The Moon Pool (12 page)

But that was insane, wasn't it? What was it Sherlock Holmes was supposed to have said—something about eliminating the impossible and whatever was left had to be the truth. Two boys, good friends, independently deciding to leave without a word, on the very same day—that was so unlikely as to be impossible.

But still. Events were splitting off into two directions. Differences were appearing. The two boys were
not
the same. Maybe they had made different choices. And even though Shay was no closer to knowing what had happened, she had to tread very carefully, never forgetting that the obvious could be a trick.

“
I DON
'
T TRUST
that bitch,” Shay said, lowering the dented mini-blinds over the motor home's long side window. Brenda's car was in the driveway. She'd worked the three-to-eleven every day this week, and apparently she had the same shift again today. Unless it was her day off, in which case they'd have to deal with her staring out the window at them all night.

Colleen set the Walmart bag on the table. Shay slid into the seat across from her and reached for the bag. “Okay,” she said, dumping out its contents. Clothes—wadded and faintly smelling of body odor and Axe—tumbled out. A paperback copy of
Game of Thrones
that looked like it hadn't been read. A baggie with two compact nuggets of weed, and a little glass pipe. Shay recognized that pipe—she'd threatened to throw it out over Christmas when she found it, to which Taylor had said, “Really, Mom?” with that amused lazy smile of his, the one that said she was taking herself too seriously. Besides, it was only a couple of years since Taylor had found
her
little stash one day when he was looking for Advil and they'd had the talk about being grown up and respecting each other's choices and besides it was only very occasional and blah blah blah.

Shay glanced at Colleen, gauging her reaction. “Is that—” Colleen asked, then blushed. “I mean, I don't mean to judge. I don't—I know that—”

“Yes, it's what you think. It's marijuana. I knew he had it.” She set it aside, picking up a smaller Walmart bag, the top twisted and knotted, its contents clanking. Tearing the bag open, she felt a tendril of dread, but inside were only the things she would have expected—a toothbrush, toothpaste, dandruff shampoo, body wash, deodorant, condoms, ChapStick. She laid these things out in a row and the two women examined them together.

“Paul used that same body wash,” Colleen said. “That Axe brand. I always thought it smelled so nice. I was surprised, you know? That a... well, a drugstore brand could smell that good.”

“Seriously?” Shay poked her fingers into the corners of the plastic bag, turning it inside out. Nothing, not even leaked soap. “You don't buy your husband's soap at the drugstore?”

“I mean—yes, sure, it's just Kiehl's makes this really nice one—”

“What's missing?” Shay interrupted, a little more sharply than necessary. “His wallet. His keys. Sunglasses, except I think he always kept those in his truck. What else? What else do boys carry around with them?”

They were both silent for a moment. “Paul has a bottle-opener key chain,” Colleen said. “He got it when he was a freshman. But it would be with his keys.”

“Taylor has these flip-flops with the bottle opener built into the sole. But they're back home. He left all his summer stuff there. I kept his room just the way he left it. I mean, he's pretty neat, he wouldn't want me moving things around anyway.”

“Wow, not Paul. He's so careless with things. I wish—I should have made him do more. But we always had the cleaning ladies, and I never minded doing laundry. I kind of liked it, actually.” She looked so forlorn that Shay forgave her the cleaning lady comment. “Maybe that's from just having the one. Every stage, every birthday, you're always thinking how he's that much closer to leaving.”

Shay barked a laugh. “Hell, not me. I made Brittany learn to do her own laundry when she was eight. Taylor would have been four, and he used to help her. I had two jobs back then, and Frank, that was Taylor's father, he wasn't around much.”

“See,” Colleen said. “That was so good. They learned because they
had
to learn. With Paul, I never had the opportunity to teach him that kind of self-reliance. Everything was always done for him; he never really learned to look out for himself.”

“It wasn't that hard,” Shay said. “If they wanted to eat, they had to figure out how to make the macaroni and cheese. Don't you think I would have rather been home doing it all for them?” She shook her head at the memory. “I was supposed to take six weeks after Taylor was born, but my boss called me after three and paid me time and a half to come back early. We couldn't say no to that, not back then.” She dug back into the pile of Taylor's things. “Oh, this was his favorite shirt,” she exclaimed, holding it up. It was soft from being washed over and over again, a faded green cotton T-shirt he got from working at the Y sports camp. On the back was his name, Capparelli, spelled out in block letters.

She kept going through the clothes. There was the belt Brittany gave him for Christmas. A pair of shorts. Socks paired and rolled, which made her smile—at home he just dumped them into his drawer, but here, so far from home, he'd adopted her habits.

She came across a shirt she didn't recognize, a silky collared shirt with a stripe of pale green against a navy background. She held it up to her face, but it smelled only of detergent. Had he bought it for going out? To show off for a girl? She closed her eyes and touched the soft fabric to her cheek, trying to conjure an image of the girl who'd caught his eye, who was special enough to warrant this kind of purchase.

She put it back on top of the other things, then put them all carefully back into the Walmart bag. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing out of the ordinary, anyway. I guess that was a bust.”

“I don't know.” Colleen folded her hands and rested her chin on them. “For now, maybe. But let's put it all aside and maybe later it will mean something. Let it—you know, let it simmer in your mind, in your subconscious, and maybe something will come to you.”

“So. You now know everything I do,” Shay said. “You've seen the cops and the man camp. I was going to try to go out to the rig where the boys were supposed to be working, but Hunter-Cole won't tell me where it is. I looked on the Department of Mineral Resources website, and Hunter-Cole has got nine of the twenty-seven active rigs in Ramsey County. I mean, I guess we could start driving around to all of them, but it would take a while.”

“We'd have to find the crew right away if we want to talk to them,” Colleen said. “From what Paul told us when he left, they were supposed to work every day through the twenty-sixth. I put it in my calendar. Today's the twenty-second. That only gives us four days and then all the workers will scatter for the next couple of weeks.”

“Well, so we have to figure out how to find these guys. I think going to the supervisors was the wrong angle. One-on-one, most of these guys are okay. We just have to get them on their own to talk to them.”

“Did Taylor tell you any of his friends' names? Other workers who might have known him well?”

“Yeah, but the problem is that they all go by nicknames like Dukey and Tailbone, and I never asked him for last names. I mean, why would I?”

“Shay, listen.” Colleen picked up one of Taylor's T-shirts that had fallen to the floor and started to fold it, her movements smooth and efficient. “I've been thinking. You found this place, right? Even though they said there wasn't anything out here.”

“Well, yeah, but only because it had never occurred to that dimwit Brenda to rent it out. Not to mention there's no way it's up to code and it's a piece of shit. You can bet she'll have a sign out there the minute we're gone, asking twice as much.”

“Well, what I'm saying is, if there was one... opportunity like this, there's bound to be others. Right?”

“What are you getting at, Col?”

“Look. I want to bring our detective out here. The man my husband and I hired? I can have him on the next plane as long as I can promise him a place to stay. And he'd be looking for
both
our boys, Shay, not just Paul.”

Suspicion coiled in Shay. “Wait a minute. Are you about to ask me to hand over this trailer to him? Because I am not—”

“No, no, that's not what I'm saying. Just—it's what, four o'clock, and if I start calling now—I'll try all the motels again first but I thought, while I was doing that, you're better at—well, I mean, you found this place. Maybe you could try to see if there's something else. Talk to the guys at the truck stop, you'll do better with them than me. If we can find a room, we could get Steve here in twenty-four hours.”

“What do you mean, I'll
do better
with them?” Shay snapped. “You mean because I'm trailer trash? Want me to flash some tit or something?”

Colleen looked shocked. “That is not what I meant—”

“Sorry,” Shay muttered, wondering what was wrong with her, overreacting to everything Colleen said.

“I only meant because you're pretty and outgoing.”

“Sure,” Shay said, waving the comment away. “But if we get him here tomorrow, then what? What exactly do you picture this guy—what's his name again?”

“Steve. Steve Gillette.”

“Okay,
Steve.
So you get him here and he does what? Goes to see the cops, goes to see the camp—which I might point out you already stole evidence from—then he's sitting on his ass just like you and me, trying to figure out his next step, only a couple days have gone by, and how is that better?”

“He's a professional.” Colleen's tone had turned pleading, but the look in her eyes was even worse. Panic. Fear. Two emotions that could easily erode any momentum that they'd managed to build.

“I'm
not
stepping aside,” Shay said. “I am not about to sit on my ass while some mall cop whacks off on our dime.”

Colleen winced, and Shay regretted her choice of words. It was one of her anger responses, one that she wasn't particularly proud of, but it had always worked for her and Taylor, who knew how to handle her. That easy grin... that “Really, Mom?” He knew her bark was a hundred times worse than her bite. If only he was here...

“He's ex-police,” Colleen said quietly. “Eleven years on the force in Boston.”

“I don't care if he's an ex-fucking-Navy-SEAL. It's not
his
kid who's missing, and there's no way he can care enough.”

“Shay, please.” Colleen looked like she was about to cry, and Shay pressed her lips together and let her speak. “I'm not saying he would replace what we're doing or that we would step back at all. He would just supplement what we're doing, and maybe he could provide structure... you know, share his insights and experience, outline a game plan. That we would have final approval of, of course. And I'll pay for the whole thing. Don't be mad,” she added hastily. “I am not trying to throw my money around. It's just, it's a tool, it's something we can use. Just
let
me. All right? It's something I can do, so please, let me.”

Shay managed to bite back her retort. Colleen had finished folding the first shirt and tugged several more from the bag and was folding them into perfect rectangles unlike anything Shay had ever produced in decades of doing laundry for the many people who'd come in and out of her life.

“Okay, look,” she said. “Here's a compromise. You make your calls. Call every damn hotel in the county if you want. I'm going to lie down. When you're done, we'll go into town, get some dinner, talk to people. I have an idea where to go. If—
if—
we get what we need, which is to find out where the boys' crew is, then we can use the rest of the night to ask around for somewhere to stay for your cop.”

“He's not my cop,” Colleen said, and then, “but thank you. I have all the phone numbers printed out, it won't take me all that long.”

“Here.” Shay dug her iPad out of her bag. She tapped out a quick search and spun it around on the table. “Just in case you missed any.”

She gathered up the folded clothes and put them back in the bag, all but one, the green one with Taylor's name on it, hiding it with her body. She lay down on the cot with her phone, slipping in her earbuds and launching into her “last ditch” playlist, the one she saved for the worst days. Lucinda Williams came on, singing “Those Three Days,” and Shay turned the sound up loud enough to drown out Colleen's voice, loud enough to crowd out her own thoughts, and rolled over on the bed and pressed her face into the pillow, shutting out the light.

She pressed the T-shirt to her face and inhaled through the worn cotton, wishing for some trace of him, some faint remnant that would take her back. But Taylor had done his laundry with some detergent Shay didn't use, and though she wished with all her might, the shirt smelled like some other mother's son.