Buckley sat back in the dim light cast by the fading lamp. It was cliché, all of it. Another missing kid, another Amber Alert, another mobilization of resources looking for a boogeyman that didn’t exist—at least not in the form imagined by the good-hearted souls beating the bush to find this kid. But Buckley had to admit that there was precious little else to suggest anything besides stranger-danger as the cause.
There was one photo of the kid, from third grade, which—in this age of digital over-documentation—seemed odd. More than odd. It was a flag. A big, red flag scrawled across his thinking. Nobody has one photo taken in five years. But this kid’s mother could provide only one picture of her son from the past five years. Flag, flag, flag.
The mother, Carine Shea, hired him, begging that the police were starting to lose interest in her boy’s disappearance, now that it had been three days. They were on to the next shiny button. So she called Buckley, a referral of a friend of a friend. Buckley knew that it was probably one of the miserable detectives who had tossed her his name.
For Buckley, the consult was free. An hour of his time to determine if he was taking the case. The hour was almost up, and he was on the fence. Not a good sign. It didn’t mean that there wasn’t any interest; there just wasn’t compelling interest. In the case of this definition, compelling meant monetary. But it also meant that there was something there—some interesting stirring.
He decided to make one phone call before he would take the case. His thumb flashed over the screen of his mobile, names and numbers whirring vertically like spinning numbers on a slot machine reel. He tapped the number. The line rang.
“Metro South Police,” the voice droned.
“Hey, Starsky, how’re you doing?” he said.
“Fuck you, Buckley. What do you want?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I meant to address you as Hutch, the potty-mouthed one. Where’s your LT? I dialed her number. Why are you answering?”
“Because she’s in a meeting with the captain and the deputy, Buckley. Not that it’s any of your business. Go to hell.” The line went dead.
Buckley looked at his phone. Maybe he had been too abrupt with Detective Harris—Hutch. He and his partner, Detective Murphy, had continually made Buckley’s life difficult. Buckley could appreciate the dim view police detectives took of private investigators. To cops, they were one step up from journalists, but still considered boils that needed lancing.
Over the past two years the Metro South Police had botched three high-profile murders, and it had been Buckley, working with the South Shore Gazette’s Gina Florentine, who had been able to find the murderers and get them arrested. Two of the three botchings came from Harris and Murphy’s handling of the cases. Florentine’s reporting of the crimes and subsequent investigations had led to the withering monikers of Starsky & Hutch, though sometimes those had been riffed in both social and regular media to include Turner & Hooch, Mulder & Scully, and even Bambi & Thumper. To say that they were not available to Buckley was an understatement.
Buckley thought for a moment. He wanted to speak to Lt. Chantelle Laramie through official channels first, but clearly that wasn’t going to happen. Either Detective Harris had been bullshitting him, or something serious was going down at Lt. Laramie’s precinct. Something beyond the hazing she regularly suffered for not being white and not being Irish. Deputy chiefs and captains never traveled down to precincts; shit flowed the opposite way in the halls of justice.
He tapped Laramie’s personal cell number on his screen. She picked up on the second ring.
“What’s on fire?” came the voice. Though modulated and stepped on by half a dozen compression technologies, the voice of Chantelle Laramie that was reassembled in the tiny speaker of Buckley’s iPhone was rich, an octave lower than most women’s voices. And though she spoke only three words, there was enough intonation to tell him that Harris had been lying to him. There was also enough in the way she spoke those three words that he knew which direction and how far he could go with his opening. Something stirred.
“If I tell you that, you might face charges from the dirty thought police.”
“Mmmm, okay. What do you want Buckley?” The tone was still playful, engaging. He had been right. Somewhere in the back of his head, his mind made a mental note use Harris’s lie against him at the right moment.
“Where are you? It sounds echo-y.”
“Ladies room. Does that help your little fantasy?”
“I just got off the phone with Turner. Or was it Hooch? I can’t tell them apart. Anyway, he said you were in a meeting with the captain and DC, and that’s why he was answering your phone.”
“That jerk,” she said. “He’s intercepting some of my calls. Second time I’ve caught him. I’ll put that in my back pocket for now. What’s going on?”
“Carine Shea hired me this morning. She wants more action on her son’s disappearance.” Now that he said it, it must be true.
“You know what we have on it.” The tone changed; it was now shiny and sharp. Buckley could picture the skin of her face tightening. It didn’t matter. She looked the way she looked no matter what, and he couldn’t help but devote time to that analysis.
“Besides,” she continued, “we’re 99% certain that it’s the father, and he’ll turn up in Maine in a couple of days.”
“Why Maine?”
“He’s a seasonal fisherman, and we have reason to believe he’s looking to catch on with a dragger for the winter. If you want more, talk to the dicks.”
“I could make the same request of you.” He let that sit there between them for a beat.
She said, “What do you need?” Shiny and sharp were gone.
“Just a photograph. And not the one from third grade that was released to the public. I’m pretty sure you have a more recent picture.”
“If we did, why wouldn’t we use it?”
“Because it would show the bruises on the boy’s face. The ones his mother left there after she smacked him around.”
“And if you are working for her, why can’t she give them to you?”
He let silence be the answer.
“I see,” she said after a beat. “If I send this to you, I’m going to need some assurances that the photo won’t end up on the front page of Gina Fucking Florentine’s newspaper.”
“My philosophy is the same as yours here when it comes to the news: the less, the better. As for assurances, I think I can figure out an anagram for that.”
This time she let the silence speak.
“Okay. But, of course, you understand the implications of this arrangement.”
“I do, and I look forward to those implications.”
She cut the call.
***
The photograph of the boy did not show up in Gina Fucking Florentine’s newspaper the next day. But it did show up in a social media post for at least an hour before it was taken down. Just enough time for Florentine to write a story about it, describing the photo without naming the boy.
Buckley was on his way over to see her to get an explanation. The photo was not supposed to show up anywhere. It was supposed to be for investigative purposes only.
“Do we have an agreement?” Buckley asked the night before, after he had called Florentine to discuss the case.
“That depends,” she said. Her voice was higher than Chantelle’s. It was edgier. It was always “on.”
“There can’t be any depending. I told you—in confidence for now—about my suspicions regarding Carine Shea. She’s an unreliable narrator.”
“How literary of you.”
“She’s also got a drug habit and a booze habit.”
“What kind of drugs?”
“I’m not sure. Opioids, probably. But that can lead to poor outcomes.”
“Tell me again why she would hire you to investigate her son’s abuser if it was her?”
“She’s sandbagging me.”
“’Sandbagging’? Are you Mickey Spillane?”
“Gaslighting, if that helps your wee brain.”
“I thought it was my wee brain you were attracted to last summer.”
“Actually, it was your tits. How are they? It’s been a while.”
“They could be talked into a reunion.”
“As nice as that sounds, we’re going to need to keep this professional.”
“Buy me dinner and I’ll write you a receipt.”
There was a beat of silence on the line before she continued.
“Besides, what’s in it for Carine Shea? You’re the creative writer. What’s your theory.”
“Money, as usual. I think the boy’s dead, and she is using me as a way to frame it away from her.”
“So what’s the angle? She involves you and then somehow makes it look like you’re complicit? Nice story, but it doesn’t have legs.”
“Legs are your specialty. But I have proof.”
“That’s why I have the photo. I can share it with you, but only if you use it in the story confidentially to smoke out Carine and whoever she is working with.”
“You said money before. How does money fit into this?”
“This is all completely off the record. You need to say it.”
“Off the record.”
“Good. When Carine hired me, she hinted that the boy’s father—her ex—came into some money recently. Some uncle left him a house somewhere, maybe a nice cottage, and he’s got some cash. Naturally, Carine wants some. She’s got some vices to feed. So she hires me to investigate the ex, who she claims beat up the boy. She does that, she can get full custody and control over child support, which ramps up drastically now that the ex has money. Bing, bang, boom, and Bob’s your uncle.”
“Is she that stupid? Doesn’t she know anyone with half a brain could figure that out?”
“Your aspersions directed at the police department notwithstanding, Carine’s not fully present.”
Silence.
“Okay, I’ve got enough for a story here. But I’m going to need to see that photo.”
“That is something I cannot do. My access is trust-derived.”
“Then I can’t make any promises.”
“I understand. But this is a good story, one that doesn’t come along all the time.”
“We’ll see about that.”
And that was the extent of Buckley’s conversation with Florentine the night before. Now, as he drove to the newspaper to confront the reporter, his phone buzzed. Shit: Chantelle Laramie. Actually, it was her office number: Lt. Chantelle Laramie.
“I didn’t leak the photo,” Buckley said by way of answering the phone.
“Do you know how much trouble I might be in?” she rejoined.
“I’m on my way over to the paper right now. She was given only background info, off the record. I didn’t even show her the photo.”
“My ass is in a sling right now.”
He thought about that for a moment.
“I’ll fix this,” he said. “I’ll figure it out.”
“You better.”
The line went dead.
***
Gina Fucking Florentine was not at the newspaper office. The receptionist there dismissed him by answering the phone and loudly talking to her mother. He needed to think.
There was a Mary Lou’s Coffee next to the marina, and he drove down there. Inside, he was so focused on getting a large black coffee that he didn’t notice two of the patrons sitting at a small table to the right of the pastry display. One was short, stocky and square, with a thick, 70s-looking mustache that gave him the look of a second-tier porn actor, the guy that only got into group scenes. The other was long and lean and patrician, a younger version of the farmer in Grant Wood’s American Gothic. Buckley knew their names, but that’s how he preferred to think of them, like wooden characters, or television cop duos.
“Well, well,” said one of the two men sitting there. “If it isn’t the LT’s boy toy. Nice job fucking up this investigation, dickhead.”
“Turner! Hooch! How’s the ball licking? You two sharing the duties?”
“You know, you got a real mouth on you.”
“Well it’s better than the mangled mugs that pass for pie holes on you dipshit dicks.” The two detectives froze, open-mouthed. “It’s alliteration. Try to keep up.”
Porn-Actor stood, achieving his full five-foot-seven-inch height without really trying. “You’re about two seconds away from handcuffs, so be very careful about what you say next.” A few people in Mary Lou’s looked up from their devices, but then returned to them.
Grant Wood stood, rising up to over six feet, mismatching the two detectives Scene at the coffee shop: “Listen up, bright boy.”
“Bright boy? Somebody’s been reading Hemingway. Or Tobias Wolff. Either way, it doesn’t end well for that attribution.”
“What?”
“It is so hard having a conversation with you two. Don’t you read? Never mind, Columbo. What do you want?”
“What we want,” said Porn-Actor, “is for you to back off, or else you are going to find yourself in handcuffs.”
A BDSM comment rose to Buckley’s lips, but he pushed it down.
“And that goes for the LT, too,” said Grant Wood. “You two bum-buddies can do whatever you want behind closed doors, but you are screwing up our investigation of this kid’s disappearance, and we’re not going to let that happen anymore. We’re happy to keep jerking you and the LT and that reporter into a circular firing squad. Capiche?”
And that was their mistake. By admitting that they were actively manipulating Laramie and Florentine and himself, Cagney & Lacey not only overplayed their hand, they showed Buckley their cards. He held up his hands in mock surrender.
“Okay, message received,” he said. “You cats can run with this thing. I’ve got about six more jobs lined up anyway. I’ll go cash those checks.”
“You do that,” said Porn-Actor, “and stay clear of this investigation.”
The two cops looked at each other as if they were trying to remember what else to say, and Buckley bit down hard on his tongue. After a long, awkward moment of staring into each other’s eyes they walked out of the coffee shop. None of the patrons seemed to notice.
***
Waves broke over Brant Rock, a jagged outcropping pointing an accusatory finger eastward into the Atlantic Ocean, as if this town full of Irish immigrants and their descendants were taking aim at jolly old England for her transgressions. Though it was still technically summer, Buckley huddled in his car, holding his fingers in front of the heater. The parking lot was empty and it was gray and dingy outside. His passenger door opened and Chantelle Laramie slid in beside him.
He quickly slipped his newly warmed right hand behind her neck and pulled her mouth into his, feeling her electric heat spread into his body, through his veins and vessels, dilating and engorging them.
They pulled apart and her huge brown eyes found his. They were at once steely and vulnerable. “Did you bring me coffee?” she asked.
“Right here,” he said, pointing to the Styrofoam cup of Mary Lou’s cradled in his crotch.
“Oh, stop it,” she said, smiling, completing the effect. She retreated into her seat a little. “Do you know how much trouble I could get into if someone sees me with you?”
“Don’t worry. Simon & Simon aren’t around, and quite frankly, besides them and Gina Fucking Florentine, nobody in this town cares if some writer-turned-PI is boning you.”
She darkened at the mention of the reporter’s name.
“The writer-turned-PI is still boning you, isn’t he?”
She smiled a little. “Not lately. Where’ve you been?” Then she leaned in for another kiss. Her hands drifted down to his belt buckle, where her fingers lingered for a moment, before completing their journey to the coffee cup. She took it from him, leaned back, and sipped. Everything about her was fluid and purposeful, and it drove him mad.
“Where are we with this thing? The captain is breathing down my neck.”
Buckley raised an eyebrow. “Is this competition from another suitor?”
“Yes. The PR suitor. The department is under a lot of pressure to wrap this up. Your other girlfriend isn’t helping.”
“Neither are Mulder & Scully. I think you were right. They’re the ones who leaked the photo to my other girlfriend, and they’re the ones who are actively torpedoing you. Plus, Carine Shea called and fired me this morning.”
Chantelle took another sip of the coffee. “That’s not good. What were her reasons?”
“Money. She only paid me my initial retainer. I’m pretty sure she is working with someone else, though. She doesn’t have enough of her shit together to think clearly.” A thought drifts through his mind. It passes.
“Any ideas?”
“My other girlfriend. She’s playing this so that she gets the story exclusively before the cops. And if she can cut me out of the loop, so much the better. I think she called Carine after the photo was leaked and threw us all under the bus. I think she’s close to a story here.”
Chantelle looked at him. Her mocha skin was soft and warm in the gray light of early morning. “Then I think you need to go visit her right away and find out something so that we can make an arrest and find this kid.”
“You’re not jealous about me spending time with my other girlfriend?”
She leaned in and kissed him again, her fingers once more finding his belt buckle.
This time there was no coffee cup to distract their progress.
***
It was just after lunch when he got the text. There was no name attached to the sender, so it didn’t come from his contacts list. And there was no sending phone number. Just a randomized 5-digit number.
239 Bay Ave
When he got to the address, the front screen door was flapping back and forth in the wet breeze that persisted. Buckley looked around. Everything was dead quiet. Green Harbor in the off season: cloudy, drizzly, cold. Though all the houses on Bay Ave had been winterized and were either rented out or occupied full-time, there was no beating geography and climate.
Buckley knew the address as soon as it flashed on his phone screen. It was Carine Shea’s. His stomach tightened as he knocked on the door. He waited. After a long 30 seconds, he tried the door. Unlocked, it swung open.
Inside he found a dark, simple former cottage that had been minimally updated, which was how someone like Carine Shea could afford it. It was also how she could not afford it, which was probably what led her to dealing the meth was using.
How the place didn’t burn down was a mystery that Buckley would leave to the cops. But judging from the position of Carine Shea’s body on the kitchen floor and the burning of her upper torso, her efforts at YouTubing a mini meth lab resulted in an explosion. Only the recent renovations in the small house’s kitchen prevented spread of the fire.
He carefully checked out the rest of the house, if only to confirm that the boy was not there. He was about to retreat back to his car when something caught his eye. Tucked into book was a yellow business card, serving as a bookmark. The book was a coffee table photo deal featuring the marshes south of Boston. The yellow business card was as simple as the text he received.
Yellowfin Tuna Charters
Mark Russell
There was a phone number on the back. He looked at the page it marked. Clarke’s Island in Duxbury Bay. Accessible only by boat, and reputedly the place where Truman Capote wrote In Cold Blood. Buckley pocketed the card and replaced the book, carefully wiping away his prints and retreating outside.
On his way to Duxbury Beach he passed the two detectives, who looked to be on their way to the Bay Ave house. Behind them was his other girlfriend. How convenient.
***
Finding a skiff at the marina on a cold and rainy September day took some time. The marina was only open part-time, and the girl at the front desk was more interested in her phone than service. Finally he was able to speak with the manager by phone, who walked the girl through the rental procedure. She looked pissed throughout the five-minute process.
“What do you want to go out in this crap weather for?” she said.
“A little marine research. Thanks.”
He found the skiff tied up near the foot of the companionway to the floating dock. The 5-hp Yamaha started on the second pull, and in another minute he was puttering across the bay, light rain forming a rime on his face.
The yellow boat was visible when he rounded the small outcropping on the southern end of the island. After he tied off the skiff, he noticed that the only view from the small dock was far across the marshes to the wooded Marshfield side of the bay. In other words, someone would have to be looking with powered optics in order to observe activity on the island. Which, he supposed, held part of its allure. Maybe that’s why Capote ended up here with his typewriter.
The cottage was set back from the shore, just as Buckley had read it would be. Why the police couldn’t find this place only underscored their lack of creativity. He found the boy sitting next to a small fire ring. A couple of gnarly beach pines smoldered while he poked them with a stick.
“How’re you doing, kiddo?”
“Fine,” the boy said, not looking up. His face looked pale and blank, as if he knew.
“Is your dad around?”
“Behind the house.”
Mark Russell was hunched over a wire lobster trap. The house blocked the fine mist that still twisted out of the flat gray sky.
“No tuna this time of year?” Buckley said.
“Gotta do something to make a living. Winter fishing is tough. But you know that, right Buckley?”
“Right.” He looked around. “You fellas okay here? Need anything?”
“A little peace.”
“Plenty of that around here.”
Russell turned around from his work to face Buckley. “Not really. Probably not ever. Not as long as she’s still out there. But that’s over now. I don’t care where we have to go to get away from her, that’s over. That boy deserves better, and I may not be able to give him much, but it’s something. It’s a way of life better than he’s used to.” His eyes searched past Buckley, out to the marshes. They were vacant and narrow. His eyes, too.
Buckley nodded. “Well, you don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
Buckley nodded again. “You’ll probably have more visitors, but not because I told them. They’ll figure it out though.”
“They’ll try and take him.”
“Maybe. But you look set up good here. You got enough money?”
Russell seemed to slump a little. He turned back to his traps. “Plenty. My uncle. Had a good season. Plus the winter fishing is good.”
“School’s going to be the point.”
“I can drop him off in the morning on my way out. Still plenty of folks living on these islands.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“More than that boy has ever had.”
Buckley turned to walk back to the dock, but stopped. He pulled the yellow business card from his pocket.
“You want this back?” he asked Russell.
“Nah. You keep it. In case you want to go chase a tuna.”
Buckley nodded and left him.
The fine mist drifting on the breeze shut itself off and the cloud ceiling lifted as he rode the skiff back to the marina.
***
Chantelle stared at him from her pillow, her head resting horizontally, her brown eyes stacked vertically. Buckley was aware of her gaze, but his eyes were fixed on the ceiling. He couldn’t get the boy out of his head.
“It’s just never over for kids like that,” he said. His tone was vacant.
“His father has income and a home, that’s in his favor.”
“His father is his father, and that’s no favor.”
She rolled up next to him. “It’s life, right?”
“It’s life and his mother is dead.”
She kissed him, lightly on the cheek. He seemed to soften.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “These things…they’re just shitty.” He rolled onto his side and faced her, their noses nearly touching. “Thanks for being there. Thanks for keeping the Hardy Boys at bay.”
She smiled. “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They’re like robots. Cliché robots who grew up watching bad cop shows.”
“They’re not really going over your head, are they?”
“Who knows? Mostly, they’re just obtuse.”
“I don’t want our relationship to jeopardize your job.”
“Silly man,” she said, moving closer to kiss him. “It already has.”
[Image Credit : Photo by Melina Kiefer on Unsplash]
Shawn Kerivan is a writer and journalist. He has published short fiction in dozens of literary magazines, and nonfiction writing in magazines such as Backpacker and Ocean Navigator. His journalism has appeared in VTDigger, a nonprofit news organization. He has written several books, including the short story collection Name the Boy (2007), Creative Writing in the Real World (2011), and A Brief History of Innkeeping in the 21st Century (2015). He created a popular blog called Innkeeping Innsights, which ran from 2004 to 2017, and was featured on National Public Radio’s “A Way With Words” program. He is a professor of writing at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia.
