The Disappearance

by J. F. Freedman

  Good. Let them think that. He’s alone. She’s alone, only her rifle keeping her company.

  Now’s the time.

  She had been to the clinic to discuss a fund-raiser she was going to chair. The meeting went all right, but there was an undercurrent. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but the doctors seemed uneasy around her—both of them, the man and the woman, but especially the woman, Dr. Lopez, who was normally very friendly with her. Dr. Lopez almost shrank from her when they encountered each other in the hallway before the meeting. And they seemed cool to her, both Dr. Lopez and the other doctor.

  The meeting ended and she rushed out to her car: she was on a busy schedule, she had a lot to do, she always had a lot to do. Reaching for her keys, she realized that in her haste to get going she’d left her purse inside, under her chair in the meeting room. She went back in, through the back entrance, she didn’t like going through the front door, there were always so many poor, sick people in the waiting room, it depressed her to look at them.

  The two doctors were still in the meeting room. She heard them talking as she approached. She didn’t know why, to this moment she doesn’t know why, but she didn’t go in. She hung back and eavesdropped on their conversation.

  They were talking about a girl who had been in earlier to get the results of her pregnancy test. The girl was young, fourteen. There were so many of them these days. This one was different, though. She wasn’t poor, or working class, or Latina, or black. She was white, rich, privileged. She had only two things in common with the others like her. She was pregnant, and she didn’t want her parents to know.

  The girl was going to have an abortion. It was getting late, she was almost beginning her second trimester. If the clinic was to perform it, it had to be right away. She—Dr. Lopez—was going to do the procedure next Friday.

  There was a gnawing in the woman’s stomach, listening to this. She looked around furtively. No one was in the hallway.

  “Thank God she wasn’t here when her mother showed up,” the male doctor said. “Can you imagine?”

  “It’s okay,” Doctor Lopez said. “They didn’t cross paths. The mother didn’t find out.”

  She leaned against the wall, feeling like she was going to faint. Then she snuck back outside to her car, where she smoked a cigarette in the parking lot behind the building.

  Five minutes later, she went back in again. This time through the front door, in plain sight. She spotted Dr. Lopez behind the counter, talking to a volunteer. “Forgot my purse,” she said with a smile.

  The doctor nodded, turned away from her. She fetched her purse from the meeting room where she’d left it and took off.

  She went home and had a stiff drink, a bourbon on the rocks. Then she threw up.

  Her daughter was pregnant. Who was the father?

  Now it was the dead of night, hours after midnight. Lying alone in bed, unable to sleep. Her heart pounding, racing. Her husband a hundred miles away, fucking God knows who, her daughter pregnant, fucking God knows who, she’s fourteen years old, still wearing a retainer. She was going to have an abortion.

  Forget sleep. She needed a drink.

  It was too late for bourbon. It was too late for anything, closer to morning than to night, but so what? Standing in the dark, empty study that overlooked the backyard, barefoot, wearing a flimsy nightgown, she poured herself a stiff cognac, knocked it back. It burned going down. It mellowed her out immediately. One more for the road, then she’d try to sleep.

  The movement outside caught her eye. A man carrying something in a blanket in his arms, moving across the lawn.

  They traversed the length of the lawn, down to the gazebo at the far end. She followed them. She didn’t have anything on except her nightgown, she had nothing on her feet, but she didn’t feel the cold. The blanket slipped a bit, and there was her daughter. Carrying her daughter, the man climbed the stairs to the gazebo. She followed, keeping to the shadows. She crouched at the foot of the structure, listening as they settled themselves above her.

  As soon as they began talking, she knew that the man was Joe Allison, and she felt a knife going into her heart, into the center cut of her heart. She crouched there, shaking, listening to them above her.

  They talked. She was pregnant, she was going to have an abortion next Friday, he was the father. She was matter-of-fact about it, she didn’t want him accompanying her, she would take care of it herself, thank you very much. But she wanted him to know, which is why she’d forced him to come see her now.

  Crouched at the bottom of the gazebo, underneath them, she could make out pieces of their bodies through the wooden slats of the floor. She was shivering, quietly hysterical. Quietly coming apart.

  She heard her daughter say, “I’m going to have an abortion.” And then she heard her say, “We might as well.” And the sounds of lovemaking.

  She cried silently, hating herself for crying, wanting to stop, unable to. She listened as they finished their lovemaking, listened as he pulled on his clothes.

  He came down the stairs alone, looking back up at the girl, as if to say something, but saying nothing. She shrank back under the cross-structure of the struts that held the gazebo up. He didn’t see her. He wasn’t seeing anything.

  Her daughter was smoking. She was humming a tune, some old show tune from the play her school had put on that fall. She had a sweet young voice. She loved to sing.

  Go back, she told herself. Go back and pretend this never happened. Go back.

  She didn’t realize she had climbed the stairs until she was at the top. Her daughter’s back had been to her. She was smoking the last drag on the cigarette butt she had found.

  “What did you come back for?” her daughter had said, her back to her. “I don’t want to do it again tonight. We’re not going to anymore, that was the last time.”

  She stood there, trembling, and her daughter Emma knew it wasn’t Joe Allison who had climbed up the stairs. She had turned, slowly, her face registering who was there—her mother, shivering with cold and fear and astonishment and anger.

  “Oh, God!”

  “How could you?” was all she could think of saying. “How could you?”

  “How could I fuck your lover? Or how could I fuck anyone? Or how could I be smoking a cigarette at three in the morning?”

  “You’re pregnant.” She felt like she was having an out-of-body experience.

  Her daughter stared at her with hostility. No, not hostility. Hatred. “You were listening to us. You were spying on us? You were listening to us fucking, you sick bitch! How sick can you get?” She was on her feet. “Did you get off on it? Did it turn you on?”

  She was whimpering, crying. “You’re fourteen years old, for God’s sake.”

  “I’m not the only one, Mom,” her daughter had said, so matter-of-factly. “There’s plenty of girls my age. You’re on the board of the clinic, you know that.”

  “Not like you.” The words were coming out of her mouth, she didn’t know what they were, or why.

  “You mean, not ‘nice girls’?” She had laughed. “Maybe I’m not so nice. Aren’t you always telling me to be my own person?”

  “I didn’t mean this.”

  “Sorry, Mom. This is how I’m my own person.”

  She had failed her daughter. She hadn’t been there, she hadn’t seen it coming, and she should have, it wouldn’t have been hard to see. If she had been there. Instead of being consumed in her own world, her own selfish life.

  “It’s Joe, isn’t it?”

  “What?” The words from her daughter snapped her out of her reverie.

  “Joe. It’s Joe being my lover that has you so bent out of shape, isn’t it? Not that I’m having sex, but who I’m having it with.” She walked up to her mother, stuck her face right in her mother’s face. “You’re jealous, aren’t you? That I’m having an affair with your lover.” She taunted her deeper. “Did you think you could keep him all to yourself?”

  “Emma …�
�

  “He doesn’t even like you. He just takes pity on you.”

  The rage took over. All-encompassing, all-overwhelming. She reached back and threw a punch at her daughter, threw it as hard as she could, and it caught Emma flush on the face, and she fell from the force of the blow, fell off the edge of the platform where they were standing next to the stairs, and she fell straight down, fifteen feet, her head hitting the ground below with a dull thud, like a sack of potatoes. She twitched for a moment. Then she was motionless.

  “Emma …”

  There was nothing. She had caught her daughter with her lover and she had killed her.

  She had killed her daughter, the fruit of her womb.

  She couldn’t leave her here. Not out here, in the cold and the dark. She tried to pick her up. Her daughter was too heavy, the ground was too slippery under her feet.

  She couldn’t leave her here.

  She needed traction. She ran to get something for her feet. Her car was the closest thing. Her running shoes were in her car. She grabbed them out of the backseat and pulled them on, then ran back to the gazebo.

  She could carry her daughter now. She slung her over her back in a fireman’s carry and carried her towards the house.

  She had murdered her daughter. She had killed her own seed.

  But (her mind was racing out of control) her daughter was dead now. She wasn’t going to come back to life, no matter what. So it was whether or not she, too, should die.

  Emma wouldn’t want her to die. Emma knew it was an accident. Emma knew she loved her. That her mother loved her, more than life itself.

  She threw the body into the car and drove around aimlessly. Then she remembered a hike the two of them used to go on when the weather was nice, up Hot Springs Canyon. Emma loved it there. It would be a nice place for her to sleep.

  She drove to the base of the canyon, lifted her out of the car, lugged/carried her up the trail. It was exhausting, but this is where Emma would want to be. She had to do this for Emma.

  With any luck, no one would find her until summer, when the creek stopped running. By then all that would be left would be bones. Her soul, her beautiful spirit would have long gone on to a better place.

  It wasn’t until she got back to her car and looked down at her feet that she realized she was wearing Joe’s shoes. He’d left them in her car the week before, after their run on the beach. In the dark she had grabbed them by mistake, instead of her own shoes, which still lay in the floor in the back. He had joked with her about how big her feet were, how they almost wore the same size shoe.

  Someone had gotten her daughter pregnant. Someone didn’t want anyone in the world to ever know that. Someone had killed her daughter. Someone wearing these shoes.

  The next morning she took the key chain. She was going to plant it in his house, with the damning shoes, and make sure the detectives noticed them later on, when they came out to the house to begin their investigation. A few days until the tumult died down. Then she’d sneak over there, and plant the evidence. She had a key. She had been there many times.

  He came to the house, to console her. He didn’t know, but he had to be feeling guilty, overwhelming guilt. He was so loving with her, so gentle.

  She couldn’t frame Joe. Because she still loved him.

  They were lovers now, more than ever. Especially after the divorce, they saw each other all the time. He was still “going” with Nicole Rogers, for appearance’ sake, but she was in love with him, and she knew he was in love with her. He had to be. She still thought of Emma, her wonderful, loving daughter, but days would go by when she didn’t.

  He got the new job, in Los Angeles. They were going to move down there, start their life together. In the open, finally.

  Except they weren’t. He was going alone, making a clean break. What they’d had had been wonderful, he told her, but it was over. They both had to start fresh. She understood that, didn’t she? It was better, for both of them. He was leaving Nicole behind, too, if that made her feel better.

  He was having dinner with her husband and that woman, Nicole. She drank some bourbon to fortify herself. Maker’s Mark, her brand of choice. Then she stole over to the restaurant. She had the bourbon with her, in case she needed more courage.

  They were inside, having dinner. Having a great time, laughing. She could see them through the restaurant window. They were probably laughing at her.

  The man who got her daughter pregnant had killed her. The man who wore those shoes had killed her. The man who had taken her daughter’s special key ring had killed her.

  She went out to the parking lot. There was his Porsche. It was open, the attendant hadn’t locked it. She took one last swallow of bourbon for courage, screwed the cap on, and slid the half-drunk bottle into the car, sticking it behind the driver’s seat, in plain enough sight. Then the key chain, in the glove compartment. Keeping a sharp eye out for the parking attendant, who was on the other side of the lot, listening to the ball game on the radio, not paying attention.

  She had a key to his house. She let herself in, planted the shoes. Then out, to the road he would take to come home.

  Sitting in her car at the side of the road, waiting. He drove by her, as she knew he would. He was alone. That was good. It would work if Nicole was with him, but this way was cleaner.

  She watched his car head away from her, towards Coast Village Road. Then she picked up her cell phone and dialed 911. A drunk driver just passed me, she told the operator, telling her where this had happened. Maybe he’s on drugs, too, you should check for that.

  Then she went home, to the house where she lived alone, and passed out into a deep, exhausted sleep.

  She stands on the ridge, looking at the house across the ravine. She has her rifle with her. She bought it last year. She’s an excellent shot, she practices. Doug got the ranch property as part of the divorce settlement, but she kept a key to the gate, and came and went as she pleased.

  You don’t have to be a great shot at this distance, this rifle is so accurate, so easy to shoot. Doug had the same kind, he was always talking about how great it was to shoot, how easy. Even a beginner could be proficient at it in a short period of time, which she found out was true, she was proficient. And with the night scope it’s like shooting ducks in a barrel. Like it had been out at the ranch, when she had shot him to warn him off.

  He hadn’t taken the hint.

  He takes a break from what he’s doing. Comes to the window, looks out. Then he slides the glass doors open and steps out onto the balcony, his arms outraised. Stretching? Maybe, she thinks, he’s praying.

  She raises the rifle to her shoulder, takes careful aim.

  The shot rings out, the crack of the report echoing like a thunderclap across the canyon. The bullet hits home, a clean head shot, knocking the target backwards, dead before it hits the ground.

  Across the ravine Luke, hearing the explosive repercussion, hits the deck.

  Riva trudges across the hard ground, in her hand the .40 S&W howitzer that her old drug-dealing boyfriend had bequeathed her, which was hidden under the floorboards, just remembered. She looks down at Glenna Lancaster, lying still, a small hole in her temple, blood starting to ooze out onto her cheek and neck.

  She had gotten the ice cream, dawdling over her choice, and was leisurely heading home when she saw it: a light, across the barranca, where she had seen the tire tracks.

  She had turned around and driven in that direction as fast as the old truck would go, praying she wouldn’t be too late. Stopping down the hill so as not to be heard, scrambling up the dirt road, slipping and sliding, feeling her belly, the life inside it. When she got to the top she saw Glenna standing there, raising the rifle to her shoulder. She took aim, and pulled the trigger.

  She kneels down. “You got away with killing your own daughter,” she says to the warm, suddenly inanimate body. “But no way was I going to let you get away with murdering the father of my child.”

  SEV
EN

  RIVA IS CALM WHEN she talks to the police back at the central sheriff’s office. She had been driving home, she’d seen a suspicious light across the canyon from their house, she’d driven up to investigate. She had the gun just in case—she hadn’t really expected to find any trouble.

  Glenna had heard her coming, she says. She had called out a warning to Glenna to put the rifle down, but Glenna had turned it on her—she wasn’t about to lay her weapon down. She had come here to kill Luke Garrison, she had called back to Riva, and if she had to kill someone else, too, then she would. One, two, or three, it didn’t matter anymore.

  Riva had fired out of instinct. Thank God for a lucky shot. If she’d missed, she would be the body lying there on the ground.

  Ray Logan interviews her by the book, but keeps it as short as he can. Luke’s by her side, protectively hovering over her.

  “Justifiable homicide,” Logan says curtly, when he’s done questioning her. He looks over to Sheriff Williams, who nods confirmation. “We won’t be pressing charges.” He shakes her hand. “I’m sorry you had to go through this ordeal. You’re free to go now.”

  Luke drives them home. They sit side by side, silent. Not until they’re safely inside the house does she break down in his arms.

  “She was going to kill you,” she sobs. Her body’s shivering, she can’t stop it. He holds her tight to him, as tight as he can. “Five more seconds, and she would have killed you.”

  “But you got there, so she didn’t,” he says. “She didn’t.” Holding her head against his shoulder, he asks her, as gently as he can, “Did she really try to kill you?”

  She looks up at him. “She was going to kill you. What difference does it make?”

  He sighs. “None, I guess.”

  She looks at him. “I’ve seen the way the law works—and doesn’t. I couldn’t take the chance on that happening again. I wouldn’t.”