The Disappeared

by David B. Silva

  Teri roamed aimlessly about the room. She thumbed through a couple of volumes from the doctor's medical library, finding them either over her head or tediously dry. Then she casually shuffled through some of the papers on the desk, hoping she might come across Gabe's file. No such luck.

  “How long do we have to wait?” he asked again.

  “Until the doctor shows up.”

  She had not made an appointment. First, because she hadn't been sure when she would be stopping by to see him. And second, because after the last visit, she thought it might be wise if no one knew when she was coming.

  A little caution never hurt, according to Michael.

  She was going to remember that.

  The boy grumbled under his breath, then gave himself another spin in the chair.

  Teri wandered over to the far wall, where a mix of photographs and community service awards had been mounted quite some time ago by the dust on the frames. 1990 Chairman of the Santa Clara County Health Fair. 1993 Houghton Award for Outstanding Community Service. 1980 Glazier Award for Gerontological Research. Some photographs taken at a lab somewhere, with everyone dressed in white lab jackets. And then something that caught her attention.

  It was a photograph of the steps outside the library at U.C. Berkeley. She recognized it immediately. Teri had spent two years at Berkeley in the mid-Seventies. That was where she had met Michael, who was studying as an art major at the time. Standing on the steps, at the middle of a semicircle of men, was Dr. Childs. He was all smiles then, and Teri shook her head, thinking he must have used them all up that year, because as long as she had known the man, he had rarely worn a smile. Never, ever, a warm smile.

  Beneath the photo, the caption read: Magical Mystery Tour. Berkeley. 1976.

  “Wonder what that's supposed to mean,” she said.

  Behind her, the door to the office swung open.

  Dr. Childs, holding a folder in the crook of his arm, stepped through, clearly self-absorbed. He closed the door, turned and only then did he realize he wasn't alone. Surprise crossed his face. He instantly covered it. “Teri? You startled me. What are you doing here?”

  “I thought I'd stop by and see what the test results had to say.”

  “Oh, yes, of course.”

  “You did say you wanted to see us as early as possible, didn't you?”

  He looked from her to the boy, his expression an unreadable mask, then back to Teri again. “I believe I did at that. I just wasn't expecting you to show up in my office without an appointment.”

  “Well, since we're already here...”

  “Yes, well...” He removed the folder from the crook of his arm, crossed the room, and sat behind the desk. He seemed caught in some sort of bind, as if he didn't know quite what to say or how to say it. He tossed aside the folder, and looked at Teri with eyes that were a mix of concern and discomfort. He was going to tell her something awful, she thought. Something that would have kept her away if she'd had an inkling that it might be coming.

  “I'm not sure where to start,” he said somberly. “Maybe you should sit down, Teri.”

  She sat in the chair next to the boy, who had ceased his merry-go-round the moment Childs had entered the room. “I'm not sure I like the way this is starting out.”

  “Let me be as straight as I can with you, Teri. Have you ever heard of a disease called Hutchinson-Gilford Syndrome?”

  “No, I don't think so.”

  “It's a degenerative disease that afflicts children.” He sighed, not for the first time, and she realized she had begun to hate the sound it made. It was as if he were trying to lose himself in the air around him. “We don't really know a lot about it. It's a rare, genetic disease that seems to speed up the aging process.”

  “Oh my God,” she said softly. She had seen a talk show on it once, now that she realized what they were talking about. Geraldo or Donahue or one of those other shows. She couldn't remember which. These children, these tiny little children, had displayed all the outward signs of premature aging: loss of hair, loss of weight, frailty. Teri couldn't remember what their life expectancy had been, but she thought it was somewhere around fourteen or fifteen.

  My God.

  It was happening again. Something hideous had come along and swept the boy up in its jaws as if he were nothing more than a paper doll, and now it was going to fly away with him. Just like it had flown away with him before. Only this time, he wouldn't be coming back.

  “I'm sorry,” Childs said.

  She shook herself free from the numbness and stared out the window, fighting to hold on to what little control she had left. This close. She had come this close to having her son again, and now, like a strike of lightning, the dream was suddenly in flames. Gabe didn't deserve this. He didn't deserve any of this. She squeezed the boy's hand.

  “So what do we do?”

  “First, I want to correct any misunderstanding I might have given you. Gabe does not have Hutchinson-Gilford Syndrome. What he has are symptoms that closely resemble the disease.”

  “What's the difference?”

  “I'm not sure. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. The bottom line, of course, is that he has begun to age at an accelerated rate. That's why the gray and the lingering fatigue.”

  “How accelerated?”

  “That's difficult to say. I'd really hate to speculate at this point.”

  “Is...” A lump caught in her throat. She swallowed it back and tried not to imagine that what she had swallowed would soon begin to grow like a cancer inside her. “Is that the reason he's having trouble building up his strength?”

  “That would be consistent with what we're talking about.”

  “Uh-huh. Well... then where do we go from here?”

  “I think that's largely up to you, Teri. If you'd like, I could make arrangements to have him admitted to a hospital where we could run some additional tests. That would give us an opportunity to get a better feel for what it is we're up against. That's my first thought.”

  “And if we decide not to do that?”

  “We're talking about his life, Teri.”

  “I understand that. All I want to know is what our options are.”

  “I'm not sure what to tell you,” Childs said. He tapped the tip of his ball point pen against the desk, and sat back in his chair, searching for the right words. “What seems to be going on here is that something's interfering with Gabe's normal cell regeneration. I don't know what's causing that. I don't know if it's something genetic like Hutchinson-Gilford Syndrome, or something environmental like a virus or an unknown bacteria. It might even be something closer to cancer, where the cells simply start to mutate and multiply at an uncontrollable rate. I can do some research for you, Teri, but beyond that, it seems to me that the best thing for Gabe right now would be a hospital environment where we can keep a closer eye on him and run some additional tests.”

  “I guess we need to make some decisions then, don't we?”

  “The sooner, the better, I'm afraid.”

  “All right.” She stood up, glancing absently out the window at the parking lot and wondering what they were supposed to do now. “I'll give you a call tomorrow. How's that?”

  “Don't put it off too long.”

  [47]

  Walt woke up sitting on the floor, backed into the corner like a caged animal. He was sweating, the sheet wrapped around him like a cocoon, and as he looked around the room, it took a moment before he was able to recognize his surroundings. This was another motel room: small, generic, the curtains open just enough for him to see that it was dark out.

  He struggled to his feet, threw off the sheet, and made his way into the bathroom, still caught somewhere in the hazy, mystical numbness that inhabited the gap between dream and waking. In the mirror over the sink, he looked like a tired old man: two days growth of beard, red eyes, sallow cheeks. Not enough sleep, he told himself as he splashed cold water on his face. Not enough sleep and too much of Richard Boyle.


  He dried his face, then carried the towel into the other room and sat on the edge of the bed, staring out through the window at the night. The room was on the second floor and he could see across several blocks of city lights, bright and shimmering and almost as real as the dream he had had. He used the towel to dab at a new rise of perspiration across his forehead, then leaned back against the pillows and closed his eyes.

  The dream had been about Brandon. It hadn't been a bad dream, a nightmare, as much as it had been a reminder that life rarely played by the rules. It was usually after such a dream that he felt the worst of his loneliness, a thick, black brume that settled over him and wouldn't let him up.

  Brandon.

  Something was wrong with a God that would take a man's child.

  Something was wrong.

  [48]

  Mitch arrived early at the dam, parked the car outside the tourist center, and sat there a moment, taken by the moon over the lake and amazed at how quiet it was here. It was well after midnight. The halogen lights cast an eerie glow over the empty lot, and he supposed that ever since the sun had gone down, the lot had been as empty or nearly as empty as it was now. If it was privacy a man wanted—and that was certainly the case in this instance—then this was as private a place as he was going to find at night.

  He closed the door, locked it, and wandered over to the concrete wall that overlooked the dam. Beneath the spillway, water gushed out in a white, frothy rage and made a mad dash down the Sacramento River. He had been here before, and though he could only hear the white water raging at this particular moment, the picture of its mad dash was clear in his mind. It was both peaceful and tumultuous, both safe and dangerous.

  “You're early,” a voice said from behind him.

  Mitch turned and saw the outline of a man standing in the shadows. He was on the small side, thin, little more than five-eight or -nine. It was not the first time he had met this man face-to-face, though such occasions had been rare throughout their association together.

  “So are you, sir.”

  “Like minds, like deeds.”

  Mitch shrugged. His throat tightened, a reflection of his unease, and he swallowed with a degree of difficulty that surprised him. The idea of being here, in this place, at this time, under these circumstances... nothing good that he could imagine could come of this. “So why are we here?”

  “You don't know?”

  “Oh, I think I've got a pretty good idea.”

  “He's a ten-year old kid, Mitch. How hard can it be?”

  “We caught a couple bad breaks, that's all. It won't happen again.”

  “But I've got it right, haven't I? You are the one responsible for tracking him down and hauling him back?”

  “It's my responsibility, yes sir.”

  “And you are the professional? You've done this before? I've got that right, too, haven't I?”

  It's never been children before, Mitch thought. But all he could say was, “Yes.”

  “Seems clear enough, then, doesn't it?” the man said softly. He pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. In the brief flare-up, his face came momentarily into focus: his eyes half-lidded, his coloring dark, his lines drawn. He held the cigarette without bringing it to his mouth, the tip glowing hotly in the darkness.

  “You want to bring in someone else?” Mitch asked. “Is that what this is about?”

  “That's not my preference, but—”

  “I can finish the job.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. What I don't think you understand is we don't have the time to dick around on this one. We need him under control as soon as possible.”

  Mitch nodded, relief loosening its grip around his throat. The worst was over. If he were going to be pulled (or worse, if he were going to be silenced), it would have been clear by now. In his coat pocket, where he had been hiding the Servicemaster in case things had gone bad, he pulled his finger off the trigger and felt the tension ease.

  “This Knight woman – she'll keep the kid on the move.”

  “I know. We're back watching the house in case she shows up again. We had a lead through a tap on her ex-husband—the one in Tennessee—and know that she and the kid spent last night at a motel south of town. A place called the Royalty. I've got a man there, too. And there's an uncle we're still trying to get a fix on.”

  The man tapped the tip of his cigarette with his index finger, effectively smothering the burning embers. A wisp of gray smoke lingered momentarily in the darkness then disappeared. “No more screw ups, Mitch. This thing's bigger than both of us. It'll swallow us whole and spit out the bones if we aren't careful. You understand that?”

  Oh, he understood all right. He understood that this was need-to-know only, that the bigot list was maybe a handful of people, and that even though he was operating mostly in the blind, he had seen enough and heard enough to make himself expendable if the fire ever jumped the line. He understood all right. And he didn't like it much. But there wasn't anything he could do about it now.

  “I'll finish it,” Mitch said flatly.

  The man broke the cigarette in two and placed the pieces in a pile on the concrete retaining wall next to him. He looked out into the darkness, in the direction of the dam, where the roar of the water was like the wind racing up a canyon. “The boy's sick,” he said softly.

  “Sick?”

  “He's got a medical condition that could potentially be fatal.”

  Mitch, who was rarely surprised by anything in this line of work, found himself surprised by this only because it added another element into a picture that he had thought was already complete. He leaned into the wall, and took a breath from the clear night air. “And how do we fit into this thing? Are we trying to help him or do we need him to help us?”

  “Serve it up either way. It doesn't matter much.”

  “Maybe not, but I'd still like to know which one's closer to the truth.”

  “Whichever one helps you sleep better at night. All right?” the man said with a sternness in his voice that displayed his growing impatience. He took out another cigarette, but this one went unlit. Instead, he began to manipulate it, one-handed, through his long, thin fingers as if it were a coin. Down and back. Down and back. “Anything else?”

  “You still want him alive?”

  “He's no good to us dead.”

  “Same drop off point?”

  “Nothing's changed, Mitch. I just wanted to make sure you understood how far our dicks are hanging out on this one. And like I said, there's a time element involved here. The kid's sick. We need to find him before he gets any worse.”

  “What about the Knight woman?”

  “What about her?”

  “You want her alive or dead?”

  “I don't want her at all. Do what you have to do. Got it?”

  Mitch nodded without saying anything, and though the night was black it wasn't so black that he couldn't see the man across from him nod in return. Fair enough, then. They both understood each other now. He leaned back against the concrete wall, feeling the coolness of the night air against his face.

  The man gave him a pat on the shoulder as if to bolster him, then disappeared into the darkness beyond the shrubbery. A moment later Mitch heard the car start up and make its way out of the parking lot.

  Everything fell deathly still again.

  In the distance he could hear the sound of the water churning at the bottom of the dam. It sounded like the rumble of thunder.

  Just what kind of a storm's brewing here? he wondered.

  He wasn't sure he wanted to know.

  [49]

  The man had been born as Malcolm Winters.

  In junior high, he went by the name of Raines, his personal homage to Claude Raines, the Invisible Man. It was fitting not only because of his personal fascination with going unseen and barely noticed, but also because more often than not he was absent from class. And when he wasn't absent in body, he was absent in mind, which was a thousand miles awa
y, fantasizing bigger than life adventures, narrow escapes from death, and beautiful women. Substitute teachers knew him as the quiet one, who sat in the back and never said a word.

  There were no pictures of him in the high school year book.

  In college, where he majored in political science, he was just another face in the crowd, dabbling with who he wanted to be, struggling to be who he was. He wrote occasional articles for the university paper, though. Most often under the name of Ted R. O'Bannon, though twice he used the name Red P. Covee, an anagram for “Deep Cover” that amused him endlessly. He rarely went by his birth-given name.

  In his senior year, he was approached, and a short time later recruited.

  From that moment on, what little left of the Malcolm Winters of old ceased to exist altogether.

  In its place came a long procession of new identities: Dexter Clements, a gun runner from New Mexico; Peter J. Thompson, an investment banker from Toledo; Howard Jenkins, a real estate investor who just moved west from Arlington, Virginia; Marshal Witmer, an FBI agent; and a host of other characters, some respectable, some shady, all of them comfortable fits.

  Buried even deeper beneath these various identities, he went by the name of D.C., which he sometimes explained as being David Collins, other times as Daniel Clements. In reality, it was neither of these. It was the return of the old college anagram. The initials stood for Deep Cover.

  Those who worked with him realized that much of this was just a game.

  And that's what made him so dangerous.

  [50]

  Teri toweled off her wet hair and found herself staring into the bathroom mirror. Dark circles were beginning to show under her eyes. She looked like a woman who had spent the past several days without any sleep. Which was fairly close to the truth, she supposed.

  She felt nearly as sluggish as she looked. Though her period wasn't for another week yet, she thought she had probably started retaining water already. That made for a partial explanation anyway. Closer to the truth, it wasn't her biology that was taking its toll. It was the stress of the past few days. Being on the run, always looking over your shoulder, not having the slightest clue of who's after you or why... it didn't take long for these things to start wearing a person down, and the wear on her was gradually becoming more visible.