R.S. Guthrie - Detective Bobby Mac 02 - L O S T (4 page)

AMANDA BYRNE occupied my thoughts. Three-quarters of a continent away and still I could not forget her. Not that I wanted to. I don’t know about such things being preordained, but the moment I saw her I knew I’d never be able to resist. The smoothness of her skin, the flame red hair, those bottomless green eyes. I missed her.

It sounds shallow to mention her in terms of her external beauty. I realize it’s uncouth to do so, but I have never been able to deny that the most beautiful creatures are the most desirable. Yes, there is more. Far more. Beauty is, at best, skin deep. But God, or evolution, or whatever mechanism you have conceded dominion over our existence, burned into us a need to mate with the strongest, or most physically dominant, of our species. We are all attracted to innate beauty.

Such attraction should not be overpowering—so inexplicably intoxicating— but often we are not in control of the innate, feral needs that rise up against our better judgment. We put up the good fight; we assure ourselves and others that we are in control. But it has been my experience that control of our lives is, at best, an illusion, and at worst, an unattainable obsession.

I called Amanda as soon as I decided to travel to Idaho to help my brother. I told myself it was a professional call. Not a chance. I needed to hear her voice. I wanted to see her again. Her interest in me had seemed to lessen with the distance between us, or at least that is how I read it. There was a flatness in her voice when we talked. And it seemed the frequency of our calls was also diminishing.

“Amanda, it’s Bobby.”

“Bobby. How have you been?”

That flatness again. I wished it was my imagination, but I knew better. I was a detective. I counted on my ability to hear such things.

“Casework has been slow,” I said. “You?”

“The Bureau has me buried in bullshit paperwork. Life of a fed.”

“I’ve missed you,” I said. Amateur hour. The knee-jerk reaction of Insecure Lover.

“Me, too.”

Classic non-response.

“Listen, my brother called from Idaho. He needs my help on a case up there.”

“What kind of case?”

“A little girl has been abducted.”

“Oh my God.”

“He feels a fresh set of eyes might help.”

“Are you going?”

“I don’t think I have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice.”

“It’s more than that. There are some uncomfortable similarities with the Calypso case.”

“No shit?” she said. I had her attention now.

“The girl’s mother and sister were murdered. By the father.”

“Doesn’t sound much like the Calypso case.”

“The father says the Devil took her.”

“Hmm.”

“You don’t sound impressed,” I said.

“I see the parallel now.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s thin. But I have some time coming and things are slow here.”

“Look, Bobby…I have been meaning to talk to you. I feel like I owe you an explanation.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“I’ve been intentionally distant.”

“I noticed.”

“I’m sorry. It’s not you.”

The ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ line. I thought we’d moved deeper than second date repertoire.

“I’ve had so much on my mind,” Amanda said.

“I get it. We shared some time together. Great while it lasted. Maybe we thought it was going to be more. Or maybe I did.”

“I’m pregnant.”

The merry-go-round stopped. It didn’t slow down; the ride ended so hard my head nearly separated from its axis.

“Shit,” was all I could think to say. “Sorry.”

It wasn’t my finest moment.

“It’s okay,” she said. “My reaction was about the same. To be honest, Bobby, I have been thinking for a long time about what I should do.”

“What
we
should do, I’d like to think.”

“Of course. I’m sorry.”

I was in New York four months earlier, at her request. She took a week off work and we stayed downtown in a four-star hotel, her showing me the city, us making love and ordering room service. It wasn’t long after my return that she started clamming up.

“I wanted to tell you, Bobby. Something inside me needed distance; needed to digest this notion before breaking the news to you.”

“Meet me in Idaho,” I blurted out.

“What?”

“Fly there. Help me sort out what’s going on with my brother. It will give us some time together.”

“You want me there?”

“Of course I want you there,” I said. “Both of you.”

“Jesus, Bobby. I want to cry. I don’t have to tell you how messed up that is for me. It confuses me.”

“What did you think, Amanda? I was going to stop calling you?”

“Maybe. Something like that. I’m a strong woman. I would have dealt with it.”

“But you don’t
have
to deal with it.”

“Okay.”

“I’m in love with you, lady.”

There was a long pause on the line.

“Fuck you, Bobby Mac. Fuck you for making me feel like a schoolgirl after her first kiss.”

“I have a way with women.”

More silence. Then:

“I love you, too.”

~ ~ ~

In the quiet of the house all I could think about was the new life growing inside Amanda and, frankly, what a baby meant to us, our world, and to me as a past-forty cop who was closer to breaking down than to the glory days of old.

I
did
love Amanda. It was the first time I’d told her that, however. Her reaction was certainly positive enough—more so than I’d hoped. She loved me, too.

That fact alone instilled a confidence in me that had been missing for some time. Just over a year ago I’d said the same words to another woman—Greer Foster: college professor, dog lover, and part-time Bobby Mac fan. I say
part time
because I think it could be argued that I was more filler in her life than something (or someone) she ever really considered a permanent fixture.

In other words, I had fallen hard for her, too, but was unsure if she felt the same toward me. I would never find out; I’d never know if there was room for me in the world she was hammering out for herself. Greer’s death was harder even than losing my wife, Isabel. I thought Greer was the one; the woman to fill that void in my life, give me more children, and share the rest of my life with me. When she died, as with Isabel, a part of Bobby Mac died with her.

~ ~ ~

The relationship with my brother is a conundrum I’ve struggled to reconcile since I was old enough to wonder about such things. How can two boys be so similar and share such joy while at the same time being predestined to destroy each other?

Jax and I were like matter and antimatter.

Meyer and I drove down Main Street toward the old brick two-story in Rocky Gap that housed the town police department.

“You and your brother were close once,” Meyer said.

“We were.”

“You’ve never said what drove you apart.”

“Probably because there is no one thing,” I said.

I wish it
had
been one thing. A disagreement. A wrong that needed righting.
Things
can be fixed. It’s not so easy to restructure what is coded into our DNA.

“I always wanted a brother,” Meyer said. “You are lucky to have Jax.”

“It doesn’t always feel that way. He and I are too much alike. We aren’t good for each other.”

“Isn’t it more complicated than that?”

“Not really.”

I pulled the truck into a visitor spot and killed the engine. It occurred to me this was the first time I’d visited my brother since he became Chief. When he was a patrol officer, I flew up for the birth of Gracie. Even then it was clear to me he’d be running the department one day. My brother was a good cop. We had that in common, too.

Jax was at the front desk, waiting on our arrival, drinking from a large mug of steaming coffee. Our father loved his java, too. The bitter stuff never did much for me.

“Bobby,” Jax said as we walked through the double glass doors. He extended a meaty paw. My brother was several inches taller than I was and outweighed me by twenty or thirty pounds. I accepted his iron grip.

Macaulays did not hug.

“Meet Meyer,” I said.

“Ah, the priest,” Jax said, offering a second handshake.

“Retired,” Meyer said.

“Once of the cloth always of the cloth,” Jax said to him. “Cops don’t retire, they die. Same thing in your line of work.”

Apparently bluntness ran in the family, too.

“You are a cousin, too?”

“So they say,” Meyer said.

Jax motioned down the hallway.

“Let’s sit in my office.”

~ ~ ~

“We’ve got search parties working around the clock,” he said, pointing to a map of the Coeur d’Alene wilderness. “Teams of forty. Sweeping the area. Divers working the rivers and lakes.”

“What makes you think she’s been abducted?” I said. “Could your perp have killed her, too? Buried her to assuage his guilt?”

“Not possible,” Jax said. “Melissa Grant called us.”

“What do you mean ‘she called you’?”

“Two nights after we put the father in the jail, my office received a call from a blocked number. We believe it was her.”

“You
believe
.”

“We analyzed the recording. According to the software, it was not an exact voice match. But I’m telling you it was her. The caller knew things only Melissa Grant could have known.”

“For example?”

“A detailed account of what her father did to her mother and sister. Specifics we’ve not released anywhere.”

“Could be an accomplice.”

“Not in a murder suicide deal.”

“Why do you call it that?”

“It’s all in my interview with Spence Grant, the father.”