the morning, she’d cleaned the spilled cocoa from the floor, though there was still a stain on the rug that she couldn’t get out, and sometimes the sight of it made him angry.
On the night he realized she was missing last January, he drank two glasses of vodka while he waited for her to come back, but the phone didn’t ring and the front door stayed closed. He knew she hadn’t been gone long. He’d spoken to her less than an hour before and she’d told him she was making dinner. But there was no dinner on the stove. No sign of her in the house or in the cellar or in the garage. He stood on the porch and looked for footprints in the snow, but it was obvious that she hadn’t left through the front door. But the snow in the backyard was equally pristine, so she hadn’t left that way, either. It was as if she’d floated away or vanished into thin air. Which meant she had to be here… except that she wasn’t.
Two more vodkas later and another half hour passed. By then, he was in a rage and he punched a hole in the bedroom door. He stormed from the house and banged on the neighbors’ doors, asking if they’d noticed her leaving, but none of them could tell him anything. He hopped in his car and drove up and down the streets of the neighborhood, looking for traces of her, trying to figure out how she’d been able to leave the house without leaving any clues behind. By then, he figured she had a two-hour head start, but she was walking, and in this weather she couldn’t have gotten far. Unless someone had come to pick her up. Someone she cared about. A man.
He pounded the wheel, his face contorted in fury. Six blocks away was the commercial district. He went to the businesses there, flashing a wallet-size photograph and asking if anyone had seen her. No one had. He told them she might have been with a man and still they shook their heads. The men he asked were adamant about it:
He drove each and every road within five miles of the house two or three times before finally going back home. It was three a.m. and the house was empty. After another vodka he cried himself to sleep.
In the morning, when he woke, he was enraged again, and with a hammer he smashed the flowerpots she kept in the backyard. Breathing hard, he went to the phone and called in sick, then went to the couch and tried to figure out how she’d gotten away. Someone had to have picked her up; someone must have driven her someplace. Someone she knew. A friend from Atlantic City? Altoona? Possible, he supposed, except that he checked the phone bills every month. She never placed long-distance phone calls. Someone local, then. But who? She never went anywhere, never talked to anyone. He made sure of that.
He went to the kitchen and was pouring himself another drink when he heard the phone ring. He lunged for it, hoping it was Erin. Strangely, however, the phone rang only once, and when he picked up he heard a dial tone. He stared at the receiver, trying to figure it out before hanging up the phone.
How had she gotten away? He was missing something. Even if someone local had picked her up, how had she gotten to the road without leaving footprints? He stared out the window, trying to piece together the sequence of events. Something seemed off, though he couldn’t identify what it was. He turned away from the window and found himself focused on the telephone. It was then that the pieces suddenly came together and he pulled out his cell phone. He dialed his home number and listened as it rang once. The cell phone kept ringing. When he picked up the landline, he heard a dial tone and realized that she’d forwarded the calls to a cell phone. Which meant she hadn’t been here when he’d called her last night. Which also explained the bad reception he’d noticed over the past two days. And, of course, the lack of footprints in the snow. She’d been gone, he now knew, since Tuesday morning.
At the bus station, she made a mistake, even if she couldn’t really help it. She should have purchased her tickets from a woman, since Erin was pretty and men always remembered pretty women. It didn’t matter whether their hair was long and blond or short and dark. Nor did it matter if she’d pretended she was pregnant.
He went to the bus station. He showed his badge and carried a larger photograph of her. The first two times he visited, none of the ticket sellers had recognized her. The third time, though, one of them hesitated and said that it might have been her, except that her hair was short and brown and that she was pregnant. He didn’t, however, remember her destination. Back at home, Kevin found a photograph of her on the computer and used Photoshop to change her hair from blond to brown and then shortened it. He called in sick again on Friday.
On Saturday, eleven days after she’d left him, he found the driver. The driver had taken her to Philadelphia. He remembered her, he said, because she was pretty and pregnant and she didn’t have any luggage.
Philadelphia. She might have left again from there to parts unknown, but it was the only lead he had. Plus, he knew she didn’t have much money.
He’d packed a bag and hopped in his car and drove to Philadelphia. He parked at the bus station and tried to think like her. He was a good detective and he knew that if he could think like her, he’d be able to find her. People, he’d learned, were predictable.
The bus had arrived a few minutes before four o’clock, and he stood in the bus station, looking from one direction to the next. She had stood here days earlier, he thought, and he wondered what she would do in a strange city with no money and no friends and no place to go. Quarters and dimes and dollar bills wouldn’t go far, especially after purchasing a bus ticket.
It was cold, he remembered, and it would have been getting dark soon. She wouldn’t want to walk far and she would need a place to stay. A place that took cash. But where? Not here, in this area. Too expensive. Where would she go? She wouldn’t want to get lost or head in the wrong direction, which meant that she probably looked in the phone book. He went back inside the terminal and looked under hotels. Pages and pages, he realized. She might have picked one, but then what? She’d have to walk there. Which meant she’d need a map.
He went to the convenience store at the station and bought himself a map. He showed the clerk the photograph but he shook his head. He hadn’t been working on Tuesday, he said. But it felt right to Kevin. This, he knew, was what she did. He unfolded the map and located the station. It bordered on Chinatown and he guessed she had headed in that direction.
He got back in his car and drove the streets of Chinatown, and again it felt right. He drank his vodka and walked the streets. He started at those businesses closest to the bus station and showed her picture around. No one knew anything but he had the sense that some of them were lying. He found cheap rooms, places he never would have taken her, dirty places with dirty sheets, managed by men who spoke little English and took only cash. He implied that she was in danger if he couldn’t find her. He found the first place she’d stayed, but the owner didn’t know where she’d gone after that. Kevin put a gun to the man’s head, but even though he cried, he couldn’t tell Kevin anything more.
Kevin had to go back to work on Monday, furious that she’d eluded him. But the following weekend, he was back in Philadelphia. And the weekend after that. He expanded his search, but the problem was that there were too many places and he was only one person and not everyone trusted an out-of-town cop.
But he was patient and diligent and he kept coming back and took more vacation days. Another weekend passed. He widened his search, knowing she would need cash. He stopped in bars and restaurants and diners. He would check every one in the city if he had to. Finally, a week after Valentine’s Day, he met a waitress named Tracy who told him that Erin was working at a diner, except she was calling herself Erica. She was scheduled to work the following day. The waitress trusted him because he was a detective, and she’d even flirted with him, handing him her phone number before he left.
He rented a car and waited up the block from the diner the following morning, before the sun was up. Employees entered through a door in the alley. He sipped from his Styrofoam cup in the front seat, watching for her. Eventually, he saw the owner and Tracy and another woman head down the alley. But Erin never showed, and she didn’t show up the following day, either, and no one knew where she lived. She never came back to pick up her paycheck.
He found where she lived a few hours later. It was walking distance from the diner, a piece-of-crap hotel. The man, who accepted only cash, knew nothing except that Erin had left the day before and come back and left again in a hurry. Kevin searched her room but there was nothing inside, and when he finally raced to the bus station there were only women in the ticket booths and none of them remembered her. Buses in the last two hours were traveling north, south, east, and west, going everywhere.
