Page 30 of Find Me

“He worked on Alaskan commercial fishing boats for years. That’s where he met Frank.” She could tell the name meant nothing to the detective. “Frank Garner. Owned Reel Deal Fishing until last winter, when he sold it to Alex, whom he met, like, a decade ago.”Whom.The same writer who had told her aboutsheversusher.

“So, we didn’t talk about that before,” the detective said. “Alex was from Alaska?”

We didn’t talk about anything before,she thought.You barely listened to me. You wrote me off as some kind of ditzy hairdresser sidepiece. You never asked me a single question.

“I told you that on Saturday,” she said. “I told you he saved up all his money from work catching salmon, and that Frank became a kind of mentor. They stayed in touch. And when Frank decided to retire, he sold the guide business to Alex. Six months ago, but that was, like, New Year’s. So this was really Alex just getting started on running the place during a season.”

“Did he grow up in Alaska?” Decker asked.

She shook her head. “Phoenix. He told me he moved to Alaska because it was basically the exact opposite of where he grew up.”

“What about his family?”

For his next of kin. That’s why you’re asking, right?

“They were undocumented—his family, I mean. He had DACAprotection. That’s how the subject came up. He told me . . .” She started to say “once.”He told me once...She realized how fleeting it made their relationship seem, but it wasn’t like that. And she realized how stupid she’d sound if she tried to explain “It wasn’t like that.” She’d had short, dramatic, intense flings before—ugh—but Alex hadn’t been that. She left out theonceand embellished a bit. “He told me all the time how unsettling it was to grow up with undocumented”—her father would have saidillegal—“parents. It wasn’t until he got registered with Dreamer protection that he started to, well, dream, I guess, that he could be something other than pure under-the-table labor. Like he’d been living in an invisible prison, and the bars were suddenly gone. And Frank was the one who encouraged him. For Alex to be a business owner here? In the Hamptons? It was major to him.” She felt a lump in her throat again and a sudden urge to crawl back under the blankets. She was exhausted from the pure physical act of crying.

“Did he ever mention living anywhere other than Phoenix or Alaska?”

She shook her head.

She could tell that Decker was contemplating whether to ask another question. “Not the Midwest?” he asked.

She shook her head again, even as she thought about that neutral accent.

“Kansas, maybe?” Decker asked, clearly revealing more information than he had initially intended. “Wichita, Kansas.”

“He just said Phoenix. And Alaska.”

“Did he ever tell you where his parents currently lived? Any siblings? Anything?”

“His parents are gone. He told me that even with DACA protection, it wasn’t until his parents passed away that he felt comfortable owning anything in his name. He called it ‘coming out from the shadows.’”

“Do you know when his parents died? Or where they were before they passed? Nothing about Kansas?”

“I’m sorry. No.”

“When you filed the missing person report, you mentioned that he had seemed distracted lately.”

Suddenly, you’re interested.“He was normally one hundred percent in the moment.” Unlike anyone else she had ever dated, she thought. “But for the past few weeks, I’d notice him not listening, kind of with a vacant stare. Checking his phone a couple times. I’d ask him about it, but he’d brush it off and tune back in.”

“It doesn’t sound like he was the most open boyfriend.”

This was the judgmental detective she remembered from Saturday. He’d clearly had some preexisting idea of what a “real” girlfriend should know about a man. Her exact words were, “He’d been distant lately. Worried. Distracted.” She had offered the observation as evidence that something was terribly wrong. Instead, this overaged frat boy had reached a final opinion, writing her off as some thirsty chick whose man wasn’t that into her.

“Just go ahead and tell me,” she said now. “He drowned out there in the ocean. I already heard. He’s the guy who was in the paper this morning. I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me that from the beginning.”

For the first time since she had encountered Detective Decker, he seemed like an actual person. He looked pained.

“That’s why we haven’t made a formal announcement yet about the body pulled from the water yesterday. I wanted to make sure you were notified first, not just about his identity but also about the actual cause of death.” And then he delivered the news. Alex’s body was the one found at Star Island, but he had been killed by a small-caliber bullet to the base of his skull.

The wail that broke from her throat surprised even her. It was raw and visceral, unleashing a new flood of sobs that felt like the riptide she had imagined Alex trapped in. She was surprised when she felt the detective’s hand on her back, patting her gently in a steady rhythm to help slow her breath.

“Why is this so much worse?” she managed between gulps of air.

“Not my place to say, but maybe because it’s unnatural—which means someone out there is responsible? And that’s why I have to ask you another question, even though it might be painful. You said that when you reported Alex missing, he had seemed distant.”

“And worried,” she emphasized.

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