by K. J. Emrick
I stand there, blinking at Carol, who stands there, staring at me from behind those glasses.
Sometimes, even with my superior investigative skills and my future-sense and my woman’s intuition, I still miss things. Upstairs in the apartment building’s hallway, I’d been too far away from Carol to notice a lot of details. After that I was too focused on getting down here quick, stopping Carol from leaving, to pay attention to much else.
Now that we were both right here in the parking lot, I notice something. It was one of those things that probably should have been obvious. Something I probably should have seen right from the start.
Carol isn’t a woman.
He’s a guy.
Chapter Eight
Well. I didn’t see that coming.
In my defense, with that oversized hoodie on and the longish hair and the big round sunglasses, I couldn’t see a lot of his body to get the finer details. Also in my defense, Carol Weber is a very feminine looking guy.
Now that he isn’t trying to hide himself, he’s stripped off that hoodie and taken off the baseball cap. The sunglasses, too. His hair fell down to his shoulders in lustrous brown waves that would have made any girl jealous. Me included. He’s only twenty-two, according to the driver’s license I made him fork over so I could snap a photo with my phone. His neck is long and slender. So are his arms. I mean, if he didn’t have that protruding Adam’s apple and those bushy eyebrows, he would have made one hell of a woman.
“Carol O’Connor,” he says to me, still listing off men named Carol on the fingers of his one hand. I get the impression he’s practiced this a lot. “He’s the guy who played Archie Bunker on television. Carol Vadnais was a Canadian hockey player until a few years ago and he won two Stanley Cups. Carol Reed was a really famous British film maker…”
“Okay, okay,” I interrupt him for the third time. “Listen, you don’t have to convince me. My name’s Sidney, and I’m always getting flak from people expecting me to be a guy. I get it. Right now, I don’t care about gender equality. I just want to know why you were here to see Katarina.”
We were still in the back parking lot but we were sitting in his car now, where we could talk without people seeing us. Barlow was going to be at work until at least the afternoon because even with his girlfriend missing, he still had to make money. Especially now, actually, since Katarina had cleared out two of his accounts. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t have neighbors or friends that would see me and Carol and report it to him. I was beginning to understand the need for the hat and the glasses.
Because generally, guys don’t talk to another guys’ girlfriend through coded text message unless something’s going on between them. Something improper.
“So what is it between you two?” I ask him directly. “How’d you even meet Katarina?”
He’s still defensive about it, but he answers me. “Accidentally. That’s how. I live a few blocks over but there’s a cool park over this way that I hang out in sometimes with my friends. Katarina was there one day. She was like, fresh off the boat, just arrived in this country or something, and she didn’t know a thing about Detroit. So I offered to take her around a bit. After that it was just like, love at first sight or something.”
“I’ve heard that one before. From her other boyfriend, in fact. Barlow Michaelson. You know him?”
His lips twist into a sneer. “Oh, sure. I know him. Katarina told me all about how he kept her locked up in that apartment most days, wouldn’t give her money to do the things she wanted, just kept buying her dumb presents that she didn’t want. She really wants to get away from the guy she just didn’t know how. He’s controlling her life. But me and her, we’re going to leave Detroit and never look back, and there’s nothing Barlow can do about it.”
I tap a finger against the dash, considering that fresh take on Katarina’s life. It certainly was a different spin than Barlow had put on it. I doubt this guy was smart enough to try and lie to me. Plus, his answers were coming too quick to be made up on the spot. It was like he’d been wanting to get this all out for a while now. I guess he didn’t have a lot of people he could talk to about his secret love interest.
“You and Katarina have been seeing a lot of each other,” I say, not really as a question.
“Well, sure.” He shrugs. “Three, sometimes four times a week. She lets me know the coast is clear, and I tell her I’m coming over, and we hang out or we go someplace she’s never seen before. It’s the best relationship I’ve been in since high school, man.”
Oh, dear God this guy is too young. Anyone who still relates their life to what they did in high school has a lot of growing up to do. Them talking in secret code is kind of like how we used to leave notes in lockers for the guys we were crushing on, and stuff like that. And yes, I’ve done that myself once or twice. Their code might be a little more sophisticated, what with the whole raining-or-not system they had set up to say when Barlow was gone, and the thing about the umbrella…
The umbrella.
Bring an umbrella.
Don’t I always?
“Condoms!” I blurt it out loud before I can stop myself and his face turns pink. I maybe can feel mine heating up, too, but there it was. It had been staring me in the face the whole time. “Umbrellas in your text messages means condoms. Katarina was telling you to bring condoms.”
“Uh… yeah. Yeah, she was.” He squirms in the driver’s seat, his hands taking a tight grip on the steering wheel. “I mean, it was a great idea, and all, but for the first couple of days when we started… you know… sleeping together, I didn’t have anything with me. We didn’t think anything about it because we were just so hot for each other. After a while she must’ve started getting worried because she was getting obsessive about it. I used them every time after that… only…”
“You’d already gotten her pregnant,” I say, filling in the gaps. “You guys started using protection a little too late, don’t you think?”
“Yeah. Exactly.” Sweat had started to bead out on his forehead. This kid was going to be a father and I could tell right now that he was definitely not ready for it. “So now she’s carrying my baby, and I told her to go to the clinic and I think she did, but I haven’t heard from her since then until last night when she texted me again. I thought she was mad at me for knocking her up… I mean, getting her pregnant. Here we are trying to sneak around but I get her pregnant and Barlow sure as hell is going to notice that. I take it he’s the one who hired you to find me?”
“Sort of,” I tell him, because it’s not exactly a lie. “Barlow thinks Katarina is saving herself for marriage. She isn’t having sex with him, but she’s having sex with you. Care to explain that one to me?”
With a stupid little grin, he motions down at his crotch. “Some guys got it.”
Yeah. I’m sure. Guys always think theirs is the best. That didn’t answer my question, though. This scarecrow of a guy didn’t have a lot to offer in the looks department, same as Barlow didn’t. Even though I know there’s no accounting for a woman’s personal taste, I’m very sure Katarina is picking her men for something other than their physical company. It’s not for their IQs, either. Barlow’s a smart enough guy, especially when it comes to money, but Carol here sure isn’t going on Jeopardy anytime soon.
So why is Katarina with these guys? If not for personal reasons, then…
“Hey, Carol? What is it you do for work?”
“Me?”
“Yeah, what’s your job?”
“I’m a computer programmer. Katarina wanted to hear all about my work whenever we were together.” He shrugs. “I mean, I’m not on Bill Gates’s level or anything. I work at the DMV but that’s because it’s hard to find tech jobs here in Michigan. The state is still the second biggest employer of people we have. It’s a good job.”
A computer programmer at the DMV. What did a computer programmer do at the Department of Motor Vehicles?
Katarina had been with him for some reason
. Certainly not to get pregnant, because based on the reaction she gave Louise Timmins at the clinic, she hadn’t wanted the baby. I’m guessing not for the sex either no matter what Carol thinks, although there’s only one way to confirm that and I’m not willing to go that far for any case, thank you very much.
Carol had access to all the records at the DMV as one of their programmers. Maybe he could even manipulate those records, if he got asked nicely by a naked woman in the throes of passion. Maybe he could even create a file for an immigrant who didn’t actually have one yet.
Driver’s license. Proof of residency in the great state of Michigan. Everything an immigrant would need to get herself a green card, without having to go through the much slower, proper channels. Obviously, she hadn’t gotten around to asking that yet, but I was pretty sure that would have happened soon enough.
But why stop at a new driver’s license? Carol here could have created a whole slew of fake documents for Katarina. New name. A whole new identity. All official and in order.
Interesting. Very interesting.
That led to a whole new theory of what Katarina was doing with the two men in her life—Barlow and Carol—but it didn’t really put me closer to finding her. Louise Timmins didn’t know anything about her whereabouts. Neither did Carol, apparently. That left me right back at square one.
Where was Katarina Borishev?
“So now what?” Carol asks me, surprising me out of my thoughts. “I mean, I didn’t do anything illegal. Barlow can’t tell me to stay away from her, either, because that’s her decision to make, not his. Me and her were going to leave this cesspool of a city and start over somewhere else. Can I… can I at least call Katarina and let her know that Barlow’s on to us? He’s not going to be happy now that you’ve found me, and I don’t want him taking it out on her.”
Leaning my elbow on the armrest, I look him straight in the eyes. “Katarina’s missing. Barlow hired me to find her, not find out who she was sleeping with. He didn’t know anything about you until yesterday. As far as I’m concerned, he still doesn’t need to. Like you said, that’s between you and her.”
“Wait, wait… hold on.” His mouth has dropped open again. Must be a pretty common look for him. “What are you saying? Katarina’s missing? Like, she was kidnapped? Is that what you’re saying?”
“She was kidnapped, or she left on purpose. She took a lot of Barlow’s money when she left.”
“No. No, she wouldn’t do that to me.” He let go of the steering wheel finally and crosses his arms over his thin chest instead. “You don’t know her. She would never leave on her own without me. We had plans. We were going to get out of here together.”
He honestly believes that was Katarina’s plan. I could just imagine them lying on Barlow’s nice couch in his fine living room and drinking some sort of expensive liquor while they made plans to put Detroit in their rearview mirror one day. “Where were you going to go?” I ask him. “South? North into Canada?”
For a moment he just stares back, his eyes slowly blinking. “We… uh, we didn’t get that far. I mean, the plan was to leave but we didn’t have any place specific in mind. Just… out of here.”
So I’d been right. Katarina was stringing Carol along, working him slowly, and she hadn’t gotten to the part about how they would leave, or where they would go, and definitely not to the part where she would need his help creating a new identity. She used Barlow Michaelson to get over here, to the United States, with the promise of marrying him someday and loving him forever. But Barlow couldn’t give her everything she needed, so she had to move on to the next guy, Carol. He required more than just a promise of love, so she started sleeping with him.
She’d disappeared before seeing her con game through. Whatever plan Katarina was working had been interrupted by something. Or rather, by someone.
What kind of danger was she in?
Carol is still staring at me, expecting some sort of explanation to a problem I haven’t completely worked out yet. This one really was a riddle wrapped in an enigma and sprinkled with crystalized chunks of crazy.
“That girlfriend of yours,” I tell him, “is a pretty complicated woman.”
His face finally smooths over into a smile, and I can admit that maybe he’s as much as a seven. “Yeah, she is. I don’t like that she’s missing. You’re gonna find her, right?”
“Answer one more question for me and maybe so. Did you ever see anyone watching you when you came to meet with Katarina? Anyone following you or paying a lot of attention to you being here?”
He gives me a quick shrug. “There’s always people around. I try not to look them in the face because I don’t want them remembering who I am later. As long as it wasn’t Barlow who saw me, I really didn’t care, you know?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.” I’d been hoping that since Carol didn’t have anything to do with Katarina’s disappearance, that maybe he might have caught a glimpse of whoever did. Now I knew Carol wasn’t the woman at the bank. No long nails and red polish on this guy. That woman was still out there. She must have been watching the apartment here to know when she could safely abduct Katarina, but Carol didn’t see her.
Guess it couldn’t be that easy, right?
“Miss Stone,” he implores me, “I love Katarina. She’s like, the best thing that’s happened to me in a really long time. You’ve got to find her. You’ve got to make sure she’s okay.”
So what do you say to that? Should I tell him I have no earthly idea where to go from here? No, I should not. There are times when the truth is more important than anything else, and there are times when a little white lie is best for everyone involved.
“I promise I’ll find her, Carol. You have my word.”
Although I had no idea how I was going do it.
By the time I got back to my apartment building… I still hadn’t come up with anything.
To make matters worse, Mrs. Anderson is in my parking space again.
This time she’s standing right next to her little Honda Civic, for all the world as if she was waiting for me. I think it’s more likely that she’s waiting on the mailman to arrive. We do that sometimes, because Hank—the guy who runs this part of the mail route—can’t seem to figure out which of our tenant lockboxes belong to who. Even though they’re labelled. And numbered.
Either way, Mrs. Anderson is here now, and I’m in just the kind of mood to confront her about where her car belongs. I’m not having a good day, considering the last lead in my case just led me nowhere, and seeing her orange Honda Fit in my spot was enough to set me off.
I parked Roxy right in the middle of the lot, right behind her car, and didn’t even bother shutting her off. The Mustang’s engine idled as I came around her front and faced down the little old lady.
She really isn’t all that old. She’s in her sixties, but her hair’s already gone white and her skin has those wrinkles that every two-pack-a-day smoker has. The dress with the shoulder pads is straight out of the 80s. Mrs. Anderson is old before her time.
“Don’t start with me, young lady,” she says before I get a chance to blow my top. “This is a free country. Life and the pursuit of happiness are free, and I’m choosing to park over here on this side of the lot. You can’t stop me!”
“I’m sorry,” I say in a mocking tone, “did you just quote the Constitution at me?”
Her chin jutting out defiantly, she stands her ground. “Yes, I did. It’s every American’s right to know what their government can’t take away from them.”
“Mrs. Anderson, I’m not the government. I’m your neighbor, and I’m just trying to use the spot that was guaranteed to me by my lease. You have your own parking spot. See that sign, the one right over there that says ‘2B?’ That’s yours. This one’s mine.”
Her smile was infuriating. “Not today, it’s not. Today, it’s mine. I tell you what, Miss Stone. If you like my spot over there so much, you can have it. We’ll trade.”
“There
is no way,” I start to say, “in any universe that might exist anywhere, that I would ever agree to—”
“Good.” She interrupts me, as if I hadn’t been speaking at all. “Then it’s agreed. Thank you for your understanding, Sidney. Oh. And if I find those frogs in my car again, I’m going to call the police! Good day to you.”
“How about I call the police on you right now?” I’m very aware of how loud our voices have gotten, and of how ridiculous this all is. It’s just a parking space. But it’s my parking space, and I’m not giving it up without a fight. “I can have you arrested and have your car towed, how about that?”
For a moment she looks worried, but it passes pretty quickly. “The police won’t come for this. You might be a big-time private investigator but that doesn’t mean you can bully me around. There’s no law about parking in someone else’s space, and you know it.”
I clenched my teeth so hard that I could hear them grinding together. She was right, of course. There was nothing at all illegal about what she was doing. It was just rude. Laws don’t apply to people being jerks.
With a great deal of effort, I made myself smile back at her. “Fine. I’ll park over there, but you can’t keep your car in that spot forever. You’ll have to move it eventually. When you do, it’s mine again.”
I expected her to keep smiling. I expected her to keep arguing. Maybe even start yelling at me like I’d been yelling at her. Instead, I watch as tears start to brim in her eyes. She turns away from me to hide them, but it was too late for that.
Oh, great, I thought to myself. I made a middle-aged woman cry. Over a parking space.
Hooray for me.
I slam Roxy’s door a little too hard when I get back behind the wheel, and the tires squeal as I goose it a little hard going into Mrs. Anderson’s parking space. “Sorry, girl, sorry.” I smooth my hand over her leather dash as I tell my car I didn’t mean it. “I’m just frustrated. I’ll buy you some synthetic oil later. And some Turtle Wax. You know you like the Turtle Wax.”
