“I don’t know how much good it’ll do, if she’s as far gone as she sounds like,” Jamison said doubtfully.
Annie shrugged. “Can’t hurt to try.”
She sat in the chair in his office, a perpetually full cup of coffee in front of her. Susan was doing her job as usual, scurrying around nervously between bouts with the phone. Her voice was strained and a little higher than usual, the whole situation was obviously talking its toll on her. She seemed to have forgotten that she was mad at him. Jamison briefly toyed with the idea of sending her home, or asking her if she wanted to go home, but figured she would flip out on him. And then he would have to answer the phone and play ‘let’s talk nice’ with the reporters. It made his head hurt just thinking about it. So he and Annie let her repeatedly fill their coffee cups and bring them mini muffins and fuss over them, figuring it made her feel better to have something to do.
“The nurse I talked to said she has some pretty clear days, she said they would wait to give her meds until after I talk to her if I can get there early enough,” Annie said.
He nodded, rooting around in his desk for his bottle of Ibuprofen. “Sounds good.”
He finally produced it and offered the bottle to her, she shook her head.
She watched him shake out four and swallow them dry, wondering how many he had been taking since this thing started. Probably quite a few she figured and she would have been right. How must it feel to have this poison in your own town, in the place you called home and happening to the people you were sworn to protect. And nothing to be done but what they were doing. Police work was a work of patience, of waiting and putting together each little puzzle piece, of making sure that every piece of evidence was collected properly and filed. That no evidence was improperly gotten or treated because that is how criminals walked away free from their deeds. She thought that was what got to most people the most and why so many cops cracked under the strain. The waiting, it was a real bitch.
She scheduled a flight out of Edgewood in two and a half hours, using the pull of the FBI name to get one fast. One of the perks of dealing with all this ugliness, you don’t have to wait days for a flight. Is it a good trade, no not really.
“I’d better get going.” She said, standing up and stretching. “I don’t know what kind of a wait they have at the airport there.”
Jamison shook his head. “Not that much of one usually, it’s a pretty small airport.”
He walked her to the door. “Assholes,” he muttered, looking out at the reporters.
Annie smiled. She was used to the media but knowing that he was not she silently sympathized with him. It was never good to be the one in the line of fire.
The two reporters sitting outside perked up when they saw her and headed toward her. Then they saw Jamison and stopped abruptly and headed back to their vehicles. That made her smile again.
She got in her rental car and headed toward Edgewood. She didn’t go back to the room to get her bag, she didn’t plan on staying that long. She used her cell phone to call Tina, to let her know what she was doing. She got her on her cell phone and didn’t miss the nervousness in her voice when she answered.
Annie hung up after giving her promise to call and let her know if she found out anything. She left town, passing the school and Charley’s and the store. The gas station and hardware store flew by as she picked up speed and then houses began going by, gradually growing further apart until it was just her and the road stretching out in front of her. The occasional farm or trailer broke the continuity of it but mostly it was just the darkness of the road and the slightly blurry green of the trees flashing by. A few miles out she passed a bar and liquor store, Cheap Charley’s, the old listing sign over it read. She wondered if it were the same Charley as the restaurant in town but figured probably not. She was surprised to see a few cars parked out front. It was pretty early for drinking, but there are always the die hards. The ones that think waiting till noon to start drinking makes them not an alcoholic. The ones that are always the last to leave the bar, always saying ‘just one more before we go, man.’
She had never been much of a drinker, more inclined to an occasional bottle of wine than to chugging shots, especially early in the afternoon. It made her shiver just thinking about it. She made Edgewood by three thirty in the afternoon, about an hour after leaving. She didn’t obey speed limits either but then that was another perk of the job. She didn’t get pulled over. She called her husband from the short term parking lot at the airport, just to let him know where she was going. She could tell he was dying to ask where she was going exactly and why, but he didn’t. She knew she could trust him with confidential information but she didn’t have the time or the inclination to get into it right then. So she left him with the promise to call later when she could talk longer. She heard the wistfulness in his voice when he told her he missed her. It was enough to make her think about switching her flights and heading home instead. Think about it but not really consider it.
“Be careful baby,” he said.
“Always,” she agreed.
She rode the escalator to the second floor and went through security. She had no bags with her, just her laptop, and the process was quick. She showed her ID and gun and got a respectful, “Yes, Ma’am,” from the man in uniform behind the belt. She always called ahead to let airport security know she was coming, it saved time and confusion. It amused her to be called Ma’am by someone no younger than she was.
She found her seat on the plane by the window and sat waiting for takeoff. She kept her laptop with her, tucking it right beside her feet. The other passengers bumped and wrangled around each other, loaded down with cases and bags and children and laptops. A plump middle aged woman plopped a chubby little guy about two into the middle seat and sat on the aisle seat, a preventative from him taking off up the middle of the plane like a little plane himself, ready for takeoff. Annie figured that was exactly what he would have done, her Evan would have done it in a heartbeat at his age. He grinned happily at her, a little gap toothed mischievous grin, and she smiled back at him.
“Hey buddy,” she said.
He clutched his sippy cup in one hand and thumped the arm of her chair with his free one. He had his mother’s big brown eyes.
“I’m sorry,” his mama said contritely. “You want me to move him over to this seat?”
“No way, he’s just fine,” Annie said, smiling at her. His mama smiled her appreciation at her and sighed tiredly. The little guy rubbed his eyes and yawned. She probably kept him up all day so he would sleep on the plane, Annie figured. That’s what Annie would have done anyway, had done it a few times with Evan. Sometimes Patrick and Evan would go with her on a job, if he could get the time off work, which was usually pretty easy for him, and if the job she was on wasn’t too intense. Lately the jobs tended to be more intense, like the one she was on now. She didn’t like to have them around if the job was an ugly one or could possibly put them in danger. She leaned her head against the back of the seat, weariness stealing through her. There had been too many late nights lately. She hoped that when this case was over she could get a couple of weeks off and if she resolved it, her chances were probably pretty good. If she didn’t…well she didn’t want to think about that.
She was asleep before the plane even took off. A few minutes later the little boy was asleep as well, tipping slowly over until he leaned against Annie’s arm. His mother thought about moving him but they both looked so comfortable that she decided against it and pulled a book out of her bag to enjoy the quiet flight in peace.
Tina was bombarded by the reporters when she pulled in the driveway. She stoically ignored them, too afraid of endangering her daughter to try to make any kind of a statement. She would have to talk to Jamison about whether he wanted them to make any kind of a statement. The complication of it all seemed overwhelming. She locked herself in the house and closed the curtains. She watched movies she couldn’t concentrate on, read pages of a book and co
uldn’t have told you afterward what she had been reading. Finally she gave up and went to cook. Truth be told she didn’t really mind the reporters being there, at least she felt safe knowing that she wasn’t the only person on the lonely stretch of lake. Feeling safe was worth feeling harassed. She made lasagna from scratch, the simple routine of cooking accomplishing what reading and movies could not and giving her a feeling of normalcy. When James came home they ate together and then lay in their room watching TV. They watched senseless, happy shows, about nothing worse than family fights and gossip, not wanting to watch anything ugly or violent or scary. They ignored the people outside, pretending for a little while that the whole world did not exist. They made love until they both fell asleep. After a while the reporters gave up waiting for something interesting to happen and went to get rooms for the night and to have dinner, the waitress at Charley’s made over three hundred dollars in one night. That was about seven times her usual average. Part of the tips were due to the reporter’s hopes that she would have some juicy gossip for them, and of course she did. The bars did a brisk business that night, too, partly from the media in town and partly from people’s desire to drown out what was going on in their town in the bottom of a whisky glass. The respite it gave them was welcome but fleeting as alcohol is always a temporary fix, just a band aid.
After the media was gone, retiring to their hotel rooms to gossip and pick over the days tidbits, the quietness fell over the lake again. It was heavy and almost tangible, a silky thick blanket of stillness. Alone in their home they slept through the night, never aware of the car that drove slowly by in the wee hours of the morning. Unaware that the man who had their daughter sat not a hundred yards away and watched their house, wondering what they were doing and thinking and how they were dealing with their daughter’s disappearance. It was ballsy to show up there but he was confident in his ability to come and go without detection. He watched from a distance as the media people prowled around their cars impatiently and reveled in the chaos that he had created. He felt God-like as he held the power of life and death in his hands and their future with it. Finally he drove away in the silence without them even knowing he was ever there.
Chapter Seventeen
Annie jerked awake when the planes wheels bumped the blacktop, after a nice little three hour nap. She drowsed for a few moments more against the window with the noises of the other passengers washing around her like soothing static. She pulled her laptop up and stretched, hunched over so her head wouldn’t smack the overhead compartments. The little guy next to her was awake but still quiet and sleepy eyed. His mom scooped him up and tucked him on her hip, heading up the aisle. He looked back over her shoulder and Annie waved to him. He smiled and tucked his chin into his mom’s shoulder. Annie suddenly missed her little boy intensely. She thought too of her mom, dead for many years now. A woman who had always been loving and there for her children, even though the abuse her husband had suffocated her under for years. Somehow she had not been able to pull herself up out of the violence not even for the sake of her children, always making excuses for the man she had married and once loved. Maybe she had put the cups on the wrong shelf or made the wrong thing for dinner, maybe she had bought him vodka when he was in the mood for whisky. Even growing up in all the ugliness Annie had always had her mother to look to for the things she needed and now she made sure that she was always there for her son too. Evan was blessed with a great dad, too, a luxury she had not had growing up. Annie had taken her father’s life on a fateful day long ago when the slapping around had escalated to beating and he had picked up a knife to use on her mother. Her mother had testified against him after he was gone, telling the truth for the first time to protect her daughter. In doing so she finally freed herself from the hold he had had over her. She had also freed herself to enjoy the remaining years of her life with her children. Watching a woman who was a stranger to her cuddle her little boy brought back Annie’s mother to her for a moment and she watched them until they turned the corner, disappearing out of the plane and out of her life.
She looked the institution up on the computer, it was called ‘A Rehabilitation Home’ but she thought that was dumb and called it an institution in her mind. No picture of it was shown, just some facts and an address. Annie pictured some giant, forbidding old stone building with blank windows echoing empty halls like in the movies. She found a table at the airport cafeteria and took a coffee and a ham sandwich with her to the table and ate while she looked it up. Google maps showed it as being four and a half miles away and she looked up a cab number. No point in renting a car for that distance. She finished her sandwich quickly and made her way out to the front of the terminal. The cab was already waiting.
“Sorry,” she said as she slid in. “I thought you’d take longer to get here.”
Her driver was a chubby, amiable man probably in his forties.
“No problemo,” he rumbled.
He talked the entire trip. He told her about his wife, they had been married twenty six years, and about his four kids, including names, birthdates, hobbies, and bad habits. He even told her about their beagle named Arthur and the cat named Dipstick. She chuckled politely at that and he bellowed a big Santa sized belly laugh. He took her right to the door of ‘the loony bin’ as he so politely called it. He asked if she was checking herself in and bellowed another laugh. She got out thankfully into the warm, flower scented air. Her suit jacket instantly felt smothering and confining. No sign of the coming winter here. Walking through the front doors she was bathed in cool air. It was not at all like she had pictured it, a cheerful blue building with latticed windows and a beautifully tended yard. Off to the right were gardens filled with flowering trees and bushes and every type of flower you could imagine. The garden was bigger than her whole house. Inside it had that familiar hospital smell of cleaners and medicine combined with the smell of too much air freshener. It was quiet with no yelling or ranting and she thanked God silently for that, after that cab ride. She checked in at the front desk and the very efficient lady in scrubs checked her ID and walked her through security. It was a subtle security, no obvious guards, but she saw alarms on every door and a bank of monitors behind the desk as she walked by. The receptionist turned her over to the nurse, an enormous man named George with a startlingly quiet voice and a calm demeanor. He took her gun and left it with the receptionist with the order to lock it in the safe.
He saw her expression and smiled reassuringly.
“More for your safety than anything, Mrs. Meyers,” he said.
She found herself smiling back even as she wondered what he meant by that. Was a deranged patient going to wrestle it away from her? Not in this lifetime, she thought. Not with King Kong here beside her. She didn’t rock the boat though.
“How is Mrs. Jenning today?” She asked as she followed him imposing bulk down the hall.
“Mrs. Jenning is doing pretty good, she hasn’t had her pills yet so she’s probably pretty with it, they make her a bit fuzzy you know.”
“Yeah, I can imagine,” she said.
“She’s not overdue for them though really, she usually has them late afternoon so you probably won’t get any behavior from her.”
“Does she get aggressive,” Annie asked.
He shook his head. “No not for a long time.”
A man wandered the hall, looking up at the ceiling and seeming to see something far more than paint and ceiling tiles there. He whispered to himself and smiled a vacant and completely innocent smile. He couldn’t have been older than twenty five and was as handsome as any popular executive with a bank roll and expensive sports car. George softly touched his shoulder on the way past and he turned and wandered the other direction. They passed a room and Annie peeked in on her way past. It was a soothing, soft green color that somehow made one think of being underwater and there was a huge TV mounted on the wall showing some sitcom or other. Two people sat on the couch watching the TV and another wandered back and forth in
front of the window. The place spoke of money and Annie wondered who footed the bill for Jeanette’s care but didn’t ask. It wasn’t important really and they probably wouldn’t want to tell her anyway, confidentiality and all that. It seemed very calm and Zen but she knew there would be a ward for the violent and unstable patients too where locks and maybe even straitjackets were employed on a regular basis. She was glad she wasn’t visiting anyone of that caliber today.
They stopped outside a door, painted in the same soothing pastels as the rest of the building.
“I had her come back to her room so you could have some privacy.”
“Come back from where?” Annie asked.
“The recreation room, just down the hall.”
He touched her arm gently. “I’ll stay right out here by the door in case you need anything,” he said, and Annie nodded.
She walked into the room.
Jamison almost went to the bar again. It took just about everything in him to stop himself. He knew that that pattern would be the death of him if he started it now, and he owed these little girls a clear head and a sharp mind. He wondered how Annie was faring at the funny farm but figured that she would call if anything important swam up out of the fog living in Jeanette Jenning’s mind. He knew it was a long shot anyway but at this point a long shot was better than no shot at all. He drove past the bar and went home instead and sat on the couch staring at the blank, dark screen of his TV. The place seemed older and shabbier than it ever had before. He wondered how old the couch actually was and thought it must be a very long time. Marcie had picked it out a couple of years before she left, he had come home from work to the new couch and table with scented candles glowing and filling the air with a sweet caramel smell. He couldn’t remember if he had even told her how nice the place had looked. He suddenly realized that his house no longer felt like home at all, just a place he ate and slept and saw occasionally. He thought of Smithers going home to see his wife, to hold her and be in the home they had made away from all of the violence and ugliness the world threw at them. He thought of the wall he had slowly constructed between himself and his wife, one painful brick at a time, and he wondered for the first time why. Had he thought that he couldn’t be as good of a cop if he showed her how much he had loved her? That it would be a sign of weakness and that that trickle of vulnerability would somehow become a flood that would drown him? He went into the kitchen and made a sandwich, trying not to see what a mess the place was. He set it on the coffee table where he just stared at it and didn’t touch it. Finally he got up slowly and went to the his desk. He sat staring at his computer as it turned on and his insides felt shaky. He logged into the police data base and then slowly typed in a name. He almost deleted it, calling himself every kind of an asshole. Better to leave well enough alone after all this time. What did he hope to find anyway? He just sat and waited for the computer to find the file on his ex-wife and sure enough, it popped up. Normally she wouldn’t have been in the system at all, with no arrests to put her there but spouses of officers were always logged in. Her last name was the same he saw, still her maiden name. The shaky feeling in the pit of his stomach got worse. Did that mean she never remarried or did women keep their own names now? He just wasn’t sure. He wondered what she was doing for a living now, where she worked. He imagined her waiting tables or sitting behind a desk somewhere. He sat at the desk and read and reread everything he could find on her, feeling like some sort of a peeping tom but not able to stop himself. Afterward he curled up dressed on his bed and fell asleep. For the first time in a while he slept through the night, not getting up in the wee hours of the morning to wander the house and wish for a drink.
Down in the Lake Page 11
