Absolute Liability

by Jennifer Becton

  Gerry studied the picture before saying, “Sure, I’ve seen her.”

  Vincent and I snapped to attention. Even James paused mid-bite and looked at his mother.

  “She was abducted on Monday from Southeastern,” Gerry continued as she looked between the three of us. “Don’t look so surprised. The story has been all over the local news. They even used this exact picture.”

  “Huh,” James said. “Guess I should start watching the news more.”

  “Have they found the poor girl?” Gerry asked, appearing concerned as she handed the picture back to Vincent.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “But it’s only a matter of time,” Vincent added as he returned Amber’s photo to his jacket pocket.

  The room remained silent a few moments before James took a bite of his side dish, made a face, and said, “This is cold. I’ve got to nuke this.”

  As James left for the microwave, Vincent dropped his chicken bone in the garbage can beside the desk and looked at me. “You got what you need?” He seemed beyond ready to go.

  “Not yet,” I said, turning to Gerry. “I can’t find a couple of the files listed here.” I handed her the paper and pointed to the missing names.

  Gerry took over at the filing cabinet. After a few minutes, she came up with them and said, “James must have misfiled them.”

  She appeared miffed. Really miffed. I feared what Gerry might do to James over some misfiled folders.

  I shrugged. “It happens.”

  “Hmmph,” she said. “It happens way too much for my taste.”

  Gerry probably never mislaid anything; James seemed like the type who might mislay something every five minutes.

  I stacked the rest of the paperwork into the box Vincent had brought me and put the lid on it.

  “I expect to get every piece of paper back as soon as we sort out this complaint,” Gerry said.

  Vowing to return her files, I nodded, and Vincent and I walked out of the office.

  He gestured toward the box. “Take that for you?”

  I don’t mind carrying my own burdens, but if a man wants to make himself into a pack mule, I might as well let him once in a while.

  When we reached the parking lot, he set the box of goodies on the passenger seat of the Explorer.

  I reclined against the front panel of the SUV and turned to Vincent. “James seem a little nervous to you?” he asked.

  I pulled my hair away from my neck, allowing the warm breeze to caress it. “Yeah, Gerry said it’s a low blood sugar issue.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “They didn’t strike me as the types to abduct anyone,” I said. “Or to commit fraud. He probably mis-measured the railings. It was only a six-inch difference.”

  “Yeah, they didn’t seem like criminals, but lots of normal-looking people try to defraud insurance companies.”

  Didn’t I know it? “Yup, people hate insurance companies, even those who sell their policies.”

  I tapped the box of files. “Other than Roger McKade, we may not have any great suspects in Amber’s disappearance, but I sure have made progress on my investigations.”

  I immediately regretted saying something so glib. Who cared about my investigations with Amber still missing? After four days of investigating, Vincent and I hadn’t uncovered anything that might help her. Maybe MPD had. Four days and Amber was being held God knows where. I shook my head to dispel my thoughts. If I wanted to be of any help, I had to investigate, not waste time speculating on the situation.

  “Well, shall we go back to the office to slog through these files?”

  “I can’t wait.”

  As I drove, I dug out my phone and called Tripp. He answered right before I was sent to voicemail and sounded tired, so I skipped idle chitchat and asked if they had any news on Amber.

  “We haven’t got squat,” Tripp said. “We’ve spoken to Amber’s family, every boy she’s dated since preschool, and all of her girlfriends. Some of them are really cute, by the way. Makes me miss my college days.”

  He was getting distracted, and I felt a “good-old-days” soliloquy coming on. I didn’t feel like hearing about Tripp’s college conquests again. “Eye on the prize, Tripp. Eye on the prize.”

  “Yeah. I’m focused.” He paused. “How’s Vincent?”

  “Not bad,” I said. And I meant it. We were actually getting along fine.

  “Everything okay? I mean, is he treating you right? I have connections, you know. If you need me to set him back on the straight and narrow, I can.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Have you two learned anything?”

  I reported what we’d been up to. I told him about everyone: Roger McKade, Leona Winchell, and the Gerwalts.

  “Yeah, now that it’s starting to look like the insurance angle is the way to proceed, we’ll be sending officers to chat with them all today. Any of them seem upset to see you?”

  “Not particularly, but it could be any of them or none of them. They’re all probably guilty of fraud. One definite, one probable, and one still early in the investigation. But at this point, none of them looked like they wanted to make me disappear. Well, no more than any other person I’ve investigated.”

  Tripp laughed, and so did I, but the sound was dull, tempered by the harsh reality of the situation.

  By the time we hung up, I was back at Southeastern. I slung my bag over my shoulder and hefted the box of files off the seat.

  Vincent met me in the lot and reached for the box.

  “That’s okay. I’ve got it this time,” I said, preferring to keep things even.

  He shrugged and we went inside together. I typed up a report on today’s activities for Ted and put it on the server, and then Vincent and I spent the rest of the workday poring over the Gerwalts’ files.

  We found nothing that might lead us to Amber.

  My weekend should have been relaxing and rejuvenating—I did all the entertaining and distracting things one is supposed to do after a stressful week—but I continued to experience alternating feelings of dread and hope. Every pleasurable activity was tainted by thoughts of what might be happening to Amber.

  And consequently what should have been happening to me.

  When I got up early Saturday and biked the flat, lonely roads nestled in the farmland south of Mercer, I thought of Amber. While I was riding free in the soft morning sunshine, was she confined in a dark, cold space?

  When the sun got too high in the sky, I headed home, ate a ham and cheese omelet, showered, and bummed around the house for the rest of the day. I wondered if Amber had been given anything to eat or drink.

  Every moment of freedom only reminded me of the one who was not free.

  But my hope was worse than my dread.

  An awful optimism hit me when the phone rang or when I turned on the news. Would I hear that Amber had been found alive? That she was safe and unharmed?

  I spent the greater part of the day going back and forth between these two feelings. It was hard to enjoy myself. I needed a distraction.

  Maybe I’d take Helena’s advice and invite someone to the cookout. Briefly, I considered Vincent. That would certainly shock and please Helena, but I couldn’t bring myself to add a social aspect to our relationship. Not yet anyway.

  I ended up calling Tripp. I doubted he’d be able to attend, but I knew he’d been working on Amber’s kidnapping nonstop since Monday. Knowing him as well as I did, I was certain that he was having as much trouble as I was keeping the thoughts of poor Amber at bay. He needed a distraction as much as I did.

  To my surprise, he wasn’t busy. And he sounded eager to attend.

  I greatly enjoyed the look on Helena’s face when Tripp and I arrived together. Her eyebrows flew to her pixie-cut hairline, and she gave me a suspicious look. I only smiled and said, “Helena, you remember Tripp, right? We used to work together at the MPD.”

  “Of course, I remember him. Come on in. Everyone’s on the deck,” she said as sh
e slipped her arm through mine and ushered us through the house. Then she pulled me closer and whispered, “I was expecting you to bring someone else. Someone bigger.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  Helena knew that Tripp and I were strictly friends, but she liked him. Everybody liked Tripp.

  Tripp, obviously having heard Helena’s words, grinned at me and said, “You cheating on me again, Jules?”

  “You know it!” I said. “Helena’s always got men lined up for me.”

  Tripp looked at Helena and said, “So you’re the one who’s causing Jules to keep breaking my heart.”

  “Okay, okay,” Helena protested. “No matchmaking tonight.”

  She opened the back door, and the whole neighborhood, it seemed, was either packed onto the deck or playing volleyball on her lawn. Music blared from speakers I couldn’t see, and the whole area smelled delicious.

  “Wow, good turnout,” I said.

  “Wow, great-smelling pork,” Tripp said as he went over to the grill to discuss manly cooking techniques with Tim and the other pit masters.

  When he was safely out of earshot, Helena said by way of apology, “I didn’t mean for him to hear me, you know.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You know how it is between Tripp and me.” I snagged a glass of lemonade from a nearby table. “I hope you don’t mind me inviting him.”

  “Not at all.” She looked toward the grill where he and Tim were already deeply engaged in discussion. “I was just hoping…”

  “I know what you were hoping, but it just didn’t seem like the thing to do. Besides, Tripp needed some time off.”

  “He working the kidnapping case too?”

  “Yeah, and it’s not going well.”

  “No news yet?”

  “None at all.”

  “Well,” she said, patting my arm and looking toward Tripp, who was now in the backyard, “let’s not talk about that right now. You and Tripp just enjoy the party. Looks like he’s about to join the volleyball game. Want to play?”

  For the rest of the evening, Tripp and I immersed ourselves in food, friends, and volleyball, and when he came over much later and joined me on the porch steps, I gave him a genuine smile.

  “I’m glad you invited me tonight,” he said. “I really needed the downtime.”

  “Me too.”

  He looked directly at me. “I’m glad we’re still friends, you know? Even after all that’s happened between us.”

  I got a little choked up but managed a nod.

  “I may not approve of everything you’ve done,” he said. I knew he was referring to the lengths I’d gone to for my sister. I’d never told him explicitly about my little evidence theft, but he suspected—strongly—what I’d done. It was just one more reason why we’d never again be romantic. Tripp walked the straight and narrow. Me, not so much. “But it’s nice to have someone who understands me.”

  “I feel the same way, Tripp. I really do.” And that was the honest truth.

  After the chaos of my youth and early adult years, the value of good friendships was only now becoming obvious to me. I was truly lucky to have Tripp and Helena.

  And maybe Vincent.

  Tripp gestured at the few lingering guests and the remnants of the party. “I had a great time, and I haven’t thought about work once.”

  I smiled, pleased to realize that I agreed with his assessment. Helena’s party had been an excellent distraction.

  Still, at the end of the night when I was alone in my bed, thoughts of Amber once again invaded my mind.

  Sunday lunch at my mother’s house always drained my emotional reserves, but this week I didn’t have much left in reserve. I would have to muscle through the meal anyway. It was important to them.

  And to me.

  It was our weekly attempt to return to what life was like before. Every Sunday after church, we’d sit at the dining room table, my father at the head, and eat a home-cooked meal. We’d talk and joke and argue: all the things a normal family did.

  For that one meal every week, we were all together. We were a family.

  Now it was different.

  I was heading to the same house and the same dining table, but the group that gathered around it could not be considered a family. Not anymore.

  We were three individuals who could never quite connect no matter how desperately we tried.

  I turned into St. Stephen’s, the upper-middle class subdivision in north Mercer where I’d grown up. Our two-story house wasn’t the biggest in the neighborhood, and our fence was chain link, not white pickets, but we had nice neighbors and had played with their kids. We never had to worry about crime.

  My mother lived here alone now that my sister and I had moved out. I, of course, had my little Tudor house in Mercer, and my sister lived in a double-wide trailer in a less-than-solvent part of town.

  Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got nothing against mobile homes. I do have something against my sister living in unsafe conditions. And her whole neighborhood—if it could be called that—was certainly unsafe.

  I’d tried to help her move to a better place, but somehow my money always mysteriously disappeared. But did I learn from my mistake? Oh no. I kept forking over money, year after year until one day, while I was still on the MPD, I was first on the scene at a disturbing-the-peace call where I discovered my highly intoxicated sister stumbling half dressed around the trailer park and shouting at some neighbors whose names I don’t remember.

  As I watched her throwing handfuls of gravel at the side of an unoffending double-wide, I realized the extent of the problem. Before that night, I’d known Tricia drank, but I hadn’t understood how much.

  Once I comprehended, I wasted a couple of months in futile attempts to help her. I suggested counseling, detox, treatment, exorcism. Okay, not exorcism, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Tricia refused everything. And my mother staunchly defended her.

  So yes, I’d been an enabler too.

  Of course, admitting the problem is only the first step toward fixing it. I don’t think I’d ever successfully taken the next step. I wasn’t even sure what the next one was. I had sort of ignored the problem.

  Still, every Sunday, I tortured myself by coming over for lunch. Seeing my sister weekly kept me determined to continue my personal investigation into her rape. I left each week with a renewed passion for bringing her justice.

  Plus, it was my mother’s only attempt at being, well, motherly, and I always showed up, hoping against the odds that my family would somehow have miraculously returned to normal.

  Sundays were definitely the hardest day of the week for me. I could hardly bear to see the way my family lived. Every time I visited, I saw anew how much they had changed over the years, and the hollow spot in my gut grew a little deeper and emptier.

  But I came.

  This week, the front door was open, and I looked in through the glass storm door. The sight made me nervous. A criminal had my planner and thus my mother’s address, and she didn’t even bother to close her door. I tried the storm door, hoping I would find it locked. Unfortunately, it swung freely on its hinges.

  I rang the bell, trying to think of a way to warn her about locks without alarming her.

  I heard my mother’s voice call from the back of the house, “C’mon in.”

  This amazed me. One daughter had been raped, the other nearly abducted, and she didn’t even find it necessary to lock her door or check to see who was ringing.

  The house was tidy inside, and a hamper of Tricia’s clean laundry sat beside the sofa in the living area. My mother liked to take care of Tricia as if she were a child, and though it bothered me, her tender care of my sister was one of the reasons I had hope that they could be saved.

  I found my mother in the kitchen and gave her a quick hug before I flopped onto the old floral couch that had remained unchanged, like every other object in the house, for so many years. I looked over at the stove. “What’s for lunch?”

  “It w
as almost too hot to cook today, but I managed a pot roast anyway. We’re just waiting on Tricia. I sent her to pick up dessert.”

  “Sounds great,” I said, and I meant it. I loved my mother’s cooking, and I loved what her cooking represented: some semblance of normalcy.

  My mother smiled at me. “Sweet tea?”

  “Sure.” I was a sucker for my mother’s sweet tea. No one made it quite like she did. Her secret was adding baking soda, which she said made it cleaner and crisper. I don’t know if that’s really why it was so good, but it worked for me. She poured two tall glasses and handed me one. I took a long swallow, and for just a moment it was like old times. It could have been any Sunday lunch before Tricia’s rape. Except it wasn’t.

  My mother shifted the laundry basket out of her way and sat beside me. Her sandy blond hair was pulled away from her face in clips, but her bangs were falling in her eyes. She pushed aside and said, “So tell me what happened this week. I was so worried when I heard about this abduction business on the news.”

  I was surprised. This was the first time she’d mentioned it to me. Strangely enough, my mother’s sudden concern warmed my heart. At least she knew something about what had happened. She was usually so out of touch with reality that she didn’t know what was going on with me.

  I didn’t want her to worry, so I stuck with the basics. “It looks like one of my fraud suspects just didn’t want to be caught.”

  “Well, I know you’ll get him. You always do what you set out to do.” My mother smiled and took my hand in hers. I watched her manicured thumbnail as she stroked the back of my hand. “I’ve always been proud of you, you know that?”

  Deep down, I had known, but it was nice to hear her say it. Our family had been so damaged by Tricia’s rape that I often felt overlooked in the fray.

  I smiled back. “Thanks,” I said with an unsteady voice.

  “I was proud when you were a police officer, even if I did worry about you something fierce. Now that you have a less risky job, I feel much better.”