Last Seen Leaving (10 page)

“I'm so glad you came,” she repeated in a soft, strangled whisper, “I'm so glad you came, I'm so glad you came.…”

Mr. Walker separated us with a gentle but uncompromising gesture, and I almost thanked him. January's mother was staring at me in a bewilderingly hopeful way, her hands flexing open and closed. I'd seen adults drunk from time to time, authority figures acting unpredictable and a little scary, but I'd never seen one who truly appeared to be on the verge of losing it. Tammy had always struck me as a little bit high-strung, prone to becoming emotional and melodramatic at the drop of a hat whenever she and January argued, but I'd never seen her so unstable.

Shuffling my feet self-consciously, I suddenly regretted climbing up onto the porch in the first place. Everyone in the courtyard was watching us, I realized, including the news crew. Clearing my throat, I mumbled, “I just … I've been really worried, since I heard … and I wanted … to tell you that.”

It was the lamest offering of condolences ever, possibly in the history of the known universe, but I had no idea what was appropriate to say in that kind of situation. Nevertheless, mournful tears slipped from Mrs. Walker's eyes, and she said, “Of course, dear, of course you've been worried—”

“Flynn is January's boyfriend,” Mr. Walker explained for the benefit of the bearded man, who then regarded me with some surprise. To me, Mr. Walker added, “This is Cedric Kaufmann, the director of the play January's working on at school.”

“Hoffman, actually,” the older man corrected gently. Shaking my hand, he stated, “I don't believe that I know you, son.”

“Flynn goes to Riverside,” Tammy said in a wobbly voice. “That was January's old school, before she started attending Dumas.”

“No, you don't seem like the Dumas type,” Hoffman informed me neutrally, and I couldn't tell whether I'd just been insulted or not. The look he was giving me, however, wasn't terribly friendly. “I don't recall January ever mentioning you.”

“We started dating last summer,” I said, because there was a very weird silence just then, and it felt like somebody needed to fill it before the world ended.

“She was a very lovely girl,” he told me sternly. “Very lovely.” The stagy sentimentality in his voice reminded me rather suddenly that January had called him a freak. I could see why. “I hope you appreciated her, son.”

“Oh, he does, Mr. Hoffman,” Mrs. Walker enthused softly, that crazy smile still plastered across her face. “Flynn is
wonderful
for January. They're so happy together.” It was clear she, at least, hadn't heard any of the anti-Flynn propaganda that seemed to be going around town. “Isn't that right?”

Her look was expectant, Hoffman's was skeptical, and Mr. Walker's was detached. I was about to mumble an answer when Detective Moses interrupted and saved me from one of the most awkward exchanges of my life. “We're about to get started, so the two of you should probably go down there and join the others.”

She was speaking to Hoffman and me of course, and with glad footsteps I retreated to the wide lip of the stone fountain. The fish had been removed for the season, but it had not yet been emptied of water, and when the wind shifted, an icy spray speckled my face. I kept my eyes on the porch, where Detective Moses stood, holding up a flier bearing a large photo of January. It was a picture that had been taken the previous summer, on a night when we'd been hanging out downtown. January was laughing, her long blond hair spilling over her shoulders. She looked confident. Happy.

“Listen up, everyone,” Detective Moses began in a loud voice that carried clear to the back of the crowd. “We are all here today to search for January Beth McConville. For those of you who do not know her personally, she is a Caucasian female, fifteen years old, approximately five feet five inches, and one hundred ten pounds. She has blue eyes and long blond hair. Those are her vital statistics. They are printed out on this flier”—she held it up a little higher so everyone could see it—“along with a description of the last outfit she was seen wearing: a light gray hooded sweatshirt, dark jeans, and a pair of red canvas shoes.

“Also printed on the flier are contact numbers. If you find January today, call one of these numbers. If you find an article of January's clothing, a dropped cell phone, a footprint, anything that looks suspicious or out of place or like it might help us track January down,
call one of these numbers
. What you should
not
do is
touch
anything that looks like evidence,
move
anything that looks like evidence, or
photograph
anything that looks like evidence and then post it on the Internet. We all have the same goal here, and we need to work together.

“To that end: Do not go off anywhere alone. Ironically enough, people can and do get lost on search parties. Pick a buddy—or, better yet, a group—and stick together. Make sure at least one of you has a fully charged, functioning cell phone at all times. If possible, stay within earshot of other groups, and be aware of your surroundings. If you find January and she is injured, do not attempt to move her, and unless you are a trained medical professional, do not attempt to administer treatment.
Call one of these numbers
.”

Detective Moses came down from the porch and began distributing fliers among the crowd, adults snatching them up and clutching them reverently, like church programs. Sympathetic mews rippled through the gathered volunteers as they examined January's bright, beautiful face, committed her outfit to memory, and programmed the contact numbers into their trusty cell phones. For a sickening moment, I felt as if I'd just joined the world's most macabre scavenger hunt.

My mouth felt tacky and dry as the flier found its way into my hand and I looked at January's vibrant smile. I'd seen dozens of similar smiles on TV and in the newspapers, on girls whose images usually accompanied a story of tragedy, abduction, or murder—girls you knew would never be seen again. It was surreal to me that the happy, likable girl in the news now was my ex-girlfriend. Would we really find her today? Did we
want
to? After all, if she were this close to home, and had been all along, then either she was camping in the woods somewhere … or she was dead.

And January had never been a big fan of camping.

Interrupting my thoughts, Detective Moses asked if there were any questions. When there weren't, she barked, “Okay, everyone. Let's bring January back home.”

 

NINE

THE CROWD BEGAN
to disperse, volunteers armed with flashlights, cell phones, and fliers heading in all directions, off into the relative wilderness that surrounded the Walker mansion. Detective Moses remounted the porch and herded January's parents back inside the house, through the massive front doors of carved and polished oak. I turned around and started looking for Mrs. Hughes. I wasn't especially anxious to tag along with a group of perfect strangers for the task ahead, and I was also sort of suddenly craving the comforting presence of a reliable and familiar adult.

I made it three steps before I heard someone call my name.

“Flynn!” It was Kaz. He was waving his hand in the air again, trying to draw my attention over the heads of the people between us, and I immediately turned the other way, pretending not to see him. I was screwed, though; the fountain created a huge barrier in front of me, and a gaggle of elderly volunteers bickering over a map formed an impassable obstacle on my left. By the time I got around to door number three, it was already too late. Kaz was upon me. “Hey, man, wait up!”

“What are you doing here?” I asked sourly, as if he had no business looking for my missing girlfriend.

“I wanted to help.” He sounded a little embarrassed, and he gave me a crooked smile. “Listen, I feel bad about the other day. We kind of got off on the wrong foot, know what I mean?”

“You think so?” I deadpanned.

He shifted his weight nervously and ducked his head. “Yeah. Look, I've been thinking about some of the things you said on Saturday, because they didn't make a lot of sense to me, and I've been starting to wonder if maybe … I don't know.”

“What?”

“I never told January she should be dating older guys,” he blurted, glancing up at me as if he wasn't sure I'd believe him. “I mean, it sounded like you thought I was trying to move in on her or something like that, and that's totally not the case. I like January as a friend, but that's all. She isn't my type, and she knows that. I
know
she knows that.”

“She told me you said it, though,” I countered pedantically, even though I'd come to realize that my ex-girlfriend was perhaps the very definition of an unreliable source. “Why would she say it if it wasn't true?”

“I don't know!” he responded earnestly. “That's what I'm talking about. There was this one time that January was upset because you two were fighting about something, and she kept saying stuff like, ‘Flynn is so immature,' and, ‘Maybe I shouldn't be dating high school boys anymore, because they're all immature, maybe I should be dating college guys.' And she asked what I thought, and it was obvious she wanted me to agree with her, so I said sure. But that was it.” Tugging awkwardly at the lapel of his peacoat, he mumbled, “And I never said anything about the size of your … size.”

For clarification, he gestured to my crotch, and I could feel my face redden. “Did you tell her to break up with me?”

“Yeah, I did,” he admitted, letting out a breath. “But the thing is, every time she talked to me about you, it was always some sort of complaint. She always seemed upset or depressed about stuff she said you did, so … yeah. I told her she didn't deserve to be unhappy, and that if things weren't good between you two, she should probably move on.”

He looked down again and then up, waiting for me to say something. I was still pissed at him, nursing a grudge calcified from months of hearing how amazing Kaz was and how he was always making cases against me in absentia, cases by which my seemingly ever-credulous girlfriend was perpetually
thisclose
to being convinced. Now he was trying to reach out to me, and I knew the
mature
thing to do would be to reciprocate, and I knew I should
want
to do the mature thing—but I didn't. And the truth of that was frustrating. Irritated by the whole situation, I jammed my hands into my jacket pockets. “Why are you telling me all this stuff?”

“Like I said, I was thinking. I guess I realized that if January told you things about me that, you know, misrepresented what really happened, then maybe the things she's told me about you weren't totally accurate, either.” He shrugged uncomfortably. “I figured at the very least I owed you a chance to tell me your side of the story.”

“Why?” I retorted. “Because I'm so concerned with what you think of me?”

“Fair enough.” Kaz sighed. “I guess what I owe you is an apology. January made you sound like this enormous ass who didn't care about her at all, but”—he gestured around the courtyard—“you're the only other one of her friends who showed up today. And you're the only one who stopped by the toy store to ask about her, other than the police. That's the other thing—I found out from the owners that the cops came by last week, and apparently January didn't tell her parents she'd quit, either.” He gave me that crooked smile again, and his sheepish expression made him look about fifty percent less douchey. “I don't know why she said the things she said, but I wanted to set the record straight. I'm sorry, man.”

It was a weird moment. Kaz had no reason to lie to me, and no reason to want peace with me unless he was telling the truth, but I was still annoyed at having to let go of my anger. I'd spent a lot of time convincing myself of my righteousness in hating Kaz, and I sure as hell wasn't ready to trust him, but I couldn't justify rejecting his olive branch, either. Reluctantly, I gave a curt nod. “Sure. Whatever.”

Pointedly, I turned to walk away, only to discover that we'd been all but abandoned in the courtyard. Mrs. Hughes was nowhere to be seen, and the only adults left were the quarrelsome older people with the map, still arguing over who should hold it and which way was north, anyway. I let out a tired sigh, realizing my own fate a moment before I heard Kaz pipe up, “So, what do you say? Search buddies?”

We were silent for a long time, our booted feet swishing through grass that was silvered with a touch of frost left over from the morning. It was an overcast day, the sky a solid blanket of dove-white clouds, and cold, blunt light fell on the fields that rolled away from the back of the Walker mansion. We'd left the house far behind, and in the distance we could see groups of other searchers moving inexorably toward the thick woods that sprouted up to the southeast of the property. Without explanation, I veered southwest, and Kaz followed.

“You know, January told me that her parents were rich and annoyingly Waspy, but I hadn't really been expecting the whole Ken-and-Barbie-in-the-Hamptons routine,” he remarked with forced amiability as he pulled up next to me, his long legs easily matching mine stride for stride. He was giving me that cute, crooked smile again, standing close enough for me to catch a mingled scent of herbal soap and sandalwood cologne, and it made funny things happen to my stomach. I gritted my teeth and tried to pick up the pace. I wasn't even sure I wanted to like Kaz as a person, let alone feel …
things
for him. Oblivious to my discomfort, he continued, “I mean, she makes her stepdad sound like some kind of animatronic, flag-waving caricature, but I always pictured her mom as a little more laid-back.”

“She used to be,” I said finally, my own peace offering. “Sort of. I mean, she could be kind of difficult sometimes? Like, if January said something even a little bit disrespectful, Tammy would start sobbing and going on about all her sacrifices and ‘this is the thanks I get' and all that stuff. But she was usually pretty cool. She didn't talk down to you, and she didn't act like she thought you were too stupid to understand her.… She told jokes, and she laughed a lot, and she swore like a prison guard; she was fun.” I could remember being at January's old condo, back before we were dating, sitting on the couch and watching Tammy blitz through the room, her mousy hair bundled up in a lopsided chignon.
Nobody look at me, I'm a fucking mess! I'm going to sue Sarah Jessica Parker.
Sex and the City
did not prepare me to be a single woman in her thirties
without
designer heels and amazing sex!
“Tammy changed a lot when she remarried. In their old condo, she had one of the walls in the kitchen covered with that chalkboard paint so people could write all over it? In their new house, she had white carpeting put down in one of the rooms on the first floor, and now no one's allowed to even go in there because she doesn't want it to get dirty.”