Idyll Hands

by Stephanie Gayle

  We were both thinking it. She’d run, again.

  Dave said, “Mickey Wentz said he spotted Susan walking toward the monument. Mickey said hi, but Susan didn’t say hello.” Mickey was an alkie who could be very nice and charming or not, depending on his intake levels. Susan might’ve chosen to avoid him for safety’s sake.

  “Why don’t I go down High Street, to the monument? You check Cordid,” I said.

  “Already did, Officer.” Dave’s response was bone dry. Now was not the time to get into who was in charge. Dave was older by two years, but he wasn’t a trained policeman. He’d argue I was barely a policeman, in uniform less than a year. I said, “Then search somewhere else.”

  “I’ll check Elm,” he said.

  I stopped at every house and talked to folks. Neighbors were happy to chat. Susan missing, again? How long had she been gone? Was a boy involved? I answered more questions than I asked. “You look good in the uniform, Mikey!” said Mr. Sullivan. His comment emphasized how wrong it was that the family with the cop had a girl they couldn’t find, again. It was like we were careless and had misplaced her.

  At Bunker Hill, I flashed the photo of Susan at a ranger. He squinted. “I’ve seen her around. Cute kid.” I got ready to tell him she was just that, a kid, and he better watch his step, when he said, “Sorry, haven’t seen her recently.”

  “You sure?”

  “Well, it’s been busy since school started back up. Field trips. You know. But I don’t think so.”

  “How about Kevin?” I asked. Kevin was a ranger who’d played in our neighborhood when we were kids. He was cousins with Jack McGee. Jack, who my dad warned me to “stay away from” when I was in third grade. Because Jack’s family did “bad things.”

  “Kevin hasn’t been on shift since Thursday,” he said. “He’s back tomorrow. She in trouble?” He looked at the picture again.

  “No.” I wasn’t as sure as I sounded. “Thanks for your help.”

  I canvassed a few more blocks, but no one had seen her. They fired questions at me. Why had she left? Was the fight they heard through their open windows Thursday night between her and my parents? She wasn’t hanging out with Trisha Darling was she? Trisha was bad news.

  The sun was gone when I trudged back to the house. Inside, it was twenty degrees warmer. Ever since his heart attack, Dad set the thermostat to broil. Everyone was gathered at the dining-room table. It smelled of starch spray. Ma must’ve ironed in here, earlier. Dave drank a beer, a lit cigarette in his other hand. Bobby ate a cookie. When he finished, Ma handed him another.

  “She’s not at any hospital,” Ma said. “I called all over. Brigham and Women’s had a girl named Susan, but her last name’s Lucas and she has appendicitis.”

  “Bobby?” I asked my younger brother.

  “None of Susan’s friends have seen her since Friday.”

  “What about Lucy?” I asked. “Do we think Susan really didn’t tell her anything?” Best friends covered for each other. Lucy had been Susan’s best friend since second grade.

  “Are you asking if Lucy MacManus is a liar?” My father’s dark eyes tried to bore a hole through my forehead.

  “She might lie for Susan.”

  “I believe her,” Bobby said. “She sounded worried. None of her friends had any idea where she’d gone.”

  “Boyfriend?” Dave asked.

  “She doesn’t have a boyfriend,” Ma said.

  “She’s not allowed to have a boyfriend,” Dad said, as if that settled that.

  “Not one you knew about,” I said, low.

  “What was that?” Dad shouted.

  “Enough!” Ma said. “Bobby, did any of the girls mention a boyfriend?”

  “No,” he said. “They said Susan has a crush on Andy Moretti, but he doesn’t know she’s alive.”

  “Moretti?” Dad said. “That oily piece of shit? He better not look at Susan. I’ll put his damn eyes out.”

  “Dad,” Bobby said. “Moretti’s got a girlfriend, Sophia. He’s never looked at Susan.”

  Was that true? Or was Bobby keeping peace? I’d ask him later, out of Dad’s hearing.

  “So, no boyfriend, she’s not in the hospital, and none of her friends know where she is.” Dave summarized it neatly.

  “Has anyone searched her room?” I asked. If she’d run away, stuff would be missing.

  “I looked this afternoon,” Ma said. “And I didn’t see much missing.”

  “Let’s take another look,” I said.

  Dad and Dave stayed at the table.

  Susan’s room had twin beds, from when she and Carol had shared the space. Carol had left four years ago, when she married, but her bed remained, shoved against the right wall. Susan used it as a desk. There were books, papers, and school folders spread across it. Susan’s closet had louvered doors that pulled off the tracks if you tugged too hard. The closet was shallow, so the hangers had to be angled so the doors could close. Inside were pants, skirts, blouses, dresses, and shoes. “There’s an empty hanger,” Bobby said.

  “Just one?” Ma asked. “That’s nothing.”

  Atop her dresser, an array of colorful lip glosses lay next to her perfume. Headbands with their small plastic teeth, ribbons, stickers, a keychain she’d won, and two copies of Glamour.

  “Where’s Mr. Growls?” Bobby asked, staring at the bed.

  Mom frowned. “I don’t know.”

  Mr. Growls had been with Susan since her fourth birthday. She’d taken the bear everywhere. Its fur was worn in patches, its head permanently atilt from years of hugs.

  “She took it,” Bobby said.

  “And her lucky rabbit’s foot,” Ma said.

  “Where does she keep it?” I hadn’t been in this room since Carol lived here.

  “Over there.” She pointed to the satin-trimmed vanity table Susan had gotten five Christmases ago. It was comically small, built for a child, not a teenager.

  “You know what this means?” I said. “She packed. She left. She ran away, again.”

  “Can you ask your department—?”

  “Ma, she’s a runaway. She hasn’t been abducted.” A low throb started at the base of my skull. I looked around the room again, hoping it would offer me some clue as to where she’d gone this time.

  “We’re going to have to find her ourselves.”

  CHIEF THOMAS LYNCH

  FRIDAY, MAY 14, 1999

  2015 HOURS

  Suds was packed with Friday-night drinkers, some of them UConn undergrads celebrating final exams. My polo shirt would smell like booze, fried food, and cigarette smoke when I got home, and I’d have to bring it back, another day, to the Laundromat side of Suds, for washing. Suds: half bar/half Laundromat, was the liveliest place in town. “Hi, Chief,” Nate, the owner, said when I reached the bar. “What can I get you?”

  “You have Brooklyn?”

  He reached below the bar, grabbed a bottle, and popped off the cap. He didn’t pour it, because I preferred to drink it from the bottle. “How’s things?” he asked.

  “Grand.” Not true. My head was still buzzing from Finny’s story about his missing sister. Missing twenty-seven years and no idea where she’d gone. I sneezed. Fished a handkerchief from my pocket. I blew into the cleanest spot I could find.

  “Allergies,” Nate said. “Nature’s way of taking the White Man down.”

  “Don’t Indians get allergies?” Nate was Nipmuc. How much, I didn’t know. He said he didn’t know either.

  “Kidding,” he said. “Most of my cousins are lactose intolerant.”

  Two college kids moseyed up to the bar. Donna took their orders. The boys tried not to hurt themselves ogling her. I scanned the room. Impossible to suppress the instinct to assess the crowd, check for trouble, make sure nothing looked amiss. Nothing seemed to, so I turned my attention to the little TV bolted over the bar. My mind wasn’t on the game onscreen, though. It was still on Finny’s missing sister. He’d thought the Colleen bone might belong to her. Jesus, w
hat were the chances? Seven million to one? And still he’d had it tested. Completely against protocol. I’d told him so, but my heart wasn’t in it because I could see, even now, how he’d wanted it to match. Twenty-seven years without any answers. That was longer than the dopey college boys at the bar had been alive.

  “Hey, Chief,” a man to my right said. I turned. Mr. Cullen. I recognized him from town events. He was a civic-minded businessman who dedicated time and money to the town’s various projects. He held a foaming glass in one hand and a chicken wing in the other. “I drive down Piper Street every day. Any word on when those clamshells will be removed?”

  “That’s on DPW, Mr. Cullen.” The stinking clamshells were supposed to be removed two days ago. “Have they not come by?”

  “They say we need to bag ’em, but they’re really gross.”

  Grosser than a two-day floater out of the Hudson River? No, I couldn’t say that. “I hear you. Drove past a few days ago, and the smell was out of this world.”

  “My girls’ best friend lives on that street. We can’t let them play on the swing set if there’s any wind,” he complained.

  “Tell you what. I’ll call DPW and see what the holdup is.” I knew what the holdup was. DPW didn’t want to pick up maggoty, stinky clamshells, and not on a day when Piper Street wasn’t on the trash route.

  “You talking about the clamshells?” Another guy, one I didn’t know, joined in. “Who dumped them there?”

  “We’re looking into it,” I said.

  “I spoke to a detective the other day. Guess this kind of crime doesn’t happen in the big city, huh?”

  “Not exactly.” I’d come from New York City. The locals never forgot, or let me forget. What I didn’t tell them was that petty crime was the same in intent, if not in execution, the world over.

  “Remember in 1990, was it, when they kept finding those broken bottles on people’s steps?” Mr. Cullen asked. “Glass bottles, and it was summer, so if you stepped out barefoot—”

  “You cut your foot,” the other guy finished. “Yup. They finally caught the guy, right?”

  “Yeah. He was caught dumping glass shards onto someone’s steps.”

  “Why’d he do it?” I asked, intrigued despite myself.

  “I don’t recall,” Mr. Cullen said. “Do you?”

  “Nah,” second guy said. “I remember one kid had to have stitches. Sliced up his heel something awful.”

  I sipped at my beer, just another guy talking about the past crimes of Idyll, almost a local. A hand grabbed my shoulder, hard. I slapped my palm over the hand and turned fast, nearly head-butting Matt. “Whoa!” he said, pulling his hand free.

  “You startled me,” I said. Mr. Cullen and friend eyed us like we might start shooting. “Sorry,” I said. “Old friend. He has a weird way of greeting people. Excuse us.” I steered Matt Cisco toward the end of the bar’s counter.

  He grinned. He wore jeans and a gray t-shirt. How I ever convinced him to sleep with me was a mystery for the ages. “How are you, papi?” He whispered the last word. His Puerto Rican terms of endearment were always delivered as half-joke.

  “Before a federal agent assaulted me, I was great.” Matt was at the New Haven branch of the FBI. We’d worked a case together, fifteen months ago. We’d been keeping each other company roughly the same amount of time.

  “Hey, Matty, what’ll you have?” Donna asked. She liked him, more than me. Maybe because he’d never misled her by pretending to be straight.

  “Rolling Rock,” Matt said. When he took his foaming glass from her, he said, “Cheers.”

  “Cheers.” I drank and stared at him from the corner of my eye. I hadn’t expected to see him until Sunday, at the earliest. I smiled. He was good to see, no matter when. “How’s things?”

  “Just wrapped up a human-trafficking case. Now here I am, in the sleepiest town I know.”

  “Sleepy? I haven’t told you about the clamshell mystery on Piper Street then.”

  “Oh, Idyll,” Matt said, amused.

  “Hey, those clamshells are nasty and no one knows who’s dumping them.”

  He patted my shoulder. “I don’t know how you keep up with this place.”

  I wanted to tell him about today’s big news, about Susan Finnegan and the bone I’d found in Evidence, but we couldn’t talk here.

  Nate came over to check on us. “You guys good?”

  My beer was nearly gone, but I didn’t want another now that Matt was here. “Hey, Nate, what do you know about Idyll’s ghost?” Nate knew everything there was worth knowing. Benefit of his profession. “Out in the woods by the Old Graham place?”

  “Oh, you mean Colleen?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Not much. Kind of recent, as ghosts go. Dates back to the 1980s. Story has it a teen girl was murdered there and now she roams the woods. They call her Colleen, but they don’t know who she is. Mr. Graham, who owned the place, died a few years after they discovered the bones.” I didn’t correct him, tell him that there had been only one bone. “There was gossip he was involved, but that’s nonsense. He was a nice old coot.”

  “New Haven got ghosts?” I asked Matt. He snickered.

  “Kids used to dare each other to sleep in the woods,” Nate said. “Try to see the ghost.”

  “I bet every kid who did it saw her too.” Matt set his empty glass on the bar. “I’ll have another.”

  “Sure thing.” Nate grabbed the glass and went to the tap.

  “So, what are your plans this evening?” Matt slung his arm over my shoulder. It was heavy with muscle. It felt good, but I couldn’t have him do that here. I tried to shrug it off. “What?” he said.

  “Nothing. I’d just prefer it if you kept your hands to yourself, mister.” The “mister” was an afterthought, added when I saw the storm clouds on his face.

  “Sure thing.” He jammed his hands into his pockets. “Why don’t I keep them all to myself? Sorry to disturb you.” Before I could protest, he stomped off and out the door. I felt the weight of curious eyes on me. I kept my gaze on the TV until I felt them drop off.

  “Where’s Matt?” Nate asked as he plunked the glass down before me.

  “Something came up.” I tossed some bills onto the bar. Nate complained it was too much, but I wasn’t going to turn around. Better to exit quickly.

  The chill air smelled like rain. Matt was gone. Probably peeled out and driving hell for leather back home. Damn it. He didn’t care what people thought if he touched me, if we looked like two gay men, because that’s what we were. I had a harder time. I was chief of police, surrounded by the people I worked for. Plenty of them didn’t like that I was gay.

  I got in my car and picked up my mobile phone. Dialed Matt, but he didn’t answer, so I drove home. Settled in my living room recliner, I called someone I knew would pick up, if he was home.

  After two rings, he did. “Hello?” Damien Saunders said.

  “Hi.”

  “Thomas. To what do I owe the pleasure?” Damien’s phone voice was very good. He could’ve run a sex line, if he wasn’t a Medical Examiner.

  “Hey, Damien. How are you?”

  “Fine. Today was quiet. Please tell me you’re not calling to change that.”

  “No, no. Hey, you ever play softball?”

  “Poorly. Why?”

  “Annual charity match is coming up. Us versus the firefighters. My guys always get their asses kicked. Wonder if I’m allowed to recruit outside talent?”

  “Think your team roster had to be submitted by April 30th,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Yeah, I was talking to your Captain Hirsch about a fire case he consulted on. Anyway, he mentioned the game. He’s team captain. I thought your captain was some guy named Walter Dix.”

  “Dix.” The same guy who couldn’t outrun a child. “Yeah, that’s right.” Was it? Shouldn’t I be team captain as chief of police? Was it an elected position? If so, why hadn’t I voted? Maybe it was a
n oversight. But I’d told them that I was looking forward to defeating the Red Menace (my nickname for the firefighters). I’d told them last week. No one had said anything.

  Time to change the topic. “I have a question for you.”

  “Case-related?”

  “No. Relationship-related.” Damien was the only gay man in the area I was friends with, which said more about me than it did about him.

  He inhaled, a soft little oh. “This involves Matthew Cisco?” Damien had met Cisco through work, but not socially, as far as I knew.

  “Yes.”

  “Well? Out with it,” he demanded.

  “Matt met me at Suds tonight, and he put his arm on my shoulder and … I kind of pushed it off. Then he said he’d keep his hands to himself and stormed out. He won’t answer my calls.”

  “You know why he’s upset?” Damien said.

  “Yeah, I do. It’s just … he’s way more comfortable being together in public.”

  “And you’re not.”

  “Suds is full of townies. It’s not exactly discreet.”

  “Quick question. How many couples did you see at the bar?” Damien asked.

  My mind reviewed the bar. “Five. Why?” I could feel I was being set up.

  “How many of them were holding hands or touching?”

  “Three, no four.”

  “Did it bother you?”

  “It’s not the same.” Those couples had been men and women, paired like the animals on Noah’s Ark.

  “Isn’t it? Do you think those people worried about discretion?”

  “You think I was wrong.” I rubbed my toes against the carpet, making a grid pattern.

  “I think you think you were wrong.”

  “Yeah.” I cradled my brow in my cupped right palm. “What do I do now?”

  “Apologize.”

  “I thought you’d say that.”

  “Make a gesture. Something romantic and a bit public.”

  “How public? Do I have to tag a bridge with our initials inside a heart?”

  His laugh was terrific, low and rumbly. “Not that public. How about flowers?”

  “Flowers? Isn’t that, I don’t know, kind of girly?”

  “You ever get flowers?”

  “No.” I associated them with hospital stays, funerals, and my mother, who liked to grab bouquets from the bodegas as “pick-me-ups.”