The Disappeared

by David B. Silva

  “Mind if I walk with you?”

  “Are you gonna talk?”

  “I was thinking about it.”

  “Then try to keep it to a minimum, will you? This is supposed to be my down time. I just want to get a bite to eat and maybe pick up a newspaper.”

  “Things that bad in the dungeon?”

  “Hey, to you, it's Criminal Identification.”

  Walt grinned. They crossed the street at the light, cut around an elderly woman who was walking hand-in-hand with a little girl of maybe five or six, and followed the sidewalk up Reed Street. They were heading to the French Deli, another two blocks up. It was always Aaron's first choice when he was pressed for time.

  “So?” Walt said.

  “So what?”

  “So you come up with anything yet?”

  “Your guy's name is Mitchell Wolfe. He's a freelancer, mostly for the CIA. I don't know where he came from. I don't know what kind of background he's got. But I'll bet you a pastrami sandwich that he's got himself a horde of phony I.D.'s, including a couple of passports under different names. You're tangling with a pro, Walt. You damn well better be careful.”

  “What the hell's he doing out here?”

  “That's your job, man. I've done mine.”

  They crossed with another light. On the other side of the street, set back into the corner of the Bank of America Building, was a small newspaper stand run by an elderly man by the name of Ronnie Tortelli. He had lost a leg in the Second World War and had only recently managed to finagle a new artificial limb out of the V.A. He swept a local newspaper off the top of the stack and held it out to Aaron.

  “Running late today,” Tortelli said.

  Aaron took the paper and slipped him a dollar bill. The daily was fifty cents, but Aaron had been paying Ronnie a dollar a paper for as long as he could remember. There weren't too many good, honest people left in this world. Tortelli was one of them.

  “How's the new leg?” Aaron asked.

  Tortelli knocked on it twice. “Still holding me up.”

  “Catch you tomorrow.”

  “I'll be here. Same time, same station.”

  Aaron glanced at the headlines, which seemed to cover everything from the President's decision to reopen migration talks with Cuba to the county's reluctant admission that its 1.2 billion dollar computer acquisition of three years ago had been a huge mistake. He folded the newspaper in half and slapped it against his thigh as he was walking. “I don't know why the hell I read this crap. It's always the same stuff.”

  Walt wasn't interested. “Look, have you got an address on this guy?”

  “I told you; he's a freelancer. I'd stay away from him if I were you.”

  “How about a city or a state?”

  “You're gonna get yourself killed, man.”

  “Come on, Aaron. You gotta have something you can give me. We're talking about a little boy who's been kidnapped. How about a photograph?”

  “I'll put it in the mail for you.”

  “Great. What else?”

  “You could try calling up the CIA and asking why they've got one of their men running around out here in the middle of Smalltown, America.”

  “Yeah, and we both know what they'd say, don't we?”

  “Yeah. They'd tell you that they've never heard of Mitchell Wolfe.”

  “So why waste the time?”

  “It was just a suggestion.”

  The two men weaved their way through a sudden crowd of pedestrians moving in the opposite direction, and when they came out on the other side, they had to backtrack past a jewelry store and a five and dime to get to the deli. This week's special, painted in bright red letters across the front picture windows, read: Italian Meatball Sandwich, Only $2.95.

  “Here's where I get off,” Aaron said.

  “Why don't we make it my treat?”

  “I'm not sure if I feel comfortable taking money from a dead man.”

  “Hey, I'm not dead yet.”

  “No, not yet,” Aaron said. He held the door open and Walt passed through. “But you're gonna be if you keep after this Mitchell character.”

  [78]

  Teri drove across town on automatic, her mind a thousand miles and twenty-years in tow. She would have preferred to have put those years aside, out of mind, for now. Especially the sound of Peggy's voice recalling how she had always been made to feel like an outsider. But the voice haunted her as she turned onto Highway 44 and made her way back into town.

  By the time she had reached the McDonald's on Cypress, the voice had softened a bit, though she knew it would be a long time before she would be able to reconcile the woman she was today with the woman she had been twenty years ago. It would be even longer, she supposed, before she would be able to reconcile Childs. Walt had been right. All those years, and she had never really known Childs at all.

  On any other day, she would have bought a salad and milk, but she ordered absently and when she sat down at the table, she realized she had a fish fillet, fries, and a soft drink on her tray. Teri ate them without thought, wondering instead about Childs... who he was, what part he might have played in Gabe's disappearance, how this was all supposed to tie together and make some sort of sense. But no matter how she tried, she couldn't seem to make any sense of it at all.

  After lunch, she gave thought to calling Walt, realized she had no way of reaching him, and decided instead to visit the next name on her list. She pulled out of the parking lot, onto Cypress and turned right.

  Across the street, one block back and unnoticed, Mitch turned the key in the ignition, checked over his left shoulder for traffic, then pulled onto Cypress to follow her.

  Not far behind him, and equally unnoticed, Richard Boyle started up his own car.

  [79]

  Michael got up, crossed the room, and turned the volume down on the television set. The television was on in the background. It was tuned to a daytime soap opera called The Days of Our Lives, but there was a Vagisil commercial on now. Since he was between calls anyway, it was as good a time as any to check the parking lot again.

  He pulled back the corner of the curtains and peered across the motel lot at the dark blue Ford parked next to the dumpster. It had been parked there for the past day-and-a-half, since shortly after he had checked into the motel, and with each passing hour, Michael was feeling more and more like a caged animal.

  The curtains dropped back into place.

  Michael went back to the bed, sat down, and took up the pad of paper and pen he had been using. Late last night, while watching Letterman mug his way through a Top Ten List, it had occurred to him that maybe the best thing to do at this point in time was to make a list of his own. He had started with all the people who had been their friends or acquaintances at the time that Gabe had disappeared.

  It turned out to be a longer list than he had ever imagined, and he was embarrassed to find that while his mind was able to bring forth an extended line-up of faces, it hadn't done nearly as well with the names that went with them. Even so, the list had eventually filled out two pages.

  This morning, he had begun looking them up in the telephone book, one by one, putting aside those names without a listing, calling those who were still living in the area, scratching off those whose numbers had been disconnected.

  He had quickly learned two things. Ten years was a long time. People he had once considered close friends were strangers now. While he had been away, their lives had marched merrily onward through divorce and re-marriage, through step-children and graduations, through promotions and layoffs. The world did not stand still. Not for a moment. Not for anyone.

  And he had learned something else. He had learned that almost all of Teri's old friends had eventually drifted away. Not for any specific reason, or at least not a reason they could find it in themselves to express. But, as he heard time and time again, just because “life goes on.”

  Those were the same words he had expressed to Teri the night before he had lef
t. “Life goes on, Teri. We've both got to face the fact that Gabe's not coming back. It's going to eat us alive if we don't accept it.”

  Michael heard these words echo in his mind, and looked down at the list of names on the pad of paper in his lap. He circled the next name to call, then picked up the phone and dialed the number.

  [80]

  Her name was Cynthia Breswick, though back in the old days everyone had called her Cindy (and sometimes Flower). Her maiden name was Kutras. She had come to Berkeley from somewhere in Southern California, on family money that had always seemed easily accessible in those days. She was intelligent and happy and easygoing, and she had liked to make bracelets and necklaces and sell them on the streets. In her last year at Berkeley—she had dropped out at the end of her junior year and moved north with the group—she made a perfect 4.0, then burned her grade slips and sent the ashes to her parents. Cindy did not get along with mommy and daddy. They were successful professionals, who lived and breathed their work, and Cindy was an only child, who had spent most of her childhood fending for herself. It had made her a strong woman, but it had also left a hole somewhere inside her. She had always been in search of the perfect family. No one had ever told her that there was no such thing.

  What Teri remembered most about Cindy was the stark contrast. Intellectually, she was an independent free-thinker, someone who could hold her own with a professor in a debate on situational ethics. Yet emotionally, she was a little girl, always in search of someone to take care of her. For the most part, she had been able to keep the two in balance and properly separated, but every once in awhile, she would let herself get swept away by a professor who seemed to fulfill both of those needs at once. Those had always been the dangerous times, the times when Cindy had been a little girl lost.

  Teri knocked on the front door and stood back. The house was a beautiful Italian-style villa, built in the 1920's. The front courtyard was cobblestone, with a small lawn surrounded by a knee-high hedge and several flower gardens. Standing in the doorway, the house seemed enormous, and Teri marveled at how dramatically Cindy's life had changed since their days together at the commune.

  The Palladian doors opened, and Cindy stood there, not at all the person Teri had expected to find. She was wearing a peignoir set, with a negligee underneath and a long silk robe hanging freely from her shoulders. Her hair, which had been honey-brown in the old days, was champagne blond now, cut short and permed. In her free hand, she was holding a wine glass, half-full.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Cindy?”

  There was a moment when her expression was an empty slate, left completely in the dark. Behind those eyes, though, she must have been searching her memory. It had been a long, long time after all, and Teri had changed, too. More, in fact, than she would ever want to admit. “Teri? Teri Cutler? Is that really you?”

  “Hi, Cindy.”

  “Oh, my God.” Cindy stepped through the door and gave her a warm hug. There was the smell of wine on her breath. It mingled in sharp contrast with the scent of a perfume that Teri didn't recognize, and she wondered briefly if the contrast in fragrances was anything like the contrasts that had played prominent in Cindy's past. “Well, come in, come in.”

  She showed Teri past the dining room, which was off to the left, and into the living room. It was huge and airy and full of light. There was a piano in one corner, an incredible marble fireplace in another. Cindy motioned to her to sit in the nearest easy chair, which was done in a warm, white velvet.

  “I was just thinking about you the other day,” Cindy said.

  “Really?”

  “Strange, isn't it?” She sat on the sofa, which was covered in damask, crossed her legs and stared across the open space between them. It was almost as if she were trying to see inside Teri, to see if she was the same person she had been all those years ago. But that wasn't what she was doing, and Teri knew it. She was sizing her up, that's what she was doing.

  She took a dramatic swallow of her wine and pinched her face in a smile that required an effort. “So what brings you around after all these years?”

  “It has been a lot of years, hasn't it?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Almost a lifetime ago,” Teri said flatly. She didn't think she liked this woman sitting across from her. Cindy Kutras, she had liked, even when she had been a fragile little girl following a new professor around like a lost puppy. But Cynthia Breswick, there was no lost little girl in her. The alcohol, Teri suspected, had drowned that little girl a long, long time ago. What was left was...

  “I know what you're wondering,” Cindy said.

  “Oh?”

  “You're wondering what happened to me.”

  That thought had, in fact, crossed Teri's mind. She thought she knew a little bit already, and she thought it went something like this: Cindy had found herself a man who liked to treat her more like a daughter than a wife. He liked to think for her and to take care of things for her and even spoil her. And in her mind, Cindy liked to think of him, not as her husband, but as her daddy, the one she had always been looking to find. And for a good many years this arrangement had worked well for both of them. But eventually things had changed, and now Cynthia wasn't sure who she was or how she had managed to end up like this.

  Hence, the booze, Teri thought.

  “Well, it's not what you think.”

  “No?”

  “Well, maybe some of it is.” Cindy grinned and took another dramatic swallow from her glass. It was empty now. She held it up against the daylight shining through the windows and gazed at it as if she couldn't believe there was no wine left. Then she climbed off the sofa and moved across the room to the bar.

  “But not all of it,” she added, pouring herself another glass.

  “What happened, Cindy?”

  She chuckled, and made her way back to the sofa, where she plopped down and immediately returned to her glass. “Cynthia. It's Cynthia these days. And I don't know what the hell happened. That's what makes life so interesting, isn't it? No matter how smart you think you are, you never really know why anything happens. It's all a game of guessing.”

  She fell silent a moment, staring into the marble fireplace as if it might hold some magic answers for her. But apparently there were no answers, and when she looked up again, she raised her glass and took another drink. “I'm sorry, I should have asked. Would you care for something?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “You're so quiet. I don't remember you that way.”

  “That was a long time ago,” Teri said.

  “Oh, yes. People do change, don't they? Nothing stays the same for long.” Her gaze went wandering back to the fireplace again, like a moth that can't stay away from the flame. This flame was made of old memories and bad dreams, Teri thought. And sometimes it could be dangerous. And sometimes you still couldn't keep yourself from wandering back. It was just too mesmerizing.

  “I lost my son,” Cindy said quietly. “It happened a long time ago, and I suppose I should have learned to live with it by now, but I haven't. I'm not sure I ever will.”

  You won't.

  Because it won't let you.

  “I'm sorry,” Teri said. “I know how you must feel.”

  A muted smile rose and fell across her face, and she shook her head. “No, you don't. You might think you do, but trust me, you don't have the slightest idea.”

  “I lost my son, too,” Teri said evenly.

  Cindy looked up. For the first time, her eyes seemed to clear a bit. She looked as if she were peeking out from behind a veil of hidden secrets, as if she had suddenly found a reason to come out into the sun and let herself be seen. And she also looked shocked. “Cody was seven.”

  “Gabe was eleven.”

  “He went out to play one afternoon, in the front here. We didn't like him playing in the garden or on the lawn, so he used to go across the street and play at his friend's house. He...” She swallowed back the rest of the sente
nce, as if it were bad tasting medicine. The wine glass in her hand looked heavy now. She placed it on the glass end table next to the couch, and tried again to finish the sentence, this time in a near whisper. “He never came home.”

  “When was this?” Teri asked.

  “March of '85.”

  “Oh, my God,” Teri said softly. She put a trembling hand to her mouth. Gabe had disappeared that same month, that same year. Perhaps it meant nothing at all, but if that were true, then this had to be the coincidence to end all coincidences.

  “What?” Cindy asked. “What is it?”

  “That's when Gabe disappeared. March 27th, 1985.”

  The color, what little there had been, drained out of Cindy's face, and she reached for her glass of wine again. She took a sip this time, only a sip, but her hand was shaky and she was a long time getting the sip down. When she was done, she lowered the glass to her lap and held it in both hands, as if she feared she might spill what remained if she weren't careful.

  “That's not an accident,” she said softly.

  “No, it isn't.”

  “Why us? Why our children?”

  “I don't know,” Teri said.

  A mild state of shock hung over her friend a moment or two longer, then her eyes seemed to clear a bit and the color gradually came back to her face. She took a deep breath. “Is that why you're here?”

  Teri shook her head. “I'm sorry, Cindy. I didn't know you even had a son.”

  “Someone should have noticed,” she said numbly. “I mean one of the detectives or someone. They should have seen the pattern. They should have checked it out. And someone should have told us.”

  She was right, of course. Teri wondered briefly why Walt or someone else in the department hadn't said anything to her. Two disappearances in the same month. Two little boys. Someone should have noticed. Someone, Teri thought, hadn't been doing his job.

  “Did you give up looking?”