“And you’d characterize this as disinterest?” I ask. “In Jason? The relationship? The whole thing?”
“Mia was passing time until something better came along.”
“Did they fight?”
“Not that I know of.”
“But if there was a problem, Mia would have told you,” I suggest.
“I’d like to think she would have,” the woman responds, her dark eyes becoming sad.
A bell rings in the distance, followed by the clatter of footsteps in the hall. Ayanna Jackson rises to her feet, which I take as my cue. I say that I’ll be in touch and leave her with my card, asking that she call if anything comes to mind.
Eve
After
I’m halfway down the stairs when I see them, a news crew on the sidewalk before our home. They stand, shivering, with cameras and microphones; Tammy Palmer from the local news in a tan trench coat and knee-high boots on my front lawn. Her back is toward me, a man counting down on his fingers—three...two...—and as he points at Tammy I all but hear her broadcast begin. I’m standing here at the home of Mia Dennett....
This isn’t the first time they’ve been here. Their numbers have begun to dwindle now, their reporters moving onto other stories: same-sex marriage laws and the dismal state of the economy. But in the days after Mia’s return they were camped outside, desperate for a glimpse of the damaged woman, for any morsel of information to turn into a headline. They followed us around town in their cars until we all but locked Mia inside.
There have been mysterious cars parked outside, photographers for those trashy magazines peering out of car windows with their telephoto lenses, trying to turn Mia into a cash cow. I pull the drapes closed.
I spot Mia sitting at the kitchen table. I descend the stairs in silence, to watch my daughter in her own world before I intrude upon it. She’s dressed in a pair of ripped jeans and a snug navy turtleneck that I bet makes her eyes look just amazing. Her hair is damp from an earlier shower, drying in waves down her back. I’m addled by the thick wool socks that blanket her feet, that and the mug of coffee her hands are united around.
She hears me approach and turns to look. Yes, I think to myself, the turtleneck makes her eyes look amazing.
“You’re drinking coffee,” I say, and it’s the vague expression on her face that makes me certain I’ve said the wrong thing.
“I don’t drink coffee?”
I’ve been treading carefully for over a week now, always trying to say the right thing, going over-the-top—ridiculously so—to make her feel at home. I’ve been on edge to compensate for James’s apathy and Mia’s disarray. And then, when least expected, a seemingly benign conversation, and I slip up.
Mia doesn’t drink coffee. She doesn’t drink much caffeine at all. It makes her nervous. But I watch her sip from the mug, completely stagnant and sluggish, and think—wish—that maybe a little caffeine will do the trick. Who is this limp woman before me, I wonder, recognizing the face but having no knowledge of the body language or tone of voice or the disturbing silence that encompasses her like a bubble.
There are a million things I want to ask her. But I don’t. I’ve vowed to just let her be. James has pried more than enough for the both of us. I’ll leave the questions to the professionals, Dr. Rhodes and Detective Hoffman, and to those who just never know when to quit—James. She’s my daughter, but she’s not my daughter. She’s Mia, but she’s not Mia. She looks like her, but she wears socks and drinks coffee and wakes up sobbing in the middle of the night. She’s quicker to respond if I call her Chloe than when I call her by her given name. She looks empty, appears asleep when she’s awake, lies awake when she should be asleep. She nearly flew three feet from her seat when I turned on the garbage disposal last night and then retreated to her room. We didn’t see her for hours and when I asked how she passed the time all she could say was I don’t know. The Mia I know can’t sit still for that long.
“It looks like a nice day,” I offer but she doesn’t respond. It does look like a nice day; it’s sunny. But the sun in January is deceiving and I’m certain the earth will warm to no more than twenty degrees.
“I want to show you something,” I say and I lead her from the kitchen to the adjoining dining room, where I’ve replaced a limited edition print with one of Mia’s works of art, back in November when I was certain she was dead. Mia’s painting is done in oil pastels, this picturesque Tuscan village she drew from a photograph after we visited the area years ago. She layered the oil pastels, creating a dramatic representation of the village, a moment in time trapped behind this sheet of glass. I watch Mia eye the piece and think to myself: If only everything could be preserved that way. “You made that,” I say.
She knows. This she remembers. She recalls the day she set herself down at the dining room table with the oil pastels and the photograph. She had begged her father to purchase the poster-board for her and he agreed, though he was certain her newfound love of art was only a passing phase. When she was finished we all oohed and ahhed and then it was tucked away somewhere with old Halloween costumes and roller skates only to be stumbled upon later on a scavenger hunt for photographs of Mia that the detective asked us to collect.
“Do you remember our trip to Tuscany?” I ask.
She steps forward to run her lovely fingers over the work of art. She stands inches above me, but in the dining room she is a child—a fledgling not yet sure how to stand on her own two feet.
“It rained,” Mia responds without removing her eyes from the drawing.
I nod. “It did. It rained,” I say, glad that she remembered. But it rained only one day and the rest of the days were a godsend.
I want to tell her that I hung the drawing because I was so worried about her. I was terrified. I lay awake night after night for months on end just wondering, What if? What if she wasn’t okay? What if she was okay but we never found her? What if she was dead and we never knew? What if she was dead and we did know, the detective asking us to identify decaying remains?
I want to tell Mia that I hung her Christmas stocking just in case and that I bought her presents and wrapped them and put them under the tree. I want her to know that I left the porch light on every night and that I must have called her cell phone a thousand times just in case. Just in case one time it didn’t go straight to the voice mail. But I listened to the message over and over again, the same words, the same tone—Hi, this is Mia. Please leave a message—allowing myself to savor the sound of her voice for a while. I wondered: what if those were the last words I ever heard from my daughter? What if?
Her eyes are hollow, her expression vacant. She has the most unflawed peaches-and-cream complexion I believe I’ve ever seen, but the peaches seemed to have disappeared and now she is all cream, white as a ghost. She doesn’t look at me when we speak; she looks past me or through me, but never at me. She looks down much of the time, at her feet, her hands, anything to avoid another’s gaze.
And then, standing there in the dining room, her face drains of every last bit of color. It happens in an instant, the light seeping through the open drapes highlighting that way Mia’s body lurches upright and then sags at the shoulders, her hand falling from the image of Tuscany to her abdomen in one swift movement. Her chin drops to her chest, her breathing becomes hoarse. I lay a hand on her skinny—too skinny, I can feel bones—back and wait. But I don’t wait long; I’m impatient. “Mia, honey,” I say, but she’s already telling me that she’s okay, she’s fine, and I’m certain it’s the coffee.
“What happened?”
She shrugs. Her hand is glued to the abdomen and I know she doesn’t feel well. Her body has begun a retreat from the dining room. “I’m tired, that’s all. I just need to go lie down,” she says and I make a mental note to rid the house of all traces of caffeine before she wakes up from her nap.
Gabe
Before
“You’re not an easy man to find,” I say as he welcomes me into his work space. It’s more of a cubicle than an office, but with higher walls than normal, offering a minimal amount of privacy. There’s only one chair—his—and so I stand at the entrance to the cube, cocked at an angle against the pliable wall.
“I didn’t know someone was trying to find me.”
My first impression is he’s a pompous ass, much like myself years ago, before I realized I was more full of myself than I should be. He’s a big man, husky, though not necessarily tall. I’m certain he works out, drinks protein shakes, maybe uses steroids? I’ll jot this down in my notes, but for now, I’d hate to have him catch me making these assumptions. I might get my ass kicked.
“You know Mia Dennett?” I ask.
“That depends.” He turns around in his swivel chair, finishes typing an email with his back to me.
“On what?”
“On who wants to know.”
I’m not too eager to play this game. “I do,” I say, saving my trump card until later.
“And you are?”
“Looking for Mia Dennett,” I respond.
I can see myself in this guy, though he can barely be twenty-four or twenty-five years old, just out of college, still believing the world rotates around him. “If you say so.” I, however, am on the cusp of fifty, and just this morning noticed the first few strands of gray hair. I’m certain I have Judge Dennett to thank for them.
He continues the email. What the hell, I think. He couldn’t care less that I’m standing here, waiting to talk to him. I peer over his shoulder to have a look. It’s about college football, sent to a recipient by the user name dago82. My mother is Italian—hence the dark hair and eyes I’m certain all women are wooed by—and so I take the derogatory name as an insult against my people, though I’ve never been to Italy and don’t know a single word in Italian. I’m just looking for another reason not to like this guy. “Must be a busy day,” I comment and he seems peeved that I’m reading his email. He minimizes the screen.
“Who the hell are you?” he asks again.
I reach into my back pocket and pull out that shiny badge I adore so much. “Detective Gabe Hoffman.” He’s visibly knocked down a notch or two. I smile. God, do I love my job.
He plays dumb. “Is there a problem with Mia?”
“Yeah, I guess you can say that.”
He waits for me to continue. I don’t, just to piss him off. “What did she do?”
“When’s the last time you saw Mia?”
“It’s been a while. A week or so.”
“And the last time you spoke to her?”
“I don’t know. Last week. Tuesday night, I think.”
“You think?” I ask. He confirms on his calendar. Yes, it was Tuesday night. “But you didn’t see her Tuesday?”
“No. I was supposed to, but I had to cancel. You know, work.”
“Sure.”
“What happened to Mia?”
“So you haven’t spoken to her since Tuesday?”
“No.”
“Is that normal? To go nearly a week without speaking?”
“I called her,” he confesses. “Wednesday, maybe Thursday. She never called back. I just assumed she was pissed off.”
“And why would that be? Did she have a reason to be pissed off?”
He shrugs. He reaches for a bottle of water on the desk and takes a sip. “I canceled our date Tuesday night. I had to work. She was kind of short with me on the phone, you know? I could tell she was mad. But I had to work. So I thought she was holding a grudge and not calling back...I don’t know.”
“What were your plans?”
“Tuesday night?”
“Yeah.”
“Meet in a bar in Uptown. Mia was already there when I called. I was late. I told her I wasn’t going to make it.”
“And she was mad?”
“She wasn’t happy.”
“So you were here, working, Tuesday night?”
“Until like 3:00 a.m.”
“Anyone who can vouch for that?”
“Um, yeah. My boss. We were putting some designs together for a client meeting on Thursday. I met with her on and off half the night. Am I in trouble?”
“We’ll get to that,” I answer flatly, transcribing the conversation in my own shorthand that no one but me can decipher. “Where’d you go after you left work?”
“Home, man. It was the middle of the night.”
“You have an alibi?”
“An alibi?” He’s getting uncomfortable, squirming in his chair. “I don’t know. I took a cab home.”
“Get a receipt?”
“No.”
“You have a doorman in your building? Someone who can tell us you made it home safe?”
“Cameras,” he says, and then asks, “Where the fuck is Mia?”
I had pulled Mia’s phone records after my meeting with Ayanna Jackson. I found calls almost daily to a Jason Becker, who I tracked down to an architectural firm in the Chicago Loop. I paid this guy a visit to see what he knew about the girl’s disappearance, and saw the evident perception on his face when I said her name. “Yeah, I know Mia,” he said, leading me back to his cube. I saw it in the first instant: jealousy. He had himself convinced that I was the other guy.
“She’s missing,” I say, trying to read his response.
“Missing?”
“Yeah. Gone. No one has seen her since Tuesday.”
“And you think I had something to do with it?”
It irritates me that he’s more concerned with his culpability than Mia’s life. “Yeah,” I lie, “I think you might have something to do with it.” Though the truth is that if his alibi is as airtight as he’s making it out to be, I’m back to square one.
“Do I need a lawyer?”
“Do you think you need a lawyer?”
“I told you, I was working. I didn’t see Mia Tuesday night. Ask my boss.”
“I will,” I assure him, though the look that crosses his face begs me not to.
Jason’s co-workers eavesdrop on the interrogation. They walk slower as they pass his cube; they linger outside and pretend to carry on conversations. I don’t mind. He does. It’s driving him nuts. He’s worried about his reputation. I like to watch him squirm in his chair, becoming antsy. “Do you need anything else?” he asks to speed things along. He wants me out of his hair.
“I need to know your plans Tuesday night. Where Mia was when you called. What time it was. Check your phone records. I need to speak to your boss and make sure you were here, and with security to see what time you left. I’ll need the footage from your apartment cameras to verify you got home okay. If you’re comfortable providing me with that, then we’re all set. If you’d rather I get a warrant...”
“Are you threatening me?”
“No,” I lie, “just giving you your options.”
He agrees to provide me with the information I need, including an introduction to his boss, a middle-aged woman in an office ridiculously larger than his, with floor-to-ceiling windows that face out onto the Chicago River, before I leave.
“Jason,” I declare, after having been assured by the boss that he was working his ass off all night, “we’re going to do everything we can to find Mia,” just to see the expression of apathy on his face before I leave.
Colin
Before
It doesn’t take much. I pay off some guy to stay at work a couple hours later than he’d like to. I follow her to the bar and sit where I can watch her without being seen. I wait for the call to come and when she knows she’s been stood up, I move in.
I don’t know much about her. I’ve seen a snaps
hot. It’s a blurry photo of her stepping off the “L” platform, taken by a car parked a dozen or so feet away. There are about ten people between the photographer and the girl and so her face has been circled with a red pen. On the back of the photograph are the words Mia Dennett and an address. It was handed to me a week or so ago. I’ve never done anything like this before. Larceny, yes. Harassment, yes. Not kidnapping. But I need the money.
I’ve been following her for the last few days. I know where she buys her groceries, where she has her dry cleaning done, where she works. I’ve never spoken to her. I wouldn’t recognize the sound of her voice. I don’t know the color of her eyes or what they look like when she’s scared. But I will.
I carry a beer but I don’t drink it. I can’t risk getting drunk. Not tonight. But I don’t want to draw attention to myself and so I order the beer so I’m not empty-handed. She’s fed up when the call comes in on her cell phone. She steps outside to take the call and when she comes back she’s frustrated. She thinks about leaving, but decides to finish her drink. She finds a pen in her purse and doodles on a bar napkin, listening to some asshole read poetry on stage.
I try not to think about it. I try not to think about the fact that she’s pretty. I remind myself of the money. I need the money. This can’t be that hard. In a couple hours it will all be through.
“It’s good,” I say, nodding at the napkin. It’s the best I can come up with. I know nothing about art.
She gives me the cold shoulder when I first approach. She doesn’t want a thing to do with me. That makes it easier. She barely lifts her eyes from the napkin, even when I praise the candle she’s drawn. She wants me to leave her alone.
“Thanks.” She doesn’t look at me.