c7

"I don'd know—"
"Amy is missing?"
"We don'd know that for sure, we"re still—"
"Since when?"
"We"re not sure. I left this morning, a little after seven—"
"And you waited till now to call us?"
"I'm sorry, I didn'd want to—"
"Jesus Christ. We played tennis tonight. Tennis, and we could have been … My God. Are the police involved? You"ve notified them?"
"I'm at the station right now."
"Put on whoever's in charge, Nick. Please."
Like a kid, I went to fetch Gilpin. My mommy-in-law wants to talk to you.
Phoning the Elliotts made it official. The emergency – Amy is gone – was spreading to the outside.
I was heading back to the interview room when I heard my father's voice. Sometimes, in particularly shameful moments, I heard his voice in my head. But this was my father's voice, here. His words emerged in wet bubbles like something from a rancid bog. Bitch bitch bitch. My father, out of his mind, had taken to flinging the word at any woman who even vaguely annoyed him: bitch bitch bitch. I peered inside a conference room, and there he sat on a bench against the wall. He had been a handsome man once, intense and cleft-chinned. Jarringly dreamy was how my aunt had described him. Now he sat muttering at the floor, his blond hair matted, trousers muddy and arms scratched, as if he'd fought his way through a thornbush. A line of spittle glimmered down his chin like a snail's trail, and he was flexing and unflexing arm muscles that had not yet gone to seed. A tense female officer sat next to him, her lips in an angry pucker, trying to ignore him: Bitch bitch bitch I told you bitch.
"What's going on?" I asked her. "This is my father."
"You got our call?"
"What call?"
"To come get your father." She overenunciated, as if I were a dim ten-year-old.
"I – My wife is missing. I"ve been here most of the night."
She stared at me, not connecting in the least. I could see her debating whether to sacrifice her leverage and apologise, inquire. Then my father started up again, bitch bitch bitch, and she chose to keep the leverage.
"Sir, Comfort Hill has been trying to contact you all day. Your father wandered out a fire exit early this morning. He's got a few scratches and scrapes, as you can see, but no damage. We picked him up a few hours ago, walking down River Road, disoriented. We"ve been trying to reach you."
"I"ve been right here," I said. "Right goddamn next door, how did no one put this together?"
Bitch bitch bitch, said my dad.
"Sir, please don'd take that tone with me."
Bitch bitch bitch.
Boney ordered an officer – male – to drive my dad back to the home so I could finish up with them. We stood on the stairs outside the police station, watched him get settled into the car, still muttering. The entire time he never registered my presence. When they drove off, he didn'd even look back.
"You guys not close?" she asked.
"We are the definition of not close."
The police finished with their questions and hustled me into a squad car at about two a.m. with advice to get a good night's sleep and return at eleven a.m. for a 12-noon press conference.
I didn'd ask if I could go home. I had them take me to Go's, because I knew she'd stay up and have a drink with me, fix me a sandwich. It was, pathetically, all I wanted right then: a woman to fix me a sandwich and not ask me any questions.
"You don'd want to go look for her?" Go offered as I ate. "We can drive around."
"That seems pointless," I said dully. "Where do I look?"
"Nick, this is really fucking serious."
"I know, Go."
"Act like it, okay, Lance? Don'd fucking myuhmyuhmyuh." It was a thick-tongued noise, the noise she always made to convey my indecisiveness, accompanied by a dazed rolling of the eyes and the dusting off of my legal first name. No one who has my face needs to be called Lance. She handed me a tumbler of Scotch. "And drink this, but only this. You don'd want to be hungover tomorrow. Where the fuck could she be? God, I feel sick to my stomach." She poured herself a glass, gulped, then tried to sip, pacing around the kitchen. "Aren'd you worried, Nick? That some guy, like, saw her on the street and just, just decided to take her? Hit her on the head and—"
I started. "Why did you say hit her on the head, what the fuck is that?"
"I'm sorry, I didn'd mean to paint a picture, I just … I don'd know, I just keep thinking. About some crazy person." She splashed some more Scotch into her tumbler.
"Speaking of crazy people," I said, "Dad got out again today, they found him wandering down River Road. He's back at Comfort now."
She shrugged: okay. It was the third time in six months that our dad had slipped out. Go was lighting a cigarette, her thoughts still on Amy. "I mean, isn'd there someone we can go talk to?" she asked. "Something we can do?"
"Jesus, Go! You really need me to feel more fucking impotent than I do right now?" I snapped. "I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing. There's no “When Your Wife Goes Missing 101.” The police told me I could leave. I left. I'm just doing what they tell me."
"Of course you are," murmured Go, who had a long-stymied mission to turn me into a rebel. It wouldn'd take. I was the kid in high school who made curfew; I was the writer who hit my deadlines, even the fake ones. I respect rules, because if you follow rules, things go smoothly, usually.
"Fuck, Go, I'm back at the station in a few hours, okay? Can you please just be nice to me for a second? I'm scared shitless."
We had a five-second staring contest, then Go filled up my glass one more time, an apology. She sat down next to me, put a hand on my shoulder.
"Poor Amy," she said.