Idyll Hands

by Stephanie Gayle

  “I heard your big news. Made the station hum for a whole week. Jansen claimed he always knew about you, but Lee said he’s full of shit.” So, the news had made its way back home. Not surprising. Cops talked to other cops. Still, that old fear of exposure, it rose up in me, and it felt again like I was back inside, pretending that there was nothing better than Cindy Crawford in a pair of tight jeans.

  “You think maybe you could look into this abortion angle for me? It’s possible the operation went badly. She might’ve died on the table.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “Terrible thing, but see the thing is, Tommy, I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire. Capisce?” He slammed the phone down.

  I sat, stunned, until the phone beeped repeatedly, and then I set it into its cradle and blinked. So much for my ace.

  Did all the guys from back home feel this way? Jansen claimed he’d known I was gay. The hell he had. Not with the way he used to walk buck naked around me in the changing room. He’d known nothing. None of them had. Well, now they knew. And they hated me. For lying? For being who I was? For both?

  A knock at my door. “Come in.” My voice sounded scratchy, even to my ears. And I hated it, hated that I cared what a nutjob like Carmichael thought of me. Sanctimonious prick.

  Billy came in, with his anxious face. “Hey, Chief. Did you sign those papers I need for my course?”

  Damn it. “No, but I’ve got ’em here. Hold on.” I found the sheets and flipped pages. Signed off on the last one. “Are these overdue?” He’d told me when they were due, and I’d set them aside for another day. Forgotten about them entirely.

  “They told me if I got ’em in today it would be good.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “Thanks, Chief.” Billy clutched the papers to his chest.

  “No problem, Billy.”

  At least I could overcome some people’s disappointment in me.

  DETECTIVE MICHAEL FINNEGAN

  MONDAY, MAY 24, 1999

  0800 HOURS

  The phone surprised me during my shave; I nicked my throat. Stuck a small patch of toilet paper on the wound. It was Linda, my first ex-wife, on the phone. I shouldn’t have hurried to answer it.

  “Did you forget your son’s birthday, again? Or decide to cut him out of your life entirely?” Shit. It was the 24th. Four days ago, my oldest son, Brian, had turned twenty-three. The truth, that I’d forgotten, consumed by the news of Susan’s pregnancy, would win me no sympathy.

  My son, Brian, had come into this world crying, his face a raisin, all angry wrinkles and folds. His six pounds, ten ounces felt like feathers. I remembered it like it was yesterday, but his twenty-third birthday had come and gone, and I hadn’t called or sent a card. “Is he still living at the place near the Laundromat?”

  She sputtered. “You don’t even know where your son lives. Can you hear yourself?”

  “I’d like to send him a card. Is he at the same address?” My calm would only make her angrier, but I didn’t see why we should both yell.

  “If you ever visited him, you’d know where he lives!”

  Sure. I’d show up, and he’d shuffle his feet, and we’d make awkward small talk in his cramped apartment, and eventually he’d take a verbal swing about how I’d mistreated his mother by not being around, about how I wasn’t much of a father. And I’d have to take it, because pointing out that his mother had been a shrew wouldn’t earn me love. Explaining her constant disdain of my job, which she’d admired when we first met, her nitpicking about why couldn’t we afford to go on cruises, and why didn’t I care more about my clothes wore me down so that I felt immobile, like a tool, not a person. Articulating that to my son would do what? Poison him against the woman who’d raised him most of his life? Prove to him that I was an uncaring monster? Best to stay away, and hope the memories he had weren’t all bad, that he had some love for the man who taught him how to hit a baseball and tie a necktie and ask a girl to the school dance.

  “You don’t know where your son lives. He could’ve been abducted.” She paused. “No. Then you’d care. You’d care plenty. It’s only the missing ones that have your heart.”

  That, then, was that. My missing sister, subject of fascination and sympathy to all my exes during our courtships, always turned to an object of scorn and jealousy by the end. The famous wound they thought they could heal made them angry that it took attention from them, from our children. I should give up, forget about Susan, move on with my life. She was dead. Why couldn’t I grieve and go on? This from women who’d wept over shampoo commercials and were still complaining about bad restaurant service they’d endured six years ago.

  “Does he live at the same address or not, Linda? I’d like to send him some money.”

  “Yes, though he’s getting a new place in July, so don’t take too long sending it.”

  “I won’t.” I hung up and scrubbed my face, dislodging the toilet paper. My cut bled.

  Forty minutes later, I walked into the station. Everyone noticed. Billy said a quiet, “Good morning.” The others watched me take my jacket off. After Thursday’s fireworks, were they expecting an encore? If so, they’d be disappointed. My fuse had burnt out. Dix sidled up to me and said, “Good job. Chief’s exercise plan? It’s absurd. And you were right to give him a piece of your mind about it. We’re all with you.” He nodded toward the others, who were watching us.

  They thought I’d exploded because of the fitness regulations? I opened my mouth and then shut it. Contradicting that story wasn’t a good idea. “Sometimes a man has to take a stand,” I said.

  “Here, here.” Dix clapped me on my back. Guy couldn’t run, but he nearly knocked me over with his palm.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Gonna go see the lion in his den.”

  In the chief’s office, I found Lewis. He and Chief were bent over a document, the crowns of their heads nearly touching. Wow. This day was chock-full of surprises.

  “Morning, Detective.” Chief eyed me for mood and pushed the document aside.

  “Hey,” Lewis said, leaning back so he could take me in.

  “Just came to apologize for my behavior the other day,” I said to the chief.

  “I understand you weren’t expecting to be subject to the fitness rules,” Chief said, nodding toward Lewis, “but as I was explaining to Wright here, modifications can be made.”

  So, the chief hadn’t told Lewis why I was shouting the other day? He’d let him believe this was all about the silly fitness memo. Should’ve seen that coming. “Um, so we’re good?” I asked.

  “Apology accepted.” Chief stood. Lewis took a paper from the desk and said, “Ready to find our girl today, Mike?”

  My heart stopped. Then I realized he meant Colleen, not Susan, and I said, “Hell, yes.”

  We went to our desks. Lewis said, “I followed up on a few of our girls. Three are confirmed dead, and one is alive and living in Alaska.”

  “Good for her.” The live ones made me happy. They got excluded from the search, and they were a welcome break from the unrelenting tragedy of the others.

  He grunted. “Would’ve been nice if she’d sent a postcard home. Saved us some trouble.”

  “You’re right. Very insensitive of her not to consider our needs.”

  He rubbed his nose and said, “That brings us down to … wait a second.” He pulled a yellow lined sheet of paper nearer and started counting. “Thirty-eight possibilities. We might find our girl before the next millennium begins.”

  “I heard the new millennium doesn’t begin until 2001,” Jim Yankowitz said.

  Lew gave him the look I’d labeled, “slow burn,” but Jim held steady. Jim knew Lewis was afraid of his dog, and that he’d never say a word about it. Everyone else in the station loved Jinx. But then, they hadn’t been attacked by a dog as a kid. Lewis had.

  “What are you talking about?” Billy asked. “It’s the year 2000 on January 1st.” Another thing Lewis hated: Billy’s frequent insertion
s into other people’s conversations.

  Jim said, “Yeah, but the Gregorian calendar counted from year AD one. There was no year zero, so technically the current millennium doesn’t end until December 31, 2000.”

  “It’s not gonna matter to the computers,” Billy said. “The Y2K problem. All those double zeroes are going to be read as 1900.”

  Lewis vibrated in his chair. He wanted to work, and these two were debating math and talking computer glitches. On another day, I might’ve joined them, but we had a hard row ahead of us and I wanted to find out who Colleen was far more than I wanted to talk about Y2K.

  “Fellas, you want to take your existential questions to the locker room?” I asked. “We got a case that needs solving, and the Gregorian calendar ain’t gonna help us. Leave the big boys alone so we can do grown-up crime stuff, yeah?” Jim looked surprised; Billy looked shocked. It wasn’t like me to pull rank.

  “Fine,” Billy said. He walked away. Jim followed. Jinx looked at me with his big liquid eyes, and then trotted off after Jim.

  “Thanks,” Lewis said, low.

  “No problem. Why don’t you gimme nineteen of those and let’s see if we can’t reduce them to a top ten by lunchtime?”

  “Top ten? What is this, the Miss America pageant?” He handed me a stack of papers. “Can’t wait for the bathing-suit competition.”

  “Me? I’m a talent guy, all the way.”

  He shook his head. “I had to watch it last year. Simone wanted to.” Simone was his daughter. “The singing and the speeches?” He shuddered. “But she loved it. Loved the sparkly dresses.”

  My daughter, Carly, had been a tomboy. More interested in Wiffle ball than ball gowns. I’d been grateful. “You want another girl?” I asked, quietly.

  He chewed his lower lip. “Yeah, but Janice says it’s a boy. Says she can tell. I didn’t point out she was wrong about our son.”

  “Wise man,” I said.

  Nineteen women were collected on my desk, missing from as far north as Millinocket, Maine, and as far south as Norwalk, Connecticut. Of course, our Colleen, as we still called her, might’ve come from outside New England, but we had to start with some limits. Six of the nineteen were from abusive families and in foster situations or juvenile homes. That didn’t mean one of them couldn’t be our girl, but, given the gold crown, it seemed unlikely.

  Thirteen women. Two were married. Ten had pierced ears. I looked up. “Pierced ears?”

  Wright pursed his lips. “Ummmmm.” He looked for the medical examiner’s report. Found it. Turned it, page by page. “They found earrings in the grave. The lobes were long gone.”

  “Great.” I set aside the non-pierced women, knowing that perhaps the question had been answered incorrectly or never asked. We narrowed the field based on what we knew, but we’d found errors. A woman was excluded because she was too tall. Then we found there were varying heights reported, as different as four inches. Another set aside because she fell outside our date range later found to have been mixed into the “wrong year” by the police who’d sent the file. That one had made Lewis kick a cabinet and ask what we were supposed to do if we couldn’t trust the paperwork.

  “God, I wish there were a national database for adults,” he said, leaning away from the papers and stretching his arms overhead.

  “No kidding.” Missing kids had a national clearinghouse set up in 1984. Adults? Nope. Many adults left home because they wanted to, and no foul play was involved. No crime, no need to track ’em. But if we had the database? Oh God, the time it would save! Consolidated reports nationally accessible? Be still my beating heart.

  After several hours, I could recite the histories of the women whose pictures blurred before my eyes. Amy Holt: twenty-two years old, played clarinet, owned a parrot, lived with two roommates on Cape Cod. Went missing April 1980. Last seen leaving work at the Lighthouse Restaurant and Café. Roommates said she sometimes hitched rides home when she was tired. That day, she’d pulled a double. Had she gotten into the wrong car? Trusted the wrong person?

  Lewis said, “I’ve got my pile down to twelve. You?”

  “Nine, I think, if this one really was alive as of late June 1983.” I tapped Nancy Quarterman’s picture. “I think Colleen was buried earlier than that.”

  “Techs think so,” Lewis said. “They think they narrowed the burial date by remnants of the jeans she was wearing?”

  “Really?” I’d missed that report. “What brand?”

  “Sasson.”

  I sang, “Ooh la la Sasson!” Lewis looked at me like I’d sprouted a hydra head. “Come on, you don’t remember those ads? They had that one with the New York Rangers, where the players skated in the jeans.”

  “Must’ve been before my time,” he said.

  “Hardly.”

  He said, “Anyway, the jeans didn’t exist before 1975, and that body couldn’t have been in there after July 1983, because the bone you found belongs to the corpse.”

  “Our victim was put there between 1975 and 1983,” I said.

  “Correct.”

  That didn’t eliminate anyone from my pile, but it might prove useful, later.

  He looked down. “Huh. This one’s birthday is today. She’d be forty years old today, or is forty. Who the fuck knows? No one can find her.”

  “Oof. Birthday. I’ve gotta run an errand before the post office closes. You mind?”

  “Nah,” he said. “I’ll grab some grub.”

  Main Street was quiet. Kids were in school. Adults were working. I liked this time of day; I liked this town. The lilac bushes were abloom. I wandered the pharmacy rows until I found the birthday cards. There were so many. For Him. For Her. Age Five. Age Twenty-One. From Both of Us. Who had decided cards must be so specific? I picked one up marked For Son. Inside was a poem about how much the son meant to his parents, and how he was the pride of their shared life. The rhymes were clunky. I shoved it back into its slot. The other For Son cards were equally overwrought. I ended up buying a 99-cent card. It had a birthday cake on the front and read, “Happy Birthday!” on the inside. Short, sweet, and to the point. I slipped three twenty-dollar bills inside, signed it Love, Dad, addressed it, and dropped it into the outgoing mail slot. My parental duty for Brian completed, until Christmas.

  My desk had a ham-and-cheese sandwich on it, a bag of chips, and a Diet Coke. “Trying to tell me something?” I asked Lewis, pointing to the soda.

  “They were out of regular,” he said. “Besides, I thought you could stand to lose some pounds before you start Chief Lynch’s exercise protocol.”

  “Not us. We’re the brains, not the brawn.”

  He pointed. “Not seeing a whole lot of brawn anywhere here.”

  I looked about the station. True. Most of us looked like the “before” in before-and-after weight-loss advertisements.

  Billy, one of the only “afters” in the station, trotted up, papers in hand. “You got some stuff from the fax.” He handed them to me, though he knew Lewis was lead detective. A bit of subversion, or perhaps my reward for going toe to toe with the chief over the fitness memo. Except I hadn’t.

  “These about the woods’ bones?” he asked. What interesting phrasing. “The woods’ bones,” as if the body belonged to the forest.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I still can’t believe that all this time there really was a dead girl in the woods.” He scuffed the carpet with the toe of his shoes. “Even as a kid, I didn’t think it was true.”

  “You ever take the dare and spend the night in the woods?” Lewis asked.

  “No,” Billy said, quickly.

  Lewis grinned. “You believe in ghosts?”

  I glanced at the top sheet. Elizabeth May Gardner, age nineteen, reported missing April 16, 1979, at 10:00 p.m., by very worried parents. I’d had only a badly photocopied photo to work from, so I’d requested a better one. Here it was. Billy looked over my shoulder. “Pretty,” he said. She was, or had been. Big eyes and a winning smile. I sq
uinted.

  “Billy, does she have a gap between her teeth?”

  He took the paper. It was black-and-white and fuzzy. The resolution wasn’t great. “Yeah, I almost didn’t see it, but yeah. Why?”

  Where had she gone missing? Salisbury. In the northwest corner of the state, bordering New York and Massachusetts. Small town, smaller than Idyll. Didn’t have a police station. Relied on the staties for help. Wealthy? Some sections were. Had Elizabeth May Gardner lived on the right side of the tracks?

  “Is that her?” Lew asked, hand extended. Billy gave him the paper, and he looked it over like it was a treasure map.

  “One way to tell. Talk to Dr. Finch.” The forensic odontologist might tell us if the gaps matched.

  “You go,” Wright said, not looking up.

  “This could be her,” I said. Surely, he’d want in on this action.

  “You check it out. I’m following up on a tech report. Might help us identify the murder weapon.” Lewis loved the chase, and he was ceding ground to me. Why?

  “Okay.” If he didn’t want it, I did, desperately.

  At Dr. Finch’s office, I had to wait. The receptionist didn’t attempt to hide her curiosity. She watched me read and reread the details of Elizabeth May Gardner’s missing person sheet. Born July 15, 1959. Dark-blond hair, blue eyes, height five feet four inches, weight 125 pounds, with pierced ears. She’d last been seeing walking with her camera on April 16, 1979, near a park.

  A young man with a swollen face emerged from the hallway, touching his cheek. He mumbled to the receptionist. Then he left, and Dr. Finch came out. She wore a lab coat over a navy dress. “I’ve only got five minutes,” she told me.

  In her office, I showed her the photo. “See the gap?”

  She nodded. “Possible. Anything in the file about a gold crown?”

  “No. I’m going to track down her family dentist. Ask that he send you her x-rays.”

  “If he has them,” she said. “It’s been twenty years since she was his patient. He might’ve disposed of them by now.”

  “Even though she’s missing?”

  She shrugged. “If you can get me the scans, I’ll be happy to compare them. Without them, I’m guessing.” She handed me the sheet. “You really think this is her?”