The Face of the Earth Read online

  “It’s ridiculous!” He made a fist and wished he could punch something. “They’ll bend over backward to cover for some idiot who’s slinking around in hotels having affairs, but they won’t start searching for a woman whose family is worried sick about her until they’re sure she wants to be found?”

  Shelley gave him a sympathetic look but didn’t respond to his comment. Instead, she picked up the notepad he’d been writing on. “Do you want me to call this number?”

  “Not yet.” He looked at the clock for the thousandth time. It was almost five a.m. Twelve hours now since Jill should have returned home. Nine at the very least, allowing for traffic and stops she might have made. “I think it’s time to call the kids. And I suppose I need to call Jill’s folks.”

  Shelley nodded.

  He picked up the phone but immediately put it down again. “Maybe I’ll wait at least until six. Let them get a little more sleep. It’s still the middle of the night in their time zone.” Jill’s parents lived in a retirement community near Colorado Springs. Her father was in poor health, and at eighty-three increasingly confused.

  She shrugged. “I guess there’s nothing they could do right now anyway.”

  “Do you think I should have the kids come home?” Imaginary conversations played through his mind like a horror movie. “Should I have them come home?” He could tell by the look she gave him that it wasn’t the first time he’d asked her that. “I’m sorry. I . . . I feel like I’m going crazy.”

  “Who wouldn’t be, Mitch? This is unbelievable. I think the kids will want to come home. But hopefully by morning something will turn up . . . We’ll have heard from Jill,” she corrected, realizing how her “something will turn up” could be taken.

  “I’m starting to think it’s not going to be good news when we finally do hear. I want to protect the kids if that happens. But I have no clue how––”

  “Shhh,” she said. “We have to stay positive. I’m sure there’s an explanation. You’ll probably be laughing about this over lunch with Jill a few hours from now.”

  He appreciated her optimism, wished he could muster some of it himself. But he had a bad feeling about this. He couldn’t let himself think what life without Jill would be like. Yet, even as he tried to push the thoughts away, a virtual movie played in his mind––he and the kids standing a grave. Jill’s grave.

  He looked down at his hands and saw they were trembling.

  “Are you okay?”

  “You know . . . I’ve heard how your life supposedly passes in front of you in those brief moments before you die, but I never thought the life of the person you love most in the world would pass in front of you . . .” He let his words trail off, afraid of what Shelley would think if she knew how he was thinking.

  “But don’t you remember, Mitch? We practically had the kids’ funerals planned that night they were late getting home.” She must have read his thoughts.

  “I remember.”

  “I’m sure it’s an even stronger reaction when it’s your spouse. That whole two-shall-become-one thing . . .”

  Her answer surprised him a little. She had been divorced since Audrey was a toddler, and from what Jill had told him, Shelley didn’t have much respect for the institution of marriage. But he nodded and dared to give voice to his thoughts. “If I lose Jill I might as well die.”

  “Mitch . . .” She put a hand on his arm. “You’re not going to lose Jill. You’re not. We won’t stop praying until we find her.”

  He’d been shooting up desperate prayers all night. He looked down at Shelley. “I think I need to call Evan again. And you need to go home and get some sleep.”

  “No. I’ll leave if you want some privacy, but I won’t be able to sleep until she gets home.”

  Her quiet confidence that Jill would come home bolstered him. “Thanks, Shelley. It . . . it’s good to have somebody here.”

  “I’ll put on another pot of coffee.”

  Hearing her behind him in the kitchen gave him the courage to dial Evan’s number. He took the phone to the table in the breakfast nook.

  “Yeah? Dad? Is that you?”

  When had their son’s voice gotten so deep?

  “Man, it’s like five o’clock in the morning,” Evan mumbled. “What’s goin’ on? Is everything okay?”

  Mitch swallowed the boulder that suddenly lodged in his throat. “I’m sorry to wake you up, bud, but I need to talk to you. Are you awake?”

  He heard rustling and then a door closing and water running. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m awake. Is Mom okay?”

  Why hadn’t he rehearsed how to say this? Evan was going to think there’d been an accident. “We’re not sure what’s going on, but . . . Mom’s still not home . . . and she’s not answering her phone.”

  “Whoa . . . Are you serious? What’s the deal?”

  “I don’t know, buddy. We’re doing everything we can to locate her, but I think . . . If she doesn’t turn up in a couple of hours, maybe you and Katie should come home.”

  “Does Katie know?”

  “I haven’t talked to her since right after I talked to you late last night.”

  “What time was Mom supposed to be home?”

  “I was expecting her around six last night. But I didn’t really start worrying until eight or so when she still wasn’t answering her phone.”

  “What? That’s, like, ten hours. Or more. Man, that’s crazy. But–– Where could she be? Why wouldn’t she be home yet?”

  “I don’t know, bud. But we need to pray. I’m starting to get pretty concerned.”

  “Did you call the highway patrol? Maybe she was in an accident.”

  “We’ve called them. No accidents reported. We’ve called everybody we can think of. And––”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “What?”

  “You said ‘We’ve called them.’”

  “Oh. Shelley’s here with me. Helping make calls. And we’ll keep calling and looking until––”

  “Oh, man . . . This is wild.” Evan huffed into the phone. “Okay. I’ll get Katie and we’ll come home. It’ll probably be . . . at least one or so before we can get there.”

  “Okay, but––” He didn’t want the kids to drive six hours for nothing. He needed to think this through, but he couldn’t seem to make his thoughts coherent. “Yeah, you go pick up Katie, but give me a call before you leave. Mom could walk through the door any minute, and I’d hate to have you get too far down the road for nothing.” He didn’t feel the conviction of his words. “And listen, give me fifteen minutes before you call your sister, will you? I want to talk to her first.”

  “Yeah, sure. I’ll wait. But we’re coming home as soon as we can. This is crazy.”

  Mitch didn’t argue with him. “Drive careful, Evan. Don’t speed. We don’t need––” He bit back the rest of the lecture he wanted to give. “Please . . .” His voice broke. “Pray. Just . . . pray for Mom.”

  “I will, Dad. We will.”

  He hung up the phone and sighed.

  “Did he take it okay?” Shelley asked.

  “I think all I did was succeed in scaring the kid to death. I would give anything if Jill would walk through that door before I have to call Katie and tell her––”

  The ring of his phone interrupted him, and Evan’s number appeared on the screen. “Hey, bud.”

  “Dad, did you check the search app for Mom’s phone?”

  “What search app?”

  “I helped her set it up last time I was home. She was excited about it––you know how she was always losing her phone.”

  Mitch felt like he’d been handed a lifeline. “But how do I do a search without her phone?”

  “You need to get on Mom’s laptop.”

  That took the wind out of him. “She has her laptop with her.”

  “Oh. Well . . . You should still be able to find it from your computer if you log in as Mom. Do you know her password?”

  “Maybe. Hang on a sec.” H
e went to his laptop at the kitchen counter. “Where do I go?”

  He typed in the address Evan gave him.

  “Do you know her password?”

  “Not for sure,” Mitch said, “but I know a couple I can try.” He entered their e-mail password and got an error message. He tried the password he’d used to get into their credit card account. Same message. He bit back a curse.

  “Dad, are you on your laptop?”

  “Yes.”

  “Try going to the computer in the den. Maybe Mom has saved passwords on that one.”

  “Hang on . . . It’ll take a while to boot up.” It seemed like forever, but when he finally got online and went to the first address Evan had given him, it logged “Jill” in immediately. “Got it!”

  Evan cheered into the phone. “Okay, now click on the phone icon . . .” He talked Mitch through the process until a map popped up on the screen and a spinning arrow indicated the computer was searching for the phone. The map zoomed in and a green dot appeared beside a callout. “It says ‘located one minute ago.’”

  “Where, Dad? Where is it?”

  He zoomed out and tried to figure out where that dot on the map was. Zooming one more level, he recognized the cross streets. “It’s the hotel! It’s showing the phone is at the hotel in Kansas City. Mom must still be there.” Then why wasn’t she answering her phone?

  “Call them, Dad. You’ve gotta call the hotel!”

  Chapter 5

  With trembling hands, Mitch dialed the hotel. Shelley stood beside him, bracing her forearms on the kitchen bar counter, her eyes wide with hope.

  He asked for hotel security and was routed to the concierge. He explained how the app had indicated that Jill’s cell phone was on the premises.

  “I’m not familiar with that particular phone app, sir.” The concierge sounded hesitant. “I can tell you that we would not reveal any information about one of our guests without their permission. I can connect you to the room of a guest if you’d like.”

  “No, you don’t understand.” He clenched his fists. “My wife checked out of your hotel sixteen hours ago. That’s the last time anyone has heard from her. I already explained everything to your security people a few hours ago. Like I told them, the police are looking for my wife.” Mitch wasn’t positive whether that had actually happened yet, but anything that might grease the wheels . . .

  “I’m not sure how I can help you. If her phone is here, perhaps your wife hasn’t actually checked out? I could dial her room for you if you’ll give me her name.”

  He bit back a growl of frustration. “Her name is Jill Brannon.” He spelled the surname for the concierge. It was worth a try.

  “One moment please.” A brief pause. “I’m sorry, we don’t have a guest by that name staying here. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  “May I speak to your supervisor, please?”

  “Sir, I am the supervisor on duty at this time. Would you like me to contact hotel security and let you discuss this with them?”

  If he didn’t need the phone so badly, he would have put it through the window. “No, I’ll just call the police at this point.”

  “Sir, I assure you––”

  Mitch ended the call. “Where’s that list of numbers?”

  Shelley grabbed it off the end of the kitchen bar and handed it to him. He called the detective in Kansas City and explained what had happened.

  Twenty minutes later, with the knot in his gut growing ever tighter, the phone rang.

  It was the detective. “We’ve found your wife’s phone. It was on the floor of the parking garage at the hotel.”

  “What happened?”

  The silence on the detective’s end sent Mitch’s heart into his throat.

  But when the man finally spoke, he seemed more stymied by Mitch’s question than anything. “We don’t know. We’re looking at every possible angle. We can’t rule out anything at this point. But there’s no indication of foul play. No sign of forced entry into the hotel room she stayed in, no sign of a struggle in the parking garage. And the hotel says they find cell phones dropped or left behind almost every day.”

  “Yes, but that can’t be a coincidence, finding her phone like that. Her car isn’t still in the parking garage there is it? It’s a gray Camry, license num––”

  “No, sir. That’s the first place we looked. It’s not here. Like I said, Mr. Brannon, we’re not ruling anything out. I assure you we are taking this seriously and doing everything we possibly can with what we have to go on.”

  Shelley poured herself another coffee and filled a mug for Mitch. She was worried about him. He’d seemed strong after talking to the hotel earlier, but after he called Evan back, and then called Katie to tell her what was happening, he’d hung up and gone out onto the back deck without speaking.

  Now, half an hour later he was still out there, his back to her, looking off across the lawn. She couldn’t even imagine the thoughts that must be going through his head . . .

  She carried the coffee out to the deck. A sliver of sun lined the ridge behind the tidy row of homes on Chanticleer Lane. Daylight meant that Jill had now been missing overnight. Still, the sun was a welcome sight.

  Balancing the mugs, she slid the door shut behind her with her foot and spoke Mitch’s name softly. He turned to face her, his eyes red-rimmed, his hair spiked every which way, as if he’d tried to comb it with his fingers. Holding out a steaming mug, she longed to put an arm around him, offer him the support of a friend. But for a world of reasons, she didn’t dare.

  “Thanks.” He took the cup from her and looked back across the yard.

  It tore her apart to see him so broken up.

  She’d called her daughter a few minutes ago and explained what was happening. She warned Audrey not to tell anyone about Jill yet––Mitch still hadn’t contacted Jill’s parents in Colorado––but to please pray. And pray hard.

  She shivered. The morning air was cool, but that wasn’t why she was trembling. Her best friend had seemingly vanished, and she didn’t have a clue how to help.

  Where was Jill right now? She couldn’t let herself believe that Jill might truly be gone. But when she pondered the possibility that her friend might be lying in a ditch, injured and frightened somewhere––or even abducted by some psycho––and wondering why the people she loved weren’t coming to save her . . . Shelley shuddered.

  She hadn’t felt this helpless since Audrey was two and got a gash on her forehead after falling off a swing. Shelley winced, remembering. She’d had to hold her precious, screaming daughter down, a white cloth covering Audrey’s sweet face, while Dr. Melson stitched for twenty minutes. Oh, that this could end as well as that had, with nothing but a thin scar to show for the trauma.

  But the more minutes that ticked off the clock, the more she feared that wasn’t going to happen. “Are Evan and Katie coming home?” she asked softly.

  Mitch nodded. “It sounded like they would get on the road pretty quick. They’ll probably be home right after lunch.” He shook his head slowly, then without warning slapped a palm hard on the deck table.

  The iron table rattled and shuddered. “There’s got to be something else we can do!” Without explanation, he slid the door open and went inside.

  Shelley followed, not sure if he wanted her company.

  But he motioned her over to the kitchen bar counter and reached for his laptop. “The Sylvia police said Jill’s info would be on the highway patrol website sometime today.” He slid onto a high stool and opened Google.

  As images loaded on the screen, Shelley leaned over his shoulder, squinting because she’d misplaced her reading glasses somewhere in the chaos of papers and maps and quickly jotted notes on the counter. Mitch scrolled through the information and they read the text together in silence.

  She could almost feel Mitch’s spirits flag.

  “Can this be right?” For at least the tenth time since she’d arrived, he raked a hand through his hair. �
��Almost 700 unsolved missing persons cases in Missouri alone?” He clicked on another link.

  The images that loaded nauseated Shelley. Photos of bodies––dead bodies posed for macabre ID photos. Deceased persons whose bodies had been found but never identified. “How can that be?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know.” In the gray light the computer screen cast Mitch’s face seemed bled of color. “How could a person go missing and not have someone care enough to come looking for them. Look at this . . .” He shook his head slowly.

  “It makes me ill.” She reached over his shoulder and closed the laptop. “Jill’s not there. Maybe we should call the hospitals again. And the Highway Patrol. Maybe now that it’s light someone will see her car if it went off the road.”

  He straightened a little and his face brightened, as though he hadn’t thought of that yet.

  But the images swirling in her mind weren’t anything a hospital could fix.

  She pulled herself back from the cusp of a cauldron of dark thoughts and forced herself to think of best-case scenarios. As she’d told Mitch after they listened to Jill’s message on the answering machine once again, Jill could be a little ditzy, especially when she was distracted. It was totally conceivable that she’d been rushing around trying to check out of the hotel and that she’d put her cell phone on the roof of her car while she packed up the last of her things. Heaven knew Shelley had done that enough times herself. If Jill had called Mitch from the lobby, or even before she left her room, it was possible she’d driven for a couple of hours or more before she realized she didn’t have her phone.

  Shelley knew if it had been her, she wouldn’t have gone back to get it. She would have kept driving, eager to get home, and would have just waited to call the hotel when she got home . . . asked them to mail the phone to her. And then she would have e-mailed Audrey and Jill––the two who called her phone most frequently––and explained why she wasn’t answering her phone.

  But none of that explained why Jill wasn’t home yet and Shelley couldn’t stretch her optimism any farther. Jill should have been home long ago. Something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.