The cabin was dark. No flashlight or lamp or burning candle gave away my bivouacking or binge-drunk father and when we entered through the unlocked door it took us less than a minute to confirm that the place was empty, that indeed it bore no sign my father had ever been there.
Across the meadow there was light in some of the windows of Millicent and Rosie’s house. On our way back I stopped and asked them if they had seen my father at Empty Mile that day. They had not.
My father was still absent when we returned to our house and the anxiety that had been riding Stan all evening rose to a physical agitation that had him pacing the hallway and shaking his hands, asking me over and over what could have happened and what we were going to do. It took me half an hour to calm him enough to get him into bed and even then he lay staring at the ceiling, wide-eyed with apprehension.
Afterwards, I stayed up, sitting alone in the kitchen, calling both of Marla’s phones every half hour. I was worried about my father, of course, but the fact that Marla didn’t seem to be at home added a streak of jealousy to the mix. There weren’t too many encouraging scenarios I could come up with for her not being there at that time of night. When she still hadn’t answered half an hour after midnight I gave up and went to bed.
Stan and I were both awake early the next morning. Neither of us had slept well and around dawn we got up and sat in the kitchen. I made coffee and Stan drank hot chocolate. He looked haunted and drawn and he sat hunched in his chair. My father had not come home during the night and we both knew something was very wrong.
Around seven a.m. I called Marla’s landline. She answered on the second ring.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me.”
“Johnny?”
“Yeah, are you all right? You sound weird.”
“I’m okay. I just woke up, that’s all. I was going to call you today. I miss you. Is everything okay?”
“My father’s disappeared.”
“Disappeared? What do you mean?”
“He didn’t come home last night. We don’t know where he is.”
“Oh no.”
“You haven’t seen him?”
“No. Why would I see him?”
“I thought because of Pat and everything he might have come around.”
“No. I haven’t seen him since before she died.”
“But you were there all night? You would have known if he came around? I called you till about twelve and there was no answer.”
“I had a killer day at work. When I got home I just turned off the phones and crashed out. I’m sorry, you must have needed someone to talk to. Have you called the police?”
“Yeah, last night. They’re sending someone over.”
“Are they going to do an investigation?”
“Well, I’d think so, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh, jeeze, Johnny, I really don’t want to get dragged into it.”
“Why would you?”
“Because of the room. They’re obviously going to ask you if he was seeing anyone. And then they’ll come here.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Of course! I’m renting a fuck pad to a woman who just killed herself, whose husband’s a big noise on the council, and whose lover has just disappeared. Not to mention I gave her those fucking pills.”
“Did anyone else know about the room?”
“No one. No one knew anything. Can you please keep me out of it? Please.”
“Okay… If it comes up I won’t say anything about the room. Okay?”
Marla sounded relieved. “Thank you, Johnny. Thanks.”
Detective Patterson turned up midmorning with a uniformed officer and a laptop. Patterson was about fifty. He was not a tall man and he was thick around the middle. He wore a dark suit and his hair was held in place with some sort of product that smelled faintly of mint.
Stan and I and the two cops went into the kitchen. Patterson put his laptop on the table and faced us with his hands slightly raised, as though he wanted to make absolutely sure we understood what he was going to say.
“All right. The news so far is that we have not found your father. Neither do we have any information about his movements last night. What one of our cars did find in the last hour, though, was a white Ford Taurus parked in the lot behind Jerry’s Gas.”
He handed me a sheet of paper that bore the logo of a car rental company. My father’s signature was at the bottom.
“Your father’s rental agreement. We’ve checked with the car people and there’s no question-the car we found is the one he rented. No one at Jerry’s knows anything about how it got there. Unfortunately they don’t have camera coverage in the lot. The car was unlocked and the key was in the ignition.”
Stan let out a small moan.
“We’ve checked it out pretty thoroughly and we haven’t found anything to indicate that he might have come to harm-no damage to the bodywork, no marks on the interior.”
For the next half hour Patterson asked about what my father did, where he worked, how long we’d lived in Oakridge, what happened to my mother… obviously compiling background to help him in his search. He typed all our answers into his laptop without looking at the keys.
“How long ago was it that your mother died?”
“Fourteen years.”
Stan was sitting beside me. Patterson was opposite us across the table and I saw him glance at my brother.
“So there were just you two boys and your father after that?”
“For a while. I went to live in London eight years ago. I only just got back.”
“Do you think your father found it difficult, working and being Mr. Mom all those years? Particularly after you left?”
“I guess.”
“Was he bitter about it, do you think?”
“I think he was… frustrated that he didn’t have the money to make it easier.”
“Mmm.” Patterson frowned and nodded to himself. “Would you call him a happy man?”
“He wasn’t suicidal, if that’s what you’re driving at.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of depression. Was he unhappy with the state of his life? Would that describe him? Was he on medication? Antidepressants?”
“No, no medication, no antidepressants. He wasn’t a happy man but he wasn’t clinically depressed, either. He was unfulfilled. He always wanted to be more successful.”
“Okay. See, where his car was found, that lot, that’s a pickup stop for the Greyhound that runs up to Burton and on to Nevada, and back the other way to San Francisco. Several people got on the San Francisco bus last night.”
“Was he one of them?”
“We don’t know. We spoke to the driver by phone. All he remembers is that out of the people who got on there were a couple of men. They weren’t together and they paid for their tickets with cash-no credit card ID. He couldn’t give a description beyond that they were white and middle-aged. We’ll e-mail him a photo, but I don’t know how much we’ll get out of him. All we know is that all the passengers went through to San Francisco, no one got off along the way. I’ll need your father’s bank details, by the way, so we can put a trace on his cards.”
Stan had been listening to all of this, rubbing his hands together as though they were hurting him. He spoke up now and his voice was angry. “My dad wouldn’t go away like that. You’re talking crazy.”
Patterson looked at him uncertainly for a moment and I knew he was trying to gauge the boundaries of Stan’s ability to understand the situation. To his credit he didn’t start speaking like a grade school teacher.
“No, you’re right. It seems unlikely. But I have to consider every possible scenario. And, unfortunately, it is a possibility.”
“Stan’s right, though. My father isn’t that sort of man.”
“I hear what you’re saying, but it’s a fact that in many, many missing persons cases the person, I don’t know…” Patterson looked around the room as though he might find some other way of putting it, then gave up and continued, “… just kind of snaps.”