Standing beside Kara's car on the gravel shoulder of a road a few blocks from home, Craig checked the sky. Through the cloud cover and rain dusk was falling, and still they had found no trace of Zach. Craig wiped nervous sweat from his hands onto his grubby work jeans; he had not had an opportunity to change into clean ones.
Kara stood across the street, speaking with a couple who had been walking together in the rain, the hoods of their jackets pulled up against the weather. They shook their heads in response to her, and she hurried back to the car. Ben, Lia, Jasmine, and Marissa waited there with Craig; Derek and Douglas stood beside them. They had insisted on joining the search an hour ago.
"No luck," Kara reported. "They saw a boy come by here, but it wasn't Zach."
She was clearly anxious. Craig felt the same way himself, a stabbing wound of fear slowly piercing his gut.
"What now?" Derek asked.
Craig worked the problem. Zach had run away—it made sense. He had been angry, Kara had been angry, he had panicked… But where had he gone? Kara had called everyone again—Florence, who had said she would stay late at Grover's to keep watch there, and Rita; Shanice, Shauna, Brooke, and Jayda had remained at their respective homes to keep watch there. So far, Zach had not gone to any of them.
"Do you think he would go to the church?" Craig suggested.
Kara mulled it over. "Maybe to look for Ben. Or to hide. I don't know." She turned to Ben.
"We'll go take a look," he offered.
Craig nodded and worked the problem further. Why did he run? He was afraid of being sent away. Why go away to avoid being sent away? Because he didn't know what else to do. So he will hide and then come home…if he can find his way. Should we still call the police? They might scare him even more. But they might find him, too. And as the sky darkened over Seattle, that was becoming an urgent need.
"Craig," Kara said, "let's check the neighborhood around the school."
"Douglas and I will drive around south of here," Derek suggested, "see if we can spot him. If we don't see him, we'll meet up with you in an hour."
"All right," Craig agreed. "We'll call the police if we don't find him by then."
The three families parted ways, each driving off in a different direction. Craig and Kara turned into their neighborhood a minute later and approached Briar Point. There were a few lights on at the school, shining in the growing darkness.
"Look, that's Eddie's car," Kara said, pointing toward the parking lot. "Let's go talk to him. Maybe Zach told him something."
Craig steered the car into the lot, and they parked and made their way to the main entrance. It was locked, but the hall lights were on. Craig pounded on the glass door with a fist, and they waited. No one appeared inside, so he jogged around the edge of the school to a set of windows from which light filtered through drawn vertical blinds. Kara followed at a trot. Between the blinds, he could make out someone moving inside.
He knocked on a window. A silhouette looked up and came toward them, and two hands cautiously pulled the blinds apart. It was Eddie.
The young man's green eyes shot open. "Hi!" he yelled through the glass. "Hang on!" He hurried to open the nearest door, the back door to a classroom. "What are you guys doing here?" he asked, beckoning them inside. "Where's Zach?"
"We can't find him," Kara told Eddie. The young man's goateed face instantly took on a look of deep concern.
"He didn't come home after school," Craig explained. "Didn't go home with any friends we know of, didn't go to our relatives… We don't know where he is. We saw your car and wondered if maybe he had told you something, maybe about being upset, running away…"
"No," Eddie replied quickly, "I have the evening shift today. Everyone was gone by the time I got here."
Kara sighed and clapped her hands on top of her head. "Where are you hiding, Zechariah?" she groaned. "Just come home, kiddo. Just come home."
"He ran away?" Eddie asked.
"He and Kara had an argument this morning," Craig answered. "We think he might be hiding somewhere."
"Was he scared? He hides when he's scared." Eddie looked up at the wall, thinking.
Kara raised one eyebrow. "How do you know that?'
"Huh?" Eddie flinched, snapping out of his thoughts to meet her eyes again. "Oh—he used to hide from Mr. Lopez, the principal, if he thought he was in trouble. Not anymore, though. I found him hiding in the janitor's closet one time." He thought a little more. "Was he scared? When you argued with him?"
"I didn't think so at the time," Kara said. "Just stubborn. But now I don't know… Maybe." She stepped out into the hall and gazed down it. "Could he be hiding here somewhere, Eddie? Maybe he didn't come home because he never left the school."
Eddie loosed a set of keys from his belt. "We can find out," he said. Then he grinned at Kara. "Janitors get keys to every room…well, almost."
He took a few steps into the hall and unlocked the nearest classroom. Kara and Craig followed him inside it, and the three of them searched it together. Really, Craig noticed, Eddie did most of the searching himself. He was thorough and efficient. Kara and Craig did their part to check that classroom and the next, but Eddie was so quick that they weren't much help.
"He could search the school faster alone than you and I could together," Kara whispered to Craig as they watched Eddie unlock and rifle through the third classroom they came to.
"Well, he does work here," Craig pointed out. Being a custodian, it was only natural that the young man would know the building well, every closet and cupboard and hiding space.
The Flemings followed along as Eddie hunted through the restrooms, the janitor's closet, the kitchen, and every classroom along the way. He moved systematically from room to room. They found nothing, but Craig had a feeling… This had been a home away from home for Zach for five years. What better place to hide, if the youngster could do it when no one was looking?
The gym was easy to scan; it offered few places for a boy to conceal himself. The library was trickier, crowded as it was with tables and bookshelves. Kara and Craig helped with that room, but Zach was not there to be found. They searched every classroom, every nook and cranny, every storage room—any space large enough for a boy to squeeze into.
Last of all, they checked the front office. Eddie unlocked the door and led Craig inside, with Kara right behind them. They fanned out across the room. "Zach?" Kara called, peeking under a desk.
Ten seconds later, they met at the only room left in the building, Mr. Lopez's office, tucked away at the back of the larger office. Eddie tried the knob, but it was locked. "This is the one room I don't get a key for," he told them. "Mr. Lopez doesn't like me cleaning in there when he's not around."
"Zach couldn't have snuck in there anyway, right?" Craig asked. "Not with people working in the office after school."
Eddie shrugged. "He's clever, the little tyke." There was a small window in the door, and Eddie peered through it, then knocked. "Zach? Are you in there, kid?" He put his ear to the door, listening.
Hearing nothing, he reached into his pants pocket and drew out a pair of tiny tools. The first was a short, cylindrical strip of metal folded into the shape of an L. He inserted the longer end into the door's lock.
"Eddie, you don't need to break in," Kara said. "Like Craig was saying, Zach couldn't have—"
But Eddie, ignoring her, thrust the second tool into the lock, above the first. It was flat, with one edge ridged, like a miniature hacksaw. With one hand he held the first tool in place; with the other, he jiggled the second rapidly up and down. There was a click, and he turned the L-shaped tool ninety degrees. The knob turned with it, and the door popped open, swinging inward.
Eddie gave Kara a satisfied grin and stepped into Mr. Lopez's office. Craig followed him in. The young man checked under the desk, under the table against one wall, and inside the closet. Then he looked back at Craig and Kara.
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br /> "Not here," he said. There was urgency in his voice. He met Craig's eyes, then Kara's. "We should search the neighborhood."
"We already have," Craig told him. "We have people out there now. We checked with the neighbors. We called his friend Cayden's house. We searched every street within ten blocks—twenty."
Eddie gazed at him uneasily. "This is not good."
Kara took Craig's arm and drew him out of the principal's office, and Eddie shut the door behind them. "We need to call the police, Craig," she said in a low tone.
He hesitated, thinking. Calling the police did not necessarily mean telling them how recently Zach had come to them. Besides, Kara was ready to tell the police anyway. And so was Craig; he had made that decision during work this afternoon. Kara was right—let the police search for Zach's origins with the resources at their disposal. Craig himself needed to focus on caring for the youngster here and now…which, at this moment, meant calling the police.
He nodded soberly. "All right. Let's just make sure he hasn't gone back home first."
Eddie escorted them out of the office and through the main entrance, shutting off the lights behind him. Kara, sad and anxious, turned to him. "Eddie, thank you. I'm sorry we took up so much of your time."
He flushed a little at her praise. "I'll come with you."
Craig ran a hand through his hair. "We appreciate that, Eddie, but I don't know what you could do."
"I don't either," Eddie said, "but I'd like to help. He's a really special kid."
Craig and Kara looked at each other, Kara raising her eyebrows to let him know this was his call. "Well, I guess it couldn't hurt," he decided.
Eddie followed them in his car as they drove the two blocks home. Kara scanned the yards they passed, still hoping to spot Zach. "I like being a mom, Craig," she said suddenly. He glanced at her as they rounded the first corner. "Not this part, of course, but I want him to come home. I'd want him to be found if he was someone else's child, too, you know, but he's ours…" She gulped and continued searching through the window, peering into the pools of light provided by the street lamps.
They turned the second corner, Eddie rounding it after them. A vehicle was parked in front of their house.
"It's the police!" Kara exclaimed, her eyes widening. "Craig, they must have found him!"
He pulled into the driveway. Before he had stopped the car, Kara jumped out and raced to the police cruiser. Two shapes stepped out of it as she approached. Officer Garrenton, Craig saw as he hurried out of the car himself, climbed out of the driver's side. From the passenger side came a man, leaner and taller than Craig, mustached, dressed in a shirt and tie with a sport coat over them.
"Did you find him?" Kara called as she ran to them. She reached Officer Garrenton and the man at the edge of the grass.
"Find whom, Mrs. Fleming?" Officer Garrenton asked.
"Zach," she gasped, breathing hard. "Is he with you?"
Craig came up next to Kara and took her hand.
Officer Garrenton shared a dark look with the other man. He took a step toward them. "Clint Nyler, FBI," he said. He passed Kara a photograph, then flipped the switch on a small flashlight and shone it onto the picture. "Is this your son?"
Kara received it, and she and Craig examined it together. "Yes," they both said.
"But," Kara continued, "he's older now. This must have been taken a year or two ago. How did you get this? Do you know where he is?"
Eddie joined them and stood a little off to the side, listening from the shadows. Officer Garrenton spared him a brief glance before she responded to Kara. "We had expected him to be with you."
"He didn't come home from school," Kara explained. Her worried eyes jumped from Officer Garrenton to Agent Nyler and back again. "We've been looking for him all evening. We searched the neighborhood, the school… He ran away. We had an argument this morning, Zach and I. I didn't think he would panic like that. But he does sometimes—like the time he saw you and ran to hide under his bed."
Officer Garrenton nodded thoughtfully and glanced at the FBI agent.
Agent Nyler held Kara's gaze. "I hope you're right, Mrs. Fleming, that your son ran away. Unfortunately, we have reason to think he may be in greater danger than that."
Craig took the words like a blow just beneath his ribs, driving all the air from his lungs.
Kara's face, already strained, went taut. "What kind of danger?"
Agent Nyler pointed to the photograph. "This picture was sent to us yesterday by an undercover agent in Singapore. He's infiltrated a human trafficking ring based in southeastern Asia. He didn't know the boy's name, only that he lives in Seattle. We got lucky—we were looking for one face among millions, and Officer Garrenton just happened to know that face." He paused to draw in a deep breath. "Apparently someone has paid this group a lot of money to kidnap your son."
"What?" Craig blurted out. "Zach? He's just a normal kid! Why him?"
"We were hoping you could help us figure that out," Agent Nyler replied evenly, watching them.
"He's hardly even been out of the city," Kara exclaimed, "let alone the country! Why would criminals in Asia want him?"
"It may be that someone in this country targeted him," Agent Nyler answered, "and hired this group from overseas to do the job. They're good at what they do. If you can tell us why someone might want your son, that information might help us find him." He looked at Kara intently.
Kara, for her part, said nothing, but just stood there with her mouth open.
"With all due respect, Mrs. Fleming," Agent Nyler said, "there's something you're not telling us. We know he's not actually your son."
"What?" Kara blurted, recoiling. "Yes, he is! We have the papers to prove it!"
"The birth certificate is a fraud," Agent Nyler said in a carefully unemotional voice. "No woman named Della Appler has ever been licensed as a midwife in the state of Washington."
"And unless I'm quite mistaken," Officer Garrenton added in her motherly, no-nonsense tone, "you don't have any pictures of young Zach from before that night I brought him to your house. You really hadn't ever seen him before, had you?"
Craig swallowed hard. Kara gripped his hand so tightly that she began to cut off his circulation. "We can still prove he's our son," she said quietly.
"We were going to call you anyway," Craig told Officer Garrenton.
She raised an eyebrow curiously. Kara turned to Craig with a look of surprise and gratitude.
He gave her hand a squeeze. "Kara's been asking me to for a while." He glanced up at the dark, cloudy sky. Cool rain continued to sprinkle their little group. "Can we explain inside?"
Agent Nyler received the picture back from Kara. "Quickly."
Craig and Kara led the two officers toward the house. Kara noticed Eddie hanging back and beckoned him to follow. "Don't stay out here in the rain, Eddie."
"I don't want to be in the way," he replied, ducking his head. "I'll just go look around the neighborhood for Zach."
"No," Craig admonished, "if Agent Nyler is right, we're not going to find Zach wandering the neighborhood." It was like another shot to the gut, saying that.
"Agent—Nyler?" Eddie spluttered, his jaw dropping.
The agent glanced back at Eddie.
Eddie gulped. "You, er—you're in the newspaper a lot. Solving crimes." He shut his mouth and dropped his eyes. "Sorry. Dumb thing to say." He seemed decidedly uneasy.
Craig felt uneasy himself, with his son missing and probably kidnapped, and with a pair of law enforcement officers here to question whether Zach was really his son at all, perhaps concerned that he and Kara themselves might have arranged Zach's disappearance. Fighting to keep his apprehension in check, he squeezed Kara's hand once more and escorted the group into the house.
The Boy Who Appeared from the Rain Page 87