Good as Gone (8 page)

“Anna,” she says, refusing to take the bait. She’s not even standing, and although I want to storm out, somehow the fact that she is still sitting in her low-backed chair keeps me from doing so for a moment longer. “Anna, Julie has had an incredibly difficult time. I can tell you that much. The trauma of what she’s been through is not something most people can imagine.”

She wants to talk about trauma.

“Many survivors of sexual abuse feel an overwhelming sense of shame,” she says. “Especially when the abuse is prolonged and combined with other trauma. She needs to feel that she’s safe talking to you.”

“Of course she’s safe,” I say. Angry tears have started streaming down my face despite my efforts.

“She’s not sure how to relate to her family anymore, or to anyone who hasn’t been through what she has. She might protect you from the details because she doesn’t want to make you sad or upset.”

“Just tell me,” I beg.

“Your job is to let her know you love her, no matter what happened.”

“Please.”

“Anna, don’t you want to come sit down? We have thirty more minutes in this appointment. I feel like it would be good for you to talk to someone as well. Don’t you think that’s true?”

I get out of there and into my car so fast I’m almost halfway home before it occurs to me to swing by the university. Both to substantiate my lie—there might really be student papers, after all—and to sit behind a closed door with a lock on it and think. I don’t want to see or talk to anyone right now, not even Julie. When I get to my office, I notice a flashing red light on the phone, indicating that I have messages. It takes me a second to figure out how to retrieve them; hardly anybody calls office phones these days. The first three messages are from reporters, and I delete them without listening past the introduction.

After the fourth beep: “Uh, Dr. Davalos, this is Alex Mercado. I’m a private investigator. I know you aren’t talking to the press right now, and I don’t need to ask you any questions. Actually, I have some information to share with you—some things I think you’ll be interested in knowing. So, uh, give me a call back.” He leaves a phone number. “Again, it’s Alex Mercado, and I’d like to meet somewhere and talk face to face, if that’s okay.”

“End of message,” says the female voice recording. “To repeat this message, press—”

I copy the number down on the second listening. Then I listen to the message two or three more times before deleting it, just to make sure I’m really hearing someone self-identify as a “private investigator” on my voicemail. I am.

We never hired a PI to find Julie. We had so much faith in the police then—a thought that presses a burst of angry laughter out of me now. I suppose I thought of private eyes as a solution only for people in movies. But then, I wasn’t the one in charge of the solutions, or much of anything, for a while. The first thing I do now is turn on my desktop computer and Google
Alex Mercado private investigator
. He comes up right away under a link for AMI Inc., which leads to a website so corny I think,
There’s no way this isn’t fake.
There’s actually a fedora in the logo. What next, a magnifying glass? I open a new tab and start looking around for websites where PIs are registered, searching for credentials.

Back when Julie disappeared, there were crackpots. We didn’t want to change our number because we still believed she might try to contact us, and even though the police had a special tip line set aside for Julie, we still got the calls:
I have information you’ll want to know,
they always said, or
I saw her, I swear to God it was her, she’s in Tucson,
or
She’s in Jacksonville,
or
She’s in Missouri City.
One or two of them refused to be referred to the police.
It has to be you, and it has to be in person.
Needless to say, the police were listening in on our line, which I assume had as much to do with their suspicion of Tom and me as anything else—God, what a time—and the calls must have all been traced to lonely middle-aged men living with their ailing mothers or teenagers playing games of truth or dare because none of them turned up any leads.

At the time, I found it hard to believe that so many people would want to be a part of such a horrible circumstance, but in the years since, the years of forgotten nightmares and long commutes past her hundreds of imaginary graves, I have almost felt I understood them. It’s so easy to forget how terrible the world is. Tragedy reminds us. It is purifying in that way. But when it starts to fade, you have to return to the source, over and over.

When I find a reliable-looking registration site searchable by ZIP code, I’m surprised to find that Alex Mercado Investigations is the second name to come up. On the AMI website, I click the About Us link and am treated to Alex Mercado’s credentials: Almost three years as a police detective in the special victims unit of the Houston Police Department. Six years as a private detective. A few links to news stories about crimes that the agency claims to have helped solve; one of the links mentions his name.

I pick up the phone and dial. A male voice answers after the second ring.

“Alex Mercado Investigations. Is this Anna Davalos?”

“Yes,” I say, a bit startled, although of course he would have caller ID. “You left a message earlier.”

“Thanks for getting back to me,” he says. “Look, I realize this is a little odd, but I would really like to meet with you and talk about some things.”

“About Julie?”

“Of course. I don’t feel comfortable saying more on the phone. Would you be able to meet me somewhere?”

“Yes, but it has to be today. It has to be now.” It’s remarkable how easy it is to finish this conversation: I suggest a diner, not the cutesy retro kind you find around my neighborhood, but a Waffle House near the freeway. I feel my pulse racing, but my voice stays absolutely cool and untroubled as I say, “I’ll meet you there in half an hour.” It’s like I set up things like this every day.

Just before I’m about to hang up, he asks one last question, as if he can’t resist. “Have you ever heard of Gretchen Farber?”

“No,” I say. “Who’s that?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “I’ll see you in half an hour.”

made one mistake, and the mistake’s name was Cal. He was supposed to be another rung on the ladder out of the dark hole she had come from. It was her fault he’d become more.

At the time, she’d been planning her next move for so long it felt inevitable. As soon as the set was over, she smiled, murmured “Thank you” into the mic, and slipped offstage fast. She headed toward the ladies’ room but swerved past it fluidly at the last second, slipping out the back door instead and then pounding through the alleyway and around to the front entrance. Then she waited. One minute, two minutes, three minutes, heart throbbing painfully from the sprint and her skin prickling in the chill. Coatless, her black Salvation Army trench still slouched up alibi-style next to her purse backstage. At least it wasn’t raining, for once, aside from a little halo of mist around the neon club sign.

And then he was there, pulling his collar up as he emerged onto the sidewalk, the neon light shining pink on his shaved head. She steeled herself to make his dreams come true, trying to look as if she’d been waiting for someone else when he happened to step into her path. “Hey, do you have a cigarette? I’m dying.”

He just looked at her, blinked for a moment, then broke into a helpless smile. “I don’t smoke,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s a nasty habit. I’m not supposed to be doing it. If my band sees me, they’ll kill me.” She gestured toward her throat, opened her mouth, pointing into it as if he could see the damage that cigarettes had already done to her vocal cords. Then she remembered Will’s hands at her neck, how she’d worn a turtleneck but couldn’t sing for two days afterward. Will had told Dave and Len she had laryngitis.

“Are you okay?” he asked suddenly, his smile going out.

She had only thirty more seconds to get this settled, so she let herself come a little unsewn, just enough to throw a natural wobble into her voice. “Rough night,” she admitted. “Honestly, I kind of need a break from those guys. Where are you headed?”

“Nowhere,” he said. “Home. Do you need a ride?”

“Yeah,” she said. “If you’re okay swinging by a drugstore or something for smokes.” She laughed. “I’m sorry, I feel like a complete weirdo.”

“No, it’s okay,” he said, and she knew it was far more than that. She was still watching the door just behind him out of the corner of her eye. Plenty of people were smoking under the sign, but there was no one out here she didn’t want to see—yet. The door flapped open incessantly, burping out a few more plaid-flannel shirts each time. He noticed her noticing and twitched to look over his shoulder, and she willed her eyes to become china plates fixed on his until he stopped.

“I’m Cal,” he said, extending a hand. “And it’s right around midnight, so you”—he gestured toward the dingy marquee—“must be Gretchen.”

She wasn’t, but he was so proud of that line she knew immediately he didn’t have any others. So she just nodded yes and grasped his warm hand, cracking open a little at the thought of all the things he was taking on faith. When she said, “Thanks, Cal,” her voice broke again, not on purpose this time, and she pulled her hand back fast; he took a step forward, like you do when you see something just beginning to topple off a shelf.

She righted herself and said, “So, where are you parked?”

“That way.” He pointed, and she let him march past her with just the faintest brush of shoulders, falling in a little behind. Giving him some time without her in his sightline so that he could reflect on his unbelievable good luck. That idea was so sad she almost laughed. She hoped he would forget about the cigarettes, because although she could hold a lungful of pot for a minute and a half before letting it out, cigarettes made her cough and cough.

He didn’t forget. The car slowed down five blocks from the club and he prepared to turn into a gas station.

“What I really am is hungry,” she said suddenly, like a confession. “Are you hungry?”

“I could eat.”

“Do you know anywhere that’s open? I’ve only been to Seattle for gigs, I don’t know anything around here.”

“Sure, yeah.” Cal seemed unfazed by the sudden switch. “Do you have to get back anytime soon?”

“I’m just hungry,” she repeated.

She wondered if they’d found her purse sitting under the stool yet, then realized Cal was saying something she’d missed. “I’m sorry, what? I’m—”

“You’re tired too,” he said. “I was just saying it was a great set. Are you always this worn out after a performance?”

“No,” she said, leaning back into the passenger seat as the warm, familiar exhaustion of being borne away washed over her. The feeling of leaving: a perfect feeling, better than any safety in the world.

She was glad when the diner turned out to be fifteen minutes out along a highway between tall traffic barriers and taller trees. It was dark, but she could barely see the Space Needle poking up over a hill; that was how far away downtown was, with the club, and the van, and Will, who would by now be looking around impatiently, maybe sending someone into the ladies’ room to check on her.

Cal opened the door for her. The diner had steam on the insides of its windows and smelled wonderful.

“This is perfect,” she said as they slid onto the curved benches of wood-grain Formica. She ordered a burger and fries. Cal got a tuna melt with a salad.

“So you come up here for gigs a lot?” Cal asked.

“You should know.”

He blushed.
Very pretty,
she thought.

“Yeah, I’ve seen you a few times,” he said carefully. “You guys play a lot in Portland?”

“A couple times a week,” she said.

“How long have you been singing?”

She looked for something on the table to play with, found the ridged white saltshaker. “I’ve been with the band six months.”

“Do you like it?”

“I like being good at it,” she said.

“That’s not really the same,” he said. “Do you like the
feeling?
”

“I like the
feeling
of being good at it.”

“I mean, do you need to sing to live? Because when I see you up there, you look like you do.”

“Well, I don’t,” she said, annoyed by the idea. “I’m just trying to do a good job.”

“Well, that’s what you look like. It’s amazing to see. It’s—like nobody else should see it, you know?”

“Yeah, that’s what Will thinks too,” she said with a short laugh. “I’m the only reason we’re getting booked or he’d lock me up and make me sing just for him.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Cal said.

“I know you didn’t. But that’s what it’s like.”

Cal furrowed his brow, obviously trying to think of something to say. She decided to save him the effort.

“He hits me,” she said levelly. “I’m running away from him.”

“He hits you.”

“And I’m running away from him.”

He took the saltshaker out of her hands and set it upright in front of her. She could feel him taking in, for the first time, her lack of a coat, her lack of a purse. Now was the moment when he would also surmise, correctly, that he was buying her dinner. She tried not to hold her breath waiting for his next question.

“How can I help?”

She looked into his eyes, which were dark brown with watery blue rings around the irises, and made her voice soft. “You’re helping right now. Didn’t you know?” She took the shaker back and laid it on its side, spun it around so that a few tiny salt grains flew out onto the table with every whirl. She let the salt lie, knowing instinctively how much he wanted to sweep it away. He didn’t.

The food came. She picked up the burger and crammed in a bite. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Cal giving a thank-you nod to the waitress, and only after she walked away did he unroll his fork and knife and spread the paper napkin in his lap. Then he picked up the knife and cut the sandwich in half diagonally.

“Wow,” she said.

“What?” He picked up one triangle and bit off the corner.