They're Gone Read online

  It was fitting behavior for Grant’s father, the same man who had never told his only son he loved him; had merely quietly shaken hands with Grant when he and Deb announced their engagement; never smiled for photos; and who, grimly, briefly, held Kim after she was born.

  Deb had felt horrible for Grant’s mother at her funeral. She hated the men’s reticence, their pointless resistance to grief.

  Grief is a monument. And they were doing their best to make the memory of Grant’s mother smooth, undisturbed land.

  But that resistance was inside her, part of her. There was something that prevented Deb from taking her friends’ advice to seek counseling after Grant’s murder, to shy away from calling a therapist or finding a support group.

  In a strange way, it seemed like taking the grief on herself honored Grant.

  Kept him close to her.

  She wondered if Kim felt it too, that pull to isolation. She’d noticed her daughter’s reluctance to leave the house, to talk with friends. Even to talk to her, aside from offering to share her Xanax, an offer Deb had—surprising herself—accepted.

  “I don’t know how I feel either,” Kim said now, her hand wrapped around a glass of water. “It changes so fast. Like any moment I might suddenly be, like, lost?”

  Deb touched her eyes, trying to ward off tears. Saw Kim do the same.

  “Sorry,” Kim said after a few moments. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this here.”

  “No, it’s okay.”

  Kim nodded. “It’s hard to sleep. I feel too much. Scared and angry and sad. And I miss Dad.”

  “I can’t feel anything without being sad,” Deb said. “I miss him too.”

  The waiter brought their food, set it before them.

  Deb touched her chicken fried steak with her fork, could barely push it through the hard, overcooked meat.

  “You want to split my pancakes?”

  Deb pushed her plate to the side, took her daughter up on the offer. They ate from the same plate, the pancakes sliced into small triangles, islands poking through a dark lake of syrup.

  “Have the cops said anything else?” Kim asked.

  “Just what I told you. It might be some gang who’s doing this. There’ve been other people, all men who died the same way.” Deb paused, spoke past the lump in her throat. “Shot the same way. The police don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

  “Me neither,” Kim said.

  The women were quiet.

  “Sometimes I think Dad’s in the house. Like I forget he’s gone. Or I see someone and think it’s him.”

  “That happened to me this morning. I saw someone near the backyard, but it was just the gardener.”

  “The other day I saw someone walking to our door, and then he turned and left. For a second, I thought it was Dad coming home.”

  They both dabbed napkins to their eyes.

  “When are you going back to school?” Deb asked.

  “Like I told you, they excused me from my classes for the rest of the semester.”

  Deb didn’t remember. “You were doing pretty good, right? With your grades?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Deb believed her. Kim had an easy affinity for school and studying that Grant shared, but that ease had completely bypassed Deb. She’d been a good student, but only because of how intensely she studied. Kim and Grant could glance at their notes the night before a final exam, show up late, walk away with an A.

  Grant’s confidence.

  God, she wished she had his confidence.

  “I don’t want you to feel like you need to stay here with me,” Deb told Kim.

  “I like staying with you.”

  Her words warmed Deb. Prior to this, her relationship with Kim had been defined by those volatile arguments. Spats that started, seemingly, the exact moment Kim turned thirteen, as if she’d realized at a young age that there was only so much control her mother had over her. She’d grown worse in her rebellious high school years, and by the time Kim left for college, they’d spent days without speaking to each other.

  Now that distance seemed immature, something she and Kim had the privilege to play with, the kind of problems created from boredom, from the arrogance of boredom. When real tragedy struck, Deb had felt helpless. And needy. And she’d never felt that way before.

  “Thanks for coming home,” she said.

  Her daughter reached across the table, held her hands.

  And there were those tears.

  Those helpless, endless, shared tears.

  CHAPTER

  4

  CESSY USED THE couch to stand. Nausea touched the back of her throat, grudgingly stayed down as she stared at a pillow and blanket on the living room floor, trying to figure out what had happened the night before.

  And why she was naked.

  She spotted an empty bottle underneath the coffee table.

  Vodka.

  Vodka had happened. And so had Anthony Jenkins.

  Cessy sat on the couch, considered that an accomplishment. She didn’t expect to do anything else that productive today.

  She crossed her legs, rested her feet on the coffee table and slouched, trying to ease her stomach. She found the remote control buried in the cushions and switched on cartoons. Watched SpongeBob SquarePants cheerfully bounce along the ocean floor.

  The shower stopped.

  That was interesting.

  She hadn’t realized it was on.

  Cessy was too hungover to do anything but pull a blanket over herself. She kept staring at SpongeBob until the door to her bedroom opened and Anthony stepped out.

  “You look like shit,” Anthony said cheerfully. He walked over to her, towel around his waist, collapsed on the couch next to her. He stretched his long black legs out, crossed his ankles over the coffee table. Anthony had played basketball for Baltimore Community College and, almost a decade later, still had an athlete’s lanky grace, even if his muscles had lost their definition and he’d added a few pounds.

  Cessy tried to think of a response. Her sleep- and alcohol-infused mouth felt like a dirty bird’s nest had been shoved inside it.

  “Things have been weird.”

  “Yeah?” Anthony was staring at SpongeBob argue with his pet snail.

  Cessy scratched her scalp. Her hair was hopelessly tangled. “Hector’s dead. He was shot twice. One in the head, one in the heart.”

  Anthony bounded to his feet.

  “What? By who?”

  “They don’t know.”

  “Last night you said he was out of town!”

  “He sort of was. Where are you going?”

  Anthony had been inching over to the bedroom. “I should probably go.”

  Cessy watched him. “You okay?”

  “I can’t believe your husband was killed and you’re acting this way about it.”

  “We weren’t married that long. And come on, Anthony, you got what you wanted.”

  “Well, okay, maybe, yeah. But after all these years of trying at the bar, and you finally giving me the green light … still, though, this doesn’t feel right. See you, Cess. Sorry about what happened. But thanks for letting me use your shower. And for, um, last night.”

  Anthony dressed quickly in front of Cessy—stumbling as he pulled on pants, accidentally pushing his head into a sleeve—and hurried off.

  Cessy dragged herself to the shower after he left, let warm water run down her back, rested her forehead against the tiles.

  The same thoughts she’d been having since Hector’s murder days earlier started rolling through her mind, like music from a player piano, a song she desperately wanted to ignore. Thoughts of how life had been before Hector was killed, when he was at his most depressed and withdrawn.

  When things were awful.

  When the beatings were regular.

  At the end of their relationship, Cessy had been trapped by its beginning, the memories of when everything was magical and possible, love overwhelming. When Hector had been diff
erent, discharged from Baltimore’s PD because of a lower back injury that kept him sidelined, rueful but not yet dejected. She’d met him at the bar, and they’d talked all night, gone to breakfast at three in the morning, finally left each other at noon without even a kiss … just the desire for one. He stopped by the next night and the same thing happened, but they left on a brief kiss that second time, a shy touching of lips.

  His old-fashioned approach charmed her, his past as a cop and thoughts about what he would do next (private security, maybe something else entirely) intrigued her. It fit Cessy nicely given that she also considered herself to be in a transitional state—she was eventually planning to return to school and finish college. And she hadn’t dated another Latino for a while, even if Hector couldn’t speak Spanish. She teased him about that, and he struggled to comprehend what she was saying, responded back with high school skills: “¿Por que … tu habla?”

  Cessy was only half Latina. Her mother was from Panama, and she’d never met her white American father, so she and her brother had been raised speaking Spanish, watching telenovelas, eating an indecent amount of rice with every meal. But her mother had been absent so frequently that she and her brother couldn’t help becoming Americanized—by television, by their friends, by the stores and restaurants and adults around them. And so, as an adult, Cessy was able to slip into either culture.

  And she and Hector slipped into love with the enthusiasm of children chasing each other. He moved in after a few short months. One bright Saturday morning, they spontaneously married, happily lost in love, aching to be as close to each other as possible. That was when, to Cessy, everything about Hector was endearing, even the playful annoyances. The way he loudly ate, his snores, the shirts he wore too often without washing. Those rough edges fit into her smoothly, like the natural flow of an easy conversation. Cessy had never been in love, and it was more than she’d expected. More than she’d hoped for.

  It was only after the first year that she noticed Hector’s moodiness, the irritation overtaking him about the lingering pain in his back, his inability to find consistent work. She started to learn more about him, about why he had really been discharged from the police, the scandal about the drugs he’d taken from dealers and sold on his own. The fact that his reluctance to find work was really his lack of interest in a regular job.

  And when he first hit her, that’s when she realized how corruption had stained his soul.

  And she realized she’d made a horrible mistake.

  Cessy tried to leave the day he died. Was almost out the door with a duffel bag of clothes, about to head back to her brother in Arizona, when Hector burst in, high and moody. Turned enraged when he saw her packed bag.

  He fell on her, fists first.

  Cessy was left stunned on the floor, taking slow pained breaths, her ribs and thighs on fire from his kicks. Cessy had sworn that was the end.

  That night, he died.

  And she almost wished that made her sadder.

  It reminded her of another time in her life, when guilt and sadness should have overpowered her but didn’t.

  But that was a memory she couldn’t let herself think about.

  Something no one but Hector and her brother knew about.

  Cessy turned off the water, wrapped a towel around herself. She stepped out of the shower and walked toward the living room, a trail of drops on the hardwood floor behind her like quivering eyes. She stared at the picture of Hector on the living room wall, the one he insisted be framed, an old one from back when he was a cop. Still thin, hair close cut, an intensity to his brown eyes as he gazed at the camera.

  Cessy took the picture down.

  She hated that picture. Seemed like such a lie.

  The blank white wall was better.

  Cessy couldn’t stop staring at the wall. Marred only by a single nail. Reminded her of when she’d first moved in and had the place to herself. Before she’d met Hector.

  She wanted it back that way, back when everything was new.

  Cessy got a trash bag from the kitchen and shook it open. Put Hector’s cop picture inside, along with a pair of his old fraying sneakers that had been sitting against the wall. She went to the bedroom, dried herself and dressed, and then viciously ripped his clothes out of the closet. Thought about sorting them to give some away to Goodwill, but figured nothing of Hector’s should remain. Jeans and T-shirts and sweatshirts filled bags, along with boxers and socks and shoes.

  The rush to throw everything away slowed, and Cessy found herself examining the clothing. Partially out of a sense of nostalgia.

  And she hated herself for it. Hated herself for the confusion of feelings.

  She stood. Dressed in jeans, a sweater, a jean jacket, boots. Headed out.

  Cessy lived in Fells Point, a picturesque Baltimore neighborhood of cobblestone streets, eccentric shops, and running chains of row houses. At its prettiest, Fells was a living oil painting; at its worst, it was drunk college kids throwing up on the street on a late Friday night.

  Cessy’s apartment was west of the tourist trappings, tucked between the stores and the homes. She walked to the water and the crowds of the business district, slipped into a little coffee shop. She stood in line for a few minutes, the men and women in front and behind her on their phones. She’d forgotten hers at the apartment and debated going back to get it. Not that she was expecting any important calls, but she didn’t like waiting without anything to do. It made her nervous.

  And Cessy always felt like she stood out in Baltimore, a small city that didn’t include a large number of Latinos. When men stared at her, she had to wonder why. Was it because she was a woman? How she was dressed? Had she been looking at him? Was it her race? Was the gaze unfriendly? Threatening?

  Was she safe?

  She hated having to ask herself those questions.

  “Can I help you?” a kid behind the counter asked.

  Cessy blinked, realized the man in front of her had already ordered and left.

  Ever since Hector’s death, time had slipped by Cessy without her noticing.

  “Yeah, coffee. Nothing special.”

  The kid stared at the register like he’d never seen it before, then slowly entered the order. “Three thirty-five.”

  A girl gave Cessy her drink. She heard the line shifting behind her. Pulled out a five and gave it to the cashier.

  “Keep it.”

  She found an empty stool near the window and sat, facing the restaurant. Stared at a mix of older couples talking and young professionals texting. Reminded her of what she’d heard about the past and present of this neighborhood. Fells Point used to be one of the most Bawlmore of all the city’s neighborhoods, deeply and proudly representative of Baltimore’s unique personality, touches of Tyler and Simon and Poe and Holiday and Calloway and Lippman and Coates and Waters mixed together, beehive hairdos and Elvis figurines and marble steps. Softly slurred consonants.

  Now it was transients and hipsters and tourists.

  Cessy sipped coffee and frowned at the taste. She could have made something just as good at home, wondered if they had the same coffee maker she did. Could have, although she liked to think an actual shop wouldn’t be that cheap.

  She drank half, left the rest. The liquid splashed into her stomach, landing next to the vodka from the night before.

  Not the best sensation.

  She realized a man had been watching her the entire time. Cessy wanted to tell him to look somewhere else, but decided against it. She’d already made a bad decision by calling Anthony last night, even if she’d been drunk when she dialed. She didn’t want to make another. No reason to be combative.

  Cessy headed home.

  She went through the rest of Hector’s clothes when she got back to the apartment. Went through his nightstand and took out his guns, a pair of surprisingly heavy Glocks. Found a set of knives. Wondered if she should just throw the whole nightstand away and tried to lift it.

  Something rustled in
side.

  Cessy frowned at the nightstand and opened the two drawers again. Empty. She pulled the nightstand toward her and pushed it back. Again, that sound.

  She took the drawers out, looked behind them. Turned the nightstand on its side, wincing because she expected to find a dead mouse underneath. Nothing.

  Cessy jostled the nightstand again. Pinpointed the sound and kept the nightstand on its side. She tapped the bottom, pressed it. Realized a small square of soft wood was stapled to the bottom. The thin board indented under her fingers, eventually snapped.

  A blank, business-sized envelope fell to the floor.

  She opened the envelope, pulled out a flash drive.

  “Hector,” Cessy said to herself, “what kind of disturbing shit is on this?”

  She plugged it into her laptop, apprehensively opened a folder containing a group of photos.

  Cessy cringed again, assuming she’d see some bizarre, probably illegal, pornography.

  Or truth about the affair she’d originally suspected but hadn’t wanted to pursue. Hadn’t wanted to chance a complication of her feelings.

  The first picture was blurry, taken at an odd angle, showed a group of shadowed people milling about. Looked like they might be on a street at night, or maybe a theater stage. Cessy couldn’t quite tell. But they were all gathered around something.

  She opened another picture and saw more of the same. More shadowed figures, all staring down at something she couldn’t make out.

  Cessy scrolled through the thirty or so thumbnails, trying to find one that was clear.

  She stopped scrolling.

  Stopped on a picture that showed two things clearly.

  The first was a man holding what appeared to be a gun. For some reason, the camera had decided to make the gun its focus, and the weapon came in clearly. But that wasn’t what drew Cessy to the photo.

  It was the color red, the blood under a man lying on a bed. His hands were over his chest, his lower body halfway off the bed, eyes open.