When He Vanished

by T. J. Brearton

  “Then if Bruce is in Canada — where is John?”

  She sighs. “There’s a good chance that he didn’t make it.”

  The first sense is a blow to my stomach — almost real, almost physical. The second is mental rejection. I have no idea who this person is, no matter what she claims.

  “I think you should go,” I say, weak in the knees. “I gotta get back inside.”

  She looks at the community center again. The piano music ends. From here the applause sounds like the babbling of a brook. One more performer, then Melody is up.

  Olympia’s gaze slides back to me. “I understand you’ve gone through a lot and you’re not ready to just take all this at face value. I get that.”

  “If you work for a bail bondsman, why did you . . . On the interstate . . . Why were you driving like that? You sped up behind us and then slowed down and even shut off your headlights at one point. Why not just come to us sooner, before anything happened, warn us about Bruce?” My voice is on the edge of cracking.

  “I put a tracker on your husband’s Subaru. Two days before that night.”

  “Why not just come to us?”

  “Catching Bruce Barnes was my original objective. But then I received information he was planning to leave the country. He was going to use someone’s identity and travel by boat.”

  “How do you know for sure?”

  “Because someone close to Mr. Barnes expressed it to me.”

  It all starts to fall into place.

  “Rainey.”

  Olympia nods, once. “And when I learned it was going to be your husband, I followed you. It was an opportunity to catch Barnes in the act. And I’m sorry that I failed.”

  “But why drive like that? If you were following us, wanted to warn us, get us to stop, you flash your lights, beep the horn or—”

  Another car is coming down the road. After it passes, something seems to have changed in Olympia’s demeanor. She’s losing patience. “Listen, Mrs. Gable, the only person who knows what happened to your husband is Bruce Barnes. And he’s in another country, where my jurisdiction runs out.”

  “What about Rainey?”

  Olympia shakes her head. “Rainey’s part in this ended with her driving your husband’s car to that rest area to make it look like he just vanished. This whole thing was set up by Bruce to put the murder of Carl Dixon on your husband.”

  I’m regretting now that I didn’t take a closer look at her ID. If she’s a bounty hunter . . . “Why not go to Detective Ridley with this? We can do it now. We can talk to her together.”

  “That’s not how this works. If Barnes committed murder, this is out of my hands. I’m here for you.”

  It takes me a second. “For me? What does that mean? Why would you be here for me?” I’m so afraid that I’m not even sure I’ve spoken intelligibly; the words are a nervous vibrato, as if my throat contains a bubble.

  She thinks John is dead. She’s here to deliver the message because she feels she owes me something.

  The wind picks up and scrapes some of last year’s leaves across the road.

  “Because I messed up,” she says. “I found out where Bruce was pretty quick — he grew up here, so when he jumped bail it was a no-brainer. I figured he’d run out of state and I was right that he came up here. I got cocky — or greedy, I guess. Trying to catch him in the act of fleeing.”

  “How did you find out for sure he was here?”

  “Facebook, actually. There was a picture that was posted and taken down in the same day — someone in his extended family — a half-sister or cousin or something. The photo had a geotag and that was it. I took a flight, rented this vehicle and then contacted the District Attorney. A state judge issued a bench warrant. But once I was up here I couldn’t get a bead on Barnes. That’s when I reached out to Rainey. She was reluctant at first but then she told me Bruce had gotten into something way over his head. And she mentioned your husband, that he was involved. Your husband was a lot easier to locate.” She gives me a look that’s hard to discern — there’s almost a longing in her eyes. “You guys pretty much stick to home. To routine. You have a beautiful family.”

  “Please don’t talk about my family.”

  I feel like I need to sit down, but I stay where I am, keeping a few feet between me and the SUV. A bench warrant? Doesn’t that mean the cops would have been looking for Bruce? If so, why wouldn’t Ridley have told me?

  Olympia stares ahead as she finishes her story. “Then I followed you up to Plattsburgh, seeing if you were maybe meeting with Barnes. You weren’t . . . you were having a date. I got frustrated. I wanted to get close, make sure I hadn’t missed something — like Barnes riding with you. You have to understand, at this point I didn’t know if you and your husband were abetting Barnes or what.”

  I remember it like it just happened — the SUV riding up behind us at a good clip, then shutting down its headlights.

  “I was taunting you,” she admits. “Wanted to see if — I don’t know — if Barnes’s head would pop up. If your husband would react, pull over or something. At that point it felt to me like Barnes had slipped through my fingers.”

  My mouth is dry. If I’m to believe her, then Bruce used my husband to escape the law. Used him and threw him away — even killed him in order to accomplish his goal.

  Without thinking I grab onto the SUV door and lower my head. The whole ordeal has become a weight around my neck that gets heavier with every step I take. I need to slough the noose. I can’t breathe.

  “Jane, I’m sorry about all of this.”

  My phone is vibrating again. Karen is wondering where the hell I am.

  I look up at Olympia. “You said you’re here for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then go to the cops with me, talk to Ridley with me. We can tell her about Lorraine Barnes, everything she—”

  Olympia is shaking her head. “Can’t do that.”

  “Why?”

  “For one thing, Lorraine Barnes died in surgery about two hours ago, just before I called you. It was adenocarcinoma, and they thought they could get it. There were complications, I guess.”

  It’s terrible news, and not just because of how it affects me, but because someone died. My heart goes out to her and anyone who cares about her. But I don’t have time to think about it for long.

  “Jane?”

  Karen is back on the edge of the community center parking lot. My phone has been vibrating non-stop — I can see it in her hand from here. I wave, my arm trembling, and call out. “I’m okay — be right there.”

  Even from a distance it’s clear that Karen is worried. I look back in at Olympia.

  “Go watch your daughter’s recital,” she says. “I’ll wait.”

  * * *

  On the small stage, Melody plays Chopin on a rustic-looking upright piano. She could’ve chosen MacDowell’s To a Wild Rose, Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, or even Debussy’s Clair de Lune, but she chose Chopin. And she’s good.

  It’s Prelude in E Minor, Opus 28, No. 4. The melancholy piece dances through the room and my palms are sweating. Karen keeps giving me looks — I haven’t explained to her who I was talking to yet or what was said.

  I try to focus on the music. Melody has been playing for just two years and while the short classical piece has simple notes for the right hand and basic chords for the left, she’s nailing it, and the effect is haunting. For a sublime moment I forget everything, lost in the performance.

  John is dead.

  It’s the second time I’ve had to face it. Seeing the Subaru in the unused rest area nearly knocked me over, but I recovered — there was hope. Things have gotten worse. The possibility that I’m a widow, that my children have lost their father for good, looms larger than ever. I can feel the tears slipping down as I think about what I’m going to say to Ridley.

  Just had a chat with a bounty hunter who says Bruce Barnes is behind the whole thing.

  Why did John get hooked up wi
th Bruce? Were the two of them out doing drugs? Selling drugs?

  I need to know more. I have to know what happened.

  Remember your wedding.

  I do. I remember how that first night in our hotel room overlooking the bay we listened to a duet between Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan called “Girl from the North Country.” I remember how he smiled and his eyes wandered the room; how, like the music, we humans do this sort of dance, a peekaboo game of seeing each other, of recognizing the light and eternity in the other person. It’s a dance, but I saw my husband, I know who he is.

  I don’t know Olympia, though.

  I go over it again: even if she’s not official law enforcement, she must work with them all the time. She’d have a license to practice. She said a bench warrant — wouldn’t the state police know about that? Bruce gave DNA samples, for God’s sake — Ridley would have been aware he’d jumped bail.

  As the crowd breaks up into applause and Melody stands and takes her bow, I can feel the truth pushing through.

  * * *

  “We’ve been through the lake house,” Ridley says on the phone. “There’s nothing there. No signs of break-in, no signs of struggle. No sign your husband was there — not since he last visited.”

  “Did you take fingerprints?”

  I’m back in John’s office, at his desk. The SUV was gone when we left. Olympia might’ve gotten impatient. Though I was anxious, I stayed for about fifteen minutes of socializing and drinking punch. For Melody.

  “No, Mrs. Gable, we didn’t dust for fingerprints at the lake house. What’s going on? Did something happen?”

  I want to tell her everything. In fact I planned to, but I can guess the response: I face charges for violating HIPAA medical privacy laws and I’m in trouble for withholding evidence or obstructing justice, one of those, because I didn’t disclose Rainey’s email right away.

  I think of John’s Subaru sitting in the weedy rest area, drops of blood on the steering wheel and gear-shift.

  Jump back a little in time: Rainey parks the vehicle in the middle of the night and her hands are bloody. Or, maybe she’s not bleeding from her hands; the drops were fine-grained, more of a spatter or a spray, like someone coughing. Olympia said adenocarcinoma, a common lung cancer, affecting the outer lungs. You don’t always cough, but if you do, late stage, you might expectorate blood. It’s only a day later that she’s checked into Albany Medical.

  Bruce knows Rainey has been sick for some time. They don’t have insurance. They need money for an expensive procedure. So he rips off a drug dealer named Carl Dixon, kills him then tries to frame John for it by leaving a crumb trail of clues. The clues lead to a gun in the floor of John’s office and his boat ride to Canada.

  But Rainey talks. Somehow Olympia connects with her, Rainey tells her the truth. And Olympia, looking for Bruce, watches us, watches John.

  “Mrs. Gable?”

  “I talked with someone who said they were a bounty hunter.”

  “Who?”

  “From Florida. Where Bruce apparently jumped bail. She said her name was Olympia.”

  “Olympia what?”

  I never even got the woman’s last name, didn’t look closely enough at her ID. After I explain to Ridley how it came to pass, she hurries to get off the phone. “I’ve never heard anything about this — nothing. What’s she doing up here chasing a bail fugitive and not checking in with us? We’re the state police. I never saw anything about it. Listen, I’m going to look into this tonight and I’ll call you back first thing in the morning.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT / MY ALTER EGO

  After the call with Ridley, I stand next to Melody in the living room, trying to keep my composure as I beam at my daughter, swelling with love, pride, a sadness that’s all mashed together.

  “You were amazing, honey.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “Really something.”

  “I was okay.”

  The tears sting my eyes — she hasn’t mentioned her father’s absence but it’s there between the words.

  “Where’s Russ?”

  Melody turns her head and shouts in an ear-splitting voice. “Russ! Mom wants you!”

  I smile through the crying and hear Russ in the distance. “What?”

  “Mom wants you! Come here!” She shakes her head and looks at me. “What a dope.”

  “Be nice.”

  Footfalls pounding through the house precede my son’s blustery entrance. “Huh? What? I’m right here, Mom.”

  “Come here.”

  Once he’s close enough I get my arms around him, draw him in. His odor mixes fresh air and greasy hair.

  “You need a bath. Let me look at your hands.”

  As I suspect, rinds of dirt caked beneath the fingernails. I let his hand drop and reach beyond him, get a handful of Melody’s shirt and yank her toward me. I can feel the flutter of their hearts. Melody has a more pleasant scent than Russ, like citrus. Her fine hair tickles my cheek. Neither of them tries to wriggle free, which is unusual.

  “I love you, Mom,” Russ says in his light voice.

  “I love you, too.” I sense someone and look over the heads of my children. Karen stands in the bedroom doorway, tears swimming in her own eyes.

  “What a week,” she says, lip trembling. “Huh?”

  “Yeah.” My word is just a breath.

  And then my phone rings again.

  * * *

  It’s 11 p.m., shift change for the state troopers. Morse anticipated a half-hour gap in coverage for the transition tonight. He was right. At the moment, no one is watching me.

  The rules I gave Olympia were to park in my driveway, and that my friend Karen observes from the house — the second anything looks wrong, she dials 911.

  The sleek black SUV idles, waiting. I first check to make sure Olympia is alone, then slip into the passenger seat. I’ve spent the past two hours psyching myself up for this but I’m my mother’s daughter; I can handle anything.

  “You’re not a bounty hunter,” I say to Olympia. “You work for someone else.”

  “There’s a black bag behind you in the seat. Can you get it?”

  I reach for it, noticing the flexibility I’ve regained since my back trouble improved.

  “This bag?” I set it on my lap.

  “Open it.”

  I unzip the bag, expecting anything at this point. Another gun. A million in cash. A severed head. Instead there’s a few assorted tools, lots of wires, and something I recognize as a camera. We had one like it when Russ was a baby so I could watch him from my phone.

  “See the little case inside there? The little hard case.”

  It’s slim and black, as if for cigarettes.

  “Open it up. Take out the flash drive that’s — there you go. Now stick it in here.”

  She points to the dashboard, which resembles the control panel of a spaceship, with more lights and buttons than I can figure out. But I see the small GPS screen and the USB port.

  “Pop it in there. Now, click on the file that says ‘Gable 3’ when it shows — yup, that’s it. Now hit play. Enjoy the show.”

  Within a few seconds, I’m watching my husband’s office on the screen, the view from the corner of the room, near a set of bookshelves.

  “When was this?”

  “Just watch.”

  Bruce steps into view. He bends and lifts the loose flooring, takes a gun out of the bag he’s holding and puts it inside. I can hear my own voice in the background, faint, talking to the kids in the other room.

  This was when Bruce came over. The last time I saw him. He said he wanted to help. I can’t believe I left him alone in John’s office. What was I thinking?

  Olympia talks while I watch. “Bruce Barnes convinced your husband to come with him on a drug deal. A kind of ride-along. Maybe for one of his books. And you know how it is with men, daring each other. Anyway, when they get there, it’s a deal between Barnes and Carl Dixon. Barnes shoots and kills Dixon, wh
o is employed by the same people who employ me.” She turns her face to mine and the smile is gone. “My employer is one of the biggest cartels in North America.”

  My stomach sinks. John’s angst. Crawling out of his skin at dinner. The dark cloud hanging over him for at least a week prior. Why would you do such a thing?

  On the video screen, Bruce has left the room. The screen turns blue when the file ends.

  “You lied to me once already. How do I know you’re telling me the truth now?”

  “You don’t.”

  I nod at the thumb drive, still plugged in. “What do I do with this? Give it to the police and say it’s from Carl Dixon’s people?” I’m past nerves and fears at this point — the words just flow.

  “I gave that camera to your husband,” Olympia says. “I’ve been to your house, never in it.” She pulls out the drive and hands it to me. “It’s yours. Proof your husband isn’t a murderer. And there’s another clip on there that shows Bruce planting the bottle of liquor.”

  I roll the small drive between my fingers. “You told me you screwed up. You said you thought John had done something.”

  “The only information I had to work with at first was Dixon’s death, a hundred and fifty thousand stolen, plus the product. So, three hundred large. I was contacted, put into motion. I knew that the exchange had been set up, I knew who the buyer was.”

  She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear with a gloved hand. “But I’m a professional. I gathered more information to make sure I had all my bases covered — no surprises. There was a text from Dixon that went out to my employers just prior to the exchange, said that there was another guy with the buyer.”

  “John.”

  She nods. “So, here’s the deal with Barnes . . . he got started on this down in Florida. He worked for a security company in Jacksonville—”

  “Night Watch.”

  “Mmhmm. Barnes and his wife started out small, rolled up a stake and took it wider, started to think they were bigger players, but they stepped on some toes down there so they decided to relocate up here. After being in the region about six months, Bruce found his way to my employer, made a connection. It’s mostly heroin.”