J. Jance - Long Time Gone

I paused, uncertain of how I should refer to the dead woman.

Tracy stepped into the breach. “Rosemary?”

“Yes.”

Tracy shrugged and put down her empty mug. “I guess she started talking about the custody thing a few months ago, saying she wanted us to come live with her. I turn eighteen in just a couple of months, so I wasn’t worried about it, but Heather was. She turns sixteen in three months. It would mean changing schools just before her junior year, and that sucks. Dad asked Heather what she wanted to do. She said she’d run away from home before she’d go live in Tacoma, or else she’d do something drastic, whatever that means. Dad said fine, that he’d talk to Rosemary and tell her the answer was no. And he did, but then, last Friday, when we were having dinner, there was a knock on the door, which Jared opened. This guy comes in and serves Dad with papers because Rosemary isn’t taking no for an answer. She’s decided to take him to court.”

“What happened then?” I asked.

Tracy sighed. “Like I said, Dad went nuts. Friday is pizza night at our house. When the guy left, Dad picked up a pizza box and Frisbeed it at the door. Pieces of pizza went everywhere. I’ve seen Dad angry sometimes, whenever Heather and I did something bad, but I’ve never seen him act like that. It scared me, and it scared Mom, too. I know because I heard her talking about it with Molly later, after Dad was gone.

“Anyway, after he threw the box, he turned and wheeled himself out of the room. We all followed Dad out to the carport. Mom asked him where he thought he was going. He said Tacoma. He said he was going to talk to Rosemary and set her straight about a few things. Mom kept trying to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen. He just got in the car and drove away like he hadn’t heard a word she said. She was crying when he left.”

“How long was he gone?”

Tracy paused before speaking. “A long time,” she answered finally. “Mom was upset, so I took Jared into the family room to watch Finding Nemo . I thought I heard Dad come home while we were still watching the movie, but I must have been mistaken. Jared and I both fell asleep on the couch. I woke up around two. I put Jared to bed in his room, and then I went to bed, too. My bedroom is right over the driveway. I had just gotten into bed and turned out the lights when I heard Dad’s car.”

I thought about that for a minute. “Your father said he talked to two Tacoma detectives this afternoon. Did he give you any details about how Rosemary died?”

Tracy shook her head. “It happened over the weekend. Some guy out walking his dog found her body by the water yesterday afternoon. They can’t tell exactly how long she’s been dead because of the cold.”

I nodded. Extreme cold weather delays some of the tissue changes medical examiners rely on in approximating time of death.

Exhausted, Tracy closed her eyes. Once again she leaned back against the cold window, as though she no longer had the energy to sit up on her own. She had come to me looking for a place to unload her worst nightmare-her suspicion that her beloved father had murdered her biological mother. I understood the kind of emotional barriers that had stood in the way of her doing that.

When a loved one turns homicide suspect, family members are usually the last to tumble to the idea that their husband or son or daughter or wife could possibly be guilty of such a heinous crime. Some, no matter how convincing the evidence, never do accept a family member’s guilt. The fact that Tracy had reached such a damning conclusion so early in the process was something I couldn’t ignore. The guys from my office wouldn’t ignore it either. No wonder Tracy was worried. So was I. Tracy was focused on her father’s angry outburst with the pizza box. I was concerned about how much Ron hadn’t mentioned when he stopped by to tell me about Rosemary’s death.

“I’m sure everything will be fine,” I told Tracy, trying to sound more reassuring than I felt. “No doubt your father has some perfectly reasonable explanation for where he went and what he was doing so late on Friday evening.”

Tracy looked at me pleadingly. “Do you really think so, Uncle Beau?” she asked. “Or are you just saying that to make me feel better?”

For an instant a terrible thought crossed my mind. Was Tracy as innocent as she seemed, or was her trip to see me a preemptive strike designed to point suspicion in her father’s direction and away from her? The thought was there, but looking into her guileless blue eyes, I banished it as quickly as it came.

“Would you believe a little of both?” I asked.

She gave me a faint smile. “I’d believe it,” she said. Unfolding her legs, Tracy reached for her jacket. “I’d better be going,” she said.

I glanced outside. Far below, streetlights and headlights glowed in golden halos through the falling snow. I looked down at the stoplight at First and Broad. While I watched, a vehicle stopped on the steep incline west of First began to slip backward. The first vehicle slid until it bashed into a second one that had been coming up the street behind it. The second car spun like a slow-motion top before ending up sitting astraddle the opposite lane. Just then a westbound car came through the green light. The driver slammed on his brakes and then skidded down the hill until he T-boned the passenger side of the second vehicle.

There’s nothing like Seattle in the snow. It can be an incredibly entertaining spectator sport as long as you’re not out in it.

“No,” I declared, turning away from the window. “You’re not going anywhere in this weather. You can sleep in the spare room. We’ll figure out how to get you home in the morning.”

“But what about…?”

“Your parents?” I asked.

Tracy nodded.

“I’ll call and let them know you’re here. I’ll tell them you came by because you were upset about Rosemary’s death and needed to talk.”

“They’re still going to be pissed at me,” she said.

“No, I don’t think so,” I told her. “They have so much on their plates right now, I doubt they’ll even notice.”

I gave Tracy one of my T-shirts to sleep in and a robe to wear. After she headed for bed, I called her house. No answer. That wasn’t a big surprise. It was late. Knowing what Ron and Amy were going through, I should have expected they’d turn off their phone. I left a message saying Tracy was with me and that I’d bring her home in the morning. I hit the sack then, too, but I didn’t sleep.

Ron Peters’s marriage was in trouble and he had been having serious difficulties with his ex-wife. I knew nothing about any of it, and yet I was supposedly his best friend. So what kind of friend did that make me?

Not so hot, I concluded. And not nearly as good a friend as I thought I was .

I awakened the next morning to the unwelcome news that there were five to seven inches of snow in the Denny Regrade area of downtown Seattle where I live, with more than twice that on the East-side and at higher elevations. What followed was a droning recitation of school closures. Many offices and businesses were suggesting that unessential workers stay home.

Which am I? I wondered. Essential or not?

Scrambling out of bed, I pulled on some clothing and then went to make coffee. I stood in the kitchen and looked out onto a beautiful winter wonderland where the streets were practically deserted. With the exception of a chained-up bus or two and a couple of speeding SUVs, no one else seemed to be out and about.

When the phone rang I knew it would be Ron, and I was right. “What the hell was Tracy thinking, taking off like that in the middle of the night? Where is she?”