Confessions on the 7:45

by Lisa Unger

  Hunter had three cases going right now—a missing teenager who was probably a runaway, a couple—doomsday preppers, who had gone off the grid and not been heard from since—and something that was personal, a case he hadn’t been able to solve that was nearing its ten-year anniversary. Because of that milestone, the old case had been on his mind lately, making him cranky. Maybe if he got some closure on that, he could think about that European riverboat trip his wife was pushing for.

  He took his seat at the table.

  “You’re late, son,” said Phil, retired beat cop, tall and skinny-fat—a naturally lean guy who never met a vegetable he could stand, who would only run if chased, who hydrated primarily with bourbon. His belly hung over his belt, tenuously kept in place by his golf shirt. “We ordered for you.”

  “Great,” Hunter said, settling in next to Andrew. “Because my cholesterol isn’t high enough.”

  “He’s busy, can’t always get here, you know,” said Ray the firefighter, expansive with sarcasm. He had a heart attack last year but bounced back; now he had egg whites—smothered in cheese, with a side of bacon. “This one still thinks he’s going to save the world. One cold case at a time.”

  “What are you working on, champ?” asked Andrew, the retired lawyer who now did pro bono work for at-risk kids in the system. He was another one who couldn’t let go.

  “I got a lead on my runaway,” he said. “I’m on my way to check it out. Just gonna grab a coffee and go.”

  “She ran away. Why not just let her go?” Jay, the other cop. Bitter as hell. Divorced. Estranged from his kids. The job had chewed him and spit him out.

  Hunter shrugged. “Family’s still looking.”

  Jennie had been missing more than a year. She was sixteen years old but looked much older. There was abuse from her biological father, though her mother and stepfather were good people, trying to help her. Jennie fell in with a group that was taking oxy. Her mother quickly lost control of the situation. And then she was gone.

  Jay rubbed at his full salt-and-pepper beard. “They did a better job, maybe she’d still be at home.”

  The other guys made affirming noises, like they were all parents of the year.

  “Maybe,” said Hunter.

  That was his way, easy deflection, allow other people’s negativity to roll over him and pass by. Hunter didn’t argue. It used to drive his wife crazy until she took up yoga and meditation. Now she got it. Hunter couldn’t touch his own toes, but he knew that you couldn’t win an argument. Anything you fight against gets stronger.

  “He’s one of those everybody counts cops,” said Andrew. Andrew gave him a hearty pat on the back. “Reads too many Michael Connelly novels. Thinks he’s Bosch.”

  “Everybody does count,” said Hunter. “Everybody counts to me.”

  Mavis brought the food, stacked plates of eggs, pancakes, waffles, breakfast meats, donuts, and was greeted with enthusiasm from the group. They were like a bunch of kids at a birthday party when the cake came, lighting up and shouting.

  She put a black coffee and an egg white and avocado on rye in front of Hunter.

  “Hey, that’s not what I ordered for him,” said Bill in mock annoyance.

  “But that’s what he gets every week,” said Mavis with a knowing smile.

  He shot her a grateful look, because god knew if someone put a chili cheese omelet in front of him, he was going to eat it. He was only human.

  “Thanks, Mavis.”

  They all started to eat—and talk. As the conversation veered from politics to health care to reverse mortgages to sports, they got loud—shouting, laughing, ribbing each other. Hunter mostly just listened. This is why he came. He liked these guys, in spite of all their bad habits and rough edges. All of them had spent their lives on the front lines of humanity. Their combined knowledge, experience and earned wisdom were incalculable. He brought his cases here and “workshopped” them. They always had ideas—some of them wrong, some of them right, almost all of them leading him down a road he might not have found on his own.

  It had been Phil who suggested that he Facebook-stalk Jennie Murray, his runaway. If he hadn’t done that, he might have missed the post from her ex. Hey, I thought I saw you at Tommy’s Cove the other night. Was that you?

  Jennie hadn’t answered, but Hunter searched the place out online and discovered it was a bar a couple of towns over, a dive frequented by bikers. This was Hunter’s first lead in a month.

  In a brief lull, he spoke up. “Anyone hear of Tommy’s Cove?”

  “Tommy’s Cove?” said Phil, with a knowing nod. “Lots of truckers, bikers through there. Drugs. If she’s there, she’s probably turning tricks for oxy or meth.”

  Hunter had figured as much. There weren’t that many ways for a drug-addled girl to get by.

  “Even if you bring her back and get her into rehab,” said Jay, “she’ll be back out there within six months. They don’t get clean. Not from that.”

  That was a typical cop’s attitude. Bad stayed bad. But it wasn’t always true.

  “Everyone deserves a chance to straighten her life out,” said Andrew.

  Hunter’s thoughts turned to Stella and Pearl Behr, his grudge match, as he’d come to think of it. The case he’d never solved, the girl who was still out there either living a life or buried deep. The woman who’d been murdered and forgotten by everyone but Hunter—whom she’d never met. A struggling single mother with a teenage daughter and a failing business, a string of loser boyfriends. She was strangled in her own bed, her child taken.

  Everyone deserves a chance to straighten her life out. Some people never got it.

  “Want some company?” asked Andrew. The conversation had gone on without Hunter, who was staring into the muddy circle of his coffee.

  “Sure thing,” said Hunter. It was always good to have a partner.

  He drained his cup, polished off his sandwich, grabbing a single piece of bacon from Phil’s plate. Then he left to jeers and shouted goodbyes. No doubt the other restaurant patrons would be happy when they all left.

  They were walking out the door when something on the television screen mounted in the corner of the restaurant caught his eye.

  The tagline across the bottom of the screen read: Missing Nanny.

  He walked over to the set, reached for the remote that sat on the counter and turned it up a little. “Twenty-five-year-old Geneva Markson didn’t turn up for work yesterday,” said the newscaster, “after her sister reported her missing this weekend. On Monday, police discovered her abandoned car in the well-heeled neighborhood of her employers. And so far, there are no clues as to her whereabouts, no immediate indication of foul play. If anyone knows the location of this young woman, police are asking that they please call this tip line.”

  The face swam before his eyes, oddly familiar. He knew her. He’d seen her before. And he never forgot a face. There was a tingle in the back of his skull as he dug through the recesses of his memory. Where? When?

  “What’s up?” asked Andrew, who had come to stand behind him. “You know her?”

  “Maybe,” said Hunter.

  After they’d followed up this lead, he’d go back home and scour his old files. He’d make some calls from the car. He wasn’t as sharp as he used to be. But he’d remember eventually.

  Everybody counts. Of all the faces of all the missing kids he’d searched for, the murder victims for whom he’d sought some justice, the rape victims whom he’d promised would someday feel safe again when their attacker was caught, he’d never forgotten a single one.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Selena

  “How did you sleep?” she asked Oliver, phone on speaker.

  Will’s bed was as enormous and soft as a cumulous cloud. She let herself sink in. In spite of everything, she’d had the best night’s sleep she’d had in a while.

 
; “Okay.” Oliver had his pouty voice on, sleepy. He must have called her the second he opened his eyes.

  “What’s Paulo making for breakfast?” she asked, trying to keep it light.

  “He said pancakes. I can hear him in the kitchen.”

  “Your favorite!” Her bright tone sank into the silence.

  “When can I come home?”

  “I”—not “we.” He couldn’t care less about Stephen; would leave him there if he could, wouldn’t he? Was that normal?

  “Really soon,” she said.

  “That’s not an answer, Mom.”

  “Just,” she said, took a breath. “Just go to school today. And by the time you get home this afternoon, I’ll have an answer.”

  It might not be the answer you want, she thought but didn’t say. At any rate, tonight she would stay at her mother’s. She wasn’t going home to Graham. Staying at Cora’s might be the answer for now. For her and the boys.

  “Okay,” he said. She listened to the rasp of his breath.

  The sheets were divine, crisp and silky all at once. Cost a fortune, she was sure. Will had taught her everything she knew about wine and art, about expensive fabrics, design. The sun was just peeking through the drawn dove-gray drapes. She pushed the button on the remote by the bed and watched as they glided silently open, revealing the milky gray of a city view.

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “Still sleeping.” She felt a pang of guilt. But it wasn’t a lie. He probably was still sleeping, even if she wasn’t there to say for sure.

  “Did he sleep in his office again?”

  You really couldn’t fool your children, no matter how smart you thought you were.

  “How did you sleep?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “Stephen snored. All night.”

  Selena heard Will get up from the couch in the living room, where he’d slept. She listened to his footfalls as he headed down the hall to the bathroom.

  They’d talked late into the night, she in a pair of his sweatpants and college T-shirt. He made a fire and they talked about Graham—how things had been hard since the kids were born. She didn’t tell him everything. They talked about Geneva, about what might have happened to her, about the woman from the train, what she wanted. She had another glass of wine with him, was sleepy and relaxed in his company, in the dim light of the room.

  “I hate that it’s like this,” he said. “But it’s good having you here. Nice talking to you like this again. I’ve missed it—missed you. All these years.”

  She didn’t know what to say. Had she missed him? Sometimes. Maybe. Missed what she imagined might have been. But life didn’t work that way. You didn’t know what lay on the road not traveled.

  “You don’t have to say anything,” he said. “I know—it’s complicated.”

  “I’m sorry I hurt you,” she said. “I’ve always been sorry about that.”

  He shrugged. “Love is a lightning bolt. Sometimes there’s no avoiding it. We don’t always choose who we love or why. We can’t make ourselves love someone we don’t.”

  I do love you, she wanted to say. I did. Maybe I didn’t even know what love was then. But she didn’t say that, just stared at the fire. Then, “And Bella? Was that a lightning bolt?”

  He smiled a little. “Bella? I think we were just really great friends and confused that for love.”

  “There are worse things to base a marriage on.”

  She should know.

  “Yeah,” he said. “But ultimately it’s not enough. You need the heat first, the passion. If it cools and leaves friendship, that can work. But if it’s never there, there’s always something missing. And—you know—she really liked girls. Always had, just couldn’t come to terms with it. Until she did.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, releasing a breath. “I know how it feels to discover someone you love is not who you think.”

  “I guess you do.”

  He kept his distance, giving her the couch, sitting in the big chair across from her. The room was filled with the electricity of mistakes about to be made. It would have been so easy. But. No. She was faithful and so was he. No matter what Graham had done, she wouldn’t cheat.

  Will rose after a few moments of silence. “I’m going to change the sheets on my bed,” he said. “I’ll take the couch.”

  “I’ll take the couch.”

  “No way,” he said. “No arguing.”

  In bed after Will had fallen asleep in the living room, she didn’t answer Graham’s calls, but it didn’t stop him from texting her until nearly 3:00 a.m.

  Please come home. I’m so sorry.

  I just need space and time to think, Graham. You have to give me that.

  Can you ever forgive me?

  Could she? Could she ever forgive him? She didn’t have an answer.

  * * *

  “Paulo’s calling for breakfast,” said Oliver now.

  “Okay,” she said. “We’ll call as soon as school’s over. I love you, buddy.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. How many times did you say that as a parent? “Everything is okay.”

  The silence was heavy on the line; she sensed he wanted to say something else and she waited.

  Then: “Mom, you hang up first.”

  “Love you,” she said again. “Give Stephen a hug for me.”

  “Love you, Mom.”

  She ended the call with a weight on her heart. What a mess her life was. Just a year ago, if anyone had asked, she’d have said it was close to perfect. She thought Graham’s issues were behind them. She was home with the boys, her husband happy at work.

  This too shall pass. Even the good times.

  Her phone pinged. Graham.

  So how was your night with Will? Everything you remembered?

  He slept on the couch, of course.

  Really.

  I’ve never cheated on you. Not about to start now.

  I know that. I’m sorry. You never answered me. Can you ever forgive me? Is there a way forward for us?

  Another question without an answer.

  She saw herself moving on...selling the house, moving back to Manhattan. Working, forging ahead into the unknown of the future. Then, she thought of Oliver and Stephen, the devastation of their happy lives, and she was kneecapped. She was her mother, enduring the abuse, the bleak humiliation of it, for the sake of her children, withering under the pressure of maintaining a facade.

  Her phone pinged again. Graham again.

  Oh, shit.

  What?

  The cops are here.

  If it was a ploy, which he was not above, it worked. She dialed his number but the call went to voice mail. Her throat was dry, belly clenched.

  Why would the cops be there so early?

  She put the phone down and walked into Will’s beautifully appointed kitchen—where coffee had already been brewed in a gleaming machine that cost about as much as a used Volkswagen. Grabbing the remote, she flipped on the television, then felt the room spin and pitch as the bottom dropped out of her world.

  On the screen was a picture of Geneva—smiling and lovely, her wheat hair whipping around her face. The pretty image was made ominous by the red type beneath it reading: Missing Nanny.

  “Twenty-five-year-old Geneva Markson didn’t turn up for work yesterday, after her sister reported her missing this weekend,” said the svelte, heavily coiffed newscaster. “On Monday, police discovered her abandoned car in the well-heeled neighborhood of her employers. Though there is no immediate indication of foul play, neither is there any clue as to her whereabouts. Two local men are being brought in for questioning, police say.

  “If anyone knows the location of this young woman, police are asking that they please call this tip line.”

/>   Will came up behind Selena. “Oh, shit. Someone called the media.”

  “The police are at the house now,” she managed, though she felt like she was sucking air through a straw. “Graham just texted.”

  “I’ll get dressed and get over there.”

  She heard his voice, felt his presence—just before she passed out cold, knocking her head on the marble countertop on her way to the tile floor.

  PART 2

  ALL OUR LITTLE LIES

  “Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”

  —Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Selena

  There was a kind of midafternoon light that Selena associated with illness. The way the sun had filtered through the gauzy pink drapes in her childhood bedroom when she was home sick from school. There was a special rosy hue to it, a hush to a house kept quiet so that she could rest. Maybe she’d hear her mother in the kitchen. Her father would be at work, her sister at school, and in that special glow it was as if time had slowed.

  Today, in the living room of her own home, the light that came in through the drapes was a cruel white. There was a sickness, to be sure. The world outside was waiting, a wolf at the door, huffing and puffing.

  Geneva was officially missing. Her husband, Graham, and Erik Tucker, her former employer, had both been brought in for questioning.

  Selena sat on her couch with Detective Crowe across from her. His hair was wild, suit rumpled, purple fatigue shadowing his eyes. She was numb, head throbbing. She held an ice pack to the lump on the back of her skull. She’d just passed out cold. Who did that? What if there was something seriously wrong with her?

  Her husband was going to prison.

  Her children would be all alone.

  Reign it in, she told herself. Pull yourself together.

  It was almost one, and her mother would be picking up the boys from school soon. She’d promised Oliver answers by the time he got home. She didn’t have any. Not one. And now there were only more questions.