Left

by Theanna Bischoff

  Reuben probably didn’t believe this story, at least not completely. Greg had told it to him that first week. When Greg finished giving up the details, Reuben had drummed his fingers along the table. “So she never told you what happened? Why she was so upset?”

  “It’s not like I didn’t ask. In the morning, she said she wanted to go home. She wouldn’t talk.”

  “And you just let her go?”

  Greg clenched his jaw. “She wanted to call a cab, but I drove her home. I insisted.” She’d actually called the cab already when he woke up. The night before, she’d stood out in the snow waiting for him, and then, in the morning she couldn’t leave quick enough.

  The way this story ended hadn’t been good enough, during all those hours of questioning. “And?” Reuben had leaned forward, clasped his fingers across the table.

  Greg remembered how his mouth had felt so dry. “I drove her home. It was awkward. She said, thanks, and she got out of the car. I was just doing what she wanted.”

  He didn’t want Reuben to think he hadn’t done everything he could. It would be wrong.

  Right?

  REUBEN

  “HEY, BRO,” WAS EXACTLY WHAT CAM SAID THE FIRST TIME Reuben asked him to come into the station. Thank God he’d said it after Reuben shut the interrogation room door.

  “Listen,” Reuben had said, spinning a chair around and sitting down on it with his chest against the chair’s back. He did this sometimes when grilling suspects so he could tilt the chair forward and get closer across the table. “You can’t be calling me Bro anymore, okay? You can’t tell anyone that we know each other.” Might as well get right to the point. “I could get kicked off this case.”

  Cam raised his eyebrows. “Why?”

  “Because, technically, you’re a suspect,” Reuben said. He remembers the vic’s stepmother pulling him aside, a day or so after Natasha went missing, telling him they should look at “the baby’s father,” because “we never liked him.”

  “What’s his name?” Reuben had asked.

  “Cameron,” the vic’s stepmother had said. “Cameron Olsen.”

  And Reuben had felt a wave of nausea. Was it possible that there was more than one eighteen-year-old Cameron Olsen in Calgary? Likely not, not with Reuben’s luck. Could his former stepfather’s spoiled teenaged son really be a suspect? Maybe the whole thing would just blow over. Maybe she would just show up. That’s what he’d told the family, anyway.

  Still, he had to cover his bases. So he’d called Cam down to the station. He had to admit—Cam had motive. He’d knocked up the vic’s little sister and the baby’s birth was just around the corner. Little sis had filled him in—the vic had gone to Cam’s house to talk to his parents, to determine how involved Cam planned on being, and to ensure the baby-to-be would be financially supported. It was a flimsy motive, though—that was months earlier, and Cam’s parents had already agreed to financially support their soon-to-be grandchild. If money or the baby was the motive, it would have made more sense to murder Abby. Why kill the person who had planned to assume a large part of his parental responsibility?

  But when Reuben told Cam that he was technically a suspect, the kid actually smiled, like the whole thing was cool. Reuben groaned inwardly. “I need three things from you. An alibi, so I can clear you, any information you have about the victim and her family that might be relevant, and your word that you won’t say anything to anyone about how we know each other.”

  “What if Dad says something?” Cam pointed out. “Is there a vending machine in this place?”

  “I’ll talk to Dad,” he said. Reuben had called Cam’s father Dad for years, though technically the man wasn’t his biological father and had never formally adopted him. Since he’d divorced Reuben’s mother, he had no responsibility. Still, Cam’s father wouldn’t want to jeopardize Reuben’s career. He could keep his word. Cam, on the other hand, Reuben would have to watch.

  “Tell me the truth,” Reuben said. “Where were you the night of July sixth?”

  Cam looked like he was trying to stifle a smile. Sometimes suspects smile when they’re nervous. In Cam’s case, though, it looked like he thought the whole thing was one giant joke. “I was at home with my girlfriend,” Cam said. “Ask her.”

  “I will,” Reuben said, “but it’s still a weak alibi. Partners lie for each other all the time.”

  Cam shrugged.

  “When’s the last time you saw the victim?” Reuben took the glossy photo of the vic out of the file and slid it across the table with one finger.

  “When she came to my house that one time to talk to my parents.”

  “Not since?”

  “No.”

  “Walk me through what you did Saturday night. Start at dinner time.”

  Cam looked up and to the right. People do this, Reuben knows, when they’re trying to recall information. “We went out for dinner,” he said. “Pizza, I think.”

  “You have that receipt?” Reuben asked.

  Cam scoffed. “Who actually keeps receipts?”

  “I’ll take that as a no.”

  Cam shrugged.

  “Keep going,” Reuben urged. “After dinner…”

  “We came home. Watched a movie.”

  “What movie?” A lack of specific details can be a clue someone is lying.

  “Die Hard,” Cam said, without missing a beat.

  “Your girlfriend sat through Die Hard?”

  Cam grinned. “What can I say? She likes me.”

  God knows why, Reuben thought. He knows Cam was cheating on his girlfriend when he conceived his soon-to-be child. When Reuben was a kid, “Dad” was still making his money. They played basketball at the YMCA and “Dad” taught him how to fish. Cam has a basketball hoop on the front driveway. Not that he ever uses it. Last time Reuben went over there—Cam must have been twelve or thirteen—Cam played some sort of handheld videogame the whole time and threw a tantrum when his parents ordered pizza without mushrooms. As a little kid, Cam had worshipped Reuben. By thirteen, he barely looked up from his game to acknowledge the presence of his “big brother.” They hadn’t seen each other in a couple years, if not longer.

  Reuben kept going. “And after the movie?”

  Cam smirked. “My parents were out of town. What do you think?”

  Sex was the kid’s alibi. For fuck’s sake.

  “Like you didn’t do the same thing when you were my age,” Cam continued. “Gimme a break.”

  Reuben crossed his arms. “Abby called you before anyone else. The media could come down pretty hard on you.”

  For a split second, Cam actually looked worried. Then he said, “Doesn’t that phone call prove I was at home that night?”

  Reuben shook his head. “Timeline doesn’t match up. You could have had time to—”

  “We both know I didn’t do anything,” Cam interrupted. The two made eye contact across the table.

  “If I were you,” Reuben said, “I’d try to dig up anything you can that strengthens your story, just in case. And I mean what I said.” He gestured between the two of them. “This whole brothers thing doesn’t exist. As far as anyone else is concerned.”

  It took Cam two full days before he called Reuben back and coughed up the computer files. “I can’t get in trouble for this, can I?” he’d asked, refusing to make eye contact. “I swore I never showed them to anyone.”

  There were five in total, dating back just over a year, all video format, recorded directly to his hard drive. Reuben had watched about ten seconds of the most recent one—the one Cam said proved his innocence—before realizing what it was. Cam had filmed the encounters on his webcam. What was he going to do with the videos? Watch them and jerk off? Share them with his classmates to brag about his conquests? No way was Reuben going to watch his “little bro” go at it for the full twelve minutes and twenty-four seconds. He’d requested Cam’s laptop, handed it and the USB upon which Cam had copied the files over to the guy in IT.

 
; “Kid’s a perv,” the guy had told Reuben, afterwards. “He had a bunch of other porn downloaded on his computer. But the file itself seems legit. It would have taken someone very skilled to change the time stamp.” He’d paused. “The first two aren’t the current girlfriend. They’re the vic’s sister.”

  Reuben didn’t want to know, but he had to ask. “He doesn’t do anything creepy, or—” he swallowed. “Aggressive?” Thank God the IT guy didn’t know Cam was Reuben’s “bro.”

  “Not unless the missionary position and some dirty talk count.” The IT guy chuckled. “The kid’s a quick shot. If you know what I mean.”

  For fuck’s sake. “Did they know?” Reuben asked. “The girls, I mean.”

  “That they were being filmed?” The IT guy nodded ruefully. “Yeah. They knew. How he got two different teenage girls to volunteer for that, I don’t know. The first girl, the vic’s sis, seemed more into it.”

  Reuben covered his ears. “Don’t need to know.”

  “It’s been a long time since I was in high school. They both over eighteen?”

  “They are now. Probably not when the…home movies were made. But then, neither was he.” Cam is stupid, but lucky. So long as he’s telling the truth about not showing the tapes to anyone else—and there’s no evidence, as far as the IT guy can find, that he did—the tapes fall under the 2001 Supreme Court ruling on intimate photo exception, meaning they were made by two willing partners over the legal age of consent, and they were kept private, therefore, they’re not considered child pornography. Later, Reuben had given Cam a serious lecture so he wouldn’t pull this kind of shit ever again. And he deleted all the porn and videos off the laptop before giving it back.

  Asking Cam, of all people, to help with the investigation was asking for trouble. Not to mention unprofessional. If his boss or his partner found out, they’d lose their shit. He would probably get fired. But what other choice did he have? It wasn’t like he was giving Cam any case details that weren’t public. The post was there on the message board for everyone to see. Reuben just wanted Cam to spend more time with the family, get to know Greg better, take him out for a drink or something, loosen him up, get him talking. If the videos and Die Hard were any indication, Cam had a way of talking people into things. Plus, it was in Cam’s best interest—Abby, still insisted Greg was innocent and let him spend time with Summer unsupervised. Even after Reuben had questioned her about the post.

  An innocent, smooth-talking kid that nobody would suspect had any agenda could be the way to go. That is, if Cam could pull it off. Which was anyone’s guess.

  CAM

  IT WAS NOT CAM’S FAULT. ABBY PROBABLY WORE THAT SKIRT on purpose. Who wears a skirt like that to a meeting at an elementary school?

  The whole day was messed up. First, Abby called to tell him she was going to Summer’s school because she got a call from the principal. Abby almost never calls him—usually she just sends him a text message with the date and time of Summer’s school plays or about when to pick Summer up. One time Summer had bronchitis and Abby took her to the ER in the middle of the night, and she told Cam after the fact, offhand, like, oh, I took our kid to the ER, she got put on antibiotics. Usually Abby acts like she’s Summer’s only parent, even now that he’s been hanging around more to keep a closer eye on his daughter. But this time, Abby actually invited Cam to join her. Getting the inside scoop for Reuben would be easy if Abby invited him along. It wouldn’t look as weird as it would if all of the sudden he just started hanging around more.

  When Abby called, Cam was still at the office. He could pack up work a little early; one of the many benefits of working for his father’s company. This was an important meeting about his child, that took precedence. Plus, he could work in some snooping for Reuben. Detective work sounded much more fun than processing invoices.

  Cam called Jessica on the way to the school to let her know, even though the night before she’d locked him out of their bedroom, effectively making him sleep on the couch with only a throw blanket and one of her stiff decorative pillows, the one with all the sequins. Yes, sequins. He’d flipped it over, but the back had a zipper across the middle. Lose-lose. Jessica had come home mad because one of her colleagues had planned a baby shower the same night Jessica had planned to invite people out for her birthday, and apparently the colleague knew all about Jess’s birthday plans even though Jess hadn’t sent out the invitations or something blah blah blah and Cam was a terrible partner for not listening to Jessica’s feelings, and something something he never listened to her feelings.

  Aside from the crappy pillow and the fact that his neck now had a weird kink in it, Cam didn’t mind the couch, because he didn’t have to listen to Jessica’s alarm go off at five o’clock, that stupid, supposedly relaxing pan flute bullshit that made him feel like a tiny leprechaun was sneaking up on him every morning. He wanted to shove that stupid pan flute right up that leprechaun’s ass.

  Cam didn’t technically have to tell Jessica about the meeting. Summer was his kid, not hers, and she still hadn’t apologized for their fight, which was totally her fault for overreacting. When she heard where he was going, she started harping about how she wanted to go, too, throwing around words like “co-parenting” and “team effort.” Calling Abby controlling. Seriously? Jess calling someone else controlling? Cam hung up on her.

  When he got to the school, Abby was already there, waiting in the office, wearing a denim skirt that would definitely not have passed their high school dress code. He’d never been to the salon where Abby worked, but maybe this was how she attracted male clientele. In high school, Abby had rolled over the waistband of her pleated school-uniform skirt to make it shorter, unbuttoned the top few buttons of her blouse. Such behaviour often got her in trouble, both with administration and with boys, which, in retrospect, was probably exactly what she wanted. Okay, maybe not the pregnancy per se. But all the stuff leading up to it.

  On the wardrobe front, Abby’s pregnancy had caused logistical problems at their high school given its uniform policy. Jessica had snickered about Abby having to order the same size shirts as the kid who was three hundred pounds and sat at the back of the classrooms at a table because he couldn’t squeeze into a desk. Cam hated the fact that Abby walked the halls with his shame so visible. Of course she told everyone he was the father.

  Abby had her hair loose and wavy around her face, with blonde streaks, like she’d just come from the beach.

  He hadn’t yet asked what the meeting was for. Was Summer in trouble? Cam had never voluntarily visited a principal’s office, though he’d gone many times against his will. Typically unjustly. He recalled receiving detention in the seventh grade when his teacher handed out pencil crayons and a map of the world and asked them to colour. Seriously, this was the first-class education his parents were paying private school tuition for? “I already know how to colour,” he’d said, crossing his arms. “How about you teach me something relevant?” Yeah, that got him a lunch hour in detention, which was bullshit, just like his teacher’s justification that colouring a map helped consolidate a blueprint of the world into the students’ visual-spatial memories. Were Summer’s teachers this stupid? Cam felt his heart rate increasing, his body revving up for a debate about his daughter’s education, about his daughter’s rights, about all the money he spent on her tuition. Okay, so technically his parents were funding Summer’s education, but same thing. Whatever she was in trouble for, Cam would defend her.

  A middle-aged woman with a sort of reverse mullet—longer in the front than in the back—and the school logo on her sweater emerged from an office behind the front desk. “Mr. and Mrs. Bell?”

  Oh man.

  Abby totally smirked, too.

  “We’re not together,” Cam said, gesturing at Abby but avoiding making eye contact with the woman. Secretary? Principal? If it was up to him, he would have named Summer something that didn’t make her sound like a hippy, and given her his last name, Olsen. He liked his moth
er’s name, Alexandra—naming his baby after his mother would have probably salved the wound of his getting some girl knocked up while still in high school. At least a little. And “Alex” would have been a cool nickname. But Cam knew better than to try to assert his will with Abby—it just made her assert hers back twice as hard. And then, with everything that had happened in the week or so leading up to Summer’s birth—what kind of asshole would he have been to argue about the kid’s name, especially since Abby had supposedly named Summer after her sister?

  She’d actually called him the night Natasha went missing, but he’d just assumed it was a disguised plot to get back together, which is what Jess had told him Abby wanted. Jess had been lying right beside him in the bed and he’d sworn to Jess that he wouldn’t talk to Abby except once the baby was born and then only about their child. So he’d hung up.

  He hadn’t wanted anything to do with Abby or her whole family drama. At eighteen, he’d figured they could just pass the kid back and forth—like, he’d have Summer sometimes, and then the rest of the time Abby could do whatever, and they wouldn’t have to mix. And yet, somehow, six years later, he’s being called Mr. Bell and his brother is breathing down his neck, trying to get him to dig up information.

  The lady with the school sweater was, in fact, the principal, and she didn’t seem to care that she’d butchered Cam’s name in the most humiliating way possible. She just ushered them into her office and shut the door. Cam took the empty chair beside Abby, on the opposite side of the principal, who sat upright in a leather desk chair and folded her hands on top of her desk.

  “Thank you both for coming. As I mentioned on the phone, there was an incident yesterday regarding Summer and another child in her class. The parent of this other child phoned to complain that their child came home upset, talking about kidnappers and police and people who go missing and never come back. This parent asked their child where they’d heard this kind of information, and the child identified Summer. When I spoke to Summer about this, she reported that her auntie was missing and, I quote, ‘A kidnapper got her.’”