No Hiding in Boise Read online

  NO HIDING IN BOISE

  NO HIDING IN BOISE

  KIM HOOPER

  TURNER PUBLISHING COMPANY

  Nashville, Tennessee

  www.turnerpublishing.com

  No Hiding in Boise

  Copyright © 2021 Kim Hooper. All rights reserved.

  This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Cover design: Lauren Peters-Collaer

  Book design: Karen Sheets de Gracia

  9781684426232 Paperback

  9781684426225 Hardcover

  9781684426249 eBook

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Chris and Mya

  CONTENTS

  ANGIE

  TESSA

  JOYCE

  ANGIE

  TESSA

  JOYCE

  LEIGH MAGUIRE

  ANGIE

  TESSA

  JOYCE

  JASON MAGUIRE

  ANGIE

  TESSA

  JOYCE

  ANGIE

  TESSA

  JOYCE

  ROBERT LANG

  ANGIE

  TESSA

  JOYCE

  ANGIE

  TESSA

  JOYCE

  RICK REED

  ANGIE

  TESSA

  JOYCE

  DAN VELASQUEZ

  ANGIE

  TESSA

  JOYCE

  ANGIE

  TESSA

  JOYCE

  ANGIE

  TESSA

  JOYCE

  JED

  ANGIE

  TESSA

  JOYCE

  KAT REYNOLDS

  ANGIE

  CALE

  TESSA

  JOYCE

  ONE YEAR LATER

  ANGIE

  TESSA

  JOYCE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ANGIE

  MY RINGTONE IS THE theme song from Sesame Street. We just started letting Evie watch Sesame Street even though the American Academy of Pediatrics has strict rules about screen time for children under the age of two (Evie will be two in a few months). The American Academy of Pediatrics must not understand the daily lives of families, the need for distraction during chaotic mornings. The only way I can get ready for work is by putting Evie in her high chair and letting her watch Elmo while eating oatmeal by the fistfuls. Cale hates the oatmeal because she gets it all over herself. He suggests I buy toaster waffles, and I suggest he make breakfast; it’s the same boring dance we do. Anyway, Evie loves the oatmeal, and it’s healthy. The American Academy of Pediatrics would approve.

  Last week, while assembling dinner—I do not cook, I assemble premade items from the refrigerated section of Trader Joe’s—I’d started humming the “Letter of the Day” song that Elmo sings in every episode. Cale laughed. He was in one of his rare chipper moods, and I thought, Maybe this will work out after all. “This” being our marriage, our existence together as parents. When I went to the bathroom, he set the Sesame Street theme song as my ringtone. He probably assumed I’d change it back, but I kept it, as a reminder that he still has good days.

  The phone rings in the middle of a recurring dream in which I cannot remember the combination to my high school locker. By the time I realize the ringing is not part of the dream, by the time I reach over to the nightstand, fumbling around for the phone, the ringing has stopped. The missed call is from a number I don’t recognize. It’s just after midnight, a cruel time for a robocall. Must be a wrong number. I close my eyes, tell myself to go back to sleep, but then it rings again.

  I answer this time so I can curse at the caller. There’s something empowering about cursing at a stranger. I know I shouldn’t think this, but life has been stressful and releasing a good “fuck you” takes the edge off.

  “Who is this?” I whisper, not wanting to wake Cale. He’s been taking something called Trazodone at night lately, for sleep. This means I’m the one who has to be ready to tend to Evie if she cries. It’s a role I resent because I’ve had it since she was born. She’s been sleeping through the night for a while now, but she still has bad nights—usually due to teething or to pee somehow escaping her diaper and soaking her pajamas.

  “Is this Mrs. Matthews?”

  It’s a man. He sounds stern. This is not a robocall or a wrong number.

  “Yes,” I whisper, now more concerned than angry.

  “Ma’am, this is Officer Stokes with the Boise Police Department,” he says.

  My first thought is Evie, though I know she’s just down the hall, in her crib. I can hear the white noise machine whirring over the monitor.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour, but we think your husband was involved in a shooting at Ray’s Bar. He’s been transferred to Saint Al’s.”

  I’m quite confident this man has his facts wrong. Cale isn’t at a bar; he’s in bed next to me.

  I turn in bed to wake Cale so he can tell this officer himself that there has been a misunderstanding.

  But he’s not there.

  “Ma’am?” the man on the phone says.

  I get out of bed and walk to the bathroom, sure I’ll find Cale there, sitting on the toilet looking at me like I’m a mad woman. He’s not there though.

  “Just a minute,” I tell the officer.

  I walk upstairs, hoping Cale is getting a midnight snack, though I’ve never seen him do such a thing. Cale doesn’t believe in snacking; he takes joy in fasting as long as he can and then eating an entire pizza.

  “Ma’am?” the officer says again.

  I can hear sirens in the background.

  “I … I don’t understand,” I tell him.

  “You can call the hospital for updates,” he says. The sirens are louder.

  “You said you think it’s him? So you’re not sure?”

  This woman at work, a fellow copywriter, told me that the phrase “grasping at straws” is from a proverb about a drowning man reaching desperately at the surrounding grasses as he goes under. This is what I feel like right now—like I’m drowning.

  “We retrieved his ID and your contact information from his wallet,” he says.

  The contact information. I know what he means. When I moved in with Cale and realized how often he went biking in the foothills alone, I insisted he carry certain things with him— his ID, his phone, his health insurance card, and my contact information. I’d written my name and number on a note card, under the words “In case of emergency,” and folded it in half. He had rolled his eyes at me, but he complied. I’d watched him slip it into his wallet.

  “I’m sorry to give you this news,” the officer says.

  He ends the call before I can think to ask the obvious questions:

  What happened?

  Was he shot?

  Is he going to be okay?

  I know I should be focused on that, on Cale being okay, but I can’t help but fixate on another question: What was he doing at Ray’s Bar in the middle of the night? I know that place. I’ve driven by it. It’s a dive, on a quiet side street on the outskirts of downtown. From the street, there’s just a brick wall, a single black door, and a sign above it that says Ray’s.

  If Cale wanted a beer at midnight (which would be strange), why not get one from our kitchen? We always have a few half-full six-packs in the fridge. Or, if he had to go to a bar (which would be even stranger), why not just walk five minutes up Thirteenth Street? Why get in the car and drive across town?

  Plain and simple, it doesn’t make sense that he was doing any
thing at midnight, let alone sitting at a bar. Since we’ve had Evie, we go to bed by eight. Both of us are exhausted. When I put her to sleep at seven, my shoulders relax away from my ears just slightly and I take pleasure in a glass of wine and whatever I’ve assembled for dinner. We barely make it through one episode of a show everyone says we “have to watch”— Stranger Things being the latest—then claim fatigue in a defeatist way and trudge to our bedroom. Cale’s been having trouble with waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to fall asleep again—hence, the pills. I’ve known about that. I’ve known he’s been “off.” But I never would have guessed he’d be going to a bar at midnight.

  I try to call him, hoping he’ll defy what the police officer told me and pick up his phone. It goes straight to voice mail though, Cale’s voice deep and strong, telling me to leave a message. I do, because it means I’m doing something.

  “It’s me. I hope you’re okay. Please call me. I love you.”

  We haven’t said those three words to each other in a while—I love you. We’ve said “love you” in a slapdash way when saying goodbye in the morning. We let the words run together, thoughtlessly—“loveyou.” Our sex life is just as slapdash— a once-every-few-weeks item on a mental checklist. I haven’t been trying hard enough, I decide.

  I call my sister, Aria, because I need someone to be at the house with Evie while I drive to the hospital. And I know she’ll be up because she doesn’t usually go to bed before one. She’s a decade younger than me, single and childless.

  “A shooting? What do you mean?” she says.

  “I don’t know anything yet,” I tell her.

  “Okay, I’ll be there in a few.”

  Aria lives a few blocks away, in one of the North End’s few apartment buildings. It’s purposeful, her closeness to me. I’ve always been like a mother to her.

  I turn on the TV while I wait. There it is—breaking news on channel 7. The words across the bottom of the screen read Deadly Shooting at Ray’s Bar.

  Deadly.

  I taste bile in my throat.

  The reporter on the screen, a woman with frizzy hair and bags under her eyes, is standing in a parking lot, the sign for Ray’s and police tape behind her, on the other side of the street.

  “Details are still coming in, but we know there are at least three people dead,” she says.

  I turn off the TV, feeling like I’m going to vomit.

  Then I see Aria pull into the driveway.

  TESSA

  I CROUCH IN THE corner of the storage closet, behind the mop bucket, covering myself as best I can with a black zip-up hoodie that was hanging from a hook on the back of the door. It’s been silent for a while, but I think he’s still out there, the shooter.

  When the shots started, I thought they were fireworks, which didn’t make sense—it’s April. Even when I saw the gun, it took me a moment to realize what was happening. People started screaming, running for the exit. I just stood there, frozen, behind the bar. That song “Night Moves” was playing over the loudspeaker. Thursday is Bob Seger night.

  “Tessa,” a voice said. Then louder: “Tessa!”

  I turned toward the man saying my name. “Cale, like the trendy lettuce stuff,” he’d said when he first introduced himself. He looked frantic. “You need to find somewhere to hide. Go, now,” he said.

  That got me running.

  I don’t know what happened to him.

  I WANT TO call Ryan, but my hands are shaking too much to even hold my phone. I’ve managed to get it out of my back pocket, but my fingers refuse to work to unlock it.

  I can see I’ve received a dozen texts from Monica, the manager of the bar. The last one shows on the lock screen:

  TELL ME U R OK

  I’m assuming she got out. If she has the presence of mind to text me about my well-being, she must have gotten out. I don’t know about Dan, the new guy who was behind the bar with me. I didn’t see where he went. It’s usually just three of us running the place, unless we have live music and a bigger crowd—then Monica makes her daughter come in to bus tables.

  I don’t dare move from my corner. He could be tricking me, waiting for me to emerge from the closet. I could be his final victim. I will not leave this room; someone will have to come get me.

  Sometime later—a few minutes or a few hours, I have no idea—I hear the SWAT team shouting codes and commands. Even though I know they are the good guys, that they can save me, I hug my knees to my chest tighter and close my eyes. When one of them kicks in the door, I scream.

  There are five of them, pointing their guns at me, telling me to put my hands up. I can’t feel my arms, don’t think I have control over them, but then my hands appear in the air, as if on their own accord. Everything is blurry from the tears. I am terrified.

  “It’s okay,” someone says.

  I’m ushered outside, seated on a stretcher. There are ambulances and police cars, sirens everywhere. There are others like me, on stretchers or pacing around, crying. I assume those injured, those killed, have been taken away already. It’s still dark outside, so I must not have been in the closet as long as I thought.

  Police officers attempt to talk to me, but I can’t form sentences. One of the EMTs gives me something to calm me down. When my hands stop shaking, I call Ryan.

  “Tess?” he says. It’s obvious I’ve woken him up. His tone is that of an annoyed person trying not to sound annoyed.

  “Ryan?” I manage.

  It feels strange to talk. My teeth start chattering, even though it’s fairly warm for April—forty-something degrees, I’d guess. I’m wearing the zip-up hoodie I found in the storage closet. I don’t know who it belongs to—maybe Dan. I look around but don’t see him. I hope he found somewhere to hide too.

  “Is everything okay?” Ryan asks, sounding more awake now.

  “No,” I say.

  “Tess, what’s going on?”

  “There was a guy. At the bar,” I say.

  “Did someone hurt you?”

  This has always been Ryan’s fear. He hates that I’m a bartender. He thinks some drunken asshole is going to wait for me to get off shift and then rape me in the parking lot. I’ve told him that Boise is safe; it’s ranked as the seventh safest city in America (or so I heard from a guy I served at the bar a while back). Ryan grew up in a small town called Gooding. To him, Boise is a big city, dangerous. He makes me carry pepper spray on my key chain.

  “No, I’m fine,” I say, though I’m not sure this is exactly true.

  “I’m coming down there,” he says.

  “No, don’t.”

  There’s no way he could get within a mile of the scene.

  “You’re going to have to tell me what’s going on, babe,” he says.

  “There was a shooting.”

  “At the bar?”

  I start crying.

  “Tess, I’m coming down there.”

  “Okay,” I say. It seems like too much effort to explain. He will see for himself.

  JOYCE

  HE TOLD ME HE was going to a movie, that he’d be back before midnight. It’s now nearly one o’clock and he’s not home. I call his phone, but there’s no answer.

  I know this is silly. He’s a grown man, twenty-eight years old. I shouldn’t be waiting up for him. Then again, he shouldn’t be living with his mother. If I had it my way, he’d be married, with a child or two, by now. He would have a job that paid enough for him to have his own house—or an apartment, at the very least. As it is, he works at Home Depot, in the appliances department. For now, that is. He’s never been able to hold a job longer than a few months. It’s always someone else’s fault. I never get the real story.

  Diana says I need to cut Jed off completely. It’s easy for her to say that. Her daughter is a well-to-do lawyer in Seattle, and her son is in medical school at Stanford. The biggest problem she had with either of them was a small amount of pot confiscated from a dresser drawer—a huge drama for her. She pities me,
I can tell. And I’m sure she wonders what I did wrong. I wonder the same. I did my best; I don’t doubt that. I just wonder if my best was good enough.

  Jed’s father, my husband, died of lung cancer when Jed was in elementary school. He didn’t smoke. I feel the need to say that any time I tell someone how he died. I can see in their eyes that they want it to be his fault. Nobody likes to consider that some things just happen.

  So I became a single mother with the usual sob story, working long hours to make ends meet. Maybe I didn’t cook enough. Maybe I didn’t help Jed with his homework enough. Maybe I should have remarried, selected a man with money so I could stay home and spend more time with Jed. It’s these maybes, these doubts, that make it impossible for me to cut him off completely.

  It’s not like I give him money. I just give him a room to sleep in, the same room he slept in as a child. It’s not like I would use the room for something else; I don’t need it, is what I’m saying. I cook food for him because, after retiring from my job as a human resources manager for Albertsons, I finally have time to do that—making up for the past, I guess. I told Diana that I don’t pay his car insurance anymore, and she said, “Anymore? Jesus, Joyce!”

  Jed didn’t tell me what theater he was going to. I’m assuming he went to the one downtown, though it’s possible he drove further out to the IMAX. He left around eight; the movie must be over by now. The optimist in me thinks he had a date, that it went well, well enough for him to stay out this late. He never mentions dating, and I don’t ask. Like I said, he’s a grown man; he’s allowed his privacy.

  I turn on the hallway light so he can see when he comes home, and I go to bed, telling myself I am accomplishing nothing by waiting. If he comes home and sees me up, I’ll get an earful about how he’s not a teenager anymore, to which I’ll say, “Then stop living like one.” That argument will result in a sleepless night for me. So I should go to bed, end of story.

  I WAKE UP to someone knocking on the front door. It’s early—just after dawn by the looks of the light outside.

  “Damn it, Jed,” I mutter, swinging my legs over the side of the bed with a groan.