John Case - The Murder Artist

“Kev? Sean? If you’re somehow there by yourselves, pick up the phone, okay, guys. It’s Dad. Just pick up the phone.”

Nothing.

Above the telephone table is the bulletin board, its wooden frame stained with green ink in one corner, where Sean colored it as a toddler. In Liz’s absence the cork rectangle has become the permanent home of a haphazard collection of cleaning tickets, news clips, take-out menus, Post-its with scribbled names and numbers, the car-pool schedule, photographs, kid art, old lottery tickets.

“Pick up,” I plead, “come on .”

The machine picks up and I hear my own robot voice again: “Hi, you’ve reached…” I try to imagine Kevin or Sean with the same detail in which I saw the bulletin board, but for some reason I can’t do it.

“What are you doing?” Christiansen asks.

I ignore him, punch 411. I ask for Yasmin Siegel’s number but then change my mind and instead call my next-door neighbor, Fred Billingsley. Yasmin is in her eighties. It will take her too long to get out the door. Fred, whose wife Nancy died two years ago, lives with his adult daughter. He’s efficient and reliable if not friendly.

“Sir,” Christiansen says, “I need to report to Detective Shoffler. Can you tell me-”

Fred is more than surprised to hear from me at this hour. “Alex? What time is it?” His voice is alarmed. “Is there a problem?”

“Can you do me a huge favor?” I ask him.

I explain the situation, tell Fred where to find the key for the front door. Fred promises to go right over; he’ll call me back on my cell phone in a few minutes.

Christiansen leans over, peering past his shoulder toward the dashboard. “Whoa!” he squeals. “Sir! Sir! Slow down! You’ve got to slow down.”

I’m on the Beltway by the time Fred gets back to me. “No one here,” he tells me. “I don’t see anything unusual or peculiar or out of place. You sure they called from here?”

I tell him my cell phone listed the call as originating from home, but maybe there’s some mistake. I thank him profusely.

“Your boys are really… missing ?” Fred says. “Good Lord, is there anything else I can do?”

I have it in my mind that the kids are in the house, hiding from Fred. For no particular reason besides the man’s stiff formality, they’ve always been afraid of “Mr. B.”

“Thanks for checking, Fred. I owe you one,” I say. “I don’t think there’s anything else you can do. I’ll be there in half an hour. You should just go back to bed. I’m really sorry I woke you up.”

“Not at all,” Fred says, in a remote voice. “Glad to be of assistance.”

Christiansen finally gets through to Shoffler just before I turn off Connecticut onto Ordway. They’re still talking when I pull into the driveway. And then I’m out of the car, running toward the house.

I yank open the screen door, turn the dead bolt, and then I’m inside, charging from room to room at warp speed, yelling the boys’ names, throwing open doors, flipping on lights, my eyes practically strip-searching the rooms. I check their bedroom last. Some demented optimist inside me continues to hold out hope that somehow I’ll find them here, asleep in their beds.

But their room is deserted. A void.

With Christiansen trailing behind, I check the attic, then the basement, then make another round of the rooms, this time opening closet doors, looking under the beds, behind furniture, anywhere, everywhere that might conceal a little boy. Again I finish in their bedroom, drifting toward the front window.

Yasmin Siegel is not just a night owl; she claims to sleep only two or three hours a night. She’s also one of those women who seems to know everything that happens in a neighborhood. Maybe she saw something – a car, the boys, whoever brought them to the house – something. She’s awake, too. I can see the bluish glow of the television through the windows of the Siegels’ family room.

I’m on my way out of the bedroom, heading for the phone in my study to call Yasmin, when my eyes catch on something I never noticed before.

It’s some kind of little rabbit, perched on the double dresser, a low-slung many-drawered thing Liz got from Ikea. It’s on Sean’s side, which, unlike Kevin’s half, is almost free of clutter – or I never would have noticed it. Up close, I see that it’s origami, the little figure maybe four inches tall, folded out of brown paper. I don’t know anything about origami, but this is not some simple cartoonlike rendition of an animal. It’s sleek and sophisticated, more like a piece of miniature sculpture.

And when I pick it up, it feels weird. It’s not made out of paper, but some kind of animal’s skin. Which spooks me, somehow.

Was this always here? I don’t think so. I would have noticed it.

But maybe not, I think, setting the little figure back on the dresser. After all, did I notice the boys’ obsession with knights? No. And Liz was always taking them to workshops… of every kind imaginable. Although… there’s no way Kevin or Sean made this thing. Their mother, maybe.

The thought of Liz hits me like wind shear.

Ohmigod. I’ve gotta call her…

She gets in late the next morning, stumbling out of the secure area at National Airport, her good looks strained by tears. After a stiff embrace, I take her elbow, pivot her to the left, and introduce her to Christiansen.

Christiansen is here as a courtesy, to – as Shoffler put it – “help escort Mrs. Callahan to your house.”

I told the detective to forget it when he first put forward this idea, but Shoffler talked me around, noting that uniformed policemen can really help get you through a media crowd. “A guy in uniform can be all business; hell, he can even be rude to reporters – and it just looks like he’s doing his job. The squad car, the uniform – they’ll help.”

“Oh,” Liz says, her eyes widening at the sight of the policeman. She throws me a wild glance, and I know what she’s thinking – even though it makes no sense, even though I would be the one to tell her. She thinks Christiansen is here in some official capacity, to deliver bad news.

“Ma’am,” he mutters, tilting forward in a kind of bow.

She waits, frozen, and when it becomes clear that Christiansen is not going to say anything else, she collapses into me, her face hot and damp against my shoulder. “Oh, Alex,” she says. “Alex?”

I’m more or less holding her up as the crowd streams around us. We just stand there, Liz weeping against my shoulder. I’m not sure what to do. But then she steps back, bats at her face to dry her tears, and starts off toward the baggage claim area, moving so fast I almost have to run to keep up. We stand together, watching the suitcases tumble down the chute toward the conveyor belt.

I open my mouth to say something, but it falls closed of its own weight. What can I say? How was your flight? Sorry I lost our sons?

The telephone call to tell her what had happened was a nightmare, but this – this is so much worse. Instead of Liz arriving to the reunion I’ve been imagining, the jumping and excited boys and their beaming please-come-back-to-me-I’ve-changed father, this is how the love of my life reenters my world. She stands not twelve inches from me, enclosed within a force field of grief and anger. Of course she was scrupulous on the telephone, as I struggled to explain what happened. She did everything she could to reassure me it wasn’t my fault, that I shouldn’t think that way, that she doesn’t blame me, of course she doesn’t blame me.

But of course it’s a lie. How can she not blame me? It’s impossible.

“What happened to your face?” she asks in a neutral tone. “You look-”