Vanishing Act

by Barbara Block

  “So Melissa just disappeared? One moment she’s in the dorm, the next minute she’s gone. Her mother is dying and she decides to do what? Go on a vacation somewhere?”

  “It’s happened before.” Marks took another bite of his sandwich. “I told Bryan and his mother to just sit tight and wait, that she’d probably show up.”

  “You don’t seem very concerned about this.”

  “I am concerned.” Marks put his sandwich down and wiped his hands on a new napkin. “But college kids disappear all the time.”

  “Maybe for a weekend, maybe even for a week or two, but not for four months.”

  Marks pushed his plate away and sat back. “Look, you wanted me to tell you what I know. I’m telling you.”

  “It’s not much.”

  “Listen, I’ve done everything I could do,” Marks said.

  I took a sip of my soda and lit a cigarette. At least no one would tell me not to smoke here.

  Marks looked at my Camel wistfully. “That’s another thing my wife made me give up.”

  I moved the pack toward him. “You want one?”

  “No ... I ...” But his hand was already in motion. “Oh, what the hell. One can’t hurt, right?”

  “Right.” I gave him my lighter.

  “My wife’s gonna skin me alive,” he said as he lit up and drew the smoke deep into his lungs. “But it’s worth it.”

  “Definitely.” We sat in silence for a moment, linked by the pleasure, surrounded by a haze of smoke. “Do you have any suggestions, any place you think I should start?”

  Marks tapped his ash into his coffee cup. “One of her friends said she was depressed. Her roommate, a girl called Jill Evans, died last year. End of the year. Right before finals. It was in the papers.”

  I put down my cigarette and sprinkled more salt on my potatoes. “What happened?” I had a vague recollection of what Marks was talking about, nothing more.

  Marks shook his head, his expression that of a man who had seen the world and found it wanting. “She fell out of a window and cracked her head open.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Fell?”

  “She was drinking too much. It happens.” Marks shook his head again. “Must be a hell of a thing for her family. Send your kid off to college, pay all that money, and she comes home in a box. She and Melissa were real tight. According to her roomie, Melissa never got over the death.” He took a puff of his cigarette and flicked the ash into his water glass. “Some of the guys said those two had something going. You know,” he went on when I didn’t say anything. “Some kind of lesbo thing.”

  “Jill and Melissa or Melissa and her roommate.”

  “Jill and Melissa.”

  “Why would they say that?”

  “Just a feeling.”

  “There had to be a reason for the feeling.”

  Marks gave me a blank look. “Maybe they were jealous. You know, they couldn’t get into their pants.” He began tapping his fingers on the pitted Formica tabletop. Then he looked at his watch. I glanced at the clock on the wall. We’d been there for almost thirty minutes. My time was up.

  “Is there anything else you can tell me, anything at all?”

  Marks stubbed his cigarette out on his plate and reached for his jacket. “You want my opinion?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t knock your brains out on this one.”

  “Why not?”

  Marks stood up. “I’ve worked cases like this before. Either these people show up on their own or someone finds them five years from now when they start building their house.”

  He turned and walked out the door. I got the bill.

  Not bad, I thought when I looked at it. At least he and Calli were cheap dates.

  Chapter 7

  It was now a little after two in the afternoon. I’d told Tim I’d come right back to the store after my meeting with Marks, but I’d driven over to Schaefer, the dorm where Melissa had been living when she disappeared, instead. Talking to Marks had heightened my desire to see the place from which Melissa had vanished. I hoped it would help me put what I had been told and what I was going to be told into context.

  I’d passed Schaefer a fair number of times on my way to this or that place over the years, but I’d never paid close attention to the building. I’d never had any reason to. Now I did. The dorm was perched up above the campus, across the street from Tyler Park. The building was a nondescript three-story, modern rectangular structure, commonplace to the point of invisiblity. You could walk by it a hundred times and not be able to recall its details if asked. In the fall, when Melissa had disappeared, the lawn surrounding it would have been littered with Frisbee-tossing students. Now the space was empty, the remaining couple of inches of snow cross-hatched by footprints.

  I found a parking place about twenty feet down from the entrance, maneuvered the cab in, lit a cigarette, and sat and thought. Had Melissa walked out of the dorm, down the two steps that led to the walkway, and then into the park? Tyler was fairly safe in the daytime, but maybe she was unlucky and met up with someone who wasn’t very nice. Or had she gotten into someone’s car and driven off? I tapped the ash from my cigarette out the window. Then there was the question, what was she doing outside anyway?

  According to Bryan, he’d met his sister for lunch, then dropped her off at the entrance to Schaefer at two in the afternoon. She was going to do some work, then he was going to pick her up at four and they were going to go to the hospital to visit their mother, only Melissa wasn’t in her room when he got there, though the door was ajar. Her books were lying open on her desk. A pen and notebook were nearby, one page half filled with notes on the psych text she’d been reading.

  Bryan said it looked as if she’d just gone down the hall to get something, so Bryan had sat down and waited. Only Melissa hadn’t returned. Around four-thirty Bryan had gotten restless and started walking around the floor, banging on doors. Everyone who answered had either been napping or studying. No one had seen his sister or heard anything unusual. Her roommate had come back from a late class around five, as had Melissa’s suitemates. They hadn’t seen her either. The bottom line was that somewhere between two and four on a sunny September afternoon Melissa Hayes had vanished into thin air.

  That everything was just as she left it; that no one had seen or heard anything suggested what? That Melissa had run out for a second to give or get something from someone she knew and that that someone had forced her into a car and driven away? No. Forcing her into the car would have created a scene. Somebody would have noticed that. Melissa had gone willingly with whomever she had met, expecting to be back in a minute or so at most, but that wasn’t what happened. She’d left with a friend or an acquaintance and hadn’t returned. I stubbed out my cigarette, tossed the butt out the window, and grabbed my backpack. It was time to go inside.

  Except for two girls and a boy chatting by the soda machine, the lobby was deserted. The security guards that the university spokesman had announced they were posting in every dorm the week after Melissa Hayes disappeared weren’t there. Maybe they were on a coffee break. I took another step inside and looked around. The place reminded me of the dorm I’d lived in when I’d gone to college. Large windows looking out on the park. Cream-colored walls with scuff-marked baseboards. Metal-framed blue and tan Naugahyde chairs and sofas grouped in strategic locales. Three vending machines. A large bulletin board by the entrance full of notices for dorm meetings, campus events, and people seeking rides. Someone had written ‘Remember, quiet time means quiet’ on a piece of pink paper in red Magic Marker and tacked it on the wall facing the stairwell. Someone else had written ‘Get a life’ under it. A third person had scrawled ‘Get drunk’ under that.

  The two girls and boy fell silent when I approached them.

  “I’ve been hired by Bryan Hayes to help find his sister, Melissa,” I explained. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  The boy scowled. “Listen,” he told me. “We’ve been t
hrough this already. We didn’t know her. We told the police, we told the campus cops, and now I’m telling you.”

  “So you’re not going to help me?”

  “We can’t help you.” The boy sounded annoyed.

  “Can you at least tell me who her friends were?”

  He put his hands on his hips. “How can I tell you who her friends were if I didn’t know her?”

  It struck me that none of them sounded particularly upset, and I told them so.

  “Of course we’re upset,” the girl who was wearing tortoiseshell-framed glasses said. “But Melissa disappeared four months ago.” She made the four months sound like four centuries. I guess when you’re raised on sound bites, your time sense gets messed up.

  After a few more tries along those lines I gave up and started toward the stairs. Hopefully, I’d find someone who was a little chattier on Melissa’s floor, but not many students were around, and the ones who were didn’t have much to say. According to them, Melissa was a girl who kept to herself. Well, maybe she was or maybe they didn’t want to talk to me. I couldn’t decide which, but I handed out my cards in case anyone remembered anything later on.

  The room Melissa had lived in, Room 203, was down the corridor and to the left. My eyes caught the names on the door as I stopped in front of it. Beth Wright and Stephanie Glass. It looked as if the university didn’t expect Melissa to come back either. From where I was standing I could see white curtains, a row of teddy bears sitting on the heat register, a desk, a chair full of clothes, and two made-up beds. A boy with a military haircut was lying on his side on the one closest to the window, reading.

  “I’m looking for Beth Wright,” I said after I knocked.

  The boy sat up and swung his legs over the bed. “She’s not here.”

  “So I see.” I smelled pizza and some sort of floral perfume as I took a step inside the room. I could tell from the way the kid looked at me, he didn’t like me in there. “Maybe you can help me,” I asked before he could say anything.

  “Possibly.” He studied me, his expression guarded, waiting to see what was coming next.

  “Did you know Melissa Hayes?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Her brother hired me to find her. I’d like to ask you a few questions if I may.”

  The boy put a bookmark in his book, closed it, and stood up. Despite the T-shirt, jeans, and two pierced ears, his bearing was military. “It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?”

  “I hope not.”

  “You really think you can locate her?”

  “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have taken the job.” I pointed to the sugar glider’s cage. “I’m surprised that he’s still here.”

  The boy’s face softened slightly. “Well, Melissa’s brother didn’t want him, and since her mother is sick, Beth didn’t know what else to do.”

  “And her new roommate doesn’t care?”

  “No, ma’am. She likes him.”

  I went over to the sugar glider’s cage and peered in. The little animal was curled up in its sleeping box. All I saw was a tiny ball of silvery gray fur.

  “He’s noctural,” the boy explained.

  “I know.” I straightened up. “Do you mind my asking who you are?”

  “No, ma’am.” He came to attention. “I’m Chris Furst, a friend of Beth’s.” A soldier on the parade ground. The only thing missing was the salute.

  “Are you a student here?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Getting this kid to talk was definitely going to be a trick and a half. “Did you know Melissa?”

  He nodded.

  “Did you know her well?”

  The sound of rap music from down the hall seeped into the room while Chris thought. He obviously wasn’t someone given to unconsidered statements. “As well as anyone, I expect,” he finally said. “She pretty much kept to herself.”

  “I’ve gathered as much. What do you think happened to her?”

  “At first I thought she just took some extra vacation time, but obviously that didn’t turn out to be the case.”

  “Was anything bothering her?”

  Chris ran a hand over the top of his brush cut. “Such as what?”

  “I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking you.” When Chris didn’t answer, I added, “I’m never going to find her if I don’t get some help.”

  “It probably doesn’t matter much now anyway.”

  “Does that mean you think she’s dead?”

  “Maybe she just doesn’t want to be found.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you sure?” I caught his gaze and held it. After moment he looked away.

  What he said next, he said begrudgingly, measuring out each word. “She was upset.”

  I waited. A phone began ringing. After eight rings it stopped and another one started.

  “Beth told me she used to cry in her sleep a lot. Beth told her she should go talk to a counselor at the health center. She kept saying she would, but I don’t think she ever did.”

  “Do you have any idea why she was crying?”

  Chris looked embarrassed. “Well, her mother is ... you know.” Death as the unmentionable.

  I nodded to show I did. “But is there anything specific that happened? Anything traumatic?”

  “Not that I know about.”

  I pointed to the bed I was standing near. “Is this where Melissa slept?”

  “Yes.” Irrelevant observation. Chris had long eyelashes.

  “Her brother came and got all of her things. Except for this.” He walked over to the far desk, grabbed a book, and handed it to me.

  I read the title. Moral Responsibility: Why We Are Our Brother’s Keeper.

  “Beth keeps on meaning to give it to Bryan. Will you?”

  “Sure.” I casually thumbed through it.

  “It was one of her philosophy texts.”

  On the front page someone had written:

  We are our sister’s keepers

  Keepers of ourselves.

  Keepers of the flame

  Fanning the embers of tenderness.

  I showed the poem to Chris. “Is that Melissa’s handwriting?”

  “I guess so. I’m not really sure.”

  “Did Melissa write poetry?”

  “She never showed any to me if she did.”

  The book’s pages came together with a dull thud when I closed them. Writing bad poetry was the prerogative of college students. I’d done my share when I’d gone to school. For a few seconds I wondered if Chris wrote any too, but then I got back to the matter at hand. “I take it you know Bryan Hayes?”

  “I’ve seen him around.”

  “What’s your opinion of him?”

  Chris looked straight ahead. “I don’t have one, ma’am.” He was back in parade-ground mode, obviously his refuge against questions he didn’t want to answer.

  “Why is that?”

  “We haven’t spent much time together.”

  “You don’t like him, do you?”

  “I don’t know him.”

  “But you must have formed an opinion.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  He obviously had, but I let the lie go by. “Did you hear Bryan tried to beat up Melissa’s boyfriend?”

  Chris nodded.

  “Do you know what happened?”

  “I heard he charged into the frat house with a bat, but the guys got him before he could do any damage.”

  “Do you know why he attacked him?”

  Chris blinked. Lots of women I knew would kill for lashes like that. “He blames him for his sister’s disappearance.”

  “But you don’t, right?” I asked, interpreting the look on his face.

  “That’s right, ma’am, I don’t,” replied Chris. He was looking at everything in the room except me.

  I stifled a sigh. Talking to this kid was like walking in molasses. Slow and irritating. I wonder
ed if he was trying to hide something, or was he just naturally cautious. “How about calling me Robin?” I suggested, trying to lighten the conversation.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He laughed and apologized.

  “You know, when I went to college, all the guys I knew wanted to stay out of the army.”

  “That’s what my dad says.”

  “How long have you been in ROTC?”

  Chris looked genuinely surprised. “How’d you know?”

  “Innate genius.”

  “This is my third year,” he told me as I studied the view from the window. You could see the park. The trees and grass were covered with a thin dusting of white powder.

  “Pretty, isn’t it?” I observed.

  “Very.” The line of his mouth softened.

  “Do you ski?”

  “I used to. I don’t have the time anymore.” His tone was wistful.

  “Did Melissa?”

  “No. She just jogged.”

  “I understand she was upset about her roommate’s death.”

  “Jill’s?”

  I nodded.

  Chris pulled his shoulders back ever so slightly. “We all took that pretty hard, ma’am.”

  “I bet.” At least he was willing to talk about her. Interesting. I thought about what Marks had said during lunch. “Did they have a special connection?”

  Chris blinked. “As in how?”

  “I heard they might be lovers.”

  “Forget it. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard. Who told you that?’ ”

  I waved my hand in the air. “It doesn’t matter.” I changed the subject. “Who were Melissa’s friends?”

  Chris answered that question immediately. “After Jill died, Beth was about it. Except that once in a while she’d hang out with Holland and Brandy. Her suitemates,” he explained.