“So do we,” Raquel said.
As he drove up to the house, Lance spotted the dark car parked on the road out front. In this upscale suburban neighborhood of garages and long driveways, no one parked on the road. Lance had a moment of panic. It was the kidnappers. They had shown up at the house. What if they were holding Caitlin hostage? But the panic melted in an instant as he recognized the dark car for what it was, an unmarked police car. Had they posted the police detail outside to keep an eye out for kidnappers or because they wanted to keep Lance and Caitlin under surveillance? Lance guessed it was probably the latter, though no doubt, if asked, the police would say they were hoping to catch the kidnappers.
Caitlin was in the living room when Lance stepped inside. She was holding the blanket they kept in the car for Adam. She twisted it in her hands as if she were trying to wring out damp laundry. Her hair was a tangled mess, and her eyes, surrounded by puffiness, looked wild and glassy.
He went to her and embraced her. Holding her, he could feel his blood pressure drop, but she went stiff in his arms and pushed him away. She shook her head and resumed her wringing of the blanket.
“I should have seen this coming,” Caitlin said.
“What are you talking about?” Lance said. “How could anyone have seen this coming?”
“I should have seen it coming,” she repeated.
But he knew the truth. If anyone should have seen this coming, it was him. He knew Caitlin was in trouble. He had seen the evidence of it, but he had ignored the warning signs. What had he done? He went and bought her sleeping pills. His wife needed medical attention, and his method of dealing with it had been to buy her sleep aids. He couldn’t believe he was such a colossal idiot.
He saw that video of Caitlin in the convenience store, trying to carry all the energy drink cans in her arms. Just the memory of it made him shudder. She had seemed so crazy and deranged, he had barely recognized her. And now, pacing around while obsessively twisting a blanket in her hands, she did look a lot like a seriously disturbed mental patient.
What if, in her altered mental state, she had done something to Adam? Maybe she had made up the whole story of him disappearing in the Quick Chek parking lot to cover for whatever she had done earlier. The police certainly suspected she was lying about him disappearing from the parking lot.
Had she told them about the sleeping pills? he wondered. The thought had crossed his mind while he was in the police station, but he was smart enough to not say anything to implicate his wife. The more and more he and Caitlin looked like culprits, the less attention the police would devote to tracking down the real evildoer.
“I should have seen this coming,” Caitlin said again. “Stupid, stupid. Those goddamn pills.”
“What happened?” Lance asked. “I need you to tell me exactly what happened.”
She stopped twisting the blanket and turned to stare at him.
“Don’t you know?” she asked, confused. “I stopped at the convenience store, and Adam was taken out of the backseat while I was inside the store.”
It was the same story she had told the police, but he had seen the security camera footage from the parking lot. No one but Caitlin had entered the car.
“I need you to retrace your steps,” Lance said. “Think carefully about everywhere you went.”
“He was in the car when I pulled into the parking lot,” she said.
“I looked into those pills you were taking,” Lance said. “They had some pretty serious side effects. They can cause disorientation and confusion. There was a class action lawsuit.”
“If I hadn’t been taking those pills, this never would have happened,” Caitlin said. Her voice had gone quiet as she stared down at the floor.
Lance felt the tears well up in his eyes.
He had failed her. For years she had taken those things. Why hadn’t he ever looked into them before? The least he could have done was look up their side effects, but he hadn’t done that, and why? Well, he knew why—because Caitlin’s sleeping pills made everything perfect for him. Caitlin was perfect in so many ways, and her dead-to-the-world sleep was like the cherry on top. He hadn’t wanted to screw things up for himself, but all the while Caitlin was in trouble, and he had been too self-absorbed to realize it.
“I’m sorry,” he said as the tears rolled down his face.
She took a step away from him, confused. Was it his imagination, or did she look afraid?
“Caitlin?” he asked. “What happened? You need to tell me what happened. Whatever you can remember. I know the pills have made you confused, but I need you to think. Try to remember, please.”
“If I hadn’t been taking the pills, I would have seen all this coming,” Caitlin said. “It’s all my fault.”
Lance didn’t know what she was talking about. She wasn’t making sense, but that was probably because of those pills.
He reached out and placed his hands lightly on each of her shoulders. “I need you to think carefully. Are you positive Adam was in your car when you pulled into the Quick Chek parking lot?”
“Yes,” she said. “I didn’t go anywhere else.”
“You went straight to the convenience store from the house?” he asked.
“He was asleep in the car seat,” Caitlin said, but that didn’t make any sense. It was a two-minute drive to the convenience store, maybe three. Adam wouldn’t have fallen asleep that quickly.
“Are you sure?” Lance asked.
Caitlin started to nod her head, but then she froze.
“Caitlin?” Lance asked. “What is it?”
She didn’t answer.
23
A mostly orderly crowd filled the folding chairs set up on the lawn outside the Rixby plant, but Sage supposed that was what one could expect from paid attendees. Behind this area on the grass and the paved parking area beyond was where the problem was. Uninvited attendees equipped with signs and posters were there to protest Mick Hillman.
“They demote you already?” Rod Smith asked. As luck would have it, Sage had been paired with him to handle the crowd control duty.
“Just pitching in.” Sage expected some wiseass remark from Rod, but the other police officer just gave him a nod before turning to look at the beefy man dressed in a suit and wearing an earpiece who strode purposely toward them. He was a member of Hillman’s security detail.
“We need to do something about this mess,” the security guard said to Rod and Sage. The guard waved his arm in the direction of the protesters beyond the perimeter.
“It’s a free country,” Rod said.
“This is private property,” the guard said. “They’re trespassing. You can have them arrested.”
“With all due respect,” Sage said, “they’re not being disruptive, but if we try to remove them, things could get ugly. Tell your guy to give his speech, and we’ll keep things under control.”
“Yeah,” Rod agreed, leering at the guard. “If Hillman don’t start saying his pretty words soon, even the natives will get restless.” He indicated the attendees in the folding chairs as they shifted around in their seats waiting for the event to begin, which was already ten minutes behind schedule.
“If there’s any type of problem at all, you two will be looking for new jobs,” the guard said. “Mr. Hillman has some powerful friends.” He turned and walked back toward the stage, pressing his earpiece to his ear as he went.
“Mr. Hillman has some powerful friends,” Rod mimicked. “Unbelievable.”
“I assume the Rixbys must be some of them,” Sage said.
“The Rixbys,” Rod said as if the word was a euphemism for excrement.
“Aren’t they the bigwigs in this town?” Sage asked.
“They don’t even live in this town,” Rod said. “They’re too good for Culver Creek. They live in Atkins, and their potato chips taste like ass.”
“I haven’t tried them,” Sage said.
“You’re not missing anything. Trust me.”
A ripple went through the assembled crowd, and Sage looked toward the stage. There was movement there, and Sage caught a glimpse of Mick Hillman with his slicked-back hair on the steps leading up to the stage.
“Looks like showtime,” Sage said.
“Do you think someone grows up thinking, What I’d really like to be is a political blowhard?” Rod asked as Hillman dashed out onto the stage to applause and cheers, as well as some boos from the area behind the fence.
“You never wanted to be president when you were a kid?” Sage asked.
“I guess I always knew I would be a cop,” Rod said. “My dad was on the force, and his father was before him.”
“Smith,” Sage said, remembering something he had read recently. He couldn’t quite place where it had been. The Lily Esposito file was the most obvious answer, but that didn’t feel right. As Hillman extolled the virtues of some hardworking single mom he had met on the campaign trail, it came to him. It was something he had read yesterday, the police report on the death of Craig Walker. An Officer Smith had been working with Arlo when they were called to the scene of a young father who had taken a bad tumble down the basement stairs.
“Your father ever mention Craig Walker?” Sage had to raise his voice to be heard over the amplified words of Mick Hillman.
“Name doesn’t ring a bell to me,” Rod said.
“He died after falling down his stairs,” Sage said.
“Oh that,” Rod said. “Yeah, I got my ass whooped one time over that goddamn thing.”
“How?” Sage asked.
“My brother and I were horsing around near the top of the stairs, and my father exploded at me, started screaming about some guy who had broken his neck and died after getting pushed down his stairs and how would I like it if I died that way or if I had to live the rest of my life in a state of guilt for causing my brother’s death. My father could be dramatic at times, and unreasonable.”
“Yeah, except no one pushed that guy down the stairs. He just fell,” Sage said.
“Really?” Rod said. “Why did I always think the guy had been pushed?”
“I don’t know,” Sage said.
Hillman’s speech clocked in at twenty-eight minutes, but to Sage it felt interminable. There were a few times his words and empty promises were drowned out by the small but orderly group of protestors, but in general, things went smoothly and Sage figured he and Rod probably wouldn’t be collecting unemployment anytime soon.
24
Caitlin looked down at the blanket in her hands. She remembered the dizzying moment when she had come out of the police station and sat down in her car, how for a second she looked into the rearview mirror and saw Adam asleep in the backseat. Of course, what she had seen was only his blanket draped over the empty car seat.
What if that was all she had been seeing on her drive back from Pennsylvania? No, she had seen him in the backseat. She had definitely seen him, hadn’t she? She thought of Lance prattling on and on about Pacifcleon’s side effects. No, she wasn’t having hallucinations. She wasn’t crazy.
She tried to play back what had happened in her mind, but her head was a jumbled mess and it was hard to focus on her memory. Mental confusion was a Pacifcleon side effect according to Lance, but she had a feeling her own mushy mind was a direct result of her child having been kidnapped.
She shut her eyes and tried to focus her thoughts. What she remembered was stepping out of the little drug store. Her Pacifcleon search had proved fruitless, and it had left her feeling frantic and desperate, but the first thing she had done when she got to the car was check on Adam, and not in the rearview mirror, either. She had gone straight to the back door. A memory of patting his little head, of pulling the blanket up to his chin, came back to her. But had that really happened? As she recalled events, she didn’t think she had opened the back door. She hadn’t wanted to wake him. Still, she had seen him through the back window. She wouldn’t have made the mistake she made looking in the rearview mirror. In her head, she saw Adam sound asleep in his car seat.
“He was there,” Caitlin said aloud, her voice barely more than a whisper. She felt like speaking the words would make it real, but she heard the uncertainty in her tone.
“What?” Lance asked.
Caitlin waved away his question.
Adam asked for ice cream. That proved he had been there. No, wait, he had asked for ice cream before they got to the pharmacy. He had been sound asleep the whole ride home. He hadn’t said a word.
That had been strange, hadn’t it? It was a long ride, and Adam barely napped anymore. Maybe if he had a cold or the flu or something, but despite what Caitlin had told Adam’s teacher, her son was perfectly healthy. He might have dozed off for a couple of minutes here and there, but there was no way he would have been so sound asleep that he wouldn’t have made a single noise on a ride that lasted nearly an hour and a half.
“No,” Caitlin said as she realized her mistake. Adam hadn’t gone missing here in New Jersey like she told the police. He had been kidnapped out in Pennsylvania, that wretched, awful Culver Creek.
“No, what?” Lance stared at her as if she was a lunatic, and she had to admit she was feeling a bit crazed right then.
She needed to call the police. She had to tell them to search for Adam out in Pennsylvania. But wait, was she sure of this? That memory of seeing Adam sleeping in the backseat was so real. She closed her eyes and saw him through the window resting peacefully, but even as she stared at him, the scene shifted. His shirt changed colors, then the blanket was draped over the whole seat so that she couldn’t see his face. What had she actually seen? She realized she had no idea.
What would she tell the police? If she told them she thought Adam might have been kidnapped while she was out in Pennsylvania, they were going to want to know why she hadn’t told them about being all the way out there. They would ask her how she could have driven the whole way back without realizing Adam was not in the backseat. She would have to tell them the truth, that she was a terrible mother—the worst.
She felt in her jeans’ back pocket for her phone, but it wasn’t there. It was upstairs plugged into the charger beside the bed. That was the first thing she had done when she came home. It was just as well, she couldn’t make the call with Lance standing here. The police weren’t going to understand why she hadn’t told them about driving to Culver Creek, but Lance would flip out for sure.
“I have to get my phone,” she told him, and ran up the stairs.
“Caitlin, what’s going on?” Lance called after her. “Talk to me!”
She unplugged her phone from the charger and stood there staring at the bed. How stupid and selfish she had been. If she hadn’t run away from her gift, Adam would be here with her right now. She would have had a dream about him being kidnapped, and she could have done everything in her power to make sure it didn’t happen. But no, she had spent her entire adulthood running away from the inconvenience of a few bad dreams, and now she was paying the price.
What’s worse was she had been telling Adam to ignore his dreams, teaching him they weren’t real. What if he had a dream that warned him? Maybe he could have kept himself safe if Caitlin hadn’t steered him in the wrong direction.
But he did have a dream, didn’t he? Caitlin recalled listening with horror as Adam described a dream that seemed so much like the nightmare she had all those years ago. She had mistaken it for a repeat of her dream, but what if that wasn’t what it was at all? Something else bubbled up from her jumbled thoughts. Adam asking for ice cream as they drove through Culver Creek. She hadn’t understood how he could have known what the ice cream parlor was, but what if he recognized it from his dream?
She ran out the bedroom door and straight into Lance coming down the hallway. He attempted to hug her again, but she pushed him away. Couldn’t he see she didn’t have time for that?
She ran into Adam’s room. The other day he had been drawing a picture of one of his nightmares. There might be a clu
e there. There might be other drawings. She flipped through a stack of papers on his little desk, discarding rockets, dinosaurs and octopi. Where was the nightmare drawing? There was another stack of papers on the floor, and she grabbed it and began to flip through it. The subjects were more realistic, and it was possible these were drawings based on his dreams.
“What are you doing?” Lance asked. “Maybe you should lie down for a few minutes.”
“Our son is missing, and you want me to lie down?” she asked, as she shuffled frantically through the papers looking for vital clues.
“Well, it might make a little more sense than whatever the hell this is,” he said, waving a hand at her and the room that now was in a serious state of disarray, crayon-colored pieces of paper littering the floor.
“Adam had a dream about this,” Caitlin said. “He knew this was going to happen!”
Her voice had reached a frantic pitch. She still hadn’t found the paper she was looking for, but she spotted Adam’s school bag hung on his closet door and grabbed it, dumping the contents on the ground.
“Caitlin, please,” Lance said.
“He wanted ice cream,” Caitlin said, jabbing a finger in Lance’s direction. “He recognized the ice cream place.”
Lance shook his head because, of course, he didn’t understand, but she didn’t have time to explain things to him. She moved papers around on the floor until at last she found it. She recognized the familiar scene right away: the creek, the fallen body, the spurting blood.
Of course, she had assumed the injured child was Lily Esposito, but what if it wasn’t at all? What if it was some new victim? What if the same man who had killed Lily was about to kill again? Then a sickening realization hit Caitlin. Her son had a dream about a child being killed in a vicious murder in Culver Creek, and now her son had been kidnapped near that same town. What if the child he had dreamed about was himself? Caitlin fell to her knees.
This was all her fault. She had silenced her dreams, and she had told Adam to ignore his own. She let out a yell that sounded like it came from an injured animal. Lance came over to her and rested a hand on her shoulder.
Up the Creek Page 15