“We’ll find him, June,” Max was saying. “I promise. We’ll find him.”
June felt at once like she was floating above the scene in Elwood’s driveway, listening in on a conversation between Max and a woman that looked like her but was not her. She felt detached from both the moment and everything swirling about it—the fear, the urgency, the unknown. It was all happening so fast.
She was vaguely aware of Melanie at her other side as they moved toward the officers.
“Mrs. Blankenship, I’m Officer Vargas.” The policeman was dark haired and younger than June, with just a hint of silver at his temples. He motioned toward the other officer, a man who was probably closer to Melanie’s age, thin and lanky, with short, curly hair. “This is Officer Truett. A search party has already been out looking for your brother-in-law but what we really need right now is help figuring out where he might have gone, all right?”
June nodded mutely.
“And you are?” Officer Vargas turned to Melanie.
“I’m Melanie. I am June’s neighbor. And a friend.”
“All right. Well, if we could just step inside, please?” Officer Vargas said.
They entered the bungalow, and everything looked just as it had when she’d left it less than twenty-four hours before. The staged dishes in the sink, Elwood’s slippers by the back door, the tweed jacket on a hook—all was right where she’d placed it.
Everyone sat down in the open living room. Outside, one of the patrol cars’ radios squawked and June jumped in her seat.
“It’s going to be okay, June. We’ll find him,” Max, sitting next to her, said again.
It occurred to June, her demeanor was successfully convincing everyone that she was shocked out of her mind that Elwood had walked off into the desert to end his life.
“Mr. Goldman here has informed me of your brother-in-law’s…condition,” Officer Vargas said carefully, nodding toward Max. “We understand he hasn’t left his house in almost a decade but decided to come here for Christmas and then spend some time alone. Working and thinking, is that correct?”
He looked from June to Max and back to June again.
“Yes,” June said. “This is where he’d been headed the night of his car accident. I thought…I thought maybe he’d finally turned a corner. I didn’t know he would do something like this. If I had, I wouldn’t have left him.”
“Of course you wouldn’t have,” Max said, patting her arm.
“And just so I’m understanding you correctly, your brother-in-law asked you to bring him here after not going anywhere, not even out to his own front yard, in nine years?” the police officer asked.
“I…he took a sleeping pill before I opened the garage door. He was asleep when we left Malibu. He wasn’t awake for the traveling part.”
“And when you arrived, what happened next?”
“He struggled a bit to come inside, but it was nothing we could not manage. He wanted to be here, Officer.” The lies were tasting bitter on June’s tongue. She swallowed hard. The cop didn’t seem to notice.
“And Mr. Blankenship gave you no indication at all what he was planning to do after you left last evening?”
“She already said she wouldn’t have left him if she’d known,” Max said defensively.
“It’s all right, Max,” June said, her tone sounding as though cloaked in regret. “They’re just doing their job.” She turned to the officer. “He seemed fine. At peace.”
The officer nodded, wrote something down. “Does your brother-in-law have any favorite hiking trails or vistas or spots here in the desert?”
June told him Elwood loved it all. Back in the day.
“Does Mr. Blankenship own a gun?”
June bit her lip and nodded. “A pistol. He keeps it under his mattress at the Malibu house. In case someone tries to break into the house. He’s never used it.”
“What kind of pistol?”
She had no idea. “It’s black.”
“Do you know if he brought it with him on this trip?”
