99 Souls

  A large analog clock with a neon ring around it hung high on the wall behind the bar. Eleven-fifty-seven AM. They hadn’t eaten all day.

  Jim, with his sharpening criminal instincts, had suggested a booth near the back, close to the restrooms. It gave them a good view of the front door and anyone who came in. He had also scouted the hallway for a fire exit and the restrooms themselves for open windows. There was no door they could escape out of down this hallway, but the window in the men’s room might do in a pinch.

  In the non-descript sweatshirt and jeans, Sarah felt invisible and safe. Jim leaned forward, elbows on the Formica tabletop, hands clasped, and sighed. Although he didn’t say anything, Sarah knew what he was thinking. Yes, I can believe they wouldn’t give it to you because of policy.

  Because how was the AMC’s manager supposed to know her son was really missing? Wouldn’t that be a good story to use if wanted to see the tapes? Would she want him giving their tapes to anyone who asked for them?

  Of course she wouldn’t. But her son was missing. And, okay, in some other situation, when she could be impartial, she’d probably likewise take the theater’s side. However, this wasn’t some other situation, and she couldn’t be impartial, and the next clue she needed was right there on those tapes. She was sure of it. She’d followed the trail of breadcrumbs and this is where it had led her, so it had to be there.

  A waitress brought them two glasses of water and asked what they’d like to eat. Jim ordered a hamburger with a side of fries. Sarah, who couldn’t concentrate on the menu in front of her, ordered a salad, since all diners have salads.

  “That’s not enough food. You need to eat something more substantial,” Jim said.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Bring a side of fries for her, also,” he told the waitress, anyway, “and two Cokes, please.”

  “Okie-dokey.” She took the menus and walked away.

  Sarah’s mind spun out of control. When she was focused on the babysitter, and then the movie theater, she was able to hold onto hope. They had a course to follow. Now, unless they could get that videotape, they had nothing.

  Brandon had been missing for fourteen hours—no, fifteen hours. Was he all right? Was he even still alive? Intuition told her he was, but maybe that was wishful thinking. These questions repeated over and over in her head until Jim said, “Maybe we should turn ourselves in.”

  “What?”

  “The manager at the theater said they could only release the footage to the police, right? So maybe it’s time we went to them for help.”

  Sarah tapped the tips of her fingers together. She wasn’t about to go to the police, but she needed a plan of some sort.

  Policy! For the first time in hours, her subconscious spoke up: The best way out is always through. Robert Frost. And she was relieved that this time she could remember where the quote had come from.

  At first, though, she wasn’t sure how it applied to her current dilemma. Then she had an idea: “We could steal it.”

  “Steal what?”

  “The tape.”

  “Sarah, how many laws are we going to break?” Jim asked, his voice a little too loud. He caught himself and looked around. None of the other diners seemed to have noticed. Still, he whispered the rest of his thought. “If we keep this up, it won’t matter that you’re innocent; we’ll go to jail for a host of other things.”

  “But we might get Brandon back. We have to do something.”

  “We don’t even know if you’ll find anything on the tape. What do we do if we steal the tape and there’s nothing there?”

  “There’s something there.”

  “Why?”

  “There has to be something there.”

  “Why?”

  “I can feel it.”

  “That’s not an answer! Why do you think there’s something there?”

  “Because there’s nowhere else to look!” Sarah fired back. There it was. She needed to see those tapes not only because she’d followed the trail of breadcrumbs and this was where they had led her, but because there was no new breadcrumb trail to start.

  The waitress returned with the Cokes. “Here ya go. I’ll be back in a jiffy with your order.” She flashed a quick smile and walked away, oblivious to the drama unfolding at their table.

  Chapter 27

  THE OLD WOMAN TREVOR HAD KNOCKED to the ground was still conscious, but wouldn’t be quick to her feet. She moaned softly, massaging the side of her head. Her eyes were half open, her vision blurry.

  Sprawled out, she looked like a victim of some horrible crime, just this side of death. The crimson house dress spread out around her like a pool of blood.

  Trevor couldn’t see much of the house from where he stood, but he knew Brandon was inside somewhere. He could feel it. He stepped over the woman and headed for the living room. It was the first logical place to look. His eyes scanned the space. Brandon wasn’t there, but the plate of cookies on the couch suggested he had been. He followed the next doorway into the kitchen.

  IT WAS A TIGHT FIT, but Brandon had managed to squeeze himself into the cupboard underneath the sink. He wrapped his arms around his knees, the sink drain snaking between his knees and his chest, and stayed as quiet as he could.

  He heard footfalls as someone came into the kitchen. He wished it was the woman who had given him the cookies, but knew it wasn’t. It was the bad man. That scary horrible man who had brought him that doll and had killed so many.

  “Son,” the bad man said loudly.

  Brandon shivered.

  “I know you don’t understand what’s happening, but trust me when I say it’s for your own good to come back.”

  Brandon remained silent.

  “I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.”

  No, you’re not going to hurt me. You’re going to kill me.

  After a moment, he heard the bad man walk out of the kitchen.

  Brandon knew his only two options were to run or stay put.

  Don’t be a chicken. That’s what some of the boys in his class would have said. In other words: run. However, that was all schoolyard chatter. Some of those same boys would be frozen with fear had they been in his situation right now.

  TREVOR DID AN INITIAL SWEEP of the ground floor. Living room, kitchen, dining room, sitting room, bathroom. By the time he was finished, he’d made his way back to where Felicia lay.

  She was trembling, pushing herself up into a seated position. She propped her back against the open front door. “Who are you?” she whispered.

  Without explanation, he grabbed her by the throat and slammed her head to the ground with enough force to crack her skull. Then he stared at her lifeless body, watching blood flow from the wound.

  AS BRANDON SAT UNDERNEATH the sink, he imagined the bad man’s progress through the house. Searching the rooms, opening closets, and maybe these cabinets on a later pass when he didn’t find anything. If he stayed where he was, the bad man would eventually discover him.

  He peeked through the thin crack between the door and the pantry, but could only see the white tile floor and a sliver of the dining room. He strained to listen. Eventually he heard muffled voices, a thud...

  Chapter 28

  LES ARMSTRONG STOOD AT HER desk with Sarah’s cell phone pressed to her ear.

  “Hello?” said the voice on the other end. A young voice. A child’s voice.

  “Hello,” she responded, surprised.

  “Is my mom there?”

  “Are you Brandon?”

  “I got away from the bad man. I want my mom. Is she there?”

  “Um, not right now. But we’re looking for you. Where are—”

  A click on the other end let her know the call had suddenly been cut off.

  The arm she was using to hold the phone slowly dropped to her side.

  Mark saw shock spread across Les’s doll-perfect face. “You’re shittin’ me,” he said.

  “That was Brandon.”

  “You sur
e?”

  “Yes. Mark, Sarah’s not the one we should be after.”

  “Why did she run, then? And what about that diary?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she was scared. But no matter how frustrated she is being a single mom, she didn’t kill her son.”

  “You got a number?”

  She found her way to the list of recent calls. “I do. Let me see if I can get an address.”

  While she worked her magic on the computer, the bullpen buzzed with activity and bright sunlight streamed in from the many windows. “Got it.”

  “All right, let’s get this boy back.” Mark stood up, grabbing his wrinkled jacked off the back of his chair.

  “What about the news broadcast?” Les looked at the clock on her computer. Nine minutes past noon. “They’re already live. We can’t have that story going on the way it is.”

  “Give me the address. I’ll get a black-and-white over there while you call Tom Trout.”

  Les scribbled out the address on a notepad and passed it to him. Then she called WSB and asked for Tom Lawrence.

  “Sorry, hun,” said the woman on the other end. “They’re on the air. Nothing I can do for you.”

  “My name is Les Armstrong. I’m a detective with the Atlanta Police Department. Please let him know not to run the story about Ms. Winslow until he calls me back.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Thank you. He’s got my number.” Les hung up.

  “Black-and-white’s on its way,” Mark said. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 29

  AFTER THE WAITRESS LEFT, Sarah apologized for her outburst. Breaking into the theater wasn’t a good idea, she admitted. Though neither was going to the police. There had to be another option.

  She sipped her Coke. Maybe it was guilt that pushed her thoughts from the theater to that long ago night when Brandon was conceived, or maybe it was the stress of knowing she might never see her son again. Whatever it was that tugged at the recesses of her memory, she no longer felt she could keep the events of that evening to herself.

  After a long silence, she said, “There’s something I haven’t told you. Actually, it’s something I haven’t told anyone. I don’t see how it could matter, but at this point, well...” She sighed, her fingers knotted together on the table in front of her.

  Jim placed one hand on top of hers and squeezed. “Go ahead.”

  And after another long silence, she began her story. She was worried about what Jim would think of her once he knew the secret she was about to reveal. She didn’t have the heart, or the will, to go straight to the point. Of course, understanding the what would be easy. Maybe if he had all of the details, he would also understand the why.

  Doling out the words one little bit at a time, eyes on the table, Sarah spoke of a small apartment in Marietta near the Chattahoochee River. It was the first place she and Matthew had lived together as husband and wife. It was plain, drab, and dreary, with gray carpets, white walls, and a less-than-inspirational view of the parking lot from their balcony.

  But Sarah had loved it, because they were together.

  Many nights after Matthew got home from his nebulous job at IBM and Sarah from school, they would sit on their old leather couch and dream about their future. They dreamed of their own home. “With lots of color,” Sarah always made sure to say. They dreamed of exotic vacations. They dreamed of sailing boats in summer and skiing in winter. But more than anything, they dreamed of having a child.

  When Matthew first broached the idea, they laughed it off as something they would do “one day.” It seemed almost as infeasible as a summer in France, which was also on their “one day” list. However, the seed had been planted, and this dream was the one they returned to more often than any other.

  Eventually, they discussed the challenges of pursuing that dream. Their lives would change dramatically and many of their other dreams would have to be shelved, some forever. They would no longer be newlyweds. They would be parents.

  When Matthew got another nebulous job at Hewlett-Packard, one with a fifteen percent pay increase, they decided to stop dreaming. They were going to have a child.

  They made love almost every day—sometimes twice a day—for two months. When Sarah didn’t conceive, she scoured fertility books for tips to better their odds. She took her temperature day and night and monitored her ovulation cycle. Still, nothing grew.

  The struggle to conceive began to strain their relationship in subtle ways. Matthew started staying at work longer and began to snap at her over little things, like an empty plate left on the table. They eventually went to see a fertility doctor. The cause, it turned out, lay in Matthew’s low sperm count.

  “Having a child isn’t out of the question,” the doctor told them. “But it won’t be easy if you want to do it naturally.” He then explained the benefits of in vitro fertilization. Matthew would still be the father, but it wouldn’t be cheap, insurance wouldn’t pay for it, and there was no guarantee that it would work.

  On the same couch, in the same gray apartment, where they had dreamed of exotic vacations and had decided on a baby instead, they considered their options. They might be able to borrow the money from friends and family. Matthew could sell a kidney, he joked. In the end, they decided to stick with the original plan—all natural. As long as that option was still on the table, they would not give up on it.

  But as more months passed, Matthew grew ever more distant. He blamed himself. He apologized for not being the man Sarah thought she had married. After enough time, the blow to his masculinity left him increasingly impotent.

  Desperate to save their marriage, Sarah called her friends and family to see if she could raise the money for the procedure. She couldn’t, and her credit wasn’t good enough for a loan from the bank, but doing nothing wasn’t an option, either.

  So one of the many nights Matthew called to say he would be working late, Sarah took a cab to a Midtown club called Blue that drew an affluent crowd. During the twenty-three-minute drive, Sarah fingered her wedding ring. She took it off, put it back on, off and back on again, twisted it around her finger, palmed it, put it in her purse, took it out, held it, felt all the weight of it and everything it represented, and put it back in her purse. She was saving her marriage, she told herself.

  At Blue, she ordered two martinis and drank them fast. She stayed by the bar along the east wall until both drinks were finished. A handful of men approached her, but she wasn’t ready to talk to anyone yet, so she waved them off.

  The bar, one of four in the club, was all mahogany and polished chrome. Bartenders poured top-notch drinks with the best-of-the-best liquors. Behind them, bubbles floated up through aqua glass walls.

  After the second drink and several deep breaths, she’d calmed her nerves enough to see where the night might lead. She traded the safety of the bar for the dance floor. Overhead, tentacles of neon stretched across the ceiling and strobes punctuated the beats of nineties dance remixes.

  Twenty minutes later, feet sore, she decided she was better off at the bar and returned for another martini. This was a stupid idea, she thought. Sitting slumped on a stool, she stared at the twisted reflection of herself in the opaque liquor bottles behind the bar. Stupid, stupid idea.

  She’d picked Blue, despite the expensive cab ride, because, if she was going to have an affair, she planned to do so with a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer. Somebody smart. And he had to be handsome. He had to have the genetics to give her the child both she and Matthew dreamed of having.

  So it wasn’t really an affair, was it? She was going to have sex with somebody to save her marriage. Maybe the pregnancy wouldn’t take the first time, but she was hopeful—all signs told her she was at the peak of her ovulation cycle.

  She would tell Matthew it was his. The tension between them would fade away. They could sit on the couch and dream again and one day, she told herself, even she would no longer remember he wasn’t the father.

  Minutes melt
ed together until she was feeling dizzy, foolish, and defeated. She could have left with over a dozen guys by now, but that one had a potbelly, that one had a toupée, the one over there was wearing some kind of awful gold chain, and that one was too short. She spun around on her stool—ready to go home, take a hot bath, forget about her misguided trip altogether—and found herself facing a man who might just make for a good donor.

  When she tried to describe him to Jim, she found pulling details of his appearance to her conscious mind about as easy as willing the sun to rise. Maybe it was because of the drinks she’d had at the bar or the drinks she’d had after their encounter. Maybe it was because she’d wanted to forget. Properly motivated, the mind has a way of burying memories so deep they disappear completely. However, she felt as if there was something more to it than that, as if she was fighting some sort of memory block. Had the man she’d slept with done something to her? Had he not wanted her to remember, either? It sounded crazy—impossible—but considering what she’d seen tonight, she couldn’t rule it out.

  “He was tall,” she said, as she struggled to unearth the fragmented pieces that would make up his description. “Dark hair...”

  Think. What did he look like? You can do it.

  “A sharp nose.”

  What else? Picture his face.

  She could see the jaw line, the ear, the eyebrows, but not the whole thing at once. When she tried to picture his face from a distance, it was as if everything was fuzzy. “Strong features.”

  What color were his eyes?

  That seemed to be the hardest detail of all to remember. “Blue eyes.”

  Like a cat’s eyes. Like a cat’s eyes. But not blue like a cat’s. Something else. Something like they almost seemed to glow. Something like the man...

  Then, all at once, the memory block crumbled and she could picture him clearly. The shock of what she saw in her mind’s eye registered on her face.