Angel Interrupted (16 page)

“You were very brave,” Miranda told Martin at the end of the session. “They may find the little boy because of you.”

Martin swelled with pride and something shifted in him, as if, in undergoing the experience, he had become someone new.

“Here.” Miranda slid her business card across the table toward him. “I want you to take my card. I’m a therapist, too, you know.” Her voice was kind. She was quite good at being kind. “If you ever want to talk, just about things, I want you to call me. Something like this can be traumatic. I have a sliding fee scale, so you’ll be able to afford it. Or maybe you’d like to go get a coffee one day? I’d love to talk with you again.”

“Talk about things?” Martin asked. “What kind of things?”

“Oh,” she said casually, “what you want out of life. How you feel about your life. We can maybe even talk about the past, if you want.”

Their eyes met and something private passed between them.

It was time for me to go.

I knew whoever had taken the boy was still in town. The AMBER Alert had gone out within minutes, cameras had been activated at all intersections, they had traffic stops set up at the major exit points, and the face of Tyler Matthews was plastered on every website and television screen in town. The police didn’t have a vehicle description the way I did, but they knew to look for a four-year-old boy, and soon they’d have at least a halfassed description of the abductor out to the field, thanks to Robert Michael Martin.

It would be tough for anyone to move around with the kid. And what the abductor wanted from him could be done anywhere that offered privacy. To me, that meant that it was likely that whoever had the boy was hiding right here in my town. I knew what car he drove, and I would find him.

I left the station house just as the FBI agents arrived to take over the case: four men in suits. I passed them in the lobby and they felt like a single person, their individuality sublimated to such a degree that I could not differentiate the essence of each. What happened when their working days were done? Did they go back to being unique, or simply half exist? Still, the department needed them, and I was glad they were there.

I had to be systematic about my search. Nearly one hundred thousand people live in my town, sprawled across a seven-square-mile area that ranges in density from packed housing projects to meandering subdivisions parceled out in multi-acre lots. It would take me days to search each street, alleyway, driveway, and garage, even moving as fast as I was able. And I could not afford to overlook a single home.

I began by searching the neighborhoods to the west of headquarters, a grimy area where people lived paycheck to paycheck, if they were lucky enough to have one, and where both disappointment and resentment rained down on me from the apartment windows above. I had answered plenty of calls in this neighborhood when alive and had rousted more prostitutes than a cruise ship could hold. But I had never really looked at the women before, thinking them all the same. As I searched up and down the urban blocks, night fell and the women began to appear on the corners, and I saw beyond the heavy makeup and ridiculous outfits for the first time. I saw weary, frightened, and defeated human beings, marking time, waiting for it all to be over, looking for a way to forget they were here.

I saw no sign of the blue station wagon, though, and felt no trace of the boy. I left the industrial lights behind and kept searching.

I began to encounter neighborhoods like the one I’d once taken for granted, tidy and comforting in the gathering dusk. Lights winked on behind curtains, televisions blared, children shrieked with laughter as they chased each other across lawns and dreamed of the coming summer. Smells wafted through the air, tantalizing reminders of people gathering to break bread together. Children were being bathed and loved and read to; couples were falling into bed after lingering glances; the weary were putting their feet up and enjoying the silence. All of the rituals I had run from while alive now surrounded me, mocked me, reminding me of what I had given up.

I shook off the regret and kept going.

On and on, down every street, exploring every garage, nook, or alley that might conceal a car. I searched and willed myself to pick up on every nuance of fear or evil or innocence I could possibly detect. By morning I was exhausted. I was filled with the details of thousands of lives, and burdened by hundreds of dreams plus far too many secrets for one man, in any incarnation, to bear by himself. I had not understood that sampling so many lives would prove so draining. I had not found the boy, nor found the car, and I needed to rest.

I ended up on a familiar block east of the town center just as the morning rush trickled into the hush of a weekday morning in a residential neighborhood. Tidy brick bungalows and small clapboard houses lined each side of the street, their yards barely big enough to require mowing.

Of course. This was the street where Rosemary D’Amato, the mother of the boy who had been taken sixteen years ago, lived, unable to move for fear her son might return one day and find no one at home. This was where I had discovered my little otherworldly friend, sitting in the crook of a tree.

I was lonely. Perhaps he was there.

As I moved up the sidewalk, I passed a young mother pushing her newborn in a stroller and looking anxiously over her shoulder. No one would feel safe until Tyler Matthews was found. The morning held a familiar air—the fear and the street intertwined—until, through a memory fogged by bourbon and infidelity and one endless hangover, I recalled my role in the D’Amato abduction case more clearly.
How could I possibly have forgotten the taking of a small boy? Could I really have been so callous?
My old partner Danny and I had been one of the teams assigned to the case, I remembered, but it had been taken from us before the day was over. I guess word had gotten out by then that you didn’t give Fahey and Bonaventura a priority case, not if you wanted the department to solve it or look good in the media. After a day of floundering through fruitless interviews with other patrons of the rest stop where the boy had been taken, I remembered clearly that we had been walking up this very sidewalk to question the parents further when a department sedan had pulled up to the curb and a pair of younger detectives had jumped out to let us know that we had orders to stand down, that they were taking over. I remember looking at Danny and shrugging with appalling apathy before we wandered off to find a bar where we could drink away the bruising of our egos. No one at the department had even noticed we were gone when we returned to the squad room, hours later, reeking of whiskey and cigarettes.

I cringed, remembering who I had been.

I had not followed the D’Amato case much after that. It was a reminder of what a loser I had been, so I had willed myself to forget it. All I really knew was that the boy had never been found, nor had his body ever been found, and that I may have spent a happy hour pushing him on a swing in the park yesterday.

I was now hoping to find him in the tree.

Alas, with the exception of a mother robin that was guarding her nest and gave no notice of me, the tree was empty. I sat at its base and looked up at the house beside it, wondering how Bobby D’Amato’s mother had ever found the strength to go on living after her son had simply evaporated from her life. How had she survived what Callie Matthews was going through now? As I was thinking of this, the door opened and Mrs. D’Amato stepped out onto her front porch, carrying a bouquet of white roses and baby’s breath as if she were a bride in search of a groom. Curious, I hitched a ride when she hopped into her car. Why not? I needed a break and, wherever she was headed, I’d keep my eye out for a blue Toyota station wagon, license plate number RPK6992.

I made myself comfortable in the back, where a child’s booster seat was still strapped into place by a shoulder harness, cracker crumbs embedded in its seams, having waited sixteen years for its occupant to return.

Rosemary D’Amato pressed a button on the CD player, startling me with the blare of Beatles music. When I glanced at the booster seat again, there he was: my little friend, happily ensconced in his harness straps, bobbing his head along to “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” a grin on his face as he and his mom headed out for a ride. He gave no notice that he even saw me. Certainly, he did not care that I was there, too.

He was a fickle little bastard. I would not have minded another session in the park, but he had no use for me today. He was content to sit and watch the town rush by.

I think he knew where we were going. He had taken this trip before. Me? It was not until Mrs. D’Amato pulled through the iron gate of the cemetery that I understood. She was there to visit her son’s grave, not knowing he had tagged along for the ride.

I remembered then how parenthood had been a terrifying mixture of joy, hope, and fear. Rosemary D’Amato was the embodiment of the inherent conflicts between them. She had consented to a grave for her missing child—but she had never given up hope that he might one day return. Had the grave been a compromise forged between her and her husband? Was it acknowledgment that he was right in urging her to accept the unthinkable? Or did she simply need a temple to his memory, a place where she could go and talk to him without the world telling her she had to move on?

The sun was climbing in the morning sky. The trees that lined the lanes of the cemetery were in full bloom, and their white blossoms floated on the breeze like a spring snow shower. It was an exquisite day to visit the dead; it was even an exquisite day to be among the dead. But as we pulled up to the section that bordered the far fence of the cemetery, my little otherworldly friend grew agitated. His eyes narrowed and I could feel him grow wary. Sorrow and something else, perhaps even anger, rose in him. He stared out the car window as if seeing something I did not see. Did he feel betrayed that his mother had moved on, even if she was just going through the motions?

I followed Rosemary D’Amato from the car, ready for a walk through what I like to call the Library of Souls. I loved the cemetery. I loved the neat categorization of the dead, the finality of the names and dates carved on the granite, and the intricate relationships marked by their designations: mother, father, beloved daughter, son, generation after generation flowering before moving on, family made eternal because life will always find a way.

I felt a flash of unexpectedly strong emotions from an unseen source: panic, remorse, longing, sorrow.
Where did that come from?
Was I picking up on the lingering emotions of the dead who lay beneath me, or was there someone hidden in the hardwood trees clustered to the right of the cemetery section before us? Mrs. D’Amato did not appear to notice anything but the lawn in front of her. She picked her way across the grass, carefully stepping around granite markers as she walked toward her son’s grave. I felt a shadow cross my heart even as I saw a shadow kiss the outer edges of the lawn.

A man hid in the trees.

He was deep in the darkness of the grove’s overhanging canopy and concealed from outside eyes—but he was there. I stood very still. After a moment of probing, I could feel his heart beating even from a distance. It was a rapid but steady beat, one fueled by an odd mixture of regret and yearning and fear.

The little boy—he might know what it was all about. But when I looked around, my otherworldly friend was gone. He had not stayed to meet the man in the trees.

As Mrs. D’Amato knelt in front of her son’s grave and laid the white roses before his headstone, I saw the man in the grove start to dart through the trees, away from her, the panic in him rising. I followed. He kept to the shadows, winding his way through the perimeter of undeveloped growth that rimmed the cemetery. He reached a section divided by the end of the asphalt drive and dashed across it, then took to the open ground, running across the graves in his haste to escape. I picked up speed, flowing past the names and years of those who had gone before me. I could sense anger in the man now, and resentment. Something had been taken from him. He reached a small stone house where the caretaker stored his tools. He ducked behind it. I heard a car door slam—he had parked his car behind the structure where no one could see it. I picked up speed, hoping to catch him. But he was already in the car and on his way out by the time I reached the road in front of the stone house. I could do nothing but stand there as the car swept through me, filling me with the tornado of conflicting emotions that coiled inside the man. He was there and then he was gone.

I could do nothing but stare after the car winding its way toward the cemetery entrance: it was a blue Toyota Matrix station wagon, license plate number RPK6992.