The Flats

by Kate Birdsall

  “We’re sorry for all of the questions, and we know that you already gave a report to Missing Persons. We’re just trying to cover all of our bases,” Goran replies. “Do you mind if Detective Boyle takes a look around while I ask just a few more questions?”

  “Fine,” Peter says. “The police already searched the house when Kevin went missing, but that’s fine.”

  Teresa looks a bit calmer, so I pull a business card out of my wallet and write two phone numbers on the back. I hold it out to her. “Here’s my card. My cell phone number is on the back, along with the number for the Hope Foundation. They help people who have lost a family member.” People who have lost a family member to violent crime.

  She takes it and clenches it in her fist without looking at it.

  “You should call them. Talk to someone. I know it doesn’t seem real right now, but you’re going to need to talk to someone.”

  “Please just go search or look around or whatever you’re going to do,” she says. “I have a birthday party to plan.”

  Pulling on a pair of latex gloves, I head upstairs while Goran continues to question them, no doubt about their alibis, Kevin’s routine, and whether they’ve had any visitors lately.

  I start with the bathroom, which is the first door on the right. There’s nothing in there of note, other than a bottle of erectile dysfunction pills behind the Children’s Tylenol.

  Their bedroom is similar in its simplicity. It’s furnished in a minimalist style, with nothing lying around. I even look under the bed. Nothing. The closet has clothes and shoes in it. I can’t really dig through their drawers while they’re downstairs in shock, but I’m not getting the sense that they’re hiding anything in here, anyway.

  The study has two desks with a laptop computer on each and a truckload of books divided by academic discipline. A wireless modem and some file folders sit on top of one bookshelf. Nothing sinister as far as my eye can see. In the closet is one of those document safes. It’s unlocked, so I take a look inside. Deeds for their house and car, passports, about two thousand bucks in cash, and what looks like a key for a safe-deposit box.

  Nothing is out of the ordinary. There’s no massive porn stash or box of sex toys, no weird keepsakes or collections, no signs of any hobbies. Even the artwork is bland, department store stuff, other than the hunting prints in the living room. If someone searched my apartment, in about five minutes, he or she would find out all kinds of things about me and what I like.

  Kevin’s room is decorated in a typical little-kid motif. One wall has owl decals on it, and the others are light green and plastered with the boy’s artwork. Most of his pictures are labeled or at least recognizable, with the kid and his parents, or the kid and his grandparents, or some combination of the same. A woman with yellow hair, probably a teacher or aunt, appears in a couple of the pictures. Everyone smiles in U’s with big dimples at the ends.

  His bedspread has cartoon trains on it. Against one wall is a shelf with a menagerie of stuffed animals and an assortment of books. A couple of what look like well-loved animals—a gray dog and a brown camel, their fur matted and worn in sections—lie on the bed.

  He has a lot of books. I’d be willing to bet they read to him every night before he went to sleep. If I had a kid, I’d do the same thing. That kind of stuff matters.

  In the closet are a variety of board games, coloring books, and some clothes. Stackable bins hold his socks and underwear. Just inside the bedroom door is a white-noise machine like the kind therapists keep outside their doors.

  The bed is made, and the window is locked from the inside. I see no signs of foul play. I glance at the dog and the camel, careful not to think too much about my own stuffed dog from when I was a kid and the fact that I couldn’t quite love him the same way after my sister died.

  On the nightstand, next to a book about a cat who goes hiking and gets lost in the woods but is ultimately found, is one of those old-school magic lamps, the kind where the lampshade rotates and casts light in the shadows on the walls at night.

  I go downstairs to rejoin the grim living room scene. Peter and Goran are still seated, but Teresa has moved into another phase of shock that some people experience, one in which she rambles about a variety of things, seemingly all at once. She’s over by the mantel, looking at the pictures and mumbling something about knowing better than to let Peter’s parents keep Kevin so often. She says, “It’s my fault” a couple of times. She tries to tell us all about the birthday party they’re planning. There’s going to be a magician who can make balloon animals, and she mentions how adorable it is that Kevin loves animals so much. She keeps the verbs in the present tense, as though he’s still alive and will be in attendance. They’ve been discussing the possibility of getting a cat or a dog for his birthday present.

  Sometimes people talk just so we won’t leave. Once we leave, there’s nothing to fill the silence, and they’re left with the reality that something unspeakable has happened to their loved one. They’re left to sit and stare at each other, to figure out what to do about dinner and funeral arrangements and to wonder how on earth something so horrible could happen to them.

  “Thanks for letting me take a look around,” I say. “Is there anyone we can call for you? A friend, a neighbor? Maybe some company would be good.” I’m going off script again, prompted as much by my own memories as I am by their shock and agony.

  “No, no,” she says, using a finger to trace the shelf of the mantel. “I’m just going to make something to eat and take a little nap. Kevin will be home soon. We’ll be fine.”

  I glance over at Peter, who is staring out the front window. You won’t be fine. You’ll never be fine again. Goran stands and, catching my eye, gives a little nod.

  I move over to the front door. “Please call us if you think of anything. Anything at all. Day or night. Give me a call.” I point at my card, which she’s left on the mantel.

  “Okay,” Peter replies, getting to his feet. “Thank you.”

  “Goodbye, Elizabeth,” Teresa says as Goran and I file through the front door.

  I let Goran go first so he can’t see my face. At the car, I glance back at the house, but the Whittles aren’t at the door or windows. I drop into my seat with a sigh.

  Goran climbs behind the wheel, starts the engine, and belts up. “All right, so if he was with the grandparents when he went missing, then—hey, are you all right?”

  “Not really.” I meet his eyes. “No, not really.”

  “Look, Liz—”

  “No, Tom.”

  “It’s not—”

  “No, Tom.”

  He shakes his head and pulls out of the driveway.

  “We need to get surveillance footage from every single fucking place down there,” I mutter. “Maybe we’ll get footage of the body drop. And we have to talk to the grandparents.”

  The good news, obtained by Goran while I was upstairs, is that both parents have an alibi that’s easy to verify. On Thursday night, Peter and Teresa had friends over to talk about how to find Kevin. Goran got the friends’ phone number, so I decide to get that out of the way. A woman, Joan, answers when I call. I get her information and ask her a few questions. She confirms the time she and her husband spent with the Whittles on the night in question then goes off on a tearful diatribe about how terrible all of this is.

  When I’m finally able to make a polite excuse and hang up, I call my friend Cassie at the Hope Foundation. I give her the Whittles’ information and tell her what happened to Kevin.

  “Oh, that’s horrible,” she says. “I’ll get someone over there today.”

  “Thanks, Cassie. Say hi to Greg for me.” I hang up as Goran makes a left turn to cut through a much different neighborhood, one left behind in the gentrification boom of a couple of years back. The houses are large and used to be majestic, but most have fallen into disrepair. Some are boa
rded up, and others have been converted into four, six, or eight apartments each.

  We drive the rest of the twenty minutes to Brian Little’s house in silence.

  Chapter Five

  We pull up in front of a navy-blue Cape Cod in an area where the factory workers used to live back when the steel mills were going full force, a place where people once let their kids ride bikes in the street, mostly unsupervised, while they waxed their American-made cars in their driveways. It’s still solidly middle class, but the demographics have shifted to include more people of color, something a lot of the older residents resent.

  We get out of the car and make our way up a narrow sidewalk. I eyeball the landscaping, which used to be nice but has become overgrown. On the porch is a set of chairs and a table, the kind many Clevelanders store in basements or garages during the winter. A layer of fine dust—my dad used to call it “winter dirt”—covers each piece.

  Goran knocks on the door while I peer inside a window to the right. What’s left of the furniture is covered in sheets and towels. Stacks of boxes and papers sit in the middle of the living room. Shit, he’s in the wind.

  “It looks like nobody’s been here for a while. Stuff is all over the place. No lights on.”

  “Are you sure this is the address?” Goran asks. He points at the mailbox, which has a “vacant” tag affixed to it.

  “Yeah. I’m gonna check around back, look to see if the electric meter is running.” I turn to head down the porch steps.

  “Can I help you?” an elderly woman calls from the end of the gravel driveway next door.

  “Ma’am, we’re Cleveland police,” I say as she totters toward us and up the front walk. She looks as though she could use a cane or a walker.

  “Well, I’d like to see some identification, please.” She sets her mouth into a haughty little pout. She’s got to be close to ninety.

  I pull my police ID out of my pocket and hand it to her. She studies it then gives it back and looks at Goran expectantly until he does the same.

  “What could the police possibly be doing here? And homicide detectives, at that.” She tut-tuts. “This is a very nice neighborhood, you know.” She makes herself comfortable on one of the porch chairs. “At least it was before the undesirables moved in.” She tips her head at an African-American man vacuuming his car across the street. “My name is Mary Parsalite.”

  “We’re looking for Brian Little.” I realize there’s an edge to my voice. Racism doesn’t sit well with me. But I need the information, so I soften my tone. “Does he live here?”

  A pensive expression crosses her face, and she looks back and forth between Goran and me. “No, I’m sorry. Brian passed away last year. It was so sad. He was such a nice man. Brian used to mow my lawn. It’s just so terrible what happened to him. Such a nice young man.” She adjusts one of her knee-high stockings. Her ankles look swollen.

  “Can you tell us what happened to Brian?” Goran asks.

  “Oh, he was in a motorcycle accident a few months ago, right before Thanksgiving, I think it was. Back when we had that stretch of warm weather? That was so strange for November, wasn’t it?”

  Goran nods.

  “Brian flew fifty feet into the air when a tanker truck hit him. Died on the spot, right there in the road. No funeral, either. It was so sad. Too bad he didn’t have any family that cared. They could have gotten a nice settlement.”

  “So the house has been vacant all this time?”

  “Well, I think Brian had money, what with all the improvements he was always making to the house. And the yard! You should have seen it before. He’d dress up and go to work every day in a nice suit and then come home, change clothes, and get right to work. He used to get me groceries sometimes, too. And he had those motorcycles—dangerous machines, those are. It’s so sad that he died like that. I couldn’t believe it. At least it was quick, I suppose. Lingering is worse, isn’t it? My friend’s sister just died of some kind of rare blood cancer. It took her four years. Four years! They did everything they could, but it was one of those cases even the doctors—and they’re smart doctors, over there at the clinic—couldn’t figure out.” She picks at something that’s stuck to the table and readjusts herself in her seat.

  “Did Brian have any family at all?” I ask.

  “No, just some lady friends that would come over from time to time, but I guess that’s a young man’s prerogative.” She shakes her head in a disapproving sort of way then squints at a point off in the distance. “Now that I think of it, he might have had a sister. Yes, he did. But she lives out west somewhere, maybe Colorado or California? One of those C states. Bunch of liberal hippies out there, you ask me. That sister of his probably does drugs. That’s why she never visited.”

  I kind of want to shake her, but she’s old and obviously doesn’t have anyone else to yammer on to. “And no one is living here now?”

  “No, I already said that, didn’t I? Ha-ha. My memory isn’t what it used to be. Now that I think of it, there was maybe a realtor or something here not long ago, but it’s been quiet. Not sure what happened to Brian’s cat. Maybe Betsy down the street took it in. Lord knows she loves cats. She has to have six, maybe eight or ten by now. I can’t even imagine what her place must smell like. Cats, they like to pee on things, and she doesn’t let ’em outside.” She lowers her voice and tilts her head toward the neighbor, who’s winding up the cord to his Shop-Vac. “I wouldn’t either, not anymore.”

  Goran quickly thanks her for her time, probably to keep me from explaining the finer points of being more tolerant. But she rattles on for at least five more minutes about the neighborhood, Brian Little, her late husband—who had been a steelworker—how the world has gone to hell in a handbasket, and why motorcycles should be illegal. I get antsy and shift my weight from foot to foot.

  “I can see that you have other work to do,” she finally says, “but feel free to stop by anytime if you have any updates.”

  Updates on what? I’m glad, not for the first time since I’ve been partnered with him, that Goran is good at seeming patient and kind because I can’t deal with this woman right now.

  “Well, that was a bust,” I say once we’re back in the car.

  Goran grins. “What, you didn’t appreciate her opinions? C’mon, Liz, the sister is probably on drugs because she lives in a C state. Give the old gal some credit.” He hits the left-turn signal at the stop sign. “Listen, it’s noon already. I know you haven’t slept enough ’cause I know you, and I’m beat, myself. We need to sleep.” He makes the turn.

  I grin at him. “Didn’t you sleep a couple of nights ago?”

  “I wish, but no, I was up almost all night with Hannah, who’s sick again.”

  I shrink away from him and make a face. “What does she have?”

  “The flu. The same flu we all had three weeks ago. She’s late to the party.”

  I shudder. “That flu was nothing to fuck with.”

  “Look, Sean Miller is due into the station at four. We’re crap if we’re zombies. We can at least catch a couple of hours. You know I’m right.” He glances over at me as though he expects a battle, as if I don’t need to sleep just like everybody else.

  “Yeah, we all know about how well trying to sleep in the middle of the day usually goes,” I grumble.

  I park my Passat in the parking lot behind my building, but after getting out, I traipse down the driveway to the front door. I always go through the front because the back stairs feel as if they’re about to cave in. The door has been spray painted with some kind of vowelless word. In spite of my exhaustion, I take the stairs two at a time, catching my own eye in the ancient, blackening mirror on the first landing. I avoid the mirrors on the next two.

  I move down the hallway to 3D, last door on the right. Almost fifteen years ago, I was thrilled to get the east-facing apartment with three bay windows in the
spacious living room. I’d been through my first bad breakup and needed light, and the way the sun hits the gray walls and the light oak woodwork in the morning is perfect. Between that, the hardwood floors, the giant bathroom, and the thick walls that meant I could blast music at all hours, I’d signed the lease on the spot. The couch and a couple of armchairs surround three sides of an oak coffee table and face a smallish flat-screen TV that sits between built-in bookcases that hold my Bose stereo, iPod, and, well, books. Even with all those standard living-room furnishings, there’s still plenty of space for my three guitars and very loud amplifier in the far corner next to the bookcase.

  I dead bolt the door and draw the chain then drop my gear on the couch next to Ivan the Terrible—or Ivan the Great, depending on what he’s up to—who is fast asleep and oblivious to my presence.

  “Privet, Ivan,” I say. It’s the only Russian I know.

  He opens one yellow eye then yawns before going back to sleep. Not all of us are inveterate insomniacs.

  I tidy the kitchen and dump some food into Ivan’s bowl. Shit, I forgot to buy cat food. I make yet another mental note to do so later. Back in the living room, I flick on the TV. The afternoon news is on, and they’re still covering “the tragic story of the shocking murder of a local boy.” I mute it and hope they don’t release details they shouldn’t.

  I notice that my answering machine light—I still have a landline because I refuse to give my mother my cell number—is blinking. Caller ID says my brother called yesterday, and Mom called this morning.

  I hit the button. The first message is just a dial tone because Christopher isn’t one for leaving voicemails. The second starts with static on the line, then my mother says, “Lizbeth, please call me when you get this. Nothing urgent, just a quick question.” Her voice sounds clearer, more with-it, than usual.