Winter's Child

by Margaret Maron

  A cold fury was building in Dwight’s head, but he tried to keep his tone mild. “Was she still gone when you got up this morning?”

  Cal nodded mutely.

  “Well, what did she say when she left last night?”

  Cal’s lip quivered and his eyes began to fill with tears.

  “She wasn’t there last night.”

  “Not at all? Not when you got home from school?”

  “No, sir,” he whispered, half fearfully.

  “Son, I’m not mad at you. I’m just trying to understand.”

  Tears spilled down Cal’s cheeks.

  “Hey, it’s going to be okay,” Dwight said.

  He unsnapped the seat belt and pulled the child close and let him cry out all his fear and bewilderment. Be-4 tween sobs, Cal told Dwight that he had not seen Jonna since she dropped him off at school the morning before.

  Thursday morning.

  And this was Friday.

  “I didn’t tell the truth last night because I was scared you’d get mad if I told you Mother wasn’t here. I tried to call Nana, but she wasn’t home either.”

  “You did right to call me, and you don’t ever have to be afraid to tell me anything.”

  “But Mother said—”

  He broke off.

  “Mother said what?”

  “That I wasn’t going to see you as much now that you married Miss Deborah. She said you’d probably have new babies and forget about me.”

  Once again, his brown eyes filled, and Dwight took that small face between his big hands. “Look at me, Cal.

  Have I ever lied to you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I never have. I never will. So listen up. You’re my son.

  You’ll always be my son and I’ll always love you. I could have a dozen more children and none of them would ever take your place or make me love you less. You got that?”

  The boy gave a tremulous smile. “Yessir.”

  “Good. Now tell me everything you can remember about yesterday.”

  From Cal’s viewpoint, Thursday had begun as a normal day. Jonna had already shoveled the front steps and walk by the time he got up and they both ate bacon and pecan waffles for breakfast. Afterwards, she had driven him to school since Wednesday night’s snowfall had left the sidewalks too blocked for his bike. That was the last time he had seen her.

  “Did she seem worried or upset?”

  Again Cal shook his head.

  “Okay, buddy, here’s what we’re going do,” Dwight said decisively. “First we’re going to go talk to Jimmy Radcliff’s dad. See if he knows anything. Maybe she slid off the road in the snow and forgot to charge her cell phone before she went out. Then we’re going to pack your suitcase and you’re coming home with me today.”

  Cal gave him a relieved hug, settled back in his seat, and clicked his seat belt. “Could Bandit come, too?”

  “The more the merrier,” he said and wondered how Deborah felt about house dogs. Mr. Kezzie gave two of his hounds the run of his house and he had never heard her speak against it. Their own house might be different, though.

  At the police station, Dwight left Cal happily chattering with the desk sergeant who refereed their Pop Warner games while he went into the chief’s office.

  “Jonna’s gone missing?” Paul Radcliff asked in disbelief when Dwight explained why he was back.

  Dwight shrugged. “Cal says he hasn’t seen her since she drove him to school yesterday morning. Mrs. Shay hasn’t heard from her, and her boss out at the Morrow House says she didn’t come in today the way she was supposed to.”

  “Still and all—”

  “Look, Paul. Jonna and I may have our differences, but she’s a good mother. Cal says she’s never left him alone 4 before and you know how protective she is. Overprotec-tive at times.”

  “Yeah. Jimmy said she almost didn’t sign the permission slip for him to play football. She thought it was too rough.”

  “No way would she go off and leave him alone this long.”

  “Okay. I’ll notify the highway patrol to be on the look-out for her car. A blue Honda, right?”

  “So far as I know.” He stepped to the doorway and called to Cal. “Your mom still have that blue Accord?”

  Cal nodded. He looked so anxious again that Dwight gestured for him to come join them and he laid a reassuring hand on Cal’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, son. Chief Radcliff’s going to find her for us.”

  “Sure thing,” Radcliff said. “Bet you a nickel she had a flat tire on one of those snowy back roads that didn’t get plowed yet. We’ll check ’em all out. I’ve got your dad’s cell number and I’ll call as soon as we find her.”

  Back at the house, Cal looked all around to make sure no one was watching—“Mother says to keep it secret”—then retrieved a spare house key from beneath a rock beside the front porch steps and carefully replaced it as soon as he had unlocked the door.

  The house felt cool, and when Dwight automatically checked the thermostat in the hall, he found it set at sixty-five degrees.

  “We turn it down during the day if we’re both gone,”

  Cal said. “Saves on heating oil.” He hurried past Dwight, through the kitchen, and out to the utility room to the dog’s crate. “I better let Bandit out for a few minutes.”

  More cold air swept in when he opened the door. The little dog bounded outside and immediately headed for the bushes along the back fence.

  Upstairs, Cal pulled his suitcase, a bright red rollerboard, from the closet and rummaged through his dresser for the clothes he wanted to put in it.

  “Pajamas, underwear, and socks,” said Dwight, opening drawers. “Your heavy blue sweater and maybe your sneakers, too, since we didn’t get any snow down there.”

  “I’ll go let Bandit in and pack up some food for him,”

  said Cal.

  While his son went down to take care of the dog, Dwight packed the things he thought Cal would need.

  “And don’t forget your backpack if you have home-work,” he called down the stairs.

  As he zipped shut the red bag, he remembered toothbrush and toothpaste and went to find them in the bathroom next door.

  He had no intention of snooping, but the door to Jonna’s bedroom was open and he saw an unfamiliar picture of her with Cal that must have been taken around Christmastime because they both wore red sweaters and Jonna held a sprig of red-berried holly.

  He pushed the door wider to take a closer look at Cal’s snaggletoothed grin and saw that Jonna’s bed, a chaste double bed, was neatly made with nothing out of place.

  Still the perfect housekeeper—unlike Deborah, who thought it was a waste of good time to do more than pull up the covers on a bed you were going to crawl back into that same night.

  Not that Deborah was a slob; merely that she never worried about a little disorder. Their house was for living, not a place to be kept pristine enough to show to prospective buyers at a moment’s notice.

  A second framed picture was a family snapshot of Jonna, her older sister Pamela, and their parents that had been taken when the girls were still quite young. Dwight had almost forgotten it and he looked closely at the man who had accidentally shot himself before Jonna’s second birthday.

  Cal’s grandfather. There seemed to be nothing physical of Mr. Shay in either daughter. The way Jonna looked now, she could almost have posed for this old picture of her mother. Dwight set it back on the dresser, obscurely pleased that Cal took after his side of the family.

  He looked around again. There was very little of the personal about this room beyond those two photographs.

  Everything else was tidied away into closed drawers and closets. It could be an ad for a furniture store. Again, he thought of the snapshots that cluttered the wide ledge of the headboard on the bed that he and Deborah shared. It was a jumble of brothers and nieces and nephews, of Cal and him laughing in the rain, of her mother and Mr.

  Kezzie on a long-ago summer day, of Mr. Ke
zzie and his own mother dancing at his and Deborah’s wedding less than a month ago.

  He was pulled from those thoughts by the barking dog. Stuffing Cal’s toothbrush and comb into a side pocket of the rollerboard, Dwight went downstairs.

  “Better let Bandit in,” he called. “He sounds cold.”

  Cal didn’t answer.

  “Hey, Cal, a little speed here, buddy. I promised Deborah we’d be home before bedtime.”

  He set the suitcase down in the living room beside Cal’s backpack and went to see what was keeping the boy.

  He was not in the kitchen, and Dwight followed the barks of the dog through the utility room to the side door. The instant he opened it, the terrier darted inside, shivering from the icy wind.

  “Cal?”

  Dwight stepped out into the snow-covered yard. There was no sign of his son. Was he still in the house?

  “Cal?”

  The little dog looked up at him anxiously.

  Dwight went back outside and called again, roaring Cal’s name.

  Beyond the snowcapped hedge, he saw the same un-friendly neighbor appear in the window. This time, the man opened the window without being asked and called,

  “If you’re looking for that boy, he just left with his mother.”

  C H A P T E R

  5

  If I cannot bend Heaven, I shall move Hell.

  —Virgil

  Friday afternoon, 21 January

  “How many times do I have to tell it?” Leonard Carlton asked testily, his white hair standing up in tufts where he’d plunged his fingers in exasperation.

  “As many times as it takes,” Paul Radcliff said, exercising his authority as Shaysville chief of police. “You told Major Bryant. Now tell me.”

  “There’s nothing much to tell. The kid opened the door and let the dog out. A few minutes later, he walked out, too. Mrs. Bryant came out right behind him and took his hand. He didn’t want to go at first, but she said something to him and they both came through the side gate, closed it so the dog couldn’t get out, then walked down the drive to the street pretty fast and turned the corner, and that was it till he came out.”

  “By ‘he,’ you mean Major Bryant?”

  “The kid’s dad? Yeah.”

  “Did they get in a car?”

  Jonna’s elderly neighbor gave an indifferent shrug, and it took all of Dwight’s self-control not to pick up the sour little man by the scruff of his skinny neck and shake him till he turned loose something that would lead them to Cal.

  Instead, he leaned against the doorjamb and looked through Carlton’s window, past the hedges, to the side door of Jonna’s house, where Paul, as a favor to him, had his people processing the door, the yard, the gate, and the drive where Cal and Jonna were last seen a bare two hours ago.

  Virginia’s blue sky had gone a dirty gray and the air felt as if more snow was on the way, snow that could blanket all traces of his son.

  What the hell was going on here? he wondered. Why would Jonna sneak around her own house and take Cal without saying a word to him?

  “How come you say that he didn’t want to go with her?” Radcliff asked.

  “Just at first,” said Carlton. “When she took hold of his hand, it looked to me like he was trying to pull away and go back in the house. But whatever she said, he quit arguing and it was almost like he was the one pulling her down the drive.”

  “You said you didn’t see them after they turned the corner, but could they have left in a car? Did you hear one drive off?”

  “Cars are back and forth all day. Can’t say as I’d’ve noticed. But they did turn to go in front of their house, like they were going over toward Main Street.”

  “When did you last notice Mrs. Bryant’s car here in the drive?”

  “Yesterday morning. I saw her drive off with the boy, but that’s the last time.”

  “Can you describe how she was dressed?”

  Leonard Carlton squinted his faded blue eyes as if trying to picture again what he had seen. “One of those puffy blue parkas. She had the hood up and it had black fur around the edges.” His wrinkled hand traced a circle around his face. “The sun was real bright on the snow and she had on a pair of those . . . what do you call ’em?

  Wraparound sunglasses?”

  “Was the parka dark blue or light blue?”

  “More like navy, I’d say.”

  “Pants or a skirt?”

  “Some sort of black pants and black shoes or boots. I didn’t notice which.”

  Radcliff raised an inquiring eyebrow to Dwight. “You got any more questions now?”

  Dwight shook his head and Radcliff thanked the old man for his patience. For the first time, Jonna’s neighbor thawed a little. “Hope you get up with your boy, Bryant.”

  “Sorry, Major,” said one of Radcliff’s officers when they had crossed the snow back to the other house.

  Dwight had provided them with pictures of Cal from his wallet. “We canvassed the street two blocks in both directions. No one saw your son leave. ’Course now, there were a few places where nobody answered the door. If she doesn’t turn up, we’ll come back and ask the ones we missed.”

  “We did take good close-ups of their shoe prints in the snow, though,” said a second officer. “And good prints from your wife’s hand on the doorknob, too.”

  “Ex-wife,” Dwight said automatically, and for the first time since Cal’s chilling disappearance, he thought of Deborah, who must surely assume that he and Cal were halfway home to Colleton County by now.

  Four o’clock.

  She would still be in court with her phone turned off.

  All the same, he hit his speed dial and left a message for her to call him back.

  The first officer reported that a neighbor two doors down saw Jonna come home shortly before eight-thirty as he was leaving for work yesterday morning. She had parked her blue Accord on the street in front of her house and had given him a wave as she went up the front walk.

  “We’ve alerted both the sheriff’s department and the highway patrol about the car,” Radcliff told him.

  “What about an Amber Alert?”

  His friend glanced away uneasily.

  “Christ, Paul! You know the sooner that’s out, the more effective.”

  “In a true kidnapping, yes, but Jonna is the custodial parent, Dwight. I know you’re worried, but face it, pal.

  She’s done nothing illegal.”

  Dwight balled his fists in frustration. “You don’t call sneaking my son out from under my nose illegal?”

  Radcliff just looked at him. “You know the criteria for a Code Amber. Do you honestly believe Cal’s in immi-nent danger of serious bodily injury?”

  Dwight groaned. “Okay, okay, so I’m acting like a civilian. But this is Cal, Paul. What if it was one of your kids?”

  “I’d be ready to wring Sandy’s neck,” Radcliff agreed.

  “All the same . . .”

  “All the same, something’s wrong here,” Dwight insisted. “Except for a couple of neighbors, nobody’s seen Jonna since early yesterday morning. She leaves Cal alone overnight. She misses work. She doesn’t call her mother—that’s not her normal behavior.”

  “No, probably not,” his friend agreed. “And you can punch me in the nose if you want, but you know I’ve got to ask. Have you done anything to make Jonna afraid of you? Afraid for Cal?”

  Dwight’s jaws clenched so tightly that he could barely get the word through his teeth. “No.”

  Radcliff waited for him to elaborate, then shrugged.

  “Listen, pal, I’ve seen you back down a general. You can be pretty damn intimidating when you put your mind to it.”

  Dwight let out the breath he’d been holding. “I don’t hit women and I don’t scare little kids. You do what you have to, Paul. Ask the questions you have to. But while you’re doing it, I’m going to take this house apart. There has to be something here to tell me why she’s gone off with Cal like this.�
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  They agreed to touch base if any leads turned up, then Radcliff returned to his office and Dwight reentered the house.

  He let Bandit out of the crate and began in the kitchen with the wall-hung phone and answering machine, whose blinking lights indicated messages.

  The first was time-dated 10:17 yesterday morning from Mrs. Shay, who complained in one long, nonstop sentence about her icy steps and walks and how nervous they made her and she wasn’t sure how she was going to get out for bridge that night and why didn’t Jonna call?

  That was followed at 11:48 by a woman who was unsure of where a reunion committee was meeting.

  Today’s messages started with Mrs. Shay peevishly asking why Jonna did not call and a message from Mayhew at the Morrow House.

  There were dirty dishes in the dishwasher and a sticky cereal bowl in the sink where Cal had fixed himself a bowl of cereal this morning. Except for a stray cornflake and a smear of peanut butter on the table, the kitchen was otherwise spotless, which meant that she had cleaned up after yesterday’s bacon and waffles. Nothing jumped out at him to show that Thursday had been anything other than a routine morning.

  Ditto for the dining room and living room, formal spaces with nine-foot-high cove ceilings and damask drapes that had hung in the house in which Jonna had been born, the house Mrs. Shay had to leave after her husband’s early death reduced the family’s finances. A large gilt-framed portrait of Jonna’s Shay great-grandparents hung over the mantel and a much smaller portrait of a solemn-faced husband and wife hung in the dining room. As Dwight recalled, that one had been a wedding gift from Mrs. Shay. Were they the famous Morrows? He had forgotten the details of how the couple were related to Jonna, but he did remember that when it arrived in Germany she had been quite pleased that her mother had sent it to her rather than giving it to her sister. She had hung it with artful casualness where it was sure to be noticed by visitors to their house—a subtle indication of status among the other military wives.