They're Gone

  THEY’RE GONE

  A NOVEL

  E. A. BARRES

  To Michelle Richter,

  Thank you for lighting the path.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THANK YOU TO everyone at Crooked Lane Books and, in particular, Melissa Rechter; Madeline Rathle; and, of course, my editor, Terri Bischoff. I’m so happy to work with you, and this book couldn’t have been in better hands.

  Thanks to Michelle Richter for her sharp eye, sage advice, and unwavering support through the years. And to everyone at the Fuse Books family.

  Thanks to Books Forward promotions, especially Ellen Whitfield, for helping my work find a wider audience. There couldn’t be a better champion.

  Thank you to Yvette and Yenny Lucero for their stellar work in helping me with translations and for not making fun of my rudimentary Spanish. And to Dr. Heather Calvert for her help with the medical sections of this book (pencil, eye).

  Thank you to the folks at my day gig, who have been so enthusiastic and supportive of my writing. I’m lucky to have known you all these years and to be part of your family.

  I’ve been fortunate to be a member of a number of wonderful organizations—Crime Writers of Color, the International Thriller Writers, Sisters in Crime, the Mystery Writers of America—and they’ve all led to some wonderful opportunities and, more importantly, lifelong friendships.

  Along that note, the entire gang at The Thrill Begins have been close to me for years, and will be for years to come. I truly love all of you.

  Thank you to the Washington Independent Review of Books, particularly the tireless Holly Smith, for giving me a chance, years ago, to write a regular column in your esteemed pages.

  Thank you to the bookstores, particularly in the DC/MD/VA triangle, that have tirelessly supported me and other writers, especially my neighborhood bookshop, One More Page Books.

  Thanks to the Gaithersburg Book Festival, Fall for the Book, Washington Writers, ThrillerFest, and all the other writing festivals and conferences that do such a fantastic job of connecting writers and readers.

  Thank you to the faculties at George Mason and Marymount universities, two of the best universities for writing and literature.

  Thank you to all the writers who stand with and support other writers—Kellye Garrett, Eric Beetner, Alex Segura, Jenny Milchman, Sarah M. Chen, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Nick Kolakowski, Nik Korpon, Marietta Miles, Chantelle Aimee Osman, Shawn Reilly Simmons, KJ Howe, Jennifer Hillier (of course, Jenny), and so many more. I admire what you do, try to emulate it, and have the fortune to count those I admire as friends.

  Thank you to the artists and musicians I’ve collaborated with in a number of projects—Angela Del Vecchio, DJ Alkimist, Sara Jones, Ayana Reed, Chantal Tseng, and so many more.

  Thank you to my parents for always standing by me and believing in what I’m doing.

  And no one is more important than my wife and son. Everlasting love and thanks to both of you. There’s nowhere I’d rather be than with the two of you, no matter where we are.

  PART ONE

  A NEW DAY

  CHAPTER

  1

  Winter 2019

  DEB LINH THOMAS didn’t understand how she’d slept through the night. Something should have woken her.

  The sounds of gunfire, no matter how distant.

  Her husband’s soul ripped away.

  The abrupt, violent, permanent change to everything she knew.

  But Deb had slept peacefully and only woke when she drowsily heard the sirens outside her home.

  Instinctively, her first thought had been about her daughter, Kim, at Washington College.

  In a panic, she turned toward Grant’s side of the bed.

  And that’s when she realized he was gone.

  Minutes later Deb stood barefoot in her kitchen, wearing a robe hastily thrown over the thin T-shirt and shorts she’d worn to bed, numbly listening to two cops tell her that her husband had been killed in a robbery.

  This wasn’t something she could have imagined—or accept. Now in her early forties, Deb was of an age when tragedy was striking her friends: rapidly moving cancer, the slow death of parents. But not violence. It felt like the worst kind of horror, one that Deb thought she’d been spared.

  And not Grant. He wasn’t a small man, or a passive one. He’d boxed in and after college, and although he didn’t have a temper, people knew better than to test him. For the most part, despite a rueful middle-aged softening, he stayed in shape. He was popular, respected by colleagues and neighbors, always in control—physically, emotionally, professionally. When change happened, it was because of a decision Grant made.

  But now that notion seemed hopelessly ignorant.

  And terrifying.

  Grant had been murdered, and he’d been powerless to stop it.

  Men who kill, Deb realized, make their own rules of law, even nature.

  And now the laws of her reality were unwritten.

  Friends and family soon filled her suburban Northern Virginia home, but Deb was very much alone. She had to be reminded to eat; her eyes were raw from constant crying; her ribs ached from ragged breaths. Her voice, hoarse and grief-stricken, sounded distant to her ears, as if coming from somewhere buried underground.

  Her nineteen-year-old daughter, Kim, returned from college to stay with her. Deb knew she needed to be there for Kim but, for those first few days, the most they could do was cry in the same room and hold each other, as if desperately trying to stop themselves from dissolving.

  Deb had known Grant was going to die someday, the same way she understood she would also die, but it was impossible to accept.

  There, but for the grace of God, went others.

  Not him.

  CHAPTER

  2

  TWO YOUNG COPS pushed through the doors of Baltimore’s Fells Gate Tavern, eyed by everyone in the dark, dingy bar, then ignored. Most uniformed cops took control of a room when they entered it. But the moment these two walked in, the room had them.

  They stayed in the doorway. One cleared his throat and asked, “Is Cessy Castillo here?”

  No one in the sparsely crowded bar replied. The bar wasn’t large—nothing more than a handful of tables, and only about half were occupied. It was too dark to see everyone clearly.

  The cops approached the bartender, a short twenty-something woman wearing a tank top, with tattoos running down her right arm.

  “Do you know where we can find Cessy Castillo?”

  The bartender drank from a shot she’d poured herself. The glass knocked loudly on the wood when she set it down.

  Her voice was guarded when she spoke.

  “You know what she looks like?”

  The other cop shook his head. “Her neighbor just told us she’d be here.”

  “Why’d you go to her apartment?”

  “It’s about her husband. Hector Ramirez.”

  The first cop glared at the second. “But we really can’t discuss that with anyone but her.”

  The bartender’s eyes widened. “Hector? Hell, I’m Cessy. What did he do?”

  “You’re Cessy Castillo?”

  The bruises Hector had left on Cessy’s back and stomach earlier that evening ached. She wondered if a neighbor had heard Hector, called the police.

  “What did he do?” she asked again.

  “He died, ma’am,” the second cop blurted out.

  The first cop—slightly older than his partner, but only in his serious face, the premature stress lines around his hooded eyes—nudged the second. “I’m sorry. My partner’s new.”

  “Hector’s dead?”

  For a moment, the pain from her bruises was forgotten. Everything was forgotten. Cessy felt the room darken, her mouth dry. First grief, then reli
ef. The two emotions wrestled inside her like darting flames, each trying to devour the other.

  “I’m sorry,” someone said. One of the cops.

  Cessy was gripping the edge of the bar. She relaxed her hands, shakily poured herself another shot. Drank it.

  “If you can,” the older cop asked, “we’d like you to come with us. We have some questions about your husband.”

  “Yeah? Like what?” Her mind raced to figure out what had happened. Natural causes wouldn’t have brought the cops. An accident would have to be suspicious.

  A killing.

  “We’d prefer not to discuss the incident here,” the older cop told her.

  Cessy had suspected there was something shady in Hector’s life—the way he took phone calls in another room; the late nights when she woke to discover he’d returned to the apartment and was in the shower—but she’d suspected he was having an affair.

  Had some enraged husband murdered him?

  Or had it been something else?

  “Okay,” Cessy said. She slammed the shot glass down on the bar, called to the back office, “Will! I’m out. Hector’s dead. See you tomorrow!”

  The younger cop said nervously, “Um, you probably don’t want to broadcast …”

  Relief was winning out, the first giddy realization of freedom. “Let’s go, amigos,” she said. “What are we doing? You need me to identify the body? In the morgue?”

  “We don’t do that. Just show you a photograph.”

  “Well, damn.” Cessy grabbed her purse, the quick move igniting the pain in her back. The pain that would never be there again. “How am I supposed to dance on a photograph?”

  CHAPTER

  3

  DEB KEPT SEEING flashes of men.

  She first noticed them one morning when she decided to finally clean the house. People had come and gone over the last week, and the house was in disarray. Glasses randomly left on tables and countertops, throw pillows tossed on the floor, clothes tangled under furniture. Like a family had fled their home in the middle of the night.

  Deb straightened out the living room until she reached the mantle over the fireplace. She paused at a picture of her with Kim and Grant. It was from their trip two years ago to Hawaii. Kim stood between them, the same uncertain smile Grant had. She’d been given her father’s height and, at sixteen, had already surpassed Deb’s sixty-two inches.

  Grant stood on the other side of Kim, wearing a polo and shorts and sandals, squinting at the camera through the sun. His arms hung uncertainly at his sides, like a novice actor waiting to be told what to do with his hands, and the polo strained to hold his chest. Back then he’d always been clean-shaven. It wasn’t until the past few months that he’d let his beard grow. Deb could still feel it tickling her face when they kissed, under her fingertips when she touched his cheek. The beard was bristly when it first emerged, then turned flower-petal soft.

  Movement in the picture glass.

  Deb turned, stared hard through the window behind her, into their backyard. The gate leading into it was open. A man was walking away. Deb watched him until he disappeared, hand over her heart, failing to control her breathing.

  She tried to remember if she’d shut the gate before she left. Had it been open? She thought it’d been closed—it was always closed—but couldn’t remember. Deb couldn’t be sure of anything, given her foggy grief the past few days.

  And that man could have been anyone. A neighbor, a gardener from the HOA, someone who mistakenly opened the wrong gate.

  A gardener, probably. That’s what she decided. A gardener.

  Her breathing slowed, calmed.

  “Hey Mom.”

  Kim walked into the living room, wearing a long T-shirt and flannel shorts. Her eyes were exhausted, half-lidded. She leaned against the wall, arms crossed over her chest.

  “Did you take your medicine?” Deb asked.

  Kim nodded. The Xanax usually hit Kim hard, left her sleepy. For Deb, it was more soothing than anything else. The pain was there, and the pain was raw, but not overwhelming.

  “You want to go out for breakfast?” Kim asked.

  Deb had always enjoyed cooking, even something as simple as breakfast. But she hadn’t turned on the oven since Grant’s death. He’d always been fond of her food, and preparing a meal seemed like too much of a memory.

  Besides, since that night neither Kim nor Deb felt hungry. They ate when they remembered, maybe once a day.

  “Let’s go.”

  Kim gave her a thumbs-up, ran her other hand through her long dark hair. Grant had thought Kim could be a model. Deb agreed that their daughter was beautiful, but privately knew he was wrong. She was tall, but not tall enough. Thin, but not thin enough. Not that she would ever deny her daughter’s soft beauty, her lovely face and effortlessly long lashes, her black rope of hair, the naturally unbroken skin that Kim’s friends (and, to be honest, Deb) openly envied.

  “Mom, stop staring at me.”

  “Sorry.”

  Deb had always worried about her daughter, and occasionally that worry nearly overwhelmed her—the first time Kim went out at night with friends, her first date, the night she hadn’t returned home until three AM. But Grant’s murder had thrown Deb’s emotions into turmoil. Her worry and love for her daughter had always felt like a balancing act, imaginary thoughts and gnawing fears fighting against Kim’s strain toward independence.

  And now all those fears were real. There was no separation.

  Violence had come.

  Deb wondered again about that man in her garden.

  * * *

  Deb had lived in Northern Virginia for twenty years and still didn’t understand it. She’d grown up in a small town in Southern Virginia, where the cities and towns were spread apart, divided by mountains or wide stretches of flat land. Northern Virginia was split into almost a dozen different cities, and the borders were indecipherable, without geographic demarcation. You could drive from Vienna, where she lived, to cities like Fairfax and Arlington, without leaving a business district.

  But it was nice, compared to the remote town her mother had settled in shortly after her adoption, to live someplace far more diverse. Deb had been the only Vietnamese child in that Southern community, and that was a lonely feeling, a sense that she never completely belonged, that there was a deeper association inaccessible to her.

  Kim had never known that feeling. It was hard to find an ethnicity not represented in Northern Virginia, DC, or Maryland. Kim’s friends in high school, and now college, comprised a wide range of races.

  But the DC region was famously expensive. Grant’s enormous salary had paid for all their expenses on its own; conversely, the money Deb made freelance writing for nonprofits couldn’t even cover one month. And it had been three months since she last worked.

  That said, there was enough in their checking account for a year of expenses. It was a relief not to think about it. Looking into Grant’s life—even at the confusion of his insurance policies and finances—felt too much like staring at a photograph of him. Deb could function when Grant was floating in the background of her thoughts, but distantly.

  She couldn’t do a thing when his presence was brought forth any further, was paralyzed when she heard Grant’s voice, or his footsteps on the stairs, or the sound of his car pulling into the garage. When she smelled his sharp aftershave in the morning.

  And even though Deb knew she’d imagined those sounds or scents, grief still struck like arrows thudding into her heart.

  She and Kim pulled into the IHOP parking lot, expecting to see a Sunday morning crowd, but no one was waiting at the doors.

  “What day is it?” Deb asked.

  “Wednesday, maybe?”

  They parked and walked to the restaurant. The weather was chilly—sweater weather—Grant’s favorite time of year, which, in Virginia, only lasted for about a week. Summers were too sweatily humid, winters a bitter dry freeze. Every year, spring and fall merely peeked out before v
anishing.

  Kim ordered a stack of pancakes. Deb wanted something with more substance.

  “You’re getting chicken fried steak?” Kim asked after the waiter left. “From IHOP?”

  “Why not?”

  “When you’re at IHOP, you should stay in their lane.”

  Deb smiled at that. The sensation felt nice, but foreign.

  Those muscles hadn’t been used for a while.

  Kim took a sip from her water, swallowed.

  “How are you, Mom?”

  Given everything that had happened over the past week, the question came off as odd. But Deb and Kim hadn’t talked much about what had happened, or how they felt. Those first days had been stunned silence or body-shaking tears.

  Being outside the house felt like a much-needed change.

  And talking in public seemed to make things more open.

  “I really don’t know,” Deb answered, and regretted her honesty.

  She wanted to be honest, but she also wanted her daughter to think she was strong.

  Deb had never considered herself emotionally withdrawn, but she was nowhere near as complicated as her daughter was about her feelings. Furious teenage years, marked by angry arguments and frightening periods of depression, had led Deb and Grant to enroll Kim in therapy. Kim had been surprisingly receptive to the idea, and it had helped. Deb would occasionally overhear Kim’s conversations with girlfriends, listen to Kim analyze her young relationships from a psychological perspective Deb hadn’t known at that age.

  “I just feel,” she once heard Kim say, talking about a boy who had asked her out her sophomore year in high school, “that his values are more subjective than shared. You know?”

  She and Grant had always supported Kim, even if, privately, her approach to life confused them. Grant had adopted much of his widowed father’s attitude—reserved, unmoved, the generational stereotype of a male baby boomer. When Grant’s mother had died, Deb had comforted Grant as he fought back tears. And she’d watched Grant’s father stoically pass through the funeral arrangements, the service, and the reception, distant, seemingly disinterested.