“Poor bastard, is right. Lofgren has to have been through hell since she disappeared. And now it’s looking like she just walked out.” He swore and shook his head.
Ann said what she’d been thinking for a long time. “If Dad had really looked for her…”
“He might have found her.” Juan Diaz’s dark eyes met Ann’s. “He screwed up.”
She summoned a wry smile. “I thought he was invincible.”
“We all make mistakes.”
“Mistakes?” She tried the word on for size. “He didn’t make a simple mistake. He didn’t conduct a real investigation, because he took a dislike to the husband.” She shook her head. “Everybody admired him because he wouldn’t let this one go. He was determined to nail Craig Lofgren in the name of the pitiful, defenseless women everywhere whose husbands wouldn’t let them go.”
Diaz was silent.
“He always had a thing about arrogant, rich SOBs,” Ann realized. “That was what he always said. What he meant was, men who made him feel inferior. He didn’t care about Julie. He cared about bringing down her husband.”
The knowledge was bittersweet. It left her feeling as if her vision was distorted. Not fuzzy, but extra sharp, as if she was trying on someone else’s glasses with a prescription that was too strong for her. It also made her wonder who she was. Maybe nobody. She’d spent a lifetime trying to measure up to her father, the god. He was her mirror, which now lay in shards on the floor. She couldn’t see herself anymore, only the world around her with this strangely altered perception.
Diaz smiled at her, his hard face becoming more gentle. “You did good.” He gave a nod, slapped a hand on her desk and stood.
She gaped as he walked away.
EXHAUSTED, Craig should have been in bed. He hadn’t slept well in days. In some ways, this past year and a half he’d valued the anonymity of the hotel rooms and restaurants in foreign cities. This time, he just wanted to be home. He needed to be there, if Ann Caldwell learned anything new.
He’d come to believe that he would spend the rest of his life in limbo. Never knowing what had happened to the mother of his children, never resolving the mystery. Never being able to walk into his neighborhood grocery store again without being aware that people stared, and that they judged.
Tonight, he’d gotten home in time to say good-night to Brett. His father, yawning, had gone to bed in the guest room. Craig had stood in Abby’s doorway for a long time, watching her in peaceful sleep and wondering how she’d handle the news that her mother had left her.
And Brett. What would the realization do to him? Or had he already come to terms with it?
Craig had his suspicions that Abby had mourned a mother snatched away by fate, while Brett had raged at a mother who’d abandoned him. Part of him had wanted to think he’d imagined her goodbye, because he’d rather believe she hadn’t chosen to go. But he’d known, deep inside.
As Craig looked in on Brett, who was now sound asleep, anger clawed at him. He could have slammed his fist through a wall. How could Julie have done this to them?
Restless despite his tiredness, Craig went downstairs. He glanced in the refrigerator and decided he wasn’t hungry. Almost reluctantly, he picked up the phone. He’d better check his voice mail. The mechanized voice told him that he had five new messages.
Beep. “Mr. Lofgren, this is Officer Caldwell. I wanted to keep you apprised of the investigation.” In a dry manner no different than that of an airline employee informing him of a schedule change down the line, she continued, “I’ve discovered that your wife was married previously. Her maiden name was Ackerman. Gibbs was the married name. I’ve spoken to the ex-husband who agreed with your assessment that she was ‘weird.’ She changed almost overnight on him, he says. I’m hoping the maiden name gives us something further to go on.”
Beep. A perky voice said something he didn’t hear as he grappled with the information that Julie had left out such a huge chunk of her past when they talked. Maybe, to her, it really hadn’t happened. Or it had happened to someone else.
Shaking his head, he replayed the message he’d missed.
Beep. “This is Jessie at Safeway. The film you left to be developed is now ready for pickup.”
Beep. “Hey, Brett. Mal. Call me.”
Beep. “Lofgren, this is Ross Buchanan.” Buchanan was an old friend of Craig’s from the Navy who now flew for Continental. Occasionally, they were in the same city at the same time. “I’m at SeaTac. Have a layover. You in town? I thought we could have dinner.” The message had been left yesterday afternoon.
Beep. “Mr. Lofgren, this is Officer Ann Caldwell again. The delivery driver just phoned to say he thinks the license plate on that Volkswagen van was from Oregon. However, your wife has not applied for an Oregon driver’s license under any of her known names. Please think about whether Mrs. Lofgren seemed particularly interested in any area, asking questions, checking out books from the library.” She left her phone number—as if he didn’t have it—in case anything occurred to him.
The telephone company’s disembodied voice informed him that he had no more new messages.
Craig hit End and set down the phone.
Julie had been married to someone else and divorced. He’d always wondered about her childhood, but it had never occurred to him she had an ex-husband in her past. Why wouldn’t she mention him? What was the secret?
But he knew his first instinct was right. This Gibbs fellow just didn’t exist to the woman she’d become. She’d kept his name as her own because…who knew? Because she didn’t go back?
She apparently hadn’t kept the name Lofgren. In his numbness, Craig thought that should sting. His name had been left with her purse on the kitchen counter. But the knowledge didn’t hurt the way it should have, because on her terms the decision was logical. She was walking out on two children without going through the motions of getting a divorce. She’d probably realized someone might come looking for her.
If she could calculate like that, did she qualify as mentally ill? He had no idea what the experts would say. He didn’t know if people with multiple personalities could live in each one for months or years before becoming somebody else entirely. Maybe her problem was something entirely different
He bent his head and made himself take slow, deep breaths. She was crazy. Her running away had nothing to do with him.
God, he hoped her form of mental illness wasn’t hereditary.
He finally turned out the lights and went up to bed, where he lay on his back trying to decide whether he wanted to confront Julie if Caldwell located her.
In the early months, he’d fantasized about finding her, reducing her to sodden tears of guilt and regret before he turned on his heel and walked away. He’d pictured her begging for his forgiveness, for the chance to come back. He had wanted to be cruel, to make her hurt, the way he and the kids had hurt.
Now… Now he didn’t know. He felt almost dead inside. He could send divorce papers, get her signature without ever having to see her again. He doubted any judge would grant her visitation rights after the way she’d taken off.
But he knew she wouldn’t want them. Maybe Julie Lofgren had loved her kids. Julie Ackerman/Gibbs/Whoever might scarcely remember them.
Slowly he peeled away the numbness as if it were a thick rind. Beneath were so many emotions he struggled to isolate one at a time. Hurt was there, sure. So were anger and bitterness and grief and bewilderment.
But the strongest, by far, was simple relief and even gratitude. Relief that he hadn’t spent a year and a half hating her, only to find out she’d been murdered by a passing serial killer, that she’d never meant to leave him and the kids at all. Relief that he and the kids would soon know. Relief that he might soon be free to sell this house and start over.
And maybe, most of all, relief that he might soon be free to kiss Robin and ask whether she’d be willing to start over, too.
Last weekend in the hot tub had she offered to make love
with him? Or to promise till death do us part? He wished he was sure.
Craig rolled over, punched the pillow and willed himself to be sleepy. Half an hour later, he continued to feel wired despite his tiredness, as if he’d had a dozen cups of coffee today.
“Crap,” he muttered, and turned on the bedside lamp. Could he concentrate on a book?
His mind took a sideways jump. What was it the cop had asked him to do? Think about whether Julie had been doing any research on a particular area.
If she had he hadn’t noticed. He’d felt her restlessness, her increasing desperation, but never guessed the outcome. He hadn’t caught even a hint of how she was channeling her hunger to change her life.
She hadn’t been much of a reader, but she liked magazines.
“It doesn’t matter if I get interrupted,” she would say, with an impatient shrug. “They have snippets. I can dip in.”
She had a basket. Unless the kids had rooted through it because they needed to cut out pictures for a school project, it sat untouched. Julie had thrown in magazines and catalogs—she liked to browse those, too. He’d moved the basket at least once a week to vacuum the family room. It had been as familiar and therefore invisible as the end tables and floor lamps.
Wearing a T-shirt and pajama bottoms, he made his way downstairs, bare feet quiet. He didn’t even turn on the hall light. In the family room he flicked on one lamp and lifted the basket onto the coffee table in front of him.
On top were a bunch of catalogs that he vaguely remembered tossing in here himself: Coldwater Creek, J. Jill, Exposures and a dozen others that had arrived in the weeks after Julie first disappeared. At some point he’d started recycling her catalogs and magazines. He couldn’t even remember consciously making the decision. Saying to himself, She isn’t coming back. But at first, he’d believed on some level that she was. So these catalogs and a couple of magazines, unread, sat on top. He set them aside.
More catalogs, none with corners turned down, as she’d done when she thought she might want something. She might have glanced through these; he couldn’t tell.
A Good Housekeeping magazine. Victoria’s Secret. She’d bought their bras, he knew. After a moment, he set that catalog aside. What if she still bought bras from them? Was that the kind of habit a person would carry with her into a new life? He guessed the police could get some kind of warrant to find out.
Below it was a Sunset magazine and below that one on Northwest travel. She’d subscribed to Sunset, but not the travel magazine. Each had a corner turned down.
His hand was shaking when he flipped open the first magazine to a feature on central Oregon. It lauded the crisp, dry weather, the beauty of ranching country and tiny lakes nestled at the feet of Mt. Bachelor and the Sisters. Photos showed skiers and downtown Bend with boutiques and restaurants and a rancher checking fences on horseback, white-topped mountains in the distance behind him across dry range land.
The second magazine fell open, as if naturally, to another spread on central Oregon. Colorful quilts hung from eaves and storefronts on a quaint, western street. Sisters, he read in the caption.
Heart thudding in his ears, he set the magazine aside and dug deeper, but below were more catalogs and a few magazines with recipes marked. Nothing surprising.
He wouldn’t have thought anything of these two, if he’d noticed them before. He might have guessed that Julie had intended to suggest a family vacation to Oregon.
Now he looked at the magazines as if they were banks of deep gray cloud hiding bolts of lightning and vicious whips of wind.
Almost hating to touch them, he nonetheless picked up the Victoria’s Secret catalog and the magazines and carried them up to his room, where he set them on the bureau. Craig climbed into bed, turned out the light and lay sleepless, waiting for morning.
THE MINUTE she’d hung up from talking to Lofgren, Ann started making calls. Two hours later, she hit pay dirt.
“We arrested a couple on June twenty-first,” the Deschutes County deputy told her. “Julie Ackerman was the woman. They were selling marijuana, but we only got her on possession. He was chivalrous enough to take the blame.”
“He?”
“Thomas Seebohm.” The deputy spelled the name.
“Do you have an address?”
After hearing her story, he gave her that, too. “It’s a commune. Probably thirty people there. They grow flowers and sell them. The group runs a restaurant in town specializing in organic vegetarian food. I hear it’s pretty popular with the ski crowd.” His tone suggested that he didn’t set foot in any place that didn’t serve prime rib, rare. “The property was a resort, way back when, and it has a main lodge and a dozen cabins on a creek. This Seebohm’s brother is their guru, or whatever you want to call him. Courage Seebohm, he calls himself.” His tone had become dry. “He encourages them to choose names that speak from their heart.”
“A commune.”
“Bunch of hippies is what it is.”
“I don’t suppose you’d know whether Julie Ackerman is still there?”
“I could check, if you want,” he offered.
“No. No, thanks. I don’t want to scare her off. I may need to come down and confirm that she’s our Julie Lofgren. More than that…” She hesitated. “I think her husband deserves a chance to present his divorce papers in person.”
“Just so he doesn’t get ugly,” the deputy warned.
“He’s not that kind of man,” she said, and wished she’d seen that from the beginning.
A minute later, she dialed Craig Lofgren’s phone number. When he answered, she asked, “How do you feel about taking a little trip?”
WHEN THE PHONE RANG that evening just after Malcolm had gone to bed, Robin knew who was calling. But it was more than that; her heart took a funny bump, and something between anxiety and anticipation fluttered in her stomach.
She saved the chapter she was writing on the computer and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
“Robin? Craig again.”
“Hi. What’s up?” Very nice, she congratulated herself. Casual but friendly.
“Caldwell thinks she’s found Julie.”
The flutter turned into beating wings. “Where?”
“In a hippie commune in Oregon. She got arrested a few months back for possession of marijuana.” He was silent for a moment. “God.”
“Oh, Craig.” Tears stung her eyes, and she couldn’t have said why. “I don’t know whether to tell you that the news is wonderful or say I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. I don’t know what to feel about it, either.” He made a rough sound probably intended to be a laugh. “That’s not true. I decided relief was predominant. But there’s a lot more, too.”
“Have you, um, told the kids?”
“No. No. I’m dreading that. In fact…”
When he hesitated, she prompted, “In fact?” Anxiety tickled again.
“I’m going down there tomorrow, Robin. The kids think I’m working. I want to be sure it’s her, hear her story, before I tell them.”
“Yes, of course.” She imagined how awful that would be, to prepare them only to find this was the wrong woman. “Are you going to be okay, seeing her?”
He made that same, raw sound. “I don’t know. I have moments when I want to kill her for what she’s done to the kids and to me. But Officer Caldwell is going, too. I guess she’ll keep me from getting violent.”
“You wouldn’t anyway,” Robin said with confidence.
“Probably not.” His wryness was painful to hear. “I’m a civilized man.”
“It’s almost over,” she said.
“For better or worse.” He was quiet for a moment. “Poor choice of words.”
“It could have been worse.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I do know that. What if they’d found her body in a shallow grave half a mile from the house? I’ve been so damn angry…” He broke off. “I just wanted you to know.”
“I’m glad. I mean that,” she said
with sudden fierceness. “For your sake.”
“Thank you.”
The silence that followed grew uncomfortable.
To fill it, she started to say, “Let me know—”
At the same time, he began, “Robin—”
They both stopped.
Sounding awkward, Craig said, “I, uh, I hope you don’t mind if I call when I get home.”
“You’d better!”
His voice lightened. “Okay. I’ll see you when I get home.”
She bit her lip. “I’ll be thinking about you.”
“I’ll hold on to that. Good night, Robin.”
“Good night,” she whispered, and hung up. She would be holding on to the knowledge that he had wanted to talk to her.
THE POLICE CAR jolted over the rutted road between ponderosa pines and a pair of split rail fences. Dust followed in a rust-red plume. Craig clutched the arm rest and gritted his teeth as the car dropped into a pothole and lurched out. The county deputy who was driving muttered a profanity.
“Here we are,” he said a minute later.
The dirt road emptied into a clearing in front of a lodge built of logs. Through the trees, Craig could see scattered cabins. Half a dozen dusty vehicles were parked in a haphazard row. His gaze went straight to the Volkswagen van in the middle. A thin layer of red dirt lay over a faded blue paint job decorated with flowers and rainbows.
A pair of men turned from where they stood by a pile of sawn logs they were apparently splitting. One held an ax; both wore long hair tied back.
The police car stopped. For a moment the two police officers and Craig sat in silence as the cloud of dirt settled and the two men stared.
Ann Caldwell was the first to move. “What are we waiting for?”
After a brief consultation, the man with the ax stayed by the wood pile, watching; the other approached as the three strangers got out of the police car. The air had a bite this close to the mountains in November. Craig shoved his hands in the pockets of his polartec jacket.
“Welcome!” The man nodded and smiled. His dark hair was gray-streaked, the stubble on his gaunt jaw glinting silver. “How can I help you?”
Mommy Said Goodbye Page 21