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them.

Anything to Be Together
     
    By Marie Lightfoot
     
    CHAPTER 4
     
     
     
     
    Early in the morning of the day Susanna Wing's body was found, a man called Bahia Beach 911 to report his wife was missing. His voice, which was being automatically recorded, sounded as if he was barely holding panic under control. He stated his name, Robert F. Wing, and then he gave his address, though that wasn't necessary since addresses automatically come up on the screen. Upon hearing why he was calling, the 911 operator told him he'd have to file a report with Missing Persons, and she gave him a number to call. In Bahia, as in most jurisdictions, an adult who is missing for fewer than seventy-two hours is not considered an emergency. Spouses who don't come home are given the benefit of the doubt, which means the cops assume they've left home for their own reasons.
    In Missing Persons, a new transfer from vice spoke with the distraught husband. Perhaps because she was new on the job she took his report more seriously than an older hand in the department might have at that point.
    “What is your name, sir?”
    “Bob—Robert F.Wing.”

    “And your wife's name, sir?”
    “Her name is Susanna.”
    “SusannaWing?”
    “Yes, Susanna Louise Wing. I'm worried. She was supposed to—”
    “How long has she been missing, sir?”
    “A few hours. I was out of town this week, and she picked me up at the airport this morning . . . I mean yesterday morning . . . and brought me home, and then she left to go to work in her car. She was supposed to be home around five last night. We were going to a church dinner together—I'm a minister—but she never came home. You have to believe me when I say this is not like her. She would be here, or she would call. Susanna would never let me worry about her like this. Something has to have happened, or she'd have come home.”
    “You expected her around five, yesterday, and it's a little after midnight now, so you'd say she's been missing about . . . five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven . . . eight hours?”
    “Yes, although if anything did happen, if her car ran off the road, or something like that, it could have happened a lot earlier, because she left the house at nine A.M.” The caller had a beautiful baritone voice, resonant and compelling, even in the midst of strain. “She was supposed to be showing a house all day—she's a realtor—but I don't know if she even got there. My wife is self-employed, so there's no company I can call, and the house she was showing is empty, the owners have already moved out—”
    “Where is that house?What's the address—do you know?”
    “Four-twenty South Ocean. I've driven over there.”
    “Did it look as if your wife had been there?”
    “I couldn't tell.”
    “What else have you done to try to find her?”
    “I've called every friend that I could think of, and I'veasked members of my church to drive around looking for her. I called 911, but they told me to call you—”
    “Yes, that's right.You're doing the right things, sir.”
    “But we're not finding her! Please, can you help me?”
    The gorgeous voice sounded anguished, and so the police officer responded in a calming manner that was both businesslike and sympathetic.
    “I'd like for you to describe her for me, sir, and I'll want a description of her car, and the license—”
    “I can't find where all our pictures have gone!” He sounded frustrated, helpless, pleading. “I can't even find our wedding pictures. Susanna must have stored them away somewhere. She's a very organized person. That's one reason I know something's really wrong. I can ask my church members if they have any pictures of her—”
    “Slow down, sir, let's take this one step at a time.”
    That first step was a physical description: five-footeight, 135 pounds—he guessed—Caucasian, thirty-two years old, very short dark brown hair, no distinguishing body marks except for a scar from a cesarian