David Silva - The Disappeared

She dug the quarter out of the change release and tossed it to the boy. “How are you doing?”

“Okay.”

“Well, you’re doing better than I am, then.”

“No answer?”

“No, he must be out somewhere.”

“Why can’t we just go home?”

“Because they might be waiting for us there.”

“What about the apartment?”

That’s why she had wanted to talk to Walt, just to make sure that it would be safe to go back to the apartment. Somehow, these guys had picked up their trail. Maybe it had been at the doctor’s office. Maybe it had been at Walt’s. Maybe it had been by chance. The problem was—she had no way of knowing.

“I suppose we could go by,” she said hesitantly. She looked down at him, smiled, and pulled him into her for a hug. “Quite a mess we’ve gotten ourselves into, isn’t it?”

“It’ll be all right, Mom.”

“I hope so.”

Teri stood across the street from Walt’s apartment watching the windows and trying to decide if it was safe or not. The thing that troubled her the most was the light in the kitchen. She couldn’t remember if she had turned it off, but couldn’t image that she had left it on. It could be that Walt had come home unexpectedly early. Or it could be that someone was waiting to surprise them.

“How long do we have to wait out here?”

“As long as it takes.”

“There’s no one up there.”

“You willing to bet your life on that?”

“Yeah.”

She glanced down at him, recognizing the mix of weariness and frustration on his face, and wishing she could wave a wand and make everything better. All she could do, though, was ruffle his hair and turn her attention back to the apartment. “I don’t know. I just don’t like the idea of that light being on.”

“You just forgot it, that’s all.”

“Maybe.”

For as long as they had stood here, the apartment building had been quiet. Except for the couple on the bottom floor, who had gotten into a fight and had spent some time yelling obscenities back and forth. The husband—or boyfriend or live-in or whatever he was—had come stomping out of the apartment with a jacket slung over one shoulder and a beer in one hand. He had gone around the corner to the back side of the building, muttering to himself and that had been the last Teri had seen of him. Things had quieted down appreciably after that.

“All right,” she said uneasily. “I guess we can’t stand out here all night.”

They crossed the street in the middle of the block, Teri keeping the boy in front of her as she guardedly made sure there was no obvious danger. Around the outer edges of the courtyard, they kept under the shadows of the overhang. Near the northwest corner of the building, where the lighting was brighter, she took him to the top of the stairs, one step at a time, and paused near the landing.

“Let’s just wait here a second.”

“What for?”

“Just to be on the safe side.”

The boy picked up a twig off the ground and toyed with a black beetle that had the unfortunate luck of having crossed in front of him at just the wrong moment. Teri leaned back against the iron handrail and watched the kitchen window, half-expecting to see someone moving around inside. When that didn’t happen, she brought out the key Walt had given her the first night. She crossed the walkway to apartment B-242, and plugged the key into the lock. It toggled both directions without success. But before she had the chance to try it a third time, the door gradually swung open on its own.

“It’s unlocked,” the boy said, surprised.

“Shhh.”

Inside, the short entryway was cast in a crisscross of shadows. The kitchen was off to the right, bright under the overhead fluorescents. The living room was straight ahead, slightly off center, again to the right. Teri took a short step across the threshold and paused.

The boy stepped up behind her, his hand slipping around her wrist and holding on.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m just going to take a look. You stay here by the door.”

“I want to come with you.”

“Let me check it out first.”

At the first doorway, she stopped and slowly peered around the corner into the kitchen. It looked as if all hell had broken loose. Drawers were pulled off their tracks, utensils scattered across the floor, the refrigerator door left open. There was a pile of cereal boxes and empty soup cans, jelly jars and empty macaroni packages on the floor in the middle of the room. A three-fingered track of apricot jelly stained the walls above the countertop and the sink, and someone had squirted the ceiling with what looked like ketchup and salad dressing.

It was worse than that, much worse, but that was as much as she needed to see. She turned and started back out the door.

“We’ve gotta get out of here!”

It was getting cold out.

Walt blew into his hands to warm them, and settled a little deeper into the front seat of the car. The evening cloud cover had finally dissipated. The sky was a remarkable crisp, deep black, sprinkled with a garden of stars.

Four hours had passed since he had first arrived here. Across the street, the house had given itself to the quiet of the night. It was a small two-bedroom, Sixties tract home with a flat, gravel roof and an oak tree in the front yard. It belonged to Richard Boyle, though he was currently going by the name of B. L. Richards. He worked at a printing shop off of Fourth Street called the Ace Printing Company. He had been working there for nearly nine months, having moved into the area with his two kids from a small town in upper Oregon. That was the story he had pitched to his employer. It was the same story he had offered up to the secretary at John F. Kennedy Elementary where he had registered the kids. And it was all a lie.

Walt glanced at the clock. 10:20 p.m. He flipped on the radio, met with an instant barrage of static, and grumpily flipped it off again.

“Come on, Richard. Where the hell are you?”

He hadn’t seen Richard and he hadn’t seen the children, and that was not a good omen. It left him wondering if Boyle had somehow made him, if he had known Walt was getting close and had already pulled out of the area. A father who steals his children keeps them nearby. So if Walt’s information was correct and this was the place and Boyle was B. L. Richards, then where were the children?

There were no lights on in the house.

There was no activity.

A couple of the neighborhood kids had said they hadn’t seen Christy or Garrett, the Boyle kids, since late last week. The family had crammed into their old Datsun late one night, all three in the front seat, and had apparently driven off to run errands. Christy waved good-bye on the way down the street, but no one could remember them coming back. And no one could remember seeing any luggage when they had left.

“I thought they were going out to dinner,” one little girl said.

Walt blew into his hands again, and glanced up the street, where a dog was circling a pair of dented garbage cans. The neighborhood had been alive two hours ago, a group of boys playing street hockey, neighbors arriving home after work, a boy going door-to-door collecting for his newspaper route, a woman and her daughter out walking the family dog. Gradually, things had grown quieter, though, and now it was as if the block of tract homes had turned into something of a ghost town.

He watched the dog stand on his hind legs and knock over the smaller of the two cans. The lid fell off, rolled over the edge of the curb and wobbled to its death like the last throes of a coin that had been flipped. A loud metallic explosion of noise went echoing down the street. And not a soul stirred. Not a single person in the entire neighborhood.