David Silva - The Disappeared

God, how he hated this place.

Then late last night, he had rolled over in his sleep and the soreness had suddenly brought him awake. He had peeled back the Band-Aid and discovered a small black-and-blue circle where Tilley had pinched him. The slit underneath, where the needle had gone in, was barely visible.

So the worse of Miss Tilley’s taking had come yesterday.

And now, as she was stepping through the door, Gabe wondered what she was here to take from him this time.

D.C. followed fifteen or twenty feet behind as the man took his mid-morning walk along the paved trail that meandered alongside the Sacramento River. There was a hillside to their left, topped with a line of expensive Mediterranean-style houses. Patches of shade fell randomly across the path, just often enough to bring relief from the overhead sun.

D.C. picked up his pace until he was directly behind the man, then pulled a gun from beneath his jacket and placed it against the small of the man’s back. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Webster? You’re going to shut down the whole project.”

Webster stopped without turning around, and though he appeared not the least bit unsettled by the gun in his back, D.C. drew a certain degree of pleasure from having placed it there. “How nice of you to join me. It is a beautiful day, isn’t it?”

“You think so?” He shoved the barrel of the gun a little deeper into the man’s flesh. “You think Peggy Landau is enjoying it as much as you?”

“Landau? She a friend of yours?” Webster said softly. “Or one of those extra wives you have stashed all around the country?”

“You know who the hell she is. You’re the one who had her killed.” They stood in the middle of the path, alone for the moment, though that wouldn’t remain the case forever. D.C. nudged the man in the direction of a bench next to the river, and motioned for him to sit down. “What are you doing? Sending up a fucking flare so everyone in the world will know what’s going on?”

Webster grinned. It was a grin that D.C. had seen before, a grin that he had come to despise almost as much as he despised the man himself. “The flare was only meant for you, my friend.”

“Why?”

“Are you aware that your Miss Landau died of an overdose?”

“Yeah. So what?”

“They haven’t decided yet if it was an accident or not, were you aware of that as well?”

D.C. couldn’t believe it. “You’re setting me up? That’s what this is all about?”

Webster shrugged half-heartedly and gazed out across the slow current of the river. Someone passing by might look at him and think what a kindly old gentleman he must be, and how much he must be enjoying his retirement out here, taking in the peaceful sounds of the water. “It’s just a little insurance, that’s all. Just a little incentive for you. I wouldn’t want you to worry about it, but it is something for you to keep in mind.”

“This is on your own, isn’t it, Webster? The agency doesn’t even know you’re out of your fucking head, or you’re out here running around killing people, does it?”

“No, to be perfectly honest, they think you’re the one who’s out of his head. And you’re the one who’s running around killing people.”

“I need to make a stop,” Walt said.

They were on their way back to the apartment after visiting the Building Department at the County Offices, where they had picked up the blueprints to the Institute. Walt had seemed draggy the last thirty or forty minutes, not tired so much as self-absorbed. He had been distant and uncommunicative, and Teri had wondered if maybe he knew something that she didn’t, if maybe it had something to do with Aaron Jefferson.

They had bumped into Aaron on the steps outside the County Offices. It was the first time she had ever met the gentleman. He was tall and thin and had a smile that came easily. It left you feeling as if you had been friends most of your life.

For the most part, they exchanged small talk, Aaron mentioning something about a proposed change in the structure of the department, Walt remarking on how easy it had been to get the set of blueprints. The exchange had been short and affable. It was after they parted and they were on their way to the parking lot that Walt mentioned that Aaron was the man who had run the fingerprint checks on her shoe.

“Did he find anything?” Teri asked, not remembering if they had discussed the results or not. So much had happened the past week; it was hard to keep track of it all.

“Nothing important,” Walt said, and then he had fallen uncharacteristically silent. He climbed into the car, turned on the radio and lost himself somewhere in the lyrics of Neil Young’s The Needle and the Damage Done . For a man who purported to abhor the Sixties, wasn’t that a little red flag going up? Teri let it flap in the wind, without making an effort to extract any kind of explanation. If he had something on his mind that he wanted to talk about, she told herself, then sooner or later it would come out on its own. As long as he understood that she would be there to listen…

The stop Walt had wanted to make was at the Hillcrest Cemetery, off Remington Drive just north of the city, overlooking a small agricultural valley nestled in the foothills. They parked out front, next to the Hillcrest Chapel.

“My father’s buried here,” he said, unbuckling his seat belt. He sank back, his hands suddenly wrapped around the steering wheel, and stared out across the graveyard, a man who had seen his share of ghosts in his life. “So’s my son.”

“You want me to wait?” she asked.

“No, you can come.”

They got out. He locked up the car and waited for her to join him. A gentle afternoon breeze kicked up, whistling through the trees, stirring the souls of all the ghosts that made their residence here.

“My father’s greatest fear was dying,” he said solemnly as they walked through the huge ironwork gate. “I never understood that.”

“A lot of people fear death.”

“I don’t.”

As strange and as stark as that might have sounded, Teri didn’t doubt it in the least. In fact, she thought she might even understand it. She had felt much the same way after Gabe had disappeared, especially after she reached the point of giving up her search for him. After that, whether she lived or died hadn’t mattered much. Death, she decided, was something you feared when you had a reason to live. Her reason had gone the way of the wind.

“My father died a thousand little deaths in his life. Every time he changed a name or quit a job or moved to a new town. Each and every one of them, they were all little deaths and it never occurred to him he was even dying.”

They came upon the gravesite, which was at the far end of the third row, just out of the shade of an old oak. It was marked by a marbled headstone set flush in the ground, the grass long and unkempt around the edges. There was a small bouquet of yellow daffodils above the name on the marker.

Walt knelt and crossed himself, then brushed away the debris that had collected around the chiseled-out letters. Underneath a matting of oak leaves and pine needles, he stirred up a red-ribbon bow, faded and pinkish and curled at the edges. He stuffed it into his pocket.

“I hated him as much as I loved him, you know. He was that kind of man.”

Teri stood back, silent, not knowing what to say. She wished now that she had opted to wait in the car. She was out of place here, a voyeur catching a glimpse of a moment best left private.