David Silva - The Disappeared

“Devol? Right? D-e-v-o-l?”

“Yeah.”

When she couldn’t find it under Devol, she tried Devole, and then finally Devoule. The results were all the same. The closest she came was Devon’s Dry Cleaning off Hartnell Avenue. “Sorry, I can’t find anything even close. A research institute, you said, right?”

“Just to make sure, after you hang up will you do me a favor and call the operator and see if maybe she has a listing?”

“Sure.” She opened the top drawer of the night stand and rummaged through the books and old magazines until she came up with a pencil and a piece of paper. On the paper, she wrote DEVOL RESEARCH INSTITUTE in bold, block lettering. “So what’s this place supposed to be?”

“It’s where we ended up after our flight. Childs went straight there, like a spaniel to water. There’s not much to see from the street. It looks like just another business building from the outside.”

“Maybe it is.”

“Now there’s a story for the papers. Idiot private eye tails suspect halfway across the country while the suspect attends a seminar on the proper filing of Medicare forms. God, it better be more than just a business building.”

Teri grinned, and it struck her how lucky she was to have this man on her side. He had, indeed, just flown halfway across the country for her. How many people did she know who would do that for her? Only one that she could think of.

“Go to bed, Walt.”

“Why? Am I starting to sound crabby?”

“Definitely.”

Teri did as she had promised.

After she hung up, she called directory assistance and told the operator that she needed a number for the Devol Research Institute in the 9-1-6 area code. The clickety-clackety patter of computer keys sounded in the background.

“Could you please spell that?”

“D-e-v-o-l,” Teri said.

“I’m sorry. I have no listing for the Devol Research Institute.”

“Could it be an unlisted number?”

“As I said, I have no such listing.”

“In other words, you can’t tell me.”

“That’s correct.”

Teri stewed for awhile after she had hung up. She got out of bed, went into the kitchen, and rummaged through the refrigerator for something to eat. But she wasn’t really hungry. She was upset. And when she couldn’t find anything that would satisfy the upset, she headed back to bed.

She was on the verge of falling asleep again when something occurred to her that was so obvious she had almost overlooked it. Of course the number was unlisted. If there had been no such number at all, no such place as the Devol Research Institute, the operator would have said so. But since the number was unlisted, the operator was in the position of having to protect that fact.

Of course!

Two calls later, Teri had learned that there were no listings for a Devol Research Institute in either the Houston area or the St. Charles area. Since she knew there was an institute in St. Charles and certainly had reason not to conclude there might be one in Houston as well, it was a short leap to suspect there might also be one here in the local area. And if that were true, then Gabe had to be somewhere close by.

That little piece of knowledge renewed the sense of excitement inside her and for awhile, unable to sleep, Teri was forced to do some reading before finally turning off the light. She rolled over, her eyes still wide open, and gazed through the thin veil of the bedroom curtains, out into the night sky. A picture of Gabe floated to the fore of her thoughts and she said a little prayer to God that tomorrow would be the day she would be reunited with her son.

Gradually, sleep began to overtake her.

Teri closed her eyes, a moment of pure tranquility settling over her.

Then she heard a noise from the living room that brought her completely awake again.

“In the sixties, endocrinologists began to understand the true nature of chemical messengers in assisting the release of hormones in the body. It wasn’t long after that, that we were able to synthesize these chemical messengers and thus trigger specific hormonal reactions. Somatostatin, which inhibits the pituitary growth hormone, is an example of these messengers. Today, we can already see synthetics playing a role in everything from diabetes control to fertility drugs.

“More recently, as we’ve come to discover the role that our genes play in the natural process of aging, we have to wonder how much longer it will be before similar synthetics will be used to artificially trigger the functions of these genes. It is not outside the realm of possibility that by the end of this century we will be able to manipulate the on/off switches responsible for the onset of aging.

“We may, in fact, actually be able to cease the human aging process.”

Michael took a sip of coffee and watched the movement on the other side of the frosted glass window that separated the lieutenant’s office from the rest of the second floor. It was well past one o’clock in the morning. He had been here better than three hours, after Lieutenant Sterns had dropped by his motel room and asked him to come down to the station for questioning.

Michael placed the coffee cup back on the corner of the lieutenant’s desk.

The office door opened and Sterns came in with a typed transcript of their interview. He pulled a stapler out of a desk drawer, stapled the pages together, then handed the transcript to Michael and sat down.

“Okay,” he said, exhausted and rightfully so, Michael imagined. Not only was the hour late, but when they had first arrived at the station, the temperature in the office had been hovering near the mid-eighties. The lieutenant had turned on the fan, which sat on the filing cabinet in the corner and was still swinging from side-to-side trying to create some semblance of relief. “Read it over and sign your name at the bottom of the last page and we’ll call it a night. Fair enough?”

Peggy’s death had not yet been ruled an accident or a murder, though the lieutenant had implied that until the coroner’s report came out he would most likely be treating it as an accidental overdose. Michael had wanted to tell him everything… all about Teri’s first call, about talking to a boy whom he had come to believe was Gabe, about arriving unexpectedly in town, about the people watching Teri’s house and the people who had been watching him the past day or two. He wanted to tell it all, but realized how bizarre it would sound and managed to keep most of it to himself. Peggy was just an old friend, he had said. Someone he hadn’t seen in years and thought he’d call since he was in town for a visit.

Michael read through the relatively short statement, beginning to end, asking only if he could change the wording where he had said something to the effect that it wouldn’t surprise him if Peggy were still into drugs after all these years.

“I don’t really know if she was or she wasn’t,” Michael said, feeling more cautious than he had when they first began their conversation. “Isn’t it enough that I mentioned her drug use back in college?”

“Go ahead and cross it off if it makes you feel any better,” Sterns said wearily. “Just initial next to the change.”

Michael crossed out the sentence in question, initialed it, then signed at the bottom and handed the statement back.

“How long are you planning on being in town?” the lieutenant asked.

“I don’t know,” Michael said. “Until I can track Teri down, I guess.”

Sterns nodded again, though Michael wasn’t sure if the lieutenant had actually heard him. He slipped the statement into a manila folder, thoughts apparently preoccupied by other matters. “You going to stay at the motel?”