Chapter 20
Auggie
When I first brought Mia home from the hospital, I took as much time as I could off work in order to get him settled into my apartment, but that could only last for so long. Soon, I needed to return to my regular shift.
I scheduled with Chantal to take Mia out shopping on my first day back to work.
As I sat at my desk, trying to plow through the mountain of emails and paperwork that had piled up while I’d been gone, I felt some assurance knowing that Mia wasn’t sitting around alone at the apartment.
He was probably having a perfectly fine day out with Chantal and Mia.
I’d gotten no phone calls or text messages saying that there’d been any problems.
Still, I couldn’t help worrying.
What if he got overwhelmed out in the crowded city?
What if someone mocked him for the bandages he still had to wear on some of his skin grafts?
What if Chantal was distracted by Melody at some point and Mia accidentally wondered off and got lost?
His lack of memories meant that everything seemed new to him, and he didn’t always have the same life skills and self-preservation that would be expected of an adult.
Did he even know how to safely cross a busy street on his own?
I’d never bothered to check.
“Shit,” I mumbled to myself as I looked down at the form in front of me.
I’d been so distracted by my worries about Mia that I’d spelled my own name wrong.
It wouldn’t have mattered on a digital file, but this was one of the physical paper forms that had to be filled out by hand.
And I’d been writing with a pen, which meant I couldn’t erase it.
My only option was to print it out again and start all over.
Cursing again, I trudged over to the office’s printer.
Cop shows always made detective work look like non-stop action. They never showed how much desk work it took to uphold the law.
The copy machine was just warming up when Roland’s voice called out behind me.
“Hey, Auggie, you’re finally back. Just in time, I want you to meet someone.”
Turning away from the copy machine, which was growling at me like a cornered predator, I found my office mate quickly making his way over to me as he dragged another man across the office.
I didn’t even need the introduction. I could tell from the way that Roland held the other man’s hand as he moved that this was the long-distance partner he’d told me so much about.
Yet, I held my tongue as I we were formally introduced.
“Tyler, this is Augustine Conway,” Roland said as he still refused to let go of the other man’s hand. “He’s the rookie I told you about that’s been a big help on some difficult cases.”
It had taken me some time to get used to Roland’s persistently high energy, but Tyler didn’t seem fazed by it at all. The man had a steady presence, like a tall tree with deeply buried roots. If Roland was a human hurricane, then Tyler was built to weather the storm.
With a laugh on his lips, Tyler held out a hand to me. “Roland said you usually go by Auggie, right? I hope you’re settling in here all right and that this one isn’t giving you too much trouble.”
As he shook my hand, he gave Roland an intimate squeeze with his other hand. It was nothing explicit, just a one-armed side hug that couples often exchanged when they were comfortable with each other. Yet, the sight of it still caused a hitch in my throat.
How long had it been since I was that comfortable with someone?
Since casual intimacy came that naturally?
I honestly couldn’t remember. At least since my divorce, and probably long before that.
Roland elbowed his partner in the ribs but didn’t pull away. “Hey, don’t talk about me like I’m some misbehaving pet. I’ve been showing Auggie the ropes of the job.”
Jumping at the excuse to give up on my paperwork for now, I stepped out with the two of them to the break room to get to know Roland’s partner.
Tyler attended school in Maryland but was visiting for spring break and was eager to see where Roland worked and meet the man’s coworkers.
Tyler’s words were always polite, but I could tell I was being scoped out with the same critical eye as a recruitment officer scouting new talent for the army.
It was understandable. While Tyler was on the other side of the country, his partner was here hunting down criminals and getting himself into dangerous situations.
Tyler no doubt wanted to make sure I was the kind of person he could trust to watch his partner’s back while he was gone.
So, I straightened my spine and took the conversation seriously.
We inevitably ended up talking about my recent absence from work, which led me to explain about Mia.
I tried to keep the explanation as simple as possible, but as soon as people heard words like fire and coma they immediately wanted to know all the details.
“And you say he can’t remember anything from before the fire?” Tyler asked as he stirred a cup of mediocre coffee that we’d prepared in the break room.
I leaned my hip against the counter, sipping from the protein drink I’d brought from home, since I knew better than to trust anything the break room provided.
“He can remember some things, but it’s fragmented.
Like random puzzle pieces that don’t fit together.
If I had all the pieces of his past, it would probably make a cohesive image, but right now I don’t have enough to identify him. ”
I’d forgotten that Tyler was a criminology major until I saw his eyes light up at the mystery of Mia’s identity.
Maybe it was a bad idea to mention Mia to him.
I barely knew the guy, and I was starting to realize that he was probably just as persistent as Roland, just in a different way.
However, there was no taking the words back now that I’d said them.
Pandora’s box had been opened, and Tyler’s interest had been piqued.
I would just have to deal with the fallout as it came.
“So, if his memory is that unreliable, are you certain his name is Mia?” Tyler continued to ask. “That’s an unusual name for a man.”
I could already follow his line of thinking. It was the same line I’d followed when I was first trying to identify Mia.
“His name is one of the few things he is certain about, though unfortunately, he can’t recall his surname. And, yes, I have tried looking up missing person reports purely based on his first name. Despite how unique it is, I’ve found nothing. Not even on a nationwide database.”
Tyler paused for a moment, setting down his mostly undrunk coffee as he mentally reorganized the next few questions he’d probably meant to ask.
“If he’s certain about his own name, then are there any other names he remembers? Or maybe places or dates? Something that can be used as a starting point.”
Having already gone through those same questions, I sadly shook my head.
“Most of what he remembers is vague. The only other name he’s been able to recall is Eli, but that hasn’t turned up any more info than Mia.
Eli probably isn’t even the person’s full name, and without a surname, it doesn’t do much good. ”
“There was another name he mentioned,” I continued as Roland climbed to his feet and made his way to the garbage, tossing out Tyler’s undrunk coffee. “Kind of a generic name, but a full name at least. Tony something, I think.”
It took me a moment, and I had to wrack my brain for what Roland was talking about, but when it came back to me I felt like a fool for forgetting in the first place. “Oh, right. Tony Smith. That was another name Mia mentioned, though I don’t know anything about this person, either.”
Now that I thought about it, Mia had been suspiciously silent about Tony Smith.
He often spoke about Eli, reliving the few memories he could recall of the other man like he was afraid they would disappear at any moment.
When I’d first started helping Mia regain his memories he’d mentioned a man named Tony Smith, but since then, the name had been surprisingly absent from his lips.
Why?
If this was a person related to Mia’s past the same as Eli then surely Mia should be just as keen to talk about him, but instead Tony Smith had been completely ignored.
I’d even forgotten that Mia mentioned the name in the first place and would have completely overlooked it if discussing it hadn’t reminded me.
“You’re sure the name was Tony Smith?” Tyler asked, an unexpectedly serious look on his face.
Just to be certain, I checked the notes app on the phone where I’d recorded everything that Mia had been able to recall.
There it was. Tony Smith. The name stood in stark black and white on the screen, mocking me for having forgotten it in the first place.
“Yeah, that’s the name. Why?”
Tyler slowly shook his head, brow furrowed and gaze distant. “I don’t know. Something about that name seems familiar, but I can’t recall where I’ve heard it before. I’m pretty sure it was recent, but…”
He trailed off, lost in thought, and only snapped back to attention when Roland moved up beside him and placed a hand on his arm.
“Sorry. Got carried away. I can’t remember anything right now but if you can send me everything you’ve got so far I’ll see what I can come up with.”
My phone was already in my hand, and it was a simple matter of hitting a few buttons to send Tyler all the information I’d managed to collect about Mia so far.
It was a distressingly small amount. All my effort so far had resulted in a pile of data small enough to fit into a single text message.
It felt so hopeless, like my failure was inevitable, but I wasn’t going to give up.
“Any help you can give me would be great. It feels like I’ve been bashing my head against a wall trying to track down Mia’s identity.”
Tyler accepted the information, apologizing in advance and warning me not to get my hopes up in case he didn’t turn up anything useful.
I didn’t care. Even if the lifeline he was throwing me was only as thick as the strand of a spider’s web, I’d still grab it with both hands. I’d never been the type to quit, not even when I was staring down the barrel of my own death, and I certainly wasn’t going to start now.