The Disappeared

by David B. Silva

Gradually, the nightmare screams drifted away and she was left with the sound of water dripping off her hair into the bath, that sound and the sound of the television in the next room. They had checked into the motel late last night, and though she had slept well for the first time in several days, she had apparently drifted off while relaxing in the tub.

  There was a knock at the bathroom door. “Are you okay?”

  “I'm fine. I'll be out in a bit.”

  Just a bit, she thought, letting her eyes close again and settling back into the water.

  No one had followed them out of Walt's apartment. Heaven only knew how they had tracked her there, but somehow they had and Walt's interior had paid the price. She had tried to reach him last night, to warn him about the danger of showing up at home. The manager at the motel where Walt was staying took half-a-dozen frantic messages before he finally put his foot down on what he considered her “damn nuisance calls.” Still, he had promised Walt would get the message when he came in if she would just quit calling. Teri still hadn't heard back, though. She imagined the manager had probably gotten some twisted satisfaction out of tossing out the messages. At least she hoped that was the reason that Walt hadn't called.

  “Mom?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Just checking.”

  God, who was the child here? Last night it had all come home to roost—the car chase, Walt being out of town, finding the apartment trashed, all of it—and Teri had very nearly become hysterical. Inside the motel room, she had sunk to the floor and started crying. The boy had cried, too. But it had been a sympathy cry and before she had even realized what was happening, he was trying to comfort her, telling her that everything would be all right.

  And maybe it would.

  Maybe in the end everything would be all right.

  Just like he said.

  Teri opened her eyes again. Television voices were arguing in the next room, sounding similar to the voices that sometimes came from the other side of the post office boxes in the lobby where she worked. She flipped the drain release with her big toe, stood up, and pulled the white motel towel off the curtain rod.

  She had awakened with a minor headache this morning. It had not grown any worse, and as she dressed, she began to feel confident that it wouldn't spiral into a migraine like so many of them did. It had been three days since the boy had arrived, three days of being on the run, and three days without a migraine. Try to understand the logic in that.

  The boy, who had been asleep when Teri had gone into the bathroom, was up and dressed and watching The Phil Donahue Show. He watched her as she crossed the room, a question forming at his lips.

  Just don't ask me what we're going to do now, Teri thought.

  “Mom?”

  She sat on the edge of the bed, drying her hair with a towel, wishing she had a clean change of clothes, and dreading where this introductory question was going to lead. “Yeah, kiddo?”

  “What about Dad?”

  “What about him?”

  “Where is he?”

  She ran the towel through her hair one last time, then dropped her hands into her lap and looked at him. God, if he wasn't Gabriel, then who in the hell was he? Even with the blue-green eyes he looked like Gabe. “Come here,” she said, patting a soft spot on the bed next to her.

  He climbed off what he had happily declared the night before as his bed, and moved sullenly to her side.

  “I don't know what to believe anymore. But I know what I'd like to believe, and I'm going to start calling you Gabe from now on. Is that all right with you?”

  “That's my name. Gabriel Michael Knight.”

  “All right, then. I want you to understand that it was hard on your father and me after you didn't come home. We both had a difficult time coping, and for some reason I guess we both held each other responsible.”

  “Why?”

  “I don't know. I guess we just missed you so much... there was this huge emptiness in our lives, and for some reason we started filling it with accusations and fears and... I just don't know, Gabe. It was just hard to look at each other without thinking of the son we'd lost. And that just seemed to make the hurt all that much worse.”

  “So Dad moved out?”

  She nodded, feeling a mix of shame and guilt. “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  She placed her arm over the boy's shoulders, as if she were trying to hold the last strand of her family together. He felt so tiny and fragile. “He lives in Tennessee now. In a little town outside of Nashville.”

  “Will I ever get to see him again?”

  “Of course, you will.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. He had begun to toy with the wedding band on her finger, and Teri realized for the first time in years that she was still wearing it. Old habits were hard to break. “You think maybe we could call him?”

  “Right now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, I don't know, Gabe.”

  “Please?”

  [38]

  The morning overcast had burned off; the sun was out; and it was easily ten degrees warmer than it had been yesterday.

  Walt pulled into his parking space right around the corner from the apartment. It was a little after eleven. The drive up from the Bay Area had been a good six-hour trip. He grabbed his suitcase off the passenger seat, climbed out of the car, and locked the door. Originally, he had considered packing up last night and coming home, but he hadn't been sleeping well lately and he didn't like the idea of possibly falling asleep behind the wheel. So instead, he had called the apartment—ten, maybe fifteen times—trying unsuccessfully to get in touch with Teri to warn her. He didn't want her or the boy to be there alone another night. Not with what he had found at the Boyle place.

  B-242.

  How had Boyle been tipped?

  And how had he tracked down Walt's address?

  It's not hard to find someone who's not hiding, Walt told himself. You know that.

  The side of the suitcase slammed against the rail near the top of the stairs. He switched it from his left hand to his right, and started down the corridor, tossing around ideas for where he thought Boyle might head next. Upper Oregon, he reminded himself, and that was as far as his thoughts took him.

  The door to the apartment was open.

  Instinctively, he dropped the suitcase and hugged the wall. Maybe not quite as far as upper Oregon after all. He reached around the corner and palmed the door. It creaked lightly as it swung all the way to the stop, not a sound coming from inside.

  He moved across the doorway and hugged the wall on the other side, taking a peek through the kitchen window. Someone had gone out of his way to make one hell of a mess in there. His angle of vision allowed him a look past the kitchen doorway, down the hall to the corner of the living room. There was an eerie stillness over the place, a kind of peacefulness after the body's been laid to rest.

  “Teri?”

  No answer.

  After another peek around the corner, he decided that whatever had gone on here, it had gone on some time ago. The damage was done now. All the participants had skittered back into the wood work. The apartment was empty.

  He listened to the heater kick on, thought distantly that he'd probably been paying to heat the outdoors since last night sometime, and moved down the entry and into the kitchen. A small flurry of white flour kicked up from the floor vent. From there to the living room, from the living room to the bathroom and finally into the bedroom, he carefully covered every square inch of the apartment.

  There was no sign of Teri or the boy.

  There was also no sign of blood.

  He chose that ray of hope to hold onto as he went to the back of his bedroom closet. After moving into the apartment, he had added a false wall at the far end. He ran his hand along the top inside edge of the framework, found the release, pressed it. A small side panel clicked open.

  Apparently, the safe had gone unnoticed.

  He fingered through the combin
ation, pausing to refresh his memory after the second number. It had been a long time since he had first installed the safe. This was the first time he had felt a need to open it.

  The door swung open.

  [39]

  “Michael?” Teri switched the phone to her other ear and turned away from the boy, who was sitting on the other bed and watching her with anticipation.

  “Teri?” There was more than just surprise in his voice. There was something underneath, something that sounded a bit like relief. She had a hard time imagining a situation in which Michael would be relieved to be hearing from her. After they had separated, he put a bumper sticker on his car that said, I still miss my “ex,” but I'm getting closer. Meaning, of course, that he was still aiming for her. Teri hadn't been completely innocent herself. Her bumper sticker had said, Who cares what Mikee likes?

  “Everything all right out there?” he asked.

  “Not exactly.”

  “What's wrong?”

  “I'm not really sure where to start.”

  “The job okay?”

  “Yeah.” The boy tugged at her shirt sleeve and when she turned toward him, he mouthed the words: Is that him? She nodded and he motioned for her to hand him the phone. “Uh... listen... there's someone here who wants to talk to you.”

  He grabbed the receiver out of her hand. “Dad?”

  There was silence on the other end.

  “It's me, Gabe.” A long pause took breath before Michael finally said something back, and the boy—looking disappointed and more than a little dejected—handed the phone back to her. “He wants to talk to you.”

  “Michael?”

  “What the hell are you trying to pull? Jesus, Teri, you think I'm that stupid? You think I'm really gonna buy that this kid – what is he? Ten, eleven years old? – is supposed to be Gabe? It's not funny, Teri. Not funny at all.”

  “Just settle down, Michael.”

  “Settle down? Man, nothing's changed, has it? You're still chasing his ghost all over the whole damn country, aren't you? Till the day you die, you're gonna be chasing that kid's damn ghost.”

  “It's him, Michael. I'm really beginning to believe it's him.”

  “It can't be him. Christ...” He let out a long, calming breath, the way he always did when he realized he was becoming agitated. Teri already knew what he was going to say next and how he was going to say it. He was going to tell her, in that almost but not quite patronizing tone of his, that she had to try to keep a perspective on things, that she was losing sight of reality here. Teri had heard it all before. After Gabe's disappearance, it had become her husband's marching song. And who could have really blamed him?”

  “Okay,” he said evenly. “Let's try to think this thing through, Teri.”

  “I know what you're going to say.”

  “It's impossible. Gabe would be... what? Twenty? Twenty-one years old?”

  “I know. And I know it sounds crazy. But it's him, Michael.”

  “What? He just showed up one day?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Oh, Teri.”

  “Michael, he's sitting right here. I'm looking at him. Don't you think I'd know my own son when I saw him?”

  “He hasn't changed? Not at all?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever stop to think that someone might be trying to con you?”

  “Why? It's not like I'm Leona Helmsley.”

  “You own the house free and clear.”

  “It's him, Michael.” She leaned back against the headboard, feeling tired from having to defend a position that she knew was indefensible. Some things in life, though, you just had to accept for what they were. Without question. Without explanation. On faith. The boy crawled into her lap and leaned back against her chest, and she knew, as she had known from the very first, that this was one of those things. “All he wants is to talk to his father.”

  “That's why you called?”

  “The one and only reason.”

  “Did you tell him I'm poor as a dog?”

  “No. You tell him.”

  “I don't want to talk to him, Teri.”

  “Why? What are you afraid of? That maybe it'll really be Gabe?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then talk to him.”

  “What am I supposed to say?”

  “Whatever a father says to his son.”

  “But he's not... Christ, Teri. You aren't going to drop this, are you?”

  “No,” she said firmly. Though if it had been about her and Michael and only her and Michael, she probably wouldn't have been as adamant. But this was about the boy. The boy and the man who was supposed to be his father. For that, she was even willing to turn a deaf ear to the voice inside her head that was saying, See? I told you he'd come home someday. I told you and you didn't believe me and I was right. I was right, Michael.

  “Talk to him, Michael.”

  “All right. I'll talk to him.”

  [40]

  Walt removed the handgun first.

  It was a Ruger P-85 he had bought from one of the detectives down at the station. The frame was a lightweight aluminum alloy, matte black finish. He held it in his right hand, the trigger finger straight along the frame, the gun tilted to the side. He popped in the magazine. With the heel of his left hand, he slammed the magazine home, and retracted the slide to check the chamber. It was empty. He tucked the gun under his belt, against his back where he could feel it.

  Next were the credit cards. There were five altogether: two Visa, two MasterCard, and one American Express. Each card had been issued under the name of a different cardholder. Further back was a stack of driver's licenses. Walt removed the rubber band and thumbed through the phony I.D.s. Good enough to get him through this mess.

  He pocketed the cards and I.D.s, closed the safe and weaved his way through the clutter of clothing and books and sheets on the floor. You still don't know what the hell went on here, my friend. No, he didn't. He could take a guess or two, though.

  He was halfway down the hall on his way out when something else occurred to him. The files. He backtracked to the living room, where he had set up a small office area in one corner. It no longer resembled anything remotely like an office. The filing cabinet was lying on its side, one end braced against the footrest of a stool at the counter. All four drawers were open. One drawer was empty. The empty drawer was where he had always kept his case files.

  On the floor, sticking out from beneath the corner of a yellow file folder, the message button on his phone was flashing. Walt, hoping Teri had called, flipped the folder off with the toe of his shoe, and pressed the play button.

  “Things a little messy there, Travis?”

  Richard Boyle.

  It had to be.

  “Missing a file or two, maybe? Listen, you quit snooping around in my life, you son of a bitch. I know more about you than you do about me, and I'll make things fucking miserable for you if I have to. You understand, Travis? You better. You damn well better understand.”

  Walt leaned back against the wall and swept a hand through his hair. Okay, so at least he knew who was responsible now. And he knew something else. He knew that what had happened hadn't involved Teri or the boy.

  But where the hell were they?

  He kicked at a file folder on the floor and started back out of the apartment, running a possible scenario through his mind. They had come back from being out and had found the place ransacked. Teri would have assumed whoever had done it had been after her and the kid, so they wouldn't have stayed around long, they would have left and...

  ... and what?

  She would have tried to reach him. She would have called the motel and if he wasn't there, she would have left a message for him. That was a place to start, at least. He might be able to talk someone down at the station into tracking any credit card uses as well. And there was always the outside chance that she might have returned home, even though he had warned her against it.


  “But she won't be back here,” he muttered to himself. He closed the door and locked it. It wasn't likely Boyle would be back, either. Between him and whatever was going on with Teri, things were getting a little too crowded around here. He jiggled the doorknob to make sure it was locked, then picked up his suitcase and started toward the stairway.

  Richard Boyle could wait.

  The big question now was how Walt was going to reconnect with Teri.

  [41]

  Teri wrapped her arms around the boy, and he settled back into her fold while he talked to his father. It felt to her as if a lost breath had been found. She was whole again. Complete. Every breath he took went into her and out again, every heartbeat struck a chord. Absently, she combed the hair back from his forehead.

  “Mom...” He pushed her hand away, a little boy's impetuousness, then squirmed a bit and finally settled back into her fold.

  “Nothing,” he said to Michael. “She's just being a pain.”

  “Don't talk about your mother like that,” Teri said lightly.

  “Well you are.”

  She mussed his hair again, and yes, she supposed she was being a bit of a pain. But that was a mother's prerogative, wasn't it? Life didn't offer so many opportune moments that you could afford to throw one away. And God, how nice it was to have him with her again. She did not want to lose another moment with him. Not one. Not ever.

  “Mom.” The boy waved the receiver in the air. “He wants to talk to you again.”

  More than half-an-hour had passed since she had put him on the phone with Michael. The maid, a woman who spoke almost no English, had come by and Teri had managed, through a hodgepodge of English, Spanish and arm waving, to convince the woman that it would be better if she came back later. Now it was getting close to check out time.

  Teri cupped her hand over the receiver. “How fast can you take a bath?”

  “Mom...”

  “Go on.”

  “I just took one.”

  “When?”

  He started to say something, and paused as they both realized it at the same time. He hadn't taken a bath last night. Nor had he taken one at Walt's the night before. And that left him with a horrible gap. When had he taken his last bath? Ten years ago?