Last Seen Leaving

by Caleb Roehrig

  “I noticed.” Mr. Walker’s tone was as remote as the surface of Pluto.

  “Where were you when I needed you?” she demanded accusingly.

  His face turned beet red. “We have been over this at least a dozen times: I had an important meeting with some people from the PAC, I had too much to drink, I got a hotel room—”

  “I’m talking about tonight!” Tammy slurred furiously. “Where were you tonight?”

  Something rippled across her husband’s face and disappeared, leaving him rigid and icy. “You’re confused, and it’s time for you to go to bed.” He took hold of her again, roughly this time, and hauled her purposefully toward the stairs. Tammy didn’t look happy, but she didn’t have the strength to fight him. Over his shoulder, he called back in an unfriendly manner, “You’d better go home now, Flynn. And I trust you’ll have the sense not to discuss this sordid little scene publicly.”

  They were halfway up the stairs, and me halfway to the front door, when Tammy’s broken whisper echoed in the airy foyer. “I was talking about tonight.…”

  * * *

  The next day was Saturday, and I got up late—not only because that is a teenager’s primary moral imperative on weekends but also because I’d spent the night tossing and turning, thinking about Jonathan Walker. I was starting to see that he had married Tammy McConville not out of love but out of strategic necessity. She was young and still beautiful—“the quintessential MILF,” Micah had once dubbed her—so she looked good by his side, and with her he’d leveled up from being a Divorced Single Parent to being a Family Man, thereby increasing his political cachet.

  If he’d truly cared for Tammy, it wouldn’t have been his fifteen-year-old stepdaughter’s ex-boyfriend that he’d have called to the rescue when his wife had a mental breakdown and started renovating the kitchen with a claw hammer. Again, he’d thought strategically, using unimportant me to defuse the problem, and then casting me out indifferently once I had served my purpose. He viewed the people around him as either resources or problems, and acted accordingly.

  I already knew he thought of January as a “problem,” and that he had no issue with resorting to devious means when it came to controlling difficult McConville women. I also knew he’d made at least one mistake.

  On Tuesday, during the first argument I’d witnessed between him and Tammy, he’d said that the night January died he’d been having “drinks with some boosters”; but last night, when Tammy shifted from self-destruct to attack mode, the alibi he’d spit out was “an important meeting with some people from the PAC.” I didn’t know much about politics, but I knew from my U.S. government class that a political action committee raised money through donations and then funneled it to a candidate, while boosters were more like goodwill ambassadors dedicated to promoting said candidate. Unless Jonathan Walker had said “boosters” when he meant to say “donors,” I was pretty sure I’d caught him in a discrepancy. Not that I could do much with it. It was circumstantial, a slip of the tongue, and hardly enough to incriminate a man with Mr. Walker’s level of power and influence.

  Still half-asleep, I got out of bed and started down the stairs, surprised when I reached the ground floor and heard the indistinct bleating of the television. Typically, my parents are never around on Saturdays, choosing instead to get up at some ungodly hour so they could exercise, run errands, and do whatever it is parents do before finally coming back in time for dinner. When they were home, it was invariably so that they could engage in some conspicuously constructive activity and pressure me to join in. The only time they watched television in the afternoon was on Sunday, a special dispensation issued for the sake of college football.

  The second my footsteps sounded in the hallway, the television went off. When I entered the living room, I found my mother staring at me from the couch with the worried, guilty expression of a little kid who’s just been caught drawing on the walls.

  “You’re up,” she informed me with a painfully false attempt at cheer.

  “Yeah.” I scratched my head, my hair a stiff mass in its usual state of morning disarray. “So are you.” We stared at each other some more. “So … what’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” my mom responded automatically, and then squeezed her eyes shut, embarrassed by the obviousness of the lie. “There was—” She stopped herself, shook her head. “Something awful has happened.”

  “Oh, shit, what now?” It was a testament to the seriousness of the situation that she didn’t even offer a cursory cluck of the tongue in response to my four-letter word.

  “Sweetie, they found a body today,” she began, and I felt the room do a complete barrel roll, my stomach going as cold as the ocean floor. My vision fogged over, and my mom’s voice was hollow and far away when she added hastily, “Not January.” I was still frozen stiff, trying to process this, when she delivered a piece of news that was even more shocking. “It was another student from Dumas. A girl named Reiko Matsuda.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  MY MOM SAID some things for a while, all of which were drowned out by the clamoring buzz that filled my brain, and then she turned the television back on so that I could see the news program she’d been hiding from me.

  The gist of things was this: Early that morning, two kayakers had discovered the body of sixteen-year-old Reiko Matsuda floating in the Huron River. A gifted student and talented artist, the Dumas Academy junior had been “stabbed and mutilated” before being dumped in the water. She had been last seen leaving school, where she was involved in the drama club and frequently stayed late for rehearsals. Police were still seeking the whereabouts of her car, as well as anyone who might have knowledge of her movements.

  Dazed by the time the report ended, I then numbly endured my mother’s delicate questions about whether I had known this Reiko Matsuda, who was reported to have been a “friend of January McConville’s.” It was impossible not to connect what had happened to the two girls, and silly to pretend like they might not be linked. Two Dumas students, both sharing the same secret, meeting tragic fates within as many weeks? The odds of that being a coincidence were so slim they weren’t even worth calculating. As my mom’s sympathetic probing continued, though, I was thinking: Is that what happened to my girlfriend? Had she been “stabbed and mutilated” and dumped in the river? Is that why they still hadn’t found her? And what, exactly, did “mutilated” mean, anyway? Or maybe I didn’t even want to know; just thinking about it made the room swim around me.

  And through the din of my morbid thoughts, I kept hearing Tammy’s insistent voice in my head: I’m talking about tonight. Where were you tonight?

  I was still sure Mr. Walker was guilty, but the news gave me pause nonetheless. If he had indeed forced himself on January and gotten her pregnant as a result, he would have the strongest motive out of anyone for wanting her gone; a powerful man on the cusp of gaining national importance, what would happen to him if the story came out? Reiko had known the truth, and had promised to consider going to the authorities, which would have made her a serious threat as well. It all fit. The only catch was, I couldn’t figure out how the man could have possibly gotten wind of a conversation that had transpired in the lobby of the Dumas theater building the previous afternoon.

  I tried to expand my thinking. Eddie? Anson? Same catch applied. Tammy? It seemed far-fetched, but … she’d never exactly been the steadiest boat in the harbor, and her assault on the kitchen had not only revealed a mania I never knew existed in her but also made it clear she was capable of doing real damage when she wanted to. Anson had implied that January tried to seduce Jonathan; no matter what the facts were, if Tammy had believed it to be true, could she have killed her own daughter in a fit of manic rage? I rubbed my temples; it sounded like a soap opera—and still there was the issue of how Tammy could have known that Reiko was a potential problem.

  Maybe Jonathan had known or suspected that January had told Reiko about what happened, and maybe he’d been planning to kill her all alon
g. Or maybe Reiko, believing she could intimidate him into confessing, had confronted the man, and he had seized the opportunity to silence her.

  How it had happened almost didn’t matter; obviously I couldn’t prove that Mr. Walker had killed Reiko any more than I could prove he’d killed January, but I had to tell the police about the conversation I’d had with the pink-haired girl, regardless. I’d been seen with her at Dumas the afternoon of the day she was murdered, and they were bound to find out about it, so I had to report it first and trust that they would eventually nail the man, even if I couldn’t.

  Taking the initiative, I called the station and, after explaining myself, was directed to Detective Garcia. I left out my speculation about Jonathan Walker, even the stuff about the changing alibi—the police would already be checking into the whereabouts of the Walker family, and I was pretty sure that hearing the theory from a breathless teenager would make them less inclined to take it seriously—but I explained that I had spoken to Reiko the day she was killed, what it was that the girl had revealed to me, and how I had tried to convince her to come forward.

  “She said she would think about, and then she got killed!”

  “And you think there’s a connection.” It was a statement, flat and stark, and the way Garcia said it made it impossible for me to answer yes without looking nuts.

  “I’m not saying they’re connected for sure, I’m just saying that it happened,” I explained with some difficulty, annoyed at having to deny what felt obvious. “Did she come forward, though? Did she report the rape?”

  Garcia sighed. “Listen, Flynn, I can’t give out infor—”

  “Look, I just want you to take this seriously, okay?” I was aware immediately that my outburst had cost me some credibility. “I think that the guy who raped January is the one who killed her. Maybe she told him she was pregnant, or that she was going to make a report about it. I mean, it can’t be a coincidence that the only other person who knew about it just turned up dead, too!”

  “Look, I promise you that we take all of our leads seriously, and we know how to do our jobs. Leave the speculation to us. If there’s a link between the deaths, we’ll find it.” After this reassurance, Garcia added, “And don’t let anyone tell you there’s no such thing as a coincidence. They happen all the time.”

  And he hung up. For a minute, I sat and stared out my window at the trees that ringed our backyard, feeling powerless and annoyed. That couldn’t be the end of it. I kept seeing Reiko’s face, puffy and wet with tears, just before she vanished back into the theater. I’ll think about what you said. How could her death be a coincidence?

  My phone buzzed again on my desk, and I saw that the call was from Kaz. I was so anxious for someone to agree with me that I decided to—temporarily, at least—ignore how hurt I still was by his rejection. I answered immediately. “Did you hear what happened?”

  “Of course!” He sounded hushed, like he was trying not to be heard. “I couldn’t believe it. It is the same girl, right? Not a different Reiko, maybe?”

  “Same girl,” I said. “Listen, I told the police about the rape, and it barely seemed like the guy cared! I left out names, but I’m starting to think maybe I should just go ahead and implicate Mr. Walker after all.” Kaz tried to interrupt me; irritated, I talked over him. “I’m going to write it out so they can see it all together, and they won’t be able to pick the story apart while I’m telling it to them and make me look like a paranoid wack job.”

  “Flynn!” Kaz finally exclaimed. “You have to listen to me, man! I’ve been doing some research, and I found out … well, you really need to hear this.”

  I frowned. “What?”

  “Look, based on what you figured about the hatch marks, we’re thinking the assault must have happened right around the last week of September, right?” he asked rhetorically. “That’s when January’s strange behavior really started: quitting her job, dropping out of the play, blowing off her friends. Well, here’s the thing: I got this idea to check out the calendar of events on Jonathan Walker’s website, and … Flynn, he wasn’t even in Michigan at the end of September.”

  “Huh?”

  “He was in D.C. for almost two weeks on some campaign-related tour, getting endorsements from political big shots and having his picture taken at important-sounding charity functions.” There was a pause. “He couldn’t have done it.”

  I was thrown completely off-balance. “But … just because the trip was on his calendar doesn’t mean he actually went, Kaz.”

  “There are pictures online confirming each of the appearances listed.”

  “D.C. is only a couple of hours away by plane,” I returned stubbornly, “and it’s not like he doesn’t have the money to charter a private jet. He could have come back to Ann Arbor at any time and then returned to Washington without being missed!”

  “You think he made a supersecret emergency trip back home just to rape his stepdaughter?” Kaz sounded even more doubtful than Detective Garcia.

  “Maybe we’re wrong about the time frame! Maybe it happened earlier … like, a couple of weeks earlier, and the trauma just didn’t set in—”

  “Flynn?” He cut me off decisively. “Face it. It doesn’t sound like Jonathan Walker could’ve been the one who raped January, which means he had no reason to kill her.” He let out a breath. “I don’t think he did it, Flynn. I think Jonathan Walker is innocent.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  IT DIDN’T MAKE any sense, and for a long while I couldn’t internalize what I was being told. I started arguing back, talking about the alibi screwup, reiterating all the points I was going to make in the theory I’d planned to submit to the police, but my case against Mr. Walker was taking on water faster than I could bail it out. Calmly, Kaz pointed out that even if Jonathan had lied about where he was the night January disappeared, it didn’t mean anything without a motive. He could have been having an affair, or tying one on in a nudie bar or something, and simply didn’t want his wife—or the media—to know about it. What I had against him was a house of cards, which was starting to look flimsier with every passing moment.

  After I hung up, I sat listlessly in my room for a while, feeling worked up and unable to concentrate on anything. To avoid my mom’s constant checking in to see if I was “okay,” I grabbed my skateboard and went to the park, where I could work on my ollie in private, hoping that maybe Micah would show up so we could talk. He didn’t, though, and I remained alone with the tumult of my frustrated thoughts, attempting the same stunt over and over again and expecting different results. The sun faded in and out through a bank of clouds, a cold wind blasting through the inadequate insulation of my sweatshirt, but I scarcely noticed any of it.

  I still wanted to believe Mr. Walker could be guilty, that the hatch marks were meaningless after all, and that the assault could have taken place either before or after his trip to D.C.; but “after” didn’t sync with January’s sudden behavioral changes, and “before” fell within a time period that January and I had still been talking pretty regularly. If she’d gone through something so traumatic, I was positive I’d have noticed. As it was, she’d only managed to hide it from me by icing me out.

  But if it hadn’t been Jonathan Walker, then who? The obvious runner-up, to me, was Anson; he was a pervert with anger management issues, and I could easily imagine him forcing himself on a girl. Add to that his habit of lurking and spying, and the fact that January was afraid to be alone with him, and you had another compelling—if circumstantial—case for a potential rapist-slash-murderer.

  The possible details coagulated in my thoughts like drying blood as I picked up speed on my board, wheels rattling loudly over the uneven pavement—and my distracted concentration cost me when I launched into the air. My takeoff was clumsy, and I came back down on all fours when my skateboard and I had a difference of opinion about where to land. I brushed myself off, savoring the sting of a skinned elbow, brooding.

  Anson. Violent and impulsive, he wo
uld have killed January without thinking twice and panicked afterward about how to clean it up. An explanation for why the clothes had been removed from January’s body occurred to me, and it made my stomach revolt as I kicked my board up into my hand: What if Anson had decided to dismember her to make the remains easier to hide? I could picture it with terrifying ease, and it would explain why she still remained unfound; maybe that’s what “mutilated” meant—an aborted attempt by Anson to do the same thing to Reiko. However, if he’d killed January, why had he waited until everyone else believed she was dead before ransacking her room for treasure? Why was he still looking for her phone, which she always, always had with her? And there was also the matter of how he could have known about Reiko in the first place, unless she’d been the one to go to him. And if she’d known anything about Anson, heard any of the stories January had to tell, she wouldn’t have dared do something like that alone.

  I shoved myself into the air again, managing to keep my skateboard underneath me this time as I sailed over a set of shallow steps, but my mind still wasn’t clear; the board shot sideways when it hit the ground, and I stumbled hard for several feet, struggling to catch both my balance and my breath. Cursing, I pulled myself back together and mounted the steps again, wrestling with the same oppressive question the whole time: If it wasn’t Anson, then who else could it have been?

  Eddie Sward? He was yet another foaming-at-the-mouth rage monster—but while I definitely believed he would stop at pretty much nothing to protect himself and his client, I didn’t think he would have actually assaulted his boss’s stepdaughter. He wasn’t like Jonathan, who was powerful enough to buy away the consequences of his actions; and he wasn’t like Anson, either, who routinely got away with whatever he wanted, because the rules literally didn’t apply to him. Eddie would have had too much to lose. And again, I couldn’t fathom any way he’d have become aware of the knowledge Reiko had been privy to, or what she might have been planning to do with it. For her to have confronted Eddie, she’d have had to track him down first, which would have involved phone calls to campaign personnel, which would have created an official record so easy for the cops to follow that Eddie would have to be an idiot to think he could kill Reiko and get away with it.