Already Gone by John Rector Read Free Book Online Page A

my throat when I see the dark spots on the carpet, all bad thoughts are still a long way off.
    It’s not until I bend down and touch one of the spots with my fingertip, pulling it back wet and red, that those far away thoughts come screaming forward, tearing into my mind and closing off the entire world.

– 10 –
     
    Detective Nolan holds up one hand and says, “Mr. Reese, you have to calm down.”
    We’re standing in my bedroom and I’m pointing at the blood on the carpet, and all I can think is that he just doesn’t get it, and that if I yell louder then maybe it’ll click and he’ll understand. Maybe he’ll see.
    But I don’t yell.
    I tell him again, calmly, “My wife has been kidnapped.”
    He pauses before he speaks. I know the technique. Cops use it to slow the conversation and release tension. The fact that I know what he’s doing makes it even harder to stay calm. I turn away and start pacing the room.
    “Did you check the doors and windows in the house?”
    “For what?”
    “If a lock is broken or if a screen door has been cut, then we’ll have an indication that someone might’ve broken into your home. If that’s the case, then we can explore the possibility that your wife was kidnapped.”
    “The possibility?”
    Nolan’s shoulders sag. “What do you want me to say?”
    I feel the anger coming on strong, and I bite it back. “I don’t want you to say anything to me. I want you to find her.”
    “We don’t know she was kidnapped,” he says. “All we have are a few spots of blood that could’ve come from anywhere or anyone.”
    “I told you, the two guys who attacked me, I saw them this afternoon. They were sitting outside my office, just down the street.”
    “You also told me your wife was upset.” He looks at me. “This wouldn’t be the first time she left because she was upset.”
    I open my mouth to argue, but I can’t.
    He’s right.
    “Give her some time,” Nolan says. “I’m guessing she’ll come home as soon as she calms down.”
    “And if she doesn’t?”
    “Then call us,” he says. “But we can’t open a missing-persons report for twenty-four hours. And without solid evidence, there’s nothing we can do right now.”
    “What about the blood? Or her clothes?” I open the closet doors. “They’re all here, same with her suitcase. If she’d left on her own, she would’ve packed a bag. She didn’t take anything.”
    “Just her car.”
    I look away and don’t speak.
    “You’d be surprised how often people walk out of their lives with just the clothes on their backs,” Nolan says. “A lot of times, people don’t even know they’re leaving until they’re already gone. They grab their keys on the way to the store or maybe to work, and the next thing they know they’re three hundred miles away. Something inside them just snaps.”
    “Not Diane.”
    “Maybe not,” Nolan says. “But people do strange things when they’re under stress.”
    He waits for me to say something else. When I don’t, he motions in the air with his finger and says, “I’ll take a look outside and see what I can see, but my advice to you is to stay by the phone and wait for her to call.”
    I walk Nolan to the front door, and he circles the house, checking the doors and windows. When he’s finished, he cuts through my yard to his car.
    I watch him pull away and wonder why I bothered.

     
    After my third drink, I set the empty glass on the counter and stare out the window at the fading light and the evening shadows sliding long across the yard.
    Diane hasn’t called.
    I reach for the Johnnie Walker bottle and refill my glass. I tell myself it’ll be my last, then I walk out of the kitchen and into the living room. None of the lights are on, and for a while, all I can do is stand in the dark and listen to the silence of the house.
    When it gets to be too much, I head down the hall to the bedroom and start searching through Diane’s things. I have no idea what I’m