The Night She Disappeared

by Kevin O'Brien

  Russ was supposed to attend Courtney’s book signing, which Anna was covering on Wednesday night. But Anna’s nerves couldn’t take it, and she talked him out of coming to the bookstore. At the last minute, he pretended to have an emergency with one of his patients.

  Anna could hardly wait for the assignment to wrap up—so she could breathe easily again. Though Courtney acted as if the two of them were fast friends, Anna believed what Russ had said was true. She and Courtney probably wouldn’t see each other after the program aired. That was pretty much standard operating procedure with Anna’s job anyway. She got extremely close to her subjects for a few days, but rarely saw them again. There were exceptions, of course; but Courtney wouldn’t be one of them—not if Anna could help it.

  She also believed what Russ had said about her being the only “other woman.” But that didn’t make the situation any less unseemly. She hated the idea of giving him up. It broke her heart. But she didn’t want to live like this anymore.

  Anna started to check out houses and condos in other parts of Seattle. If they didn’t move out of her neighborhood, she’d be the one to relocate. She even thought about leaving Seattle. Maybe this was just the incentive she needed to apply for a job with one of the networks. Anna thought she might be able to make a clean getaway from this situation—no one besides her hurt, no confrontations, no mess. Dealing with the heartbreak of splitting up with Russ would be bad enough.

  But then, on Thursday afternoon, as the shoot was wrapping up, Courtney insisted on treating her to a celebratory dinner at Canlis. She said that Russ was busy, and she didn’t want to be alone.

  Except for her call begging Russ to skip Courtney’s book signing, Anna had purposely not talked with Russ. She had no idea what his plans were for the evening. She figured she could handle one last date with Courtney. She’d use editing the story as her excuse for leaving early.

  Canlis was expensive and chic, so Anna donned a smart, red sleeveless cocktail dress for the dinner. The restaurant was on the other side of what Anna called “Amazon Hell,” because of the insane traffic around the Amazon campus. So she took an Uber there. The restaurant was a big, midcentury modern edifice of stone, steel, and glass on the side of a cliff by the Aurora Bridge. The huge windows provided a spectacular view of North Seattle. Anna had eaten there a few times. It was quite posh.

  Stepping inside the restaurant, Anna told the pretty young hostess that she was meeting Courtney Knoll: “She made reservations, but she might not have arrived yet.”

  The hostess smiled brightly. “Actually, they’re here! Come this way.”

  They? Anna wanted to ask. With sudden trepidation, she followed the woman through the restaurant—with its wood paneling, white tablecloths, and diners dressed to the nines. The hostess led her to a booth with a crescent-shaped sofa and table.

  Courtney looked beautiful in a simple brown sleeveless dress.

  Russ sat next to her, wearing a blue blazer and a white shirt with the collar open.

  Anna locked eyes with him and stopped dead. The stunned look on his face probably mirrored her own expression. Obviously, like her, he wasn’t expecting a third for dinner.

  Courtney smirked at her, and then she turned to Russ. Obviously, she enjoyed having set this up.

  She knows, Anna thought.

  The confrontation she’d been dreading suddenly seemed unavoidable.

  Russ looked a bit unsteady as he politely stood.

  Courtney turned to her again. “There you are!” She signed as she spoke. She patted the seat cushion. “Sit down. I’ve already ordered you a Lemon Drop.”

  Looking back on it, Anna wished she’d turned and walked out of the restaurant the moment she’d heard the hostess say “they.” Maybe then, Courtney wouldn’t be missing right now.

  Within ninety minutes of sitting down in that semicircular booth with them, Anna would be too drunk to remember anything.

  And now Russ wanted her to tell the police his version of what had happened after that. Anna had been determined to break up with Russ. But Courtney’s sudden disappearance had instead made them coconspirators.

  Staring out her kitchen window, Anna thought she saw movement out there in the darkness. But it was just shadows playing tricks on the indigo water. Still, she shuddered.

  She remembered something Russ had told her earlier when he’d claimed she wouldn’t see anything of Courtney once her story aired on the news. “I promise,” he’d said, “soon, neither one of us will have to deal with her.”

  Anna shuddered again.

  She took one more spoonful of gelato before getting up from the breakfast table and returning the container to her freezer. She glanced at the clock on the microwave: 3:03 A.M.

  Tired as she was, she probably wouldn’t fall asleep tonight. And all the ice cream in the world wasn’t going to help.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Saturday, July 11—12:42 P.M.

  When her phone rang, Anna didn’t have to wonder who it might be. She’d been anxiously waiting for Russ’s call for the last forty-five minutes.

  He’d phoned two hours earlier from the Bainbridge Island ferry. He’d said he would try to text her the minute Courtney showed up for the noon book signing—if she showed up.

  The morning was gray and rainy. Anna had kept busy searching the house for her blue jeans and sneakers. It had become an obsession, so perturbing she’d almost forgotten about Courtney for a few minutes. It made absolutely no sense that these two items, which she wore practically every night, had suddenly, inexplicably vanished.

  Just like Courtney, Anna thought.

  The jeans and sneakers couldn’t have been stolen. Who would want them? Besides, nothing else in the house was missing.

  All she could think was that something had happened to them late Thursday evening when she’d been so drunk. Had she woken up, put them on, and then, for some reason, thrown them away? Had all this happened during the time she’d lost?

  Anna had looked inside her closet and under her bed—as well as under the daybed in the study. She’d gone through the garbage in the kitchen, her rag bin, and her storage closet. She would have even checked the dumpster by the dock access gate—if the city hadn’t already collected it Friday morning. She’d practically turned the house upside down in her search. The place was a shambles.

  She’d just started to clean up the mess when her phone rang.

  Anna snatched it off the kitchen table on the third ring. She answered without looking at the caller ID: “What’s happened?”

  “She didn’t show,” Russ whispered glumly. “There were at least a hundred people here to see her, but no Courtney. They had to send everyone home. I talked to the store owner, which was awkward—a husband asking a total stranger if his wife had texted to cancel her book signing. I concocted some excuse about Courtney spending the night at a friend’s on the island. Anyway, the store owner said she e-mailed Courtney last night to check in, and she never heard back.”

  Anna sat down at the kitchen table. “So, are you going to call the police?”

  “I have to.” He sighed. “Damn. I kept hoping Courtney had vanished just to screw with me. But she wouldn’t miss this book signing. Something happened to her. God, I should’ve reported this earlier.”

  “You didn’t know.”

  “Yeah, but then I think of all the crucial time I’ve wasted. And I just missed the ferry. There won’t be another boat for an hour. Now I can’t get home and call the police until three at the earliest.”

  “Why don’t you just call them now—from the ferry terminal?” Anna asked.

  “What if I get home and she’s there? Or maybe I’ll find she’s packed another couple of bags and disappeared, or her car’s gone. I’d have called the police for nothing.”

  “You just said something about all the valuable time you’ve wasted. Do you really want to put off calling the police for another couple of hours? Listen, if you want, I’ll go over to your place and check to se
e if Courtney’s car is in the parking lot. It’s a silver Mazda CX-3, right? I can also check your house, ring the bell and see if she’s home.”

  “I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

  “You don’t have to. I volunteered. So you’re parked in the ferry terminal, waiting for the next boat?”

  “Yeah, I’m not going anywhere,” Russ said.

  “Well, if there’s no sign that Courtney’s come home, I’ll let you know. Then you can call the police from there. That will give them a couple of extra hours to start looking for her.” Anna got to her feet. “I’ll phone you in about a half hour—or less.”

  * * *

  The small, fenced-in parking lot was close to Russ and Courtney’s dock. The gate was locked, but Anna didn’t need to get in. She could see Courtney’s Mazda, parked just on the other side of the chain-link fence.

  Holding an umbrella over her head, Anna stared at the car and the beads of rain on the windshield. Earlier in the week, she’d ridden in the Mazda a couple of times during the shoot with Courtney. While in the passenger seat, she’d noticed the custom oversize rearview mirror and the wide-angle side mirrors. They were supposed to give the deaf driver a visual advantage. Now, as she got a look at the driver’s side, Anna noticed a blue and white sticker near the top of the door. It had a blue Star of Life sticker and the words DRIVER IS HEARING-IMPAIRED.

  She had hoped the car would be gone. But, no, it was Courtney who was gone.

  Anna shivered.

  The rain had brought a slight chill to the air. Anna wished she’d worn something heavier than her shorts, a long-sleeve tee, and sandals. Her feet were getting wet. She’d left the house in a hurry to get here and hadn’t been thinking.

  Russ had given her the dock access code. Anna punched in the numbers, opened the metal gate, and stepped down to the dock. The floating homes were all upscale and pristine—in much better shape than the quaint houses on her dock. What a difference a few blocks made.

  It was a short walk from Russ and Courtney’s front door to the parking lot. Anna wondered if Courtney had been heading toward her car on Thursday night when something had happened to her. The dock was sturdy and wide enough, but the so-called railing bordered only one side: a cable—not even waist-high—ran from post to post. It was more decorative than practical. Someone who had had too much to drink easily could have tripped and fallen over the flimsy barrier.

  Anna imagined Courtney hitting her head on one of the pilings or on the edge of the dock. She could have been knocked unconscious and then drowned. There would have been no scream to wake the neighbors, just a splash. Maybe the suitcase had fallen in with her.

  Approaching Russ and Courtney’s place, Anna paused and glanced down at the rain-dotted grayish water. She couldn’t help wondering if Courtney’s body was beneath the surface somewhere, snagged on a piling or trapped underneath one of these luxurious homes—like an old piece of rubbish.

  She turned toward Russ and Courtney’s two-story floating house near the end of the dock. The modern construction gave the place a boxy, sleek, almost charmless look. But it also smacked of money. The dark wood, metal, and glass house was surrounded by pots with perfectly trimmed small trees and shrubs. Russ said a gardener tended to them every week. The inside of their house was like something out of Architectural Digest. The views from the huge windows were magnificent—when the remote-controlled shades were up.

  An arty-looking metal-and-glass piece above the front door served as a canopy. Anna collapsed her umbrella as she stepped under it, and then she rang the doorbell. It was a special bell that flashed the lights on inside the house—so Courtney would know someone was at the door.

  Past the rain patter, Anna didn’t hear a sound from inside the house. She really didn’t expect Courtney to be home. But like Russ, she needed to make certain before he called the police to report her missing.

  Anna knocked and waited again. Finally, she walked around one of the potted shrubs and peered through the rain-beaded window. The living room was impressive and elegantly furnished, but not exactly cozy.

  Right now, it was empty.

  Russ said that the three of them had been in there Thursday night. He said Courtney had gotten abusive, but Anna couldn’t remember any of it. She didn’t even recall leaving Canlis with them.

  What she remembered was the stricken look on Russ’s face as she’d sat down at their table in the posh restaurant. He’d moved down toward one end of the semicircular cushioned seat to make room for her in the booth.

  Courtney was between them. “At last, the three of us together!” she declared, signing as she spoke. She looked smug—or maybe she was already a little drunk, Anna couldn’t be sure. Raising her glass as if to toast her, Courtney sipped her Lemon Drop.

  Anna politely nodded at Russ, pretending he was a stranger. She couldn’t help thinking that Courtney probably saw right through the facade. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” Anna said.

  “Same here,” Russ replied with a tight smile.

  “I’ve never seen him act so shy with a woman before,” Courtney said. She patted Russ’s arm. “Anna already knows you have a little crush on her. I told her so the first time I met her. The cat’s out of the bag, Russ. She knows you DVR her news program every night.” She turned to Anna, still signing—and smirking. “He’s a big fan. He casually mentioned it to me years ago, and I teased him about it for the longest time after. You’ve never been married, Anna, so you might not get this. But it became one of those little jokes with us, the kind married people share. That’s what you were to us—a joke.”

  Russ touched Courtney’s arm, and she turned to him. He signed as he spoke: “I’m sure you didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

  The hell she didn’t, Anna thought.

  The young, pretty blond waitress arrived with Anna’s drink—a slightly cloudy, pale-yellow concoction in a martini glass with a wafer-thin slice of lemon perched on the rim.

  Courtney finished hers and pointed to the empty glass to let the waitress know that she was ready for another. Russ’s pilsner beer glass was still three-quarters full. Courtney waited until the waitress left. She nodded at Anna’s cocktail. “Drink up. We’re celebrating.”

  Anna sipped the sweet-and-sour vodka mixture. It had a kick. She worked up a smile. “Very nice,” she murmured.

  “Funny thing,” Courtney said. “But about a year or so ago, I noticed Russ no longer wanted to talk about you. I’d say something to him like, Your girlfriend was on the news tonight, and he’d act indifferent. I knew he was still watching you. I knew he was still a fan, but obviously, he didn’t want to talk about it. I wondered what happened. Maybe he got tired of my teasing.”

  In her previous discussions with Courtney, Anna hadn’t been able to distinguish inflections in her tone. It was hard to pick up when Courtney was being sarcastic. But tonight, practically everything she said dripped with irony. She was mocking the two of them, and relishing it. Clearly, she was aware of what had been going on. It had been a little over a year since Anna had first met Russ. Had Courtney known all this time?

  Russ touched Courtney’s arm once again to get her attention. “I don’t really remember that far back, but maybe you’re right,” he said—and signed. His expression was deadpan. “I probably got tired of your teasing.”

  It was strange for Anna to see him using sign language with his wife. They had this connection she knew nothing about. She sat there, watching them bicker in sign language—and it was all about her. Anna just wanted to get out of there.

  The waitress arrived with Courtney’s second cocktail. Courtney turned to Anna: “You’re not going to let me drink alone, are you?”

  Anna reluctantly took another swallow of the potent concoction.

  “We’re lucky Russ could join us tonight,” Courtney said. “One thing you can always be sure about when you’re a doctor’s wife, and that is, you can’t count on them for anything—dinners, birthdays, anniversaries”—she shot
Russ a look—“or book signings. He’s constantly missing special occasions. Some emergency always comes up. Somebody always gets sick. You can’t plan anything because, inevitably, some little bastard is going to get the croup.”

  As she spoke, Courtney’s voice became a bit louder and her gestures a bit wilder. “Everyone thinks it must be so wonderful to be married to a doctor. I suppose that’s true, if you don’t care about having a career of your own—if you like being a sidekick, always in the background. I’ve had years of that. People think Russ is a saint, because he’s a doctor and because he married a ‘handicapped’ woman . . .”

  Russ tapped her arm again. “That’s bullshit,” he whispered, frowning at her.

  Courtney sipped her cocktail and waved away his comment. Her eyes narrowed at Anna. “Drink up! Don’t you like it?”

  Shifting on the seat cushion, Anna took another swallow of the drink.

  “I’m just telling Anna what it’s like to be married to a doctor,” Courtney continued, “just in case she has any plans along those lines. It’s not what it’s cracked up to be. No one ever thinks about lawsuits. The possibility is always hanging over your head. It’s not a matter of if you might get sued. It’s more like when your husband will eventually be sued—especially if he’s a pediatrician. Can you imagine what it’s like living with someone who has that hanging over his head all the time? He gets so moody and depressed.”

  Anna knew what she was talking about. She’d comforted Russ when certain patients of his had died or gotten a grim diagnosis, and when he’d had to give a speech to the devastated parents. The fact that he cared so much was one of the things she loved about him. But, of course, she couldn’t say anything. Anna took another gulp of her cocktail, which was starting to taste smoother.