and... Well, you better watch your back.

  And today I stood by and watched a woman get mugged.

  What does the universe have in store for me now?

  * * *

  The women storm inside, and I start the car and drive as fast as I dare, squealing into the strip mall Jorge directed me to a full six minutes late. I pray Jorge’s not a punctual guy, the type who doesn’t tolerate clients who show up later than promised. Then again, I am the client, and I’m guessing the black market ID business must by definition remain fluid. In the grand scope of things, six minutes isn’t all that long.

  I step out of my car and scan the half dozen storefronts. Jorge didn’t give me anything other than an address, so which one? Discount stores and carnicerías, a cell phone shop, a smashed window covered in butcher paper. And then at the far end, I spot a single word: fotográfico. I slam the door and hurry to the store.

  Inside, the place is tiny—a shoebox of a room with a camera on a tripod, a register counter and not much else. Jorge is waiting for me by the register, beside a man he introduces as Emmanuel, no last name. Emmanuel demands six dollars in cash, then points me to a grubby white wall. “Stand there. No smile.”

  Emmanuel is a man of few words, but he gets the job done. There’s a blinding flash, and by the time the spots have cleared from my vision, two passport-size pictures are rolling out of his printer.

  While Emmanuel cuts them into tiny squares, Jorge hands me a piece of paper and a pen. “Write down name, birth date, height, weight and address. You can use fake ones if you want.”

  “Do your customers ever use real ones?”

  He shrugs his linebacker shoulders. “Don’t know. Don’t care.”

  I write Beth’s full name across the top of the paper, dredging up a middle name on the spot—Louise, a character from some book I just read. I give Beth two extra years, born on February 20, 1983. She’s my height, five foot eight, but I tack on a few pounds. The best way to hide in plain sight, I’ve decided, is to put some more meat on my bones with a strict pizza, doughnut, hamburger and french fry diet. Her address is the one for Morgan House.

  I hand the paper back to Jorge, and he holds out a meaty palm.

  “Three-fifty, right?”

  He grunts. “Funny.”

  I contemplate the wisdom of forking over the money now, before I’ve gotten my ID cards, but I’m not exactly in a position of power here. I slap the three hundred and seventy-five dollars I already peeled off my stash into his hand. Jorge counts it, then counts it again.

  “What’s your number?” he says, pulling out his phone.

  I open my mouth, then stop myself just in time. The only number I know by heart is my real number, for the phone sitting at the bottom of a trash can back in Arkansas. My new number, the one for the prepay phone in my back pocket, is a blank. I haven’t memorized it yet.

  “I...I don’t remember.”

  Jorge heaves a sigh that reeks of cheese and jalapeño, and the look he gives me says “amateur.” He rattles off a string of numbers that I realize too late is for his cell phone.

  “Hang on, hang on.” I fumble for my phone, and he repeats the numbers, this time slower while I type them in. I hit Send, and his cell phone lights up in his hand.

  He flips it so I can see. “Your number. I call you when ready.”

  “How long?”

  He lifts a meaty shoulder. “Thirty minute. Maybe more. Wait at Sonic up the road.”

  It is seventy-three eternal minutes before a shiny black SUV rolls into the Sonic parking lot. I watch from my table by the window as a man who is definitely not Jorge�
��too dark, much too skinny—slides out. He looks up and down the parking lot like a villain on an episode of Cops, then tucks a manila envelope under the Buick’s windshield wiper and hustles back into his car. By the time I make it outside, the man is long gone.

  I pluck the envelope from the windshield and drop into my car, my fingers shaking as I slide my nail under the flap. I jiggle the envelope upside down, and two small squares drop onto my lap. One is paper, a social security card with a bright yellow sign here sticker. The other is plastic, a driver’s license that looks as real as any I’ve ever seen. I examine it, turning it back and forth in a shaft of sunlight, and the hologram Georgia seal brightens and fades. The signature is not mine, but it’s generic enough that with a little practice, I can duplicate it. Other than that, it’s perfect. Beth Louise Murphy is legit.

  My cell phone rings with a number I recognize as Jorge’s cell. I pick up to the sound of chewing.

  “You get ID?”

  “I did get ID, thank you.” I toss the cards on the passenger’s seat and start the car. “They look great. Totally real.”

  He grunts, a sound I take to mean you’re welcome. “Listen, you have friends who need ID, you send them to Jorge. Fifty dollar every friend.”

  And there it is, I think as I ease the Buick into traffic. What Martina wanted from me.

  MARCUS

  The Pine Bluff Police Department is housed in a squat, one-story complex on East Eighth Avenue, blinding white stucco against a sprawling green lawn. The place is a dump, dingy walls and scuffed linoleum floors, but on a bright note, we’re understaffed enough that the detectives get their own private rooms. They’re cramped and stuffy, but they’re a million times better than a desk in the bull pen they surround.

  Jeffrey and Ingrid arrive a full twelve minutes late, and just like yesterday, the two are practically vibrating with animosity. He opens the door for her but only because I’m watching, prompting a thanks she doesn’t want to give. These two people detest each other, and I want to know why.

  I gesture for them to follow. “This way.”

  I usher them through the rowdy bull pen to the open door of my office. “Have a seat,” I say, gesturing to the twin chairs across from my desk, but only Ingrid sinks into one. Jeffrey is frozen just outside the door. He pokes his head into the room, and his relief when he sees it’s an office is palpable. The sucker thought this was going to be an interrogation room. I raise a brow, and reluctantly, he steps inside, sinks into a chair.

  I round my desk and drop into mine. “We found Sabine’s car.”

  “What?” the two say in unison, their voices high and wild.

  “Omigod, where?” Ingrid says. “When? And that’s good news, right? It means you have some idea which way she went.”

  I don’t shake my head, but I don’t nod, either. A car is not necessarily good news, especially one like Sabine’s—undamaged and untouched. So far, the only DNA we’ve found on it is hers.

  “The car was parked at the far end of the Super1 lot on East Harding. According to the security footage, she walked through the door yesterday at 1:49 p.m. Ten minutes later, she purchased a loaf of bread, some sliced turkey and cheese, and a lemonade. She paid with her ATM card and was out the door by 2:03 p.m. The cameras don’t cover the entire parking lot, unfortunately, so we lost her soon after.”

  Ingrid scoots to the front edge of her seat. “I don’t understand. You’re saying she never made it back to her car?”

  “It sure looks that way. We searched the lot and trash cans for the groceries, without any luck. Somebody could have picked them up, or maybe she took them with her.”

  “With her where?” Ingrid shakes her head. “What are you saying, exactly?”

  “You both mentioned you talked to Sabine—” I flip through my notes, pausing to find the right page. “Ingrid at 10:45 a.m. and Jeffrey...” I look up, meeting his gaze. “You didn’t actually tell me a time.”

  “I was at the Atlanta airport, boarding a flight.”

  “The DL 2088, I know.”

  Jeffrey told me he talked to Sabine as he was boarding his flight, but he didn’t say which one. He didn’t even mention the airline. I did a little digging.

  “The flight left Atlanta at 11:30 a.m,” I say, “so boarding would have been what, a half hour earlier?”

  He nods, shifting in his chair. “Yeah, eleven sounds about right. I can pull it up on my call log if you need the exact time and duration.”

  I ignore his offer, turning to Ingrid instead. “In either of these conversations with Sabine, did she mention where she was going?”

  Jeffrey shakes his head, but Ingrid nods. “She was on her way to the office.”

  I frown. Not the answer I was expecting. “This particular Super1 is nowhere near her work. I checked with her office, and she didn’t have any showings that morning. Only a staff training later in the afternoon at the office, which she missed.”

  “Oh, she had a showing, all right,” Jeffrey says, his voice thick with sarcasm and something else. Anger, for sure. Disgust, too. And more than a little pain.

  Ingrid looks over with a frown.

  “Sabine was coming from the hospital.” His lip curls into an ugly sneer. “Her lover told me she dropped by for a little conjugal visit.”

  I lean back in my chair. By now I know about the affair. Dr. McAdams already told me, tripping all over himself in his hurry for a face-to-face, a million questions disguised as a statement. The poor guy is desperate for answers, almost too desperate to be believable. “Well, if she was coming from the hospital, the route makes more sense. She could have stopped to buy herself a late lunch.”

  “And then what?” Ingrid squirms on her chair, clutching her hands. “Where did she go next?”

  “Well, it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility that Sabine left on her own accord, that she got into a car with a colleague or a friend, but my gut says no. For one thing, she wouldn’t have left her cell phone behind. We found it in the car, charging in the cup holder. I was hoping one of you could identify it for us.” I pull an evidence bag from my desk drawer, holding it up to show the Samsung smartphone inside.

  Ingrid releases a loud, relieved breath. “That’s not Sabine’s. Are you sure the car you found is the right one? Maybe you made a mistake.”

  Again, not the answer I was expecting. The phone was found in Sabine’s locked car. Who else’s could it be? “Are you positive? We haven’t been able to check it. Not without the code.”

  “One hundred percent,” Ingrid says. “Sabine has an iPhone. A white one. The newest model.”

  I look to Jeffrey for confirmation. “It’s true, she does have an iPhone.” He stabs a finger at the Samsung. “But that’s probably her burner phone.”

  Ingrid’s face whips to his. “What the hell are you talking about? Sabine doesn’t have a burner phone. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Yes, Ingrid. She does. The one that for the past five months, she’s been using to talk to her lover.” Ingrid twitches, and his smile is a mix of mean and condescending. “Looks like she doesn’t quite tell you everything, does she?”

  Ingrid slumps in the chair, and Jeffrey turns to me. “Dr. Trevor McAdams, Chief Obstetrician at Jefferson Regional Hospital. I believe you spoke with him last night. I’m guessing if you crack the code on that phone, every number on the call log will be his.”

  “Try 8-2-6–6-3-7,” Ingrid mumbles. “It’s the one she uses for her iPhone.”

  I pluck a plastic glove from the box on the sill, wriggle my hand inside, then shove it in the bag and tick in the code. The log-in dissolves into a colorful home screen with neat columns of apps. The icon for phone has a bright red number in the top right corner, twenty-three missed calls. I tap it, and they’re all from the same number, which matches the one scribbled on my pad. “You were right. It’s the number for Dr. McAdams’s cell.”

  Ingrid shifts in her chair with a huff.

  I reseal the bag, peel off
the glove and drop both in my desk drawer. “This doesn’t explain where the iPhone is, though. We’ve put out a trace on that number, but we’re not finding anything. Looks like wherever it is, she’s turned it off. And according to her bank, the transaction at the Super1 was the last purchase she made. She hasn’t used her credit card or ATM card since. There were also no big withdrawals in the weeks before, which tells me she wasn’t planning on making a run for it.”

  “Of course she wasn’t,” Ingrid says. “Sabine wouldn’t run, not without telling me.” Sometime in the past few minutes, she’s started to cry. Her face is messy with it—red eyes; mottled cheeks; swollen, dripping nose. She sniffs and swipes at it with a sleeve. “So, what now? Where do we look next?”

  “Well, we’ve begun questioning Super1 staff who were working Wednesday’s shift. We’re hopeful that one of them saw something out of the ordinary, or maybe someone out of the ordinary. I’ve also put out an APB for anyone matching Sabine’s description, which means we’ve got a lot more than just our eyes looking for her. We’re going through her bank records, her credit card usage, anything that will help us trace her movements. We’ll be interviewing her friends, her colleagues, all the people in her life—and before you ask, that includes Dr. McAdams—and we’ll be asking them the same question I’m asking you—where were you Wednesday afternoon, from 1:00 p.m. on?”

  An alibi. I’m asking them for an alibi.

  The two exchange a look.

  Ingrid folds her arms across her chest, her expression a mixture of insult and concern. “I work at home. I’m a virtual assistant. People pay me to arrange their schedules, type up reports, handle their social media. Things like that.”