“I think I saw a baby, maybe a year old, or a little older, over by the dumpster at about a quarter after five. Maybe it was five-thirty.”
“You think you saw her?” Julian asks.
“I saw her,” Janey says coldly. “Her and the boy.”
“You saw the boy, too?” Julian says, real easy, so that Janey has no idea that a second child is news to him. Bad news, probably.
“Both of them.” Janey nods.
“And the boy looked ...” He leaves room for her to fill in the blanks.
“Eleven or twelve,” Janey says. “Blue jeans, I think. Blond,” she adds. “Kind of skinny.”
Julian nods as if she’s answered correctly. “Were they headed for the Interstate?” he asks her.
“I don’t know. I blinked and they disappeared. What are they? Missing children or something?” Janey asks.
“Something like that,” Julian says. He opens the back door of his car and lets Loretta out.
“But not exactly,” Janey says flatly.
If he looked at her now, he’d remember that whenever she climbed up the drain pipe to her bedroom window, her skirt billowed out around her. Sometimes there would be spider webs on her ankles and red dust on the soles of her feet.
“Well, that’s it, isn’t it?” Janey says. “Same old thing. Make certain you don’t tell anyone too much, because then they might know how you feel.”
Julian clips Loretta’s leash on. His eyes are just as black as they ever were, revealing so little you’d think there was nothing inside.
“Did you see anything else?” Julian asks. “A car you didn’t recognize? Maybe someone over there by the weeds?”
“No,” Janey says. She realizes that she’s tired; it’s much too hot to be standing out here in the noon sun. He’s come back twenty years too late, that’s all there is to it. “The sky was black except for all the way east,” Janey says. “Over by the ocean. You know how it is at five o’clock?”
Since he used to wait in his car with the headlights turned off until she was safely through her window, he knows exactly what it’s like at that hour of the morning. There’s a yellow ribbon of light and then suddenly, before you know it, the sky is wide open and blue.
“I know how it is,” Julian says, because none of what happened was her fault.
Janey Bass almost smiles, then she turns and walks back to her shop. Julian appreciates the fact that she doesn’t say good-bye. She’s honest, that’s all. There’s nothing left for them to say to each other. Still, he knows that she’s watching through the window as he walks across the parking lot. He also knows that eventually she’ll stop; she’ll move away from the plate-glass window and she won’t look back and he’ll never get to tell her that she’s wrong. She does look the same. She’s as beautiful as ever, but that never had anything to do with the reason he didn’t come back to her.
Near the dumpster, the asphalt is so hot it’s melting into black pools. Loretta stands still, her tail wagging slightly. When she starts that rumbling sound low in her throat, Julian reaches down and lets her off the leash, and she takes off to circle the dumpster, faster and faster, until she stops, suddenly, and puts her face down to the ground. There, along the melting asphalt, is a trail of sugar and crumbs.
They’ll go as far as they have to, and if the weather permits, they’ll be searching long after dark. After all this time, Julian is so methodical he can see a white moth on a white mound of sand. He can determine the direction of the wind from the sound of one leaf falling. He’s made mistakes in his life, ruinous ones, but there’s one thing he knows for sure. Nothing gets past him. Not anymore.
Even people who are afraid of the dark know that the worst nightmares usually happen at noon. It may be because of the gravitational pull of the sun in the center of the sky, or simply because this is the hour when everyone’s defenses are down, and they expect nothing more than bread and fruit. Lucy is at the mall when she knows something is about to go wrong. She can feel a sharp edge at the back of her throat, as if she’d been forced to swallow a knife. The fifth-graders from the elementary school have built a model of Charles Verity’s house entirely out of toothpicks, which has been set up on a large felt-covered table in front of the Sun Bank. This unveiling is considered a cultural event in Verity, and Lucy will actually have to write about it, but that’s not what makes her feel like crying. It’s those fifth-graders, with their sweet, proud faces and gluey hands. Just once, she would like to believe that her son was capable of happiness. What she wouldn’t give to be able to leave for work in the morning and be certain he’ll get out of bed and arrive at school on time, instead of finding his way to Laddy’s place and the liquor cabinet. What she wouldn’t give for just one kind word.
Instead, what she gets when she returns to the Sun Herald is a message on her desk asking her to phone Martha Reed at the guidance office so she can set up an appointment for Keith’s reinstatement. He either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that a parent has to come in to school before a student can return to class after the third suspension. If he keeps up this way, Keith may break the Verity Junior High record for administrative action. Lucy tosses the note into the trash and immediately calls home. Each time the phone rings unanswered her fury multiplies, until she is ready to wring Keith’s neck. Of course he told her school was okay yesterday, just not for him, he failed to mention that. He probably didn’t even get out of bed today until noon, and Lucy guesses he’s already hanging out at the Burger King or finding fresh trouble with Laddy Stern. Lucy wrestles with herself, then finally phones Laddy. When he answers and swears that he’s alone, home with the flu, his voice actually sounds raspy and thick. Lucy can tell Laddy’s not lying, but she also understands that he wouldn’t tell her where Keith was if he knew. She heads for the soda machine in the hallway and gets herself a cold Diet Dr Pepper, then goes to Kitty’s office and perches on the air-conditioning unit.
“You heard?” Kitty says.
Everyone knows that if Kitty had been more ambitious, or if things had been fairer, she’d be the managing editor of the Sun Herald. As it is, she’s privy to everyone’s secrets and well aware of everyone’s deficiencies, and she’ll cover for you only if she likes you.
“I’m at my wits’ end,” Lucy says.
“I’ll bet,” Kitty says.
“Am I supposed to hire a bodyguard to walk him to school and make certain he stays there?”
“You’re talking about Keith?” Kitty says, confused.
“No,” Lucy says, pausing to gulp down some Dr Pepper. “I’m talking about the preteen monster.”
Kitty gets up and closes her door, something she almost never does, since her air conditioner is on the fritz.
“What is it?” Lucy asks. She feels that odd, stabbing sensation in her throat again, as if she could down a six-pack of Dr Pepper and still be dying of thirst.
“I don’t know if you want to know,” Kitty says. “And once you do know, you can’t tell anyone, since I’m not supposed to know, and I wouldn’t if I hadn’t overheard Paul when he called in to talk to Ronny. That happened completely by accident. You know Paul, he wants an exclusive when a pelican drops dead on West Main Street. It’s not like I intended to pick up on his line.”
“Tell me,” Lucy says.
Kitty sits down at her desk and leans forward. When she whispers, her voice sounds crackly, as if she were speaking through a bad phone connection.
“Someone was murdered in your building last night. And don’t ask me who. I don’t know.”
Lucy can feel the blood drain out of her face; she looks as white as a piece of paper, all fluttery and crumpled up.
“I shouldn’t have told you,” Kitty says. “Shit.”
“Keith’s not at home and he’s not at school.”
Lucy is trying desperately to remember where she left her car keys. She searches her pockets frantically.
“He’s probably got his music turned up high and his headphones on,” Kit
ty suggests.
But Lucy knows she should have watched over him more carefully; if she hadn’t brought him here from New York he would never have lived in a building where someone could get murdered, he’d be riding his bicycle beneath the oak trees, he’d be playing baseball with his father out in the backyard where the lilacs bloom.
“Go home, and I’ll say you had a headache,” Kitty tells her.
It’s not only good advice, it turns out to be true. On the way home, Lucy doesn’t bother to stop for red lights, and when she gets to Long Boat Street she does have a headache, a blinding one. Her heart is pounding so hard her ribs ache. Paul Salley has followed Walt Hannen down to the station on West Main, and there are now only two police cruisers in the parking lot, but an officer has been posted in the lobby, and Lucy has to sign in before she’s allowed to use the elevator. She imagines Keith in his room, beautifully sullen, his headphones plugged into his ears, but as soon as she unlocks the door to her apartment she can feel the emptiness inside. There’s a cricket trapped behind the refrigerator, and its song echoes above the terra-cotta tiles. It is possible, after all, to know things you shouldn’t, just as Lucy knows, before she opens the door to his room, that Keith’s bed hasn’t been slept in. She stands in his doorway, breathing in the scent of smoke and unwashed clothes, thinking of the dozen different ways Evan can accuse her if she has to tell him their son has disappeared. When she finally can move, she runs to the kitchen and calls the police. The cricket behind the refrigerator is driving her crazy; she wraps the phone cord around her arm like a tourniquet. She wants them to tell her she has nothing to worry about. Instead, the dispatcher contacts Richie Platt, up in 8C, and sends him downstairs, so he can wait for Walt Hannen with Lucy.
Lucy sits down on a kitchen chair, her arms folded around herself, rocking back and forth. Richie Platt is afraid she’s about to flip out; he won’t look at her, and he certainly won’t answer any of her questions. He’s been told, he explains, to keep his mouth shut. By the time Walt Hannen arrives, Lucy looks so ill that Walt goes directly to the refrigerator, takes out a pitcher of orange juice and insists she drink a full glass, before she faints. He sits down beside her and when he tells her that her neighbor up in 8C has been murdered and that her little girl is missing, Lucy begins to shiver uncontrollably. Not even the blanket Walt has Richie put around her can help. Lucy tries to think of Karen, to remember her face, the angle of her haircut, but all she really cares about is the fact that two children are missing, one of them hers. She can’t focus much and she can’t stand to listen to Walt Hannen comforting her, but this much she understands: If the children are together, and if they are to be found today, the chances will be best before darkness falls. Someone is tracking them right this minute. Lucy needs to give them a list of her son’s friends and known hangouts; then she can wait, right here in her own kitchen. She is not to panic or tie up her phone. What she can do is watch the horizon from her window, charting the exact position of the sun. She can go downstairs, and outside the glass doors she can pray for clear skies and moonlight, a condition so rare on May nights in Verity that even the most ardent stargazers usually put their telescopes away until June.
Just after dusk, Walt Hannen drives back to Long Boat Street, followed by the K9 patrol car. There are thin, low clouds in the sky and not a bit of wind. It’s bad luck to have no moonlight on the first night of a search, even worse luck to see a woman waiting for you in the driveway, pacing beneath a bloodred hibiscus.
“Oh, shit,” Walt says, after he and Julian have gotten out of their cars. “She’s going to get hysterical.”
Last May a social worker from New York jumped out her window and Walt had to drive down to her parents’ retirement village in Del Ray Beach and tell them. The way he sees it, he’s somehow gotten stuck with work a preacher should be doing, and he’s not cut out for it.
“Get ready for a scene,” he mutters to Julian as they approach.
Already, clouds of mosquitoes are gathering above the pool. Lucy is wearing a gray sweatshirt and running shorts; her eyes are puffy from crying. All afternoon she’s been falling apart. Now she’s in pieces. It’s possible that she’s a jinx and was given the obituary column at the Sun Herald for good reason, since everyone she’s ever cared about has disappeared. As soon as she looks at Walt Hannen she knows her son is still missing.
“You didn’t find anything,” Lucy says accusingly. She’s so raw that Julian quickly moves back, ducking under the hibiscus, hoping she won’t notice him.
“There’s no reason to get all upset just yet,” Walt Hannen says. He has a deep, slow voice that his wife insists is sweet enough to comfort the dead.
“Don’t tell me not to get upset!” Lucy says. Her mouth is set in a tight, thin line; she looks somehow dangerous, as if she might snap in two.
“Mrs. Rosen,” Walt says. “Lucy.”
Lucy backs away as though he were about to strike her. When her parents were killed, all the neighbors on the block seemed to want to touch her; she’d felt that she herself would die if one more person comforted her.
“Just calm down,” Walt suggests.
“Oh, yeah, right,” Lucy says. “Oh, sure.” She has goose bumps all up and down her arms. It’s as if Keith’s voice had just come out of her mouth, and the taste is unbelievably bitter.
“Julian’s going back out tonight, and let me tell you, he can find a snowflake in hell,” Walt says. “I kid you not.”
Lucy looks over at Julian Cash for the first time. She sees the scar across his forehead and the jumble of scratches on his cheeks and hands from searching through thorn bushes. He stares right back at her. He’s exhausted and filthy and he’s clearly got nothing to say. Any hope Lucy might have had evaporates; she sinks down on the curb, and before she can stop herself a thin wail spirals out of her mouth. In the backseat of Julian’s car, Loretta raises her head and begins to howl.
Walt and Julian exchange a look. They hate this. Walt crouches down on the curb and urges Lucy to put her head between her legs and try to breathe evenly.
“The whole situation is like a puzzle,” Walt tells her. He looks up at Julian for ideas on where to take this, but Julian just stares back at him, offering nothing.
“What do we have?” Walt says, to give himself some time. He lights a cigarette. “We have a dead woman with a false identity, and two missing kids. Yours and hers. That’s the reality.”
After years of unhappiness, Walt now sees that the fact he and his wife could never have children may really have been a gift. The boy’s mother has stopped wailing, but she’s staring at him, panicked, the skin on her throat flushed with heat. For the past few years, Walt and his wife, Rose, have been breeding Labrador retrievers; each time a new litter is born, Walt sits up all night in the garage, making certain the puppies are warm enough and that each one knows how to feed. He’s had only one puppy die, and that one died in his hands, before it was old enough to open its eyes. Thinking about that small death makes Walt open up more than he should.
“We don’t know who took the children, or why, or if they were just frightened off. But we think they were spotted over at the Hole-in-One. And we do have one very interesting piece of evidence. We have a shoe box.”
As soon as the shoe box is mentioned, Lucy sits up straight, her shoulders rigid as wire. That’s when Julian Cash starts to watch her.
“We found it buried over there.” Walt Hannen points his cigarette at the ficus hedge. Julian notices that she knows exactly where to look, even though Walt is gesturing only toward the area of the pool. “It may be some kind of sign to us. Some kind of message from someone who wants to get caught. If the gold rings that were inside belonged to the victim, we may have a real lead.”
“What was inside?” Lucy says. She looks truly frantic now; Julian can almost see her bones rise to the surface of her skin. “There were rings?”
“I don’t want you to worry about this,” Walt says.
“All right,
” Lucy says flatly. She’s much too calm.
“Did you ever see the victim wearing two gold rings?” Walt asks.
“No,” Lucy says. “I didn’t.”
Lucy’s hair is cut short enough for Julian to see the back of her neck. Just looking at her he can feel the white edge of desire. The reason he’s so attracted to her isn’t simply that he can already imagine her in his bed. It’s that she just lied, and she’s going to do it again.
“All we want is for you to let Julian go up to the boy’s room and get what he needs so the dog can do her job tracking,” Walt says as he helps Lucy to her feet. She stumbles once, and Walt has to catch her beneath her elbow. “Can you do that?”
Lucy nods and starts for the entranceway. She moves like a sleepwalker, staring straight into the darkness. Before Julian can follow her, Walt takes him aside.
“Just grab something and get the hell out of there before she freaks out again,” Walt says.
Lucy has stopped just outside the building, waiting for Julian. She reminds him of the merlins that nest in the cypress trees along his driveway, ready to take flight in an instant.
“Be careful with her,” Walt suggests. “Don’t mention the goddamned alligator.”
“I won’t talk to her,” Julian says. “How’s that?”
He stands behind her in the elevator, aware that he’s making her uncomfortable. When they get to her apartment and she opens the front door, Julian remains out in the hall.
“Mud,” he explains.
The wall-to-wall carpeting is a pale gray, and Julian’s boots have covered acres of marshland. That’s why he prefers bare wood that can just be swept once a month.
“Do you think I care about my carpet right now?” Lucy says. “Is that what you think?”
“Why don’t we just get this over with,” Julian says. “All right?”