All The Hidden Pieces

by Jillian Thomadsen

  “Can I get you one?” he asked.

  “No, that’s…thanks, I’m okay,” Hobbs said.

  Colt closed the fridge, placed the water on his desk and opened up a file cabinet behind the desk, his back turned towards the Detective.

  Hobbs stiffened and cupped the edge of her revolver.

  The detective then pivoted to face her, and Hobbs could see that he was holding a file. She immediately slackened.

  “I have their names, if you want. The two guys in the Ferrari,” Colt offered as he made his way back to the couch.

  Hobbs agreed and took down the names, even though as he spouted out the names and the correct spellings, she knew the information was useless – leads that had already been scrubbed.

  Colt adjusted his position on the couch, crossing his legs at the ankles. “You know, Greta only came to see me one other time,” he said. “Not too long after her first visit. She wanted the identity of Griffin’s business partner.”

  “Yeah? Who is that?”

  “His mother – Marcia Brock.”

  “I see. And that was the last time you saw Greta?”

  Colt threw up his hands, palms upward. “That’s it. Last time.”

  Hobbs paused to draw out the moment. She wanted to ask questions about his infiltrating within the Vetta Park PD, and more than that, she wanted to send him a warning to stay away from them. But she was too tangled in her concern of finding the Carpenter family to want to delve into the issue of police impropriety.

  “Anything else you can tell me about your meetings with Greta?” Hobbs asked. She was gathering up her items, shifting her weight on the couch, getting ready to leave. The question was a standard wrap-up question for the end of interviews, meant as a catch-all that typically caught nothing.

  But there was something about the way Colt Bundy moved, the way he cocked his head back with a subtle but obvious twitch that led Hobbs to believe there was something more.

  “Mr. Bundy…” she led.

  He faced her and she could see that his eyes were wide, his expression baffled – as though he was on the brink of finishing a puzzle but couldn’t quite get the pieces to fit together.

  “Well, I just thought of something,” he said in a voice that seemed both bewildered and startled, a pitch higher than his usual tone.

  “What did you just think of?” Hobbs asked, and she reminded herself to remain patient as brought his eyes back and forth across the room. He seemed to be registering, sequencing and revisiting his thoughts instead of looking around or even at her.

  Finally, he leveled his eyes directly at Hobbs and stated, “Greta said she thought that Griffin’s silent business partner was Steven Vance. Before she found out that it was Marcia Brock, she thought it was Vance.”

  If this was supposed to be an a-ha moment, it was lost on Hobbs. This bit of information was neither surprising nor newsworthy. Greta had an established relationship with Vance and it wasn’t a stretch to think he might be working with Griffin.

  “I don’t understand why that’s significant,” Hobbs said.

  “Because they’re both gone!” Colt said. “First Greta’s family and now Vance…they’ve up and left Vetta Park and just disappeared.”

  “What are you talking about?” Hobbs asked. Now it was she who felt taken aback. “Steven Vance hasn’t left town! We just brought him in for questioning last week.”

  “Well he left, probably right afterwards,” Colt said. “Trust me, I have a client who…let’s just say he’s once of Vance’s creditors, to the tune of a few pennies. When my client couldn’t reach Vance, he hired me. And I have been unable to locate him, which is extremely rare for me.”

  Hobbs was perched at the edge of the couch. It was a position she’d assumed when she had been prepared to hop up and leave, and with Colt Bundy’s revelation, she stayed in that pose and tried to figure out what was going on.

  There was an obvious, textbook reason why a person of interest would mysteriously leave soon after being questioned. But the Vetta Park police weren’t close to connecting Steven Vance to the family’s disappearance. In fact, his vanishing – if it was true – was the closest reason they had for distrusting him.

  And it wasn’t just that he’d left, but if Bundy’s account was correct, he’d left in the same abrupt vein as the family. It was as though some unexplained force was shaping the lives of certain Vetta Park residents – as though at any time, she could get a phone call that would make her pack a few bags and leave town forever. But it was an improbable scenario that had now happened twice – two entities distantly related but who must have been more closely aligned than their detective work had uncovered. Clearly, they needed to work harder at tying one to the other.

  “Are you sure Steven Vance left for good?” Hobbs asked. “He’s not just on a getaway for a week or so?” She knew that as soon as she returned to the station, the primary concern of the police department would be to track Vance down. But she wanted to hear from the private detective who had a few days lead on her.

  Colt shook his head. His face was hardened, decisive. “I’ve done everything in my power to find Steven Vance and I’m very good at my job, Detective. The man is gone.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  March 11, 2011

  Tuck couldn’t have chosen a more perfect restaurant for their night out. It was a small Italian place, open-air, overlooking the Mississippi River, and sporadically layered with heat lamps to make the cooler air seem just right.

  They were seated at the best possible table with the nicest views. Greta at first attributed this to luck or coincidence…but as soon as Tuck got down on one knee and requested her hand in marriage, she knew he had planned the whole thing.

  Greta said yes without hesitation and soon the whole place erupted with cheers. Waiters stopped by their table to wish them the best, and one table sent a few congratulatory drinks over to the lucky couple.

  The diamond ring itself was stunning, in Greta’s opinion. It was a solitary round diamond, affixed to a gold band – a symbol not just of the eternity of love but the hardness of perseverance.

  Greta and Tuck spoke throughout the evening of their plans for the future – a timetable for Tuck to move in with her and John, a simple courthouse wedding and maybe even one or two more children.

  It was all so fun and exciting – the planning that made her feel the momentum of her life moving ahead. They spoke ebulliently over stuffed prawn and lobster tail, crowned half-rack of lamb and filet mignon.

  While they were waiting for the dessert course, she let her gaze rest on the ring – a new ornament to enclose her slender finger – an accessory that felt strange to wear. She was quiet for a few moments and Tuck noticed.

  “You look sad,” Tuck declared. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re thinking about?”

  Still staring down, Greta exhaled a sigh and fingered the ring with her right hand. “My mother,” she said. “This is the second wedding I’m going to have where she won’t be there. She’s never even met Johnny.”

  “So call her,” Tuck said. “If you’re looking for a reason to get in touch with her again, this is as good a reason as any. Tell her you’re getting married and you want her to come to the courthouse. She can be our witness.”

  Greta shook her head. “I can’t. I don’t know how to reach her. She’s moved around a lot, changed her phone number.”

  “Well, you know a private investigator, right? Get in touch with him and hire him to find your mom. I bet he could do it.”

  Greta shook her head again and kept her gaze downward. It was hard to explain to Tuck – a man so logical, whose thoughts seemed always rational, algorithmic. This wasn’t a problem that could easily be solved. “Too much time has passed,” Greta explained. “I don’t think either of use would recognize the other.”

  “So it’s a pride thing,” Tuck said, and Greta could tell by the way she snapped her head up and frowned at him that he instantly regretted saying it.
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  “Let’s not focus on the past then,” Tuck added. “This is our happy night, our celebration of our lives being together forever. Let’s not let anything sour it.”

  Greta blinked back the tears that had formed in her eyes, nodded and raised a champagne flute. She and Tuck returned to the task of planning. The wedding was going to be small and unceremonious, practically bureaucratic. But it was still exciting to think about details such as date and attire.

  Greta’s mood was lifted by the end of the meal, and she was so buoyed by her news that when she got home, she forgot to knock on John’s door before bursting in.

  “Johnny, guess what?” Greta exclaimed – although in the same instant, she forgot why she had come into his room in the first place. John’s room stunk – a hybrid of incense and weed. There was a fog in between the door and the window – a cloud of stench and haze that hung in the air. Behind the fog, two bodies leaned out the window, their faces obscured. As soon as she came into the room, the bodies recoiled, jumped back into a military stance and tried to clear the air by waving their palms.

  One of the bodies belonged to John, and his shock soon gave way to anger. “Mom, you’re supposed to knock!” he yelled.

  The other body belonged to a neighbor named Robert – a gawky teenager with spiked hair dyed purple. He was older than John by a few years, and although he’d played at their house occasionally as a child, Greta hadn’t seen him for a long time.

  Here is what Greta did know about Robert: that he had been expelled from the local public schools starting in elementary school, that he had a record for vandalism and drug possession and that he attended a school for children with behavioral concerns.

  Once the haze dissipated and Robert could see Greta more clearly, he said, “Uh, hi Mrs. Brock. See ya later.” He then reached forward and snatched a plastic bag from the top of John’s bed, but before he could cross the threshold of the doorway, Greta held out her hand.

  “Leave it with me,” she ordered.

  “Aw, come on, Mrs. Brock.”

  “Leave it. With me.” Greta repeated.

  Robert thrust the bag into her hand and disappeared behind her. Greta looked down and studied the bag.

  “Mom, you need to knock before you come in,” John repeated. “This is my room!”

  Greta sat down on John’s bed. She ran her fingers across the comforter’s stitching and thought of what to say. She looked at her son’s face, hoping to garner some type of insight – a regret-laced frown from being caught with marijuana or an optimistic gaze from the talk that they were about to have. But instead, his face was hardened, cheeks sunk, eyes fixed on the ground.

  He sighed heavily as if to emphasize the taxing nature of whatever drawn-out dialogue was bound to happen. First there was the offense of her uninvited entry, and then she made herself at ease on his bed and was going to force a conversation.

  “John, I can’t have you smoking pot in my house,” Greta said, in a voice that was meant to be soft but convincing.

  John was quick to respond. “That wasn’t mine. That was Robert’s pot.”

  “Are you telling me right now that you didn’t smoke any of this?” Greta asked. But the question was worse than rhetorical; it was an invitation for him to lie to her. The question was answered by the redness of his eyes, the smell that secreted from his lips every time he opened his mouth.

  And when he did – predictably – lie right to her face, he didn’t even flinch. “Mom, I’m telling you. I didn’t smoke any of it. It was all Robert.”

  To Greta, just as bad as the act of smoking pot at the age of twelve was the ease with which he looked right at her and lied. It was a worse case than her baby growing up and assuming the rebellious rites of adolescence. He had learned to be deceptive, dishonorable…and it didn’t even seem to bother him.

  “Well I don’t want you hanging out with Robert anymore,” Greta said. “He’s a lot older than you and he’s a bad influence.”

  “Really?” John asked. “Well then I guess I won’t be hanging out with anyone because Robert is my only friend!” John took a book off of his shelf and threw it on the floor in protest, then jumped onto the bed and hid under the covers.

  Greta shifted her position on top of the bed to allow him to completely unfurl and thought about his declaration. He rarely gave her any insight into his social world and she wondered whether he’d spoken the truth or was exaggerating.

  “What about Jacob? Matthew? Or Tyler?” she suggested to the shrouded lump on the bed, spouting a few names that had come home on class lists.

  John remained frozen in his current position – neither moving nor speaking. When Greta thought she detected a tuft of hair creeping up from his swaddle, she reached out and gave it an affectionate scratch. He shrunk down further in response.

  Greta tried again. “Johnny, are those boys not nice to you?”

  His response – muffled and garbled – stung her. “Stop calling me Johnny. Call me John. Everyone is not nice to me. They say I’m an idiot and they’re right. Only Robert is nice to me.”

  Greta placed her body next to John’s and tried to quiet the hollow feeling in her heart, now furiously pumping. She was both ferociously angry and heartbroken – split between the desire to march up to the school and scream at everyone and cry on the bed with John.

  “It’s not true John; you’re so smart. Remember the tests you took. The tests that showed you have a really high IQ. It’s just that your brain processes things a little differently, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, okay, mom, whatever. The tests say I’m smart.”

  Greta realized the futility of pointing over and over again to the tests. Maybe it worked when he was a kid but it wasn’t going to work anymore. He was smart, but he was also sensitive and impressionable. Empirical evidence demonstrated every single day that he couldn’t read – not really, not like the other kids – and he could barely write. Telling him that he was smart against a rising chorus of classmates telling him that he was stupid was just pointless.

  “You know, John, I taught myself to read when I was a teenager – several years older than you are now. I think I may know some good techniques. Do you want to work with me – maybe for a little bit every day after school? I think that would really help.”

  John shot up in bed and yelled, “Mom! I know how to read!” His voice was loud, livid. Her suggestion, while well intentioned, had embarrassed him. And his avowal that he knew how to read was another falsehood. But unlike the last one, this one made Greta worry that he was lying to himself, too afraid to accept the reality that both of them knew.

  “Can you please leave now, Mom? I’m tired and I want to go to bed.”

  Greta nodded and stood up from the bed. “Good-night John. I love you.” She leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek and was surprised that he let her, although didn’t move to reciprocate.

  As she left the room, Greta was overcome with the feeling of powerlessness. Her only child was plunging down a slope and she had no idea whether this was the beginning, middle or end of his descent. She had tried to intervene and she swore to continue to try…but it was hard to feel capable of making a difference. John was strong-willed and introverted. As long as he refused to accept his constraints, he was bound to self-soothe with the likes of Robert and his inauspicious remedies. Greta worried about what the future had in store.

  It was this future that lay before her that had shifted so dramatically throughout the course of the night. At the beginning of the night, the future was a long promising arrow, pointing towards comfort, marriage and love. But it had flipped and reversed as soon as she entered John’s room. Now the future was a question mark at the end of a tunnel, and the hope that John would find his way out before it was too late.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  September 23, 2013

  Olivia Noelle was two weeks old when Greta brought her home from the hospital. Despite her prematurity, she was a beautiful baby…not round and plump, b
ut soft and pink, with wrinkly skin and a tassel of downy hair.

  Mary Miller was the first neighbor to stop by. “I knitted a baby blanket,” she said, placing it on Greta’s shoulder and then bending over to get a closer look at Olivia, who was fast asleep in the crook of Greta’s arm. “Oh what an absolute beauty!” she squealed.

  Greta smiled, thanked the older woman, and led her into the living room. The sofa was covered with baby blankets, burp cloths, pacifiers and other baby accouterments, but somehow they found space across from each other.

  Mary held out her arms. “Can I hold her? Please?”

  Greta obliged and handed over Olivia. The baby stirred and fussed, but eventually settled down in Mary’s arms.

  “How is Tuck doing?” Mary asked. “Is he here?”

  “No, he’s at work.”

  “And how about you, dear? How are you doing?”

  Greta sighed and thought about what to say. Mary Miller was a neighbor she spoke with once a year at most. The older woman was lovely…but not a confidante – and not someone Greta wanted to receive her avalanche of personal issues.

  First there was Greta’s physical state – her body, which felt like it was on fire. She felt emotionally drained – exhausted to the point of feeling shattered. And finally, the fact that she hadn’t slept in days and felt practically catatonic at all times.

  “I’m good,” Greta replied. “Just really tired.”

  “And your other child…James…?”

  “John.”

  “John yes, is he driving already? I sometimes hear him and his friends late at night outside my window,” Mary said pointedly.

  “He’s only fourteen so he can’t drive yet,” Greta said. “But I guess he does have a few older friends. I hope they don’t bother you.”

  “Oh, no, no,” Mary said, but her voice was a whisper directed at the sleeping baby in the bend of her arm.

  Greta was surprised to find herself relieved. If John’s friends were an annoyance to the neighborhood…well, that was another notch on the list of grievances she would take up with him at some point.