Five Days in Summer

kitchen?”
    “I mentioned you were waiting, but I guess he’s had a long night. Needs his cup of joe.”
    Suellen was a little older than Geary had noticed, now that he got a closer look. Plump and pleasant, with salt-and-pepper hair cut short. In the old days, there just weren’t too many females to be seen at work; he still had trouble processing their presence.
    “Well, there must be fifty bags of coffee in the cabinet just under the machine,” Suellen said. “Here, I’ll get a pot started.”
    “Stay where you are, my dear. Let an old hand take care of it.”
    Geary smiled his best one. Suellen shot one back. Nice lady. He missed Ruth.
    “Nonsense, let me.”
    Suellen got up, tucked her blue shirt into her blue pants, adjusted her holster, even straightened the upside-down badge. She buzzed another officer to come mind the front desk, then went her own interior route in the direction of the kitchen.
    Geary turned and walked slowly down the hall. In the moments the reception desk was unattended, there was no one to stop Parker from following him. He could tell this guy wasn’t someone who would wait around to get Snowed on.
    The kitchen door was open. Suellen already had the water poured into the machine and was dumping a bag of grounds into the filter. “There you go, Al.”
    Snow looked up from the rim of his paper coffee cup, lifted to his lips. “Excuse me?”
    “Here’s your fresh pot. You must be beat after that night shift. Though how you’ll sleep on all that caffeine, I certainly can’t tell.”
    Suellen left the kitchen through the interior door that led to the front office and her desk.
    Geary went straight to the coffeepot, to wait for it to brew and to watch the show.
    “Detective Snow?” Parker asked.
    Snow put down his coffee and stood up. He had to be six feet three and a good two hundred pounds. “How can I help you?”
    “I’m Will Parker. I’ve been waiting for you.” He was straining to keep his voice polite. “Didn’t they tell you I was here?”
    Snow shook his head. Here came the Snow job. “I’ve been out looking for your wife, Mr. Parker. I just got back.”
    “I’ve been here almost an hour,” Parker said. “I don’t understand how this could have happened, how she could just disappear—”
    “Mr. Parker, why don’t you sit down?” Snow pulled out a chair and held on to the back until Parker had settled in. Then he went around the counter and took one of the brown mugs from the wall cabinet.
    “How do you take your coffee?” Snow asked.
    Parker twisted around, forehead tight as a fist. “Milk.”
    Snow pulled out the glass pot and let the coffee drip right into the mug until it was three-quarters full. Then he added a splash of milk and carried it around the counter. He set the steaming mug in front of Parker, who took a sip and seemed to have to force it down. He set the mug back on the table.
    Snow got started, flipping open his pad, uncapping his pen, even giving the tip a little lick. Geary listenedas Snow spun out all the right questions and jotted down the answers. When he got to, “Your wife ever disappear before?” Parker had enough.
    “Of course not,” Parker said. “How can a person be missing twice?”
    Snow shrugged. “Some people can’t stay put.”
    Parker leaned back. “Not Emily. She’s never run away and she never would. She’s not capable of leaving the children.”
    “Tell me about the children.” Snow twirled his pen between his thumb and pointer.
    “We have two boys, eleven and seven. And Maxi’s just one.”
    “Most mothers don’t walk out on their kids.” Snow nodded. “But they do walk out on their husbands and sometimes the kids get left behind.”
    “Detective Snow.” Parker stood up and scraped his chair under the table. “We’re wasting time with this. Please.”
    “I’m sorry” — Snow smiled; he actually smiled — “but it’s procedure. Have to do it.”
    Procedure, sure. This guy was a do-nothing piece of work — Geary had seen it a hundred times. Bottom line: Snow should have been out looking for the woman, finding traces of her at the place she was last seen, following threads. Any thread. Even invisible ones. When Geary was on the job, they used to say it took a magician to conjure a missing person back into the world from inside a black hole. They called it the vanishing point, the place you stepped into by mistake, and vanished. There were no procedures in the rule book for that