Mindy Mejia - Leave No Trace

When he got into town, driving seventy in a thirty-mile-an-hour zone, the doctor’s office still wasn’t open yet so he stopped by the duplex to pick up extra clothes. Two squad cars were waiting in the driveway. Before Josiah could process what was happening, the officers took him down to the station to question him about Heather’s disappearance and when he lied and said he hadn’t seen her – ­because who the fuck cared about Heather Price, he needed to get medicine back to his son – they threw him in jail for obstruction of justice. They flashed his record, as if that would scare some bullshit confession out of him, and played a game of bad cop/bad cop that had more to do with him than about finding Heather Price. He’d run into local boys like this all his life, the ones who stared at the same few miles of land so much they thought they owned anyone who dared to walk on it. Cooperating, he described the fight he’d had with Heather, leaving out the part where he’d shoved her into the walls, and asked them to dust his apartment for fingerprints.

‘She probably took the money straight to her dealer.’

‘Heroin?’ Sergeant Coombe, the overfed desk cop who seemed to be in charge, chewed on that idea like it had a funny taste he couldn’t identify. ‘We don’t have an opioid problem up here.’

An opioid problem. Josiah bit back the impulse to ask him if they didn’t have ‘the Internets,’ either. ‘Maybe that’s why Heather didn’t have any friends.’

‘It’s easy preying on a woman with no friends, isn’t it?’

He felt a flash of panic, not over Heather – all he’d ever done to Heather was say no, thank you – but about the hollow-eyed woman who paddled alone in the dead of night. He’d left her cabin hours ago and the more time that passed, the less he could remember about her. The color of her hair, the pitch in her voice, the expression on her face when she looked at Lucas: all of it wavered out of his memory, leaving a dark outline that could be inhabited by any manner of person. And Lucas – what would Lucas think when he woke up? If he woke up? The fever might have spiked again. A dozen possibilities competed for the worst-case scenario as Josiah stared at the beige on beige ceiling, crumbled at the corners and hacked up with holes for electrical equipment and video surveillance. He loathed it more with every minute he sat underneath it in handcuffs.

‘I’ve cooperated, haven’t I? I’ve told you everything that happened that day, so there’s no grounds to hold me anymore. I’m not hiding anything.’

‘No, you’ve been pretty straight with us about giving a missing woman money so she could buy illegal drugs.’

‘I paid her rent. What she did with the money after that is her business.’

Sergeant Coombe flipped a paper over and scanned it. ‘What about your son?’

Josiah went cold. ‘What about him?’

‘Would he agree with your version of events? Neighbors claim you’re two peas in a pod. They never see one of you without the other.’

‘Lucas has nothing to do with this. Leave him out of it.’

‘Listen here, Brad Pitt.’ Sergeant Coombe leaned over the interrogation table. ‘I’m sure you get away with ordering people around like that in most areas of your life, but I’m the one wearing the badge. I’m the one who’s going to find out what happened to Miss Price. And I hope – I really, truly hope – that you had something to do with it, because I would love to see your pretty face behind bars.’

‘Really?’ Josiah mirrored him, leaning in over his cuffed hands. ‘Because if I were you, I’d hope Miss Price was found alive.’

The sergeant slapped Josiah’s file on the table. Neither man blinked.

‘I know your type. I arrest your type. You might as well say goodbye to that kid of yours because one day you’re going to give me a reason. Maybe not today. Maybe not even this case, but if you decide to stick around my town it’ll happen. And I guarantee you I’ll be there when it does.’

They threw him back in the cell to wait out the entire twenty-­four hours before they had to either charge or release him, and by the time he got out it was Saturday and all the doctors’ offices were closed. He grabbed four boxes of Tylenol, Popsicles, and a wilting rose at the gas station, then raced back to Jane’s cabin, hitting the steering wheel and cursing Heather Price the entire way.

‘How is he?’ He burst through the door and past Jane into the bedroom, where Lucas was alive and sleeping. His skin seemed cooler, but nowhere near normal. Fumbling with the packages, he read the dosing instructions. The adult ones started at age twelve so he switched to the pediatric, but they were based on age and weight. Did he have to know both? Jesus, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d weighed his son. ‘Do you have a scale?’

No answer from the main room.

He walked back to where she sat at the kitchen table, hands in her lap and an empty juice glass in front of her with a wine ring at the bottom. It was nine in the morning. ‘A scale. Do you have one?’

She shook her head.

‘Fine. Whatever. It doesn’t matter.’ He screwed open the bottle and shook out three pills, then went in to wake Lucas, who was weak and disoriented. Josiah fed him the medicine and made him drink as much water as he could before he fell asleep again. Sitting on the edge of the bed, petting Lucas’s hair, watching him breathe, Josiah felt like the climber hanging one-handed on the edge of the cliff in the picture on the wall. Lucas was all he had. Lucas was the only thing that mattered. And if he lost his grip on his son, if Heather Price turned up dead and they found a way to blame him for it, there would be no end to his fall.

He’d already had the worst moment of his life, goddamnit.

After a while, when Lucas’s breathing seemed to even out, he went into the main room again. Jane hadn’t moved from the table. He sighed and sat in the other kitchen chair.

‘I’m sorry. I got detained by the police.’

She stared at the empty juice glass as if he hadn’t spoken, as if he wasn’t even there. He looked around, found the wine on the counter, and picked up the dusty bottle that still felt full. ‘More?’

Shaking her head, she reached out for the cup and rotated it slowly.

‘It’s a good source of manganese. Red wine. Prevents rust and corrosion. An essential trace mineral, but too much of it will kill you.’ Her words were jerky, like the thoughts had been pulled at random from dark corners of a disused wardrobe.

‘Aren’t you going to ask what the police wanted with me?’

She got up and went to the sink. ‘I thought you’d left him. I didn’t think you were coming back.’

‘That’s my son in there. How could I abandon him?’

Rinsing out the glass, she carefully set it next to the sink, bottom up, and watched the drips collect and pool underneath the rim, trapped. ‘Maybe you thought he’d be better off without you.’

‘He needs me.’ Josiah got up and paced to the bedroom doorway, staring at the smooth curves and planes of his son’s face, the traces of Sarah in his nose and jaw, the miraculous rise and fall of the quilt over his narrow chest. ‘Almost as much as I need him.’

He retrieved the gas station bag from the bed and paced back to the kitchen, where Jane still leaned into the counter and stared out the window, motionless. He wanted to be outraged that she would even suggest he’d abandoned Lucas, but the fact was he had. He’d left his son for twenty-four hours and if the police had charged him, it would have been even longer; Lucas could have been stuck with this ghostlike woman indefinitely. And Heather Price was still missing. He sighed, not at all sure about what he had to ask next.