David Morrell - Long lost

As I sped back to town, I used my cell phone to call Special Agent Gader, but his receptionist told me that he wouldn't be in the office for a couple of days. I phoned Payne's office but got a recording that said he wouldn't be in the office for the rest of the week. I had a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach that told me his wife's biopsy hadn't been good.

That left getting in touch with the local police, but when I parked outside the station (the same brick building from years ago), I had a disturbing image of policemen piling into squad cars and rushing out to Mrs. Warren's. I feared that their arrival would be so obvious that if Petey was in that house, he'd notice them coming and escape out the back. I might never learn what he'd done with Kate and Jason. Even if the police did manage to capture him, suppose he refused to answer questions? Suppose he denied knowing anything about where Kate and Jason were hidden? If they were still alive, they might starve or suffocate while he remained silent. Think it through, I warned myself. I needed more information. I couldn't trust the police to go after him until I knew exactly how they should do it.

The pilot said something that I couldn't quite hear amid the drone of the single-engine plane.

I turned to her. "Excuse me?"

"I said, Woodford's over there."

I glanced to the right, toward where she pointed. The sprawl of low buildings, old and new, stretched toward the interstate.

She put so much meaning into the statement that I shook my head from side to side. "I don't understand."

"You told me you wanted to see how the old hometown looked from the air."

"More or less."

"Seems like less. You've barely looked in that direction. What you're interested in are those farms up ahead."

We flew closer to the eighty-acre section of woods and underbrush. Although the day was sunny, there was a touch of wind. Once in a while, the plane dipped slightly.

"You're a developer, aren't you?"

"What?"

"We've had our share of development the last five years. Seems like every time I look, there's a new subdivision."

It was an easier explanation than the truth. "Yeah, too much change can be overwhelming."

I stared down at the large dense section of trees. I saw the lane leading into it from the gravel road. I saw a clearing about a hundred yards into it where a brick house was surrounded by grass and gardens.

I'd bought one of those pocket cameras that had a zoom lens. Now I pulled it out and started taking photographs.

Back in my motel room, I spread out the eight-by-tens on a table. I'd paid a photographer to stay open after hours and process them. Now it was after dark. My eyes ached. To help keep me alert, I turned on the television-CNN-and as an announcer droned in the background, I picked up a magnifying glass and leaned down over the photographs. They were slightly blurred from the plane's vibration. Nonetheless, they showed me what I needed.

One thing was immediately obvious. No one would have noticed it at ground level, where the front, sides, and back of the house couldn't be viewed simultaneously. But when seen from above, the grass and gardens in back of the house looked different from those at the sides and the front. They seemed to have had work done on them recently. The area seemed slightly lower than the others.

Sunken? I wondered. As when ground settles after it's been dug up and then refilled?

In the background, the CNN announcer explained that a distraught man with a gun was holding his ex-wife and his daughter prisoner in a house in Los Angeles. A police SWAT team surrounded it. With greater intensity, I stared through the magnifying glass at the photos, confirming that a section of grass and garden in back of the house did appear slightly lower than what was around it.

I noticed a blue pickup truck parked next to the house. I studied a stream that wound through the middle of the woods in back. But what I kept returning to was that area behind the house. The grass seemed greener there, the bushes fuller, as if they were getting more attention than those at the front and the sides.

I set down the magnifying glass and tried to calm myself. There was nothing sinister about relandscaping, the police would say. A blighted lawn and old bushes had been replaced with healthy ones. But what if the lawn and bushes had been replaced because something had been built under them?

On the television behind me, the announcer reported that the hostage situation had ended badly. As the police tightened their circle around the building, the man had shot his daughter and his ex-wife, then pulled the trigger on himself. I stared at the television.

When I'd driven past Mrs. Warren's property, I'd made the mistake of using Kate's Volvo. Petey might have recognized it. This time, I drove only to the outskirts of town, where I left the car among others at a shopping mall. I put on my knapsack and hiked into the countryside.

As in most midwestern farm communities, the road system was laid out in a grid that contained squares or rectangles of land. Avoiding the road that fronted Mrs. Warren's property, I took an indirect route that added several miles, coming at the wooded eighty acres from the road behind. Under a bright, hot sun, I hiked past fields, past cattle grazing, past farmers tending their crops. I adjusted my baseball cap and moved my fanny pack to a more comfortable spot on my waist, trying to look as if I didn't have a care in the world, that I was merely out for a pleasant day of walking. In truth, I wanted desperately to run. The adrenaline burning through me needed exertion to keep it controlled. If I didn't do something to vent the pressure swelling inside me, I feared I'd go crazy. To my right, across a field, the woods got larger. Nearer. Kate and Jason. They're alive, I told myself. They have to be.

Worried about being noticed crossing the field toward the woods, I waited until a car went by and there wasn't any other traffic. The stream that I'd seen in the photographs crossed the field and went under the road. I climbed down to it. Its banks were high enough that I was out of view as I walked next to the water. In contrast with the stark sun, the air was cool down there.

After five minutes, the stream entered the trees. I ducked under a fence, climbed the slippery bank, and found myself among maples, oaks, and elms. The noise I made in the undergrowth troubled me, but who would hear me? Petey wasn't going to be patrolling his fences, guarding his property against intruders. The logical place for him to be was at the house. Or maybe he'd be off somewhere, committing God knew what crimes.

The forest cast a shadow. A spongy layer of dead leaves smelled damp and moldy. I wiped my sweat-gritted face, took off my knapsack, and pulled out a holster that I'd bought that morning. It was attached to the right side of a sturdy belt. My spare fifteen-round magazine was in a pouch to the left, along with two other newly purchased magazines. A hunting knife went next to it and a five-inch long, thumb-width flashlight called Surefire, which the clerk in the gun shop had shown me was surprisingly powerful for its size. I took the pistol from my fanny pack and shoved it into the holster. The weight of the equipment dug into my waist.

Thirsty from nervousness, I sipped water from one of three canteens in the knapsack. I ate a stick of beef jerky and several handfuls of mixed peanuts and raisins. Uneasiness made me urinate. Then I put on the knapsack and pulled a compass from my shirt pocket. Unlike a year ago, I'd taken the time to learn how to use it. Remembering the photographs, estimating the angle that I needed to follow in order to reach the house, I took a southeast direction, making my way through the trees.