“I really fuckin’ thought I had it, Joe,” he said, shaking his head, staring at the ground. “Guys out in Imperial Valley found a body. A girl.”
My heart thumped in my chest.
“Definitely not Elizabeth,” he said quickly, as if he could hear my heart. “Teenager, she’d been missing about six months. But they snagged the piece of shit that did her. Someone saw him dumping her body, some shit like that, I can’t recall.”
Mike wasn’t much for profanity, making him a rarity among cops. But when he used it, it came forth in bursts and I’d learned that it signified how high his level of frustration had risen with whatever he was talking about.
“So they snag this asshole, bring him in and the prick immediately gives up another one, a young girl, an illegal, that he’d killed over a year ago,” Mike continued, rubbing at his chin. “Girl was never reported, probably because her parents were illegals, too. The I.V. guys can’t find any family members now.” He shook his head, angry at a multitude of things. “Anyway, cocksucker tells them where the girl’s body is and sure enough, he isn’t lying. Couple hundred feet from the first girl. Motherfucker.”
Two women walking past us glanced in our direction. Mike stared them down until they moved their eyes away. He waited a few more seconds.
“The I.V. guys come back after finding the second girl, wondering if they’ve got some sort of serial killer or Green River fucker on their hands. So they ask him if there are anymore.” Mike paused, rubbed harder at his chin. “And the motherfucker gives them Elizabeth’s name.”
I shut my eyes, tried to slow down my heart, tried to find air to breathe.
“I.V. guys run her name and eventually they call me. I listened to what they had to say, listened to what he told them, decided he was worth a look.” He bit down on his bottom lip. “Almost called you as I was driving out there, then figured I better wait.”
I tried to nod, but the muscles in my neck were locked up and I managed only a small, awkward jerk forward.
Mike looked at me. “Jesus, Joe. I’m sorry. Do you wanna hear this? I just started in and…”
“I’m fine,” I said, my voice sounding strained and small. “Tell me.”
He studied me for another moment before continuing. “So I get in the box with this guy and I thought it was him, Joe. Bad, bad guy. He was giving me details about your house, about the neighborhood, about Elizabeth. He just felt like the guy. He fit.”
Each word was like a newly sharpened razor blade into my skin. Into my heart.
“And then he started going off about how he saw Lauren in the doorway as he drove away with Elizabeth,” Mike said and his voice trailed off.
I shook my head, choked out a dry laugh. “Message board freak.”
Mike nodded.
In the Internet age, message boards had become both a help and a hindrance in finding missing people. If you went to the right places, knew how to filter out the garbage, you could find details and people that could legitimately help your case.
But filtering out the garbage wasn’t that easy. One of the things I learned early on was that both cops and investigators would float phony details out to the public to root out the nut jobs and weirdoes that would try to leech onto cases, either as a supposedly helpful witness or as the perpetrator. If that info came back to you, you knew a liar was sitting in front of you.
Mike and I had thrown several phony bits out to the Internet and one involved Lauren standing in the front doorway, maybe having caught a glimpse of the car that carried Elizabeth away. Lauren never left the kitchen the entire time Elizabeth was outside by herself and no one would’ve seen her in the doorway.
“Motherfucker was telling me what Lauren was wearing, what her face looked like, how she was standing in the doorway, all of it giving him a hard on as he said it to me,” Mike said, a sour expression gravitating upward from his mouth to his eyes. “I broke both of his wrists before the I.V. guys got me off him.”
I stood from the car, took a couple of deep breaths, glanced up at the sky. “Good.”
“It’ll happen, Joe,” Mike said. “One day, something will shake loose. We’ll know what happened.”
I knew that wasn’t true, but I appreciated him saying it. “Check with vice, alright, if you wouldn’t mind, on Jordan’s wife? I’ll let you know if anything turns up on my end.”
Mike nodded and I walked away, images of my daughter clouding my vision.
FIFTY-EIGHT
One of the first things I told people when they asked for my help was that they had to take care of themselves first. Take care of themselves, take care of their spouse, take care of the children still in the home, take care of their lives. If you allow those things to break down, the rest comes crumbling down around you.
I learned that the hard way. My marriage to Lauren collapsed before either of us had realized what happened. We were so focused on the enormous crack that had fractured our lives that we missed the fissures that radiated out from that initial crack, me far more than Lauren.
To get anything done, I had to take care of my own life first.
So I drove to Lauren’s house.
Our old home.
The one where I'd last seen Elizabeth.
I parked across the street and got out. I didn’t cross the road, just stood there, my back against the car, as if some invisible forcefield was between me and the house.
The house was originally a one story, but we'd built an upstairs addition. Beige stucco with big, wide windows. A giant tree in the center of the front yard. Small cracks in the short driveway that had grown longer and wider since I’d last seen them. Fresh flowers, blues and reds and yellows, bloomed along the narrow path to the front door. The grass was green, the windows were spotless and the paint on the trim looked fresh.
I tried to remember other details about what it looked like when I lived in it. Was it the same color? Were those the same kind of flowers? Was the tree always that big?
The only thing I knew for certain was the lawn in front of me was the last place I’d seen Elizabeth.
I wanted to walk to the door and knock, but my legs wouldn’t move. My stomach cramped, the anxiety gripping the muscles inside and squeezing them. Heat radiated up the back of my neck and into my head, tiny beads of sweat lining up along my forehead, just beneath my hairline.
It physically hurt to stand there and look at the house. I was making a mistake.
My hand slid along the car door, found the handle and grasped onto it, as much for balance as to open it. I heard a car coming from down the street and turned in that direction.
A dark blue Toyota Camry slowed as it approached. I stood up straighter, tried to look normal, not as if I was about to pass out in the street, and attempted a smile and a half-wave at the driver.
The driver was Lauren and my hand stayed frozen in the air.
She pulled the car into the driveway and sat there for a moment before she got out, looking at me, expressionless.
She wore a black pant suit with a red blouse and black pumps. A thin gold chain hung around her neck, standing out against the red of the blouse. Her hair was down and I didn’t see any earrings. A flash of light at her right wrist revealed a watch the same color as the necklace, a watch I remembered giving her.
She stood there for a moment, looking as unsure as I felt. She opened the driver-side rear door and pulled out a leather satchel and placed it over her shoulder. She shut the door and stared at me.
“Hi,” I said, my voice loud enough to carry across the street.
She just nodded.
“I owe you an apology, I think,” I said.
She shrugged as if I’d asked her a question about something she couldn't have cared less.
“I’m sorry,” I said anyway. “For the other night. I handled it poorly.”
The look in her eyes shifted, but I couldn’t tell what was there. Anger, sadness, nothing?