The Best American Mystery Stories 2020

by C. J. Box

  After the visit from Bruce, Elaine also had to act as if nothing was amiss. She forced herself to greet and smile and make eye contact with Samantha the way she always had, all the while playing out delicious scenarios in her head. In one, Bruce crashes through the door of a cheap motel room and catches Samantha and her lover in the act. It’s a seedy, rundown place, utterly without dignity, which adds to the humiliation. Samantha bursts into tears, begging for a second chance, promising in an obviously insincere manner that it will never happen again. Bruce leaves her. Then the lover disappears—​it was never anything more than physical. And for once in her life Samantha knows the pain of rejection.

  The final few seconds of the reel are especially good from a photographer’s point of view. Samantha is standing in her rose garden, her features softened by late afternoon shadows, perfectly framed with Nathan and Bruce on either side. There’s no mistaking the confidence in her eyes, the sense of ease and poise, while all the time pretending to be unaware of the men’s attention. The shot is impressive, especially considering that there were no second chances back then. What you shot was what you got. No erasing, no do-overs.

  Try as he might, Nathan never fully appreciated her love of photography. He called it her hobby, referred to her pictures as “snapshots.” Efforts to explain the art of it went nowhere. She went to exhibits by herself, bought the occasional book of photographs that she kept on her side of the bed. What was so hard to understand? A photo exhibit is a peek into another person’s world. To know a photographer’s work is to know the photographer. Each picture screams out, “This is me. This is what I see.”

  * * *

  Elaine refills her drink. She thinks it’s her second, but it might be the third. “Reel Three,” she says. “Thanksgiving with the Neighbors.”

  Suddenly her old living room is on the screen. The horrible green couch, the stark white walls. Samantha and Bruce are just taking off their coats. Still together several months after Bruce revealed his suspicions to Elaine. It was Nathan’s idea to invite them. Neither couple had kids. Why not spend the day with our friends? Why cook a big meal for just the two of us? But, Elaine would like to know, where is it written that friendship is the default option between next-door neighbors? Aren’t you supposed to choose your friends? Still, as always, she played her part. She chatted with Samantha across their adjacent driveways as often and with as much enthusiasm as required. Anyone listening to Samantha’s side of the conversations would assume they were the closest of friends—​my girl, sweetie, hon. She invited Elaine to go shopping with her and to stop by sometime for coffee. An occasional cup of coffee Elaine could tolerate. Shopping with Samantha was never going to happen.

  Nathan said they were lucky to have such good neighbors. Then again, her husband saw good fortune everywhere. They were blessed to have their home, their health, their jobs. She should be thankful she’s married to an accountant, someone who would never be out of work. In fact, for reasons she kept to herself, Elaine did consider herself lucky. What no one knew—​what someone like Samantha could never imagine—​was that when Elaine met Nathan their junior year in college, she had been on only two dates her entire life. And, truth be told, both were more like an evening with a friend than a date. Those old movies and TV shows where teenage girls gossip about boyfriends and spend weeks getting ready for the prom don’t apply to everyone. Some girls are shy and awkward and plain. But no one seems to notice them.

  Now Samantha is in the kitchen—​Elaine’s kitchen—​helping with the last-minute preparations for the big holiday meal. It’s what the girls do while the men talk football and cars. Just tell me how I can help, dear. Anything at all. Samantha cuts mushrooms for the salad, pulls some plates from the cupboard. Just enough to fulfill her obligation.

  Elaine tested him once. Starting a few weeks after she lost her virginity in Nathan’s dorm room one Saturday afternoon when his roommate was out of town. She complained when he wore wrinkled shirts, criticized his friends, groused when something annoyed her. He saw her with unwashed hair, without makeup. She came as close to showing him her real self as she dared. And, to her surprise and relief, he stayed. He even started ironing his shirts.

  They were married two months after graduation. Nathan had job offers waiting; she took a series of temporary positions. The plan had always been to open her own studio. Family portraits and weddings would pay the bills, but there would also be time for creative work. She could exhibit her photography in her own gallery adjacent to the studio. It all seemed entirely plausible, and Nathan was supportive. But that was before. Before two cars, furniture, and a mortgage barely within reach of their paychecks. A studio? How would they pay for the space, the equipment, the advertising, and all the overhead? Maybe someday, when things were more settled. As Nathan would say, they were doing fine. And there was nothing wrong with being a receptionist in an insurance office.

  * * *

  The reel ends with the predictable shot of Nathan carving the turkey. The table is set with their wedding china, tiny flames flicker atop new candles. The camera keeps rolling while everyone takes a moment to say grace. Two young couples enjoying each other’s company on a day set aside to give thanks. How appropriate, Elaine thinks, that she is not in the picture. Exactly what did she have to be thankful for? That she had one more week before everything fell apart? That for a few more days she could still believe in the fairy tale? She stares at the image of Samantha—​eyes closed and head bowed devoutly—​until the scene mercifully comes to an end.

  * * *

  “Reel Four,” Elaine bellows. Her tone is defiant. Anyone who doesn’t want to watch doesn’t have to. “The Plot Thickens.”

  On the screen, more neighbors. Some of them the same as in Reel One. They are gathered in her den, a decorated tree perched in the background. Most years they didn’t bother with a tree, but Nathan said they couldn’t host a Christmas party without one. The lights are low, the images darker than in the earlier films. Deliberately so. The camera moves boldly, some might say belligerently, from person to person. She gets right in people’s faces. You want to be in the movie? How’s this? How do you like it now? The smiles are forced, the expressions pained. The discomfort palpable.

  The blinders had come off a few weeks earlier, the Thursday Elaine had come home in the middle of the day with what surely were early signs of the flu. She called Nathan at the office. She needed some over-the-counter medicines; they didn’t even have aspirin in the house. But Nathan wasn’t in. She called a little later. Still not in, and they didn’t know where he was or when he would return. So reluctantly she phoned the only person she knew who didn’t have a daytime job. But Samantha wasn’t home. She tried both numbers off and on the rest of the afternoon. About a quarter after 5:00, she saw Samantha pull into her driveway. Then, before she could pick up the phone, Nathan drove up in his car.

  The movie shifts to the kitchen. Elaine leans forward. On the screen before her, a conversation between Samantha and Nathan. Just a friendly chat, nothing suspicious. It takes a trained eye. The two neighbors are standing farther apart than one would expect. Only by a few inches, but noticeable and revealing. Nathan seems uncharacteristically self-conscious. He thinks about each movement, his gestures are awkward and unnatural. He laughs too readily and exaggerates his expressions. An actor too aware of the audience. Samantha is better, but her usual air of self-assurance is missing. She is stiff, formal. She glances about, eyeing nearby guests instead of the other way around.

  * * *

  Everything had quickly fallen into place, the unraveling as predictable as a movie plot. It was all there. The hint of perfume, the excuses, even the long dark hair on the jacket. Then there was Nathan’s out-of-place defensiveness, the obvious lies. I was seeing clients. I see clients, you know. And the late meetings that often coincided with Samantha’s comings and goings.

  You deny the facts as long as possible. The eye willfully follows the magician’s misdirection. But
at some point it all collapses, leaving everything exposed and indisputable right before your eyes. Each of Nathan’s desperate efforts becomes more evident and more insulting than the last. An expensive dinner for no reason. Compliments for routine things. You look wonderful in that dress. Is it new? What little respect he must have for your intelligence. Are you supposed to be flattered? Blinded by all the attention? Oblivious to the forced passion, the empty smiles?

  How long can this go on?

  We think we know ourselves. We rely on our principles, values, and character to guide us. But you might be surprised. We may all be capable of things we never imagined possible. We may all harbor longings and passions no more available to us than the inner worlds of the people who surround us.

  There are times you have to act, when continuing the pretense is unbearable. Sometimes choices narrow to a single path. And you know even at the time that there will forever be a before and an after.

  * * *

  “Reel Five,” Elaine says, barely above a whisper. Or maybe she doesn’t say it at all. She starts the projector.

  Nathan and Bruce are working on the backyard fence that separates the properties. The winter weather has taken its toll. Their breath clouds in the chilly air, hammers rhythmically pound nails into new posts. Men’s work. Nathan correctly guessed that it would do Bruce some good. At this point it’s been more than eight weeks since anyone has seen Samantha.

  Bruce is a broken man. Although only a few months have passed, he looks as if he has aged five years since the last reel. Everything about him seems drab—​his cotton work shirt, his complexion, his once-glistening eyes. He needs a haircut. Nathan has become his pillar of support. He checks on Bruce daily, invites him to dinner at least once a week.

  The rumors were rampant. Who had Samantha run away with? Every neighbor had a theory about this man or that. Margie from across the street was certain she saw Samantha at a downtown restaurant having lunch with a blond man in a blue blazer the very afternoon she disappeared. Another story placed Samantha and a mysterious but, as always, very handsome man in the lobby of a nearby Hilton. The police weren’t buying any of it. Why would she leave everything behind—​clothes, jewelry, money? No note, no phone call. No use of her credit cards or bank account. The investigation went on for months. For a while it was all anyone could talk about.

  You can’t get over how something so consequential could be so easy. Let’s have lunch. Followed by a little Christmas shopping. How could Samantha resist? Even at the time you half expected a moment of doubt would arrive, a sudden jolt of conscience that would force you to reevaluate. But it never came.

  Bruce would sell the house later that year and move out of state. He sent a card the first Christmas, promised to visit but never did. They lost contact with him after that. There was a what-ever-happened-to story in the newspaper on the tenth anniversary of Samantha’s disappearance. And that was it.

  * * *

  The movie ends. Elaine turns off the projector, switches on the nearby lamp. She lifts her glass to find nothing but an amber ring at the bottom. As always, she reaches for the yellowed envelope sitting on the table, the same place she found it almost exactly one year after filming the boys mending the fence. The once-bright stationery has faded into uneven shades of gray. The single sheet of paper, cracking at the folds, is held together with discolored cellophane tape. She has long ago memorized every word and each detail of Nathan’s simple handwriting, even the spaces between words. Still, she starts from the beginning, reading each line slowly, pausing at key words and phrases.

  . . . leaving you . . . most difficult decision of my life . . . will always care for you.

  She reaches the last paragraph, absentmindedly lifts and then sets down her empty glass before continuing.

  I’m moving to St. Louis with Connie Wilkerson. You probably don’t remember Connie. She worked as a temp in my office three summers ago. Please understand that this is not a sudden impulse kind of thing. Connie and I have been involved romantically for nearly three years. For what it’s worth, this has been my only infidelity. Connie and I love each other very much.

  There was never a sense of triumph, only a moment of relief that it was over. For years she waited for her punishment, for the start in the middle of the night, the crushing guilt. Eventually she settled into a blunted state of acceptance, resisting the pull of either shame or self-pity. She seeks no forgiveness, doesn’t feel she needs any. Sometimes options disappear. At some point the script is written. You are only the actor.

  She returns the projector to the hall closet, places it on the shelf next to the cameras she has not touched in years. She no longer believes in the magic of photography. A painter creates with brushes and oils, a photographer merely records with lenses and light. Of course, you have your tools and your tricks. You can draw the eye, freeze a moment, highlight, obscure, grab that split second when a guard is let down. But in the end, we see only what we are prepared to see.

  * * *

  She places the scruffy yellow boxes into the worn leather case and sets them next to the projector. She will watch the movies again. Maybe next week. Maybe in a few months. There is something comforting in the never-changing images unfolding in their predetermined sequence, a reassurance that comes from knowing that, perhaps like one’s fate, no alternative endings are possible.

  JAMES LEE BURKE

  Deportees

  FROM The Strand Magazine

  People think the Dust Bowl ended with the 1930s. It didn’t in Yoakum, Texas. I remember how cold and brittle and sharp the air was at eight in the morning six days after Pearl Harbor when my mother and I arrived at Grandfather’s paintless, pitiful home in our old coupe with the hand-crank windshield, but I remember even more the way the dust was piled as smooth as cinnamon against the smokehouse and barn and windmill tank, and how the sun was a dull silver disk and the sky an ink wash and the pecan trees bare and black like they’d been scorched in a fire.

  The first thing Mother did when we entered the house was sit down at Grandfather’s piano, which he had bought from a saloon in San Antonio, and play “Clair de Lune.” She was a beautiful woman and had a regal manner, but she was also crazy and had undergone electroshock treatments and had been placed in the asylum in Wichita Falls. The edges of the wood grips on Grandfather’s revolver were cut with nine notches he had tried to sand out of existence with a nail file. It worked about as well as the electroshock treatments did on my mother.

  “How you doin’, Buster Brown?” he said.

  “That’s not my name, Grandfather,” I said.

  “That’s right, stand up for yourself, Aaron,” he said. “But you ought to get you a little dog named Tige.”

  You didn’t win with Grandfather. Even in old age he still stood six foot six. When he was a Texas Ranger he knocked John Wesley Hardin out of his saddle and kicked him in the face, and for good measure nailed chains on him in the bed of a wagon and threw him in the county jail and poured a slop bucket on his head.

  He was sitting by the fireplace, his face warm and yellow as a candle in the light. “Y’all come to he’p me put up the Christmas tree?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He knew better. My father had disappeared again. My mother kept playing “Clair de Lune,” an expression on her face like the shadows rain makes running down a window.

  Grandfather got up and went into the kitchen and lifted a tin sheet of biscuits off the woodstove. The biscuits were brown and crusty and oozing with melting butter. The sky was dark, dirty with smoke, and I could see flashes in the clouds and hear the rumble of thunder that gave no rain. I thought I saw people rush past the barn, gripping their belongings against their chests, their clothes streaming in the wind, their faces pinched as though raindrops were stinging their skin, although I knew there was neither rain nor hail inside the wind, only dust.

  “There’s Mexicans running across the lot, Grandfather,” I said.

  “They’re wets. Don�
��t pay them no mind.”

  He smiled when he said it. But I knew he didn’t mean anything mean or racial. In hard times you don’t share your secrets and you sure don’t borrow trouble.

  “A woman was nursing a baby and running at the same time, Grandfather.”

  He scraped the biscuits into a galvanized bucket, then slid a sliced-up ham onto the biscuits and draped a checkered napkin over the top and hefted the bucket by the bail. “Let’s go, Buster Brown.”

  * * *

  We didn’t need books to learn about the history of our state. It was always at the ends of our fingertips. It was even in the eyes of my crazy mother, who often seemed to take flight and travel back in time, for good or bad, mostly for bad. How about this? In 1914 an old woman outside Yoakum told my mother this story. When the old woman was a girl, two dozen mounted men with weapons tied to their saddles rode into the yard and asked if they could have breakfast. The girl and her parents started a fire under a Dutch oven and boiled coffee and cooked meat for the riders, all of whom spoke little. Their leader was a lantern-jawed man with soulful brown eyes and oiled, thick hair that hung on his cheeks. After a while he rested his knife and fork over his plate. “Why are you looking at us in such a peculiar way, little girl?” he asked.

  “We don’t often see people who wear animal hides instead of clothes,” she replied.

  “Back in Tennessee buckskin is considered right smart fashion. You and your folks have been mighty kind. One day you can tell your grandchildren you fixed breakfast for Davy Crockett and his Tennessee volunteers on their way to San Antonio de Bexar to give ole Santa Anna the fight of his life.”