by J. R. Rain
“It’s a good game—”
“My son is ten.”
“These are more than just games, they’re experiences.”
“If you say so,” I said. “How did the previous detective die, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“A car accident.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“So am I. He was a good guy. We miss him here.”
“When was the accident?”
Detective Sharp shrugged. “Three weeks ago.”
I made sympathetic sounds that I didn’t really feel. Truth was, these days, I found death a lot less...heartbreaking. I found death. more...interesting. Exciting, even.
No, she found death exciting.
Deep breaths, Sam.
“Can you tell me any more than that?” I asked.
He studied me, then nodded. “Broadsided over on Grand Street and Main.”
“Broadsided by who?” I asked. And just as the word escaped me, I silently cursed myself, certain it should have been “by whom.” Sigh. I might be undead, but that didn’t make me a grammarian.
“We don’t know.”
“Hit and run?”
“Yeah.”
“You knew him well?”
“Well enough.”
“Any leads?”
“We got some.”
“But nothing you’re willing to pass along?”
He studied me some more, then shook his head. “No,” he said. “Not until I know you better.”
“I could help.”
“We got enough help.”
“Fine,” I said. “What do we know about Lucy Gleason?”
“The broad who went missing from Starbucks?”
“Yeah.”
“We know she’s still missing.”
“What else?”
He studied me some more. He wasn’t sure if he liked me, which was hard to believe. He already felt like he’d said too much, which wasn’t much at all. I knew all of this because I was following his thoughts. He was just about to turn me away, claiming he was busy—he was, but not that busy—when I gave him a gentle telepathic nudge, planting the words directly into his mind:
Tell her everything. And get her a glass of water.
He blinked, nodded, and then said, “Follow me. And would you like some water?”
“Why, how kind of you, Detective,” I said and followed him out, hiding a grin. I should have felt bad that I was controlling another human being, forcing him to do something against his will.
I should have...but I didn’t.
In fact, I liked it a lot. Perhaps too much.
Lord, help me.
Chapter Twelve
I was waiting in another room when Detective Sharp returned with a glass of water and handed it to me.
He stared down at me for a moment, frowning. I peeked into his thoughts and watched him, trying to remember why he had agreed to help me further. He couldn’t remember why, but it had seemed like a good idea at the time, and so he ran with it.
“Ready to roll,” said Detective Sharp, perhaps a little too excitedly. I might have encouraged him to help me a bit too much. “Come to my side of the desk. Bring your chair. This could take a while.”
I did as I was told, although I could probably stand all day, or all week. My legs didn’t ache, nor did my muscles grow tired. I think, in fact, that my muscles regenerated and refreshed in the microseconds during use.
Such a freak.
No, came the voice from down deep. Not a freak.
When I sat, Detective Sharp said, “Shall we get on with it?”
“On with what?”
“The Starbucks surveillance tape.”
* * *
These days, all surveillance tape can be downloaded as a movie file. I watched Jason rather expertly click through various screens and files until he found the one in question. It read: “Sbucks-MP-Feed1-Open” followed by the date and time.
“Have you gone over the tape?” I asked.
“Not yet.”
“When did you get the case?”
“Last week, when Renaldo’s case files got redistributed. Been meaning to look it over.”
“What were Detective Renaldo’s findings?”
“According to his notes—”
“Which you just read.”
“Yes, but I’d spoken with him previously regarding the case, too. We all had. We were all confused by her disappearance. We all offered theories. Nothing panned out. Anyway, according to Renaldo, there was nothing on the tapes that seemed to indicate that she had ever left the Starbucks.”
“So, she just disappeared,” I said. “Poof. Off the face of the earth.”
“Seems like it. Trust me, it fucked with Renaldo’s head. He took the case to heart, worked on it night and day, up until the day he died.”
“You mean the day he was killed.”
“Right.”
“So, what is on the tape?”
“I think it’s time to find out.”
He clicked on the file, and a window opened. He pressed play and I think we both sat forward.
“Too bad we don’t have popcorn,” he said.
“I wish I could eat popcorn.”
“You can’t eat popcorn?”
“Long story,” I said.
He shrugged, and we both watched the screen.
Chapter Thirteen
The wide-lens camera had been strategically placed.
Positioned in the parking lot at the side of the building, it provided both a wide shot of the front entrance of Starbucks and a side shot of the back door, too. One camera, both front and back doors. Nice.
A few days ago, Henry Gleason had emailed me the “missing person kit” that I always required for such cases: five recent photos, social security number, cell phone number, driver’s license number, contact information for family and friends, and anything else that he thought might prove helpful.
Although I had committed Lucy Gleason’s face to memory, I had seen the tape a dozen or more times at this point. Most people in the area had. Corona Police Department had released the tape to the public, asking for leads. According to Detective Renaldo’s notes, nothing had panned out. The case had gone cold with his untimely death.
So, what leads they had gathered from those anonymous calls, I didn’t know. But I would, soon. I recognized her immediately when she appeared from the bottom of the frame. There she was, moving right to left, toward the Starbucks. Had I possessed a normal pulse, it probably would have quickened right about now, thumping steadily just inside my temple. Instead, there was no physical reaction to seeing her, other than my own excitement level increased.
There she is, I thought, Lucy Gleason, “The Disappearing Wife,” as the press had dubbed her.
Of course, I had studied the video a dozen more times after taking the case, too. But the video available to me online had been only a fragment of what I was seeing now, which was the complete feed.
We’ll call this, I thought, the extended cut.
Lucy was a thin woman. She was dressed in tight black yoga pants and pink Converse sneakers. The sneakers glittered. Her age was tough to determine, although I knew she was thirty-eight, which was getting close to my own age, although you would never know it.
The woman on the screen, the “Disappearing Wife,” seemed oblivious to the fact that she was about to disappear off the face of the earth. This was evidence for me. It was telling. She didn’t seem fearful. Indeed, she even casually looked down at her cell phone at some point.
“Would give my left nut to know what she was looking at on her cell phone,” said Detective Sharp.
“Too quick to read a text message,” I said.
Sharp nodded. “Renaldo pulled her text records. Nothing around that time. Sent or received.”
“Maybe she was looking at the time.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“But you don’t think so?”
“No,” said Sharp. “Looks
to me like she was expecting to hear from someone, and didn’t. She looks, I dunno, sort of disappointed.”
I was impressed with Jason Sharp. The “Disappearing Wife” was wearing sunglasses, and so there wasn’t much to work with there, as far as discerning her emotions. But, admittedly, I got a sense that she had been disappointed as well. The way she exhaled slightly. The way she paused slightly in mid-step, as if she thought she had just received a message.
“I agree,” I said. “Replay it.”
He did, using a dial next to the keyboard. He turned it slightly, and the video went back two or three seconds and started again immediately. Yes, there it was again. She virtually jumped when she reached for her phone. And then I saw why.
“The person coming toward her,” I said. “Look.”
He replayed the video again. A man, maybe twenty yards away and coming toward her, reached for his own cell phone just as she reached for hers.
“His phone rang,” I said. “Or beeped or chirped.”
The detective nodded. “She thought it might be hers.”
“Right,” I said.
“Except, of course, what are the chances his cell phone sounded like her cell phone?”
“Not a very good chance,” I said.
“Which means she was jumpy,” said the detective. “Reacting to any sound she heard.”
“Almost as if she was nervous about something,” I said.
Sharp nodded. His pointed nose waved through the air like a maestro’s wand. “Or nervous about someone,” he said. “Except, where does that get us?”
“Nowhere yet,” I said. “But it’s a start.”
“A start is something.”
“I agree. Can I see her text history?” I asked.
I didn’t need to prompt the young detective. “Don’t see why not. The wife’s been missing for nearly a month now, and we’ve got nothing.”
“You’ve got me,” I said.
“A private dick with no di—” He caught himself.
“Good catch,” I said.
“Er, sorry.”
“Nothing I haven’t heard before, Detective,” I said. “Wanna keep watching?”
He nodded and rolled the video.
Chapter Fourteen
We watched her cross the parking lot and enter the Starbucks with no fanfare. She didn’t speak with anyone and kept her head down. Once inside, through the smoked glass, we lost track of her.
“Interior footage?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t that be nice?”
I knew this, of course. Everyone knew this. I nodded.
He added, “They have since installed an interior camera. Too little, too late.”
I nodded again, and for the next two hours, we watched my client appear and disappear out of the screen, going inside, searching outside, circling the building. Covering his mouth and calling loudly. He looked like a crazy man. He also looked like a man who had lost his wife.
We backtracked the video, going over it frame by frame, studying everyone coming in and going out. But no one looked like her—or even looked like her in disguise. There was no one unaccountable, either. Meaning, a man with a beard didn’t suddenly emerge who hadn’t already come in.
Later, the police came, searching the exterior and interior, taking statements, and taking photos.
“Police checked behind the counter, the back room, even the freezer. Everywhere. No one saw her go back there, and they had like seven employees working at the time. Seven. What coffee shop has seven fucking employees working at one time?”
“Is this a trick question?”
He ignored me and backtracked again. We both were taking copious notes.
“Husband doesn’t come into view until...” Sharp checked his notes. “Until fourteen minutes after she goes in. Almost fifteen. If you ask me, that seems like a reasonable amount of time to come looking for your wife. It doesn’t seem, you know, suspicious.”
I nodded.
“The police come,” he checked the notes again, “thirty-two minutes after she disappears. All normal stuff, if you ask me.”
“Normal, except she hasn’t been seen since.”
We both stared at Henry on the screen, who was now frozen in mid-yell, one hand cupping his mouth, the other shielding his eyes from the sun’s glare. The disappearance had happened just after noon.
After a moment, Sharp said, “Husband’s been taking some heat.”
“Shouldn’t be. It’s obvious that he’s at a loss, too.”
“Unless he’s in on something? Or unless they’re in on something together.”
“Magic tricks?” I asked. “Teleporting into alternate dimensions?”
“No one asked for a comedian. In fact, he hired you. You talked to him, face to face. What’s your gut say?”
I decided against mentioning the fact that I had dipped inside Henry’s memory and therefore, knew he was innocent. Instead, I settled for, “I believe him.”
Sharp looked at me, and then gave me a short nod. “I haven’t talked to him yet, but I know Renaldo wasn’t too hung up on him, although...”
“Although what?”
“There was a history of violence between them.”
“Oh?”
“Police were called twice in the last two years. Both times by neighbors. Both times, he was given a warning.”
“No arrests?”
“No violence. According to the reports, he never touched her. Just a lot of yelling.”
“Doesn’t seem like a lead,” I said.
“Maybe not,” he said. “But it’s something.”
“Something,” I said, “is better than nothing.”
“They teach you that in private eye school?”
“No, at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.”
“Fancy.”
I chuckled, and we stared at the monitor some more.
After a moment, Sharp asked, “Any theories yet, based on what you’ve seen?”
I shrugged. I might be a creature of the night, and have access to some pretty amazing talents, but I didn’t know all or see all. I said, “No one suspicious came in after her. No one suspicious came out. No one carrying, say, a large plastic bag came out.”
“And no one came out the back, either,” he added.
Indeed, the back door had remained closed the entire time. “Any chance we missed it?”
“No way,” said Sharp. “I was looking.”
I was, too, of course.
“Not to mention,” added Sharp, “that Renaldo went over this like a hundred times. No one came out that back door.”
“Windows?”
“None. It’s a corner space in a shopping center. One front door, one back door. Even the bathrooms are windowless. You ask me, a bathroom should have a fucking window.”
Now that we had sat together for a few hours, Detective Sharp let go of his tough-guy act, and some of his personality was coming through.
We were silent some more. Admittedly, nothing was coming to me. No hits, no feelings, no theories, no real impressions. No, that’s not right. I was getting one impression. And it was a big one. And the more I thought about it, the more I was sure it was right.
I think my excitement might have been obvious. The detective snapped his gaze over to me. “What is it?”
“No theories yet, Detective, but I am sure of one thing.”
“And what’s that?”
“She’s still alive.”
He looked at me long and hard. “Yeah, I’m thinking that, too.”
Chapter Fifteen
I was boxing at Jacky’s gym.
Except this time, I was working out with another trainer—and a trainer who didn’t seem to look too happy about working out with me.
Tough noogies.
Jacky himself working closely with my son, up in the ring. My son had wanted to come tonight. I wasn’t sure how wise it was to teach a boy how to fight when he was already stronger than most kids. But I understood w
hat was going on here: Anthony hadn’t left my side for the past few months, ever since his father had died. Tammy could take me or leave me. Anthony was a different story. He shadowed me just about everywhere I went.
Tammy handled her father’s loss differently. She buried herself in books and schoolwork. She finished novels bigger and fatter than anything I’d ever read, even back in grad school. Books about divergents and tributes, featuring characters called Tris and Katness, or was it Kat and Trissness? I didn’t know; either way, both had way cooler names than me.
Despite her independence, sometimes, late at night, I would hear Tammy crying softly in her room. I would then put away my files, turn off my laptop, and slip into her room unannounced. I would crawl into bed and pull her to me and listen to her cry against my shoulder until she would finally go to sleep. More than once, I fell asleep next to her, only to awaken late in the day.
The thing about a mommy who works the night shift and goes to bed at the crack of dawn—or slips into a minor coma, to be more accurate—is that a son or daughter can’t, well, crawl into bed with her when they need her.
Anyway, the new trainer was holding up punching mitts, or focus mitts, before me. He held them up as I hit them harder and harder. With each punch, I watched him wince until he finally stepped back and said his hands needed a break.
I didn’t doubt it. As he slipped off the mitts, I caught a fragment of his thoughts: he was wondering what drug I was on. Speed, he figured. Maybe bath salts.
With my trainer undoubtedly wishing he never showed up for work today, I sat down and watched my son work with Jacky up in the ring. Jacky was personally working out with my son, showing him proper footwork and striking techniques. Presently, he was holding my son’s right arm straight, adjusting his elbow and shoulder height and wrists. I could hear Jacky’s thick accent from here, barking orders. I could also see a wicked gleam in the old trainer’s eye. With my son, he was liking what he was seeing.
Tammy turned to books, while Anthony turned to me.
As the weeks passed, he grew more and more attached to me. Often, he would slip into my office, nonchalantly, quietly, almost secretly. One moment I would be working, the next, I would look up and he would be there. It was a credit to his own supernatural prowess that he could sneak up on me, perhaps one of the few people who could.
