“I will,” Denny said. “I really, really will.” He meant it, too.
Denny was dressed in a flannel shirt over a thermal waffle one, threadbare Levi’s, boots, and a beige Carhartt coat. The kidswould be at school for four more hours, time enough to get down to the station, talk through whatever Sticks needed so desperately to discuss, and get back.
The police station was part of a complex that included the library and town hall—all municipal needs wrapped into one. You could buy your trash stickers and file a noise complaint at the same time. Plainly convenient in a place where nothing ever really happened.
It was ten in the morning, and Denny was on deadline for a table and chairs for a family down the road in Boxford: $20,000 for a custom set, and he had to get it done by next week. It would cover a few months’ mortgage and keep them on steady ground, which was all these projects ever did—pave the way for more projects.
The snow from the week before had evaporated, large piles of it shoveled to the sides of the lot, now turned gray with car exhaust and dirt. Denny parked his Jeep—Anna’s Volkswagen had been taken into police custody, though he didn’t see it here in the lot—and made his way to the door, when he saw Sticks right before him, heading in, wearing a blue bomber jacket and holding a cup of coffee.
Denny wasn’t sure if Sticks had seen him, but the officer didn’t miss a beat.
“Ah, there he is,” Sticks said, turning and smiling out of the side of his mouth, with what almost looked like a snarl. “The man of the hour.”
“A pleasure, as always,” Denny said, extending a hand, but Sticks didn’t take it, holding up his coffee as excuse.
“Shall we?” the officer said, motioning to the door of the station with his elbow.
Denny nodded.
Inside, the station was painted greige, the same color, Denny noted, as his unpleasant and still-unrenovated bathroom, a project that would now remain unfinished.
“Deb, you can hold my calls for the meantime,” Sticks said to a woman behind a thick double-paned sheet of plastic or glass who stood guard at the front desk. She wore her hair in an unflattering ’80s style: bangs in two layers, top section a roll formed with what must have been a curling iron, likely held fast with Aqua Net. Her eye shadow was bright blue, but she couldn’t have been more than thirty-five. A relic, Denny thought. A whiff of the past right here in the present. She reminded him, in an oddly pleasant way, of his grandmother, a woman with a fashion sense that never accurately represented the time, but who tried, at least, who went to the hairdresser every week, and who wore makeup every day until her last, blue eyeshadow and all.
Denny followed Sticks through a door that led into the back of the station. It was a maze: A long hallway led to a series of smaller rooms that looked like the nondescript, blocky spaces that had so fascinated his wife on theDatelineepisodes she so religiously watched.
“Right in here,” Sticks said, stepping back and allowing Denny to take the lead. The room was small, with no windows, two chairs, and a metal desk between them.
Denny sat down in the nearest chair. The room was cold. The chairs were cold. The room was very bright. He looked up in the corner: camera, green dot. Anna would be proud.Datelinehad paid off.
“Water?” Sticks asked.
“I’m good,” Denny said.
Sticks sat in the opposite chair, taking a second to position himself. “Thanks for, uh, finally coming in,” he said, drawing out the wordfinally. He smiled that sort of shit-eating smile again. Denny had come to the conclusion that he did not like the officer, though maybe this wasn’t the best moment to have an epiphany of this nature.
“Sorry about the wait,” Denny said.
“The reason we wanted to have you in here was that what we originally thought about Mrs. Plummer, well, turns out there are some additional facts,” Sticks said.
“Facts?”
“We have a bit of a situation,” the officer said. He placed a beefy hand on the metal desk. He still had his coffee, cardboard cup, large, Dunkin’ Donuts, smelling like artificial vanilla, gripped in the other. Hard to take a man like that seriously, Denny, who drank only espresso—black, naturally—thought. Anna had sworn by Dunkin’ Donuts, as many New Englanders did, but he had never himself caved.
Denny chewed the inside of his lip, a habit he took up while nervous. “A situation?”
“The exposure,” Sticks said. “It’s a little more complicated than we originally thought.”
“Wait a second,” Denny said. Plausible, this idea that they were both on the same team, even though, sitting here, they both knew that they were combatants, not friends. “What are you saying here?”
Sticks looked at Denny, tapped an index finger on the table. “I’ll get to the point. This wasn’t an accident.”
“I’m sorry, Officer, I think I’m going to be sick.” Denny heaved for a moment, and the officer slid a black plastic trash can toward him, but there was nothing in his stomach to release, hadn’t been for days. His sweat ran cold. Suddenly, it dawned on him: He was here for a murder investigation. What had happened?
What was it that Anna was always saying, on Friday nights, on that stupid velvet couch? The husband was always the first suspect. Denny Plummer, called into the police station in Hamilton—now it was clear as day—not to discuss an engagement ring gone missing, or some detail lost in the ephemera of his wife’s cut-short life. He was, he now realized, a rat trapped in a maze. He was a suspect. Something had happened that had been unintentional.His wife had not simply vanished. She hadbeenvanished. There had been causality. Intent. He was, he now realized, angry. Not at his wife, but at the so-called situation. The sick feeling that had emerged the last time he saw Sticks had come back. He could feel that same shaky feeling, the feeling of being on the verge of fainting. He could go for that water now, but no one was offering.
“What happened?” he said. He had the sense that his own voice was betraying him. Anna, had she been here, surely would have coached him on how to tamp down his anger and his depthless sadness, on how to appear normal and functional in the face of such an unimaginable accusation. True, the officer had not yet said the words, but Denny could feel them lurking, just another series of ghosts.
“Why don’t we start with me asking the questions,” Sticks said, interrupting Denny’s thoughts. “Like, where were you that Wednesday, when your wife went missing?”
