One Week After the Flight
We landed and headed to ground transportation. I called up an Uber and punched in the dreaded address: 4240 Horizon Lane. The condo was just twenty minutes from the airport. We waited inside the terminal for the Uber to arrive.
Lucy was looking at her phone and stepped away to take a phone call. When she hung up, she walked back to me and opened her mouth to talk, but nothing came out. Fear began to climb my neck.
“What, Lucy, what?”
Still without speaking, she motioned for me to sit. I kept my eyes on her face the entire time as I did so.
“Robert,” she finally stammered. “That was Dave. He said a GM friend of his called him. Apparently, word is getting out in the news community that a news director named Trent in Atlanta is in jail. For something awful. And Dave’s friend said it involves another news director, a female.”
Lucy’s eyes filled with tears. I felt mine instinctively do the same. Jail? That sounded a lot more serious than staging a fake kidnapping with someone.
I gulped and looked down at the airport floor, the noise of the busy terminal around me. There was a din of voices, a child cried, a couple was reuniting and sharing kisses, the carousels were moving at a mechanical churn, and a robotic woman’s voice came over the loudspeaker directing people to the right baggage pickup for their flight.
“Come on, Robert,” she said finally. “It’s not over until it’s over. I won’t believe it until someone proves it. And Dave’s friend didn’t have the name of the victim yet. Let’s get over to Horizon Lane.”
I stood up in a trancelike state and followed her. Our Uber was only two minutes out now, so we stood in silence on the curb waiting. Luckily the driver was quiet and serious, without any music on. It was just what we needed. Complete and total silence. As we got closer, the driver finally spoke up.
“Lots of cop cars, I can only get a block away.”
“That’s fine,” Lucy said. I was glad she seemed to be taking the lead in getting things done. I still had not spoken a word since the airport.
We climbed out to find two squad cars blocking the street and a bunch of neighbors milling about whispering to one another. We set our bags on the ground and stood there, trying to assess what we could.
It was hard to see that far down the block, but I craned my neck and thought I could make out the top of the white stucco building that matched what Steph had texted me. The neighborhood was clearly for wealthy people, lots of modern loft-type places and expensive SUVs along the street. The bushes were well tended, and neatly planted flowers adorned some nearby lawns. I overheard three women who looked like they were in their seventies talking to one another near us.
“I heard he’s some big shot at a local TV station,” one hissed.
“Like an anchor?” another asked. “What a scandal!”
“You know what I heard?” said the third. “There was some kind of drug overdose, or sex game gone wrong. That’s what the word on the street is.”
The word on the street? From these grandmas? I had to stop myself from charging at them and wringing their sagging necks. There was no way Steph would do drugs or play sex games with a relative stranger.
Or would she? I mean, you know your neighbors, but how well really? But no, not my Steph. Impossible.
A man walked up with a poodle in his arms. He was wearing all purple and looked like a poor man’s Prince.
“Y’all,” he said in a Southern drawl, “there’s a press conference coming up in thirty minutes. They’re holding it in front of the condo, but y’all can stream it on your phones if you want to. That’s what me and Poo-Poo plan to do, isn’t that right, Poo-Poo?” He kissed the poodle’s head and took a paw and did a fake little wave. She sat there with a dumb look on her face. The guy turned to us. His eyes traveled downward to our bags.
“Y’all from out of town?”
“Yes, just got in,” said Lucy.
“And you came right here? Lord, child, isn’t there a better tourist attraction? You can go to that giant waste of taxpayer money Centennial Olympic Park, can’t you?”
I finally found my voice.
“We just want to find out what happened,” I said, and the guy with the poodle raised his eyebrows.
“Don’t we all, sugar child? I dare say murder is not common in these parts, you know what I mean? I keep an eye on the neighborhood and take pictures of strangers. I got a friend with the po-po, that’s the police, as opposed to Poo-Poo, that’s her.” He stroked the dog’s head. “And they told me they ain’t got no actual body yet but a lot of evidence is pointing to someone’s demise. You know, hair, blood, DNA-type stuff, plus I guess they found like a phone and some other shit in the backyard. This dude’s in deep doo-doo, right, Poo-Poo?”
He waved and turned, the purple cape flowing behind him. “We’re going to my condo to watch the press conference. Have a blessed day, y’all!”
A blessed day? I couldn’t imagine ever having another one in my life.
“Come on, let’s find a place to sit and watch the press conference,” Lucy said. “A coffee shop or something.”
One of the seventy-year-old women who had been whispering overheard us and chimed in: “There’s one just down that block and over. Peaches and Cream. Really good lattes. Wait until you see their fun mugs.”
It hit me between the eyes. That could be the shop where Steph and Trent went, the one with the picture of the two lattes on a table.
“Yes, let’s go,” I said to Lucy, grabbing her arm so hard I startled her. Anything to see where Steph had been, to walk in her shoes around Atlanta. We took off at a fast clip.
Sure enough, the moment we got to the place and I saw the dark brown tables and brightly colored mugs with peaches on the side, I knew it was the same shop. I remembered the angle of the table against a window, and that very table was vacant. I felt as if Steph herself were calling me to it.
“There.” I pointed. “Let’s sit there.”
Sliding into the chair she would have been in when she took the picture of the mugs and letting Lucy have the one Trent would have sat in, I ran my hands over the edge of the table, back and forth several times, just trying to be close to anything she would have been close to.
Lucy took charge again, going to the counter and returning with two black coffees. Plucking her laptop from her travel bag, she called up one of the local TV stations to watch the live stream of the press conference.
It hadn’t started yet, and we sipped our coffees and waited, both of us staring at the screen. I wanted desperately for the Atlanta police chief to come out and say this was a horrible mistake and really nothing bad had happened and they apologized and we could all go home now. If not that, my second choice was that he name some unfamiliar person as the victim. If I heard Steph’s name, I thought I might combust right there in the coffee shop.
I leaned forward in my chair, eyes glued to the laptop screen. A muscular Black man with glasses and a police chief’s hat approached a makeshift podium peppered with hastily assembled microphones. He cleared his throat.
“Good afternoon, I’m Chief Newman of the Atlanta PD. I will share the information that I can, but this is an active investigation and I will not be taking any questions. Atlanta police were dispatched to the residence behind me overnight for a welfare check on an individual after that individual called 9-1-1 asking for help. Police entered the residence. Enough evidence was found to take a Trent J. McCarthy, age fifty-two, who is employed at NBC6, into custody on suspicion of two homicides. We are not releasing names of the victims yet. Again, this remains an active investigation and we will provide further updates when we can.”
He started to step away from the microphone, but reporters began shouting questions.
“Chief, Chief … what else do we know?”
“Chief Newman, is Trent McCarthy married?”
“Chief, did you find the bodies?”
The chief half turned his head and scowled.
“I told you, no questions. This press conference is adjourned.”
Lucy slowly shut her laptop and looked at me. We didn’t say anything; we didn’t have to. Even though there was no name of the victim given, somehow we knew. We both knew. I put my head into my hands. Even if Steph had started out working with this Trent guy to stage a kidnapping, it seemed that it had gone horribly wrong.