“It’s something,” I said. “I don’t know I’m trying to link anything. I thought maybe with Caroline being gone so long, and no closure, that an article on her would be appropriate. To show she’s not forgotten. The other stuff, maybe I could get a grab-bag column out of it, mention in the last six months there’s been all of this weirdness in town. Like a bad moon is rising over Camp Rapture kind of thing.”
“To be frank,” Mercury said, “and possibly to get punched in the nose, I don’t think you are all that interested in remembering Caroline. I think you smell a good news story. Something you think the hicks in town have not followed up on. Am I right? And that you will be able to nose it out because you used to be a real reporter. No emphasis, mind you, on the used to be.”
“Guilty,” I said.
“Of course you are,” he said.
Mercury turned to his computer, tapped the keyboard, brought up some information about Caroline Allison. There was a lot of it. It was much more than I had. I said, “Can you print this out for me?”
“Sure.”
He scanned through some of it, came to her photograph. A head shot. Her hair was as yellow as sunlight, her eyes so blue they broke your heart, her skin looked soft and warm as a spring day. And her mouth. Men would have ideas about that mouth, and so would a lot of women.
“Jesus,” I said.
“Looks like a movie star or a model, doesn’t she?”
“She is stunning.”
“Can you believe she was a history major?”
“Saw that in Francine’s note,” I said.
“Girl like that doesn’t strike me as someone that would spend her time in the library behind the stacks. A face like that, there had to be some party girl inside. There’s some devil in those eyes, don’t you think?”
“I suppose.”
Of course, from the moment I realized she was a history major, I had thought of my brother, Jimmy. She had been in his department, and most likely he had taught her, or knew her. And, of course, he would have known about her coming up missing, about her never being found. It was another lead-in, another angle. I filed that in the back of my mind.
Mercury reached in his shirt pocket, pulled out some greasy glasses, put them on, tapped at the keyboard some more, scanned through more files.
“Girl like that, in high school, you’d think she’d be more popular than a free back rub, but guess what, there’s hardly anything about her in her high school annual.”
“You have it?”
“I have it scanned in. I’ve looked through it. I think she was a member of the history club, and that’s it. No Most Beautiful. No Most Likely to Succeed. No Most Popular. And except for the history club, where there’s just the one picture of her and some other students, there’s little to nothing. She wasn’t too popular. Way she looked, that’s peculiar.”
“Peculiar, but not incredible,” I said. “Sometimes people are afraid to approach the good-looking girls, maybe even give them the ass end of things because they’re jealous. Print it out for me, if you don’t mind. All of it.”
“I’ll have it by the end of the day.”
“Perfect,” I said.
“You need any more information, drop in anytime. I’m here late at night, sometimes midnight, two in the morning. I don’t sleep that good, so I work.”
That afternoon, the file Mercury had made me was on the corner of my desk. I picked it up and went through it.
Good. He hadn’t added information about flying saucers and lake monsters. It was just the straight goods on Caroline.
Sweet.
8
I took off at four-forty-five. From Gabby’s ads in the Yellow Pages, I knew she was open until five. I drove by there and saw that hers was the only car parked out front.
I parked, took a deep breath and went inside.
When I came in I could smell some kind of strong disinfectant and the pungent smell of wet dog coming from somewhere, and then she came walking through a door that led to the back, rolling her sleeves up, ready to go home. She was whip-lean and her hair was still long and dark brown and time had done nothing to her, except make her look better. I felt a little nauseous and my throat grew tight. I stood by the door and didn’t move, and soon as she saw me her body twitched, then deflated a little.
“Cason, you shouldn’t be here.”
“I just wanted to say hi.”
She shook her head, looked at the floor. Somewhere from the back of the place a dog began to bark. Gabby finally lifted her head, looked right at me. Her eyes narrowed, like a sniper about to sight down a rifle.
“How clear can I make it?”
Several dogs started barking. Maybe they knew it was closing time. Perhaps they got treats before she locked up. Somehow, I was messing up their schedule.
“Cason, I don’t know how to tell you this any better. I wrote you the letter. When you got back, I talked to you on the phone. I read all the notes you sent me. They don’t change a thing. I tossed them. It’s not about finding someone else. It’s not about any of those things. It’s about the fact I don’t love you. Maybe I never did.”
“Don’t say that.”
“There’s an old saying: When the dog is down and dying, you shoot it in the head. Sometimes, love is down and dying.”
“Is that a folksy veterinarian saying?” I said, and stepped forward.
“Stay where you are,” Gabby said, and she held out one hand like a traffic cop.
“For Christ sakes, you don’t think I’d hurt you, do you?”
“I don’t know what I think, the notes, the calls…But it’s done, Cason.”
I shook my head.
“You were over there alone, scared, I’m sure. I was your anchor. It was a way for you to hang on to something. I represented home. Escape from fear, and you blew it all up in your mind, how we felt about one another. It was never that big a deal.”
“That’s not what you said, not how you talked when we were together. You telling me you were lying to me all along?”
I hadn’t meant for it to happen, but my words came out a little loud.
“I’m telling you, Cason, I was caught up in the moment. I was in love with the idea of being in love, not with you. I didn’t know it until you were gone…Cason, I didn’t miss you. I felt sorry for you, and was worried about you, like I would be for any soldier over there in harm’s way.”
“Any soldier?”
I was starting to feel as if I needed to sit down. The dogs were really barking now.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” she said.
I stood there for a moment. No words would come. I took my hands out of my pockets and put them back.
“I really need you to go, Cason. I see you again, I’m going to get a restraining order. I want you to stay away from me. No more notes. No phone calls. And if you have to drive by my office, drive by, don’t coast by, rubbernecking. Six months from now, we pass on the street, I see you, we can wave, say hi, like old acquaintances, and that’s it. Please go. While I at least don’t hate you.”
I went outside and got in my car and drove away, not even considering which direction I was driving.
