thugs. Sometimes they were kids. Sometimes they were intellectually impaired, just folks not smart enough to make good choices. Often, they were victims themselves. He left the job after twenty-five years, and he never told anyone—not even his wife, Claire, who he thought knew on some level—that he had wasted his life.
People were so hung up on the concept of justice, of wrongs punished, streets safe, criminals put where they belonged. But the system was broken, like so many systems. And the world was so impossibly vast, even now with technology tightening the net, that some people just stayed lost.
“Don’t take it so hard,” said Andrew from the passenger seat.
They sat in Andrew’s driveway with the sun dipping low. The search for Hunter’s runaway had yielded nothing, except a foray into the dregs that had left them both wondering what had happened to the world. The tattoos, the piercings, the blank-faced young people staring into screens. Tommy’s Cove used to be a biker bar, a wild place, lots of brawls and gang violence. That seemed tame, old-fashioned compared to what had become of the place. Permanent midnight with windows blacked out. Blaring music, weird strobes. And everyone—so blank. Hopped up on pills, or that new thing, kratom—opium’s legal cousin. Lots of lost kids looking like zombies, stumbling, dead-eyed. No Jennie.
Hunter didn’t want to face Jennie’s mother with more bad news.
“Do you ever think about retiring?” said Andrew. The gloaming had settled on the pretty manicured lawns of his street. Somewhere a lawnmower buzzed. “Like really retiring.”
“And do what? Work on my backhand?”
Andrew shrugged. He was a big guy who had lost a lot of weight. Now he was a skinny guy who looked like he was waiting to get big again. He hadn’t updated his wardrobe, so his clothes hung off of him. “That’s what people do. You could take a class. Woodworking. You used to do that, right?”
Claire wanted him to fully retire, as well. She wanted to travel. Take ballroom dancing classes. “Maybe.”
“I’m just saying. You look tired.”
He was tired.
But. But. How did you stop being the sheepdog? There were sheep in this life. And there were wolves. He’d heard it in a movie, and it struck him as true. And then there were the men and women on the job—the ones in the squad cars and the ambulances, the firetrucks, those fighting on the front lines at home and overseas. They were guarding the perimeter between bad and good. The sheepdogs, on the lookout for the predators, and bringing the lost lambs back into the fold.
Andrew climbed out of the car, rubbed shyly at his balding head. “Call me if you ever want company again.”
Hunter drove home, through the quiet of Andrew’s middle-class neighborhood, up a rural road to his own house. Claire was always the high earner working in medical sales; that’s why they could afford the big house they had, set back on five acres of land—idyllic with big trees and a stream at the edge of the property. He parked in the garage and killed the engine, checked the mail—all catalogs and fliers—walked inside.
He expected to find his wife at home, in the kitchen with the television on, cooking something or another. Instead there was a note reminding him that she had book club and that there were leftovers in the fridge. He was guiltily glad for it.
He wanted to pull out his old files on the Behr case and didn’t want to do it under the disapproving stare of his wife.
Some of this stuff, Hunt, you just have to let go.
Everyone was all about letting go these days. But, in this world, it seemed to Hunter that way too much was just let go. Pearl—there was no one to hold on to her. And she—a teenage girl, flesh and bone, heart and soul, just disappeared. Hunter prided himself on being the only one holding on to her.
Missing people. Missing children. There was always a big fuss at first. A media feeding frenzy, search parties and helpful volunteers, endless news loops, press conferences with tearful parents. Then, as the days and weeks wore on, leads ran cold, people went back to their lives. They had to. Because the ugly truth was that some things—even people—got lost and were never found. There was a special kind of hell to that for folks. An always waiting, always wondering, end to life as they knew it.
In the spotlessly clean kitchen, he nuked the lasagna Claire had left