by David Bell
“What’s the matter? Is your girl sick?”
“I guess so.”
The night before, Jared had dreamed of being chased. He couldn’t see who was behind him or what they wanted, but Jared knew, in the dream, he’d done something wrong. And if whoever was behind him caught up he’d be in big trouble. His eyeballs felt as if they’d been scoured with a Brillo pad, as if he’d slept about ten minutes.
“Didn’t she text you and tell you what was going on?” Syd asked.
“She doesn’t text much.”
“So text her. You know if you weren’t here she’d be texting you.”
Jared tried to laugh it off, to play along with the banter. He wondered if Syd had ever been with a girl, if he’d ever so much as made out with someone. And in that moment, he found himself feeling envious of his friend’s easy, uncomplicated life.
As the day went on, he looked for Tabitha in the hallways between classes, but he didn’t have much hope. Something was going on, he knew, something relating to her father and the events of the previous night. Kids came down with stomach bugs and colds all the time, especially when the weather was as shitty as it had been. But Jared refused to allow himself to accept an illness as the cause of Tabitha’s absence. He’d kept her out too late, and then made things worse with the rock.
At lunch he returned to the table with Syd and Mike. He’d been eating with Tabitha every day since she arrived at their school. He knew he’d get shit from them for coming back, but he also wanted the company and the distraction from his constantly racing thoughts.
“The prodigal returns,” Mike said when Jared sat down. Mike was the best-looking friend Jared had. His hair was thick, his clothes always perfect. Mike liked to boast about the girls he’d been with, and if he had been anyone else, Jared would have doubted the stories. But Jared knew the way the girls in the school talked about Mike—as if he were a rock star, just stepped off the stage. Mike had moved to Hawks Mill in the second grade, and he and Syd and Jared had been a tight-knit group of friends ever since. “Your girl wasn’t in history today.”
“She’s sick or something,” Jared said.
“And you can’t text her or anything? Is this all because her dad’s so strict?”
“Yeah.” Jared tried to concentrate on the slice of pizza before him, but he wasn’t hungry.
“And you’ve never met the guy?” Mike’s voice was full of awe. “That’s unprecedented. You’re walking this girl home every day, messing around with her, and the guy doesn’t want to meet you and check you out.”
“He’s never been inside the house,” Syd said. “Never even in the yard.”
Jared wanted to curse at Syd. He told him things in homeroom he’d never tell Mike. But the floodgates were open. Jared was going to face the full force of Mike’s interrogation and wisdom.
“Is that for real?” he asked. “Never set foot in the yard? Is she ashamed of you?”
“Easy, Mike,” Syd said.
“What I mean is, her dad works, right? And where’s her mom?”
Jared tried to think of the right words. “Her mom’s . . . missing in action. They’re separated. I don’t think she knows where her mom lives. It’s kind of like she left them, I think.”
“Weird. Usually mothers don’t leave,” Syd said. “Fathers do.”
“She acts evasive about her mom, like there’s something else going on.”
“So you could be in that house every day after school,” Mike said. “When do you think all the good stuff happens? It’s in that time between school letting out and the time the parents get home from work. I call it the Magic Hour. I guess your mom works too, but she’s pretty smart. She’d know. Dads are clueless for the most part.”
“I brought her to my house yesterday,” Jared said, trying to lighten the mood. “My mom walked in on us.”
Both Mike’s and Syd’s eyebrows shot up.
Mike said, “In the middle of the act?”
“Starting down that road,” Jared said.
“Holy shit,” Syd said. “I wonder what Jenna’s face looked like when she saw that.”
Mike laughed and laughed, the food he was chewing on full display. Jared hadn’t planned on telling him anything, but the sharing of information made him feel more closely connected to his friends. It provided a sense of comfort and ease he hadn’t felt since he walked Tabitha home the night before.
“Mom was cool,” Jared said. “She really was. She has other stuff on her mind.”
“Oh, yeah,” Syd said. “She was on TV last night. My mom saw it. She dropped an f-bomb on Reena Huffman’s show.”
Mike laughed even more and asked Syd to find the clip on YouTube so he could watch it. Jared started eating, started feeling a little more normal. Maybe Tabitha was just sick. Maybe she needed a mental health day. His mom let him have those on occasion. He didn’t have to be sick and she’d let him stay home and mellow out in his room, so long as he promised to keep up with the work, which he always did.
“I swear,” Mike said, “your mom is so freaking cool. She makes my parents looks like the mom and dad on All in the Family.”
Jared remembered the dustup with his mom the night before, all of which came about because he’d tried to open up to her and then changed course in midstream. He never liked losing his cool with her. He understood the pressures she felt, and she’d already opened up to him about the shitty day she’d had. But he wished she’d just learn to read the signals, to know when to back off and let him be. She didn’t have to have the answer to everything all the time. Over breakfast that morning, they both behaved normally. Neither one mentioned the disagreement. They did that sometimes—let things go. He wished he could do that with Tabitha, just turn the page and go back to the way things were almost twenty-four hours earlier.
“Let me ask you guys something,” Jared said once the laughing and the jokes about his mom’s f-bomb settled down. “You know how Tabitha doesn’t really text and she has the strict curfew and all that, right?”
“Practically Amish,” Mike said.
“Exactly.” For a moment, Jared wondered if that was it. Were Tabitha and her father part of some Amish splinter sect? Was the strictness and lack of communication and even the kissing just a cultural or religious custom? “Have you ever Googled her?”
“Googled Tabitha?” Syd asked.
“Yes.”
“Why would I Google someone?” Mike asked.
Syd looked at him. “You don’t Google people? I Google a lot of people. Teachers, students. Not Tabitha, though. I looked for her on Twitter and Facebook once.”
“I don’t Google regular people,” Mike said. “Not kids I know. Not that I really know Tabitha.”
“Well, I have Googled her,” Jared said. “I know the town she came from in Florida and her middle name. I figure maybe there’d be something. You know, honor roll. Soccer team. School project.”
“Graduation lists,” Syd said. “They always print lists of graduates in every town, so when she finished junior high they might list her.”
“You think about this too much,” Mike said, looking at Syd from the corner of his eye.
“He’s right, Mike. There’s nothing. There are other Tabitha Burkes in the country. The name isn’t that unusual. But nothing about her. No social media, no school or sports stuff.”
Syd pulled his phone out and started typing with his thumbs. While he did that, Mike looked at Jared and said, “Maybe she didn’t do any activities. She seems pretty much like a recluse, don’t you agree? I guess she gets out with you a little. She doesn’t have any girlfriends.” He leaned forward, his hands folded on the tabletop. “To be honest, the other girls think she’s a little standoffish. You know? She’s pretty and all that, but she’s quiet. Maybe even aloof. She probably was like that at her old school.”
“You’re r
ight,” Syd said. “Nothing comes up. What’s her dad’s name? Maybe he shows up, and then you can at least know she didn’t just materialize out of thin air.”
Jared didn’t even know where her dad worked.
He was starting to realize how little he did know.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jenna vowed she’d have a better day.
Driving to work, she recited a list of all the things she intended to leave behind: the scene at the barn, the cursing on TV, the disagreement with Jared. And something else, some other lingering unpleasantness. Yes, the prank phone call. It all belonged to yesterday.
She scanned through the stations, checking for news. The man and the earring were mentioned on a local station, but they didn’t seem to know anything else. She’d called Detective Poole once before leaving the house and hung up when it went to voice mail again.
A great song came on the radio. “These Are Days” by 10,000 Maniacs. Yes, she needed to hear that. The sun was bright, the temperature slightly warmer. Soon it would be spring and then summer. Things had to get better, didn’t they?
Times like this, when she needed a pick-me-up, she didn’t pray or meditate. She talked to Celia. Sometimes she heard the conversations in her head, but sometimes, usually when she was alone in the house or the car, she’d say things out loud and wish she could once again hear Celia’s voice or her laugh.
“You would have liked the show I put on last night,” Jenna said.
She made sure to stop talking before she reached a traffic light. She didn’t want the people next to her—and in a town like Hawks Mill, it very well could be someone she knew—thinking she had totally lost her mind. But as she accelerated down the road, the music playing in the background, she told Celia all about the interview with Becky and the bleeped f-bomb on CNN.
“You’d have gotten a kick out of that one, C,” she said. “You would have shaken your head and laughed. You would have found the clip on the Web and shared it on social media. You would have had a good time at my expense, as usual.”
Celia always laughed at Jenna’s missteps, the things she said wrong, the times she messed up. But she almost always followed up with something more: a pat on the back, a smile, or a hug. “That’s our Jenna,” she used to say. “We love you for it all, babe.”
Jenna came to a light and felt emotion welling in her throat. Once she was moving, she pounded the steering wheel with the flat of her hand. “Where the fuck did you go, C? Where the fuck did you go?”
She didn’t let herself cry. She choked it all back, reminding herself once again that a new day had dawned. When she walked in to Hawks Mill Family Medicine, she saw Detective Poole waiting for her, and the whole notion of a new day went out the window.
• • •
Naomi Poole was about fifty-five. She wore her hair cut short and used the knuckle on her right index finger to push her owlish eyeglasses up the bridge of her nose every few minutes. She’d taken the lead on Celia’s case and had spent more hours than Jenna could remember asking questions and then more questions about Celia’s life and their plans on the night she disappeared. Jenna liked Naomi Poole and mostly trusted her, but couldn’t escape the feeling that the detective, as a consequence of her job, was always sizing Jenna up, sifting through every piece of information and reevaluating her. Jenna believed Naomi turned that critical eye on everyone she met.
“Hey, Jenna,” Naomi said, as casual as anything. She pushed the glasses up her nose. If someone didn’t know any better, they’d think Naomi and Jenna worked together, and the older woman was just greeting her at the start of another day. “I’m sorry to show up this way, but I needed to talk to you.”
Jenna knew the detective’s arrival wasn’t as casual as she’d made it seem. Naomi could have returned her call or could have texted. She’d done it before for smaller things about the case. She could have caught Jenna on her lunch break or even at home before she left. If there was one thing Jenna had learned since the night Celia disappeared, it was that detectives liked to talk to people on their own terms. They liked to decide the time and place of the conversation. They set the tone and the ground rules, even if it seemed that they weren’t. Jenna knew Naomi had something on her mind.
“Maybe we can sit on those benches over there?”
“Can I at least—”
Naomi smiled, the wise woman who had thought of everything in advance. “I already told them you’d be a few minutes late. They’re fine with it.”
They walked across the spacious lobby where everyone who entered the Medical Arts Building came in and studied the board to find out which floor their physician worked on. Functional, comfortable sofas and chairs ringed the perimeter of the room, and a security guard in a blue uniform sat at a desk, pretending not to be texting as patients started wandering in.
Naomi led Jenna to a sofa on the far side of the room, against a large window that allowed the morning light to stream in. Jenna placed her lunch and coat on the floor as the two women sat.
“What is the deal with this earring they found? And this guy? I’ve been going nuts and there’s no news about it.”
“We’re still piecing it together.”
It drove Jenna crazy that Naomi could be so calm and detached even in the midst of a crisis. Jenna knew it was part of her job to be cool, but would it kill her just once to be as riled up as Jenna was?
“Just tell me anything,” Jenna said.
“Yesterday a man went into Will’s Pawnshop, the one out on Hammond Pike? He tried to sell an earring. The clerk was on his game. He recognized it from the hot sheet and called us. A cruiser got there while the guy was still in the store. He claims he found the earring in a field on Western Avenue. He was out looking for aluminum cans and came across it in the grass. The snow had just started to melt. He says he’s heard about Celia’s case but didn’t put the two together when he found the earring.”
“Who is he, Naomi?” Jenna asked.
“His name is Benjamin Ludlow. He’s forty.”
“Benjamin Ludlow . . .” Something scratched below the surface of Jenna’s brain, something itching to get out.
“What is it?” Naomi asked.
“We went to high school with him.”
“I thought you might have. He’s a local guy, your age.”
“Jesus, Naomi. He’s a total creep. At least he was in high school. He was one of those guys who was always slinking around the corners of the building, leering at the girls but never actually talking to them. He scared us.” Jenna felt flushed. “Is he a suspect? Did he hurt Celia?”
“Everything’s on the table right now. This guy’s kind of rootless. Grew up here, as you know, and then served in the army. Moved around in the South and came back here about a year ago.” She stopped talking, but Jenna saw there was more.
“What is it?” she asked. “Don’t keep me hanging.”
“He has an arrest for sexual assault. It was ten years ago, and he served six months. This was down in Georgia.”
If Jenna’s hand hadn’t been resting against her thigh, it would have been shaking. She stared at the floor, the intricate pattern in the tile.
“Did he do it?” Jenna asked. “Did he hurt her?”
“He’s saying no. By the way, we’re trying to keep as much of this as possible out of the press until we’ve had a chance to look into this guy more. That’s why it’s so quiet this morning.”
“Do you believe him?” Jenna asked. “Naomi, he was a scary guy in high school, one of those guys you just assumed would end up in prison someday.”
“I’ve been a cop so long I don’t believe anybody. I’m sorry, Jenna, you’re going to have to be patient on this one. We just got this guy into our hands yesterday. I’ve barely filled Ian in on it.”
“I think I’m going to die being patient.”
“Have you seen him since
high school? Benjamin Ludlow?”
“Benny, everybody called him. And no, I haven’t seen him. If I saw him, I’d run the other way.” Jenna rubbed her temple. “What a week this is turning into.”
“I’m sorry about what happened yesterday,” Naomi said. She had a way of talking that made every word seem easy and natural. Nothing to be stressed about here. No crisis, no fears. Sure, we might have a suspect in custody, but it’s nothing to get worked up over. “I hope you know I never would have called you to that scene. None of our officers would have.”
“It was Becky McGee.”
“I know,” Naomi said. “She wanted a story, and she got one. Not the one she envisioned, but a story nonetheless.”
“I walked right into it. I should have stayed at work, but I couldn’t say no. I wondered . . . I wondered about it really being Celia. If it was, shouldn’t I be there and not leave her alone to be handled by a bunch of strangers?” Jenna studied Naomi’s face, evaluating her. “Is that morbid?”
“Not at all.” She reached over and patted Jenna on the knee. “It makes perfect sense.”
“You don’t have to apologize for a reporter’s behavior.”
“I have to ask you about something else.”
“Is this about Benny? Benjamin or whatever?”
Jenna wondered why she felt a different kind of guilt when a police officer wanted to ask her a question. It wasn’t the guilt she felt over Celia’s disappearance. That was a guilt she lived with every day, a duller ache, like a nagging cavity that sometimes—rarely—managed to slip below her consciousness.
But when a cop wanted to ask her something, she felt an acute sense of guilt, a feeling that the officer knew something about Jenna that she might not even understand herself.
“Not exactly,” Naomi said.
“Do I want to know what this is?” Jenna asked, the question slipping out of her mouth with an edge she hadn’t intended. It was the kind of quick, tart response that so often landed her in trouble.
Naomi studied her for a moment, a practiced pause that had the desired effect of putting Jenna back on her heels.