Part 50 (1/2)
”She does.”
”And there was nothing strange?”
Jared frowned. ”Like what?”
”I don't know. That's why I'm asking.”
”No, there was nothing. She kissed me. Told me she was going to pick up my s.h.i.+rts. Hurried the kids along.”
Cobb asked if Jared had called the local hospital. Had he called the area hospital? No, said Jared. They called Morristown Memorial only to learn that no unidentified women had been brought in the last twenty-four hours.
”What about identified women?” asked Ezra. Has anyone been brought in with the kinds of injuries that would have limited the patient's ability to call home? Severed arms perhaps? Amnesia?
Jared perked up. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps his wife had been flattened by a small vehicle, unhurt, except to develop amnesia, a total loss of memory that would prevent her from calling home. She came to in an amnesiac fog. She didn't even know it was a Friday. She didn't know who she was, didn't know her own name. So she got on the road and she started walking.
Cobb's response deflated his musings. No unidentified females meant no females, not some females who had amnesia.
”But maybe she hadn't been brought in?” he said, hopefully. (With hope?) Was he hoping she had been knocked down, not killed, and not brought in? Just an amnesiac wandering the streets of Short Hills?
”It's unlikely, sir,” said Cobb.
”My wife not being home the entire Friday, not calling, and leaving her purse, her wallet, her car keys is also unlikely,” Jared said. ”What else could have happened to her?”
Cobb said she could've been kidnapped. Was there any sign of struggle in the house?
”Kidnapped! Struggle!” Jared's raised voice was but a small outward indication of the turmoil inside him. ”No, there was no struggle.” He hadn't even considered it. Perhaps it was possible. She had let ina”who? Who could Larissa have let into the house? ”Who could have taken her? And for what?”
”People get kidnapped every day for all kinds of reasons. Ransom perhaps? Where do you work?”
”Prudential,” replied an exasperated Jared. ”But if someone had taken her and kept her for ransom, wouldn't they have called in the last fourteen hours? What kind of bogus ransom kidnapping is it if I don't even know about it?”
Cobb and Finney agreed it was odd. Still, they weren't dismissing the possibility, nor others by the looks of their discomfited expressions. They stood in the middle of the kitchen refusing a drink and glancing warily at each other. Jared couldn't figure out why they were studying him.
”So what do I do now?” he asked. ”Usually I know where she is at all times. She has never not been home on a Friday night. I don't mean sometimes, or occasionally, or seldom. I mean, never not been home. Something terrible must have happened.”
The rotund Finney nodded. The apathetic Cobb didn't. ”Do you?” he pointedly asked Jared.
”Do I what?”
”Do you know where your wife is at all times?”
It took much strength for Jared not to raise his voice, not to take a linebacker step forward, not to lose his temper. ”What does that mean?” he demanded. ”What are you asking?”
”Don't get upset, sir. I'm asking a simple question. You're at work all day, while she is here.”
”She is not here,” said Jared. ”If she was here, I wouldn't be calling you.”
Finally they began to jot down information about her in their small reporter notebooks. How old she was, how tall she was. Distinguis.h.i.+ng marks? Color hair? Attractive? Yes, said Ezra, Maggie, Jared. Attractive. What she was wearing? Jared didn't know. It all depended on where she had been going. Going without a purse or wallet. Something she could've walked in, ran in? He kept coming back to that for some reason, that she had gone out for a stroll and was knocked down by a car. But thenaa woman didn't just get knocked down w.i.l.l.y-nilly in the middle of suburban neighborhoods without someone noticing.
Maybe she went out for a brisk walk, a jog anda”and what? How to complete that sentence?
a”and had a heart attack and fell and died? And had a stroke and fell and died? Had a ruptured aneurysm, a cerebral hemorrhage. When morning came, Jared would go look for her in the woods near the golf course.
And then Cobb spoke, to break Jared's reverie about Larissa falling down dead. ”She could've been picked up by someone,” he said. ”Was driven out of the local area. Driven out of Jersey. To New York? To Pennsylvania? She could've gotten into an accident somewhere else. Or not.” Cobb slapped closed his book. ”She could be anywhere.”
Jared got stuck on the first part of Cobb's words. All his earlier efforts had been jutting up against a blank wall of her vanis.h.i.+ng. Now Cobb brought up something Jared had not considered. ”Picked up by who?”
”I don't know, Mr. Stark,” said Cobb. ”I don't know your wife.”
Finney coughed a little. ”Was there any trouble in your marriage?”
”Any what? No! What are you guys talking about? Trouble in my marriage? What kind of trouble would make a wife vanish like this?” Jared turned to Maggie. ”Maggie, is what I'm saying true?”
Maggie shook her head. ”She never said a word.” She paused. ”About anything.” Slightly she s.h.i.+fted in her chair. Jared noticed. Finney noticed. Ezra, who was looking down into his tense hands, noticed. ”Recently,” Maggie said, ”she seemed more distracted than usual. It wasn't normal.”
”Distracted?” Jared said incredulously. ”Maggie, what does that even mean? What does it have to do with today, with tonight?”
”I don't know, Jared,” said Maggie. ”Nothing? Everything? I'm just saying. It was out of the ordinary. That's what the officer asked.”
”Her being distracted during your lunches doesn't translate into her being kidnapped out of her own home, does it? Or her falling down from a cerebral accident?”
”What cerebral accident?” asked Cobb suspiciously, and it was then that Jared realized: wait, they may think I had something to do with it. They must think this. That's why they're looking at me like that. Like I did something to her. Oh G.o.d.
Jared retreated. Literally took a step back from them, lowered his shoulders, his spine sloped, his mouth fell mute. There was nothing more to say. Desperate, he called them for help and they were eyeing him with suspicion. The raw injustice of it burned his eyes.
”My wife is missing,” he said quietly, to no one in particular, wis.h.i.+ng them to go, wis.h.i.+ng they would all leave his house. ”You're here because I called you. I didn't know what to do. I still don't. Can you help me or not?”
Apparently they couldn't help him yet. But they did give him their card and before leaving told him to call and file a formal report on Sunday morning if she hadn't returned by then.
For the rest of the night, Jared sat on the sofa in the den, unable to go upstairs to their bedroom. He must have fallen asleep before dawn, though it felt as if he slept minutes before Michelangelo tumbled downstairs and, patting Riot, sleeping by Jared's feet, said, ”Dad, where is Mommy?”
It was only seven. Jared spooned some cereal into his son's bowl, poured the milk, patted his head. After putting the boy in front of Sat.u.r.day morning T V, still in yesterday's clothes he walked down the driveway to Bellevue, made a shoehorn left along the golf course and slowly walked up the street, between the houses and the dewy glinting green golf course, looking for something, anything, that might clue him into the clueless-ness. It was a crisp May morning. It smelled of the upcoming summer. The oaks had all bloomed, the red impatiens were fluttering; it was beautiful, the silence of the street, the distant view of the mountains. What was he looking for? He walked the half-mile circle up to the main road, looked left, looked right, turned around and walked back down Bellevue. He found nothing. He walked again, slower. He walked the third time. When he got to Summit Avenue, he didn't know which way to go. The town of Summit was to the right, but what good did the town do him? She took no money with her! She wouldn't have walked to Summit; what would the point be? She had play rehearsal in the opposite direction. She had to get in her Jaguar and drive to where people were waiting for her. She didn't do this. Why? Jared turned around and started his fourth walk back home. It was after eight, he'd been out an hour. Tara was walking down her driveway in her robe, to pick up the paper. They lived in the large black and white Tudor two doors from the Starks. She waved.
”Good morning, Jared. Isn't it a nice morning?”
”Tara,” he said, coming up to her, ”have you seen Larissa?”
”What do you mean? Today?”
”Yesterday.”
”I talked to her,” Tara said cheerily. ”She called to confirm the play date and asked if I would mind picking Michelangelo up from school along with Jen. I said of course I didn't mind.”
”What time was this? The phone call?”
”Early. Nine? Maybe ten.”
”Usually, would she pick him up?”
”Yes, usually. But that's okay. She said she had scheduled some errands that might run late.”