Джозеф Файндер - Vanished

More carefully, I went through the previous year’s phone bills and found just one other collect call from my father-eleven months ago. Six collect calls in a year from Dad, five of them in the last four weeks. Just before Roger’s disappearance.

No coincidence.

When I returned to Lauren’s house – after a quick stop at Mr. Younis’s gas station in Georgetown to make another DVD copy of the surveillance video that had been snatched from me – both Lauren and Gabe were home. Her Lexus was in the driveway, and the light in Gabe’s room was on. I unlocked the front door. The security system’s warning tone didn’t sound. They’d disarmed it.

That was not what I wanted. I’d made it clear to Lauren that whenever they were home, they should use the night setting, which would give off a tone whenever someone entered. So I went to find her and explain to her how to use the system.

She wasn’t in the kitchen. Nor was she in the TV room or at the computer in the hutch that served as her home office. I became aware of raised voices coming from upstairs, and I walked toward the staircase, climbed the steps.

Mother and son were arguing. I stopped halfway up the landing, heard Gabe shout, his voice cracking: “–But you don’t know that. You don’t know that!”

Lauren shouted back, “You listen to me! He’ll turn up. They’ll find him. I promise you!”

“After all this time? He’s dead, don’t you get it? Why do you keep pretending?”

“He’s not dead, Gabriel! You have to think positive. You have to believe. Your father is not dead !”

It was too painful to listen to, and anyway, I was eavesdropping on a private moment. I headed back down the stairs.

I WATCHED TV listlessly for a few minutes, changing the channels, not finding anything I wanted to stay on. I heard a door slam, followed by heavy footsteps, then Lauren entered the room.

“That kid, I swear–”

She stopped short when she saw my face. “Jesus, Nick, what happened?”

I shrugged.

“Who did that to you?”

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I said, and smiled.

“Yeah, I get the reference. How’d that happen?”

“Lauren, I overheard you talking to Gabe.”

She sat at the end of the same couch I was sitting on. “You call that ‘talking’? More like screaming. He just knows how to push every single one of my buttons.”

“Why are you telling him to keep the faith? What’s the point of assuring him that Roger’s alive?”

“ Why? ” Her eyes flashed. “Can you imagine what it’s like to have your father disappear suddenly, not knowing whether he’s…” She faltered, seeing my expression, realizing.

I nodded. “Yeah, I can imagine.”

“Why did I never see the parallel?”

“What makes you think there’s a parallel? My father took off in the middle of the night. My mother told us he was on the run. We knew that he was out there somewhere, hiding from the authorities.”

She said softly, “Maybe Roger is, too. Something like that – I want to believe that’s what happened.”

“I don’t think so,” I said, and I described the surveillance video I’d just seen: the apparent abduction, the Econoline van, the gun.

She looked stricken, then closed her eyes for five or ten seconds. “Can I see it? Do you have a copy?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Someone grabbed it from me. That’s how I got this.” I pointed to my bruised nose and split lip. “So I just went back and made another one.”

I PLAYED the DVD for her on her computer, and she responded the way I expected she would: shock, disbelief, then immense relief. And then puzzlement: What did it mean? Roger hadn’t been killed in the attack, but he had been abducted. But by whom, and why?

“This means he’s alive,” she said.

“Maybe,” I said carefully. “It certainly means he survived the attack. That much we know for sure. As for whether…”

“He’s alive,” she said. “These people have him.”

“Could be.”

She pointed to my face. “Who did that to you?”

“Probably the same people who abducted him.”

“Who?”

“You’ll be the first to know when I find out,” I said.

She nodded, compressed her lips. “Nick, you were able to get into Gifford Industries today, right?”

“I was, yes. And I met with the librarian.”

“The librarian–?”

“Roger’s e-mail, remember – he said something about saying good-bye to a librarian. ‘The librarian’ turns out to be Roger’s nickname for a lawyer colleague of his named–”

“–Marjorie something. Right! I’d totally forgotten. So what did she say?”

I told her about how protective of Roger she’d been, her unwillingness to provide details beyond the fact that Roger had discovered something “troubling” in the books of a company they were acquiring.

“Well, it shouldn’t be so hard to figure out which company she’s talking about. We’ve only acquired one in the last three or four months, a power company in Brazil.”

“She wouldn’t say whether it was a company Gifford acquired or was considering acquiring.”

“Is she covering something up?”

“That wasn’t my sense.” I paused. Thought for a second. “I walked around Georgetown a bit. Retraced the route you and Roger took the night you were attacked. So let me ask you something.”

“Sure.”

“Roger parked his car on Water Street. Quite a ways down the hill from the restaurant. I don’t get that.”

“What don’t you get? Oji-San doesn’t have valet parking.”

“But there are parking garages a lot closer than where he parked. And it was a rainy night – not the kind of night you’d want to stroll around Georgetown.”

“I… I suppose I never thought about it.”

“It didn’t strike you as somehow strange?”

“No, not really. What are you getting at?”

“I don’t have a theory. It’s just that it doesn’t make sense.”

“Sense? I mean, Roger’s parked there before. It’s free, it’s easy to get in and out of. I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“Okay.”

“What, you think he deliberately parked there for some sinister reason?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Then what are you saying?”

I spoke carefully. “I just wonder how well you know him. How much you know about him.”

“How well I know Roger ? What are you talking about? If you’re hinting at something, why don’t you just come out and say it?”

I hesitated, blew out a lungful of air. “Did you know Roger was having an affair?” I asked gingerly.

“Stop it.”

“Did you know?”

“Just cut it out.”

“You had no idea?”

“That’s just not true. Now you’re listening to Gabe’s crazy ideas?”

“I’m not asking if it’s true. I’m asking if you knew about it.”

She shook her head. “Stop it.”

I got up, closed both living-room doors. “What do you know about Candi Dupont?” I asked.

Lauren blinked a few times. “Candy…?”

“Candi Dupont is a woman. Candi with an i. A woman that Roger was having an affair with.”

She flushed, looked as if she’d just been slapped. Closed her eyes again.

“Seven months ago–” I began.

“I don’t want to hear it,” she interrupted. “If he started seeing her again, I don’t want to know about it.”

“So you did know.”

“What does this have to do with what happened to him?”

“It’s an important lead. She might know where he is.”

“Or not.”

“Or not,” I agreed.

“Nick, we went through a – a difficult time in our marriage a few years ago.”