The Last Place You Look

by Kristen Lepionka

  I turned around and walked out.

  No one chased after me this time.

  * * *

  After a forty-minute shower and two cups of tea, I still wasn’t ready to face things. I lay in bed with the blinds drawn. I wanted to sleep for a year and wake up sober and entirely happy. But I couldn’t even sleep for five minutes. Finally I looked at my phone and considered the damage from the past day.

  Calls from: Danielle (confused), Marisa (concerned, having heard from Kenny about what happened to me), Danielle again (annoyed), Tom (concerned/apologetic), Matt (inviting me to an AA meeting with him), my mother (with the phone number of her dermatologist), Joshua (no update), Shelby (no message). The unknown number remained silent.

  Even it had determined that I had no next move, that I proved no threat to anyone.

  I stared at the stars on my ceiling, willing them to tell me what to do. Either they didn’t know, or they weren’t saying. Finally I got up and took my tea into the office and called Danielle.

  “I’m sorry for the delay in getting back to you,” I told her. “I have no excuse. But it won’t happen again.”

  “Listen, Roxane,” she said. “I don’t think this is working out.”

  I pressed the heel of my hand against my forehead. “Danielle—”

  “It’s nothing personal, really,” she said, “and I don’t mean to be judgmental about whatever, um, problems you might have. But my brother is running out of time. Literally. He doesn’t have any time to waste. I hired you to help him, and instead you spent the last week trying to pin some other shit on him?”

  So she’d finally talked to her brother. I felt my face get hot again, even though I was alone. “I wasn’t trying to pin anything on Brad,” I told her. I stood up and paced the length of the hallway. “I was trying to figure out how these events were connected. In my line of work, you have to explore everything. Even when it looks ugly. Even when it’s the opposite of what you set out to do. I know—”

  “No, I don’t think you do.” Danielle cleared her throat. “Brad had Columbus police detectives in to visit him the other day, about that Mallory Evans girl you asked me about. They didn’t just spontaneously decide to revisit that.”

  Fuck you, Tom, I thought unfairly.

  “So I can’t work with you anymore,” she finished. “That’s all I wanted to say.”

  I couldn’t even argue with her. I walked back to the office, once again refusing to look at the square of cardboard on the front door. “Okay.”

  That seemed to throw her a little. “Okay?”

  “I’m sorry, Danielle,” I said. “I don’t know what else to tell you. You didn’t see Sarah Cook at the gas station that night. I thought I could find another way in to helping out your brother, but I can’t. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know where else I can look. You should hire someone else, some ex-military guy with a buzz cut and an illustration of a shooting-range target on his business card and maybe he’ll have some entirely conventional approach with better results. And don’t hold this against my brother. He’s nothing like me.”

  I hung up and went back to the bedroom. But instead of getting back under the covers, I leaned against the doorframe for a while. I had no idea how I had gotten here: what started as a search for a potential witness to a very old case had turned into a missing teenager, circa now. Along the way I had two viable suspects that were, in retrospect, not all that viable. I’d lied to Sarah’s cousin and wound up with a broken window as punishment. I’d never been able to make sense of the Cook murders at all, which was the very thing I set out to resolve. I’d made a series of connections that maybe didn’t exist, that could too easily be chalked up to small-town syndrome. Maybe too much time had passed to be able to prove anything either way. Maybe none of it was connected in the first place. Maybe the woods below Clover Point were a notorious dumping ground for murderers across the entire Midwest because of the indistinct jurisdictions and general isolation.

  But the blue tarp.

  The image of the bones rose into my mind.

  It almost didn’t make a difference if any of it was connected, not anymore, I tried to tell myself. Mallory and Colleen and Sarah’s parents were still dead, even if no one ever figured out what really happened.

  Except that wasn’t true. Of course it mattered. It mattered to Brad and Danielle. And it mattered to Veronica and Shelby and Joshua.

  And really, it mattered a whole hell of a lot to me.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Shelby was making grilled-veggie sandwiches for lunch when I got to their house. “I have an extra one,” she said, “are you hungry?”

  “Sure, that sounds great, thank you,” I said. It was warm in the house, and I took off my leather jacket and hung it from the back of a chair at the dining table.

  “Guess you had a feeling she was coming, huh, Shel?” Joshua said.

  Shelby didn’t say anything. We looked at each other and I could tell that the sandwich was really for Veronica, a hopeful, hopeless gesture. “It’s probably not going to be very good,” she said. “We’re out of garlic and he wouldn’t let me go to the store to get more. So the flavor is like nothing.”

  “Shelby,” her father said, an uncharacteristic note of warning in his voice. To me, he added, “She’s getting a little stir-crazy.”

  Shelby slammed a skillet down on the stove. “Stop saying that. God,” she said, brushing past us on her way out of the kitchen. A beat later, her bedroom door slammed.

  Joshua shook his head. He hadn’t changed his shirt from yesterday and it looked like he still hadn’t slept. “She’s never like this,” he said. “But she hates me right now. I wouldn’t let her go to work at the restaurant. I wouldn’t let her go to the store, I wouldn’t let her go make more copies. She acts like that means I don’t care about Veronica, but of course I do. She’s practically another daughter to me, that girl. The police said there’s nothing we can do except stay safe ourselves.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m sick over this.”

  “I know.”

  “Shelby doesn’t remember her mom,” he added. “So it’s like something that didn’t happen to her. But it happened to me. I remember. And this—I just—” He stopped and brought his fist down on the table, hard enough to knock over his beer bottle. It was empty, but it rolled onto the floor where it clinked against something. Glancing over his shoulder, I saw quite the collection of empties in a brown paper bag.

  So that was why he hadn’t just driven her to the store for more garlic. This man is her father, I reminded myself, my chest tight.

  “Joshua,” I said, “if Shelby wants to make copies, I’ll go with her. It might be good for the two of you, to have a little space. You don’t need to be at odds with each other at a time like this. She’d be safe with me.” And I’d reloaded my revolver, I thought but did not say.

  “Oh, you don’t have to do that. I know you have your own life.” But there was gratitude in his eyes.

  “I’d be happy to,” I told him. “Really.”

  He nodded. “Thank you, Roxane.”

  I patted his shoulder and left him sitting at the table and went down the hall to Shelby’s bedroom. I knocked on the closed door. “Can I come in?” I said.

  “Whatever.”

  That wasn’t much of an invitation, but I went in anyway. Shelby was sitting cross-legged on her bed, arms crossed. Her computer was open on the blanket next to her, Veronica’s Facebook page on the screen. She didn’t look at me.

  “Shelby,” I started.

  “I thought you were mad at me or something,” she blurted, beginning to cry. “Or you thought I was so stupid. Because you went away and stopped helping us.”

  I closed the door and sat down next to her. “No,” I said. I felt sick. “No, that couldn’t be further from the truth. When I left the other day, I thought I knew something about what might have happened, and I went and made a really stupid choice, and because I was interfering with
what the police were doing, I got arrested.”

  She finally looked at me, her eyes going wide.

  “That’s why I didn’t answer when you called,” I added. “And yesterday, once I got out of jail, I was feeling really bad and I didn’t know how to help you. Your dad said the police were doing everything they could, and I thought I should leave them to it. But then I realized if it was my friend who didn’t come home, it wouldn’t matter to me if the police were doing everything they could. I’d want to do everything I could. Even if that was just something small. So that’s why I came back, to see if I could help you today. Your dad said you want to make more copies of your flyer. I’ll go with you, if you want me to.”

  Shelby covered her face with her hands, nodding. “Thank you.”

  “Why don’t you finish making lunch for your dad, and we can go. Okay?”

  * * *

  I sprang for five hundred copies of the flyer at a print shop by the high school. Then I let Shelby navigate for the rest of the afternoon. We expanded the canvassing area well beyond Belmont to include other places Veronica liked: the Drexel movie theater near downtown, a few vintage clothing stores on High Street—Flower Child in the Short North, the Boomerang Room in Clintonville—and the gift shop at the art museum. I didn’t think Veronica had disappeared for going on seventy-two hours in order to go shopping, and no one we talked to remembered seeing her. But we distributed flyers liberally. It didn’t hurt to widen the net.

  Later I took Shelby to the Angry Baker, the vegan place I’d told her about last week. We got chai lattes and sat at a small round table in the window, watching in silence as cars splashed through the puddles on Oak Street. It had stopped raining, but the city was atmospherically wet and felt like it would be forever. There was no reason to bring her here, except I was trying to cheer her up. I didn’t know what else to do.

  “Veronica would like it in here.” Shelby cupped her hands around her mug. “We never come to this part of downtown. My dad says we shouldn’t because it’s a bad area.”

  “This is my ’hood, kiddo,” I said lightly. “Does it look like a bad area to you?”

  Her eyes flicked to the boarded-up building across the street and over a few houses but she kept quiet.

  I had to laugh. I opened my mouth to say something about Belmont and how it looked nice on the surface but was far from it. But the moment wasn’t right for such horizon-broadening. “Has your dad ever been up here?” I said instead.

  “Probably not. He basically only leaves our neighborhood to go to his job.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  “When Veronica gets back, I’m going to bring her here,” she said.

  When Veronica gets back, like she was currently on a camping trip.

  Shelby looked into her empty mug for a while. “He asked me if it was possible that she hurt herself. Killed herself. It’s not. It’s so not. She would never do that to me.” She paused again before finally speaking. “My dad probably doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he doesn’t know everything. She’s coming back. Right?”

  I didn’t know what to tell her. There were so many life lessons contained in that one question. I was the last person in the world to be giving advice to anyone right now. I didn’t want to lie to her. But I didn’t see any way around it. In that moment, Shelby needed reassurance more than she needed straight shooting. “Yes,” I said. One way or another, at some point, she’d be found. “She is.”

  On the way back to her house, we tried the Book Loft and a big thrift store on South High and then, as it neared seven o’clock, Shelby said she wanted to hit up the Belmont Public Library. “Not that Veronica really likes libraries,” she said. “I mean, I do, she doesn’t. But they have a place where you can post flyers and I always see people reading them.”

  “Good idea.”

  It was cozy and quaint inside, a small space arranged around an actual hearth. An old card catalogue stood in one corner as a museum of sorts, along with a deeply earnest poster about the history of the Dewey decimal system. While Shelby asked for permission to post her flyer, I looked around, trying to picture Brad and Sarah at their weekly writers’ group in this space. But it was hard for me even to imagine their faces. I felt like a physical manifestation of a jammed signal. Nothing was getting out, and nothing was getting in. Shelby turned away from the counter, giving me a thumbs-up as she took her flyers over to the community board. I doubted that any librarian in the world would refuse to post a missing-persons flyer; librarians were, in my experience, some of life’s finer human beings. But it was good to know that there were still some decent people left in Belmont.

  I sensed the library doors opening behind me, so I took a step toward the card-catalogue museum. But then I heard the telltale utility-belt creaking of a uniformed cop.

  I spun around and came face-to-face with Sergeant Jack Derrow.

  “I’m just waiting for someone, come on,” I said, spreading my hands wide. It was hard to believe that I thought he was friendly the first time I met him.

  “Maybe I’m just here to check out a book.”

  “Why do I get the feeling that you’re not?”

  His eyes flicked to my cheekbone he but didn’t comment on it. “I’m sure you understand, I was doing my job.”

  “Yeah, of course,” I said. “Good work. Go ahead. Go get your book.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I told you, I’m waiting for someone. Pretty sure that’s not a police matter.” I semi-seriously considered if the cops had LoJacked my car while it was parked on the access road behind the Brayfield house. BOLO or not, the speed with which they seemed to locate me each time I came here was out of control.

  Derrow watched me for a minute like he was waiting for me to commit a crime in front of him. But I wasn’t trespassing this time. I wasn’t even loitering. And he’d have a lot of witnesses to refute any disorderly conduct claims. Then his gaze traveled over my shoulder as Shelby came up to us.

  She looked at Derrow, then down at her shoes. “They let me put out twenty of them and they said they would make more copies if it runs low,” she said, almost whispering.

  “Awesome. You ready?” I said.

  “How are you holding up, Miss Shelby?” Derrow said. “How’s your dad?”

  “We’re okay,” she said. “I’m ready.”

  We walked back out into the cold, Shelby slightly behind me and walking close to my heels. I glanced behind me and saw that her face was bright red.

  “Hey,” I said. “Is something wrong?”

  She shook her head, pulling at the handle of the car before the vacuum lock had released. Once it did, she jumped inside and pulled the door closed while I was still standing outside. I got in too. “Shelby,” I said. “What? You’re blushing.”

  Shelby’s hands went to her knees, fingers digging into the fabric of her pants. “I—” She didn’t any anything else.

  “You can tell me,” I said.

  “I blush, sometimes. I can’t help it.”

  I waited, one hand on the ignition.

  Then she said, “I just don’t like him, is all.”

  “Derrow?”

  “I don’t like him,” she said, more resolutely. “Veronica always said he was so weird in shock.”

  I let go of the ignition and turned to her. “In shock,” I repeated, not understanding.

  “She had to take this class, her stepdad made her. After she stole, like, one lip gloss from Target. The police run it. Self-discipline, honor, opportunity, um, the ‘c’ is … character. And knowledge. It’s like a, what’s the word, acronym. SHOCK.”

  I suddenly felt like I was staring into the barrel of a gun. “Veronica took the class,” I said slowly. Danielle had told me Mallory Evans had taken a class like that. This boot-camp program that the city runs for messed-up kids, she’d said. Colleen’s mother said she’d been sent to one of those scared-straight-type programs the city puts on. Was this the same program? Ha
d Derrow taught those girls too? I shook my head, trying to slow down the racing thoughts. “Weird how? What did Veronica say he did?”

  Shelby still looked embarrassed. “I don’t really know. She said he was always staring at her boobs. I don’t know about that, sometimes Veronica can be melodramatic that way. Her mom always says, Veronica, you think the whole world is in love with you, just wait till you find out it’s not.”

  Veronica’s mother sounded like a bitch, although I’d known girls like that growing up too. But my heart was beating hard in my ears. I suddenly remembered the conversation the girls had been having when I first encountered them at Joshua’s house last week.

  On a scale of one to ten, how frequently did he ogle all the girls in class?

  And it wasn’t just that. Shelby was clearly picking up on something about him too.

  “Shel,” I said. “Listen. I know that sometimes something might make you feel weird, and other things just make you feel bad. And as a woman, you have a little sensor in your brain that tells you which one it is, right?”

  She nodded, watching me watching her in the reflection in the passenger-side window.

  “You owe it to yourself to pay attention to that sensor, always, always,” I said.

  Shelby nodded again. Then she turned and faced me. “I don’t like him,” she said again. “I don’t like how he looks at me.”

  “And how does he look at you?” Something dark began to coil around my chest.

  “Like—I don’t really know how to explain it. Like he knows something about me. Except he doesn’t, he doesn’t know me at all,” she said.

  “Overly familiar, like,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Shelby said. “I guess that’s what it is. He came into the restaurant one time,” she said. “And he sat at the bar and every time I was seating a party, he smiled at me. Wow, that sounds so stupid. He smiled at me. So what. I don’t know. I just don’t like it.”

  She shivered in the cold, so I finally turned the car on. Her color had returned to normal. She didn’t seem to realize that what she told me was still exploding in my brain. In the rearview mirror, I saw Derrow slowly drive away, pointedly not looking at me.