David Silva - The Disappeared

He felt a sharp pang of shame, and brushed the thought away.

“ Did they break it out?”

“Yes.”

“I mean all the way?”

“What are you getting at?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry.” Walt stared out the window at the front of the house. “I just think it might be better if you stayed here with the boy. I’ll do a quick walk through, just to make sure everything’s clear, then I’ll come back and get you. Okay?”

Teri nodded. “Yeah, sure. I guess.”

“I won’t be long. I promise.”

He climbed out of the car, slamming the door behind him. He motioned for her to make sure the locks were down, then started across the street without looking back. What struck him almost immediately as odd was that all the lights in the house were off. Teri said she had grabbed the boy and left on the run. So why were the lights off? Why would these guys, whoever the hell they were, turn off the lights before they left? It didn’t make any sense.

He stopped at the top of the driveway, next to the corner of the house, long enough to listen to the night sounds. There was a gentle breeze blowing through the shrubs across the front, making harsh whispering noises. What sounded like one or two blocks over, a dog was barking at something in the night. Otherwise, everything seemed quiet, almost eerily quiet.

The front porch was saddled with a blanket of shadows, black and blacker still. Walt found the knob, tried it, and found the door locked. He pressed his hands against the window and peered in, only distantly realizing that the window had not been broken after all. Inside, an eerie, oppressive stillness seemed to huddle in the corners.

He tried the knob again, just in case.

“Dandy. Just dandy.”

Back at the car, Teri leaned across the seat and unlocked the driver’s-side door for him. Walt leaned in, taking a moment to first glance at the surroundings and assure him that they were alone and in no danger.

“Don’t suppose you have a key to the front door, do you?”

“What?”

“The door’s locked,” he said.

“You’re kidding.”

“Wish I were.” He glanced up again at the surroundings, a precaution that had become habit over the years. Night had set a quiet peacefulness over the neighborhood. Overhead, the clouds had opened to the faint glimmer of a scattering of stars. It seemed like a place that had been sleeping for a good long time now, though he knew that was hardly the case. “You still want to come in?”

“Of course.”

He leaned against the car, his forehead resting against the frame just above the door. You can read a person by listening to her voice or the choice of her words, and you can read a person by the expressions that cross her face. Teri’s inner strength had always impressed Walt, especially as Gabe’s disappearance had lengthened from days to weeks and then from weeks to months. But he wanted to make sure that strength was still with her and that she was still with him.

“You sure?” he asked.

“I’m sure.”

“Good. It might help if you take me through exactly what happened, step by step.”

“Okay.” She glanced over her shoulder at the boy, who was still sleeping soundly in the back seat. “What about him? I hate to wake him.”

“He’ll be all right. I’ll lock the car.”

After thinking about it, though, Teri decided she didn’t want to chance it. If he really was Gabe, he had been gone an awfully long time, and now that he was back, she wanted to make sure she never lost him again.

“Try not to touch anything,” Walt said as soon as they were inside.

At the restaurant, he had offered to stop by his place and see if he could scrounge up a pair of slippers or something for her feet. It had been a nice offer. But since they were heading back to the house anyway, Teri had told him not to worry about it. She could get something out of the closet. Standing in the front hall now, she could feel the coolness of the tile under her feet, and secretly she wished she had taken him up on his offer. Going without shoes all evening had been annoying, especially in light of the rainfall today.

She stepped around him and felt the wall at her back as she tried to find a warm spot on the floor. Walt was transfixed on the thin, vertical window next to the entrance. As he had intimated, the window was completely intact. Teri tried to remind herself that she hadn’t actually seen the window break. She had only heard the sound, the initial impact, the sharp raining down of broken glass. Naturally, her assumption had been that they had smashed the window. But maybe that hadn’t been the case.

“Teri? Did you hear what I said?”

“Yeah, I heard you. Don’t touch anything.”

“Are you all right?”

“They broke it out, Walt. I would have sworn they broke it out.”

“I heard it, too,” the boy said, sleepy-eyed.

“Okay,” he said. He gave the base of the door a tap with his foot. It swung lazily toward the jamb, stopping an inch or two short, effectively choking off the outside chill. Teri felt immediately warmer. “Let me take a look.”

She had no idea what it was he was hoping to find. The window was there, fully intact. The glass—something called bottle glass, tinted green and roughly resembling the bottom of a Coke bottle—had been in style in the late Sixties and early Seventies. It wasn’t something you often saw anymore.

“Teri, can you turn on the light for me?”

“Sure.”

“And… Gabe … how about that flashlight?” Walt had brought three items out of the car with him. One was the flashlight, which he had handed to the boy and told him to take good care of. The second item was a small, plastic box, which Walt was still holding in one hand. The third item, the one that alarmed Teri when she first saw it, and still alarmed her even now, was a gun. He had tucked it into a shoulder holster, not unlike the one that other man, Mitch, had shown her earlier in the evening. Only Walt wasn’t wearing a jacket and the gun was plainly visible.

Teri turned on the nearest light.

Walt cast the beam of the flashlight across the glass of the window, up one side, down the other, experimenting with various angles. “No prints. These guys are good.”

“How can you tell?”

“It’s a little harder with the green tint, but you can usually pick up a print if you catch it in the right light. It’s not likely these guys left any prints, though. I’m sure everything was wiped down. Even if we do come across a print, odds are it won’t belong to either of your friends.”

“Who would it belong to?”

“A technician,” Walt said. He turned off the flashlight, handed it back to the boy, and leaned against the wall. “Can you smell it?”

“What?”

“Come here.” He motioned her to the window and had her take a whiff. “Smell that?”

“Yeah.” It wasn’t an unpleasant smell, and she knew she had come across it before, but she wasn’t sure where or when. It smelled a bit like turpentine or maybe rubbing alcohol or… no, it smelled like linseed oil. That’s what it reminded her of – linseed oil. “What is it?”

“Window putty,” he said with a grin.

“They replaced the window.”

“They sure as hell did.” Walt stuck his thumb into the putty, and left an amazingly detailed impression. “Just as fresh as fresh can be.”

Suddenly it became clear what he had been saying: no prints, technicians, these guys are good. After she had escaped, they had brought in some sort of a cover-up team to make it look as if nothing had ever happened here.

And I would have been considered a crazy woman, Teri thought numbly. No one would have ever believed me.