David Morrell - The Shimmer

“Okay, you told me what you did right. Now, how about what you did wrong?” the chief demanded. “That press conference is in fifteen minutes. I don’t want any surprises.”

“We weren’t chasing him,” one of the officers, Angelo, insisted. “We never endangered any civilians. All we did was try to get ahead of him and cut him off.”

“Right,” another man, Rafael, added. “Even though the bastard shot Bobby, we didn’t overreact.”

“He was driving a hundred miles an hour,” an officer named Vera said. “It’s a miracle the only other driver he killed was the poor guy behind the wheel of that gasoline tanker.”

The chief looked in Page’s direction.

“How about you?”

Page tried not to imagine the agony of the tanker’s driver.

“With the state police helicopter in the hangar for maintenance, the only aircraft available for police use was mine. I warned the air- port traffic controller to advise other planes not to fly over the city. I stayed above the minimum required altitude. No FAA regulations were broken. Nobody was at risk.”

The chief swept his gaze across the group. “Anybody have anything to add? Any screw-up I should know about?”

The group was silent.

“Then I’m ready to talk to the reporters.”

The officers looked relieved.

Page hung back as they all rose and began to leave the room.

“Want to join us for a beer?” Angelo asked.

“As soon as I tell my wife I’m okay,” Page answered. He didn’t need to ask where they’d meet. They always went to the same place-a sports bar on Carrillo’s Road.

Once he was alone in the debriefing room, he used his cell phone to call home. It was the fourth time he’d done so since landing-and the fourth time he’d heard his own voice saying, “Please leave a message.”

He tried Tori’s cell phone, and for the fourth time it was her voice saying, “Please leave a message.”

Yet again he said into the phone, “Hey, it’s me. Call me when you get this.”

He glanced at his watch, the digital display of which showed 7:23. Where is she? he wondered.

Turning into the driveway of his single-story home, Page pressed the garage-door opener that was attached to his SUV’s sun visor. As the door swung upward, he saw that Tori’s Saturn wasn’t there. He drove in, turned off the engine, got out of his Grand Cherokee, and closed the garage door.

Entering the shadowy kitchen, he noticed how quiet the house felt.

A note lay on the table.

Gone to see my mother.

This made Page frown because Tori’s mother lived in San Antonio, Texas, eight hundred miles away, and Tori hadn’t said a word about wanting to visit her mother. What on earth could have caused her to make such a spur-of-the-moment trip? he wondered.

The only explanation he could think of was, Some kind of emergency. She got a phone call with terrible news from her mother-no, about her mother-so she bought a last-minute plane ticket and hurried down to Albuquerque.

The state’s only big airport was in Albuquerque. The drive down from Santa Fe took an hour and fifteen minutes. Normally Page and Tori used his plane when they visited her mother. But because he’d been flying and couldn’t answer his cell phone, Tori hadn’t been able to tell him what had happened.

Sure. That makes sense, Page thought.

Nonetheless, he couldn’t help rubbing his forehead.

Even if I wasn’t able to answer my phone, that wouldn’t have pre- vented her from leaving a message.

The kitchen phone hung on a wall next to the fridge. Page went over to it, looked at a list taped to the side, found the number he wanted, and pressed the buttons. He expected to get the answering machine, but an elderly voice answered.

“Hello?”

“Margaret? Is that you?”

Page didn’t talk to Tori’s mother often, but she recognized his voice.

“Of course it’s me, Dan. Why do you sound so surprised?”

“I didn’t think you’d be answering. I just assumed you were sick… or something.”

“Sick? What would give you that idea?”

“I came home and found a note from Tori saying she’d gone to visit you. It’s so spur-of-the-moment-I mean, when I left this morning she didn’t say a word about going-I assumed something serious had happened. That you’d been in an accident or something like that. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Well, I’m tired from working in the garden all afternoon. Other- wise I feel fine. When Tori called and said she was coming to see me, I was as surprised as you.”

Page tightened his grip on the phone. “She called you? When?”

“This morning around ten.”

As soon as I left to go to the airport, he thought. Tori was a real estate agent. She often spent the morning at home, writing offers or making phone calls.

Page did some quick calculations. There wasn’t a direct flight between Albuquerque and San Antonio. Tori would have needed to catch a connecting flight in Dallas. Door to door, the whole trip usually took about seven hours. Depending on when her flight left, she should be in San Antonio by now, he thought.

“Is she there? I’d like to talk to her.”

“No, I don’t expect her for several more hours,” the elderly voice replied. “Maybe not until tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Confusion made Page’s head start to ache. “She must be on a really late flight.”

“She’s not flying.”

That didn’t sound right. “Not flying? But then how… Are you telling me she’s driving?”

“That’s what she said. It didn’t make any sense to me, either. Eight hundred miles-but that’s what she told me she wanted to do. You really didn’t know about this?”

“Nothing. Not a damned thing.”

“I asked her why she was driving. She answered that she wanted to see the countryside and think. But she didn’t say what was on her mind. Dan, I don’t know another way to ask this. Is everything okay between Tori and you?”

His impulse was to blurt, Absolutely. We get along fine. Things couldn’t be better.

But the words stuck in his throat.

He forced out a different answer. “All she needed to do was tell me she wanted to visit you. I might even have gone with her. She didn’t have to keep it a secret. If she drives straight through and gets there tonight, tell her to call me as soon as she arrives. I don’t care how late it is.”

“Count on me. I’ll ask her.”

“Not just ask her, Margaret. Please, make sure she does it. Put the phone in her hand and make sure she calls me.”

After he hung up, Page studied the kitchen. Tori had put the breakfast dishes away. The kitchen counters were bare, and everything was in its place, just as if the house were ready for a real estate showing.

He moved into the living room. Magazines that had been spread across the coffee table were neatly stacked. Cushions that had been in disarray from when he and Tori had watched television the previous night were back in their proper places. He remembered that she hadn’t watched TV for long, that she’d gone to bed early, saying she wanted to read.

He walked down the hallway and peered into Tori’s office. Her lap- top computer was gone. Apart from a lamp, nothing was on her desk.

He entered their bedroom. The bed was made, everything perfectly arranged. Looking in the closet, he discovered that two suit- cases were missing. He studied the empty hangers and concluded that Tori had taken most of her casual clothes but none of her business outfits. He checked her bureau drawers and discovered that all her socks and underwear were gone. He glanced toward her side of the bed. A compulsive reader, she normally kept a dozen books stacked there.