Stephen White - Missing Persons

I said, “Bob, look at me. Please.”

He did, holding the connection for almost two entire seconds. I asked, “Do you know something about Mallory? Where she is? How she’s doing? Had she said something to you? Has Doyle?”

Way too many questions on my part. Way too many. A rational observer would have had a hard time determining who was more flustered at that moment, doctor or patient.

“Maybe you know something you should tell the police,” I added-my way of adjusting the seasoning on a therapeutic dish I was already responsible for overcooking.

Bob did the half head-shake thing again, this time minus the “sheeesh,” before he said, “I have to go.”

I barely heard his words. The echoes of his earlier pronouncement- “She doesn’t look fourteen” -were gaining volume in my head. Silently quoting Diane, I thought, Holy moly.

“Did you talk to Mallory just before Christmas, Bob? Did you know what was going to happen?”

“I have to go.”

“I have a few extra minutes. We can go on.”

Bob didn’t acknowledge my offer. He stood, grabbed his daypack, and stepped toward the French door that led outside toward the backyard, but he didn’t ask me for permission to use it as he had on previous occasions. As he pulled the door open, air that was much colder than I expected flooded into the room, chilling my feet. He paused in the open doorway and turned his head back in my direction.

Our gazes failed to connect by about ten degrees. It was as though he were blind, wanted to find my gaze, but couldn’t quite manage to make eye contact.

He said, “Is something a secret if nobody knows you know it?”

My gut was still in knots. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“For something to be a secret, somebody else has to know it, right? Or… do they? I tell you things and you have to keep them secret. But I’ve never been…”

Been what?

I suspected that Bob’s naiveté was talking, or that he was posing a trick question-a-tree-falling-in-the-forest clone-but I couldn’t find the trap. Reluctantly I said, “A secret is a secret, I guess.”

He suddenly shifted his gaze and we locked eyes for a period of time that was about the duration of a solitary flap of a hummingbird’s wings. There, and then gone. He persisted. “If nobody knows something but the person who knows it, is it really a secret? Or is it something else? What would that be?”

“What are we talking about, Bob? Is this… something about Mallory? Is she okay? Do you know something about where she is?”

“Other people have secrets. I didn’t really know that. I mean I knew it, but I didn’t… I don’t know everything yet, but it’s not as simple as I thought at first. I’m not even sure about what I know. Does that make sense?”

No, it doesn’t.

I could feel him pulling away. He hadn’t moved an inch farther away from me, but this prolonged connection between him and me had existed at a level of intimacy that I knew Bob couldn’t tolerate for long. Now he was floating away like a helium balloon in a stiff breeze.

I tried to grab for the string that would bring him back. I said, “But you know something? You know a secret?”

I kept thinking, You know that she doesn’t look fourteen .

“You know secrets, too,” he replied. “People tell you things. I do. Therapists.”

What did that mean? Was he speaking generally or was he referring to something specific that he thought I knew?

I didn’t know.

He pursed his thin lips and shook his head, just a little, as though he was mildly disappointed with me. “The story’s not over. I have to figure stuff out, who to trust. I think I’ve already been wrong once. Doyle’s not… the guy I thought he was.”

Trust me. Please.

“Doyle’s not what? What do you mean?”

“Maybe you should read it. What I wrote.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but Bob closed the door behind him.

I was about to say, “I’d love to.” The cold air that had rushed in wasn’t the only cause of chill in the room.

I stepped outside into the frigid air. “Bob,” I called. After two more steps across the yard he stopped and turned to face me. He didn’t bother to look at me, but he faced me. I said, “Tuesday, our regular time, okay?”

“Yeah.”

“If you’d like to meet before then I can do that. Don’t worry about the money.”

He said, “Okay,” hunched his shoulders forward, dropped his poor excuse for a chin, and paced off into the night.

Sam had blown some serious bucks at Runners Roost.

A year before if you had asked me what was more likely, a giant meteor destroying our planet, or Sam Purdy adorned in head-to-toe burgundy running Lycra, I would have been warning everyone to duck.

But there Sam stood, right at my front door, jogging in place, his breath puffing out in little frosty clouds that stood out like flares against a sky the color of deep water.

It was 5:10 in the frigging morning on the first Monday of the year. My initial thoughts upon waking had been about my disconcerting session with Bob a few days before.

“You ready?” Sam asked. “I say we do a couple of slow miles, then we try to bring one in around nine. What do you think? We’ll work up from there.”

I tied both of my shoes before I replied. “I think it’s January, Sam, and this could really wait until March or April. The race isn’t until May, for God’s sake.”

The race on Sam’s radar was the Bolder Boulder, the Memorial Day Weekend 10K classic, and for some reason Sam had decided that his training regimen couldn’t be put off until spring. I’d volunteered to be his workout partner, and unfortunately for me his ardor for physical fitness was that of the newly converted.

“Emily coming with?”

Sam was asking about our Bouvier des Flandres. Emily was a big bear of a dog and her natural instincts spurred her more toward herding livestock than jogging on a lead alongside human beings. “Maybe next time. Running in straight lines isn’t one of her best things. She likes to roam. Let’s see how it goes without her this time.”

“What about the little one? Anvil?”

“Hardly. Three miles is a marathon for a miniature poodle. At least it is for him. I’m afraid it’s just you and me.” I stared out into the darkness. “I don’t even think we’ll see the milkman or the paperboy at this hour.”

“Cool, let’s go.”

Although it was contrary to his character to yield control, Sam wanted me to set the pace. Two reasons: From a thousand dog walks I knew the trails in the nearby hills, and since I’d run a couple of Bolder Boulders when I was younger he was granting me the status of running guru.

I knew the status assignment wouldn’t endure for long. Near the end of mile one, I asked, “What kind of trouble has Reese Miller been in?”

Sam didn’t move lightly. I don’t know whether it was inexperience, poor technique, just the fact that he was a big guy, or what, but the pounding beside me on the dirt trails of Spanish Hills sounded more like the clop , clop of a Clydesdale than the heel-toe patter of a jogger. I’m not much of a runner. Bicycling is my thing. But running beside Sam and his plodding strides I felt like I was floating.

“Fights.”

I didn’t expect that he’d answer me at all, but his reply was too parsimonious for my taste. I considered the possibility that Sam was too winded to be more expansive, but he was in better shape than at any time since we’d met and I decided that the brevity was an indication of caution while he figured out where the hell I was coming from.

“Hockey fights?” I asked.