A throng of people in blue scrubs ran toward him, two pushing a gurney. Gentle hands pried her from his arms and laid her on the stretcher.
“What happened?” A man with a stethoscope glanced up for a brief second. “Sir, talk to me. Do you know what happened?”
“No, no I….”
As if their clothes were on fire, they turned in unison and sprinted toward the emergency room, the wheels of the stretcher clicking from the rapid motion.
Another voice, a woman’s. “You need to go to admitting. They’ll need a name, blood type….” Her voice faded as they disappeared behind another set of sliding doors.
“Will she make it?” He didn’t know why spoke aloud. There wasn’t a soul around to hear him.
Walking slower than a crowd at an Irish funeral dirge, he returned to the hearse, slid behind the wheel and headed for home.
~*~
Hans’ phone rang early the next morning. He looked at the number. “Yeah, I’m here.”
“Everything okay in Shangri-La?”
“Hardly.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean is she wasn’t dead.”
“I know this ain’t April Fools Day so I’m going to assume you’re on some mind-altering drug.”
“I don’t do drugs.”
“What the hell happened?”
“On my way back to Des Moines, I heard a noise.”
“What kind of a noise?”
“A pathetic, gut-wrenching groan you pompous prick.”
A long puff of air pedaled through the line. “I’m going to ignore the name-calling for now, but listen very carefully. What did you do with her, Bones?”
“What do you think I did, bury her alive? Jesus. I took her to someone who could help her.”
“Man, this is getting better by the second.”
“My contract says nothing about killing someone. I agreed to pick up a body, a dead body.”
“Which makes you an accessory to murder.
“I don’t care anymore, sic your dogs on me. At least I know my last act in life was a decent one.”
“You stupid blockhead! Where did you take her, a hospital, a doctor’s office…where?”
“You might think I’m a blockhead but I’m not stupid enough to tell you where she is. She was alive when I dropped her off but won’t be once you find her.”
“Fair warning, Bones. I’ll give you ‘til noon to get out of town.”
Hans threw his phone across the room and slumped onto the sofa with a strangled groan.
Chapter 18
When you are given, eat, when you are beaten, run away.
Rann didn’t get a phone call from Duna at ten p.m. and he hadn’t heard from Officer Cruikshank. On the way to Janesville, he kept one eye focused on his driving, the other peeled on the terrain. He searched for anything and everything out of the ordinary, skid marks, remnants of black rubber, and broken glass. Course, along Interstate 80 it would be impossible not to see a car in the ditch, particularly an SUV. The four lanes of traffic, two headed in his direction, clipped along in normal fashion with no indication that anything aberrant or nefarious had crossed its path in the last twenty-four hours.
When darkness moved in with the stealth of a panther, he turned onto a short dirt road that at one time must have had a destination.
Rook whined from the rear of the vehicle. “Okay, boy. Guess this is as good a place as any to water the weeds.”
Rook finished his business and they returned to the car. He couldn’t be too far from Janesville now. He didn’t want to get a room, and dogs weren’t welcome in most places. No, tonight he’d doze in the car and hit the road again at first light.
The welcome sign appeared on his right, Welcome to Janesville, Population 63,280. He took the off-ramp and decided to stop at the 7-Eleven up ahead to pick up supplies, dog food, some type of container to put Kibbles ‘n Bits in, several bottles of water for Rook and coffee for him. The thought of food pitched his innards into somersaults.
After gathering what he needed, he paid the clerk and walked toward the exit door. An indefinable sensation stopped him in his tracks. He turned around, got in line behind a man buying smokes and waited his turn.
“Forgot something, huh?”
The clerk must have been close to his age, maybe two to three years older. "Actually, I’m looking for someone who might have stopped in here.”
He dragged the word out. “O-k-a-y.”
“Do you mind telling me what time you started your shift today?”
“Noon. We work ten hour shifts here most of time. I’d be long gone by now but my replacement said he’s running late.”
“Good, I’m kind of glad he’s running late or I would have missed you.”
“So what’s up? You said you were looking for someone?”
“Yes, a girl…a woman who might have stopped by here.”
“How long ago?”
“That’s one of the things I’m trying to pin down. Maybe between two and four this afternoon but let’s not get hung up on time.”
“We get a lot of business here, right off the Interstate and all. But tell me what she looks like.”
“Petite, shoulder length light-colored hair—”
“Does she have—please don’t take this the wrong way—green eyes, eyes that most men would never forget?”
Chest tight, breathing accelerated, he struggled to get the words out. “Yes, yes!”
“She came by, bought a Coke.”
“What time, man?”
Eyes toward the ceiling, he hesitated. “In the afternoon, maybe around three, give or take an hour either way.” The clerk studied him. “You all right? She missing or somethin’?”
Missing. Like those thousands of kids on milk cartons and the black and white posters slapped up on tree trunks, store windows and bulletin boards. “I’m hoping she lost her way or car trouble delayed her.”
“Pretty hard to miss the signs to the Interstate when you leave our parking lot.”
“What if she did, I mean, took a wrong turn out of here?”
“She would have ended up on a gravel road in farm country.”
Rann thanked the man, returned to the car and cruised to the far end of the parking lot, away from the security lights and hustle and bustle of the entrance door. He let Rook out to scamper around an empty field next to the 7-Eleven, fed and watered him and then coaxed the lab into the rear of the vehicle again. Crawling into the front seat, he slouched down, put his head back and closed his eyes. You were here, sweet girl, and no matter where you are now, I will find you.
~*~
The sun blasted through the windshield. Rann rubbed his eyes and looked back at Rook still asleep in back. “Hey, boy, you want out?”
The lab snapped to attention and barked.
While Rook marked his territory, Rann tried to formulate a plan in his mind. He pictured Duna sitting at the table, head meeting hands, wondering how he’d make it through the day. Hell, how would the elderly man make it through life now? A pain, so sharp it constricted his airway, stabbed his heart. How would he carry on, pretend he’d never met her?
When his phone went off, he shooed Rook back into the car and scurried behind the wheel. “Duna…did she return?” He knew it was a long shot but he had to ask.
“No. No,” he said it again his voice flat. “Where are you now?”
“Janesville, in the parking lot of a convenience store. The clerk said she stopped in here yesterday afternoon to buy a Coke.”
“Is that good or bad?”
How do I sound encouraging and yet not give false hope. “It’s a start.”
“I don’t know what to do, Veshengo. I should be looking for her, helping you but….”
“No, you need to stay there in case she calls, comes home.”
“What will you do now to find her? I think we should call the police again, file some kind of a report. We’re burning daylight, boy.”
; Burning daylight. The image hit him so hard and fast, he wondered if he moaned out loud. Her cheeks puffed out with food, she looked like a chipmunk when she pointed a fork at the bathroom door. Hurry, we’re burning daylight.
“I’m on my way to the police department now. I’ll call you back as soon as I’m done there. Don’t leave the house, Duna, in case she calls the land line.”
The man sounded so dejected when he said goodbye, Rann had to take a few deep breaths before he could start the engine and call up directions to the Janesville Police Department on the GPS.
Minutes later, he pulled into the parking lot. With a command to Rook, the dog sat down on his haunches and looked through the side window in back.
Rann walked in and spoke to the man behind the front desk. “Hi, I called yesterday to inquire about a possible accident.”
“Car accident or….”
“Yes, or anything out of the ordinary in the area.”
The man looked at him askance. “My names is Rann Brogan. I drove here from Chicago to see if something happened to my….” God, how should he explain his involvement with her? “Heading to Minnesota, my girlfriend left my place in La Grange about noon and she-she’s missing.”
“What do you mean, ‘missing’?”
He didn’t mean to be curt but his frustration had kicked into overdrive in the last twenty hours. “What part of missing don’t you understand?”
The man put a hand in the air. “Okay, you mean she hasn’t made it back to Minnesota yet?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. Yesterday when I called, the Officer said no accidents in a hundred mile radius had been reported. How about now?”
“What time did you call and who did you speak with?”
“I called about six, could have been eight o’clock. Sorry, I sorta lost track of time in all this. But I remember the officer’s name. Cruikshank, his name was Thomas Cruikshank.”
“He’s off today but let me look on the computer.” An interminable amount of time passed before he stopped scanning whatever had popped up on the screen and looked up again. “Nope, nothing reported. Have you called the hospital?”
“Not yet; that’s next.”
“How about the police departments from Elgin to here or further up the pike?”
“She made it to Janesville. Someone saw her at the 7-Eleven near the Interstate.”
The officer’s expression softened. “You want to file a Missing Person Report? It’s kind of early for that but once we take it in, the data gets blasted out to thousands of resources.”
“Yes.” The floor moved beneath his feet. Shit, was he going to faint?
The man reached into a drawer next to the desk and passed the document to him.
“You want to sit down while you fill it out?”
“No, but thanks.”
The words moved on the page, questions really, name, date of birth, physical description, details about to and from destinations, and anything else relevant to a disappearance. When he finished, he slid it back to the officer. “I put my phone number on there. You’ll call me if you hear anything?”
“Absolutely. You look a little green around the gills. You gonna be okay?”
How should he answer that? He wanted to say, ‘peachy’ if by some miracle she showed up, ‘bulldozed, torpedoed, dismantled’ if she didn’t. “Fine. Think I’ll go make those phone calls.”
“Good luck.”
Chapter 19
A tear in the eye is a wound in the heart.
Leaning against the Cayenne in the police parking lot, he looked at the clouds overhead. “I don’t know what to do; just don’t know where to turn.”
His cell phone rang and he jumped on it without looking at the number. “Season?”
“Rann? It’s me, Matt. I’ve been trying to call you for hours.”
“I know, man, sorry.”
“What’s going on? Why didn’t you answer?”
“Matt…Season is missing.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She left my place yesterday afternoon and never made it back to Minnesota.”
“God, I don’t know what to say. Did you call the police?”
He kicked at the pavement. “I’m at the Janesville Police Department right now. Just finished filling out a Missing Person Report.”
“What can I do? Name anything.”
“I don’t know what I should do.” Pinching the bridge of his nose, he hoped to quell the tears brimming in his eyes.
“You need me to go over to the house, feed Rook or anything?”
“Rook’s with me. Jesus, she just won’t stop.”
“Who?”
“Charlotte. She’s been calling my phone all morning too.”
“Want me to get a hold of her, let her know what’s going on?”
He blew a short burst. “Yeah, like that would stop her. I better go, in case something comes up about Season.”
“Hey, take care of yourself. I’ll be waiting to hear from you.”
He clicked over to his mother. “I’m here.”
“Rann, oh, thank God. I’ve been worried sick. You said you’d be in this morning so we could chat.”
“Something came up.”
“And I’ve been calling your cell….what? What came up?”
“I can’t go into it right now.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t, all right. I just can’t.”
“All…right. Are you okay?”
Since he didn’t know how to answer that, he didn’t. “Mom, you have to listen to me. Are you listening?”
“Of course I’m listening.”
“Have I ever asked you for anything in my life?”
“Have you ever…what kind of a question is that?”
“Mom, stop answering my questions with one of your own. Jesus, why can’t you just converse like normal people?”
Complete silence lapsed before he heard her voice again. “I’m sorry, Rann. I am listening. You want me to tell you whether or not you ever asked me for anything in your life. I needed to think about that for a minute. The answer is, no, you have not.”
“I’m going to ask you for something now and I don’t want you to ask me any questions, do you understand? Don’t ask why, don’t ask what’s going on, don’t ask me anything. Try your hardest to answer yes or no, got it?”
“I do, but you’re scaring me. I’ve never heard you so…so lost. Just tell me if your life is in danger or if I need to worry about whether I’ll ever see you again.”
“My life is not in danger.”
He heard an audible sigh of relief.
“But how you answer my question hinges on whether or not you’ll ever see me again.”
“That’s it; I’m calling your father.”
“No, don’t do that. This has nothing to do with him. It’s between you and me.”
“Very well. What do you want to ask me?”
“Will you cancel the Pine Bay project? Take as much time as you need to think about it.”
“This is what you want me to do for you?”
“Yes.”
“I must say, I thought it would be much more serious.”
“Like what?”
“These days, who knows? You’ve been acting so strange the past few weeks I don’t know what to think. Believe me, my mind has run the gamut—gambling debts, extortion, drugs.”
“Wrong on all accounts. What’s your answer?”
“It means that much to you?”
“Yes, and I’ll never ask you for anything in my life again.”
“Please stop talking like that…never see me again…never ask me for anything again. It sounds so, oh, what’s the word…morbid or final.” She expelled another long breath. “My answer is yes.”
“You’ll cancel it today?”
“I said yes.”
“And you’ll leave them alone, walk away; never try to buy or build on that strip of land again.”
“Well, I’d hardly cancel, hence, cut my losses only to turn around and pour more money into it again.”
“Do I have your word?”
“Yes, if my word still counts for anything in whatever world you’re living in these days.”
“Thank you, Mom.”
“You’re welcome, Rann. I know I agreed to not ask why or what’s going on but can I ask something unrelated?”
“Yep.”
“Will you have lunch with me this week? Just the two of us and talking business is banned from the table.”
“I can’t promise it will be this week but I can tell you I’d like that very much.”
“You’ll call me?”
“I will call you, I don’t—"
“Know when.”
“Soon, that’s all I can say.”
“Soon is good enough for me.”
After they said goodbye, he looked skyward again. “Thank you.”
Tired, he was so tired, he couldn’t think.
Before he had a chance to think, his phone went off again. He didn’t recognize the number. “Hello.”
“Rann, Rann Brogan?”
“You’re speaking to him.”
“Thomas Cruikshank. We spoke on the phone yesterday about your friend.”
“Yes, thanks for calling Officer Cruikshank.”
“Call me Tom. Officer Boardwell just called me. He said you stopped by to file a Missing Person Report.”
“That’s right. Have you heard something?”
“No, son, I haven’t. Have you left Janesville now?”
“I haven’t. In fact I’m sitting in your parking lot.”
“How about I drive over there and we take a little excursion?”
“You mean to look for Season?”
“Let’s start at the 7-Eleven and take it from there.”
“Thank you, thank you so much.”
~*~
Ten minutes later, Rann and Officer Cruikshank drove to the 7-Eleven in the Cayenne. Rather than turn right out of the parking lot, they turned left.
“We’re assuming she didn’t head toward the Interstate now.” Tom kept his eyes peeled in all directions. “Maybe she got distracted and turned onto Miller Drive.”
Book Boyfriends Cafe Summer Lovin' Anthology 2015 Page 186