The More They Disappear

by Jesse Donaldson

  He guided the Explorer onto a highway pull-off next to a plaque.

  “Why are we stopping?” Ginny asked.

  “A little fresh air.”

  He helped the girls out and they looked at the creek below. Mounds of leaves had piled beneath the trees, and in the distance a log cabin lay in open view. The girls peppered him with questions.

  “What’s that?”

  “A cabin.”

  “Whose?”

  He read the plaque. “A family. The McGoverns.”

  “Do you know them?”

  “No, sweetie. This was in pioneer times. Way back before cars or television.”

  “Before TV?”

  “Yep.”

  “What did they do?”

  Lewis made up a story. “They worked. They hunted and gathered, mended clothes. They played games and took long walks.”

  “Why’d they leave?”

  “It says here they didn’t want to be near other people.”

  “Why not?”

  “I guess they were happy by themselves.”

  The girls stopped talking and tried to mimic how Lewis looked deeply into the valley. He imagined how their lives would have been different in earlier times. Maybe things were better then.

  “Are you and Mommy getting a divorce?” Ginny asked.

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  Ginny didn’t answer.

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Lewis said.

  “Do you love Mommy?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  “What’s divorce?”

  “It’s when two people who live together decide not to anymore.”

  “What happens to their kids?”

  Lewis thought before answering. He wasn’t saddened by the question so much as unsure how to respond. The girls weren’t distraught or suffering; they were trying to understand. He tried his best not to lie. “They grow up,” he said. Each girl nodded like she understood.

  When he settled them back in the Explorer, Lewis let the girls sit in the front. A soft rain broke down from the clouds, and he showed them where the windshield wipers were and how they worked, and as he drove, he draped his arm over the seat so that he could hold them all together as the world raced by.

  * * *

  Harlan parked next to the same unfinished A-frame he had the day after Lew died. No more work had been done. The house would stand exposed all winter long. Bored kids would congregate there, tag the beams, leave empty bottles and the remnants of fires. Nobody would complain or care.

  He hiked the worn path back to the spot where Mary Jane shot Lew. It was wishful thinking, but he hoped he might find the girl there. It made sense to him, returning to that moment when a life went off the rails. And if she was out there, sitting on the bald rock and staring out over the river, he would let her have her moment’s peace. Hell, he might even join her.

  The ground was soft and forgiving underfoot and Harlan barely made a sound as he walked, but when he came out of the woods, the clearing was empty. He sat down on the rock and started to roll a cigarette, then decided against it and let the tobacco scatter in the breeze. He picked up a few small stones and pitched them over the edge.

  They hadn’t yet found a body in the river but each passing hour made Harlan more and more certain it was Mary Jane. He tried to convince himself he’d done right, handled the case right. Mark Gaines and his father were in custody. He knew who pulled the trigger and had an APB out to arrest her. He’d uncovered the truth, or most of it, anyway. He’d done his job. By all accounts, he should have been proud—it was good police work—but he didn’t feel proud. The girl, if she was dead, that was on him.

  All his life, Harlan had searched for a code worth living by, a guiding star, but he was a man who hedged bets, who believed a little in everything and therefore stood for nothing. He’d wanted to place his faith in the law, to place it in God, place it in himself, but he wasn’t a true believer. Other people found mentors or gave themselves fully to a cause or a person or the bottle, but Harlan had always kept a part of himself back. Out of fear. Out of doubt. It was the reason he’d failed Mary Jane. He’d allowed himself an ounce of doubt and it had drowned her.

  When the dust settled, he would be able to stand before a crowd of voters and claim he’d delivered justice, but that would be a lie. There was nothing just about what he’d done. What was the point of reckoning? Harlan had never wanted to punish people. He wanted to save them. He wanted to be there the moment before Mary Jane pulled the trigger, wanted to let her know that if she put the gun down, he’d let her go. Mary Jane was somewhere out there—on the road? in the river?—and what had he done to help her? What had he done?

  If the good book was right, maybe there was some St. Peter at the gate separating the righteous from the wicked and if only Harlan could believe that, or believe that there was a man whose judgment was honest and absolute, then maybe the wet world before him wouldn’t seem such a terrible place. But he couldn’t imagine there was much reward for stumbling through this life, and he wasn’t sure he wanted the reward anyway.

  epilogue

  NOVEMBER 1998

  Harlan managed to have Mark Gaines transferred to a juvenile facility in the southern part of the county even though he was nineteen, a carrot that he hoped would maintain the kid’s cooperation. Mark kept refusing visits from his father, who was out on bail, and told Arthur Blakeslee, his father’s lawyer, that he’d be using a public defender. He agreed to tell the whole story in court and a plea deal was drawn up. Harlan was there with the lawyers for Mark’s first deposition. The story Mark told was long and wieldy—it started with his dad’s medical practice and Mark’s ability to get pills, moved on to Lew and his father’s partnership, Mark’s scheme in Lexington, and the startling wealth that came from dealing pills, all of which sowed the seeds of distrust that ended in murder. He even copped to setting the fire at the Spanish Manor to help Mary Jane escape. When the kid finished talking, Harlan could see that he expected swift punishment, but this was just the beginning and Harlan didn’t know how to tell him the guilt wouldn’t go away. “I’m so sorry you and Mary Jane went through this,” he said, patting Mark on the shoulder. “But you should have fought back.”

  Each day Harlan sent one of the deputies to search the banks of the river for a body. He hoped they found it before the vultures or snapping turtles did their damage. Eventually, word got out that it was Mary Jane Finley in the water, and it seemed like the entire town joined the search, but they all came up empty. The only things anyone in Marathon could talk about were the case against Mark Gaines and his dad or the Finley girl’s suicide. The details were meant to stay sealed but rumors spread.

  Right after Trip posted bail, he started bad-mouthing Harlan to the Marathon Registrar. Each issue included an editorial by Stuart Simon about the various ways in which Harlan was tarnishing Lew’s legacy. Harlan tried to shrug off the criticism. The case against Trip seemed primed to go federal—there were even charges of fraud concerning the Silver Spoon and Trip’s attempted land grab. Harlan had done the job he was supposed to, but no one thanked him for it. He wanted to believe that when Mary Jane turned up, life would go back to normal, but it wouldn’t.

  The authorities in Lexington found her car and thanks to a bevy of parking tickets from a diligent meter maid, they confirmed it had been parked since before her disappearance. Holly didn’t like to talk about Mary Jane, but sometimes when she looked at him, there was a sadness in her eyes that made Harlan shudder with guilt. He drove by the Finley home at the end of each night, hoping for some glimpse of Lyda, but the blinds were always drawn and the only light came from two small windows near the roof.

  During his rare hours off, Harlan would walk the riverbank with Mattie and her mutt, pretending to search for the body. In truth, it was just an excuse to be away from other people. He’d done all this before. He’d been about Mattie’s age when his daddy fell in the river, had searched the riverba
nk without end until one day the sheriff came by asking for someone to identify the body. His mother refused, saying she wanted nothing more to do with the man, so Harlan had gone. He could still see the red splotches where fish had nibbled his father’s flesh, the cuts from branches and rocks, his father’s dead, yellow eyes and bloated neck. He remembered wondering why he needed to be there at all. The sheriff had arrested his daddy enough to recognize him. All Harlan said was, “That’s him.” The sheriff said, “I know, son.”

  As the days passed, Harlan and Mattie’s search for the body moved farther and farther into the woods. Mattie liked to point out birds and woodland creatures. They rested for long stretches, and Harlan let Mattie use his knife to whittle sticks into nothing. She rolled him loose cigarettes that burned too fast, and he built small campfires that she tossed twigs into just to watch them burn. Sometimes he left her and hiked down to the river to swim in the stills. The cold water seemed to remind him he was alive.

  The election came and went. There was record low turnout but Harlan managed to eke himself a win. Almost immediately he named Paige his second-in-command and deputized Lewis after he promised not to get involved with his father-in-law’s case. Lewis seemed perfectly content writing speeding tickets and patrolling county roads before the roosters cried at dawn. He was actually good company around the office, a bridge between Harlan and the other deputies. He liked bantering with Frank and Del, treated Paige with deference, picked Holly’s brain about what makes a good deputy. It had to have been a strange time for him. Lewis’s wife had moved back into their house to get away from her father, but Lewis and the girls were living with his mom. Lewis and Harlan met every couple of days to chat about how he liked the job but it always turned to more personal matters. Lewis explained that his marriage was on hiatus, but whenever he dropped Ginny and Stella off to visit their mom, Sophie would invite him in for coffee. Her life was in shambles—her brother in jail, her father out on bail. She didn’t know what was happening or why. Apparently his daughters liked to ask when they were moving back home with Mommy, and every time they did it threatened to break Lewis’s heart, but he claimed that Sophie was becoming a better woman and that maybe he was becoming a better man, and in time maybe they could be better to each other.

  Harlan talked about retiring even though he’d won the election, thought about handing the reins over to Paige. He’d lost his faith in the law. The law hadn’t been able to save Angeline from her father or save Lew from himself or save Mark and Mary Jane from whatever darkness haunted them. All the law could do was punish after the fact. At best it could keep the town from destroying itself, and it could barely manage that. Harlan thought maybe he’d go back to school, get a social work degree, start trying to save people before they did wrong. At least it would give him something new to believe in.

  Eventually, he called in a diver to search the river for Mary Jane. He thought that, at least, might give the town some closure. The search turned into a long day of setting the trawler, releasing the diver, and watching him come up empty-handed. A bunch of Staties sat around the boat trading dirty jokes and dropping nips of whiskey in their coffee. No one spoke to Harlan. Despite a cold misting rain, a pack of locals watched from the bridge—lined up like birds on a wire. At some point Harlan began to wonder if Mary Jane’s body was in the river after all, if it wasn’t just another trick. He wanted to believe that she was out there somewhere—alive—but late in the afternoon, the diver surfaced and gave a thumbs-up. Harlan stood among the Staties and listened to his report. “She’s caught on a rock with all these initials carved into it,” he said. “Damnedest thing I ever saw.” The Staties threw out a wide net and the diver went down once more. People on the bridge cheered.

  Harlan knew the rock. When he was a kid and the river was low, it rose like an island above the surface. People boated out and carved their names and the names of their loved ones into it. And then when the water rose again, the rock vanished. It had come loose years before and sunk to the bottom. Harlan’s own initials were on the rock. And who knew how many others? And who knew how long it would be before all their symbols were worn away?

  Harlan looked up at the bridge and saw Henry Dawson standing among the birds. Mattie was nowhere to be seen, and he had a sudden urge to find her, to jump from the boat and swim to shore and search her haunts to make sure she was okay. The anxiety crippled him and he took a seat just as the sun peeked out from behind the clouds. The mist from the boat’s spray danced before him like a million atoms of space and time, like all the world’s chaos and possibility. One of the Staties put a hand to his shoulder and said, “It’s okay, Sheriff. It’s over now.”

  Dredge the bottom of any river and you’ll find things forgotten, things left behind, things pitched over the rail or fallen from the sky, things carried by the wind and worn down by time. Dredge these things up and you’ll have more questions than answers, but the river will keep moving, keep changing, keep pushing so that nothing has its final resting place, so that nothing is ever finished or complete but just sitting there, trapped in the mud, waiting for some swell to lift it, to carry it along some new current, waiting for some hand to loose it from its snag, so it can float weightless to the top, new and pale and clean again.

  acknowledgments

  This book has brought me into contact with many amazing people, and whatever this novel’s charms, they are indebted to that community.

  Thank you to David Hale Smith for boarding the ship and Will Anderson for bringing it into port.

  Thank you to Liz Parker, Katie Gilligan, and Jamie Levine for guidance along the way. And to the team at Thomas Dunne, including Justin Velella, Paul Hochman, Emily Walters, and Susannah Noel.

  Thank you to the Michener Center and all the writers I met there. To Artcroft and the VCAA, which gave me time and space to work.

  To my friends and confidants: Gregory, Smith, and the Billy Goat; Kevin and Jessica; Mac and Tate; Adam, Aja, and James; P.F. and Peter; Dan and Ronnie; Yaakov, Scott, and Nick.

  To kind strangers like Sheriff Patrick Boggs and his father, Bill, who taught me so much about the place that was once called Limestone.

  Thank you to my family: John, Marty, Emily, and Sarah. I’m a fortunate son.

  To my spiritual adviser, the Right Reverend Parker.

  And finally, to Becca and Poe. Love. Always.

  about the author

  Jesse Donaldson was born and raised in Kentucky, attended Kenyon College and Oregon State University, and was a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas. His writing has appeared in the Oxford American, The Greensboro Review, and Crazyhorse. Among other things, he’s worked as a gardener, copywriter, teacher, and maintenance man. He now lives in Oregon with his wife, daughter, and a dog named Max. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraphs

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

  THE MORE THEY DISAPPEAR. Copyright © 2016 by Jesse Donaldson. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.thomasdunnebooks.com

  www.stmartins.com

  Cover design by Rob Grom

  Cover photograph by Jade Farr / Millennium Images, UK

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Donaldson, Jesse, author.

  Title: The more they disappear / Jesse Donaldson.

  Description: New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2016.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016002482 | ISBN 9781250050229 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781466851337 (e-book)

  Subjects: LCSH: Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | Drug traffic—Fiction. | Drug addiction—Fiction. | Kentucky—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Crime. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3604.O5344 M67 2016 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016002482

  e-ISBN 9781466851337

  Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  First Edition: August 2016