The Next Time You See Me (33 page)

Before the meeting started, Susanna came up to him with her husband. Their hands were linked, and her eyes were almost comically round, as if she were a hostage trying to silently send him a signal. They had spoken on the phone earlier that day, when Tony called to let her know about the meeting and about his conversation with Sonny Ferrell, who was looking like a dead end—he’d stayed until one
A.M
. at the Salamander, plenty of folks to vouch for him, and then he and his lady friend had driven together back to Fort Campbell, where she spent the night with him. Sonny had not heard from Ronnie and seemed genuinely upset to learn that she was missing. So Tony had filled Susanna in on all of this, businesslike, but they’d not seen each other since parting on Sunday morning, and now here she was with her husband: a very tall, lean man with glasses and a slight hunch to his shoulders, the kind of hunch that usually went with much greater age.

“Dale,” she said, and Tony wondered at the fact that the man seemed to miss the tremble in her voice, “this is Tony Joyce, the detective looking for Ronnie. Tony, this is my husband, Dale.”

They shook hands, and Dale smiled in a distant but pleasant way. He looked almost as uncomfortable as she did, and he kept darting his eyes back and forth at the crowd. “Quite a group you’ve got gathered here, Tony. It’s a little overwhelming.”

“Well,” he said, proceeding as diplomatically as he could, “Brother Jim felt strongly that the community should be kept informed.”

“These things take on a life of their own. That’s what I tried telling Suze.” He spoke with what seemed like forced cheer, and a shadow of irritation passed across Susanna’s features—a drawing of the brows, easy to miss. Tony could see she was uncomfortable with the meeting, that she hadn’t realized the implications of making her worries about her sister public.

“Maybe something will come of it,” Tony said. He was talking to Susanna now—for her—and he hoped she realized it. “I have to say honestly that I don’t know what searching would accomplish at this point. But getting the info out there’s a good thing, and getting it on the news again is a very good thing.”

“I hope so,” she said softly.

Brother Jim had ascended to the pulpit and was tapping the microphone. “Folks, if y’all could settle down, we’ll get started here. Bless you all for coming. We’re going to start here in just about a minute.”

The meeting proceeded without protest or disruption or accusations or unexpected grandstanding—and that was about the best Tony could say for it. The opening prayer was melodramatic and overlong, and Brother Jim kept saying things about Ronnie that made Tony think he knew nothing about her, such as, “Lord, please touch us with your light of knowing, so that we can be joined again with our sister Veronica, a fine Christian woman and beloved member of the Roma community.” Tony was afraid to lift his head in case the camera was trained on him, but he sneaked a peek at Susanna, and he saw that her jaw was set, her expression closed and verging
on angry.
Beloved member of the Roma community
—well, from all that Susanna had told him, that was certainly putting a bright polish on things.

Tony kept his own remarks short, not elaborating much beyond the information already on the flyers: her last known whereabouts, the man in the drawing. “He’s just a person of interest at this point,” he said. “We hope he’ll hear word and come voluntarily to us, just so we can talk to him.”

There were a few questions and comments during the Q & A, but nothing too contentious. Someone suggested a community curfew for children and teenagers, but others dismissed that quickly as a drastic measure, especially since—as one man tried to carefully put it—the disappearance seemed “personal, not random,” and at any rate the missing woman was thirty-two years old. Another person asked about cadaver-sniffing dogs, and Tony told her, avoiding looking at Susanna, that it would be premature to draw on that resource until they had more information to go on. He invoked the phrase “needle in a haystack.” At last he added, “The best you can do for now, I think, is to keep your eyes and ears open and to contact the police department if you have any information. There may come a time to search, but I don’t think we’re there yet.”

The meeting broke up just shy of six o’clock, when Brother Jim rose from his seat onstage to invite people to the Fellowship Hall “for a bit of refreshment, courtesy of our Women’s Auxiliary.” Two currents formed, one to the parking lot and one to the deeper recesses of the church, where plates of cucumber sandwiches and bowls of potato salad awaited, and Tony took a spot out of the way of both, in case Susanna needed to exchange a fast private word with him. He wasn’t sure how much he wanted to talk to her, especially here, especially with her husband so nearby—but he felt the duty of his position. He thought that he was a better person than the boy who had cheated on Stefany all those years ago, that he was, in fact, truly a man at last, a grown-up who could anticipate the fallout of his actions. Yet had he not, in a church, just mildly shaken
the hand of his lover’s husband? And what was his duty, really—his intentions? He had seen in Susanna’s eyes love, or something that thought itself love, which was funny, because Susanna had only been back in his life for a week and the past they shared was so very distant: a high school art class, a missed date. That Susanna had fixated on it in the years since made him wonder how much this all had to do with him, really.

Wonder all you want,
he thought.
You still slept with her.

Susanna didn’t come to him, though, and he didn’t even see her leave. He knew that she would bypass the Fellowship Hall, would not be able to endure people’s questions and awkward condolences, and so he guessed that she and Dale had slipped out the front door as soon as Brother Jim made his announcement. Tony wished he could have gotten away with doing the same.

The sanctuary had nearly emptied, and Tony was contemplating whether or not he had to stop in to the dinner when a young man approached him. He was white, tall, lean, with a head of thick blond hair that looked strategically shaggy, just as his blue jeans seemed purposefully ragged, as if they’d been bought new from the store already with the faded spots and worn-through knees.

“Hey, man,” the guy said. “Talk for a minute?”

Tony nodded warily. “Sure. What’s on your mind?”

The young man looked around and rubbed his chin, then leaned in. His blue eyes were very bright—Tony was almost taken aback by them. “What I need to know—what I’m wondering, I guess—is if there’s a reward for tips. I mean, if a person had information leading to an arrest, is there some money in it?”

Tony sighed and shook his head. “No reward. If you have information, it’s your obligation as a citizen to provide it.”

“I mean, I just ask because I know people have gotten rewards in similar situations. You see it all the time. It ain’t exactly unusual.”

“That would have to come from a private donation, and the family in this situation doesn’t have the resources for that,” Tony said. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

The young man shoved his hands in his pockets and appeared to be thinking. “Well, maybe so. I think I know who the guy in the picture is.”

Tony shifted his weight from one foot to another, dubious. “Oh, really?”

“Yeah. I work at Price with him. We were at Nancy’s the night you’re talking about. It was just kind of a prank, we didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Wait,” Tony said. His pulse had quickened, and he had to stop himself from reaching out to grab the man’s arm. “Are you Sam?”

The young man backed up a step, alarmed. He put his palms up. “Whoa there, man. How do you know my name?”

Tony could not believe his luck. He had started calling factories today after striking out with Sonny Ferrell, but he hadn’t made it very far down the list, and so far, no soap. For this Sam to come to him—for the drawing to have actually worked—

“You’re just the man I was hoping to see,” Tony said.

2.

Tubs, Sam Austen explained, was their nickname for the quiet older fellow who worked out in packaging—the guy who was always confusing orders and backing up the line.

“You know, ’cause he’s fat,” Sam said. He had agreed to follow Tony back to his office at the police station, where they could tape-record the conversation, and he rocked back comfortably in the rickety wooden guest chair that Tony kept meaning to replace. Sam was enjoying himself now, getting on like a natural raconteur. “But mostly, you know, we call him that to get a rise out of him. He’s real tight-wound, always throwing me and the guys these pissed-off looks when we’re goofing off. So that’s why we pranked him.”

“You left him with a large drink bill and no ride,” Tony said flatly. They had gone over this before. “And you believe you took off at”—he consulted his notes—“between ten thirty and eleven
P.M
.”

“That’s right,” Sam said. “We went over to this girl’s house after the dance hall, and I distinctly remember seeing a clock in her kitchen that said eleven thirty. She lives in Roma, so we couldn’ve left much later than eleven.”

“Did you see him talking to anyone outside of your group?”

Sam laughed. “Oh, yeah. He danced with a woman.”

“Really,” Tony said. “What did she look like?”

“Some big fat lady with blond hair. She and my girl got into it a little, but nothing serious. Then she left.”

“What was the nature of the argument?”

Sam shifted, and the chair chirruped. “Like I said, it wasn’t nothing big. We were just teasing a little, and she got offended.”

“You and your buddies must really love to tease,” Tony couldn’t help saying. “That’s the impression I’m starting to form.”

“Man, you know how it is,” Sam said. He might have been a little uneasy—uneasy in the manner of a person who is wondering for the first time if his actions might have personal consequences—but his cockiness was irrepressible. He radiated it.

The sad thing was, Tony
did
know how it was. Once, in Bluefield, he and some of his teammates had slipped their first baseman, Teddy McCalister, a couple of Valiums with his vodka tonics. Then, when he’d passed out, they stripped him to his underwear and moved him, La-Z-Boy and all, to a median strip on a major four-lane highway, where he woke up the next day in a state of such utter confusion that he nearly got run over trying to make it back to his apartment. They’d chosen Teddy ostensibly because he’d played a series of bad games that season but really because they had determined, without coming out and taking a vote on the matter, that he was the weak man among them: the guy who got homesick, who complained about the length of practices, who would let you stick him with the pizza bill because he was too nervous to argue with you when the time came to split the check. That guy. Tony had never been one of the Sam Austens of the world, but he felt a grim sureness that he had plenty in common with the pack of guys Sam hung out with. Their names were in his
notebook now: Daniel Stone, Gene Lawson, Roger McCreary, Chet Roth, a few others. He hoped he wouldn’t end up having to call all of them.

“And you’re sure that this woman he danced with left?”

“I didn’t see her after that,” Sam said. “Gene talked Wyatt into coming back to the bar, and we spent about an hour after that getting him to do shots. Then we split.”

Tony scribbled a note to himself:
Mystery woman?
Aloud, he said, “What would you say was the state you left Wyatt in? How drunk was he?”

Sam laughed. “Pretty blitzed. Looked like he might put his head down on the bar and take a nap.”

“Did you ever find out how he got home?”

Sam frowned. “Well, no. He was at work the next Monday, like always. We ribbed him some, but we didn’t ask. I assumed he called a cab or something.”

With friends like these . . . ,
Tony thought. “And what’s he like in general? Nice guy? Easygoing?”

“Aw, he’s a baby doll,” Sam said. “He’s a little strange, I guess, but he’s basically just a wimp. I don’t think he hurt nobody. Anyhow, he’s been in the hospital for the past week, so he probably doesn’t know anything about your drawing, or he’d have come to you himself.”

“Hospital? What for?”

“Heart attack,” Sam said. “A woman found him pulled off the side of the road on Hill Street.”

Tony wrote furiously:
Heart attack, hospital. Parked off Hill Street.
“What day did this happen? Do you know if he’s still in the hospital?”

Sam squinted as if he were thinking. “Happened a week or so ago. I think that’s right. You know, the days all run together at the plant.” Tony detected a note of genuine sadness in the young man’s voice.

“And he’s at the hospital?” Tony prodded.

“Maybe. I’m not sure. He’s not back at work yet, at least.”

“OK,” Tony said in a soft, slow exhalation, speaking mostly to himself. He stared at his notebook and tapped his pen against the desk’s
surface, wondering if there was anything he hadn’t yet considered. He was trying to connect the dots, but he didn’t see the way to. Dancing with a “fat woman.” An argument; she leaves. They get him stupid on shots. They abandon him. And at some point, for some reason, Ronnie enters the equation, and she and Wyatt end up together at the Fill-Up in Roma.

A week after that, Wyatt has a heart attack.

Sam cleared his throat. “We done here?”

Tony finally nodded and punched the stop button on the tape recorder. “Yeah. Well, wait. The missing woman, Ronnie Eastman. What do you know about her? Do you remember seeing her?”

There was a pause, long enough to notice. Then Sam shook his head no.

“You sure?” Tony asked, trying to catch his eyes. “You don’t seem sure.”

“I mean, I think I saw her around at Nancy’s a few times. She was always trawling for fry.”

“Trawling for—”

“Trying to move in on younger men,” Sam said.

“And you didn’t see her that night? For sure?”

“No,” Sam said. “I didn’t.” He rose, the chair squealing one last time in good-bye, and paused when he reached the door. “Oh, and, Officer? If any reward money was to come along, remember who told you first about Wyatt Powell. All right?”