“Christ, Ellen, no, I’ve just got a million things on my mind.”
“You’re a camping-trip retiree, Martin. All you have to worry about is the people in this house and not accidentally bank-transferring four million dollars to Nigerian scammers. So listen to me when I’m talking.”
I looked at the scrapbook screen: one of the audio files, a title only with numbers, was playing in iTunes. The volume was off. The track was forty-seven minutes and eighteen seconds long. I closed my scrapbook and sat on the desk, crossing my arms then uncrossing them immediately, to make it clear I was all acceptance and no defensiveness.
“Is this about, what, your job, or Kylie, or is it really about me being an absentminded jerk? Because guilty as charged. Kylie’s doing what she’s teenage-programmed to do, which is to push on your boundaries and pick me as her backup because I have less worries than you—”
“That—”
“Which, like I said at the dinner table, is because your life has given you genuine reasons to worry, especially about young women, especially about ones in your family. I completely get you on this, and you need to understand Kylie does, too, as well as she can. She understands but she still wants that extra hour, or extra mile, of freedom, and we have to give it to her. Build in text-message checks, make her wear a goddamn chip implant or convict bracelet, whatever it takes to make you as comfortable as possible—and me, too—and tell her she needs to stick to the rules if we’re going to let her go.”
“That’s not going to be enough. I don’t trust it to be enough. I don’t trust the world to respect that she’s playing safe.”
“What it looks like to Kylie is that you don’t trust her. And if she’s going to be responsible, she’s got to believe that we trust her to be responsible. That’s the best weapon we can give her.” I wanted to go on a little more but I could see that the “trust her” part had landed with Ellen, so I shut up. She stared at me for a second, making the decision on her own, the way she made every important decision. I could only say my piece, never hope for compromise.
“Responsible. Okay. Good weapon. And bear mace. Can you get her bear mace?”
“It’s just called bear spray, and yeah, I’m sure I can do that.” I turned and bent to put my scrapbook back in its drawer, and Ellen leaned over me. Her hair dripped onto the back of my neck and I shuddered and turned. She’d dropped her robe, and when I faced her she mashed her breasts into my face and laughed. “I had a hard week,” she said, and moved toward the stairs, her fingertips hooking into my left hand with a touch so light it seemed more magnetic than physical. I left the scrapbook on the desk, resisting the urge to break away from Ellen to stow it, following her up to the bedroom because I knew it would get me downstairs quicker if I just did what she wanted.
“While your blood pressure’s up anyway—and I’m glad you’re okay, of course, if that isn’t obvious—I want to talk to you about something.” She lowered her voice a little as we crested the part of the staircase in front of Kylie’s door, even though Kylie usually slept with her earbuds piping in white noise or the weird ambient electronic music one of her swimming summer camp mentors had gotten her into last year.
“What?”
“Shh,” Ellen said, until we were in the bedroom. I toed my socks off and she turned off the overhead light, taking a shirt lying at the bottom of the bedspread and throwing it over the too-bright bedside lamp I kept meaning to swap the bulb out of. The light beamed red through her blouse and pinked the walls until it hit the dark curtains and vanished.
“I know you’ve got this second youth thing going here,” Ellen said, sitting down and crossing her arms over her naked breasts. “I get that. And you’ve been great with Kylie, almost the whole time, always putting her first so I could work and only had to step in when you went on your little bachelor solo Deliverance trips. You did the responsible thing for years, you’ve been responsible with the money you made, no goofing with house flipping or casinos. And I’m grateful. Grateful for the home that’s built for me and for Kylie.”
“It’s not as if you haven’t contributed as well,” I said, taking off my jeans and pulling my t-shirt half-off before letting it settle back down over me. It was cool in here, and I knew I’d be back at the desk with my scrapbook as soon as Ellen fell asleep. Better to stay as ready as possible for my departure.
“Thank you for saying that, but it hasn’t been on the same scale.” She got under the sheets and came close, putting her back against my side.
“I’ve been meaning to bring this up with you for a while,” Ellen went on. “I mean, I’ve talked to other people about it, and that’s starting to seem wrong. Since this is something that really should start with you.”
“I’m getting worried now,” I said, and it was true. I didn’t want to have to deal with a marital implosion when I was so close to finding Tinsley and letting the news find its way back to her sister, to my wife, so she could finally be at peace. “Stop circling, Ellen. Finish the thought.” I realized she was talking to me while looking away so she could be more direct.
“No, no, it’s not bad. I just don’t have anything, Mart,” she said.
“That sounds pretty bad.”
“Enough with the irony for a few minutes, okay? I’m not like you were when you had the company. I hate every day of what I do. The older Kylie gets, the closer she gets to you and the further she drifts from me.”
“That’s just teenager shit, Ellen, come on.” She edged away from me minimally when I said this, then relaxed back.
“Yes, it’s ‘teenager shit’ for Kylie, fine, but that equals years of my life where I don’t have a center in what I do for work or in my home.”
“Jesus, thanks,” I said, trying to smile at Ellen’s back but failing.
“Martin, come on. I’m talking about my fucking identity here, not how well we get along. It comes back to Tinsley again, to be a broken record.”
“You don’t need to apologize for that. I know she’s always in the back of your mind. And it’s coming up on twenty years. I’ve been thinking about her, too.”
“Maybe that’s why I’ve been giving Kylie an even harder time, I don’t know. I think of Tinsley more than a few times a day. When I first took in that she was gone—that she was dead—I had the idea that I should live her life. I know that sounds silly.”
“It’s not, at all,” I said, reaching my right hand down to squeeze Ellen’s forearm, then pulling the weight of her over to me, resting her upper body against my chest. My arms were still aching, but I didn’t let on.
“You get what I mean. I think about how I should stop working this stupid job where I make myself and others miserable by telling them how poor they are and always will be. I could do what Tinsley wanted to do. Live independently, do exactly what she wanted. That’s what she did since she was a kid. Exactly what she wanted.
“Instead of two lives, though, hers and mine, I’ve got, at most, half of one. I’m the opposite of you. Still working, retired from the things I enjoy.”
This last bit sounded rehearsed, too good to have been an improvised thought. So did the stuff about Tinsley. I briefly wondered who she’d been testing these ideas out on before getting to me. Not Kylie, certainly.
“I haven’t made anything in months, my wardrobe is boring off-the-rack stuff I barely care about, I stopped doing any graphics stuff after that wedding invitation mess—I need to get back into what matters to me, but not just in a hobbyish way.”
I was relieved when she veered away from Tinsley; I thought she was heading for a divorce announcement.
“I need you to be listening to this,” Ellen said.
“I am! I mean, what can I do for you? You know I’m on your side about this stuff. Quit the cred union already, we don’t need the money.”
“I know. I mean, I’ve saved some up. I’ve been planning something for months, putting it in place, laying out cash. I’m going to quit tomorrow.”
“That’s
great.”
“But I need a tiny bit more cash to pull it off.”
“Pull what off?”
“A store. Hear me out for a second.”
The nothing-to-live-for, grim rundown of daily misery disappeared as she described what she wanted: a small, boutique clothing store.
“Personal, creative, you know, it pays for itself if you bring the right stock. Kylie can work the counter when she doesn’t have practice. Learn how to talk to people, maybe learn to respect her mother again. To like her.”
“Ellen, she does like you.”
“She loves me, sure, but that’s about all right now, except for occasional doses of hate.”
We talked for another fifteen minutes, Ellen flicking off the lamp halfway through, which allowed me to close my eyes and trail my attention off. Back to Jason Shurn, back to bringing Tinsley Schultz into the light again. Being a loan officer, Ellen had a better idea of her business practicals anyway, and the money she wanted was a pretty small sum. I checked back in when she mentioned the number.
“Do you want to borrow it, or would this be a gift?”
“Neither,” she said, with a glinting return of the anger that had struck off this conversation. “It’s an investment, Martin, a sort of mutual faith thing. I want this to be official, with returns, all that stuff. I want to contribute to your life through what I’m doing with your money. Don’t you get it?”
I told her I did, and she turned all the way around and held me. I had barely ever done any serious investing, letting my money fester in moderately high-interest savings accounts instead, playing stocks just for fun. The growth rate of money that just sat around was slow, true, but I’d been almost bulletproofed from the recession when it came. The money Ellen was asking for was a tiny fraction of what we had.
“I’ve been talking about it with Gary, actually. Pretty actively.”
“ReeseTech Gary? My Gary?”
“Yes,” she said, laughing. “You know what a total clotheshorse he is. You’ve made fun of it often enough.” I’d never gotten properly vicious about Gary and my dislike of his scumbag behavior in the decaying days of the company, but I had swiped a few times at superficial stuff. I should have gone further.
“Yeah. Well, we ran into each other once on one of my coffee shop drifting-around days. Sort of fateful, I think, because that was when the idea of the store got really cemented, me sort of vaguely mentioning it then Gary jumping all over it. He’s convinced it’s a masterpiece of an idea for us to do.”
“Us. As in, you and I?” I knew that wasn’t what Gary meant. Insinuating creep.
“Well, that too, but he wants to chip in. Not much financially, but you know, he wants to give me his time and business insight, for free, so I’m not always bugging you.” My wife’s plans, flecked with ideas of Gary’s, were now tumbling out of her with torrential force into the dark of our bedroom.
“I’m in for any amount you need from me, El,” I said. I was thinking about exactly what it was that Jason Shurn said to Tinsley to get her to come with him, to leave the street and her life behind her when she got into his car and exited her potential future. Maybe he asked for her help. Maybe he offered her something—money, excitement. It wasn’t anything her bones would be able to tell me.
“That’s great. I’m actually—tomorrow, I’m meeting with Gary to talk it over,” Ellen said. “I’m going to call the place ‘Tinsley.’ ”
“That’s a little—”
“You’re not going to say morbid,” Ellen said. I had been about to, actually.
“Sad, if you’d let me finish. Bittersweet.”
“I want it to be a tribute. Plus, I’d feel too awful if a place with her name on it went out of business, so I’ll have to try extra hard, right?” Ellen rolled off me and looked at me in the dark. I could see the brown of her eyes against her white face, the snow and wood contrast of a Japanese painting, pressed into the dark air behind her head.
“I love you,” I said, so we could stop talking, at least for the night.
“I love you,” said Ellen.
“SO HOW’S HE DOING IT?” Sandra whittal asked, spearing two popcorn shrimp and letting them soak in the cocktail sauce trench in the middle of her plastic serving basket.
“Doing what, exactly?” Chris Gabriel asked, looking at the booths of families around him and wondering how he’d ended up sitting in an Ivar’s at the age of forty-one. “Do you know how insulting it is that you’re following up the fucking handmade pasta I served you with this deep-fried sludge?”
“That was two hours and one sex ago. I’m hungry.” Their server, a young black girl with three blue braids striped through her bundle of hair, overheard Sandra and smiled as she refilled their Diet Cokes.
“What I mean,” Sandra said, “is how’s he finding the bodies, obviously. That, and the question of why he’s doing it, are the only things that matter.”
Chris was wearing the one pair of skinny jeans he’d ever purchased, the last pair he ever would, and crossed his legs with difficulty before answering. “Well, what are the basic elements of investigation he’d need? Same as with us. Time, for starters. Enough to properly concentrate on a single investigation.”
“Exactly. Or else we’d get them ourselves. The bodies. The department doesn’t have the manpower or the time to chase old burials.”
“So he has no job or a nondemanding job,” said Chris, picking up and eating one of the shrimp despite himself. “Maybe some psych case who makes his money from disability checks?”
“You called it a service?” Sandra asked.
“Yeah, I did. Ask Winnie Friedkin’s parents if they agree, when they get to put her in a casket and bury that casket in a grave they can visit, instead of lying awake wondering where she is.”
“Where she is is where she’s been for years, Chris. Dead. That story ended when she got into Horace Marks’s truck. What he did to her in his truck before she died, and the way he cut her up afterwards? Burial doesn’t fix that.” Sandra didn’t notice the server had returned until she picked up the empty shrimp basket, looking blankly at the table, pretending she hadn’t heard anything.
“Just talking about a TV show,” said Chris. “One of those autopsy ones. Sorry.” He smiled at the girl, whose nametag read “Nia,” and she tried to smile back before walking off. “You just don’t understand, Sandra. You don’t get the emotional part of it from a parent’s angle.”
“Oh, I’ve understood this angle since you brought it up at your apartment, Chris. ‘If anything happened to my son I’d just blah blah oh my sob sigh.’ I get it. You strongly believe there’s a zone of investigative knowledge that’s sealed off to me because a baby never has and never will come out of my vagina.” Sandra whirled the ice cubes in her glass and chewed on the straw.
“Jesus.”
“You’re the one who’s not getting it, Chris, not me,” Sandra said, finishing the last fragments of batter and rooting in her purse. Chris unfolded his wallet on the greasy table, but Sandra picked it up and frisbee’d it at his chest. He didn’t protest, letting her pay in order to quicken their flight from this crime against seafood. Chris wanted to pick up the conversation on their way out but knew his partner hadn’t finished her volley, that she was leeching some of the anger out of it to avoid saying something permanently hurtful. Halfway to the car, Sandra started to talk again.
“You’re suggesting I’m not maternal enough to understand this guy’s essential goodness. That he’s digging up these bones as a heartfelt service to the families of victims. Okay. How about this. You’re making the mistake of thinking this lowlife meltdown shares your decency, your way of thinking about your kid. That love. Let’s say he does have kids. Let’s say the messages he leaves us are the real deal in his conscious mind. I don’t fucking believe that’s the truth of what drives him, Chris. Not for a second.”
“Why not?” Chris put his hand on the car door, but Sandra was holding the fob, not making a move to ope
n up. “What’s so unbelievable about that?”
“You’re being naïve. He’s not just some random mentally ill guy getting cash from the state. He’s not a sweet dad who wants the best for mommies and daddies everywhere. He’s an obsessive. Efficient, highly mobile, meticulous in covering up after himself. And he gets weird data, Chris. The next thing he’d need, after time, is information. He’s a wannabe-cop with a chip on his shoulder, with ways of getting at our files. Contacts in the department, something like that. He could be a journalist. God knows there are enough unemployed, bitter, research-skill-heavy reporters out there. It’s someone with inside information, stuff that wasn’t released, officially.”
“That seems to be about it. Time and access to information.”
“The third thing is that he’s crazy. Crazy somehow.” Sandra bleeped the fob and then, unexpectedly, tossed Chris the keys and walked around to the passenger seat.
“You haven’t said anything to prove that. A little weird, yes, but I don’t see why we need to go further than that.” Chris slid into the driver’s seat. He didn’t know where they were going next, and knew better than to force a destination on Sandra without consulting her. She liked to choose. “Nothing you’ve said makes me see this guy as something to worry about. I also don’t know that you’re right to discard the obvious possibility here.”
“Which is?”
“Finder’s not a guy with access to cop info, he is a cop. How about that?”
“Put it this way. You’re a cop why?” Sandra put her hand over Chris’s, preventing him from turning the key in the ignition.
“Because I was a bully in high school, according to my sister.”
“Janet says that about you? That old hack idea?”
“Yep.”
“Reason five hundred I’m never meeting your family. But really, why are you a cop?”
“I don’t know, the usual reasons. Seemed like a good job, something I could do, would take up some mental space once I got past patrol, stuff like that. I can’t remember that far back.”
Find You in the Dark Page 5
