“Seven, eight times a year.”
“Seasoned. So she changed her mind. Or someone screwed up the booking and she had to find an alternative.”
“I’ve been through this. She’s still missing.”
“You ever call her while she was here this week, get her on the Hotel Malo number?”
“No, because—and I’ll keep repeating this until it gets through to you—she was never there. I always call her cell when she’s away. It’s easier.”
“Right—except now she doesn’t have it.”
“It’s been thirty hours since it was reported lost. She would have called to let me know what was going on.”
“But you’re not at home, right?”
“I have a cell phone, too.”
“She tap in the number every time?”
“She had it on speed dial,” I admitted. He had a point, annoyingly. If asked to quote Amy’s cell number from memory, I wasn’t sure how far I’d get. But Amy was different. Her brain was optimized for that kind of information. Although…I had changed networks when we moved, and I hadn’t had the new number very long.
“So she wants to call to let you know the score, but she never learned your number by heart and her phone’s missing. You see what I’m saying?”
“She’d remember it. The number.”
“You’re sure?”
“I know my wife.”
He sat back and looked at me, judging that he didn’t need to comment on this, given the current situation. Also that it might be unwise to. “Do you know how to pick up your home messages remotely?”
“No,” I said. “Never had a need to.”
“You do now. Got a neighbor with a set of keys?”
I knew this was bullshit, but it was clear I wasn’t getting anywhere without jumping through this guy’s hoops. Ben Zimmerman wouldn’t mind going around and checking the machine, though I would mind asking him. I nodded.
Blanchard drove it home. “Excellent. See if your wife has been trying to get in touch. Maybe she’s wondering where you are. Filing her own missing-persons report out in…” He consulted the form again. “Birch Crossing. Wherever that is.”
“And if there’s no message?”
“Come back and we’ll talk again. Mr. Whalen, I appreciate that it maybe seems like I’m being obstructive. My wife went off radar for a couple nights, I’d freak out, too. But right now I can’t do anything you haven’t already done. Meanwhile there’s stuff going on in this city that needs people paying attention to it. I am one of those people. You were, too, from what I gather.”
I stared at him.
“Yes,” he said with a faint smile. “Guy comes in with an alleged missing wife, we run his name. You get no red flags, I’m happy to say. No reports about late-night shouting matches. No freaked-out calls to emergency ser vices. But I got a Jack Whalen with ten years in LAPD Patrol Division, West. Resigned a little under a year ago. That you?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “So?”
He did nothing but sit looking at me, remaining silent for long enough to become insulting.
I cocked my head. “You got a hearing problem?”
“Just intrigued,” he said. “You present more like the kind of guy I’d expect to see on the other side of the desk. Wearing handcuffs, maybe.”
“I had a bad night’s sleep,” I said. “I’m very concerned about my wife’s safety, and I’m having more trouble than I anticipated in getting someone to take a missing-persons report seriously.”
“Right now we don’t have a missing person,” Blanchard said firmly. His voice wasn’t as flabby as his face. “We have a missing phone. Except it isn’t missing anymore, because you’ve got it in your jacket, right?”
“Right,” I said. I stood up, banging the table accidentally. This is precisely why I hadn’t gone to the cops the day before. I felt dumb for doing so now.
“I’m curious,” Blanchard said, folding my information in half. “Care to tell me why you left the force?”
“No. But I’m curious, too. You actually do any police work, ever?”
He smiled down at the table. “I’m going to tell you what I think your bottom line is, sir. Your wife didn’t stay in the hotel she said she was going to, and in the last day and a half she’s declined the opportunity to get in touch with you. Either there’s a straightforward explanation or she’s missing on purpose. That’s not the law’s problem, Mr. Whalen.” He looked up at me. “It’s just yours.”
I walked fast and randomly for ten minutes and finally got out Amy’s phone and scrolled through her contacts. I’d noticed yesterday that she had the Zimmermans in her list. Just as well, because I didn’t.
My heart sank when Bobbi answered. She got straight to asking if their vehicle was okay and when it would be back, implying that she needed it right now to ferry carloads of sick children and wounded nuns to the hospital.
“The car is fine,” I said. “I’m still in Seattle, that’s all.”
“You said you would be back yesterday afternoon.”
“Something came up, and I’m sorry, but…look, is Ben around?”
“No,” she snapped. “That’s the whole point, Jack. He’s flying down to the Bay Area this morning to visit an old friend of ours. Who is dying.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said again, relieved at being able to apologize for something that wasn’t actually my fault.
“Benjamin had to take the other car. I’m stuck here in the house because we thought you’d be back last night. Which is…Why do you want to talk to him?”
“I’ve got a problem.”
“That much is abundantly clear,” she said. “But—”
“Bobbi,” I said, “would you just listen for one second? Amy’s missing.”
There was silence at the other end of the line for a long moment. “Missing?”
“Yes.” I hadn’t wanted to get into this but I didn’t know how else to get through to her. “She lost her phone two nights ago, and I’m hoping it’s just that she doesn’t know my cell number to tell me where she is. She might have remembered the number at the house, and so I wanted to ask Ben if he’d go see if there were any messages.”
“Jack—is this supposed to be funny?”
“Does it sound like it’s meant to be funny?” I shouted, finally losing my temper. “Jesus, Bobbi.”
“You want me to walk around to your house, let myself in, and check your machine, to see if Amy’s called?”
“Yes,” I said. “But I understand now that you have no car, and if it’s too much trouble, that’s fine.”
“It’s no trouble at all,” she said. “In fact, I can do better than that.” There was muffled silence, and then someone else came on the line.
“Jack,” the voice said, “where are you?”
For a moment I believed I’d started hearing voices.
“Amy? Is that you?”
“Of course it is,” the voice said calmly. It was like hearing my mother on the phone. My mother is dead. “Why are you in Seattle, Jack?”
“Where…where the hell have you been?”
“I’ve been here,” Amy’s voice said. “Wondering where you are.”
“Didn’t you get my messages? On the answering machine?”
“You know I can’t work that thing. Plus, why would I think you’d leave me a message there?”
I opened my mouth to reply but couldn’t come up with anything at all to say.
“Look, honey, just come home, okay? And drive carefully.” Then she put the phone down, leaving me standing in the street with my mouth hanging wide open.
It began to rain then, with sudden firmness, as if it had meant to start earlier but forgot.
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