“You two stop.” Her mother stepped forward, next to her husband, and gave the sleeve of his coat a soft slap. “No one’s been explaining anything to anyone for a long time, and it’s mostly my fault, I’m sure, so can we please just . . . stop?” She shared a quick, surprisingly pleading look with Calliope.
Calliope hesitated, her instinctively combative habits wrestling with a real, if newfound, desire to make peace. Finally, she motioned over her shoulder with her head. “Jim’s calling someone I know back in the city who can probably straighten everything out.”
“The police detective?” Phyllis asked. At her husband’s look, she explained. “She’s been working with the police on the disappearance of her friend. Partner.” She looked back at Calliope. “She works with the police a lot, as part of their business.”
That last wasn’t anything Calliope had told her, or even implied, but it wasn’t really wrong, and it felt good—if more than a little weird—to hear her mother embellishing her accomplishments on the retelling.
“And gets shot,” her father said, though low enough that Calliope didn’t think anyone else had heard.
“That”—she stepped in closer to him—“that isn’t going to help me get out of here faster.”
“If—”
“I told Mom; it isn’t anything I could get in trouble for,” Calliope interrupted. She winced inwardly, not at the falsehood, but at how easy it had become to lie to her family. “But gu— things like that automatically mean that reports need to be filed.” She indicated the rest of the officers with her hand. “At best, I’d be here filling out paperwork for most of a day. At worst, Jim would make me go back to where it happened and fill out the paperwork there.” She looked up into her father’s eyes. “I don’t have that kind of time. Not right now.” The real reason she didn’t want the gunshot wound mentioned—that the sheriff would ask who had shot her or, worse, might have a good guess—would have bad enough consequences that Calliope tried not to think about it.
“Suppose that’s true.” The muscles in her father’s jaw—far too easy to make out under his taut skin—worked. “Mostly because people getting shot are what police are supposed to take care of.”
“Dad, please.” Calliope touched her father’s sleeve.
The door to the sheriff’s office opened, and Calliope turned. The youngest deputy—Dwight—pushed himself out of his chair and headed for the break room’s coffee machine. The sheriff watched him go, shook his head a single time, then turned back to Calliope and her parents. “Whyn’t you folks come on in?”
“So as I understand it,” Fletcher began, once Calliope and her parents were seated, “your partner’s dead.”
“He’s missing.” Calliope felt her mother’s eyes on her, but her father’s gaze stayed on his friend on the other side of the desk.
“Detective Johnson said he was reported dead.” The sheriff leaned forward on his blotter. “I’m no expert on it, but that is usually how a murder investigation gets started.”
“Did he mention the answering machine message?” Calliope said. Her voice sounded high and uneven in her own ears, but no one else in the room seemed to notice.
The sheriff looked at her, his face tired. “He did.” His eyes slid to her mother, and he seemed to remember that they weren’t alone. He sat up. “It seems that Calliope’s partner, who was reported dead, also left a message on their office’s answering machine several hours after his alleged remains were found.”
“So he’s not dead?” her mother asked.
The sheriff blew air through his teeth, his eyebrows raised. “If he isn’t, he’s been missing more’n a week. Let’s say it raises doubt.” His eyes flickered back to Calliope. “His wife is flying out to identify the body for sure.”
“He’s married?” This last was to Calliope.
Calliope raised her eyebrows. “We just work together, Mom; we’re not—we’re friends.” She crossed her arms. “I’m just trying to see if I can find him.”
“See . . .” Sheriff Fletcher interjected. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Why would you get involved in looking for him?”
Calliope tilted her head, barely able to contain her instinctive sarcasm. “Well . . . we do find people for a living.” It was a glib truth that she hoped the others would take at face value. “And I’ve known him long enough to know where he’s likely to be, how and where he grew up. He used to live near Harper’s Ferry. First with his parents, then they died, then him and his brother and a great-aunt, then just the two of them for a while after she died, then just him, after he lost his brother.”
“Harper’s Ferry’s nowhere near here, though,” the sheriff replied. “If you were coming to visit your folks, that’s fine, but if you were in a hurry, this is out of the way.”
“On a . . . second message, he told me to talk to my mom.” Calliope’s face felt hot. “Which I know sounds weird, but I figured there might be some kind of reason.”
“Detective Johnson didn’t mention that part.” The sheriff looked at Phyllis. “Had you two met?”
“No—” Calliope braced herself, caught in an admission she couldn’t see a way to avoid. “But he came out here one time.” She wanted nothing more than to pull her head down between her shoulders, but she sat straight and kept her eyes on the sheriff. “With me.”
Her mother blinked. “You’ve never brought anyone here.”
Calliope looked her way without meeting her eyes. “I did, Mom. Three years ago.” At the confused look from her mother, she added, “I didn’t quite make it.” Her eyes moved to the floor. “We turned around about ten miles up the road and went back.”
The room was silent. Caught in the middle of something unexpected, Jim Fletcher cleared his throat and shifted his pen on the desk.
“Are we that horrible?” Phyllis whispered, her eyes fixed on her own white, intertwined fingers.
“Do you remember?” Calliope’s voice rose. “Do you even remember the last time?”
“Settle down,” her father said, his voice even, his eyes on the far wall behind Jim Fletcher.
“You . . .” Calliope turned in her chair toward him, grounding out some of her growing anger in the abrupt motion. “I’m sorry, Dad, but you weren’t there, and the one time you did actually talk to me afterward, you told me not to come back. Not to ever come back.”
“You don’t—” Her father’s eyes hardened, then flickered toward the sheriff. “You don’t do that and expect me not to say something.”
“What I . . .” Calliope’s eyes went to her mother, her chest tight as she started to see the scope of what had happened—what had been done to her family’s memory of her. “What did you tell him?”
“Folks,” the sheriff said, “I’m not sure this is a talk anyone needs to have in public.”
“Christ, Jim, you know everything,” her father said. “You’re the one who went looking for her.”
“He . . .” Calliope felt her head tip as though she’d heard the words wrong—felt the room start to tilt as well, her breath go short as the last ten years of her life rewrote themselves as she watched. “What?” No one would look her in the face.
Finally, the sheriff cleared his throat. He brought his blue eyes up and met Calliope’s. “Your mother and you had an argument,” he said, his voice even and measured, as though reciting something memorized, “one of several that year.” His eyes flickered to her mother, whose head was turned away, the fingers of her clenched fist pressed to her chin. “By some accounts, they occurred almost daily.” He cleared his throat, glancing down at his desk for a moment, then back to Calliope. “In this case, your mother was struck . . .”
I’m sorry, a small voice cried in the back of her mind. I told her I was sorry. I take it back.
“ . . . and you left—”
“I threw her out.” Phyllis sounded like she’d been holding her breath. Neither of the men said anything, but the look they exchanged told Calliope that this was the first ti
me they’d heard the words. “I was so”—she squeezed her eyes shut—“I was so tired of fighting all the time. It was so hard. I just—”
“I’m sorry, Calliope.”
“Mom—”
“I should have done this before.” She walked out of the kitchen. “Pack, now. Get out of my house.”
The house was quiet as she pulled the door shut behind her.
“—gave up.” Calliope’s voice was barely a whisper, rough with unshed tears. The office rang with silence. “So did I.”
No one spoke for over a minute. Finally, the sheriff cleared his throat. “Your parents asked me to try to find you.” His eyes went to her father, then back to her. “When your sister got your letter, they decided to let things work out on their own, since you were already well out of the state.”
Phyllis let out a laugh that was more than half sob. “That didn’t work out so well. Our daughter hates us.”
“No.” Calliope shook her head, frowning at the sheriff’s words more than her mother’s. “No, Mom. I just . . . I got scared.”
“That—” Her father sat forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees, and rubbed at the bridge of his nose with both index fingers. “Your logic makes my head hurt, little girl.”
The childhood phrase brought a faint, sad smile to Calliope’s lips. “Josh didn’t really understand either.” She glanced at her parents. “He really wanted to meet you. After we got back home, we—he broke up with me.”
Phyllis frowned. “But you started working with him in Sept—”
“It’s complicated, Mom,” Calliope cut in. “The band wasn’t working after he left, so I decided to get into the new business with him. He offered.” She sat back in the chair and crossed her arms, feeling defensive. “It’s complicated.”
“That’s a pretty good word for it,” the sheriff said. His voice was too loud in the tension of the room, but it served to shift attention away from the revelations of the last few minutes. “The thing is, with a history like that—if you hadn’t had about the best alibi you could have, ‘complicated’ would have turned into ‘suspicious’ as soon as your partner was reported missing.” He looked at his desk, then back up at Calliope. “As it stands, it’s just curious as all hell.”
Calliope watched Jim Fletcher’s face, looking for a sign that she had another enemy to worry about. “You jumping in on the investigation of the case, Sheriff?”
“Calli—” her mother began.
“No.” The sheriff raised his hands. “It’s a fair question, though I think the answer’s pretty obvious.” He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his desk, unconsciously mimicking her father, and looked at Calliope. “I’ve got a badge waving in my face, as you put it, telling me I should give someone a call if I get any word of Miss Calliope Jenkins anywhere in my jurisdiction.” He glanced sidelong at Phyllis, but returned his attention to Calliope. “The person you’re looking for is an ex-boyfriend, who’s now your business partner; which might be a problem except you’re only into the company for ten percent, and his ninety percent goes to his wife if he’s declared dead, according to Detective Johnson.” He sat back in his chair. His eyes were still on Calliope, but rather than meeting her gaze, he seemed to appraise her. “Then Calliope Jenkins shows up at her parents’ house, who are friends of mine—and I hope still are after all this—and she’s looking a little cat-dragged and a little wild-eyed and”—his lips narrowed—“she’s favoring her right side the way someone does when it hurts like merry hell but she doesn’t want the sheriff to notice.” He leaned forward again, lacing the fingers of his hands together, but leaving them lying on his desk. “I’m not working on your case, but I suddenly have a situation dumped in my lap that could turn into a hell of a mess if I just ignore it.”
Calliope felt as though the bandage wrap had tightened around her chest again. “What do you want me to tell you, Sheriff Fletcher?” Her voice was soft, not out of any particular self-control or consideration, but simply because she couldn’t force any more air out. “I just want to see if I can find my friend. I only came here to see my parents. I wasn’t causing any trouble, and I’m still not.”
“You have to see—” Fletcher began.
“Everything you said is right,” Calliope continued, “and everything I just told you, you already know.” She spread her hands, palms up, in her lap. “You called Detective Johnson, and he told you everything he knew, it sounds like. That’s all I’ve got. There’s no dark secret or big truth I can pull out to make everything come clear.”
“Who shot you?” her father asked.
For several seconds, Calliope continued to look at the sheriff, hoping she’d somehow dropped into one of the surreal dreams that had dogged her since the start of this trip. Jim Fletcher’s eyes tracked to her father, then back to her, and he tilted his head slightly. Waiting.
Keeping still simply to contain the frantic, nervous energy in her chest, Calliope turned her head toward her father. “What?”
He didn’t return her look. His eyes were on his hands, his thumb rubbing along a callus on the outside edge of his left index finger. “Who shot you?” he repeated, almost talking to himself. “Seems like that’s the only big thing we don’t know.” The corner of his mouth drew up in a humorless smile. “Seems kind of important to me.”
“Oh,” Calliope replied. She turned back to face the sheriff, though her eyes were focused on nothing in particular. This is where it ends, she thought. I’m not going to find Josh, or . . . anything. There was a finality—almost release—to the thought. I lose.
“Calli—” the sheriff began.
“Walker.” Calliope lifted her head, looking him in the eye. She heard a kind of wordless, confused sound from her mother. “Special Agent Walker shot me. In the shoulder. With his service piece.”
It was Jim Fletcher’s turn for his eyes to go wide. After a few seconds, they resumed their typical hooded expression, and he looked down at the small pile of notes between his hands. “When was this?” His jaw firmed, and he looked back up at Calliope.
“Two days ago.” Calliope felt cold—detached from her own body. “In Colorado. Castle Rock.”
The sheriff nodded. Sounds from the outer office seeped in to fill the empty space between the room’s four occupants. “Guess I need to ask for your personal effects, Calli. For safekeeping.” He glanced up at her, then back at his desk. “Figure you know the deal.”
“I do.” Calliope pushed herself up out of her chair and dug in her pockets. She felt numb, detached from herself. After everything that she’d gone through, the enormity of what this meant for her—for Josh—was simply too much to process.
“What—” Her mother seemed to choke the word out around her own surprise. She looked at the sheriff, then Calliope, then back to Fletcher. “What are you doing?”
“It’s fine, Mom.” Calliope dumped her keys onto the sheriff’s desk and pulled out her wallet. “That’s pretty much everything I have on me,” she said to Fletcher.
“It’s not fine.” Phyllis turned to her husband.
Her father cleared his throat. “You gonna hand my daughter over to the man that shot her, Jim?”
“Dad—”
“No . . .” The word seemed to come out of the sheriff’s mouth reluctantly. He shook his head, looking away from all three of them. “No, I don’t suppose I am.” His gaze moved back to her father and settled on Calliope. “I can still lock her up for a couple days, though.”
Calliope blinked, trying to keep up with the sudden shift in the conversation. “What?” Her voice sounded remarkably similar to the way her mother’s had only a few seconds ago.
The sheriff leaned back, considering. “Might not be such a bad idea.”
“Excuse me?” Calliope turned to look at her father, but his eyes were still on his hands; it seemed to Calliope that he didn’t want to look up and see her face, or the face of his friend. She turned back to the sheriff, whose eyes were also looking away from
her and her father; oddly, he was watching her mother, who sat with her arms crossed tightly over her ribs, the fingers of one fist pressed to her mouth. Calliope shook her head and picked up her keys. “No.”
“Honey—” her father began.
“Not just no, but hell no,” she cut in, glaring at Fletcher.
“Your partner’s wife comes in to identify the body in the next day or so,” the sheriff said. “Figure that you’ll be fine if you just stay out of the way until then—let that question get answered.” He sat back in the chair. “Unless you promise to stay at your parents’ house that long.”
“No!” At some level Calliope barely understood—one that might not have even existed a few days ago—she knew that she had to find Josh before Lauren saw the body; that it was, in Vikous’s words, the way it worked.
“You didn’t have any problem with this when you thought I was turning you over to Walker,” Fletcher said. “Now you do, when I’m not? Doesn’t make much sense.”
“You wanna do your job, Jim? That’s fine—I understand that.” She pushed her chair to the side and stepped away from the desk. “You want to lock me up for safekeeping? Treat me like I need babysitting? Fuck you.”
“Calliope Jenkins!”
“Oh, what, Mom?” Calliope rounded on her mother. “You want to put me in some jammies and get me a pacifier? Because I have a suggestion . . .”
“You’ll want to be real careful what you say next,” her father murmured. His voice was quiet, but it cut through the room. “That’s your mother.”
The tone of his voice, so familiar—the sound of dozens of arguments Calliope had lost as a child—cooled her ire only slightly. “What do you—”
“No.” Phyllis interrupted, shaking her head. “Calli, they’re just . . . you know they’re not going to do that.” She looked at the two men. “Jim?”
The sheriff shifted in his chair. “Your daughter’s already been shot once.” He jerked his chin toward the outer door of the department. “Guy that did it’s out there, probably not that far away, and he still has his gun. And a badge.” Her mother’s face pinched with frustration.
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