Barely a Trace - excerpt from book

The strange man at the door introduced himself as Detective Thomas Kelly of the Metro Nashville Police Department, and asked if he could come in. She moved slowly back from the door as he entered, wondering what on Earth had happened. Her first thought was, “What had Gerry gotten us into?” At that moment, the relative quiet was interrupted by the plaintive wail of the baby. She looked back at the high chair to discover that five-year old Amy and four-year old Scott had taken the remaining crackers off the baby’s tray and were in the process of eating them. Just then, as Mary Beth turned around, Amy reached out and grabbed the cracker from Scott, and said, “Mama, Scott took Sara’s crackers,” causing Scott to scream and throw himself to the floor. The dog swooped in and grabbed the cracker from Amy’s hand, and utter chaos ensued. Detective Kelly said, “Ma’am, is there somewhere we can talk privately?”

This struck her as incredibly funny, and she said, “Detective, do you think there is anywhere in this house you could do anything privately?”

He said, “I’m sorry, ma’am. This is serious.”

After supplying a generous portion of soggy Mac & Cheese and turning on a movie to entertain the kids, she suggested they sit out in the sun porch. “What is going on?” she asked, looking down at a glob of mushy cracker on her black sweatshirt, which she thought was navy when she put it on with the navy sweatpants.

The detective explained, “Mrs. Trace, a ’92 Subaru Wagon registered to your husband was found in a Kroger parking lot this afternoon at around 3 PM. An employee was walking to his car and noticed the car with the windows rolled down. Since it looked like rain, he thought he would be a Good Samaritan and roll the windows up (she was thinking, “Where the hell are they when I leave my windows down?”), when he noticed a substantial amount of blood in the car. He called us, and we sent officers out to investigate. They ran the tag number and found your address. They checked to see if Mr. Trace had been reported missing or the car had been reported stolen.”

He explained that nothing had been reported, and Homicide was notified. Detective Kelly was assigned to the case, and decided to visit the house to see if anyone was home. He asked her when was the last time she saw or talked to her husband, and she related the events of that morning, admitting that she had no idea who the client was that he was supposed to be meeting, and told him that Gerry had not picked up the kids that evening like he was expected to. Detective Kelly was writing all this down in his little pad, and Mary Beth looked down again at the mushy cracker glob which had dried to a crunchy, crusty patch. She was trying to take in what he had told her, but couldn’t imagine what might have happened to Gerry. She’d felt hungry when she first got home, but now her stomach felt like it had contracted into a knot the size of a golf ball. Who would want to hurt Gerry? She had no idea what he’d had been up to lately, and from past experience, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. He left the house every day, and came home every night, but she had never been to this new office, and didn’t even know exactly where it was. She did, however, have a copy of the lease with the address. She was about to ask Detective Kelly if he needed the address when she looked up to see Amy and Scott drawing a bead on the unsuspecting detective with their Super Soakers. “Damn!” she yelled. “I thought I hid those things where they’d never find them.”

After she had chased down the assailants and wrenched their weapons from their sticky little fingers, Mary Beth fetched Detective Kelly a towel, and offered to make coffee. She explained that Gerry had brought the Super Soakers home one summer afternoon, and he and the kids had contentedly drenched each other for the better part of three hours. It was the longest she had ever seen him play with the kids, and they only stopped because he got cranky. Even though Mary Beth didn’t like the whole idea of toy guns, she knew Amy and Scott could always find something in a pinch to use as weapons on each other. Detective Kelly asked if he could use her phone. While he was making his call, she made the coffee and tried to straighten up the kitchen a bit. Gerry’s bowl was sitting in the sink, half filled with water, with a crusty ring of oatmeal at the top, dried to the consistency of quick dry cement. Why couldn’t he ever run water all the way to the top? What good did he think it did to run a little in the bottom? It certainly didn’t make it any easier for her to get the solidified residue out before putting it in the dishwasher. But Gerry had never considered that to be his problem. As she looked at that bowl, the giddy, guilty thought entered her mind for the first time that this might be the last time she ever had to address the oatmeal bowl, or the dirty socks on the floor less than one foot from the hamper, or the suit jacket and tie left lying on the kitchen table, or the foamy toothpaste glob in the bottom of the sink, or the wet towel left lying on the floor, or, that universal bane of womankind, the toilet seat left up in the middle of the dark night, resulting in the unavoidable slow motion descent of the bare bottom into the frigid toilet water. She fought back this thought, realizing how wickedly inappropriate (and probably premature) it was, finished with the coffee, and carried the tray out to the sun porch.

As she entered the room, she heard Detective Kelly speaking in hushed tones, “I know we can get a search warrant. I just don’t think it’s necessary. Let’s wait until the prints and the blood evidence come back. Yeah, so far. I’ll get back with you.” He hung up and started spooning sugar into his coffee cup. “Would you mind if I take a look at Mr. Trace’s closet?” he asked. “Maybe you could help see if anything is missing.”

She thought for a second, and said, “Do you think maybe Gerry was going somewhere?”

Detective Kelly said, “Ma’am, it’s just standard procedure that we check out all possibilities. Right now, we have nothing to go on. The prints haven’t come back from the lab, and it will take a couple of days on the blood samples. We need to get started working right now before the trail gets cold. Did Mr. Trace mention the name of the client he was meeting?”

“No,” she said, “Not that I recall. It’s pretty hectic around here in the morning, so I may have not heard him. It was kind of unusual for him to leave the house that early. He usually doesn’t schedule appointments early in the morning. I have the address of his office if you want to look there. Maybe he wrote it down on his calendar or something.” She got up and pulled the lease agreement out of the desk and gave him the address. She explained that she didn’t have a key, but the landlord’s name and phone number where on the lease, and Detective Kelly called and arranged for someone to meet him there in an hour. She had gotten the kids cleaned up from dinner while he was on the phone, and they spent the remaining time going through Gerry’s personal things trying to determine if he had taken anything to indicate he was planning to be gone. Nothing seemed to be missing; his razor and toothbrush were still in the bathroom, and none of his clothes seemed to be gone.

She was pretty embarrassed for the Detective to see Gerry’s bathroom. She should have asked if he’d had a tetanus booster lately. The ever- present glob of toothpaste was standing guard in the bottom of the sink, surrounded by a week’s worth of whiskers. Several pairs of boxer shorts were scattered on the floor, but one pair had been tossed at the hamper and left hanging over the side as if Gerry just couldn’t commit to putting them all the way inside. Maybe he was considering wearing them again. Who knows? A soggy towel was wadded up on the floor, and the musty smell of mildew was competing with the faint hint of urine for dominance. At least a dozen dirty tissues lay wadded up around the base of the overflowing trashcan, along with used Q-Tips and Band-Aid wrappers. Gerry was always putting Band-Aids on little paper cuts. He was a bigger baby about such things than any of the kids. One time he made such a fuss about a little cut on his wrist, she asked him if he needed a tourniquet, or maybe a transfusion. He talked for days about how it probably needed stitches, and how he had to keep changing the bandages and applying antibacterial ointment to keep it from getting infected. When she finally felt guilty for her lack of sympathy and asked to look at it, she could not keep from laughing because it was such a tiny little cut! One thing was for sure: if Gerry had hurt himself in his car and bled to the degree Detective Kelly described, he would have tried to get to a hospital. Had they checked the emergency rooms?

She looked up to see Amy standing at the bathroom door holding her crotch. “I’ve got to go potty!” she said.

“Let’s go to Mommy’s bathroom,” Mary Beth said.

“Yeah, Daddy’s bathroom stinks!” Amy said dramatically.

Detective Kelly assured her that as soon as they ran the tag, they checked all the emergency rooms in the area for anyone named Gerald R. Trace, and had also checked to see if any John Doe’s had been treated. He had to leave to meet the landlord, but wanted her to write down the names of all Gerry’s business associates she could recall, and he would check back with her after they searched the office. He also asked her to try to recall any arguments or altercations Gerry might have mentioned to her, along with what clothes and jewelry Gerry was wearing when he left that morning. She felt awkward admitting to Detective Kelly that she and Gerry rarely talked about anything but the kids, and even then they didn’t seem to talk more than absolutely necessary. They merely lived in the same house, and only because neither could afford to leave. She promised to make a list for him before she went to bed. Detective Kelly said he would call her first thing in the morning unless he knew anything sooner, and she let him out and locked the door. She walked into the den to survey the damage resulting from three resourceful preschoolers left to their own devices for approximately twenty minutes. They had been uncharacteristically quiet, which definitely meant trouble. She probably wouldn’t discover all the mischief for days. First order of business - baths all around.

After the baths, stories, milk for Sara, and prayers for Scott and Amy, she finally got them all down to sleep, and started loading the dishwasher. She realized that the children had not mentioned their dad all evening, and wondered if they even realized Gerry had not come home. Is that what happens in a family when the father is so self-absorbed? When she was a small child, her dad took care of her bath every night, and got her breakfast every morning (and also, incidentally, went to work every day.) Mary Beth had known that Gerry was self-centered when she married him, but couldn’t imagine that he could remain that way after three kids. Little did she know that instead of growing up and accepting his responsibilities, he would go straight in the crapper. He was literally crushed by the weight of responsibility, and instead of helping with the kids, he seemed to act more and more like a child himself.

She remembered that she needed to make that list for Detective Kelly, and a description of what Gerry was wearing, and sat down at the kitchen counter with a pen and the back of an envelope. She did remember that Gerry had been wearing the one dress shirt this morning that wasn’t too tight. All the others looked like the buttons could pop off at any moment and put someone’s eye out. He wore the olive green tweed sports coat with dark khakis and a red striped tie. Cordovan loafers. And of course he was wearing his wedding ring, probably because he was too fat to get it off, and that stupid dive watch his mother bought for him last Christmas. They could barely afford to put food on the table, and Liz spent eighteen hundred dollars on this hideous, huge, stainless steel dive watch with a computer in it that Gerry just had to have. It was obscene.

Who had Gerry mentioned lately? She wrote some names of local attorneys down who Gerry was supposed to have called to see if they needed any help or had any cases he could take off their hands, although she genuinely doubted he had called any of them. Gerry was about as likely to stumble upon a job as he was to win the lottery, contract the Ebola virus, or strike up a romantic relationship with a lingerie model. These kinds of thoughts came easily to her, but tonight they just weren’t as much fun as usual because there was the distinct chance that something dreadful had happened to Gerry, and he was, after all, the father of her children. She had often thought of how divorce would affect her kids, but she had never envisioned a scenario like this. Amy was a very precocious child who seemed wise beyond her years. She had learned very early how to get what she wanted from her dad because, in actuality, she was smarter than Gerry. She played him like a harp. She also demonstrated her intelligence by not trying that crap on Mary Beth. If Gerry didn’t come home soon, Amy was going to start asking questions that Mary Beth could not answer. If he did come home after a few days, with whatever fictitious story he had devised to cover up the ugly truth, she would let him explain it to Amy. Scott and Sara didn’t really have much to do with Gerry, and seemed to treat him more like just a guy who lived in their house. For this, Mary Beth was grateful.

She wrote a few names of mutual friends on the list, the family doctor, and a former associate of Gerry’s who had left a message for him last week. She also wrote down Gerry’s mother’s name and address. “Hope they have fun talking to that old battle-ax,” she muttered aloud. She thought it might do her some good to write a few pages in her journal, but she was so tired that her heart wasn’t in it. She had also promised she’d get a picture of Gerry for Detective Kelly. She pulled a stack of pictures that she’d just picked up from the photo lab last week out of a kitchen drawer. She flipped through the pictures of Amy, Scott, and Sara, and marveled at how beautiful they were. Perfect works of art, pure and innocent, for the most part, anyway. Then she found the picture of Gerry, sitting in his recliner with his laptop in his lap and the TV remote in his right hand. He was looking at the camera with an annoyed look on his face. It was not a flattering picture, but it was certainly representative. She put it together with the list she had compiled, and left it on the kitchen counter by the coffee maker. It was late, but she was not sleepy. So she picked up the phone to call her best friend, Clarisse. She knew it was kind of late, but Clarisse had probably just gotten home from her night class and wouldn’t be in bed yet. She answered on the second ring. “Clarisse, it’s Mary Beth. Are you busy?”

Clarisse knew her better than any one on Earth, and immediately asked, “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Gerry. He hasn’t come home and the police think something has happened to him.” Mary Beth recounted the events of the day, the questions from Detective Kelly, and the blood found in the car. While she was telling all this to Clarisse, the realization hit her like a cold wind - Gerry was not coming home. “I don’t know what’s happened, but I just feel like it’s got to be bad. He’s been unreliable and irresponsible for as long as I’ve known him, but he’s always come home every night.”

Clarisse snorted, “Of course he always comes home. He’s got it made! Why would he want to leave?” Clarisse had never minced words when it came to Gerry. She thought he was a lying sack of shit, a leech and a loser, and voiced her opinions very freely.

Mary Beth sighed. She had always used Clarisse as her pressure valve. She talked to her almost every day, and Clarisse knew all the gory details of their miserable marriage. There were days when, if she hadn’t had her friend to talk to, she might have just collapsed. She could blow off some steam, make a few caustic and sarcastic remarks, and then get back to her business. Clarisse was the closest thing to a sister that Mary Beth could imagine, and she never held back anything she thought. They had an understanding that each one could say anything to the other, even down to honest critiques of new hairdo’s and clothing. So Mary Beth swallowed hard, and said, “I really don’t know how to feel right now. I’m so worried about him, my hands won’t quit shaking, but if he were to waltz in that door right now, I would probably try to kill him myself. If he’s been out whoring around or drinking or gambling or anything like that, I don’t think I can keep up this act any more. I’m exhausted as it is from putting up with his nonsense everyday. If he’s not hurt or dead, he’s going to wish he were. Things would really be easier if he just didn’t come back.”

Clarisse was used to these protracted diatribes, and always knew when to jump in. “What if they don’t find him?” she asked. “How long does he have to be missing before they declare him dead?”

“Well, I have to admit, that question occurred to me, too, but I didn’t think it would really be appropriate to start asking those questions until the police had done their investigation.” At that moment, a high-pitched wail pierced the night, and all the lights on the baby monitor flashed an angry red. Mary Beth said, “Gotta go. The baby’s crying. Talk to you tomorrow.”

Clarisse said, “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

Sara was finally cutting a tooth, and was having a hard time with it. Mary Beth picked her up from her crib, brought her into her bedroom (Her’s and Gerry’s bedroom, she thought to herself) and gave her a dose of Tylenol. She knew from experience that the Tylenol would take about twenty minutes to kick in, so she also rubbed some Orajel on Sara’s swollen little gums, and gently rocked her. Even though she was tired and worried, she felt herself becoming calmer and more relaxed from holding her precious Sara. She sang her the song she liked about the tiny turtle, and could feel Sara relaxing. Mary Beth would always regret the lack of time she’d had to spend with Sara alone. Since Amy was the first child, she received an abundance of individual attention in her first year. And Scott had still received a good deal of attention when he came along, but it was rare for Mary Beth to get Sara all to herself after she came home from work because there were just so many people tugging her in different directions. So even in the middle of the night she cherished these times. There were many instances lately when Sara had woken up at two or three in the morning, and Mary Beth (always Mary Beth; Gerry never woke up, or at least pretended to still be asleep) whisked her out of the crib - you had to be quick to keep the noise from waking Scott in the same room - and took her out to the sun porch to rock and cuddle her. Often after calming down, Sara would be wide-awake, and they would spend this time playing together, patty-caking and peek-a-booing, waving bye-bye and blowing kisses. And Mary Beth never resented the sleep she missed. She had rather be up playing with Sara than lying awake worrying about the gas bill. Sara had now fallen back to sleep, and looked like a beautiful china doll. Delicate and absolutely perfect. Mary Beth thought of all that Gerry had missed in his children’s lives, how he had never been able to appreciate these subtle, priceless moments, and she was overcome with a crushing, consuming sadness. Tears sprang to her eyes; hot, salty tears stinging her face as they rolled down her cheeks. She had always hoped someday he would wake up and clearly see what was really important in life, and that this realization would profoundly change him. Now she worried that he would never have that chance, as unlikely as it was, and the finality of that thought seemed to thaw the frozen place she had held in her heart for so long. She did not love him anymore, but for all her harsh criticism of him, she never wished him any harm.

She tried to blink back the tears, but could not stop the flow, and finally gave in and allowed herself to cry for the first time in years. She cried out of fear, sadness, and worst of all, from guilt. She knew that the only way she could ever take control of her life and make a good life for her children was if Gerry was gone. And she felt that maybe this was the answer to the problem that had no answer. She had never wished it, never said it, but she still felt that someday she would be punished for her evil thoughts. Maybe sooner than she thought. Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of little feet on the bedroom floor. She looked up to see Amy and Scott pulling their blankets and pillows behind them, each clutching their largest stuffed bears for reinforcement.

“Mama, we heard a monster sound. Can we sleep in your bed?” Amy had already climbed up on the bed and was helping pull Scott up.

Mary Beth sighed and said “Sure.” The queen size bed would hold them all, so they all piled in, and fell asleep in a jumble of legs, arms, bears, blankets and pillows.