In the midst of the final Friday-afternoon flurry of instructions and questions and small-scale panics about the long holiday weekend ahead, Ariel’s eye was drawn to the shop window, beyond which a giant pickup was suffering through the final throes of parallel parking. In the past few years, this steroidal type of truck had become the most popular vehicle in town. It seems like every aggressive tailgater, every obnoxious cut-offer, every impatient red-light jumper is now behind the wheel of one of these monsters, looming up behind her, headlights in her eyes, menacing everyone on the road with their suspension lifts and oversize wheels and aftermarket mufflers, their POWER STROKE stenciling on the side. What stroke was being suggested, to whom, and why?
Everything about this vehicle looked like a schoolyard bully, even the bumper stickers—the glowering visage of the New England Patriots, the implicit challenge of BLUE LIVES MATTER, the bizarre armed eagle of the NRA, the crossed sticks of the travel-club lacrosse team for which the driver, Ariel knew, was a coach. He was also a volunteer fireman, and the treasurer of a rod and gun club. This man was, as people say, active in the community. He gave back. He was a so-called patriot, you knew it because he said so, it was even his favorite football team.
You can see the culture war right there, bumpers versus bumpers, on any road in America.
He lumbered out of the driver’s seat, a human embodiment of his oversize truck, wearing a tremendous tent of a T-shirt and basketball shorts that draped below his knees and plastic slides, dressed head-to-toe for a locker room despite being a person who obviously didn’t engage in rigorous physical activity. Athletic gear was the wrong label for this category of attire; unathletic gear. He had a long scar across his cheek, and an unkempt beard he’d grown to try to hide it. Ariel knew that he’d refused to go to the ER, unwilling to explain the source of the gash. He’d rather have a scar. Like any scar, a perpetual reminder of something that had gone wrong.
Ariel’s bumpers are unadorned.
His eyes met Ariel’s across the divide of the shop window, of the street; across so many divides. Ariel would not acknowledge him—no smile, no nod, nothing other than an intense glare of ill will.
He walked away, into what summer people call the wine shop but locals call the liquor store. He had never, not once, stepped into the bookshop.
“You need anything before I go?” Ariel asked Persephone.
“Nope. Have an awesome vacay.”
The girl sounded genuine, though it was always hard to tell. Her generation’s default was irony, with equivocation not far behind; nearly every sentiment was mitigated by kinda or sorta, a constant hedging against any perceived excess of earnestness.
“Thanks,” Ariel said. “I’ll try.” It had been a long time since she’d traveled for vacation. In those first few years after George was born, she’d been terrified of traveling. With an infant, with a baby, a toddler—with any version of preschool-aged child—the meltdowns, the unpredictable sleep, the anxiety, there were so many potential downsides. Plus with George’s health problems, Ariel never wanted him to be too far from his doctors, from the well-trod path of admitting or ER to specialist in the small-town hospital where everyone knew her, knew her son. It was a strange sort of comfort level she had with the hospital: one she wished she didn’t have.
And the dog—which later became plural—those big eyes staring up at her: What do you mean, you’re leaving? Why would you do that?
Plus the eternal concerns of living in an old house on a desolate country road, you never know when the furnace is going to fail, the roof is going to leak, a pipe burst, and no one will notice until the house is wrecked. Hurricanes, snowstorms, vole infestations, downed power lines, the place is never safe. Plus the bookstore-café, which confronts not only all the same potential physical disasters but also the smorgasbord of small-business issues—the absent or disgruntled or untrustworthy employees, the health-code inspections, permit renewals, delivery delays, payroll and accounting chores, customer-service disagreements, tax bills and sales calls and inventory-management-software webinars.
It takes no small effort to leave behind this whole life, if only for a couple of days, her kid and her house and her shop and her farm and even her crappy old truck baking in the hot sun of long-term airport parking, her borderline-incompetent mother housesitting. Dozens of different negative consequences for Ariel to worry about.
But in all those years of all that worry, never until now has she confronted this particular nightmare: Her husband has gone missing in a foreign country.
CHAPTER 9
DAY 1. 5:58 P.M.
Knock knock.
Ariel feels her body seize. What now?
“Who is it?”
“Senhora Wright? It is Duarte from reception.”
Ariel opens the door.
“Yes?”
“My apologies for intruding. But I think you are wanting to know.”
“Yes? What?”
“We are finding something.”
Do hearts actually skip a beat? Ariel’s feels like it does.
“We are calling and again calling, but it is only your husband’s telephone number that we are knowing, not yours. And your husband, he is not—”
“What is it? What did you find?”
“Here.” The young man fishes in his pocket, removes a piece of paper. “Leonor, she is cleaning your room, and she is finding this under the bed—”
*
Nicole Griffiths has just begun packing up for the day when she notices Saxby Barnes in her doorway again, waiting to be noticed.
“Hey Barnes.” She’s not going to ask why he’s here. Whatever he wants, he’s going to need to do the asking.
“So did you find that gentleman’s phone?”
“Yes.”
Griffiths is quitting out of her applications one by one, careful as always to make sure that every program closes. These days you never know what’s going to turn out to be an opening for a backdoor attack. Hackers have gotten awfully clever about sneaking their way into other people’s privacy.
“Anything to share with me?”
“Not yet.” She locks her desk, stands.
“Where was the phone?”
Griffiths glances at her watch. “Listen, Barnes, I gotta run.”
She needs to get home, shower, change, and drive downtown for her date with Pietro, and she doesn’t want to be late.
“But you’ll let me know what you find?” Barnes asks.
Griffiths doesn’t want to actively lie to her half-colleague, which would be bad form. But whatever the problem is with the missing businessman, Saxby Barnes is probably not going to be part of the solution. Especially if this turns out to be in any way related to national security. Which is highly doubtful, but not impossible. It’s never impossible. That’s why Griffiths is willing to be involved in what at first blush looks like a matter of a common crime, or an accident, or a marital misunderstanding. Barnes will be more than welcome to untangle any of those messes.
Griffiths smiles. It’s her tightest, coldest, most insincere smile, but it’s more than nothing. She’ll leave it up to Barnes to try to figure out what it means, confident that he’ll get it wrong.
*
“Look.”
Ariel is standing over the table where the detectives are seated in front of bowls of stew. Ariel has barely eaten a bite in—what?—twenty hours. She’s starving.
“Please,” the woman Santos says, indicating an empty chair.
When Ariel rang Detective Moniz a few minutes ago, he told her where to find them, after a lengthy pause. “It is no trouble,” he said, sounding like he meant the opposite.
Now he reads the note. “This is your husband’s handwriting?”