Little Comfort

by Edwin Hill

  Paul ordered a shot of whiskey with a beer chaser, which got him carded.

  “I get carded all the time too,” Hester said.

  “You look old enough to me.”

  “Thanks. I guess. I’m getting lunch too.”

  Paul ordered a lobster roll, the most expensive item on the menu. Hester ordered a Reuben. “Extra fries,” she said. “And bring me another beer.”

  After the bartender moved away, she swiveled toward Paul. “You’re the one who wrote me. You didn’t have to do that. So if I had to bet, I’d bet that you have something to tell me. And that it has something to do with Gabe DiPursio or Sam Blaine. They disappeared, right? And it seems like no one cared about it. I’m trying to figure out why. I put all that in my e-mails, though. Tell me what you remember about them. Were you in any classes with them or the band? Did you play sports? Anything.”

  Paul slammed down the shot and followed it with half of his beer. He coughed, and then drank down the rest of the beer and ordered another.

  “You’re not driving, are you?” Hester asked.

  “I’ll take the T.”

  “So, Sam and Gabe?”

  “Gabe came to town in the middle of freshman year,” Paul said. “And no one really noticed him. Not till he started hanging out with Sam. Sam was one of those guys that you did notice. Girls liked him. Guys liked him. He was good at soccer and singing and playing the clarinet. He was comfortable. But you never really knew him. The two of them hung out at school, like, all the time. They were fags. Or at least that’s what everyone thought, especially when we found out they ran off to San Francisco.”

  “You knew they went to San Francisco?”

  “Sure.”

  “How? Who told you?”

  “I don’t really remember,” Paul said. “It’s a small place. Once one person knows something, pretty much everyone does.”

  “Did Sam’s sister tell you? Lila?”

  Paul smirked into his beer in a way that made Hester cringe. “Yeah, maybe that’s who it was. Lila. She was the town slut.”

  “I’ve figured that much out.”

  Paul lowered his voice. “She was my slut for a while. At least till I moved on to something better.”

  “When you were in high school?”

  Paul nodded. “Tenth grade. Used to go by her house after school and watch pornos.”

  Strike two for Lila Blaine.

  The bartender delivered their plates. Paul squeezed a mound of ketchup over his fries and then went at the lobster roll as though he hadn’t eaten in a month.

  “How come you even remember Gabe?” Hester asked. “Most people I talk to say he was invisible. Not someone you even noticed, let alone remembered.”

  “Well, I knew Gabe better than most of the other kids. We lived together.”

  “You were a foster kid?”

  “For a bit,” Paul said with a shrug. “My mom went through a tough time.”

  “Was this with Cheryl Jenkins, or before?”

  Paul paused. “Yeah, it was with Cheryl.”

  “What was it like at her house? I met her earlier this week. She made it sound like Shangri-La.”

  “Shangri-what?”

  “Like heaven.”

  Paul drank down his second shot and followed it with a bit less beer this time. “Are you friends with her?”

  “Not at all,” Hester said.

  “Do you know Bobby?”

  “Bobby Englewood? Yeah, we’ve met.”

  “It was okay there at first,” Paul said. “There were six of us, all boys, but more like a revolving door because some kids would come in for a couple of weeks and then move on. We slept three or four to a room, and it was like summer camp. We’d play baseball on the front lawn. She had dogs. Made good food that kids like. Mac and cheese and that type of thing. We’d all kind of sit around and work on our homework together at night, so my grades even went up. My mom’s a great person now, but not so much then. She got hooked on drugs and went into rehab and then we lived out of the car for a while. Cheryl’s place seemed perfect at first. And I wasn’t there all that long. Only a few months.”

  Paul dragged a wad of fries through ketchup and stuffed them into his mouth. “You don’t look much like a private investigator,” he said.

  “So I’ve heard,” Hester said.

  “Who’re you working for? Is this some kind of lawsuit? How much money is involved?”

  “There’s no money or lawsuit. Why would there be?”

  “Don’t try that. I’m not giving it up for nothing, so tell whoever you’re working for to cut me in.”

  “There’s nothing beyond this lunch. I’m trying to find out what happened that summer. Why Gabe and Sam ran away and why no one bothered to look for them. And it seems like you might have some information. I’ll tell you who hired me. It was Lila Blaine. Sam’s sister. The town slut. There’s no money coming from Lila.”

  “I heard Gabe was doing her for a while. Cheryl couldn’t stand that. She wanted him home, back at the house, not over there.”

  “Why?”

  Paul checked over each shoulder to see if anyone was listening. “I’m not admitting to anything,” he said. “Especially if there isn’t any cash. I was barely there long enough for anything to happen anyway.”

  “Tell me,” Hester said. “Off the record. Lila doesn’t even know I’m meeting you. No one does.”

  “Cheryl liked to have the boys indoctrinated, really dependent and grateful, before it started. She wanted to be sure they knew to keep their mouths shut, and they did, for the most part. I mean, what boy in rural New Hampshire would want to admit to sucking cock all night long?”

  Hester put her sandwich down and gulped at her beer. Her mouth still felt dry.

  “So you can put two and two together,” Paul said. “I can see it on your face. It was the early days of the Internet. Well, not that early. But it was when you still thought things were anonymous. They pimped those boys out. You knew your turn was up when Bobby showed up to drive you over to the motel. And they had a roster of clients willing to travel and pay top dollar. Alone. In groups. They’d have parties some Saturday nights, a thousand bucks a head. And when Gabe disappeared, it all ended fast. There were too many cops around, and Cheryl had to take cover. In a way, Gabe saved all those kids.” Paul put on his coat and swung his knapsack over one shoulder. “Thanks for lunch,” he said. “And for the memories.”

  Hester watched him leave and then paid the bill. She hurried outside onto the street to catch him, to say something, to apologize for pulling him into this, for making him remember. But he’d disappeared.

  CHAPTER 17

  Sam was unnerved in a way he wasn’t used to being. Who was that woman? Why had he seen her twice now? And why hadn’t Gabe mentioned bumping into her at a dog park? He unlocked his car and slid into the driver’s seat. Jamie got in on the other side. Sam scanned the VA parking lot and found her monster truck, which he remembered from when she’d come by the apartment. He waited till she left the hospital a moment later and snapped a photo of her. The image was blurry and distant, but it was clearly her. Later, he’d show it to Gabe to be sure that Gabe understood that any slip-up, however small, could mean the end for both of them. He started up the car and headed toward Route 128. “Type ‘Hester Thursby’ into your phone,” he said to Jamie. “See what you can find out about her. There can’t be too many people with that name in the world.”

  “Her Facebook page’s blocked,” Jamie said.

  “What else do you see?”

  Jamie scrolled through the search results. “Nothing but hits from Ancestry.com.”

  “Hester isn’t really a twenty-first-century name, is it?”

  “This is a blog about finding old friends,” Jamie said a moment later. “This woman found everyone in her second grade class. She in touch with a few, and found most of the others online. But there were two she needed help with. Hester helped her.”

  “At the librar
y?” Sam said. “She helped the woman because she’s a librarian, right?”

  Jamie read a few more lines. “More like as an amateur investigator. She finds people who go missing.”

  Sam drove onto the highway and edged into midday traffic. He could feel his blood pressure rising. Someone—someone from the past or present—had hired Hester to find him or Gabe or both of them. And now there were connections between her and this mysterious person, connections he didn’t know about. There were e-mail trails and phone calls and exchanges of money, and any one of them could lead right to him.

  *

  Jamie lived with a little white dog named Butch, who yapped as they came in from the cold with a pizza. Sam wanted to kick her. He could barely concentrate as they ate lunch. He’d nearly forgotten that Twig’s body was frozen in the shed out back. This was a connection, wasn’t it? Being here. Working with Jamie. Knowing him. He shouldn’t have come here. He touched the scratches on his wrists, which had nearly healed over. In twenty-four hours, they’d be all but invisible. He felt terrible about what had happened to Twig. Really, he did. He’d tried to explain that to Gabe, who’d barely gotten out of bed yesterday, and when he did, Sam had had to talk him down, to convince him that they didn’t need to flee Boston. “What could possibly connect us to her?” Sam had asked.

  “How about the party?” Gabe said. “Or that anyone who digs too deep will figure out that you grew up in the same town where she has a summer house. Or that your new girlfriend is her BFF?”

  “Nobody saw her,” Sam said.

  “In a crowded party right in the middle of the holiday season?” Gabe said. “I guarantee you someone saw her. You just don’t know who yet.”

  Gabe was pissing Sam off. “Drink something or look at porn or smoke a joint or do whatever it is you do to calm down,” he said. “No one even knows she’s missing yet.”

  “They’ll know soon enough,” Gabe had said. “Rich people don’t disappear without someone taking note.”

  He’d been right. Sam knew Gabe was right, and that he should have listened, and that the entire Boston police force would come down on this case, but Sam hadn’t wanted to listen. He wanted to be in Wendy’s house, in Wendy’s life.

  He wanted to become who he was becoming.

  He finished up a slice of pizza and proposed a game of Warcraft to Jamie. After they’d played three times, he asked Jamie to pull up a web browser. “Do me a favor. Search on Laura Ambrose.”

  “Laura Ambrose?” Jamie said as he typed the name in.

  “Someone I used to know,” Sam said, as Twig’s photo popped up on screen. It was a professional photo, taken at a studio, and meant to make her look businesslike and sexy at the same time. She wore glasses, her yellow hair framing her long face.

  “Nothing in the news?”

  “No,” Jamie said.

  The news would come soon enough. “Search on Wendy Richards now. See if there’s anything about her.”

  Wendy’s name brought up plenty of hits, including her website. There was a link to a society page that covered the Crocus Party, complete with photos. Sam had carefully avoided any photographers that night, but now, a quick scan showed that no one had picked up Twig either. Not even in the background. “Bookmark that page, would you?” Sam said, as his phone rang. Wendy’s name popped up on the screen. “I need to grab this,” he said.

  Butch followed him down the hallway, yipping as he slid into his coat and stepped onto the front porch.

  “A police detective came by the house,” Wendy said when he answered. “They think Twig is missing. They want to talk to you.”

  A tingle of dread slid down his spine. “Why me?” he asked.

  “You, Felicia. She wants to talk to anyone who was at the party. She wants you to call her.”

  “Okay. Text me her number, would you? Have you spoken to her already?”

  “It’s not like I had much of a choice.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Not much. That Twig was on the board of the foundation, but she barely showed up at the party.”

  Sam nearly asked her if she’d told the detective that he was with her the whole night, but stopped himself. He wouldn’t want her to remember the question.

  “Where are you?” Wendy asked.

  “You remember Jamie, right?” Sam said. There was no use in lying. His phone records would show he’d been here. “I’m with him. He’s being … I don’t know. He has PTSD. Some rage issues. But it’s nothing. I’ll take care of it.”

  “Tell me.”

  Sam let the silence between them grow. And when he did speak, he made sure Wendy understood that he did so reluctantly. “It’s almost like he’s possessive of me. Like he doesn’t want me to have any other friends. I told him about how happy I am with you, and I thought he might put a fist through the wall.”

  Wendy laughed. “Maybe he has a crush on you.”

  “Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. It seemed like more than that.”

  “Call that detective,” Wendy said. “But be careful what you say. And if anyone from the press contacts you, don’t say anything. This’ll be a mess if we don’t contain it.”

  “Letcha know how it goes,” Sam said with a breeziness he hardly felt. He went to hang up, but stopped himself. “Are you okay? Are you worried?”

  “About Twig?” Wendy asked. “Not at all. This is just like her.”

  Sam clicked off. The thermometer hadn’t risen above freezing since Saturday, but the winter air—if you knew to sniff for it—had the slightest trace of a meat locker. He reminded himself why he’d come and stole along the side of the house to the backyard, where he swung open the shed door. Here, the air smacked of rot. Twig lay facedown on the frozen ground. He left the body the way it was but grabbed the garden shears. Back on the front porch, he rang the doorbell. Butch’s shrill yap cut through the air, and the house actually shook as Jamie lumbered down the hallway. Sam liked Jamie. He’d meant to do good when he’d asked him to the party. But sometimes things worked out differently than expected. He needed the police to focus.

  “How about another game?” Sam asked as he crouched down to pet Butch. He gave the garden shears to Jamie. “I found these out here. Hang on to them, would you? You wouldn’t want some kid to hurt himself.”

  Jamie took the shears in his enormous hand. No questions asked.

  *

  Gabe woke with a start to a banging at the front door. A part of him was glad to be awake, away from his dreams, where Twig’s blank eyes stared at him from the dark, and a part of him yearned to be asleep again, to be as far from this life as he could get. He glanced at the clock. It was well into the afternoon. He lay in bed and hoped whoever had come to the house would leave, but the pounding continued till he trudged to the front door. A black woman stood on the stoop. It took all of Gabe’s resolve not to run when she flashed a detective’s badge and introduced herself as Detective White.

  “Are you Aaron Gewirtzman?” she asked.

  Gabe shook his head. His mouth felt dry. He didn’t dare speak.

  “Is he home?” she asked.

  Gabe shook his head again, and the detective waited. She had a kind face, with dark, almond-shaped eyes and whorls of hair that puffed out from beneath a knit cap. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and smiled impatiently. He was acting guilty. He knew that. He was giving her every reason to notice him when, really, she should barely remember having ever met him. He swallowed. “Aaron’s out,” he said. “I think he’s at work.”

  “We have a few questions for him,” the detective said.

  We? Who was “we”? “Do you need his phone number?” Gabe asked.

  “It’d be helpful,” the detective said. Behind her, water dripped from icicles hanging off the eaves. She raised an eyebrow, and Gabe told her the number.

  “You seem nervous,” she said. “To me, at least. But then I just met you. Maybe you’re always like this. Could I ask you a few questions?”


  Gabe felt a jolt of anxiety, a spider running up his spine. But he stepped aside for her to come into the house.

  “Let’s stay out here. Stand in the sun. It’s cold today, but sunny. We can cure our rickets. There’s a snowstorm coming. Did you hear? A blizzard.”

  Gabe hadn’t heard, but he said he had. He hadn’t dared listen to the news since Saturday. He eyed the lump under her coat. It had to be a gun. She’d have handcuffs too. She was forty or so, sturdy, and, Gabe imagined, played “good” way more often than “bad.” She had nice teeth, white teeth, so Detective White was easy to remember. And she was black, and Gabe knew the teeth thing was a stereotype, but there was truth in stereotypes sometimes. At least he thought there was. He also remembered that he had a stash in the batik box, a box that screamed “stash.” Pot, he reminded himself, wasn’t a big deal anymore. Unlike murder. Maybe he should worry about those two fingers he’d hidden under the boiler.

  “Saturday?” Detective White seemed to be waiting for something. “Can you tell us where you were on Saturday night?”

  Us? Who was us? But Sam had coached Gabe well. “You stayed here that night to work on a project,” Sam had said. “You went to bed right after I called to tell you I wasn’t coming home.”

  “Do you spend most nights alone?” Detective White asked.

  Gabe felt himself blush, but managed a shrug anyway.

  “So you stayed home and worked. And Aaron called to tell you he wasn’t coming home. Can you tell me why?”

  “He hooked up with someone,” Gabe said.

  “Who?”

  “You should ask him.”

  “But I’m asking you, so you should tell me if you know.”

  “It was Wendy Richards.”

  The detective opened her notebook and jotted something down. Gabe tried to read her note and she flipped the notebook closed. “Okay,” she said, taking a photo from her pocket. “Do you recognize this woman?”

  The photo was of Twig. Gabe had resisted searching her name online. It was too easy to trace. So this was the first image he’d seen of her alive. “I don’t know her,” he managed to say. “Who is she?”