Crystal smiled and nodded, studying the fine bones beneath his large, long-fingered hands.
“That’s why I’m drawn to poetry. It evokes something different in us all,” she murmured.
“Exactly,” he agreed, reaching to grab a planner on his desk.
His hand brushed Crystal’s, and she shivered. The contact moved between them like an electric current. Soft and enveloping, as if someone had thrown a sheet, warm from the dryer, over top of them. For an instant they were together beneath that shroud, tucked safely, solidly, and then the door banged open and a girl, probably a freshman judging from her frazzled expression and the campus map clutched in her hand, burst in.
“I’m sorry. Is this Poetry 101?” she squeaked.
Professor Meeks blinked, took another step away from Crystal, and nodded.
“Yes, you’re in the right place. Grab a seat wherever,” he told her.
He returned his gaze to Crystal and now he didn’t break away from her eyes.
“I have to…” he gestured at his notes as if in explanation.
“Yeah, absolutely. I’m sorry to have kept you, Professor Meeks.”
“Wes,” he told her, reaching out as she turned and touching her wrist.
He looked surprised that he’d offered the word, his name, to a student he’d only just met.
“Thank you, Wes,” she said and left.
She paused at the confused student who peered at the two hundred seats in the room as if her seat choice was the first question on the exam, and she was bound to fail.
Crystal pointed to the upper back section.
“They dim the lights for slides. You’re practically invisible up there,” Crystal told the girl, who gave her a timid smile.
“Thank you,” she whispered, clutching her map and hurrying up the stairs.
As Crystal slipped into the hallway, she glanced back and saw Wes watching her.
3
Now
Bette drove to the Hospice House where Crystal worked several nights a week. They hadn’t seen her.
She returned to Crystal’s apartment, where she called every name and phone number listed in her address book. Crystal had owned the address book since high school, and it wasn’t up to date. Several of the phone numbers were disconnected. A few of Crystal’s old friends admitted they hadn’t spoken to her in years.
Finding Weston Meeks’ number nowhere in the book, Bette called Michigan State University and left a message on his office machine.
After exhausting every avenue, she pulled in to the East Lansing Police Department.
“I need to report my sister missing,” Bette told the woman at the desk.
The woman studied her, and perhaps seeing the alarm Bette felt was written across her face, she stood.
“Just a moment, please,” she said, disappearing behind a wall.
Bette heard voices beyond the wall and imagined a sleepy police station with men drinking cold coffee and telling stories of their latest traffic stops.
Several minutes passed, and the receptionist returned with a man in police uniform.
“Hi, ma’am. I’m Officer Hart. Come on back, and I’ll help you out.
Bette followed him around the wall and was surprised to see an array of neat cubicles, many decorated with family photos or posters of superheroes and movie characters.
The deputy led her to his own cubicle, which contained a framed photo of a dog wearing a red bandanna next to another framed photo of an older man and woman smiling as they stood in front of a sloping vineyard.
“Your sister is missing?” the man asked.
Bette sat in the hardback chair next to his desk and nodded. She clasped her hands in her lap, weaving her fingers together to keep them from shaking or tugging and pulling at her long dark hair. She was a nervous fidgeter, prone to anxiety in normal circumstances and practically a bouncing ball during moments of crisis.
“Yes, her name is Crystal Childs. C-R-Y-S-T-A-L. She’s twenty-two years old, long red hair, green eyes. She drives a 1979 Volkswagen Beetle. It’s a light-blue convertible with a black top.”
“Okay, hold on. You’re talking faster than I can write.” The man jotted the words down in a scrawl that Bette doubted he’d be able to read after he finished.
“When did she go missing?”
Bette looked at the clock. Three hours since their scheduled meeting time, but who knew how long her sister had actually been missing. Five hours, eight. The last person Bette had spoken to who confirmed seeing Crystal that day was Rick at the coffee shop. That had been at nine a.m. — nearly eleven hours before.
“I’m not sure. She was supposed to meet me at five. That was three hours ago.”
The deputy paused and looked up at her.
“She’s been missing for three hours?”
Bette watched him lay the pen down.
“Pick that back up,” she snapped, grabbing the pen and holding it out to him. “Fine, never mind. The last time I saw her was Wednesday afternoon. That was three days ago. She’s been missing for three days.”
The deputy took the pen and sighed.
“Ma’am—”
“My name is Bette,” she snarled.
“Okay, Bette. I understand it’s frustrating when someone misses an appointment. I get it. I have a sister and she’s notoriously late for everything. I kid you not, I’m still shocked she arrived on time for her own wedding. But I can’t file a missing person’s report on a twenty-two-year-old woman who hasn’t been seen in three hours. The Chief of Police would not look kindly on that. You see, there’s hours and resources that go into missing person’s cases.”
“Do you know how many people are” —he paused and made air quotes— ”’missing’ every single day? How many husbands come home late from work, or how many kids ride the bus home with their friend and forget to mention it to their parents? Do you know how many actual crimes wouldn’t be solved if we had every deputy in our department tracking down sisters who missed dinner dates?”
Bette stood so abruptly her chair smacked into the cubicle and sent it wobbling. The officer also stood and grabbed the top, righting it before it could tip over.
She’d made it halfway to the front door when he called out.
“Wait. Ma’am, Bette, just hold on a sec, okay?” He hurried to catch up with her, his face flustered and embarrassed.
Bette glared at him.
“Let me take the information down. I can’t put it into the system for twenty-four hours, but there’s no reason for you to have to come back in. I can put a BOLA out to the guys on duty tonight. If anyone comes across her car, we’ll call you.”
Bette stood, arms rigid at her sides, her blood coursing in hot rapid gusts behind her eyes. She’d always had a short fuse, and instead of sadness tended towards anger when faced with a dilemma. Anger or panic.
She said nothing, but followed the officer back to his desk. She didn’t sit but stood above him as he wrote.
“A blue Volkswagen Bug. Anything distinctive about the car?”
“A blue VW bug is pretty distinctive, don’t you think?”
He smiled, but quickly wiped the look when he saw her expression.
“Sure, okay. Got it. Anything else suspicious? I only ask because you seem awfully upset about a woman who’s only been missing for three hours.”
Bette stuffed her hands in her pockets to stop their shaking.
She didn’t have Crystal’s insight, her ability to sense someone’s favorite candy or if a person might get in a fender bender that afternoon, but her body perceived something. It always had, though she’d spent most of her life writing the feelings off as anxiety or neurosis. Crystal never tuned any of it out, but Bette found the feelings unmanageable, a nuisance, really.