The Hunt. Andrew Welsh-Huggins
sniffing and chasing and nipping. It was still dark, sunrise close to an hour away. The mild December air made it feel like the week before a late Easter. I chatted about the Blue Jackets with a guy I’d seen around who had a black lab-collie mix. For the record, he agreed with me about jumbotrons. After a few minutes I called for Hopalong, reattached his leash, and walked up to my house at 837 Mohawk. I opened the door, let the dog inside, and pulled the door shut. I turned around and went back to the park and did three more loops on my own, sprinting for fifteen seconds at every other telephone pole. I’m not that old.
When I returned I checked my phone for messages, drank a glass of chocolate milk, and did twenty pull-ups on the bar I’d installed within my kitchen doorframe. I rested and did ten more. I got on the floor and with Hopalong studying me from under the kitchen table did one hundred sit-ups, a new record. A new age-group record, I corrected myself. I did some core exercises, some planks and some crunches and a back-and-forth thing with my hips that Anne had taught me, and then stretched and lifted some free weights. Anne, who’d texted me three times and called twice when I didn’t show for dinner the night before. Whose anger faded when I finally called and explained about my dad, though not without an emotional “Why didn’t you call me?” Good question. I tried to think of an answer when I tossed the now-fading flowers I’d bought her into the garbage can out back.
When I was finished exercising I checked my phone again, took a shower, and dressed. I scrambled three eggs and added some shredded Colby-Jack and poured myself the first of three bowls of cereal and sat down at the table with the Dispatch. I turned to the sports page and checked my phone again. Still nothing since my sister’s text at midnight: Mom finally asleep. Short visit possible in the morning if he’s conscious.
I tried to relax. I read the entire paper, even Marmaduke. There was nothing new about the serial killings other than a short article about a vigil later in the week for the slain women and those who were still missing. The congresswoman battling the online sites had organized it. Even less than a day after meeting Bill Byrnes I felt an urgency about this assignment. If Jessica was still alive, every moment counted.
When I was finished eating I opened my laptop and searched her name on the Franklin County muni court records page. Soliciting or drug arrests or both going back several years filled a screen. I clicked on the most recent case, from just about a year ago. Her status was listed as “Diversion in lieu of prosecution.” I saw that Karen Feinberg had represented her. So that was one good thing. I called Karen on her cell phone. When the connection went through I heard a baby crying, and then Karen’s voice.
“This better be an offer to change a diaper.”
“A week Thursday work for you?”
“That slot’s taken. What’s up? I’m on my way out the door.”
“I thought you were doing the stay-at-home mom thing.”
“Change of plans.”
“Gabby’s OK?”
“Yes. What do you need?”
I explained why I was calling. Karen, one of the city’s top young defense lawyers, and Gabby, her wife, a probate attorney, had bailed me out more than once on difficult cases. The high-profile entanglements I drove their way in return hadn’t hurt their own careers either, I supposed.
“She’s missing? Shit,” she said, over her son’s wailing.
“You mean Jesus?”
“What?”
“Never mind. You have time to go over her case today?”
“As if. Four arraignments, and those are just the ones I know about.”
“You have to eat. I’m buying. Name your place.”
“Usual joint, in that case. High noon. No, make it high noon and a quarter. Gotta go.”
After I hung up I shot Bonnie Deckard an e-mail with Jessica’s name and date of birth, asking her to poke around on her case online to see if she found anything I might have missed. Then I powered down my laptop, put it in my shoulder bag along with a water bottle, an apple, a notebook, my copy of James A. Rhodes: Ohio Colossus, the envelope with the pictures of Jessica, and a phone charger. I didn’t need a coat but grabbed it anyway. I went outside, got into my van, and headed to the hospital.
7
“WHY ARE YOU HERE?” MY FATHER SAID, turning his head toward me.
“To see you.”
“Make fun of me, more like it.” His voice scratchy with fatigue. “Before I die.”
“You’re not going to die.”
“You want me to.”
“No, I don’t.”
Behind me, I heard my mother sigh.
“You think this is my fault,” he said. “Because I don’t exercise. That’s what you said.”
Focus, Andy, focus!
I’m trying!
Not hard enough!
“It’s not your fault,” I said, though I knew I didn’t believe it. I glanced at my mom, silently accusing her. She stared back, her face a stone.
“Like you’re so high and mighty,” my dad said. “My son the security guard. Like you eat vegetables all day long. Like you run marathons.”
“Bud,” my mother said. “Leave off.”
I took a breath and pushed my chair back. We were crowded into his room on the cardiac step-down unit. A tube snaked from his nose down along his side. He had an IV in his left arm. He looked pale and pasty, salt-and-pepper stubble turning the corner into a beard. He’d been stabilized, catheterized, brought back from the dead with the help of stents and angioplasty and some other things I didn’t understand. But his blockage was too severe for him to go home before the surgery. Shelley had driven back to Cleveland to gather some things and make arrangements for a longer stay. My mom was driving back to Homer that night, declining an offer to stay with me.
“How are you feeling?” I said.
“How do you think? Like shit on toast.”
“Hopalong’s favorite snack.”
“Who’s that?”
“My dog. It was a joke.”
A grunt. “What kind of dog?”
“Golden lab.”
“Bitch?”
“Male.”
He grunted again, gave the slightest nod.
“He’s a good dog,” I said. “Gets the job done. You’d like—”
“When Bernie died, I thought about telling you. Calling you up. Asked your mother for your number. Then I thought, what the hell. Why? What would you care?”
“Bernie?”
“Yeah.”
“That was, like, fifteen years ago.”
“I still miss him. That a problem?”
“No. I’m sorry Bernie died. He was a good dog too. And I’m not a security guard.”
“What are you?”
“I’m an investigator.”
“Of what?”
“People’s problems. I help fix things.”
“You help people?” He laughed, stopping just short of it turning into a cough.
“What I said.”
“Never helped