David Silva - The Disappeared

“Sure.”

“Sometime in the afternoon?”

“That should work out fine,” Childs said. He tucked the clipboard under his arm, and reached out to shake hands with the boy, who seemed almost taken aback by the gesture. “It’s nice to see you again, Gabriel. Try to talk your mother into bringing you in every once in a while for a checkup, even if you don’t think you need one. Will you do that for me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” He opened the door, and paused again. “I’ll have the nurse come in to take a little blood and help with the urine sample, and we’ll see if anything turns up. Until then, try not to worry about it, Teri. I really don’t think it’s anything serious.”

“Thank you, doctor.”

“My pleasure.”

The door closed, and Teri turned to the boy, who was slipping his shirt back over his head. “Well, what do you think?”

“About what?”

“About Dr. Childs.”

“He’s okay.”

“You don’t remember him, huh?”

The boy shook his head and hopped down from the table. “Should I?”

Yes , Teri thought. Gabe would remember him. But then she didn’t know if that were true or not. Especially under these circumstances.

Walt closed the door to his motel room, tossed his suitcase on the nearest chair, and collapsed on the queen-sized bed next to the window.

The drive down state had taken nearly six hours, due largely to an eight mile backup in Concord, where a semi had smashed into a small Ford pickup while changing lanes. The semi had flipped onto its side and gone for a long, helpless slide down the middle two lanes of the freeway, leaving a thirty-foot-wide skid mark. By the time Walt had made it to the front of the line, all that was left were a few scattered flares in the road. Off to the right, the semi and the pickup were both in the process of being towed away. If there had been any injuries, the ambulance had come and gone long ago.

Right about now, he wished he had gone with it.

Not only had the trip been a long one, but he hadn’t slept well last night. After Teri had gone off to bed, he had put things away in the kitchen and reread the story about the nursing student who had been found dead – Amanda Tarkett. There was no way her death had been an accident. That kind of coincidence didn’t happen nearly as often as people liked to believe. No, the boy’s sudden arrival and Miss Tarkett’s death were certainly both part of the same weaving.

Walt thought on that awhile, and then he tried to close his eyes and drift off to sleep. But there had been something else bothering him. He hadn’t been completely honest with Teri about why he had left the department. At times, he wasn’t sure he had even been honest with himself. There was a ghost giving chase, and it was a ghost that belonged to his past.

When he had been a boy, Walt, too, had been one of the disappeared.

It had happened shortly after his seventh birthday. His mother had won full custodial rights after a lengthy court battle, and his father was allowed to visit on weekends only. It was a fate the man decided he couldn’t live with. So one day he had picked up Walt after school, the car packed to the brim with every last possession, and the two of them had begun an odyssey across the country. Salvation Army clothes. Odd jobs. Every new town bringing a new hair color, a new name. Always on the move. Always looking over their shoulders, wondering how much longer before the Witch would catch up with them.

The Witch .

That had been his father’s name for her. “You’ve always gotta be on your toes, Walter. ’Cause the minute you relax, she’s gonna be there. And when she gets her hands on us, she’s gonna throw us both in jail and that’s where we’ll stay until the day we rot. So you be careful, you hear?”

The Witch .

Walt believed most of what his father told him, but even as a seven-year-old he didn’t believe everything. He didn’t believe he’d have to go to jail. And he didn’t believe his mother was a witch. Not the woman who used to tuck him into bed at night and read to him from The Cat in the Hat or Horton Hears A Who . That woman was his mother, and as far as Walt was concerned she would always be his mother.

At the age of sixteen, when he was finally old enough to go looking for her, he went back to his home town again, only to discover that she had died some three years earlier from ovarian cancer. She had spent the final six months of her life in a hospital bed, alone, surrounded by people who cared but who were strangers just the same.

Walt had made it back home, but he had made it back too late.

Just another of the disappeared.

Last night, he had conjured it all up again, like Black Magic, all the way up to three years ago, when he had sat at the side of his father’s death bed and forgiven him for the lost years and the loss of his mother. The trouble was… Walt had never forgiven himself. And that was the reason he had first become interested in law enforcement. And that was the same reason he had quit the force and had taken up the challenge of finding lost children on his own terms. The guilt had never seemed to let him forget.

So he hadn’t been completely honest with Teri.

And he hadn’t been completely honest with himself, either.

He stared reminiscently out the window at the Motel Six sign across the street and closed his eyes. Just a little sleep. That’s all he needed.

And then the phone rang.

Teri unlocked the car door on the boy’s side, then went around and climbed into the driver’s seat. They were both feeling a little worn down after their visit with Dr. Childs. Especially the boy, who had been terrified by the thought of some nurse sticking a needle the size of a number two pencil into his arm just to draw a little blood.

“Is it going to hurt?”

“A little,” Teri had told him. “But if you keep your eyes closed, it won’t seem so bad.”

“Really?”

“Scout’s honor.”

“Mom…”

“What?”

“You’re not a scout.”

The needle hadn’t been as big as he had let himself imagine, but it had been plenty big enough, and Teri had felt that terrible guilt of motherhood when a silent tear had slipped out of the corner of the boy’s eye and trailed down his cheek.

But that was over now, and behind them.

“What do you say to an ice cream?” she asked, buckling the seat belt.

He nodded, still a little angry at her.

“Baskin Robbins?”

Another nod, just as unforgiving.

She started up the car, the engine cold and registering its complaint with a knocking sound that Michael would have described as nothing more than a ping . It was a tight squeeze backing out. An old Toyota pickup had moved into the space on her left and there was a concrete block wall on the right. She backed out slowly, making a hard turn once the front bumper was clear.

“I’m sorry it hurt so much,” she said apologetically.

“You said it wouldn’t hurt.”

“I know. And I’m sorry.” She shifted into first and started out of the lot. “It’s just that sometimes adults forget how much things can hurt.”

“Did you ever have to give blood?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did it hurt?”

“You bet,” she said, checking the rear view mirror. There was a black, late model Ford in the outside lane, maybe half a block behind her. She glanced over her shoulder to make sure she hadn’t lost sight of a car in her blind spot, then turned on her signal and moved to the inside lane.

“But sometimes you just have to do things you’d rather not have to do,” she said. “You remember when you and your father drove over to Reno to pick up your grandfather’s bedroom set?”