When He Vanished

by T. J. Brearton

  “Thank you.” It’s my turn to ask a question, something I’ve been burning to know since I first saw the Subaru. “Can you . . . what was in John’s notebook?”

  “Jane. I can’t discuss that with you.”

  “All right.”

  “But I do have something to ask you — does the name Olympia mean anything to you?”

  “No. Was it in the notebook?”

  “Again, I’m just going to keep certain information with me for now. It’s better for you and for me. This way when I ask you about certain things we avoid any sort of contamination. So, nothing comes to mind?”

  “Olympia? No.”

  “Okay. I’ll get back to you when I know more about Marcus. And with definitive blood results.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE / THE BODY

  Wednesday, March 27th

  I swing my legs over the cushions and the floor feels cool beneath my bare feet. The events of the past days are a blur of faces and a cacophony of voices. Not sleeping at night, fatigue forces me to nap during the day.

  I wake my laptop at the kitchen island and it suddenly occurs to me that I don’t hear my kids.

  “Russ? Melody?”

  Melody appears first, blinking at me from the mouth of the hallway. “Yeah?”

  Then Russ scoots into view. “What is it, Mom?”

  “What time is it?”

  Melody scowls at me, walks a ways into the kitchen, looks and points. There’s a digital clock on the stove in plain view. “Um, it’s two-thirty, Mom.”

  “Okay.”

  She holds her gaze on me. Russ has already dismissed my apparent lack of observation. “Can I have a snack, Mom?”

  “In a minute.”

  The kids don’t move and I wave them off with the back of my hand. “Go on. I’ll get you guys something to eat in a little bit.”

  Russ leaps off to his room. Melody backs away more slowly. I need to get them outside to play; the weather has improved some. Neither of my kids have been to school all week — have they been getting any exercise or have I relegated them to their rooms like prisoners? The kitchen smells funky, like spoiled milk. I give my armpits a sniff and notice that I’m a little rank as well. I have a headache. But my attention wanders back to the computer before I do anything about it.

  Olympia.

  My research is still there from before I zonked out: Olympia is a sports company. It’s the capital city in Washington State. It’s a Greek sanctuary, site of the Olympic Games in ancient times. It’s also a men’s bodybuilding competition and the name for a zillion other things, including some people. But what holds my fascination is the painting by Édouard Manet.

  The original is kept at the Musée d’Orsay and depicts a nude woman reclined on a chaise longue, propped up on some pillows while a dark-skinned servant brings her flowers. According to a few different sites I visit, the painting caused a scandal when it was exhibited at the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris, 1865. Manet was criticized for “crude” work, lacking the dignified and almost mythological depiction of nudity in such paintings as Titian’s Venus of Urbino.

  I check out the latter and see the similarities and contrasts: Manet’s figure is less voluptuous, the image is darker and flatter and, if it weren’t for the black servant delivering the bouquet of flowers, she could be mistaken for a prostitute. I’m no art history major, but it strikes me that Manet might have been an early feminist. Was my husband writing about some controversial piece of art or am I completely off my rocker?

  I’m transfixed by the black cat at the foot of the woman’s bed. The woman and her servant are realistic, but the cartoonish cat leers with large, crooked eyes and has an arched back and mangy fur. I feel like I’m that cat — an odd version of myself, perpetually alarmed and bug-eyed as my life makes less and less sense. Then again, maybe I’m the woman. Plain, hard to read.

  John, where are you?

  I ask this in the doorway of his study. Reaching over to touch the cold place in the bed beside me, I close my eyes and try to sense the answer. Nights are spent googling about missing spouses, eager to hear from anyone who’s been through this how they coped. I devour stories of reunited loved ones, but the world of missing persons is mostly an abandoned place of unanswered prayers and isolated, lonely people. Most of the missing are either located within seventy-two hours or not until years later. If ever.

  This is the fourth day that John has been missing, if you include Sunday. In a strange and bittersweet way, I’m becoming accustomed to it.

  Since we were married, we’ve never been apart more than two nights in a row. I’ve been to nursing conferences overnight, spent a night or two alone with the kids at the lake house. This is a record.

  Olympia. Meaning what? I have to know what was in John’s notebook, what he was working on last. What if he really was doing some sort of book research when something happened?

  I’m so tired. Limping around like a three-legged dog with too many scents on its mind. When my phone rings I can’t find it right away. It jiggles against the coffee maker and I answer an unfamiliar caller. “Hello?”

  “Jane Gable? It’s Eve Sheppard with Channel Five News.”

  I leave the kitchen. I’ve installed drapes over the window beside the front door and I push one back. The news van is in the road; the cameraman and reporter are on my lawn. I see the woman’s mouth move, just out of sync with the words in my ear.

  “Mrs. Gable, we’d appreciate an update from you on the status of your husband and the ongoing search.”

  “You’re on my property.”

  “If we could just have a quick—”

  “Call Detective Ridley,” I say, and hang up.

  Eve Sheppard looks at her phone, then at the house, and I duck out of sight.

  I’m back in the kitchen when someone knocks on the front door.

  “I’ll get it!” Russ yells. He pounds down the hallway and I rush to intercept him. The activity traumatizes my lower back. Shit. Not again.

  “Leave it,” I tell Russ with a clenched jaw.

  “But, Mom . . .”

  “Russell. It’s a TV reporter, milking this for ratings. Just ignore the door.”

  “Milking what? Why do they want to film us? Maybe I want to be on TV!”

  “Russell!”

  He gives me a puppy-dog look and skulks back to his bedroom. Eve Sheppard’s head shows in the door window. Part of me wants to storm outside and give her a piece of my mind, but that wouldn’t help anything. Plus I need to take it easy now — any more aggravation and I’m going to wind up immobile. And I just got my back sorted out, too.

  “Mrs. Gable? Please open up.” Her muffled voice sounds plaintive, like her life depends on my giving an on-camera statement. How I love my husband and wish for his safe return and want to thank all the men and women of law enforcement — don’t forget the local community — for their support. Fine, if that’s what it takes to get rid of her.

  I waddle painfully to the door, unlock and yank it open.

  The camera light blasts on as soon as I’m standing on the threshold and Sheppard sticks a microphone in my face.

  “Mrs. Gable, Channel Five News has learned that police have found an unidentified body of a male in his thirties. Do you have any comment on this?”

  * * *

  “The body is a man named Carl Dixon,” Ridley tells me an hour later. “A known drug dealer.”

  “A drug dealer?”

  “Multiple felon. Connected to some pretty scary people.”

  “So not Marcus?”

  “Correct. As of less than an hour ago, Marcus Gainsborough is no longer missing.”

  “Wait — what?”

  “We’ve located him. He booked a flight to Belize three days ago. Local authorities there have made contact with him.”

  “Is he returning to the States? What’s he saying — is he saying he talked to John at any point?”

  “We can’t force Mr. Gainsborough to return home. The local
authorities found him in good health and he’s willing to answer more questions. But so far he’s said he knows nothing about your husband.”

  Melody is safe. It’s something solid, at least, something I can rely on.

  A drug dealer is dead, his body found in a hasty woodland grave by a couple of hikers and their curious dog. Then there’s an abandoned vehicle, a black BMW, stripped of plates and sitting in a Walmart parking lot about twenty miles away. What does it all add up to?

  “The trail where the hikers found Carl Dixon isn’t far from where John’s car was parked at the rest area,” Ridley says. She doesn’t come right out and say it, but I can hear it in the space between her words: the police are checking down any possible link between my husband and the dead man.

  John. Oh God, John. Getting into drugs? Then something went horribly, horribly wrong?

  I feel like a pincushion of emotions.

  Ridley understands and we end the conversation.

  “Russ?”

  I hear something thud and then a crash. “Yeah, Mom?”

  “You okay?”

  “Uh-huh!”

  “Where’s your sister?”

  “In her room!”

  After ten minutes rumbling around in the kitchen I call them in to eat. My laptop is sitting open on the island. I was researching Olympia before the reporter interrupted with her bombshell news. Once the kids are seated at the table I sit back down on the stool and check my email for the tenth time that day — I just can’t help it.

  There’s nothing new, but before logging off I feel a pulse of inspiration and check my spam folder. It’s the usual junk advertisements and newsletters I never signed up for.

  And a message from LBarnes409 that stops my breath.

  It’s just one line: Remember your wedding.

  LBarnes. That has to be Rainey. AKA Lorraine Barnes. But why is she writing me and what does she mean? I’m practically shivering with adrenaline as I type a response.

  Rainey — is this you?

  I hit Send and stare at the kids gobbling down their mac and cheese like I haven’t fed them for days. I was sitting at this very same table when Rainey asked how John and I met, and he told her, “the old-fashioned way,” and then I briefly described our humble little wedding at the lake house.

  “Can I have some juice?” Russ asks.

  “You know where to find it.” It feels like I can’t move. If I do, I might begin to disintegrate.

  He gives me a look, shrugs, and heads for the fridge.

  “Get me some too, Russy,” Melody says.

  “Every man for himself.”

  “I’m not a man. I’m a woman.”

  The laptop chimes with a new message.

  It’s been automatically delivered, it says, from the mail server host — a failed delivery notice. My reply to LBarnes409 has bounced back. Either she deleted the email account in the past seven hours or it was configured to reject anything incoming. I don’t even know whether that’s possible or not, but in my heightened state of paranoia, it seems like something Rainey would do. After all, she ran a security company in Florida, didn’t she?

  The kids are still bickering as I walk down the hall to John’s study and stand in the doorway.

  Remember your wedding.

  Did Bruce figure something out? If so, why not contact me directly? Why have his wife do it? Unless maybe he’s using her email. I bring up his contact on my phone and make the call.

  After a few rings, his same outgoing message: “Hi, it’s Bruce . . .”

  I look around John’s office with fresh eyes, seeing it for the man-cave that it is, the secrets it harbors.

  The cops have John’s computer, phone, and tax records. I’ve pored over his books and notes. I find myself looking at our wedding picture, the one with John holding me up. There’s another one beside it: after getting the formal shots, the photographer had us loosen up and do something goofy. In my simple white dress, I hold up a sign that reads He cooks! and John, looking dapper in his dark blue suit, holds one up saying She has insurance!

  Behind us, framed by poplar trees, is Lake Ontario.

  Seeing John’s smiling face wipes out all the bitterness. He can be a total pain in the ass, but he’s my husband, my partner. He’s always treated me with respect.

  Selma’s voice floats up from my memories: He loves you.

  They’re telling me something. Selma and Rainey. Selma has a degenerative disease and she could have been talking about anything, probably her own tangled memories — it’s just random coincidence. But Rainey is a different story. Her husband has been trying to help me, taking my side when the cops seemed more suspicious of me than worried about John.

  I step back from the picture and my weight causes the floor to creak.

  After staring at the wedding picture some more, I ease my weight onto my back foot and then onto my front foot, listening to the sound. When John remodeled this room, he had to level the floor. I remember the construction process — John showed me how he put down sleepers and added insulation between the old and new floors. The floor in this room is solid, but there’s this one spot where it creaks beneath the braided area rug.

  I lower myself down carefully and roll up the rug. Pergo flooring is laid down in a staggered pattern so that there aren’t any long seams between the slats, but there’s one section where the seams form a square. And the edges of the square are a little ragged, the Pergo slightly chipped as if someone made a cut.

  Heart beating harder, I slide my fingertips over the seams. I need something — like a butter knife. A moment later I’m digging in and lifting out a corner. Beneath the laminate flooring is a square of plywood. It’s a little harder to leverage out and I’m starting to sweat. I can’t seem to pry it up because it’s an inch thick. The cat’s paw and hammer do the trick: they splinter the plywood and I’m able to lever it back and pop it out.

  Beneath is a space about six inches deep. Inside is a metal box.

  I pull it out, my arms rippling with goosebumps, adrenaline prickling around my ears. The box is unlocked.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR / THE GUN

  Nothing makes any sense. John has never owned a gun. Maybe he used a rifle when he was younger for hunting, but we’ve never had a gun in our house.

  I look at it, spit gone from my throat, fingers tingling with a sudden numbness.

  Don’t touch it.

  I don’t even know what kind it is or whether it’s loaded or not.

  Though it does look familiar.

  I look up at the wedding picture again. Rainey’s message was a ray of hope, now it seems like an omen — I’m already certain that this gun will match to the drug dealer’s body and that John’s fingerprints will be all over it.

  The next idea seizes me so fully and forcibly I feel choked for air: Mom shot Daryl Chase with a 9mm Glock.

  The name of a caliber and brand I heard repeatedly for several weeks during her trial. A weapon I saw pictures of during my deposition. This is it.

  Leland snuck into the house and put it here. That’s the only explanation. It’s Leland, not Marcus, setting this whole thing up — Leland, having his revenge after all. I’ve underestimated him.

  I start looking around the office, but I’m not seeing anything. Temporary blindness, they call it — only my vision is intact, but objects have lost all meaning. I’ve finally arrived in that alien world that mirrors my own; the parallel reality rubbing up against mine has now taken over.

  Only the sound of my children brings me back: plates dropped into the sink, the pounding of feet, the squeak of Russ’s voice and the frustrated mumble of his older sister.

  My children, my home. Invaded by these hostile elements. My mother was right: there are dark forces at work, people behind things, pulling the strings, lying to the public about anything and everything and reality is an illusion crafted by Hollywood and Madison Avenue. In truth, we’re all lost.

  Plain Jane. She’s insane. Her life is a muth
a-fuckin runaway train! Oh!

  No it’s not. I can handle this. I can take the gun and I can hide it somewhere else. Or destroy it. Guns can be destroyed, right? Because the cops will never believe me. No way. Not after everything that’s happened. Not when my mother nearly killed a man with the very weapon in my floorboards, not when they’ve been looking at me hot-eyed with suspicion all along . . .

  No.

  It’s impossible. My mother is in jail and the gun she used to fend off the abusive, wife-beating Daryl Chase would have been impounded. Put in an evidence locker — whatever they do.

  It’s a cop plant, then, a salting of the mine shaft. Did Gorski stick this in my floor to screw with me? How deep does this thing go?

  I see Karen’s face, feel the knowing vibes coming off of her in waves as she watches me pace around on the phone with Ridley. How much of what Karen has told me is true? Any of it? John walking around, yelling into his phone, or Patti from work telling police I threatened to hurt him? They could be making it up, or at least embellishing — part of a conspiracy to sink me and my husband. Why? Because we don’t belong here. Because we’re different. Because—

  Stop it.

  The words ring as if they were spoken aloud, so clear and direct that I look around the office, wondering who’s there.

  Stop it, Jane. This has gone on long enough.

  I’m on my backside, palms down, the open floor between my splayed legs. Like I just gave birth to a baby Glock. The kids could walk in any moment.

  Jane.

  The voice again, it’s in my head, but now it rings familiar.

  Janie . . .

  Only one person besides my mother has ever called me Janie, and that’s John. I listen for more, some detached part of my mind noting that yes, now I am listening to voices in my head.

  There’s nothing else.

  Just a feeling. A feeling that John is reaching out to me, trying to communicate something to me from wherever he is. Maybe there is no such thing as telepathy, maybe there’s no spooky dark force manipulating my world, but there’s intuition, right?

  Snapping into action at last, I cover the floor with the loose Pergo tiles and roll the braided rug back over it. Then I stand, sweating, as Melody appears in the doorway.