“I thought the same thing too, at the beginning. I couldn’t believe it. Who could believe it? Now do you understand? If I go to police and say, ‘I had an affair with a guy forty years ago, who believes in aliens, and I stole a safe out of his office, and he happens to have a lot of articles about me and my family, and I think that’s proof that he abducted my grandson,’ then you can see the problem. Because I don’t think he has my grandson, Roxy. But what if he knows… what happened to William?”
Roxy leaned back in her seat. “I should have gone to Little Rock.”
“Do you know what I remember so vividly about all those cases of missing people? That sometimes there was a phrase repeated over and over again by the people who either claim to have witnessed the abductions, or were the last to see the missing people: ‘The lights took them.’ Or some variation of that. And you know that’s the last thing Brian ever said. Yes, I know I’m desperate. Yes, I know this is hard to believe. It’s still hard for me to believe all the stupid things I did in this town. But I have to do something….” I inhaled sharply, to stifle the tears.
“Oh, sweet girl.” Roxy reached over to place her hand on my knee. “I’m sorry for being such an ass. I know admitting all this has to be hard.”
“‘It’s the lies that undo us,’ that’s what I tell the girls, what I’ve always told the girls. And look what I’ve done. It all sounds so ridiculous, and I know it sounds crazy. But I thought if I came here and found Steven and begged him to tell me anything he’d uncovered in the last forty years about these missing people, maybe I could feel like I was doing something to help.”
“Lynn,” Roxy said, taking my hand. “Forty years ago you believed this junk—I mean this… research. And that’s OK. Lots of people believe in dumb stuff when they’re kids. Hell, until I was twenty-six, I believed that if I sent Elvis enough mental messages, that he would seek me out and find me on the strength of my love. May I ask, though, what in God’s name were you doing having an affair with some nutty professor who believes in little green men? I mean, all those maps and files? About alien abductions? Come on, Lynn.”
“This is why I wanted to come alone.” I opened up the truck door. “Stay in the truck, I’ll be back.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Roxy muttered, lifting the hem of her denim dress and sliding out her door.
I carried the safe, with a sweater draped over it, into the building, Roxy shuffling behind. The hallway of the professors’ offices was silent, and I set the safe down outside Steven’s door. Roxy grumbled to herself as she once again picked the lock.
I went in and slid the safe under the desk. Roxy looked around with renewed disdain at the maps. “What do we do now?”
“I need to find out where he may have gone—”
“Excuse me, but how did you get in here?”
A young man stood in the door. He wore dark-rimmed glasses and a flannel with a Morrissey T-shirt underneath.
“We’re housekeeping,” Roxy said with a smile.
“This office is supposed to be locked.”
“Perhaps you should mind your own business.” She smiled wider.
“This is my business. I’m Professor Richards’s graduate student. No one is supposed to be in here.”
Roxy sighed. “It is too early to be this annoying—”
“I’m an old friend of Professor Richards,” I said. “I’m trying to find him.”
“He’s not here.”
“Do you know when you expect him back?”
“I think you read the sign on the door before you broke in. He’s on leave.”
“It’s important that we find him. Does he have a cell phone? Or could you give me his address?”
“He keeps an unlisted number and doesn’t give out his address.”
“Are you his student or the head of his security detail?” Roxy asked.
“Could I give you my number? Perhaps you could pass it along to him?” I reached into my purse and quickly wrote it down on an old receipt.
“I suppose. But I need to know how you got in here.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Roxy snatched the paper out of my hands and thumped it against the chest of the student. “Here, take it and stick it in your Velcro wallet. Come on, Lynnie.”
I gave him a soft thanks as Roxy walked me down the hall. “We need to get the move on. Mr. Personality back there seems the type to call campus police. Tell me you didn’t write your full name or phone number on that sheet.”
“I most certainly did.”
“Really, Lynn,” she said, pressing her key fob to open the truck doors. “Why not give them all the proof they need to bust us for breaking in.”
“I don’t care at this point. I need to find Steven.”
“The police can take care of that.”
“I can’t go to police with this yet. You know why now.”
“Well, Google Agent Mulder, then. See where he lives. I’m going to that Shell station we passed to get us farther away from the scene of the crime.”
As she drove down the street, I pulled out my iPhone and stared helplessly at its shining screen. “I know how to use Google, of course, but where’s the symbol—”
“They’re called apps. Jesus, Lynn.” She took my phone. “Don’t go getting all senior citizen on me.”
“We are senior citizens. And thus, you cannot look at that phone and drive. There’s the gas station.”
Roxy parked, took off her glasses, and spent the next several minutes holding the phone a good one to two inches from her face, rapidly punching on the screen until she swore and put her glasses back on. “Well, nothing pops. Not in Google, not in whitepages.com. Mr. Keeper of the Gates back there was right about the unlisted address and all.”
My phone vibrated with the ring tone of chimes. “It’s Stella.”
“You better answer. The texts you sent the girls were uncharacteristically brief.”
I answered the call. “Hi, hon. Yes, I’m fine. We’re having a nice time.”
I responded with genuine interest to the mundane, adding here and there brief statements of where we were supposedly eating in Little Rock’s River Market district.
“Tell Anne that I’ll call her later—”
“Give me the phone for a minute.” Roxy reached for the phone.
“Uh, well, Roxy wants to say hi.” I gave her a warning glance.
“Hi, sweet girl. Listen, when you do all that snooping to find people for your stories, how do you find them? Uh-huh. Well, my brother’s trashy ex-wife owes him some money, and we think she’s invested it in a tanning booth franchise in Hot Springs, but she has an unlisted number. Uh-huh. Really? You have to pay for that? No, you don’t have to do it.” Roxy waved away my gesture to hang up. “Isn’t there another way? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Good tip! Property deeds. Public record. We’ll try that. Thanks darlin’, love you.”
Roxy handed the phone back but covered up the speaker, “Wrap this up, sister.”
“I’m going to say 1910,” Roxy said, staring up at the Victorian. “See the columns? Gauging by those and that tired old foundation, I’d say early 1900s.”
I hugged my arms, looking at the empty windows and the snow drifting on the stairs. A few neglected newspapers lay on the front porch, still in plastic bags. The county’s home-ownership records indicated Steven lived here. Strange that I felt bold enough to waltz into his office, the very place where it all began, but I was hesitant to even approach the house.
“Well, shall we?” Roxy said, taking the cracked concrete pathway up to the stairs. I hovered behind.
She repeatedly knocked. No lights came on. No one peered through the blinds. “Let’s try the back door.”