Page 46 of The Secret
This is achingly familiar. Sometimes he answeredmyquestions with his own questions. I want to groan out loud. This is so much more than being self-contained.He shared nothing.
“I don’t remember him ever talking about where he was brought up or his family.” Jeff laughs nervously. “I don’t know what we talked about.Myfamily I think. He was always asking questions, and I have a very big family.” He shakes his head.
Boni asks a few more things about them and their background and what they had in common with Dan, but I can see from how little he’s writing down that it’s fruitless. They probably know less about Dan than I do. Both of them express concern and ask us to let them know if we find anything, and Boni takes it all down, making a note of their phone numbers.
When we leave the university café, Boni blows out a long breath and glances over at me. He pulls out his notebook as we get to the car and flicks through the pages.
“This doesn’t feel good to me, Liss.”
I roll my lips together, staring off over the parking lot shimmering in the lingering afternoon heat.
It doesn’t feel good to me either. Where do we go from here?
20
LISS
Saturday, July 13, 2019
Ilay down my phone and study Kate’s and my small Manhattan apartment: the chipped Formica cupboards of the kitchen opposite Kate’s bedroom, the worn wooden floors. After ten fruitless days in Zimbabwe, I came home two weeks ago. The car license plate was just an ordinary guy in the suburbs driving into town. We put Dan’s picture in theHarare Tribuneand Herald, which resulted in a flurry of calls and “sightings,” mainly crackpots looking for money, other private investigators, and people promising to find “Mr. Dan.” Boni has managed to track down another couple of people at the university who knew Dan, but got a similar story. He’s reported Dan as a missing person, which is standard in a situation like this apparently, but the police aren’t too interested. They think he’s left the country and that explains his switch to a new phone.Yes, but if it’s just that, why hasn’t he contacted me?
It’s in my court to decide if I want Boni to keep digging, but I’ve spent over four thousand dollars already, which is money I don’t have. I’ve read about people disappearing in the past and always wondered how that could be possible with the trail left by smartphones and online. I’ve never thought tracking the last place someone was would be that hard. And I guess we have tracked Dan to where he was last, but it hasn’t helped.But this can’t be the end of the road.
I pick up my phone again and scroll through the photos. My favorite is a joint selfie we took in a bar, both a bit drunk, two smiling idiots, Dan’s chin on my shoulder. A lump forms in my throat.God, he could be dead. I would rather anything than that, even if he had lied about everything. I blink fast, trying to hold back the tears, but they well up anyway, and I curl into myself on the sofa hugging my phone to my chest. Lying on the couch, I stare at the thin surface of the coffee table, the TV from next door chattering away in the background, and everything blurs as my tears track down my face. My whole chest is tight, my heart squeezed in a vice. I have no idea how much time passes, but eventually a key rattles in the lock and Kate barrels in, dropping her backpack down when she sees me curled up.
“Liss.” Her feet hurry across the floor, and her warm hand wraps around my shoulder. “Are you okay?”
I roll onto my back and peer up at her. Her face swims.
“Oh God, what’s happened? Have they found him?” She studies my blotchy face intently.
I shake my head, tears starting up again as she plonks herself down next to me, pulling me up and into the slightly antiseptic smell of the hospital.
“Tell me what’s going on,” she says, sitting back and smoothing my hair with her hand.
“Just another update from the PI: still no trace of him.” I briefly gulp out the details.
She slumps into the back of the sofa, and I shift to make room for her.
“Oh God, it’s all so weird,” she says.
“I can’t bear the thought he might be dead.”
She shakes her head. “There’d be some evidence of that, surely? Your guy has examined the death records, hasn’t he? No one matched his description?”
“He’s checked it all out, yes. There were a couple of people who were about the same age, but he talked to the families and got photographs and neither of them are Dan. What if he’s lying in a ditch somewhere?”
“We overestimate the chances of someone dying because of all the cop shows on TV. Usually, people don’t die unexpectedly and anonymously in ditches. They pass away in obvious ways like old age, car crashes, drug overdoses, or at the hands of their spouse. The police are always involved in those.” And I know she’s trying to provide some hope in her matter-of-fact way.
“The Harare police think he’s left the country, that that’s the most likely thing.”
“Then they’re probably right.”
“Yeah, but why hasn’t he got in touch with me? I mean, that I don’t understand.”
“It’s pointless speculating about things you can’t answer, likewhy. I think the real question iswherehe might have gone.”
“Well, if he lied to me, then he could have been from anywhere. Not Zimbabwe. Not even Africa.”
