by Jung Yun
42
Officer Peterson wasn’t exaggerating. After sundown, the volume of activity surges, as if the passage from day to night opened a gate somewhere. Elinor tries her best to make conversation, which she decides is marginally preferable to silence. When the radio crackles with police codes or nicknames in the cross chatter, she asks him to translate for her, which he seems happy to do. She learns that a 10–16 is a domestic disturbance, while a 10–55 is an intoxicated driver—not to be confused with a 10–56, which is an intoxicated pedestrian. A leaner is someone on heroin. A jumping bean is someone on meth. A wife beater is exactly what it sounds like.
Because he’s on public affairs duty, patrolling without his usual partner, Officer Peterson’s role at each site is limited. He can’t help interview witnesses on the scene or put anyone in his squad car for a ride back to the station. His primary responsibility during the ride-along, perhaps his only responsibility, seems to be driving from one location to another so he can check in with his colleagues and tell Elinor what’s going on. It’s obvious now why the department was so resistant to doing this. He’s a glorified tour guide. It’s a terrible use of his time. Officer Peterson doesn’t seem to mind, though. Whenever he responds to a call, he greets his fellow officers with fist bumps and throws a casual thumb back at Elinor, who has to remain in the car. Although she can’t hear what they’re saying, their gestures and glances aren’t subtle. She knows when she’s being discussed and dissected, which irritates her, the fact that Officer Peterson doesn’t think she understands what they’re doing.
From her passenger seat window, Elinor watches a parade of troubled people file past. The perpetrators, in particular, make her want to open them up like books. Ever since she first heard Lydia say “dead girl story,” she’s been annoyed by the casual cruelty of the term, but she wonders if the genre’s allure is some kind of proximity to danger or suffering that most people don’t have in their lives. Perhaps this is the same guilty prickle of fascination she feels as she watches two officers escort a handcuffed man out of what appears to be a nice, middle-class home. He’s dressed in nothing but dingy gray underwear, so old and loose that it looks like he’s wearing a baggy diaper. The man, who’s red-faced and glassy-eyed, is obviously sky-high on something, maybe even drunk too. The officers—both of whom she could swear are trying not to laugh—have to hold his teetering body upright by the elbows. He’s not walking to their car so much as being carried to it while he air pedals, his feet occasionally scraping the ground.
When Officer Peterson returns, he’s holding both hands over his stomach like it hurts.
“What’s going on?” she asks.
“The guy was passed out…” He wheezes with laughter, trying to catch his breath. “He was passed out … in the kitchen … with a … with a banana in each hand.”
Aside from the minor sight gag, she doesn’t understand what’s so funny about this. Given the man’s disheveled and disoriented state, it seems awful to laugh. “But why are they arresting him? Did he hurt someone?”
“No, no. It’s not … it’s not that.” He waves his hands in the air, trying to pull himself together. “It’s not the guy’s house!” He blurts out the punch line as he folds over the steering wheel, honking the horn with his forehead. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he says, his shoulders continuing to shake. “It’s not funny, I know.”
Elinor watches him for a few seconds longer. He’s still laughing too hard to notice that she isn’t. “I guess you had to be there,” she says.
The moments in which she observes Officer Peterson behaving badly alternate with occasional acts of kindness that could be genuine or could be performance. She honestly can’t tell. At the Stop-N-Go, he spots a girl—maybe ten years old at the most—leaving the store with a bag of hot dog buns. He says hello and drives beside her slowly, talking to her through his open window about her favorite TV shows. Behind him, frustrated drivers divert down other streets or pass when it’s legal to do so. A few are brave enough to honk, which barely earns them a glance in his rearview mirror. The girl is chatty and doesn’t seem to understand that he’s escorting her home, making sure she gets there safely—something Elinor hopes he’d do for any child, not just the ones who could be his own. When the girl reaches her front door, they wave at each other like old friends before she goes inside. Afterward, Elinor wonders if she’s being unfair, assuming the worst about Officer Peterson because the one time she interacted with the police, they were condescending and rude, a secondary trauma to the one she’d already experienced. But her guilt never has a chance to expand beyond a pang or two before he turns around and does something upsetting again.
Shortly after seeing the girl home, he slows down at an intersection and examines two teenagers hanging out in front of a gas station.
“Some parents have no sense,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
He motions toward the girls, both of whom are dressed in T-shirts and cutoff shorts. “Letting their kids stay out after dark, looking like that,” he says, running his eyes up and down the length of their bare legs. “It’s not that kind of town anymore.”
Only three or four years separate the girl they just took home and the teenagers, but he responds to them so differently, like a pair of mosquito bumps passing for breasts is the dividing line between innocence and impurity. She’s sick to death of the argument that what a woman wears dictates the behavior she deserves. It’s hard to believe that people still think like this. She can never get over her dismay when she realizes how many people do.
“Please tell me you’re not suggesting that what they’re wearing is going to get them raped.”
He jerks his head back, his expression both shocked and insulted. “Ea-sy. Easy now,” he says, which is an infuriating response, the kind of thing someone would coo to a dog or a horse. “I’m not saying they’re asking for it or anything. Give me some credit. But there’s like twenty or thirty men in this town for every woman. If you think all of them care about the age of consent, then you’re living in a fantasyland.”
“Well, I guess those girls are lucky to have you around,” she mutters, no longer caring whether he hears her or not.
Another long stretch of silence follows. Elinor has never been on a ride-along before, but she knows this one is going bad in a spectacular way. When Officer Peterson pulls into a Burger King and announces that he’s taking a bathroom break, she gets out to stretch her legs, relieved to finally be free from the car.
The sky is dark and starless now, and the air is filled with crickets chirping from every direction. It’s half past ten already, which hardly seems possible. Discomfort usually makes time crawl. Lisa said to be back in Emerald’s lot by ten or there might not be an empty space for her. Elinor had forgotten, or perhaps chosen not to remember, being kicked out of the Thrifty. She had forgotten that a bed and a safe place to sleep were no longer guaranteed. How do people live like this? she wonders. How do they stay here without wanting to burn it all to the ground? She imagines Travis kicking the barbecue grill again, and she thinks she understands the impulse now. How else are people supposed to feel, living out of their cars, doing dirty shit for work, being pushed to the outskirts of a town that doesn’t want to know they exist? And this is supposedly the best chance they have?
Elinor walks to the edge of the parking lot where there’s a border of trees separating it from the lot next door. From the shadow of one of the larger trees, she smokes while watching a group of skateboarders attempt painful-looking tricks on the Burger King’s bike rack. None of them are very good. Only one manages to ride the entire the length of the rail before he falls off and his board clatters across the asphalt. His friends hoot and jeer at him just as Officer Peterson walks out, drinking something out of a jumbo-sized cup. He does a confused double take, looking at them and her and back again, probably wondering if they were laughing at him. There’s a split second when it seems like he’s about to tell the kids to get lo
st, but he continues walking toward her, his eyes following the lit cigarette in her hand. She wouldn’t have guessed he was a smoker, not with his clean-cut appearance and athletic build, but it’s obvious now that he is. She recognizes the fiendish expression that only nicotine and certain hard drugs can inspire. She barely has a chance to offer her pack and lighter to him before he’s inhaling a cigarette like it’s the last one he’ll ever have.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” he says. “Man, I would have stopped like an hour ago if I did. You mind?” He points at the tree she’s leaning against, gesturing as if he wants to trade places with her. “We’re not really supposed to do this in uniform—looks unprofessional—so I have to be discreet about it.”
She lets him take her place under the tree’s leafy cover. Just past his shoulder, a woman pulls into the parking lot with her headlights off. Elinor watches as she teeters past the skateboarders, her hands held out to the sides for balance. One of the boys follows her into the Burger King, laughing and mimicking her drunken gait.
“So, listen. I’m not sure what happened, but it feels like we got off to a rough start tonight and never really recovered.”
She nods.
“Could we please start over?” He laughs and scratches his head. The rubber bracelets—yellow, pink, and red—slide down his wrist and fall back again. “I’m a decent guy, I swear. I think I just got nervous about putting my foot in my mouth that one time and then I kept doing it.”
Elinor doesn’t know which time he’s referring to as his first. And she’s wary of people who insist upon their decency, as if it’s something to be claimed instead of demonstrated. She probably looks as unconvinced as she feels because suddenly his tone turns cajoling, like he’s trying to sell her a car.
“Listen. I’ll make you a deal. What else can I tell you about the Lowell case? You said you were interested in that before, but we’ve barely talked about it. Ask me whatever you want if that helps buy back a little goodwill.”
She wants to know what kind of person Shane Foster was, whether he hung his flag upside down like his aunt, and if so, was he doing that before his wife went missing or was it a reaction to the grief of losing her? But she doesn’t feel comfortable asking Officer Peterson any of these questions, so she settles for an inferior one. “Does Leanne still have any family around?”
He shakes his head. “Her parents live in Montana, from what I understand. Her husband’s the one who grew up here, but he moved to Idaho after all this happened.”
An I state, she thinks. “He was never a suspect in her disappearance? The husband?”
“Shane?”
The cool professional distance lapses, and the sudden switch to a first name startles her, although it shouldn’t. She of all people should know how few degrees of separation there can be in a small town. Officer Peterson and Shane Foster, both of whom are in their thirties she’d guess, probably went to school at about the same time, played in the same sports leagues, maybe even crossed over in age enough to go to the same keg parties in the woods, the ones that Elinor always went to but Maren never did.
“I just asked because I thought the husband was usually the first person you looked at in cases like this.”
“He was off hunting with three or four other guys when she went missing, so we were able to rule him out pretty fast.”
By now, she understands that reading about the case will only get her so far. There are things it would simply never occur to her to ask. “Okay then. Tell me something I don’t know,” she says. “A rumor or detail I couldn’t possibly know from just following the news.”
He nods, blowing smoke through his nostrils. Then he takes the pack out of her hands without asking and removes another cigarette that he tucks behind his ear. “Something you don’t know,” he repeats. “On or off the record?”
The fact that he’s asking dictates her answer. “Off.”
“Okay … So here’s one … About four months before she went missing, Leanne cashed out an insurance policy her parents bought when she was a kid. It wasn’t worth much, only a couple grand or so. But she never told her husband about the money, and she didn’t deposit it or make any big purchases with it either. So for a while there, one of the theories was that she hadn’t been abducted or murdered. She just decided to take off and that insurance policy was her bankroll.” He lights his backup cigarette off his first, puffing the ember to life with several long drags. “There’s no proof that’s what happened, though. She could have loaned that money to a friend or—who knows—maybe had a drug problem no one was willing to talk about. Sometimes that happens around here. Anyway, that was a theory we kicked around for a while.”
“That’s it?” she asks. “She could have skipped town, but she probably didn’t?”
Officer Peterson waves his hands at her. “Alright, alright. Here’s another one, sort of along the same lines. The reward money her husband put up. Fifty grand. A lot of people didn’t understand how someone like Shane Foster could get his hands on that much. I mean, if you grew up around here and knew him or his family, you’d understand there was just no way. When his parents were still alive, they were always getting their cars and farm equipment repo’d, and Shane was actually worse off than they were because he didn’t even own a house to take a second mortgage on. So for him to come up with that kind of money for a reward? I don’t know. There was something not right about it.”
The way he looked in all those videos she watched—not angry or sad or worried. It still sticks with her for reasons she can’t fully comprehend. “But a lot of locals started making good money after the boom—”
“No, but see? That’s just it. Shane didn’t want anything to do with the oil companies. Didn’t like the element they were bringing in, he said. He was still working on landscaping crews when his wife went missing, so if he’d put up five grand? Okay, that probably wouldn’t have made anyone blink. Maybe he could have gone as high as ten. But fifty? It seemed like he purposely picked an impossible number because he knew she’d taken off and wasn’t coming back, and offering a big reward like that at least made him feel like a man.” He puts his cigarette out in the grass, kicking the still-smoking butt onto the asphalt. “So how’s that? You wanted rumors? Those are some of the rumors we chased around that first year. But nothing came of them. And to be fair, Shane always seemed like a nice enough guy from what I could tell. A little strange, maybe. Quiet. Not much of a people person, if you know what I mean.”
43
Dani jumps to her feet and greets her with a sweaty hug, which she didn’t expect.
“My wing woman!” she shouts, releasing Elinor with a hard clap to the back. “I’m glad you texted. I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear from you again.”
Dani, her brother, and Aaron have been drinking at the Depot since it was light out. Elinor would have assumed this even if Fat Mike hadn’t said so. They’re all red-faced and bleary-eyed. Teetering columns of empty glasses are scattered across their table. Elinor wishes she’d known that Dani wasn’t alone before arranging to meet. As soon as she walked in and saw the three of them sitting next to the dance floor, she had a vague memory of being gently lifted into Dani’s car by Fat Mike and Aaron a few nights earlier. She orders a round of doubles for the table from a passing waitress. It’s part apology, part token of gratitude to all of them for getting her back to the Thrifty unscathed.
The Depot is more crowded than it was on Thursday. Before sitting down, Elinor exchanges a brief wave with Michelle, who looks like she’s struggling to keep up with the onslaught of orders. Despite the long lines for drinks, most of the roughnecks appear to be in good spirits thanks to the presence of two large bachelorette parties—one dressed in pink JENNA’S SQUAD T-shirts, and the other wearing Tiffany blue sashes that read BECKY’S BRIDE TRIBE. There’s also a group of about two dozen guys dressed in matching white polos. At first, Elinor assumes they’re from a bachelor party, but they seem too stiff in their pressed khaki trousers, re
laxed-fit jeans, and tucked-in shirts. They look like a bunch of dads trying to loosen up by ordering shots for themselves and any bachelorette who happens to wander into their corner.
“I think it’s some sort of company event,” Dani says, staring off in the same direction.
The circumstances are less than ideal for a conversation. Elinor had hoped to get Dani alone, or at the very least, sober, which was probably an unrealistic expectation for a Saturday night. She considers trying again tomorrow, in a place that isn’t thumping with dance music, but she’s desperate to talk with someone who knows the town well and can help her make sense of the things she’s seen and heard. She also has nowhere else to go at this hour. It’s long past midnight, and she’s too tired to risk the drive out to Emerald’s only to find the lot full.
A fair-skinned redhead walks past their table, leaving a cloying trail of perfume in her wake. Fat Mike’s and Aaron’s eyes follow her across the room as they speculate about real tits and curtains that match the drapes, things she doesn’t want to hear from two guys who have otherwise been pretty decent to her. She angles her back away from them, pulling her phone out and opening her recent photos.
“I need you to take a look at something and tell me what you see, okay?”
“Is it a dick pic?” Dani shouts.
Elinor hands her the phone and watches as her smile begins to flatline.
“Where’d you take this?” she asks, enlarging the photo of Mrs. Eddy’s flag with her fingertips.
“A town north of here called Heath. Have you ever seen a flag hanging like this before?”