Page 11 of Whistle

John’s personal effects were eventually returned to Annie. They came to the door one day by courier. She was in such a daze when they arrived in a padded pouch she didn’t know whether they’d been sent by the funeral home or the coroner’s office.

Anyway, there wasn’t much. He didn’t carry a lot of stuff on him. There was the fucking phone, of course. There was his wallet. It still contained all his credit cards, plus eighty-five bucks in cash. There was his pair of glasses. There were two pens that he had tucked into the inside pocket of his sport jacket. There was three dollars and forty-five cents in change that had been retrieved from the front pocket of his black jeans.

When the package arrived, Annie brought it into the kitchen and set the various items on the table. She held each and every item as though she could draw some of John’s life force through her fingertips. She took the eighty-five dollars in cash from the wallet and wondered what to do with it. Tuck it into her purse? Spend it? What do you buy with the last bills your loved one touched? No, she couldn’t spend those. She couldn’t do anything with that money. She put it back into the wallet. She brought out the Visa and American Express cards, realized she would have to cancel them. Same with the phone bill for his cell. God, the shit you had to deal with.

His glasses.

She unfolded them, peered through them for a moment, imagining John working on some project as he used them. She folded the arms back down, put them in the kitchen drawer where she tossed all the things she didn’t know what to do with.

Something was wrong.

Something was missing.

Where was Marvin?

The Marvin the Martian watch was not in the pouch. He’d worn it every day since they’d bought it together years earlier. He always wore it to work.

Where was it?

Had the impact been of such magnitude that the watch was flung from John’s wrist? If it had been attached to a flexible, stretchy band, maybe. But the watch was on a leather strap John had to pull taut and secure with a small buckle. It seemed unlikely it would have been thrown clear. And even if it had, why hadn’t it been found? The phone had been recovered.

It didn’t make sense.

There was only one explanation. It had been stolen. But by whom?

Annie considered the list of suspects. It could have been one of the paramedics. It could have been a cop. It could have been someone at the coroner’s office. It could have been someone at the funeral home.

Annie made calls to all of them. “Where’s my husband’s watch?” she asked the funeral home director. “Someone stole his watch!”

The director said she would investigate and get back to her. When she did, she had nothing to report. Annie went down a voicemail rabbit hole trying to find anyone accountable with the various emergency services people. The paramedics knew nothing. The police knew nothing.

She even went, in person, to the coroner’s office and demanded to speak to someone,anyone, who could tell her what had happened to John’s watch. She was met with shrugs and a chorus of, “Beats me.”

Her despair had morphed into rage.

Howdaresomeone steal John’s watch? What kind of sick fuck stole a watch off someone who’d just been run down by a van?

What kind of city was this, where something like that could happen?

What kind of city was it, where a kid could crawl out on a balcony and think he could fly?

What kind of city was it, where someone could mow down a total stranger in broad daylight and suffer no consequences?

All of which was to say, this was why Annie Blunt wanted to take a goddamn break from this goddamn city, and who the fuck knew whether she and her boy were ever coming back?

Three

“You won’t believe this,” Finnegan told Annie over the phone. “I found you a place.”

She had been walking back from Charlie’s school. There might come a day when she’d let him walk there and back on his own, but, hey, this was New York, and that day was a long time off. She was turning onto Bank Street when her cell started ringing in her purse. She saw Finnegan’s name and took the call.

“Where is it?” Annie asked after he’d delivered his news.

“Upstate. Near Fenelon, which, I have to admit, I have never heard of. But it’s near Castle Creek, in case you’ve heard of that.”

“I haven’t.”

“Yeah, there’s a gas station there or something. Anyway, it’s about a three-hour drive out of the city.”

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