Hidden Things (27 page)

She shook her head, dropping the phone back into her left pocket. “Expecting it? Not really.”

The sheriff made an attempt to look confused; as a result, he looked like a police officer who was pretending to look confused. “Then how do you know he's going to vouch for you?”

Calliope shrugged. “Don't you know people who'd vouch for you even if you didn't warn them ahead of time?”

The older man dipped his chin. “Sure . . .” he said, pronouncing it the same way Calliope had on their drive to town.

“So do I,” Calliope said. A small, less confident voice in the back of her head hoped she was right. She ignored it.

Fletcher gave a short chuckle that someone might have mistaken for a throat clearing. “Fair enough.”

Calliope kept her eyes on him. “He worked with Special Agent Walker for a couple of days too.”

The sheriff's face gave nothing away, but Calliope did notice his hands pause for the barest second as he moved a paper on his desk. “That's interesting, that you bring that name up.”

“Not that interesting.” Calliope settled into the chair, working hard not to favor her shoulder. “He's the kind of guy who likes to push badges into people's faces. Not very likable.”

Jim Fletcher met her eyes. “You're not wrong about that, but that doesn't mean he's not someone a county sheriff has to at least listen to.” Before Calliope could answer, he picked up the handset of his phone. “I'm going to call your detective friend and run the county phone bill up a bit,” he murmured, his eyes on the number scrawled on the blotter. “Go give your dad a hug and tell Dwight we all want some coffee.”

Calliope considered any number of things she wanted to ask the sheriff about what Walker had said to him; while she didn't think he would ask her anything she couldn't—one way or the other—answer, in front of her parents, there were a number of things she wanted to ask
him
while they had some privacy. But it looked like her chance was already gone. She stood up and let herself out of the office.

Behind her, the sheriff watched her leave, his eyes sharp.

Calliope walked through the sheriff's department, feeling that familiar frisson that always filled the air when strangers were around law officers in their private space. It didn't matter if the visitors were victims or criminals—alleged or convicted; Calliope thought the simple fact was that there were strangers in perhaps the one place that an officer could feel legitimately safe, and it put them on edge. Since starting work with Josh she'd experienced—and caused—that discomfort many times. She located the deputy that Jim Fletcher had pointed out (the youngest in the room) and repeated his message, then continued toward her parents.

Her father still hadn't turned around when she'd reached them. He was speaking to her mother in the low, steady murmur of half-spoken words and inflection that functions as a kind of impenetrable code between longtime couples. Something inherently stubborn in Calliope's makeup kept her from walking up next to the pair; she stopped, her hands in her pockets, and waited for him to turn around. Her eyes scanned the back of his neck, looking for the scars from the cancer surgery her mother had mentioned, but the collar of his coat was pulled high and tight against his hairline.

Her position meant that she was easily visible to her mother, who had watched first Calliope, then her husband as her daughter had crossed the room. Now, her eyes—troubled in a way that Calliope found perversely comforting—found Calliope's for a moment. She nodded in a particular way and took a half step back from the closed huddle.

Her father turned. Calliope's first instinct—brutally suppressed—was to turn away or close her eyes. From her chair in Jim Fletcher's office, he had looked thin, but she realized now that the jacket had given her a false impression of his remaining bulk. He was rail-thin, gangly, in the way that teenage boys were, with joints that seemed too big for their limbs. His cheekbones and jawline were far more pronounced than she remembered—even the ridge along his temples seemed to press at his skin—and his fair hair had washed out to gray.

“Your mom says you two had a good talk.” He reached his arms toward her, an invitation more than embrace.

“Yeah.” Calliope stepped into his arms and squeezed almost as tightly as she could with one arm, then squeezed once more, harder. “Where's the rest of you?” she exclaimed. Her voice was muffled by his coat, but he chuckled and stepped back. “Oh, you know; the treatments are a pretty good diet program.” He patted his stomach with one long-fingered hand. “I'm putting it back on, though. Twenty—”

“Treatments?” Calliope shot a look at her mother. “What kind of treatments?”

He frowned in turn. “Doesn't matter. They didn't take long, and I'm fine.”

“You—”

“Hey,” he interrupted. His eyes met hers and matched the stone in his voice. “We're not doing this here. It's not why we're standing in the sheriff's office—we're going to talk about
that
.”

Calliope glared at him, feeling a familiar obstinacy seep into her in reaction to his tone. “How about I say
I'm
fine and not to worry about it and not tell
you
anything about what's going on? How's that sound?”

“You two stop.” Her mother stepped forward, next to her husband, and gave the sleeve of his coat a soft slap. “No one's been explaining anything to anyone for a long time, and it's mostly my fault, I'm sure, so can we please just . . . stop?” She shared a quick, surprisingly pleading look with Calliope.

Calliope hesitated, her instinctively combative habits wrestling with a real, if newfound, desire to make peace. Finally, she motioned over her shoulder with her head. “Jim's calling someone I know back in the city who can probably straighten everything out.”

“The police detective?” Phyllis asked. At her husband's look, she explained. “She's been working with the police on the disappearance of her friend. Partner.” She looked back at Calliope. “She works with the police a lot, as part of their business.”

That last wasn't anything Calliope had told her, or even implied, but it wasn't really wrong, and it felt good—if more than a little weird—to hear her mother embellishing her accomplishments on the retelling.

“And gets shot,” her father said, though low enough that Calliope didn't think anyone else had heard.

“That”—she stepped in closer to him—“that isn't going to help me get out of here faster.”

“If—”

“I told Mom; it isn't anything I could get in trouble for,” Calliope interrupted. She winced inwardly, not at the falsehood, but at how easy it had become to lie to her family. “But gu— things like
that
automatically mean that reports need to be filed.” She indicated the rest of the officers with her hand. “At best, I'd be here filling out paperwork for most of a day. At worst, Jim would make me go back to where it happened and fill out the paperwork
there
.” She looked up into her father's eyes. “I don't have that kind of time. Not right now.” The real reason she didn't want the gunshot wound mentioned—that the sheriff would ask who had shot her or, worse, might have a good guess—would have bad enough consequences that Calliope tried not to think about it.

“Suppose that's true.” The muscles in her father's jaw—far too easy to make out under his taut skin—worked. “Mostly because people getting shot are what police are supposed to take care of.”

“Dad, please.” Calliope touched her father's sleeve.

The door to the sheriff's office opened, and Calliope turned. The youngest deputy—Dwight—pushed himself out of his chair and headed for the break room's coffee machine. The sheriff watched him go, shook his head a single time, then turned back to Calliope and her parents. “Whyn't you folks come on in?”

 

“So as I understand it,” Fletcher began, once Calliope and her parents were seated, “your partner's dead.”

“He's missing.” Calliope felt her mother's eyes on her, but her father's gaze stayed on his friend on the other side of the desk.

“Detective Johnson said he was reported dead.” The sheriff leaned forward on his blotter. “I'm no expert on it, but that
is
usually how a murder investigation gets started.”

“Did he mention the answering machine message?” Calliope said. Her voice sounded high and uneven in her own ears, but no one else in the room seemed to notice.

The sheriff looked at her, his face tired. “He did.” His eyes slid to her mother, and he seemed to remember that they weren't alone. He sat up. “It seems that Calliope's partner, who was reported dead, also left a message on their office's answering machine several hours after his alleged remains were found.”

“So he's not dead?” her mother asked.

The sheriff blew air through his teeth, his eyebrows raised. “If he isn't, he's been missing more'n a week. Let's say it raises doubt.” His eyes flickered back to Calliope. “His wife is flying out to identify the body for sure.”

“He's
married
?” This last was to Calliope.

Calliope raised her eyebrows. “We just work together, Mom; we're not—we're friends.” She crossed her arms. “I'm just trying to see if I can find him.”

“See . . .” Sheriff Fletcher interjected. “That's what I'm trying to figure out. Why would you get involved in looking for him?”

Calliope tilted her head, barely able to contain her instinctive sarcasm. “Well . . . we
do
find people for a living.” It was a glib truth that she hoped the others would take at face value. “And I've known him long enough to know where he's likely to be, how and where he grew up. He used to live near Harper's Ferry. First with his parents, then they died, then him and his brother and a great-aunt, then just the two of them for a while after she died, then just him, after he lost his brother.”

“Harper's Ferry's nowhere near here, though,” the sheriff replied. “If you were coming to visit your folks, that's fine, but if you were in a hurry, this is out of the way.”

“On a . . . second message, he told me to talk to my mom.” Calliope's face felt hot. “Which I know sounds weird, but I figured there might be some kind of reason.”

“Detective Johnson didn't mention that part.” The sheriff looked at Phyllis. “Had you two met?”

“No—” Calliope braced herself, caught in an admission she couldn't see a way to avoid. “But he came out here one time.” She wanted nothing more than to pull her head down between her shoulders, but she sat straight and kept her eyes on the sheriff. “With me.”

Her mother blinked. “You've never brought anyone here.”

Calliope looked her way without meeting her eyes. “I did, Mom. Three years ago.” At the confused look from her mother, she added, “I didn't quite make it.” Her eyes moved to the floor. “We turned around about ten miles up the road and went back.”

The room was silent. Caught in the middle of something unexpected, Jim Fletcher cleared his throat and shifted his pen on the desk.

“Are we that horrible?” Phyllis whispered, her eyes fixed on her own white, intertwined fingers.

“Do you
remember
?” Calliope's voice rose. “Do you even remember the last time?”

“Settle down,” her father said, his voice even, his eyes on the far wall behind Jim Fletcher.

“You . . .” Calliope turned in her chair toward him, grounding out some of her growing anger in the abrupt motion. “I'm sorry, Dad, but you weren't there, and the one time you
did
actually talk to me afterward, you told me not to come back. Not to
ever
come back.”

“You
don't
—” Her father's eyes hardened, then flickered toward the sheriff. “You don't do that and expect me not to say something.”

“What I . . .” Calliope's eyes went to her mother, her chest tight as she started to see the scope of what had happened—what had been done to her family's memory of her. “What did you tell him?”

“Folks,” the sheriff said, “I'm not sure this is a talk anyone needs to have in public.”

“Christ, Jim, you know everything,” her father said. “You're the one who went looking for her.”

“He . . .” Calliope felt her head tip as though she'd heard the words wrong—felt the room start to tilt as well, her breath go short as the last ten years of her life rewrote themselves as she watched. “What?” No one would look her in the face.

Finally, the sheriff cleared his throat. He brought his blue eyes up and met Calliope's. “Your mother and you had an argument,” he said, his voice even and measured, as though reciting something memorized, “one of several that year.” His eyes flickered to her mother, whose head was turned away, the fingers of her clenched fist pressed to her chin. “By some accounts, they occurred almost daily.” He cleared his throat, glancing down at his desk for a moment, then back to Calliope. “In this case, your mother was struck . . .”