The Night She Disappeared (6 page)

Pete adds quickly, “But don’t tell anyone. It could be a coincidence.”

“Do her parents know?” Drew asks.

“Of course,” Pete says, already looking like he’s sorry that he told us. “But no one else. I really shouldn’t have said anything.” He busies himself straightening up some papers. It’s clear we’re being dismissed. “I’ll talk to Miguel and tell him the schedule’s changed back.”

Outside Pete’s office, I turn to Drew. “Want to go to Starbucks?”

DREW’S MOM
came into Pete’s a couple of weeks ago. Drew was in the back, grating mozzarella on the Hobart. I didn’t know it was his mom. He and I went to different elementary schools, which is about the last time you see people’s parents.

My first thought wasn’t that she was anyone’s mom. Her dishwater blond hair hung in tangled curls in front of her skinny face, and her blue eyeshadow was smeared over one eye. She had on jeans, a black down jacket, and scuffed high heels.

“Hey, is Drew working today?” She had a smoker’s voice, and she smelled like one too.

“He’s in the back,” I said. “Do you want me to get him for you?”

Everyone at school knew you could buy weed off Drew Lyle. But it was all pretty casual, a couple of joints. It wasn’t like he was some big dealer. He only sold pot. But now it looked like he was selling it to adults as well as kids, and somehow that was different. Plus, I’d never seen him sell at work before. I didn’t like that idea at all.

Instead of answering me, she suddenly bellowed, “Drew! Come out here! Drew!”

I winced. There was only one other customer in the place, some guy in his thirties who was eating a slice at the counter and reading an old
People
magazine. He had tried to hit on me earlier. I pegged him for recently divorced. And probably for good reason. I had communicated with him as little as possible, and he had given up, his shoulders slumping. Maybe he had finally realized how ridiculous he was being, trying to flirt with a seventeen-year-old girl at a pizza place. Now he looked up with an expression of annoyance that quickly changed to one of contemplation. Fresh meat. Or not so fresh.

She opened her mouth to yell again. “I’ll get him,” I said quickly, not wanting to hear another nasal bray.

But Drew came out at a run.

“Mom, what are you doing here?”

Mom?
She didn’t look any older than thirty.

And the look Drew shot me couldn’t be characterized. Embarrassed, defiant, pleading.

“I need,” Drew’s mom announced in a haughty voice, “to borrow some money.”

The Fourth Day

Drew

AT STARBUCKS,
Gabie insists on paying. I wish I’d ordered a house coffee instead of a grande mocha.

“Are you guys related?” the barista says as she hands over identical coffees.

We laugh, say no, and then look at each other. We do kind of look alike. I’m two inches taller, but we both have straight chin-length hair that’s the same nothing color, not blond, not brown, with bangs some people might think are too long.

“Thanks for the coffee, cuz.” I lift the cup toward Gabie, like I’m making a toast. She smiles. We go out and sit at one of the small round metal tables. The sun feels good, like a warm, flat hand on my back.

The only other person outside is a guy smoking and talking on a cell phone. Still, Gabie lowers her voice. “One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is I feel like you’re the only one who understands about Kayla. I mean, he wanted me, right? He asked for the girl in the Mini Cooper. He didn’t ask for Kayla. She was an innocent bystander.”

“He did ask about you.”

Gabie’s throat moves up and down as she swallows. She’s quiet for a long time, but then she says in a rush, “Sometimes I think—what if he still wants me? What if he comes back?” Her knees are going again. I want to put my palm on them, like you would try to soothe a frightened animal.

“Well, you won’t be making deliveries anymore,” I point out. “But if you feel scared, you could just quit.”

Her mouth twists. “What good would that do? If he wants me, he can get me whether I’m at Pete’s or not. In fact, it’s probably better that I’m at work, because at least there are other people around.”

“What about your parents?”

“They’re hardly ever home. They do a lot of trauma surgery, which means they’re on call twenty-four hours.” She picks at the lip of her paper cup, uncurling a tiny section. “I’ll wake up in the morning and realize I’m the only one in the house and have been all night. It’s spooky, even if the alarm is on.”

I nod. It’s not the same, but sometimes my mom goes home with some guy she’s met. Still, the end result is the same: you wake up in an empty house.

“Have you talked to the police? Maybe they could get you a bodyguard.”

“Oh, right.” She rolls her eyes. “They seem to think it was someone who knew Kayla. You heard them today. They think the reason she got out of the car was because she knew the person. But he asked for
me
.” Gabie stabs her chest with her index finger. She’s wearing some kind of white gauzy blouse with a pink tank top underneath.

“Maybe he asked for you to throw the cops off the scent like Thayer said. Maybe whoever it was already knew Kayla was working that night.”

I don’t really believe it, but Gabie looks a tiny bit relieved.

“Then who would it be?” Her eyes narrow. “Do you think it could be Brock? Kayla just broke up with him. Isn’t that when there’s the most danger for violence?”

I try to imagine Brock angry, angry enough to hurt or kill Kayla. Underneath his half-closed eyes and barely passing grades, maybe there’s a coil of energy and rage, just waiting to spring out.

But I don’t think so.

“He could just wait until after school or go over to Kayla’s house on a weekend or something,” I point out. “Why go to all the trouble of calling in a fake pizza order?”

“The same reason anyone would do it,” Gabie says darkly. “So they would have privacy, out there in the middle of nowhere. So they could do whatever they wanted to her with no witnesses.” She stands up, chugs the rest of her mocha in a single gulp, and tosses it in the garbage can. “Will you go somewhere with me?”

I’ve worked with Gabie for fourteen months, but today I’ve said more to her than in all those months put together. Plus she keeps surprising me.

“Sure. Where?”

“I want to see.”

“What?” I think I know what she’s saying, but I’m hoping I’m wrong.

“I want to see the place for myself. Where it happened. Will you come with me?”

“Okay,” I say and push back my chair. A snake uncoils in my belly. Is this really a good idea? I wonder if we’ll even be able to find where it happened. At Pete’s we have a big map of the area we can check before we go out on an order.

I have a sudden flash of Kayla looking at it before she left, tracing her finger on a line running parallel to the river. And then she turned and said something to me, didn’t she?

But I still can’t remember what.

I’ve never been in a Mini Cooper before. It’s cool. The dash is wood and shaped like a
T
, with a speedometer as big as a plate. Instead of an annoying
beep, beep, beep
to remind you about the seat belt, it plays a three-note melody that sounds straight from the disco era. It almost makes me smile.

As I get into the passenger seat, Gabie hands me some papers. It’s MapQuest directions to the fake address.

“How did you get it to give you directions?” I ask. “I thought the cops said this address didn’t exist.”

“I guess MapQuest doesn’t know that. It must just figure out where the address
should
be and give directions to that spot. Even if it’s not real.”

Despite the directions, the address is hard to find. Once we get off the main road, we don’t pass a single car. The roads are narrow, barely big enough for two cars to pass, with gravel shoulders. There’s no houses out here, no nothing. Just a sign, pockmarked with bullet holes, warning there’s a five-hundred-dollar fine for dumping trash. The road where the house supposedly was is next to what the Internet says is a Superfund site. Fifty years ago, companies dumped tar and creosote into the river before conveniently going bankrupt so they wouldn’t have to pay for any cleanup.

I see something white in the distance, but it takes a while to recognize it. Someone has put up a white cross next to the road, the way people do to mark where someone died in a car accident. We park about twenty feet away. After getting out of the car, we walk toward it without saying anything. Our feet crunch on the gravel. The river rushes on our right, but I can’t see it.

Looking at the cross is creepy. Crosses mean dead people, but no one has said Kayla’s dead. Maybe Kayla’s parents already know more than Pete, know that it is her blood, or have even already identified her body. I imagine her being pulled from the water, her skin so white it’s nearly violet, her tangled black hair covering her face.

Kayla’s senior picture is glued to the center where the two wooden sticks meet. One arm of the cross says Kayla in purple glitter. The other arm says cutler. A purple teddy bear is propped at the base.

“When I think of Kayla, I don’t think of white crosses or purple teddy bears,” I tell Gabie. Kayla never talked about religion, and she doesn’t seem like the kind of girl who still likes stuffed animals.

“You never know.” Gabie takes a deep breath and her lips tremble. “Chase me.”

I hear what she says, but I can’t understand it. Or I understand it all right, but I can’t believe it. “What?”

“Chase me. Chase me down to the river.”

I stop pretending I don’t know what she means. “It’s still light out,” I point out. “It was dark then. It’s not the same.”

“Please,” she urges, “chase me.” She runs a few steps, stops. Her eyes are shiny.

“That’s crazy. That’s sick. You heard the cop. He wanted Kayla.”

Gabie shakes her head so hard her hair whips out. “I don’t think so.” Her face wrinkles up. She presses her fingers against her lips. She looks like she’s going to cry or throw up. “It was supposed to be me,” she whispers from behind her fingers.

I puff air out of my lips. “But why do you want me to chase you?”

“I’m freaking out, Drew! I can’t stop thinking about it. I need to know what it was like for Kayla.”

The Fourth Day

Gabie

I IMAGINE KAYLA
running. I’ve seen her run the bases before. She’s fast. Tricky. She takes chances, takes a lead off the base, daring the pitcher to pick her off. She steals when she can. Always with a grin.

In my mind’s eye, Kayla’s running into the dark, her hands in front of her, her breath coming in panicked gasps.

But why did she get out of the car? She could have locked the doors or leaned on the horn; she could have used her cell phone or driven away. She could have run him over. I imagine her punching the gas, the satisfying
thunk
as he disappeared under her bumper.

But instead Kayla got out of the car. And then she must have run. For whatever reason, she didn’t get back in. Maybe he was between her and the car. Or did she try, did Kayla try to stay in the car, and he dragged her out while she kicked and screamed? But then I remember how they found her purse, still sitting on the passenger seat, undisturbed. So whatever happened happened outside the car.

Kayla set the parking brake. She got out of the car. Was she by herself then? But if she was by herself, why would she get the pizzas? There’s no house nearby. She would only do that if she thought she was with whoever had ordered them.

Or did the guy grab them after he had done whatever he did to her, come back to her car, his job finished, and take them? Only then he panicked, maybe at the sound of a car, and dropped them and ran away.

My thoughts go back to Kayla, running from the car. It’s all I can think about.

And that’s when I start to run. In a second, I hear Drew’s footsteps behind me. He’s calling, “Gabie, stop this! Gabie!”

I cut down the slope, heading for the sound of the river. It’s hidden by a line of bushes and trees.

Did she scream, her voice echoing through the empty night? Or did she save her breath so she could run faster? Did Kayla try to keep her footsteps light, so he couldn’t follow her in the dark? With the river so close, the sound of the water might have given her some cover. I imagine her running, her hands outstretched in front of her, thinking, thinking—which way could she go? Where could she be safe? Was there any place she could hide?

And all the time she’s running as fast as she can. Running from the man hunting her.

I close my eyes, imagining the blackness that night, but my lids flutter open a second later.

He must have caught her. Why else was there a bloody rock down by the river?

Drew’s fingertips graze my shoulder, and just like that, my adrenaline pumps even harder. My breath is coming in gasps. Drew’s staying right on my heels.

How did the guy catch Kayla? Did he grab her shoulder? Or was she wearing her hair in a ponytail that night? Did he snatch it, jerking her head back? I see her crying out, falling to her knees, sharp rocks cutting her hands. Maybe that’s where the blood came from.

And here it is, the river, dark gray and about fifty feet across. A ten-foot slope covered with weeds and stunted bushes leads down to it, and then there’s the bank itself, edged with lots of broken black rocks. Nobody would walk along here if they could help it. The dirt closest to the river looks stained and oily. About a hundred feet farther down, one area’s all churned up. No yellow crime scene tape, but I don’t need any to know this is where they found the bloody rock. I realize I’ve stopped running, stopped moving altogether.

Drew catches up with me, swearing under his breath. Together, we walk over to the spot that stands out because of what isn’t there. It’s like Kayla herself. Her absence sets off echoes. At work, I keep expecting to hear her voice or see her laughing at the counter.