Missing Child Page 17

  ‘No, she doesn’t,’ said Travis.

  ‘Thanks anyway,’ said Caitlin. She turned and opened the door to the trailer and began to descend the steps. ‘Another time, maybe.’

  ‘Come back and browse sometime,’ said Naomi cheerfully.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Caitlin. She glanced back at Travis but he was bent over the Game Boy again, fiddling with the screen, and she had the distinct feeling that he was avoiding her gaze.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Caitlin glanced at her phone, just to be sure, but Noah had not called her back while she was in the free bookstore. There was, however, a call from Sam Mathis. She returned the call immediately.

  ‘Sam, it’s Caitlin,’ she said.

  ‘Where are you? I need you to bring that toy of Geordie’s down the station,’ he said.

  ‘Bandit?’ Caitlin asked. ‘Why?’

  ‘We need to send it to the lab. How far away are you?’

  ‘Not too far. Does this have something to do with your visit to Dan?’ she asked.

  Sam was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘We’ll talk when you get here.’

  ‘Can’t you tell me on the phone?’ she said. But Sam had already ended the call. Her blood drumming in her ears, Caitlin drove as quickly as she could back up the bumpy road which led to the recycling center and turned out onto the highway, trying to just drive and not think about what it could be. She made a hasty stop at her parents’ house, retrieved Bandit from her bedroom, and went directly downtown to the police station.

  She parked outside and ran up the sandstone steps. She was trying to gauge what was going on from the expressions of the officers coming and going. Her imagination was running away with her. When the desk sergeant asked whom she wanted to see, she said that Detective Mathis was waiting for her and brushed by his desk, not waiting to be allowed to pass.

  The door to Chief Burns’s office was closed and it was dark inside. She rushed down the hallway to Sam’s office and was relieved to see that the door was wide open. ‘Sam, I’m here,’ she said as she burst in.

  Sam looked up gravely, and pointed to the chair in front of this desk.

  Caitlin sat down. ‘What?’ she demanded. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Hand that over,’ he said, waggling a hand at Bandit.

  Reluctantly she offered the toy to the detective, who held out a plastic bag for her to drop it into. Once she had placed Bandit it in the bag he sealed it, wrote on it, and made a call. In a moment, a uniformed patrolman arrived at the door of his office. ‘Take this to the lab,’ he said. ‘Tell Dr Murphy this is the toy I was telling him about.’

  The patrolman nodded and took Bandit away. Caitlin watched him disappear and then turned back to Sam. ‘What is going on?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not sure yet,’ Sam said grimly. ‘I need you to tell me every single thing that happened when you were there at Dan’s house yesterday.’

  ‘Why?’ Caitlin asked.

  ‘Just . . . go through it with me.’

  Caitlin did not equivocate. Starting from the moment she arrived in Society Hill, she described everything that happened, exactly as it happened. She even, after a moment’s hesitation, included her call to AAA, and the manner in which she had tricked the fellow who had arrived to aid her in unlocking Dan’s car.

  Sam listened intently. ‘You said that he let you into the house, and that you yelled for Geordie. You’re absolutely sure that there was no response? You saw no sign of the boy in Dan’s house?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ said Caitlin. ‘I wouldn’t have left if there were any indication . . . What’s going on?’

  ‘I went to see Uncle Dan today,’ he said.

  Caitlin felt a sudden rush of fear. ‘Yes.’

  ‘He wasn’t there. There was no one in the house.’

  ‘You went inside?’ she asked.

  ‘I couldn’t go inside. I went there to question him. I had no warrant. Unlike you, I have to obey the law and respect the rights of citizens.’ It wasn’t exactly a joke, but Caitlin could tell that he wasn’t speaking out of anger. ‘No one answered. I banged on the door for a long time.’

  Caitlin raised her hands as if to express the fact that she did not understand how this was important.

  ‘So, I went to the station where he works,’ said Sam.

  ‘And?’

  ‘He wasn’t there either. He hadn’t come in today.’

  Caitlin felt her hopes deflating. ‘So . . . what was so urgent?’

  ‘While I was at the station, I checked out Uncle Dan’s work schedule. On Tuesday, the Phillies were playing the White Sox.’

  Caitlin shook her head. ‘I don’t . . .’

  ‘The Chicago White Sox,’ said Sam. ‘It was a home game for Chicago.’

  Caitlin’s eyes widened. ‘Dan . . .’

  ‘. . . was there,’ said Sam. ‘He went to Chicago for the game.’

  Caitlin shook her head and stared at him.

  ‘I’ve scanned his photo and sent it down to the detectives who are helping us in Chicago. They are going back to the stores in the area we know the tracphone was purchased.’

  ‘Oh my God.’

  Sam met her gaze without speaking.

  ‘Then where is Geordie?’

  ‘I don’t know. I hope to have an answer on the purchase of the phone very soon.’

  ‘What about the flight? Was Geordie with him on the flight? Did you check on that?’

  ‘First thing. He traveled alone. The minute I get a confirmation on the photo I will put out an APB on Dan and get a warrant to enter his house.’

  ‘But what if Geordie is in there all alone or something? What if he’s . . .’ she closed her eyes, unable to allow herself to visualize her child alone, suffering.

  ‘If he’s there we’ll get him out. I’ll make sure to have medical personnel standing by.’

  ‘Does Noah know?’ she asked.

  ‘I spoke to him,’ said Sam.

  ‘I’ve been trying to reach him. He’s not calling me back. What about the Bergens?’

  ‘I’ve sent a couple of men out there to see if Dan’s parents might know where Dan is. We have to tread carefully with them. They’ve been through a lot. We weren’t able to find their daughter’s killer. I don’t want to accuse their son until I know something for sure. But I’m beginning to have a bad feeling.’

  ‘Uncle Dan?’ Caitlin cried, trying to imagine the unimaginable. ‘Why?’

  ‘You said that you never saw him act in an inappropriate way with the boy?’

  ‘Never,’ said Caitlin emphatically. ‘Never once. He . . . was fond of Geordie, but he never showed any interest in spending time alone with him or . . . anything like that. And he could have. Easily. I sometimes thought that Noah wished Dan would make more of an effort to spend time with Geordie. You know, offer to take Geordie and Travis to a game or something, but Dan never took the hint. I mean, kids are not his thing. Beautiful women are his thing. And, besides, why all of a sudden, out of a clear blue sky . . .?’

  ‘What about his ex-wife?’

  ‘Haley?’ Caitlin shook her head. ‘What about her? She knows nothing. I’d swear to it. Although . . .’

  ‘What?’ Sam demanded.

  Caitlin felt her blood run cold as she realized that this information might now be crucial. ‘She did tell me that Dan was in Hartwell the morning that Geordie was taken. He had fallen ill at the birthday party, and ended up staying over in her apartment. He was too sick to drive home. He wasn’t faking. She said he threw up all night. He left that morning.’

  ‘I need that warrant,’ Sam growled, almost to himself.

  Caitlin’s mind was racing. ‘If Geordie was with Dan . . . Dan would never hurt Geordie. I’m sure of that.’

  Sam frowned at her. ‘I wish I could be so sure,’ he said.

  Caitlin shook her head. ‘Not his nephew,’ she said. ‘Not a little boy. Maybe it’s some kind of awful misunderstanding.’

  Sam looked at her with rai
sed eyebrows. ‘Yesterday you broke into his car. You were screaming for Geordie in his house.’

  Caitlin shook her head miserably. ‘I know I did. But I also know that Dan loves Geordie. Geordie is all he has left of his sister.’

  ‘Caitlin, taking that little boy, hiding him from the police, keeping him from his parents – that was a desperate act. There’s no turning back once you’ve committed a crime like that. That’s life in prison. And Geordie is both the victim and the sole witness.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ she protested. ‘No one could be that evil.’

  ‘I don’t have to tell you. People do some truly terrible things,’ said Sam. He got up and came around the desk. ‘I’m going to see if I can speed it along. Will you excuse me?’ he said.

  Caitlin nodded dumbly. She pulled her phone out of her bag and tried Noah’s number again. It went directly to voicemail. Where are you? she thought.

  She got unsteadily to her feet and walked out of Sam’s office. A policeman in the hallway brushed past her and frowned at her, as if to indicate that she was in the way. You are in the way, she thought. Let them do their job. That’s all you can do right now. She thought of Geordie’s face, his sweet eyes behind his glasses, his gap-tooth smile. Who could ever hurt him? And then she forced the question from her mind. She had to. She couldn’t bear to consider the possibilities.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The shops on Hartwell Avenue were beginning to close up for the day, while the bars and restaurants were turning on their twinkle lights and starting to look more lively. Caitlin walked in the direction of Jordan’s Bakery. She felt the need to talk to Haley, to have Haley reassure her that Dan was incapable of hurting a child for any reason. She knew that was what she would hear.

  When she reached the Bakery window and glanced inside, Caitlin saw Haley sitting at one of the little marble-topped tables, speaking to two men in jackets and ties who were seated at the table with her. One man was writing in a notebook. Caitlin recognized him right away. He was a detective who had been working with Sam all along through this nightmare. She stared in at them through the window.

  Haley looked up and then did a double take as she recognized Caitlin through the glass. Caitlin raised a hand in greeting but Haley’s normally welcoming smile did not appear. She gave Caitlin a frosty stare and then turned her attention back to the detectives.

  Caitlin lowered her hand, turned away and walked back to her own car.

  Now what? she thought. She drove first to her parents’ house, and sat in the car in the driveway for a few minutes. She felt an almost physical revulsion at the prospect of going back in there. She tried Noah again, both his home and cell phone numbers, to no avail. Either he was avoiding her calls or he was not at home.

  She felt an urgent desire to see him, to be with him, to talk over what Sam had said about Dan. He had been almost kind at their last meeting. He had even apologized for accusing her in Geordie’s disappearance. Surely he would want to discuss this latest news.

  She decided to go to the house and wait for him there. When he got home and found her there, the worst he would be able to do was to send her packing. She realized that a rejection like that would not upset her too much. Not after this week in hell. How much could it hurt? Besides, anything was better than entering her parents’ house. She backed out of the driveway with a distinct feeling of relief, and began to drive toward the house which had been, until lately, the home she had always imagined for herself.

  She was used to seeing at least one police car in the driveway, but there was no one parked there when she arrived. No lights were on in the house. She immediately felt that she had done the right thing by coming here. What if Geordie were to come home and find the house like this, cold and unlit? As if no one cared. She would turn on the lights until the place glowed, she thought. She would warm up some rolls in the oven so the house would smell good. Just in case.

  She got out of her car and stood beside it for a moment. A twilight mist was settling in the trees, winding through their low branches. Caitlin jammed her hands in her pockets and looked back down toward the highway, hidden by the dense woods. She hesitated, and then walked down the sloping driveway, watching her step as she made her way down the gravel surface. The grade of the driveway was steep enough that she had to use her feet and shins as brakes when she walked along. That was one reason why they had left it as gravel. If it had been paved, any ball which hit the surface would bounce down into the road. At the least the gravel inhibited bouncing and rolling. With a little boy who loved playing catch, you had to think of these things.

  Caitlin reached the end of the driveway and looked over at the mailbox. She thought about Emily on that fateful day. The police believed that she had left Geordie in the car and walked down this same grade. She had walked over to the mailbox. Caitlin did that now and pulled open the mailbox door. The box was stuffed, as if Noah had not looked inside it for several days. Caitlin reached in and pulled out the mail inside. Headlights from an oncoming car grazed her in the gloom as the car sped by. She could feel the breeze as it passed. How easy it would be, in the gray twilight, for a driver not to see someone standing here at the mailbox.

  On the other hand, she thought, looking around her, it would be impossible to stand at this mailbox without being aware of the proximity of oncoming cars. It would be unnatural not to notice the oncoming headlights, to sense that they were too close, to dive into the bushes and out of harm’s way. You would have to be completely distracted not to be alert as you stood at this mailbox.

  James said that Emily had run out in front of his car. Caitlin clutched the pile of mail to her chest and tried to imagine it. The grade of the driveway was so steep that if, for some reason, she had been running down the driveway, it would be difficult to break her own momentum. But why would Emily be running down the driveway in the first place? James suggested that she had been trying to deliberately kill herself. Caitlin was sure that Emily would never choose that method, would never leave her baby stranded in his car seat. So why else would she be running? Caitlin stared up the driveway, trying to picture Emily running down that driveway. Moving so fast that she ran right out into the street and in front of a speeding truck.

  She would never do that unless . . . Unless she was running away from something, Caitlin thought. Or someone. Unless she was being chased.

  Caitlin shivered at the thought. No. You’re just imagining things, she thought. That doesn’t explain the mail scattered everywhere.

  Clutching the pile of mail to her chest, she closed the mailbox and walked slowly back up the driveway toward the house. She climbed the steps, pulled out her keys, and went to insert them in the front door. At that moment it occurred to her: what if Noah had changed the locks? He had been angry enough to do it.

  The key slid into the lock and turned, and Caitlin felt her heart lighten a little bit. She turned on the porch lights and then went around switching on the lamps. She put the mail down on the kitchen table and, after she had taken her coat off and hung it up, she began to clear up the debris of take-out boxes and coffee cups which Noah had left scattered through the house. She folded up his bedding on the sofa into a neat pile and set it on the far cushion. She emptied the vases of flowers, now dead, and washed them out. She looked in the freezer and found a box of cheese and spinach turnovers. She preheated the oven, set the pastries on a metal cookie sheet and slipped the sheet into the oven. Soon the house smelled of baking piecrust. It was better now, she thought. If Geordie came home, he wouldn’t find it looking and smelling like a homeless shelter. It would look like his home, with his mom there checking out the window, watching for him, waiting.

  Now, she thought. If only his father would come home.

  But Noah did not arrive. She waited as long as she could. Finally, she went into the kitchen and took the cheese and spinach pastries from the oven before they burned. Realizing that she was hungry, she sat down alone at the table, and placed one of the turnovers on
a plate in front of her. She sat at the table, staring out the kitchen window, remembering when this had been her favorite time of day.

  As the hour grew later she began to feel a little uneasy about still being in the house. What if Noah was out with someone? A woman. It seemed impossible under the circumstances. He seemed to barely be able to pull himself together since Geordie had gone missing, but lately she didn’t know what to think anymore. What if he came home with someone, expecting to find the house empty? Several times she thought of leaving, but she decided against it. What if the police found Geordie and brought him home? She would be here waiting. She stayed.

  She watched a little bit of television in the den, pulling the throw up over her as she curled up in the chair. She was not aware of being tired, but before she knew it, she had dozed off.

  She awoke with a start to the find the television still on, some pitchman droning on about car insurance. Caitlin snapped off the TV and leaned her head back against the chair.

  With the televison off, the room was perfectly silent. Caitlin could hear every creak in the house as the wind rose outside and started to whip the trees, the branches snapping against the windows. She had loved that sound when Noah and Geordie were here, and a fire crackled in the fireplace. It made her feel snug, and safe. Tonight, alone in this house where she no longer belonged, her mind filled with questions and worries, she felt anything but snug and safe. Every gust of wind, every rustling branch made her edgy. It’s nothing, she reminded herself. Just a little wind blowing up. Maybe rain coming in. At the thought of rain, she couldn’t help but imagine Geordie, alone and unprotected in the storm, and it was hard to catch her breath from the anxiety.

  And then, from somewhere outside the window, Caitlin heard a sound that made her freeze. She told herself she was imagining it. It was the wind playing tricks. But it came again. Faint, almost indistinct. It was human. And barely audible. A moan.

  For a moment she sat rigid, unable to move from the chair. Who’s there? she thought, but she did not say it aloud. Her heart was thudding in her ears. She was terrified to budge and terrified not to. It was coming from outside the window. Get up, she thought. Get out the chair.