The Moon Pool (8 page)

It's a hell of a thing. Can't believe it got this out of hand. Can see how you must have been worried sick. Boys will be boys...

Some caper, a case of bad judgment, a terrible misunderstanding.
Something.
Shay hadn't told Colleen the whole story, how after the Arby's parking lot episode, for the next forty miles she'd bargained hard with God while her fingers bled, letting Him know that whatever Taylor had done, she would forgive, if only he was alive and safe somewhere. A night in jail, she could accept that. A knocked-up girlfriend. A lost weekend in the Indian casino. A barroom brawl, a case of the clap, a fight that ended with the other guy in the hospital—she'd forgive all of those. By the time she crossed the North Dakota line the next day, she'd upped the ante. Would she forgive Taylor for being involved with a hit-and-run? Drugs? A shoot-out? Yes, yes, and yes, and there she was to prove it, laying his picture down, ready for the truth.

Only she'd been met with one blank stare after another.

The police station was blocky and modern, maybe fifteen years old, more glass than brick. It looked out of place on the corner where it hunkered, across from a shuttered movie theater and a Meineke muffler shop. Shay found a parking spot out front and dug quarters from her console. Fifty cents an hour; she doubted they'd need even the first quarter, but she put three in the meter just in case.

At the door, Colleen hesitated. “You've been here already, right?”

“Yes.”

“And they stonewalled you.”

“Yes.”

“All right.” Colleen nodded to herself and squared her shoulders, tipped her chin up, and went in. Shay followed her to the receptionist's desk, but Colleen ignored her. She pulled off her gloves and laid them down on the counter before saying, “My name is Colleen Mitchell. I'd like a word with the chief of police, please.”

The receptionist, a young dark-haired woman with thick-fringed eyelashes behind plastic-framed glasses, gawped at her. “He's pretty busy. He mostly only sees people with appointments.”

“I understand,” Colleen said calmly. “Please let him know that I have come all the way from Boston to talk to him. About a private and sensitive matter,” she added, speaking over the young woman's protest. “I'll wait right here.”

“You can sit over there in those chairs—”

“I prefer to stand.”

As the receptionist disappeared down a hall, other people in the warren of desks behind the reception area glanced up curiously. Shay, who hadn't been permitted to talk to anyone but the on-duty sergeant when she visited two days ago, considered Colleen. She was nice-looking in profile, with her expensively styled hair and good skin. She had probably been gorgeous twenty years ago, and now she was the kind of woman Shay made fun of. The kind of woman who could afford to buy anything but settled for shapeless, boring old-lady clothes. Whose makeup case held three shades of concealer and no eye shadow.

But she had something. An... elegance, Shay supposed, or else just a knack for giving off a rich vibe without trying. Here she was without any makeup on, her boots rimed with salt and her clothes wrinkled from the suitcase, and she could still probably walk down Fifth Avenue and have people waiting on her hand and foot.

The receptionist returned. “Chief Weyant says he can give you a few minutes before his next appointment. Just wait over there.”

“As I said, I'll stand. Thank you.”

Shay took a chair, picked up a brochure from a stack on the table. “Towed, Stored, and Abandoned Vehicles.” She scanned it without reading the text, put it back. Colleen stood motionless, gazing at the wall above the desks, appearing not to notice everyone staring at her. When the chief came down the hall, she gathered up her gloves and purse and extended her hand.

“Mrs. Mitchell?”

Shay's first impression of Chief Weyant was that he had the right look for a difficult job, projecting unflappable calm while his department tried to keep a lid on behind-the-scenes turmoil brought by the boom. Fortyish and fit, Weyant had the ramrod-straight posture and bland good looks to carry off the polyester uniform shirt without giving up an ounce of authority. He was probably six one, six two, and his dark, thick hair was just a shade longer than a military-style brush cut, a bit of silver showing at the temples.

Colleen flashed him a smile so brief it might have been imagined, and shook his hand. “Thank you for agreeing to talk to me and Ms. Capparelli.”

The chief glanced over at Shay and acknowledged her with a nod. If he knew about her prior visit, he didn't let on. “Sure thing. Come on back. Get you ladies some coffee? Water?”

Colleen declined, murmuring her thanks, and they followed him to a large office at the corner of the building. The windows looked out over the street where they'd parked, and then past the downtown to the old houses and barns and vacant lots at the edge of town, beyond which the white-and-tan landscape stretched to the horizon under an oppressive gray sky. The snow had stopped, only to seem to be gathering for a greater onslaught later.

The women took the chairs facing the chief's desk. Weyant rested his hands on the laminate desktop and regarded them gravely. “Let me start by telling you the same thing Sergeant Sanders told Mrs. Capparelli. We are concerned that your sons have been out of communication, and we are devoting as many resources as we can to locating them. But we can't rule out the possibility that there's an explanation other than them getting into some kind of trouble. We've seen too many of these boys light out of here without giving notice, just to show up a few weeks or months later in another state entirely. You know how it is when you're that age.”

“Not really, no,” Colleen said coldly. She sat very erect in her chair. “Please share a little more about your line of thinking.”

“Oh. Well—all I meant was, you got a twenty-year-old, especially a boy, a male, there's going to be a lot more hormones and such than common sense at work. If I had a nickel for every fight we had to break up in the bars—and this is
after
these boys come off a twelve-hour shift that would knock me out, I'm not afraid to say it—well, I'd be a rich man. Then we got the casinos barely an hour away, or—and this happens more often than we like to admit—they just get tired of the guy-to-girl ratio around here, they take the money they've made and go looking somewhere else. Find a girl and an easier job and don't get around to writing home for a while.”

His speech concluded with a shrug, the chief looked relieved, even a little pleased with himself. It was a better, smoother version of the speech that Sanders had given Shay two days earlier. Clearly, Weyant had put a little thought into it, adding the bit about the boys coming off long shifts, for instance—that was a nice touch. Maybe he saw the writing on the wall, figured he'd be using the speech on a regular basis. Heck, maybe it really was true, and he already had.

Colleen didn't say a word. She watched him expectantly, barely blinking, her face giving nothing away. The chief put a finger under his collar, loosening it, and cleared his throat, waiting for one of them to say something. But Shay decided to take a page out of Colleen's book and stayed silent.

“So,” Weyant finally said.

“My son has not left town for a
girl
or a
casino
,” Colleen said, her voice tight. “He and his friend Taylor are missing. Instead of focusing on the unimaginative list of possible scenarios you've come up with, I am wondering why you and your men aren't doing any actual police work in an effort to find them.” She held up a hand to stop Weyant's protests. “I understand that your resources are finite. I can only guess at the demands on your staff. I'm not a police officer. But I damn well expect my son—
our
sons—to get at least as much attention as a liquor store holdup or highway accident or domestic dispute. And you haven't told me one concrete thing you've done to find out where they are.”

“As I told Mrs. Capparelli—”

“And that's another thing.” Fury had gradually shaded Colleen's face a deep red. Shay marveled at the change in her. Somehow she'd pulled her shit together, turning from the blubbering mess in the truck stop to a fearsome bitch. “It's
Ms.
Capparelli. Not Mrs.”

Weyant looked from Colleen to Shay and back again. “Look here,” he started.

“I am interested in everything you have to say,” Colleen went on, opening her purse and searching through the contents. “In fact, I want to make sure I get it all down.”

“I'll take notes,” Shay said, grabbing her notebook out of her own handbag. Later there would be time to resent Weyant for being intimidated by Colleen after dismissing her. For now, they needed to benefit from the momentum. “You talk.”

“Thank you.” Colleen returned her purse to the floor. “Let's start with which officers are involved with the case, or assigned to it, or whatever the proper term is.”

“I don't have to...” Weyant wiped his forehead, shaking his head, before starting over. “I wouldn't want to say without checking the duty roster. But you can consider me your liaison. I don't want you contacting my officers, disrupting their work. You need something, you come to me.”

Colleen raised an eyebrow. “Noted.”

“That's not what Sanders told me before,” Shay muttered.

“It's all right, Shay,” Colleen said, giving her a bland smile. “We can revisit that later if we need to. Now, what steps have your officers taken? Who have they interviewed; what leads have they tracked down?”

“When
Ms.
Capparelli notified us of her concern, officers were sent out to the Black Creek Lodge—”

“Not the
first
time I called,” Shay interrupted, as she wrote. “Took you all three days.”

“They interviewed staff there and confirmed the boys hadn't been around for a few days,” Weyant continued, testily. “They talked to their employers. Believe they went out in the field. They'll have the names of the supervisors they talked to. But the upshot is, no one on the rig knew anything. The boys simply didn't show up for work.”

“The officers spoke to the men who worked closely with Taylor and Paul? Their coworkers?”

“I'm sure they did,” Weyant said, looking not very sure at all.

“What about other men who were staying at the lodge? Restaurants or other places they were known to go?”

“Well, now you're getting into a gray, that is to say, an area where we don't devote more resources until there's a reason. Something to suggest a direction to go.”

“You mean, like them still not turning up?” Shay snapped.

Weyant turned on her, his irritation obvious. “Like an indication that harm has actually been done to them. Your son's vehicle hasn't been seen at the lodge since the day you reported him missing, which to me says there's a good chance he drove out of here on his own steam.”

“
Truck.
Not vehicle. My son drives a white Chevy Silverado. And what about the fact he left his things in his room?”

Weyant shrugged. “A few changes of clothes and some deodorant? There wasn't anything valuable. He could easily have replaced it all. Or maybe he took what he cared about with him. I don't see that meaning a whole lot one way or another.”

“What about the boys' phone records?” Colleen said. “Have you looked into who they spoke to? Whether there have been calls since they disappeared?”

“Let me guess,” Weyant said wearily. “You like watching cop shows. No, look, don't get all in a twist. It's just, to put it mildly, they can give you an unrealistic idea of how that sort of thing proceeds. Even if we had the boys' phone numbers—”

“Gosh, too bad they wouldn't have been all over the lodge's rec-ords,” Shay interrupted. “Or their employment applications, for that matter. Or in Sergeant Sanders's notes, since I told him.”

“Even if we had the numbers,” Weyant continued, ignoring her, “they're likely to be with out-of-state carriers, and we can't just fax them a picture of our badges. It's a little more complicated than that.”

“Well, I'll tell you what,” Colleen said, reaching across the desk to a little bronzed stand holding the chief's business cards. She handed one to Shay and jotted a phone number on the back of another, along with the word
Sprint.
Then she added her own name and phone number. “We'll give you their phone numbers right now. Carriers, too. There, we just saved you two steps. I put my phone number on there too, so you can reach me whenever you have something to report. Feel free to share it with your officers. Now, what happens next?”

Weyant blinked, looking both angry and a little overwhelmed. “What happens next is I thank you for your input, and I go back to doing my job, which is to put my limited resources and budget to work the best way I can see. Yes, I will follow up with these numbers and I will review the case with my staff. But you want to be the one to explain to all these people”—he smacked his hand down on a stack of folders stuffed with paperwork—“why you're more important than they are? You want to know what else I'm dealing with? How about a woman whose boyfriend hit her so hard her teeth went through her lip? Or this one, we got a six-year-old who disappeared Tuesday, and his father's missing too, and he's got a known meth problem and a gun.”

He was breathing hard, leaning over his desk, looking like he wanted to sweep the folders to the floor. It was time to go. They'd pushed as hard as they were going to get away with—for now.

“You'll follow up and let us know,” Colleen said, standing with dignity. “We appreciate that. But let me add one thing. I can mobilize the press in my own hometown easily. Maybe you don't care much what they're saying about Lawton and its police department in the greater Boston area. But my husband is a respected attorney with contacts all over the country, and he won't hesitate to involve the media if we feel that the police are not giving our son's disappearance sufficient attention.”