by Kate Anders
Thankfully, he doesn’t make me wait that long.
“I was a cop,” he says simply.
“I know.”
More silence. More waiting him out. I don’t think he realizes yet he’s not even close to having a fighting chance at waiting me out. I just keep staring out the passenger side window, watching the pine trees fly by as we speed down the highway.
“Clara’s case. The reason I didn’t want to take it at first, well, it’s, it hit a little close to something.”
“You used to work missing persons cases?” I guess out loud.
“Not often, but sometimes one would come my way. They were never the ones with happy endings.”
“Oh,” I whisper. “Does that mean you don’t think Clara—”
“No, I’m not saying that. I’m not saying that at all.” He slows the truck as we start to hit traffic coming off the highway. Out of my peripheral, I see him turn to look at me before I follow suit. “Look, by the time I got missing persons cases, there wasn’t a chance. The crime was normally committed before anyone ever was reported missing. Hell, sometimes weeks went by after the crime before anyone was reported missing. But my last case. My last case was… different.”
The questions start racing through my mind at warp speed. I want so badly to just blurt them out at him in rapid-fire succession, to get all the answers as quick as I can. But I can tell this hurts him. So I try to give him the space he needs to tell me in his own time. And while I wait, I pull Will’s go-to comfort move with me. I reach out and rest my hand on top of his, if only for just a few moments, hoping beyond hope it helps him the way it does me.
The small smile he gives me lets me believe it did help.
“The girl that was missing, someone saw her get taken. So we knew she was alive, and we knew most likely we were up against a clock.” His thumb starts up the earlier rhythm against the steering wheel.
“You don’t have to, Will, it’s okay,” I tell him. I thought about all the times in the past couple of days I had to lay out everything for people, over and over again, and how each time it felt like ripping a piece of myself out. It was painful. It felt like it was going to leave a scar. And by the way Will was speaking just now, whatever happened, I think it left a pretty big scar.
“No, you should know. You didn’t just hire me, you’re working in the office for now, you should know. And if at the end you don’t think you want to work with me, that’s okay, I’m still going to see this through, okay? No matter what.” Our eyes meet across the cab and he looks nervous. Nervous, but serious.
“Okay,” I tell him, but the word drags out slowly.
“The case. The girl…” He turns to look back out toward traffic. “It didn’t end well for her. I tried. I tried everything. Hell, I almost lost my job. But in the end, I was still the one standing over her broken body, I was still the one listening to the screams of her mother that I still hear all the time.” His shaky intake of breath lets me know that scar might be an understatement. He was still living it. Trapped in that moment in a way. I recognized it. I’ve lived with people trapped in time before. It’s painful to watch.
“Will—”
“No, just let me finish. We knew who it was. We knew quickly who it was. We just couldn’t prove it. I knew she was out there; I knew she was running out of time, but when we picked him up, he wouldn’t talk.” He paused. “I’ve never crossed a line before, not once. When I swore in to be a soldier, when I swore in to be a cop, I believed. I was a believer of the words I was saying, of the code we had to live by. But this guy. He had a record, he had done this kind of thing before, but always managed to get out of it, not enough evidence, technicalities, he was never going to stop. So I pushed. I crossed a line. I came clean on my own, got a slap on the wrist, and as much as I want to regret it, I don’t. I got what we needed, but it wasn’t quick enough.
“These cases, they haunt you. You live and breathe them day in and day out. And the bottom line is after we found her, there was always going to be another case right around the corner. So I left. I didn’t want to ever not get there in time again.”
I can’t find words to say to him. You watch these procedurals on television, and everything is nice and neat and wrapped up in sixty minutes. But I know from experience, real life is messy. I can’t imagine what it was like for him. I’m not sure I want to even try. I know I want to say the right thing though, I want to comfort him. To let him know that I don’t hold him responsible for her death, that no one in their right mind would.
“I’m so sorry, Will.”
His head whips around to face me, the look of disbelief mixed with confusion speaks volumes.
“I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you,” I say as I reach over and take hold of his warm hand in mine. Will stares at me for a few seconds longer before turning to look at our joined hands. “I wish I could say I’m sorry for bringing you into this case, but I can’t. Without you, I don’t think we would be as far as we are. So I’m sorry that this is probably bringing back a lot of bad memories for you, but I am so grateful that you are here with me. And I know if Clara were here right now, she would say thank you too.”
“It doesn’t bother you?” I’m sure my face must display my confusion because he follows up with, “I crossed a line, you wouldn’t be the first who didn’t want to work with me because of it.”
“The thing is, if it meant even a chance of getting Clara back, I’m not sure there is a lot I wouldn’t do. I would break laws for her. I wouldn’t care if I ended up in jail, if the payoff was her being alive. I can’t exactly judge you for doing whatever you thought you needed to, to find that girl. I get that.”
After a pause, he finally just nods his head in finality. The air is heavy with the weight of our conversation, but I can tell he doesn’t want to go further than what has already been said. And that is fine with me.
We pull up to a cute little mom-and-pop diner, Alice’s Diner. It doesn’t seem to have a lot of business, judging by the number of cars in the parking lot. Rush hour is winding down, so maybe their morning crowd tends to be the much earlier crowd.
Whatever the reason for the lack of customers, I was grateful, the subject matter we were supposed to be discussing wasn’t anything anyone eating breakfast would want to hear about anyway.
Pushing open the heavy door to Will’s truck so I can hop down, I brace myself for the cold that is sure to be startling. I don’t wait for Will, instead I just start moving toward the door. I am on a mission. I need the short walk to shore up my nerves anyway.
Right as I go to reach for the door, Will reaches out and turns me toward him.
“It’s going to be okay. Whatever happens in there, it’s going to be okay.” We look at each other, my eyes searching his, hoping to take some of the faith that he has that this is all going to be okay from him.
“Okay.” I nod.
The rush of warm air that hits me as soon as I step into the diner causes my skin to pebble up with goose bumps. A quick stomp of my feet on the welcome mat to make sure I’m not bringing in mud gives me some time to scan the diner. Back in the corner, I see Joe. He is sitting in a back booth, no one sitting at any other tables around him.
He looks tired. Worn down. I can see the darkness underneath his eyes, even from across the room. He doesn’t have any food in front of him, instead he seems to be nursing what has to be a cup of black coffee, the way you would nurse a glass of bourbon.
My feet carry me to him quickly, as my worry for his well-being mounts. He sees me halfway to him and slides out of the booth. There is the beginning of an awkward pause when we just stand in front of each other, unsure of how to greet each other now that the dynamics of our relationship are so different.
“Fuck it,” I declare as I throw my arms around his neck and hold tight. There is no hesitation as his arms wrap around my torso and hold me tight. I pull back slightly to get a better look at his face before being as honest as always. “Yo
u’ve looked better.”
“That’s my girl,” he says, following a big belly laugh. “Nothing a good night’s sleep won’t fix,” he assures me.
“If you say so.” I let go of Joe and move to slide into the booth across from where he has been sitting. Will slides into the booth next to me.
Not going to lie, I am definitely enjoying the smaller booth and how it leaves his left side pushed up against my right, our thighs with no space between them. But despite the little butterflies trying to take hold in my stomach, I know we are there with a job to do. So, I try to push them aside and get down to business. Will beat me to it.
“Thanks for meeting with us.” Will nods toward Joe in that manly way only guys can pull off.
“You said you had some new information about Clara, something time sensitive.”
Will looks over at me, and a silent conversation passes between us, with him letting me take the lead.
“It’s not just about Clara, we found a lot of information Clara was compiling on her own before she disappeared, all about girls who also went missing.”
Slowly Joe set his coffee on the table and just stared at me, his worried expression amplifying. “Tell me exactly what you mean by missing.”
“Well, you know Clara is missing.” He raises an eyebrow but nods at the same time, almost an acknowledgment that even though she wasn’t technically missing, we both agree she is. “And Clara had files on three other girls who seemingly left school like she did, never to be heard from again.”
“Define never heard from again.”
“I ran them all, none of them ever used credit again, signed a lease, utility, not even so much as an inquiry on their credit. They left campus and school but after that, nothing,” Will fills in the blanks.
“Well, that’s disconcerting,” Joe replies.
“Yeah, but there was someone Clara was talking to right before she went missing, someone she had planned on meeting up with. Before they could meet, Clara went missing and by Thursday she was missing too,” I explain further.
Shock fills Joe’s face. Ever so slowly, he sets his cup of coffee on the table. “Tell me her name isn’t Jenny.”
I know he already knows the answer, so instead I just look at him and nod.
“You’re certain about this?” Joe asks, making direct eye contact with both Will and me.
We both nod, and then Will pulls a file out from his left side and slides it across the table, “We made copies of everything.”
Joe doesn’t touch the file, instead just asks, “What’s the connection, why was Clara in contact with Jenny?”
“Everyone on the list had filed reports with campus security about stalking, or more specifically, cyber stalking, that was clearly being done by someone who was on campus,” I tell him.
“I checked with campus security myself. I had them pull everything with Clara’s name and Jenny’s. Clara’s name only brought up the report from you, and Jenny’s name was only mentioned briefly as a witness to a car accident that she saw happen in a parking lot. There was nothing about stalking in any of the files.”
Will and I look at each other once more before he goes on to explain, “I know, I had a friend of mine check their system. None of the reports from any of the girls are on campus security’s mainframe anymore. But we have all the copies off of Clara’s files, and I put each of them in the file. Clara also saved every email she ever received from the stalker, so you can see how he escalates slowly. She also saved all the correspondence with Jenny. Everything is in there.”
We all sit in silence as Joe reaches for the file and starts to work his way through it. I hate watching him because I can see on his face how serious things are. I watch as his jaw tightens with every passing email, how his eyes focus intently on the security reports, the sighs that escape him when he goes over the names of the other women and their lack of activity after they left school. I can see him making all the same connections that we did. It’s so hard to be excited about progress when it means talking about someone who is skilled enough to be responsible for what could be five women going missing and never being heard from again. Someone skilled enough to cover their tracks, even as far as to remove vague reports of him that had no shot of being traced back to him.
When he finishes, he closes the file gently before looking directly at me. “I’m sorry, Kenzie. You never should have had to be the one to find all of this stuff out.”
“But there’s a connection. A big one,” I reply.
“Yeah. I’ve got to get all this stuff back to the office, and we will run some of our own checks, but right now, yes. I would say we are looking for a serial offender.”
“So what happens now?” I ask.
“It may take a few hours on the other girls, but I can add Clara to all the alerts with Jenny. I’m sure we will be alerting the media to try and get some outside help. Basically, the calvary.”
“Really?” I ask.
“Really. Kenzie, if you had listened to everyone and stopped looking, it might have taken months to start making these connections, hell, we may have never made some of them. You did good, kid, really good,” he tells me with his New York accent growing stronger.
I might be homeless in a few weeks, and I don’t have any books to use for my classes, but right now, in this moment, it’s all worth it.
After parting ways with Joe so he could head back to the police station to get to work on everything we had just given him, Will and I also start making our way back to the truck. As soon as we cross the threshold, I can’t help myself, I jump up and down, bouncing with the excitement coursing through my veins.
“We did it!” I exclaim to Will.
“Yes, we did,” Will says with a smile that probably matches mine, wide and full of teeth.
“I can’t believe it, I can’t believe we did it, I can’t believe any of it.”
“Of course we did it, you were never going to give up,” Will tells me.
“I know, but still…” I stop bouncing and take a good look at Will. Honestly, without him, I’m not sure I would have gotten this far, and certainly not this fast. I love the happy expression on his face, that he’s just as invested in this as I am. I feel like I have a partner. Someone to lean on, someone I can depend on, someone who is going to fight this battle with me. I reach out and take both of his biceps in my hands.
I can feel the muscles tighten underneath my hands. The strength he has in those arms becoming more obvious as I feel them flex beneath me. I look up at him, he still has the smile on his face as he raises his hands up to take hold of my elbows. His fingers wrap so gently around me, somehow delicate and supportive at the same time.
“I never would have come this far, this fast without you, Will. Thank you so much for doing this with me.”
“Of course.” One of his hands squeezes my elbow gently. “We still have a lot of work left to do,” he tells me with a smile.
It feels like time is slowing down in this moment. I can feel my heart beating in my chest, the butterflies in my stomach taking hold. I feel like I’m on top of the world. Like in this moment, after everything that we have been through the last couple of days, that I could do anything. Not giving myself the time to really think about it, I just go for it.
I feel my weight shift as I start to lift up on my tippy-toes, moving toward Will. I feel Will’s hands take a firmer grip on my elbows, but not to hold me in place or move me away. I hear the exhalation of breath before I feel it gently against my skin as it leaves Will’s body.
My lips are only a fraction of an inch away from his when everything shifts. Instead of meeting my lips with his, he shifts his head ever so slightly to the right. When my lips make contact with him, it’s at the spot right next to the corner of his mouth. Will’s hands are still holding me tight. Our bodies are still connected, even though a mountain of space has started to form between us.
My heart sinks in my chest. Embarrassment floods my cheeks as they begin to flus
h pink. What are the chances that Will thinks the flush on my face is from the cold weather? Slim, I’d guess. Panic starts to flood my bloodstream alongside my embarrassment. I want out of this situation. And fast.
Quickly I let go of Will’s arms and release the tension in my feet, allowing my whole body to rapidly fall back down to the ground with the help of gravity and take a few steps backward from Will.
We both stand there for several seconds, I can tell Will is trying to make eye contact with me, to figure out what to do next, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t bring myself to look at him.
“Kenzie,” Will eventually starts to speak.
All I know is I don’t want to hear anything that is going to come out of his mouth. Whatever platitude or gentle dismissal, nope, it’s not for me.
“So I guess we should get back to it, right?” Not giving him a chance to respond, I turn and walk toward the truck.
There’s a couple of seconds before I hear Will’s sigh and then the sounds of gravel crunching under his weight.
I waste no time getting in the truck the second I hear the car alert that the doors are unlocked.
Just keep looking ahead, I tell myself as I pray Will won’t push this. Clearly it was a mistake. No need to talk about it, right?
The entire drive back to the office is full of tension. Tension that continues to build with every passing mile. Thankfully, the drive is short and traffic is light, because before I know it, I can see my own car in the parking lot of the office. It’s my salvation. My way out.
As soon as I hear Will shift the truck into park, I start to make my exit.
“I’m gonna get some rest before going over all the stuff King got. I’ll um, I’ll call you or uh, see you back here if I find something.” Great, that was smooth. I had envisioned that going much smoother in my head.
“Kenzie, wait,” I hear Will say as I slide out of the truck before closing the door a little harder than necessary.
I start “walking with purpose” as Joe would have said before throwing up a hand before getting into my car. Will is still standing next to his truck as I pull out of the parking lot with a look on his face that I have no hope of deciphering.
