Long Bright River

by Liz Moore

  * * *

  —

  Sitting in parked patrol car 2885, I go through everyone in turn.

  I call Gee: no answer. No answering machine either. When we were younger, this was probably to avoid creditors. Now, it’s out of habit, and probably a certain amount of misanthropy. People want to get ahold of me, says Gee, they can keep trying.

  I call Ashley. I leave a message.

  I call Bobby. I leave a message.

  I call Martha Lewis. I leave a message.

  Finally it occurs to me that almost nobody listens to voicemails anymore, and so I begin to text everyone instead.

  Have you heard from Kacey lately? I type. She’s been missing awhile. If you have any information please let me know.

  I watch my phone. I wait.

  Martha Lewis is the first to respond. Hi Mick, sorry to hear that. That’s a shame. Let me research a little.

  Then my cousin Ashley. No, I’m sorry.

  A few old friends text that they haven’t seen her lately. They wish me luck. Send me condolences.

  The only person who doesn’t text back at all is our cousin Bobby. I try him once more, and then I text Ashley again to make certain I have the right number.

  That’s the one, she replies.

  Then, quite suddenly, an idea occurs to me. Today is Monday, November 20—which means that Thursday is Thanksgiving.

  * * *

  —

  Every year since I was small, the O’Briens—Gee’s side of the family—have come together for the occasion. When I was younger, Thanksgiving took place at the house of Aunt Lynn, Gee’s younger sister. These days, Lynn’s daughter Ashley typically hosts, but I haven’t been in many years—since before Thomas was even born.

  I’ve made the same excuse, over and over again, for missing the O’Brien Thanksgiving: that I have to work. What I don’t tell anyone is that, even in years when I have had the option not to, I have elected to do so for extra pay.

  This year is a rare one in which I happen to have Thanksgiving off. I had planned to spend it alone with Thomas. I was going to buy canned sweet potatoes and instant mashed potatoes and a rotisserie chicken. I was going to light a candle in the middle of the table and tell my son the true story of the first Thanksgiving, which I first learned from my favorite high school history teacher, Ms. Powell, and which is much different than the version that is typically taught in schools.

  But it occurs to me, now, that attending an O’Brien family Thanksgiving might be a way to ask after Kacey—and, more specifically, to inquire about her with Cousin Bobby, who still has not responded to my texts.

  I phone Gee once more. This time, she answers.

  —Gee, I say. It’s Mickey. Are you going to Ashley’s for Thanksgiving?

  —No, she says. Working.

  —But she’s hosting?

  —According to Lynn, says Gee. Why?

  —I was just wondering.

  —Tell me you’re thinking of going, she says, incredulously.

  —Maybe, I say. I’m not sure yet.

  Gee pauses.

  —Well, she says. I’ll be damned.

  —I just have the day off for once, I say. That’s all.

  —Don’t tell Ashley yet, I say. In case I can’t make it.

  Before I hang up, I ask her once more.

  —No word from Kacey, right? I say.

  —Goddammit, Mickey, says Gee. You know I don’t talk to her no more. What’s going on with you?

  —Nothing at all, I say.

  * * *

  —

  I spend the rest of the day fruitlessly scanning the sidewalks for anyone I might talk to. I check my phone compulsively. I manage to respond to only a handful of calls, cherry-picking ones I know will be easy.

  That night, when I go home to Thomas, he seems worried about me. In fact, he asks me if something is wrong.

  I want to tell him, everything is wrong except for you. These days, you are the only great pleasure of my life. Your small presence, your small observant face, the intelligence within you that grows unceasingly, each new word or turn of phrase that enters your vocabulary, that I take stock of, that I store like gold for your future. At least I have you.

  I say none of this, of course. I say to him, Nothing’s wrong. Why?

  But I can tell by his expression that he doesn’t believe me.

  —Thomas, I say. How would you like to spend Thanksgiving at Cousin Ashley’s?

  Thomas leaps to his feet, his hands clutched to his chest, dramatically. His hands are boy hands, ragged cuticles, strong fingers, palms that smell always of the earth, even when he has not dug in it that day.

  —I’ve been missing her so much, he says.

  Against my will, I smile. I think the last time we saw Ashley was two years ago, at Gee’s house, when she stopped by on Christmas; I doubt, therefore, that he actually remembers her. He knows about her because of the homemade family tree on his wall, which he traces sometimes with a finger, chanting every name. Cousin Ashley, he knows, is married to Cousin Ron, and is the mother of his other cousins, Jeremy, Chelsea, Patrick, and Dominic. Cousin Ashley’s mother, he knows, is Aunt Lynn.

  Now, Thomas raises his hands into the air in victory, and asks me how many days until we go.

  * * *

  —

  I put him to bed. The weeks I’m home for his bedtimes, our routine never varies: bath, books, bed. We are frequenters of our local libraries—first in Port Richmond and now in Bensalem. Each librarian there knows Thomas by name. Each week we choose a stack of books to enjoy together, and every night I let Thomas select as many as he would like to read. Then, together, we sound out the words and describe the pictures, inventing scenarios, speculating about what will happen next.

  The weeks I’m on B-shift, when Bethany puts Thomas to bed, I am under the impression that she does not read to him much, if at all.

  Once he’s tucked in, I linger in his dim and peaceful room, thinking how nice it would be to let myself lay my head next to his on the pillow, to drift to sleep there, just for a little.

  But I have work to do, and so I rise, and kiss my son’s forehead, and quietly close the door.

  * * *

  —

  In the living room, I open my laptop—an ancient one of Simon’s that he gave to me, years ago, when he bought a new one—and open an Internet browser.

  I have always resisted ‘social media.’ I don’t like being connected to anyone at all times, let alone relative strangers, people from my past with whom I have no reason to remain in touch. But I know that Kacey uses it—or at one time used it—frequently. So I enter Facebook into the search bar, and click on the link, and try to look for her there.

  And there she is: Kacey Marie. The main picture on the page is of my sister holding a flower in her hand, smiling. Her hair looks the same as it did the most recent time I saw her on the street, so it must be at least somewhat up-to-date.

  Below, on the page itself, I don’t expect to find much. I can’t imagine updating her Facebook page is at the top of Kacey’s list of daily to-dos. But I am surprised to discover that her page is littered with posts. Many are pictures of cats and dogs. Some are pictures of babies. Strangers’ babies, I presume. Some are vague rants about loyalty, or fakery, or betrayal, that look as if they have been created by others for the purpose of mass-marketing. (Reading them, I am made aware, again and again, of how little I know, today, about my sister.)

  Some—the important ones—are by Kacey herself, and these are the ones I scroll through most avidly, looking for clues.

  If at first you don’t succeed . . . says one from last summer.

  Anyone have a job for me??

  I want to see Suicide Squad!

  Rita’s!!! (Here, a picture of Kacey, grinning, holding a water ice in a cup.)
>
  I love love, says one from August. Attached to it is a picture of Kacey and a man, someone I don’t recognize, someone skinny, white, short hair, tattoos on his forearms. He and Kacey are gazing into a mirror. He has his arms around Kacey.

  He’s tagged in the photo: Connor Dock Famisall. Beneath it, someone has written, Lookin good Doctor.

  I squint at him. I click on his name. Unlike Kacey’s, his page is marked private. I think about sending him a friend request, and then decide against it.

  I enter Connor Famisall into Google, but there are zero results. I’ll run a search on his name in the PCIC database tomorrow, when I’m back in a police vehicle.

  Finally, I navigate back to Kacey’s page.

  The post at the top, on October 28, is by someone named Sheila McGuire.

  Kace get in touch, it says.

  There are no comments beneath it. In fact, the last time Kacey seems to have posted at all is a month ago, on October 2. Doing something that scares me.

  I click on the Message button. And, for the first time in five years, I contact my sister.

  Kacey, I write. I’m worried about you. Where are you?

  The next morning, Bethany is early, for once. I’ve recently resorted to bribing Thomas to let me leave in the morning without a scene: stickers that, when a count of ten is reached, lead to a coloring book of his choosing. Today, therefore, I get to work early, and head to the locker room. I’m wiping my shoes with a paper towel when something on the little TV mounted in the corner catches my attention.

  —A wave of violence in Kensington, says the anchor, solemn, and I straighten up a bit.

  The media, it seems, has finally picked up the story. If these murders had been happening in Center City, we would have heard about the first one a month ago.

  There’s only one other officer in the room, a young woman who started not too long ago. Today, she’s getting off C-shift. I don’t remember her name.

  —The bodies of four women have recently been discovered in separate incidents initially believed to be overdoses. But new information is causing police to question whether foul play might have been involved.

  Four.

  I only know about three: the woman we found on the Tracks, still unidentified; seventeen-year-old Katie Conway; and the eighteen-year-old home health aide, Anabel Castillo.

  I sit down on one of the wooden benches that run between the lockers. I wait, closing my eyes, suddenly imagining my life divided sharply: before this moment and after it. It’s how I’ve felt every time I’ve ever received bad news. Time slows in the breath people take after saying, I have something to tell you.

  They give out the names, beginning with Katie Conway. Her mother is interviewed, distraught, a mess, almost certainly intoxicated. Her voice is too slow. She was a good girl, says the mother, about Katie. Always a good kid.

  I’m waiting, breathless. It can’t be Kacey, I think. It can’t be: someone would have told me, surely. I don’t talk about her at work, but we do share the same last name—Fitzpatrick, our father’s—if nothing else. I check my cell phone. No calls have come in.

  Next, the anchor moves on to Anabel Castillo, the home health aide, and then to the unidentified woman Eddie Lafferty and I located on the Tracks. No picture, of course, is available for her. But I can still see her clearly in my mind. I’ve been seeing her behind my eyelids every night before I fall asleep.

  I know they will move next to a discussion of the fourth victim, the one I haven’t heard about yet. Slowly, and then quickly, my vision dims.

  —This morning, says the anchor, a fourth and possibly related victim was discovered in Kensington. She has been identified, say the police, but they’re waiting to release her name until her family has been notified.

  —Are you okay? says my companion in the locker room, and I nod, but it’s not true.

  * * *

  —

  When I was a child, I used to have episodes. A doctor once told me that they were ‘panic attacks,’ though that’s a term I dislike. They consisted of minutes or hours in which I thought I was dying, in which I counted every heartbeat, certain that it would be my very last. I haven’t had one of these episodes in years, not since high school, but suddenly, in the locker room, I recognize the signs of one approaching. The world darkens at the edges. I feel as if I can’t see, as if the information my eyes are receiving no longer makes sense to my mind. I try to slow my breathing.

  Sergeant Ahearn, ruddy and impassive, is standing over me. Alongside him is the young female officer. She’s got blond hair and a slight build. She’s pouring water on my forehead in a slow trickle.

  —My mom told me to do this once, the rookie is saying to Sergeant Ahearn.

  —She’s an EMT, she adds, for emphasis.

  A deep sense of shame comes over me. I feel as if a secret about me has been revealed. I wipe the water off my forehead. I try too quickly to sit up, to laugh, to make light of what has happened. But I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and my face is gray and grim and frightening. I feel light-headed again.

  * * *

  —

  Sergeant Ahearn, despite my protests that I am fine, insists I take a sick day. We’re in his office. I’m sitting in a chair across from him, trying to will myself to feel better.

  —Can’t have you fainting on the job, he says. Go home and rest.

  Fainting. An embarrassing word—one Ahearn seems to relish saying aloud to me. Is he hiding a smile? I imagine him retelling the episode at roll call, and shudder.

  Then I pull myself together and rise from my chair. Before I leave, though, I gather my wits and my courage and ask him.

  —I heard they found another body in the district, I say.

  He looks at me. Only one? he says. Lucky us.

  —Not an OD, I say. A woman. Another strangulation.

  He says nothing.

  —The news picked it up, I say.

  He nods.

  —Do we have a description? I ask him.

  He sighs. Why, Mickey? he says.

  —It’s only that I was wondering if I knew her. If I’d ever brought her in, I mean.

  He picks up his phone. He looks something up. He reads aloud to me.

  —Christina Walker, according to her ID. African-American, twenty years old, five-foot-four, one-fifty.

  Not Kacey.

  Someone else’s Kacey.

  —Thank you, I say to Ahearn.

  Through his window, I regard for a while several oak trees that have almost fully shed their leaves for the season. I recall learning, in a course I took in high school, that the majority of Pennsylvania is covered by Appalachian oak forest, which seemed to me to be strange at the time, Appalachian being a word I associate with the south, and Pennsylvania with the north.

  —Mickey, says Ahearn, and it’s only then that I realize I have been standing still too long.

  —You sure you haven’t talked to Truman lately? he says.

  I don’t answer right away.

  Then I say, Why?

  He smiles again, not kindly.

  —In the locker room, he says. You were calling his name.

  Truman Dawes.

  Outside, I pull up his number. I look at my phone for a while, contemplating the name, imagining how many times, in the past decade, I have said it aloud.

  Truman Dawes. My most important mentor. Some years, my only friend. Truman, whom I worked alongside for the better part of a decade. Truman, who taught me all that I know about policing: who taught me that respect for a community begets respect; who frowned whenever anyone maligned or insulted his district; who was quick with a word of consolation or a joke when the occasion called for it, even in the middle of an arrest—Truman, whom I miss every day. There is no one whose counsel, at this moment, I need more.

  * * *


  —

  The truth is that I’ve been avoiding him.

  * * *

  —

  I’ve had a certain bad habit ever since I was a child. I duck what I can’t bring myself to acknowledge, turn away from anything that causes me to be ashamed, run away from it rather than addressing it. I am a coward, in this way.

  In high school, I had a favorite teacher—a history teacher—Ms. Powell. She was not old, though she seemed so to me at the time. With other students, she was not popular. She did not earn anyone’s admiration easily or cheaply, like some teachers—I am thinking here of mainly young, white, male teachers who played sports themselves in high school and who joked around with their students as if they were their peers—no. Ms. Powell was different. She was perhaps thirty-five, African-American, the mother of two young children. She wore jeans every day, and she wore glasses, and she generally did not try to be funny, which meant that the students she attracted were more serious, and these students she addressed with real gravity, and for them—for us—she had real ambition. I recall that she gave us her own phone number, her home number, and instructed us to telephone her anytime for extra help. Though I only took her up on this offer one time, I liked knowing that I had the option, that I had a way to reach at least one responsible adult outside of school hours. It soothed me.

  Ms. Powell was supposed to teach us two years of AP U.S. History, with an emphasis on the history of Pennsylvania, but she taught a great deal more than that to students who paid attention. In her class I learned the fundamentals of philosophy and debate, and some interesting information about both geology and dendrology—the oak tree being a particular favorite of hers, and now mine, and now Thomas’s—and I also listened to Ms. Powell describe, off script, the imbalances of power in this country that have resulted in institutionalized forms of prejudice—though when she approached this territory, she was delicate, aware always of the groups of Polish and Irish and Italian boys and girls in the back of the classroom who, with a complaint to their parents, could make her life and work more difficult.