Tana French - The Searcher - A Novel

From having seen his buddies go through this process, he expected that getting drunk would give him the urge to call her, so he stayed away from booze for a while, but it didn’t turn out to work that way. After a few beers Donna feels a million miles away, in some other dimension, like no phone could reach her. When he goes weak is when she takes him by surprise like this, on an innocent fall morning, blooming right across his mind so fresh and vivid that he can almost smell her. He can’t remember why he shouldn’t pull out his phone, Hey, baby, listen to this. Probably he should delete her number, but they might need to talk about Alyssa sometime, and anyway he knows it by heart.

The drawer runner finally comes free, and Cal pulls out the old rusted nails with a pair of pliers. He measures the runner and scribbles the measurements on it. First time he was in the building suppliers he picked up a few bits of lumber, different sizes, because he had that toolbox and because you never know. One long piece of pine is just about the right width for the new runners, too thick but not by much. Cal clamps it to the table and starts planing it down.

Back home his plan would have been to grab the kid again, in a better hold this time, and deliver a fear-of-God speech about trespassing, assault and battery, juvie, and what happens to kids who fuck with cops, maybe finished off with a slap upside the head and a good hard shove off his property. Here, where he’s not a cop and where that feeling of not knowing what he might set in motion is settling in deeper, not one bit of that is an option. Anything he does, he needs to keep it smart and careful, and do it with a light touch.

He gets the wood planed to the right thickness, rules two lines down it and saws along each of them, a quarter-inch deep. A part of him wondered if he would still know what to do with these tools, but his hands remember: the tools fit like they’re still warm from his last grip and move smoothly through the wood. It feels good. He’s whistling again, not bothering with tunes this time, just tossing out amiable little trills and riffs to the birds.

The day warms up till Cal has to stop and take off his sweatshirt. He starts chiseling out the strip of wood between the two sawn lines, taking his time. He’s in no hurry. The kid, whoever he is, wants something. Cal is offering him the opportunity to come and get it.

The first time he hears a sound, off behind the hedge, it’s blurred by his whistling and the slide of the chisel, and he’s not sure. He doesn’t look up. He finds his tape measure and checks the groove he’s making: long enough for one runner. When he moves around the table to get his saw, he hears it again: a sharp rattle of twigs, someone ducking or dodging.

Cal glances up at the hedge as he stoops for the saw. “If you’re gonna watch,” he says, “you might as well get a good view. Come over here and gimme a hand with this.”

The silence from behind the hedge is absolute. Cal can feel it thrumming.

He saws off the runner, blows away the dust and measures it against the old one. Then he tosses it, underhand and easily, towards the hedge, and follows it with a sheet of sandpaper. “Here,” he says to the hedge. “Get that sanded down.”

He picks up his chisel and hammer and goes back to cutting the groove. The silence lasts long enough that he thinks he’s struck out. Then he hears the rustle of someone easing, slowly and warily, through the hedge.

Cal keeps working. In the corner of his eye he sees a flash of red. After a long time he hears the rasp of sanding, clumsy and inexpert, with gaps between the strokes.

“Doesn’t need to be a work of art,” he says. “It’s going inside the desk, no one’s gonna see it. Just get the splinters gone. Go along the grain, not across it.”

A pause. More sanding.

“What we’re making here,” he says, “is drawer runners. You know what those are?”

He glances up. It’s the kid from last night, all right, standing on the grass about a dozen feet away and staring at Cal, with every muscle poised to run if he needs to. Mousy buzz cut, too-big faded red hoodie, ratty jeans. He’s maybe twelve.

He shakes his head, one quick jerk.

“The part that holds the drawer in place. Makes it run in and out nice and smooth. That groove, there’s a piece on the drawer that’ll fit into it.” Cal leans over towards the desk, good and slow, to point. The kid’s eyes follow his every move. “The old ones were falling apart.”

He goes back to his chiseling. “Easiest thing would be to use a router for this, or a table saw,” he says, “but I don’t have those handy. Lucky for me, my grandpa liked carpentry. He showed me how to do this by hand, when I was about your size. You ever done any carpentry?”

He takes another glance. The kid shakes his head again. He’s built wiry, the type who’s as fast as he looks and stronger, both of which Cal already knew from last night. In the face he’s ordinary: a little of the baby softness left, not strong-featured or fine-featured, or good-looking or ugly; the only things that stand out are a stubborn chin and a pair of gray eyes fixed on Cal like they’re running him through some CIA-level computer check.

“Well,” Cal says, “now you have. Drawers nowadays, they’ve got metal runners, but this is an old desk. I can’t tell you how old, exactly; that’s not my area. I’d love to think we’ve got ourselves some Antiques Roadshow material here, but more’n likely it’s just a piece of old crap. I’ve taken a shine to it, though. I want to see if I can get it up and running.”

He’s talking like he would to a stray dog in his yard, steady and even, not bothering much about the actual words. The kid’s sanding is getting faster and more confident, as he gets the hang of it.

Cal measures his groove and saws off the next runner. “That should be done enough by now,” he says. “Lemme see.”

“If it’s for a drawer,” the kid says, “it oughta be real smooth. Or it’ll stick.”

His voice is clear and blunt, not broken yet, and his accent is almost as thick as Mart’s. And he’s not stupid. “True,” Cal says. “Go ahead and take your time.”

He angles himself so he can see the kid out of the corner of his eye while he chisels. The kid is taking this seriously, checking each surface and edge with a careful finger, going back over it again and again till he’s satisfied. Finally he looks up and throws Cal the runner.

Cal catches it. “Good job,” he says, testing with his thumb. “Look.” He fits it over the tenon at the side of the drawer and slides it back and forth. The kid cranes his neck to watch, but he doesn’t move nearer.

“Smooth as butter,” Cal says. “We’ll wax it up later on, just for a little extra slide, but it hardly even needs that. Have another one.”

When he reaches for the second runner, the kid’s eyes go to the Band-Aid on his hand.

“Yeah,” Cal says. He holds up the hand so the kid can get a good look. “This gets infected, I’m gonna be real pissed off with you.”

The kid’s eyes snap wide and his muscles snap tight. He’s on the verge of flight, toes barely touching the grass.

“You’ve been keeping a pretty good eye on me,” Cal says. “Any reason for that?”

After a moment the kid shakes his head. He’s still ready to run, eyes fixed on Cal to catch the first signs of a lunge.

“There something you want to know? Because if you do, now would be a real good time to go ahead and ask straight out like a man.”

The kid shakes his head again.

“Got any problems with me?”

Another head-shake, this one more vehement.

“You planning on robbing me? ’Cause that would be a bad idea. Plus, unless this turns out to be Antiques Roadshow stuff after all, I got nothing worth stealing.”