and you’re still not home? Don’t worry, Officer Patterson’s casual expression read. Your wife is probably at the movies.
Officer Charles was talking, but through the din in Rich’s head he could barely hear him. Then he realized the din was there just so he couldn’t hear Charles speak, because Rich didn’t like what he was hearing. Something about not jumping to conclusions.
Rich wasn’t sure if he needed to respond to that or just get in his car and go home. He said, ‘I thought you came to help me. If you can’t help me, then let me talk to someone who can.’
The officers tried with little effect to be more helpful. ‘Could your wife have gone into labor?’ said the woman officer. ‘Could she be in the hospital somewhere?’
Shaking his head, Rich said, ‘We’re preregistered at Columbia Medical. If she was having a baby, that’s where she would go, and they have my number. Also she has it. She’s not there. I called them. And no one’s called me.’
‘Could she have been in an accident?’ said Charles.
‘Yes, yes, she could have,’ Rich said impatiently, failing despite his best wishes to talk slowly, calmly, reasonably. ‘No, absolutely. You’re so right. She could have been in an accident.’ He paused. ‘But not in her own car. Because our car is parked out –’ and he flung his arm for emphasis – ‘there.’
Officer Charles stared at him. ‘Perhaps she had an accident in someone else’s car?’ he said.
‘Maybe she met a friend and decided to spend the afternoon with him or her,’ Officer Patterson suggested.
Rich rubbed his eyes, shaking with frustration, and other things. ‘Oh, dear Jesus! We had a lunch date at one. She didn’t show up. She has the cell phone with her –’
‘Maybe it ran out of power,’ said Patterson.
‘You mean to tell me that my wife decided to stand me up after calling me and asking me to meet her early?’ he said loudly. He may have even shouted. The officers asked him if he wanted to go upstairs and talk to them privately in the security offices. Rich refused.
‘Could she still be in the mall, maybe?’ said Charles, while Patterson looked at Rich disapprovingly.
‘Okay,’ said Rich. ‘She buys a pretzel from Alex at twelve twenty-five, at which point she’s accosted by a stranger who offers to carry her bags. She refuses. He follows her –’
‘He goes in the same direction she’s heading,’ Officer Patterson corrected him.
‘Of course, excuse me. At twelve-thirty she calls my office and asks me to meet her a little early for lunch. That’s unique in my experience.’
‘Maybe you’re prejudging your wife,’ said Officer Patterson. ‘There’s a first time for everything.’
Rich faced the male officer. ‘She shops for a little while longer, and then Alex sees her heading that way.’ Rich pointed. ‘Which is where her car is parked. I know because it’s still there. The man is walking in the same direction she is. I know you say it’s a coincidence, but how many can we have in one day?’ Rich could not stop moving. ‘If my wife met me for lunch, then I’d say everything’s hunky-dory and isn’t it all so coincidental. But she didn’t meet me for lunch. No one’s heard from her. Her car is still parked outside. Which means that my pregnant wife with all her shopping bags is still in this mall, because the bags are not in the car. Except for this bag, the pretzel bag. I found it next to our minivan. Look, there’s a receipt in it, two pretzels, my wife’s smell on the bag, and what to me looks like her blood. Look!’ He shoved the bag rudely into Officer Patterson’s face and then into Officer Charles’s. ‘What do you think it is?’
‘Listen, maybe her nose bled, and she decided to come. back in,’ said Officer Patterson, a little more sympathetically. ‘Then she met someone she knew, and decided to spend the afternoon with them. That’s likely, right?’
‘Then why hasn’t she called me?’ Rich screamed.
They looked frightened of him. Frightened and concerned. As if they didn’t understand what was driving him, what he was so upset about.
Am I crazy? Am I mad? Have I lost my sanity? Rich looked around him. There was the Disney Store, there was Dillard’s, there was FAO Schwarz. He could see, he could comprehend. He wasn’t insane yet. Rich concluded that police officers were trained to deal with robberies and homicides and rapes, but not trained to deal with fear.
‘Tell you what,’ Officer Patterson said. ‘If she’s in this mall, let’s alert mall security. They’ll call for her on the PA.’
Rich threw up his hands. He paced furiously near the fountain in the middle of the mall, peering into strange faces walking past him while the officers went to talk to security upstairs. Rich was still hoping that somehow Didi would miraculously appear before him with a new hairdo. Within five minutes there was an announcement over the public address system: ‘Will Didi Wood please come to the security office on the second floor as soon as possible?’ It was repeated twice.
Rich sat down, leaned his elbows on his knees, and held his head in his hands. Seconds later he was up and pacing again. Five minutes later – which seemed an eternity – there was another announcement: ‘Will anyone with any information about the whereabouts of a nine-month-pregnant woman with long brown hair and wearing a yellow dress notify the management or the security personnel as soon as possible.’ That message was also repeated twice.
The officers came back to Rich and flanked him as he walked back and forth. ‘Let’s wait and see. Okay? Let’s wait and see what happens,’ said Officer Charles.
They didn’t have to wait long.
Rich saw two women walking alongside a security officer, and he immediately moved toward them. Charles and Patterson followed.
The young security officer said, ‘These ladies here said they might have seen a pregnant woman in the parking lot earlier today.’
‘What time was that?’ Rich snapped.
Officer Charles put up his hand as if to stop Rich. ‘Wait a second,’ he said gently to Rich. He turned to the women. ‘What time was that?’
The ladies shrugged. They were short and chubby. The taller of the short women – bleached, heavy, and middleaged – said, ‘I don’t know. Maybe around one. We were just coming into the mall.’
‘And what happened?’
‘We parked our car and started walking to the entrance. Then all of a sudden a lady started screaming.’
An uncontrolled groan left Rich’s throat. For a few seconds no one spoke. Rich couldn’t even look up from the floor. He could barely stand.
‘Go on,’ Officer Charles said quietly.
There were tears in the woman’s eyes. ‘I feel so bad now, you know, because then we looked over at her, and she had a guy with her, and he smiled at us, wrapped an arm around her, and started kissing her –’
‘Started what?’ Rich said, horrified.
‘Started kissing her.’
He briefly felt relief. ‘Well, then, that couldn’t have been my wife.’
‘Maybe not,’ she said. ‘But this woman was very pregnant and she had long brown hair. She was screaming, “Help me, help me,” and then the guy kissed her and we just thought they were fooling around, you know? Didn’t we, Debbie?’
Trembling, Rich clenched and unclenched his fists.
‘This guy, what did he look like?’
Officer Charles extended his hand again. ‘Mr Wood, wait.’ He turned to the woman. ‘What did this guy look like?’
‘We didn’t see him so good,’ she said. ‘We just saw them from the