Midnight Lullaby

by James D F Hannah

  I told him I supposed not everyone could be his uncle. He laughed. “We should all be so fucking lucky."

  The station was an old, flat building with a half-dozen state cruisers flanked in the parking lot. Painted on the top glass half of his office door was "Jackson Hall, Lieutenant, West Virginia State Police." Jackie was behind his desk in an armless chair with two inches of him spilling out over each side, taking a bite out of a foot-long meatball sub as I walked in.

  He jerked forward as the door opened and a dollop of marinara dripped from the end of the sandwich onto his tie. He slapped the sandwich down on his desk and reached for a napkin.

  "Goddammit, Henry, you can't just let a man eat in peace?" He wiped at his tie, smearing sauce.

  I sat down in the visitor's chair. "I doubt anyone’s gonna start a canned food drive so you don’t waste away to nothing."

  Jackie tossed the napkin into the trash can next to his desk. "I know you didn't come here just to be an asshole, since you can do that anywhere. You talk to Mitch Fisher?"

  "I did."

  "You gonna do it?"

  "You think I've got anything to contribute to this that your guys haven't already?"

  He sucked up soda from a takeaway cup. "Man wants answers, and you can't fault a man for that. Him and his wife, those little girls, there’s gotta be something we can tell them at some point."

  "You can tell them the goddamn truth, which is that she's probably dead somewhere, and they can find those girls a good therapist and let 'em start spending the rest of their lives working their shit out. Happens all the time. News is filled with it, folks vanishing and never get found. It’s the reason Nancy Grace wakes up every morning."

  "That they do, and there's almost always someone somewhere wondering just what the fuck happened to them. No one wants to grow up not knowing what’s happened to their mama. You get this better than anyone, Henry."

  For a second, I debated coming out of the chair and using his sauce-stained tie to choke the fat asshole until his vision went black and he could answer the secrets of the universe. Most people who knew about my mother had the common decency to not play on that. Not Jackie, though.

  I opted to let him live, however, and instead I took out my pencil and notepad. "Tell me about Bobbi Fisher."

  "Not much to tell. Two kids. Works at that law place in town with the jingle in the TV ads."

  “McGinley and Kurt.”

  Jackie winked and shot me with his forefinger and thumb. “That’s the one.”

  "Don’t do that," I said. "You look like a douche. What about an ex-husband? Boyfriend?"

  "No husband. Kids' daddy went for a drive and never looked back. No boyfriend that anyone knows about."

  "She owe anyone money? Get along with her family? Was she into drugs?"

  He counted each off on his fingers. "No, yes, and no. Henry, do you not think any of this is stuff we didn't ask already?"

  "Well, fuck me running, Jackie. I just walked into this mess, and since reading minds isn't in my skill set, I might end up asking a question that's already been asked."

  Jackie opened a desk drawer and handed me a manila folder.

  "You keeping up with any of this?" he said.

  "Nope. Why should I?"

  "How the fuck are you not? It's all over every goddamn news broadcast and on the front page of the newspaper every day."

  "I let my paper subscription lapse. They print the comics too small, and 'Peanuts' is nothing but reruns, anyway."

  The file Jackie gave me was thin, consisting of the initial missing person report, transcripts of interviews, follow-up reports, and photographs of Bobbi Fisher. The photos were of her and her daughters at a Chuck E. Cheese, others with a group of women I guessed were co-workers, and another from what I presumed to be a family picnic, where I recognized Mitch Fisher.

  "What you're telling me," I said, “is that you've got nothing, and from this pile of sow's ears you want me to shit a silk purse."

  Jackie folded his hands together and rested his palms on the back on his head. It was chilly outside, it wasn’t much better inside, and Jackie still had geometrically perfect sweat circles underneath each arm. "You might be right, that you'd be better off sitting on your ass with your goddamn gimpy leg."

  I glanced up. "Antiperspirant, Jackie. Check into it."

  Jackie shot looks at his armpits and dropped his arms down onto his desk. His face flushed red. “Sweating is a sign of a healthy system.”

  "Then you’re Olympic-level, brother," I said. "And besides, someone has to show you assholes how to do some police work. It's obvious you don't have a clue what the hell you're doing."

  "We all can't be beautiful and brilliant like you, Henry." Jackie leaned back in his chair and the springs groaned in misery.

  I snapped a picture frame off the desk. Jackie and the family. "Family's looking fat and happy."

  "Mostly fat," he said. "Wife likes to make gravy, and she's good at it." He huffed a breath. "You ever talk to Maggie?"

  I handed him back the case folder. “Sometimes. She calls, or I call her.”

  Jackie nodded. I could tell he wasn't sure what to say.

  "The Fisher family, they don't have the money it'd take to get answers in all this," he said. “I thought you could at least tell them there's not going to be an answer."

  "Plenty of people go through life never getting answers. But why don't you tell me what you think happened."

  Jackie drank more soda. "There’s two options. First, that she shows up somewhere down south in a few months, working as a waitress at a truck stop, a stripper, some bullshit like that, because she had enough and snapped and couldn’t handle it anymore, whatever 'it' happened to be. Or the second, which is more likely, is that in four or five years, someone'll be clearing out a slab of mountainside, and there'll be a bunch of bones that turn up, and that’s what's gonna be left of Bobbi Fisher. We’ll kind of have an answer at that point, since it's not likely she drifted off into the hills and threw herself in a hole. But when that happens, it still won't answer the questions; we’ll just something to bury. Which I suppose was buried already, so irony." He threw his hands into the air. "That's just me, though, being a prick of a cop. Big fat cynical bastard."

  "You said she wasn't into anything suspicious."

  "That's just what people told us. And what's the first thing we both know about people?"

  "That they lie like motherfuckers,"

  "Exactly," he said.

  3

  It's not that I hate attorneys; it's just my experience with them is they’re scum-sucking bottom feeders who'd whore their mothers out for a quarter. A place like McGinley and Kurt would probably offer a stamped customer card for the experience.

  McGinley and Kurt was a franchised firm with offices in store fronts across the state. They specialized in Social Security and medical malpractice cases. If you drove on the interstate, you passed their billboards, imploring you to call so they could sue someone for you. Their commercials ran during the local news and were notorious for production values that would shame porn. But they had a jingle, and it was only slightly less catchy than cholera:

  "We’re there for you, we’re by your side/You’re not alone, we’re along for the ride;

  "So if you get injured, if you've been hurt/Just pick up the phone and call McGinley and Kurt."

  It made you want to die every time you heard it.

  The main offices were in a Civil War-era two-story with Greek pillars and a balcony. Wilson McGinley's office was at the end of the second-story hallway, just off a spiral staircase I expected Scarlett O'Hara to descend from. McGinley sat on the opposite side of a desk a fraction smaller than a hockey rink.

  I was wearing a sports coat from the back of my closet, throwing it on over a blue button-down from Goodwill and the best blue jeans I had. There hadn't been time to run by the barber college to get a haircut; McGinley had agreed to meet me that day after I'd called to set up an appointmen
t. I kept brushing back the hair that hung over the tops of my ears.

  McGinley smiled at me as he ran chunky fingers across the polished surface of the desk. He was late 60s, thick in the middle, wearing a suit that hadn't been in style when he'd bought it at Sears 20 years earlier. McGinley was the official commercial spokesman for the firm, the smiling face that appeared in 30-second intervals across the area. He needed to stop coloring his hair with cheap product; it gave his hair a purple tint to it that made him seem alien.

  "I can't say I'm familiar with your name, Mr. Malone," he said. "We work with most investigative firms in this area, and throughout the state, and your name isn't one that—"

  "I'm not with an agency," I said.

  He arched his eyebrows. It took a lot of work, but he finally got the flesh around his forehead to move. "Oh, so you're freelance?"

  "Not really. I'm looking into Ms. Fisher's disappearance as a favor for her brother."

  "I see," he said, resting his hands on his gut. "Then you have a background in this sort of thing, I would presume."

  I chewed on the inside of my cheek. "I was a state police trooper."

  "Ah. Well, to be honest, I'm not sure there's much that we can answer now we couldn't answer … it's been what, a month now?"

  "More than two months."

  McGinley sat back in his chair. Getting relaxed and comfortable. Little shit-eating smile on his face. He was preparing to pass on some learned knowledge and shit. Man, but I wanted to punch the old coot.

  "Mr. Malone, it’s my experience that, for many women who come to work here, life is very—" He lifted his head and looked skyward. “Transitory, I suppose is the right word. Some of these ladies, well, not to sound harsh, but they find something that seems like a better offer, and they leave, and they don’t always offer the courtesy of giving goodbyes.”

  “Bobbi Fisher has two daughters. She doesn't seem the type who would up and walk away from that.”

  McKinley laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. “Your optimism is charming, Mr. Malone, and maybe I've spent too many years seeing the worst in people, but with what I know of the world, a woman will sell her children out in a heartbeat if she sees something with a big enough dick or a big enough wallet.”

  I leaned forward until I could rest my forearms on the desk surface, pushing back the wood-and-brass “Wilson McGinley” nameplate, the heavy antique desk lamp, the desk calendar with nothing written on it, even the pencil holder, scooting them all back and making sure they made a scratching sound. It cut fresh grooves into the desktop.

  "I appreciate that, Mr. McGinley," I said with a smile, "but I'd still like to talk about Bobbi Fisher."

  McGinley looked like he'd just smelled a fart, and his eyes went to the size of pie plates. "You mind not doing that to my desk? It’s two hundred years old, and I've spent a sizable amount of money restoring it."

  "Oh, well, excuse the hell out of me," I said, settling into the chair.

  McGinley stretched across the desk and pushed everything back into place, got back into his seat. He brushed imaginary crumbs off of the front of his suit and said, "Ms. Fisher’s work was secretarial, and that was with different associates. I can’t speak personally about her. I knew her if I saw her in the halls, said hi to her, but we weren't exchanging Christmas cards. The office cards, yes, but nothing personal."

  I took my notebook and mechanical pencil out of my jacket. "Which attorneys worked with Bobbi?"

  "I'll have you talk to Doria Newland," he said. "She's the head of administrative services, so she's the person who can tell you the most about Ms. Fisher."

  I wrote the name down and slipped the notebook back into my jacket pocket. “If you didn’t know Bobbi, why did you even agree to talk to me? Why not just refer me to this Doria Newland to start with?”

  He bored holes through me with hooded eyes. “It was what they term ‘professional courtesy,’ which you would understand if you behaved like a professional, Mr. Malone.” He pushed his chair away from his desk, rising to his feet.

  "Funny," I said. "You look taller on TV."

  He flashed a smile that reeked of impatience and came around the desk. It was clear it was my time to go. He walked me to his office door, opened it, and motioned me out.

  "I hope the best in finding Ms. Fisher," he said. He didn't offer to shake my hand, and the door closed in my face. I turned to look at his secretary, a gum-chewing Millennial playing "Candy Crush" on her computer.

  "I did think he'd be taller," I said to her. She clicked her mouse and obliterated a line of jelly beans without looking at me.

  4

  I expected Doria Newland to look like Ms. Hathaway from "The Beverly Hillbillies." That was the only point of reference I had for someone running a secretarial pool: a spinster bulldog in polyester with a stick not just shoved up her ass, but flipped sideways for emphasis.

  Doria Newland was outside, sitting in one of the rocking chairs set across the wide back porch. The temperature was moderate, hanging in the forties, but with all the moisture sucked from the air, every breath you drew was as raw and dry as sand. You'd have mistaken it for October except for the yellowed paper Santa Clauses in the windows. That, and that goddamned Dan Fogelberg song.

  Doria took a deep pull off of a Marlboro Light as I came around the corner of the building. She was on the far end of her 30s, dirty blonde hair streaked with gray and pulled into a loose ponytail, wearing an oversized cardigan and a T-shirt and dark skinny jeans that couldn’t hide her curves. She glanced over at me and knocked a little ash off her cigarette and said, "Can I help you?"

  "Only if you're Doria Newland," I said as I stepped up the porch stairs.

  "You're in luck." She took a last draw off the cigarette, crushed it out on the porch floor and flicked it into the grass with her foot. "What can I do for you?"

  Her expression never changed as I explained everything, just nodding and mumbling "mmm-hmmm." When I finished, she fished a pack of cigarettes from her purse and lit a fresh one.

  "You plan on finding her?" she said as she blew smoke through pursed lips.

  "I plan on looking for answers."

  She smiled. Tiny lines formed around the corners of her eyes. "That's good. That's like what the assholes here tell you to say on the stand. Gives a response that satisfies the question without answering it. A commitment that makes you sound real noncommittal."

  "I'm new eyes, that's all," I said. "Mind if I have a seat?"

  "I'm not likely to stop you."

  I sat down in the rocking chair next to hers.

  "So, Doria, what d'you think of Bobbi?" I said.

  Doria exhaled smoke, stretching her neck out in the action. She had a long, thin throat, with tiny white streaks that hadn’t gotten dark from the tanning bed.

  "She was a nice enough kid. Had maybe a year of community college behind her when she got here. She was smart, though, and she worked hard." Doria paused for a moment. "'Smart' might be generous here."

  "Why do you say that?"

  She chewed on her bottom lip. It was a very nice bottom lip. "It wasn't that she was dumb. 'Naïve' is closer to the truth." She sighed. "I didn't say anything to the cops the first time around, because I hoped they might find her alive, but that doesn't seem to be a realistic expectation anymore."

  I shrugged. "I'd think finding her regardless would be preferable to not finding her."

  "I guess it would be. Anyway, Bobbi, she walked in here, had lots of enthusiasm, was a hard worker. All of that cliched bullshit people always give when they talk about someone like her, well, it was all true with her. Did the long hours, the working on weekends, never complaining, always smiling, and she always did it like a professional. I never once had an issue with her work ethic."

  "I'm sensing that there's a 'but' coming with this."

  "But—" She stretched the word out to a couple of syllables and smiled. "—she was young, and single, and she said she'd been in some bad relationships, and I
think she felt like a lot of these girls still looking for that white knight who'll come along and save them."

  "Was there someone here offering to ride up and save her?"

  Doria put her hands on her calves and pushed herself up. "Sometimes, Mr. Malone, you know when you’ve already said too much before you’ve said much of anything. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to get done."

  I stepped in front of her as she turned toward the door back inside. She bristled slightly, drawing her body back, coiling tense, as the door opened. A youngish guy, looking firm underneath his gray suit and holding a cigarette and lighter, stood and looked at me. To Doria, he said, "Everything good here?"

  She glanced at me. I took a step back.

  To the guy, she said, "Yeah, everything's fine. Give us a few?"

  The guy’s expression said he was trying to figure out if he could kick my ass. The answer was probably yes.

  Doria smiled at him. "It's good, Scott. I promise."

  He shrugged and said, "Whatever. My lungs will be grateful for the reprieve." He tucked the cigarette and lighter into his jacket pocket and stepped back inside, closing the door behind him.

  I took another step back, put more space between us. "I'm just trying to find two little girls' mother," I said. "I'm not gonna make your life difficult, but I will be super appreciative if you can tell me anything that might help me find Bobbi."

  She chewed her lip more. It was a distracting habit, more for me than her. "Not here," she said. "Tonight. You know Marlowe's?"

  I did. It was a dive joint stuck in the corner of an ancient strip mall, nothing left to the thing but a call center, a Laundromat, an everything-for-a-dollar store, and the bar.

  "I'll be there about 10," she said. "See you there."

  She moved past me, brushing her arm along mine and smiling before disappearing inside.

  5

  Izzy needed to piss, so I walked out with her, watching her tear her way across the yard, stopping to sniff and squat and leave her mark and repeat the process enough times that I wondered how much urine one dog could contain. When said dog is the size of a bull moose, it's a lot.