“I don’t think ill of you.”
Lottie said, “Good. Now if he was dead and Raheem was dead—like if they drowned on the river or something bad like that—I think their bodies would have been found. Bodies don’t sink, do they? Don’t they kind of bloat up and float to the top? I remember seeing a drowned heifer do that in the river when I was a little girl on the farm. It bobbed along like a beach ball or something.”
Cassie nodded. It was a tough subject to discuss but that didn’t seem to effect Lottie. She was a tough old bird who could serve slices of baked apple and lefse at the same time she was talking about the bloated body of her grandson.
“That’s true,” Cassie said. “When bodies decompose in the water they create gas that buoys them to the surface sooner or later.”
“Unless of course they’re weighted down with chains or something,” Lottie said. “But that just sounds a little too crazy, doesn’t it?”
“Well … we have no reason to believe that someone murdered them, do we?” Cassie asked.
“Nah, I guess not.” She shook her head. “Maybe I watch too many of those TV shows.”
Lottie pushed herself up from the table to get the pot of coffee. It didn’t seem to matter that Cassie had said she didn’t want more.
On the way to the kitchen counter, the old woman slid a loose rug aside that was in front of the stove to reveal a star-shaped burn in the linoleum.
“That’s where one of those tear gas things went off that night,” Lottie said. “It burnt my floor. The sheriff said he’d replace the flooring afterwards but I thought that was a wasteful use of taxpayer money. I just asked him to buy me a rug at Walmart to cover it up.”
“That was nice of you,” Cassie said. The thought of Sheriff Kirkbride browsing through kitchen rugs for the right one at Walmart made her smile to herself.
“Of course, it took months to get the smell of that gas out of the house,” Lottie said. “It clung to the curtains and the sofa fabric. It was worse than old tobacco smoke, you know?”
“I can imagine,” Cassie said. Like most cops, she guessed, she hadn’t really given a lot of thought to the long-lasting effects of a police raid to the homeowner afterwards. The scars, the smells, the ghosts that lingered.
“When it was warm enough I tried to air it for days on end,” Lottie said as she came back and refilled Cassie’s cup. “Finally I think it’s gotten to the point where I can’t smell that smoke anymore. Can you?”
“No.”
“Well, good. When I smell that smoke it always takes me back to when it happened.”
*
CASSIE CONTINUED TO WRITE DOWN the pertinent details of the missing person’s case as Lottie laid them out, including a list of all the items Kyle had taken with him that had been collected over the years in his “River Box.” She did it to keep herself busy, primarily because she had no doubt the information was already in a file at the Law Enforcement Center. She did it to suggest to Lottie that something was being done.
“Is there anything else?” Cassie asked after an hour and too many bites of lefse and baked apple.
Lottie answered, “Yes. If you find Kyle, you don’t have to make him come back.”
“Excuse me?” Cassie had no idea that Lottie expected her to start an immediate investigation herself.
But Lottie misunderstood the question. “There’s no need to force him back to Grimstad to attend high school. He’s learning very little of value as far as I’m concerned. I’ve looked at his homework assignments. I can’t even figure out what they’re teaching him that can be of any real benefit to a boy like Kyle.”
Before Cassie could break in and steer the conversation back, Lottie continued.
“Kyle is a very poor student but as we know he’s very smart in his way. He’ll learn a lot more about the world by being out in it. That’s the way things used to be in this country. Not every person went to college and a lot of people I know never even finished high school. Instead, they went to work and moved from place to place. That’s how you get wisdom. It isn’t from school papers about diversity and gay rights and that sort of thing they teach these days.
“Kyle will learn and get smart in his own way,” she said. “If you find him I want you to tell him I said that. He’s always welcome back here and he should give me a call because I worry about him, but he doesn’t have to come back if he’s healthy and he’s doing okay. I just want to be assured he’s alive and on his journey, whatever that is. So will you let him be if he’s in a good place?”
Cassie didn’t know what to say to that.
“It’s more important to me to know he’s alive and well than it is to drag him back here to waste his time at that school and have to live with a little old lady,” Lottie said. “I just want to be sure. And I’m sure that nice Mr. Johnson wants to know that Raheem is okay.”
Cassie sat back. “Lottie, I think there’s been a misunderstanding here. I’m no longer law enforcement. I really can’t investigate this. I’m just here to get all the information and relay it to the sheriff now that he’s back.”
“There’s no misunderstanding,” Lottie said with a mischievous grin. “You were the only person who helped Kyle when he really needed it and you’re the only person I trust to find him or learn what happened to him.
“Here,” she said, digging into her purse on her lap and withdrawing a thick envelope. “This is eight thousand, three hundred and twenty-eight dollars. It should get you started.”
“Lottie, I’m not a private detective.”
“Whatever you are, this will help with expenses. Gas, motel, food, that kind of thing.”
“I can’t take it,” Cassie said.
“Of course you can,” Lottie said. “What am I going to do with it—die with it in my bank account? I’d rather spend it on finding Kyle.”
“I won’t take your life savings,” Cassie said.
“Oh,” Lottie said, waving away Cassie’s concern, “I got a lot more money than this stashed away. This is just one of my accounts from the First International Bank and Trust in town. I’ve got a lot of other accounts and a whole bunch of stock I’ve picked up over the years. I’m not worried about running out of money before I go meet Jesus. So if you need more, just say so.”
Cassie stuttered, “I’m not … I can’t do this kind of thing. This will take some time and travel and I have a son of my own.”
Lottie nodded eagerly as if Cassie had played right into her trap. “What would you do if Ben went missing and the police didn’t seem to care?”
Cassie closed her eyes and admitted it. “Everything I could.”
“Well, I’m not asking you to do that for Kyle,” Lottie said. “But this is all I can do.”
Then, after a long pause: “So, you’ll help me?”
*