I wouldn’t trade either of them for the world.
“Well, we’re staying here,” Ethan said.
“Thanks,” I said.
I felt safe. Until the first body showed up.
FIVE
Donovan Cotter checked the locks on the door to the studio and stepped carefully on the paving stones that led back to the house. His boots stayed dry, but he wiped their soles on the rough mat all the same. He moved inside, sliding the glass door shut behind him. He locked it and listened for a moment.
The house was quiet.
He liked that so much.
It had not been quiet when his second wife lived with him. She had been unhappy, and what she would not say to him directly she expressed by loading and unloading the dishwasher in a noisy way, by banging pots and pans on the stovetop, by starting the vacuum cleaner when he would lie down for a nap.
When Donovan refused to acknowledge these acts for what they were, she escalated her attempts to get a combination of revenge on him and his attention. If, in the evening, she felt displeased with him-and near the end of the marriage, she so often was-she would set her alarm to go off the next morning with loud music and a buzzer an hour before the time for which his own was set. He would try to fall back to sleep, but she would pour cereal in a bowl and eat in a manner that he thought worthy of a chimpanzee annoyed with its keepers-she would cause the bowl to ring in a maddening arrhythmic staccato as she tapped her spoon against its sides.
When this failed to get a response, she prolonged her morning campaign. After breakfast, she would enter the bathroom off the master bedroom. She would flush the toilet, sing off-key in the shower, and just when the water was off and he thought he might get a minute of peace, she would turn on her blow dryer.
Once Donovan was up, she would wait until he was in the shower to run the washing machine and the dishwasher, so that the hot water was gone within seconds.
Donovan let her get away with it for a while. One morning, he rose from the bed and strode naked into the kitchen, took the bowl of cereal from her, and calmly dumped it down the sink. He said, “You should stop this little warfare. You don’t know who you are up against.”
He had not raised his voice, or lifted a hand to her, but there must have been something in his face or his stance that conveyed a little of his real nature to her, because she shrank back from him. He could not suppress-or hide, in his state of undress-his arousal when her eyes widened, her lower lip quivered, her breath quickened in fear.
Disgusted with himself, he left the kitchen and took a shower.
When he emerged from it, she had left the house.
The first thing he had noticed was the quiet.
She filed for divorce, did not ask for anything from him-he had bought the house before he met her, but she might have had a go at his military pension-and she never came back to retrieve so much as an article of clothing. He did not fight it, attempt to reconcile, or seek a new partner. He had already decided that marriage was not the answer he had hoped it would be.
He had tried it twice. The first experiment had failed mostly because of mutual immaturity, but over time, he was sure, the result would have been the same. She had protested when he went into the service, claiming she couldn’t stand knowing he was in so much danger. Shortly after he shipped out, she filed for divorce. Ironically, getting on the freeways in L.A. proved to be more dangerous to her than his military duties were to him-after the divorce was final, and long before he returned home, her mother wrote to tell him that she had died in a car accident.
He turned his thoughts away from her, back to the quiet.
No, marriage was not for him. If he ever changed his mind about that, he knew he would have no difficulty finding a woman willing to be his wife. Without entirely understanding why, Donovan knew he was considered to be attractive. He did understand, because he worked at it, that he was in excellent physical condition. He had a good job, and knew how to be personable. But he didn’t want to think about any woman in the way he had started to think about his most recent ex-wife, so he would probably stay unmarried.
Donovan’s ex thought he didn’t know where she lived now. She was wrong about that.
So far, he had been able to control his impulses in that direction.
Self-mastery meant you didn’t have to become what certain people predicted you would become. Self-mastery meant you, yourself-and not your past-defined you. Self-mastery was the key to his happiness.
It was time to leave the house and earn his wages. He did not like to look in mirrors, but neatness was important to him, so he compromised by studying the uniform carefully and merely glancing at his own face in the reflection.
He savored the quiet of the house for another moment, then it was time to go out into the noisy world.
No sooner was he out the door than his personal cell phone rang. Caller ID blocked.
He took the call but didn’t speak.
“I love that you’re so cautious,” a man’s voice said.
When he still didn’t speak, the man laughed.
“Did you see the television interview with his doctor?”
“No,” Donovan said and considered hanging up. He knew he wouldn’t. He was angry with himself for his curiosity. It made him weak. It kept him listening.
“I didn’t think so. The doctor spoke the code phrase-innocently, of course. He mentioned the marathon.”
“Coincidence.” He would hang up. He would hang up now…
“You don’t believe that any more than I do. It’s time to begin.”
Donovan stayed silent. He felt a little queasy. He wasn’t ready for this, even though the news about Nicholas Parrish being up and walking had left him expecting it.
“Don’t let it upset you-we are what we are.”
He winced, thinking, I’m not what you are, but said, “I’m not upset.”
“Good. I’m going to contact the other one.”
“That might not be wise. What if it isn’t really starting?”
“Cold feet?”
It would not do to let the caller play these games.
“Call me again when you really have something to say,” Donovan said quietly and hung up on him.
SIX
I first heard about Marilyn Foster as a missing person case.
Marilyn Foster’s husband managed the swing shift at a manufacturing plant forty miles from Las Piernas. Dwayne Foster routinely arrived at home well after midnight, ate the light meal his wife left waiting for him, took a shower downstairs, and wound down with a beer or two while he watched TV with a headset on before going up to bed.
He got caught up in an old movie in the early hours of Wednesday, so it was about three in the morning when he went upstairs. To his surprise, the bed was empty. He called his wife’s name, wandered through the house looking for her, feeling a mixture of annoyance and fear. He went into the garage. Her car was missing.
He tried calling her cell phone. He heard it ringing and discovered her purse still in the kitchen.
He called the police.
“It’s not a crime to be missing,” I once heard an old cop say.
“It’s not a crime to be dead, either,” I replied, “but you still investigate when someone calls to report a body.”
What he had said, though, is true-as far as it goes-and he was only expressing the frustration that many in law enforcement feel when it comes to missing persons cases. All too often they use their time, energy, and resources trying find a missing adult, only to discover they’re not looking into a crime. As it turns out, many adults who go missing just want to escape whatever they’ve gotten themselves into-debts, bad relationships, boredom, overbearing families, abuse, you name it. The police run into that so often, it leads to a kind of cynicism that in turn leads to a lack of investigative effort.