by E. G. Scott
“So,” I begin, finally. “This joint disappearance is probably the most action you’ve had on the job out here so far, eh?”
“Huh?” It takes him a second to come back. “Yeah, I was starting to get a little antsy.”
“Well, time to break you in. Any ideas on this thing so far?”
“Been thinking on that. You know, the husband seems like a real prince.”
“Mark Anders?” I say, flinching at the memory of the cigar stench during our interview with him. “Not the most attentive, so far as spouses go. Although that makes me less suspicious of him.”
“How so?” asks Silvestri.
“When we questioned him, he seemed genuinely surprised to hear that his wife had been reported missing. And he mentioned that she took off on a regular basis. Gave us the number for the sister and the mother. I thought he came off as detached more than anything else. A guy like that, jealousy is long gone from the equation, if it was ever there in the first place. Doesn’t seem like much of a candidate for a crime of passion. He seemed mildly annoyed about the fact that she might be spending his money, but his tone was more resigned than angry.”
“Yeah,” my partner says. “Now that you mention it, he did only seem to show any sort of alarm when we told him that her cards hadn’t been used in weeks. Unless, of course, he’s just full of shit.”
“Oh, I suspect that he is. But that weak show of remorse that he offered up? That sounded more phoned in than anything else, like he was trying to tell us what he thought he should be feeling, but without enough emotion behind the words to really sell it.”
“Maybe,” says Silvestri, “he’s just a bad actor.”
“Could be. But he just didn’t seem to care enough one way or the other.”
“Plus,” my partner reminds me, “his financials are in order. Guy’s Big Pharma, after all. He can afford to lose whatever his wife’s squandering at the Givenchy store to stick it to him.”
“Look at you, with the name brands.”
“I had a little culture under my belt before I moved out to the sticks.”
“Uh-huh. Anyone else looking good for this, you think?”
Silvestri ponders the question. “I think it’s a hell of a coincidence that Paul and Rebecca Campbell had connections to both of the disappeared women.”
Rebecca hasn’t been taking up much space in my head, but her husband’s starting to give me the itch. I decide to see where a round of devil’s advocate might get us. “This is a small town. People overlap in all sorts of ways. Same is true for any other member of that studio.”
“But the fact that she worked for the husband doesn’t bother you at all?” he asks.
“She just seemed pretty matter-of-fact when we spoke with her. Appropriately concerned, but not selling anything too hard. I did notice that Paul’s relationship with the wife from high school was chafing her, though.”
“You think the wick on that flame hasn’t burned all the way down?” he asks.
“Wouldn’t be surprised if his eyes had a habit of roving, at the very least.”
“You might be giving the guy way too much credit,” my partner muses. “He reminds me of a guy I knew once.”
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“An old stepdad of mine,” he responds. “Real slick fuck.”
“I’m going to wager that that ended poorly?” I ask.
“Ended great,” he retorts. “Guy ran off with a coworker. My mom and I never had to deal with him again.
“How about Paul and Rebecca’s story?” he asks. “You think it sounded rehearsed?”
“No, thought that whole thing came off pretty naturally. It was just the way he spoke about the other woman and the fallout from that.”
“Yeah, the wife seemed more remorseful than he did,” says Silvestri. “Jesus, we’re just surrounded by fucking Prince Charmings around here, aren’t we? And yet I can’t manage to wrangle a decent woman.”
“Maybe ‘wrangling’ is the wrong approach, cowboy.” I like giving this guy the business.
“Pardon me, Soft Glove. Perhaps you can teach me the ways of women.” He laughs. “Then again, you do have an old lady at home.”
I nod in his direction and catch a forlorn look in his eye. Underneath the bluster, there’s something else there. I feel for the guy. Just as quickly, he clears his throat and straightens up, and I see a look of curiosity take shape. Something is nagging at him.
“What’s on your mind, Silvestri?”
“I keep coming back to Sheila Maxwell.”
“How so?” I ask.
“Well, she seems like an afterthought in this whole situation. Aside from the anonymous tip we got, which led with the news of Sasha Anders, there’s barely been any mention of her. Paul Campbell seems to be about the only connection to her. Even the other women at the spin studio that we spoke to hardly remember who she was. It’s like she was barely on anyone’s radar.”
“Bit of a loner,” I suggest. “You find anything on the husband yet?”
“Looking into that right now, and waiting on her phone records. Let’s see what we can turn up on this chick. I’m intrigued.”
“Go get ’em.” I laugh. “Going to stretch my legs.”
* * *
I SIT ON THE BENCH out front of the station house, breathing in the crisp air. Spring is starting to rear its head. My favorite time of year, and my favorite time on a case. I watch the cars pass by on the main road and listen to the whistle of the cardinals. As I zone out, the pieces of the puzzle begin to take shape in my head.
I certainly take no pleasure in the fact that two women have gone missing, but getting to the root of the mystery is where I feel most at home and useful. It gives me purpose. And it’s been a slow winter. I’ve had a lot of time lately to ponder what it would have been like to do this on the federal level. To have been able to make this kind of action my day-to-day. But life unfolds in its own way.
The itch starts to take shape, as it always does. It hasn’t arrived fully formed this time, but the feeling is there, and I need to sit with it and give my brain a chance to blow the dust off and get a clearer look at the picture. I can’t quite see how I’m going to get there yet, but my instinct is leaning heavily toward a particular suspect: Paul Campbell.
* * *
I RETURN TO THE DESK, coffee and tea in hand, and set the latter down on the coaster next to Silvestri’s desktop. He’s studying the screen intently and only notices me as I draw my hand away.
“Wolcott, there you are.”
“Miss me?”
“Cute,” he says. “Was about to call your cell.”
“What’s up?”
“Sheila Maxwell’s phone records just came in.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he says, with a glint in his eye. “You’re going to want to see this.”
twenty
REBECCA
IT’S LATE IN the afternoon on Sunday. Paul has been in Miami for thirty-six hours.
He sent a few texts confirming that he and Wes landed and checked into their hotel on schedule. When I call his phone, it goes straight to voicemail. At a loss for what to say, I text back, asking him how the weather is. Nothing.
I take Duff out into the safety of the backyard on his leash. Even with the gate closed and locked, I feel like he could disappear if I let him off the lead. He looks at me holding the leash and then around the yard, confused. Eventually he lifts a leg and relieves himself and I lead him back to the house, closing the sliding doors and locking us in.
Chemically, I’m secure for the short term. I stocked up on enough stolen medication at Lotus Pedal to float me through the next handful of days (if I’m able to exhibit some self-control in rationing). I turn music on and start to clean the already immaculate kitchen. I aim to clear my head by keeping my body in mot
ion, but the walls around me move as fluidly as I do. I turn the music off, sit as still as possible in the quiet, and try to focus on one thought. I’ve let myself go off the rails for long enough. His letter and journal entries are cycling through my brain on full swing.
I go to the cupboard with the thought of making an entire pot of coffee and caffeinating for the next ten hours, or until I figure out what he’s done with the money. The beans are absent from their usual spot and I remember Paul’s Post-it note reminding us that we are fresh out, stuck next to the detective’s business card on the fridge. I curse the Post-it and pull the plain white card with small black lettering from the magnetic clip. I run my jittery fingers over the embossed police shield and the letters forming “Wolcott.” He was the taller of the two? Or maybe not. I can’t remember. I say his name out loud before I put the card in one of the credit card slots of my wallet/phone holder for safekeeping.
I’m in no shape to drive so a coffee run is out of the question. My brain gets fuzzy again and I take a seat to regain composure. I remember the hidden Adderall in my rolling suitcase, taken from work just in case I needed help with motivation and focus. I’ve gotten good at not overdoing it on the Oxys and Xanax in general, but there have been one or three mornings where I’d swallowed one too many the night before and needed a boost to get through the workday.
Duff follows me to the walk-in closet in our bedroom and I extract the pill bottle from a makeup case that I’ve left in the front zipper pocket. Location number seventy-five that dear husband wouldn’t think to look.
The bottle holds ten opaque rust-colored gel capsules. I shake one into my palm and hold it vertically as I pull one half away from the other, careful to not lose any of the tiny white orbs within. Carefully I pour a portion of the chemical granules under my tongue. I reconnect the capsule and save the other half for later.
As I sit on the bed my focus automatically goes to the spot near the lower corner of the frame where Paul spackled, painted, and scuffed a few subtle marks with his work boots to camouflage the glaringly pristine spot. The replacement carpet looks identical to its predecessor. While the dopamine boost begins, I try to push away the hurricane of thoughts about what they did in our bed. What else had he done in our house and with who else? I’ve been checking his pockets and bag when he comes home from work and is in the shower, trying to find clues to anything that might help.
Every day that I’m home, I dig up a little more about my husband. I’ve taken to routinely riffling through his drawers, feeling in his coat pockets, and going through old papers. This practice doesn’t yield any earth-shattering revelations, but in the searches for comandeered painkillers or evidence of his other life, I’ve come across some interesting findings. For example, I notice that his sock drawer can’t be closed when I try to push it flush with the rest of his drawers. When I pull the drawer all the way out and place it on the bed, I see what is disrupting the drawer’s track. I extract the object from the recesses of the dresser and it regains its natural shape when I spread it out on the bed. It is a La Perla bra, size 32B; the cups are blue and green lace and metallic threading, making up the feathers of a peacock. The expensive and memorable item is not mine. And it looks exactly like one I’ve seen Sasha wearing in the locker room. When I make the connection, I practically throw Paul’s drawer at the vanity, but my fury is diverted by the landline ringing. The outdated portable phone sitting in its cradle is like a sad plastic movie prop that only receives action from telemarketers these days. The incoming number is blocked on the ancient caller ID screen. I clumsily grab the receiver before it rings a third time, to spare my nerves, and hit the answer button accidentally. A female voice speaks before I can disconnect.
“Is this Mr. Paul Campbell or Mrs. Rebecca Campbell?”
I clear my throat. I don’t think I have the wherewithal to interact with the outside world. But the official-sounding outsider saying both of our names, combined with the effects of the drugs, snaps me to attention.
“This is Rebecca Campbell. Who is this?” I don’t bother hiding the disdain in my voice.
“My name is Melanie Wilkes and I’m calling from the fraud department of American Express to confirm that some recent charges made on your card are legitimate.”
It takes me a minute to even place the card she’s referring to. I pull open the drawer where the emergency Amex usually lives. It is missing, like so many other things around here. Paul must have taken it with him and the out-of-state charges have triggered a red flag. Not so smart, are you, Paul?
Well, this could be interesting. A little insight into what he has been up to in Florida may be exactly what I need to start connecting some dots.
I’m surprised he’s using this credit card. I’d guess that he’s charging things he doesn’t want me to know about. He probably assumed that I’d completely forgotten about the card, and he was right. Though he clearly didn’t count on bureaucratic intervention.
“What charges?”
“I’ll need you to confirm some information before we go any further.”
As I give her my social security number, mother’s maiden name, and four-digit access code, my pulse begins to race. My brain is exploding with a hundred ideas. Thoughts while on Adderall practically take physical shape and push themselves through my brain on legs of their own.
“Now that I’ve confirmed your identity, Mrs. Campbell, I need to tell you that this call may be recorded. I’m calling on behalf of the American Express fraud department because there’s been suspicious activity on your card ending in zero-zero-zero-eight.”
Suspicious activity pertaining to Paul is the understatement of the fucking year.
I try to calm the growing excited curiosity in my voice and my increasingly speedy heart with a hand over my chest.
“What suspicious activity has been happening exactly?”
“Well, there hadn’t been any activity on the card in nine months, and when a card has been dormant for that length of time, we like to follow up when activity starts up again to make sure it hasn’t been stolen. Especially for purchases of this amount and frequency.”
“Frequency?”
“Yes, ma’am, there have been ten charges in very quick succession made in five hours, totaling fifteen thousand dollars. We’ve actually been calling since yesterday when they were occurring but weren’t able to reach anyone.”
I see the red light on the answering machine blinking and realize that I’ve stopped paying attention to it altogether. Who knows what information has been blinking in front of me all along.
“We’ve placed a temporary freeze on the card until we could get a cardholder to confirm the activity.” Her voice is almost robotic.
“I’m just curious, Melanie, have you been able to contact my husband yet?”
“No, ma’am, this is the only number we have for both of you—”
“That’s fine. I was just wondering.” I’m relieved. I realize the card is old enough that it probably predated our cell phones, and neither of us is very good at remembering to update that kind of information. It is good that Paul doesn’t know they are trying to reach him.
“I’m going to go over the last couple of charges on your card, and I’ll need you to confirm or deny if they are fraudulent or not.”
“Okay. I’m ready.”
“There was a charge for five thousand dollars at a vendor called Illusions made yesterday afternoon.”
Sounds like a strip club. This makes my stomach hurt but could be worse. Wes and Paul didn’t waste any time after landing, it seems. And five thousand dollars? That is a hell of a lot of lap dances.
“That could have been my husband.” I force a boys-will-be-boys-tinged laugh and walk to the couch, where the laptop is.
“And there was a charge made at the Royal Palm steak house for five hundred dollars early this morning.”
Spray-ta
nned skanks followed by a steak dinner with all the trimmings? Paul’s dutiful-husband profile continues its descent at a swift clip. He is making it easier and easier to hate him today.
“It sounds like my husband had quite the night out.”
I open my laptop and see that the battery is drained. I connect it to the charger. I’ll need to use the Internet on my phone.
“What other charges are there, Melanie? I’m not entirely sure about these; they probably are Paul’s, but he’s not here right now. I’ve just texted him to find out.”
I pull my phone from the charging station and enter “Illusions Miami” into Google. A one-star Yelp review pops up for a Spanish restaurant, but when I click through, it shows that the business closed in 2015.
“Um, let’s see here. There was a purchase at a store called Wined-Down for two hundred dollars, and a five-hundred-dollar purchase at the Synchronicity day spa.” I’m thrilled to hear that while I’m home sick with worry about the myriad disasters exploding around us, Paul is pampering himself. I need to get off this call and start some digging.
“Melanie, I can confirm that these are Paul’s charges. He just texted me as much.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Campbell. So I can lift the hold on the card?”
“Yes, that would be great.” I don’t want Paul to be alerted by a declined card and go into defense mode. If he hasn’t already.
“Well, I’m sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused.”
“Inconvenience?”
“We did have one attempted charge early this morning that came in after we’d suspended usage.”
“Oh? What was that one?” I could only imagine. Was it middle-of-the-night karaoke or bottle service at some cheesy Miami dance club? Everything about this spending spree has Wes written all over it.
“It was for the Harbor Rose bed-and-breakfast this morning for four hundred and seventy-two dollars.”
My blood runs cold. “Uh. No problem. He made other arrangements.” I hang up.
