Between Lost and Found

by Shelly Stratton

  She wanted to ask Connie that question, but couldn’t work up the nerve to do so. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to know the answer. Just like she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to another question that had been plaguing her since yesterday, since their confrontation in the stockroom.

  Why did she accuse me of cheating?

  Over and over again, Janelle replayed in her head her phone conversation with Sam, trying to remember if she had said something improper, some twist of phrase that sounded like a double entendre. She could think of nothing.

  She heard it in your tone, the annoying voice in her head chided. She heard it in the way you were talking to him. You were practically caressing him.

  No, I wasn’t. That’s ridiculous!

  She was just being kind, treating Sam with the warmth that he had treated her with for the past few days.

  But Connie’s right. You should end it. No more late-night dinners. No more convos on the couch over wine—so nothing can be misconstrued, the voice insisted.

  Janelle had contemplated this already.

  That night, after Sam had kissed her hand, she had considered making up an excuse so he wouldn’t come back for dinner. She’d tell him that she had a sudden onset of a cold or the cabin had a rat infestation or she was going through the world’s worst menstrual cramps. She’d tell him anything so that they would never be alone in that cabin again. But, as she lay in bed, rubbing her hand so much that the flesh started to burn and ache, she had changed her mind. She replayed the moment of him kissing her knuckle—those cool, dry lips on her soft, warm skin, and a delicious thrill went through her at the memory.

  Yes, it was a thrill. She could admit that now.

  How had a gesture so simple ignited a flame so big?

  When Janelle finally closed her eyes that night, she had decided that she wanted Sam to come back. She knew she was being hypocritical, making plans to have dinner with a man three nights in a row while she had chastised Mark for doing the same with another woman. She knew if she steered too blindly, her relationship with Sam could head in a direction that might have serious repercussions for her in the future. But she no longer cared. Sam had shown her more compassion and patience during this whole ordeal that anyone else had—including Mark.

  All the questions, longing, and sadness she had endured were pounding at her like a persistent wave breaking along a seashore. And her resistance to anything that might give her some respite had gone from a stone moat to a crudely made sand castle.

  I like Sam, Janelle had thought stubbornly. She liked the way he made her feel. Why shouldn’t I be friends with him? Why shouldn’t I eat dinner with him again?

  “Janelle, are you listening?” Connie barked, and Janelle swiftly nodded, though she had no idea what Connie was talking about. She had been lost in her own thoughts.

  “I’m gonna need you to stand at the bottom of the stairs, checking all the models to make sure everything is okay before they come on stage. You come out second to last. Check all the accessories and make sure every zipper is up and every button is buttoned. And make sure they go out one at a time. Okay?”

  “Of course!” Janelle said, nodding again. Her neck was starting to hurt from nodding so much.

  “I’m gonna be on stage. I’m going to give my speech about Bill as an intro, then talk about the fashions as the girls come out.”

  “Gotcha,” Janelle said, then frowned, looking at Connie more closely.

  Connie was bouncing on the balls of her feet, clenching and opening her hands, and looking cagily around her. Janelle wanted to dismiss the other woman’s jitters as nerves about the impending fashion show, but they seemed worse than that. Connie had the same twitches that a junkie would have right before she met up with her dealer.

  Janelle’s stare must have been more conspicuous than she thought because Connie glared back at her.

  “What?” Connie asked tersely.

  “Are you . . . okay?”

  Connie sucked her teeth. “Why the heck does everyone keep asking me that? I swear you people are like a broken record.”

  Janelle opened her mouth to answer, but stopped when Connie glared at her wristwatch.

  “Dammit, they’re going over their time! Those yodeling bitches are doing this on purpose! I know they are! Fucking Wasi’chu,” Connie muttered before marching toward the stage stairs.

  Janelle let out a long breath as she watched Connie stomp up each step before disappearing behind a fold of velvet curtains. She turned back to one of the tables and leaned down to examine her reflection in a small oval vanity mirror that most of the models had been using and was therefore covered with a fine sheen from face powder and tanning spray. She adjusted her Pepto-Bismol pink cowboy hat and pushed her curls back over her shoulder. She ran her finger over one of her false eyelashes. They were both starting to droop into her eyes.

  Janelle looked like a Little Miss beauty queen on steroids. She looked ridiculous. She felt ridiculous. But when was the last time in the past week that she had felt remotely normal?

  She startled and whipped around from the mirror when she heard the crash behind her. Then she heard the feedback through the stage speakers that made her wince and clap her hands over her ears.

  “Let go! Let go, you harlot!” a shrill voice shouted from the stage.

  “Call me that again, and I’ll punch you in the nose! Give it to me!”

  Janelle recognized the second voice. It was Connie’s. She rushed across the space, tripping in her cowboy boots over the hem of her dress, shoving her way through the models. The women were all gawking and pointing at the ruckus now on stage.

  As Janelle neared the foot of the stairs, she caught sight of Connie wrestling over the microphone with one of the performers, one of the weird women who had introduced themselves earlier to Janelle. The two looked like they were engaged in a serious battle, like they were close to coming to blows.

  “Connie!” Janelle shouted.

  CHAPTER 23

  “Oh, come on, Phil! What do you mean you’re pulling your men, too?” Sam lamented. “We’re still—”

  “I’m sorry, Sam, but we need our guys back here on duty. We’ve still got cases to solve . . . patrols to do. We had that big drug bust just last week. You know how it goes,” the lieutenant answered.

  Sam sighed and slumped back into his chair, barely listening to the voice that droned on the other end of the phone line. He had heard this so many times from other agencies in the past few days that he could spout the halfhearted apologies and excuses verbatim.

  Resources for the search for Little Bill were slipping away faster than salt through a sieve. The county already had withdrawn its helicopters two days ago for another emergency fifteen miles away. More than half of the other police department officers and the sheriff’s office deputies had already returned to their regular duties. And the rescue teams—who had searched the same terrain twice and found squat—were starting to lose hope. When that body was found, everyone seemed to use it as an excuse to throw in the towel or take time to regroup.

  Sam glanced at his desk. A strewn pile of photos showed the corpse they had unearthed.

  It had been in horrific condition when the trackers found it: rotted by melting snow and torn and mangled by wild animals. What little clothing the person had worn was almost entirely gone now. The medical examiner said, confidentially, that the body was so decomposed that it had to have been out there a lot longer than a week or two. It probably wasn’t Little Bill, but he couldn’t say for sure without doing a complete autopsy and running a few tests. Until then, they would have to wait a few weeks before they could make a positive ID, if at all.

  “Look,” the lieutenant continued on the phone line, “if you’ve got any new developments. If anything pops up—”

  “Yeah, I understand,” Sam mumbled. “Thanks, Phil.”

  He then slammed down his phone and glanced at his office wall clock.

  2:38 . . .


  The fashion show had started almost ten minutes ago, and he had told Janelle he would attend. Sam scanned the stack of papers on his desk and the multiple open windows on his desktop monitor. He had plenty of work to do, but if he still couldn’t give Janelle a definitive answer for what had happened to her grandfather, the least he could do was show her some moral support. Seeing the fashion show would just take fifteen minutes of his time.

  Sam reached over, turned off his computer, pushed himself out of his chair, and grabbed his cap, which sat on the edge of his desk. He placed it on his head and started to walk toward his office door, when his phone rang. He turned and glanced over his shoulder, checking the number on the caller ID. When he saw the area code then the name beneath it, he picked up the phone.

  “Hey, Kevin!” he said with a grin. “I meant to call you back last week. Things have been crazy around here, I hadn’t had the chance to.”

  “That’s . . . that’s okay,” Kevin answered softly.

  Sam glanced at his wall clock again.

  “Sorry for being a dick and putting you off again, but I was just . . . uh, heading out on police business,” he lied. “Can I call you back? I swear I’ll do it this time.”

  Kevin didn’t reply. Instead, Sam heard silence on the other end. His smile faded.

  “Kev, you still there?”

  “She’s dead, Sam.”

  “What? Who’s—”

  “Gabby. She’s . . . Gabby’s dead. She killed herself last night . . . I mean, early this morning, I guess. Sometime around two o’clock. She jumped from . . .” Kevin paused to clear his throat, filling the phone line with a phlegmy, ripping sound. “She jumped from her apartment balcony. I thought you . . . I thought you should know.”

  The air was sucked out of Sam’s lungs. He felt like he had been shoved to the bottom of the ocean at a hundred miles an hour and the pressure would pulverize him if he didn’t black out first.

  “Gabby’s dead?” he repeated dumbly.

  “Yes, Sam. Her rough patch was worse than everyone thought. I’m . . . I’m sorry.”

  She had hit a rough patch, and he hadn’t been there to help her out of it.

  Sam turned and caught his reflection in the black screen of his computer monitor. His face was blank. The emotions he felt were too overwhelming to find any form of expression—sadness, anger, or regret. He didn’t know it was possible, but much like a computer, he had reached a system failure. Everything had halted.

  “Thank you for telling me, Kev,” he finally said in a voice so calm he no longer sounded like himself. “I . . . I appreciate it.”

  “Are you okay, Sam?”

  “I’m fine. I just . . . I have to call you back.”

  He let the handset fall back into its cradle and turned away from his desk. He walked dazedly into the short hall leading past the deserted conference room and the men’s room. As he walked toward the bullpen, Rita simultaneously ran toward him, though he didn’t see her there. She might as well have been a pane of glass. He bumped into her, knocking the petite woman to the floor.

  “Oww!” she yelped.

  “Oh, hell! I’m sorry, Rita.” He reached down and grabbed her hand.

  “It’s okay,” she said as he hoisted her to her feet. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah,” she muttered with a grimace, wiping imaginary dust off her bottom and her knees. She then peered up at him. “I was just coming to . . . Hey, is something wrong, Chief?”

  My ex-wife killed herself today, he thought but instead of saying it aloud, he nodded. “Everything is . . . fine.”

  She continued to squint at him, and he wondered if his face was still blank. Was looking at him like staring at a mannequin in a department store window?

  I know I may look strange, he wanted to explain, but my ex-wife killed herself today, and I wasn’t there. I don’t know if anyone was there with her or on the phone when she did it. And what’s worse for me than finding out she killed herself is knowing that she was alone.

  “I was headed to the festival,” he said weakly.

  “Oh, good!” Rita dropped a hand to her chest, looking relieved. “I was just coming to get you. Mitch said he needs assistance. He said a fight broke out on the stage between Connie and the church ladies. I think the security guys have their hands full with other stuff going on with a record number of folks there today. I was seeing if you could spare a few minutes to help him.”

  “What?” Was he so lost in devastation that he had heard Rita incorrectly? “The church ladies?”

  “Afraid so, Chief.”

  Hearing that Connie was involved in a brawl wasn’t so surprising, especially considering what she’d been going through lately. Hearing that Bernice and Mary Elizabeth were involved in one was a bit of shock.

  “Why’s Mitch calling for assistance?” Sam asked. “I thought Hank was there, too. He was supposed to be patrolling the festival today, wasn’t he?”

  “He was, but . . .” Rita paused.

  “But what?”

  She lowered her eyes. “He’s . . . busy.”

  “Busy doing what?”

  “He’s on his lunch break.”

  “For two and half hours?”

  She shrugged helplessly. “It’s Hank, Chief,” she said and it was all the answer he needed.

  The myriad of emotions Sam felt finally coalesced into one: fury. His jaw tightened. He balled his fists at his sides.

  “Excuse me, Rita,” he said in an icy voice as he walked around her and strode into the bullpen.

  “Chief?” she called nervously after him.

  He found Hank sitting at his desk, as always, doing a crossword puzzle in the Mammoth Falls Gazette and loudly guzzling a Big Gulp through a straw.

  “What the heck do you think you’re doing? You’re supposed to be patrolling the festival,” Sam said, narrowing his eyes at the sergeant.

  Hank’s stubby pencil stilled. He slowly looked up from his crossword puzzle and cocked a white, bushy eyebrow. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  Sam nodded thoughtfully and faked like he was about turn around and head back to his office, but then he leaned down and wrenched the Big Gulp out of Hank’s stocky fingers.

  “Hey!” Hank exclaimed, groping at empty air, just as Sam tossed the oversize plastic cup into a nearby waste bin, making Pepsi explode over the rim and spill onto the side of Hank’s desk and the bullpen’s linoleum floor.

  “You can’t do that!” Hank shouted, shoving himself to his feet, looking a lot like a slumbering bear that was startled awake by poking it with a stick.

  “Just watch me!” Sam challenged before promptly shoving Hank into his rolling chair, sending it and Hank sailing back five feet until he and the chair bumped into the adjacent wall, knocking down a bald eagle calendar and making it tumble to the floor.

  Rita’s mouth fell open in shock. Several faces appeared in the police department’s doorway; many of the people were from the surrounding offices in City Hall.

  Hank made like he was about to rise out of his chair again until Sam charged toward him.

  “Don’t hit him!” Rita yelled just as Hank shielded his face.

  “Now you listen to me, you sack of shit,” Sam barked, jabbing his index finger into Hank’s doughy chest, “you want to sit around watching your fat ass grow wider, you do it on your own time! Not on the taxpayers’ dime and not under me anymore, you hear me? Or I’m writing you up!”

  Hank lowered his hands. His face was red. His double chin trembled. “The . . . the union’s going to hear about this,” he whimpered.

  “Like I give a shit,” Sam muttered before turning on his heel and walking toward the department door. Those huddled in the doorway scrambled to get out of Sam’s way.

  “Chief!” Rita yelled as Sam opened the partition between the bullpen and front office.

  “Chief!” she yelled again as he let it slam shut behind him.

&nb
sp; She chased him into the hall, grabbing his arm just before he reached City Hall’s main door.

  “Sam, stop! What the hell was that?”

  He didn’t answer her. Instead he lowered his gaze, feeling his anger drain out of him as quickly as it had flooded every limb in his body.

  “What’s gotten into you?” she asked in a whisper so shrill that it sounded like a whistle. It almost hurt his ears. “Do you realize that Hank could file a complaint against you? What if Mayor Pruitt finds out about this? You know he has it out for you! You could—”

  “Rita, I don’t have time to talk about this right now,” he said as he shoved the double doors open. She chased after him again. “I’ve gotta—”

  “Yes, you do!” she bellowed.

  She grabbed his wrist and dragged him toward to a nearby seating area where people took smoke breaks and gossiped in nicer weather. It was deserted today—a perfect hideaway from the prying eyes on Main Street.

  “Yes, you do,” she said dropping her voice again. “You can make time.” She pointed a tiny finger up at him. “Look, I’ve pretended with you, Sam Adler. I’ve pretended like what happened between us didn’t happen, but I can’t pretend with this! You’re losing it! You’ve been pushing yourself hard, going without sleep. I never see you eat anymore—not anything you couldn’t get out of a vending machine. And now you’ve cracked up!” She threw up her hands. “Are you driving yourself so hard for Little Bill—or are you doing it for her?”

  “What? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about Janelle Marshall! Who the hell else? I know that you’ve been hanging around her, going to her cabin every night when you’re supposed to be off duty.”

  He stared at Rita in amazement. “How . . . how did you kn—”

  “Suzie Lansing stopped over Little Bill’s cabin a couple nights ago to bring Janelle a casserole. She told me she saw your cruiser there. She saw you through the window drinking wine with Janelle. She said you too looked ‘pretty friendly.’”

  Jesus Christ, Sam thought, envisioning the scrawny middle-aged woman peering through her car window with high-powered binoculars, watching him and Janelle eat dinner.