The screen jumped from a woman in a tailored dress, her hair in a taught ponytail that swayed slightly in the breeze, in front of a blurred building backed with bright blue skies and small, fluffy clouds to a closely cropped headshot. The stark white background made the woman’s titled head pop off the screen. Her glossy hair, dark with tinges of red, formed meticulously rolls that swopped along the contours of her face landing just above the sharp cut of a lightly padded blazer. She wasn’t smiling, but her mouth was set almost as if she was trying to say something.
BAKER
The fact that the news had used her headshot from five years ago said a lot to Baker.
Her headshot disappeared and before him was the newscaster, cheerfully full of sorrow as she pleaded the community to call local law enforcement with any information. Baker had information. For starters the well manicured woman with the defined cheek bones, pink lips, and flawless complexion wasn’t going to help anyone find the heavyset woman with shorter flat dark brown hair losing the battle against an incoming crown of gray whose cheeks were no longer defined nor rosy. If she had been taken, though that brought a whole new list of questions Baker wasn’t prepared to mull over, it would have been without her makeup kit.
Baker would call down to the station talk to someone about using a more current picture. She had a feeling the woman’s family or friends were trying to honor her wishes, but if there didn’t get current information out there, they’d be planning a memorial service instead of a homecoming.
She also knew that she had been at the craft store last Thursday night and had run into someone who knew her. It wouldn’t be too hard to find a petite, short dirty blonde young woman who could be anywhere from her early twenties to her mid-forties. Shit, she had been that age once.
MAMIE
She remembered the day that picture was taken. Palmer had come by her desk three times asking when they were taking headshots.
“I can’t eat my lunch until after the picture,” she said. Her voice strained to remain civil.
Palmer had been on a health kick then. Gym class at 5:30 in the morning or after work, depending on her court schedule. Pre-portioned, pre-packaged lunches most of which were a form of grilled chicken and spinach and purported to be homemade. Not that Palmer wasn’t a good cook, Mamie had been to a few of her parties over the years and she always delivered with homemade Greek and Italian specialities. Palmer didn’t have a lot of time and if she could pay to have something done — and done right — she would. Cooking would have been one more thing on her already full plate that would have been easier, and probably healthier, to outsource.
From their last run in it seemed that Palmer’s health kick was long over. She had been even bigger than when they first met. Her face saggy and weathered. When Mamie had seen the frazzled hair, dark fighting against the lightened top, framing the long face that pulled down she had thought to herself it’s Palmer Makarov’s mom.
A few short steps and she realized it wasn’t her mom, it was Palmer.
Palmer, who given everything, was still happy to see her. There were smalls lines straining around her eyes and her overly big smile. Her eyes had darted between Mamie’s and over her shoulders. She had dropped her cell phone into her bag looking like a kid who ate the dog’s treats when Mamie had run around the corner. Palmer was always jumpy, always aware of what other’s saw or thought. It was as much of her personality as it was in Mamie’s not to give a shit.
No matter what their differences, their embrace had been warm and genuine and completely unlike the Palmer that was about to strike. Mamie hadn’t known it in that moment, only that she was happy to see someone she cared about, someone she hadn’t seen in a dog’s age, someone she (once) had called a friend.
Arjun
Arjun shut the television off no longer able to stomach the repeating segment on Palmer. No news, or at least no newnews. He wanted to believe it was a good sign. She would not have. Instead she would have launched into a long, long dialogue about how vital the first 24 hours were to an investigation, how idiotic the police were to use an old picture because without a doubt she would have stalked the victim on social media, and probably most importantly: how the boyfriend did it.
Not that Palmer had a boyfriend.
She was focused on her career. The one she hated a little more with each passing day. The one she had hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to have. The one her friends had decided upon for her. Wrapped up in his arms surrounded by a sea of blankets, she had laughed with him, or at him — it was hard to tell with Parker, about his parents and their desire for him to pursue a career in medicine. How disappointed they were to have a lawyer for a son. They had felt that way until his first paycheck. It was not the American dream of their choosing but it paid the same.
No, Palmer did not have a boyfriend. Instead she had Arjun. A confidant. A safe place for the deepest feelings she felt compelled to share. A person with whom she could be her naked self. Both metaphorically and physically.
It had been a while since he had seen Palmer the way she was in her photograph, the one the stations were using, but she was as beautiful to him no matter what the scales read. It had taken months and more tequila than any one person should consume for her to go to bed with him without that damned t-shirt. How many men had missed out on her milky skin, soft and curvy, because she felt insecure? How many moments had she wasted worrying about her size and not the brilliance of her character?
A pang settled in his stomach pulling Arjun to his knees. He rested his elbows on his glass-topped coffee table. He would have given her the world. Instead she wanted to remain friends.
Friends.
He could not bring himself to ask. The glass felt cool against his forehead as his pain pulled him further down. It was one thing to suspect. It was another to know.
He did not want to know if Palmer rejected his heart due to the color of his skin, his preferences of teas, spices, and naan to coffee, skim milk, and whole wheat toast.
Palmer did not have a boyfriend, nor did she have a friend. Somethings were just too painful.
Alexis
Alexis muted the television and picked up his phone. Her picture was still frozen on screen as he sent a text to the group. It read, “WTF did anyone know Palmer was missing –”
Dancing ellipsis came and went along the bottom of the text. He backed out of the chat and scrolled down through the rest of his messages until his thumb hovered above the word: PALMER.
Shit, he muttered to himself. He couldn’t text her. The best thing to do when anyone went missing was to keep your head down and stay out of it. At least if you didn’t want to end up dressed for them county blues.
Alexis swiped through his texts again. The name he was looking for this time was closer to the top: LUDO.
The news reporter returned to the screen as a ringing burst through Alexis’ phone. It only rang twice before a smooth, oily voice came through the speaker.
“Hello,” Ludo answered.
“Did you see my text,” Alexis asked.
“No,” there was a pause. “What do you mean missing?”
“Like News Channel 12, missing for a week, police are investigating, missing.”
“Damn.”
It came out like a low whistle. Alexis wondered if he was thinking of the Palmer that used to follow them around when Mert, her older brother, and the rest of the guys on the blocked would run around town. The one who would do the stupid shit they proposed to her or get herself so worked up arguing that she ended up walking home alone crying.
“Are you gonna call Mert?”
Or was he thinking of the fleshy, soft teenager who swallowed all of them like it was just as much a right of passage for her as it had become for them? The Palmer whose V-card Ludo had swiped? It should have made him king of the group. Especially with Mert away at whatever “special school” his mother swore was for prodigies and not parolees. It hadn’t. It was Palmer.
“I can’t Ludo,” his voice trailed off.
He doubted Ludo was thinking of the broke as a joke, big-city living esthetician Palmer. Ludo had been married then, and Alexis was usually the one who kept in touch with her. He’s the one who made her apply to law school and stop dicking around. He was also the only one of their childhood friends to have been associated sexually with her. Not that it wasn’t true, but it’s what solidified his role as king and Palmer’s loyalty, which certainly had helped over the years.
“Let me call my mom. I think she and Mrs. M still talk.”
30+ years and more than 200 pounds since he first met her and she was still their friend. The one who threw the best Super Bowl parties and who always knew the dirt on everyone.
The Palmer who was missing.
Alexis’ phone was practically convulsing in his hand from the influx of texts. Out of everyone they knew, that he could think Palmer knew, he held the majority of her secrets. The Indian she “wasn’t seeing,” the friends she recently cut out of her life, the ones she had cut out years ago. If someone wanted information about Palmer, Alexis was the person to see.
Not that he would be seeing anyone about anything. She would rather die than for the world to know she had gotten and broken her gastric band after a year.
Rarely were any of Palmer’s secrets exclusively her own. Most of them belonged wholly to other people or other people’s secrets had mixed in with her own. Alexis knew all to well how things with Palmer could get sticky.
Alexis shut off the television and pushed off from his recliner. 42 new texts waited for him. He grabbed his pack of Camels and headed out the door to the driveway. From his basement apartment, what used to be his mom’s basement that she converted for him for his 30th birthday, he could see the block the Makarov family lived on. Ludo’s family still lived there. Though Mrs. M sold the house a year after Mr. M left her.
He pulled out a cigarette from the pack and wondered if anyone had told Mr. M his daughter was missing? Alexis didn’t know his father. He was pretty sure his 20 year old mother hadn’t either, not really. Something Palmer always told him could be problematic if he ever committed a real crime.
The only crime he had ever committed Palmer was intimately aware of. . . the smoke filled his lungs. Palmer and her secrets; the joke had always been a simple one: it would help her or get her killed. Alexis opened his phone after lighting another cigarette and started reading through the group text.
BAKER
“It’s been 24 hours since the news took this story and what do we know about Palmer Makarov?”
Baker looked at her partner. Somewhere in the precinct more than one phone was ringing off the hook. She doubted they were for her cases. If there were calls, she glanced at the cork board to the right of her desk, she would be shocked if any of it was useful information.
“Well,” Albin started, “this isn’t our case to start. In case you forgot we’re the cold case unit.”
Albin shifted in his seat. His tweed elbow patch shuffling around the Martinez case from 95.
“She was seen Thursday evening at Joanne’s by you,” he continued. “Other than race – white, gender – female, age – 45, occupation – attorney, and that she’s been missing for a week? Nothing.”
Baker felt the graphite tip of her pencil part her hair as she used the side to scratch the back of her scalp.
“You are going to go to Harrison with this, right? It’s his case. Him and his new partner, Rodriguez.”
“Yes,” Baker nodded reluctantly.
From a quick stroll by Harrison’s desk and the war room that had replaced the makeshift morgue he and Albin had been using to dissect the Martinez case, it didn’t seem like they didn’t have much more on Palmer. Had she paid cash? or did had she not made it to the register?
She had been online, that was when she was ambushed by her acquaintance. She didn’t have anything in her cart, but on the upper shelf there were a few things. Did it matter?
Baker knew she was going to have to talk to Harrison and Rodriguez soon enough. She could already hear the pat on the arm, followed by a soft chuckle from Harrison thanking her for chipping in. Like she was Reception taking a message and not a senior detective. Baker had chosen to move to the cold case unit, had actually been the one championing having the unit in the first place. Her move had given Harrison the opportunity he snatched up like a greedy jackal.
But everyone needed a voice. Coffee and toothpaste permeated her mouth as she exhaled. Including Palmer Makarov, even if it meant talking to Harrison. Maybe he would actually be a better detective than his loud mouth, boastful attitude led her to believe. Maybe he would dig far enough into Palmer’s life to know just how coincidental it was that Baker had run into Palmer the night before she went missing?
Or maybe he wouldn’t. Baker didn’t think so. Rodriguez seemed to be cut from a different cloth, but Baker wouldn’t be talking to anyone but Harrison.
Some secrets were better off kept quiet.