Ruin Falls

by Jenny Milchman

  “Perfectly understandable,” the detective said without emotion. “I’m just trying to put a preliminary picture together.”

  Liz hardly heard the explanation, nor did she detect Paul’s response. She was remembering something, and the realization occupied her whole mind, a storm blotting out the sky.

  There was another person who had seen the children, one night and a lifetime before.

  She rose, moving into the space between the two men.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  At the front desk, everything was in a frenetic swirl. A busload of kids had just checked in, part of some field trip or school competition. They were older than Reid and Ally—teenagers really—but still, the sight of them made Liz feel light-headed, as if she had just stepped onto the moon. She came to a stop and leaned down, one hand on each knee.

  It took a while for the person she was hunting to rise from the melee, but when he finally did, Liz launched herself at him.

  Blood-colored uniform swam before her eyes. The fabric felt rough as she grabbed a fistful. The bellhop moved like a startled horse, up and away, rearing back. His refusal to meet her eyes only corroborated Liz’s suspicions, and she held on even tighter.

  A thought speared her—if the bellhop had been involved with whatever happened to Reid and Ally, he wouldn’t just be hanging around the hotel lobby right now—but it was too late for logic to impact her actions. Liz was some kind of creature, small and stooped, or like a child herself, hunched over and shrieking out the sheer primitive scope of her need.

  “Give me!” she demanded. “Give me back my children!”

  The students began to form an uneven, ragged clump as their teacher corralled them, shielding them from Liz.

  Paul arrived, and the detective, too. Liz heard them making some sort of apology. To the kids, or their teacher? Surely not the bellhop?

  The bellhop’s gaze skirted past the detective before he looked imploringly at Paul.

  One of the men—Liz couldn’t tell which—unhooked her fingers from a swath of burgundy cloth. And while the schoolchildren looked scared, and their teacher alarmed, the bellhop’s face was contorted by a frown.

  Paul called his parents from his cell phone. Liz had to cover her ears when the initial announcement was made, but after that she listened to her husband’s side of the conversation, aware that she was pinning hope on every word.

  “I know,” Paul said. And then, “No. No, not yet. Nothing yet.”

  A long pause to allow for what Liz imagined to be a horrified sort of taking in.

  “Okay, Mom,” Paul said. “Yes. All right.”

  He slid his thumb across the screen, ending the call.

  Liz couldn’t help but look up at him questioningly. She needed him to shake his head, needed to be told.

  “They haven’t heard anything.”

  And why would they? Paul himself had been in only infrequent contact with his folks. He and Liz were alike in this; distance from their families had been one of the less-lovely things that drew them together, which they bonded over, half regretful, half accepting, on early dates.

  Her husband sat down beside her. At some point, they’d been moved to another identical room, their own cordoned off, Liz supposed. All the guest rooms contained the exact same appointments, and Liz’s skin fired each time she chanced to catch a glimpse of something the kids had touched or played with or remarked upon last night. The tray of coffee Ally had pretended to serve. The safe Reid had fiddled with.

  Liz felt her back curl, huddling over. Paul began to stroke her, but the touch felt mindless again. He couldn’t be here for her now. Neither of them could be there for each other.

  Suddenly Paul removed his hand from her back. “I have to do something.”

  Liz looked at him.

  “I—we can’t just leave this to the cops.”

  “What do you want to do?” she asked raggedly.

  “We have a car,” Paul said. “Let me get out there and look.”

  This disaster had jogged them from their normal roles. Always before, Liz had taken care of things on the ground, while allowing Paul to set the higher course of their lives. But in this instance he had seemed at least as paralyzed as she, possibly more so.

  “Where do we start?” she said, glad to be asking, even as the enormity of the possibilities crashed down around her.

  How would they whittle them down? Should they look in the stores and restaurants that populated the strip malls? Liz closed her eyes against an image of the roads that would take them there. She couldn’t let herself think of the roads, how swiftly they carried people away.

  Paul was moving toward the door. “I’ll go,” he said. “You stay here.”

  Because the children might come back. Liz allowed a lift of hope inside her before another possibility occurred. The police might learn something that she would have to be told.

  Reid could’ve encountered anyone out there. Reid, and the way he walked up to people, viewing them as marks. Reid, and his fears of death. Last night, Ally had said she was worried about her brother.

  Something filled Liz’s throat, solid, choking.

  Paul was met at the door by a uniformed officer. “Did you need something, sir?”

  Liz stared down at her flayed hands. Sickles of dirt showed under her nails, flecks that even a good scrubbing couldn’t reach. The beds were raw and bleeding now, too. She’d been digging at them without even realizing it.

  “I’m going out for a few minutes,” Paul said.

  “Did you need something?” the policeman repeated. “I’d be happy to get—”

  “Just some air,” Paul said. He made a move to step into the hall.

  “Sir?” the policeman said.

  Liz glanced at him, then returned to regarding her ruined fingers.

  The officer wasn’t quite blocking Paul’s way, but he wasn’t moving out of it either.

  “It’d be best if you and your wife left the search to us,” he said. “Believe me, we know what we’re doing. We’re covering all the bases.”

  “Yeah?” Paul said, so roughly that Liz’s gaze was yanked back up. “If you know what you’re doing, then why the hell are my kids still missing?”

  Liz got up and crossed to the door. Her husband was able to overpower almost anyone with words. Paul was part professor, part preacher, part psychic even, and people seemed to sense it. But worry and despair were tearing holes in him. He was facing the policeman, fists balled, as if he might throw him to the ground in an effort to get past. And what would that do, except distract everyone’s efforts, take attention away from Reid and Ally?

  “Where the hell are my kids?”

  “Shhh,” Liz said, arms around Paul from behind. “Come on. Let them do what they—”

  Paul twisted in her grasp. He walked away from her, three long strides that took him to the window. He stood, visoring his eyes with his hand, staring out bleakly at the parking lot and all the vast acres of space that might contain their children.

  The hours wore on and at the same time seemed to be hurtling away. Fear surged and Liz fought to suppress it. She knew what the passage of time meant. Paul, too, kept checking the clock as if willing it to stand still, a mask of desperation transforming his face each time the numbers advanced. Liz made herself focus on the presence of the policeman who had been assigned to babysit them, and Detective Bissell, who returned not infrequently to ask them more questions.

  He wanted to know about their lives in Wedeskyull, about Paul’s parents, as well as anyone Paul still knew downstate. When Bissell finished with background, he moved on to their trip yesterday, whom they might’ve encountered on the road, at the rest stop, anywhere en route.

  “No one!” Paul cried. “It was just the four of us. Who could’ve seen anything?”

  There was the man whose wallet Reid had pinched, but even Liz couldn’t come up with a way to connect him to this. How would he have known where they were going, or gotten into their room? And h
ow angry could he have been over having his intact wallet returned? She shut her eyes, other scenarios sparking in her mind. A small sound left her lips, and both men looked up. Liz found herself telling the detective about the pickup truck, as if one crazy driver might have something to do with the catastrophe they were facing now. She mentioned Reid’s penchant for thievery, seeing Paul close his eyes.

  Bissell listened, jotting notes.

  Paul appeared to be migrating into a near-catatonic state, some kind of waking coma that severed the connections he was usually able to make, and his ability to piece things together. Liz felt a splinter of anger in her husband’s direction. If ever she needed Paul to take charge, it was now, but the weight of crisis had robbed him of the ability. The monosyllabic responses he was offering the detective were nothing like his usual thoughtful elaborations.

  No, he hadn’t gone to his recent twenty-year high school reunion.

  No, he wasn’t in touch with anyone from home.

  Yes, he was aware that his father’s farm was in trouble.

  Liz looked up at that. She hadn’t known. And although her mind didn’t seem to be operating as sluggishly as Paul’s, she couldn’t make out what difference it made.

  What was the state of the children’s possessions?

  The word registered late, too awful to take in right away. Ally’s favorite T-shirt, which Liz had to wash at the last minute back in Wedeskyull because it was dirty, and Ally refused to leave without it. Reid’s new bathing suit, which was so big around the waist that it fell down to his ankles the first time he tried it on.

  Had anything been taken or disturbed?

  Detective Bissell was still firing away.

  Liz couldn’t bear to answer, let alone look. Paul offered to attend to the task. Liz watched as he headed off to the room they had checked into only last night.

  The kids’ clothing all seemed to be there, he reported back. The only thing that was missing was Izzy, a doll of Ally’s.

  Liz’s gaze shot to Paul.

  “Would your daughter have had the doll outside the room?” asked Bissell.

  Paul coughed, and Liz realized that her husband was looking her way because he didn’t know the answer. She blinked to clear her eyes. “She might’ve,” she said dully. “Ally takes that doll everywhere still.”

  Bissell made another note.

  At eleven o’clock, he finally began winding down. Bissell returned them to the care of the policeman who had stopped Paul from going out, and at noon that cop insisted they accompany him downstairs for some food.

  “Trust me,” he told them. “You won’t be able to do what you need to if you’re running on fumes.”

  The experience that must have lent the officer this perspective—not to mention the prospect of whatever he might mean for them to do—was something Liz couldn’t consider. She followed the cop rotely out into the hall, reaching for Paul’s hand when she sensed him beside her. They stayed that way, joined, until the policeman rang for the elevator.

  It rose at a slow, stately pace, making its way upstairs. The door slid open and the sight brought a chorus of squealing children to life in Liz’s head. How ashamed she was now to remember the faint annoyance she’d felt at Reid and Ally’s pleasure last night, thinking only about quelling their giddiness so that she would be able to get them to focus on eating and then down to sleep.

  Liz fell against the steel wall, not seeing the floors flash by, instead only the darting, sprite-like images of her children. She twisted around, unable to look a second longer, and slammed into a body she hardly recognized as Paul’s.

  Her husband allowed Liz to collapse in his arms, hissing in her ear, “It’s all right! You hear me? The kids are going to be fine!”

  The cop braced his arms across his chest, shuffling his boots in silence.

  Liz felt her weeping taper off at her husband’s words, barked as if he were giving orders. She allowed herself to bury the place that understood that Paul couldn’t possibly know.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Morning became afternoon without the kids being found, which meant a whole other level of search. Perhaps even one involving the FBI, if the police turned up any suggestion that Reid and Ally might’ve been taken across state lines. Liz would have to be fully functioning if new officials were brought in, and if they weren’t, she had to work alongside the men already helping. Had to conceive of possible reasons for this. Because the alternative—that it was random and her children had stepped into the path of a madman—made Liz’s hold on sanity seem to flicker and go out.

  As always, Paul talked her down, throwing out life rafts in a terrible sea. Two things counted against the possibility of an encounter with a stranger, he reminded her. First, such criminals were far more likely to go for a child alone than one in a pair. Bissell had said so. And second, Reid and Ally were farm kids.

  Liz stared up at her husband, mesmerized by the conviction he was trying to impart.

  Theirs wasn’t the kind of spread where heavy machinery necessitated a deep knowledge of risks, or where an unremitting stream of death exposed Reid and Ally to its reality, but it was true that both kids had had to attain a degree of self-reliance. Neither would’ve been naïve enough to go with someone who approached, let alone the two of them together. They’d been warned about strangers, even if there weren’t that many opportunities for chance meetings in Wedeskyull.

  Liz left Paul to walk into the outer room of the suite, where Bissell and the other cop were talking in low, ruminative voices.

  “Gentlemen,” Liz said. Her mouth was trembling. “Please don’t bullshit me.” She took a breath. “I’m not some frail flower.”

  But suddenly that’s exactly what she was. A woman who’d turned to other people all her life for sustenance and direction. A fake farmer, whose crops if they failed didn’t spell starvation or death, but a lack of restaurant orders filled, a few fewer pretty jars at the weekend markets.

  The cops looked up, appraising her.

  “I come from wild country, and we’re in another sort of country here. I have some idea what you’re facing. What are you doing now? What’s the next step?”

  Paul had come up behind her, placing a solid, restraining hand on her shoulder. For a moment she welcomed its feel.

  The policemen exchanged glances before Bissell spoke.

  “I think our next move will be to speak with each of you separately. Sometimes one person remembers something alone that they wouldn’t with the other present.”

  Liz felt her shoulders drop, aware that the added weight of Paul’s hand was gone. He had stepped away from her toward the door.

  Talk to them alone? That was all they had?

  She agreed to stay in the hotel room with the babysitting cop, while Paul went with Bissell. She summoned strength, and began, again, to recount the events of the last twenty-four hours, and then the days that had come before.

  “I know this might be hard, ma’am,” the cop said, once Liz’s answers had begun to trail off. “But do you think you can take me through the time when you discovered the children were missing once more? Just briefly.”

  Liz stared down at her lap.

  The cop got up and entered the adjoining bathroom. Liz watched him remove the fluted paper top from a glass. She heard the tap running, then the cop returned with a drink of water.

  Liz drained it. “I woke up, and it was late,” she began. “Eight o’clock.”

  The cop nodded.

  “At first I thought I saw the children underneath the blankets.” She indicated the couch they were sitting on, and although this one wasn’t dismantled, she saw a sofa bed, its thin mattress and ill-fitting tangle of sheets. “But when I pulled them back—the blankets—nobody was there.”

  The cop nodded again.

  “So then I checked the bathroom because the kids love water games—” Splinters seemed to sit on her tongue and she worked to speak around them.

  The cop sat silently, legs sprea
d, palms resting on his thighs.

  “But they weren’t in the bathroom either.”

  The cop tracked her gaze across the new suite.

  “So I opened up the door, the one to the room, and …” Liz stopped.

  The cop gestured her wordlessly on.

  “… I looked out by that low wall in the hall. I was afraid that they had fallen.”

  But she was remembering now, recalling exactly what she had done, and she suddenly couldn’t speak. Words shriveled in her throat. She looked down into her glass, which was empty.

  The door to the suite they were occupying swung open, and Bissell stood there. His gaze slid past Liz’s; he wouldn’t look at her.

  Liz spoke to the other cop; she spoke to no one at all. Her voice sounded stunned and airless in her ears. “I flipped the lock at the top of the door.”

  The cop frowned.

  Bissell summoned him forward, still not looking in Liz’s direction.

  Liz understood the reason for his change in demeanor, how her status had altered abruptly from victim to something much more murky.

  When she had opened the door to look out in the hall for the kids, the bar lock at the top had been secured.

  Which meant that whoever had taken the children had to have reentered the room.

  Maybe she’d begun to figure it out even earlier, when she felt pinpricks of anger pierce her ability to cleave to her husband. Or upon reflecting during the drive out on the revised roles in their marriage. And if she was right about this, then she was right about what must have happened next, the reason Bissell had gone so chilly and distant.

  Liz stood and faced the detective, forcing him to meet her stare.

  “Paul is gone, too,” she said.

  THE BOY

  Kurt Pierson sat in his car with his fists wrapped around the steering wheel as if he were trying to compress the plastic into a narrower ring. Blue, snaky veins stood out on the tops of his hands. It was his first day alone with his son, and the boy was about to wreck it. Kurt could sense a point not too far off, like the thin gray line of a horizon. He could see himself reaching it, and after that no attempt to salvage this day would work.