The Missing Place

by Sophie Littlefield

  But this was the last time he would ever tell her to be reasonable.

  “Are you ready to write these names down?” she asked coldly. “Otherwise, you can hang up and I’ll just text them to you.”

  “Colleen, come on, I—”

  “I really don’t have time for this.”

  “Fine.”

  Once she’d hung up, Shay glanced over. They were almost back to town, taking it slow on the icy roads. “You okay?”

  “Yes.” Colleen didn’t bother keeping the irritation out of her voice. “I didn’t even get a chance to tell him about Kristine and the baby, because he lit into me about yesterday the minute he picked up. Get this—he says that guy who hit you is thinking of filing assault charges.”

  “Of course he is,” Shay said, rolling her eyes.

  “And then I feel like he didn’t even listen to my side. You ever feel like everyone in your life thinks you’re incompetent?”

  “Only most every day of my life,” Shay said. “Fuck ’em. You really need to get past that, Col. Tell you what. You can do the talking in there. Just keep repeating it to yourself—fuck ’em.”

  “Hey, better slow down,” Colleen said. “Look at all that.”

  At the intersection ahead, police and fire vehicles were taking the right turn, lights and sirens going.

  “They’re headed toward the Hunter-Cole rig,” Shay said.

  “Not necessarily, they could be headed anywhere.”

  “Seriously, what else is even out there? We didn’t see a single damn house on the way to the rig.”

  “We can’t do anything about that now,” Colleen said. “We have to get to Kristine.”

  “Kristine will be there later today. What if this is important? If we get there now—if there’s been another accident, there’s going to be chaos, no one will pay any attention to us. Maybe we can find something out.”

  “No,” Colleen snapped. Panic clutched at her throat. She couldn’t miss Kristine, couldn’t miss the chance to find out the truth. “We can go as soon as I get done talking to Kristine, I promise. If it’s any kind of big accident, the rig will be shut down for hours.”

  Shay hesitated only a moment longer, then she peeled forward, her jaw tight. “I’ll drop you off. Then I’m coming back here.”

  “Fine.”

  They got to the apartment complex, a seventies-looking three-story brick building, in less than five minutes.

  “Just let me out here,” Colleen said impatiently, already opening the door as Shay pulled in front of the building. The dash clock said twelve twenty-one. “Come get me when you’re done.”

  “Good luck,” Shay called. As soon as Colleen shut the door, she made a U-turn and headed back the way she’d come.

  Standing in front of the homely building, Colleen adjusted her scarf and ran a hand through her hair, thinking that she should have freshened her makeup in the car.

  Apartment 102 was dead center, its view obscured by the stairs outside to the building. Sheer curtains hung in the windows. Before Colleen could knock, the door opened, and Kristine was standing there in a black skirt and emerald green blouse. She was wearing black tights and, incongruously, fuzzy blue slippers. Her hair had been pulled back into a tight bun, and her eyes were accented by carefully drawn eyeliner and a thick coat of mascara. She smelled like shampoo and toast.

  “Come on in, Mrs. Mitchell.” She seemed nervous, stepping out of the way for Colleen to enter, and then shutting the door quickly behind her.

  The apartment was a tight little box with a pass-through to a tiny kitchen. To the right was a narrow hall. Through the partially open bedroom door, Colleen saw a neatly made bed topped with a pile of pillows in various pastel shades; one was embroidered with the words LIVE LOVE LAUGH. The furniture was neat and scrubbed, but it looked hand-me-down, with sagging cushions and worn trim. An old TV sat on a large doily on a pressboard stand.

  “I have tea,” Kristine said. “Or soda?”

  Before Colleen could answer, a girl came out of the bedroom. She looked about sixteen and was startlingly pretty, with wide blue eyes and thick pale hair that cascaded around her shoulders. “Hi,” she said shyly, not quite meeting Colleen’s eyes.

  “Okay.” Kristine clasped her hands together and took a breath. “Mrs. Mitchell. This is my cousin. Elizabeth. She’s on her lunch break from school.”

  “Hello,” Colleen said, confused.

  The girl burst into tears. “Oh, my God. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, I’m such an idiot. Maybe I should just go.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Kristine said sharply. “Sit down.”

  The girl sat on the edge of the love seat, twisting her hands in her lap. Colleen grabbed a box of tissues from the coffee table and handed it to her. Elizabeth accepted one gratefully, dabbing at her eyes.

  Kristine took a seat at the far end of the sofa, leaving Colleen the other side, between the two girls.

  “I need to apologize to you,” Kristine said. “Mrs. Mitchell—”

  “Please, just call me Colleen.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you for being furious. You have so much to deal with. The thing is, I’m not really Paul’s girlfriend. I was covering for Elizabeth.”

  Colleen looked from one girl to the other. Elizabeth looked miserable; she’d taken the decorative pillow from the love seat and was clutching it to her stomach.

  “Covering . . . how? You mean you were dating Paul? But you’re . . .”

  “I’m almost eighteen,” Elizabeth said quickly.

  “Not until June,” Kristine said. “Elizabeth came to the Halloween party where I told you I met Paul. She told Paul she was nineteen. She made up this whole story about how she waitressed with the rest of us. None of us knew about it until they’d been dating like a whole month.”

  “I told him right away.” Elizabeth’s voice had gotten very small. “The second time I saw him, I felt so bad about lying. I just . . . I wanted so bad to talk to him. At the party. And I knew he’d never talk to me if he knew I was still in high school.”

  “Wait a minute,” Colleen said, putting her hands out on either side of herself on the couch. “Wait just a minute. You’re telling me you’re his girlfriend? Even after he knew how old you were? Are you . . . are you pregnant?”

  “Oh, Mrs. Mitchell, I wish I didn’t have to meet you this way,” Elizabeth said, tears dampening her cheeks. “I’ve been thinking about it so much, the way I wanted it to be, Paul and I wanted to come tell you ourselves, we were going to come see you on my spring break. And now . . . now . . .”

  She couldn’t speak, she was sobbing so hard. Colleen patted her knee awkwardly while Kristine watched in stony silence, her arms folded across her chest.

  “Why—why did you lie?”

  Both girls started talking at once, but then Kristine pressed her lips together and rolled her eyes. Elizabeth blew her nose.

  “My dad would kill me if he knew. He’s super protective. He and my mom are very strict, they’re really religious. The only other boy I ever went out with, my dad hated him. So now I’m not supposed to date at all. When Paul and I got serious, I told Kristine. She’s all I have. She’s like a big sister to me. She said Paul and me could meet here after school while she was at work. So whenever Paul had night shift, we met here before he had to go to work. And if he had to work days, I’d just say I was going to study over here after dinner and meet him.”

  “Mrs. Mitchell, do you remember I told you I stayed with relatives when I came back from college?” Kristine said. “I stayed with the Weyants. My aunt and uncle and cousins. Elizabeth and I shared a room.”

  “She always made me feel better, whenever my parents—”

  “Wait,” Colleen broke in. “Chief Weyant? Your dad’s the police chief?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “He’d go crazy if he knew I was pregnant . . .”

  “You don’t have to be,” Kristine said tersely. “Mrs. Mitchell, I’m sorry, it’s not my place, but I’ve be
en trying to tell Elizabeth that she has options. I can’t keep covering up for her. I can’t keep lying.”

  “It was only supposed to be until I graduated,” Elizabeth said earnestly. “I’ll be eighteen. I’ll be an adult. Paul and I were going to get a place. We were going to get married. He proposed.”

  “Oh, God.” Colleen put her hands to her face, unable to process everything she was hearing. Her son had not only found a girlfriend, his first; he’d gotten her pregnant and fast-forwarded to marriage. “You’re underage. If anyone had found out—”

  “Once I’m eighteen they can’t prosecute,” Elizabeth said hurriedly. “I went online. I mean they could but they won’t, not if we get married. Oh, Mrs. Mitchell, I miss him so much, I can’t even believe how much.”

  “Do you—do you have any idea where he and Taylor are? What happened to them?”

  For a moment Elizabeth said nothing, her hand twisting the tiny cross she wore on a gold chain. Then she shook her head, not meeting Colleen’s eyes.

  “This baby is everything to me,” she said, pressing her hands to her flat stomach. “Mrs. Mitchell, I miss Paul so much. I can’t breathe sometimes, thinking about him, and then I think he’s with me all the time, in this tiny baby we made, and . . . and that way I can keep going through each day, even though it feels like I’m in a daze.”

  “Elizabeth,” Kristine said impatiently. “That’s not what she asked you. Is there anything you’ve thought of? That would help Mrs. Mitchell and Taylor’s mom? Anything you remembered from the last time you saw him? This is serious. Come on.”

  Elizabeth turned to her cousin. “I’ve gone over and over it, every minute we were together after he got back from Christmas. He came to see me the first night he got back. I told my parents I was at a movie with friends and since it was a Friday they were okay with that. I told him I was pregnant before he left, and he . . . the night he came back he asked me to marry him.” She blushed and tugged at one of the thin chains around her neck.

  Something glinted at the end of the chain. When Colleen realized what it was, she gasped. “Oh, my God. That’s . . . that’s my mother’s ring.”

  Elizabeth undid the clasp and let the ring fall into her palm. The diamond glittered between the two tiny sapphires in the antique platinum setting. She held it out to Colleen.

  “I don’t feel right keeping it now, Mrs. Mitchell. I couldn’t let my parents see it, and I didn’t know where to keep it safe, but Paul said he wanted me to have it. He said as soon as I turned eighteen I’d put it on and we’d drive to see you and . . . and . . . I’ve been keeping it in a little box in my dresser but I’m worried sick my mom will find it. If you would keep it safe for me . . . if Paul . . .”

  Trembling, she put the ring in Colleen’s hand.

  Colleen folded her fingers over the ring, the metal warm from Elizabeth’s skin. Her mind raced, thinking back to Paul’s last visit home. He’d said he needed his passport to take back with him, for employment verification. Colleen had thought it was strange that he was being asked for it now, after being on the job for several months, but he said it was because they’d been so backed up. He offered to pick up dinner, since her favorite Thai restaurant was next to the bank, and she’d been so glad to see this change in her son: taking responsibility, getting things done, offering to help.

  And of course she hadn’t been back to the safety-deposit box . . . and even if she had, would she have looked in the velvet box to make sure her mother’s ring was still there?

  “I was so afraid of what my dad would do if he found out.”

  “Elizabeth,” Kristine said, “your dad loves you. Both your parents do.”

  “You don’t know.” Elizabeth’s voice was agonized. “You have no idea what they get like.”

  “I lived with you guys for most of a year,” Kristine said, exasperated. “They’re strict, but they’re not mean.”

  Elizabeth was shaking her head. “They have everyone fooled. Oh, my God, Daddy practically killed me when he found out I started dating.”

  “That is not true.”

  “He hardly ever lets me out of his sight. That’s why we’re so careful. Paul parks a block away and goes through the parking lot out back and I let him in through the slider door.”

  There was a knock at the door. Kristine jumped up and went to answer it.

  “You must be Kristine,” Colleen heard Shay say. “I’m so sorry to barge in like this, but is Colleen still here? Oh, you are, thank God.”

  She pushed past Kristine into the room. “Hi. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt. I just . . . Colleen, it was a fatality. One of the workers fell off the rig. He’s dead.”

  twenty-six

  “IT COULD HAVE been an accident,” Colleen said.

  “Don’t you think that’s a hell of a coincidence?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know. Right now everything feels like it’s all twisted up. Like I don’t know what caused what. Where it started and where it ends. God.”

  They were back in their warm hotel room, drinking room service tea, the sky outside going steely as thick, low clouds moved in and obliterated the sun.

  “Okay, look.” Shay was sprawled on the love seat, tapping on her iPad. “We know a lot that we didn’t know a few days ago. And we’re starting to get pulled in different directions. We need to separate what we know from what we’re just guessing at. Maybe then we’ll be able to figure out what we’re not seeing here.”

  Colleen went to the desk and came back with the notepad and pens with the hotel’s logo. “I have to do this on paper,” she said. “I can’t think about it unless I can see it all laid out.” She pulled a chair close to the coffee table and tore a piece of paper off the pad.

  “Okay. What we know. There were safety violations that the boys knew about.” She wrote Hunter-Cole safety on the paper.

  Shay set her iPad down and sat up facing Colleen. “Is it okay if I write on these too?”

  “Yes, that’s the point.” Colleen handed her a pen.

  Shay tore off two more sheets. She labeled one of them fact and marked the other with a question mark and set them at opposite ends of the coffee table. She pushed the Hunter-Cole safety paper to the fact side. “We know that a worker is dead after an accident today. And that there have been a lot of other accidents on Hunter-Cole rigs. We also know that the foreman, or whatever he was, was willing to assault me to keep us off the rig.” She wrote fatal accident and cover-up and set it by the question mark.

  They were quiet for a moment. “So now . . .” Shay said slowly, “let’s say Weyant found out about Paul. If what Elizabeth says is true, that he’s crazy, what if he . . . did something to Paul?”

  “You can say it,” Colleen said hoarsely. “If we’re going to do this, we have to look at all the possibilities. If he hurt him, if he went after Paul . . .”

  “And somehow Taylor got in the way, or something. And he goes nuts and kills them. So then he’s responsible for both of them.”

  “Just to keep Paul away from his daughter? It just seems . . .”

  “We’re brainstorming, Col. Come on. So he . . . got rid of the boys. Now we’re here stirring things up. Of course he’s not going to do anything to help us.”

  Shay grabbed another piece of paper and wrote Elizabeth/pregnant and added it to the question-mark pile.

  “That should go in facts,” Colleen said.

  “No. We don’t have any proof. Yesterday you thought it was the other girl. Maybe both of them are lying.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s not a fact. Not until I see her pee on the stick, anyway. And really . . .” She wrote Paul’s girlfriend on the paper too.

  Colleen slowly nodded. She took the paper back and wrote abusive/protective father underneath. “So really, we don’t know anything about her.”

  “Except the ring.”

  Colleen wrote Mom’s ring on a fresh sheet and slapped it down on the f
act pile.

  “Now, the Indian angle.” On another piece of paper she wrote Reservation, mineral rights/lease.

  “This is really just part of this one,” Colleen said, tapping the paper marked Hunter-Cole. “Hunter-Cole is only at risk of losing their rights if their safety record is exposed. We haven’t come up with any proof that the boys had anything to do with the reservation.”

  “Okay, one more,” Shay said. “If we’re thinking outside the box. Kristine wanted you to come exactly at twelve twenty—”

  “Because of Elizabeth’s schedule—that way she’d be sure Elizabeth could come without anyone missing her at school.”

  “What if we’re thinking about the wrong girl?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if this all started with Taylor? Remember I told you that when he was home over Christmas, he was talking about a girl. That she was special—he hadn’t ever known anyone like her. Told me she looked like Dakota Fanning.”

  “Kristine? Is that what you’re thinking?”

  “No, her roommate. Chastity. That’s how they all met. I thought her name sounded familiar. She and Taylor party, they all get to know each other. Chastity introduces Taylor and Paul to Kristine. She and Elizabeth are close, right? Close enough to cover for each other. Kristine was willing to pretend she was dating Paul, for Elizabeth’s sake. But then today, you said that she was impatient with her. When she was telling the story, right? What if she was upset because Elizabeth was screwing it up?”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Elizabeth screwed up by actually falling for Paul. That wasn’t supposed to happen. She was supposed to be easy to manipulate because she was young and—sorry—Paul was gullible. No wonder Kristine put the two of them together.”

  “I’m way lost, Shay.”

  Shay grabbed a clean piece of paper off the pad. “Okay, let’s look at this another way. Think about Nora. She has coffee with one guy from the rig, tells him which guys are complaining to Roland in the break room, and he gives her an envelope full of cash. What do you think they would pay to find out about something potentially way more serious? Guys with the brains and the determination to make real trouble for them?”