Martina’s brows dip even farther, but I have no choice other than to snag my bucket and follow the Reverend up the stairs, trying to tamp down my heightened sense of paranoia. Why has he called me upstairs alone? Does he know about the fake ID, the fake social security card, the fake everything?
Judging from his friendly chatter, he doesn’t. We wind our way through the church while the Reverend talks nonstop about his book collection—instructional manuals on expository preaching, a collection of antique Bibles, an entire shelfful of Sermons for Dummies some jokester puts in his stocking every year at Christmas.
“The problem is, my parishioners are always forgetting to return whatever they borrow. Last year my wife put those From the library of stickers inside every book, but it’s still a fifty-fifty shot if I’ll ever see it again.”
“You could create a sign-out sheet,” I suggest as we approach the double doors to the executive offices. “You know, like libraries have. After two weeks, their time is up. They have to bring the book back or risk... I don’t know, eternal damnation or something.”
He laughs and opens the door. “I’m not beyond an infernal threat or two, if it means books stop disappearing from my shelf.”
Charlene is perched behind the receptionist’s desk, a phone pressed to her ear. She smiles as we come inside.
“But the sign-out sheet is a great idea,” he says, ushering me down the hall. “Do you think you could make me one?”
I look over to see if he’s serious, why he’s asking me, a cleaner, and not his secretary. I study his profile, searching for whatever motivation fueled his question, but I can’t find anything beyond a request for help. I tell myself to chill and keep my expression steady and warm. “Sure. I’d just need a computer and a printer.”
“You can use mine. My password’s ErwinGrace2.” His kids. He smiles, obviously proud. “Just don’t tell Erwin Four or he’ll get a big head.”
In his office, we spend a few minutes in front of his shelves, floor-to-ceiling slabs of glossy wood stuffed with religious books and icons. The Reverend wasn’t joking when he said they were a mess. Bibles mixed in with devotionals and sacred texts and history books and evangelical tomes, spread across multiple volumes. There’s no order as far as I can tell, no reasoning for the way some shelves are half-empty, and others crammed to bursting.
“Look at this one,” he says, pulling a raggedy book off a middle shelf. “This is the Andrews family Bible, purchased by my great-great-grandmother and given to her son, Erwin Jackson Andrews the first, on his wedding day.” He peels the leather cover open, flipping carefully through the yellowed pages to a colorful one at the back. A family tree, the branches reaching out like leafy fingers, ending in handwritten names and dates. Births, deaths, marriages. He taps two at the bottom. “Erwin’s sister, Grace, and Erwin Four. One day, God willing, they’ll pass this down to their kids.”
“They’re lucky to have such a beautiful heirloom,” I say. “This one deserves its own shelf. A middle one. With maybe a spotlight shining on it.”
“See? I knew I had the right person for the job.” A muffled melody sounds from somewhere deep in his pocket, and he hands me the Bible. “That’s my wife. Excuse me a minute, will you?”
He ducks into the hallway, and I carry the book to his desk, setting it gingerly next to his computer. I’m not entirely sure I believe in God, but maybe I believe in a greater power, in some sort of order to the chaos. That there might be a reason why the Reverend brought me up here, to a room armed with a computer and no one to look over my shoulder. Maybe this is the universe laying out the pieces I need to survive, fate pointing me the way.
All day long, I’ve been smuggling snippets of time in the bathroom, scrolling through news on the tiny screen of my phone, fretting about how the searches are eating up expensive data I can’t afford. And now here I stand, next to a computer I know the password to. The sneakier part of my brain kicks into gear, and my whole body tingles.
Or then again, maybe this is a test. Maybe the Reverend suspects me of violating his trust, and this is a chance to prove to him I’m worthy.
The Reverend’s voice is gone now, faded down the hall. I check my watch, think of Martina and Ayana downstairs, wiping germs off a million plastic toys. They’ll be busy for another hour or more, but how long do I have before the Reverend wraps up his call? Seconds, maybe; minutes if I’m lucky.
I fall into his chair, and my insides thrum, my heart beating on overdrive. I tell myself I’m doing nothing wrong, that popping onto the internet is not a crime. The Reverend is a kind, accommodating man. If I’d asked him for a few minutes to check the news from home, I’m almost certain he would have said yes.
I jiggle the mouse, type in the Reverend’s password, and the lock screen dissolves into a crisp image of the Church of Christ’s Apostles taken from above by a helicopter, maybe, or a drone. At its tallest peak, a golden cross gleaming in a cloudless blue sky.
I listen for the sound of people in the hall—footsteps, the clattering of keyboards, voices calling out or talking into a phone. Someone sneezes, but otherwise it’s quiet. Like everyone disappeared for lunch.
I pull up the internet and type in the words that have been playing all day in my head on repeat: Sabine Hardison missing.
I’m rewarded with thousands of hits, and I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. News travels fastest over the internet. If the story has bled across state lines, if it’s spread far enough to become a national news item on a major television network, then of course there’s plenty more online. CNN, Fox News, all the major networks have picked up on the story.
I scroll through the links, and a familiar title catches my eye. Mandy in the Morning. A taped episode promising dirt from Sabine’s sister and a lover—as usual, Mandy doesn’t mind speculating, and like the promos for her shows, the title on this one is complete clickbait. People in Pine Bluff love her, but I’ve never been a fan. I click instead on a link to the Pine Bluff Commercial, the local hometown newspaper. The article’s title, Police Search for Clues in Case of Missing Pine Bluff Woman, swims on the page.
A wave of nausea pushes up from the deepest part of me, and I breathe slow and steady and wait for the sensation to pass.
I surf around a little more, casting panicked glances at the empty doorway. As far as I can tell, the news sites are all reporting the same meager facts: last seen on Wednesday, car abandoned and unharmed, no clues, zero evidence or leads. After a few more articles, I realize I’m getting nowhere, learning nothing new. I need to go straight to the source.
With shaking fingers, I type in the address for Facebook, and the Reverend’s personal wall fills the screen. Inspirational Bible memes, pictures of food and vacation snapshots, an ad for an expensive pair of running shoes. I lean back in his chair, chewing at a thumbnail that reeks of bleach, chastising myself for prying into his private business. Maybe I should sign out of his profile, create a new, fake one for Beth, but I shove the idea aside as soon as I think of it. I don’t know the Reverend’s Facebook password, which means there’s no way I could sign him back in. No, better to leave the computer just like I found it, and with no trace I’ve ever been here.
“I am so going to hell for this,” I whisper.
On the Reverend’s Facebook profile, I pull up the page for the Pine Bluff Police Department.
Pinned to the top, a call for information pertaining to Sabine’s disappearance, another reference to the tip line. I scan the post, but it tells me nothing new. If the police have any evidence or leads, they’re not revealing them here.
I scroll farther down the page, past staff announcements and PSAs for the dangers of texting while driving, then pause on a post at the bottom of the page. Another call for information about Sabine, alongside a photograph and four little words, bursting like a bomb across my brain.
Missing woman feared dead.
Movement sounds in the hall, footsteps and a door banging against a wall, and the Reverend�
��s voice calls out. “Charlene, get Father Pete at Christ the King on the line for me, will you? I’ll be at my desk.”
Shit.
I fumble for the mouse and back frantically out of the site, closing down Explorer and returning to the desktop image of the church. The footsteps are moving closer, closer still, and I glance at the bookshelves, still full and unchanged, and realize I need a reasonable cover. I double click the icon for Microsoft Word, and underneath the desk, the computer churns and whirrs.
Shit.
I spring up from the chair, pluck a spray bottle and rag from the bucket, and give the desk a dousing, right as the Reverend walks in.
“You make any progress?” he says, glancing around at an office that is just as he left it. The bookshelves still stuffed with books. The printer still quiet. The answer, I’m thinking, is obvious.
I point at the screen with the bottle. “I think your computer’s stuck. It’s been trying to open Word since you left, and—oh, look, there it is. It’s working now.”
His smile bubbles up something unpleasant in my belly. “Good. But can I ask you to start on the shelves, so I can get behind my desk? I’m expecting a call any second now, and I need a file on my computer.”
Just then, right on cue, his desk phone rings.
With one last flourish of the rag, I step away from the desk. “All yours.”
He sinks into his chair and I move to the shelves, my heart banging in my chest like a war drum. I stare at the books and pretend to come up with a plan, trying not to eavesdrop on his conversation, something about a joint day of service at a downtown soup kitchen. I concentrate on the sound of his voice, the way it rises and falls when he talks, so I don’t have to think about my guilt for betraying his trust.
“I’ve still got the notes from last year somewhere,” he says as I’m emptying the first shelf, piling the books in neat but lopsided stacks across the floor. “I’ll dig them up and send them to you. Just give me a minute.”
Behind me, his fingers click across the keyboard, and that’s when it occurs to me.
I didn’t clear the browser history.
MARCUS
The Pine Bluff PD’s computer forensics unit is crammed in the lower back end of the building, in a windowless room that could do double duty as a broom closet. Jade, the unit’s sole employee, can barely move around the computers and monitors and the giant industrial-strength air conditioner shoved in one corner, blowing icy air over the overheated electronics. If Jade minds the cramped quarters or the frigid temps, she doesn’t complain. This job is a million times better than prison, which is where she was headed after she hacked her way into a national security program run out of Little Rock.
I rap a knuckle on the door frame, and Jade swivels in her chair. “Move some shit around and have a seat,” she says, gesturing to a chair piled three feet high, with files and unopened mail and a ratty pair of rain boots covered in mud. “I’m almost done here.”
Jade’s dishwater hair is shoved into a neat ponytail I’ve never seen her go without, her bangs hanging in frizzy chunks over glasses that were purchased last century. She’s wearing her usual uniform, a holdover from the eighties—mom jeans, an oversize sweater and giant neon earrings made of plastic. If I stopped her on the street, I’d think she was a schoolteacher or maybe a librarian, until she said something. She has the mouth of a sailor and the speech patterns of someone half her age.
I dump the junk on the floor and pull the chair closer to the desk. Six monitors are stacked up the wall on the other side of Jade’s head, and I try to make sense of what I’m seeing. Long lines of computer code crawling across the screens. Jade called me down here with promises of news of Jeffrey, but now that I’m here, I’m going to need a little additional help.
“What the hell is all this?”
“Magic,” Jade says, tapping the enter key. Somewhere under her desk, a printer whirrs to life.
She spins around, and her lips, coated in an unflattering coral, widen into a smile. “Okay, so first of all, we totally lucked out that Jeffrey’s cell phone account is with Verizon. Compared to all the others, they’re a breeze to get into.”
“Legally, I assume.”
“Well, duh. Arkansas, remember? No warrant necessary, especially once the folks at Verizon heard Sabine’s name. They didn’t push back, not even a little bit.”
There’s a but coming. I wait.
“Before you get too jazzed, I want to warn you that geographic location isn’t always one hundred percent accurate. Like, if we see your guy in a strip mall, for example, we won’t know if he’s in the coffee shop on one end or the dollar store on the other, or maybe even in the apartment complex next door.”
I think about the scenario Jeffrey stitched together for the afternoon his wife disappeared. Lunch at an Italian restaurant in Little Rock, followed by an hour, maybe more of alone time on the river. I don’t need Jade’s pings to be exact, only close enough to verify he was where he said he was—or not, and I’m betting on not. Jeffrey doesn’t strike me as the introspective type. A hundred bucks says he was somewhere else entirely.
“How close can you get?”
Jade shrugs. “Depends on the phone. Not all GPS chips are created equal, if you know what I mean. But even with an older model phone with a crappy chip, if your guy was, say, reading a book on a park bench by the river, we might get a ping that makes it look like he was standing knee-deep in the water, but at least we’d know he was where he said he was.”
“Was he?”
She grins. “No, he was not.”
That little shit. A familiar heat pulses in my chest, and my hands tighten into fists. This case might turn out to be a hell of a lot easier than I thought it would be.
“Are you familiar with microcells?” she asks, and I shake my head. “A microcell is a little box the cell phone companies install in order to augment service in busy places. Places like parking garages and shopping malls and office high-rises. Think of it like a mini cellular tower inside a building where you otherwise wouldn’t have the best reception. Microcells record highly precise location data. As long as your phone is on, I can see where you are, down sometimes to a few feet.”
“Are you saying what I think you are?”
“I don’t know. Do you think I’m suggesting he was in a building with a microcell?” She gives me a saucy smile. “Because he was.”
I want to reach across the desk, grab her by the ears and plant one on her. That two-hour hole in Jeffrey’s day? History.
She whips a paper from the printer, slaps it to the desk and flips it around so I can see. A map of Little Rock, covered in time stamps. She taps a finger to one, smack in the middle of the airport.
“I started at twelve o’clock, right before his plane landed in Little Rock, and tracked him until 6:00 p.m., two hours after the neighbor said she spotted him pulling into his driveway in Pine Bluff. The time stamps on this map are every ten minutes, but if you need me to narrow the time gap, I can do that. It’ll just take me a few minutes to print you a new one.”
“Walk me through this one first, and then I’ll decide.” I scan the paper, taking in the time stamps. “Looks like he was at the airport until quarter to one.”
“Correct—12:48 p.m., to be precise. He gets into a car, then heads west on 440 to 30 North. Just over the river, he takes exit 141B.” She taps the spot with a short-clipped nail.
The next ping is a block away. I squint at the letters on the page. “What’s on Olive Street?”
“Vinny’s Little Italy. This isn’t the microcell yet, by the way. These are all pings from a cell tower.”
I nod, studying the map. So lunch at an Italian restaurant, at least, was true. “Vinny’s must be a pretty special place, seeing as he went all the way across the river. That’s what, twenty minutes out of the way?”
“Something like that, but it’s a dive. A 76 on the latest health inspection, which is basically like putting your life into their hands.
A one-way ticket to a twenty-four-hour puke fest. He was there until just before two.”
“Don’t tell me that’s where he went next, clutching a toilet all that time.”
“Possible.” She locates the 2:00 p.m. dot on the map, then follows the pings south, back across the river then due west. At 2:10 p.m. he veers off another exit, heading north on University Avenue. Her finger stops at another cluster of time stamps, all within a square block.
“What’s this?” I say, looking up. “Why are these dots so spread out?”
“Bigger building. That whole block is CHI St. Vincent, a hospital with a microcell. He walks through the doors at 2:23 and heads to the southwest corner of the building. This is where things get dicey. The hospital is ten stories, including the basement. I can see where he is, but not which floor. I had to do a bit of sleuthing.”
“Again, legal sleuthing?”
She rolls her eyes. “Do you want to know where he was, or not?”
“Just tell me.”
“I held the pings up against the building plans, and then used process of elimination. Four stories I could cross off right away—supply closets, bathrooms, the morgue. I crossed off the floors with patient rooms next. The rooms are too small, and the time stamps would’ve meant he was moving through the walls. It had to be a larger space, and there was only one floor that had one big enough, the second. Suite 203, specifically.”
“Which is?”
“The urology unit. A Dr. Patrick R. Lee.”
“And you know this for sure.”
“One hundred percent.” Jade pauses, and she chews her bottom lip. “But maybe don’t tell anybody I said that. Maybe just take my word for it.”
I puff a laugh. “You hacked into the cameras, didn’t you?”
She doesn’t respond, and I take her silence as a yes.
To tell the truth, I could give a shit how she got the information. The point is, Jeffrey has an alibi, and it’s not food poisoning but a problem with his plumbing. So why lie? He had to know I’d track down the truth eventually. And didn’t he stop to consider that every minute I’ve spent chasing him down the rabbit hole of this reading-by-the-river bullshit, I could have been out there looking for his wife?
Dear Wife Page 18