Fortunate is not what she’d call herself, but now is not the time to argue. Not about that.
Moniz turns over the thumb drive. “What is this, please?”
“It’s a memory stick. A flash drive. It contains footage from the hotel’s security camera that shows my husband on the sidewalk this morning.”
“This device—this video—these are supplied by the hotel?”
“Yes.”
Ariel can see that Moniz is not enthusiastic about connecting his computer and the police network to this piece of hardware delivered by this possibly unhinged American. He puts the thing down, pushes it away, as if it’s dangerous, or smells. He picks up his landline, has a quick conversation.
“One moment.” He indicates a chair. “Please.”
They hold each other’s gazes for a second, then both look away, Moniz down at his notepad, Ariel across the large room, taking in the usual assortment of things you’d expect to find in any police station. Ariel hasn’t been in one in a long time, but she can remember her last visit vividly.
She returns her gaze to Moniz, who’s also what she’d expect to find in a police station, the standard off-the-rack model of cop—mid-forties, thinning hair compensated for with bushy mustache, a bulky frame with twenty extra pounds that sit in the front of his belly, distended in a bulge at the beltline, the way some men carry their middle age and their beer, as if six months pregnant. When she was here earlier, Moniz had a spot of something on his tie. Now he has added a splash of what seems to be tomato sauce on his pale blue shirt.
Next to his desktop monitor, a silver frame holds a photograph of a plain-looking young girl of five or six; no mother in the shot. Ariel looks to his ring finger, finds none.
A uniformed colleague arrives, delivers a laptop to Moniz, who inserts the thumb drive into the port, plays the brief clip. Then he leans closer to the screen, and replays it.
“Look,” Ariel says, “after John disappears from the frame? See that shadow?”
“Yes.”
“Do you see it move? I think that’s a car driving away. With my husband in it.”
Moniz doesn’t dignify these bits of conjecture. He continues watching the screen closely, a completely static scene, for another ten seconds, twenty. Ariel wonders what he’s looking for. Maybe nothing, maybe he’s just buying time, figuring out what to say, how to get this woman out of his guest chair, this problem out of his hair. Ariel can’t imagine doing a job like his, spending all day every day confronting other people’s problems.
His partner walks over. Santos nods at Ariel, then has a quick conversation in Portuguese with Moniz. He points at the laptop, and Santos leans over, and both detectives watch the video, concentrating intently. Moniz removes his reading glasses, places them deliberately on his desk, adjusts their angle.
“I am sorry,” he says. “I understand that you are worried about your husband. But this video does not appear, to me”—he jabs his own chest with his forefinger—“to be evidence of anything illegal.”
“But do you see the shadow?”
“Yes, I see it.”
“Maybe the video can be enhanced? Then we’d be able to identify details about that car?”
“You mean, about that shadow?”
“Isn’t there some software you could use, to—I don’t know—figure out the make of the car? From the shape of the shadow?”
Moniz bites his lower lip, as if chewing on the idea. He turns to his partner.
“It is possible,” Santos says. She speaks!
“Okay,” Ariel says to the woman. “Then let’s do that.”
Both cops are struggling with the idea. Maybe whether to accept Ariel’s suggestion. Or maybe how exactly to reject it, and which one of them is going to do it.
“If this shadow is a car, is it not possible that your husband gets in because this car is taking him to the office of his client, where he is at this very moment working?”
Ariel almost rolls her eyes.
“Is this not a possible explanation? Is this not the most possible?”
“Yes, of course, that’s possible. But look: He’s not wearing a jacket or tie. He packed four neckties for three days of business. Why would he bring all those ties to Lisbon if he wasn’t going to wear any of them to the office, on a day that will be full of business meetings?”
The cops don’t have a rejoinder to that.
“He’s missing,” Ariel says.
“Perhaps. But being missing, while wearing no jacket or tie, is not a crime.”
“But …” What can Ariel say? “I’m worried that something bad has happened to him.”
“Something bad,” Moniz says. “Which something bad?”
Ariel inclines her chin at the frame on his desk. “Is that your daughter?”
Moniz doesn’t answer.
“What if you woke up this morning,” Ariel continues, “and she wasn’t in bed where she was supposed to be, and she hadn’t left a note, and you couldn’t reach her? What would you do?”
Moniz doesn’t respond, so Ariel turns to the woman, who has remained standing, not committing to participating in this conversation.
“Please,” Ariel says. “Can’t you do something?” Ariel doesn’t like this, appealing to the woman, it feels so feeble, so reductionist. But it works. It almost always works. Santos nods.
“Okay,” Moniz says, “please, let us start at the beginning: Why is your husband in Portugal?”
*
Leonor shuts off the bathroom lights, and turns her attention to the bedroom. The linens are a messy tangle, pillows everywhere, sheets on the floor. A wild night, she thinks. And then apparently the husband disappeared. Leonor is half-expecting to find blood, or drugs, something. She does not trust Americans.
Before she pulls on the fitted sheet, she drops to her knees—the most painful part of her job—to check under the bed. That is when she sees it.
*
“I should know the name of the client,” Ariel admits again. “I realize that. I should know the business name, the address, the name of my husband’s contact. I should know all this info, or at least some.”
It sounds bad, the many things that Ariel should know but doesn’t, itemized this way.
“But when John told me these details, I didn’t write them down, and I just don’t remember any of it. I’m sorry.”
“But he did tell you these informations?” Moniz asks. “You are sure?”
“Of course.”
“Do you know what type of business it is? Perhaps we can reduce the choices.”
“Manufacturing.”
“Good, good, that is something.” Moniz writes down a word. “Manufacturing of what?”
“Maybe involving natural resources?”
“Good. Good! Mining is very important here. Iron, zinc, cop—”
“I don’t think it’s mining, no.”
“Fishing? Winemaking?”
“I think I’d probably remember those things as mining, or fishing, or winemaking. Not just as natural resources.”
“We have a very large timber industry. Especially cork. Did you know that Portugal is the primary cork producer in the world?”
“I’ve noticed.”
“So, cork?”