David Silva - The Disappeared

“N-i-g-h-t?” the voice asked.

“With a ‘k’,” Michael said. “You mind telling me who I’m speaking with?”

“This is Lieutenant Sterns. Can you give me an address and phone number where I can reach you?”

Michael explained that he was from out of town and that he was currently staying at a motel. Uneasiness squirmed its way into his voice and his throat tightened up as he gave the man the motel’s address, the room number, and the telephone number. Then he closed his eyes and asked a question of his own, the words barely audible out of his mouth. “What’s this all about, lieutenant?”

“Your friend’s had an accident. I’m sorry.”

“She’s dead, isn’t she?”

“What makes you think that?”

“Why else would you be there, answering the phone?”

“There could be lots of reasons, Mr. Knight. Why did you assume she was dead?”

“Just tell me… she is, isn’t she?”

“Yes. She is. I’m sorry.”

The air emptied out of his lungs as if he had been hit in the gut with a football, and he fell back against the headboard, trying to catch enough air to take another breath.

“Mr. Knight?”

He swallowed hard. “Yeah?”

“You want to tell what you were calling about?”

Walt had known it would be wearisome. That was the nature of the business. Any kind of investigative work requiring a stakeout was going to be wearisome. You had to like cramped spaces and eating on the run and listening to talk radio. You had to live and breathe and sleep on someone else’s schedule. Your time was their time. He had always found it to be like that, and this instance was proving to be no exception.

Childs had left the house a little after seven-thirty this morning and had arrived at the clinic just before eight. He had taken a different route this morning, down Fremont and over to El Camino West. And wasn’t that an unusual thing for a man to do? Most people tended to stick to their routines. Still, Walt cautioned himself not to read into it.

The car windows were down, a lazy afternoon breeze filtering through.

Walt glanced up from his newspaper, looked at the back door of the clinic, and went back to reading about USAir Flight 427 that had crashed outside of Pittsburgh. It had been a quiet morning at the clinic. Maybe half-a-dozen patients had come through. The last had been a woman who had appeared to be in her early sixties and in fine health. She had left nearly twenty minutes ago and no one else had come or gone since.

It was one-fifteen now.

Walt dropped the paper again, giving debate to the idea of running around the corner and grabbing a hamburger at the Bartel’s Drive-Thru. He thought if he hurried he could make it in a little under ten minutes, over and back. But of course, as soon as he rounded the corner, Childs would come bounding out of the clinic, climb into his Buick, and be off and running. Wasn’t that the way it always went?

“Come on, doc. Take me to your leader.”

If there was a leader.

The truth of the matter was he had no way of knowing at this point. There was little doubt that Childs was involved somehow. The question was: how big was his role? Was he the guy at the top or some flunky in the middle?

The back door to the clinic slowly swung open.

Walt sat up, feeling an instant surge of adrenaline.

“’Bout time.”

Childs emerged, carrying a briefcase in one hand. It was the same briefcase he had brought from home this morning, and Walt wondered if it meant that the doctor’s day at the clinic had officially concluded. Childs crossed the lot and climbed into his Buick.

Walt rolled up the windows.

“Come on, make it worth my while, you turkey.”

He had no idea how worth his while it would actually turn out to be.

Teri sank back on the couch, feeling tired. Her neck ached. She had slept on it wrong last night and gradually throughout the day it had grown stiffer and stiffer. It didn’t help that Gabe had been out there somewhere, on his own, for nearly five days now.

“Uh-huh,” she said, switching the phone from one ear to the other.

She was talking to Peter Brenner, one of the old college gang. She’d had a crush on Peter once, in her sophomore year before she’d met Michael. It had never gone anywhere. Peter had had his eyes on Drew. They were married now, with four children, two boys and two girls. Their first daughter, Kala, as Teri had just learned had become one of the disappeared in April ’85, less than a month after Gabe’s disappearance. Kala had never returned home.

“I’m sorry. I’m trying to get this straight in my mind. Where were you and Drew living when Kala disappeared?”

“That was about a year after we first moved to Houston.”

“And you hadn’t been back this way?”

“No,” Peter said. “Still haven’t. Drew’s parents are out here and we’ve kind of settled in like natives. Except for that Southern drawl, which I think we’ve both come to envy.”

“Sounds wonderful.”

“It has been. Everything except for Kala.”

Teri hadn’t told him yet about Gabe, and she wasn’t sure she was going to. You never put it completely out of your mind when you lose a child. One way or another, it was always with you. But some days were better than others, and it sounded to her as if Peter and Drew had managed to handle their loss as well as any two people could under the circumstance. She didn’t want to pop that bubble. And she didn’t want to add any false hopes to it, either.

“You ever see anyone from the old days?” she asked.

“No, not really. Drew and Judy write back and forth, but that’s about it.”

“Who’s your family doctor?”

“Oh, well, there’s someone I guess we still see. It’s Childs. You remember him from college?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“He’s got a clinic out here.”

“Really?”

“It’s a small, general practice that he set up shortly after we arrived.”

“Were you a little surprised to see him out there?”

“Amazed. He said he had some relatives here and had decided the old saying was true: there was no place like home.”

Teri’s pager went off, sending a tingling vibration into her hip. She glanced down at it, wondering briefly if something was up or if Walt was just testing her again. She shut it off.

“I’ve got a call I better take,” she said.

“Sorry you missed Drew. I know she would have loved to talk to you.”

“Well, maybe next time.”

“That would be nice.”

“Peter, one more thing before I go.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you take all your kids to Dr. Childs?”

“Sure do.”

The phone rang and Walt grabbed it immediately. “Teri?”

“Is everything all right?”

“You’ll never guess where I am.”

“Where?”

He turned and looked out across the gateway. A businessman, dressed in a dark blue suit and carrying a briefcase, passed by. He was followed by a couple of teenage boys who stopped at the newsstand across the way and leafed through the current issue of Playboy .

“The airport,” Walt said.

“What are you doing there?”

“Believe it or not, I’m on my way to Chicago.” He shook his head, and glanced down at the ticket in his hand. It was a 3:30 flight to O’Hare. Absently, he tapped the corner of the document against the metal face plate of the phone. “Ever been to Chicago?”

“No.”

“Me, either. Guess there’s a first time for everything.”

“What’s going on, Walt?”

“I’m not sure exactly.” He glanced across the way at the seating area, where Childs was reading a newspaper and waiting for the boarding call. “Childs knocked off early this afternoon and now he’s on his way to Chicago. I just thought I’d go along for the ride, that’s all.”