Between Lost and Found

by Shelly Stratton

  CHAPTER 9

  Hank finished the last of his bear claw. He then glanced around him in search of a leftover pale pink napkin from Joanna’s Bakery. He couldn’t find one, so he wiped his mouth on his sleeve instead. The flakes of pastry icing on his lips left a crusty streak on the black nylon of his jacket near the wrist, but he didn’t care. He felt like a little boy forced to sit in detention while everyone else was whooping it up on the playground at recess.

  So what, he thought petulantly. I’ll clean it off tomorrow.

  He then slouched back in the driver’s seat and grumbled to himself as he drove.

  Twenty minutes ago, the twenty-five-year-Mammoth Falls Police Department veteran had been just about to finish his shift for the day and head home to his wife, Barb. Tuesday was pot pie night. A cold beer awaited him on the second shelf in the fridge. He and Barb would sit in their padded leather recliners in front of the forty-inch plasma TV he had purchased last year at that Best Buy out in Rapid City. They would eat dinner on blue plastic trays perched on their laps while they watched their favorite TV shows: NCIS for Hank, for obvious reasons, and The Voice for Barb, because she loved singing competitions and had a schoolgirl crush on that Adam Levine fellow. They’d flip between the shows during commercial breaks while their Saint Bernard, Sadie, parked her big rear end on the carpet between them and dozed.

  Hank had been looking forward to all of it—the cold beer in his hand, the cozy warmth of his home, the silent reassurance of Barb’s company, and the sound of their pooch snoring at their feet. But twenty minutes ago, just as he was raising the partition between the front of the office and bullpen, the department’s office manager/dispatcher, Rita, had called out for him to wait.

  “Hold on, Hank! A call came in,” Rita had said, lowering the dispatch desk phone back into its cradle. “Someone said there’s something suspicious looking over near Eighty-five . . . off of Cedar Lane.”

  “What the hell is ‘suspicious looking’?”

  “Suspicious looking!” she had said again with widened eyes. “I’m just telling you what they said. They said they couldn’t get a good look at it, but it looked like a car might have gone off the road, maybe it got waylaid in a ditch. Somebody might need some help, they said.”

  “Well, I’m heading home. Have one of the other guys do it,” he had mumbled, shrugging on his coat.

  “They can’t do it! The chief has tonight off. Mitch is over at Toby’s breaking up a fight between two drunken hotheads, and Brady is doing patrol at the festival. You’re all we got right now. Besides, it’s on your way home anyway.”

  “Bring in one of the part-timers.”

  “Hank—”

  “If it’s over by Cedar Lane, it’s not even our jurisdiction. Call Lead and have one of their guys do it!”

  “Hank—”

  “I’m bone tired and I wanna go home, Rita.”

  “Hank Bachmann, you have done nothing all day but write two traffic tickets! You’ve kept your butt parked at that desk eating donuts and doing crossword puzzles! Just go check and see about the accident. Please!”

  Behind his mustache, he had pouted. He had itched to tell Rita that since she had divorced her second husband she had turned into a real B-I-T-C-H, but he kept those thoughts to himself. Instead, he had stalked toward the door, shoved it open, and headed out of City Hall. A minute later he was in his truck and had it pointing it in the direction of I-85.

  * * *

  As Hank neared his destination, he continued to mumble to himself. He still didn’t know why the Lead cops couldn’t do it or one of those high and mighty deputies at the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office. Why did tasks like this always fall on folks like Hank?

  It was the way of the world today, he guessed. With the exception of men like him, no one wanted to take responsibility for anything anymore. They all wanted a leg up and a leg over. They wanted subsidies and free health care and welfare. They were always crying about how someone was getting something that they should have gotten and how laws should be passed so they could get it, too. Meanwhile, God-fearing, hardworking men like himself were being left out in the cold.

  It’s a damn shame, he thought as he drove, slowing down to make a right turn onto Cedar Lane and listening to the chatter on his police radio.

  He couldn’t stand the lazy, no-good folks out there that made life hard for men like him—folks like the paper boy, Bobby Sawyer, who always, always threw Hank’s copy of the Mammoth Falls Gazette and his Pennysaver on the far side of the fence, requiring Hank to walk an extra ten steps from his front door. (He had counted!) Hank despised those good-for-nothings like his neighbor John, who borrowed his weed whacker last year, only to return it broken and claiming that the thing had never worked at all. And he inwardly loathed the entitled, like Police Chief Sam Adler, who had spent fewer years on the force than Hank, but had moved up the ranks faster simply because his daddy had happened to be police chief. Why wasn’t Prince Sam the one out on the road, following up on “something suspicious” out on Cedar Lane? Hank bet Sam was probably home right now enjoying a cold beer, maybe a pot pie and NCIS, while Hank was still on duty.

  It’s a damn shame, he thought again.

  The little injustices in life could pile up on a man. The cumulative weight of these indignities could break a fellow who was weaker than he was. But Hank was made of thicker stuff. He would persevere.

  Hank slowed down to peer at the road, searching for the supposed accident Rita had told him about. He squinted his myopic eyes. He looked to his right then left and peered into the distance, but he still didn’t see anything.

  “Figures,” he huffed.

  He drove almost another half mile before slowly pulling to a stop near the shoulder, hearing the packed snow, now coated with ice, crunch under his Kevlar tires. He looked around again, still not seeing a sign that anything was amiss. He shook his head and started to do a U-turn. He would head back to 85. If he was lucky, he’d catch the last fifteen minutes of NCIS and watch Special Agent Gibbs do his magic. (Gibbs was a man who reminded Hank much of himself—hard-nosed, unflappable, and take-charge.) But just as Hank pulled into the lane heading northbound and reached for another bear claw in bottom of the bakery bag beside him, he caught sight of something from the corner of his eye. About twenty feet away he could see skid marks in the snow leading to a thicket of trampled shrubs and broken tree branches. With brows furrowed, he drove closer to get a better look. He slowed down when he saw the glint of shattered glass in his headlights.

  Hank pulled over and threw open the truck door, grunting as he climbed out, and hopped down to the asphalt. He walked toward the splinters of glass before slowly lowering himself to one knee and grunting again. His eyes drifted back to the shrubs. Beyond those bare shrubs were the mountains. The mountain slope took a sharp dip that was hidden in a darkness that even his headlights couldn’t reach. He rose to his feet—which warranted a third grunt—removed the flashlight that was strapped to his belt, flicked it on, and inched forward, careful not to slip and fall into the shadows below. He peered down the slope. He saw the slanted rear tire first, then the mangled rear end with its busted taillight and bent bumper. When he saw the two bumper stickers on the back—“Change We Can Believe in ’08” and “If you can read this, you’re riding too close”—he knew who the truck belonged to.

  “Bill!” he yelled.

  The driver’s-side door to the F-150 was open and the truck’s contents—a beat-up cooler, a magazine, and a heap of CDs—were splayed along the dark rock, looking as out of place as M&Ms sprinkled on a pile of manure. But Hank did not see the driver, and judging from how bad the truck looked, he’d imagine Bill was in the same shape as his truck—or worse.

  “Shit, Bill!” Hank shouted, his breath catching in his throat. It came out in sharp bursts like he was running uphill instead of standing still on a roadway, staring at a car crash scene. “Hey, are . . . are you all right down there? Bill?”

  No on
e answered.

  Hank groped frantically for the radio on his shoulder and scrambled back toward his pickup truck, almost slipping in the snow. He dropped his flashlight, and it went sliding across the black asphalt before rumbling to a stop near a tree. He ran as fast as his 286-pound frame would allow as he called for assistance.

  It looked like he wouldn’t be catching the last fifteen minutes of NCIS after all.

  CHAPTER 10

  Sam stood at the foot of the cabin’s front porch, took off his cap, and raked his fingers through his hair, which was now damp with sweat. It was a nervous gesture that had plagued him since he was a little boy.

  “I can always tell when you’ve gotten yourself into trouble, Sammy,” his mother would admonish with a winsome smile. “You start yanking away at that head of yours. Keep it up and you’re gonna be as bald as grandpa! You won’t have a lick of hair left!”

  Of course, Sam’s mother had been wrong. His hair was still lush and thick, though it was sprinkled with a lot more gray than when he started this bothersome habit thirty-eight years ago. Sam raked his fingers through his hair once more before donning his cap, taking a shaky breath, and steeling himself for the task ahead. He climbed the first step, then the second. The porch light to the left of the door flickered on. If the motion-detection light or his heavy footfalls hadn’t woken Janelle Marshall, then his knocking certainly would.

  He knocked on the front door then waited a beat. He knocked again.

  “Mammoth Falls Police Department!” he shouted, gazing at the darkness beyond the living room curtains. “Miss Marshall?”

  No one came to the door, though he knew she was home. Her rental car was still in the driveway.

  “Shit,” Sam muttered before knocking a third time. “I hate doing this.”

  It was, by far, the worst part of the job. Even his father, if he were still alive, would probably agree. (Though, frankly, they hadn’t agreed on much of anything else.)

  The old man had been on the force for almost forty years before he finally endured retirement by death, having a heart attack at his desk one morning and collapsing onto his desk calendar, knocking his bagel to the floor. Sam had been a police officer himself or worked in jobs related to law enforcement for almost half that time. Sam had heard at the family dinner table and seen in the course of his career just about everything small town crime had to offer, from bored teenagers who decided to hold up the local Stop ’n’ Go with BB guns, to the town pastor and church secretary running away together with twenty thousand dollars’ worth of parishioner donations, to a tough so violent and cranked up on meth that it had taken five officers and a Taser to finally get him down to the ground. But one story Sam never wanted to hear or share with others was that of the late-night visits to a victim’s home to tell a family about their loved one.

  There was nothing that gripped your heart with cold fingers quite like finding a police officer standing on your welcome mat at two o’clock in the morning, looking grave. And for a cop there was no worst agony than watching a mourning father as he sobbed uncontrollably or a mother fainting to a hallway floor. Sam hated it. He’d rather get bitten by a million fire ants. He’d rather get a kick squarely to the balls than to have to be the bearer of bad news, the grim reaper in a police uniform. But there was no getting around it tonight.

  “A man’s gotta buck up and do his job,” as his dad would say. Little Bill’s car had been found a little more than two hours ago. Sam and a few of the other officers had already examined the scene and done accident reconstruction. They had a rough idea of what had happened before the crash but still didn’t know what happened after. Of course, the number one question was “Where the hell is Bill?” With the exception of what looked like his boot prints in the snow not too far from the wrecked F-150, Bill had left no trace; not even a smattering of blood on the ground.

  Sam had to tell Janelle all of this. He also had to ask her a few questions before the police department started contacting other agencies for assistance, though Sam still wasn’t exactly sure what they would be assisting. Was this a missing person case? A kidnapping? A homicide? Hell, was it a hoax? That crazy coot wouldn’t pretend to get in an accident and disappear just to keep his granddaughter from getting engaged, would he?

  Sam had tried to explain as much to Mayor Pruitt during his drive to Bill’s cabin. News had already traveled to Pruitt’s ears via a leak in the police department. (Sam had no idea who it was, though he had money on either Sergeant Bachmann, who had discovered the deserted vehicle, or Sergeant Yates, who was a notorious gossip.)

  “I don’t care why Bill is missing. I just need you boys to find him ASAP, Sammy, do you hear me? ASAP!” Pruitt had said over the phone in a pompous tone he was notorious for. “We can’t have something like this distracting from the festival. The town has put a lot of time and money into this, and we need those dividends. There’s no reason why we can’t compete with Rapid City or Deadwood when it comes to tourism. This is our chance, Sam. The festival has to be a success!”

  Sam had wanted to tell Pruitt that he didn’t give a damn about the festival, and whether it was a dud or a hit had nothing to do with Little Bill’s disappearance, but he thought better of it. He kept those thoughts to himself.

  “Of course, we’ll put all our resources toward this, sir,” he had said icily, deciding to leave it at that. “We’ll try our best to find him.”

  “Well, keep me updated, Sam. You damn well keep me updated! You hear me?”

  Finally, Sam saw a light turn on inside the cabin. A shadowy figure drifted past the window. A few seconds later, Janelle swung open the front door, and when he saw her, Sam got a kick to the gut. He had to blink to clear his vision. He could swear it was his ex-wife, Gabriela, standing in the doorway, wearing nothing but an oversized blue t-shirt and a parka with her long, golden legs glistening under the orange glow of the porch light.

  It’s not Gabby, damn it, he thought indignantly. When are you going to get that through your thick head?

  Sam blinked again and, mercifully, Gabriela disappeared. Only Janelle stood in front of him, looking like she had just climbed out of bed.

  “Sam?” She yawned, shoved her hair back over her shoulder, and wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands. “What are you doing here? What . . . what time is it?”

  He didn’t respond. Instead he cleared his throat. She gazed up at him quizzically. When she saw his dour expression and his hands clasped in front of him like a pallbearer at a funeral, her face changed. She knew this was not a social visit. The haze of sleep cleared her eyes.

  “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” she asked in a shaky voice.

  Sam slowly nodded. “It’s Bill, Janelle.”

  “Pops?” She took a step back. “W-what happened?”

  “I’m sorry to tell you, but we found Bill’s truck off of Highway 85 and—”

  “Oh, God. Oh, God!” Her eyes went wide and bright. She wobbled slightly, like someone had given her a hard shove. Her hand shot out and she reached for the door frame to steady herself.

  Here it comes, Sam thought. His stomach tightened. He extended his arms to catch her before she fell to the cabin’s hardwood floor.

  The flailing and hysterics would come next. That’s certainly what her doppelgänger, Gabriela, would do in this situation. Gabby didn’t keep any of her feelings on the inside: not her highs and certainly not her lows. At her worst, she would sob, scream, and kick. Once, when he was late home to dinner, she actually threw a platter of churrasco at him before running into the bathroom and slamming the door shut. She had wept and refused to come out of their master bath for almost two hours.

  “Latin women,” a guy had joked back in Virginia when Gabby had had a full meltdown at one of their mutual friends’ engagement parties. “They sure are fiery, huh?”

  He had then elbowed Sam in the rib cage before guffawing like a jackass.

  But Sam knew what the bigoted party guest did not. Gabby didn’t ma
ke scenes and sob in the corner of their bedroom at night because she was Latina. The woman that Sam had loved and adored was “crazier than a shithouse rat,” according to his dad. Or more accurately, she had bipolar-1 disorder, according to the doctors who had diagnosed her at Washington Hospital Medical Center, where she was admitted after several sleep-deprived nights and having an epic “episode” at the Brazilian embassy where she worked—slapping one of the receptionists who told her to calm down after she kept yelling about phantom children playing in the embassy’s corridor. Gabriela had gone untreated for years.

  When the doctor had uttered the words “bipolar disorder”—saying them slowly as he read from a file folder covered with multicolored tabs—Sam had accepted the diagnosis almost with relief.

  So now the beast had a name, he had thought.

  “Name it and claim it, son,” his mother, the granddaughter of a bible-thumping Pentecostal minister, would often say to him while she was alive.

  The doctors knew what was wrong with Gabriela and they could cure her, or at least help her manage the disease. They would give back Sam the old Gabby—or so he had thought. Looking back on that day at the hospital, he could only laugh at his naïveté.

  Stupid Sam. Stupid, stupid Sam.

  Sam now grabbed Janelle’s shoulders to pull her upright. He watched with surprise as she shoved his hands away.

  “No, I’m . . . I’m okay,” she said, her voice still shaking slightly.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m fine.” She closed her eyes and breathed in and out. She placed her hand on her stomach. Even her hand was trembling. “Just . . . just give me a minute.”

  Sam stepped back. Remember . . . this isn’t Gabby, he told himself.

  He got yet another reminder that this wasn’t his ex-wife when Janelle stopped her Lamaze breathing and opened her eyes. Dark brown irises stared back at him—not the tortured hazel eyes Gabby would flash when she was in the midst of one of her manic episodes or when she was in the depths of a depression so low that the ocean floor seemed above her head.