Dusty had barely managed to hang up on Anna before his game face came apart completely. He went to lean against the nearest cement piling, and sobbed as he had done only once ever before, thirteen years ago, after hearing of his sister’s overdose. Every wound he’d buried for decades seemed to vomit out of him—so explosively that just minutes later he felt emptier than he had ever been, sitting on the garage floor by now, his back against the column, staring blankly at Colleen’s banged-up rental. This new calm was not the frozen, breathless void that always armored him when things got suddenly too real. That place was always full of adrenaline fiercely harnessed and brutally cinched down, dire focus, laser-aimed and poised to act with cold precision. This…was some much, much emptier lethargy. 

Before long, however, flotsam began washing up onto the storm-scoured shore inside him; curious thoughts, like dead sea creatures dragged across the sand on sluggish arcs of foam to be abandoned, limp and broken, at his feet.

He’d thought the flood had been his test. He hadn’t really seen that until now. But he had thought it, and had nearly died—no, actually died, in some sense—to pass that test. …Which, in turn, had seemed finally to answer some crucial question buried too deeply within him to retrieve with words. Some question about worthiness. His worthiness.

He’d thought…until now, that the question was settled. …For good.

Until now.

But now he saw that hadn’t been the test at all. …That night had just been the warm-up. …The conditioning stretch. This… This, now, was the test. And just dying for Colleen again would solve…even less than it would have last time. If he could have laughed, he might have, at the adolescent melodrama of it: I would die for you!

What would dying have accomplished—for her? That would just have been another way of running off… The way his sister had. …The way his father always had. The way Dusty himself had—time and again—until Anna came, and Thom, and, last and best of all, Colleen, to hold him to some higher standard. …Some standard they had all so clearly believed him capable of satisfying.

What washed up next on that bleak, gray beach within him was memory of the morning, just a couple weeks ago—as impossible as that seemed now—when he and Colleen had clung to each other in Thom and Anna’s kitchen, crying. Not like he’d cried just now. Their cry that morning had been shared, and healing. …A call, from her, to that same higher standard. A promise, from him, that he could—and would—meet it.

But keeping that promise wouldn’t be anywhere near as simple as just drowning for her after all. …He could see that now. What he couldn’t see was what the promise to be worthy of her meant now that Dusty himself was not the problem to be fixed? What could he give her now, when she wasn’t even…here. What would she want of him that he could still do?

What if he failed the real test—after all?

What you could have done for her, growled some contemptuous inner voice, was just not set all this shit in motion to start with. …The voice sounded like his own. It had to be his own; who else was here? Your fuck-up with Matt; that’s what really came for her today, sneered the voice. But it’s a little late to fix that now, ain’t it—boy?

‘Boy’ …His father’s voice. Who else’s? Recognition flared up tangled in a wave of rage that almost brought Dusty back onto his feet. But the rage died out again before his legs could even find themselves. It was pointless—impotent. His father was long gone now; murdered the same way he had murdered his own daughter—the way he’d murdered his whole family, really. Slowly. Selfishly. Stupidly. Almost-unintentional cowardice. And there was Dusty’s answer.

The first thing he owed Colleen now was…just to set all that back down. He could see her clearly, in his mind’s eye, gazing at him with that sharp-edged, ‘show me what you got’ half-smile. And he would show her—this time—even though she wasn’t here to see it. Because she wasn’t here to see it.

He meant to pass this test too. Somehow. Without so much as a nod to any of the shit his father had buried everywhere in his son’s yard. That would matter to Colleen. That would let her know he could really be depended on. And she would know—here or not—once he got her back.

He heard tires crunching across the parking lot outside before he saw the flash of colored lights reflected just inside the garage entrance. He stood up, but stayed where he was, sure they knew where he’d been told to wait. Never walk toward a cop. One of a hundred such lessons he’d learned way too well and early to forget; stored forever, in his very body. Wait.

A moment later, they came walking down the ramp, in dark, long-sleeved uniforms; a thick-bodied middle-aged Latino officer in the lead, followed by a trim, regulation-cut Scandinavian sort who had to have been younger than Dusty. The older officer raised an arm in greeting. “Mr. Clarke?”

He nodded. That’s who he was now, Dustin Clarke, grad student planning a career in social work, and relieved at the arrival of policemen. Not Dusty Bennett, vagabond speed freak living on the Avenue. He wondered how long it would take them to unearth his arrest record—if they hadn’t already. He’d given the 911 operator all the information they’d need. Previously dormant considerations began to stir at the back of Dusty’s mind.  

“You reported that your fiancée has gone missing; is that right?” the older officer asked as they got nearer.

“That’s her car.” Dusty gestured at the rental. “There’s a very definite ransom note scribbled on the wall above her bed upstairs.”

Both officers eyed the damaged vehicle, the younger one already passing Dusty on his way to take a closer look.

“How long ago would you say this occurred?” asked the older officer as his young partner bent down to look inside the car.

“I got here…ten, maybe fifteen minutes ago,” said Dusty. “I don’t think she could have gotten here more than ten minutes before I did.”

“You think this because…?”

“We were both coming from a lecture at an office complex, maybe twenty minutes away. We’re grad students at the university. That’s the last time…I…” Dusty’s throat closed around the words, and his eyes began to swim again. As he paused to re-gather his composure, the younger officer took a flashlight from his belt, clicked it on, and got down on his hands and knees to look beneath the car. “I had to stop for gas on my way here,” Dusty resumed answering, “but I couldn’t have been more than a few minutes behind her.”

From outside the garage entrance, Dusty heard more cars arriving.

The older officer glanced back at the sound as well. “Have you seen anyone since you arrived, Mr. Clarke? Someone suspicious, or who might have witnessed something?”

“No. The place seems completely deserted. …I’m still not sure why.”

“Sir, there appears to be a phone down here under the car,” said the younger officer. He looked up at them. “By the driver’s door. Looks pretty badly crushed, though.”

A vise tightened around Dusty’s lungs. He bit both lips to hold his face together, not wanting to treat these guys to another emotional display. Straight to voicemail. One question answered. …How badly had they hurt her?

The young officer made no effort to retrieve the phone, but got up and wandered farther off into the garage, training his light here and there, mostly at the ground.

The lead officer’s expression hadn’t changed, but his body language softened. “We’re here to help, Mr. Clarke. We’ll do everything we can to find her quickly.”

“I know,” Dusty said, thickly. “Thank you.”

“Do you remember which gas station it was?”

Dusty struggled to pull his thoughts back from Colleen. “It was a PennyMart on Plath Avenue. …I don’t know the cross street.”

“Do you have a receipt?”

“Yes.” Dusty pulled it from his pocket and handed it to the officer.

“May I keep this?”

“Sure.”

Two more officers came down the ramp, a redheaded woman followed by a body builder type whose head was shaved. They glanced around at the garage as they came.

“Moreno,” the redhead said, greeting the Latino patrolman.

Moreno nodded to her, then to her partner. “Keller. Blanchard.”

“Lee and Basima are up top,” said the redhead, Keller.

“Good,” said Moreno. “If one of you will start taping up the car? Perhaps the other two can search the complex; find out if anyone’s around who might have seen something?”

The bodybuilder nodded, and headed briskly back up the ramp. Keller remained beside Moreno.

“Anything?” Moreno called to his partner.

“Nothing yet, sir,” the younger man called back.

“Okay, Keller and I are going up to look at the apartment.”

“Yes, sir,” the other man replied.

Moreno turned to Dusty. “Want to take us there?”

Dusty nodded, and led the officers to the stairwell, as the younger officer continued searching the garage.

As they climbed the stairs, Moreno asked, “She was living here—in a place deserted like this?”

“No. This was our first time back since the flood. …It’s a complicated story, but we’ve both been staying with my parents up on Shannon Ridge since a night or two before that.”

“Neither of you has been back here in all that time?” he asked.

“The neighborhood’s been surrounded by closed areas until recently, and I was in the hospital for quite a while. Colleen’s spent most of her time—”

“Sorry to interrupt,” said Moreno. “The hospital, why?”

Dusty drew a breath, and sighed. “We got caught down in the Saddle when it flooded. Or, she did anyway. She was trapped up on her car, and…I tried to save her.” Dusty shrugged apologetically. “Mostly just got myself drowned.”

Moreno’s brows raised in apparent surprise for the first time since his arrival, as he and Keller exchanged glances. “I think I may have heard about you,” he told Dusty, nodding, ambiguously.

That I’m a hero or an idiot? Dusty wondered.

He clearly wasn’t saying. “So, you two came here today for what reason?” he asked as they left the stairwell, and started down the second floor’s open walkway.

“We heard the place was accessible again, and decided we should come down and see about moving her back in.”

“You don’t live here together, then,” said Moreno.

Dusty shook his head, imagining what Colleen would have said about that. “My apartment’s across town, closer to the campus.”

“Not in the flood zone down there, I hope?”

Dusty shook his head. “Higher ground, thankfully. It was a real convenient spot ’til they moved our classes to all these other locations while they clean up the campus. But I haven’t really been there either since before all the trouble. …Not sure what to do now.”

“About what?”

“About moving back into my apartment. I’m…it doesn’t feel safe.”

The officers stopped walking , and turned to face him. “Why not?” asked Moreno.

“What if they come back—for the rest of us?” asked Dusty.

Both officers seemed keenly interested now. “Do you have some reason to expect they will?” asked Moreno.

Before Dusty could formulate an answer, Keller added, “Do you have some idea who might have done this?”

Dusty sighed again. “I have no idea who they are, but…I’m pretty sure I know why they took her. The ransom note makes that pretty clear.” He gestured toward her apartment door, not fifteen feet away, but neither officer moved or looked away from him.

“So, why do you think this happened?” Moreno asked.

Dusty looked up at the walkway ceiling, wondering where even to begin. “A few days before the flooding, I was at a market down by campus, and some guy gave me a letter they were trying to deliver to…an old acquaintance. Someone I haven’t seen for seven years. I told the guy I had no idea where he was, and couldn’t help him, but he said a lot of very weird shit, and left the letter anyway. On the floor.”

“This man was someone known to you?” Moreno asked.

Dusty shook his head. “Never seen him in my life.”

“And the letter; did you open it?”

“Yes, completely bat shit stuff. Made no sense at all. But, at that very moment, someone  left an identical letter on Anna’s desk on campus.”

“Anna?” asked Keller.

“Sorry, my mother.”

“You call her Anna?” asked Moreno.

“I’m adopted. …Late in life.” He gestured at the apartment door again. “This is just going to get more and more complicated. Maybe we should—”

“You called the police?” Moreno asked, his full attention clearly trained on Dusty now.

“We talked about it,” Dusty said, “but there was nothing specifically threatening or illegal in the letters; just crazy stuff. No one had actually—”

“Crazy how, please?” Moreno asked.

Dusty sighed again. “Something about a lady—they didn’t say who—that was being taken to trial somewhere, but they didn’t say why or where either; and they needed Matt to contact them to save her and everyone, from I have no idea what, because the letter didn’t say. It was a very vague letter.”

“Everyone who?” asked Keller.

“What?”

“You said they needed to find this person to save ‘her and everyone.’ Who is everyone?”

“You know, they didn’t say.” Dusty struggled to keep the frustration from his voice. “But the weird guy in the store said something about this mattering to everyone in the city.”

The officers exchanged another glance.

“And you still didn’t call the police?” Moreno asked.

“Look, I wanted to!” said Dusty. “But Anna said you guys wouldn’t care—and so did Thom, and they were right, weren’t they? There wasn’t one actual, specific threat in any of it; not to us, or the city, or anyone else except maybe Matt, but even his emails said—”

“I’m sorry to keep interrupting,” Moreno said, politely, “but who are Matt and…Thom, was it?”

“Thom is my adoptive father, and Matt is the acquaintance these other people were trying to find.”

“Whom you haven’t seen in seven years,” said Moreno.

“Yes.”

“But you just mentioned emails from Matt?” asked Keller.

Dusty just managed not to roll his eyes. “Yes. Later that day, both Anna and I got emails from Matt too.”

“After seven years,” Moreno said. “And where is this Matt now?”

“That’s what everyone seems to want to know,” said Dusty. “Including us. But no one does, and the note above Colleen’s bed says—”

“Wait,” Moreno cut in again, shaking his head, and looking back at Keller. “You’re right, I think, Mr. Clarke. We’re getting too far ahead of things here. My fault. But I think it’s very important that you talk with a police detective—about all of this—as soon as possible.” Keller nodded in agreement. “Would you be willing to come down to the station with us to do so now?”

“I’ll talk to anyone who can do something, before Colleen…” Dusty shook his head to drive the thoughts away. “I’ve already called my parents. They’re headed here now, and I’m sure they’ll be happy to talk with someone too. Just…what can we do?”

Moreno nodded. “May we look at her apartment now, please?”

Dusty turned and led them the remaining distance, pulling out his keys as they arrived. “It was locked when I got here,” he said, inserting them and turning the handle. “911 said nothing should be disturbed, so I locked it again when I went down to the garage.” He pushed the door open and waved the officers in ahead of him, but Moreno stared through the doorway in obvious surprise, raising a hand to prevent anyone from entering. “Did you tell the 911 operator that it had been ransacked?”

“Oh. No, it hasn’t been. I don’t think so, anyway. This is just how we left it.” Both officers turned to give him puzzled looks. “Before the flooding. They were about to shut all our routes out of here. That’s how she ended up…in the water. We were throwing everything she thought she’d need in bags, and racing back and forth to the cars. Things blew around every time we opened the door.” He dropped his head in resignation. “This is just how our lives have been since all of this shit started.”

“Perhaps, if you wouldn’t mind, Mr. Clarke, we should go in first—alone?” Moreno asked. “To avoid disturbing things before forensics gets here.”

“Be my guest,” said Dusty, leaning back against the wall beside the doorway. He just wanted to get this part done, so they could get down to the station and start doing something to find Colleen.

The officers went inside, carefully stepping over and around the drifts of refuse piled everywhere. Colleen would have been completely mortified, Dusty imagined. Back before she’d learned what real trouble was, at least. They soon vanished farther into the shadowy interior, making not so much as a sound for several minutes. Dusty saw a fourth police car pull into the parking lot below, and went to look down over the railing as it too headed for the garage entrance.

“Excuse me, Mr. Clarke,” said Keller, suddenly in the doorway behind him once again. “You said there was a note above the bed.”

“Yes,” said Dusty, wondering what the point was now.

“Where above the bed?” she asked.

“What?” Dusty threw his hands out in a helpless gesture. “It’s, like, six feet wide. In big black letters. …Were you in the bedroom?”

She gave him a mildly impatient look. “Come in, please. Show me?”

Dusty shrugged and went inside, stepping as carefully around the piles of stuff this time, as he’d seen them do.

Moreno was waiting for them just outside of Colleen’s bedroom. Sir, Forensics is here, rasped the radio on his belt. He removed it and raised it to reply. “I’ll be right there.” 

Dusty passed him to reach the bedroom door, and stepped through it, his arm rising to point out the obvious, then froze midstride—staring at an empty wall. “What the fuck?” He turned back to gape at them, both standing in the doorway behind him now. “It was right there when I left! It was huge!” He turned to stare back at the wall again. “Right there—in giant letters! We want someone you know how to find. Care to trade!” An icy frisson ran the length of him, up his legs to the top of his head. “They’ve been back here—since I left!” He turned to stare at Moreno and Keller. “They’re still here somewhere! What if she is too?”

“Not anywhere in here, they aren’t,” Moreno said, gazing at Dusty skeptically, rather than racing into action as Dusty had expected. “We’ve looked in every nook and cranny, Mr. Clarke. Pretty carefully.” He and Keller gazed at Dusty, as if waiting for some answer. But Dusty had no idea what to say.

“The door was locked just now, when we came in?” asked Keller.

“Yes…”

“So, someone unlocked it during…the last, what, fifteen minutes, then?” asked Moreno. “Came in here, erased this giant message so carefully that we can find not even residue of anything at all there now, and left again, locking the door after them.”

“I…was in the garage,” Dusty said, dazed. “We all were…for quite a while. No one would have seen…” He shook his head. “Why would I make such a stupid thing up?”

“I don’t know,” said Moreno. “The more I learn here, the less sense any of it makes to me. I think maybe we should get you down to speak with a detective…if you’re still willing?”

“Of course I’m willing,” Dusty said. “You really think I’m lying about this?”

“I’ve said nothing of the kind, Mr. Clarke. And, if I may say so, I would be a fool to hazard any opinions at this point, even privately. There appear to be more dangling ends here than I’d expect to find in the world’s largest pot of spaghetti. The best thing we can do for your fiancée now, I think, is get you down to a detective, pronto.”

Dusty nodded, half numb with disbelief. “Can I call Thom and Anna first, to let them know where I’ve gone?”

Both officers nodded. “You are not being arrested, Mr. Clarke,” said Moreno. “Allow me to make that very clear. You have agreed to come down voluntarily for questioning. That is all. I will be reading you your rights first, purely a formality which I am required by law to do before transporting you to the station. But you are a free man now, and, as far as I know, will be just as free to leave the station and do as you like once you are done there, okay?”

“I understand. Thank you,” Dusty said, only now beginning to realize how badly this could go—for him. He reached into his pocket for the phone, pulled it out and thumbed it on—or tried to. But after several attempts, he could not get it to respond. “My phone’s not working,” he said, to himself as much as anybody else.

“Is it charged?” asked Keller.

“I called 911 from this phone less than half an hour ago,” he said. “It had most of a full charge then.”

Moreno navigated the piles of clothing still strewn about the floor to come stand at Dusty’s side. “Try again, please?” he said, gazing down at the phone in Dusty’s hand.

Dusty pushed the button several more times while the officer watched. It responded not at all.

Moreno looked gravely up at Dusty, then at Keller. “I think we should waste no further time. If you know their numbers, I can arrange to have them called and given directions to the station, if you wish.”

“Yes, please,” Dusty said, feeling all the earlier resolve knocked out of him.

“We should go then. You may leave the door unlocked. The investigative team will be up momentarily. We can read your rights down at the car.”

Not my first rodeo, Dusty thought bleakly. But go right ahead—if it makes you feel better.