When He Vanished

by T. J. Brearton

  “Bedtime. John put Russ to bed at eight o’clock. That’s his usual time. Melody went into her room to read about half an hour later.”

  “And Melody — I’ll speak to her too, if that’s okay — but, from your understanding, Melody didn’t hear your husband leave after she went into her room?”

  “She had her headphones on, listening to music.”

  “She listens to music as she reads?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Did she come out of her room at some point to use the bathroom?”

  “Yes. She says she came out around 9:15. The bathroom is right next to her room. She says she assumed John was in his study. The door was closed.”

  “And you found the door closed when you returned home from work . . .” Ridley consults her notes. “Which was just after midnight.”

  “Correct.”

  “So your husband could have been home when Melody used the bathroom.”

  “He could have.”

  “And after that, after she used the bathroom, she went right back into her room.”

  “That’s what she says.”

  “Continued listening to music, maybe, while she read.”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “So there’s a two-hour gap between when a state trooper first saw your husband’s car at the rest area and when you say you got home to discover him gone, at midnight. Was it right at midnight, or a little after?”

  I take a sip of water. “My shift ends at midnight. It takes me maybe two or three minutes to get here from the hospital.”

  “So you came right home.”

  “Yes.”

  She writes something down then our eyes connect again. “And your son, Russ? He says he saw lights outside?”

  “No. Melody says she might’ve seen headlights. The way they shine through the window.”

  “But your daughter’s bedroom is not—”

  “I guess she means in the living room.”

  “So her door was open?” Ridley reads something in my face and looks down. “I’ll speak to her.”

  “It was Russ who said he saw his father talking to someone. His room is the one at the front of the house — he can see the porch; you know, the stoop.”

  “And he talked about a blonde woman.”

  “Yes. But he’s not sure when.”

  “Okay, so Russ talks about the blonde woman he saw at some point. Melody saw the lights. Was she more specific about the time?”

  “She just said it was late when she saw the lights. Definitely after Russ went to bed, so, after eight o’clock.”

  “Through the open door of her bedroom. In the living-room windows.” Ridley’s gaze holds on me before she looks at the legal pad and jots something else down. “All right. So what we’re going to say, tentatively, is that your husband left the house sometime between 8:30 and midnight. That gives us a range of two to five or so hours that he could have been out, doing whatever he was doing, before depositing the car at the rest area.”

  “Have you learned anything from the car?” I’ve already been over all of these details with Trooper Gorski and I’m anxious to get to new information. Plus I don’t like how Ridley is subtly insinuating that my statements aren’t enough for her to go on. Her timeline is tentative, apparently.

  “Just a minute on the car — we’ll get to that. You’ve said John has a few friends, other than this person who you know as Bruce Barnes, but they’re far-flung. Have you contacted any of them at this point, just to be sure?”

  I take a breath and let it out slowly. “I have contacted John’s friends, yes. He’s not with any of them and he hasn’t called them or anything. Not recently anyway. Have you found Bruce yet?”

  She puts on a smile that’s clearly meant to placate. “I know this has been trying and today has been a very long day. You rightfully want some answers. But I need to go through things in a certain order. All right? So nothing John said to any of them — the last time they did have occasion to speak, or correspond — would indicate plans to leave or anything like that?”

  “I texted with two of them and reached out on Facebook to the third. It was hard to know what to say. But no, none of them had any plans with John. Nothing. That’s why I’m asking about Bruce. He’s the person John did talk to recently, and they talked about, I don’t know, something about John trying something new in his life. He’s been in a work slump. A creative rut, I guess.”

  I know what she’s thinking: that maybe this all has to do with some artistic whimsy gone awry.

  It’s not something I’ve discounted entirely, either.

  “What about the lake house?” I ask.

  “The place on Henderson Harbor?”

  “Yes.”

  She nods, slowly. “We’ve had a trooper check it out. Everything is closed and locked. No one there.” Her dark, smallish eyes fix on mine again. “And you told the state troopers that John wouldn’t be with his relatives? They said you seemed fairly certain, but didn’t elaborate.”

  I take another breath. “John’s mother passed away two years ago. He doesn’t keep in touch with his father and stepmother. We went out there . . . um, last year for a visit. John hasn’t wanted to go back since then.”

  Ridley lifts a notebook sheet with her finger. “I understand John’s father is Frank Gable. After his wife Katherine died — John’s mother — he remarried and has since retired to Arizona.” She looks up at me. “How about you — have you spoken to Frank?”

  “I haven’t.”

  She lets the paper drop and stares at me. “I have his number,” she says with a flat quality. “I’ll be in touch with him.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be difficult. But I just know John is not with him. And if he was, Frank would have called me and let me know. We get along. John still blames Frank for how things went with Katherine. Her sickness, her passing. They didn’t have much, and there was no health insurance. And when Frank remarried so quickly, John was . . . well, it’s been difficult for him.”

  Ridley folds her hands on the table. “And what about your family?”

  Here it comes.

  “I have a half-brother and half-sister. My half-brother is overseas and my sister is in Iowa. I also have a stepbrother, but we’re not in touch since my mother divorced his father. He’s the son of the man she . . . We’re not in touch. He lives in Troy, as far as I know. Yes, my mother has had problems. Both John and I came from . . . you know, I guess we came from troubled homes. And that’s part of our bond.”

  Ridley absorbs all of this and then moves to the next topic with a bob of her head. “Okay. So, the car is going to take some time. Blood type will be quicker — later today or maybe tomorrow — but DNA can take a long time. You said in your statement that you can’t think of anyone else who John has had in his car in at least several weeks. Just you, your two children and John.”

  “Correct.”

  “So once we eliminate the four of you, any additional DNA could point to a fifth person, someone else who’s been in the car. But of course we’ll need those elimination samples from your children. I might ask your stepbrother as well. Since you’re not sure where he lives.”

  Her eyes acquire a smugness, like she’s just caught me in something.

  “Whatever you think,” I say. The idea that my stepbrother could have something to do with this has entered my mind once or twice, revenge for my mother nearly killing his father. But that’s too far out there for me to get a real grip on it as a possibility and Leland is too lazy anyway. And too inept from what I remember of him.

  “Can we talk about your mother’s case a little bit?”

  “My mother took a plea deal,” I say. “Self-defense was too hard to prove because she’d never gotten a medical report or called the police about the abuse. Not to mention that he has money, and I think there were threats of a civil suit if she proceeded with a trial.”

  Ridley frowns and shakes her head. “That’s not right.” She scrib
bles more notes in her pad.

  “I’m not my mother.”

  Her eyes snap up and grab me. “I don’t think I said you were.”

  “My mother grew up in a rough area. She learned to take care of herself. People then were taught and expected to deal with their own problems.”

  Like, you know, shoot them point-blank in the chest.

  Ridley is watching me closely. Then she sets out the yearbook and slides it into the space between us. Lake Haven High School, 1995. My stomach has butterflies.

  “Okay. Now we get to the Bruce thing.” Ridley opens the yearbook to a page marked with a small pink sticky note and points to the picture of a young male amidst similar other photos of students. “This is Bruce Gramone. Is this the man who had dinner here with you and your husband?”

  I only need to glance at it for a moment. “No. That’s not him. Not even close.”

  “You’re sure this man’s last name was Barnes.”

  “That’s what he said when he showed up at my door.”

  Ridley closes the yearbook. “There is only one other Bruce that went to Lake Haven High School, but it’s a Bruce Stratford.”

  “He’s not in there?” I fight an urge to start flipping yearbook pages.

  “He might have missed school on picture day. But I have this . . .” She pulls a file folder out of her bag. I’m looking at redacted documents — police records or something with sections blacked out. She flips to a picture.

  “That’s him!” I tap the picture rapidly. “That’s Bruce . . . Stratford? He said his name was Barnes. I’m sure he said that. When he first showed up.”

  Ridley calmly slides that photo aside, revealing another beneath. “This is Lorraine Barnes.”

  I stare down at it. The face is definitely Rainey’s. The confusion takes just a second to sort out. “Wait . . . he took her name?”

  “Here is a document showing that Bruce Stratford legally changed his name to Bruce Barnes less than two months ago — about a year after the signing of their marriage certificate. That’s why Sergeant Ferron and Trooper Gorski couldn’t find him in the system. Sometimes things are a little slow to filter through and some records with the Department of Public Safety, things like Social Security, don’t always update right away.”

  “Okay . . .” I lean back, momentarily relieved. I remember the way Ferron and Gorski looked at me, like I had some sort of early-onset dementia. I replay the Saturday morning when Bruce came to the door: he introduced himself to me, but did he ever repeat his last name in front of John? It never came up. There would have been a discussion about it. My husband was likely still thinking of his old classmate as Bruce Stratford.

  Or if it did come up and John didn’t react, then he already knew.

  “What about their security company?” I ask. “Does it say anything in the file about their security company?”

  Ridley nods, picking through the papers. “It does. I have a business license from Florida . . . Night Watch LLC. It appears that Bruce Barnes — then Bruce Stratford — and Lorraine Barnes ran this company for a little over two years. They didn’t have many contracts, just one overnight parking facility in Jacksonville, and Bruce worked at a bank for a while. There are a few others . . .” She’s shuffling papers.

  “And that he got shot?”

  “There’s a record of that, too. One of their contracts was for a company called Mango. They’re a big restaurant supplier, lots of shipments coming up from South America, and Bruce was a security guard at one of the ports in Jacksonville. Apparently someone attempted to rob one of the shipments and Bruce tried to prevent it. There was an exchange of gunfire and he was shot through the abdomen.”

  So some of what Bruce has told me is true. I’m not sure if knowing what happened to him is a relief or not. “They said — when we had them over to dinner — that Rainey was sick.”

  Ridley’s brow wrinkles and she shifts through some more papers. “I haven’t found anything of that nature. Did she say what the sickness was?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. I thought, with you having a medical background, you might have asked her.”

  There’s an accusation there, another hint that the police think I’m unreliable.

  “I respected their privacy. If they’d wanted to, they would have mentioned it.”

  “Well I’ll have a look,” Ridley says.

  “They were both . . . they were strange.”

  “How so?”

  I talk a little about how both John and I joked that we expected a donations cup to come around the dinner table, or that they were going to invite us into their pyramid scheme. How they stared into each other’s eyes like Romeo and Juliet. The talking distracts me from the dread that’s settling on my shoulders. I’m one step away from climbing into bed and not getting out. Falling into darkness and despair. But I can’t. I have the kids. John needs my help.

  “So here’s what’s going to happen.” Ridley is putting the yearbook and the files back into her bag. “We’re going to find Bruce and have a talk with him. It all sounds pretty bizarre to me.”

  “Okay.”

  “And we’re continuing the search around the rest stop on I-87 where your husband’s car was found. So far there are no signs of anyone — no blood, no trail. At this point it looks like he didn’t just leave the car and go into the woods. But we’re still looking. You’ve told us what you thought your husband was likely wearing. Have you gone through the shoes to get any idea of which ones he most likely had on?”

  “I did. Everything is there except for his hiking boots.”

  “Are those waffle iron or honeycomb? The treads. What kind of pattern?”

  “I don’t know, I’m sorry — they’re pretty old, though. They might be worn down.”

  “But you think they’re hiking shoes.”

  “I think they’re hiking shoes but that doesn’t mean I think John went hiking.” I’m walking a tightrope: on one side is the possibility of John being the victim of a crime; on the other is the possibility that it’s all his own fault, that while drinking, searching for inspiration, something went wrong. I don’t want to help the police to paint that picture, if only because it might distract or demotivate them.

  I imagine laying my head on John’s shoulder, the smell of aftershave on his neck, the warmth of his body, his green eyes staring into mine. I miss him — happy or grumpy, fat or bald. Throughout this whole ordeal I keep expecting him to be there, to turn to him, to share in this experience with me. It’s like half of me has been cleaved away.

  Ridley hands me a tissue. I didn’t even realize I was crying. I’m not a big crier but since last night, I’m waterworks.

  “We’ll find him,” Ridley says.

  “Do you think he just . . . I don’t know, what do you think?”

  “Does John ever use anything else — or did he — besides alcohol, I mean?”

  “No.”

  “No? Never a joint, nothing like that? Nothing harder?”

  “Pot. Maybe once in a blue moon.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, as part of this . . . this idea to shake things up, as you put it, maybe he had an occasion. Because here’s one theory: Your husband has some people come over to the house. Maybe they were pot dealers. Maybe something else. I know this is tough to hear, but this is the thing . . . We know that sometimes people can have quite severe reactions to combinations of alcohol and drugs. I know a lot of people today think marijuana is harmless, but especially if your husband hadn’t been drinking for a long time, his tolerance would be very low. He might think he can handle a lot. We know that it can really affect decisions.”

  I consider these ideas, but it’s still hard to wrap my mind around. “That wouldn’t explain why his car was found where it was.”

  “If he’s trying to get inspiration, he could be revisiting the area where you and he had the encounter with the SUV.”

  Why haven’t I thought of this? In fact, I bet his little notebook contains thoughts
on a potential story about it. I’m about to ask Ridley but she’s still unspooling her theory.

  “So your husband is there — I’m confident the blood and fingerprints will confirm it — but then something happens. Perhaps he’s outside the vehicle and falls — similar to your fall — and he scrapes himself up. He gets back in the car to drive home, but the fall could have affected him cognitively.”

  “Was the car working? The engine? Did you test it?”

  “One of the first things they did. Yes. Half a tank of gas. The engine turned right over. Everything in working condition.”

  “Wait . . . how did you test it? Did he leave the keys?”

  “That’s right. The keys were on the floorboard in front of the driver’s seat.”

  “John usually tucks them up under the sun visor. I mean when it’s in the driveway. He’s lived up here most of his life and people don’t always lock their cars. I lock mine. Force of habit.”

  “Right. Little things, little behaviors, are not the same. These abnormalities might suggest an addled state. Confused, your husband leaves the car behind. Then he flags someone down, hitches a ride. Either he doesn’t know the way back home, or maybe he forgets. I’ve seen it happen. It’s called a fugue state. You’re probably familiar, as a nurse practitioner.”

  I nod, thinking, or maybe he’s running from someone and has to abandon the Subaru for his safety.

  “We’re expanding the search, but it’s tough. We’re looking at a very wide search area. An area that’s really impossible to cover.” She has just articulated my concerns. “If he got in another vehicle right away, he could be halfway across the country by now. We just don’t know.” She reaches out and pats my hand. “But I think this is going to turn out all right.”

  The way she keeps spinning things positive makes me skeptical. I’ve never been part of an investigation, but offering hope to victims, or families of victims — is that the usual protocol? Why am I doubting everything and everybody involved? John would say I’m over-analytical. “Why do you think it’s going to be all right?”