Page 86 of Wrong Mail

"Julia?” I yell.

She’s nowhere to be found.

I take out my phone, pausing for a second to catch my breath.

My hands are shaking when I call 911.

Part Three

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The next morning, Chris's face is on the television by the time I come downstairs, but it's the wrong photo.

They've used his country club shot. Chris is tanned and grinning in a collared shirt with the lake behind him. It looks too good. He's the type who grips your hand too hard and calls you champ. They picked one that wants you to like him. There's nothing in it of the real man who put David into the cake table or laid a hand on Julia. Under his chin, three words sit in clean white letters.

WANTED FOR QUESTIONING.

David is already dressed, standing too close to the screen with a coffee. He didn't come to bed. He sat up all night with the news, watching what happened become a story. Julia’s house now has the scrubbed-out quiet of a place the police have finally left. They were on the road a long time yesterday, first at Julia's and then at ours.

A young officer wrote down what I'd found, including the open door and the tap running upstairs. I showed him Julia's video and watched him play it twice.

He asked why I hadn't called when I got it.

I told him the truth. Julia had asked me not to tell anyone. She was my friend, and I trusted her. I'd seen the bruises before, but she'd said she was handling it. I thought she was finally ready to leave Chris, that she wanted me there when she did. I thought giving her one night was what she was asking me to do.

I told it over and over, to him and then to another officer, until the words stopped sounding like mine.

David changes the channel.

The storm is the lead story.

A man in a slicker stands on a Seattle dock somewhere with the rain coming sideways, saying the system has stalled over the Sound and the worst is still to come. Then they cut back to a news anchor and another version of the story about Julia.

They're calling her a Hunts Point woman. They use a photo from her website. Julia appears in a bright empty room with her arms folded, looking like money with good bones. Reported missing by a neighbor, the anchor says. I know which neighbor. I'm that neighbor, the one who called it in. The anchor says that the woman's partner, Christopher Brockwell, is being sought for questioning.

Then it switches to Detective Rodriguez.

He's at a low podium in front of a county seal. He looks exactly as tired on television as he did in my living room. He asks anyone who has seen Christopher Brockwell to come forward. He doesn’t call Chris a suspect. He calls him a person of interest. Watching him, I understand what that careful language means. They're looking for Chris because they think he took her. He's the abusive boyfriend, the obvious answer.

I want it to be Chris.

If it's Chris, the world stays the size it was a week ago. He's cruel. He's violent. He's been hurting Julia for longer than I wanted to admit, and now he's done the thing everyone should have seen coming.

I cast a glance at David, thinking of my own marriage.

David might be short-tempered, secretive, lying about one bad night, but he’s not capable of this. Of that I’m sure. Or am I?

I realize if it's Chris, I get to keep David.

If it isn't, where does that leave me?

"They'll get him," I say. "He can't have gone far."

David doesn't answer. He's watching the crawl at the bottom of the screen, reading it like a wound.

We keep watching.

The broadcast moves to politics, then a car dealership ad, then a story about a school board meeting I barely hear. David doesn't move from the screen.