Chapter 1

 

Christmas was coming. The plastic holly and fake trees had been side-by-side with the Halloween decorations since September, and Brenda Lee had been rockin’ around the Christmas tree so long store cashiers were on suicide watch. By now the holiday loomed at every corner, like a schoolyard bully demanding your lunch money. Everything on TV had Christmas trees and styrofoam snow and lessons about the power of love, followed by ads for a Tom Cruise flick where he ran places and blew shit up.

I’d gone to Walmart to buy the groceries I’d throw away next week once they went bad. My knee let me get as far as the cereal aisle before the pain kicked in. I thought I could make it, at least until I couldn’t, and I abandoned my cart in the coffee aisle, grabbing bread, milk, and half-and-half and leaving the rest. I gritted my teeth through the check-out and pushed back tears once I got to my car.

Pain burned like splinters of phosphorous through my knee. I lugged around twenty pounds more than my six-foot-one frame could handle, and my tendency toward gravy-heavy breakfasts at Tudor’s didn’t help.

I sat in the parking lot for a long time, hoping shit would stop hurting, knowing it wouldn’t, and finally conceded defeat, swallowing a handful of painkillers from my supply in the glove compartment, washing it down with the milk and driving home.

A radio station had gone to an all-Christmas playlist, and thirty percent of it was the Dan Fogelberg song about him meeting an ex at the grocery store. They were day-drinking a six-pack in their car as I pulled my Aztek into my driveway. I didn’t recognize the Ford F-350 already there.

The guy on the front porch was fortyish, heavy around the middle, wearing a “Coal Keeps the Lights On” baseball cap and a Carhartt coat. He scratched at a graying Fu Manchu mustache. His skin had the permanent discoloration it gets after a decade of pulling coal, and the black dust shoves so deep into your pores there’s no getting it out.

“You Henry Malone?” he said as I mounted the short set of stairs onto the porch.

“I am,” I said.

He extended a hand. I took it. “I’m Mitch Fisher. How you doing?”

“I’m grand,” I said. When he realized I didn’t intend to shake his hand, it drew it back and shoved it back into his jacket pocket. “You didn’t hear a dog bark on the porch, did you?”

“No. Why?”

“No reason,” I said as I unlocked the front door and walked in, flipping on the lights behind me. Mitch Fisher followed right behind. “Yeah, go ahead and let yourself on in.”

In the living room, one hundred twenty pounds of Bullmastiff stretched out across the couch, snoring as “Armageddon” flickered on the forty-three-inch flat-screen. If the end of the world wouldn’t rouse Izzy, no reason to expect a truck in the driveway would do the job either.

“Hell of a watchdog,” I said in her direction. An ear twitched, and she pushed her face into the cushions.

I made my way to the kitchen and put away the groceries. Fisher stood at the kitchen doorway, watching me like an admonished child at a parent.

“You’re limping,” he said.

“I am. My knee hurts.”

“I mean, you’re limping pretty bad.”

“It hurts pretty bad.”

“You might ought to get that looked at.”

“Thanks, I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll jump right on it.” I peered into the refrigerator. “You want something to drink? I got beer, milk, and half-and-half, if that’s your thing.”

“I’ll take a beer if you’ve got one,” he said.

I wanted to point out I’d specifically mentioned the beer, which more than implied I indeed had beer, but instead I handed him a bottle of Bud Light and took a diet Coke out for myself. He twisted the lid off of his bottle and took a long drink, then said, “You not having one?”

I shook my head. “Don’t drink. Just keep ‘em for company. On account I’m such a social creature.”

That seemed an agreeable answer for him, which worked because I didn’t plan on coming up with another one. I took my coat off, draped it on the back of a chair and took a seat. I motioned to the empty chair. “Help yourself.”

He kept his coat on and sat down. He was younger than I’d thought, but life had packed years on him. He kept the beer bottle tight in thick, calloused hands.

“What can I do for you, Mitch Fisher?” I said.

“Jackie Hall told me I should come by, see you,” he said.

“He say anything about calling first, and not just showing up unannounced on someone’s doorstep?” I said. “What if I’d been out carousing or running around bare-assed naked?”

Fisher laughed. “Lt. Hall said you were a funny guy.”

“Yeah, I’m hilarious. I suspect you’re not here for the jokes, though.”

He took another drink. “My sister’s Bobbi Fisher.”

“Your parents must be real proud, but that doesn’t answer the question of what you want.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t you know who my sister is? Don’t you watch the news?”

“I limit my news intake to anything about the royal family and if the Browns make it to the Super Bowl. Your sister marry a prince or get drafted as a running back?”

Fisher reached into his coat pocket and produced a newspaper clipping. He unfolded it on the table, smoothing it out before sliding it across to me.

 

Investigation Into Missing Mother Stretches Into Second Month

By Jason O’Brien

Parker County Herald-Tribune

 

Authorities say that while there are no fresh leads into the disappearance of Parker County resident Bobbi Fisher, they are continuing to pursue the case while the mystery of what happened to the mother of two stretches into its second month.

State Police Lt. Jackson Hall said the toll-free telephone number started to accept tips into Fisher’s disappearance is still receiving calls but has produced no new leads.

“This doesn’t mean that people should stop calling,” Hall said. “All this means is that we are now going back and reviewing previous leads and working to see where that goes. We are encouraging anyone with any information into Bobbi Fisher’s disappearance to call. We want to return Ms. Fisher to her family.”

Fisher, 27, of Serenity, was last seen Oct. 2 as she dropped her daughters off to daycare at 8 a.m. Police were called when she failed to report to work that day at McGinley and Kurt, the Serenity-based law firm where she worked as a secretary, and never came to pick her daughters up from day care.

Police found Fisher’s car, a blue 2005 Ford Focus, abandoned off Rt. 232 the next day. A forensic investigation of the vehicle produced no results.

 

The picture of Bobbi Fisher showed a woman attractive if a little worn, the result of too much drugstore beauty product and too many late nights of beer and Marlboros. She was blonde with roots to make Alex Haley proud, a round, moon-shaped face, and almond-colored eyes. She wasn’t my type, but she still would have been attractive even before last call.

I handed the clipping back to Fisher. “I’m sorry your sister’s missing, but that’s got nothing to do with me.”

Fisher refolded the clipping and slipped it back into his coat. “You used to be a cop.”

“‘Used to be.’ Past tense.”

“Right, but he said you were good, and he thought you might help. You could look at things, see something that no one else is seeing.”

A smile flickered across my face. “Lt. Hall told you that, huh?”

“Yes, sir.”

I rested my forearms on the table. “Mr. Fisher, I think Lt. Hall might have overstated a few things. Whereas I used to be a state trooper, what I am now is an ex-cop on retirement disability. That limp you pointed out, it makes my life miserable most days, and it doesn’t make me the best choice to play Jim Rockford. Besides that, I don’t have any licensing or legal standing to be a private investigator.”

Fisher took off his hat and ran his hand over his head, brushing down his thinning hair. “I didn’t like coming here and asking you, but this was Lt. Hall’s idea, Mr. Malone. Bobbi’s a good mom, she loves her girls, and she wouldn’t never just leave them, no word or nothing. The day care, the day it happened, called up me and my wife—my wife, her name’s Jessie—and we picked the girls up and drove over to Bobbi’s house and we waited with ’em and she never showed up. We called her cell phone over and over, and all it did was send to her voice mail. She just up and vanished.”

Mitch Fisher’s voice ached of concern, of worry, of fear, of loss—even if there was no actual knowledge of known loss yet. But it made me think about his nieces, and what it was like to find out your mother wasn’t coming home.

I pushed myself out of the chair and opened up the junk drawer, found a mechanical pencil and a notepad, and sat back down at the table. “Your sister, she got anyone who doesn’t like her? An ex, or her boyfriend’s got an ex?”

“Nah,” he said. “She spent her time with her girls.”

“How old are your nieces?” I said.

“The little one, she’s four. Her name’s Amelia. The older one, Becky, she’s nine,” he said. He finished his beer and set the empty bottle down.

“Want another?” I said. He said yes, and I got it for him. The painkillers were wearing off already, and I felt the blood coursing through my knee. I sucked air through my teeth and told myself I could take it. Mitch Fisher sipped his beer and was kind enough to not comment on me grimacing.

“How long were you a state trooper?” he said.

“Sixteen years,” I said.

“What happened that you’re not one anymore?”

“Shit that’s neither here nor there. I’m sure you’ve been told this already, but there are certain realities you need to deal with, Mr. Fisher,” I said.

“You‘re gonna tell me you don’t know if you can find Bobbi,” he said.

“I am. I’ll bet Lt. Hall has said that by this point, finding your sister, the odds aren’t good.”

Fisher looked down at his beer bottle. “He’s gone over it with us.”

“If he’s saying to not get your hopes up, then he’s being honest with you, which you need to hear,” I said. “I might not be able to find your sister, and even if I can, you may not like what I have to tell you. I can run down what the cops had, see if anything new comes up, but time’s the disadvantage here. I’m one guy, and trails like this, they get cold quick.”

Fisher scratched at the label on the beer bottle with his thumbnail. “You got kids?”

“I don’t.”

Fisher cast his eyes downward. His voice dropped low. “My wife, she can’t have babies,” he said. “We tried, and nothing worked, so Bobbi’s girls, my wife put all that love into them she couldn’t put into ones of our own. But we ain’t their parents, and Jessie’s not their mom. They need their mother, and my wife needs to not raise those girls knowing they’re not hers to have.”

I nodded. “I’ll check around, see what I find out,” I said. “No promises. I can ask questions and make phone calls. Can’t promise much past that.”

He extended his hand toward me. “I appreciate you doing this, Mr. Malone.”

I shook his hand. “It’s Henry.”

I locked the door behind him as he left and watched out the window as he drove away and the taillights faded into the darkness.

Back in the kitchen, I looked at the refrigerator’s contents longer than I should have. There was fresh bread and milk, questionable eggs, cheese that wasn’t improving with age, something that had once been a half-pound of hamburger, and four six-packs of Bud Light.

I closed the refrigerator door and opened a can of beef jerky on the counter next to it. Four truck tire-sized paws hit the living room floor, and Izzy lumbered in toward me. Even for food, that dog didn’t get herself in a hurry.

I stood with arms crossed and tried to keep the jerky out of sight. She stopped and sat down in front of me and cocked her head to one side.

“Yes?” I said.

Izzy twisted her head to the other side, staring at me with brown eyes the size of coffee saucers. Drool gathered at her jowls.

I reached the jerky out toward her. She leaned forward and took it from my hand and laid on the floor to eat it. I patted her on the head and started a pot of coffee. It was late, but that didn’t matter; I wasn’t likely to be asleep for a while, anyway.