by N. M. Brown
‘Could you have been mistaken? I mean, there are hundreds of buses coming through there every hour, and I know from experience a worried mind can get confused.’
‘You think I’m being stupid, don’t you?’
‘No.’ Leighton smiled. ‘Just being a good friend.’
‘It’s okay. I’m starting to doubt myself, too.’
‘Miss, I’m going to give you a card, with my number on it.’ Leighton reached into his jacket pocket, and handed the girl a plain white card, with neat, printed text on both sides.
‘That’s my office number at the top, and cell phone on the back. If your friend gets in touch in a couple of days’ time – as she most probably will – well, then you can just go ahead and toss that card in the trash, but if you still don’t hear anything, give me a call.’
‘Thank you for this,’ Vicki said, as she clasped her hands between her knees. ‘I know I could be wrong.’
‘Well,’ Leighton said, as he stood up, and brushed at nothing on his trouser legs, ‘if you’re not, we can get this passed on to the Missing and Unidentified Persons Unit, and they can get the ball rolling. Okay?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yeah, thanks, I am,’
‘Okay, good day to you, Miss,’ Leighton said, with a genuine smile, and turned and walked away.
As he got back into his Ford, Leighton felt a sense of purpose he had not known for many years. It seemed somehow timely one of his final duties as a working police officer would be to help reassure a worried member of the public. He smiled sympathetically at the petty worries of youth, and recalled a quotation from Mark Twain about how most of the troubles he had known in his life had never happened.
Pulling back out on to the boulevard, the Detective imagined over the next few days the young woman would finally be reunited with her friend, and perhaps the two of them would laugh over a couple of clinking Mojitos. Maybe the young woman would even speak fondly of the friendly old police officer, who had rightly assured her everything would turn out fine. If that turned out to be the case, then maybe Leighton could finally be the type of person he had always failed to be.
Driving home on that warm afternoon, Leighton pushed a cassette into tape player on the dashboard - it had cost him two hundred dollars to have the CD system removed. The sound of sweet sound of Son House playing “Delta Blues” filled the car. Leighton began to drum his hands rhythmically on the wheel. As he sunk into the sanctuary of the music, he was blissfully unaware his cosy vision of the future could not be further from the truth.
6
Anthony Morrelli could not believe his luck. Most weekends he would head to the bar for its 11:00 a.m. opening time, blow his wages far too quickly, and end up getting sent home in a cab before early evening. Tonight, however, he had paced himself and lasted the entire day. Having arrived at Scotty’s in the late afternoon, been fed, got drunk, and spent his cab money, he felt a vague sense of accomplishment. With no cash or options, and with the warped wisdom of drunkenness, he decided to stagger unsteadily home along the dark, dusty road leading to town.
Scotty’s Bar was a hacienda-style place four miles out of Laughlin, Nevada. It was off the beaten track, but to Anthony, and a cluster of regular patrons, it was worth the journey. The beer was cheap, the waitresses were hot, the burritos were big enough to keep you full for a day and a half, but best of all, none of the asshole tourists ever came out here. Tourists - or fuckheads, as he affectionately liked to call them - were the bane of Anthony’s life. His day job down in Laughlin involved renting jet skis and motor boats to piss about on the river. Most of them couldn’t fit into a life vests or, in some cases, a boat.
“Don’t you have anything bigger?” they would whine, day after mind-numbing day. He had even gone as far as buying in a few extra-extra-large personal fucking flotation devices, which resolved part of the problem, but the boats were still designed for reasonably fit people, so he often ended up having to assist, as they squeezed their fat asses in and out of the vessels.
It was a hot night as Anthony wandered along the desolate roadside, and his feet kicked up the dust. Above him, the stars were clear, and an occasional plane would blink a trail towards Vegas. One previous evening, after a day of drinking, he had been walking unsteadily back down to Laughlin, when a neat black triangle had blocked out the stars overhead, as it silently crossed the sky. Anthony had stood with his neck craned watching it, feeling like he was in some Spielberg movie. He imagined for a moment a blinding light would fasten onto his body and spirit him off to another world. But, then, as the angular shape moved away from him, he saw the orange glow of the stealth plane’s two afterburners.
He had walked back to town on only one other previous occasion, and that time, he had been accompanied by a guy called Trey Evans. Trey was a small guy and a big drinker. Anthony reckoned he was probably somewhere in his late forties, but it was hard to be sure. He usually sat at the end of the bar, dressed head-to-toe in faded denims, and would often be the last customer there when it closed. Usually, he would be driven back to town by Marianne – one of the more compassionate barmaids. There was nothing romantic about the arrangement – everyone knew Marianne lived in Bullhead City with another woman in a civil partnership. However, one occasion where Trey’s hands started to pay her unwanted attention, and another where he vomited on her passenger seat, was enough to end Marianne’s generosity. After that, he was required to book a cab, or take the long walk.
The April night Anthony had walked back with Trey had been colder, and they had walked briskly to stay ahead of the frost settling on the desert around them. The fact both men had someone to talk to about baseball, the price of gas, and asshole tourists made the journey pass quickly.
As they reached town at about 3:00 a.m., the men were bonded in drunken accomplishment. They shook hands and agreed they would repeat their journey the following weekend.
But that journey never happened. Anthony had been laid up in bed, after eating some bad prawns, and the furthest he journeyed all weekend was from his bed to the bathroom. The next time he was in Scottie’s, he looked for Trey at the end of the bar, but his space was occupied by a group of three women sharing glass jugs of cocktails.
When he asked Marianne if she had seen the small man, she rubbed her temple, and said he’d been in the previous weekend, and made his own way home alone.
Anthony hadn’t seen him in the bar in the following months either, and so he figured the journey out of town was perhaps not worth it without the promise of a free ride home.
Shambling through the dark night, Anthony began singing various Bon Jovi songs to cheer himself up. At one point, his tuneless murmur was interrupted by the startling sound of a snake’s rattle, coming from the road up ahead. Anthony stopped dead, spreading his fingers on both hands, he looked like a man who had wandered blindly into a field of land-mines. Anthony may have been drunk, but he still knew a bite from a rattler out here, in the middle of nowhere, would mean serious trouble. The creature fell momentarily silent, masking its location. Breathing carefully, Anthony leaned forward, and peered into the gloom. He could see the vague change in tone from the roadside to the sandy scrub, but nothing more than that.
From somewhere in the darkness he heard the rattle, like a crazed maraca. The chilling sound came from somewhere just in front of him, possibly within striking distance. Anthony let out an involuntary yelp, and leapt backwards. His survival instinct overpowered his rational mind, and he ran to the side of the road, then hurried a few metres ahead.
For several minutes, Anthony had walked quickly, imagining if he slowed down, the rattler would somehow catch up with him to take deadly revenge.
After half an hour of walking at a decreasing pace, Anthony decided walking to town had perhaps not been such a great idea after all. He was ravenous; his feet were hot and sore, with the first sting of a blister on his heel was starting to cut through his drunkenness. He looked over his
shoulder in the hope of seeing a car to flag down, but there was nothing except the indistinct grey ribbon of road stretching away from him in both directions.
Eventually, a glow on the horizon swelled to reveal an approaching car. A smile crept across Anthony’s face, and he began to wave his arms wildly in the direction of the approaching vehicle. In his mind, he was already anticipating getting back home to his trailer, and microwaving some frozen pizza. Not only did the car not slow down, it accelerated and drifted to the opposite side of the road to Anthony.
‘Bastard!’ he shouted as the tail lights shrank into the distance.
He wandered on for a several more minutes, before the urge to urinate sent him to the edge of the road. He unzipped and sighed as his urine hissed on the arid sand. He shook and zipped up, then began his solitary wander along the deserted road once more. By the time the bus appeared on the horizon, Anthony’s attention was lost in a haze of fatigue. He was simply counting his steps in groups of ten. Eventually, the growling engine sound was too loud to ignore.
At first, Anthony thought the low groan was emanating from a 747 rising out of Vegas, but he turned around to see bright lights on the horizon. His next thought was it could be a truck delivering cargo or fuel through the night, but as he peered into the darkness, Anthony Morrelli smiled. It was a bus.
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he said. He began to wave his arm back and forwards.
As the bus approached, Anthony held his arm up to his eyes to shield them from the fierce lights. The bus jolted to a stop beside him, and juddered from the vibration of the engine’s intestinal rumble. The doors expelled a loud hiss, and slammed open.
Without waiting for an invite, Anthony leapt aboard, and climbed the two steps to face the driver.
The interior of the bus was lit by a cool blue light, in which Anthony Morrelli could discern the vague, dark shapes of sleeping passengers.
‘Hi,’ smiled the driver, a large man in a Hawaiian shirt. ‘You need a lift into town?’
‘That’d be great, but hey, I don’t have any cash.’
‘Don’t worry. The meter’s not running tonight,’ the driver said, as he pulled a lever and closed the door.
Anthony grinned as he staggered along the aisle – from his point of view, his luck was just getting better and better.
7
Leighton Jones was a relatively happy man. He had survived the final week of work with his dignity intact, and was finally getting acquainted with his dwelling. Having spent four days cleaning and de-cluttering, his small apartment was now more like a home than it had been in twenty years. His only stumbling block had been a drawer in the kitchen, where photographs and emotions lay undisturbed, but he promised himself, unconvincingly, he would get around to that whenever he finally felt ready.
However, in the process of tidying his wardrobe, he had dug out a pile of paperbacks he had previously started reading but never finished. They were now stacked neatly on a small table next to the patio door, and it was Leighton’s plan to spend each evening after dinner sitting in the setting sun, with a book in one hand, and a glass of iced rum or white wine in the other. There was something fundamentally relaxing about the warm evening air combined with a good book – though, the drink undoubtedly helped, too.
Tonight, he had eaten a small Caesar salad with home-made croutons for dinner, and, having washed up, had moved out on to the patio, where he sat in shorts and a faded denim shirt, with the sleeves rolled up. He took occasional sips from a tall glass of crisp Orvietto, dipping in and out of a Dan Brown novel. This, for Leighton, was as close to contentment as he ever got.
When the car pulled up in front of his small, neatly mown lawn, Leighton glanced absently up from the pages of the book. He took no specific interest in the vehicle; it was amazing how quickly he had slipped off the cop mentality when he had handed in his badge. Not recognising the license plate, he returned his attention to the book in his hand, and did not look up until the shadow of a figure passed over him. Glancing up, he found himself staring at the fresh-faced girl he had spoken to outside the station, three weeks earlier. Her shoulder length hair was tied into a neat ponytail, and she wore jeans with a grey t-shirt.
‘Hello again, Detective,’ she said. ‘I need your help.’
Leighton’s mind was momentarily knocked off balance, as he struggled to recall the nature of their previous interaction. He gestured her to sit, and smiled politely.
‘What can I do for you, Miss?’
‘My friend is still missing,’ she said in a matter-of-fact way.
‘Ah, now, I remember.’ Leighton nodded. ‘The bus girl, right?’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ she said flatly. ‘The bus girl.’
‘Okay.’ Leighton took a deep breath. ‘Let’s start at the beginning. I’m Leighton Jones, and you are Vicki?’
‘Yeah, Vicki Reiner.’
‘Okay, Miss Reiner. Would you perhaps like something to drink?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Well, please take seat. Can you remind me who your friend is, and where she was headed?’ Leighton arched his hands into a steeple, and leaned slightly forward.
The girl sat down, but remained rather rigid. ‘Her name is Laurie Taylor. She’s a college friend, who booked a bus ticket from her home in Barstow to Oceanside - she was coming to stay with me for a while - but she never showed up.’
‘OK, and it’s been how long since you last heard from her?’
‘Twenty-two days?’
‘Are you in contact with any members of her family?’
‘No, she only had a mother, who died a few years ago.’
Leighton raised his eyebrows, unsure of the best way to tell this sincere young lady she was most probably wasting both his, and her, time.
‘Well, to be honest, look…’ Leighton hesitated too long, and the girl’s expression hardened.
‘I damn well knew it,’ she said sourly, and began shaking her head. ‘You’re still going to tell me to wait.’
‘No, I was actually going to tell – ’
But, the girl had already reached into her bag, and thrust a number of A4 sheets of paper across the table to Leighton.
‘Have a look at this, Detective, then, tell me I’m wrong.’
Picking up the sheets, Leighton looked over the top of them at Vicki. ‘What are they?’
‘Laurie’s cell phone call logs.’
‘Call logs? How did you get these?’ he asked curiously.
‘Just look at them, please. They begin on August 4th, that’s when the last number, at 1:42 a.m., was a SMS message sent to my phone. After that, she was picked up by the tower at Barstow Station. Then, Oceanside West cell tower picked up her phone, three hours later.’
‘So?’
‘So, Detective, from the moment she boarded the bus, Laurie Taylor never used her phone again.’
‘And you’re certain of that?’ Leighton looked at her seriously. ‘There can be no other explanation other than she was abducted - no other more likely scenarios?’
‘Yes, I’m certain.’ Vicki held Leighton’s gaze.
‘Well, I suggest you take these documents along to the Missing Per-’
‘I thought we could drive up there,’ she said intentionally cutting him off, and brushing absently at nothing on her jeans.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Leighton put down his glass, and arched his fingers together in front of his chest.
‘Yeah.’ Vicki grinned. ‘The two of us could go take a look at Laurie’s place up in Barstow. Well, technically, it’s just beyond Barstow, but not much.’
‘Miss, may I remind you I am officially a retired police officer, and as such…’
‘Exactly, so I know I can trust you.’ She grinned at him. ‘Plus, since you’re retired, you’ll be available during the day.’
Leighton shook his head. ‘It’s completely out of the question.’
‘You said you would help me, that day at the station, and I took you at
your word.’ She sighed. ‘Look, I’ll drive, and I’ll even buy your lunch. You’re retired - it’s nice up there - think of it as a day trip.’
‘Well, if your friend is missing, what good would it do snooping around?’
‘I just thought we could take a look around, see if there’s any sign of a break in. You’d know what to look for.’ She glanced at Leighton for confirmation of this, but his face gave nothing away. Somewhere nearby, a lawnmower spluttered to life, and the faint smell of cut grass and gasoline fumes drifted by.
‘I thought,’ Vicki continued, ‘if we found something, some kind of evidence, then the police would maybe take the case seriously.’
‘Okay.’ Leighton tried his best to sound reasonable. ‘And if there was no evidence - no fingerprints on the windows, no puddle of blood in the kitchen, or swag bag in the garden, would that be enough to set you free you to move on?’
‘I swear.’ Vicki held her right hand up, and looked purposely earnest. ‘That would be the end of it - you could enjoy your retirement in peace.’
Leighton didn't know if it was the wine, his own loneliness, or the girl’s simple tenacity, but eventually, he took a sip from his glass, looked at Vicki Reiner, and nodded.
‘Look, Miss Reiner-’
‘Vicki.’
‘Look, Vicki, I was about to say, before you pushed the paperwork at me, I was never a particularly good cop, anyway.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I want you. I trust you.’
‘Okay,’ he said softly. ‘We can drive up tomorrow and have a look.’
‘That’s great.’
‘But,’ Leighton held out his hand to quell her delight, ‘we take my car and split the gas, and if we find nothing suspicious, you can still buy me lunch, otherwise I’m buying lunch for you, and a little slice of humble pie for me.’
‘I knew you were a good man, Detective Jones.’ Vicki grinned.
‘Or a damn fool.’ Leighton chuckled wryly. ‘And it’s Mr. Jones from now on, Miss. I handed in my badge last Friday, remember?’