Three Women Disappear

by James Patterson

  “Well, they let me take a last look at my husband, and what did I find? Bottles of Jim Beam scattered all across the floor of the cab. They got that one detail wrong, and some nights that’s what I’m most angry over. ’Cause that one detail is enough for me to know, but not nearly enough for me to prove a thing.”

  “You think they wanted you to know?”

  “Honey, I’m sure of it. There are vindictive people in this world, and mostly they’re the ones who crave power. Which is why you’re going to need a good cover story. A better story than the one you’ve got now, Michelle.”

  I said I agreed. I started to tell her my real name, but she held up a hand.

  “Let’s stick with Michelle. We can build around that. For now, we should get over to the diner. I’ll put you on kitchen duty for tonight. Not sure how smart it’d be to have a fugitive circulating among the clientele.”

  Kitchen duty meant mopping the floor, doing the dishes as they came in, fetching ingredients from the walk-in freezer, making sure Doris’s coffee cup was never less than half-full. Peeling carrots and potatoes was as close as I came to actual cooking.

  On the one hand, it was busywork, but on the other hand, I couldn’t see how she got by without more help. For a cut-rate diner in the middle of nowhere, the place was hopping. Which isn’t to say there were people spilling out into the parking lot, but the steady stream never let up. And Doris was pulling double duty, cooking and covering the tables her lone waitress couldn’t handle.

  When the last customer had left and the OPEN sign was turned to CLOSED, Doris came to keep me company while I finished the last of the dishes.

  “You’ve got a work ethic on you,” she said. “I’ll give you that much. Now let’s see what you can do with this.”

  She handed me a slotted metal spatula. At first I was confused. I thought she wanted me to wash it.

  “Looks like it’s already clean,” I said.

  “I’m aware of that. I wanna see what kind of chops you’ve got behind a skillet.”

  She pointed to the stove, where she’d already laid out a half dozen eggs.

  “You choked down my waffles earlier. We both know I can’t cook worth a damn. Truth is, quality or lack thereof doesn’t move the needle on your bottom line when 90 percent of your business drifts in off the highway. But since you fell out of the sky, I figure, why not make the place respectable? At least for as long as you stick around. So how about it? Wanna prove to me you’re ready for the breakfast stampede?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Call me that again and the deal’s off. Meantime, make me an omelet I can’t forget.”

  An omelet is like the scrapyard of breakfast foods: you can throw in just about anything you want and end up with a meal that’s at least edible. I ran around the kitchen searching out the real crowd-pleasers: cheese (at least two kinds—one sharp, one mild), butter, onions (shallots are better, but Doris didn’t seem to have any in stock), mushrooms, finely chopped ham, spinach and/or kale.

  Doris sat on a stool, watching me dice and mix, watching me angle the skillet as needed to make sure all the egg was getting cooked. When I was done, I slid the finished product onto a plate and handed it over.

  “Oh, no,” Doris said. “Let’s do this proper.”

  She walked through the kitchen’s double doors and took a seat at the counter. I followed on her heels. Half joking, Doris pulled a paper napkin from one of the dispensers and fashioned it into a bib. I set the plate in front of her, gave a little bow, then stared anxiously as she took the first bite.

  “Well, well,” she said. “These are the tastiest unborn chickens I ever put in my mouth.”

  I was sweaty and aching and tired, but I couldn’t stop myself from grinning ear to ear.

  “So I’m hired?” I asked.

  “Think you can do what you just did thirty times in an hour? I mean, you can cook—but can you line cook?”

  She had a point. I’d never before had to ply my trade in a high-volume environment. But having your back to the wall gives you a new kind of confidence.

  “Easy as breathing,” I said.

  She thought it over.

  “I’ll give you three hundred a week to start, plus room and board—board being whatever you want to fix for yourself here at the diner. It’s not the best deal in the world, but it’s what I can afford.”

  For the second time that day, I thrust my hand across the counter.

  “Deal,” I said.

  Chapter 25

  “SO GLAD you found your place in the world,” Haagen said, looking at her watch, “but can we speed this along?”

  “You’re the one who asked for every detail.”

  This was the closest I’d come to talking back.

  “Every relevant detail,” she said.

  “I thought the relevance was for you to decide?”

  She didn’t have anything to say to that. Her interruption only made me want to go slower. Detective Haagen, with her ramrod posture and her smug little frown, was becoming someone I seriously disliked.

  “So can I continue?” I asked.

  She nodded and snarled at the same time.

  It took me a couple of days to get settled, a full week to make every item on the menu my own, but from there it was smooth sailing. I added ginger and lemon to the roast chicken, pepper and a touch of paprika to the cheddar burger. I got rid of the powdered mashed potatoes and started from scratch, adding a healthy dose of onion and garlic. Once we sold out of the frozen pies, I replaced them with my own homemade recipes: almond flour and vanilla extract in the key lime, Granny Smiths and a touch of sour cream in the apple.

  The customers weren’t increasing in number, but they were eating more, coming back for seconds and sometimes thirds. I even got the line cook lingo down:

  “Two Ts on the hoof, sticks in the alley, and my radio’s waiting,” Doris would yell.

  “On it,” I’d yell back.

  Still, every time the little Liberty Bell above the entrance rang, I’d feel a quick jolt of fear, like maybe it was a state trooper or a fed or a plain old cop come to haul me away. This fear meant that, as much as possible, I kept to the kitchen, out of sight of the customers.

  When I did venture through the double doors, I seemed to get noticed. Once, as I was on my way to the restroom, a trucker at the counter stopped me to say how much he’d enjoyed his flapjacks. Then he gave me a long once-over.

  “Your name’s Michelle, right?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “You’re her, aren’t you?”

  “Her?”

  “You were in that movie? What’s it called? The one where you drown at the end?”

  I’d started to claim mistaken identity when a customer two stools down said, “Michelle! That’s Michelle Brown. You researching a role? Gonna be in one of those trucker serial-killer flicks?”

  By now, every head at the counter was turned toward me.

  “Give us a little Shakespeare,” yelled a man in a Texas Rangers cap seated at the far end. It sounded like a catcall.

  “I don’t act anymore, fellas,” I said, and walked away.

  The fellas was me playing to my audience, trying out a word Sarah Roberts-Walsh would never use. I liked it. It felt like something Marilyn Monroe or Mae West might say. I thought, Maybe this is my cover story. Michelle Brown, failed actress. Maybe that’s who I am now.

  Meanwhile, life as Doris’s housemate was going just fine. At first I had trouble sleeping in the palatial but rickety spare bedroom, where I made a nightly roundup of spiders and moths before switching off the light. The ancient windows that looked as though they might disintegrate if you so much as tapped them did nothing to block out the not-so-distant hum of the highway, and the sound of a car driving past Doris’s property would have me sitting bolt upright in bed. Little by little, though, I calmed down. The highway became white noise. I stopped noticing local traffic. And fourteen-hour days on my feet had me falling asleep befo
re my head hit the pillow.

  Doris and I were so busy at the diner that just about the only socializing we did outside of work was during target practice. Every day, between lunch and dinner, Doris had me out on her meadowlike lawn, shooting at cans.

  “Someday you might actually hit one,” she joked.

  The problem, for me, was the recoil. I couldn’t pull that trigger without being knocked backward, without the bruise on my shoulder turning a new and darker shade. Day after day, I looked like a comic practicing her pratfalls. Until the day I didn’t. Until the day—which at first didn’t feel any different from any other day—I found my balance and cleared the field.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Doris said. “We’re going to have to find you smaller cans.”

  Roughly three weeks into my new life, Doris announced that she had a gift for me. She was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, before sunup, as I came stumbling down in my all-white line cook’s outfit. I could smell coffee in the background—about the only thing Doris made at home.

  “Here you go,” she said, handing over a small box meticulously wrapped in shiny polka-dotted paper, a red bow sitting on top.

  My morning fog lifted. I felt half-giddy, half-embarrassed: shouldn’t it have been me giving Doris a gift? I hugged her, then took the box and carefully peeled away the wrapping. Inside, beneath a bed of yellow rose petals, I found a forged driver’s license featuring my photo and borrowed name: Michelle Brown. Michelle was thirty (a generous guess on Doris’s part), weighed 120 (another generous guess), and lived on Serpentine Road in Phoenix, Arizona.

  “How did you…”

  “I may be a hick,” Doris said, “but I’m a hick with resources. Consider it a housewarming. And don’t ask any more questions.”

  I’m not ashamed to say that I got a little teary. Doris put herself at risk. She committed a crime on my behalf. More importantly, she believed me. I hugged her again, held on until she pushed me away.

  “Just do me a favor,” she said. “Make this an honest-to-God rebirth. Figure out who you want to be, and pour all of it into Michelle. No more letting men set your course for you. Michelle’s a shitkicker who takes no guff.”

  “I promise,” I said.

  “Good. Now let’s go feed some hungry truckers.”

  Up until then, I’d made no effort to check in on my old life. Not by phone or text or email or postcard. I’d been dying to hop on Doris’s laptop and google “Hunt for Sarah Roberts-Walsh,” but I didn’t dare: even search items can be traced these days. But that afternoon, Michelle decided to skip target practice and head to a nearby laundromat, pockets weighted down with quarters. Doris had a machine of her own, but what I wanted was a good old-fashioned pay phone, and the Happy Laundry Laundromat had one of the few remaining public phones in the state.

  I smiled at the attendant, headed straight for the back wall, started feeding coins into the slot.

  “Hello?” Aunt Lindsey said.

  “Aunt Linds?”

  “Sarah?”

  “Listen,” I said, “I can’t talk for long, but I need to know if you’re okay.”

  “Me? What about you? Are you calling from—”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “Oh, thank God.”

  Inside, I felt as though I might dissolve just from the sheer comfort of hearing her voice, but I stuck a smile on my face for the sake of the laundromat’s patrons, tried to make it look as though I was sharing good news. And in a way I was.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Better than fine. I’ve landed in a good place.”

  “Of course you have,” she said. “That’s just your style.”

  “Anyone been asking for me?”

  “Oh, yes, a steady parade. I think there’s even a cop parked down the street.”

  I hoped it was a cop.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I didn’t tell them anything more than I told Sean: ‘Ain’t seen her.’ And now that’s been true for too long. God, I miss you.”

  “Me, too, Aunt Linds,” I said. “I love you.”

  And then I hung up.

  I thought I’d feel homesick to the point of breaking, but driving back to Doris’s place I was nearly bouncing in my seat. Hearing Aunt Lindsey’s voice reminded me that there were people out there who could be trusted. People worth loving. It made me believe that Doris was real, that she wasn’t on the internet right now, checking to see how much she’d get for turning me in.

  That night, I fell asleep before my head hit the pillow. I dreamed of lazy beach days with Aunt Lindsey, when I was a child and she was still young. Sloping sandcastles and rainbow ices and the tide carrying us backward. The kind of days that dropped by the wayside once I hit my angry teenage years.

  And then I woke up. I couldn’t say what it was that woke me. Maybe a truck had backfired? Maybe Doris had taken a midnight bathroom break? The plumbing was about what you’d expect from a hundred-year-old home on the prairie.

  I glanced over at the clock, then rolled onto my side. That was when I saw him, standing in the doorway, the right side of his blazer tucked behind his gun. I knew who it was before that tall, lean frame came all the way into focus.

  “Hello there, Sarah,” Sean said.

  Chapter 26

  I SQUINTED through the darkness. He stood silhouetted against the lamplight like a cartoon villain. It was almost comical.

  “Sorry to wake you,” he said. “But really I have no choice.”

  Slowly, I reached toward my nightstand, fumbled for my glasses—glasses I only wore when Sean was around, as if somehow they’d make him think before raising his fist.

  “You have a lot of choices,” I said.

  “Not really. Not since you ran from the scene of a murder. That was your choice, but somehow it seems I’m the one paying for it.”

  “That’s a situation you created.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “No,” I said. “Did you?”

  If he’d been close enough I would have felt the back of his hand one more time. Instead, he switched on the light, stepped inside, shut the door behind him.

  “In case you’re thinking of running again, there are two sheriffs parked out front. They did me a favor, let me come in alone.”

  He started toward me, then stopped and sat on the edge of the bed. He reached over, took my hand.

  “I’ve been worried sick about you, Sarah,” he whispered. “I suppose you don’t believe me, but it’s true.”

  I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even flinch. As powerful as Sean was, as quick as he was to dole out a slap or a kick, it was the gentle, reassuring voice that I’d come to fear most. Because the longer the calm, the more violent the storm.

  “Please just go,” I said.

  “You know I can’t, baby. The only question is whether you’re going to make me break out the cuffs.”

  For a while we just stared at each other. I could imagine the nostalgia in his eyes, and I have to admit I felt it, too. Not for him, but for the man I’d convinced myself he was, back when he was wooing me and I was letting myself be wooed.

  “Okay,” he said. “We’ll do this the hard way.”

  He stood, took a step back, pulled out his handcuffs, and twirled them around one finger.

  “You want to pretend I’m the bad guy and you’re all sweetness and light, but the truth is—”

  “Get your ass on the ground!” Doris screamed.

  The door flew open so fast I couldn’t tell if she’d pushed it or kicked it. And then she was standing there with her twelve-gauge pointed at Sean’s jewels. At first Sean didn’t react. Then he looked back and forth between me and Doris, his smile growing wider and wider.

  “I said on the ground.”

  She pumped the shotgun for effect. Sean didn’t blink.

  “Doris,” I said, “it’s okay.”

  “Now!” she yelled.

  “Lady—”

  “Shut your mouth. Before you launch into an avalanche o
f bullshit, you should know that killing doesn’t scare me, and neither does getting killed. Everything I love’s been butchered by bastards like you. And so help me you’re about to pay for it.”

  Sean let her anger simmer for a moment, then turned solemn.

  “This has nothing to do with you, ma’am. I recommend you back off.”

  “Kneel,” said Doris. “Lock your fingers behind your head.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Sean,” I said. “Sean, just please don’t—”

  “There are armed deputies outside,” he told Doris. “That shotgun you’re holding will make short work of me, but I hope you were telling the truth when you said you’re ready to die.”

  She stepped closer, then—in a move I wouldn’t have thought a woman her age could pull off—kicked his legs out from under him.

  “Now you’re on your knees,” she said.

  Sean ignored her. He looked up at me.

  “You sure this is what you want?” he said. “I can still help you. I want to help you. I love you, Sarah. Don’t tell me it’s over between us.”

  “You know it is, Sean. It was over even before all of this.”

  “I don’t believe that. You don’t believe it. I’m the only one who—”

  “Shut your goddamn mouth,” Doris said, inching forward, pressing the barrel against his ear.

  But Sean was losing his patience.

  “I’m going to count to five,” he said, “and if I don’t hear that gun hitting the ground, I’m going to forget you’re a lady.”

  “Just do what he says, Doris.”