“Went on break without telling me?” Zadie followed the two women into Gray’s office.
Gray dropped her purse onto the credenza. “About to start my first missing person case.”
“Congrats, honey,” Zadie said. “How you feelin’?”
“Excited. Nervous. Nauseous.”
“Like a virgin at a prison rodeo?” Jennifer asked.
“Never been to a rodeo,” Gray said. “So … maybe?”
“You’ll do fine.” Zadie pointed at the pile of books on the corner of Gray’s desk. “Looks like you’ve been studying.”
For two years, Gray had worked as a contractor for Rader Consulting, writing reports, transcribing recordings, and much, much more! Now, though, she wanted to be a private investigator. She’d read handbooks, attended community college courses, shadowed Nick for two weeks, and watched YouTube videos featuring investigators on the job. She’d even immersed herself in mysteries written by Hammett, Chandler, and Mosley. Nick promoted her, placing her on his license until she’d be eligible to apply for her own in three years. And then he’d given her a case: finding Cheeto, a stolen Chihuahua.
“Sounds simple,” Gray said. “Find the guy’s girlfriend. I shouldn’t fuck it up too much.”
“You obviously haven’t met you,” Jennifer snarked.
Gray plucked a sheet of tissue from the box on her desk. “I have, and I’m actually the best report writer here.” She cleaned her tortoiseshell glasses but kept her gaze on Jennifer.
Jennifer offered a saccharine smile. “Totally different skill set. But you’ll see that.”
Zadie clicked her nails against the Dr Pepper bottle. “I’ll always remember my first missing person case.… He woke up on Saturday, stayed home while the wife and kids drove to synagogue. He fed the dog, opened the front door. He took his kayak out in the marina, where he ‘drowned.’ But really, he swam down shore for three miles, where he’d hid dry clothes and a new life and a new name behind a fucking drug dealer’s boat.”
Gray and Jennifer eyed each other.
Zadie had just described how her husband Saul had disappeared thirty years ago.
“Well, women disappear all the time,” Jennifer said. “Some intentionally.”
Because she’d grown tired of her man, had grown tired of his hands, of that job, of those freaking dishes that kept filling the sink, dishes that no one touched even as their stink wafted through the house. If she wasn’t taking the kids with her, she kissed them farewell, took out the trash one last time, and just … left.
Natalie Dixon, a woman Gray knew once upon a time, had disappeared like that.
Unlike the men who disappeared, women left their egos behind along with their keys, photo identification, and unpaid electric bills. These women may have wondered about their past lives—What are they doing back home? How are they living without me? Did somebody finally wash those damned dishes?—but they rarely did more than wonder. They never visited old haunts. They never searched their names on Google or checked their Facebook pages. Unlike most men who vanished, women rarely got caught. They just wanted a new beginning.
Natalie Dixon had also longed for a new life and hadn’t wanted to be found. Guilt had gnawed at her spirit, Gray recalled, and that prickly sensation of millions of eyes had pecked at poor Natalie Dixon, and she always worried that the wrong pair would pick her from the crowd.
“Two, three days, tops,” Gray said. “That’s Nick’s estimation.”
“I would say use sex appeal to help you,” Jennifer said, eyes on her coral-painted fingernails, “but that won’t work. Fortunately, you have a great personality. You can talk about books and … and … movies and … politics. Oh, and comic books. Improvise. Make shit up.”
Gray cocked an eyebrow. “I’m good at making shit up.”
“She’s better than you at that, Jen,” Zadie said.
“Doubt it,” Jennifer sang, with a twisted grin. “I’m a supreme liar—Oh!” She pointed at Gray. “Think I’m a bitch now? Skip Sam Jose’s tonight and see how evil I’ll be tomorrow morning. I can’t do Clarissa alone.”
Zadie rolled her eyes. “That girl does nothing but yak, yak, yak.”
“I’ll let you know about tonight,” Gray said.
Jennifer slapped Gray’s desktop. “Nuh-uh. I’ve dated enough black men to know that ‘I’ll let you know’ means ‘I’m not showing up.’”
Gray laughed.
“You’ll see your ex-marine,” Jennifer sang.
“Former marine,” Gray corrected.
Hank Wexler was the new owner of Sam Jose’s. Two weeks ago, the square-jawed jarhead with blue eyes and thick salt-and-pepper hair had claimed that the blue-inked Hebrew letters tattooed on his left forearm were Gray’s name. Back then, he didn’t even know her name, not that him not knowing had kept Gray from licking tequila salt off his skin. An hour later, she and Hank had made out in his office—it was like they’d known each other in a former life, so making out so soon was okay. He had tasted like whiskey sours and Juicy Fruit gum. That had been a good night.
“No flaking,” Jennifer said now, as she glided out of Gray’s office.
“Scout’s honor,” Gray shouted. “Have a margarita waiting for me.”
3
Dominick Rader, founder and CEO of Rader Consulting, was not at his desk.
Gray, though, had enough information to start working.
It was two o’clock, and traffic pockets filled with a trillion cars mixed with bursts of highway freedom, and sometimes, sometimes, the speedometer on Gray’s silver Camry crept toward forty miles per hour. Zooming. She rolled down the sedan’s windows, then turned up Angie Stone on the stereo, lamenting not being able to eat or sleep anymore cuz of love.
Right then, Gray felt “L.A. fly,” a near-native alone in her car beneath that weird-colored, murder sky with those white plumes of smoke to the north, to the east, and to the west of her. One woman in the second-biggest city in America, disappearing in a heartbeat from block to block. No one and everyone knew her in Los Angeles. Some called that a weakness, like color blindness or fallen arches. For Gray, that six degrees of anonymity was Marilyn Monroe’s mole or Barbra Streisand’s nose.
She kept north until she pulled into the garage for UCLA Medical Plaza, a city unto itself. Anchored by the university, the plaza spanned nearly seven hundred thousand square feet and was filled with outpatient centers, hospitals, and research facilities.
Cardiologist Ian O’Donnell worked in UCLA’s Urgent Care department, and Gray met the eyes of patients waiting to see someone about their lungs, their hearts, their mucus. Battered chairs hosted bloody men with bruised knuckles. Diabetics waited for insulin shots and children clutching blankets barked coughs that sounded like gravel trucks. The waiting room stank of phlegm and unwashed bodies, but the carpets were clean and the lights were bright.
At least.
Gray pushed her eyeglasses to the top of her head. She crossed and uncrossed her legs as though she needed to pee. She ignored the tingle and yanking near her belly button—her body knew she needed to be here as a patient—as she scanned the waiting room in search of threats.