Three police cruisers sat on my block, our very few neighbors milling around. No Carl, but there was Jan Teverer—the Christian lady—and Mike, the father of the three-year-old IVF triplets—Trinity, Topher, and Talullah. (“I hate them all, just by name,” said Amy, a grave judge of anything trendy. When I mentioned that the name Amy was once trendy, my wife said, “Nick, you know the story of my name.” I had no idea what she was talking about.)
Jan nodded from a distance without meeting my eyes, but Mike strode over to me as I got out of my car. “I’m so sorry, man, anything I can do, you let me know. Anything. I did the mowing this morning, so at least you don’t needta worry about that.”
Mike and I took turns mowing all the abandoned foreclosed properties in the complex—heavy rains in the spring had turned yards into jungles, which encouraged an influx of raccoons. We had raccoons everywhere, gnawing through our garbage late at night, sneaking into our basements, lounging on our porches like lazy house pets. The mowing didn’t seem to make them go away, but we could at least see them coming now.
“Thanks, man, thank you,” I said.
“Man, my wife, she’s been hysterical since she heard,” he said. “Absolutely hysterical.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” I said. “I gotta—” I pointed at my door.
“Just sitting around, crying over pictures of Amy.”
I had no doubt that a thousand Internet photos had popped up overnight, just to feed the pathetic needs of women like Mike’s wife. I had no sympathy for drama queens.
“Hey, I gotta ask—” Mike started.
I patted his arm and pointed again at the door, as if I had pressing business. I turned away before he could ask any questions and knocked on the door of my own house.
Officer Velásquez escorted me upstairs, into my own bedroom, into my own closet—past the silvery perfect-square gift box—and let me rifle through my things. It made me tense, selecting clothes in front of this young woman with the long brown braid, this woman who had to be judging me, forming an opinion. I ended up grabbing blindly: The final look was business-casual, slacks and short sleeves, like I was going to a convention. It would make an interesting essay, I thought, picking out appropriate clothes when a loved one goes missing. The greedy, angle-hungry writer in me, impossible to turn off.
I jammed it all into a bag and turned back around, looking at the gift box on the floor. “Could I look inside?” I asked her.
She hesitated, then played it safe. “No, I’m sorry, sir. Better not right now.”
The edge of the gift wrapping had been carefully slit. “Has somebody looked inside?”
She nodded.
I stepped around Velásquez toward the box. “If it’s already been looked at then—”
She stepped in front of me. “Sir, I can’t let you do that.”
“This is ridiculous. It’s for me from my wife—”
I stepped back around her, bent down, and had one hand on the corner of the box when she slapped an arm across my chest from behind. I felt a momentary spurt of fury, that this woman presumed to tell me what to do in my own home. No matter how hard I try to be my mother’s son, my dad’s voice comes into my head unbidden, depositing awful thoughts, nasty words.
“Sir, this is a crime scene, you—”
Stupid bitch.
Suddenly her partner, Riordan, was in the room and on me too, and I was shaking them off—fine, fine, fuck—and they were forcing me down the stairs. A woman was on all fours near the front door, squirreling along the floorboards, searching, I assume, for blood spatter. She looked up at me impassively, then back down.
I forced myself to decompress as I drove back to Go’s to dress. This was only one in a long series of annoying and asinine things the police would do in the course of this investigation (I like rules that make sense, not rules without logic), so I needed to calm down: Do not antagonize the cops, I told myself. Repeat if necessary: Do not antagonize the cops.
I ran into Boney as I entered the police station, and she said, “Your in-laws are here, Nick,” in an encouraging tone, like she was offering me a warm muffin.
Marybeth and Rand Elliott were standing with their arms around each other. Middle of the police station, they looked like they were posing for prom photos. That’s how I always saw them, hands patting, chins nuzzling, cheeks rubbing. Whenever I visited the Elliott home, I became an obsessive throat-clearer—I’m about to enter—because the Elliotts could be around any corner, cherishing each other. They kissed each other full on the mouth whenever they were parting, and Rand would cup his wife’s rear as he passed her. It was foreign to me. My parents divorced when I was twelve, and I think maybe, when I was very young, I witnessed a chaste cheek kiss between the two when it was impossible to avoid. Christmas, birthdays. Dry lips. On their best married days, their communications were entirely transactional: We’re out of milk again. (I’ll get some today.) I need this ironed properly. (I’ll do that today.) How hard is it to buy milk? (Silence.) You forgot to call the plumber. (Sigh.) Goddammit, put on your coat, right now, and go out and get some goddamn milk. Now. These messages and orders brought to you by my father, a midlevel phone-company manager who treated my mother at best like an incompetent employee. At worst? He never beat her, but his pure, inarticulate fury would fill the house for days, weeks, at a time, making the air humid, hard to breathe, my father stalking around with his lower jaw jutting out, giving him the look of a wounded, vengeful boxer, grinding his teeth so loud you could hear it across the room. Throwing things near her but not exactly at her. I’m sure he told himself: I never hit her. I’m sure because of this technicality he never saw himself as an abuser. But he turned our family life into an endless road trip with bad directions and a rage-clenched driver, a vacation that never got a chance to be fun. Don’t make me turn this car around. Please, really, turn it around.