JIMMY STOOD on the civilian side of the yellow tape, facing a ragged line of cops, as Sean walked away through the weeds and into the park, not looking back once.
"Mr. Marcus," this one cop, Jefferts, said, "get you some coffee or something?" The cop looked at Jimmy's forehead, Jimmy feeling a mild contempt and pity in the loose gaze and the way the cop used the side of his thumb to scratch his belly. Sean had introduced them, telling Jimmy this was Trooper Jefferts, a good man, and telling Jefferts that Jimmy was the father of the woman who, uh, owned the abandoned car. Get him anything he needs and hook him up with Talbot when she arrives, Jimmy figuring Talbot was either a shrink with a badge or some disheveled social worker with a mountain of student loans and a car that smelled of Burger King.
He ignored Jefferts's offer and walked back across the street to Chuck Savage.
"What's going on, Jim?"
Jimmy shook his head, pretty sure he'd puke all over himself and Chuck, too, if he tried to put what he was feeling into words.
"You got a cell phone?"
"Yeah, sure." Chuck scrambled his hands through his windbreaker. He put the phone in Jimmy's open hand, and Jimmy dialed 411, got a recorded voice asking him what city and state, and he hesitated a second before throwing his voice out into the phone line, had an image of his words traveling through miles and miles of copper cable before dropping down a vortex into the soul of some gargantuan computer with red lights for eyes.
"What listing?" the computer asked.
"Chuck E. Cheese's." Jimmy felt a sudden wave of bitter terror at saying such a ridiculous name on the open street near his daughter's empty car. He wanted to put the whole phone between his teeth and bite down, hear it crack.
Once he'd gotten the number and dialed, he had to wait as they paged Annabeth. Whoever had answered the phone hadn't put him on hold but merely placed the receiver down on a countertop, and Jimmy could hear the tinny echoes of his wife's name: "Will an Annabeth Marcus please contact the hostess stand? Annabeth Marcus." Jimmy could hear the peal of bells and eighty or ninety kids running around like maniacs and pulling one another's hair, shrieking, mingled with desperate adult voices trying to climb above the din, and then his wife's name was called again, echoing. Jimmy pictured her looking up at the sound, confused and frazzled, the whole Saint Cecilia's First Communion squad fighting for pizza slices around her.
Then he heard her voice, muffled and curious: "You called my name?"
For a moment, Jimmy wanted to hang up. What would he tell her? What was the point of calling her with no hard facts, only the fears of his own crazed imagination? Wouldn't it be better to leave her and the girls in the peace of ignorance for a little while longer?
But he knew there was already too much wounding going on today as it was, and Annabeth would be wounded if he left her unaware while he pulled out his hair on Sydney Street by Katie's car. She'd remember her bliss with the girls as unearned and, worse, as an assault, a false promise. And she'd hate Jimmy for it.
He heard her muffled voice again: "This one?" and then the scrape of her lifting the phone off the counter. "Hello?"
"Baby," Jimmy managed before he had to clear his throat.
"Jimmy?" A slight edge to her voice. "Where are you?"
"I'm...Look...I'm on Sydney Street."
"What's wrong?"
"They found her car, Annabeth."
"Whose car?"
"Katie's."
"They? The police? They?"
"Yeah. She's...missing. In Pen Park somewhere."
"Oh, Jesus God. No, right? No. No, Jimmy."
Jimmy felt it fill him now-that dread, that awful certainty, the horror of thoughts he'd kept clenched behind a shelf in his brain.
"We don't know anything yet. But her car's been here all night and the cops-"
"Jesus Christ, Jimmy."
"-are searching the park for her. Tons of them. So..."
"Where are you?"
"I'm on Sydney. Look-"
"On the fucking street? Why aren't you in there?"
"They won't let me in."
"They? Who the fuck are they? Is she their daughter?"
"No. Look, I-"
You get in there. Jesus. She could be hurt. Lying in there somewhere, all cold and hurt."
"I know, but they-"
"I'm on my way."
"Okay."
"Get in there, Jimmy. I mean, God, what's wrong with you?"
She hung up.
Jimmy handed the phone back to Chuck, knowing that Annabeth was right. She was so completely right that it killed Jimmy to realize that he would regret his impotence of the last forty-five minutes for the rest of his life, never be able to think about it without cringing, trying to crawl away from it in his head. When had he become this thing-this man who'd say yes, sir, no, sir, right you are, sir, to fucking cops when his firstborn daughter was missing? When had that happened? When had he stood at a counter and handed his dick over in exchange for feeling like, what, an upright citizen?
He turned to Chuck. "You still keep those bolt cutters under the spare in your trunk?"
Chuck got a look on his face like he'd been caught doing something. "Guy's gotta make a living, Jim."
"Where's your car?"
"Up the street, corner of Dawes."
Jimmy started walking and Chuck trotted up beside him. "We're going to cut our way in?"
Jimmy nodded and walked a little faster.