“Brass monkey,” his phone chimed, “that funky monkey,” and he flipped it open.
It was a local cellphone by the area code, and he sat up straight before answering.
It was Kim’s dad again, warning him about the detective.
“Nina already told me.”
“Do me a favor,” Kim’s dad said. “If there’s anything you can think of that’s suspicious, tell him, because right now it’s pretty clear he thinks she’s a runaway, and they’re not going to look for her the way they’d look for someone who’s been kidnapped. It’s a huge difference. If you can think of anything at all, let him know, okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can you think of anything?”
He could only think of the secret, how it wasn’t connected to Kim but sat off to one side, lurking. He wanted to tell him there was something, but that would just be another kind of lie.
Since he’d been going out with Kim he’d only spoken seriously with her dad once, at four in the morning after he brought her home late and shit-faced from the spring formal. Her dad was waiting in the dark kitchen and ambushed them, flicking the switch. Kim was swearing and incoherent under the bright lights, and they had to help her up to bed. Her dad gave him credit for driving, then asked him what he was doing while Kim was getting ripped. “If you really cared for her,” he said, “you wouldn’t let her do this to herself.” Kim always made fun of her mom, calling her a lush, drinking her bottle of wine every night, but J.P. stayed silent, not wanting to make things worse. Somewhere deep down her dad must have known there was no way they could stop either of them, all they could do was hold on and limit the damage. But her dad was right too. J.P. didn’t love her enough, and certainly not enough to sacrifice himself. The shame was, he would have if Kim had let him.
“No,” he said, “but I know she wouldn’t run away.”
“We told him that. It didn’t seem to do any good.”
“She was leaving in another month anyway.”
“That’s what we told him. She just bought all this stuff for college. There’s a whole bag of shampoo in her bathroom.”
J.P. didn’t know what to say to this.
“I think the problem is that he doesn’t know her. He thinks she’s some messed up teenager. He’s got to be in his sixties—you’ll see. I really think he just doesn’t get it.”
“Doesn’t sound like it.”
“We need to make him understand. Otherwise the cops are just going to sit on their asses when they should be out looking for her.”
“I’m going to come over later with Nina and Hinch.”
“Good. We’re going to need everybody we can get. Okay, I’ve got a call on the other line. You tell him whatever you have to.”
“I will,” J.P. said.
Nonfamily Abduction Sample
Connie told her to go online. “Right now, come on. If they’re not helping you, you’ve got to help yourself. What do we tell our people?”
“Information—”
“—is education. So get educated.”
Live Smarter was the hospital’s name for its patient outreach program. In their sillier, more cynical moments they called it Die Smarter, but Connie was right. The detective hadn’t gotten back to them, and Fran needed this pep talk. Connie gave her a direction, guiding her through sites dedicated to the missing.
Fran was amazed at how many there were for children. It was a kind of heavenly netherworld decorated with hearts and cherubs, yellow ribbons and white roses and scrolls of poetry. The Hope Network, 18-Wheel Angels, BringJoHome. In between the 800 numbers and links for national clearinghouses and private eyes, the lost smiled for the camera. Some of them had been missing for years.
She lagged behind Connie, her eye caught on a teenaged boy with Down syndrome from Indianapolis who disappeared after applying for a job at a Wendy’s. In the picture he wore a Colts hat and his mouth was slightly open, as if he’d forgotten what he was going to say. The forum had archived the news stories on him in order. The last headline read: KY. MAN ADMITS ’04 KILLING.
“Doubleclick on ‘Resources.’”
“Hang on,” Fran said. She hated this computer; it was so slow. At work she could bounce from screen to screen, but Kim and Lindsay’s music downloads and the attached spyware had choked their hard drive.
The page that came up was a manual, Finding Your Child. The corny clip art on the cover made it look out of date.
“They’re calling her an adult,” Fran said.
“Keep reading.”
The first section was titled “The First 24 Hours.” Step-by-step it described what they needed to do. There were links to pages where they could design their own flyers, with checklists of information. She wouldn’t have thought to include a second picture from a different angle, but it made sense. She was dazed and grateful.
Clear all released information with Law Enforcement.
Do not use your own phone number.
Review and proofread several times before reproducing.
Ask local printers to copy for free or at a discount rate.
“This is really good.”
“Good,” Connie said. “Bookmark it.”
It had tips on the best way to organize volunteers, and where to post flyers, how to get pizza places and video stores to tape them to their boxes. She printed out the whole section for Ed, drawing the deputy’s attention. Let him look, she thought.
Connie was ahead of her, on an entirely different site. “From what this lady’s saying, you want to bring in dogs as soon as possible. That’s what she wishes they’d done.”
“We’ll ask for them.” She was still trying to learn the rules about the different types of flyers—who could use NONFAMILY ABDUCTION instead of ENDANGERED MISSING, or worse, VOLUNTARY MISSING.
“The police have to request them. In this case they waited two months—”
“Two months?” She couldn’t imagine Kim being gone that long. She couldn’t really imagine what was happening now.
“That’s what she says—don’t wait, make a stink about it.”
She added the manual to her favorites before joining her at the Ohio K-9 site with its pictures of German shepherds in blaze orange halters. Along with search-and-rescue teams they offered cadaver dogs. Their homepage ran on and on, and she felt queasy from all the coffee, her mind spinning out ahead of her.
“I can’t read it. What does it say?”
“They’re nonprofit,” Connie said. “All the police have to do is call them.”
She printed it out and went back to the manual while Connie forged ahead.
Do not disturb or remove anything from your child’s room or bathroom, even and especially trash. Preserve all worn clothing as is. Pillowcases, sheets and towels may contain evidence. Secure your child’s comb, brush and toothbrush for fingerprinting and DNA testing.
The detective hadn’t said anything about this, and Fran made a note to save Kim’s towels, and the washcloth hanging in the shower, and the shower curtain, and the bath mat, and the garbage can. From what this said they should have closed off both rooms. Instead, she’d let Lindsay take her shower.
“Looks like Erie has a good horse team,” Connie said. “They’re supposed to be faster than dogs.”
“Can we do both?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“What’s the link?”
Find videotapes or movies of your child and make copies for law enforcement and the media.
Ask your child’s doctor and dentist for copies of recent X-rays.
Record a daily update on your answering machine to keep family members informed of your progress.
There were too many things to do, and the further she read, the more overwhelmed she felt.
“It says here the state police have helicopters that can see body heat,” Connie said.
“Do me a favor and print that out. And anything else you think we can use. I’ve got to get working on this flyer.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, if you can wait.”
“It looks pretty simple.”
“You’re going to need an alpha geek anyway.”
She loved Connie for trying to keep things light, even if she didn’t feel it. She wished Ed would joke with her, but she knew him too. He was so focused that he might misinterpret any attempt at humor on her part as distracting and inappropriate.
He hadn’t left the kitchen table. He sat with the phone directly in front of him, his cellphone to his ear. She clipped the printed pages of The First 24 Hours together and set them next to him. He looked up in acknowledgment, still talking to someone—his brother in Minnesota, it sounded like. Before she could leave he reached his free arm around her waist and she leaned into him, his head pressed against her rib cage. “We don’t know yet,” he said. “We don’t know anything.” His hair was thin and graying, his part growing wider by the month. When she’d met him his hair was blond and longer than hers, with a natural curl she envied. She smoothed what was left with a hand. He squeezed her once and patted her hip to release her, and though she wanted them to stay like that, she let him go.
Upstairs, Kim’s door was closed. So was Lindsay’s. She knocked, and when she didn’t get an answer she opened the door a foot and stuck her head in. Lindsay was on her bed, reading and listening to her iPod, Cooper half across her lap. She plucked out one earbud.
“Hey,” Fran said. “Don’t use your bathroom, okay? Use ours or the downstairs.”
“Okay.”
“Did you want to invite Dana or Micah over?”
“No, I’m good.”
“I’m not,” Fran said. “I don’t like this. We’re just going to have to deal with it, I guess. I’ve got to go make a flyer, I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
“Okay.” She held the earbud up to stick it back in.
“Okay,” Fran said, and shut the door.
On the stairs she felt herself frowning and tried to relax her face. She didn’t expect Lindsay to accept the invitation, but she wanted more out of her. The way she’d closed herself off lately reminded her of Kim, turning distant and dismissive. Maybe it was the age. Her own mother had accused Fran of being moody. “Smile,” she was always telling her, “you have such a nice smile,” as if she were withholding it out of spite.
Ed was still on the phone. The deputy was standing at the window over the sink and barely turned his head to see her sit down at the computer.
She went to the blank flyer and filled out the information line by line, stopping only to spellcheck Caucasian. When she was done the computer asked her to rename the file.
The first name that came to mind was Kim.
FLYER1, she typed.
In the folder with her pictures from graduation were a couple dozen shots from the party at Elise’s, none of them useful. Fran lingered briefly over each, reading her face, and the crowd around her. Beneath that file was the Fourth of July they’d spent on the lake, more recent, except Kim hadn’t gone with them. Fran had to go back to Easter to find a good one of her from the waist up. Kim’s hair was shorter and darker, but the dress showed off her neck and shoulders and gave a better sense of her presence. The gold chain with her butterfly was just a bonus.
She pulled them up side by side, trying them one way and then the other. She couldn’t wait until Ed was off, and waved him over. He leaned toward the screen and gave her the okay sign.
When he left she flipped them again, and then again, unsure. She opened the flyer and dragged the pair over to the waiting empty space. A click and she’d be done. They didn’t have time to waste, yet she balked as if she were making a mistake. The twin Kims smiled out at her, cheeky and bright-eyed, ripe. The right flyer might save her life, Fran knew—the manual said so—but all she could think of was the boy in the Colts hat, the badly animated flickering candles and glowing rainbows. She wanted to stop and close the folder, turn off the computer, afraid that once she sent Kim into that other world, she’d never get her back.
The Right to Disappear
His gut said they were screwed, and nothing he could do would change that. The old guy was clueless. He’d been gone almost two hours now while they sat here cooped up, doing nothing.
At the same time Ed knew they couldn’t afford to piss off the cops. Yes, he was frustrated, but Fran was so stuck on what was right that she didn’t understand their position was weak. Always deal from strength, that was one fundamental law of his business. (Another was, you can’t bargain with an idiot.) They could only hope the detective had turned up something, and that’s what was taking him so long.
He knew Kim’s friends well enough by now that he could read them like clients, Nina and Elise especially. Elise seemed normal, calm but concerned, asking how they were, if there was anything she could do. Nina, as usual, was all over the place, impossible to stop, but J.P. hardly said anything. He didn’t seem surprised, and talked dully, as if he’d just woken up. Maybe it was shock, but it bothered Ed. If he was eighteen and his girlfriend was missing he’d be tear-assing around town looking for her.
There was a lot about Kim and J.P. he didn’t get. They were sleeping together, Fran assured him, yet when they were deciding on colleges Kim had scoffed at the idea of going to Ohio State. When he and Fran had faced the same choice they’d battled their parents to stay together. While he sensed that sex had returned to the semicasual status it held in the seventies, he was confused by their lack of romance. As a father, he was at times grateful for that missing intensity, but as a man who liked to surprise his wife with flowers, it baffled him. Maybe he was old-fashioned, but to him a couple meant a strong bond, with positive and negative charges constantly arcing between them. He’d never seen Kim and J.P. kiss, let alone argue.
Outside, the sun flashed off a passing car—not the detective’s. It was already hot, a good day to be on the lake. According to the thing Fran had printed off the internet, they needed to be out searching with blood-hounds, beating the bushes from here to the interstate.
He offered the deputy a soda, then, pouring himself one, asked when they should expect the detective.
“I’m really not sure.”
“Can you call and find out? Tell him we’re getting a little antsy here.”
“Sure,” he said, then went outside to do it.
Ed watched him from the window. His nametag said Oester, but Ed couldn’t put an address to it.
“This is bullshit,” Fran said, holding aside the curtain. “I think you should call Perry.”
“I want to wait and see what this guy says.”
“Maybe Perry can talk to him.”
“I’m hoping he won’t have to.”
“God help me, if they screw this up we’re going to sue them for everything they’ve got.”
It was a reckless statement, tempting fate, yet he’d had the same thought. “I know,” he said, and held her.
“Connie’s coming over.”
“Good.” Exactly what they didn’t need—another cook.
The deputy headed back up the drive, and they broke, Fran taking her place at the computer.
“He’s on his way,” the deputy said.
“Did he find anything?”
“That’s what he’s going to talk to you about.”
“So you don’t know.”
“Sorry.”
“That’s all right,” Ed said. “Thanks for checking.”
While they waited he went over his pitch. Forget the family—her friends agreed she had no reason to leave. She wasn’t in trouble, she hadn’t broken up with her boyfriend, she hadn’t met anyone new, she wasn’t pregnant or depressed or on drugs. She hadn’t taken any favorite clothes or jewelry, she hadn’t taken her glasses or even a box of her contacts. She hadn’t mentioned leaving to anyone, hadn’t left a note. Altogether, the facts pointed to her not being a runaway, and yet, with no other evidence, the police were assuming she was. He was hoping that that, along with some hone
st parental hysteria, would shame the man into action. If not, he’d call Perry.
If he’d known how hard convincing them was going to be, he would have sliced open his own arm and dripped blood across the backyard.
At the computer Fran ran out of paper and fought with the feed tray. He was afraid she’d break it, but didn’t look, just stood there watching the street, and soon she had it going again.
He had practice at waiting, his livelihood depended on it: waiting for buyers, waiting for counteroffers, waiting for contracts. This was different. This was like waiting for the market to pick up. For over a year he’d been riding it down, liquidating their savings to pay the bills. The feeling he had now was the same, and even the sight of the unmarked car pulling in didn’t change that, unless the passenger door opened and Kim got out, head bowed in apology, her hair hanging limp and dirty.
No, only the driver’s side opened. The detective tottered as if he had bad knees, stopping once to adjust the fat stack of folders under his arm. Beside Ed the deputy left his post at the window to get the door. Fran took advantage of this, stealing over.
“We’ve got to have dogs,” she said.
“I’ll try.”
“You get them.”
They sat on one side of the kitchen table with the detective across from them, shuffling his papers like a lawyer at a closing. He folded his hands and hunched over them.
“First, I want you to understand that because this is an open investigation I can’t share every piece of information we uncover with you. For the good of the case sometimes we have to withhold things, okay? I know that’s not what you want to hear, but believe me, it’s in your daughter’s best interest.”
Ed didn’t believe this one bit, but nodded.
“Second, I think it’s important to remember that as an adult your daughter has a right to privacy. If we locate her and she requests that right, legally we’re prevented from telling you where she is.”
Songs for the Missing Page 5