The Missing Place Read Free

couldn’t seem to stop crying. “Back in September. He got a job right away, with Hunter-Cole Energy. He stays at the Black Creek Lodge. He was just home over Christmas. And then he came back here and we didn’t hear from him and that’s not like him . . . last week my husband called the company and they said he hadn’t come to work. No one let us know. I’m sure he would have listed us, an emergency contact at the very least, but they didn’t call or anything. They didn’t tell anyone. If Andy hadn’t called them . . . And he hadn’t been in his room at the camp, either, Andy talked to someone at the lodge, they gave away his room. Paul wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t just . . . quit and not tell anyone. They said, the police said they can’t do anything about it. So I’m here. I’ve come to find him.”
    A change had come over the man’s face. He already knew the story, Colleen could tell; recognition mixed with concern in his eyes. Well, so at least people up here were talking about it. The cops had made it sound like boys went missing all the time, but that wasn’t true, and this man Dave knew it.
    She put her hand on his arm, feeling the warmth of his skin under the rough cotton of his shirt. “Do you know something? Have you heard something?”
    â€œI heard . . . I mean, I don’t know if it’s the same one, if it’s your son, but they say two boys went missing from the Black Creek camp a couple weeks ago. Hunter-Cole Energy boys—one was still a worm. Went by Whale and, uh, can’t remember the other boy’s name.”
    â€œPaul. My son is Paul.” She didn’t know about any other boy. The police, the men from Hunter-Cole Energy—she’d kept calling until they transferred her all the way to the company’s headquarters in Texas—had never mentioned that. She didn’t know what he meant by worm and whale , and what did it mean that there were two of them—that had to be worse, didn’t it?
    â€œAll I know is the handles they used up here. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t even, I don’t know if it’s the same ones.”
    â€œWhen did these ones go missing?”
    The man squinted, as though the question caused him pain. “Let’s see, I heard it Thursday last. They were moving a rig out Highway Nine east of town, the boys didn’t show. I got a friend on Highway Patrol, is how I know.”
    â€œIt’s him, then! He went missing the same day, that’s the first day he didn’t come back to his room.”
    â€œWell, listen. There’s someone you maybe ought to see.”
    â€œYou know something? Anything. Anything at all, please tell me.”
    The man took a deep breath and let it out, shrugging off his vest. He folded the vest in half and began to roll it up, not meeting her eyes. “I don’t know a damn thing. Wish I did. But she might, and I’ll take you to her right now.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œThe other mom.”

three
    DAVE CALLED HIS wife to tell her he’d be late. As he drove, he told Colleen he had moved to Lawton from southern Missouri during the last boom, in the late 1970s. He met a local girl, married her, and stayed. The airport job was a good one, and he didn’t miss the work on the rigs, or the prospect of losing his job when the boom started to fade.
    The snow was coming down more heavily now, dusting Dave’s windshield between each swipe of the wipers. His truck smelled pleasantly of oil and tobacco. It seemed like the only traffic on the road was trucks—pickups like Dave’s, bigger than those Colleen saw around Boston, many of them jacked up on larger-than-life wheels, but mostly long-bedded vehicles both empty and loaded with equipment. Traffic moved slowly, giving Colleen a chance to watch the town go by outside her window.
    Lawton seemed to be one