David Silva - The Disappeared

“That’s because he isn’t.”

He grinned again, this time with less ease, and glanced out the window. “So what’s the catch, Teri? He’s what? Maybe ten years old?”

“I’m eleven,” the boy said.

“Okay, so make it eleven. It’s all the same.”

“Ask him his name,” Teri said.

“Gabriel Knight,” the boy blurted out.

“Ask him anything you like.”

“You’re serious?”

“Absolutely.”

“Come on, Teri. This is crazy.”

“I know it sounds that way, but—”

“Let me show you something.” Walt patted down the pockets of his jacket, at first the two inside breast pockets, then the right front pocket, until he pulled out a sheet of paper. “I brought something I want you to see. I thought Gabe might be interested in seeing how hard we looked for him, so I brought along one of the old flyers.”

He unfolded the paper, and flattened it out against the table. Across the top it said: MISSING! GABRIEL KNIGHT. Below the headline was a photograph of Gabe in his Little League uniform. They had printed nearly a hundred-thousand copies of this flyer. It offered a reward of $10,000 for his safe return, every penny Teri and Michael had been able to come up with.

Walt stared down at the photograph a moment, and then looked up at the boy. The photo had been taken three months before Gabe’s disappearance. He was kneeling on one knee, a bat in his right hand, and a grin across his face that was warm and playful. In the distant background, a bright patch of blue sky cut a mat around the treetops. For a flyer, the photo was unusually clear and sharp.

“Okay, I’ll grant you this much,” Walt said. “He looks like him.”

“Exactly like him,” Teri agreed. “Except for the color of his eyes.”

“Look, I know you’ve never stopped hoping,” he said carefully. “But tell me now, honestly. Don’t you see a little bit of him in every kid you come across? I mean, doesn’t his face show up everywhere? In the grocery store? At the park? And haven’t there been times when you would have sworn you saw him up ahead of you in line or in the back seat of a car that’s just passed by, when it wasn’t him at all?”

Yes , Teri thought.

Of course.

She couldn’t count the times she had spotted a boy with Gabe’s build, with his coloring, his gait. Or the times she had followed after a boy like one of those crazy women who couldn’t have children of her own. Walt was right. One-hundred percent right. For years, she had seen Gabe’s face nearly everywhere.

“Yes,” she said, suddenly solemn. “But this isn’t like that.”

He shook his head, the uneasiness back and roaming naked across his face. He stared down at the flyer again, studied it a moment, and slid it across the table toward the boy. “Kid meet Gabe.”

“I know my own son, Walt.”

“I know you think you do.”

“He knew where Michael kept the spare car keys in case of an emergency. In a magnetic box under the wheel well of the left front tire. Michael used to nag me about it whenever I’d forget and have to call Triple A. I still keep my spare keys in the same place, Walt. The boy – he went right to them. He knew right where they were.”

“How’d you know that?” Walt asked him.

“Dad always kept them there.”

“Well, there’s a safe enough answer,” Walt said, sinking back into his seat. “Look, this isn’t getting us anywhere. If you really want to believe all this—and it’s gotta be a hoax, Teri, let me tell you that much right now, it’s gotta be a hoax—but if you really want to believe it, at least check it out first, will you?”

“That’s one of the reasons I called you.”

“Well, I don’t even want to know the other reasons.”

“They can wait,” Teri said, knowing that they probably couldn’t. “First things first. I want you to ask him whatever you think might shed some light on this thing. You ask him, and he’ll answer the best that he can. You will, won’t you?”

The boy nodded. “Sure.”

“And when you’re finished, then we’ll talk about this other stuff.”

“Are they, by any chance, related?”

“Yeah, I think they are.”

“Great.” Walt scratched at an invisible itch near his right ear, and then looked across the table at the boy as if he were hoping he might be able to find some easy way of stepping inside his head. “All right. We’ll play Twenty Questions and we’ll see where it takes us. But I’m telling you right now, this is not going to get settled tonight. Not if you’re expecting to make a convert.”

“That’s fine, as long as you keep an open mind. That’s all I’m asking, Walt.”

“That’s all, huh?” He smiled. “This all okay with you, kid?”

The boy, who had been mesmerized by the flyer in front of him, looked up and nodded numbly. “Sure,” he said, his voice soft and mouse-like. He was getting tired, Teri thought. He had that rheumy-eyed look of an old dog before it’s had a chance to lie down and take its afternoon nap. He slid the flyer across the table at Walt, and rested his head against Teri’s shoulder. So much the little boy. So much like Gabe would have done under similar circumstances.

“Okay, why don’t you tell me what you were wearing the day you disappeared?”

“I was wearing these.”

Walt glanced at her and she nodded, referring him to the description in the flyer. Levi’s. A black tee-shirt beneath a blue-and-white wind breaker. A generic brand of K-Mart tennis shoes. White athletic socks. It was all there. Just like the description.

“Odd, isn’t it?” she said.

He ignored her. “What’s your middle name?”

The flyer listed him as Gabriel “Gabe” Knight. No middle name.

“Michael,” the boy said. “After my father.”

“And your birthday?”

“April 22nd, 1974.”

That was information listed on the flyer as well. The date of his birth. The date of his disappearance. His age. His name. What he had been wearing. A brief description of his physical characteristics. The circumstances of his disappearance (which had been sketchy, since little was known beyond the fact that he had arrived home that afternoon and then left for the park). The amount of the reward. And of course, a phone number to contact. It was all there.

“All right, then. Tell me this. At the time of your disappearance, were your grandparents still alive?”

“Only Grandma Knight. She lives in Toledo, so I haven’t seen her since I was little. I got to call her, though. On my last birthday, because she sent me twenty dollars.”

A chill went up Teri’s spine. Edna Knight, Gabe’s grandmother was no longer alive. She had passed away three years ago last Mother’s Day, sometime during the night. Natural causes, according to Michael. Teri, who had always gotten along well with the woman, hadn’t been able to make it to the funeral because she had spent that day—as well as the day before—with a terrible migraine headache, something she still felt guilty about. But yes, Gabe’s grandmother had been alive then.

“His Grandpa Knight died in an automobile accident a couple of months after Gabe was born,” she said.

“How about on the other side of the family?”

“My side? I grew up in foster care.”

Walt nodded and glanced off to the parking lot, where the lights were shining off the rain puddles like tears in the darkness. Teri thought he probably wanted to say something polite, something like I’m sorry , but she hoped he wouldn’t find it necessary. That was the way things had been when she was a little girl. Some kids had it better. Some had it worse. She had made the best of it, and she had spent very little time looking back.