Missing Persons

by Stephen White

  The Looney Tunes allusion was an interesting addition to Bob’s repertoire. I hadn’t heard it before; with him, comical touches were as rare as zits on starlets. But I convinced myself to ignore it, confident it would come back around if it was important. I could’ve let the Doyle thing drop, too, maybe should have. But instead I chose to push a little harder. “I find it interesting that you’ve never mentioned him before.”

  His frustration blossomed. “Really? You find that interesting? I haven’t talked about the teller I use at the bank either. But I see her every week, too.”

  Did he say “use”? He “uses” a teller? And who, in the age of ATMs, lays eyes on a bank teller every week? Wouldn’t a schizoid guy love the age of ATMs?

  I had a few choices as to where to go next, one of which was the tempting bank teller/ATM question, but I suspected that it-like Invisi-Bill and Looney Tunes-was a blind alley. I went with what looked like the no-brainer: “By talking about him now are you suggesting that Doyle has become a problem?”

  “Only if I need to find a new place to park the Camaro. When that happens, then, well… then I have a problem, don’t I?”

  “If Doyle sells the house?”

  “When. Yes.”

  “And your current landlord doesn’t have any garage space you can rent?” I wouldn’t have asked most patients that question. But Bob often missed the forest for the trees, or vice versa, and part of my job was to help him understand how the world works, especially those parts of the world that are inhabited by other people.

  “He owns some big stupid supercab macho truck. There’s no room in the garage.”

  I leaned forward slowly, resting my elbows on my knees, slightly closing the space between us. I was almost certain that Bob felt my postural readjustment as an unwelcome intrusion. That was okay; it was my intent. “You said it wasn’t safe yet. What did you mean? Was that about Doyle?”

  I was challenging Bob much more than I usually did. For many patients, perhaps most, my insistence on talking more about Doyle and the garage would not have been perceived as much of a confrontation. But Bob was feeling pressured by my persistence and he was figuratively reaching out behind him, searching for the perimeter of the corner I was edging him toward. His breathing grew more rapid and his normally pale cheeks drained even further of color.

  “Yes,” he said, but it was tentative. His defenses were much more nimble than I would have predicted.

  As I swallowed a silent question to myself about whether my persistence was really therapeutically indicated, I made the point I’d been leading up to for minutes, “And I thought you were implying that you’re concerned about Mallory.”

  He snapped back, “Isn’t everyone?”

  Another good reply. I was impressed, but perhaps I shouldn’t have been. The one thing that schizoid personalities usually have mastered is distancing behavior.

  Two years and counting and I was still learning things about Bob.

  The banter was therapeutically enlightening, but I wasn’t about to be deterred from my quest to understand more about his surprising revelations about Doyle, and his intimations about Mallory. “Earlier in the week-when you played the song?-shortly after you mentioned the guy you rent the garage from, you specifically expressed concern about Mallory, and talked about the writing you’re doing. And today you said, ‘It’s not safe yet.’ ”

  “So?”

  “What connects Doyle’s garage, your writing, and Mallory?”

  Bob’s mouth was open about half an inch and he’d thrust his jaw so far forward that it momentarily appeared as though he had a chin. He said, “She’s been gone a… while. Everyone’s concerned. I bet even you are. Aren’t you?”

  Even me? “Bob, this is important. Do you know if Doyle has anything to do with Mallory’s disappearance?”

  He shook his head. “You never really know about people, do you? You think you know… but then,” he said, his voice unsteady. “I think… things always turn out to be different.”

  Bob’s platitude was true, of course. And Bob’s psychopathology probably left him more vulnerable to doubt about other people’s motives than most of us. But I also knew that Bob’s statement hadn’t been an invitation to parse psychological principles. I asked, “What are you thinking specifically?”

  “Nothing,” he said. Then he added, with a side of sarcasm, “My mother.”

  I went back to the beginning. “Why don’t you tell me about Doyle?”

  Bob stuck his tongue between his teeth. When he released it, he said, “I know her. Mallory. I didn’t think you’d…”

  What? You didn’t think I’d what?

  22

  I know her. Mallory.

  Interesting non sequitur. Or apparent non sequitur. He hadn’t answered my question about Doyle. Instead, he’d turned my attention back to Mallory.

  Or… perhaps talking about Mallory was his way of talking about Doyle.

  Patience, Alan.

  “You do?” I asked. “You know her?” Despite what I’d learned about the location of the garage, and about Doyle, I wouldn’t have guessed that Bob knew Mallory. Why?

  Because Bob was Bob.

  “We talked. While I was working at Doyle’s. She’d come by sometimes. She was curious what we were doing. She liked the fish. And the waterfall. She said she could hear the water running from her bedroom window. I saw her up there sometimes. At her window. When Doyle wasn’t home she’d go down and sit by the pond and watch the fish.”

  Bob was having trouble stringing the short sentences together. Something was aggravating his natural wariness. Was it thoughts of Mallory?

  Had to be. Or maybe Bob’s admission about Mallory was diversion? Was he uncomfortable talking about Doyle and was he taking me someplace he figured I’d willingly go instead? Was Bob that cunning? I didn’t think so, but I couldn’t rule it out.

  “We talked through the fence,” he added, not waiting his turn. “A few different times.”

  Not waiting his turn was another sign of his discomfort. The fact that he and Mallory talked through the fence? I suspected that the physical separation of the barrier made the conversation more palatable for Bob, maybe even made the conversation possible for Bob. Metaphorically, it was elegant.

  But still… “Go on,” I said.

  “She’s a nice girl.”

  “And you spoke with her?”

  “I have, yeah. A lot of times.”

  Well, Bob, was it a “few times” or “a lot of times”?

  He squinted his eyes and tightened his jaw. The grimace caused his chin to retreat. It looked for a moment as though his face just melted away half an inch below his lower lip. “She’s my… friend.”

  As surprising as it might sound, the fact that Bob had personally met Mallory was merely a curiosity to me, another one of those “I know someone who” anecdotes that were still swirling around Boulder about the Millers. But the fact that he’d conversed with Mallory on a personal level? And multiple times? And that he considered her a friend? That was epiphany-quality news where Bob was concerned.

  From what I knew about him socially-and before that day’s session had started, I thought I knew most of what there was to know-Bob didn’t have repeated personal conversations with people with whom he wasn’t somehow compelled to relate.

  He just didn’t.

  “She’s your friend? You talked about…?”

  “I told you. The waterfall, the pond. The fish. She loved the waterfall. Other things. She likes my car.”

  “Other things?” I was reaching. I knew I was reaching.

  “Yeah.”

  “Such as…?”

  Another grimace. Then, again, “My mother.”

  I went to safer ground. I didn’t want to. But I felt I would push him farther away if I came any closer. “And you thought she was nice?”

  Shortly after the words exited my mouth, I realized that my caution had come too late and that our rat-a-tat conversation was over. Silenc
e descended on the room the way darkness follows a closing curtain. I waited. Bob had started breathing through his mouth. Each exhale was accompanied by a faint whistle.

  Finally he spoke. He said, “She doesn’t look fourteen.”

  My spleen spasmed. At least I think it was my spleen-something in there suddenly got twisted into a big, fat knot. I hadn’t been aware that I didn’t want to hear those specific words from Bob, but now that he’d said them I knew that I hadn’t wanted to hear them.

  “Time’s up,” he said.

  I looked at the clock.

  He was right. Time was up.

  Didn’t matter to me. I needed some magic that would encourage Bob to stay and tell me what was haunting him. Because something was haunting him. I couldn’t find any magic, so I focused on what I feared: “You don’t think she looks fourteen?”

  “Do you?” he asked.

  Frankly, no. In Boulder, most eleven- and twelve-year-old girls look fourteen. Fourteen-year-old girls look, well, older-sometimes a lot older. Sometimes way too much older. But I wasn’t about to tell Bob that. I suspected his comment about Mallory’s age had little to do with musings about the sociological implications of the increasingly early psychosexual maturity of adolescent girls.

  I said, “Bob, look at me. Please.”

  He did, holding the connection for almost two entire seconds. I asked, “Do you know something about Mallory? Where she is? How she’s doing? Had she said something to you? Has Doyle?”

  Way too many questions on my part. Way too many. A rational observer would have had a hard time determining who was more flustered at that moment, doctor or patient.

  “Maybe you know something you should tell the police,” I added-my way of adjusting the seasoning on a therapeutic dish I was already responsible for overcooking.

  Bob did the half head-shake thing again, this time minus the “sheeesh,” before he said, “I have to go.”

  I barely heard his words. The echoes of his earlier pronouncement-“She doesn’t look fourteen”-were gaining volume in my head. Silently quoting Diane, I thought, Holy moly.

  “Did you talk to Mallory just before Christmas, Bob? Did you know what was going to happen?”

  “I have to go.”

  “I have a few extra minutes. We can go on.”

  Bob didn’t acknowledge my offer. He stood, grabbed his daypack, and stepped toward the French door that led outside toward the backyard, but he didn’t ask me for permission to use it as he had on previous occasions. As he pulled the door open, air that was much colder than I expected flooded into the room, chilling my feet. He paused in the open doorway and turned his head back in my direction.

  Our gazes failed to connect by about ten degrees. It was as though he were blind, wanted to find my gaze, but couldn’t quite manage to make eye contact.

  He said, “Is something a secret if nobody knows you know it?”

  My gut was still in knots. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “For something to be a secret, somebody else has to know it, right? Or… do they? I tell you things and you have to keep them secret. But I’ve never been…”

  Been what?

  I suspected that Bob’s naiveté was talking, or that he was posing a trick question-a-tree-falling-in-the-forest clone-but I couldn’t find the trap. Reluctantly I said, “A secret is a secret, I guess.”

  He suddenly shifted his gaze and we locked eyes for a period of time that was about the duration of a solitary flap of a hummingbird’s wings. There, and then gone. He persisted. “If nobody knows something but the person who knows it, is it really a secret? Or is it something else? What would that be?”

  “What are we talking about, Bob? Is this… something about Mallory? Is she okay? Do you know something about where she is?”

  “Other people have secrets. I didn’t really know that. I mean I knew it, but I didn’t… I don’t know everything yet, but it’s not as simple as I thought at first. I’m not even sure about what I know. Does that make sense?”

  No, it doesn’t.

  I could feel him pulling away. He hadn’t moved an inch farther away from me, but this prolonged connection between him and me had existed at a level of intimacy that I knew Bob couldn’t tolerate for long. Now he was floating away like a helium balloon in a stiff breeze.

  I tried to grab for the string that would bring him back. I said, “But you know something? You know a secret?”

  I kept thinking, You know that she doesn’t look fourteen.

  “You know secrets, too,” he replied. “People tell you things. I do. Therapists.”

  What did that mean? Was he speaking generally or was he referring to something specific that he thought I knew?

  I didn’t know.

  He pursed his thin lips and shook his head, just a little, as though he was mildly disappointed with me. “The story’s not over. I have to figure stuff out, who to trust. I think I’ve already been wrong once. Doyle’s not… the guy I thought he was.”

  Trust me. Please.

  “Doyle’s not what? What do you mean?”

  “Maybe you should read it. What I wrote.”

  I opened my mouth to reply, but Bob closed the door behind him.

  I was about to say, “I’d love to.” The cold air that had rushed in wasn’t the only cause of chill in the room.

  I stepped outside into the frigid air. “Bob,” I called. After two more steps across the yard he stopped and turned to face me. He didn’t bother to look at me, but he faced me. I said, “Tuesday, our regular time, okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “If you’d like to meet before then I can do that. Don’t worry about the money.”

  He said, “Okay,” hunched his shoulders forward, dropped his poor excuse for a chin, and paced off into the night.

  23

  Sam had blown some serious bucks at Runners Roost.

  A year before if you had asked me what was more likely, a giant meteor destroying our planet, or Sam Purdy adorned in head-to-toe burgundy running Lycra, I would have been warning everyone to duck.

  But there Sam stood, right at my front door, jogging in place, his breath puffing out in little frosty clouds that stood out like flares against a sky the color of deep water.

  It was 5:10 in the frigging morning on the first Monday of the year. My initial thoughts upon waking had been about my disconcerting session with Bob a few days before.

  “You ready?” Sam asked. “I say we do a couple of slow miles, then we try to bring one in around nine. What do you think? We’ll work up from there.”

  I tied both of my shoes before I replied. “I think it’s January, Sam, and this could really wait until March or April. The race isn’t until May, for God’s sake.”

  The race on Sam’s radar was the Bolder Boulder, the Memorial Day Weekend 10K classic, and for some reason Sam had decided that his training regimen couldn’t be put off until spring. I’d volunteered to be his workout partner, and unfortunately for me his ardor for physical fitness was that of the newly converted.

  “Emily coming with?”

  Sam was asking about our Bouvier des Flandres. Emily was a big bear of a dog and her natural instincts spurred her more toward herding livestock than jogging on a lead alongside human beings. “Maybe next time. Running in straight lines isn’t one of her best things. She likes to roam. Let’s see how it goes without her this time.”

  “What about the little one? Anvil?”

  “Hardly. Three miles is a marathon for a miniature poodle. At least it is for him. I’m afraid it’s just you and me.” I stared out into the darkness. “I don’t even think we’ll see the milkman or the paperboy at this hour.”

  “Cool, let’s go.”

  Although it was contrary to his character to yield control, Sam wanted me to set the pace. Two reasons: From a thousand dog walks I knew the trails in the nearby hills, and since I’d run a couple of Bolder Boulders when I was younger he was granting me the status of running guru.
>
  I knew the status assignment wouldn’t endure for long. Near the end of mile one, I asked, “What kind of trouble has Reese Miller been in?”

  Sam didn’t move lightly. I don’t know whether it was inexperience, poor technique, just the fact that he was a big guy, or what, but the pounding beside me on the dirt trails of Spanish Hills sounded more like the clop, clop of a Clydesdale than the heel-toe patter of a jogger. I’m not much of a runner. Bicycling is my thing. But running beside Sam and his plodding strides I felt like I was floating.

  “Fights.”

  I didn’t expect that he’d answer me at all, but his reply was too parsimonious for my taste. I considered the possibility that Sam was too winded to be more expansive, but he was in better shape than at any time since we’d met and I decided that the brevity was an indication of caution while he figured out where the hell I was coming from.

  “Hockey fights?” I asked.

  “Some.”

  “But some not?”

  “I think you’re watching too much cable. It’s bad for your health.”

  I probably had been watching too much cable news, but I wasn’t about to admit it to Sam. Blame it on Bob, and Diane. “I don’t know. I’m curious, I guess.”

  “Ask me, there’s already way too much curiosity about that case.”

  “You brought up Reese, Sam. Not me.”

  “First time, I did. And I regret it. This time you did. You still pissed at Jaris Slocum?”

  I wasn’t surprised that he’d changed the subject; I was surprised where he’d gone. “What he did to Diane? Of course. He was an asshole.”

  “There’re reasons. Not excuses. Reasons. Cops feel pressure, too. Just like everybody else.”

  “Reasons to rough up a witness who’s grieving about finding her friend dead? Yeah? Like what?”

  “Maybe you could cut him some slack, get over your hurt feelings. In the end it’s not about what he did, it’s about whatever happened to that woman.”