by Rob Cornell
Who would do such a thing?
I parked across the street from the news vans, my heart thumping. It had been a long time since I had to suffer through a job interview, but that’s how I felt approaching Mrs. Brown. Oh, and I also felt like a complete dick. The only thing that didn’t lower me to their level was that I had a more righteous goal. I wanted to help her get her husband back…if she wanted him.
The bitter wind bit my cheeks as I slammed my car door shut. My eyes watered in the cold. The air smelled like cold metal. I noticed plumes of exhaust coming from all three of the news vans’ tail pipes. So people were inside them, keeping the engine running and the heat on.
As I sloughed through the unplowed street toward the house, one of the van’s side doors snapped and rolled open on its track. A man with gray at his temples but otherwise pitch black hair, hopped out of the van and approached me. He wore an expensive-looking overcoat along with designer slacks that got all wet as he walked through the thick snow on the street.
The Brown house sat close to the middle border of Hawthorne, where you would expect to find upper middle-class neighborhoods peppered with the lower middle-class. The Browns lived in one of the latter neighborhoods, the kind of place the City Council didn’t feel it a priority to get plows out to until after most the northern half of town had theirs plowed and salted. In other words, a rich guy like me could take out my Beemer for a spin right after a snow storm, but anyone in one of these places could wait to get their groceries for a day or two, if they were lucky.
When I was younger, before I moved to California, I hated Hawthorne for this biased dichotomy. But I don’t blame Hawthorne anymore. It’s like this everywhere.
The reporter didn’t have anyone with a camera following him. I guess he or she got to stay in the warmth of the running van until I was deemed newsworthy. He smiled at me, showing off a perfect set of teeth as white as the freshest of the snow.
I must have had my eyes on the Brown house, because I don’t know how or why he decided to come out of his warm van just to talk to me.
“Trent Spears,” he said in his newsy voice. “Channel Seven Action News.”
I didn’t take his hand. I kept getting this weird vibe from him. I’d seen his face hundreds of times on the TV and it never bothered me. But in person? He gave me the heebie-geebies. “What’s up?” I asked, as glib as I knew how.
“Are you headed to the Browns?”
I said nothing.
“It appeared as if you were headed toward the driveway.”
Still nothing. I didn’t even return his smile.
That smile started to slip. He furled his brow. “Was it something I said?”
I shook my head. “It’s what you do. Sitting in front of her house like a turkey vulture, waiting for scraps.”
The smile evaporated entirely. “Oh, you’re one of those anti-reporter people.”
“No, no. I love reporters. Real reporters. Not sensationalists.” I clapped him on the shoulder as if we were old buddies from a long time ago. “Look, I appreciate you stepped out of the heat into the cold to try me, but I have nothing to say.” I glanced back and forth to the other vans. “Your peers seem to have gathered that. So why don’t you get back in your van and leave me alone. Or better yet, leave the Browns alone and get out of here.”
Spears pointed at me with a leather-gloved hand. “Citizens have a right to know what’s going on in their community. If this young girl was killed, how do we know the killer won’t strike again? The people need to know.”
I shook my head and laughed. Then I sauntered through the snow past him, between his van and the one on the other side of the driveway, and up the driveway, which someone had shoveled as well as the short cement approach to the porch. A fresh snowfall left enough powder on the shoveled sections to capture my footprints as I approached the house. I noticed a few other prints as well, up and down the approach. At the bottom of the drive, the number of prints increased, coming from all sorts of angles, a documentation of Mrs. Brown getting accosted by the press as they left their house and headed for the street, perhaps to get to a car parked there. The investigator in me wondered, why they wouldn’t park in the garage? But there were dozens of reasons.
I tried to imagine Mrs. Brown and her son’s state of mind as they had to deal with the vultures. I belonged to a famous family once. I remembered how the press could be in their effort to get a fresh quote or a scandalous tidbit. Nowadays, they pretty much left me alone. I most definitely qualified as old news.
But to deal with all that on top of losing your spouse and daughter—or sister and dad? My stomach turned.
When I reached the porch, I heard a van door slide shut. Thankfully, Spears had given up on me. Unfortunately he didn’t take my advice about leaving altogether.
I pulled a glove off and rapped on the glass storm door, then rang the bell.
Silence greeted me.
I leaned close to the door, listening for any sign of movement inside.
Nothing.
I glanced back at the driveway and wondered if they hadn’t returned yet from their trip. I tried to read the footprints, but I wasn’t an expert tracker or anything like in the westerns my father used to watch.
I knocked again. Afterward, I swore I heard a soft noise from inside, but I couldn’t bet on it. What I could bet on was the reporters. If Mrs. Brown and her son had taken off, there was no reason for the news crews to stand by. Wasting gas to stay warm when you had no idea when or if someone would return home soon didn’t make sense. Not that I expected much sense from television “journalists.”
I became more convinced, though, that I had heard something inside.
I knocked again, but this time watched the curtain in the picture window facing the street. I didn’t hear anything again, but I saw the curtain twitch. Probably Mrs. Brown, peeking out and trying to make sense of the guy on her porch who didn’t look like a reporter, but you never could tell.
“Mrs. Brown,” I said, voice raised so she could hear me through the glass. “My name is Ridley Brone. I’m a private investigator hired to look for your husband.”
I stopped there to give her enough room for questions. Questions, I’ve found, make good bait. A reluctant interviewee could turn into a chatter box if you toyed with their curiosity enough.
The curtain moved again. Or maybe it was my imagination. Maybe they weren’t home and all my reasoning was more like wishful thinking.
I decided to go for broke. In other words, tell a little fib.
I knocked again.
In my louder voice, I said, “Please, Mrs. Brown, I have information about your husband I need to discuss.”
I felt a little greasy after saying it. Here I get all high and mighty about the TV news crews, and I resort to twisted words to lure Mrs. Brown to open the door to me. But I didn’t outright lie. I did have a tiny bit of information about her husband—mainly that he had run off three days prior—and I did want to discuss that fact with her.
Didn’t make me feel any better, though.
I felt even worse when the inside door finally opened and instead of Mrs. Brown, a kid not much older than fourteen stared through the outside door’s glass. He was a tall, gangly kid. Too gangly to utilize his height for a sport like basketball, but not so awkward that he’d get easily pushed around at school. He did have a dusting of acne on each cheek, but nothing serious. His eyes sort of bulged, which gave him a permanently frightened look even while his eyebrows drew together. His warm breath fogged the cold glass.
“You know about my dad?”
Feeling very much like a salesman or a Jehovah’s Witness, I smiled at the kid and asked, “Is your mother home?”
“I’m not supposed to open the door to anybody.”
My guess, then, was that the kid was home alone. I noticed a scrape on his arm. Despite the cold weather, he wore a short-sleeved T. The scrape had a familiar pattern I recognized from my brief homeless stint in Los Angeles. Y
ou learn a lot of things when you spend that many days on the street. Like the kids at the skate parks and their road rash.
I pointed to the scrape. “Where can you go boarding when it’s snowing out?”
The corner of his mouth quirked as if he wanted to smile but was on strict orders not to. “The Rec Center has an indoor skate park.”
“Cool. I didn’t know that. You go there with your sister?”
He looked down. Big tears swelled, then dripped off his face. He snuffled and wiped his nose. With his head turned down, and his breath directed elsewhere, the patch of fog on the glass faded. At first, I hadn’t seen any resemblance to Sasha, but I caught a glimpse of it there. The sorrow in his face. Sasha had the same sorrowful look as she sang that night. I wondered if she knew then that she was going to end her life in the park. I’d never seen her in the High Note before. Maybe singing there had somehow made her last-wishes list.
I tapped gently on the glass. “Are you okay? I’m sorry I mentioned her.”
He lifted his shirt and wiped his eyes with it. I noticed a set of washboard abs, a stark contrast to his otherwise gawky appearance.
He dropped his shirt and shook his head. “I’m fine.” He looked back up at me. “What do you know about my dad?”
I looked over my shoulder at the news vans. Every one of them had someone peeking out a window at me, including the guy, Spears, with the sparkling white teeth who’d approached me on the street. Either they all had plans to accost me when I left, or they were contemplating rushing the house now that someone had finally answered the door.
If I stayed on the porch, this wouldn’t last long without interruption. But I didn’t exactly feel comfortable asking my way into a house with only a fifteen year-old kid home alone.
So I had to be quick. And a little bit harsh.
“I know your dad left you three days ago,” I said. “I was hired to find him.”
“You said that already.”
“Do you know when your mother will be home.”
He curled a lip. “She’ll never talk to you.”
“I can be pretty persuasive.”
“Do you know something about him or not?” He put his hand on the inside door’s knob as if ready to slam it in my face if I answered wrong.
But how could I answer right? I’d only just begun the investigation. So I tried general facts. “In most missing persons cases, they end up with someone they know. A relative. A friend. Can you think of anyone like that?”
The kid narrowed his eyes, but he did not slam the door in my face. “I really shouldn’t be talking to you.”
“When do you expect your mother home?”
He shrugged. “About an hour.”
I glanced over my shoulder. “How long have these reporters been here?”
“Since this morning.”
I looked up at the sky, at the giant sheet of winter gray brining on an early dusk. We were creeping up toward dinner time. The air smelled wet and cold.
I didn’t really want to grill the kid without his mom around. I hadn’t come here for him, anyway. I needed to speak with her. But maybe I could juice just a little more information to kill time between now and when she came back.
“Just answer me one question,” I said, “and I’ll leave you alone. Can you think of any friends or relatives your dad might go to?”
“Mom called them all. He’s not with any of them.”
It’s really easy to lie over the phone, I thought, but didn’t say aloud. “How many people did she call?”
“You said only one more question.” He adjusted his grip on the door knob. I think the only thing that kept him from slamming it was his curiosity.
“It’s a two-part question,” I said with a smile.
The kid rolled his eyes. “Whatever, dude. She called about three people. One was Uncle Matt. I don’t know the other ones. One I think was on his bowling league.” He shrugged. “I dunno.”
“Your dad and uncle close?”
“So now it’s a three-part question?”
I ducked my head, felt my cheeks flush. Smart kid. “Busted.”
“You don’t seem so douchey like the others, so I’ll let you have a bonus.”
Douchey. I liked that term. I lifted my head and gave him a nod. “Appreciate it.”
“My dad and uncle are twins. And they’re close as hell…er…heck. It’s almost creepy. Like one will know the other is thinking about him and so give a call.”
I took a chance and pressed for another question. “Did your dad get such a call the day he disappeared?”
The kid’s eyes went wide. The fog on the glass obscured the rest of his expression, though. I wanted to wipe it off, but the condensation formed on his side.
He must have figured the same thing. He lifted his shirt again and wiped away the patch of condensation. He backed off so his breath wouldn’t hit the glass as much and bring back the fog. “Yeah. I think so. He actually took the call in his bedroom; told me, Mom, and…Sasha…” His voice quivered at her name. “…told us he needed to take it in private.”
“But you’re sure it was your uncle?”
“I answered the phone. Caller ID said so. And Uncle Matt said ‘hi’ to me and all that. No doubt it was him.”
I was well beyond pushing the “one more question” edge and into flat out taking advantage of the kid. But if I could get the info I needed to run this guy down myself, I could call Paul at the bar, have him watch over things in my place for a while, and get this out of the way. Maybe even close the case.
“Does your uncle live close?”
The kid backed up. “I shouldn’t tell you where he lives.”
I held up my hands. “You’re right,” I said, while imagining how many Matt Browns in and around Hawthorne their might be. My stomach dropped at the prospect of tracking him the easy way. I needed one more piece of info, and I grasped for an easy one.
“Do you know your uncle’s middle name?”
“Why? So you can look him up on the Internet?” The kid eased the door closed a foot. He stood in the narrow opening. The kid was savvy, I’d give him that. “I’ve talked to you way too much as it is.”
“Sure. I got it. How about this, though? I never got your name.”
He seemed to chew on the idea of giving it to me, then must have decided it wouldn’t do any harm, and would be an easy thing for me to find on my own. “Collin,” he said, then swung the door shut before I could say another word.
Chapter 7
By the time I got back to my office, Paul was opening up the High Note like I’d asked him to when I called on the way over. I didn’t bother peeking into the bar. Instead I went straight up to my office by way of the separate staircase—the same stairs I led the kids up earlier that day.
From inside my office, I could hear the karaoke host, Holly, doing her routine sound checks, which included variations in volume depending on the singer. In other words, when one of our regulars, like Hal, hit the stage, Holly turned the volume down to make up for his belting voice and poor working of the mic. If you ever notice your favorite pop star pulling the mic away from their face during a high or particularly powerful note, it means they’re working the mic. It’s an easy and professional way to keep from blowing out an audience’s ear drums. It can also look dramatic as hell. Just watch Beyonce.
I also heard a few cars pull into the lot outside, engines idling as they waited for official opening time at eight PM. Hal had to be one of them. He rarely missed getting his name in first on the roster of singers. In fact, Hal’s early arrival has often had him singing to an empty room, barring staff. Never seemed to bother him, though.
I pushed away thoughts of the bar for the moment. If I didn’t get down there right at opening, my crew could handle things fine. They probably didn’t need me at all. All I ever did was take up a back booth and siphon off a bit of the gin supply. But if I didn’t sit at my usual table, I missed performances like Sasha’s. Talent like her
s made all the cheesy, off-key, and downright dreadful performances worth the ear pain.
I woke up my computer and sat staring at the blank screen. I clicked open the browser and stared at my homepage—Google—a little longer. Google is an investigator’s reliable friend.
But I’d need a little more this evening.
The advantage I had was knowing Matt and Peter were twins. That means they probably went to the same schools growing up, which meant a quick search on the schoolmates site would give me his full name. Luckily, a middle initial was indicated, as well as a bunch of other info. Apparently, Matt had registered on the site, actively looking to reconnect with old classmates. As long as this information was recent and up-to-date, it appeared Matt still lived in Hawthorne. This site didn’t give me a specific address or phone number, though.
Not a problem.
I went to the white pages site, typed in his full name with middle initial: Matthew Luke Brown. The results popped up with his number unlisted, but his address in full view.
Too easy.
I printed off the address along with a map. I retrieved the documents from my printer which was set on a short filing cabinet in the corner opposite the couch. When I sat back at my desk, I held the map and stared at it with a scrunched face. He didn’t live far from me. In fact, his address put him along a ridge of homes in Lakeside Park that all sat—obviously enough, thanks to the name—along the manmade lake, Lake Thornton. Probably the most pretentious name for a lake I had ever seen. But the homeowners along that stretch could boast homes well into the five-, six-, or even seven-thousand square foot range. Never mind the few acres and the outbuildings many had on site.
The richest of the rich folks in Hawthorne, MI.
They could make someone like me and my massive house feel insecure—if I actually gave a shit about material things like that.
What a massive contrast between one Brown and his brother—Peter living in the lower middleclass, his twin living the high life along the lakefront.