Lisa Unger - Darkness My Old Friend

“So do you think you might hang out a shingle?” she said from the sink.

“What? Like a private-detective kind of thing?”

He came up behind her with the glasses, put them in the sink.

“Yes, something like that.”

He gave a little chuckle. “It’s a small town. I’m not sure how much call there would be for my services.”

“You’d be surprised.”

He thought about Paula Carr then and the call he’d seen on his phone. When he’d checked his messages, he found that she hadn’t left a voice mail. His old buddy at the credit bureau hadn’t gotten back to him yet. Hands down, that was the fastest way to locate someone. If you had the right contacts, you could find out someone’s last charge and where. In a culture where people used their cards for virtually everything, it was almost impossible to hide unless you went off the grid-lost your cell phone, switched to cash.

“Anyway,” said Maggie, “part-time wouldn’t be bad.”

“I’ll think about it.” He was trying for nonchalant, but he kind of liked the idea, and he could tell that Maggie knew he did, too. She gave him a fast kiss on the cheek, a light squeeze around the middle.

“I have a patient,” she said.

And then she was gone, slipped through the door that took her to her other life. Dr. Cooper. He used to have another life, too. Detective Cooper, local cop, former jock, hometown boy. He’d been those things for so long he didn’t know how to be just Jones Cooper, husband, father, retired (not by choice). He thought about what Maggie had said earlier. What you were before, what we were, it’s gone. We have to find a new way forward together, as the people we are now . He was starting to understand what she meant.

There was a list of phone messages on the counter: The plumber apparently hadn’t been paid; the Andersons were going out of town, so could Jones feed their cats? And then another, which gave him pause. Kevin Carr had called. Paula’s husband. Could Jones please call him back?

Jones took out his cell phone and scrolled through the numbers to find Paula’s, then quickly hit “send.” He’d get in touch with her first before he called her husband.

“Hello?” It was a male voice, presumably Kevin Carr. Jones toyed with the idea of hanging up. But with caller ID there wasn’t much point in doing that anymore. Jones stayed silent.

“Is this Jones Cooper?” The voice on the other line was edgy, nervous.

“It is,” Jones said reluctantly. “Who’s this?”

“This is Kevin Carr. I saw your name and number on my wife’s cell phone bill. Has she been talking to you?”

What was he going to do, lie?

“That’s right,” he said. He put on his cop voice-distant, almost, but not quite to the point of rudeness. “What can I do for you, Mr. Carr?”

“I want to know what you’ve been talking to my wife about.”

Jones didn’t like the sound of the other man’s voice. He heard insolence and anger in Carr’s tone. He remembered what Paula had said: Kevin cares about what he cares about, and that’s it .

Jones kept his voice light and level. “I think that’s something you should discuss with her, Mr. Carr.”

There was a long pause on the line. “My wife’s gone,” Carr said finally.

“Gone?” Jones felt his blood pressure go up a bit.

“She left me yesterday,” he said. Carr could barely contain the heat of his rage; Jones could feel it. “She assaulted me. Then she took my two youngest children and left. She kidnapped my children.”

Jones couldn’t imagine Paula Carr assaulting anyone-unless she had no choice. He could see her defending herself, her children. He was always suspicious of men who accused their wives of kidnapping the children. When a woman like Paula Carr left her home and took her kids, there was generally a damn good reason. Usually that reason was her husband.

“Why did she leave, Mr. Carr?” Jones asked. “Why did she assault you?”

“Look,” said Carr, his voice going peevish and high-pitched. “I’m calling you because I want to know who you are and why you were talking to my wife. ”

Jones noticed that Carr hadn’t used Paula’s name once. He’d referred to her as “my wife.” That said something to Jones about Carr, about how he viewed Paula.

“At the moment I’m not willing to discuss that with you,” said Jones. “Have you called the police to report the assault or to report your children missing? If you have, they can get in touch with me and I’ll answer any of their questions.”

Jones heard Carr take a deep breath. When he spoke again, the guy was crying. Jones really hated it when men cried. It made him extremely uncomfortable.

“Look, Mr. Cooper,” Carr said. This time his voice was soft and pleading. “My wife is not well. I don’t know what she told you, but she’s unstable, has a history of depression.” Carr paused to take a shuddering breath. “I’m afraid of what she might do-to herself, to the kids.”

Jones felt the first trickle of fear for Paula Carr and her children. Had Carr hurt them? Was this call a setup, a play to make himself look innocent when things got ugly?

“I can’t help you, Mr. Carr,” he said. “But what I will do for you is contact the police.”

“No,” Carr said quickly. “I don’t want to get her in trouble. It’s against the law, right, to leave the home with the children without your spouse’s permission?”

Or was Carr trying to set her up as unstable, as someone who had kidnapped and might harm the children, when what she was doing was fleeing an abusive marriage?

“That depends upon the circumstances,” said Jones.

There was another heavy silence on the line. Jones could hear the other man nearly panting.

“You’re a private detective, right?” Carr said. Why did everyone think he was a private detective? Jones chose not to respond.

The other man went on. “It doesn’t matter why she was talking to you. Just… can you help me find my wife? All I want is for her to come home so that we can work things out.”

Jones stayed silent, as if he were considering it. But he had no intention of helping Kevin Carr. On the other hand, he had promised to help Paula. And he was a man of his word.

“Okay, Mr. Carr. I’ll help you find her,” he said. “I will need some information from you, like her parents’ hometown, her maiden name.”

Carr got all mushy with gratitude. A moment later he was firing off the information.

“I’ll be in touch this afternoon, Mr. Carr,” said Jones when he had what he needed. “Just do me a favor until then. Stay put and wait for my call.”

“And you won’t call the police?”

“At this point I can’t see why I’d have to do that.” Maggie had accused him of being the king of noncommittal answers. It was a cop thing.

What he did first after he hung up was call Denise Smith, the receptionist at Hollows Elementary. He and Denise had known each other since they’d attended kindergarten together at the same school where she now worked. After the standard pleasantries had been exchanged, he asked her who had picked up Cameron Carr from school yesterday. It was an unusual request, probably information she wasn’t authorized to give. But Jones had found that so many people were used to him in his role as cop that they answered his questions as if they had to answer.

“Well, it’s normally his mom. But I can ask his teacher,” Denise said. “We hardly ever see the dad. I think he works in the city.” He heard her fingers clattering on a keyboard, then a pause.

“You know,” she said after a second, “I don’t need to ask. It was Paula. She stopped by the office to say Cameron was going to be out the next couple of days. They were going away.”