She's Not There

by P J Parrish

  “I go after her. Again.”

  “How do you think she got this far?”

  Again, Buchanan wondered why McCall cared so much, but given Tobias’s mood, maybe it was good the older guy was here.

  “Bus, most likely. You don’t need an ID if you pay cash.”

  “How did she pay for her ticket?” McCall asked. “She didn’t have a purse in the hospital. There have been no withdrawals or a request for a new debit card. Alex checked.”

  “Maybe she had a stash somewhere, a secret account. Wives often do.”

  Alex’s voice came from the backseat. “No. All the accounts were in my name.”

  Buchanan glanced again to the rearview mirror. Alex caught the look and leaned forward again.

  “She wanted it that way,” he said. “She never wanted anything to do with money. She shopped, and I paid the credit cards.”

  “Maybe she socked something away.”

  “No way. I always knew to the penny what she spent.”

  “What about jewelry?” McCall said. “What about her ring, that rock you gave her?”

  “How big a rock?” Buchanan asked.

  “Ten carats,” Alex said.

  Buchanan’s eyes shot back to the rearview mirror. Alex was staring at him but Buchanan looked away, out at the house.

  “They would have removed her jewelry at the hospital and secured it,” Buchanan said. “Did they give you any of her personal effects?”

  “I haven’t been back to the hospital. And no one has called me.”

  “Check it out,” Buchanan said. “Talk to security and the nurses at the hospital. I need to know what she has with her.”

  “Yeah, okay, whatever,” Alex said. “But what about right now? If she took a bus to get here, she might take a bus away from here. Why aren’t we—”

  Buchanan reached back over the seat. “Give me your phone.”

  “What?”

  “Give me your phone.”

  Alex slapped his iPhone into Buchanan’s palm. Buchanan asked Siri for the bus station in Brunswick, Georgia. When the Google map came up, the station marked with a red pin, Buchanan tossed the phone over his shoulder.

  “There’s your damn bus station,” he said. “Go look if you want. But she won’t be there. She might not know how we found her, but she’s smart enough to know she has to come up with some new moves.”

  “She’s not as smart as you think,” Alex said, pushing open the car door. “She’s running because she’s brain-damaged and mixed up. Maybe you’re the one who should find some new moves.”

  Alex slammed the door behind him. Buchanan watched him walk back to the rental car he and McCall had arrived in. With a roar of the engine, Alex disappeared into the darkness.

  For a few moments, Buchanan and McCall sat in the car, silent.

  “He blew this,” Buchanan said.

  “I know,” McCall said.

  Buchanan sighed, his disgust with Tobias growing.

  “So what’s your next move?” McCall asked.

  “I’ll spend tomorrow here in town, show her picture around. I need to put a tap on the old woman’s phone.”

  “Why?” McCall asked.

  “Amelia seemed sort of . . .” Buchanan paused. “Sort of affectionate with the old woman. She might try to contact her again. But if I don’t get a lead here, I need to go back to Florida. I need some more background on her.”

  He thought about telling McCall about Carol Fairfield and his suspicion that Amelia had a lover, but decided to stay silent. McCall had been the one who had hired him, but there was something odd about his intense interest in Amelia Tobias’s welfare and until he figured out what was going on, he wasn’t going to volunteer any more than he had to.

  McCall loosened his tie, and just sat there, staring straight ahead. “You’ll need more money.”

  “You bet.”

  “How much more?”

  “Five grand for another week.”

  McCall drew a long slow breath. Still, he didn’t look at Buchanan. “What could you do for a million?” he asked.

  “Pardon me?”

  “What could you do for a million dollars?”

  Buchanan sat back against the door, studying Owen McCall. The man sat straight as a statue, his face like clay in the slant of the streetlight.

  “What are you asking me to do?” Buchanan said.

  “Amelia wants to disappear,” McCall said. “I want you to make sure that happens.”

  “You want her dead?” Buchanan asked.

  Now McCall looked at him, his eyes hard as glass. “I didn’t say that. I said I wanted her to disappear. How you make that happen is up to you.”

  Buchanan had heard some pretty bizarre propositions in his line of work, mainly runners who had tried to buy him off after they had been caught. But he had never been asked to carry out a hit on someone. This explained why McCall was here, but what the hell had this woman done to make her husband’s law partner want her dead? Did McCall have anything to do with Amelia’s car going off the road in the Everglades?

  “Why do you want her dead?” Buchanan asked.

  “That’s not your concern.”

  “Does Tobias know about this?”

  “Of course he does.”

  Buchanan shook his head. Enough of this shit. He had his five grand retainer. He was about to shove McCall from the car when McCall gave a small chuckle.

  “Don’t pretend you’re above this.”

  “What do you mean?” Buchanan asked.

  McCall reached into his jacket pocket, withdrew a folded paper, and handed it to Buchanan.

  Buchanan paused and then began to unfold it, slowly because he knew what it was, and he didn’t want to see it. It was a copy of an article from the Nashville Tennessean, dated September 12, 2009. The headline was black and ugly.

  HUSBAND SUSPECTED

  IN DISAPPEARANCE OF

  WIFE AND INFANT SON

  Buchanan was not surprised that McCall had done his own homework. But what did he think it would get him?

  He tossed the paper back at McCall. “I was never charged.”

  “It’s likely you were never charged because the police never found the bodies, Mr. Buchanan.”

  A slow burn started to creep up the back of Buchanan’s neck.

  McCall picked up the paper and carefully folded it into a square as he spoke. “You said during the investigation that you would do everything humanly possible to find whoever abducted your wife and son.”

  Buchanan glared at McCall, tempted to smash the man’s head through the passenger window. But his curiosity about where this was going was stronger, so he stayed quiet.

  “But you’ve done nothing, really,” McCall went on. “You’re charging me outrageous fees, but you haven’t really been all that successful in your work. Your personal bank account has less than two thousand dollars in it.”

  “I have other accounts,” Buchanan said. “One is for my daughter—”

  “Who you lost custody of to your in-laws. Who by all accounts hates you because she thinks you killed her mother and baby brother.”

  Buchanan looked away. He knew he should throw this man out into the street and head to Nashville without looking back. But something was stopping him.

  “Mr. Buchanan,” McCall said. “I really don’t care if you killed anyone or not. I’ll make it two million. Use the money to clear your name, use it to get your daughter back, or just put it in a trust for her and go drink yourself into oblivion.”

  “Look, you bastard—”

  McCall’s hand shot up. “Like I said, I don’t care what you did. I don’t care what you do. But it’s yours, right now—two million in cash that no one can trace—if you’re willing to do what I asked.”

  “We’re don
e,” Buchanan said. “This is over. Get out of my car.”

  But McCall didn’t move. “Mr. Buchanan, I have many friends, friends who tell me things they think I might need to know. One of them is the district attorney in Nashville. He’s preparing an indictment against you.”

  Buchanan was so stunned he could only stare at McCall. It was quiet in the car, then he began to hear a strange rushing sound. It took him a moment to realize it was the sound of blood pulsing in his ears.

  Jesus, was this never going to end? Five years and they had never found anyone else to go after? And what the hell did they have now that they could indict him on?

  “Let me make this easier for you,” McCall said.

  Buchanan looked away.

  “I will get you the best defense money can buy. No matter what they come up with, I can promise you won’t see one day in prison.”

  Buchanan shook his head slowly.

  “All right, I’ll sweeten the deal,” McCall said. “I will also make sure you get back custody of your daughter.”

  Buchanan closed his eyes. Against the flood of memories, against the feelings of pain and impotence. Against the voice, her voice, that he knew now he couldn’t silence.

  No, Bucky, not this way.

  Buchanan opened his eyes. For a few seconds, they simply sat in the darkness. Then suddenly, all the lights in the old lady’s house went out.

  “It’s a deal,” Buchanan said.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Amelia awoke to a screech of air brakes and nearly fell from the bunk. The truck came to stop, and she could hear Dolly muttering to herself. Amelia rustled her hair, slathered her mouth with a fingertip of toothpaste from her duffel, and climbed back to the cab.

  There was a cottony gray light coming through the windshield, and the cold air, slithering in from Dolly’s cracked window, had a sharp smell, like copper kettles and wet wool. Winter . . . it was the smell of almost-winter, Amelia realized. She looked out the side window at the bare black trees and the rolling hills covered with frosted grass. A roadside sign told her they were in a place called Jasper, slowed by a traffic jam.

  “How long did I sleep?” Amelia asked.

  “Over six hours,” Dolly said. “We’re coming to Tupelo soon. From there, we head to Memphis to pick up I-40 West then it’s balls to the wall until we hit Kingman, Arizona.”

  Arizona. No, she couldn’t go there. It didn’t feel right. She didn’t know where she wanted to go but she knew she didn’t belong there. She needed to go . . . where? She needed . . . what?

  She shut her eyes, struggling to summon up something of comfort from her past, but all she could muster was that strange sensation she had felt the day she had awoken in the hospital, that feeling of floating inside a blue-green bubble.

  They crept along, Dolly cursing and shifting the rig through its gears. Then suddenly, the pulsating lights of a police car came into view ahead. Amelia’s heart kicked up and didn’t slow until they had passed the trooper standing on the side of the road, directing traffic around a car that had gone into the ditch. Dolly was quick to get the truck back to cruising speed.

  “I got you a coffee when I stopped a few miles back,” Dolly said, nodding to a Styrofoam cup in the holder. “And there’s an Egg McMuffin for you in that bag there.”

  Amelia picked up the cup and lifted off the top. The coffee was lukewarm but good and strong. As she reached into the greasy bag, again she heard the Russian man’s voice: I want to see bones.

  Screw you, whoever you are. I want to eat.

  A few minutes later, her stomach had stopped rumbling and the coffee was gone. Dolly had turned up her iPod and it was blasting out a song Amelia didn’t recognize. But that was the norm now, hearing songs that sounded familiar but whose titles were lost to her.

  Amelia’s eyes drifted down to the photo on the dashboard. “May I?” she asked, pointing at the photo.

  “Sure.”

  Amelia picked up the photo. It was a woman in baggy pants and a tank top, her sinewy arms cradling a rifle.

  “Your sister?” Amelia asked.

  “My hersband, Nikki,” Dolly said.

  The word didn’t register, and Dolly laughed. “Partner, you know. My significant other. You don’t have a problem with that, do you?”

  Amelia smiled. “No, I don’t.” She slipped the photograph back into its place on the dash.

  “Is Nikki in the army?” she asked.

  Dolly smiled. “Hell, no. She’s First Battalion Eighth Marines, Regimental Combat Team II. She’s in Musa Qala, Afghanistan.” Her smile faded. “She’s as tough as woodpecker lips and I love her.”

  Amelia was still looking at the photograph when the images came, flooding her with such power she felt her body go slack.

  Two skyscrapers crumbling to dust. Tanks rolling over sand. Men in camouflage but tan not green. Then she could hear a man’s voice, the same voice that had told her about hitching with truckers.

  It’s my duty, Mellie. I want to defend my country.

  The face formed slowly in her head, like someone moving toward her out of a fog—brown eyes, hay-colored hair an inch or two too long, a spray of freckles across his nose.

  I’ll come home safe. I promise.

  The face stayed with her, moving through her head and settling deep in her heart. And finally, after a long moment, came a name.

  Ben.

  Amelia looked to Dolly, unable to stop herself from blurting out this new memory. “I have a brother,” she said.

  Dolly glanced at her as if to say “so?”

  “He’s a soldier, too.”

  “Still serving over there?”

  Amelia had no idea, but she didn’t want Dolly to know about her amnesia. She didn’t want to have to explain anything, so she lied.

  “No, he’s home now.”

  But maybe it wasn’t a lie. Ben—Benjamin Ross Bloodworth—was there in her head, as real as Dolly sitting next to her, and it brought her a comfort she hadn’t felt in days. She had someone. She had family. But where were they?

  The song changed from something high-pitched and girly to the steady strumming of a guitar followed by a man’s voice that sounded as it were filtered through a shredder, imploring someone named Maggie to wake up.

  Elton John? Billy Joel? Where were these names coming from? “Who’s singing that?” Amelia asked.

  Dolly smiled. “It’s my man, Rod Stewart.”

  The morning sun when it’s in your face really shows your age.

  Amelia’s heart jumped. Why? It was the words, the words to the song.

  “Can you play that back?” Amelia asked.

  “What?”

  “Those last couple of lines. Please, can you stop it and start it over?”

  Dolly hit a button and the song started over. Amelia leaned closer to the speaker.

  The morning sun when it’s in your face . . .

  The morning sun.

  She turned and crawled back to the bed, grabbing her iPad from her duffel. It booted right up and found a signal, just as the Apple clerk had said it would. In seconds, she had the search window up. She typed in the words “Morning Sun.” Up came links for a newspaper in Michigan, some publication about China, and a small book publisher.

  She added the word “Town.”

  Her first link was “Morning Sun, Iowa, Chamber of Commerce.”

  She clicked on “Images,” and there it was. Narrow asphalt streets, white frame houses with wraparound porches, a tiny grocery, a tavern called The Sunspot, and trees, lots and lots of green trees.

  And every bit of it felt real.

  This was her home. This was where Ben was. Maybe where her family was.

  She was so excited she could barely type, so excited that she knew Dolly was talking to her, but she couldn’t listen. She qu
ickly brought up a map and punched in directions from Tupelo to Morning Sun. Morning Sun was on the east side of Iowa, over five hundred miles north from where Dolly would have to break due west, at the Mississippi River.

  “I need you to let me off when we get past Memphis,” Amelia said. “Somewhere I can catch a bus north.”

  “Where are you going?”

  Amelia looked down at the map, her eyes fixed on the small yellow dot of Morning Sun.

  “I’m going home,” she said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Was there anything more pathetic than staring at yourself in a bar mirror? But maybe that’s what he needed right now, a good long hard look at himself. Confront the man in the mirror, stare deep into his soul. Find a bright shining moment of moral clarity.

  Buchanan picked up his glass. What was that Michael Jackson song? “The Man in the Mirror”? How did it go? Something about making a change?

  He finished his second scotch and set the empty glass down in the trough of the bar. On the plane ride back from Georgia, he hadn’t had anything to drink. He had needed his head clear to think. Think about what might happen if he had to stand trial for Rayna’s murder. Think about the deal he had struck. Think about what he could do with two million dollars. Think about what he was going to have to do to get it.

  Owen McCall’s face came back to him in that moment, how it had looked in the car, stone cold gray in the slant of the streetlight, how there was nothing coming from those hard blue eyes, like all the man’s energy was directed inward. Maybe that’s what it took. Maybe you had to filter everything and everyone out and laser-focus everything you had back into yourself to become a man like that—a man who was successful enough to buy anything on earth. Including a woman’s life.

  Could he do that? Could he be the kind of man who would do whatever it took to get what he wanted?

  But what do you want, Bucky?

  Buchanan shut his eyes.

  Tell me, Bucky. What do you want?

  “I just want you to be quiet,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  Buchanan opened his eyes to see the bartender staring at him. He blinked her into focus.