An Elegant Theory

by Noah Milligan

  “We were above one of those geysers,” she said, “on this wooden swing bridge. Fog was everywhere. We couldn’t see a thing. It’s one of those surreal moments—we felt like we were trapped in this bubble, a cocoon. Maybe trapped isn’t the right word.” She picked up a grapefruit, squeezed it, then placed it back into the bin. “More like we were being comforted, kept safe. It was like being wrapped in a warm blanket and being held by someone you loved. We stayed up there for quite a while. We talked. We had snuck some rum up there and were sipping on that. We must’ve been up there for about an hour. Then we both got the urge to pee. Not having anyplace else to go, we just dropped our trousers right there, popped a squat, and let it fly. That’s when the wind picked up. This whole time we thought we were alone, but it turns out we weren’t. The bridge was packed with people, children even, some not even five or six feet from us, and there we were, pissing off the bridge!”

  She laughed, and I laughed, and others glanced at us out of the corner of their eyes as if to glean what our secret was, deciphering why we were so happy when they were not.

  “We slept in our cars and ate peanut butter crackers and travelled the country for six months. We saw the Grand Canyon, the National Mall, Miami Beach. I was truly happy then.”

  “Have you ever stayed in one place for a long time?” I asked.

  “I like moving,” she said. “I like adventures. Staying mobile. It keeps things interesting.”

  “I could see that,” I said. “Starting anew. Something fresh.”

  “A clean break. The past is unchangeable. The future malleable.”

  “You can make of it what you will.”

  “Exactly,” she said.

  We decided to have salmon that night. At the butcher station there were all sorts of red meat, white meat, fish, seafood lined up under the glass. There were sirloins and filets and prime rib and chicken breasts and lamb chops and stuffed pork chops and lobster and scallops and shrimp. Being from Oklahoma, I’d devoured red meat. Steak and hamburgers were served three, maybe four times per week, always accompanied with potatoes and dinner rolls, heavy starches. They’d always made me feel lethargic and overstuffed. A meal was something I had to recover from, not fuel that energized me. We were changing that now, my mother and me, and it seemed to be working. I felt like I had more energy. I felt like I could accomplish more, achieve more, take on more projects. It was rejuvenating. I had never felt so good.

  “Oh gosh,” my mother said. “I almost completely forgot about this. Later in that same trip—I think we were in Detroit, passing through on our way to the Great Lakes—we stole a car.”

  “No.”

  “Really. A Jeep Wrangler. It was summer, and it didn’t have the top on or the doors. We just hopped right in. Milly started it up, hotwired it, and we were off.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. We took it for a joyride for a while. We brought it back. No one was ever the wiser.”

  “You didn’t get caught?”

  “No one ever even knew it was missing.”

  My phone rang. It was Detective Landsmen. I didn’t answer at first, instead showing the phone to Mom, his name highlighted on the screen. She squinted at it, then looked up to me, concerned. “Aren’t you going to answer it?”

  “Should I?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Answer it.”

  “Mr. Zahn,” Detective Landsmen said, his voice an octave lower than normal. “I hope I’m not calling at a bad time.”

  “No. No. Not at all,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

  “We have new information,” he said.

  “”Yes?” My pulse quickened. My pupils narrowed.

  “We think it would be best if you came into the station. Could you come by this afternoon?”

  I looked to Mom who peered back at me quizzically.

  “Of course,” I said. “I’ll be right there.”

  “What’s going on?” Mom asked as soon as I hung up the phone.

  “I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

  “Do you think they found her?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It was so long ago, though. There’s no way she could still be in the dumpster. Don’t you think? Don’t you think someone would’ve picked her up by now?”

  “Probably.”

  “But what do they do after they pick up the garbage? I thought it was incinerated. Isn’t it incinerated?”

  “I don’t know, Mom. I don’t. I don’t know.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing. Just that he wants me to come by the station.”

  “And nothing else? He didn’t give any clues as to what he has to say?”

  “I told you. No. He didn’t say anything. Just drop it, okay?”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “I’m going to go. What else can I do?”

  “I think he knows,” she said. “I think he knows what happened.”

  “Why?”

  “He’d come to you otherwise. If they had more information but didn’t know what you did, he wouldn’t make you come to the station.”

  I didn’t say anything. The couple in front of us grabbed their steaks, briefly glanced at us with a disconcerted look, and quickly walked away.

  “I think we should leave town,” she said.

  “That would incriminate us.”

  “We’re already incriminated.”

  The butcher pointed at us, asking what we wanted. “Salmon filets,” I told him.

  “How many?”

  “Just two.”

  “Listen to me, Coulter. Now is our only chance. We have to leave tonight.”

  The butcher was a large man, stocky, with wide shoulders. He had the physique of a rugby player, not bulging with muscles, but solid, sturdy, with a low center of gravity. Though I knew he could hear our conversation, his expression didn’t reveal as much. He kept to himself, cut the fish with precision and efficiency.

  “I can’t leave,” I said. “I’m not going to run.”

  “Please, Coulter. Listen to me. I’m begging you.”

  “You can. You can leave if you want. But I’m not.”

  The butcher finished cutting the filets and began to descale them. His hands were gloved and bloody, the scales sticking to the white latex. He smelled of fish and meat and flesh, like copper and guts. Taken together, I began to feel nauseated.

  “I’m not going to leave you,” she said. “I promise you that. I’m not going to leave.”

  Once he slid his knife underneath the scales, he grabbed the edge of the flesh with his fingers and peeled it back, revealing the pink meat. It glistened underneath the fluorescent light. Marbling stretched from skin to meat, little white strands of fat.

  “Are you okay?” Mom asked. “You’re turning pale.”

  “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  The butcher looked up when I said this. He held the blade out to his side, little bits of salmon stuck to it. “Please don’t,” he said, but it was too late. I puked over the glass counter, the floor, him, splattering everywhere. “Get out,” he said. He pointed his knife at me. “Get out!”

  z

  Mom waited outside the police station when I went in to speak with Detective Landsmen. It looked much like it had before, a crowded bullpen full of gruff and loud cops. The heater blasted from ceiling vents, and I began to sweat immediately, my shirt turning damp and clinging to my skin. My mouth still tasted like vomit despite the peppermint gum I chewed. I felt like I had drunk too much coffee, jittery and anxious, my teeth grinding, my eyebrow twitching. I wouldn’t be able to hide my nervousness; that much was clear. I just had to hope Landsmen mistook it for apprehension about what he had to tell me, not over what I had done.

  He greeted me politely, shaking my hand firmly, not reacting to my sweaty palms. He smiled, revealing his luminous teeth. He offered me coffee or water or tea, asked me how I was holding up, like he was hosting m
e for lunch rather than meeting me at the police station to discuss my missing wife. This, however, did nothing to comfort me. Instead, it exacerbated my worry—good cops always get people to talk. After all, they’re only there to help.

  “I thought we could go someplace a little more private to talk,” he said. He led me past the bullpen down a long hallway lined with windowless rooms. His boots squeaked against the linoleum floor. They were odd footwear for a detective. On television, they always wore suits. White shirts, dark coats, plain ties. They slicked back their hair and had mustaches and wore dark sunglasses. They were mysterious and reserved and chewed on toothpicks. Landsmen, on the other hand, wore a down vest, jeans, and hiking boots, like a man planning to go on a fishing trip. He was clean-shaven, and his hair seemed devoid of product, waving whenever he walked underneath a ceiling vent. If I’d met him anyplace else, I wouldn’t have pinned him as a missing-persons detective. I would’ve guessed him to be a geologist maybe, a high school teacher, perhaps even an athlete, but not a policeman.

  He led me to one of the last rooms before the hallway ended. It was an interrogation room, empty with the exception of a plain table, two chairs, and a video camera fastened to the wall. We sat, the walls so close we barely had enough room to push our chairs back.

  “Are you sure you don’t want something to drink?” he asked. “Something to snack on? We don’t have much, but I could get you some crackers or a candy bar or something.”

  “No, thank you. I’m fine.”

  “We are recording this,” he said as he caught me looking at the camera. “It’s the law now. If we’re alone with anyone, we have to show we follow protocol, don’t harass anyone, break any laws, yada, yada, yada. Does it bother you?”

  “No,” I said, though it did.

  “Good,” he said. He smiled again. His teeth were the whitest of any person’s I had ever seen. It almost hurt to look at them. “There’s no reason for it to. I only wanted to speak with you alone.”

  “About Sara.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have news?”

  He nodded. “She has been found. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but she is dead.”

  “Where?”

  “I’m sorry?” He looked confused.

  “Where was she found?”

  “At the Rockland Landfill.”

  “What happened?”

  “It’s hard to say,” he said. “But there appears to be foul play.”

  “Foul play?”

  “Homicide.”

  “How do you know?”

  “There’re lacerations over her face and neck. Jugular wound. She appears to have bled to death. Head trauma. A large contusion on her forehead.”

  “She was murdered?”

  “It appears so.”

  “Any leads?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “Though there are some peculiarities.”

  “Peculiarities?”

  “There’s no sign she fought back. Usually we’ll find flesh underneath her fingernails, maybe in her teeth where she clawed or bit her assailant. Fingers and knuckles bruised from throwing punches. Forearms will have scrapes. And in the wound itself, we found bits of ceramic porcelain, an odd weapon for someone to have out on the street.”

  “Porcelain?”

  “From dishware, a coffee cup, or maybe a soap tray. Home décor stuff. It looks like she was inside when she was attacked, and it seems like she knew her attacker.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because she didn’t fight back. She didn’t try to defend herself, shield her face. She must’ve been surprised. The attack came from the front. It was a puncture wound, not a slice like an attacker would do from behind. She was stabbed, so she would’ve seen it coming.” He shook his head, looked down at the table, smiled again, and leaned forward. It wasn’t a smile of happiness or welcoming, but one of sympathy. I couldn’t tell if it was an act, though, designed to manipulate me into trusting him, into seeing him as a confidante and not a detective. “I know this must be hard.”

  “I’ve suspected that this was how it would end.”

  “You did?”

  “She would’ve contacted someone by now.”

  “Oh. Yes.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Of course, we’ve mapped out all the trash routes that end up at that particular landfill. It does cover Dorchester. So we believe she was murdered in your neighborhood.”

  “I see.”

  “We, of course, found this odd. When she first went missing, you said she didn’t know many people in the area. You couldn’t provide the name of a single friend or acquaintance she would’ve confided in locally. After your fight, I mean. You were quite adamant about this.”

  Sweat trickled down my back. My cotton shirt stuck to me, and my hair matted against my forehead. The humidity choked me. I could hardly breathe. My esophagus felt swollen, my tongue too large for my mouth.

  “There is one man,” I said. “When we went out searching for Sara, we found one man who knew Sara. A shop owner. Asian man. I believe he’s Vietnamese.”

  He peered at me, taken aback by my answer. “Really?”

  I nodded.

  “What else do you know about him?’

  “Not much. Nothing really.”

  “Name? Type of shop? Description.”

  “Deli. Café sort of place. He’s short, maybe 5’5’’. Fifty maybe sixty years old. A bit of a gut. Thin everywhere else.”

  “Tattoos? Birthmarks? Piercings? Distinguishing marks at all?”

  “Not that I can recall.”

  “How did he know Sara?”

  I told him about her going there to eat pie, to people watch, to talk about home.

  “And you didn’t know of her relationship with this man?”

  “Not at all.”

  “So you have no idea about motive? Romantic entanglement? A feud? An unpaid debt? Drugs?”

  “She never mentioned him.”

  “So it would be unlikely she would confide in him after your fight?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know how close they were.”

  “So all you know is that she kept secrets from you? That you two fought, she left, she wound up dead?”

  “I guess you could say that.”

  He smiled again. This time it was not a sympathetic smile, but one of pleasure. He was pleased with himself. “I think that is enough for now. You’ve gone through an awful lot.”

  “I can go?”

  He nodded, stood, and held his hand out like an usher showing me to the exit. The walk to the front of the police station, he didn’t say a word, just matched his steps with mine. It was like he was mirroring me, synchronizing our movements, mocking me. This, for some reason, disturbed me more than his questioning had.

  When we made it to the door, he tapped me on the shoulder. “Mr. Zahn,” he said. “If you wouldn’t mind, please stick around town for a while. I’m sure we’ll want to speak again soon.”

  As soon as they got home, he told his mother all about it. He expected her to worry and scold him and his father for allowing him to get so close to a tornado, putting him in harm’s way, but she didn’t. They were in the backyard, and he was helping her get ready for his birthday party later that afternoon. He expected her to get riled up, maybe even livid, but instead she simply smiled and said, “That’s nice, Coulter.”

  That’s nice, Coulter? He could’ve been killed!

  He went on.

  “It was an F3. The Bronco was getting pushed all over the road. It was the coolest thing ever!”

  “That does sound exciting.”

  She was making party hats out of cardboard and finger paint. Sitting here now, Coulter regretted his decision for a carnival theme. After what he’d experienced that morning, it just seemed so childish. There was a bouncy castle and a petting zoo with goats and pigs and a pony ride and a piñata and an apple-bobbing station. He didn’t even like carnivals. He’d been to one, about three years pri
or with his grandfather, and his opinion then had remained largely intact—they stunk, they were hot, and he didn’t care to ever return. When he’d made the choice of a carnival theme, he did so considering what the other kids might like. They wouldn’t have enjoyed an outer space themed party where they learned facts about the various constituents of the solar system, the number and names of Jupiter’s satellites or Mercury’s polarization, for instance. He already had the reputation for being a nerd, an over-achiever, a teacher’s pet. He didn’t want to exacerbate that with a science-themed birthday party. Best to appeal to their curiosities, their interests.

  “Dad’s car got messed up pretty bad,” he continued. “There was hail the size of a grapefruit. The backdraft from the cell nearly tipped the car over.”

  “Good, sweetie.” Mom was cutting triangles out of the cardstock with scissors, folding them into cones, and taping them together. She wasn’t even listening to him anymore, dazed into her own little world. Her cutting had a rhythm to it. She didn’t scissor the pieces but instead sheared them, scraping the blade across the paper’s edge. Each time she made a cut, it sounded like a wave receding over a sandy beach. Shear. Scrape. Shear. Scrape. Shear. Scrape. It was mesmerizing, and she had gotten lost in the monotony of her activity. She was doing this more and more lately. Coulter would come home and tell her about his day at school, what he’d learned, what he’d already known, who he had made friends with, and she’d look at him blankly and nod her head and tell him to go to his room as she folded laundry, each shirt given her complete attention. She wasn’t mean or neglectful by any means—she still hugged him goodnight and made sure he was safe and warm and fed and clean—she just seemed distant, a bit cold.

  “One actually crashed through the windshield. It killed Dianne on impact. Just crushed her skull. Look! I still have brain stains on my pants!”

  Shear. Scrape. Shear. Scrape. Shear. Scrape.

  “We buried her in a field. Not before some crows started picking at her, though. One ate her eyes.”

  Shear. Scrape. Shear. Scrape. Shear. Scrape.

  “I cut off her ear and ate that. I thought it would be gross at first, but it wasn’t. It was like marbling on a steak. Fatty and salty. Then I ate a finger. A toe. A part of her calf. I figured, why not? She’s already dead.”