The Missing Place (21 page)

“What we have is a lot of hearsay about the safety problems,” Colleen finally said. “But if we could get a look at the leases, that would be something concrete. If we could see exactly what Hunter-Cole is up against.”

“Well, that shouldn't be too hard. They're public record.”

“They are?” Colleen wanted to ask how Shay knew. In a way, she was afraid it would be one more detail Taylor had shared with her, that Paul had never told his own parents. Another bit of proof of the distance between them.

“Yeah. Maybe we can get someone at the library to help us.”

“You think they're open? Back home, our library closes at four o'clock half the time due to budget cuts.”

“In a state with three percent unemployment? Hell, yes, they ought to be open—state assembly probably can't spend their money fast enough.”

THE LIBRARY, A
pleasant 1970s facility that seemed to be half children's area, was indeed open until seven. Colleen stayed outside to make a call while Shay went inside.

It was a call she had been dreading—not because she didn't want to talk to Andy, but because she was afraid of what he might say. But she couldn't look at Shay anymore without remembering her expression when she confronted her about Darren Terry.

Colleen found an alcove on the side of the building where the winds didn't reach. The ground was tramped down and littered with cigarette butts; this was clearly the smokers' retreat. She hoped none would come while she was on the phone. It was almost six thirty in Sudbury; Andy would be home, putting dinner together from whatever he found in the fridge. Or maybe the dinner brigade that Laura had set up had dropped something off. Helen with her famous lasagna, maybe; or if it was Vicki—

She's been down here practically since you left.
Wasn't that what Andy had said? Working on the Internet and creating the flyer and making calls. Keeping Andy company, offering solace, reassurance . . .

“Colleen.” Andy sounded out of breath. “I'm glad I heard the phone. I'm out here shoveling the drive. We're getting another three inches tonight. How are you doing?”

Terrible
, she wanted to say. She pushed thoughts of Vicki from
her mind, but it was impossible to pretend that she wasn't failing here. She hadn't succeeded in getting any closer to finding Paul, other than opening up possibilities that might make things even worse.

She was going to have to tell him about Shay finding out about Darren. Besides, she needed someone now. Andy was Paul's
father.
They ought to be drawing on each other's strength, comforting and supporting each other, talking and listening. Even if things had been less than perfect between them, Andy would be better than what she had now: a virtual stranger, who was hostile and suspicious, sharing a freezing-cold motor home with no shower.

“There's something I have to ask you,” she said. Better to get straight to it, or she might lose her nerve.

“Sure, anything.”

“That Wednesday last August, before Paul left . . .”

“Oh.” It came out as a groan, and Colleen knew it pained Andy as much as it did her to remember.

The three of them had argued over breakfast, the same tired fight they'd been having ever since Paul came home from Syracuse in the spring, having gotten two Ds the first semester of his freshman year and withdrawn from the second semester when it became clear he was going to fail several classes. Andy's last words to Paul that morning had been along the lines of, “Considering I just sent Syracuse a twelve-fucking-thousand-dollar deposit, you're damn well going back.”

Paul had stood up from the breakfast table, and for one terrible moment Colleen had thought he was going to hit Andy. He was that close, that angry, his hands clenched into fists. But instead he had said, his voice strained, “Why do you even want me to go back if I let you down so bad last year?”

And Colleen had started to protest, to remind him that he'd been able to withdraw from the worst classes, so he still had the 2.6, he didn't have a failing grade on his transcript, and if he retook algebra and met with the tutor like they'd asked him to . . .

But neither Andy nor Paul paid her any attention. Andy got out of his chair and faced Paul down, and Colleen realized that Paul had passed Andy sometime that spring, he was now slightly taller. And muscular from the garden center job he'd taken, it seemed to Colleen, to spite them. If it
did
come to blows, Andy didn't stand a chance—then she felt terribly guilty for even thinking it. Disloyal to both of them.

“Please,” she begged, but they didn't listen.

“You didn't let
me
down,” Andy said, in that irritatingly condescending voice of his. “You let
yourself
down. You let yourself down every time you don't study, every time you give up because it's too hard, every time you don't go to office hours or call the tutor. Those are
choices
, Paul, and if there's one thing I wish you'd get through your thick head it's that you get where you end up because of the choices you make along the way.”

“I'm not
you
, Dad,” Paul retorted. “I can't do those things. I can't be who you want me to be.”

“Fine,” Andy said in disgust. “You know what, I can't stand to have this conversation one more time. So you win. You're right. Effort wouldn't make a goddamn bit of difference. You're doomed to fail. None of our suggestions are worth shit.” He slammed his coffee cup down on the table, spilling over the edge. “I'm late. Somebody's got to earn a paycheck to pay for you to go up there and sleep through your classes.”

Seconds after Andy stomped out the door, Colleen raced after him, but he'd already pulled out of the drive. She didn't want to be
alone with Paul, with their argument, and instead she went straight to the school, where she spent the next six hours in the literacy office, preparing for the returning student evaluations.

When she got home, she entered the house with a sense of dread, ready to take up the terrible talk again, to try to intervene on behalf of Andy, to apologize to her son for his father. But Paul was on his knees on the kitchen floor. He had a bucket of soapy water and a rag and he was washing the floor under the cabinet. When he looked up, his eyes were puffy from crying.

He admitted that after Colleen and Andy left, he'd broken every dish on the breakfast table, hurling them all to the floor, the juice and milk upturned, the syrup pitcher smashed. When there was nothing left to break, he sank to the floor and sat there long enough, Colleen gathered, to remember how much he loathed himself. He stripped, leaving his clothes in the kitchen, showered, and changed. Then he went to Target and replaced everything he'd broken, using the money he'd earned at his job, and came back and started cleaning.

She'd cried and hugged him and told him she loved him and promised that they would all try harder, and silently thanked God that he'd at least finally gotten it all out of his system.

But she'd been wrong.

“Did you see it coming?” she asked Andy now. “Because I didn't. I though it would be all right.”

Andy was silent for a moment. “You
have
to believe that,” he said, bitterly. “You're his mother. You have to always believe in him. You're the self-appointed keeper of hope.”

Colleen cried silently, not wanting Andy to know. “But you knew. You knew he wasn't done, you knew the other shoe was going to drop.”

He didn't deny it.

“So what I have to know—please, Andy, tell me the truth, because I can't trust my own feelings. Do you, in your heart of hearts, think it could have happened again? That he could have had one of his—his rage episodes? Maybe hurt someone . . . maybe hurt Taylor?”

This time the pause was even longer. When Andy spoke again it was barely more than a whisper.

“I don't know. God help me, I just don't know.”

COLLEEN STAYED OUTSIDE
as long as she could stand it. She didn't want Shay to see her eyes red from crying. She also didn't look forward to the prospect of waiting around, unable to help, while Shay displayed more of the hardscrabble competence that made Colleen wonder if she'd wasted the twenty years since she herself had held a full-time job. In the volunteer position at the school, she wrote the newsletter, but someone else formatted it to go online. She submitted her receipts and budget, but someone else keyed them into the spreadsheet. Her skills were pretty much limited to email and reading the news. And shopping . . . she did a lot of online shopping.

Finally, she went inside the library. And of course she found Shay sitting at one of the tables with a stack of books and her laptop, typing madly.

“They have a printer,” Shay said, barely looking up. “A nickel a page. I've found this database that a Bismarck newspaper put online. It's not complete or anything, but so far I found a couple leases that seem to be on reservation land. It's printing now.”

“Oh,” Colleen said. She felt oddly formal, standing and looking over Shay's shoulder, holding her purse across her chest. “Thank you for doing that.”

“There's something else. I found this blog where they report on workplace accidents. I can't tell who's behind it, and a lot of it seems like it could be made up. Here, want to see? Only, some of it's pretty bad.”

Her fingers stilled over the keyboard and she finally looked directly at Colleen. Her eyes were full of doubt. Colleen understood—Shay didn't think she could handle it.

She didn't like the tilt in their relationship. And it wasn't just that Shay suspected Paul. It was an imbalance in competence. Shay did everything. She found their lodging, she knew about the showers. She came up with the plans for where to go and who to talk to. And she had the skills to investigate.

So far all that Colleen had added was smoothing over the communication with the girl at the lodge after Shay insulted her, and getting Chief Weyant to meet with them. So score one for Colleen's impeccable tact. That was what she had to show for the last twenty years—no, make that four decades, ever since her own mother, bitter with disappointment from her rash decision to marry down, started steering Colleen toward Junior League and Bryn Mawr, reminding her that it was all well and good to have a career, but she needed to prepare for the life she would create for her family. And that had been Colleen—
she
had wanted the family, she had been so happy to sink into its comforts, its luxurious bosom, once their bout with infertility had finally been over.

She'd done damn well in her role too, even with Paul's challenges, even with the effort it had taken to smooth his way, to create a place for him in the community and, later, at Syracuse. It had been exhausting much of the time, but she'd done admirably. Her friends called her a rock, said they didn't know how she did it. She'd even allowed herself to believe it—some days, like when she watched her
son cross the stage on graduation day, with the 3.4 GPA that they'd all slaved over.

And what did that meager skill set do for her now? How was it helping her find her boy? Absolutely nothing, that was what. A way with words, an expensive wardrobe, the ability to talk to people in positions of authority, a faultless sense of social commerce—none of that was worth a thing.

And here, in a public library in the middle of nowhere, wearing a coat lined with pink acrylic fake fur, typing with fingers bearing chipped crescents of glitter nail polish, Shay had come up with hard evidence in half an hour.

“Let me see,” Colleen said between clenched teeth. She yanked off her coat more roughly than necessary and flung it over the table, then pulled out a chair and sat down.

“You're sure. I mean . . .”

“I'm
sure.
”

Shay tried to shield the screen with her body while she typed. “Let me just find one . . .”

But Colleen had seen it, a glimpse of it, anyway, a man's arm, blood running down and dripping from the fingers. “No. Go back to that one. The one you were looking at. I can handle it. I have to see it.”

Shay was still for a moment and then reluctantly moved her mouse to the Back button and clicked.

It was an arm . . . but it wasn't connected to a body. It had been severed at the middle of the forearm, and some remnant of the skin that peeled away from the innards of the arm had caught in the machinery from which it hung. The long sheets of metal were connected to pulleys of some sort, the machinery taller than a man, bigger than the photograph. Blood pooled on the floor. In the background, incongruously, was a man turned away from the camera,
wearing a nice plaid shirt, a shirt like Andy wore to the office on casual Fridays.

Colleen thought she might be sick. She pressed her hand over her mouth, but she didn't look away.
Here.
Here was what was real. She had boldly, stupidly come to this place on the strength of a promise to her son, a promise she'd never voiced out loud, a promise to find him. She was
not
going to fail him now, the first time she was forced to look at something she didn't want to see.