Stephen White - Missing Persons

“Get them on what?” I asked, gently. “You’ll tell them you’ve been unable to reach your wife for an hour? So what? In Vegas terms that’s an eye-blink. You know what the security people will say: She met somebody she knew, got distracted. She met somebody she didn’t know, got distracted. She went to a show, went to a club, went for a walk, found a hot slot machine or a hotter craps table, went out for a meal, went out for a drink. So she’s been gone for an hour? Nobody’s going to care. Not for an hour, not for a day. Maybe not even for a week. Not in Las Vegas.”

“They don’t know Diane. I do. You do, too. This isn’t like her. If she said she was going to call, she would’ve found a phone. She would’ve called.”

“But that’s the point. They don’t know Diane. To them, she’s just a tourist who lost her cell phone. Big deal.”

Stubbornly, Raoul said, “I’m going to call hotel security.”

“Okay,” I said. I knew that were I in his shoes I would want to do something, too, no matter how futile.

“Write down my hotel number here.” He dictated it. “Call it if you hear from her. I’ll be on my mobile.”

I curled my tongue against the roof of my mouth and forced just enough air through the gap to cause a high-pitched, low-volume whistle to emerge. Emily, the big Bouvier, responded immediately. I could hear her lumbering in my direction from the other side of the house. The sharp tips of her nails click-clacked as she made the transition from carpet to hardwood. I knew that Anvil, the miniature poodle, would follow her. He’d follow not because he found my whistle alluring. He’d follow because whatever Emily found alluring, he found alluring.

In our tiny neutered dog pack, Emily was the alpha-Amazon and Anvil was the eunuch slave.

The dogs waited impatiently while I pulled on a jacket and stuffed the cordless phone from the kitchen into one pocket and Lauren’s cell into the other. We all crashed together heading out the front door.

Emily ran immediately across the lane toward Adrienne’s house. For her it was like visiting extended family. I stage-whispered to her that everybody was in bed; she apparently didn’t care. Anvil peed copiously in the dust before he loped off in the same general direction.

Raoul’s version of my predicament was simple. In his view I possessed information that might help him find his wife. Sure, he’d been married to a psychologist long enough to know that the information he wanted was privileged. Realistically, of course, he didn’t care. Who in his position would?

The fact that I’d already revealed that the information had at least a tangential tie to Hannah Grant’s unfortunate demise would only aggravate his insistence that I breach confidence and tell him what he wanted to know. But what he also didn’t know was that the patient of Hannah Grant’s whose mother was in Las Vegas was Mallory Miller and that the reason for my anxiety over Diane’s sudden vanishing wasn’t only because I was concerned that it might have something to do with Hannah’s death, but also because I feared it might have something to do with Mallory’s disappearance.

I’d already decided that, ethical or not, as soon as I felt that Diane had been sucked into that vortex I’d tell Raoul whatever I knew.

It wasn’t the way the rules were written. But so be it.

Ten minutes outside with the dogs and I was getting cold. It was apparent that Emily-she didn’t get cold until wind-chill numbers were in double-digit negatives-was eager to head down the lane on her usual evening jaunt, but I feared that kind of walk would yank us out of range of the cordless phone so I forced both dogs to roam the area between our house and Adrienne’s. Emily found some smells that were compelling and she adapted. Anvil hung around close by. Raoul called back just as I was coaxing the reluctant dogs back inside the front door.

“Hi, Raoul?” I answered. “You hear anything?”

“Not from Diane. Security’s not going to help. I’m in a cab on the way to the airport. I’ll be in Vegas in a couple of hours.”

“You’re sure that’s a-”

“Yes, I am. You didn’t hear from her?”

Raoul’s interruption shouted at me that his usual unflappable civility was developing fissures. “No,” I said.

“Sometime tomorrow morning, if I’m not waking up next to my wife, I’m going to want to talk to this patient’s mother, Alan. Be prepared to help me find her.”

“Raoul, I-”

He hung up.

“-will do whatever’s necessary.”

Diane’s husband was wealthy. She didn’t work the long hours I did. She didn’t have to.

On a typical weekday before eight in the morning my car would’ve been the first to slide into the parking spaces beside our office building. That Tuesday should have been no different. On a typical Tuesday morning, Diane would show up at around 9:00, or 9:30. That Tuesday should have been no different.

She’d told me on the phone the evening before that she’d already canceled her appointments until Thursday. Still, given the events at the Venetian, the driveway felt empty without her Saab, the waiting room felt empty without her patients, and the offices felt empty without her laugh.

Raoul had called me near midnight the night before from the room he’d checked into at the Venetian after flying to Vegas from San Francisco. He had a suite fit for the doges overlooking the Rialto Bridge, but he didn’t have any good news to report. Diane hadn’t phoned him. The fact that she hadn’t at least left a message on Raoul’s cell was unprecedented between them. When one of them was traveling they always talked at the end of the day-always. When they were traveling separately they always talked at the end of the day.

After a lot of cajoling, and a five-hundred-dollar incentive, Raoul had finally persuaded a housekeeping manager to agree to check Diane’s room for him. The manager wouldn’t give Raoul the location of her room, but reported back that there was no sign of anything out of the ordinary, nor was there any indication that she’d been there since late that afternoon. No phone calls had been placed on the hotel room phone since midafternoon. The minibar was untouched after it had been replenished midday. The housekeeper who cleaned the room reported that she’d finished the evening turndown service around 6:30. From all appearances, no one had disturbed the bed or bath linens since that time.

The casino attendant who’d been given Diane’s cell phone by the drunk woman who played nickel slots and inhaled Harvey Wallbangers had promptly turned it in to the casino’s lost-and-found department.

Diane had not inquired about it.

Raoul had also begun what he anticipated would be a long, difficult process of badgering the hotel security officers to review the casino security videotapes for the time that Diane was walking across the gaming floor talking with me on her cell phone. He assumed that hotel security cameras videotaped every square inch of the casino twenty-four hours a day. Security was resisting his pleas to review that section of the tapes.

Their argument? What his wife did when she was in Las Vegas was her business, right? Not her husband’s, right?

He was European, he understood. Right? They can’t very well start showing videotapes of what one spouse does in their casino to another spouse, can they? Would that be fair? What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?

Raoul knew that it was hard to disagree, unless you knew her.

Raoul knew her. I knew her.

Venetian security didn’t know her. The identity of the person she’d run into as she walked across the casino floor? Venetian security thought that was her business.