Unexpectedly, Milo

by Matthew Dicks

  The sobs hadn’t quite subsided when the police officer tapped his flashlight on Milo’s passenger window, motioning for him to roll it down.

  chapter 17

  Milo opted for honesty. Still in the throes of Freckles’s overwhelming outburst of candor, it seemed like the right decision. And for the first few questions, the truth served him well.

  Yes, he could place his hands on the wheel.

  No, there weren’t any weapons in the vehicle.

  No, there were no drugs in the car.

  Yes, he could present his license and registration.

  No, he had not been drinking.

  Yes, he could step out of the car.

  This is where honesty stopped being easy.

  Complicating the situation was a second police officer, a red-faced, blond-haired man at least six inches taller than Milo who had been standing opposite his partner on the passenger side of the Civic. Milo hadn’t seen the man until he had climbed from his driver’s seat and was standing outside the car, trying to keep his back to the house in case Christine or Thick-Neck Phil emerged from within. It was then that he also noticed the police cruiser parked about four feet behind his car, its lights thankfully off.

  Yes, he told the officer closest to him, a short, wiry man with what Milo thought were the hairiest knuckles he had ever seen. He had been sitting in his car, watching a video on his camera’s view screen.

  Yes, he told the second officer, whom Milo now liked decidedly less than the first. He had been crying.

  Yes, according to his driver’s license, which he had not changed since moving out, he lived on this street, just four houses down from his present location.

  “Do you still live at home, sir?” Hairy Knuckles asked. The man was wearing a badge displaying his name, but in the dim light, Milo could not read it.

  “No,” Milo said, surprised at how quickly the cop seemed to be catching on. “I’m separated from my wife right now. We’re working on getting back together.”

  “What’s on the tape?” the second cop asked, still on the opposite side of the car and behind Milo. Suddenly sandwiched between two cops, Milo flashed back to Freckles and her own interrogation back in sixth grade. She must have been terrified that day.

  “Sir? Did you hear me?”

  Milo turned to answer. Holding on to the truth like a life preserver, he said, “It’s a video diary. Like a confessional.”

  “Is your wife on the tape?”

  “No. It’s another girl.” Milo tried to sound as nonchalant as possible, which wasn’t very.

  “Sir, does your wife know that you’re sitting here, outside the house?” Hairy Knuckles had asked this question, forcing Milo to turn again. He was starting to become unnerved by the barrage of questions from both sides.

  “Not unless she’s the one who called you guys.”

  “Nope. A neighbor called. Reported seeing a guy sitting in his car. You can imagine how nervous you might make someone, just sitting here, right Mr…. Slade?” The cop had looked back at Milo’s driver’s license in order to recall his last name.

  “Sure, but I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

  “Just keeping an eye on your ex-wife. Right, Mr. Slade?” The second officer again. Officer Unfriendly, Milo dubbed him in his mind.

  “She’s not my ex-wife,” Milo said, the most forceful words out of his mouth so far. “We’re separated, but we’re getting back together.”

  “Right. But that’s what you’re doing. Keeping an eye on her. Correct?” This was Hairy Knuckles, smiling in way that Milo did not entirely trust.

  “Sort of. She had a guy over the house today. It was probably nothing, but she … I wasn’t sure. She wasn’t clear about who he was and why he was over the house. I just wanted to find out what was going on.”

  “Mr. Slade, I need you to turn around and put your hands on the hood of your car, so I can pat you down for weapons. Okay?”

  “I don’t …” Milo said uncertainly, but before he could protest, his body had turned and his hands had planted themselves as instructed in what seemed to be an act of conspiracy.

  “Mind if we take a peek in your car, Mr. Slade?” Officer Unfriendly asked while his partner finished checking Milo for weapons.

  “I guess not.”

  The peek in the car turned into a full search of the vehicle, including the trunk, which led to an awkward question about the half dozen jars of jelly nestled in a box on top of the spare tire. Unable to honestly explain their presence, Milo was finally forced to abandon the truth.

  “They were on sale,” he explained, which he realized was actually true. They had been on sale when he bought them. “I’m in a second-floor apartment and haven’t brought them up yet.” Milo hoped that the cops hadn’t noticed that each jar had already been opened.

  The search complete, Hairy Knuckles returned to his squad car, presumably to run Milo’s name through their computer. This left Milo standing alone with the redhead, Officer Unfriendly, while still trying to keep his back to the house. Even with the fear and dread that had consumed him, Milo’s mind continued to stray back to Freckles and Tess Bryson and the events surrounding her disappearance. Despite his desire to find out what was going on with his wife, and an equally strong desire to rid himself of these police officers, an even more urgent need to get home as soon as possible and start his research was forcing its way into the corners of Milo’s consciousness, not unlike many of his other demands.

  Cassidy Glenn. Her full name, at last.

  “So what did you plan on doing tonight, Mr. Slade, if you found your wife with this other guy?”

  “I don’t know,” Milo said, back to honesty. “Probably nothing. I just had to know the truth. Know what I mean?”

  “Sure. But then what’s up with the video camera? Who’s the woman on the tape? A girlfriend of yours?”

  Milo was saved from answering this question by Hairy Knuckles, who had returned with Milo’s driver’s license. “Okay, Mr. Slade. Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to wait with Officer Eblen and I’m going to have a chat with your wife. Get some information. Then we’ll take it from there.”

  “I don’t understand,” Milo said, already feeling the mortification of Christine finding out what he was doing. “I didn’t do anything wrong. Can’t I just go home?”

  “Of course. But let me talk to your wife first. If this is a onetime thing, it won’t constitute stalking. And your record is clean, which is good. But I don’t know for certain that you’ve never done this kind of thing before.”

  “I haven’t. Honestly. I’m not a stalker.” The sentence sounded ridiculous to Milo.

  “I’m just going to confirm that with your wife while you wait here. Is your wife’s last name Slade too?”

  “No, she uses her maiden name. Turcotte. But officer, do we really have to do this? I swear. I’ve never done anything like this before.”

  “Then you have nothing to worry about, Mr. Slade. Just wait here with my partner. I’ll be right back.”

  Milo watched as the cop crossed the street and headed in the direction of his house. He couldn’t believe this was happening. What would Christine think? What would she say? What would she tell Dr. Teagan when they met next week?

  “You know,” Officer Eblen said, still sounding unfriendly. “If you’ve done this before, it’s better to tell me now before we hear about it from your wife.”

  “I’ve never done anything like this before. I swear. I saw the guy today for the first time. That’s his Jeep right there. I just wanted to know if my wife was dating another guy. That’s all.”

  At that moment, two thoughts materialized in Milo’s mind.

  The first was to the need to strike a match or two, or maybe ten. Not the flimsy kind you would find in a book of matches, but one of those blue-tipped wooden kitchen matches that Christine kept in the drawer beside the dishwasher. The kind with the match head mounted on an honest-to-goodness block of wood. He had never ex
perienced this need before, but he knew immediately that it was no different than the demand that had forced him to open the jars of jelly in his trunk, except that it was growing in intensity with surprising speed. Perhaps the tension of the situation in which Milo found himself was stoking the flame, both literally and figuratively.

  The second thought was that he might end up in a jail cell this evening, unable to satisfy this and any other demand that might appear, and unable to research the street address and hometown of Cassidy Glenn. The possibility that he might find himself locked up in an small concrete room, with no access to kitchen matches or jelly jars or the Internet, sent Milo’s heart rate skyrocketing. His muscles tensed, his felt his face and neck flush, and in moments, he knew he would be sweating.

  He could not allow himself to be arrested.

  Milo watched as the door to his house opened and Christine appeared in the entranceway. She looked nervous and scared at first, but then seemed to relax a bit as Hairy Knuckles began to speak. After a minute, the officer motioned in Milo’s direction and he saw Christine look around the cop to see her husband standing by his car in quasi police custody. She did not look pleased.

  “Mind if I ask who did the separating, Mr. Slade? Was it you or your wife?”

  “Depends on who you ask,” Milo said, fixated on the scene at the front door of the house. The conversation between Christine and the cop went on for almost three minutes, and with each passing minute, Milo grew more and more nervous. He wondered how long it could take to confirm that he was not stalking his wife. What the hell could they be talking about?

  Just as Milo thought that the discussion was ending, Thick-Neck Phil appeared in the doorway beside Christine, and after a moment, he seemed to be answering questions from Hairy Knuckles as well. Even though Milo suspected all along that Phil was inside the house, the sight of the man and the resulting confirmation that he was with Christine, in their home, after nine, made Milo angrier than ever before.

  “Is that the guy?” Officer Eblen asked.

  “Yes,” Milo said, afraid to say more. He was seething inside.

  Finally, Christine and Thick-Neck stepped back into the house and closed the door and Hairy Knuckles made his way back to Milo and his partner.

  “Okay, Mr. Slade. Just a couple more questions. Your wife said that you were in the house today when she wasn’t home. Is that true?”

  “Huh?”

  “Is that true, Mr. Slade. Were you—”

  “Yes, it’s true. I stopped by to give her some flowers. When I saw that she wasn’t home, I left. Did Christine complain about me going into the house?”

  “Did you and your wife have an agreement about when and how you might enter the home?”

  “No,” Milo said. “Did she say we did? It’s my house too.” Hairy Knuckles just stared, so after a moment, Milo continued. “She never even asked me for the key. We’re only separated, for Christ’s sake. I’m still paying half the mortgage. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “No, but you can see how it might make a woman nervous. Right? Finding out that someone has been inside the house while she was gone. Especially after she finds out that the same man is sitting in a car outside her house.”

  “Did you want her to feel nervous, Mr. Slade?” Officer Eblen asked.

  “Of course not! I’m not just some man. I’m her husband. All I did was bring my wife some flowers. I had a key. She wasn’t home. That’s it.”

  “What about the confrontation between you and your wife in the driveway? She said that you seemed very angry this afternoon. Angrier than she has ever seen you before.”

  “Of course I was angry. I found my wife with another guy. I found his kid’s playpen in my bedroom. I didn’t know what the hell was going on, and she wouldn’t tell me anything. But that doesn’t make me a stalker.”

  “So you didn’t just drop off the flowers? You went into the bedroom too?”

  “Yes, I did. It’s my house. I went to use the bathroom and I noticed the playpen next to the bed. I went into the bedroom to check it out. It’s my house, damn it.”

  Milo left out the part about examining Christine’s lingerie and chewing on the plastic book. He didn’t think that would go over so well.

  “No need to get excited, Mr. Slade,” Officer Eblen said. “We’re just making sure that things are okay here. Just doing our job.”

  “Fine. Can I go now?” He couldn’t believe how quickly the need to strike a match, a whole box of them perhaps, had filled his mind.

  “Yes, you can, Mr. Slade. You’ve done nothing wrong. But you should keep in mind that sitting here in the street like this can make people nervous. You may want to reconsider that decision in the future.”

  “But that’s just our opinion, Mr. Slade,” Officer Eblen added, already turning toward the squad car.

  A minute later Milo was standing alone by his car on the darkened street. Terrified of a possible encounter between him and Christine (and Thick-Neck Phil), he climbed into his car and headed home.

  He had matches to strike and a woman to find, and finally, he knew her name.

  chapter 18

  Cassidy Glenn, who might always be Freckles in Milo’s mind, was older than Milo had expected. Perhaps as old as he was. With more than a hundred feet still separating them, Milo couldn’t be sure. He was standing on the edge of the Mill Pond Park in Newington, his shadow long in the late-afternoon sun. Just moments ago, he had solved the final mystery of Cassidy Glenn, the one that had proven elusive during his Internet search the day before. Milo now understood what Freckles had meant when she spoke of a morning fight on tape number three, and with that final piece of the puzzle in place, he felt ready to return the camera and the tapes to the woman whom he thought he might know better than almost anyone else in the world.

  Less than twenty hours had passed since Milo’s encounter with Officer Eblen and his hairy-knuckled partner, and during that time, he had placed eight unreturned phone calls to Christine, on both the home phone and her cell. Though this seemingly purposeful disconnect by his wife and the continued uncertainty surrounding Thick-Neck Phil left him uneasy, the free time that it had afforded had allowed him to locate Freckles and piece together much of her life.

  Once he had the full names of Freckles and Mira, it had been easy.

  To start, Mira had turned out to be Meera, an Indian or Pakistani name with which Milo had not been familiar. Combined with the last name Singh and his knowledge of the circumstances of her death, he had found several news reports of her accident with relative ease. Last October, Meera had been training at Bartolini Farm and Stables in Glastonbury, Connecticut, when the horse that she was riding refused to jump over a routine obstacle on an indoor equestrian course, throwing Meera from the saddle and onto the turf. The fall had broken Meera’s neck, killing her almost instantly; an incident that Milo discovered is not so uncommon in the equestrian world. This indicated that Freckles had begun her diary just six months ago, which thrilled Milo. It meant that in getting to know her through the tapes, he had gotten to know the Freckles of now, of today, and not some decade-old version of the woman.

  Though the story about Meera’s death had not included any reference to Freckles, Milo had managed to find her the old-fashioned way: through the phone book. Searching through the listings of Newington (the town in which he had found the camera) and surrounding towns, he had found a Cassidy Glenn, the only one in the book, living about twenty minutes from his apartment, in the town of Berlin.

  He was confident that he had his girl.

  Milo had also managed to find information on Freckles’s runaway friend, Tess Bryson, or more specifically on her father, Sean Bryson. Milo hadn’t expected to find anything on Tess, given that she had disappeared more than a decade before the Internet had become ubiquitous, but in searching on her name, Milo turned up a story about Sean Bryson in which his daughter, Tess, was referenced. Sean Bryson, formerly of Millville, Massachusetts, was in year eight of a f
ifteen-year sentence at Walpole State Penitentiary, convicted for the sexual assault of his ten-year-old niece during a camping trip to the Berkshires. Though the writer of the story was professional enough not to explicitly link the possible disappearance of his daughter ten years earlier to his apparent predilection for familial pedophilia, she had included a short paragraph on Tess’s disappearance, trusting the reader to make the obvious connection.

  Milo wondered if Freckles knew about Mr. Bryson’s current place of residence and thought not. Had she known, she too might have suspected that Tess had run away from more than just an unsatisfying social life or a failing grade in math, and that maybe her disappearance was intentional and not at the hands of “some sick fuck” with a pickup truck. Maybe Tess Bryson had wanted to disappear.

  Maybe the sick fuck that Freckles suspected in her friend’s disappearance had been Tess Bryson’s own father.

  Most important, maybe Tess Bryson remained missing on purpose, in order to hide from an abusive father.

  Maybe she was still alive.

  Finished with his final client of the day, a widow named Grace Bedford who obsessed over a backyard herb garden and wore a necklace made from her daughter’s baby teeth, Milo had headed to Berlin to take a peek at Freckles’s home, hoping to confirm that the Cassidy Glenn of 19 Cynthia Drive was the same girl who had appeared on the tapes. He had no doubt, but confirming this information, as well as the opportunity to see her in person, was too much to resist. Sitting outside her home, feeling like the stalker that Hairy Knuckles had all but accused him of being the night before, Milo watched as Freckles arrived home shortly after five. Though he was across the street, parked two houses down from Freckles’s home, there was no doubt in Milo’s mind that he had found his girl. Stepping out of her Ford pickup, she had the same look, the same gait, and the same glow of the woman in the video. He watched her enter the house and disappear behind curtains, and for a moment, he thought he might walk right up to the house, ring the doorbell, and introduce himself as the man who had found her video camera and tapes. Get it over right now and head home with a clean conscience.