The Missing Place

by Sophie Littlefield

  “I don’t know.” Colleen folded her hands and rested her chin on them. “For now, maybe. But let’s put it all aside and maybe later it will mean something. Let it—you know, let it simmer in your mind, in your subconscious, and maybe something will come to you.”

  “So. You now know everything I do,” Shay said. “You’ve seen the cops and the man camp. I was going to try to go out to the rig where the boys were supposed to be working, but Hunter-Cole won’t tell me where it is. I looked on the Department of Mineral Resources website, and Hunter-Cole has got nine of the twenty-seven active rigs in Ramsey County. I mean, I guess we could start driving around to all of them, but it would take a while.”

  “We’d have to find the crew right away if we want to talk to them,” Colleen said. “From what Paul told us when he left, they were supposed to work every day through the twenty-sixth. I put it in my calendar. Today’s the twenty-second. That only gives us four days and then all the workers will scatter for the next couple of weeks.”

  “Well, so we have to figure out how to find these guys. I think going to the supervisors was the wrong angle. One-on-one, most of these guys are okay. We just have to get them on their own to talk to them.”

  “Did Taylor tell you any of his friends’ names? Other workers who might have known him well?”

  “Yeah, but the problem is that they all go by nicknames like Dukey and Tailbone, and I never asked him for last names. I mean, why would I?”

  “Shay, listen.” Colleen picked up one of Taylor’s T-shirts that had fallen to the floor and started to fold it, her movements smooth and efficient. “I’ve been thinking. You found this place, right? Even though they said there wasn’t anything out here.”

  “Well, yeah, but only because it had never occurred to that dimwit Brenda to rent it out. Not to mention there’s no way it’s up to code and it’s a piece of shit. You can bet she’ll have a sign out there the minute we’re gone, asking twice as much.”

  “Well, what I’m saying is, if there was one . . . opportunity like this, there’s bound to be others. Right?”

  “What are you getting at, Col?”

  “Look. I want to bring our detective out here. The man my husband and I hired? I can have him on the next plane as long as I can promise him a place to stay. And he’d be looking for both our boys, Shay, not just Paul.”

  Suspicion coiled in Shay. “Wait a minute. Are you about to ask me to hand over this trailer to him? Because I am not—”

  “No, no, that’s not what I’m saying. Just—it’s what, four o’clock, and if I start calling now—I’ll try all the motels again first but I thought, while I was doing that, you’re better at—well, I mean, you found this place. Maybe you could try to see if there’s something else. Talk to the guys at the truck stop, you’ll do better with them than me. If we can find a room, we could get Steve here in twenty-four hours.”

  “What do you mean, I’ll do better with them?” Shay snapped. “You mean because I’m trailer trash? Want me to flash some tit or something?”

  Colleen looked shocked. “That is not what I meant—”

  “Sorry,” Shay muttered, wondering what was wrong with her, overreacting to everything Colleen said.

  “I only meant because you’re pretty and outgoing.”

  “Sure,” Shay said, waving the comment away. “But if we get him here tomorrow, then what? What exactly do you picture this guy—what’s his name again?”

  “Steve. Steve Gillette.”

  “Okay, Steve. So you get him here and he does what? Goes to see the cops, goes to see the camp—which I might point out you already stole evidence from—then he’s sitting on his ass just like you and me, trying to figure out his next step, only a couple days have gone by, and how is that better?”

  “He’s a professional.” Colleen’s tone had turned pleading, but the look in her eyes was even worse. Panic. Fear. Two emotions that could easily erode any momentum that they’d managed to build.

  “I’m not stepping aside,” Shay said. “I am not about to sit on my ass while some mall cop whacks off on our dime.”

  Colleen winced, and Shay regretted her choice of words. It was one of her anger responses, one that she wasn’t particularly proud of, but it had always worked for her and Taylor, who knew how to handle her. That easy grin . . . that “Really, Mom?” He knew her bark was a hundred times worse than her bite. If only he was here . . .

  “He’s ex-police,” Colleen said quietly. “Eleven years on the force in Boston.”

  “I don’t care if he’s an ex-fucking-Navy-SEAL. It’s not his kid who’s missing, and there’s no way he can care enough.”

  “Shay, please.” Colleen looked like she was about to cry, and Shay pressed her lips together and let her speak. “I’m not saying he would replace what we’re doing or that we would step back at all. He would just supplement what we’re doing, and maybe he could provide structure . . . you know, share his insights and experience, outline a game plan. That we would have final approval of, of course. And I’ll pay for the whole thing. Don’t be mad,” she added hastily. “I am not trying to throw my money around. It’s just, it’s a tool, it’s something we can use. Just let me. All right? It’s something I can do, so please, let me.”

  Shay managed to bite back her retort. Colleen had finished folding the first shirt and tugged several more from the bag and was folding them into perfect rectangles unlike anything Shay had ever produced in decades of doing laundry for the many people who’d come in and out of her life.

  “Okay, look,” she said. “Here’s a compromise. You make your calls. Call every damn hotel in the county if you want. I’m going to lie down. When you’re done, we’ll go into town, get some dinner, talk to people. I have an idea where to go. If—if—we get what we need, which is to find out where the boys’ crew is, then we can use the rest of the night to ask around for somewhere to stay for your cop.”

  “He’s not my cop,” Colleen said, and then, “but thank you. I have all the phone numbers printed out, it won’t take me all that long.”

  “Here.” Shay dug her iPad out of her bag. She tapped out a quick search and spun it around on the table. “Just in case you missed any.”

  She gathered up the folded clothes and put them back in the bag, all but one, the green one with Taylor’s name on it, hiding it with her body. She lay down on the cot with her phone, slipping in her earbuds and launching into her “last ditch” playlist, the one she saved for the worst days. Lucinda Williams came on, singing “Those Three Days,” and Shay turned the sound up loud enough to drown out Colleen’s voice, loud enough to crowd out her own thoughts, and rolled over on the bed and pressed her face into the pillow, shutting out the light.

  She pressed the T-shirt to her face and inhaled through the worn cotton, wishing for some trace of him, some faint remnant that would take her back. But Taylor had done his laundry with some detergent Shay didn’t use, and though she wished with all her might, the shirt smelled like some other mother’s son.

  ten

  THE WALLEYE WERE heavy on the line, melting crusts of ice clinging to their scales. T.L. had gutted them on the frozen lake next to the hole he’d cut with Myron’s hand auger, leaving their entrails glistening in the blood seeping into the ice. They shone like treasure, scales and blood reflecting the sun among the ropes of guts. Next time he went back, in a week, the guts would have been eaten by scavengers and the bloodstain would be skimmed over in frost and ice.

  T.L. slapped the fish down on the steel counter. Four fat ones, all the Swann’s chef wanted, enough for the special. That left a couple for T.L. to take home, one for tonight and one to freeze. The manager, a thin, blinking man in his fifties named Cory, handed over three crisp twenties from the drawer. “Appreciate it,” he said. “Might take an extra next week, we see how this sells.” T.L. nodded, all the time looking through the kitchen to the window where the girls picked up the plates. Looking for Kristine.

  Finally, after he list
ened to Cory complain about a dishwasher who hadn’t been on time all week, and washed his hands in the prep sink, he gave up. “Kristine around?” he asked as casually as he could manage.

  “Sure. We’re not busy yet, go out on the floor and say hi, if you want,” Cory said, already heading back to his office. The cook whose name T.L. could never remember, the one who had a tattoo on his throat like an extra set of teeth, had already slid the fish down the counter and opened one up with a meaty, scarred hand, flipping up the rib cut and planning where to section it into servings. They slapped on a Parmesan-garlic crust, charged thirty dollars for it. T.L. didn’t mind. For him, it meant sixty bucks for an afternoon on the ice, a Saturday afternoon he didn’t have anything else to do with, anyway.

  T.L. took a breath and dried his hands on his jeans. They were soiled where he’d knelt to gut the fish. He was wearing his old jacket, which was warmer than the North Face parka Myron had given him for Christmas; his wrists jutted two inches past the cuffs, and the lining was ripped, but the matted-down chamois lining kept him warmer than the new one. T.L. looked like he’d been doing exactly what he’d been doing, and this was the one place in town where even an oilman wore his good clothes. Not that many came: it was mostly the suits here, the men who flew in from corporate offices in Texas and California.

  He couldn’t do much about the way he looked. He pushed through the swinging doors and saw her with a dark-haired girl over by the coffee station. Kristine was kneeling, pulling filters from a box on a shelf below. The other girl was separating and stacking them, counting out loud.

  “Kristine.” T.L. stood back outside the waitress station, hands jammed in his pockets. The dark-haired girl glanced at him and smiled, pushing her hair back behind her ear. Kristine took her time peeling off a clump of the filters before she stood up.

  She was ready for him. The look she gave him wasn’t a smile, but it wasn’t a frown either, it was just a bland expression that telegraphed Don’t bother. T.L. figured she got plenty of mileage out of that look working here, especially after she’d served a guy his second or third drink.

  “Thought we could find a time,” he said wearily, as though he’d asked her a thousand times already. In truth it had been only once before. “When I could come over.”

  “Dinner rush is starting,” she said, even though there were only three occupied tables. In another hour the place would be packed and it would stay that way until closing.

  “I could call you.”

  “Sure,” she said, but they both knew the lie was only for the benefit of the other girl. If he called, Kristine wouldn’t pick up. It wouldn’t matter how many times he tried.

  “Okay, then,” T.L. said, turning to go.

  “I’m so jealous,” the dark-haired girl said, and they both turned to look at her. She was the kind of pretty that had another ten years to go before her hair lost its sheen and she started thickening through the neck, the arms, the waist. She spoke in a careful, awkward way that was meant to cover her teeth, which were not straight.

  “Because of L.A.!” she clarified, blushing. “I’ve never been farther than Colorado.”

  “Oh,” T.L. said. This. He thought everyone knew. He stared at the coffeepot that had been set on the burner with its handle out; if someone bumped it at the wrong angle, there would be hot coffee everywhere. “I’m not going. I decided . . . not to.”

  “You’re kidding!” The girl gaped. “But I thought it was like a full scholarship to the art department? Like for minorities? I’ve seen your stuff, when they had that show at the library. You’re really good.”

  “Yeah . . .” Another uncomfortable shrug, T.L. backing toward the swinging doors. “Maybe next year. I’m going to take a few classes at Minot this fall. I need to stay and help my uncle out.”

  He pushed open the doors with his hip, meeting Kristine’s eyes before he turned away. They were cold and hard. But none of it had been his fault. How could she not see that?

  eleven

  SHAY NAPPED THROUGH most of Colleen’s ever-more-frustrating calls, her small body still and peaceful-looking on the bed, curled up and facing the wall. One of the motels Colleen called didn’t answer at all. Another had a message saying “We are currently at full occupancy and do not anticipate any rooms being available for the week of January seventeenth.” When Colleen spoke to actual humans, the message was always the same: nothing, as far as the calendar stretched; everything had already been booked by companies and individuals.

  She was still going down the list—Shay had searched motels in a fifty-mile radius—when Shay got up and changed clothes. Or rather, changed her shirt from the soft jersey cowl-neck she’d worn earlier in the day to a gold-flecked, cut-out-shoulder top. Shay took her cosmetic bag into the bathroom and stayed there long enough for Colleen to call Andy, tell him about their day, and learn that he had nothing to report. When Shay came out, she trailed a cloud of perfume and was wearing a lot of eye makeup and sticky-looking dark pink lip gloss, and her hair cascaded around her shoulders in a nest of curls.

  Colleen didn’t dare ask why she’d gotten dressed up. Dressed, not to put too fine a point on it, like a tramp, but maybe that was just a California thing. She felt like everything she said had the potential to set Shay off, even those things that seemed neutral. She understood that she had come barging into Shay’s life, into her hell-bent search for Taylor. It was very generous of Shay to allow her to stay with her. And it was awkward to try to repay the kindness with the only currency Colleen had, which was her money. Still, she was determined to keep trying. They needed each other.

  So instead of mentioning the makeup, the evening top, Colleen got her own cosmetic bag and added some lipstick, some eyeliner, a swipe of mascara. Not satisfied with the result, she got out her concealer and did her best to camouflage the circles under her eyes.

  They were pulling away from the house, Shay flipping off their unseen landlady, when she finally admitted they were headed for Walmart.

  “I was afraid you’d refuse to come along,” she said, and Colleen couldn’t tell if she was making fun of her.

  “I’ve shopped at Walmart tons of times,” she protested. “There’s one in Salem. We always go on the way to the beach.”

  “Yeah, well, this Walmart’s a little different. Supposedly it’s the busiest one in the whole country. Everyone, I mean everyone in this damn town seems to go there. The guys getting off at seven all stop by on their way back to wherever they’re staying.”

  “But how are we going to talk to them?”

  “Look, Hunter-Cole is one of the biggest employers in town right now. How hard is it going to be to find someone who works for them?”

  “That doesn’t answer the question of how we’ll talk to them, though.”

  Shay glanced over at Colleen, bemused. “You never started a conversation in the garden department? I met a guy that way, we dated for six months. I asked him for help picking a garden hose.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Hell yeah, I did. Didn’t need the help, but he came through with the hose, if you see what I’m saying.”

  Colleen felt herself blushing, her skin warming.

  “Sorry,” Shay said after a moment. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you. Do you mind me asking, how long have you been married?”

  “Twenty-two years. Our anniversary was last October.”

  “Damn. That’s an accomplishment.”

  “And . . . were you married for a long time?”

  “No, we only made it a few years. We were awfully young . . . and, well, I was looking for a baby daddy.”

  “Oh—you were pregnant?”

  “No, I mean for my first. My daughter, Brittany. I had her when I was seventeen. She’s twenty-three now. Her dad was never really in the picture. I lived with my mom when she was a baby, but by the time she was two I was ready to get my GED and get a real job, and I didn’t want to live with my mom for the rest of my life, so when Frank proposed I kind of
figured all the pieces were falling into place. God bless him.” She said the last bit with a fond smile.

  “You and he stayed close, then?”

  “Yeah, until he died. Taylor was only two at the time, and I was twenty-three. We’d already gotten divorced. And it was a hell of a thing because I would have qualified for his service benefits, but the dumbass was stupid enough to die on leave, driving his motorcycle while drunk, instead of over in Iraq. Woulda, shoulda, story of my life back then. But yeah, I always did love him, and we were kind of talking about getting back together.”

  “Oh, my God, I’m sorry,” Colleen said, thinking, Two kids by two men, all by the time she was twenty-one years old, practically still a child herself. She and Andy hadn’t had Paul until she was thirty-three, and then only after two rounds of IVF. “Do you . . . is there . . . I mean, it’s none of my business.”

  “Am I seeing someone? Not really. Which I guess means only when I’ve had too much to drink.” Shay laughed, but Colleen thought she detected a note of sadness. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t take people home from bars or anything. Just, if I get lonely, I know who to call. Old friends, you know? But mostly, I’m on my own, and I have been for almost all of Taylor’s life. I mean, I had guys I saw for a while here and there, but nothing ever got serious, especially because I never wanted to introduce the kids to a guy unless it was the real thing. I used to tell myself that when Taylor got out on his own, I’d look . . . you know, for real. Maybe try the online thing, seems like everyone’s doing that. I have girlfriends who found guys, got married, even.” She was silent for a moment, and Colleen searched for something to say, but before she could think of anything, Shay added, “Maybe I’ve just been independent for so long, it’s too late for me to live with anyone again. Too used to having my own space and making all my own decisions. Hell, I don’t know.”