Nine Years Gone

by Chris Culver

  I took my phone from my pocket and slid my finger across the touch screen, all the while silently praying it wasn’t the police. Katherine crossed her arms and looked away. God apparently was listening and had answered my prayers. I kind of wished he hadn’t.

  The call had come from my alarm company and came accompanied by two text messages. The first message asked if we were home, while the second said that our alarm had gone off and police officers were dispatched.

  “Who was it?” she asked as I stared, frozen, at the screen.

  I looked up at her. “We need to go home.”

  18

  Two police cars, three officers, and one of my neighbors waited for us in my driveway when we got home. We didn’t have streetlights in my part of the neighborhood, so shadows cast by the moon lay over my home and yard. A lamp illuminated the front room, but we hadn’t left any other lights on inside the house. I parked on the street and walked toward the group of men while Ashley and Katherine stayed in the car.

  “Officers,” I said, nodding to the police officers and then looking at my neighbor. “Hey, Ron. I’ve been at an event for my niece’s school, so I didn’t get the call earlier. What’s going on?”

  “Are you the home owner?” asked one of the officers, an overweight young guy with a brown goatee. His nametag pegged him as Sergeant Roberts.

  I nodded and looked over my shoulder to my car. “Yeah. My wife and I are. What’s happened?”

  “There’s been a breakin,” said Roberts. “Mr. Watkins thinks he may have seen them drive off.”

  Katherine and I had moved into the shadow of a crime-infested city, but we remained away from it, protected from it, in Webster Groves. Or at least so we thought. I don’t even remember the last time I heard of someone actually breaking into a locked home. It happened to unlocked vehicles sometimes or garages, but rarely the house. I looked at Ron, my neighbor.

  “Did you recognize them?”

  He shook his head and looked up the street. “I just saw an unfamiliar car drive away. A black SUV. I don’t know cars, so I don’t know what kind it was.”

  Tess had driven a white Nissan sedan the last time I saw her, so it wasn’t her. That was a relief.

  “Can I go in?” I asked, looking at Roberts.

  “I’ll walk through with you.”

  “Give me just a minute. I’m going to talk to my wife,” I said. Roberts nodded, and I walked toward my car. Before I got there, Katherine opened her door and stepped out, leaving Ashley inside with the door partially ajar. “We’ve had a breakin. The police have already gone through, so there’s nobody inside. I’m going to walk around and see what’s broken or stolen. Maybe you guys should stay in the car.”

  Katherine started to say something, but then she stopped and leaned toward the car. My niece said something, but I couldn’t understand what. “Ashley wants to know where Simon is,” said Katherine.

  I looked at Sergeant Roberts. “Did you guys find a dog?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  I winced. Simon’s days of being a threat to a burglar had long since passed—if they had ever even existed. He probably saw people breaking in and got scared. I hoped he hadn’t run off; as old as he was, he wouldn’t be able to see or hear a car coming before it hit him. I looked back at my wife.

  “Tell Ashley we’ll find him.” I looked at Roberts and gestured toward the backyard. “Please, show me the house.”

  He led me down the driveway, past our rear-facing garage, and through the open gate that led to our yard.

  “Was this gate open when you guys got here?”

  Roberts nodded. “Yeah.”

  That was probably how Simon got out. I didn’t like this at all. I followed Roberts through the backyard. My home’s previous owners had built a large deck off the kitchen, allowing easy and private access to the backyard through a paneled door. Even from the grass, I could see that the wooden frame around the deadbolt had splintered.

  “This is how they got in?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  Roberts nodded. “Yes, sir. You’ll have to make the final determination, but it doesn’t even look like anyone’s stepped inside.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I said.

  Roberts pushed open the back door and I walked into the kitchen. It looked like it always did, but everything seemed a little off. I walked through that kitchen every morning, and I loaded up the dishwasher every night, but I rarely took notice of it. The toaster was still on the counter; the canisters of flour, sugar, and salt were still on the counter beside the stove; the knives were still in their block beneath the cabinet that held our spices. I presumed Katherine or I had left those things in those locations, but I didn’t remember. It’s funny to think, but Katherine and I spent most of our adult lives at work to earn money to buy those things, and once I had them, I seldom gave them more than a passing glance. I guess it said something about my priorities.

  “Are you all right?” asked Roberts.

  He must have noticed my pause. I took another quick scan of the room.

  “I’m fine. Thank you,” I said. “I think you’re right. I don’t think they took anything.”

  “Good,” said Roberts. “Let’s check out the rest of the house.”

  Roberts likely had other calls to attend to, so I nodded and walked into the dining room. Someone might have bumped into the table, but it looked fine. The chairs were there, the tablecloth still draped over the sides, the napkin holder remained in the center. The attached living room looked similar. It didn’t even look as if the throw pillows on our couch and loveseat had been moved. I checked out my office next. Since I write historical crime novels, I spend a lot of time and money researching the history of forensic science. Two of my hundred-year-old textbooks were worth a couple thousand dollars each, but like everything else in the house, my bookshelves looked as if no one had touched them.

  “First floor looks clean,” I said. “I don’t think they took anything.”

  “Where’s your TV?”

  “I have an old one in the garage and a new one in the spare bedroom upstairs. We don’t have one down here.”

  “Does your wife have any jewelry?”

  “A little,” I said, walking toward the staircase. Roberts followed me up, but we didn’t stay long. Ashley’s room held only items of sentimental value, so I just stuck my head in to make sure nothing was obviously out of place. Simon’s dog bed lay beside a neatly made, full-sized antique bed, while plush animals peeked at me from atop my niece’s dresser. The guest bedroom held even less: a bed, a dresser, and a chest of drawers. I peeked into one of the drawers on the dresser, but quickly shut it when I saw a pair of quilts my grandmother had made before she died. They were the only thing worth stealing in the room, and the bulk of their value was sentimental.

  I took a little longer in the master bedroom, but even then I didn’t look for more than a few minutes. We had never been able to afford expensive jewelry, so Katherine didn’t have much. I peeked into the drawers of her jewelry box and saw a couple of necklaces from estate sales her father had given her when she was still in college, her sapphire engagement ring, and some bracelets from her grandmother. Everything looked to be in order.

  I stuck my head in our closet last, and that’s when I saw something out of place for the first time. When we bought the house, our master bedroom closet had a single bar on which the previous homeowner had hung various garments. A week after we moved in, Katherine and I took out the bar and installed a wooden closet organization system with hanging space, a number of shelves, and even a few drawers. Katherine’s clothes occupied most of the storage space, but I still had a couple of shelves for my t-shirts. Someone had pushed those t-shirts aside, exposing the cold-air return duct near the ceiling. I would have assumed it was Katherine except that the grate covering the ductwork was crooked, making me think someone had taken it down and put it back improperly, probably after leaving something inside.

  I looked back
at Sergeant Roberts.

  “It looks good. Nothing’s missing.”

  “You sure about that?”

  I nodded. “I think so. If I find something, I’ll give you a call.”

  The officer nodded. “The alarm probably scared the burglar off. We’ll mail you a copy of our report for your insurance.”

  “What should I do about the back door?”

  “Well,” said Roberts, “you’re going to have to reframe it eventually, but you ought to be able to get by for a few days if you screw the sill together. Your neighbors can probably give you the name of a contractor.”

  Screwing the sill together wouldn’t look good, but at least it’d keep the door shut. I nodded.

  “Thank you for coming by. I appreciate it.”

  “Good luck finding your dog.”

  “I’m sure he’s around.”

  Sergeant Roberts went back to his patrol car to write a report, while I walked to the front yard, where I met my wife and niece. They had gotten out of the car and stood on the front lawn. Ron, my neighbor, had left.

  “What happened?” asked Katherine, watching as Roberts climbed into his cruiser.

  “Somebody kicked down the back door, but we don’t think he went in. Sergeant Roberts thinks the alarm scared him off.”

  Katherine put her arm around Ashley and held her to her side. “Do you think it was Tess?”

  Ashley looked at her aunt. “Who’s Tess?”

  “She’s nobody, sweetheart,” I said, looking from my niece to my wife. “And probably.”

  “I don’t like the idea of her in our house,” said Katherine.

  “I don’t either,” I said. “Are you guys okay in that hotel for another day or two?”

  Katherine looked at Ashley and smiled.

  “They have hot water in the lobby all the time,” said Ashley.

  “Someone’s become quite the hot chocolate drinker lately,” said Katherine. “We’ll be fine in the hotel. There’s room for you, too, if you want.”

  “I appreciate it, but I’ve got a lot of stuff to do around here. I need to fix the back door and find the dog. I’ll call Vince and see if he can help.”

  That seemed to relax my wife some. “Good.”

  We waited until the police left before walking into the house. Katherine immediately went upstairs to double-check her jewelry box, while Ashley and I stayed in the living room. My niece didn’t seem to understand what was going on, but it might have been better that she didn’t understand. After about five minutes, Katherine called out, asking me to look at something. I hoped that she hadn’t found the loose grate in the closet.

  “I’m coming,” I said, jogging up the stairs. When I got upstairs, I found Katherine beside the bed, her jewelry spread across the comforter. She held a gold brooch. It looked like an ancient Egyptian’s eye with an enormous emerald in place of the iris.

  “Did you buy me this?”

  “That depends,” I said. “Do you like it?”

  “It’s . . . it’s nice, I guess,” she said, her brow furrowed. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it before.”

  “It isn’t really your style.”

  “No, it isn’t,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s gaudy. And feel it,” she said, holding out her arm. “It’s heavy.”

  I took it from her outstretched fingers. It did feel heavy. “Your dad probably bought it at one of his estate sales. He liked to surprise you with jewelry, didn’t he?”

  Katherine tilted her head to the side. “Dad has better taste than this,” she said. “Besides, we went to estate sales because things were cheap. I think this is real.”

  “It can’t be,” I said, handing her the brooch again. “That emerald would have to be eight carats.”

  “At least,” she said. “I’ve never seen this before. If you didn’t buy it for me, I don’t know where it came from.”

  “How about we just leave it here for now,” I said. “And we’ll call your dad about it tomorrow. He probably bought a whole set of costume jewelry and forgot to tell you that this was part of it.”

  “Maybe,” she said, pursing her lips. She didn’t look convinced.

  “Do you have enough clothes for the next few days?” I asked.

  “I do,” she said. “But I was going to grab a few more things for Ashley.”

  I looked around the room and crossed my arms as if I were cold. “I want to get out of here as soon as we can. The idea of someone in here gives me the creeps.”

  She nodded, her eyes looking absent. “I guess the brooch can wait.”

  Since Katherine wasn’t sure when she’d be back, she picked out a week’s worth of clothes for Ashley, while I packed a few extra toiletries so they wouldn’t run out of toothpaste. I carried the bags to Katherine’s car and buckled Ashley into the backseat. Before getting in, my wife shut her door so Ashley couldn’t hear us talking.

  “I’m sorry for what’s happened,” I said.

  “Nine years ago, you couldn’t know it would turn out like this. You thought you were doing the right thing.”

  I looked at my feet. “Now that you know the truth, now that you know what I did to Dominique, are we okay?”

  She put her hand over her stomach, over the small bump that would eventually turn into our child. “I think we will be. I hope so.”

  “I hope so, too.”

  She smiled weakly, and I kissed her forehead before she climbed into the car. Sometimes I wished we lived in the soap-opera world where grand gestures like running into the street would be enough to heal every wound our marriage had. Unfortunately, we lived in reality, a world in which grand gestures were usually a waste of time. When I walked into the street to watch her drive off, she didn’t slow down or even open her window to wave at me. She just turned at the stop sign at the end of our street and disappeared. I stayed in front of my house, waiting and hoping she’d turn around and come back. She never did, which was for the best, anyway; I had a dog to find.

  19

  When Katherine and I moved to Webster Groves, we let Simon have free rein in the backyard. After living in an apartment in Boston, he loved it. He chased everything that moved, lay in the sun for hours, and dug up nearly every plant we had. Fearing that he’d eventually dig an escape route beneath our fence, we bought him a collar with a GPS tracker built into it, something I planned to take advantage of now. I took out my cell phone and searched through the list of apps until I came to the one supplied by the collar’s maker.

  The dot on the map representing Simon was near the River des Peres, a euphemistically named drainage ditch approximately six miles from my house, and he wasn’t moving. With my dog’s arthritis, he couldn’t have made it that far on his own. I’m sure the police would come with me if I called, but they’d come with questions that I couldn’t answer. Instead, I called Vince.

  “Steve, what’s up?”

  “I need some help. Somebody broke into my house, and I’m pretty sure they took Simon.”

  “Your dog?”

  “Yeah,” I said, looking up and down the street. It felt like someone was watching me, but that was probably just my nerves. “His collar has a GPS tracker on it that says he’s near the River des Peres.”

  “You sure he didn’t run away?”

  “He’s too old to have run that far.”

  “Why would someone take your dog?”

  I threw up my free hand and turned toward my house. “How the hell should I know? All I know is that he’s beside the River des Peres, and he isn’t moving. I need to make sure he’s okay, and I want someone with me. If you can’t come, I’ll call Isaac.”

  “Calm down. I’ll come with you.”

  I took a breath. “Thank you. And sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  We both hung up at the same time, and I walked to the garage for my drill and some screws. I didn’t have the tools or construction know-how to reframe my
door, but I patched the existing frame as well as I could by screwing the broken bits of wood back together again. My patch job wouldn’t win too many beauty prizes or keep water out, but it at least allowed the deadbolt to engage and the contact points of my alarm to meet.

  As I put the tools away, Vince pulled to a stop in front of my house. I walked out to meet him. He wore a navy windbreaker, and I could see the bulge of a firearm along his hip. If someone had asked me a couple of days ago if I thought I’d ever need a gun to feel safe, I would have said no. By and large, I trust the police. They have a tough job, and most of them do it well. Now, though, I didn’t know. I wiped bits of wood and sawdust on my pants and nodded hello.

  “Are Katherine and Ashley home?” he asked.

  “No, they’re staying at a hotel.”

  “Good,” said Vince, nodding. “I’ll drive if you navigate.”

  I agreed and climbed into his car. We took I-44 northeast toward the city and ultimately parked in the gravel parking lot of a small city park beside the River des Peres. I didn’t have a flashlight, but according to my app, we weren’t far from Simon. The air smelled of earth and rot, and the sound of trains clanking against one another carried from the nearby railroad yard. St. Louis was a city whose bright, sunny days were long since past, leaving us perpetually overcast. Each year, the blight sprawled further out, devouring the city from within, and that park was amongst the saddest I had ever seen.

  Vince and I walked across a baseball field containing more dirt than grass, and stopped near the chain-link fence that separated the ball field from the river. I called out my dog’s name and waited, hoping he’d bound towards me or at least whimper. He didn’t respond, so I put my right foot on the waist-high fence and hoisted myself over. A few scraggly trees lined the opposite side of the river, blocking the view of the train yard, while graffiti adorned the concrete piers that anchored the nearby Arsenal Street Bridge to the ground.

  “Are you sure he’s here?” asked Vince, still on the other side of the fence.