The day before him was too long, too shapeless. He hadn’t talked to another person since Friday night. He didn’t want the officer to leave.
“You know, he usually does go on about how he wants to move somewhere far away. Get off the grid. How we’re all suckers for living the way we do, the constant hustle. Stuff like that. He likes to say there are places where it’s spring all year-round.”
“Yeah? Where would he go?” The officer was interested.
“He seemed really into South America.”
“To Peru? Did he say Peru?”
“Yeah, Peru. You knew that?”
“What else did he say?”
“Just how beautiful it is there. He’d looked into how much land costs per acre in one particular area, how he’d make his money stretch. Stuff like that. He seems to really hate his job.”
The officer waited, as if hoping for more.
“I just let people talk. He does something in finance, don’t ask me what.”
He thought of Jess, the time she asked him if he was happy, how he’d reacted as if he didn’t know what she was talking about, as if he’d never asked himself that question, the closed expression on her face when she thought she was the only one. Later he thought it was probably mean of him to make her think that, how she might feel lonelier, but if he forged on as if there were no other choices, then so would she. Only it hadn’t worked out that way. Over the past week, Malcolm had gotten bills for a new year of disability insurance, workers’ comp, his permit from the Department of Health, the company that serviced his fire extinguishers and the exhaust hood. He’d owe first-quarter sales tax pretty soon.
“Did he ever mention specifics? How he’d go about it if he were to do it?”
“Not that I remember. I didn’t take it too seriously, to tell you the truth. You should hear the things people talk about when they’ve tied one on. People don’t realize they’ll bring their exact same problems to a new place, new relationship, new career—whatever it is they think will solve their problems.
“He seems like a pretty nice guy,” Malcolm added, “but put a few drinks in him and he’s an expert in everything. You know the type? He’ll tell me how to run my bar. He’ll tell you how to be a cop. He’ll tell a fish how to swim.” Malcolm shrugged. “He was definitely unhappy. A little angry underneath, but that’s everyone. I hope nothing happened to him.
“You want coffee?” Malcolm asked, and then remembered he had no power. “Oh wait. Sorry.”
The officer closed his notepad and put it in his pocket. Malcolm followed him to the door. He noticed the new four-foot-tall ridge of snow at the end of his driveway. The plow must have pushed it across while they were in the kitchen, and now that ridge was no doubt transforming into a solid block of ice.
“Is the power out all over town?”
“All over the county.”
“The roads are okay though?”
“No, the roads are terrible. An alert went out to stay home. We’ve been doing rescues all night.”
“But the forecast said the freeze will last days.”
“People are getting stuck. For real. Don’t go out if you can help it. Anyway, thanks for your time.”
He began to high-step his way down the path, in the same footsteps he’d made on his way in.
“Hey. Do you think I could get a lift? To my bar? Since you’re driving over that way and your car is on the other side of that mountain?” He glanced again at the enormous ridge of snow where his driveway met the road. “It’s an old building. I have a generator there but I need to set it up. The lever on the water main broke off a few years ago and I never got it fixed so I’m worried about a pipe bursting.”
The officer hesitated.
“I’d really appreciate it.”
“Yeah okay,” he said.
“I just need one minute,” Malcolm said and then moved as fast as he could through his house. He layered on clean clothes, grabbed his wallet, his keys, his phone. He stepped into his boots and went out the back door to the shed, picked up the canister of gasoline, looked around for what else he might need. He half expected the car to be gone when he got back around to the driveway, but it was still there, waiting. The officer had just summited the ridge of snow and was stumbling down the far side. When it was Malcolm’s turn, he rested the gas can on the crest and climbed over on hands and feet.
The car was warm. The street was freshly plowed but Malcolm could see from the way the sun glinted off the surface of the road that the thin layer left behind was all ice.
“Your bosses are so worried about Tripp that they sent you out in this?”
The young officer didn’t respond at first. He rolled slowly through the stop sign at the end of the street and took the turn without tapping the brake.
“You call him Tripp. Did he tell you to call him that?”
“I guess so. I didn’t come up with it myself.”
“It’s a childhood nickname. He usually introduces himself as Charles. He probably likes you.”
“Yeah?” Malcolm said.
The car rolled right through the red light on Raritan.
“He’s my father.”
“Ah,” Malcolm said, trying to remember what exactly he’d said about Tripp. Nothing too bad, he hoped.
“I’m supposed to be barricading the hill on Overlook Drive. I’m Rob Waggoner.”
Malcolm had never pictured Tripp’s kids.
“For a couple years now he’s just been talking crazy about going away. He pulled me aside maybe six months ago, but he’s so full of it in general that I didn’t really tune in to what he was saying. But now he’s gone. Just like he said. I mean, I can’t imagine anyone getting very far after Friday’s storm, but on the other hand we think he’s been planning. He might have looked into getting papers. You know, false documents.”
“False documents,” Malcolm repeated. “You’re serious?”
“I know it sounds crazy. My mom thought he was having an affair. He was being secretive, always closing his laptop when she walked into the room. She sometimes saw him looking through a file folder but when she searched for it when he was at work she could never find it. The little things she did manage to find never had to do with women.”
“What were they?”
“Places he wanted to go and how to live there. Patagonia. Mongolia. Northern Canada. Really rugged places. But his favorite was Peru.”
“If you’re worried can’t you check? Put out a description?”
“Like in the movies?” Rob glanced at him. “Send out an APB? Our captain made an announcement to be on the lookout for him and we can alert other police departments, but that’s pretty much it. And it’s busy right now. People getting stuck in this cold, in houses without power.”
“Listen, people talk all sorts of nonsense they don’t mean,” Malcolm said as they glided down Seneca, the storefronts so peaceful with snow piled on the sills, sticking to the plate glass. “I hear it all the time. I’m going to leave my wife. I’m going to quit my job. I’m going to write my memoir and sell it to Hollywood. But very few people actually do the things they say they’re going to do. And it feels a little dramatic for a guy like Tripp. Plus remember the weather on Friday night? I’m sure he’s holed up somewhere and he’ll be back soon. I bet his phone died.”
They pulled up to the Half Moon.
“I’m going to take a look around if that’s okay,” Rob said. “I want to picture his night.”
There were no other cars around, so Rob left the cruiser running in the middle of the road.