The Space Between

by Dete Meserve

  “FBI and police have expanded the search for missing restaurant owner Ben Mayfield to include the Inland Empire and the San Fernando Valley,” I hear her say on the TV in the kitchen. “Mayfield was last seen five days ago getting into a Toyota SUV driven by his bodyguard, Antonio Spear, who was later found shot to death off the 405 freeway, about a mile from Mayfield’s well-known restaurant, Aurora.”

  And then the report includes a photo of Ben. Tanned, handsome, bathed in seemingly golden light and surrounded by a bevy of celebrities that frequented Aurora. An empty heaviness comes over me.

  “It’s unknown if Mayfield was able to escape on foot or if he was abducted by whoever shot his bodyguard,” she continues. “But what has police stumped is this. What happened to Mayfield’s car? Police have stepped up the search for his blue Audi A8, as they hope it will offer clues to what happened to Mayfield.”

  I swallow the lump in my throat, wondering when these reporters are going to find out that Ben is suspected of murdering Rebecca Stanton.

  Agent Elliott assured me that they were not releasing any further information about Rebecca’s murder because it would compromise the investigation, but the story is too sensational to remain hidden for very much longer. How soon until that news is leaked?

  At least I’m no longer an official suspect in Ben’s disappearance. The FBI is monitoring my phones and texts because they’re looking for Ben, not looking at me. I am relieved that they’ve set aside their assumptions about me, but I can’t help but wonder: If they’re right that Ben did kill Rebecca Stanton, what happened to him? Was he dead, his body lying somewhere police haven’t looked yet? Or was it possible that he was still alive, abducted for reasons we don’t know yet? A ransom, perhaps. The heir to the Mayfield Department Store fortune could be worth a hefty sum.

  As I watch Kate Bradley’s seemingly endless coverage continue, my cell phone rings. It’s my CIT boss, Steven Webster. I mute the sound and answer the call. After a few minutes of casual banter about the space symposium panel he just moderated, he launches into business.

  “We’ve decided to delay further publicity about the Trojan asteroid discovery,” he says. “Right now we think the announcement will get lost in the sensational nature of what’s happened to your husband.”

  “I’m disappointed but understand,” I say, watching as Channel Eleven clicks through photos of Aurora on its opening night a few years ago—limos, klieg lights, a parade of celebrities and accompanying paparazzi.

  “I hope this doesn’t sound insensitive, but how are you coming on the projection for the proposal?”

  I don’t want to admit I haven’t spent any time finishing one of the calculations we need for it. The space telescope will scan two hundred thousand of the brightest stars, but we need to estimate how many planet “candidates” we expect to find and how many of those we expect will be Earth-sized. “I’ll have everything along with the methodology to you later in the week.”

  “Would you like to assign that task to someone—”

  “No. I’ve got it under control.” I glance at the continuing coverage, and my blood pressure rises when I see Kate Bradley is now interviewing Ben’s sister, Julia, in Chicago via satellite. I suck in a breath. There’s no telling what Julia will say, especially with cameras trained on her.

  I steady my voice. “How’s the top brass feeling about all the news coverage?”

  He pauses a long moment. Then gives it to me straight. “It’s making some of them very nervous. And rightfully so. Your name is about to be listed as the principal investigator on this one, and some of the news we’re seeing . . . well, we all know the decision makers don’t like even a whiff of controversy when they’re thinking about handing out a quarter billion dollars.”

  “Would it help the project if I—”

  “No. We’re not going to hand this over to someone else just because your husband is missing.”

  I close my eyes and draw a deep breath. I want to tell him that Ben isn’t just missing. He’s a murder suspect. That will surely change his mind about everything. I open my mouth to begin an explanation, but his next words make me lose my nerve.

  “I hope they find your husband soon,” he says quietly. “Alive and well.”

  After I hang up, I turn up the sound on Kate Bradley’s interview with Julia.

  Julia’s wearing a tank top and striped leggings, which isn’t what you’d expect to see the family member of a missing person wearing on TV, or in December in Chicago. But Julia has never been predictable.

  “What can you tell us about the investigation into your brother’s disappearance?”

  “Why the LAPD can’t find him or his car is beyond me,” Julia says calmly, but her eyes have a wild, high-strung look to them. “Makes me wonder if they’re really doing enough to find him. Or, you know, if they’re just incompetent.”

  Kate raises an eyebrow. “Police seem to be quite competently overseeing dozens of officers and volunteers who are searching the area,” she says. “How are you and his family holding up now that Ben has been missing for five days?”

  “My mother isn’t doing well. She had a stroke a month ago, and this tragedy is slowing her recovery. I’d be out there searching for Ben myself, but I need to take care of my mom.”

  “What’s the situation with Ben’s suit against his Aurora partners?”

  “Yeah, I’m not up to speed on that, but I warned Ben not to get into business with them. Never trusted any of them. Because I can tell you this. No matter what they’re saying, they know exactly what happened to Ben.”

  I sigh, hoping Richard Jenkins and my CIT bosses aren’t watching.

  I cannot remember the combination for the safe. I’ve tried the ones that Ben and I had always used—our birth dates and our anniversary—but the door remains locked. I know what mundane things to expect behind the steel door: our will and living trust agreements, life insurance policies, the deed to our house. But I suspect—based on nothing but a gut instinct—that the safe holds clues to what happened to Ben.

  I’m not surprised the FBI didn’t find the safe when they searched the house, because it’s concealed in concrete behind a rusty metal cabinet next to the water heater in the basement. You’d need x-ray vision to even speculate it might be there.

  Ben had grown up seeing his family lock their jewels, expensive watches, and important documents in a safe, so it seemed completely natural to him that we’d lock up our essential papers this way. But this safe went overboard with its safety specs: half-inch steel doors that could supposedly withstand .50-caliber bullets, seventeen-hundred-degree heat for ninety minutes, and even impalement by a one-ton steel I-beam. Ben’s mother was close friends with the owner of a luxury safe company, so this “starter” safe arrived as a gift a few weeks after we moved into our Brentwood home.

  The safe is only large enough to house a foot-tall stack of papers and a few showy jewels Ben had inherited from his grandmother. I try another three-number combination, Zack’s birthday, but the lock still doesn’t move. The brushed-steel dial seems to be mocking me for continuing to try.

  Had Ben changed the combination?

  If so, then that could only mean he had something to hide. From me. That thought makes me even more determined to figure out the code. Simple math says that if I devoted every waking minute to cracking the code, it would take me working around the clock for up to sixty days to try all the possible combinations. I attempt a few dozen more until my fingers begin to feel numb and my attention drifts.

  Then a text from Aaron flashes on my phone, but this one isn’t a link to a clip from the security-system DVR. Instead it’s a photo of a Piggly Wiggly store sign, a smiling yellow pig wearing a little white paper hat. At first I think he sent me the photo by mistake—I’ve never been to a Piggly Wiggly—but then I notice that right above the lighted sign, hanging high in the night sky, is Venus, and directly above that glittering planet is a brilliant and slender crescent moon.

  I
smile for the first time in days. There’s something quirky and funny about the rare sky show—the alignment of Venus and the moon—playing out above the happy-faced pig sign.

  I think about Aaron sending this to lift my spirits, then my mind inevitably drifts to our kiss, this time outside the airport Tuesday night.

  “What . . . are we doing?” he had whispered.

  I met his gaze for a long moment, but instead of doing the right thing, I leaned in to kiss him again, certain—positive—that it wouldn’t be the same this time. That the surprise of it all was what made it . . . powerful.

  It didn’t work. Because this kiss was exploring, questioning. Both of us trying to understand the force that was drawing us—pushing us—together. I leaned into him, felt his arms enveloping me, and the blood rushed hard to my ears, shutting out all the airport sounds around us. He drew me closer, and it felt as though the two of us had done this dance together before, even though we hadn’t.

  I couldn’t catch my breath. It was stuck high in my chest, somewhere inaccessible to my vocal cords. The words came out breathy, a voice I barely recognized. “We can’t . . .” I touched my lips to his in the softest kiss. A kiss goodbye.

  “The problem is . . . I like you too much.” The way he was looking at me made me think it was true.

  I took a step back. “I shouldn’t have . . .” I said, trying to sound normal.

  As if I could ever get back to normal.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Sarah, Aaron’s here for you,” Rachel calls out to me a half hour later.

  I draw a deep breath. After the Piggly Wiggly photo, Aaron had texted to let me know he was on his way. He didn’t say whether he was coming over to talk about new data he’s recovered from the DVR or work business, but with police and FBI monitoring all my communications, I don’t risk asking him why.

  I head downstairs, and I notice Aaron is watching me. I can see he’s not used to seeing me dressed like this, barefoot and wearing jeans and a slim-fitting T-shirt.

  I feel his admiration and my chest swells. I’m determined to feel nothing, to squash and flatten all my emotions, if that’s possible, so that I can talk with him like nothing happened between us. As if I can control that.

  “You’ve met my sister, Rachel,” I say, and I’m relieved that my voice sounds . . . normal.

  “I did,” he says. “I brought the . . . data we talked about.”

  “Great, come on up to my office.”

  “You two can work down here. I won’t be in your way,” Rachel says. Even though it’s not true. She’d definitely eavesdrop.

  “My office will be easier,” I say, but realize it won’t be. Not for me. The thought of being behind a closed door with Aaron is making me jittery.

  I can feel Rachel watching me as Aaron follows me up the stairs. I sense her sister-radar is on high alert and she’s wondering why a good-looking colleague is here on a Sunday when Ben is still missing.

  I open the office door and let Aaron in. “Nice,” he says.

  My office has two enormous skylights that drench the room in sunlight by day but allow me to peek at the stars at night. Several telescopes cluster in one corner, but the room is dominated by a set of bookshelves labeled with subjects like Asteroids, Optics, and Exoplanets, and an entire shelf devoted to my collections of meteorites.

  He sets his leather bag on the couch and looks over the meteorites, notices a small crystal among them, and picks it up.

  “My latest obsession,” I tell him. “That one’s not a meteorite . . . it’s zoisite. Looks blue, right?”

  He nods without taking his eye off the stone.

  “Now move it into the natural light.”

  “It’s . . . red,” he says in a half whisper.

  “It’s a pleochroic gem, which means it’s one of the few stones in the world that have two or more colors, depending on the direction of the light.”

  “It’s kind of . . . mesmerizing. I can see why you love it,” he says, then gently places the crystal in my hand. I meet his gaze and get the feeling he’s thinking about Tuesday night. “How are you holding up?”

  “This isn’t how I was expecting to spend the week after our big announcement.” That sounds glib, so I add, “You know what’s the worst part?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know what data to rely on. The FBI has evidence that my husband was involved in Rebecca Stanton’s murder. But that’s in direct conflict with the person I’ve known all these years. And then there are Ben’s attorneys, who think his partners are behind his disappearance. That seems more probable, but there isn’t any evidence to support it.”

  “I might have found something that will shed more light.” He pulls a flash drive from his bag. “But I had to look, Sarah. I know you asked me not to, but it was the only way to figure out what I recovered.”

  “I don’t want you to get in trouble because you’re helping me.”

  “I feel kind of . . . involved. I mean, we were together and then your husband . . .”

  I realize what he’s asking, even if he’s not saying it. “What happened Tuesday night was entirely my fault. My doing.”

  “That’s not how I remember it.” His eyes drop briefly to my lips. “It was me who wanted it to happen—who made it happen . . .”

  I let his words hang in the air. I can’t admit my feelings, but I can’t pretend I didn’t have them, either.

  “I should never have kissed you.”

  My words land hard on him. It’s not the answer he’s hoping for. “I . . . can’t stop thinking—”

  “We can’t . . . ,” I say softly.

  We both know the reasons we can’t repeat what we did that night. But knowing something is impossible or wrong doesn’t make you want it any less. It doesn’t put an end to the feelings.

  He shifts his tone. Professional now. “I saw on the news where the FBI is involved, so I figured they’re monitoring your email and texts. That’s why I didn’t send you any more data by email link, even though it’s encrypted.”

  “Good thinking. What were you able to recover?” I ask, anxious to see.

  “Your cameras are voice or motion activated, so sometimes the system recorded nonevents, like when you or your family came in the front door or went outside.” He sits on the couch, pulls a laptop out of his bag, and turns it on. “I put those kinds of clips in a folder of their own. You should look at them later. But there are three that you need to see.”

  I sit beside him, and he inserts the flash drive into his laptop’s USB port. “Let’s start with this one since it’s time-stamped the afternoon your husband went missing.”

  He clicks on a link and we see Ben sitting in front of my computer in this very office at 5:05 p.m. on Tuesday, just a few minutes before he left with his bodyguard. From a vantage point behind my desk, this camera was positioned to capture the entire office but especially the small liquor cabinet that Zack and friends had once raided.

  And then there’s Ben.

  He’s dressed for work in a white shirt open at the collar and a midnight-blue blazer. A three-day beard graces his jaw. I can’t take my eyes off him. When he looks up from the computer and glances in the direction of the camera, he seems wholly different than I remember. There’s a tenderness in his eyes that I haven’t seen in a long time.

  Something remarkable happens when you observe someone and they have no idea they’re being watched. It’s as though they’re uncloaked for a moment and you can see them as they really are. Ben doesn’t look like someone who just committed a murder. He looks as though he’s carrying a joyful secret.

  A few seconds later, Zack steps into the frame and points to something on the computer monitor. “Once you click ‘Continue’ you’ll erase all the data on the security system’s DVR. Are you sure you want to do that?”

  There’s a brief silence, then I hear Ben say, “Positive.”

  Ben had deliberately erased the DVR. It wasn’t accidentally corrupted or
mistakenly erased. He had planned it. And gotten Zack to help.

  “What’s on this drive that Ben didn’t want anyone to see?” I ask, but stop there. My theory, the one I don’t dare speak, is that somewhere on this hard drive is proof that Ben killed Rebecca Stanton.

  “You need to watch it again,” Aaron says. “Look closely this time at their computer screen and you’ll see they’re only using the program’s internal delete function.”

  He plays the clip again, and I notice the familiar blue-and-gold security-system banner.

  “If this is all the deleting they did, it would’ve been far easier for us to recover than it has been. The way the data has been corrupted, they must’ve run a more powerful scrub utility later to wipe the drive clean.”

  “Why?” I look at Aaron and suspect he has his own theory about Ben, even if he won’t say it. The two have never met, and I wonder if it’s awkward for him to speculate about the man who is my husband.

  “Luckily for us, whatever utility they used wasn’t entirely recovery-proof.” He clicks on another clip. “This next one is very odd. But maybe you can make sense of it.”

  This segment is time-stamped Monday night at 11:54, the day before Ben disappeared. The camera is pointed at the pool in the backyard, but it’s late at night and the pool lights are off, so all we can really see is the outline of the pool reflected in the ambient light. For a brief second, there’s shadowy movement on the right side of the frame, then the camera is awash with bright white light. The light shifts for a moment, then settles down, obscuring everything.

  “At first I thought this was a by-product of the data deletion, but look at it again.”

  He plays the clip and points at the corner of the screen. “You can vaguely make out the shape of someone standing here. It looks like they’ve deliberately positioned a very bright light—maybe upwards of ten thousand lumens—on some sort of tripod to blind the security camera. If you throw enough light at the camera . . .”