Robert Crais - Lullaby Town

"Why be defeatist?"

The doorbell, rang again, and she walked to the door and opened it. Peter stalked in with Dani behind him. Nick and T. J. had been left at home. Peter said, "Jesus Christ, you really live out in the goddamn sticks, don't you?"

Karen gave me the flat eyes. "You see?"

The room felt smaller with them in it and the ceiling no longer felt high and peaked. Peter looked around like he was thinking of buying the place, and Dani stood to the side, sort of out of the way, one hand holding the other.

Karen said, "Would either of you care for something? I have soft drinks and beer and I made iced tea." The corners of her mouth were tight.

Dani said, "No, thank you."

Peter said, "I'll take a brewski. You got a Bud?"

Karen went into the kitchen without saving anything.

Peter winked at me and smiled. "She's doing okay, isn't she? If you'd known her back in L.A., you'd never believe it."

I said, "Peter. Go easy on that."

He looked confused. "What?"

Karen came back with a bottle of St. Pauli Girl and a glass and a napkin on a Dansk tray. Peter took the bottle but not the glass. "You know I never use a glass."

Karen said, "I forgot."

"Sure."

Karen offered Dani a seat on the couch, then took one of the wingback chairs. I sat at the dining-room table with Joe Pike. Peter had some of the beer and went over to the mantel and looked at the pictures. It was five minutes to four and we were having just a fine ole time.

Peter said, "Guess it was too much to hope you'd have a couple shots of me up here."

Karen made her lips into a small hard rosebud.

"You know, for the boy."

She looked out the window, then checked her watch.

Peter crossed the living room and sat on the other wing chair. He spread his legs under the coffee table and held the beer without drinking it. He said, "I'm not trying to create a problem for you."

Karen said, "Of course."

"I just want to know my son."

"He should be here anytime."

Peter nodded and drank some of the beer and didn't say anything. Karen stared out of the window. Dani stared at the floor. Pike sat immobile, safely hidden behind the dark glasses. Maybe if I asked he would loan the glasses to me and I could pretend I wasn't here, either. I made a little face at him to see if he was looking, but he didn't react, so maybe he wasn't. Of course, he might be pretending that he wasn't. You never know with Pike.

At ten minutes after four Peter said, "I thought the kid was supposed to be here at four."

Karen leaned forward a fraction of an inch. "Don't call him 'the kid.' His name is Toby."

Peter spread his hands and nodded and stared off into space some more.

At fourteen minutes after four Karen's orange and white cat came out of the hall, walked across the living room, and sniffed at Peter. Peter reached down to pet it, then thought better of it and drew back his hand. Guess the scratches hadn't healed from before.

At twenty-two minutes after four Karen looked at her watch, then at the Early American clock, then frowned. Toby should've been home.

At twenty-eight minutes after four Peter put his hands on his knees and stood up and said, "What the hell is this? Is the boy coming or not?"

Karen stood up with him and her nostrils were tight. "He's having a hard time, Peter. He was nervous about meeting you. He didn't sleep well and he's scared."

"What'd you tell him about me, that I eat rat turds?"

Karen made a hissing sound and went into the kitchen and picked up the phone. "I'll call the school."

Peter walked around in a little circle, then sat down again. Dani put a hand on his shoulder.

Six minutes later Karen came out, worried. 'They said he left forty-five minutes ago."

I said, "How long is the ride from school?"

"No more than ten minutes."

Peter said, "Jesus Christ, you think he ran away?"

Karen got her purse and her keys from the hutch in the dining room and went to the front door without saying anything. I got up with her, looking at Pike. "I'll go with her. You hang here."

Pike nodded, the black lenses moving just enough to catch the light.

Peter said, "Hey, I'll come, too."

Karen said, "No," and when Peter started to get up, Pike gently pushed him back down. "Not this time."

Peter said, "Hey," and tried to get up again, but Pike kept him in the chair, standing so close that Peter couldn't get the leverage to rise. Peter said, "What in hell you doing?"

Dani stood and took a step forward, but I shook my head once and she stopped. Pike leaned down close to Peter, Pike's face maybe six inches from his, letting Peter stare into the glasses, and said, "It's better if she goes without you." Pike's voice was soft and even.

Peter squinted into the dark and stopped trying to get up. "Sure."

Karen was already climbing into the LeBaron when I got out the front door. Her back was stiff and her jaw was tight and she overcranked the engine, grinding the starter gears.

We drove to the school and circled the campus twice and then went into town and back out to the school. We took a shortcut that Karen thought Toby might've taken, but he wasn't there, either. We drove for over an hour and we saw no sign of him until we were heading back toward her house on a part of the road that was between two wide, flat fields overgrown with a heavy wild rye that was dying from the cold.

I said, "Stop the car."

She said, "What?"

When the car was stopped, I got out and walked off the road to Toby Lloyd's red Schwinn mountain bike. Its rear wheel was broken and its frame was crushed and the handlebars were bent backward and together so that the handgrips were touching and it looked the way a bike looks when it's been run over by a car.

I researched for Toby Lloyd in the high grass around the bike, but I couldn't find him.

Charlie DeLuca had finally made contact.

Karen Lloyd got out of her car and ran to the edge of the field. When she saw the bike, her eyes got wide and she put her hands on the sides of her head and she yelled, "Toby?" first scared and then angry, like maybe this was a bad joke and he would jump out and yell boo. She pushed past me into the rye and the timothy and the pumpkin vines, screaming her son's name and running one way and then another. "Toby?"

I caught her and held her and she said let go and tried to pull away. I said, "He's not there. They wouldn't hurt him. They want you on their side and they know that if they hurt him they'll lose you."

"I want to find him."

"We'll find him. We'll go back to the house and wait for Charlie to call."

"Oh my God. What am I going to do?" She was breathing hard, as if her subjective reality had suddenly been hypered on to a higher plane. "How could they do this? How could they know?"

"There's only one school here. They probably hung around until Toby started for home and then they picked him up."

"But his bike."

"I don't know."

"Did they just run over him?"

"No."

"My God. What did they do to him?" She turned and ran back to the car and I followed.

Five minutes later we knew.

Charlie DeLuca's black Lincoln Town Car was sitting in Karen's drive behind the limo. Ric was in the passenger's side with the window down and country-and-western music on the stereo. Reba McIntyre. He still had the black Ray Bans and the black spiked hair and the deathly white skin. A brand-new red Schwinn mountain bike was leaning against the garage, the price tag still on the handlebars. Karen said, "Oh, thank God."

Ric peeled himself out of the Town Car as we parked. He was wearing a triple-layered black leather English jacket with an acne of metal studs. When the jacket pulled open you could see something stainless-steel and shining under his left arm. The ten. "Let's go inside."