Party Crashers

FROM
    CHATTAHOOCHEE RIVER
    A local fisherman alerted Roswell authorities that he'd found what appeared to be a late-model car just below the water's surface near the Morgan Falls Dam. A 2008 silver Mercedes sedan registered to Buckhead resident Gary Edward Hagan was pulled from the Chattahoochee River. Authorities found the decomposing body of an unidentified woman inside. A warrant has been issued for Hagan's arrest. The local and state police are asking that anyone who knows of his whereabouts contact them.

    She clicked on the link to photos and inhaled sharply at the color picture of Gary's car being pulled from the water by a winch, yellow water gushing from the fender wells. The next photo showed a black body bag being loaded into a van. A lump clogged her throat at the graphic nature of the photo—from the way the body handlers held the bag, the body seemed especially unwieldy. But when Jolie hit the button for the next photo, the air fled her lungs. Gary's driver's license photo. He was a handsome man, dark-headed with smooth brown skin, pale eyes, and a charming smile. But the DMV photo made him look heavy-lidded and surly. Any person who saw that photo would think him capable of murder.
    The waffles forgotten, Jolie stared at the photo for the longest time, her eyes watering and her doubts rearing.
    Was he?
    She returned to her bedroom and opened the closet door to stare down at the box of Gary's belongings the apartment manager had given to her. She debated whether she should sort through everything or not before delivering the box to Detective Salyers—after all, if she didn't look, she could always plead ignorance.
    On the other hand, Detective Salyers already believed she had looked.
    She heaved the box to the bed and gingerly lifted the lid, releasing a smoky odor into the room. Her heart squeezed with the thought that, fugitive or no, Gary's life had been reduced to this cardboard box. She sorted through bills and junk mail and set them aside, unopened. A wire tray held more mail, but the envelopes appeared to have been opened, she assumed by Gary. A check of the postmarks confirmed that they were received the week he disappeared. She uncovered his cell-phone bill, and a half dozen credit-card invoices, all with overdue amounts that were breathtaking. Gary was either slothful about bill paying or was deeply in debt.
    There was a cube of yellow note paper, on the top of which he'd scribbled, "extra door key for Gordon." She didn't remember him mentioning anyone named Gordon, but if Gary was giving him a key to his apartment, they must be close. A neighbor? A cleaning service?
    There were various flyers and postcards advertising all kinds of happenings in Buckhead, midtown, and downtown Atlanta. Concerts, art shows, restaurant openings, club events, open houses. It was how he kept up with everything, she presumed. He was on the mailing lists of the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Woodruff Arts Center, the High Museum of Art, the Fernbank Museum, the Falcons, the Braves, the Hawks, and every college in the vicinity. She turned over each flyer, looking for highlighting or more hand-scribbled notes. On the back of the postcard for the High Museum, he had written—illegibly—what looked like "hardy manuals." The nonsensical words meant nothing to her.
    There were sales papers, random coupons, and other irrelevant pieces of mail. She almost missed a small envelope the size of a gift card. The envelope was blank, but contained a tiny pink card. Outside it read, "Missing you," and inside it read "Missing me?" The card was signed, not with a signature, but with a lip imprint in pink lipstick. The imprint was smeared, badly...purposefully, but by the sender or by the receiver? Was it a message from his "troubled" ex? Since the envelope had no address or stamp, the sender had obviously delivered it in person, or left it where Gary would find it.
    She returned the card to its envelope, then delved through the rest of the box's contents—a couple of baseball caps, although not the burnt-orange-colored one he wore most often. A couple of sports-themed paperweights, a Swiss Army knife, a handful of matchbooks from local restaurants, some bottles of over-the-counter painkillers, a few music CDs he'd burned and labeled himself—80s ROCK, 90s ROCK, DELTA BLUES. She winced when she thought of his extensive music and movie collection being melted down by the fire.
    At the bottom of the box was a dusty framed