Girl Lost

by Kate Gable

  "What do you mean?" I ask.

  He shakes his head. His face gets flushed and I can feel the tension as he's brought back to that moment.

  "Somebody stole one! It’s so dumb. I drove all the way back there and I was not going to do it again. Anyway, I don't want to make Karen sound like she's a nutcase because she's not. She's just really anal about certain things and she wanted me to go back, but I refused. I said I’d been there three times. We had a fight about it, and she refused to go on principle. What principle, I have no idea.”

  "Okay. So, what happened?"

  "This. This is what happened."

  "So, you just, what, like had a stalemate?"

  "Yes, exactly. Neither of us would budge. So, we just have three. That's it. How is this important to you finding her?"

  “At this point, I have no idea what is important.”

  "Listen, I really don't want to tell you how to do your job, but you really have to go find her," he says. "I mean, she's my wife. She can't just be gone."

  I nod. I'm wondering for a second how this whole conversation got so off course in the wrong direction.

  "So, let's just review," I say.

  He walks out of the bedroom, but Lenore and I remain. I make one long scan around, king-size bed, plush. The bed is a metal platform bed painted white. One of those that look like the beds popular in the past.

  There are two nightstands. One is completely covered in books about writing and short story collections. The other is perfectly neat with nothing but a small lamp on the side.

  "Is that your side?" I ask.

  "Yeah, she's not exactly a neat freak," Robert says with a smile.

  "Got it."

  I thought that he had walked away, but instead he's just hovering in the hallway.

  The closet is rather small, and the doors have glass on the windows on the outside. I slide one open and look inside. It's stuffed with things. There's so much clothing from the top to the bottom that I can barely get the door closed again. For a second, I wonder if maybe her body is hidden somewhere in there, but I don't smell anything. I'm tempted to ask him for permission to go through it but if he says no, I’ll need a warrant and I don’t want our relationship to escalate to that level right now. I need him to cooperate.

  Walking out of the bedroom and past the bathroom, I don’t note anything out of the ordinary. It's a typical 1970s apartment with a small toilet and a minuscule sink. A bunch of lotion and makeup bottles crowd the back wall since the additional cabinet above the toilet is already completely full.

  When I peek into the shower, I notice that the tub looks clean, but not so clean like someone had recently bleached it.

  Back in the living room, I find Robert sitting on the overstuffed reclining couch facing the 60-inch television. Both of their desks are located in the dining room section.

  His is pristine with just the laptop and a printer. Hers is covered with piles of papers, folders, notebooks, and library books. Somewhere underneath I see a laptop barely sticking out.

  There are five black bookshelves that go all the way to the ceiling, each packed with titles. Some contain classics like The Iliad and others are in Greek and Latin. The ones near her desk contain collections of Faulkner, Hemingway, Austen, as well as Mansfield and Irving. Other popular ones like John Grisham, Jill James, and Stephenie Meyer appear as well.

  "She has quite varied interests, I see," I say, pointing to the Twilight collection.

  "Yeah. Actually, no, not really. Recently she started reading more popular stuff. I think she was getting very disappointed with the publishing prospects of short stories and she just wanted to make money. So, she started expanding her horizons of what's possible and what she can do."

  "That's good," I say. "So why don't you tell me, again, everything that led up to you discovering that she was missing.”

  2

  "I'm not sure what you want me to say," Robert says, walking over to the kitchen and starting to pour himself a cup of tea.

  He grabs a tea bag out of the cabinet above the teapot and opens it in such a way that it rips the bag in half.

  After cursing under his breath, he asks, "Why does this always happen?"

  He grabs another one and this time, opens it a little bit more carefully.

  "Robert, you really need to tell me what's going on. Where were you today?"

  "I didn't see her today. I didn't know. I was at work, like I said. I slept there and I only got home two hours ago."

  "Okay, good, so how did you ... Why did you decide that she was missing?"

  "Elin called me. She told me that she couldn't find her and they had plans to meet up today. I don't know. It's all so jumbled."

  "Robert, did you know about her appointment this morning?"

  "What appointment?” He raises an eyebrow.

  “The one with the doctor, the gynecologist?"

  "No. She had an appointment?"

  "Yes. She was going to go with Elin."

  "Why?"

  "I guess she suspected that she was pregnant."

  I watch his expression carefully as I say that. He swallows hard and then shifts his jaw from one side to the other. Popping his collar, he throws his hoodie over his head.

  It's something of a nervous tic of his, but what I don't know is whether he's nervous about this conversation or if he's a nervous person in general.

  "So, you had no idea that she might be pregnant or that she might have thought that she was pregnant?"

  "No. Of course not. Wait, she's pregnant?"

  "No, I'm not saying that. We haven't talked to the doctor yet, but she had the appointment."

  "Why didn't she just get one of those tests at the drugstore?" he asks.

  "I don't know. I'm going to talk to Elin about it. Anyway, did you speak to her today at all on the phone or texts?"

  "No."

  "Is that something that's uncommon?"

  He thinks about it for a moment.

  "Ever since I started this job, things have been kind of off. We haven't been talking as much. I've been working a lot and I don't know, we just haven't made much time for each other. After this project is over, I want us to take a trip, but I hadn’t brought it up to her yet."

  "You haven’t?"

  "No," he says, shaking his head.

  "Do you think that there's a chance that she just left?"

  He considers that for a moment.

  "I don't know."

  "Can you tell me about what happened?” I continue to press for information. “You came home, and then what?"

  "Well, nothing. I just came home and Elin called me and she was all frantic. Then I realized that I haven't talked to Karen since yesterday morning."

  "So, you don’t know when she got in from her trip?"

  "No, it was late already. She was going to get in at like midnight. I talked to her at the beginning of the day when she was still at that conference, the one I didn't want her to go to."

  "Tell me more about that."

  "What do you want to know?" He shrugs.

  “Anything you can think of."

  Robert shakes his head, looks down at the floor, picks at the nail on his thumb with his index finger and says.

  "I told you already, the thing about the MLMs. It's all crap. They make you go to these conferences. They cost a lot of money and, of course, you have to pay out of pocket. They make you believe that you're going to be successful, but that's all crap."

  "So, you didn't think that Karen was capable of selling these things?"

  "No, I'm not saying that. Not at all. She probably would have been a good salesperson in a bookstore or a boutique, even though she wasn't really into clothes, but this? No. I definitely don't want her to do that. We fought about it for a while, but she wanted to help out. She wanted to bring in some money and she didn't exactly want to get a regular job because of her writing.”

  He hesitates for a moment and then narrows his eyes and takes a step closer to me.
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  “She invested $4,000,” he says in a gasp. "That's a lot more money than we had, so when she told me she was going to this conference, I knew it was going to cost another $600. I wasn't exactly happy, so I didn't really want to hear from her. I was working anyway and I just needed an excuse to get out of the house."

  "You wouldn't have any sort of surveillance cameras outside?”

  "No," Robert says, shaking his head. "What's the point? There are neighbors everywhere. I guess I never thought anything would happen."

  "Okay. Thank you. I’ll give you my card and we'll be in touch."

  He sighs deeply and walks me over to the front door. I take one last look around. Nothing is out of place, except for that unusual story about the curtains, but then again, everything about this guy is a little bit unusual.

  When Lenore and I walk downstairs, we review our notes.

  "I guess he told us pretty much the same story," Officer Lenore says.

  "So, he came home around 5:30 and then what? What exactly?" I ask.

  "Elin called him and told him that she hadn’t seen his wife. That's when he got worried."

  "He waited a couple of hours and then they called us."

  I lean against the railing downstairs. A few neighbors walk by and I stop them and introduce myself. I ask them about Karen Moore Kaslar; what kind of person was she, when was the last time they saw her?

  The woman who lives downstairs with the freckles and the tank top, even though it's close to fifty degrees outside, lights a cigarette and says that she tried to sell her some candles for her multi-level marketing business.

  "I thought that she was making them herself, but apparently not, so I'm glad I didn't buy them," she says with a smirk. “You know it’s a pyramid scheme, right? I did Mary Kay back in the day and they’re all the same."

  "Okay. Is there anything else? Do you remember the last time that you saw her?” I ask, cutting her short.

  "Like three days ago, standing out here with her suitcase, waiting for an Uber. She said she was going on a business trip, Phoenix, but that was it."

  "You didn't hear anything today?"

  "No. I was home all day," she says, shaking her head.

  "No unusual sounds?"

  "Like what?"

  "I don't know, just anything out of the ordinary," I say.

  "Are you ... Do you really ... Do you think that her husband did it?" she asks, pointing her cigarette in my face.

  "I'm not saying that."

  “Well, I guess he'd be the type, huh?"

  "What do you mean?"

  She runs her fingers through her thinning hair and takes another drag of a cigarette.

  "I don't know. He just always seemed a little odd."

  "How long have they lived here?" I ask.

  "Three, four years, I think. I've been here like ten. My landlord isn't too happy about that."

  I try to steer the conversation back to Robert.

  “So, back to today, no unusual sounds?"

  "Nope," she says, after thinking about it for a moment. "There was a lot of noise from the elementary school across the street, you know, all of their bells and all that stuff, but that's what happens usually on a weekday."

  “Anything unusual?"

  "No. Not that I can think of."

  I nod my head and thank her for her time. Officer Lenore walks me to my car. We discuss the case, or the lack thereof, in a little more detail.

  "Thanks for coming out," he says. "I wasn't sure what kind of report I was going to make, but that was good to see you in action."

  "Yeah, of course. Do you want to be a detective someday?"

  "Yeah, of course," he says with a smile, "but that's a lot of years in the future."

  "Well, you never know. You just keep doing a good job and they might give you the opportunity."

  "Is that what happened with you?"

  "Yeah, sort of. I had this one case that kind of pushed me up a pay grade."

  "Oh, yeah? What happened?"

  My thoughts drift back to the docks near the Queen Mary, but I'm not ready to talk about it with a complete stranger just yet.

  "I'll tell you about it some other time," I say. "I actually have to go deal with some personal issues right now."

  "Oh, yes, of course. I heard about your sister."

  I nod.

  "Yeah. How is she? I mean, sorry." He fumbles over his words. "Is she still missing?"

  "Yes, she is. Two days. It doesn't look great."

  "Is there any chance that she ran away?"

  "No." I shake my head. "She’s thirteen and she's not the type. She's a good girl. She always called whenever she stayed out late, that kind of thing."

  Then I think back to how she called me last summer and asked me to come get her. Even then, she told Mom where she was going.

  "So, she just vanished?"

  "She got dropped off by her friend's mom in front of the house, but she never walked in. I have no idea what could have happened. The mom was there with her friend and they dropped her off, so no one knows what happened."

  "Wow, that's really scary."

  "Yeah."

  "What if she had plans to meet up with someone else?” Lenore asks. "Like a boyfriend."

  "What do you mean?" I narrow my eyes, wanting to hear his thinking, his line of thought.

  "No, nothing. I'm just talking."

  "No, seriously. Tell me."

  "I was just thinking back to being that age and I was dating this girl, but her parents were really strict. She used to tell them that she was hanging out with this one friend and she was really hanging out with me. That's what we used to do, just get around it, you know?"

  "Yeah. I don't know. That may be the case. I thought that we were close and she would have told me about it. Maybe that could have been possible the first night, but she didn't come back yet and it's been a while."

  "Yeah, I get it. That's not good. I'm sorry."

  "Well, the good news, Lenore, is that you may have yourself the makings of a detective."

  "Really?"

  "Yep. You'd be surprised how few people would connect those dots in that way, so chin up. You might have a good career yet."

  I get in the car and drive away from him, watching his face beam in the rearview mirror. My apartment is not too far away from here and as soon as I get in, I climb into the shower. I'm going to make the report later on tonight, but first I have to get back up to Big Bear.

  When I climb out of the shower, I wrap myself in a towel and lie down on the bed.

  My clothes are piled on the chair in the corner and there's one, sad, little plant that I have forgotten to water for close to a week. I know that I need to get back home as soon as possible to try to find my sister, but I don't know how much more time I can take off from work.

  I snuck in these hours and I had to be back here to close a previous case, but I don't have that much time off. As a detective, I work long hours and the department does not look too keenly on people who take a lot of personal days off.

  So far, they've been pretty understanding about my missing sister and the urgency of the matter, but the more days that click by, the less understanding they’ll be.

  No matter how much I insist that she's not the type to run away, a part of me wonders if she did. What if my bookworm, quiet, little girl of a sister had a secret life?

  That's not even a what-if anymore. I know that's true. My mom doesn't, but the captain of the sheriff’s station up there showed me what they found on her computer; videos of her friends in compromising situations.

  She was there, recording it all. Why? I don't know.

  For what purpose? I also don't know.

  The one other thing I know is that the girl that she was supposedly not particularly friends with, but who appeared in that video, Natalie D'Achille, is now missing as well.

  She was supposed to come home, and she didn't. At least that's what I heard from my mom. I need to get up there and talk to the ca
ptain to get all the details, but suddenly, I feel like there is a thick, damp blanket that has descended upon me that I can't lift off my body or free myself from.

  I get on my side, lie down in the fetal position, and close my eyes. I know that all cops feel this way. Sometimes the work just gets to be too much. There's just too much darkness, too much pain, too much disappointment. In what other job do you constantly deal with everyone else's worst days?

  Maybe if you're an emergency room doctor, but at least you can do something to help them. At least some of them survive.

  I grab my phone and scroll aimlessly through social media, then I check my emails. There's nothing but spam and nothing really of interest.

  I check my text messages again, wanting to see one from Luke, the FBI agent who it felt like I had a good connection with the last time that we were together, but nothing.

  He had to go off on a job to Northern California and he said that he'd be in touch later that day, but I haven't heard much in a few days.

  He's ghosting me. It's obvious, of course, but I still don't want to believe it. Some people would ask, "Why not just call me and tell me that you don't want to see me?" but I know the answer. They don't want the conflict. They don't want the trouble.

  Besides, it's not like you don't really want to see this person again. Maybe it was just nothing to him, like just another day, just another date. I get it. You can't expect much from these one-off meetings, these one-off dates.

  Sometimes you have a connection, sometimes you don't.

  I'm used to it, of course. I've had plenty of dating experiences in all of these years of being single, but sometimes it's still nice to think that maybe the connection that you thought you made was real and the person on the other end felt the same way.

  Oh, well.

  My phone rings and I answer it just as I start to get ready. I put it on speakerphone.

  "What's up, Sydney?" I ask.

  She's my closest friend in the department and she was the one there with me that night when I met Luke.