Harrowing (19 page)

Mrs. Garrison held up her hands stiffly.

“I do the best I can,” she said. “I was probably daydreaming at that moment. That
does
happen to us artistic, creative types, you know. It’s not that I don’t pay attention, mind you. Sometimes I’m just lost in thought.” She brightened. “Oh, now I do remember. He was very tall. He towered over me. Almost touched the top of the doorframe.”

Calvin and I exchanged glances. Calvin pulled his mobile out of his pocket and began to flip through images until he found the one he wanted. It was a photo of Lars Herbert posing with Bruno at some sort of inauguration.

“This the man?” he asked, pointing at Bruno.

Mrs. Garrison raked her eyes over the image.

“Yep. That’s the one.” She raised her chin. “I might be a dreamer, but I never forget a face, you know.”

Calvin began bombarding her with questions.

“How did he arrive? Did he have a motorcycle? A car? Which direction did he take Romeo in?”

But Mrs. Garrison only kept shaking her head over and over.

“I didn’t notice. He picked Romeo up at the door of the classroom. I never went outside with them.”

“And... and Romeo didn’t say anything? He doesn’t know Bruno,” I ventured. “And how the
hell
did Bruno find out where Romeo goes to school? Don’t tell me Romeo went
willingly
with a complete stranger.”

Mrs. Garrison grimaced.

“He assured Romeo he was his father. When Romeo told him his father was dead, he said something like, ‘That’s just a convenient story they made up, but it’s not true’, or something of the sort.” She smiled sheepishly. “I admit I wasn’t paying much attention. I see this sort of thing happening in broken families all the time. Lies, deceit, secrets...”

Blood rushed to my face.

“I’ve never in my life told a single lie to Romeo!” I screamed.

Calvin laid his hand over my arm. Mrs. Garrison lifted her hands in truce fashion.

“I’m not saying you lie, Ms. Adler. I’m just saying I see it a lot. I don’t actually know who’s really lying, and it’s not my job to figure it out.”

“So...” I gasped out in utter astonishment. “So, you’re saying Romeo actually
believed
him? He actually just
followed
him docilely out of the building, like a... like a...”

Mrs. Garrison nodded her head emphatically.

“Of course. If he’d raised a fuss about it, I would’ve noticed. Don’t you think, Ms. Adler?”

I could only gape at her with my mouth open like a fish on land.

Calvin lugged his phone out of his pocket again and lumbered to his feet with a menacing expression.

“I think it’s time the police were on this,” he said quietly, and began dialling a number.

Mrs. Garrison tottered beside him and crushed her finger over his phone. Calvin started, backed away in indignation.

“No. Wait.” She grasped his arm pleadingly. “Don’t report it yet. Please. Don’t you want to just check and make sure he hasn’t wandered on home by himself? Or maybe someone else you know has him?”

Calvin sneered.

“You disgust me,” he said. “You just don’t want to get in trouble with the police or something. After all, it was
you
who was negligent. You let him walk away with any old man at all. A beggar on the street could’ve come calling, and you would’ve sent Romeo off with him just as happily.”

Mrs. Garrison opened and closed her mouth a few times, but no sound came out. Calvin began to punch numbers into his phone. I peered over his shoulder and noticed he was calling my landline.

“Just in case Romeo did decide to go home on his own, after all,” he explained.

I shook my head.

“Romeo doesn’t have a key.”

“That’s not a problem. All the neighbours know him, and they’d let him into the building no prob. And then, after that... well, after that, the building manager would let him into the apartment. Right?”

I nodded, watching the phone in Calvin’s hand with clenched fists. The phone rang and rang in my apartment, but no one answered it. I nearly jumped to the roof.

“Hold on, Annie. Wait a minute.” Calvin pressed his palm soothingly against my arm. “Maybe it’s not Bruno. Maybe it’s someone else. Can you think of any other friends, any tall friends—”

I rushed to the door, felt like stomping my foot.

“Shut the hell up, Calvin,” I shrieked. “You know damn bloody well it was Bruno as sure as you know the sun sets every day so if you’re not coming with me right this very minute, I’m going to march on over there all by myself.”

“Coming where?”

“To Bruno’s house, of course.”

Calvin strolled to my side.

“You don’t even know where Bruno lives,” he said. “I
am
calling the police now.” He glared at Mrs. Garrison. “And I don’t care what anyone says.”

I plastered my hand over Calvin’s phone and started jumping up and down.

“That’s a waste of time,” I screamed. “While the police arrive and ask us questions, Bruno could be doing
anything
to Romeo. Anything at all. By the time they get it straight – and that’s always assuming they even take us seriously, cos you know most of the time the police always suspect the family first. But supposing they even
do
take us seriously. By the time they get around to investigating Bruno, he’ll be long gone.”

I grasped the doorframe and started swaying back and forth.

“So are you taking me to Bruno’s? Or will I have to grab a taxi?”

Calvin sighed.

“You don’t even know where Bruno lives,” he repeated.

I snatched his phone from him impatiently.

“That’s what the online phone directory is for,” I said, and began calling it up on the internet explorer.

Bruno Jarvas is an unusual name, but his personal information was unlisted. I almost dashed Calvin’s state-of-the-art iPhone onto the floor. I crumpled to the ground and buried my face against my knees.

“I don’t know what to do anymore, Calvin,” I whispered.

I noticed Calvin was flipping through things on his phone in a rush.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

Calvin held up his hand.

“Wait a minute. I’ve thought of something...”

I waited with as much patience as I could muster. At last Calvin fished something out.

“Look. A list of all the top guns at Herbert and Mons, and their personal information, including their phone numbers and addresses.”

He flashed the document at me. I leapt up with a squeal.

“Where did you get that?” I demanded.

“Lars gave it to me once. I’d forgotten all about it.”

I scanned over the document. Immediately Bruno’s address jumped out at me.

“Come on,” I cried. “What are we waiting for? Bedford Park.”

Bruno’s house lay in darkness. I barrelled about it in the drizzling rain, dashing through the streaming undergrowth, peering in through every window, concentrating especially on the basement ones. There were no lights on anywhere, nothing stirred that I could make out.

I approached both the front and back doors and tried the handles. They refused to budge. Bruno’s house was as barred and locked as a maximum security penitentiary. I hammered against the front door with both fists, then dug my keys out of my purse and smashed them against the door as well.

“Bruno, you fucking bastard, open up!” I shrieked. “Let us in right now or I’ll fucking break your door down.”

I glanced about, searching for something I could use to pound against the door. Calvin approached, more calm and rational, and began making the rounds, even directing the torch app of his mobile through the windows. He studied every inch of the basement visible from the outside. Finally, he turned towards me and seized me by the elbow.

“Come on, Annasuya. We’re wasting time here,” he said at last. “It’s clear there’s nothing and no one there.” He gestured towards the house. “Unless Bruno’s got a concealed room or something. But even if he
does,
” he added as he headed back towards his motorbike, “I doubt he’d be staying there the whole night. If he does have Romeo locked up somewhere, I’m sure he’d only spend short spurts of time with him. No one likes to risk what could happen to them if they hang around a hostage. And I haven’t seen anyone come out of any secret room.”

He turned towards me.

“And I’ve pretty much gazed into every room there is on these bottom floors, and there’s no one there.”

He perched sideways on his motorcycle.

“Let’s get out of here already, Anna. The house is obviously empty. While we’re hanging around here twiddling our thumbs doing nothing, Bruno’s got him locked up somewhere else. I say we clear out and try and figure out where he could’ve taken him instead.”

I kicked childishly at the tires of Calvin’s motorcycle.

“Damn!” I screamed. “Now what? Where the hell could they be?”

“He wouldn’t risk holding him here in his own house.”

Calvin’s reasonable tone drove me insane. But I had to admit he was probably right. I grabbed around in my handbag for my mobile.

“What are you doing?” Calvin asked.

“What do you fucking think I’m doing? I’m addicted. Whenever I want to know something, I just look it up on my phone.”

I turned away from him and pressed some buttons. My phone refused to light up.

“Shit. The battery’s dead,” I cried, remembering.

I cupped the useless device in my palms, the rain trickling over it, and banged away at the unresponsive buttons with stiff fingers. My fingers were so numb with the cold I could barely move them. I rubbed my grimy hands over the black screen, lost in thought, sniffling absent-mindedly as rain pooled at the tip of my nose. My soaked jacket sleeves dragged down over my wrists and plopped onto the phone, encasing my hands in dripping fabric and making me feel like an orphaned waif in Victorian London. I sighed.

“It doesn’t work,” I said, shaking my head.

Calvin glanced over my shoulder at what I was doing.

“What doesn’t work?”

“This.”

I threw the mobile back into my bag and hurled my bag at Calvin.

“I thought I had a brainstorm. I thought I could look up if Bruno has any other properties,” I explained, deflated. “But the bloody shitty phone’s dead. Just when I fucking needed it the most. And now I’ve no idea what to do.”

I kicked at the tires again out of pure frustration.

Calvin wrapped comforting arms about me.

“That’s best done on a computer,” he told me. “Not on a teensy mobile. And I don’t even know how to do that on a computer, either. We’re not hackers, you know.” He rubbed his eyebrows. “Well, come on. Why don’t we get home and think things through there? You’re frozen.”

I shook my head and squinted out into the darkness.

“I can’t. Romeo’s out there somewhere. We’ve got to find him.”

Calvin seized his helmet and jammed it resolutely over his head.

“Yeah, but we won’t accomplish anything by hanging out round
here.
He’s obviously not here. Our best bet’s to get home and grab the computer
there.
”

He stood up and straddled the seat of his motorbike.

“Come on. Time to do something proactive. You’re so cold you can’t even think straight,” he cajoled in a reasonable voice. “And that’s not being of much use to Romeo, you know.”

He waved at the seat. Sighing, I climbed up behind him and grasped his waist.

“Besides which, don’t you need to charge up your phone?” he added. “If you don’t charge it up, how can people get in touch with you with information?”

I had no choice but to agree with him.

At a stop light, he reached behind him and passed his phone to me.

“Here. I’ve had a brainstorm. I’ve thought maybe you could call Lindsay and tell her what’s up.”

I glanced at him quizzically but of course, he couldn’t see me.

I shrugged.

“Well, I guess it won’t hurt,” I conceded in the end.

As he revved up the engine, I dialled Lindsay’s number and tried to hold a conversation with her over the roar of the motorbike.

I’d had no idea how completely and utterly exhausted, how absolutely ground up I was, until we walked in through the door of my apartment. I glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was long after midnight.

I dug up my phone charger in the living-room and plugged it into a socket in the kitchenette, then left my phone on the counter and collapsed on the sofa-futon. But a minute later I had to get up and reach for my laptop.

My foot rolled over something small and round. I bent and picked it up. It was a diminutive orange plastic bead, like the sort little girls wear on necklaces or bracelets strung together with elastic string. I squinted at it.

“That’s strange,” I said.

“What?”

I waved my hand and rolled the bead through my fingers.

“Nothing. Just, I don’t know where this came from. ’S not important.”

Calvin tossed together a glass of whisky straight and held it out to me. I waved it away.

“Alcohol, Calv? No. I need real
food.
I haven’t eaten in ages.”

Calvin cocked an eyebrow at me and began to stir up a package of macaroni and cheese while I banged away helplessly on the computer. Everything was coming out all wrong. My sopping wet sleeves kept flipping down over my wrists, wrapping themselves about my hands and encasing them inside. My fumbling fingers couldn’t even press the on-off button. And when I finally got it on, Windows decided it was a superb moment for an hour-long update. I kicked the computer off my lap, nearly smashed it on the floor. A glance at Romeo’s least favourite meal, that he’d complained so peevishly about for ages, had me melting into tears.

“Wherever he is... he hates that food, Cal... I’d do anything to have him here with me... eating this crap with me...” I gasped in fits and starts. “Anything... I miss him so much... I’m sure Bruno has him starved... I’m sure...”

Calvin left the meal cooling on the table and plunked himself down beside me, wrapping his arms consolingly about me.

“We’ll find him,” he said softly. “We’ll get him back. Now come and eat. You must be starved. And then we’ll think what to do next.” He leaned back, cool-headed pragmatism taking over. “
I
say we should report this to the police right away. No more playing private eye, you and me. It’s obvious we haven’t a clue how to go about this.”

I nodded dejectedly and went to the table.

“I don’t have much confidence they’d be able to do anything,” I said. “I’m sure they’ll waste more time asking us questions and investigating
me
and
my
background, rather than going after Bruno. I just read a coupla novels about kidnapped kids, and the police kept suspecting the
parents.
They said something like ninety-five percent of the time it’s the
parents
who arrange for their kids to be abducted, so they can get rid of them.”

I paused as an even more demoralizing thought occurred to me.

“And isn’t there this thing, I think I’ve heard of it before? Something about how they need to wait a certain number of hours before they’ll officially open an investigation into a missing person and start looking for him or something? And while they’re waiting all those hours, Bruno could be hurting Romeo. Or take him away someplace so far away no one will ever find him. Or...”

I buried my face in my hands on the table and dug my fingers into my eyes. Calvin perched himself awkwardly by my side.

“I think that waiting period doesn’t apply to kids. Well, but I’m not too sure. I know about as much about police procedures as I do about neurosurgery, you know, so don’t take
my
word on it.” He gestured at my plate. “Eat up. How long’s it been since you last ate something? You have to keep your strength up, you know. For Romeo,” he added, when he noticed I only picked at the macaroni with my fork. “You’re no use to anyone if you’re fainting from hunger.”

I nodded.

“You’re right.”

I was famished. But it was still hard for me to get anything down with the lump in my throat.

“We’ll call the police as soon as we eat,” Calvin reassured me.

After dinner, Calvin dumped the dirty dishes into the sink and reached for his phone. He studied me with concern as I melted into a sodden morass on the futon.

“I haven’t got much battery. Go take a hot shower while I charge up the phone, sweets,” he urged, “before you catch pneumonia or something. Let me take care of it. I’ll call the police for you.”

I bristled.

“I want to talk to them. He’s
my
son.”

He shook his head.

“You’re not in a state to talk to anyone,” he said firmly. “Look at you. No one will take you seriously, the way you look right now. Everyone’ll think the same thing Mrs. Garrison did. That you’re drunk, or not a fit mother. They’ll have plenty of reasons to investigate
you
and not believe a word you say, just from the way you look. Your face is as black as a chimney sweep’s. For fuck’s sake, how much mascara do you dump on every morning, anyways?”

He pulled me to my feet and dragged me towards the bedroom.

“Go on. Take a shower and freshen up before I call the police.”

I reached the bedroom door and paused.

“And I can’t go in to work tomorrow either,” I mumbled as this irrelevant thought struck me inanely. “I’ll have to call my boss and explain. I’m sure I’m going to lose my job. Not that it matters anymore,” I added as I reached for the light switch. “I have no idea what Sandy Bleckley will say now. Not after that tremendous
sermon
she threw to me this afternoon.”

I turned on the bedroom light and screamed a shrill, bloodcurdling shriek that probably resonated all the way to Timbuktu.

For there on the threshold, outlined in black in the harsh light from the bare light bulb above, tottered a menacing figure with his anonymous face enshrouded deep inside a hoodie. I could barely make out the nasty curl of his lip as he advanced towards me.

“You were speaking about me?” taunted the grating female voice. The same one I’d had to suffer through earlier this afternoon as she’d lectured at me without pity.

The bottom plopped out from my stomach. My limbs, frozen and numb, jerked into action with exasperating lentitude. I finally succeeded in forcing myself to turn around as an iron grip wrapped itself about me, vice-like, encasing me like unmovable fetters. I was barely able to make out Calvin’s mouth petrified into a “o” of terror, his eyes popping out from his face like toad eyes.

“Now I have you,” Sandy Bleckley cried triumphantly, her voice hard and unpleasant. “Both of you. I’ve got your son, Romeo, I believe he says his name is? And if you ever want to see him alive again, Annasuya, you’ll stay put and listen to everything I have to say.”