Джонатан Крейг - Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 12, December, 1953

Frank Kane deliberately ended the story at this point. In our Anniversary Issue, coming up next month, Kane will be back with the sequel to THE ICEPICK ARTISTS, a brand-new story about Johnny Liddell, and the real bosses of the waterfront rackets.

She was there in the house when — one by one — her family began to disappear.

Kay had finally gone to bed. But sleep was impossible. She lay there in the darkness of the bedroom, wide-eyed, listening for the sound of the car, for the metallic click of a key in a lock, for the sound of his voice. All she heard was the ticking of the clock which seemed in a panic to unwind itself.

She snapped on the bed lamp.

It was after two.

She looked across at Joe’s bed. The emptiness of it was unreal. Unreal — that was the word for the entire night. It were as if this night had been cut loose from its moorings of simple, routine, everyday reassurances and had drifted away from her, leaving her stranded in a void of frightening questions and increasing uncertainty.

She had to do something.

Of that much she was certain.

She got up and slipped into a robe, then tip-toed to the door of the nursery.

The sight of a six-year-old son and a baby girl of sixteen months were reassuring things. Comforting things. Solid stepping stones across a night that had turned into quicksand. She tucked the blanket carefully about Judy. At the side of Mike’s bed she picked up the Mars Special — a battered veteran of many solar flights.

Strange, she thought. When we were children we were afraid of reality and escaped into a world of make-believe. And then, we we grew to be adults, we built a dike about our world of reality, and when a break appeared in that dike, fear flooded in.

She returned to the bedroom and went to the blinds and opened them. She looked at the Davis home across the way. As this feeling in her grew she covered her shoulders with her hands as if to ward off the cold.

Abruptly she cast off the last shackle of indecision. She went back to the bed and reached for the phone on the stand. She dialed. In a moment, through the blinds, she saw a light come on in the house next door.

A man’s voice answered.

Then she said, “Frank, this is Kay. I hate to bother you but I’m worried about Joe. He hasn’t come home.”

“Hey! That’s no good, is it?” Frank said.

“I can’t imagine where he could be. I kept dinner on the table until nine. I... I kept thinking that if he had to work late he would call me, but he never did. Finally I called the office, but I didn’t get any answer.”

“Imogene and I will come over,” Frank said.

“No, you don’t need to do that,” Kay said. “It’s just that I don’t know what to do.” Her hand tightened on the phone. “I thought about calling the hospitals, but if he had been in a wreck they would have been sure to find his identification and notify me.”

“We’ll be over in a minute,” Frank said. He hung up.

Kay replaced the phone. The phone. There was something solid. A direct line to reality. And the Davises. Good friends. Sandbags. Sandbags with which to repair the dike.

Frank and Imogene arrived in less than five minutes, Frank with his pajama tops stuffed into his trousers and Imogene with a housecoat wrapped over her nightgown.

“Kay, dear!” Imogene said, putting her arm around her. “Why didn’t you call us sooner?”

Kay tried to smile. “Well, I... I kept thinking he would come in.”

“You poor thing. I know you’re just worried sick.”

“One thing we can be sure of,” Frank said, grinning too much. “We know he’s not out with another woman — not with the kind of homework he’s got.”

“Not funny, Frank,” Imogene said. “Kay doesn’t need bum jokes; she needs help. Think of something.”

“I’ll tell you, Kay,” Frank said, “I could go out and look for him, but it would be pretty pointless. There’s just no place you can look for a fellow like Joe. I’m not trying to scare you, but I think maybe it would be a smart move to call the police. Why don’t you let me do it?”

Kay felt herself tense. Frank was talking sense, of course. It was simple and obvious. And yet, she felt a hesitation that she did not fully understand. Perhaps it was because once that she called the police she would be admitting to herself that her existence was insecure.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll call them.”

“Frank can call them,” Imogene said. “Let’s you and I go back to the kitchen and put on the coffee pot. The children all right?”

In a minute or so Frank came back to the kitchen and told them that the police were sending someone. Then they sat around the kitchen table and drank coffee and talked about everything except what was important. In less than thirty minutes two uniformed policemen arrived. Frank brought them into the kitchen and poured them coffee. They were polite men with trained efficiency. The one named Monohan asked the questions.

Missing person’s name? Joseph W. Scott... Age, 34. Height, 6'1". Weight, 185 pounds. Brown eyes; dark brown hair. Occupation, Industrial Engineer. Employer. Last seen wearing. Driving car, license...

“Happily married?” Monohan asked.

“Very,” Kay said.

“Has Mr. Scott seemed worried about anything recently?”

“No.”

“Does he usually carry large amounts of money on him?”

Again Kay felt the cold wind when there was none. “No,” she said.

As Monohan and the other policeman left, he told her that they would notify her the moment they had any information. He was enough of a realist that he did not mention the trite advice of not worrying and Kay appreciated this, because realism was what she felt she needed. She needed every solid thing she could grasp.

“There’s no use of you staying any longer,” she told Frank and Imogene. “Thanks — thanks so very much for what you’ve already done.”

“Chin up,” Frank told her.

“If you need anything, call,” Imogene said. “I’ll be home all day tomorrow. Come over, if you wish. Or, I’ll come over here.”

“I’ll be all right,” Kay said.

“It will work out okay,” Frank said. “Chances are that we’re excited over nothing. Joe will probably show up soon and have a simple explanation for the whole thing.”

“Yes,” Kay said. “I feel that way, too.”

She looked in on Mike and Judy again, then went back to bed. As she lay there the questions that Monohan had asked her begun to gnaw at her. It wasn’t the questions themselves — it was the abstractions they suggested. Seeds of doubt that sprouted and grew into unreal plants. She tried to kill these plants by recalling all the solid things that had come to her support during the night. The telephone. The Davises. Her children. The police. Yet, her feeling of unreality clung to her.

In the morning, she told Mike that daddy had gone on a trip. It seemed to be the simple solution to hold down alarm. Shortly after she had finished feeding Judy, Imogene came over again and stayed almost until eleven.

At fifteen minutes after twelve, Kay called Mike for lunch. He had been playing with his train on the back porch. She called him twice but got no answer. She stepped to the door leading to the back porch and saw that he was not there.

Her first thought was that he had gone outside. But the screen door was still hooked. She was sure that he had not passed through the kitchen for she would have seen him.

“Mike?” she called again.