Missing White Girl

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  “You might be right about that, Oliver.” Buck drained his cup. “And I ought to be doing something about it, oughtn’t I? I’ll get out of your hair. Appreciate the hospitality.”

  “Anytime. Sorry I didn’t have doughnuts.”

  Buck smiled. “Every civilian gets one doughnut joke,” he said. He put his mug on the kitchen counter, next to the sink, and picked up his hat from the table. “Next time, I shoot you. Right in the gut.”

  “It’s a deal,” Oliver said. He walked Buck to the door, where the lieutenant shook his hand and headed out into the storm’s aftermath.

  11

  Barry sat around his house for a while, but he couldn’t get comfortable there. The place reminded him of Clarice. Her framed picture stood on the buffet, the look on her face mildly disapproving. The buffet contained dishes bought for them as wedding presents that he hadn’t used since her death, but couldn’t bring himself to get rid of. Over the couch hung an Indian-style wall hanging she had bought in Phoenix, a dream catcher that he pointed out wasn’t really made by Indians and should be in the bedroom anyway, but that she had thought looked perfect over the sofa. Even the coiled cloth rug in the entryway, which she’d found at an antiques store up in Benson. These things made him think about everything he’d lost in his life and everything he stood to lose. After a couple of hours he stormed out, slammed the door behind him and climbed back up into the truck. He needed to get away, to be around other people, to get outside of his own head for a time.

  After driving aimlessly for thirty minutes, he found himself parked on the gravel lot of the Rusty Spur Saloon, an adobe building standing by itself on a quarter-acre lot in McNeal. He couldn’t remember the details of the drive. He had been churning over his anger at his boss and that fuck down at the Wal-Mart and all the Mexicans who had come to the United States to take jobs away from Americans, and next thing he knew he was spraying stones and water at the other trucks in the lot and coming to a shuddering halt.

  The saloon had a tin roof and a heavy wooden door, standing open. A screen kept some of the bugs and most of the rain out. He could hear Toby Keith turned up loud. The inside was dark and cool, and Barry tugged open the screen door and walked through into a different world, leaving behind the monsoon and some of the heartache.

  Barry ordered Miller in a bottle. The bar had six stools and three drinkers, each with an empty between him and the next guy. One booth stood empty, but it held at least six, and Barry would have felt bad taking that much space. So he sat down between two of the guys, nodded to both and started in on his beer.

  By his third he was complaining about his employment situation to the guy on his right. They had started out just chatting casually, and he hadn’t even noticed when the conversation took this turn. “Listen to me,” he said when it occurred to him. “Running off at the mouth like this, telling you my troubles.”

  “Don’t worry about it, man,” the guy said. “Man drinks in a bar, he’s got to know he’ll hear a sad story or two. That’s why we’re here, ain’t it? Support our brothers in their time of need?”

  “That’s downright Christian of you,” Barry said.

  “I do what I can.” Lean and weathered, the guy wore jeans and worn boots and a Western-style tan work shirt with pearl snaps. His hair was brown, trimmed military-short. His most striking feature, Barry thought, was pale gray eyes that seemed to glow in the bar’s dim interior, as if the guy had a candle inside his head. Barry couldn’t begin to explain it, but he felt as drawn to those eyes as a moth to a lightbulb. He could trust a man with eyes like that. They would reveal any trace of dishonesty, would signal deception before it could happen.

  “You want to go sit in the booth?” the guy said. “I’ll buy you another and you can finish your story without worrying about anyone else hearing you.”

  Barry wondered for a second if the guy was trying to pick him up. He’d been with a few women besides Clarice, but not many—a couple of B-girls in Saigon, two others in high school before that and a couple of awkward encounters since she had passed away. He’d heard about men who went with men—you didn’t reach adulthood these days without learning about such things—but he didn’t think he’d ever met one. Not that he knew about, for sure. This guy looked plenty masculine, though, with a stringy muscularity, no trace of makeup or earrings or anything like that. His shirtsleeves were rolled up over tanned, corded forearms, and his shoulders were broad, and of course he had those eyes. Barry tipped back his bottle, drained it, set it down on the wooden bar top with a loud clunk. “Sure,” he said. What he hadn’t had was anything regular except his right hand, Vaseline and satellite TV since he’d lost Clarice, and he wondered if this guy made a move, that kind of move, would he be able to resist?

  The guy ordered them both another beer and carried the two bottles over to the booth, the strong fingers of his right hand clutching both necks. Barry slid in, his jeans sticking once on the vinyl, and the other man sat across from him. He kept his hands above the top of the table, at least one on his bottle. “You were telling me about the guy at Wal-Mart,” he prompted.

  “Don’t know what else there is to tell,” Barry said. “He didn’t quite laugh in my face, but I could tell he wanted to.”

  “Sure,” the other man said. “He’s got a job; all his people have their jobs. What’s it to them if a white man can’t afford groceries?”

  “Exactly,” Barry said. Maybe the guy wasn’t interested in him in a physical way. That was better, anyway. He didn’t know what to do with a man, that way, but he felt a closeness with this stranger that he hadn’t known since Clarice’s death. Like the two of them connected on some wavelength he hadn’t been broadcasting on for years. “You hit it right on the head, buddy.”

  “I’ve been there too,” the man said. “Hell, every white man in this bar, in this whole damn county, probably has.”

  “Got that right,” Barry said. “I…I can’t remember your name. I know you said it, but…”

  “That’s cool.” The guy stuck his hand out for another shake. “I’m Carl Greenwell.”

  The name sounded vaguely familiar, but Barry couldn’t place it. Carl kept him talking awhile longer, buying rounds as they went. Rings of bottle sweat ran together on the varnished tabletop, forming pools. When Barry’s eighth or ninth Miller showed up, Carl grabbed the bottle. “Listen, Barry,” he said, lowering his voice. “What would you think if I could show you a way that you could make a difference? You could fight back against the forces that are ruining this country?”

  “Hell,” Barry said, trying to tug his beer free of the other man’s grip, “I’d say sign me up.”

  “That’s what I was hoping you’d say. Why don’t you bring that along and come with me?”

  Barry saw no reason not to accompany Carl Greenwell. Outside, the rain had stopped. Rays from the late afternoon sun slanted beneath the clouds, giving a golden glow to a cloudburst over the Mule Mountains to the west. “What are you driving?” Carl asked.

  Barry indicated his rust-pocked old GMC truck. Carl nodded and continued toward a gleaming black Expedition with tinted windows. The front passenger door opened, and a man got out, nodding once to Carl. “Give Joe your keys,” Carl said. “He’ll follow us with your truck.”

  Without hesitation, Barry fished the keys out of his pocket and gave them to the man who had climbed down from the dark SUV. Carl opened the rear doors of the Expedition, and Barry got in behind the driver, a man wearing a straw cowboy hat with a dark sweat stain around the base of the crown, mirrored sunglasses and a gray camo-patterned T-shirt. Carl sat beside him in the rear. “Let’s go home, Marc,” he said to the driver. “We have a lot of stuff to show Barry.”

  12

  Vivian Stiles had been twenty-two and brilliant, a senior with her choice of graduate programs ahead of her, a consenting adult in anyone’s book. She was sophisticated, worldly, and had amassed plenty of experience at life and sex. She had told Oliver that she’d been sexually
active since before her sixteenth birthday, and when she described the number of lovers she’d had, of both genders, and some of the things she’d tried, he felt that if anything, she would be corrupting him and not the other way around.

  Even so, he had not come on to her. She sat in his San Diego State classroom during lecture periods, dressed in college casual, cleavage revealed by low-cut tops or tanks or tight, skimpy numbers that laced up the front, snug-fitting jeans or shorts or tiny skirts that displayed miles of shapely leg. She visited him during office hours, at first to discuss issues relating to course work or grades, later just to pass the time. For a twenty-first-century college student, Vivian was remarkably articulate, and talking to her was more like conversing with a colleague than a student.

  Gradually, their exchanges became more and more personal. She shared stories of her romantic history and seemed fascinated by Oliver’s description of his nontraditional marriage, in which both partners occasionally had other lovers, with full spousal knowledge and consent. Vivian seemed fascinated by the arrangement and the fact that Oliver and Jeannie both thought it kept their marriage fresh and vital.

  From that point, her interest in him seemed to change. Her flirting grew more direct. It didn’t take long for Oliver to realize that he could have her in a second, that all he had to do was lock his office door and she’d start tugging her clothes off. He was not, at the moment, involved with anyone besides his wife, but he wasn’t looking for involvement, either, particularly not with a student.

  But he couldn’t deny the attraction he felt, mentally and sexually. Vivian had a remarkable figure, athletic but soft where it counted, curvaceous instead of cut. Cascading waves of auburn hair framed a face equal parts angelic and devilish, her green eyes heavy-lidded, her lips just slightly thinner than traditional beauty standards dictated, her jaw pronounced, as if defying him to deny her anything. He flirted back but gave no consideration to taking the next step, until the time he accompanied her to her off-campus apartment to pick up a birthday gift she’d promised him, and when the door was closed she shoved him against it, pressing her body against his. Her mouth sought his lips, his neck, his shoulders, and her hands moved across his back, his chest, his groin. He tried to protest, but not forcefully, and then he was hard, his own hands roaming to breasts and behind, tangling in her hair. She rolled her tight T-shirt off, unclasped her bra, and as his hands explored the swell of her breasts, she lowered to her knees and opened his pants, taking him in her hungry mouth.

  The first time, she finished him that way. He wanted to reciprocate, but Vivian turned him down, assuring him that he would more than make it up later. By which she meant forty minutes later, when they had retreated to her bed, naked together, still learning the curves and corners and crannies of each other’s body as the afternoon light slanted in between half-open blinds and dust swirled lazily in the air. He reached between her legs and found her moist and ready, and he began manipulating her with his fingers, but she pushed his head down. He kissed and licked a trail down the valley between her breasts, down her stomach, down, until with tongue and fingers he brought her to a shuddering, screaming orgasm. By then he was hard again, and she guided him inside her. Moving expertly, controlling his rhythm and bucking beneath him, she held him at the edge of orgasm for a long time, until he could hold off no more and exploded inside her.

  The physical sensations she delivered to him were incredible. But after they were done, guilt warred with the pleasant afterglow. Oliver knew she was on the pill and got regular checkups for STDs, but he had taken no precautions of his own. And his arrangement with Jeannie required that they discuss prospective partners before anything happened. She would never have agreed to let him play with a student, knowing what it could do to his career. He had sworn not to get into such a situation for the same reason.

  Yet here he was.

  Having broken so many rules at once, he decided he couldn’t tell Jeannie. The affair continued, Vivian demonstrating her experience and a definite attraction to high-risk behavior, going down on him in public or semipublic places: the beach, his office, an empty classroom, a campus parking lot. Once she took him into the back row of a quiet movie theater, hiked up her short skirt, undid his pants and straddled him. It turned out to be the shortest Merchant/Ivory film he had ever seen, or felt like it.

  In private, she was just as inventive, wanting sex as often and in as much variety as she could get.

  Finally, after very nearly getting caught in the act by a campus security guard, Oliver decided that it had to end. He couldn’t risk his career and his marriage anymore, not even for such a stimulating and agreeable partner. He told her his decision over a quiet dinner at her apartment.

  Vivian broke down. She not only wanted to continue the relationship, but she wanted to make it official, wanted him to leave Jeannie for her. Oliver refused. She threatened retaliation, swore that she would tell his wife.

  Instead, she told Bob Crandall, his dean.

  Worse, she was able to back up her charges with e-mails, photos and cards, all of which she had saved. Oliver was called in and informed that he had to resign immediately or be fired for having violated the school’s policies in such a visible and egregious way.

  That night, Oliver told Jeannie what he’d done.

  The third scene in a row, after Vivian and Bob, almost turned out to be more than he could handle. He moved to a motel for a few weeks, seeing Jeannie only occasionally. He knew that his dishonesty had wounded her, and even if he had been less perceptive, she made no effort to hide it.

  Not once during the days they were apart, however, did they end a day without saying “I love you” to each other.

  A month after his resignation took effect, Jeannie agreed to stay with him. Bob Crandall helped get him in touch with Franklin Hinckley, and when the offer came through from Cochise College, they put their house up for sale and started to think of the future in positive terms, as the beginning of a new phase of life. They agreed to try monogamy for a change, and as far as Oliver knew both of them had lived up to the pledge.

  But the past leaves its imprint on every human soul, and Oliver knew that he would carry the marks of his failure for the rest of his life. Buck Shelton had found out what he’d done, and it had made him a suspect in a multiple homicide and abduction. For all he knew, he was now suspected of the abduction of Elayne Lippincott as well. Oliver felt that the decisions he and Jeannie had made about their marriage were personal and private, and it offended him that anyone would equate extramarital intimacy with murder.

  Jeannie came in shortly after Buck left and found Oliver still sitting at the table, cradling his empty mug between his hands. “What was all that about?” she asked.

  “I think he talked to Bob Crandall,” Oliver said. “Or Hinckley. Either way, he knows about…you know, about me and Vivian. And just naturally assumes that if I’d fuck a student once then I’d do it with an eighteen-year-old neighbor too. Which, since I’d be sure to be caught, means that I’d murder her family and hide her out in the shed.”

  “He can’t be too serious about it,” Jeannie said, “if he sat in here and drank coffee with you.”

  “I’m trying to figure out that part too. I can’t decide if he really believed I was guilty and expected to find her in there, or was just going through the formalities. Maybe he thought that if I was relaxed enough I’d let something slip.”

  “Or maybe he knows you didn’t do anything and wanted to make peace over coffee.”

  “Maybe that,” Oliver agreed. “I just don’t know.”

  “When he left, it didn’t sound like he really suspected anything. At least to me, in the other room.”

  “I don’t think he did, but I don’t know him well enough to really read him. He might have planted a bug for all I know, hoping I’d confess to something after he left.”

  Jeannie leaned against the jamb with her arms folded over her chest, head cocked at an angle that reminded Oliver of B
enji, the movie dog, regarding him for a long moment. “You didn’t, did you? I mean, I know you’re no killer, and I don’t believe you would have sex with Lulu. But I’d like to hear you say it.”

  “Jeannie…” Oliver’s first impulse was to feel insulted, to decry her lack of trust. Barely had the thought entered his mind than he reconsidered. She had every right to doubt. The hurt he had caused her with his lies, his deceptions, had never left her, for all that they had worked to put it behind them. “No. I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I hope you believe me.”

  She came to him then, put her arms around his back. “I do, Oliver,” she said. “It’s just…all this stuff, with Lulu and her family, so close by. It all has my head a little fucked up, that’s all.”

  He squeezed her, feeling her comfortable warmth against him. “You’re not alone there, sweetheart,” he said. “Not at all.”

  13

  Peggy Olsson got a weird vibe from her new guest. She was Sensitive, with a capital “S,” and had learned to pay attention to her instincts. They rarely steered her wrong. Even back in high school, the night she had refused to get into Tony Corbett’s Impala after the spring dance, it had been because she picked up a strange feeling from Tony. Twenty minutes later he had steered the Impala into an oncoming semi. Sadie Franks, who had taken the seat that would have been Peggy’s, hadn’t died in the accident, but to this day she had to roll around in a wheelchair that she operated with her mouth, so Peggy had to think she’d made the right choice.

  Normally she closed the cabins down after Labor Day. There was just no percentage in keeping them open. During the summer, Arizona’s desert heat drove flocks of tourists up the heights of the Mogollon Rim. But in autumn, tourists wanted to see color-changing deciduous trees, so the Rim’s pine forests didn’t suit. And skiers had no use for the Rim’s sheer cliffs, which limited winter business. The springs and summers earned enough to meet Peggy’s needs, and during the fall she hired Wes Colton to do maintenance work on the cabins, getting them ready for the winter and the following spring’s guests.