Still Here

by Amy Stuart

  “That I’m an idiot.”

  “No,” Somers says. “That’s where the compassion comes in. People fool us all the time. We all get fooled. You were young, and you had a lot of shit going on in your life, and he fooled you, and you married him. And you paid way too steep a price for that, didn’t you?”

  “I really don’t want to talk about this,” Clare says, a crack in her voice.

  “You lost everything. You left everything behind. And here you are on the other side of the country, looking for ways to take blame, for other people to hate. You’re this ball of rage. But why? You picked yourself up, and you took this job, and now you’re doing good work. Maybe you’ve found a calling. I believe you’re trying to stay clean. Maybe it’s not a straight line, but you’re trying, right?”

  “Stop,” Clare says. “Really. I don’t need a therapy session right now.”

  “I’m trying to intervene here, Clare. Because now you’re pulling guns on guys in bars.”

  Clare says nothing. Somers sits on the bed at arm’s length from Clare.

  “Look at me,” she says. “You don’t need to take this to your grave. Show yourself some compassion. You were fooled. You deserve more. So let it go.” Somers takes Clare’s hand and squeezes it. “And, Clare? Just to drive it home: I am not one of the bad guys.”

  All Clare can do is nod. She can’t bear tears right now. She drinks the last of the coffee and stands to use the bathroom, closing the door behind her and bracing herself on the sink.

  You were fooled, Somers said. How well Clare knows this to be true.

  Douglas Bentley places the sandwich plates down in front of Somers and Clare. Since they arrived at his house he has busied himself in the kitchen, mostly in awkward silence. He seems nervous, his hands shaky, Somers’s presence in his home a twist he wasn’t expecting. The Stacey Norton file Somers gave Clare rests on the counter next to her sandwich plate.

  “I saw your face on the news this morning,” he says to Clare.

  “Let’s not talk about it,” Clare says. “It was a misunderstanding.”

  “Clare told me on the drive here that you made high rank,” Somers says to change the subject.

  “I did,” Douglas says.

  “My husband served. Two tours. He retired a sergeant.”

  “Is he managing well?”

  “He is.” Somers smiles. “Thank you for asking.”

  Douglas gives a small yep without making eye contact. He sets water glasses down for Somers and Clare, then sits at the counter so the three of them form a triangle. Somers directs a look to Clare that asks the obvious question: What are we doing here? Clare nods as if to say, be patient. Only when Clare bites into the ham sandwich does she realize how ravenous she is. She eats as Somers makes small talk, commenting on the view, on the house, just as Clare had done yesterday. Was that only yesterday? Clare thinks. That feels almost impossible.

  “I was hoping we could take Somers downstairs,” Clare says, patting the file. “She’s got a cold case that has a lot of parallels to your daughter’s. A young woman who was also from the Lune Bay area. Maybe if the three of us—”

  “I don’t like working with cops,” Douglas says. “No offense.”

  “None taken,” Somers says. “I’m sure they’ve given you no reason to trust them. But as Clare says, I’ve got a case that’s been lingering a long time. A young woman with some ties to the Westman family.” Somers reaches down and lifts her satchel. “I pulled up whatever I could on your daughter. Seems to me like there’s some… as Clare said, some parallels.”

  “You’re talking about Stacey Norton,” Douglas says.

  “I am,” Somers says. “Do you know of any others?”

  “Women who went missing, you mean? None who were reported. But…” Douglas rubs at his temple, his eyes red. “Missing women, especially a certain type, don’t exactly rouse the troops, if you know what I mean.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” Somers says. “We all hear about the flashy cases. The Zoe Westmans who make the front page of the newspaper. That footage of volunteers in formation scouring parks and ravines and beaches. But what if you’re dealing with a young woman who just didn’t come home one night? Who had the wrong boyfriend or a drug problem or who’d gotten herself mixed up with the wrong crowd.” Somers frowns, her voice dropping. “I have daughters too, you know. This stuff feels personal to me. The Norton case? No evidence of foul play, my colleagues would all say. Looks like she’s just another runner. Is that what they said about your daughter?”

  Douglas nods.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Somers continues. “I swear, I’ve always made an effort to take cases like this seriously. But you’re right, Mr. Bentley. A lot of cops don’t.”

  A silence passes between them. Clare can see the emotion on Douglas’s face, his jaw pulsing in the effort to maintain composure. He lifts their plates and turns his back to wash them in the sink. Somers grimaces at Clare. When he’s finished at the sink, Douglas waves for Somers and Clare to follow him to the basement. Downstairs, he stands aside, hands in his pockets, shifting his weight uneasily as Somers studies the photographs and notes lining the wall.

  “You’ve been at this a long time,” Somers says.

  “It gives me something to do.” Douglas points to the top corner of the wall where Malcolm’s photo is displayed next to Zoe’s. Clare can see a paper with her own name, an enlarged photocopy of her business card. “I put that up there because of what you told me yesterday. Your connection to Malcolm. I don’t mean anything by it. I’m just trying to keep things straight.”

  “Makes sense,” Somers says, shooting Clare a look.

  Clare retreats to a corner and chews her fingernails as Somers continues to follow the map on Douglas’s wall. Above Kendall’s photograph is one of Stacey Norton, the few small articles about her disappearance cut out and stapled neatly next to her photo. Clare wants to rip her own name down from the wall. But she is part of this matrix whether she wants to be or not. Malcolm hired her, she worked for him. To see it so plainly on the wall, Clare only one step removed from Zoe, from the Westman family, sends a chill down her spine. Somers pauses next at Jack Westman’s photograph. There is a sticky note attached to it. Autopsy? Somers taps at it.

  “What’s this?”

  “Jack Westman’s autopsy was never released. With public shootings, with something like this, usually the autopsy is released. Neither was the coroner’s report. I asked around. Wanted to see if I could get my hands on it.”

  “Wouldn’t it be pretty straightforward?” Clare asks. “Gunshot wound to the head.”

  “That’s what they said about JFK,” Douglas says.

  Somers allows a small smile. “Conspiracy theorists unite.”

  A cell phone rings sharply. Somers jolts, then fumbles to extract hers from her satchel and answer the call. She lifts a finger to say give me a minute, then disappears up the stairs. Clare and Douglas stand in place, listening to Somers’s muffled voice upstairs. What do you mean? she is saying. He’s where? Does Clare hear her say a name? No. She does not hear her say Jason. Clare must be imagining things. Douglas approaches the wall and touches his daughter’s photograph at its center.

  “You know what’s made me the maddest?” he says.

  Clare shakes her head. “The cops ignoring you?”

  “No.” Douglas runs a finger along the outline of the photograph. “The cops who suggested she’d killed herself. There was one guy, one detective, this really crusty asshole. Not an empathetic bone in his body. I came to him with some information, and he listened to me like I was a child inventing fairy tales. Like I was amusing to him. And then he leaned forward in his chair and said to me, ‘Maybe the problem is that you feel guilty. Maybe you pushed her too hard, and she went over the edge. She was under a lot of pressure.’ He was implying to me that Kendall killed herself because her mother and I couldn’t lay off her.”

  Douglas faces Clare. In his grief, h
e might best understand the loneliness, the isolation that Clare feels. He might be the only person she can trust in all of this.

  “I ran away from a really shitty husband,” Clare says.

  “Oh,” Douglas says. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yeah,” Clare says. “Just before Christmas. Nine months ago. Up until two months ago I was sleeping in a different cheap motel every night. I had a gun. I kept it under my pillow. Sometimes I’d toss and turn and my hand would jam itself under the pillow and land on the gun and for a split second I’d think about it. I’d think about putting it to my temple and pulling the trigger. Because I left my life…” She pauses and scratches hard at her scalp. “I left everything because I was afraid I was going to die. But after I was gone, it was hard to imagine anything at all. I was still so afraid, but there was this void too. Every day, everything around me changed. I had no footing.”

  Douglas removes his glasses and wipes away the sweat forming on his brow.

  “When I finally did stop in one place,” Clare continues, “when I saw this HELP WANTED sign in a window and tried my hand at staying put for a while, that hopeless feeling got even worse. Because I took this job at a restaurant, and right away it set in just how hard it would actually be to build a life from scratch. Everyone else already had their lives, they were settled with their families and their routines. The cooks, the other waitresses. The clientele. People don’t like to make room for strangers. And even if they did take a cursory interest in me, I had nothing to give them. I couldn’t make small talk or answer any of their basic questions. People want to know where you’re from and who your family is and what brings you to their place. I just didn’t have it in me to invent an entire backstory, you know?”

  “Sure,” Douglas says, awkward. “Makes sense.”

  “And then I hadn’t even finished my first week on the job when Malcolm Boon showed up. Malcolm Hayes, as you know him. And I knew exactly why he was there the minute I laid eyes on him. So I ran, of course I did. I literally ran out the back door of the restaurant. I’d trained myself to run for many months, so it was a well-honed instinct. I drove half the night in zigzags before stopping at a motel. I was really scared. The thought of being caught terrified me. But honestly? When I look back on it, on waiting in that motel room with my gun to see if he’d followed me, I can admit that I wanted him to find me. I wanted some kind of reckoning. Because nothing is worse than being invisible.”

  “Yes. That’s why I need to find out. I need to know what happened to her. To Kendall.”

  “Even if she’s…”

  “Especially if she’s dead,” he says, his voice steady. “I mean, look at you. You weren’t dead. This guy Malcolm found you. And he didn’t hurt you.”

  “No,” Clare says. “He didn’t. He offered me this job. And it floors me that I took it. And I know that for the rest of my life I’ll never be able to truly explain why I did. It was just something in my gut. The relief at something tangible. At having something to do aside from run. Even at having someone in my life who knew my story. He was the first person in months who knew my real name. He was looking for missing women and he wanted a partner. Hey, it takes one to know one, right? Somewhere near the end of our first case it occurred to me that I was actually good at the job. Great, even. Because if you’ve spent years honing survival instincts, then you understand how other people do the same. And if you’ve disappeared, you understand how it happens. Why people run, how they might go missing. How easy it can be, really.”

  “Why are you telling me all of this?” Douglas asks.

  “Because I have this question,” Clare says. “Malcolm took on this work of looking for missing women. For something to do, maybe. Because he was driven to find Zoe and needed an outlet for that? I don’t know. He never talked about it. Then I got hurt at the end of our first case. Shot in the shoulder.”

  Clare pulls back the neck of her shirt to reveal the scar. Douglas leans in to examine it.

  “Wow,” he says. “Five times overseas and I never took a bullet on the job.”

  “Yeah. Beginner’s luck, I guess. Anyway, Malcolm and I spent a few weeks laying low as I recovered. To be honest, I was in a haze. Lots of painkillers. I don’t remember much about those weeks, but I learned more about him, some details seeped in. And I think about those details in a new light now. I have reason to question his motives. And last night, I was in a holding cell with these women after I was arrested. And I was thinking: What if my story started here? What if it’s all connected to Zoe? Stacey. Kendall, even? What if it’s all connected?”

  “I’m not following,” Douglas says.

  Clare points to the photo of Kendall, then to Stacey Norton. “What if he was looking for them the same way he was looking for me?”

  “Come on,” Douglas says. “You think?”

  “Maybe I’m a conspiracy theorist too.”

  Upstairs Somers’s voice rises, clearer.

  “I need this from you right away,” she says on the call. “As in, yesterday.”

  Clare blinks, listening. She hates that she wants to cry.

  “I need a gun,” she says to Douglas. “I can shoot. My dad taught me to shoot. I’d like a gun.”

  “And?”

  “You strike me as the kind of man who knows where to procure one.”

  “Yeah. I know a place.”

  “Can you take me?” Clare asks. She sees his hesitation. “Listen. I carry a gun for protection. Like I said, I know how to use one. And mine was taken from me last night when I was arrested.”

  Douglas considers this, leaning a shoulder into the wall, rubbing at his beard.

  “So will you help me?” Clare asks.

  Before he can answer, Somers has descended the stairs. She pauses to absorb the air between Clare and Douglas, thicker now than when she’d left to take the call.

  “I’m going to need an hour to address some things at home,” Somers says. “I may need to go back to the hotel.”

  “Is everything okay?” Clare asks.

  “It will be,” Somers says.

  “Anything you need to tell me?” Clare asks.

  “Nope,” Somers says. “Shall we get going?”

  “Clare can stay,” Douglas says. “We can sift through some things here.”

  Somers nods, shifting her gaze from Clare to Douglas. Clare plants herself at the desk. She will stay right here.

  Though they are less than a mile above the ocean, the trees here are low and crooked, the air dry. The drive from Douglas’s house to the sporting goods store had taken only twenty minutes, but Clare was shocked by how quickly the backdrop shifted away from the quaint houses and manicured gardens to a grittier landscape. Lune Bay is its own little world, Clare thought as they pulled into the parking lot. MURPHY’S SPORTS AND HUNTING SUPPLIES, the sign reads. A bell jangles when Douglas tugs the door open.

  “No gun stores right in Lune Bay?” Clare asks.

  “Never,” Douglas says. “The Business Improvement Association would never go for that. Too ignoble.”

  “Right.” Clare smiles. “This is your store of choice?”

  “They have a nice range out back. I know the owner. I did a tour with his cousin.”

  Together they weave through the racks of binoculars and camouflage gear to the back of the store where the gun wall resides. A young man spritzes the glass countertop with a spray bottle, then rubs at it hard with a clump of paper towels. They stand in clear view but it still takes the young man a few beats to snap out of his cleaning trance and look up.

  “Douglas! Jesus. Didn’t even see you there.”

  “Hi, Danny,” Douglas says. “We’re looking to purchase a weapon. One. Possibly two.”

  “Excellent. Anything specific today?”

  “A handgun,” Douglas says. “On the compact side. Easy to pack away.”

  They speak as if Clare isn’t there. Danny shuffles down the counter and waves his hand over a selection of smaller guns. He point
s to one in the corner of the cabinet.

  “This one is a very popular model. Inexpensive given what you get. Fits in most pockets. Well, your pockets, maybe. I’m not sure about hers.”

  “Ha,” Douglas says, unamused. “Can we have a look?”

  Danny pats at his chest and retrieves a lanyard tucked under his green golf shirt. Clare watches him as he crouches to unlock the cabinet. There is evidence that Danny is far older than he looks at first glance, the way his skin is pinched around his eyes, closer in age to Clare than she might ever have previously guessed. It isn’t until he unravels a cloth and sets the first gun down on it that Clare notices the thin band on his left hand. Married. He lines four options up along the counter. Clare picks up the smallest gun. It is heavier than she expected. She must nudge her finger into the trigger loop, cupping the gun so that her thumb can press down and gently roll the cylinder open.

  “It’s not loaded,” Danny says.

  Clare casts him a look. “Of course it isn’t.”

  “Technically I’m supposed to see your ID before I let you handle the weapons,” he says.

  Douglas fishes his driver’s license from his wallet and slaps it on the counter.

  “I know who you are, Mr. Bentley,” Danny says. “I was referring to her.”

  “She’s not buying,” Douglas says.

  “She’s holding the gun, though.” Finally he looks directly at Clare. “Wait. Have we met?”

  “Definitely not,” Clare says, eyes to the floor.

  “This is my niece,” Douglas says. “She’s visiting from out of town. Her crazy uncle wants to make sure she stays safe. I know you can appreciate that, Danny.”

  “Sure.” Danny’s brow creases as he studies her. “But, hmm. You really look familiar.”

  Fuck, Clare thinks. The video. Surely a young guy who works in a gun store would have seen it. He’s the video’s target audience.

  “Listen, Danny,” Douglas interjects. “We’d like to use the range out back if that’s okay with you. Clare had her wallet stolen in a coffee shop yesterday, so all you’ve got with her is my word that she’s not going to put a bullet in my head.”