A few days later I met Hadley for lunch and we discussed our relationship. We agreed that it wasn’t ultimately going to work out. I don’t know who actually used the phrase the long run, but I suspect it was me.
I did not call Mike Shiloh or contrive to cross his path downtown.
Neither was I asked to help the narcotics task force again, although Radich stopped by to thank me for my help. The rattlesnake incident had made me briefly famous in the department, but now that had mercifully died down. I was an unassuming patrol officer again, working my midwatch and dogwatch shifts, which were uneventful.
An early warm spell settled over the Cities. Genevieve took a week off during Kamareia’s spring break, and without a workout partner for the weight room, I took to running in the afternoons along the river. I told myself that I wasn’t avoiding the pickup basketball games in which the Narcotics guys sometimes played; I was simply cross-training, and besides, the warm weather was too pleasant to waste by exercising indoors.
I always walked my last quarter mile to cool down. That’s what I was doing one evening a little after five, walking and enjoying the scent of a pizza restaurant nearby, when I turned onto my own street and saw a pair of long legs on my front steps. The rest of my visitor was out of sight, sitting on the top step within the entry alcove, but the scuffed boots were vaguely familiar, as was, I suddenly realized, the green Catalina parked on the street.
I was glad to have recognized who it was in advance; it allowed me to not look surprised when I came face-to-face with Mike Shiloh for the first time in two months.
It had been about that long since our cluster of encounters, and seeing him gave me that little shock, the one of both recognition and of realization that your memory hasn’t painted someone quite true. I registered everything anew: the slightly Eurasian features, the longish, curling hair, which clearly hadn’t been cut in the interim, and most of all, the direct, unapologetic gaze. Given his place on the highest of the steps, he was almost on a level with me, even seated.
“I figured if you were working midwatch you’d be there by now,” he said by way of greeting. “Have you eaten?”
“Did you think of calling first?” I asked.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Is Hadley here right now?”
He kept a completely straight face, but I sensed amusement. He was pleased at having guessed something Hadley and I had worked hard to keep off the grapevine.
“I am no longer seeing Detective Hadley socially,” I said, using the most formal phrasing I could think of, and the coolest tone.
“I’m glad to hear that,” Shiloh said. “Last Friday evening I saw Detective Hadley in the Lynlake district with a young woman. She was dressed like she might be ‘seeing him socially.’ ”
“Good for him.”
“You didn’t answer my question. Are you hungry?” He tilted his head slightly, interrogatively. “I was thinking of a Korean place in St. Paul, but that’s negotiable,” he said. “It all depends on what you want.”
I realized that for a while now I’d been trying to decide who this man was, and if I liked him, and still I couldn’t come to a conclusion.
“Before I go anywhere,” I said stiffly, “I want to ask you a question.”
“Go ahead,” he said.
“Why drink in an airport bar?”
If nothing else, I’d surprised him; I saw that in his face. He rubbed the back of his neck a minute, then looked up at me and said, “Airports have their own police. I wanted to go somewhere that I wouldn’t run into any cops I knew.”
I heard the truth in his words. Truth, and none of the easy cynicism that would have allowed me to send this man away and stop thinking about him once and for all.
“Come in for a minute,” I said. “I need to change.”
chapter 14
Naomi Wilson, formerly Naomi Shiloh, hadn’t exaggerated about her size. She wore a loose yellow dress and a coral-colored sweater that was left open to accommodate her huge belly. She was standing at the edge of the well-tended play yard of the day-care center, watching the children.
When she saw me coming, I saw her take my measure: my height, the black leather jacket I’d thought would be best against autumn out West.
“You must be Sarah,” she said. “Call me Naomi.”
Her hair was darker than Shiloh’s, and I didn’t see much of his features in her open, sweet face. But demeanor, of course, is part of appearance. The older we get, the more our faces reflect our lives and our thoughts. And already it was clear that Naomi and Shiloh were worlds apart on that count.
“Do you mind talking out here?” Naomi gestured at a picnic table nearby. Obviously she was comfortable in her sweater, used to being outside with the kids. “I can have Marie come out, if you’d rather go inside.”
“Outside is all right,” I said.
“Can I get you something first? Some tea or water? Apple juice? Graham crackers?” She smiled at her joke.
“Coffee would be good,” I said.
“We don’t actually have any,” she said apologetically.
Too late I remembered Shiloh telling me that in Utah, where 75 percent of the population is Mormon, even the soda fountains served caffeine-free cola.
“Right,” I said. “I’m okay, really.”
At the table, it took a moment for her to comfortably adjust herself.
“Is this your ninth month?” I asked.
“Seventh.”
“Twins?”
She nodded. “It runs in the family.”
“Where does your twin sister live?”
“She’s still in school,” Naomi said. “Bethany didn’t go straight through college in four years like I did.”
I was about to get to the point at hand, but Naomi focused thoughtfully on me as though I’d suddenly materialized. “So Mike is married,” she said. “I don’t know why, but that surprises me.”
“Yeah?”
“He was always kind of a loner,” she said.
“He still is, in a way. Before he went missing, he was supposed to be going to the FBI Academy in Virginia. That would have kept him away from home for four months, but I understood.”
“He was going to be an FBI agent?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow,” she said. “That’s amazing.” Naomi even laughed. “Mike, an agent of the FBI.”
“Why does that surprise you? You knew he was a cop.”
“True,” she said. “I know, it’s just…”
“Was he wild as a kid?”
“You know…” She glanced upward slightly, the way people do when accessing memories. “I don’t really know. That was kind of the impression I got, growing up.”
“From your folks?”
“Yeah, and from Adam and Bill. But now that I’m thinking about it, I can’t remember anything specific that they said. Maybe I just assumed anyone who left home so young was a rule-breaker.”
“An outlaw,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “How did you two meet?”
Naomi seemed more interested in Shiloh’s life in Minnesota than in his disappearance. Maybe that was only natural. To her and her family, Shiloh had already disappeared, in a sense.
“Through work,” I said. “I’m a cop.”
“I should have guessed,” she said. “You look kind of like a police officer, I mean, you’re-”
“Tall, I know,” I said, smiling at her. “When was the last time you spoke to Mike?” I asked. It was time to get down to business. If I knew what my business in Utah was at all.
“I don’t talk to him at all,” Naomi said, mildly surprised. “I get Christmas cards from him.”
“But you were the one in your family who tracked him down,” I said. “The two of you seem to have the closest relationship.”
“I wouldn’t say close,” she said. “He left home when I was only eight years old.”
“Why’d you start looking for him?” I asked.
She considered. “In our family, I was kind of the record-keeper. Family’s important to me. Well, it was to all of us. But I’ve always been the one who took pictures at family gatherings and put the albums together. I guess that’s why, when I was a senior in high school, I started to think about Mike and whether it might be possible to find him.”