Chapter 33
The problem with this town, Cathy thinks as she studies the police sergeant sitting opposite her, is that everyone knows everybody else.
Take Sergeant Jenkin. A year younger than him, Cathy has a vague memory of Neil at a house party in their late teens, drunk as a lord and walking around with his dick in his hand, leaning over the girls and saying, Suck it, just suck it. Do it for a friend.
“How you doing, Cathy?” He laces his fingers together over his desk.
Cathy swallows her discomfort. “I’m getting by. Thanks for seeing me, Neil.”
He winces almost imperceptibly, but she catches it.
Should’ve stuck with Sergeant Jenkin. She notices the ring on his finger and wonders what kind of woman he married.
How he treats her. Just suck it. Laughing at their disgust. She straightens up in her chair as he turns to the computer monitor on his right.
“This is about your sister. Hazel, right?”
“That’s right. I called last night, and they gave me a crime ref—”
“She’s younger than you?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Married?”
He looks at her unblinking, and Cathy thinks, I know where this is going.
“Separated. Her divorce just got finalized, but she hasn’t signed the papers yet. She’s been staying at our parents’ house.”
“She talk to you about her divorce?”
Cathy shifts in the hard plastic chair. The windows are frosted glass, the lights bright and uncomfortable. “No. We, uh … we lost touch for a while.”
“How long?”
“About five years.”
“Uh-huh. That’s what I’d heard.”
“But I spoke with her on Friday last. We were meant to meet Saturday, and she didn’t show.”
Sergeant Jenkin types something on the computer and scratches his head. “That’s when you went to the house?”
Cathy nods. “I got a video. There’s a nanny cam in one of the rooms and I caught something following Hazel down the hallway when she should have been alone. Here.” She holds her phone out, but Sergeant Jenkin doesn’t take it.
“One thing at a time, Cathy. You know, funnily enough, we had a call about you. Mr. Jenner from across the street had some concerns that you were trying to break in.”
Cathy rolls her eyes. “I was looking for my sister.”
“All the same.” Sergeant Jenkin taps a finger on the desk in admonishment. “I think you’d better leave the welfare checks to us. Don’t want to have to caution you, Cathy.”
Cathy gives him a tight, insincere smile. Her insides feel hot and corrosive, and she has never wanted a cigarette more badly in her life. Just suck it, do it for a friend. She flattens her palms on the desk, leaning closer.
“We got a note.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Me and Suzie.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Suzie Trebath?”
“Actually, it’s White now.”
“Aw, lovely Suzie. Good as gold, she is. Never gives anyone any trouble. I’ve always liked her.”
I bet you do, Cathy thinks hotly. She passes the note to Sergeant Jenkin, pointing to the words printed there, fading to a light, tea-stained brown. BELLE VUE.
“A man brought this into the pharmacy, but we think it’s Hazel’s writing on the receipt because it’s the same one Suzie gave her. Do you see? She’s trying to tell us something.”
Sergeant Jenkin takes the piece of paper and holds it up to the light. He frowns. “Belle Vue. I know that place. Used to be a school for special kids.”
Cathy ignores the anachronism because she knows that once she starts, she won’t stop. It’s a fight she doesn’t have the energy for.
“I know, we went up there yesterday. My sister spent some time there as an inpatient recently, and I thought maybe she’d gone back in, but she hasn’t.
Here’s the thing that bothers me, though—those words are written in invisible ink.
Whoever this man is, he can’t have known that Hazel had put it there, because it only shows up when you heat it. ”
“Who is this man?”
“I don’t know. There’s CCTV of him, but it’s hard to make his face out. He—”
Cathy experiences a strange thing then, something she thinks of as a brain fart. A static image of a hydrangea bush, there and gone in a moment.
Sergeant Jenkin lays the receipt in front of him and folds his arms on the desk. He is smiling with mild, barely concealed amusement. “Wow. Invisible ink, CCTV, nanny cams. You have been busy. You girls ever thought about becoming detectives?”
“I just want to find my fucking sister, Neil.”
Her shoulders and neck are knotted and tight. She keeps thinking about the way Scout had smelled that morning, as if he’d been held close by someone else. A stranger.
She tries to moderate her tone as Sergeant Jenkin stares at her, face impassive. “Look. We know she got into a truck with a strange man because we have a witness who saw her do so. Can’t you chase that up? You must be able to do something!”
“A witness? Well, that’s a start.”
“Good!” Cathy grins. “Great! She’s an old woman who came into the pharmacy. Suzie will be able to put you in touch with her, I’ll bet.”
Sergeant Jenkin pauses in the act of typing, fingers hovering over the keys. “How old was this woman?”
“How would I know? Eighty? Ninety? What does it matter?”
“Did she have a walker? Insist on doing everything herself?”
Cathy shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe. She’s a regular in there.”
“Yeah, I know she is. That’s Beatrice Scott.
Betty to her friends, of which I happen to be one.
I regularly go and see her and some of the other folks at Shady Pines to give them advice on online scams, credit card fraud, that kind of thing.
Make sure they’re not signing their life savings over to some hustler from overseas.
Now, Betty isn’t quite the oldest person in town, but she’s getting there.
Still sharp as a whip, though. Her eyes are about the only thing letting her down. ”
Cathy feels herself deflate, first physically—shoulders sagging, stomach pooching out over the top of her waistband—and then mentally, realizing that this had all been a big, pointless waste of time.
Sergeant Jenkin is still talking, typing something into his computer.
“Glaucoma. Both eyes. Oh, she can see up close, all right—I’ve watched her play bingo up at Shady Pines myself—but the idea that she could pick out a man sitting in his truck all the way across the street? No, sorry. Not even on her best day.”
“Can’t you at least talk to her? Go in and watch the CCTV? You must have cameras all over town. You’re quick enough to single my son out for skateboarding every weekend.”
Sergeant Jenkin laughs uncomfortably. “We don’t caution Danny for skateboarding, Cathy.
It’s for the destruction of property and criminal damage.
You can laugh if you like, but a lot of these property owners don’t want all these boys hanging around in their car parks and outside their businesses.
He ought to find a more productive hobby. ”
I remember you with vomit on your shirt and your dick in your hand, asking me to suck it, Cathy thinks, almost recoiling from the memory, so don’t lecture me about what my son should be doing.
The urge to say this to Sergeant Jenkin, who is sitting back in his chair with his hands laced across his stomach in a way which signals he is done with this conversation, is so strong that Cathy thinks the words will just fly out like sharp red arrows.
Instead, she draws a breath and grits her teeth in a barbed smile. “Well. Thank you for your time anyway, Neil.”
“Let me tell you what I think, Cathy. Your sister is in the process of a separation. She’s stressed out, struggling.
You said the divorce papers arrived the day she went missing?
That’s certainly enough to trigger a breakdown.
Or maybe she’s got something going on with this man in the truck, I wouldn’t know, and neither would you, because she’s a single woman.
An adult, capable of making her own decisions.
As for this note you found, well, how do we even know it’s from her? ”
Cathy sighs. She’s going to be late for work again, she realizes.
But Sergeant Jenkin isn’t done. “Here’s another thing, and maybe you won’t want to examine it, but it probably needs to be said.
You said you and Hazel hadn’t spoken for five years?
It’s clear you’re feeling a lot of guilt about what happened, Cathy.
Maybe that’s why all this stuff is eating you up.
Go home and get some rest. Paint your toenails, that’s what my wife does when she’s fed up with the world.
I bet Hazel’ll be back in a couple of days and she’ll be mighty embarrassed about all the fuss she’s caused. ”
Cathy’s head snaps up. Sometimes her temper is quick to spark and as unstable as a wildfire. This town, she thinks, feeling color flush her cheeks, this tiny, stupid fucking town.
“What’s that meant to mean, ‘about what happened’? Nothing happened. I didn’t take that money!”
“I’m not accusing you of anything, Cathy. I just think—”
Cathy can’t bear it any longer. She grabs her bag and snatches the receipt from the desk, breathless with fury and the hot, molten tears filling her eyes.
She can feel the emotion building, all of it, strangling her until her breath whistles.
But she doesn’t want to cry here in front of Neil fucking Jenkin, so she forces a strangled “Thanks for your time,” and slams the door against the wall as she leaves.
She walks until she reaches the car park, where Cathy finally stops and drags her palms down her face, heaving big gulps of cold air into her lungs. She can taste the pines, and the wind blowing in off the lake, like rusted metal on her tongue.