Fortune's Deadly Descent (10 page)

“Lovely. Lovely boy, no?” I hear the artist say.

“Is he a relative?”

“
Non
.”

Oliver nods. I will him to be careful, not ask too many questions.

“On my way to the market, I see this photograph on the ground,” the artist says, looking only at his subject, his charcoal sweeping across the thick paper. “Beautiful child. Full, beautiful life. You see in the eyes.”

Oliver nods, a terrible strain in his face.

A vague connection to something, a memory, is tugging at me; a sense of déjà vu rushes in, and then out.

The woman in the chair adjusts her hat, and the man lowers his arms and mock chides her again about sitting still. She laughs and slides her hands beneath her thighs.

“Too bad you don’t know him. It’s always nice to have a story to tell the children,” Oliver says.

“Perhaps a tourist dropped the photograph from a bag. You could tell the children a story about this.”

Oliver nods at the portrait. “Is it recent?”

“
Oui
. About two weeks?
Oui
, I think two, maybe three weeks.”

Weeks! How can this be? Clearly we’re both thinking the same thing. Benny was taken six days ago. How did the photo show up here
two weeks
ago?

“How about I take these three on top?” Oliver says calmly. “The two boys and the girl?”

“No Chirac for you today?”

“Sure. I’ll take Chirac, as well,” Oliver says with his single-dimpled smile. “
Vive la France
.”

The man grins as he wraps the plastic-covered sketches in butcher paper and ties them with twine. He hands the package to Oliver in exchange for the euros.

I feel as if I’m about to burst. We can’t just walk away without the photograph.

The line of people waiting for crepes now stretches into the square. Everyone seems to know one another, chatting forward and behind. A young girl with wavy red hair holds her small blue umbrella in one hand, the edge of her mother’s jacket pocket in the other. I have the urge to rush over and make sure they know how lucky they are to be sharing a crepe in the rain.

I feel the mother’s eyes on me. She has caught me staring at her child. I turn and pretend to talk on Oliver’s phone.

Then, just as Oliver is about to walk away, I hear him say, “I’m curious, if you don’t mind. I’d love to see the likeness you drew from. You wouldn’t happen to have the original photos of the children, would you?”

The women turn and study him. What kind of person asks such questions? The artist himself looks wary. “I find the process fascinating,” Oliver goes on. “How you manage to transfer every bit of light and nuance from one medium to the next.”

Does the artist understand him? He seems to at least get the gist and takes it as a compliment. He reaches into what looks like
a tackle box full of charcoal crayons, pencils, and a money pouch. He lifts up one of the trays and retrieves several photographs, which he hands to Oliver.

It’s all I can do to hang back and appear disinterested.

Oliver nods as he shuffles through the photos. “You’re very talented,” he says. “Are you a teacher as well?”

The old women have had just about enough. They look at their wristwatches and sigh.

“
Non. Merci
!” the man says. “I do it only for me. There’s no time for teaching. I have a vineyard as well.”

“Ah! A dream of mine,” Oliver says. “How wonderful.”

I slide up next to him.

The artist says something to the woman, though she seems reluctant to laugh. “
Voila
!” he says, spinning the easel around for her to see.

The women flutter and cry out; at the same instant, Oliver slips the photo of Benny into the twine underneath the portraits in his hand. He places the rest on the table.

“
Merci beaucoup
, and
au revoir
,” he says and practically pushes me toward the line for crepes.

“
Merci
!” the man calls out with a wave of his hand, his attention returned to the women.

We cross the square and duck into a narrow walkway. Oliver holds the umbrella above our heads. I exchange his phone for the photograph.

Benny. Oh god. It’s truly him. The vague tugging in the back of my mind suddenly pops free. “I shot this photo
myself
, no more than a month ago at Confiserie Sprüngli, our favorite confectionery in Zurich. Then I framed and hung it with the family portraits in the living room.”

It’s as if something putrid has been shoved beneath my nose. I bend over and grip my knees. I imagine a set of hands I must know, eyes I should recognize, peering through the rooms of my house, my
home
, once filled with
Liebe und Glück
. Footsteps, a voice, whispering to Benny. Someone we trust. Someone we love.
Who
took this photograph from my wall?

I bend the photo into my pocket, cover my mouth, and lurch away from Oliver. I retch beneath the golden-stained windows of a brasserie; its red velvet drapes blocking the patrons from the spattering potato galette. My throat burns. The blood behind my eyes pulses and pushes as if urging me to see the very thing I don’t want to look at.

I need to talk to Benicio.

Oliver rests his hand on my shoulder. Covers me from the rain.

“Can you hand me a tissue from my purse?”

Oliver digs out several, holds them in the rain, and then hands me the damp lump.

“Thank you.” I wipe my mouth, spit flecks of galette from my teeth. “I need some water, sweetheart.”

“I don’t want to leave you here.”

“I’m all right.”

But I’m not. I’m shaking. I step away from the windows and rest my back to the stone wall. “The picture was in a frame on our living room wall.”

Oliver leans beside me, mouth gaping.

“I don’t
believe
this,” I say. “Whoever took him must have been in our
house
, Oliver. It makes my skin crawl. Someone I may have offered food, wine, stories, including ones about Benny.”

“There’s got to be an explanation,” Oliver says.

The phone buzzes in his pocket.

I spit again.

“I saw some Perrier at the cheese stand,” Oliver says.

“Yes, go,” I say, then nod at his pocket. “That’s probably Benicio. Don’t tell him about the photograph. Don’t tell
anyone
.”

“Isak?”

“I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m behind the whole thing, if he can just figure it out. I can’t imagine what he’ll make of the photo being here ahead of Benny missing. More trickery on my part, I guess. But the last thing I want is to give him another reason to arrest me.”

Oliver eyes me steadily, deciding whether or not to obey me. I almost can’t bear the power of this gaze. “All right,” he says finally, returns the umbrella, and puts on his hood. “Wait here.”

The photograph looks stepped on, smudged with charcoal dust—useless as a source of fingerprints at this point, no doubt. There on the back in my own hand:
Benny, 7 years old, Zurich. 03 Juni, 2009
. And a tiny smear of blood from where I first touched it a few minutes ago.

I’m sure I had it framed and on the wall within a week—by the tenth, then. And if it’s been here roughly two weeks, that
would make it sometime in the last month and a half or so that it was taken. Who was at the house during that time?

I pull out my phone to check the calendar, forgetting it’s broken.

Scheisse
.

But my laptop is in the Rover, synched with the phone.

“Here you go,” Oliver says, opening the bottle of Perrier, putting it into my hand.

“Thank you.” Even the lukewarm bubbles sting my raw throat. After drinking as much as I can stand, I ask, “Do you remember me mentioning any guests? Sometime within the last month?”

“Sorry, no,” Oliver says.

I sag a little. “My short-term memory is shot,” I say. “I’m not thinking straight.”

“Benicio might remember something.”

“
No
,” I say, too sharply. “I said I don’t want him to know what we found.”

“I get that.”

“I’m not sure you do.”

“I get the gist of it, Mom. And considering the questions Moreau was asking me…are you two
all right
? I mean, before all this?”

“I don’t know.”

I see Oliver cringe. I feel so sorry for him. “Look, sweetie,” I say, “we have to stay focused on Benny, OK?”

“Right.”

I say, “Whoever stole the photo could’ve been in the house when I wasn’t—he could’ve been there to see Benicio.”
Or she
, I think.
Could’ve been a she
.
Emily? No, that’s crazy. Some other woman?
A few days ago, I’d have thought that was equally crazy. I try to remember if I was gone any length of time in the last month. Then again, how long does it take to rearrange a few pictures?
“Claudia and Renata cleaned several times, but they’re family, and we’ve used them for years without any problems.”

Just then, a man comes hurrying along lugging a cloth satchel bulging from the market, arm pumping at his side. He startles at the sight of us. His face is largely obscured beneath his wool cap, yet it seems to linger on me, then the vomit on the ground. His step slows, then speeds up again.

What must we look like? Strangers in the narrow walkway, the foul spatter on the cobbles, our red, panic-stricken eyes.

We don’t say a word until the flare of his trench coat is long gone.

“Did that guy give you the creeps?” Oliver asks.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’m suspicious of everyone,” he says.

“I understand,” I say.

Oliver narrows his eyes in the direction the man fled. He pulls up a map of the area on his phone. “Let’s go back to the train stop and look around. Or let me look. You can wait in the car and catch your breath.”

I slip my hand through the crook of his arm.

Oliver whispers, “I have this feeling Benny’s somewhere close. Don’t you?”

I look into my son’s face and I can barely keep my despair at bay. Even if Benny
is
here, what makes me think I can actually find him? Is this a fool’s errand? Have I put us all at risk for nothing?

We reach the Rover, stand aside it, the train platform now directly across an open field. Still a bit nauseous, I’m comforted by the idea of shutting myself up in the front seat and putting my head down. But Oliver wasn’t around when Benny disappeared, and won’t necessarily know what to look for. The fact is, I need to be on the platform myself.

We set off through wet knee-high grass, flushing out small acrobatic toads. Blackbirds tug at worms until we’re practically on top of them. The air smells of wet hay and manure. All’s quiet again. It must be some acoustic magic, the layout of the houses and shops, the slope of the hill and short narrow walkways conspiring to carry the sound off into the vineyards.

I climb onto the platform. The fainting woman was here, her husband over there; the others were crouched on either side. I imagine the train on the tracks. Could you sneak a child past this small knot of people? Were they too absorbed in their own problem? What if the child was making a fuss?

And if he wasn’t making a fuss,
why not
?

Then it occurs to me to ask Oliver, “The cross-continental trains are
longer
than the locals, aren’t they?”

He nods, says they’d have to be.

“So it must’ve stuck way out,” I say, and we both turn and look east, beyond where the platform stops.

Benny could have been at either end of the train, though probably the rear; it would’ve been simple for them to hop down and cross behind the last car. On the far side of the tracks is a windbreak of twisty-branched plane trees, interspersed with lilac bushes, thick with dried blossoms.

Before coming back here, I thought Saint-Corbenay could have been happenstance, an opportunity presenting itself. After all, how would one calculate how long a train could last with sabotaged air-conditioning before having to stop for repairs? And Saint-Corbenay, tiny, the middle of nowhere? But Benny’s photograph being here two weeks ago changes
everything
. I run through what the artist said again, how he seemed. I decide I have to take him at his word.

I study the sky. The rains come in bursts all day, thinning to drizzle, then stopping altogether. Each time I think the storm’s blown over, another mass of black roils in. And now, while I’m still looking up, lightning splits the sky. A mix of hail and rain crashes against the umbrella, unbearably loud.

“I want to see what’s over there,” I tell Oliver when it lets up, nodding toward the other side of the tracks.

The plane trees are set back fifteen or twenty meters from the railbed. Their trunks are thick and mottled, like dots on a paint-by-number set. Side by side, they provide enormous cover. I push through tumbled brush to see a long-neglected vineyard, the brittle, blackened vines in disciplined rows still bound to ancient posts, to wire that has rusted but not given up its grip. Stubborn grapes of all sizes still manage to pop through like a million sweaty blisters. The vineyard backs onto forest, and there’s no farmhouse in sight. I walk on a ways to where the rows are interrupted by a bumpy two-track lane, then see, in the soggy ground, a tractor’s heavy tread marks.

This brings back the red tractor I mentioned to the hypnotist. It had caught my eye when the train first stopped. It stood alone in the vineyard. I hadn’t noticed it again later…but, of course, by then my thoughts were elsewhere. In any case, it’s gone today. And what was it doing out here in the first place? The grapes don’t seem to have been harvested in decades.

Oliver studies the tracks and then peers at me with a raised eyebrow. I cover my mouth and take in the scent of chervil lingering on my hand. My scalp tingles. Images flash like a premonition, clear and sure. I see Benny propped on the tractor, a laughing driver, a stranger, telling my son
happy birthday
. Telling him
surprise!
Telling him
this is a gift from your parents
.