Page 27

27

MACK

I rush directly to the police station when the call from Florence drops. I ask for Riley and I’m told that he’s off for the night, but they will take my report, and my blood boils at the lax attitude this is being met with.

“So what are you gonna actually do about it?” I ask. “She’s in immediate danger! It should be all hands on deck!”

“Well,” a man with a close-cropped hair and unstylish glasses says, and I can hear him trying to keep the condescension out of his voice. “We’re sending a squad to look and we’ll have Angela call her family—see when they were last in contact, and…”

“No,” I cut him off. “Her husband died twenty-seven years ago, and she doesn’t have other family. The Oleanders are her family. Did you call them?” and even though everyone knows everyone here, that’s only mostly true. You can’t know every single person, and I only know this officer vaguely. Jerry is his first name, I think, and he’s young-ish, so maybe he doesn’t know the Oleander’s like everyone in town does, because he has a stupid look on his face as I say this.

“Did I call who?”

“Did you contact the senior living facility where she lives?”

“Well, since you just made the report nine seconds ago and you’re still standing here, when exactly did you think I had time to do that?” he asks, which is fair.

“Fine. Then I’m telling you that’s where to start. And where the hell is the fucking squad gonna start looking? They don’t know where she goes, or anybody she spends time with. What’s the strategy?” I say, impatient and overflowing with anxiety.

“Again, ma’am. We can work on our strategy if you give us just a minute, alright?” he says. And I know I’m being unreasonable, but there has to be some action here. There’s no time to waste.

“What about a silver alert? How do we put out one of those?”

“We don’t. We can’t do that based on your account of a three-second phone call where you think she sounded in distress. It’s just…” And I don’t even need him to finish his bullshitty, runaround answer. They think Shelby and her cronies at the Oleander’s are completely carried away and causing drama on purpose for podcast ratings, pointing the finger at the wrong people, and off the deep end. I’ve heard the talk in just the space of a day, and this means they will probably do the minimum amount they have to do here, just to say they did their job. They don’t believe there’s any danger.

“Where’s Riley?” I ask.

“Off. Red Lobster, I think.”

“Red fucking Lobster? Did you tell him about this?” I snap.

“Yeah, but it’s all-you-can-eat shrimp. And he said to send out a squad and call the family which we are doing, so—” I don’t listen to the rest of whatever is coming out of his mouth. I walk out the front doors, to my car, ready to bust into Red Lobster and flip a goddamn table in attempts to get him to take this more seriously, but then I think of Shelby in the bar and how far that got her. I can’t put myself in that position right now. I’m the only one of us they still might listen to, so I drive. I’ll go to the Oleander’s myself.

I call Riley instead on my way there. He doesn’t pick up so I call twice more, and when he finally answers, I can hear the annoyance in his voice.

“Riley,” he says, still chewing his all-you-can-eat shrimp.

“Do you know that Shelby is essentially missing and Florence called me? Said someone has her, and she—”

He cuts me off. “Mack. Look. I have some guys investigating the call, okay. Shelby, missing? Come on. She left very pissed off after being called out today. She’s probably embarrassed, or is somewhere blowing off steam…”

“No,” I stop him. “She told Clay she was going to her mother’s, and her mother says she never mentioned coming up there. I’ve been looking for her all day!”

“Exactly my point. If she’s actively lying to get some time to herself, what does that tell you? Clay hasn’t called it in,” he says, and I realize now that that is because he still thinks she’s at her mother’s and I forgot all about him once I got frantic looking for her. I never told him.

A call beeps in, and when I see that it’s Billy I simply hang up on Riley and his useless answers and pick up the call.

“Billy,” I say flatly, annoyed that he hasn’t answered my call all day, and at myself for letting it affect me so much, like he’s obligated to do so.

“I’m so sorry. I went ice fishing with dad up at Pine Lake, and lost service. I saw you were trying to call.”

“Yeah, sorry, I…” I stop for a moment. I’m relieved that in all the chaos, at least he’s okay, but I just don’t have the time to explain everything to him right now. I’ll probably break down sobbing if I start to explain the call from Florence and how ter rified she sounded, and how I know something is very wrong since Shelby stopped answering her phone, but I can’t lose control and spiral into an emotional wreck right now. I feel the panic creeping in. It’s all just too goddamn much, and I don’t know how much longer I can go without screaming until my throat is raw and crying until I’m numb and just hiding from it all. I can’t afford to do that.

“I’m sorry. I’ll call you back,” I say, hanging up as I pull up into the Oleander’s parking lot and screech my car to a stop. I see inside the front doors that the lights are off. It looks like there is nobody working, which is very unusual. I know Heather is out, but what about Evan? I decide to call him. It rings through. What is going on? I decide to leave a message asking if he knows where Shelby is since I already made the call and I’m trying to deal with two things at once.

I call Herb next, and when he sleepily answers I ask if he can let me in the front door. A couple of minutes later I see him coming down the hall in his big robe and Yeti slippers as I stand freezing in the icy wind that’s starting to pick up.

He has a perplexed look on his face as he lets me in, and I follow him into the rec room where he picks up his glasses off a side table and puts them on and looks at me. “What’s happened?”

“Florence. When is the last time you saw her?”

“Just earlier tonight. A few hours ago we were all sitting here talking about Bernie’s funeral arrangements. Why? What the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know yet,” I say, seeing his face fall.

“What does that mean? She’s not here? She’s in trouble or something?”

I tell him about the phone call and he shakes his head and starts heading down the hall. “She was just here,” he says as I follow quickly behind. “She was just goddamn here!” He stops at her door and swings it open so hard it hits the drywall with a thwack and creates a little hole, but he doesn’t notice. He flips the lights on and we have a shared moment of relief when we see she’s right here. She’s right here, sleeping.

He rushes over to wake her up and see what the hell is going on, but when he puts his hand on the mass underneath the covers, he discovers pillows made up to look like a sleeping body, and not Florence at all.

“What the hell? She snuck out like a teenager. What in the world? Where? She didn’t say anything—she tells me everything, I thought. I don’t understand.”

“Herb,” I say, interrupting his moment of grief and confusion. I pick up a piece of paper I see sitting on her desk. “Does this mean anything to you?” He takes it and squints at it through his glasses.

“Blacklock,” he says. “She came into my room earlier tonight asking what this meant. But what the hell? I mean, it’s a video game avatar name. I told her since Evan started gaming with me now and then, we sometimes play remotely and that was him logged in as his avatar, Blacklock. What on God’s green earth does that have to do with anything? Why would she write that down? She hates video games.”

“I don’t know, but there’s an address. I think it’s Evan’s. I mean I haven’t been to his dad’s house since I was a kid, but if I remember right, it’s on St. Charles. This must be Evan’s address. Why would she go there?”

“How would she even get there?” Herb adds and we look at one another, at a complete loss.

“Something must have happened on the way. Maybe she was followed. Maybe…wait, did you call Evan?” he asks.

“Just now to get let in the building. No answer.”

“We have to go,” Herb says, grabbing his boots and coat. A few minutes later we’re driving through dark, snowy roads to Evan’s house, having no idea what we’ll find.