Линвуд Баркли - Find You First

They ate hurriedly and soon were back in the van, heading to Todd’s trailer outside Springfield. Nearly an hour later, when they were within a mile of their destination, Kendra yawned and said, “I should’ve had one more coffee.”

“Did you see that place we passed about two miles back?”

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t you let me out, I’ll look for the phone, you go back and get us a couple more coffees, come back. If I haven’t found it by then, you can help me.”

Kendra nodded. She saw the driveway up ahead.

“Don’t bother pulling in. Just drop me,” Rhys said.

The van slowed and came to a stop at the end of the driveway. Before he opened the door, Rhys hit the button on the glove compartment and opened it, then removed a silencer-equipped Ruger and tucked it into a deep, inside jacket pocket.

“Expecting trouble?” she asked.

He smiled. “Like the Boy Scouts say.” He opened the door. “Maybe get a donut or something, too, if they’ve got it.”

He slammed the door and started walking up the driveway while Kendra waited for the traffic to clear so she could do a U-turn.

Rhys approached the trailer, mounted the cinder block steps to reach the door, and went inside. The place still smelled of bleach. He closed the door, behind him and immediately got to his knees, peering under chairs and the living room couch. He worked his way to the kitchen and, using the flashlight app on his phone, peered into the cracks between the stove and fridge and cabinetry.

“If I were a phone, where would I be?” he said under his breath.

He stood, briefly, to walk down the hallway to the bedroom at the trailer’s tail end, then went down on his knees again.

That was when he heard the approach of a vehicle.

It was too soon for Kendra to be back with the coffee, and besides, this did not sound like the van, which was a well-tuned machine. Whatever was coming down the driveway sounded like the proverbial bucket of bolts. Rattles, squeaky springs, perforated muffler.

He crept to the closest window, went up on his knees, and peeked outside.

It was an old piece of American Motors shit. A Pacer. A young woman was driving, a middle-aged guy in the passenger seat.

“Fuck.”

He moved away from the window and considered his options.

The trailer had a so-called back door, but it was on the same side as the front door. He couldn’t slip out without being seen.

He heard the car’s two doors slam shut. Voices. The man and the woman were having a conversation as they got closer.

And then, from the front end of the trailer, the ringing of a cell phone. Inside the trailer. Terrific. Now he knew where to look, but couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

He had to hide.

Where did you hide in a mobile home? It wasn’t like there was a basement to scurry down into. No attic to crawl up into.

He figured he could squeeze himself under the bed. He’d cleared the space out only hours earlier. He flattened himself on the floor and edged his way under.

But not before taking the Ruger out of his pocket and gripping it firmly in his right hand.

Springfield, MA

Chloe, standing outside the trailer, phone in hand, said, “That dumbass. No wonder I can’t reach him. Left without taking his phone with him.”

“You said it never leaves his hand.”

She shrugged. “I haven’t known him that long. Maybe sometimes he has something else in his hand. You’d know a little something about that, wouldn’t you, Mr. Sperm Donor?”

Miles gave her a disappointed look. “Is that any way to talk to your dad?”

She took a step toward the trailer. “If he’s left it unlocked, we can wait inside.”

“We can’t just walk in.”

Chloe waved him off. “He’s family.”

She mounted the cinder block steps and tried the door. “Here we go,” she said, pulling the door open. She stepped inside. Miles followed her.

Once inside, Chloe screwed up her face. “Jesus, what’s that smell?”

“Some kind of cleaner?” Miles said. “Maybe bleach? Call his phone again and I’ll try to track it down.”

Chloe dug out her cell one more time and a moment later they could hear a ring near the front end of the trailer. Miles walked over to a couch, looked down, and saw the edge of the phone tucked down in between two cushions.

“Must’ve slipped out of his pocket,” Miles said, picking up the phone and displaying it. “Maybe he tried to find it, but had somewhere to go and had to give up looking. There’s some texts here, and not just from you. There’s a Madeline?”

“His mom.”

“Can’t access them. Know his password?”

“No.”

Chloe had stepped into the kitchen area. “What the...” She took her phone, still in hand, tapped the camera app, and set it to video. “I’m getting a record of this shit. This is crazy. I mean, look at the place.”

“What? The place looks fine.”

“That’s the point. The place is fucking spotless.”

“So Todd’s a neat freak.”

“No, he isn’t .”

She walked slowly over to the sink, looked down. “I can see my reflection.”

Miles bent over, putting his nose to a countertop. “I can smell the bleach here. Maybe Todd hired the world’s best cleaning lady.”

“It’s more than that,” she said, nodding toward the kitchen table. “Where’s his laptop? Where’s his stuff? I’m telling you, the guy’s like totally messy. And the thing is, I don’t think he even knows he’s messy. It’d never occur to him that he needed to spruce the place up or bring in a cleaning lady or anything.” She pondered a moment. “Maybe his mom did it? She was here the other day, would have seen how messy it was. Except she was limping. Can’t see her doing all this hobbling around on one foot.”

She struck off down the hallway, raising the phone to record her journey. As she headed toward the back of the trailer, Miles held back, in the kitchen, standing at the hallway’s end. He felt like more of a stranger here than Chloe did — an interloper — and that he didn’t have the right to start nosing around. But when she reached the end of the hall, she looked back at him and waved at him to join her.

She was starting into the bathroom when he came up alongside her.

“Whoa,” she said, stepping in for a closer inspection.

“What?”

“You could eat off this toilet,” she said. “Not that I plan to.”

Miles followed her into the bathroom. Not large, but large enough for the toilet, small built-in cabinets with drawers and a sink, and a bathtub that doubled as a shower. Chloe, with her free hand, opened the cupboard doors, then each of the drawers, all of which were completely empty and scrubbed clean.

“Do you believe this?” she asked.

“Did Todd rent this trailer?” Miles asked.

“What? Why?”

“If he decided to leave, to move on, his landlord could have had this place cleaned.”

Chloe shook her head. “He told me he owned the trailer, had it brought in here, but he paid some guy to rent the land it’s sittin’ on. But the trailer, it’s his.”

“Maybe he was going to sell it. To whoever owns the property.”

Chloe edged around him and went into the bedroom at the back of the trailer, continuing to film. Again, Miles followed. Chloe opened a set of folding doors that revealed a wide closet. Except for a few wire hangers, it was empty.

“This is like, nuts,” she said.

A built-in set of drawers that spanned the rear wall was her next target. She wanted both hands to open them more quickly, so she stopped recording and put her phone back into her pocket. Every drawer was empty.