Джозеф Файндер - Vanished

She shook her head again. “They brought him home. They picked him up at school and brought him home.”

“Who did?”

“I don’t know. It just sounds totally bizarre. It doesn’t make sense to me… Just, can you talk to him, Nick?”

“What happened?”

“Maybe he’ll talk to you. He won’t talk to me.”

“Is he okay?”

“ He’s fine. But we can’t stay here anymore. It’s just not safe.”

“Lauren.”

“I’m taking Gabe, and I’m getting out of here. Go stay with my sister, maybe.”

“Lauren,” I said. “Let me talk to him.”

I could hear the tinny rasp coming from Gabe’s iPod earbuds even before I opened the door. He was lying on his bed, wearing a black Nightmare Before Christmas T-shirt, reading a paperback. On the cover was some guy in a Roman-gladiator outfit holding a gleaming sword and flying through the air. No doubt one of the sci-fi/fantasy series he devoured along with every comic book ever published.

He didn’t look up.

I sat down on the side of the bed. “Hey,” I said.

He kept reading. Maybe it was a generational thing, but I didn’t understand how he could read at the same time he was listening to music like that. I couldn’t.

Actually, I couldn’t floss my teeth while listening to music like that, but whatever.

“I want to hear what happened,” I said.

He kept looking at the book, but his eyes weren’t scanning the page.

“What happened, Gabe?” I said.

No response.

I reached over and yanked the earbuds out of his ears with one hard tug.

“Hey!” he squawked.

“What’d they do to you?” I said.

He glared at me. “Why? So you can tell Mom? She’s all whacked out over it.”

“She was scared. Can’t blame her. What’d they do?”

“Like, did they arrest me or something?” He gave me that prototypical teenage glower and put his book facedown on the bed. “They wanted to ask me stuff.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, all kinds of stuff.”

“Did they take you somewhere?”

“No. They just talked on the way.”

“On the way?”

“They picked me up at school and brought me home. They knew where I lived and everything. I didn’t even have to give them directions.”

“And what did they ask you?”

“Lots of questions.”

“Like?”

“Like, does Dad have any safe-deposit boxes, and where he keeps the keys, and like that. Does he stash stuff anywhere in the house. Is there like a panic room or some kind of hidden room in the house where he might have kept stuff. Where do we go on vacation, and do Dad and Mom have any places they like to travel to. They wanted names of Dad’s friends and relatives and like that. Anything I could think of.”

“Did they tell you why they wanted to know all this?”

“Of course. They said they’re trying to find him. They said maybe he left files or notes or something. Stuff that might tell them where he went. People who might know where he’d gone.”

“And… you answered all their questions, right?”

“I sure did.”

My stomach sank.

“I told them Dad has a safe-deposit box at Chevy Chase Bank, only I forgot which branch. I told them I was pretty sure Dad was hiding out at our house on Cape Cod.”

“House on Cape Cod,” I repeated.

“Wellfleet.”

“No one told me about this house in Wellfleet,” I said.

“That’s because we don’t have one. He also doesn’t have a safe-deposit box at the Chevy Chase Bank. As far as I know. Come on, dude, what kind of detective are you, anyway?”

Momentarily stunned, I noticed the little smile pulling at the edges of Gabe’s mouth, and I couldn’t help smiling myself. “You lied to them,” I said.

“Misled them,” Gabe said. “Okay, I lied to them.”

“You figured out they weren’t real cops.”

“Thing is, Uncle Nick, they were driving a Crown Vic like all plainclothes cops drive, and they were wearing blue uniforms with shoulder patches that said METROPOLITAN POLICE, so at first they looked totally for real. They even showed me their badges. But you can buy badges and police uniforms and all that stuff on the Internet.”

“So what made you realize they were fake?”

“They didn’t have a police radio installed.”

“Excellent.”

“And they didn’t have those strobe light thingies, the kind the cops take out and put on the roof of their car when they’re chasing speeders.”

“Very nice.”

“And I didn’t smell doughnuts.” He grinned, and I grinned back.

“You did good,” I said.

“Tell that to Mom.”

“I will.” I leaned over to pat him on the shoulder, and I noticed his face had gotten strangely contorted, and there were tears in his eyes. He made a hiccuping sound. He was trying not to cry.

“I was scared out of my mind, Uncle Nick,” he said.

“I know,” I said. I tried to hug him, but it was awkward, the way he was lying back on the bed. Then he leaned forward and gave me a hug.

“Who are they?” he said.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know, or you won’t tell me?”

“At this point, I can only guess, and I don’t want to do that.”

He let go, turned around, sat on the edge of the bed, looked back at me. “So what was the point of all that? Were they just trying to scare Mom and me?”

“Maybe.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are… are we safe?”

I hesitated far too long. “I don’t know.”

“Are you going to stay in the house, or are you going back to the fortress of solitude?”

“I told you, Gabe. You can’t get rid of me that easy.”

“Are you going to teach me how to use a gun?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Have a little faith in me,” I said.

He made a derisory snort.

“What’s the matter?” I said. “You don’t trust me?”

He rolled his eyes.

“Listen,” I said. “There was once this legendary French acrobat named Charles Blondin, okay? He was famous in the nineteenth century for doing these impossible daredevil tightrope-walking stunts. He strung a rope across Niagara Falls, a thousand feet long. And this crowd gathered and he walked on the tightrope over the falls, hundreds of feet above the gorge, and the crowd went crazy when he got to the other side, clapping and cheering.”

Gabe gave me a skeptical glance. “Yeah?”

“And then he said to the crowd, ‘Do you believe I can do it again?’ and the crowd cheered, ‘Yes!’ And he did it. And the crowd cheered even louder, and he said, ‘Do you believe I can do it wearing a blindfold?’ And some people in the crowd got scared and shouted, ‘No, don’t do it,’ and others said, ‘Yes! You can do it!’”

“And he fell,” Gabe said.

I shook my head. “He did it, and the crowd cheered even louder, and he said, ‘Do you believe I can do it on stilts this time?’ And the crowd shouted out, “Yes! You can do it!’ And he did it, and the crowd roared and got even wilder. So then he said, ‘Do you believe I can do it pushing a wheelbarrow along the rope?’ And the crowd roared and cheered and said, ‘Yes!’ And Blondin said, ‘You really think I can? You believe it?’ And they shouted, ‘Yes! Yes, you can!’ ”

Despite himself, despite his teenage cynicism, he was actually listening. For a moment he almost seemed to be a child again, listening to a bedtime story. “Is this true?”

“Yes.”

“He actually did it?”

“Yep. He did it. He walked across the tightrope hundreds of feet above the gorge pushing a wheelbarrow, and when he made it to the other side the audience had grown huge and frenzied and totally worked up and they cheered. Really went crazy. So Blondin said, ‘Do you believe I can do it again but this time pushing a man in this wheelbarrow?’ And the crowd roared and said, ‘Yes!’ He said, ‘You really believe I can do it?’ And they all went, ‘Yes, definitely! You can do it! We believe in you! Yes! Absolutely!’ By that time the crowd was completely behind him. They thought he could do anything. So Blondin said, ‘Then who will volunteer to sit in the wheelbarrow?’ And the crowd suddenly went quiet. Totally silent. And he said, ‘What’s the matter? You don’t believe in me anymore?’ And they were silent for a long time before someone from the crowd finally said, ‘Yes, we believe in you. But not that much.’ ”