Girl Last Seen

by Nina Laurin

  When I sit up, panting, I have no idea if I was asleep for five hours or five minutes or five days. Weak light filters in through the blanket over the window. Dawn in this city looks the same as a rainy afternoon, and when most afternoons are rainy…well.

  Damp bedsheets cling to my sweaty skin. Blindly pawing for my cell phone, I squint at the dim screen: six a.m.

  I can’t stop shivering so I amble to the shower and turn on the hot water. The bathroom in my apartment is the size of a Kleenex, or as one hookup or another put it with a smirk, you can shit while you brush your teeth. It has no bathtub, only a plastic shower stall, very much like those at the loony bin. There, everything was blunt and plastic so I couldn’t do something dumb like intentionally crack my head open on a tile or a sharp corner.

  Here it’s because the slumlord is a cheapskate. But at least there’s no nurse on the other side of the clear curtain, watching me like a hawk.

  The memory still makes me shudder. I remember crying into the stream of hot water because I couldn’t look down without seeing my distended stomach. I ended up staring at the ceiling the whole time.

  I push the memory away, into some far recess of my mind where it can rot until it poisons me. I’ve barely had time to rinse my hair when the water turns from warm to lukewarm to freezing. With a sigh, I turn off the tap.

  When I try to climb back under the blankets, I realize I won’t be going back to sleep. The sheets are still soaked with sweat, and while I was showering, they got cold and clammy. So I get dressed in baggy jeans and a T-shirt with the logo of some band I’ve never heard of, a relic left behind by some guy I don’t remember having slept with.

  It’s nearing seven a.m. when I lace my boots and shrug on my jacket, pause on the threshold of the apartment, thinking, then go back and refill the hole in the lining of my pocket with a new lump of foil. Normally, I’d never be dumb enough to bring pills to a police station—but these were prescribed in my name. Technically. I ran out of my monthly prescription two weeks ago, but no one has to know that.

  I’m ready to face Ortiz. As ready as I’m going to be.

  It’s not quite light enough when I venture out, and the street is deserted, shadows still clinging to every crevice, reluctant to leave. The glow of the streetlights—whichever ones are working, that is—is muted, diffused in the light fog that shows no intention of lifting. Everything about it clearly rings unsafe, a tinny trill of alarm in the back of my mind: you, of all people, should know better. I put my headphones on and crank up my music to the loudest setting. Like I’m really asking for it.

  * * *

  As I push open the heavy glass door with the Seattle PD logo and go into the station, no one pays much attention to me. Men and women in cop uniforms go back and forth, phones ring, a din of general chaos hangs over the place like a cloud of smog despite the early hour. Only when I get to the nearest counter and tell the woman behind bulletproof glass that I’m Lainey Moreno does she cut herself off midword, cover the receiver of the phone she’s been yammering into, and look at me like I actually exist.

  “This way.”

  I half expected to find myself in one of those ominous rooms like on CSI, with gray walls and a two-way mirror, but this looks more like the cluttered office of a middle-school principal. The shifty, skinny guy from the other night gives me a tepid hello and motions for me to sit. I don’t shake the hand he proffers. He looks like one of those people whose palm would be cold and clammy to the touch, although without the hockey jersey, he’s almost handsome.

  I look around. He’d closed the door behind me, and the noise outside is reduced to a soft din. More than anything, I feel trapped.

  “Where’s…Detective Ortiz?” I ask in guise of hello.

  “He’s busy. I’ll be interviewing you, Lainey. If that’s all right.” Judging by his close-lipped smile, it doesn’t really matter if it’s all right or not.

  At the same time, I’m furious with Sean…with Detective Ortiz. He’s busy? What does he think he’s playing at? My teeth are gnashing, and my jaw starts to ache. I really, really should have slept longer.

  “I’m Detective Morris, Lainey.”

  Morris. A name fit for a guy who wears a fedora with his black trench. I half expect him to call me a dame. The thought makes me crack up, and I catch the neurotic chuckle between my clenched teeth before it can escape.

  His pale-orange brows knit. He has that blotchy redhead skin, thin like papyrus. It’s already starting to crease in myriad microlines and folds.

  “Is something wrong?”

  I shake my head. He gives me a last lingering look and then on to the questions, without warning. What did you do on this day at this hour?

  What did I do? “I was at work.”

  “At eight in the morning?” A rise of his brows again. He communicates his entire range of emotions through them, like a dog, and his mouth is set in a firm line the whole time when he’s not talking.

  It takes me a moment to get his meaning. My other job, I explain hoarsely, although it’s supposed to be the other way around. The grocery store job is my real job, the one I put on my lease and credit card applications. The night shift is my other job.

  “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” he says evenly, with a note of condescension. “You’re not doing anything illegal at that club, are you?” Chuckle, chuckle. This is supposed to be the punch line to some joke that went over my head.

  “No, I’m not.” I answer even if I’m not sure he wants me to, just in case. Nothing illegal; I don’t even take my clothes off—but I don’t say that part out loud.

  “So for how long were you at the grocery store?”

  I tell him. “From seven to two, like every day.”

  “Every day?”

  “Well, uh, except,” I stammer, stumbling over my own thoughts. “I get my schedule every week. I had Thursday and Friday off. I think.” I curse myself—who the hell doesn’t remember when she had a day off just the week before? But he moves on without skipping a beat.

  “What time did you get off work?”

  I have to repeat myself. “Two o’clock, at the end of my shift.”

  He doesn’t have a notebook or a tablet or a keyboard, because he’s recording the whole thing with his phone. Is this it? Doesn’t strike me as very…professional.

  “What did you do after work?”

  “I went running,” I say. Not because of any kind of malice or ill intent, it just rolls smoothly off my tongue, and I don’t have time to catch it. Too late. My armpits get clammy, and I swear his nose twitches like he can sense it through my layers of T-shirt and jacket.

  I can lie to myself all I want, but lying to the police has consequences.

  “And then?”

  “I went home.”

  “Straight home?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did anybody see you? Running?”

  “What?…”

  “It’s not very safe in your neighborhood. Is it?”

  I shrug.

  “Let’s move to yesterday,” he says smoothly, too smoothly, and just like that, I know he knows, and he’s aware of it, and we sit here in the middle of the knot of my lies that tightens with every word I say.

  “Yesterday, where did you go after work?”

  When he sees that I’m not answering, he adds, “Did you go straight home?”

  Opening the door for me to lie. Waiting for me to lie. Expecting it.

  I dip my chin. Saying yes, but not vocalizing it so it doesn’t end up inside that scuffed little phone of his.

  “Did you stop anywhere?”

  Of course I had. Sugar hightailed it out of the Silver Bullet and never came back, so I made a detour to pick up my stuff. Took all of fifteen minutes, and most of them a blur, this part as much a fabric of my day as brushing my teeth. I mostly remember sitting in my car, idling at a traffic light that was taking forever. Red light from it spilled down the rain-slicked asphalt, brighter than fresh blood, a
nd I drummed my fingertips on the steering wheel, picking away bits of fake leather as I wondered if I could just blow past it. The street was empty on all sides—no one to see. No one to know. But I didn’t, in case of traffic cameras.

  Shit. Traffic cameras. I’ve watched enough CSI to know how these things work.

  “I did.” I try my best to keep my voice even. “I made a detour. Stopped at a…an acquaintance’s house. But—”

  He cuts me off before I have a chance to explain—to lie—further.

  “Acquaintance? What acquaintance?”

  “This guy I was sort of seeing,” I stammer. I’m hoping to move on from there, but he latches on to it.

  “And who was this acquaintance?”

  “Just this guy I met. Su—James.” That’s Sugar’s real first name, isn’t it? It’s gotta be James, or Jack, or Jon, or something.

  “And what kind of acquaintance is James? Does he have a last name?”

  “I don’t know, all right?” My mouth twists like there’s something sour under my tongue. “I only sort of know him.”

  “Know him how?”

  “Through work.”

  “The grocery store?”

  “The club,” I say. My voice turns into a hiss. “I thought this much was obvious. You’re a detective, aren’t you?”

  He lets that sail over his head with true professional cool. I, however, am this close to losing mine.

  “So he came to the club,” he says. “The strip club. Where you work.”

  “Where I bartend.”

  “Yeah.” He shifts in his chair, a comfy, ergonomic chair with a high back. “Was he a client?”

  “What?”

  “Well, if he came into the club, that must mean he was a client. Why else would he be there?”

  “Maybe he was. So?”

  “You have a habit of leaving with customers, Lainey?”

  I shoot to my feet without realizing I’m moving. The room falls away, and I loom over him, the air in my lungs pulling me toward the ceiling like a balloon. “You wanna know if I turn tricks? Is that it?”

  “I was just asking you a question.” As he says this, his face smooths out, his forehead an uncreased plane of thin, freckled skin.

  “Yeah, well, the answer is no.”

  “How long did you stay at James’s?”

  “I didn’t.” I swallow. “Ten minutes. Five.”

  His eyebrows rise. “It only took five minutes?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Nothing. Just trying to figure out what could have been in it for you.” And he gives that close-lipped smile again.

  “What the fuck does that have to do with Olivia?”

  “Let me worry about that. I’m the detective—you said so yourself. You just answer the questions, please.”

  “Yeah. It only took five fucking minutes.” My voice cracks. I realize this is being recorded, but it’s too late to backtrack. My ugly words are trapped in the chips and circuits of his old smartphone with its cracked screen, and there’s no way to take them back. My control over them is lost forever. People will listen to the words replayed over and over, analyzing, scrutinizing, shaking their heads. My humiliation mingles with rage and powerlessness.

  “If you can’t behave, we can conduct this interview with you in handcuffs. If you like that better.”

  I steady my voice. “I have nothing else to say. I went home and went to sleep.”

  “Do you live alone?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Just wondering if someone can corroborate your story.”

  My story.

  “Fuck you.”

  Before he can say anything else, I turn around and storm out.

  No one stops me; no one calls my name. At least I don’t think anyone does. The only sound I can hear clearly is my pulse pounding in my eardrums. I shut my eyes, and an image surfaces: the house where I grew up, so unreal it looks flat like a theater set. The thin wall that separates my bedroom from Val’s, and the sounds I always pretend not to hear. The casual insults flung at me by the other neighborhood kids, s words and w words that always send me into a frenzy of violence. Val’s shoes, platform heels scattered by the front door, shoes I put on while she’s sleeping and amble around the living room like a baby deer. The prettiest shoes in the world, I thought back then, shiny red or black or clear heels like Cinderella. Knowing full well that if she ever caught me, she’d beat the crap out of me, but I put them on all the same.

  The panic attack scratches at the edges of my subconscious, insistent, growing closer with every moment. And when it hits, I don’t want to be in this place. I want to be outside, in the cold drizzle of early morning. I want to be home, in my bed, or at least in the driver’s seat of my car with the door locked.

  Throwing my weight against the door, I topple out into the burnt-rubber and diesel stink of the parking lot. And collide with Sean Ortiz, face-to-face. More like face-to-chest, like in the movies, minus the cute romantic component. The wool of his jacket is scratchy and soft at the same time as it connects with my palms; I reel back with a jolt.

  “Here you are,” he says. Not surprised, just observing. I’m seeing him in daylight for the first time. His eyes are darker than I thought they were and his hair, lighter. Pale sunlight brings out the grays that hid in the shadow, many more than I’d noted at first glance.

  “Yes,” I exhale. “I’m here.” And you weren’t. I needed to see you, and you weren’t there. You left me in the care of others, of more people who don’t give a shit. Again.

  As if he can read my mind, his gaze grows somber. “Yes, I just got a call. I hear it didn’t go so well.”

  My face flares, and I study the cracks in the asphalt at my feet. Ten different brands of cigarette butts soak up the rainwater by the edge of the sidewalk.

  “This is important. Couldn’t you keep it together just this once? Do you realize how it makes you look?”

  “I didn’t do anything.” My voice cracks.

  “I know. But it’s them you have to convince, not me.”

  My fists clench inside my sleeves.

  “You’re making yourself look guilty. Like you have something to hide. If that’s what you were going for, then you did a great job—congratulations. And Morris—”

  “Morris,” I say, spitting each syllable in a furious staccato, “tried to insinuate I was some kind of two-bit whore.”

  Sean groans. “Come with me, Laine. We should talk.”

  “I think I’m done talking for the day.”

  He throws a grim, squint-eyed glance around, over my head, at the building. “Not here. Somewhere else. Somewhere private.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I keep my head down as I follow Sean to his car. He opens the door and practically shoves me in like I’m being arrested—not that I’m resisting. Empty energy-drink cans litter the floor, and the crumpled wrappers of nicotine patches fill every nook and cranny. In spite of that, the seats kind of smell like smoke.

  Sean slams the door on the driver’s side. He won’t look at me. “Put your seat belt on,” he barks.

  I sit on my hands. “These don’t really work, you know.”

  “What?”

  “The nicotine patches. How long have you been at it?”

  He cringes, like I reminded him of something he was trying to put out of his mind. “We’re not here to discuss my bad habits.”

  He peels out of the parking lot, going way above the speed limit, I can tell—as are my thoughts, and all my attempts to slow them down are in vain. They go around in a circle, getting louder with each loop. Until I saw that poster, I didn’t even know for sure if Olivia existed, if she had a name. And today, they think I took her, at least this Morris does. But then I’d be in handcuffs, wouldn’t I? Why am I here and not in the back of a cop car, separated from Sean by a metal grille?

  I steal a sideways glance at him. “Don’t you have work to do? Missing people to find?” I manage to keep the bitter
ness from my voice.

  “Yes, I do. I think you’re it.”

  Well, that’s reassuring. That’s how he sees me, a missing person, even though I haven’t been missing for a decade now. But to him, and to the rest of the world, I’ll forever be Girl Last Seen. My defining moment.

  And now Olivia’s defining moment.

  Don’t think about it, they’ll find her—Sean will find her—and everything will be fine. She won’t end up broken like me. She has parents who love her, and half the country is looking for her and…and…

  I realize I’m grinding my teeth and clench my jaw, which only makes it worse.

  Sean takes me to a twenty-four-hour diner near Pioneer Square. If I were him, I wouldn’t leave a decent car parked within a mile of the place, but he doesn’t seem to give a damn. I understand his motivation when we walk in, because the diner is mostly empty. A few tables are occupied by the last bleary-eyed holdovers from the night activities, a few homeless guys warming their hands on unlimited one-dollar coffees, a table of hookers in high vinyl boots smoking and laughing raucously. He steers us to a booth in the very back. A few of the patrons follow us with bored glances. They probably think he’s some rich businessman dude here to buy drugs from me.

  Clearly, this isn’t going to be a conversation fit for a Starbucks.

  I plunk down onto the bench. The blue vinyl is scarred with cigarette burns and torn in places, exposing yellowed stuffing. Sean watches me intently as I pat myself down to retrieve my crushed pack of smokes. The smooth feel of my lighter in my hand is like an old friend. I light up, looking Sean straight in the eye as I take that first, sweet drag.

  His eyes narrow a little, and a vein pops on his forehead, but he doesn’t tell me to put it out.

  I hold out my pack to him. “Want one?”

  “Laine.”

  “I’m asking seriously. You must be twitchy from all that NicoDerm.”

  “If anyone is twitchy, it’s you. Have you slept at all lately?”