The Disappeared

by David B. Silva

  Maybe they weren't two of a kind after all.

  “Still, it's too cold for man or beast,” he said, absently.

  He went to return the cat to the ground and the sudden movement sent the tabby into a surprising frenzy. She let out a wail, scratched him across the back of the hand, and struggled to free herself from his grasp. Mitch let out a wail of his own, and wrapped his hand around the cat's neck.

  “Jesus, you little bastard! Jesus Christ Almighty! Why'd you go and do that!”

  In one swift motion, he flung her across the walkway. She struck a six-by-six support beam, let out another screech, and fell to the ground, dazed. Mitch checked his hand. The scratch had drawn blood.

  “Jesus.”

  The tabby climbed drunkenly to her feet, shook her head, then wandered back into the maze of shrubbery.

  “Jesus Christ, you little bastard!”

  He sucked blood from the wound and spit it out, hating the coppery taste it left in his mouth. Enough. That was enough for one night. He took another drink of blood, spit it out, and started around the corner on slightly shaky legs.

  The car was parked on the other side of the street, half a block down. As Mitch made his way along the sidewalk, images from the accident the other day floated back to him like lost, soulless ghosts. Though he had lost one of his men (something he had experienced only twice before, both occasions under hostile circumstances), it wasn't the accident that had troubled him. It was knowing that it could have been prevented if he had done his job right in the first place. The first night – the night he had gone to the Knight house after the boy – that should have been the end of it. Right there, right then. There never should have been an accident. There never should have been a death.

  He arrived at the car, climbed in, and sat there a moment.

  The street was deserted. There had been a brief shower earlier in the day, and the sheen of standing water was a mirror to the street lights all the way down the block. A Mercedes passed by, its tires wading noisily through the puddles.

  Night... the time of dark secrets and faceless people, Mitch thought remotely.

  They had come upon Walter Travis as much by accident as anything, which—if a man were to be honest with himself—was the way most things happened in life. The world was not nearly as organized or purposeful as we liked to fool ourselves into believing. Chance, Mitch had long ago come to realize, played a bigger role than any of us cared to admit.

  In this instance, someone apparently knew someone, who knew someone else, who knew someone in the local police department. And that someone was familiar with the Knight woman and her background. He was also apparently familiar with Walter Travis, an ex-cop. Mitch didn't have the full story—as usual, the less he knew the better off he was—but apparently there had been some sort of past relationship between the two of them.

  So someone had gambled on a tap, and the tap had paid off.

  It had been as simple as that.

  Mitch started up the car, looked over his shoulder, saw there was no traffic, and pulled out into the lane. It was nearly one in the morning now. He'd have to be back here again around seven or so, in case one of them happened to be an early riser. How long this was going to go on, he didn't know, but he hoped it wouldn't be much longer. This was not the kind of assignment that made him eager to get up in the morning.

  He passed a thin man in his late fifties, uneven beard stubble, gray hair, ragged clothes that were a couple of sizes too large. The man walked as if he had no bones. His arms dangled lazily, his knees seemed to buckle with each and every step. Without looking up, he raised his right arm into the air and flipped Mitch the finger.

  Night... the time of dark secrets and faceless people.

  [74]

  In what he thought was mid-morning—there was no clock in the room—Gabe busied himself with a hand-held video game. It was a poker game and it was one of a dozen or so games that had been brought in the day before. They had also brought in a color television set. It was somehow rigged to the Cartoon Network. There were only so many hours of cartoons a kid could watch.

  The poker game beeped and a new hand was dealt: two fives, a king, a queen, and a seven. No chance for a flush or a straight. Gabe balanced the game on one leg while he pressed the necessary buttons to keep the two fives.

  He was gradually growing used to the cast on his arm. There were three things, though, that the cast had made difficult. The first was eating, which was fine as long as he didn't have to cut meat or open a milk carton. Last night, Miss Tilley—she was the woman who brought him his meals and had brought him the games—had to return with a second milk after he spilled the first one all over the bed. It hadn't been much fun trying to use the bathroom, either. Mostly it was a matter of working out the logistics, though there had been some trial and error and a little embarrassment as well. And finally, it was like wearing a lifejacket to bed. The cast was always in the way, always taking up space. It was impossible to find a comfortable position.

  Gabe hadn't slept well last night. Not well at all.

  Another beep from the game and three new cards were dealt: a five, an ace, and a ten. That left him with three fives, a decent enough hand. He pressed a gray-colored button, cleared the screen, and was about to draw a new hand when a knock came at the door.

  He looked up.

  The door swung open, and Miss Tilley stepped through, balancing a stainless steel meal tray in one hand. “Lunch time.”

  “Already?”

  “It's been four hours since breakfast.”

  “What time is it?”

  “A little after twelve,” she said. She placed the tray on a bedside table, removed the cover from the plate, and a cloud of steam rose into the air. Lunch today was meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and corn. There was a wheat roll off to one side, and a carton of milk that she immediately opened for him. “Hungry?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, you need to keep your strength up, Gabriel.”

  “Why?”

  Miss Tilley was not Miss Churchill. She was an older woman, heavyset, with bright blue eyes that were always averting his gaze. As uneasy with him, he believed, as he was with her. The truth was... he just didn't like her very much. She had given no reason to like her. And there was something cold and disturbing about her.

  “You sound like you think we're fattening you up for the kill,” she said.

  “Are you?”

  “Don't be silly.”

  Gabe stared down at his lunch a moment, and used his fork to toy with the mashed potatoes. “When do I get to go home?”

  “Not for awhile I'm afraid.”

  “Yeah, but when?”

  “It's not up to me when you go home or when you eat your meals or when anything around here happens. I don't make the decisions.”

  “Yeah, but when do I get to go home,” Gabe whispered under his breath. He tried the meat loaf, which wasn't as dry as the chicken had been last night. A little ketchup wouldn't hurt. Neither would some salt.

  He took another stab at the mashed potatoes and watched Tilley use her keys to unlock the top drawer of the medical cabinet just left of the door. She brought out a short rubber hose and a syringe, which she placed on a stainless steel tray. She carried the tray and its contents around the foot of the bed.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I need to take some blood.”

  “From me?”

  “Yes. From you.” She placed the tray on a bedside table, and went about unlocking a nearby drawer and pulling out some cotton swabs and Band-Aids.

  “I'd rather not, thank you.” Gabe could only recall a couple of occasions when someone had drawn blood from him. His earliest memory was of an incident in the third grade, when he had been drinking too much water according to his mother, and she had grown worried about something she called diabetes. His grandmother had apparently had it and his mother thought maybe he did, too. It turned out that he didn't, which made it hard for him
to understand why he'd had to go through all the trouble of having that huge needle stuck in his arm. More recently, Dr. Childs had drawn his blood. Gabe wasn't going to go through that again. And he especially wasn't going to go through it for Tilley.

  “Don't be obstinate, Gabriel.”

  He pushed his lunch tray aside. “I don't have diabetes.”

  “This isn't about diabetes.”

  “Then what's it about?”

  She picked up the rubber hose, stretched it, and seemed to take delight at the sound of it snapping back to size again. “Give me your arm, Gabriel.”

  He shook his head, then pressed his elbow against his side and locked it in place.

  “Gabriel!”

  “I don't want to.”

  “Listen, young man, I don't have the patience for this kind of behavior. Do you understand me? If you want to make this difficult, we'll make it difficult. But either way, we're going to draw blood and we're going to do it now.”

  He shook his head.

  “Give me your arm!” She reached out at him like an old witch reaching out at a child's youth. Her thin, cold fingers wrapped around the inside of his elbow.

  Gabe pulled his arm free and fell back against the bedside table. His lunch tray flipped. Corn niblets scattered across the floor like a thousand frightened insects scurrying for cover. The tray landed with a loud, reverberating clang, and by the time the sound had finally reached its conclusion, the expression on Tilley's face had transformed into a hideous Halloween mask.

  “Why you little monster!”

  He hadn't meant to knock the tray over. It had just happened. If she would just leave him alone...

  She started around the foot of the bed, her face flushed with anger, one hand gripping the rubber hose as if she were trying to squeeze the very life out of it.

  Gabe backed into the farthest corner. “Stay away!”

  “Not until I get some blood out of you, young man.”

  A chair was pushed into a nearby opening, effectively cutting off an avenue of escape. A cart was pushed into another opening, narrowing the room half again as much.

  He grabbed at a plastic bottle sitting on the counter, caught it, and flung it in her direction. It struck her on the right forearm, bounced off, and fell to the floor with a hollow echoing sound that reminded him of just how lonely and empty this place had become. What he might have done next, he would never know. The only door in or out suddenly burst open and two men, dressed in street clothes, came rushing through, their faces a mix of amusement and threat.

  “About time,” Tilley said, visibly relieved.

  “He's only eleven. We thought you could handle him.” The first man through went directly at Gabe. He swept him up around the waist and tossed him over his shoulder as if he were nothing more than a sack of potatoes. “Where do you want him?”

  “On the bed.”

  They pinned him down to draw the blood, and by the time the job was finished, a black, ugly hatred began to smolder somewhere deep inside him. He watched Tilley gather up her things, her demeanor subdued, her actions officious again. She was back in charge now, her lips pursed in that prissy little manner of someone who knows she's won.

  “Maybe next time you'll make it easier on yourself,” she said on her way out.

  The door closed.

  Except for the cartoon on television, the room fell quiet again.

  Gabe fell back into his pillow, tears welling in his eyes. She had placed a cotton swab and a Band-Aid over the puncture wound to help stop the bleeding. He stared at it a moment, then tore it off and threw it at the overturned tray on the floor.

  Never before in his life had he hated someone so much.

  [75]

  Now that they were both on the same team, they had to see if they could get on the same schedule. Last night had been a troubled night for Teri. She had slept so much the past couple of days that she found it difficult to close her eyes and return to that state of dreams and drifting. Instead, she had tossed and turned most of the night, and this morning she had been up and about by six.

  Walt, on the other hand, had had no trouble at all falling asleep. He had snored on and off for several hours last night, the sound so penetrating Teri could hear it vibrate through the wall between the living room and the bedroom. And then this morning, he hadn't even opened his eyes until a little after ten.

  For awhile, they behaved as if they had been married for a good number of years. Teri busied herself in the kitchen, putting together a breakfast of pancakes, canned fruit, and coffee, all the while trying to suppress her mounting irritation. He should have been up earlier. There were only so many hours in a day, so many days in a week. How much of it was he going to waste?

  When Walt finally emerged from taking a shower and getting dressed, he sat down at the kitchen table and poured himself a cup of coffee. “How you feeling this morning?”

  “Antsy,” she said.

  “Sorry. Guess the last couple of days finally caught up with me.”

  The days had caught up with her, too, only a little sooner; and when it had been her turn, Walt had shown nothing but patience. Teri had to remind herself that he had been patient about a lot of things lately. Certainly more patient that she had any right to expect.

  “How about some pancakes?” she asked.

  “Sounds great.”

  It was nearly noon by the time they left the apartment. Walt gave her a ride into town, where she stopped at Enterprise Auto Rental and got herself a '93 Ford Taurus. It was a nice car, dark blue, though the interior had a funny smell she couldn't quite identify. It wasn't the smell of a cigarette, she thought, but something more like that of a pipe. Though that wasn't quite it, either.

  Teri finished checking out the Taurus, and walked over to where Walt was waiting for her. “Everything looks fine.”

  “Great,” he said, glancing across the street at a bus that had just pulled up to the curb. It sat there less than ten seconds, then pulled away again, leaving a cloud of black exhaust to linger in the air awhile longer. “Six o'clock, my place, right?”

  “Sure,” she said, suddenly far away in her thoughts.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Sorry.”

  “You still upset about the Childs thing?”

  “I wouldn't call it upset exactly.” She had called Dr. Childs this morning, shortly after Walt had sat down to breakfast. She had called him because Walt had convinced her it was the only way they could get a quick read on the doctor. Instead, it had only served to muddy the waters. Childs had again urged her to consider placing Gabe in a medical facility as soon as possible, and he had seemed as concerned as ever, maybe even more concerned than the last time they had spoken. But as she was hanging up, he had said something that had struck her as odd and she hadn't been able to put it out of her mind. He had said: “You call me, Teri. I know it's been nice having him back, but he needs medical attention.”

  How did he know?

  How did Childs know that Gabe had been away? And why hadn't he said anything earlier? He had never said so much as a word about Gabe being only eleven. Not a word.

  “What would you call it then?” Walt asked.

  “I just can't imagine that he could be part of this.”

  “Well, we don't for sure that he is. Not yet.”

  Teri nodded, still troubled. “You sure we should meet back at the apartment?”

  “Why not?”

  “I don't know. I just thought maybe that was how they knew we would be at the plaza. That maybe the phone was bugged.”

  Walt grinned. “I thought about that, too. It's not bugged, though. At least not anymore. I checked it out a couple of nights ago. Besides, these guys aren't interested in us anymore. It was Gabe they wanted. Now that they've got him, I'd be amazed if they were willing to risk a tap. What would they have to gain?”

  “As long as you're sure.”

  “I'll tell you what, just in case, we'll stay off the phone. How's that?
”

  “You're the boss,” she said.

  “Good. Then don't worry about it.”

  “Six o'clock.”

  “Six o'clock.”

  She watched him disappear into traffic, then went back and sat in the Taurus a while, letting the old memories stir. This was going to be a trip into the past and she wasn't sure if she was going to like it or not. You can remember fondly, she had heard somewhere. But you can't go back. Of course, this wasn't about nostalgia. It was about Gabe.

  The first name on her list was Peggy Landau.

  Teri remembered her as the quiet one. She was always hovering around the outer edges of the group, a little field mouse who worried about being accepted, but who was too shy to ever feel comfortable enough to become involved. She had been a thin, waif of a girl. Her dresses were all long flowing, flower prints that kept her hidden. When she smiled, it was a child's smile, all innocence and sweet summer smells and soft breezes. Teri had never known her as well as she would have liked, and wasn't that the way life always seemed to be?

  Peggy was one of a handful from the old commune who still lived in the area. Her house was out in the country, south of the city limits, where it would be another twenty years before the urban sprawl caught up with her. Teri drove right past the house and had to turn around and come back. It was set back from the road, a country charmer with a front porch and white picket fence. Not much different from the kind of place they had all dreamed about when they were still in college.

  She knocked, and stared out across the field on the other side of the street. Mount Lassen stood majestically in the distance, a white cap of snow against a blue background. At least someone had found her dreams.

  The door opened only a crack, and a women with bright blue eyes stared out.