Linwood Barclay - Far From True

“It’s a few blocks,” she said, sounding very winded. “Not... too... long.”

“When does school officially let out?”

“Now, right now!”

“Hang up, call the school, see if they can call Carl to the office!”

“I tried that! I can’t” — a pause to catch her breath — “get through!”

“Then call the police!”

“They won’t care!”

“What?”

“They never care about this shit!”

If she meant custody disputes, she was half-right. There were some things a cop in a patrol car couldn’t solve. But what she was talking about now seemed to suggest an outright kidnapping that was about to take place.

My heart was pounding, my hands slippery with sweat on the steering wheel. Ahead of me, cars were stopped at a light.

“I’m a long way away!” I shouted. “I don’t know if I can get there in time!”

I didn’t know whether Samantha had heard me. I grabbed the phone, put it to my ear. Said, “You there?”

Nothing.

The light turned green up ahead, but the cars were moving ahead slowly. I laid on the horn, swerved around two cars, narrowly missing a pickup truck coming in the opposite lane. Floored it.

As I sped into town, I realized I didn’t know the whole story. For all I knew, Sam had abducted her own kid and what was going on now was payback. Maybe she’d been in the midst of a custody dispute and run off with Carl without the court’s permission.

But if that was the case, the courts didn’t usually send thugs around to your place of work and threaten you. Ed did not come across as an officer of the court.

So I gambled that the angels were with Sam and her boy. My gut told me that Ed taking Carl away was very, very wrong. Even if it turned out Sam didn’t have the law on her side, kidnapping a kid from school was no way to resolve custody disputes.

“Come on, come on,” I said, seeing another set of cars bunching up ahead of me at the next intersection. I was looking for an opening. Too many cars coming the other way for me to pass. I wondered whether, if I took the next right, I could make up some time on less-traveled residential streets.

“Let’s go, let’s go,” I shouted at the drivers ahead of me.

I made the decision. When I got to the intersection, I’d hang a right. Find another way to get to Clinton Public.

An old Volkswagen inched far enough ahead that I could make the turn. I cranked the wheel, put my foot down on the gas.

Just as a jogger crossed my path.

“Shit!” I said, slamming my foot on the brake pedal so hard I was surprised it didn’t snap off.

The jogger, a shirtless man in shorts and running shoes who was probably in his midthirties, stopped as abruptly as I had, turned, and looked at me. He slapped both hands onto the hood of the Accord.

“The fuck!” he screamed, spraying spit.

Had I hit him? I was pretty sure I hadn’t. But if I was going to be any help to Sam and Carl, I was going to have to run him down anyway.

I powered down the window. “You ran right in front of me!”

He pointed to the WALK sign. “You see that! Are you blind?”

He wasn’t moving. If I could get him to move from the front of the car, if I could get him to approach my window, I could boot it.

“Yeah!” I said. “It says walk, not run!”

The man shook his head, started coming around the fender. Good, good. Come give me shit face-to-face, so my way is clear and I can floor it.

He came up alongside the car. But as he did, several other people started walking through the intersection, blocking my way.

“You fucking think you own the road?” he asked, at my window now, hands on the sill, close enough that I could smell his sweat. “Is what you got to do so important it justifies running people over? That what you think?”

I didn’t think I was going to make it.

I didn’t think I was going to make it in time to help Carl.

Ed idled his pickup truck down the street from Clinton Public Elementary School. He figured that Carl Worthington’s route to his mother’s work, or their home, would take him this way, right past where he was parked. It was a good thing the little guy had never seen him. It’d be easier to pull off what he had planned that way.

Of course, there was a chance he wouldn’t be walking this way, if he decided to go to a friend’s house, say, before going home. But Ed’s information was that his mother picked him up most days. He’d probably be looking for her, standing around, wondering why she was late.

That worked for Ed. He had his story ready.

Ed sat behind the wheel of the truck, waiting for the bell to ring, which was when he’d go on high alert. While Carl had never seen him, he’d seen plenty of pictures of the kid — Yolanda had given them to him — so he didn’t anticipate having any trouble picking out the little bastard.

While he waited, he ate a Mars bar. Unwrapped it, bit off half, chewed it up in a few seconds, then shoved the other half into his mouth. Licked his lips, glanced into the rearview mirror to make sure he didn’t have chocolate in the corners of his mouth. His mother had taught him that. Always check the corners of your mouth.

He looked okay.

The bell rang.

Seconds later, school doors flew open and hordes of kids made their escape. Jesus, there were way more of them coming out at once than he’d imagined. Ed had to keep a close watch on everyone.

But then he saw him. And just as he’d hoped, he was coming this way. He’d gotten about twenty yards from the school when he stopped, looked around.

“Looking for your mommy?” Ed said.

He got out of the truck, stood by the open driver’s door.

“Hey!” he called. “Carl? You Carl?”

The boy looked his way. He was about sixty feet from the truck. Don’t scare him, Ed thought. If the kid took off running, he’d never be able to catch him.

“Me?” Carl said, pointing to himself.

Ed nodded furiously, forced a smile. “There was a fire!”

Carl’s jaw dropped and he started running toward the man. “A fire?”

“Your mom asked me to come get you,” he said. “I was doing a couple of loads of laundry, and your mom was in the office, and one of the dryers just kind of blew up. All kinds of flame coming out of it and stuff.”

“Is she okay?” the boy asked.

“She’s good — she’s fine — but she had to call the fire department, and she asked me if I could come pick you up. She described you pretty good! I picked you right out of the crowd!”

Carl’s feet stayed rooted to the ground about ten feet away from the man. “I don’t know,” he said.

Ed put both hands out in front of him, palms out. “Look, I get it. I told your mom — I said, ‘Your son’s going to think I’m some sort of creepy stranger.’ I mean, you don’t know me. And if you’re not comfortable letting me give you a ride to the Laundromat, I understand. Go back into the office and maybe in a couple of hours or so, when the fire department is finished up, your mom can come get you. I can go back and tell her you decided to stay. I mean, she could probably use your help right now, with all the trouble that’s going on, but I think she’ll understand.”

Ed could see that the kid was right on the edge.

He started to get back into the truck. “Don’t worry about it, Carl. I’ll tell her you’re fine and that you’ll be waiting—”

“It’s okay!” he said, and closed the distance between them.

“You can get in on my side,” Ed said, moving back to allow the boy to jump in and scoot across the seat to the passenger side.

“You sure my mom’s okay?” he asked as he settled in up against the passenger door and buckled his seat belt.