Point Omega - Don Delillo [23]
He was in the house, on the sofa, leaning well forward and talking into the floor.
“I tried to get her to come with me. I talked to her. You heard me. She said she wasn’t feeling well. Headache. She gets headaches sometimes. She wanted to stay here and take a nap. I gave her an aspirin. I brought her an aspirin and a glass of water. I watched her swallow the damn thing.”
He seemed to be trying to convince himself that all of this had happened precisely as he was stating it.
“We have to call.”
“We have to call,” he said. “But won’t they say it’s too early? She’s only been gone an hour or two.”
“They must get calls for lost hikers all the time. People missing all the time. Out here, this time of year, whatever the situation, they have to take action fast,” I said.
The only phones were our cell phones, the quickest link we had to assistance of any kind. Elster had a map of the area with numbers he’d written down for the caretaker, the sheriff’s office and the park rangers. I got both our phones and snatched the map off the kitchen wall.
I reached a man in the park rangers’ office. I supplied name, description, rough location of Elster’s house. I explained Jessie’s circumstances, not a trailwalker or mountain biker, not driving a car, not prepared to withstand even a limited period in the elements. He said he was a volunteer and would try to reach the superintendent, who was with a search party now, looking for Mexicans who’d been led across the border and then abandoned, no food or water. There were search planes, tracking dogs, GPS hand units and they often searched at night. They would be on lookout, he said.
Elster was still on the sofa, phone at his side. No one answering in the sheriff’s office, he’d left a message. He wanted to call the caretaker now, someone who knew the area, and I tried to recall the man clearly, face stained by sun and wind, eyes tight. If Jessie was the victim of a crime, I’d want to know where he was when it happened.
Elster called, phone rang a dozen times.
I finished putting away the groceries. I tried to concentrate on this, where things go, but objects seemed transparent, I could see through them, think through them. He was out on the deck again. I went through the house one more time, looking for an indication, a glimmer of intent. The impact, gathering from the first moment, hard to absorb. I didn’t want to go out there and stand watch alongside him. The fear deepened in his presence, the foreboding. But after a while I poured scotch over ice in a tall glass and took it out to him and soon night was everywhere around us.
4
Passing into air, it seemed this is what she was meant to do, what she was made for, two full days, no word, no sign. Had she strayed past the edge of conjecture or were we willing to imagine what had happened? I tried not to think beyond geography, every moment defined by the desolation around us. But imagination was itself a natural force, unmanageable. Animals, I thought, and what they do to bodies in the wild, in the mind, no safe place.
The day before, with all the phone calls made and everyone alerted, I’d stood outside and seen a car on the horizon floating slowly into motion, rippled in dust and haze, as in a long shot in a film, a moment of slow expectation.
It was the local sheriff, broad red face, cropped beard. A helicopter was in the air, he said, trackers were on the ground. First thing he wanted to know was whether there had been any recent deviation in Jessie’s normal pattern of behavior. The only deviation, I told him, was the fact that she was missing.
I walked him through the house. He seemed to be looking for signs of a struggle. He checked Jessie’s room and spoke briefly to Elster, who sat on the sofa throughout, barely able to move, either from medication or lack of sleep. He said nearly nothing and showed confusion at the sight