At Kyle’s arrival, Officer Dodge stood, placed his hat back on his head, and turned to go. He paused at the entrance to share all the information he’d gotten thus far. “She’s worried about an Emmy Grey. Her roommate,” Dodge said, and Kyle nodded his thanks.
Kyle Donovan looked like a cop again. I decided it was all in his expression, that he could turn it on at will. He projected a confident authority in the school’s front office but a relaxed demeanor in my classroom. Today he was back to authority. I wondered if he had to actively flip the switch or if something automatic came over him, as something came over me when I approached a crime a scene.
“Hey there,” he said, sitting down in the freshly vacated seat.
“Thanks for coming,” I said.
He tilted his head to the side. “I told you I would. I’m glad you called. I actually wasn’t even aware you had a roommate.”
“Emmy Grey,” I said. “We moved down here together this summer.”
“And you’d like to file a missing persons report?”
“No, something more. She’s not just missing. Something happened to her.” I unfurled my fist, showed him the necklace. “I found this on the back porch. She never takes it off.”
He narrowed his eyes at the pieces of chain. “Looks like it broke and fell off. She may not even know she’s missing it.” He leaned back in his seat, let out a slow sigh. “Look, we’ve been keeping an eye on the Cobb house. He hasn’t left today. I’m afraid this is my fault—that I’ve made you worried for nothing.”
I was already shaking my head. “No, no, not today. Before.”
He frowned, the overhead light catching the scar on his forehead. “When did you last see her?”
“Five days ago,” I said. Five days while I went about my life, barely giving her a second thought.
He blinked too long, tried to hide it. “But you weren’t worried, not at first?”
“No, she’s an adult. We work opposite schedules. But she’s late on the rent, and with the calls, your questions, and the woman found down at the lake . . . I started to worry.”
He nodded. “Have you checked in with her work?”
I paused, embarrassed. A fault; the holes in our relationship. “I’m not sure where she works, exactly. A motel lobby, the night shift.” I had a feeling her job cleaning houses was all under-the-table stuff. I wondered if the motel was, too. A temporary way to pay the bills until she found something more permanent and fitting.
“Okay, why don’t we start with the basics, then.” He took out a pencil, a pad of paper, wrote her name at the top. “G-r-e-y or a-y?” he asked.
“G-r-e-y,” I said. “I think.” I knew this, didn’t I? I’d seen it written somewhere? It felt right, so I went with it. Tried to project sure and assured. “Yes, that’s right,” I said.
The lead scratched against paper, echoing through the kitchen. “Date of birth? Where she’s from?”
How to explain that I didn’t know these things. I almost said, Her birthday isn’t in June through October, because wouldn’t she have told me? But then I thought, Maybe not. Maybe Emmy thought birthdays were trivial and meaningless. Maybe she cast them aside as she had cast off the rest of her life, flying to Africa with nothing.
Detective Donovan wanted to know the facts, the type of things we report in the paper. But these weren’t the right questions for me and Emmy. I didn’t know where she was from, the names of her parents, her blood type or place of last residence.
But: the sounds she made, the lies she told the men in her bed, the hours she kept and slept. The nightmares, the way she paced the hall before knocking, and the words she said when she thought no one was listening. I knew the squeak of her mattress, restless or otherwise. I knew the arch of her spine and the sunken skin beneath her rib cage, where she once was all curve and allure.
I knew her mother was dead. I knew, like me, she couldn’t go back.
“A phone number? Her cell?” he asked, his gaze piercing my own.
“She left her last phone in Boston,” I said. “When she broke it off with her fiancé. Not sure about the rest.”
“Okay, how about email or social media accounts?”
I shook my head. “Not that I know of. She doesn’t have a computer. Or, like I said, a cell phone. I don’t think she wanted her ex to be able to find her.” Emmy had also spent four years overseas, off the grid. Maybe she’d grown accustomed to it, preferred it to the way most of us documented and framed every aspect of our lives online.
But he raised an eyebrow at this, like he couldn’t believe it.
“I don’t have any social media accounts, either,” I said, crossing my arms. “And I bet neither do you.” Because there was too much danger for someone like him, and someone like me, to be out there. Too much exposure.
“Because you’re a teacher?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, the easiest response.
“Okay, do you have any pictures of your roommate?”
I didn’t. Back when Emmy and I met, eight years earlier, the cell phone dependability had only just begun. We took photos with disposable cameras or with purchased rolls of film when the moment was big enough—got them printed at the drugstore, put them in boxes, and lost them in moves.
And now the few I took I sent to my mother and my sister—which felt slightly defensive even to me. Nothing more than a way to convince us all: See the way the moon shines through the trees of my front yard? I’m happy here. I did not send anything of real consequence.
“How long have you known her?”
This answer could’ve been either eight years or, if adding time, the actual time we’d spent together, nine months. “We were roommates for a while after college. We reconnected this summer.”
“Did she leave behind a purse? A car?”
“She drives a brown station wagon, but I don’t know if she owns it.” That was generous. I knew she didn’t. I hadn’t owned a car when I’d moved, either. Emmy had picked me up at the airport, and I had shipped whatever couldn’t fit in my luggage. I’d bought my first car a few days later, brushing aside every extra mentioned, taking the baseline price, and then I had to wait for the model to come.
Emmy let me drive the station wagon until the paperwork went through. It smelled faintly like cigarettes, though Emmy didn’t smoke. You could feel the engine sputter under the cloth seats. The plastic coating of the steering wheel was beginning to fade away. But none of these things mattered or helped.
“Plates?” he asked.
“Not sure.”
“Would you have the registration or insurance or anything else on file?”
I laughed. The idea of Emmy keeping records or files. The idea of Emmy doing anything with a long-term plan. “She wasn’t the type.”
“Wasn’t?”
My expression faltered. Wasn’t that exactly what I was worried about? Why I’d called him? That she was gone. “Not in all the time I’ve known her,” I said.
“Her purse, then?”
“I haven’t seen it.”
“What was she doing the last time you saw her?”
I almost told him about the owls but then stopped. “I was on my way to work Monday,” I said. “She was coming in, I was heading out.”