But emergencies are emergencies. And missing husbands who are feared drowned are usually considered emergencies.
As I prepared Grace’s dinner, I couldn’t help thinking that Gibbsshouldhave called. Since I left her at her house during the search warrant execution on Friday, she’d had to endure an uncomfortable interview by Carmen Reynoso. Her husband had disappeared and was feared dead in some river I’d never heard of in Georgia. That had to be stressful.
I couldn’t help wondering why she didn’t call.
I thought of calling her, checking on her. I really did. The very fact that I was considering it was so unusual that it caused me to recall Diane’s admonition that I was treating Gibbs differently than I would treat some other patient, which for some reason caused me to jump to a very disconcerting association to Teri Reginelli andhachas en cabezas.
I had an appointment with Gibbs Monday morning near dawn. If she could wait until then, I could wait until then.
THIRTY-THREE
My best guess is that Lauren hobbled out of bed after a few fitful hours of sleep somewhere around threeA.M.The primary short-term side effect of high-dose steroids is agitation, and she was agitated. Not wide awake, but agitated. I followed her out to the living room to check on her but never looked at the clock. She got herself settled on the sofa with the remote control and sent me back to bed. Did I sleep after that? I don’t know. I do know that the alarm jangled at five forty-five.
Grace started squealing at five forty-seven. She was my snooze alarm.
Viv, our daytime nanny, arrived at six thirty-five. I filled her in before I kissed Lauren and Grace and ran to my car at full speed.
Emily’s paw umbrellaclack-clackedon the floor as she chased me to the door. I apologized to her because I didn’t have time to make repairs.
Gibbs looked much better put together for our seven o’clock appointment than I did. The morning was brisk, and she was modeling her fall things. The autumn forecast, fashionably speaking, apparently called for snug black jeans, tight sweaters, and large beads of silver and gold. Gibbs wore it all well, no surprise.
I’d brought coffee from home. Gibbs had stopped at Starbucks. Every time she sipped, she left a slightly wider lipstick stain on the plastic cover of the paper cup.
“Whew, interesting weekend” was her opener.
I suppose.I tried to read her face for signs of what she might be feeling, but no clues jumped at me.
I did, however, check “distressed” from my list.
“Tell me,” I said. I could just as easily have chosen silence or said “go on” or “yes,” but “tell me” is what I chose.
“I talked with that detective, finally.”
She lifted her latte and took a baby sip. I expected her to continue with her tale of her meeting with Reynoso, but she returned the cup to the small table between us and looked at me expectantly.
I sat holding my mug just below my chin with both hands, and I waited. Gibbs had apparently decided that this appointment was going to be more dental than psychological and that it was going to be my job to pull the teeth. In turn, I decided that it wasn’t going to happen. In therapy, when things go according to plan, the patient sets the pace.
On good days in the therapist’s chair, I could outwait Job. And I felt like having a good day.
I needed a good day.
Two minutes, maybe three, later, Gibbs blinked. “Oh, and I met that friend of yours. Detective Purdy? He stopped by my house yesterday for a visit. He’s so nice. Don’t you think he’s nice?”
I thought,You have to be kidding.
But I kept my face impassive and said, “Tell me.” Steam blossomed up from the mug below my chin.
I allowed Gibbs to go on uninterrupted. She sensed, I think, that her story was causing me consternation, but I doubted that she understood why I was feeling almost cataplectic at what she was telling me.
If Gibbs was to be believed-and I admitted to myself that I was experiencing more than a few instances of severe doubt about the veracity of her story-Sam was probably well over halfway, or more, to Georgia as she and I were speaking. I’d been on road trips with Sam before. The image in my head needed no further developing. He was crammed behind the wheel of his Jeep Cherokee, listening to some music that was as full of lament as was his current life. He was hungry. He was cranky. Road maps were spread out on the passenger seat beside him. Maybe they had already crumpled into heaps on the floor. He’d marked his preferred route with a pastel highlight pen, then marked an alternative in a different color. Something you could count on when traveling with Sam was that every time he stopped for gas, he would decide that there was a better way to get from where he was to wherever he wanted to be.
If it was more than an hour from his last fuel stop, he probably needed to visit a bathroom. But he wouldn’t pull over again until he needed gasoline. Highway rest stops were for wusses. Sam was a velocity traveler, not a comfort traveler. Bladder be damned, full speed ahead.
I was willing to make a guess that he was someplace in Arkansas or, if he was making particularly good time, had already crossed the border into Louisiana.
I had a fleeting wish that I was beside him, riding shotgun. Sam grows reflective on long trips. The monotony of the road or the infinity of the sky or something about the miles passing below his feet causes him to consider opening windows into his life that were otherwise nailed shut and hung with blackout curtains.
There was so much for Sam and me to discuss right then: Sherry. Simon. Heart disease. Rehab. Cop work. Lauren’s exacerbation. The future.
God, the future.
And of course, Gibbs and Sterling Storey.
But the real reason I had a yearning to be sharing the Jeep with him was that I wanted to be a fly on the wall, a silent spectator, as the inevitable collision occurred between the recalcitrant Iron Ranger and the southern good old boy. I wanted to watch as Northern Minnesota, personified by Sam, said hello to Southern Georgia, personified by any number of unwitting volunteers. I would have paid good money for a chance to witness what happened as Sam Purdy tried to reconnoiter Dixie.
I blinked myself back to the present. Gibbs was still talking, oblivious to the extended holiday my attention had just taken.
“He said he’d call when he got to Albany, but I don’t expect that will be before tonight. I’m thinking thirty hours minimum.”
“Tonight,” I repeated for no other reason than to get my bearings. I didn’t bother telling her that Sam would be doing the trip nonstop; that his head wouldn’t see a motel pillow between here and there. I didn’t know the mileage, but Gibbs should be dividing by seventy-five-plus miles per hour, not any pedestrian fifty-five.
“You think sooner? You know better than I do, I’m sure. Cops don’t have to drive the speed limit, do they? He could just flash his badge and make the ticket go away, couldn’t he?”
With those words she grew silent.
I used the interlude to consider the obvious. What was it Sam hoped to accomplish in Georgia? I knew him well enough to suspect that his motive had nothing to do with what he had told Gibbs: that he wanted to help her find her husband in the Ochlockonee River.
In usual circumstances Sam wouldn’t have driven to Denver to look for Sterling Storey in the shallows of the South Platte.
So then, why?
The silence spread between us like a little pond of fetid water. We each sat on an opposing shore.