A Measure of Blood (30 page)

Where he is, it's called the Excellent Motel. He makes his way through the brochures. Free WiFi. Cable television. That's good. Another brochure tells him attractions are: nearby Raystown Lake, also ten miles to Snyders Run Boat Launch, fifteen miles to Seven Points Marina. Things to do are: Lincoln Caverns, Penn's Cave, the “Thousand Steps” walk, IMBA Mountain Biking.

The burrito has only managed to make him want more food. He begins on the crackers, wishing he had jelly or butter. Then he gets an idea. He pinches bunches of cereal, this time bits of Special K, and puts the flakes into a drinking cup. Then adds milk. The milk isn't cold at all. He uses his fingers to eat the cereal. Three cupfuls.

The fact that he could eat and use the toilet and wash his hands without being punished makes him more comfortable. He wonders what else he can explore. What's outside the motel?

He tiptoes out to the draperied windows and looks through the crack. It's deep nighttime, but there are lights in the parking lot, and what looks like woods in the distance. He can't see the red car anywhere, only a black truck.

He hears a sound behind him, like a hum.

“How long have you been awake?” the man asks.

IT'S MIDNIGHT. CHRISTIE
DROPS
into bed next to Marina who is reading. “I thought you'd be sleeping.”

“I was up all night and then I napped and now my sleep schedule is as screwed up as yours. It was worth it, though.”

“Colleen told me you were dead on, profiling the guy.” There are dark patches under his eyes. He fumbles absently with the covers. “I hope I can sleep a little. I've been calling everyone I know about the searches on the roads. But … this is a big country, lots of roads.”

“Or he could be holed up.”

“Yeah. The mother didn't know of any friends.”

“I would have guessed that. No friends. The guy isn't close to anyone. Childish to childlike. Connects with his mother, but that's about it. Not exactly autistic but needs a solo occupation. A golfer, not a tennis player. That is, competitive, but needs to be alone.”

“Not bad. Makes sense of the computer stuff in his life. I had Potocki at Pitt for a while today, trying to trace his computer activity from when he worked in the labs, but it seems he might have logged on with another name. Tomorrow they're going to try to use Spyware to get at something.” He kisses her. “I'm going to put the covers over my head so long as you're reading.”

“I'll turn out the light.”

She does, but there's a full moon and the room still holds a good deal of light, the kind of night that thwarts sleep even when you aren't working an abduction case.

“You could do this job if I ever buy the big one.”

Not that. It isn't a bargain like that.

He continues, “Tell me, if he needs to be alone, why did he assault the mother of the kid? And what does he want with the boy?”

Marina considers this question, not for the first time. “Maybe he also hates being alone.”

“Okay. And what next? Give me an answer.”

“I don't know. But I'm glad you said I could do this job …” She winces and backs off from saying anything about the academy. Why risk an argument at this time of night, with him so depleted?

“You can do just about anything. Doesn't mean you should. It can be lousy.”

“But useful.”

“Sometimes useful. I sure don't feel useful right now.”

COLLEEN AND POTOCKI
both wake up after midnight, near one o'clock. They are at her place. “Damn,” she says when she realizes he's awake, too. “That's what we get for going to bed early.”

“They say you can't catch up, but I don't believe it. Let's go back to sleep.”

“Well, food would make us drowsy again.”

“Let's eat something then,” he says. “What's in the larder?”

“Frozen tortellini. Or eggs, sausage, toast.”

“Breakfast is my vote. Let's just hope it doesn't tell our brains we need to drive to Headquarters.”

“Move slowly. Try to stay sleepy,” she whispers.

In a moment she starts four sausage patties cooking, attempting to take her own advice, moving slowly, as if in a dream. She places bread in the toaster and cracks four eggs.

Potocki flicks on her TV. He finds a black-and-white movie where everyone is shooting everyone. Eventually she brings food to him. They eat on trays in front of the TV.

Potocki is in boxers and a T-shirt. His hair is sticking up. His eyes are hooded with fatigue. He's so … real. And he loves her. She's never been this close to anyone.

She slips down beside him, then drops to one knee. “Marry me,” she says.

“Don't joke.”

“I'm not joking.”

MATT IS WATCHING
an old black-and-white movie. The man—he doesn't know what to call him—holds on to the remote control, but he has promised to find something else when the movie ends. He isn't exactly watching the film himself; instead he's working on his computer. “You like that movie?” he asks.

“It's okay.” After a while Matt turns to him and asks, “What are you looking up on the computer?”

“Maps and maps and maps.”

“Because we're going to Puerto Rico?”

“In time. Yes. I think so. We'll see.”

“I like it to have a TV.”

“I realize that. I'll get you any of that kind of thing. So long as you're good.” The man is calmer now, not shaking so much.

“I couldn't see the red car anywhere.”

“We don't have it.”

The truck is the only vehicle out there. It must be the truck from that place in the woods. “I never heard of this town. They have camping and biking and things. Are we going to do that?”

The man's eyes narrow. “You like that?”

“It's … okay.” A sinking feeling goes through Matt. He did go camping with his mother. She wanted him to like it and he didn't. “I like video games the most.”

“Then I'll buy you some of those. In time. In time. Everything in time.”

For a while they both watch the movie.

“For my birthday maybe.”

“When is that?”

“It's next month. The twenty-sixth.”

“You'll be nine!”

“No, eight.”

“Nine.”

Matt frowns. He forgets to watch the movie. He knows how old he is.

“What … what makes you think eight?”

“School. And it's written down. I'm in third grade.”

“There can be mistakes. Like, what year were you born is how you figure it.”

“I know. It was 2004.”

“That's the mistake.” The man is getting angry.

But Matt saw it on papers his mother filled out. He presses himself to watch the movie. The man doesn't know anything important. Plus he's still hiding the phone. Plus he did something with the red car. Matt gets up abruptly to go the bathroom. He doesn't want to cry. He should run, but … they're in the middle of nowhere and it's black night.

He comes out of the bathroom after a few minutes. “My mother had cremation today. I was supposed to be there.”

The man hangs his head. A silence goes by. He doesn't try to say she's alive anyway. He's shaking again.

Matt says, “If you take me back, you could just let me off.”

“No. You don't understand at all.” The man goes to the window and just stares out of a crack in the drapes for a long time.

“Can I use your computer now?”

“Okay.”

Are people looking for them? On the computer are maps and maps. “I know how to do this,” Matt says. “Maps. I'm good at it. I can even do a city, like how to find a building.”

The man—is he Nate or something else?—sways, then sits.

Matt studies the map. He tries to see where they are. With two fingers he types in his address in Pittsburgh. The man comes over and stands behind him. “We're not going back.”

“I saw that. We're going … south.”

“More or less.”

Matt studies the screen. He types in
Peabody Institute, Baltimore
.

“What's that?”

“Just a place.” He presses directions and search, trying to see how far away it is.

“No. Come on. What is it?”

“That's where the man works who said he was my father. On the email. You said it was you. Ziad Zacour. Are we going there?”

The man is very angry now. “I'm not that person.”

“I don't know what to call you.”

“You call me
father
. That's enough with the computer.” He grabs his laptop and jerks it away from Matt.

For a long time they watch TV. They even laugh at some of the antics on screen in a new movie.

Matt closes his eyes and pretends to sleep when he loses interest in the movie. He does not want another pill. He pretends so hard he falls asleep a little, but every time something happens in the room, he wakes again. Still he keeps his eyes closed. He knows to let his arm hang limp. He fooled his mother every time with pretend sleep. Through slitted eyes, Matt watches the man go to the computer, where he clicks and clicks, searching, studying something. Then he paces to the window, seemingly disturbed. Matt almost falls asleep a hundred times and brings himself awake every time, watching.

Sunday

CHRISTIE IS UP AT FIVE,
having surprised himself that he slept at all. But he feels invigorated. Only … there is little he can do now but wait or call people.

The morning papers aren't here yet. He releases the automatic timer for coffee and presses the manual
start
button.

He knows what Marina was trying to say last night, but he doesn't want to tangle in that argument right now. Yes, she is good at searching, figuring, yes, she helped them yesterday … but their lives, the kids, the total disruption. No, he can't tangle with that today.

There's hardly a cup of coffee in the pot yet, but he pulls the pot out and pours what there is into a mug.

He sent Denman and Hurwitz to watch the State College house along with the police from up there.

What else, what else?

He sips the too-hot coffee.

A part of him wants to take off for Akron, to meet the man lying in a nursing home, but he can't indulge his own life in the midst of this crisis.

He will go to church today, early mass. Sometimes he can find himself there.

He has still not told Marina the old man has been found. His father will be dead by the time Christie gets there, and it's going to turn out as if he never found him at all. Too late is too late.

He shivers, takes up the coffee, gulps the rest of it.

Suddenly—without warning—he's crying quietly.

THE KID SLEEPS
WELL,
that's good. Nadal carries his few bags of things—a grocery bag with some crackers left, and his backpack with computer, the wool blanket—to the truck. He puts those things on the passenger seat. Then he goes back in, making sure he has left nothing. He pokes his head outdoors and seeing no one, goes back in for the boy and lifts him. Once more he's aware of how heavy the kid is; who could have thought a boy could be so hard to carry? At first, having lifted him like a baby from the bed farthest from the door, Nadal lurches toward the door, but he can't keep his balance and stops to put his son down on the bed near the door.

He catches his breath. The boy doesn't move. Good. Next Nadal tries the fireman's carry and that works better to distribute the weight as he makes it to the car. It's hard from this position to get the boy down on the floor of the truck's cab, and he's almost tempted to put him in the passenger seat, but he doesn't. He looks about, almost circling to be sure no one sees him. Then, moving awkwardly, he manages to get Matt down on the floor. The boy stirs, moans, and curls up in the fetal position. Nadal stretches for the wool blanket and covers him, watching to see that he doesn't wake. He doesn't. Okay. Done.

Nadal never knew anything about trucks, but this one is a lucky find, with this space behind the driver's seat. Maybe that's what the motel owner meant when he said he wanted a truck like this.

The way he figures it, he probably has a week before the truck is reported missing, because the cabin is a weekend place and if Stanton Adams didn't come to the cabin yesterday, Saturday, he probably won't come until next weekend—if that.

Nadal gets in and starts driving. It's Sunday morning and very early and so almost nobody is out and about. His only goal is making his way via rural roads toward 95 and then paralleling 95 on his way south.

Around seven o'clock in the morning he realizes he needs food.

For a long time there is nothing indicating a restaurant, but after eight o'clock he sees a sign for a Burger King in a nearby town. Drive-thru is the best bet.

The kid still sleeps.

Eight years old, he says. Third grade. A huge canyon of doubt opens up.

If he's eight, if there is this person with a strange name who wrote the email … what was that name the boy used? And the places he was looking up? Nadal's heart is making a clatter. He can't bear the thoughts that are coming to him. The boy is his. It's clear. They look alike. They are alike. He won't let himself doubt it now.

Up ahead is the Burger King. He turns to see his son is not moving from the curled position. He will be hungry eventually. So at the window Nadal orders the breakfast bowl and three breakfast sandwiches, a large coffee, and a large milk. This will keep them going until suppertime, probably.

He pays cash and then picks up a huge bag at the second window. “Have a good day,” says a teenage boy.

The smells of fat and salt and meat fill the truck as Nadal forces himself out on the road again until he sees, a full forty minutes later, a place to pull over.

He grabs at the bag. It rattles. The kid sits up, rubbing his eyes.

WHEN IT WAS
STILL DARK NIGHT IN THE HOTEL ROOM,
after they had watched TV and Matt could hear the man moving around in the night, he tried to make plans while pretending to sleep.

With his eyes closed, trying to calm himself, he called up his mother's voice, the way she always told him to slow down and think and figure things out.

More than once she sat him down and told him,
If a man should ever capture you and try to make you do things, kick, run. Do you understand?

What she meant was about body parts.

Run, yes, he needs to run, but where can he run that the man can't run after him or run the truck after him. When he sits up at the smell of food, there is nothing but a field on the one side and some woods on the other side.

“Where are we?”

“On the way to someplace good.”

“There are no buildings around.”

“Farmlands. Are you hungry? See what you like. I got milk for you.”

He starts to feel bad for the man, to like him a little. He digs into the bag and pulls out a sandwich and milk.

It's awkward trying to find a sitting position in back on the floor. There's no place for his knees. “Can I sit up front?”

“I have stuff on the seat.”

“I can move it. I'll use the seat belt.”

“Not yet.”

“Can I sit up front sometime?”

“Sometime.”

Matt finishes the sandwich in silence. It's good, the kind of thing his mother fretted he shouldn't like, the kind of thing his new parents wouldn't let him eat at all. But good. It's as if the man can hear him thinking.

The man says, “Those people you were living with. Tell me about them.”

“They were supposed to adopt me.”

“They were teachers, right?”

“Yes.”

“I don't like teachers. They weren't taking care of you. They kept you out at night.”

“I was in a play.”

“I don't care. It wasn't right.”

“Are we allowed to have the truck?”

“Yep.”

“I thought it belonged to the guy with the cabin?”

“I wrote him a note.”

Will the police be looking for the truck? “Can we stay in a motel again? With a TV and Wi-Fi?”

“Sure.”

“How far will we go today?”

“Far.”

“What if we have to use the bathroom?”

“Side of the road.”

“I have to sit up front because it hurts my body back here.” Matt reaches forward and starts to move things off the passenger seat.

“No! I said no!” On the last word, the man slams Matt in the head and Matt is crying before he knows it.

“You went too far. You understand? You went too far.”

Matt slinks down to his position lying in the back of the cab. Soon they are moving again. Outside he sees trees and sky and every once in a while he hears the sound of another motor. He can't imagine yelling in time to alert some other driver passing, or if he did, the other driver wanting to get involved.

AT HEADQUARTERS CHRISTIE,
Dolan, Colleen, and Potocki gather behind Colleen's computer. It's Sunday morning at eleven. Colleen has engineered another Skype session with Nadal's mother, Mala Brown. She's in silhouette at first because there's a glass door to a patio behind her, but when they ask her to move, she is totally cooperative. Soon there is a wall with a TV behind her and her face is more visible.

Christie asks Colleen to begin the questioning.

“Have you heard from your son, anything at all?

“No.”

“Even a hang-up phone call?”

“No, nothing.”

“And you knew nothing of Maggie Brown?”

“Nothing. My son said many people have our name.”

The police have run the fingerprints found at Nadal's apartment and at Mala Brown's home in State College. “Mrs. Brown. The news is not good. We have evidence that your son knew this woman or thought he did. And that he believed her son was his. And that he now has this boy. This is a very serious case.”

Mala Brown claps her hands to her mouth. She is shaking her head. “I don't know about this.” She does not appear to be lying.

“We will of course be checking student records from all his schools, but you can be very helpful in telling us everything you can about his life. Small things that don't seem important might be crucial.”

“I don't know what to tell.”

“How about when you came to this country? Did he adjust well? You weren't always in State College, correct?”

They listen carefully as she explains that the adjustment was difficult and that indeed she did once live in Miami where she is visiting now. She had cleaned university apartments in Puerto Rico and she cleaned in Miami. Her son had been quiet, a bit difficult in Puerto Rico, but much more difficult in Florida.

“What kinds of things set him off?”

“Other kids bullying him.” She pauses. “His father.”

“Tell us about that.”

“His father … ”

“Was this Arne Brown?”

“Yes. His father was … married to someone else. He only came to see us sometimes. Like maybe once a year or not even. He was decent to Nadal but Nadal hated him.”

“Friends. Likes, dislikes in school.”

“Nothing much. He kept to himself.”

“Girlfriends?”

“He always wanted but he was not … successful.”

“Do you know why?”

“Too nervous, I think.”

“Did he ever show interest in children in a sexual way?”

She sinks back into her seat, shaking her head. “No. Never. Please. This is so terrible.”

“Did he ever get violent? With you? With anyone?”

For a moment, she lowers her head. “Not with me. With things, yes. He threw things. With kids at school.”

“He had a temper?”

“Yes. Please, please. Help him. He is not a bad person.”

“We want to help him. Just … just a few more questions. You eventually moved up to State College. He came with you, right?”

“Yes.”

“When was that?”

“Nine years now.”

“And how did he adjust?”

“He was unhappy.”

“With school?”

“He didn't like college, but my husband … a widower then and we got married … he believed college would help Nadal, so he insisted. And Nadal did it, but he didn't like it. Always nervous.”

“Did he fight with his father?”

“More … sarcastic.”

That, Colleen thinks, covers most boys but most boys grow out of it.

“Where did you go on vacations?”

“No vacations. Always working.” She hesitates.

“What? You thought of something?”

“Not a vacation, but my husband would take my son to a cabin where he would study animals.”

Colleen's heart quickens.

“Study? How?

“Cameras. It was my husband's work to study animals.”

“Do you know the location of this place?”

“I went once, but I don't know.”

“Your husband rented this place?”

“Oh, no. A friend had it and let him use it.”

“I see, I see,” says Colleen.

Christie murmurs almost inaudibly, “Good, keep going.”

“About how far was it?”

“About two, three hours.”

“Do you know if the friend still has it?”

She frowns. “I don't think Nadal would go. He never liked it. The woods.”

“Well, we should check it as a part of routine. Do you have a phone number for the place?”

“They didn't keep a phone. Just two rooms, very rough.”

“I see. Name of the owner. Just in case.”

“I can't think—”

Colleen closes her eyes.

“Adams. Stanton.”

“Adam Stanton?”

“Other way around.”

“Did this man stay there year-round?”

“Oh, no. He teaches at the university, too.”

But Potocki is already at his computer.

Colleen stays on Skype asking questions but the others peel away, excited. A place to look. One little clue to give them hope.

NADAL HAS LOST
TIME
by taking a wrong turn and dizzying himself driving in circles. The dock he wants in Florida seems suddenly years away instead of days away. He's beginning to think the highways might have been better. Nobody is looking for the black truck. “Matt,” he calls. “Matt? I'm sorry I hit you.”

No answer.

“Are you going to be difficult?”

No answer.

“Okay. Not answering when you're spoken to. I'll have to show you what that costs.”

“What?”

“No restaurant, no new clothes, no TV.”

“Where are we?”

“Just some woods.” He'll pull over for a while, rest up. “I want to tell you something,” he says, opening the take-out food bag, but not wanting anything he sees. “Everything can be faked. Even a birth certificate. Just so you know.”

BY THREE O'CLOCK
Christie, Greer, Dolan, and Potocki have joined some state troopers and Stanton Adams at the cabin.

Adams wasn't supposed to get there before they did, but he didn't honor their request. He wasn't supposed to touch anything, but Christie guesses he probably did.