When He Vanished

by T. J. Brearton

  The corkscrew is buried in a kitchen drawer. After uncorking, I pour us each about half a glass and raise mine. My hand is trembling a little as I speak. “A toast to John — that he’s okay. That he comes back to us soon.” I don’t know why I even say it. I feel outside of my body, like I’m watching a stranger from the corner of the room.

  “Amen,” Karen says. We both take a drink. “I’m not sure you’ll like this brand. I’m not much of a sommelier.”

  I can’t really taste anything. “It’s good.”

  I realize what’s happening: despite the tenderness I feel toward John and the deep desire for his return and for my once normal life, there’s that part of me, a survivor, a person who knows how to move on, how to start over when things go wrong. She’s emerging.

  My phone shudders on the counter and I check the number. “Karen, shit, I have to take this. Ridley? Hi, everything all right?”

  “Jane,” Ridley says. “How much do you know about your finances?”

  Glancing at Karen, I walk a few steps away. “John does the books. I get a W-2, not much to it. But he has to file a bunch of different forms. Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Have you looked at the numbers?”

  “Not lately, no.”

  “According to your tax returns, John’s royalties from book writing have been on a steady decline. Last year he claimed $13,000 from writing. You pulled in much more. Do you and your husband pool your money?”

  “We have a joint savings account. It still has some of our wedding money in there from nearly ten years ago, I think.” I really wish I’d checked that account more recently.

  “Well if you’re not pooling your money, you’re spending your own money on whatever you need?”

  “I have things I pay for and things that come out of my paychecks. John pays the mortgage and utilities . . .”

  I went through the mail the other day in a daze. There was something from the electric company that might’ve said Urgent on the envelope. I look for the pile, feeling Karen’s eyes on me.

  “I’ve been able to check into his bank account,” Ridley says. “First, there’s been no recent withdrawal on his debit cards. That was the first thing we wanted to look at — see if we could trace a withdrawal to a certain bank or ATM. There’s nothing on the credit card, either, and no online purchases. So I don’t know what he was living on then and if he’s . . . nor what he could be using for money right now.”

  She was about to say if he’s alive. Maybe that’s what John wants. To be untraceable, lost, with no paper trail to follow, no use of digital money, looking like he’s dead.

  “Unless he has access to your account. But I’m not seeing that.”

  “He doesn’t. They’re separate.”

  “Okay, well . . . the subpoena came through and there have been no big cash withdrawals prior to his disappearance. Not that there was much to draw from.”

  “How much is in there?”

  “In all three accounts — personal, business, and joint — there’s a combined total of nine hundred and forty-six dollars. The last transaction was the debit card used five days ago for seventy-seven dollars and forty-two cents. Looks like a restaurant?”

  “That was our date.”

  “Sorry?”

  “We went out on a dinner date. That’s the night we saw the SUV.”

  “Oh right. Okay. I have that in the timeline.” She exhales loudly. “He could have gotten a credit card since then and be living on that.”

  The shock of it feels cold, numbing. We’ve never been money-driven people but this is stupefying. I usually have a rough figure in my head: a touch over twenty grand in savings. But it sounds like John has been using it to pay the mortgage and other bills. He’s been buying groceries, getting gas, even paying for Melody’s bi-weekly piano lessons. And then, apparently, he ran out. Or, came close — running on fumes. Just under a grand in the bank now, according to Ridley. Peanuts.

  “Does he have any other bank accounts?” I ask.

  “I haven’t been able to find any. Just yours, with Fidelity Trust. You have six thousand, one hundred and fourteen dollars.”

  While John’s been the one tending the nest egg, I’ve managed to squirrel a little away. Growing up with a mother living paycheck to paycheck, marrying a man whose future finances were uncertain, I took precautions. But it’s not much. I’m burning through both my sick time and personal time. Unless I go back to work soon, the money supply shuts off. Six grand will last me a month, maybe two if I stretch every dollar.

  “Does John have any wealthy relatives?”

  “No.”

  “How about his father?”

  “Frank and Delores live on his pension, which isn’t much.”

  The more I think about it, the more I realize how in the dark I’ve been. For one thing, I’d thought Edge of Night had been more of a success. But since John’s crime series wound down, nothing has hit big. It shouldn’t be surprising, either; the average annual income of a fiction writer is something like $8000. Maybe I’ve taken certain things for granted.

  What has he been doing all day when I’m at work and after he feeds the kids and puts them to bed? When I’m home, and he’s enclosed in his study? Occasionally I’ll pause outside his door, listen for the tapping of keys. Sometimes I’ll hear them, lately not so much. He’ll go out for a bit — “I’m just going to stretch my legs, see if I can work a few things out.” What’s he been up to? Or is this just more paranoia filling a vacuum of answers?

  I tell Ridley about getting a cell pic of the SUV sitting up the road from my house. She’ll see what she can do with it, she says. We hang up.

  Karen has obviously overheard my end of the conversation about finances and put the rest together. She’s looking grim, her head down as she stares into the wine glass and rotates it by the stem. I share Ridley’s half of the conversation with her and Karen flicks little looks at me, nods, then finishes her wine.

  She wipes the corner of her mouth with a thumb and fixes me with a look.

  “I have to tell you something.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN / TROUBLING REVELATIONS

  “Karen? What?”

  Karen exudes a certain tension as she looks into her wine glass.

  “Honestly? It upset me a little bit. I know we don’t spend a lot of time together — I think we’ve talked more in the past couple of days than in the past three years.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be . . .”

  She shakes her head and looks at me. “No, you don’t have to say anything. I understand what it’s like. Believe me. Matt and I see people coming in to the community. And it can be a little . . .”

  “Provincial?”

  “We’re not the most well-off county in the state, right? I think there’s some pride. It’s hard.”

  Karen looks ready to choke on what she wants to say.

  “Karen . . .”

  “I hate gossip.”

  I have to stop myself from taking her by the shoulders and shaking it out of her. “What is it? Karen. Is it about . . . this?”

  There’s a spark in her eyes. “People have seen him.”

  “What do you mean?” I worry the kids might overhear me and lower my tone. “They’ve seen him? Where?”

  “I don’t . . . I’m sorry — I don’t mean now. I mean before.”

  “Okay, so people have seen him. I don’t understand.”

  “Walking around, talking on his phone, acting upset.”

  “Who? Who’s seen him? Where?”

  “Amy Dugan, for one. She lives on Grant Street, by the river.”

  Everything is jumbled together and for a few seconds I feel disassociated again, like I’m not even me, but slipped into this life by accident. The feeling passes and I remember my life, family routines. “John walks by the river sometimes — when he’s writing and he needs to think, get some exercise. Sometimes he comes by the hospital and says hi to me if I’m available. Amy Dugan talked to you about s
eeing John?”

  He loves you . . .

  Karen still acts like she’s got a secret she can’t digest. Her face twists with the telling. “Seeing him, hearing him — he was sort of . . . Amy says he was yelling and swearing. And someone else, you know, someone else saw him, too. Darby Trestle lives in the—”

  “Yelling and swearing?”

  “Upset. He seemed upset, she said.”

  “I know Darby. I know where she lives.”

  “She told me about it — Darby — when we had the kids together. She saw him on a separate occasion, and he seemed just as distraught. And now you mention this thing with work, and the money thing, it makes sense maybe. That he was talking with this guy, his agent, right? And he’s just been . . .”

  Bruce’s comments come to mind. That John was agitated, afraid. That he thought someone was watching him. It has to be the people in the SUV. Bookies or something? People he owes money to? Karen is right: I need to check it out.

  “His agent says they haven’t talked,” I tell her.

  She’s looking down again, not really listening, and then our eyes connect.

  “I think it’s hard for men today,” she says. “That’s not making excuses. It’s not that. But a lot has changed, right? I mean they’re good things. More women in higher education, more jobs. There’s still a pay gap, there’s still harassment, but sometimes I think we forget how far we’ve come.”

  I bite my tongue, knowing that to the privileged, equality can feel like oppression. John has never whined, though. He’s always seemed to fit as a domestic man working from home, unthreatened by my salary. If anything, I’d thought at one point his masculinity could have been threatened by Bruce Barnes. That’s usually how it goes: men getting themselves into trouble over ideas of strength and honor.

  “They have an instinct that doesn’t just go away,” Karen says. “They want to provide. I think their self-worth is attached to it. I hope I’m not offending you.”

  “No.”

  “But I believe you’ve got millions of years of evolution shaping men to be competitive, to take what they want. We’re the gatherers. They’re the hunters.”

  Better just to let her talk.

  “But like I said, I’m not making excuses for any behavior — you have to get with the times. I’m just saying . . . well, it’s something to look at.”

  Maybe. Maybe I’ve been wrong about John and he feels secretly oppressed, or at least underperforming as a provider. Then again, if he’s kept his financial troubles a secret, then I guess there’s no maybe about it.

  A sense of betrayal slides through my heart like a length of lead pipe — John’s been lying to me. Not directly, but by neglecting to communicate with me. By keeping it all to himself, bottling it up, he’s been letting me believe we’re okay. I might have a role to play; when you have happiness, you want to keep it. That might mean not looking at things too closely — like your husband’s secret misery and financial fears. So what has he gotten himself into? Has he been trying to make money in some other way?

  “What about you?” I ask Karen. “What about Matt? Do you think he’s content?”

  “He’s got a — you know, he has a—”

  “A man’s job?”

  “That’s not what I was gonna say.”

  “It’s okay. It follows from what you’re saying. I mean, does he seem happy?”

  She doesn’t answer. It’s an intimate question. Maybe I’ve asked too much.

  Her voice lowers. “Let’s just say I’ve found out a few things, over the years. But all around, yeah, he gets to drive his car fast and carry a gun.”

  John’s not like that. Or am I kidding myself? Maybe he needs to conquer and compete and I’ve just been fooling myself it could ever be any different.

  For the first time, I taste bitterness. I’ve been angry, I’ve been afraid for John — he’s been on my mind every second since I found him gone. But I’m a little sick of being so preoccupied. It’s selfish, but I’m just drained. The sleepless nights and all these endless worries and theories and being under the police microscope — skepticism, implications, questioning my own sanity. Now a woman from our community is talking to me about how boys just need to be boys, how men, at their core, are independent souls only tolerant of their modern trappings because they don’t know what else to do.

  John made his choices and withheld things from me. Either he’s been secretly drinking and planning his escape or he’s in trouble — with the law or someone else. Either way, it’s his own doing. It seems less and less likely my husband is a victim, abducted or otherwise. The thought has a finality to it which makes my knees go rubbery, my chest hollow.

  I finally manage to find my voice again. “Well, like I said, I know John hasn’t been talking with his agent because I talked to him and he hasn’t heard from John in nearly five months.”

  “No, you’re right. I don’t think he was talking to his agent.”

  It’s a peculiar comment — how would she know? Just how keen are the eyes and ears of Hazleton? “Okay, well, if people are eavesdropping on my husband, maybe that’s part of why he thinks he’s being watched. I mean . . .” I stop short, reading her expression.

  Karen looks like she has more to say, but this last bit is stuck in her throat and she avoids my gaze.

  “Karen, what? What else?”

  She faces the hallway like she’s worried about the kids then takes a deep breath, studies her hands. “Maybe because we’re not that close, I can tell you something other people wouldn’t.”

  A bead of sweat works its way down my spine. “Like what?”

  “People in this town know about you, and what happened with your mother.”

  There it is. My mother. Three years I’ve managed to avoid it. Then Sergeant Ferron questioned me, Ridley after that. Now there’s town gossip. I can only imagine what looks people have been giving me in the grocery store behind my back, what they’ve been thinking.

  “Okay,” I say with a measure of defiance. “People know about my mother. So what.”

  “All I’m saying is that what happened with her, it’s going to bias people. I’m sure you know that. They’re going to get certain ideas.”

  “People like Amy Dugan.”

  “Well, yeah. Like her.”

  “There’s more? Don’t people have anything better to do?”

  “Well when your husband is walking around acting upset, yelling into the phone, people assume it’s marital, you know? That’s natural.” Karen shakes her head and looks out the window. “It’s just talk, Jane. That’s all it is.”

  “Tell me the talk, Karen. I can take it.”

  “Just that you and John . . . sometimes you get a little . . .” Her eyes dart around until she finally looks at me. “Physical.”

  “Physical?”

  “Upset, and it turns physical.”

  “John has never laid a hand on me.”

  She’s locked her eyes on me now. “Not John.”

  I actually have to stifle a laugh as the implication strikes. The notion of me hurting John is so bizarre after the stress of the past couple of days that the laugh would be a tension reliever. But it might not stop. “Karen. You’ve got to be kidding me. If John left, he did it to protect us.”

  “And not himself? That’s what I’m telling you. Some people think he left because he thought you were going to . . . Well, there it is.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “It’s just people. They don’t know you. They listen to news reports about women shooting their husbands, and that sort of—”

  “Women who were probably fighting for their lives!”

  Karen doesn’t speak. It’s in her eyes: my outburst is evidence that I’m possibly as unreliable and dangerous as my mother.

  * * *

  Ridley calls back while Karen is in the bathroom. “First, I thought you’d want to know we’ve been keeping an eye on your stepbrother. Leland returned to Cohoes late last night, acc
ording to the local police down there.”

  “All right.” At some point I have to call him and apologize.

  “So the vehicle you saw would not be his. I’ve managed to get a partial number from the plate and am running it through DMV. From what I can tell already, though, it looks like this is going to show up as a rented vehicle.”

  “A rental. Okay.”

  “Second, I checked into Bruce and Rainey Barnes some more. Turns out she’s being seen by an oncologist at Albany Medical Center. She has cancer.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Bruce has offered us his own blood and tissue samples. He’s been very cooperative. In fact — and I don’t usually pass on messages like this — but he asked me to tell you he’s available if you need anything.”

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  Bruce Barnes . . . Mr. Law Enforcement, with a cancer-stricken wife. Wants to help out so much it’s driving him crazy. Maybe I can use the extra input? He’s known John longer than I have, even if they had a falling out at one point. And he knows the area. I can have Bruce help me find John and he might also give me a heads-up about what the police are doing. He seems to have their ear.

  But he’s odd and he scares me a little, so it’ll have to be on my terms.

  “Jane?”

  “Yes, sorry.”

  “The last thing . . . we’re just having a little trouble here. Or, the lab is. They’ve sent me some preliminary findings that . . . Let me ask you, do you know your blood type?”

  “A-positive.”

  “And how about your husband. Do you know what blood type he is?”

  “John is O-positive.”

  “Okay.”

  I know this because I’m a nurse, but also because John and I have joked that I could receive blood from him if it was ever necessary, but not the other way around, so he needed to be the careful one.

  “It’s still going to take time for the DNA results, but preliminarily . . . Jane, the blood in your husband’s car tests as A-positive. That’s your blood type. Not his.”

  “What?”