“I transferred up here last year. Yeah, he’s good. Three kids. I’ll tell him you were asking.”
Malcolm stuck his hand out to the other officer. “Officer Navarro,” the man said.
“So,” Jackie said as she reached up and straightened the Hennessy sign by the door. “What can you tell us about Charles Waggoner? We heard Rob filled you in a little.”
“He hasn’t turned up yet?” Malcolm was surprised. He figured Tripp would have shown up one way or another by then, that he’d either found his way home or been discovered somewhere between there and the Half Moon. If he’d attempted the walk home on Friday night, he might have stopped for a rest, fallen asleep like drunk people tended to do. And then the snow, the extreme cold that followed. It wasn’t a bad way to go, really. There was also the creek that ran along Jefferson, the water moving fast under the surface ice. A body had been fished out when Malcolm was in ninth grade, and he was certain that every person his age who grew up in Gillam could name the place they were when that news went out. They’d played in that creek all summer.
“No, and we really need to track him down before this next storm gets here,” she said.
“One more biggie and then spring,” Officer Navarro said. “Next thing the tulips will be pushing through.”
“That’s March for you,” Jackie said.
“I hadn’t heard that,” Malcolm said. “About another storm. My phone’s dead.”
“Tomorrow, supposedly,” Jackie said. “They might be wrong. It doesn’t have that smell, if you ask me. You know how you can smell snow coming?”
A Tuesday storm would be better than another Friday storm. He needed to be up and running by Thursday, latest. He had a birthday party coming in. Plus the rolling St. Patrick’s Day parades that took up most of March—Hoboken, Jersey City, Woodlawn—would mean people returning to Gillam and going for a drink in town. The rowdy groups opened tabs, stayed for hours. He had a band scheduled for Saturday night. They were probably awful but they’d agreed to play for drinks and tips. March was usually his best month.
Malcolm told the officers more or less the same things he told Rob the day before, that Tripp had gotten drunk, cooled out in the kitchen, walked off. They took Emma’s and Roddy’s names. He went to the kitchen to get his phone so he could give them their numbers, forgetting it was dead. They asked if he knew the names of any of the people Tripp had been arguing with, but Malcolm didn’t.
“What’s upstairs?” Jackie asked. She looked at the ceiling.
“You ever hang out here, Jackie? I’ve never seen you.”
“I don’t think I’ve been here in years. I like going to Riverside or into the city. That new place on Oak is nice. Have you been?”
“Nope,” Malcolm said, and pulled on his tight shoulder. “Well anyway, there’s nothing up there. Odds and ends. I thought I’d use it as an office, but I really don’t need one. There’s a door from the sidewalk, or a staircase in the back, if you walk past the men’s.” Malcolm pointed.
“You never had a renter or anything?”
“No. Thought about it, but I’d need to renovate, put in a full bath and a kitchenette.” And who in the world would want to live above a bar? They’d have to soundproof it, bring it to residential code. “I’ve been thinking of opening a wall, having outdoor space, a rooftop bar. You can see the lake from up there.”
He watched for their reaction.
Jackie turned her face north and tilted her head. “Wouldn’t it overlook the commuter lot?”
“There are things you can do about that. Decorative things.”
But she’d already lost interest. “You mind if we look around up there?”
“Sure,” Malcolm said, and then apologized for having to lead them back outside to the door that led upstairs. A policy leftover from Hugh’s time; they kept the interior door to the second floor locked so that people didn’t sneak up when the bar was full.
Upstairs, the light was brighter. The walls were scuffed and the floor was pitched badly, needed to be leveled. But there was something cheerful about it, something promising.
“What’s all this?” Officer Navarro asked. Malcolm was across the room, imagining the wall gone, some sort of wood trellis to prevent a person from looking left. “Is someone staying here?”
Malcolm turned to see what he was talking about. There in the corner of the room closest to the door they’d entered through was a duffel bag, and next to it, a short stack of clothes, neatly folded. A phone charger. Two battered paperbacks. A clip-on book light. A camp mattress, rolled up into a cylinder. A sleeping bag. As a group they moved toward the tiny bathroom and looked in. There was a cup on the windowsill that held a single toothbrush and a travel-sized tube of toothpaste. Deodorant. A striped towel hung from the doorknob.
“Whose stuff is this?” Navarro asked, looking at him carefully.
Malcolm shrugged, astonished. For some reason his first thought was of Jess. But if it was her stuff, there’d be the face wash she liked. There’d be her floral makeup case. She didn’t wear men’s deodorant, mountain fresh scent.
“Someone’s definitely staying here,” Jackie said, looking at Malcolm. “You didn’t know?”
“No idea,” Malcolm said, glad he didn’t have to lie but also feeling a strong sense of trouble looming. They stood over the duffel bag. There were two boxes of peanut butter protein bars. Jackie picked up a sweatshirt, held it so they could all read what was written across the front: “Fall Classic,” a drawing of a fish underneath. One of the books was a spy novel and the other a guidebook of sorts: Alone: How to Break Free of the Grid.
Navarro picked up Alone, flipped it open. “?‘Dig a well before you’re thirsty,’?” he read aloud.
“You don’t need a warrant?” Malcolm asked, and immediately wanted to kick himself. He sounded defensive, but really he just wanted to make sure they did everything right because if they didn’t, it would end up becoming his problem.
Both officers looked up.
“Nah,” Navarro said. “If Charles Waggoner wants to jet off to the South Pole or wherever, that’s his business. We just want to feel pretty sure that’s what happened.”
“For his wife’s sake,” Jackie added. “The family is wondering.”
“Trespassing is a crime, isn’t it?” Malcolm asked.
“Yeah,” Jackie said in a tone that said, Not really.
“You’re certain he was on his own on Friday night?” Navarro asked.
Malcolm shrugged. He wasn’t certain about anything anymore.
“Who else might be staying here?” Jackie asked. “Someone on your staff maybe?”
Malcolm ticked through his staff face by face. He paused on Roddy for a moment, always broke, always disheveled, but he moved on.
“I’m just confused. Why would he need to stay here? He has a house.”
Jackie looked at Navarro and he shrugged as if to say, Go ahead.
“Rob found an itinerary for Toronto in his father’s email, early Saturday morning departure. Or rather, Rob’s mother found it, showed Rob. That’s when he looped us in.”
“Saturday morning as in two days ago? I would think flights were canceled. How’d he even get to the airport?”
“You’d be surprised,” Navarro said. “Planes get above the weather pretty quickly. Getting to the airport would have been hard but not impossible. We confirmed the flight took off from Newark at 7:35 Saturday morning and he purchased a seat several weeks ago. We also confirmed that he checked in, but anyone can check in remotely, so it doesn’t tell us all that much. Maybe he went straight from here Friday night and slept at the airport. We’re waiting for the passenger list. That’ll tell us if he was actually on board. There was also a bunch of stuff in his search history about a village in Peru.” He pronounced the name of the village slowly, syllable by syllable. “Ollantaytambo. Rob said Tripp and his mother went there once, years ago. His father’s been obsessed with it ever since.”
“He told me about that place,” Malcolm said.