Missing Pieces

by Tim Weaver

  The faster she went, the more the engine began ticking, as if there were something defective under the hood, a bomb counting down to detonation. She tried to ignore it, checking her mirror. The Ram had gained on her again – it was close enough for her to see both of them clearly, their faces, their features – and something worse.

  Lima was leaning out of the passenger window.

  In his hands was his gun.

  A shot rang out, cutting across the afternoon like the roar of a jet plane. She felt the Jeep buck under her, thought for a moment that a tyre had been hit then realized that, in her panic, her foot had slipped from the gas to the brake.

  She looked again, saw him lining up another shot.

  Do something. Do it now.

  Ahead of her, the road was starting to arc to the right, looping around the lines of the old sawmill, long shuttered, that she’d been to once after she’d first found the map. In front of the mill was a narrow line of pine trees.

  Another shot. A third.

  Something pinged off the bodywork, the noise like the ting of a cymbal. When she looked back, Lima still had the weapon out in front of him, his wrist resting on the black frame of the mirror, trying to steady his aim. Rebekah knew that if he got one in the tyre, she’d instantly lose control of the vehicle.

  She could hit the pine trees on her right.

  She could flip.

  She needed to stop Lima getting the shot in. She needed to disrupt the pursuit. Their car was faster, newer, more powerful. It was gaining on her the whole time. Her foot was flat to the floor. She couldn’t go any faster.

  And then a thought came to her.

  Maybe I don’t have to.

  She slammed on the brakes.

  She hit the pedal so hard, everything in the Cherokee propelled forward, the pink giraffe hitting the windshield in front of her. The seatbelt locked hard between her breasts. Pain lightning-forked across her.

  Quiet.

  And then it shattered: brakes screamed, tyres squealed, a car howled as it tried to change direction at the last second. They’d got so close to her, it was impossible to avoid her.

  The Ram swerved violently to the right, smashing into the Jeep and exploding a tail light. A shudder passed through the cab, and the Cherokee lurched forward, rocking and resetting.

  On her right, through the smashed window, she watched the pickup leave the Loop, and then, a split second later, it collided with a tree. Ten feet from the road, in the shadow of the sawmill, it stopped dead, its hood crunching and folding like paper. As it did, the two men slammed forward, airbags erupting into their faces.

  And, like a video pausing, everything stilled.

  Only steam continued to move, hissing from the crushed hood. Hain’s head was slumped against the door, eyes shut. Rebekah didn’t know if he was dead or alive, but he was definitely unconscious. Next to him, Lima was still awake, but dazed. She checked her mirror.

  Should she turn around?

  Should she head back into Helena?

  She needed to call the cops before the men came around properly – and there was an easy way to do it. She could see a cellphone in a charging slot on the centre console of the Ram. It was still in place despite the crash: if she could grab it, she’d have her escape route; she’d have her immediate call to the cops.

  No delay, no waiting.

  But she’d have to get inside their car to take it.

  Life Raft

  Travis let Gaby have his car, so she could drive to the cemetery, and got her to drop him at the subway on 46th Street. As the carriage rattled through the earth towards the city, he thought about the conversation he’d had with his daughter that morning, and about where it had ended up.

  With the cases he’d failed to see through.

  He reached into his pants and wriggled out his old notebook, the one he’d used at the NYPD after starting in the Missing Persons Squad. It was full, first page to last. After he’d finished talking to Gaby, he’d gone up to the bedroom and dug through a tower of shoeboxes, and it had been there, buried in one, alongside every other notebook he’d ever bought and filled. They were a thirty-six-year record of success and failure, a testament to his life as a cop, engraved in black ink. He’d gone through a couple, recalling other cases he’d worked and closed, and then, wary of becoming distracted, had entombed them in the closet. All except one.

  This one.

  The one that contained his notes on Louise Mason.

  And on Johnny and Rebekah Murphy.

  Now, as people moved in and out of the train, as stations passed, Travis barely noticed anything else. It had started with Louise, and for now that was where he began again. So much of her case he knew off by heart, the details of her disappearance tattooed on him. Mostly, though, what endured in his mind was how close Louise had been to her parents, and how crushed they’d been when, in the days before his retirement, he’d been to see them again to tell them he still hadn’t found their daughter. Often at night, when he couldn’t sleep, Travis would look up into the dark of the bedroom and find himself in their shoes, and it would be Gaby missing, and he’d feel everything Louise’s parents were experiencing. The failure felt immense.

  Murphy and his sister he didn’t know as well – but whatever had happened to them, Travis was convinced it was connected to whatever had happened to Louise. He still couldn’t prove that Murphy wasn’t behind all of this – but, in his gut, Travis knew he wasn’t. It didn’t feel right. Murphy didn’t fit the profile, and his sister would never have abandoned her kids.

  And then there were the cell-tower pings, the way they traced a path to Connecticut, for reasons he didn’t understand. And the less he understood, the more the frustration burned.

  After he’d ceased to be a cop, he’d thought about asking for a favour from someone, an old colleague who might be persuaded to do some hunting around for him, to chase paper trails and exhausted leads, but Louise and the Murphys were both long-term disappearances. They’d been missing for months. There were hundreds of other cases ahead of his, confirmed crimes, murders, rapes, robberies, that were way up the list. And perhaps, if he was honest with himself, there was another, more compelling reason that Travis couldn’t pass the torch: no one knew the cases like he did – and he didn’t trust anyone to work them like him.

  But then Amy Houser had called.

  She’d called him in the days after Naomi passed, in part to send her condolences to Travis and the kids. But that hadn’t been the only reason. She’d also asked Travis if he’d be interested in some freelance work: they needed some cases reviewed, to see if anything had been missed, and Travis had been the first person Houser had thought of. Travis had said yes straight away: he needed the money and he wanted the distraction.

  But he said yes for another reason too.

  Amy Houser was going to be his life raft.

  Travis waited for Houser on a bench at the southern end of Columbus Park, next to some kids playing on the jungle gym. It was cold but they were having a ball, and as he watched them, smiling as they squealed with delight, he wondered if he would ever be a grandparent. Maybe Gaby in a few years, but not Mark: he’d already made it clear that he didn’t want kids, and when he’d told Travis that, Travis had felt a weird stab of guilt, as if the reason might be down to him: mistakes he’d made as a father, times he hadn’t been home when he should have been, ways in which he’d neglected his children without ever knowing it. He’d always thought he’d been a good dad, even with the demands of his job, but Mark’s confession had stayed with him, started to embed itself, and a few times in retirement – as he woke up to another day on his own – he’d wondered if his loneliness might not be a kind of punishment.

  ‘You okay, Trav?’

  He hadn’t seen Houser approach.

  ‘How you doing, Ames?’

  ‘All good.’ She checked her watch. ‘Sorry I’m late. Got caught up in the world’s longest and most boring meeting. Let me pay for lunch to say
sorry.’

  Travis stood. ‘You don’t have to do that.’

  ‘You got to help the elderly where you can,’ she said, winking at him, and as they headed up Mulberry Street, into Chinatown, she slid a gloved hand through the crook in his arm, and started filling him in on all the office gossip. He loved it: it made him feel normal again, reattached to something he understood.

  Eventually, as the snow continued to fall, Houser said softly, ‘I was really sorry to hear about Naomi.’

  Travis nodded. ‘Thanks, kiddo.’

  ‘How you feeling about it all?’

  ‘I don’t know …’ He shrugged. ‘Conflicted, I guess.’

  Houser just nodded: Travis had told her about his marriage.

  They ate dim sum at a place on Mott.

  Over lunch, they talked a lot about the force, about the changes being pushed through by the brass, and then Houser surprised him with the news that she’d had a promotion, swapping Major Crimes for the Cold Case Squad.

  ‘That’s amazing, Ames.’

  She smiled warmly at Travis. ‘Thanks, Frank.’

  ‘You’re gonna kill it in that squad, you know that?’

  She looked at him for a moment, the admiration clear in her face – and not just for his work as a cop – and Travis realized how much he missed the force, the people he’d worked with, and especially Amy Houser. He missed seeing her every day. Save for the one drunken night when she’d told him about the father she’d never known, Houser had never been big on sharing, but Travis had learned enough down the years: she was divorced, she liked going to the gym, she ran a kids’ softball team for the Police Athletic League, and she had an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of eighties action movies. A part of him had always liked not knowing everything because, as time had gone on, they’d continued to learn new and interesting things about each other.

  ‘Thirty-seven and already a lieutenant,’ Travis said, and whistled for effect. ‘You’ll be running the whole damn place before long.’

  ‘What can I say? I learned from the best.’

  They carried on eating for a while, then Travis asked her more about her promotion. ‘Is that what you’ve got lined up for me? Cold cases?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Houser said, picking out a sliver of prawn with her chopsticks. ‘It’s ninety-nine per cent signed off. I just got to take you back to the Plaza for introductions. You’re going to need access to our system again, obviously, so a few people need to make sure you’re not a total charlatan.’

  She winked at him again, but Travis hardly noticed: his thoughts had lodged on what Houser had said about access. That was what he needed. That was how she was going to be his life raft. As much as he denied it, because he liked Houser, wanted the work, and felt guilty about carrying an ulterior motive into this lunch with her, access was the major reason he was here right now: he needed to be back in the system. He needed the police databases.

  They were how he could find the Murphys.

  They were how he could still find Louise Mason.

  60

  As Rebekah approached the Ram, neither man seemed to be aware of her.

  Hain’s head was still down, eyes on the steering column that had shifted towards him. Lima had a hand on the crushed dash, trying to swivel his legs to the door. The cellphone was between them, in a charging slot at the midway point of the centre console. To get it out, she’d have to lean over Hain. What if he grabbed her? What if Lima had his gun close by?

  She stopped dead, but then forced herself forward again. They still didn’t seem to have noticed her – but, with every attempt to exit the vehicle, Lima was getting stronger. After a while, he switched tactics: he leaned back and kicked at the passenger door with both feet.

  She hurried towards the bed of the Ram, so that she’d be approaching Hain’s open window from the rear of the vehicle. She could see him in the side mirror, head still down. He looked as if he’d slipped back into unconsciousness: his eyes were closed and blood was leaking from his shaved head, a perpetual drip, drip, drip that carried threads of it down the side of the car.

  She’d almost got level with Hain’s shoulder when Lima sprang his door. As it came back at him, he stopped it with his boot. The second he did, it was like something changed: he seemed to become aware of where he was and how he’d ended up here. He started looking at the damage around him, at Hain, then out at the Cherokee.

  He’s searching for me.

  Rebekah dropped to her haunches.

  Below the level of the windows, she was blind. She could only hear: he was shifting inside the car again, probably trying to haul himself out. She looked both ways along the Loop – all she wanted was to see another car now – then towards the sawmill, knowing help wasn’t going to come from there. Further out there was a tangle of buildings, grey at this distance. They were a mile away at least. Could there be someone in them?

  Lima was outside the car, in front of the trees.

  If she was going to grab the phone, she had to do it now.

  She crab-walked the rest of the way to Hain’s smashed window and peered through. She had a clear view of Lima’s midriff on the other side of the pickup. He was moving, shifting from one foot to the other, as if he was trying to get a better view of the Cherokee and of Rebekah. When he moved to his right, she could hear a slight drag of the foot. He’d damaged it.

  She turned her head, double-checking on Hain. He was in exactly the same position as before.

  Except his eyes were open.

  It took her breath away and – as she froze – his arm came up from his lap and tried to grab her by the neck. She managed to lean away from him, hitting her head on the top of the window, but avoided his grasp, then jammed the flat of her palm into his face.

  The impact vibrated through her wrist.

  ‘Hain?’

  Lima ducked, looking through the passenger door.

  His eyes met Rebekah’s.

  ‘You bitch!’

  He couldn’t get around the front of the car without weaving through a knot of pine trees, so he started hobbling towards the back, dragging his foot.

  Quickly, Rebekah leaned inside and tried to grab the cell.

  It didn’t move.

  She tried again, realizing there were identical buttons on either side of the slot that the phone was clipped into. She pressed the buttons and pawed at the cell for a second time.

  It still wouldn’t come out.

  Checking on Hain, she saw he was coming round again. She leaned even further in, her heart pounding inside her chest, and as she got her fingers around the phone, as she popped it from its station, she started to wriggle back out.

  Hain tried to grab her again.

  ‘No!’ she screamed. ‘Let go of me!’

  ‘Don’t let that bitch go!’ Lima shouted from her right. He was at the back of the car somewhere. She could hear his foot dragging.

  Rebekah thrashed at Hain with her spare hand, trying to hit his face, his throat, anything, and as she did, he jerked, avoiding her attempted blows.

  He gripped tighter.

  ‘No!’ she screamed again, lashing out with her elbow – and, this time, she caught him in the throat. He instantly released her, his body pivoting sideways – but as his arms went with him, they connected with her hand, and the cell spun out of her grip. She watched it hit the wheel, bounce off the dash and exit through the open passenger door.

  No.

  It came to rest outside among the pines.

  No, no, no.

  She pulled herself out of the pickup, across Hain’s slouched body, and searched for Lima. He was in view of her now, teeth gritted, at the tailgate of the car. In his hand was the gun.

  She turned on her heel and looked at the Jeep. It was too far away. She would have covered barely half the distance between her and the Cherokee before Lima was all the way around the pickup. By then, she’d have a bullet in her back.

  That meant there was only one option left.

  R
un.

  61

  She passed from the road to the grass and then into the trees, the light changing, the wind dying. Behind her Lima was shouting again – and then a gunshot rang out. Its sound was ruinous, a noise that ripped through the air. A second shot, a third, a fourth. He couldn’t see her and had no idea where she was.

  He was panicking.

  Rebekah flashed on the mirror image of this moment – she and Johnny running for their lives five months ago – and then she picked up her pace again. She could feel electricity charging through her veins, the air against her face. She was back at school, between the white lines of the athletics track.

  Just then, the pines began to thin out again, and the sawmill rose out of the ground, like a titan breaking from the earth. It was hardly standing, its windows shattered, its corrugated metal rusted. In front of her was a huge sweep of uneven, pockmarked ground, awash in tall grass – in places, almost as tall as Rebekah – and piles of moss-covered timber.

  Before she became swamped by the grass, she looked out to the left of the mill, to the dirt track she’d driven down in the Jeep when she’d come here looking for dry wood in the winter. For a vehicle, it was the only way in and out of this place. It would also be a shortcut onto the Loop’s northern flank. If she used it, she’d be closer to the buildings she saw earlier.

  There might be someone in them.

  She headed for the dirt track.

  Please let there be someone.

  That was when it appeared.

  The Cherokee.

  She stumbled to a stop. Lima had predicted her plan. He was coming down the dirt track, using her own car to cut her off.

  Shit.

  Rebekah looked around, scared, desperate. The last time she’d been here it was winter, when the temperature had been in the twenties, when anything the frost hadn’t compacted was being blown sideways by the merciless squalls howling in off the Atlantic. Now, in spring, it looked completely different.