Джозеф Файндер - Vanished

I had an idea where some of it might have gone.

My cell phone started ringing again. Annoyed, I fished it out of my pocket, glanced at the caller ID. It said Lauren Heller – my brother’s wife. In Washington, D.C., it was around one in the morning. She wasn’t calling to chat.

I answered, “Lauren, what’s up?”

“It’s me.”

Not Lauren. The voice of an adolescent boy. Lauren’s fourteen-year-old son, Gabe.

I hadn’t spoken to my obnoxious brother in months, but I liked his wife a lot, and her son – Roger’s stepson – was a great kid. Gabe and I talked on the phone at least once a week, and I did stuff with him as often as I could. He was the son I didn’t have, might not ever have; and I was, I guess, the father he lacked. Having ended up with Roger as his stepfather instead.

“Hey, bud, I’m sorry. I can’t really talk now. I’m with a client.” I glanced at Woody, pulled his SIG-Sauer from my waistband, and wagged it at the guy. Like some overworked customer-service representative, I said apologetically: “I’ll be right with you.”

“Uncle Nick,” Gabe said. “You need to get over here.”

“I’m not in D.C., Gabe. What’s wrong?”

“It’s Mom. She’s in the hospital.”

“What happened? Is she okay?”

“I think she’s in a coma.”

“A coma? How–”

“No one’s telling me anything. She got mugged or something, but–”

“Where’s your dad? Is he out of town on business?”

“I don’t know where he is. No one does. Please, Uncle Nick. Can you get back here now?”

“Gabe,” I said, “I’m in the middle of something, but as soon as I can–”

“Uncle Nick,” he said, “I need you.”

WASHINGTON

She must have fallen asleep again – a fitful, distressed sleep, troubled by dreams that were far too real. Gabe visiting her in the hospital, his curly hair a mess, crying when he saw her. A doctor with a long chin and a high-domed forehead peering into her eyes with a bright light. She awoke, slowly this time, unsure which if any of these things had actually happened.

When she opened her eyes again, she could tell right away she’d been moved. None of that frantic intensive-care cacophony, the jumbled voices and quick footsteps or the dissonant symphony of electronic beeping. One machine beeping quietly, but not much else. Quiet whispers.

The quality of light was different somehow. Daylight, maybe. There had to be a window somewhere nearby. She’d slept through the night. Another night, come to think of it.

Two men in jackets and ties stood at the foot of her bed. One a lot older than the other. Cops, she thought.

For a moment she thought she might still be dreaming. She closed her eyes and went away for a while, but when she opened them again, they were still there, talking quietly to each other. One of them glanced at her, approached.

He was around sixty, with thinning white hair and a scraggly white beard that she guessed had been grown to conceal a weak chin. “Mrs. Heller, I’m Detective Garvin from the D.C. police department.” He was holding a giant Dunkin’ Donuts cup. “And this is Detective Scarpino.”

The guy standing behind him – cute, dark-haired, the innocent face of a boy and the body of a linebacker-looked barely thirty. “How’s it going?” he said, smiling, and she couldn’t help smiling back.

They each took out leather badge holders and flipped them open. She saw only a flash of gold, a glint of silver.

The older one sat slowly, gingerly, on the only chair, as if he had a bad back. “How are you feeling, Mrs. Heller?” His partner went scrounging for another chair from somewhere beyond the blue curtains, the boundaries of her world.

“Where’s my husband?” she said.

Garvin went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “One of the nurses gave us the heads-up that you were okay to talk, but if you don’t feel up to it, we can come back.”

“What time is it?”

“Around nine. In the morning.”

“Are you here about my husband?”

Garvin wore steel aviator rim glasses with thick lenses that grotesquely magnified his bleary pale eyes – gray? blue? Hard to say. “Mrs. Heller, we’d like to ask you some questions about what happened.”

The throbbing behind her eyes was back with a vengeance. “Are you… homicide detectives?” she asked in a choked voice.

He shook his head, gave a prim smile. “We’re from the Violent Crime Branch.”

The words made her stomach flip over. “Detective, where’s my husband?” she said, heart thudding. “Have you found him or not?”

“No, ma’am. Nothing.”

“What do you mean, ‘nothing’?”

“Every hospital in the city and the surrounding area has been called. Medical examiners’ offices, even the central cellblock.”

“Cellblock?”

“We don’t want to rule anything out. A notice went out on WALES – the Washington area law-enforcement network.”

“And…?”

“Nothing, ma’am. I’m sorry. At this point, we’re treating this as a missing-persons case.”

“How do you know he wasn’t – harmed? Or worse?”

“Our crime scene squad didn’t find any cartridge casings or bloodstains or anything else that would indicate bodily harm.”

“ ‘Missing persons’…?”

He hesitated. “Missing Person Critical, actually.”

Scarpino returned with a molded plastic chair and scraped it into place behind his partner’s.

“Why ‘critical’?”

“Suspicion of foul play.”

“But you just said you didn’t find anything.”

“Because of what happened to you.”

“How do you know I wasn’t just mugged or something?”

“Because, ma’am, you were identified by the contents of your purse. Someone saw you lying in the street and called nine-one-one, and because you still had your wallet, we knew who you were and who to call.”

His stare was penetrating, downright unnerving.

“So?”

“Tells us you probably weren’t mugged, right? So maybe you could tell us as much about the incident as you remember.”

She told them everything she could. Garvin asked all the questions; Scarpino, clearly the recessive gene, said nothing, took notes.

“The attacker – was there only one of them?” Garvin asked.

“As far as I know. I mean, some guy grabbed me from behind, and I guess he hit me on the head with something, though I don’t remember that part. And… yes, I think he put a gun to my head.”

“Where?”

“Right here.” She pointed to her temple.

“Before or after you were hit in the head?”

“Before.”

“What makes you so sure it was a gun?”

“I–I don’t know, it was hard and round and it felt like metal and – I mean, I suppose it could have been anything, but–”

“You didn’t see it, though.”

“No, but – actually, come to think of it, I remember hearing a click. Like a revolver being cocked.”

“You know what that sounds like?”

“My dad kept one in the house. I don’t think he ever fired it, but he showed me and my sister how to use it.”

“Did the attacker try to get your clothes off?”

“No. But he might have been scared off when Roger showed up.”

“Let’s back up a little. You and your husband went out to dinner, just the two of you, right?”

“Right.”

“A special occasion?”

Date night, she wanted to say, but instead she replied, “Just dinner.”

“Whose idea was it to go out to dinner?”

“What difference does it make?”

“We’re just trying to get the big picture here.”

“It was Roger’s.”

“Did you go out for dinner often, just the two of you?”