The Missing Place

by Sophie Littlefield

  “Wow,” Colleen said, reaching in the box. “Just like at an open house.”

  “That doesn’t mean you,” Shay scoffed. “That’s for when the guys come in with mud all over their boots. Believe me, you don’t qualify.”

  Colleen tried to ignore a flash of irritation as she stomped off as much caked snow as she could. She was growing tired of Shay pointing out the chasm between them every chance she got. Inside, two girls who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five sat on high stools behind a rustic wooden counter. They had been laughing together, but they went silent when they saw Shay. The one whose plastic name tag read BRIT got off her stool and busied herself with something under the counter. The other one blushed and looked at her nails. She was wearing a lot of eye makeup, dramatic wings of silver shading to black, and had tried to cover up the ravages of acne with heavy foundation that didn’t quite match her skin. Her name tag read JENNIE.

  “Martin said to tell you he’s sorry but he can’t talk to you anymore,” Jennie said without preamble.

  “That right?” Shay said, slamming her purse down on the counter.

  “He said. Um. I’m just telling you what he told me to tell you. He said he’d call the cops if he had to this time.”

  “Well, you can tell him to—”

  Colleen grabbed Shay’s arm. Shay twisted away from her and shot Colleen a look full of raw fury and aggression, but Colleen held on. Shay blinked a few times, breathing noisily through her nostrils, and then the intensity was gone. Colleen was learning the rhythm of Shay’s temper, and now she tugged her away from the counter, grabbing Shay’s purse and slinging it over her arm.

  “They can’t tell me I can’t—” Shay muttered.

  “Stop it,” Colleen hissed. “Now come on.”

  She pulled Shay back to the vestibule, waiting until the first set of doors closed behind her before speaking. The air felt barely above freezing after the warmth of the lodge.

  “What happened when you came here before?”

  “The manager—Martin—I don’t know. I mean, I maybe pushed him kind of hard, I mean, just talking, but nothing to make him react like that. I swear.”

  “It’s just, I don’t think he would have threatened to bring the police into it unless something happened. Would he? I’m not judging,” Colleen lied—in truth she wished she could slap some tape over Shay’s mouth. “I’m just trying to understand what the situation is.”

  “Yeah?” Shay’s eyes blazed, but in seconds she dropped the stormy glare. “Okay, look. I got kind of mad when they wouldn’t let me see Taylor’s room. They said they’d already rented it out.”

  “They probably had. With the occupancy rates what they are . . .”

  “All I wanted was a look. I wasn’t going to touch anything. I told him he could come with me and watch to make sure I didn’t disturb anything, but he kept talking about liability. Like whoever had the room would even notice. And if he did, he wouldn’t care. I mean, these guys are working twelve-hour days and coming back to a shared shower and cable TV. Quality of life isn’t like their main concern, you know?”

  Colleen bit her lip, trying to figure out how to handle this. She’d known Shay less than twenty-four hours and she already could trace the arc of her volatility. And it was easy to imagine that in whatever low-paying job Shay worked, conflicts were probably settled with direct confrontation.

  But throwing a temper tantrum would quickly burn through strangers’ sympathy. Since arriving, Colleen had learned nothing that could lead her to Paul, and due to Shay’s behavior this could end up being another dead end. And she didn’t have a whole lot of other ideas. They had to make this work.

  “Let me try. I’ll talk to the girls. And fast, before they decide to go tell their manager we’re here.”

  “Trust me, they aren’t going to listen to you. You don’t have any idea how places like this run. They got the girls out here for one reason and it ain’t what’s between their ears. It keeps the men settled down.”

  Colleen tightened her mouth. “All right. Duly noted. Now will you just let me try?”

  Shay rolled her eyes and then gave a small, tight nod. “Fine. Knock yourself out. I’m going to smoke outside.”

  She held out her hand for her purse, which Colleen had forgotten she was holding. Shay stomped outside onto the deck without another word. Colleen took a moment to breathe deeply and figure out what she wanted to say. Then she faked a pleasant smile and went back inside.

  “I’m sorry about that,” she said before the girls could speak. They gaped at her with more curiosity than suspicion. “You have to understand, we’re mothers, we get emotional.”

  Her face felt brittle. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep it up. But she’d learned the technique—smile before speaking, even when disagreeing—at a conflict-resolution workshop she’d taken back when she was on the PTA regional board, and it really did help. Something about tricking the brain, redirecting one’s impulses. “Did either of you know my son Paul? Paul Mitchell?”

  The girls glanced at each other. Brit wouldn’t meet Colleen’s eyes. But Jennie twisted her long blond ponytail and nodded. “I knew him a little. Just to say hi. He was nice.”

  Colleen’s heart skipped—she hadn’t been expecting that. “You knew him from working here? Or socially?” she asked, knowing it was the wrong question, asked out of her hunger for Paul to be well liked, to have made friends. But it was as irresistible now as it was when she volunteered in the third-grade classroom and watched her boy shyly approach the table where his boisterous classmates sat, her heart full of longing on his behalf.

  “Just from here. He was quiet, you know? But real sweet. Sweeter than most.”

  “We really are sorry they’re missing,” Brit said. “Only Mrs. Capparelli, she like threatened Martin or something, and now we aren’t supposed to talk to her.”

  “He called Alaska,” Jennie said. “That’s our main office? I heard him on the phone with them. They don’t want the publicity.”

  Colleen nodded, aware that it was only a matter of time before Martin or someone else saw her and Shay on site and then this narrow window would be closed.

  “Listen,” she said, “is there somewhere we can go to talk in private? Please? I don’t want you to get into any trouble. I promise I would never tell anyone you talked to me. I swear it. But I haven’t talked to my son in over two weeks—” Her voice wobbled, and she paused, steadying herself. “And I’m just so worried about him.”

  “Jennie,” Brit said reprovingly. “We can’t.”

  A look passed between them. “I didn’t take my break yet,” Jennie finally said. “Come on, Brit. It’s his mom.”

  It was that last plea that seemed to make the difference. Brit huffed a breath and turned away, typing furiously on the keyboard.

  “Listen, around the corner is the rec room and past that’s a little meeting room they use for Bible study. Go in there and wait, okay? I’ll come in a few minutes. Martin comes out to the coffee machine all the time, you don’t want him to see you. And make sure she doesn’t come back in.” She pointed at the front entrance.

  “Got it. Thank you.” A couple of men had come in, stomping snow off their feet and putting on the required booties, joking loudly. The girls ignored Colleen to focus on the men, and Colleen walked briskly around the corner with her head down, hoping not to attract attention. The halls were quiet. It was already after one p.m.; the men who’d gotten off work at seven, and would return to the rigs this evening, were surely asleep now.

  The rec room was spacious, a row of windows looking out to the parking lot on one side. A giant timber-manteled fireplace burned gas logs in front of an arrangement of sofas and chairs and coffee tables. On the other side of the room were pool and foosball tables, poker tables, and bookcases full of board games and paperbacks.

  Colleen found the small meeting room, its door standing ajar. It held the same sort of furniture, tweedy sofas and a couple of La-Z-
Boys and oak tables. On a side table were a Bible on a stand, a vase full of silk flowers—tulips and daffodils, which seemed especially out of place in the wintry setting—and a stack of flyers reading “JESUS in the Camps” and, in smaller letters, “He wants to hear from YOU!”

  Colleen chose a chair in the corner that couldn’t be seen from the rec room. She dialed Shay.

  “Hello?”

  “Shay. One of the girls is going to come talk to me. You can’t come back in here, okay? You have to wait out there, if they see you I don’t think this is going to work.”

  “Do you have any idea how cold it is out here?”

  “Well, sit in the car and run the heater if you have to.”

  “That’ll burn so much gas, my car doesn’t—”

  “Forget about the gas, I’ll pay for it. Come on, this is important.”

  “You think I don’t fucking know this is important?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Just don’t talk to me like I’m a child, okay?”

  Colleen took a breath, let it out slowly. “I’m sorry.”

  “And I can pay for my own gas.”

  “I’m really sorry.” Although she wasn’t—she was angry and frightened and resentful and probably a lot of other emotions she wasn’t even aware of.

  After a pause, Shay said, “Okay, look. Remember, they have the boys’ things. That fuckwad Martin let it slip when I talked to him. See if you can get them back.”

  “How am I going to do that?”

  “I don’t know, Col—maybe you could buy them?”

  She hung up and Colleen was left staring at the phone. But there wasn’t time to worry about feelings. Besides, the money thing was ridiculous. If throwing money around helped find their sons, Colleen would do it and not apologize.

  And maybe she could buy a little help. When Jennie arrived a moment later, Colleen was still working out how to frame the offer.

  “I got the keys to a room that was vacated today,” Jennie said. “Maid service hasn’t been through and they’re on their lunch, so we have a little time, is that okay with you?”

  “Yes. Perfect.”

  “Look . . . I don’t think anyone’s going to try to talk to you, but best if you didn’t let on who you are. I guess headquarters got on Martin pretty hard. They don’t want it getting on the news that the boys were here if . . . if it turns out it’s something bad. Sorry.”

  Colleen knew what she meant by “something bad.” The fear fluttered and tugged around her as she followed Jennie down a hall that intersected an even longer one, branching out in corridors of rooms on both sides. There were no windows, only the soft glow of muted fixtures every few yards. Colleen tried to get oriented, to figure out where they were in the warren of rooms.

  “How many rooms are there?”

  “Four hundred, most of them singles. We have a few doubles, but the guests don’t like them. Guys prefer to have a space of their own while they’re here, especially since they have to share the bathroom.”

  “Paul said he liked his room. He said it was really nice.”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am, we have the nicest ones of any of the camps,” Jennie said sincerely. “Everybody wants to stay here, but we’re booked out. Companies buy up whole blocks. Okay, turn here.”

  Under Colleen’s feet, the carpeted floor felt hollow, and she wondered how much insulation had been laid between the floorboards and the bottom of the unit. Between steel and earth, the winds would rush and the snow would blow all winter long, but it was almost too warm inside.

  On either side of the hall, metal numbers marked plain gray doors. Men’s and women’s restrooms bore signs reading QUIET, PLEASE! FOLKS SLEEPING!! On a few of the doors, cartoons and photographs had been taped up. One had a pair of tiny stuffed toy reindeer arranged in a pornographic pose, held in place by duct tape. About a third of the doorknobs held PRIVACY PLEASE tags, and Colleen imagined the men inside, blinds drawn, sleeping through the daylight hours.

  “Here we are,” Jennie said, unlocking a door. She stood aside for Colleen to enter first.

  Inside the room was the faint but unmistakable funk of male sweat. The bedding was strewn haphazardly, pillows and blankets on the floor. Besides these two details, Colleen’s first impression was that it resembled a hospital room more than a hotel. The space was small, a double bed with no headboard wedged in one corner and a small laminate desk and chair in another. In the remaining two corners were narrow metal lockers, just big enough to house a few changes of clothing and stow a duffel bag. Hooks on either side of the door served for towels and coats. A single window faced across a fifteen-foot expanse of unmarred snow at the neighboring wing. The only decoration in the room was a TV suspended from the ceiling; its position suggested the best viewing would be from the bed, not the desk chair, which struck Colleen as sad.

  The departing guest had left clues to how he’d spent his leisure time. A half-empty bag of Doritos shared space on the desk with a beef jerky wrapper and several empty Styrofoam cups. On the floor were copies of Road & Track and Penthouse.

  “Sorry about the mess,” Jennie apologized. She grabbed a corner of the sheets and yanked the remainder of the bedding off the bed before sitting down. “You go ahead and take the chair.”

  “This room . . .” Colleen placed her hand on the laminate desktop. It was warm from the heat blasting from a fixture in the ceiling. “It’s not what I pictured.”

  “But you should see some of the other places,” Jennie said defensively. “Everything here was new when they set up. I mean, we have maid service twice a week and they can have new towels anytime they want. And people are good about keeping it quiet. We’re real strict about that. We got cameras on the halls, nobody ever tries to break the rules here.”

  “What are the rules?” All Paul had said, last Thanksgiving, was that nobody partied at the camp. The more Andy ribbed him about it, the more he clammed up, refusing to talk about what he did with his free time.

  “No alcohol or drugs, no women in the rooms except the staff, no gambling, and keep it quiet. I mean, right there, that keeps the partying out. And the guys know if they break the rules and get barred, they aren’t going to have anywhere to stay.”

  “What do they do when they’re not working?”

  “Depends how far they’re going to the job site. The rigs can be an hour or more away, especially in bad weather. So mostly it’s just the younger guys on in-close jobs who go out. If it’s a big game on or something, they’ll get together and watch it in the rec room. The kitchen does something nice on special occasions and holidays. Like for Super Bowl? They’re going to fly in king crab.”

  “But the younger ones,” Colleen pressed. “Like Paul. They go to bars?”

  “Well, the guys work twelve-hour shifts, so a lot of ’em, the ones with families? They just want to get through their hitch and go home. The younger, single guys, yeah. There’re a few places in town. I don’t go,” she added. “I’m engaged.”

  “Could you give me a list of places they go? Did you ever happen to hear Paul or Taylor saying where they were going?”

  “No, ma’am, I’m sorry, I never did talk to them like that. But yeah, I’ll write down a few for you. I wish there was something more I could do.”

  “Jennie, listen. Is there anything you could think of, any guess of what might have happened to them?”

  The girl’s expression turned not so much wary as sad. She twisted a button on her sweater and seemed to be trying to decide how to phrase what she wanted to say. “We talk about it,” she finally said. “Me and the girls. This one girl, Megan, thinks one of them got hurt, and maybe the other one was going to report it. If he was the only one who saw, and the supervisors thought they could keep it quiet . . .”

  “Hurt how?” Colleen demanded. “What kind of injury?”

  “Well, they were with Hunter-Cole, right? And Hunter-Cole works their crews real hard, and they got a reputation for safety problems. They lost three
men last year, it was in the papers. Had the inspections and all; OSHA was out here making a fuss, they put a ton of money into fighting it. I mean, I don’t know all the details, but supposedly they have guys in Washington trying to get the rulings reversed and it ain’t anywhere near over.”

  “Three men died? How?” Colleen’s mouth tasted bitter—just saying the word took effort.

  “Well, one fell. He didn’t have his harness on, that was straight regulation failure and they took a hit for that. I don’t even know how much the fines ended up being. The other two, though, the families signed an agreement they can’t talk about it, so I don’t really know. I mean, there’s rumors and all, but people talk all kinds of crazy.”

  “They signed an agreement?” Thinking, Who would do that, who would get in bed with the devil that killed their loved ones?

  “You got to understand, Mrs. Mitchell, they autopsy the bodies, and if there’s any drugs in their system then they don’t have to pay out. It’s in the contract they all sign. And it can even be something like Ritalin, some of them take it just for the energy to get through their shift. Anything at all.”

  “But that would never hold up! No jury would let a corporation off the hook.” Not if the victim was attractive, anyway. Flash a picture of a young man in the prime of his life—her mind went to the picture of Paul on her refrigerator at home, her favorite, in which he was holding up a plastic fish in a souvenir shop in Cozumel, pretending he’d caught it.

  She forced the image out of her mind.

  “Ma’am,” Jennie said quietly. “What you got to understand is some of the families don’t have the money for the hospital bills. And the burial. If the company ain’t going to cover it, it’s a powerful reason for them to make a deal. I’m not saying they’re happy about it. I got this friend from school, her boyfriend got his hand crushed last year, he can’t work now. She told him to sue, but the company lawyers sat him down and laid out how if he took them to court they were going to get this whole team from Minneapolis to fight it, and even if he eventually won they’d make sure it took years. And they got a baby coming. So he took the settlement. And it was a lot of money, almost two hundred thousand dollars. They’re building a house south of town.”