The Night She Disappeared Read online

  “Sure, no problem.” Anna was getting impatient with him. She glanced at the clock on the microwave. “Listen, I need to go. I’ll call you as soon as I hear from her, okay?”

  “Okay, I’ll—”

  “Bye,” she said, cutting him off.

  Then she hung up before he could say anything else.

  She hated how upset he sounded—as if his wife packing a bag and leaving was the worst thing that could happen. Hell, wasn’t something along those lines just what Russ had been hoping for these past several months? Weren’t they planning to split up anyway?

  That was what Russ had told her. Or was that just something married men said to their gullible girlfriends?

  No, Russ wasn’t like that.

  He’d mentioned that Courtney’s car was still there in the boat slip’s private lot. For a moment, Anna imagined a drunken Courtney with her suitcase, stumbling off the dock, falling into the water, and hitting her head on one of the pilings.

  That would be one solution, she thought.

  She immediately felt awful for even letting such an idea enter her head. For the last year, her number one concern had been that no one got hurt. And here she was imagining how convenient it would be if Courtney were dead.

  She didn’t mean it.

  Anna told herself that her thinking was muddled because of this horrible hangover.

  She wished she could remember what had happened last night after the restaurant. She’d never blacked out or “lost time” before in her life.

  Did Courtney know about Russ and her? Russ had said she’d “made a few insinuations.” But he didn’t elaborate. Whatever was said, for Anna, it felt like there was no going back to the way things had been for her and Russ this past year. Either the two of them would move forward, or he’d reconcile with Courtney. It was why Anna hated to hear him sound so worried. It was the sound of a husband ready to reconcile with his spouse.

  Anna kept going back to last night, wishing she could remember exactly what had happened and what had been said. But it was all muddled.

  For now, she’d just have to take Russ’s word about everything that had occurred.

  Still a bit shaky, Anna took another gulp of coffee and started to get ready for work.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Friday, July 10—11:19 A.M.

  The woman on the computer screen was strikingly beautiful with long, chestnut-colored hair, big brown eyes, and full lips. She wore a simple, elegant, sleeveless white blouse that showed off her tan. She looked smart, sexy, and sophisticated. But when she opened her mouth, out came a halting voice that seemed to belong to a breathy, young Southern girl.

  Anna knew it would jar TV viewers when they first heard Courtney Knoll speak. They’d expect her voice to sound as refined as she looked. But then they’d see her gesturing and using sign language, and they’d finally realize that Courtney Knoll was deaf.

  Courtney had grown up in Florida, and lost her hearing because of a bout with measles when she was eight. Anna made sure that fact came up early in the segment so that viewers would understand why Courtney spoke the way she did. It was as if her voice was locked in the time before she’d lost her hearing.

  Anna sat in front of the computer with George Danziger, a lean, still boyishly cute thirty-eight-year-old. Anna thought he looked like Sam Rockwell, a comparison he frequently got from others, too. George had been the videographer on nearly all her stories. Anna always asked for him.

  She’d been working at KIXI-TV for two years. At the start, she’d had a little crush on George. But he was married with two kids. So Anna had managed to suppress those romantic notions. Still, she picked up an occasional vibe that he was attracted to her. Fortunately, neither one of them ever acted on their unspoken feelings. Anna didn’t want to jeopardize their working relationship or screw up yet another marriage.

  She and George knew each other so well. Most of the time, they talked in shorthand and finished each other’s sentences. She rarely had to tell him how to shoot a subject. George automatically knew how she wanted things to look.

  Anna could usually read his moods—and vice versa. George seemed kind of off today—subdued and serious. Anna had figured he wasn’t happy with her for being late this morning. She’d apologized as soon as she’d staggered in. They were in Editing Bay B, one of four small offices with a sliding glass door off the main newsroom. George had waved away her apology with a “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” He’d already edited some of the piece without her—from the script she’d written late yesterday afternoon.

  Anna was on her third cup of coffee and second round of aspirin. Her head still ached—a dull pain that echoed the insufferable throbbing from two hours ago.

  It was impossible for her to look at the sound bites of Courtney without wondering what had happened to her. A part of Anna still clung to the idea that Courtney had deliberately disappeared just to screw with Russ’s head and teach him a lesson. But during the last couple of hours, she’d begun to think maybe something far more serious had happened.

  “I just had a weird thought,” George said. Slouched in his chair, he popped a couple of pieces of Trident into his mouth. “Do you think we ought to have someone double-check the sign language—just to make sure it all makes sense? I mean, we have no idea what she’s signing, or if it matches what she’s saying.”

  Clicking the mouse, Anna paused the video on the computer screen. She squinted at him. “Why wouldn’t it match what’s coming out of her mouth?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. There are a lot of variations in sign language. Do you know what she’s signing here?”

  “I get some of it—or enough,” Anna said. But that was a stretch. She’d picked up a bit of sign language from her interactions with Courtney during the past month. And for the last three days, Anna and George had been closely working with her—shooting segments on Courtney and Russ’s beautiful houseboat, at Courtney’s book signing, and at some of the Seattle locales in her latest book: Gas Works Park, the Fremont neighborhood, and the University of Washington campus. Anna figured she understood about 20 percent of what Courtney was signing. Then again, she wondered how well she’d comprehend Courtney if they turned off the audio right now.

  She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I ask you again, why would she be signing something different from what’s coming out of her mouth?”

  “Well, for instance, I had a buddy who shot a story once about a charter boat capsizing, and the captain only spoke Swedish. The captain was a real son of a bitch. This guy on the crew interpreted for him, and what he said was all bullshit. He went on and on about how grateful the captain was to the Coast Guard for their help. Meanwhile, the asshole captain—in Swedish—was calling the Coast Guard guys imbeciles and throwing around the Swedish equivalent of a lot of four-letter words. No one bothered to double-check what the interpreter said. The piece ran on the news, and the station got flooded with calls from people who knew Swedish.”

  Anna shook her head in disbelief. “Okay, well, that’s a real cute story. But why in the world would Courtney deliberately sabotage her own segment?”

  “It’s not her segment,” George replied. “It’s yours. You’re the one responsible for it.”

  Anna looked at Courtney on the computer screen—frozen in midsentence, her eyes closed, her mouth open, and her expressive hands perfectly still.

  Courtney’s first two books, a romance and a thriller, published by a tiny press, didn’t earn her a dime. But four years ago, her first young adult novel—The Defective Squad—was picked up by a major publisher. The edgy, fast-paced thriller featured a band of four disabled American teens—sort of X-Men meets Stranger Things. Each teen had a gift: the blind seventeen-year-old white kid had the ability to tune in and listen to conversations miles away, while his Black sixteen-year-old deaf girlfriend could see through walls; the mute Native American girl, also sixteen, took on the shapes and capabilities of her animal spirit totems, and the fifteen-year-old
Samoan American paraplegic used his wheelchair to fly at jet speed.

  Anna had read The Defective Squad in two days and found it exciting, but silly and cringeworthy at times. Some of the online reviews—including ones from readers with disabilities—called the book “insulting,” “laugh-out-loud ignorant,” “condescending,” and “pandering, with something to offend everyone.” Still, The Defective Squad was a modest success. So Courtney followed it up with a sequel, Blind Fury, which did an even better business. Her new book in the series, Silent Rage, was just released last week. At the same time, a major Hollywood production company announced its intention to film the whole series—on location, in Seattle.

  This seemed to make Courtney’s book release newsworthy. At least that was what the station head and the news director thought. After all, Twilight had put Forks, Washington, on the map. And after one look at Courtney’s photo, nearly all the men in the newsroom wanted to work with her or know more about her. But Courtney had specifically asked for her friend Anna to cover the story. It was one of those assignments Anna couldn’t wriggle out of.

  She couldn’t very well tell the station head or the news director that she and Courtney were hardly friends—or that she was sleeping with Courtney’s husband.

  When Anna and George had prepared the shooting schedule, he’d pointed out that the story about Courtney seemed like little more than a promotional piece. He didn’t think it was newsworthy at all.

  But then, Anna rarely covered hard-hitting news items. Most of her segments were offbeat, human-interest stories—sometimes funny, sometimes heartwarming or inspirational. Back before KIXI, when she’d been working at a station in Spokane, they’d gotten word about a local farmer who had amassed a collection of potatoes that resembled famous people, and everyone in the newsroom had said without hesitation: “Well, here’s one Anna can cover.”

  Lightweight as her segments seemed, they were always the stories that garnered the most viewer feedback, the segments people were talking about around the water-cooler at work the next day. Her segments were often picked up by affiliate stations—and sometimes by the network. Her stories had heart, and she did them well.

  Anna wondered if Russ’s wife was truly interested in her TV-reporting skills. Or had Courtney picked her with an ulterior motive in mind? At times, Anna was absolutely certain that Courtney knew about her and Russ and sadistically relished this whole setup. It was so perverse, employing her husband’s mistress to produce a promotional piece about her. Anna wondered how far Courtney planned to push her and manipulate her into getting what she wanted. And what exactly did Courtney hope to gain from this uneasy alliance?

  To Anna’s total surprise, Courtney was warm and friendly to her during the shoot. She’d studied Anna’s work and often brought up different news stories she’d done: “Maybe we could have a shot of me in my favorite coffee place, you know—like you did in your profile of that teacher from a couple of months ago.”

  Anna found that she liked pleasing Courtney and lapped up her compliments. It was a hazard of the job, becoming a fan of her subjects. She wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, but Anna also got immediate satisfaction from helping someone with a disability. Seeing Courtney sign thank you to her filled her with pride. And after some studying online, she got a kick out of being able to sign certain words and phrases back to Courtney.

  Anna started to hate herself for what she and Russ were doing behind Courtney’s back. But if Courtney knew about them, she didn’t let on at all.

  Then, after a couple of days, Anna realized she’d handed most of the control on the project over to Courtney. It irritated the hell out of George. For example, Anna found it fascinating that, at age nineteen, Courtney had had cochlear implants that had marginally increased her hearing capacity. She kept the required external hardware hidden under her thick chestnut brown hair. Anna never caught a glimpse of the microphone behind Courtney’s ear and a recharger near the back of her skull. Anna could have done a whole series on how these implants helped different hearing-impaired people. But Courtney didn’t want it mentioned at all, because some members of the deaf community thought the procedure negated deaf culture and its own communication system of signing. Courtney didn’t want to risk alienating any potential fans by mentioning that she’d had the controversial operation. So the topic was verboten.

  Courtney also told Anna that she could show only preselected photos of her with her husband. She also didn’t want them to interview Russ or her mother. And she wouldn’t talk about the two unsuccessful books before the Defectives series, written under her maiden name.

  Anna and George had spent the better part of Wednesday afternoon at Courtney’s floating home, where they filmed her tutoring sign language to an eleven-year-old deaf boy. She’d supported herself as an American Sign Language tutor before the book sales took off.

  “To find clients,” she explained in the sound bite, signing as she spoke, “I used to go around to doctors’ and pediatricians’ offices and leave my card and my résumé. That’s how I met my husband, Russ. He was a pediatrician at one of those offices.”

  The eleven-year-old was adorable, and they got some cute scenes with Courtney and him interacting at her kitchen counter. But the following day, Courtney let it slip that she hadn’t actually tutored in three years, and the kid had been a former student.

  George was livid. He wanted to toss out the entire tutoring scene because it was merely an act. Rather than scrap the whole thing, Anna reduced the scene to a twelve-second sound bite. It was a compromise to please Courtney. Anna and George fought over it. In fact, it was one of the worst fights they’d ever had.

  Anna had figured Courtney would have tried harder to make friends with the cameraman. After all, George was the one who made her look good. She remembered Courtney once telling her how annoying it was when she used an interpreter and people speaking to her would look at the interpreter instead of her. So it seemed kind of strange that Courtney always addressed Anna as if she interpreted for George. “Tell the cameraman I don’t want that side of the living room in the shot, because you can see out the window and someone might figure out where I live.” She’d said this with George seven feet away from her, right there in the room. Maybe because she couldn’t see his face behind the camera, Courtney felt she couldn’t talk directly to him. Still, it was odd. Even when George wasn’t holding the camera in front of him, Courtney often treated him like he was invisible.

  “Listen, I don’t blame you for not being a fan,” Anna said, sipping her coffee. On the computer screen in front of them, Courtney was still frozen in midsentence. “If she wasn’t very friendly to you, I think you can chalk it up to her being nervous and on edge about the shoot.”

  “I can’t believe you’re making excuses for her.” George shook his head. “The reason I’m not a fan is because it was pretty clear to me—and obviously not to you—that she doesn’t like you at all. God knows why.”

  Anna glanced at the computer screen—and the still image of Courtney holding her hands in front of her as she signed. The engagement and wedding rings gleamed on the third finger of her left hand.

  “I see you bending over backward to please her,” George continued. “I’ve seen you do that before with different people we’ve profiled, but not to this extent. I know you want to make allowances for her because she’s deaf. But what baffles me is why you’re even friends with her. The entire time we’ve worked with her, I’ve had this feeling she has something on you—as if you owed her. Do you actually even like her?”

  Anna just shrugged uneasily.

  “That’s what I thought. This whole puff piece was motivated by guilt.”

  She gave him a narrow look. “Why would you say that?”

  “Because you can hear,” he replied. “And ever since she was eight, she hasn’t been able to hear anything. No Beatles, no Ella Fitzgerald, no Springsteen, no waves splashing on the shore, no sounds of children laughing. So you’re motivated by gu
ilt.”

  That wasn’t why Anna felt guilty in regard to Courtney. But obviously, in just three days, George had picked up on something she hadn’t about Russ’s wife: Courtney had been manipulating her all this time.

  Anna let out a long sigh. “Well, even if she’s a total bitch and hates my guts, I sincerely doubt Courtney would purposely screw up a promotional piece that benefits her more than anyone else. I mean, why would she shoot herself in the foot like that?”

  “Just what I said, maybe to bring you down,” George explained.

  Anna realized he might be right. What if—while she verbalized about something else in her little-girl voice—Courtney was signing and trashing the reporter responsible for this piece? Was that even possible? Could someone do that, sign and speak two different messages at the same time? Wasn’t it like simultaneously rubbing your belly and patting your head?

  If Courtney was out to destroy her, Anna wondered just how far she was willing to go.

  She glanced at her wristwatch. “Well, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to get someone to check her signing before this goes on the air tonight.”

  George nodded. “Good.” He clicked on the video, and it resumed playing. Courtney broke out of her frozen pose and began talking and gesturing once more.

  “So—you’ll contact an American Sign Language interpreter to double-check that what Courtney’s signing matches what she’s saying.” He pointed to the screen. “I think after this bit, we could insert the first book cover and then dissolve to that sweeping shot of Gas Works Park.”

  Two hours later, a sign language expert confirmed that everything Courtney had signed matched what she’d said.

  Anna left Courtney two text messages, letting her know that thirteen affiliates had already picked up the story. It was a major publicity coup for her book release. Anna figured that ought to get a response out of her.