Set You Free (3 page)

She puts the windows back up and shuts the engine down.

“Let’s walk it,” she says. We watch as the homeless guy comes out of the woods. The zombie parents all sipping coffee from giant insulated mugs pretend he isn’t there as he limps across the fresh grass to the road.

“What about before that?” Detective Evans asks.

“We were at the toy store down on Main. I forget the name of it.”

“Loose Marbles,” she says.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“Don’t sound so surprised. I know kids. I have two of my own. They go to Leslie Public School, just like I did.” She gets out of the cruiser.

I set my phone down on the seat and gather up what’s left of the breakfast sandwich and coffee. I have to shuffle the sandwich and the coffee around in order to open the door. As I slip out of the car, my stomach gives me another jolt.

“Did you take the path or the sidewalk?”

“The path,” I say, shutting the car door and burping into a fist. “How old are your kids?”

“Twelve and ten. A boy and a girl.”

“They at home?”

“At home with their dad. He pulls solo weekend duty when something like this happens.”

I sip my coffee, wondering which way this walk is going to push my insides now that the day is becoming warmer. I’ve found that sometimes the fresh air calms my stomach down but other times gets everything rumbling and angry.

She points to the fork in the trail. “Left or right?”

“Left,” I say. The right trail cuts close to the street. The left goes through the woods. Benny and I always go through the woods. My stomach heaves. The headache is rearing up again. I’m getting the pasties as well. I close my eyes for a moment against the sun and push at my glasses.

“How long does this walk normally take?” Detective Evans asks.

“From the Dairy Queen?” I try to think, but my brain is not functioning as it should. “Maybe fifteen minutes? Ben likes to go into the woods, then come back out and try to scare me.”

“Fifteen. Okay. What is it, maybe eight, ten minutes otherwise?”

“I guess.”

“Anywhere along here he could be hiding? The backyard of a house? Maybe down near the ravine?”

“No, it’s nothing but forest back there. Honestly, Ben’s a little afraid of the woods when it comes right down to it.”

Detective Evans pulls out a pack of gum and offers me a piece.

“Thanks,” I say. Chewing often calms me down. It might even settle my stomach a bit.

“So tell me, what is Benjamin’s favorite thing in the world?” Detective Evans asks as she cuts over to a garbage can and drops the empty wrappers in.

I don’t even have to think about it. “His mother.”

It’s a magical connection. They light up when they see one another. I see other kids at the playground disrespecting their parents. Yelling at them, demanding things and getting angry. But that never happens with Ben and Erin. They disagree now and then, but Ben takes it almost like an adult.

You can reason with him.

Take yesterday. Erin had just come from volunteering. Her father died when she was young, and she has no siblings, so when her mom died she was left entirely alone, in the sense that no one else understood the world she grew up in. So as much as she enjoys volunteering, feeling close to her mother again, it also leaves her tired and sad.

But still, when she came across the park and saw Ben, she lit up. It was as if the rest of the day had simply washed away.

“Really?” Detective Evans says. “His mom?”

“Yeah. He’s a kid, so he’s into games and toys and all that. He loves Star Wars and pretends to battle things with imaginary light sabers. But there’s nothing he loves more than his mother.”

“Really?” Detective Evans says again.

“Really.”

“My kids…” she says, trailing off. “Paul is great in his way. Emma is…” She stops speaking, and we walk in silence until we reach the Dairy Queen, which, since it’s Sunday morning, is closed. We go around to the back, and Detective Evans moves some boxes from beside a Dumpster.

Stale cones.

Moldy buns.

Empty drink containers.

No Ben.

But the smell! “You don’t really think he’d be here, do you?” I say, staring at the garbage and trying not to breathe.

“We have to check everywhere,” Detective Evans says. “You’d be surprised where we’ve found kids.” She brushes her hands together. “Where were you before this?”

I back away from the stench in search of fresh air. “On the playground at the junior school.”

“And before that?”

“Like I said, that Loose Marbles place.”

Detective Evans looks at her phone again, swipes the screen, then puts it away. “Can you think of anywhere he might have gone? Not just from yesterday, but from any of the other days you’ve been with him. Some place he’s talked about?”

“No, this is our route. Sometimes we go to a movie, but the rest of the time it’s this park, the Dairy Queen, the toy store and the school.”

Detective Evans looks around as if she might spot Ben sitting on a bench or strolling down the street.

“How do these things normally turn out?” I ask.

She doesn’t stop to think. “You have three options. One, the kid ran off. There’s usually a good reason for that. And some warning. And most likely he or she’ll come back on his or her own. But five is pretty young for running away. And from what you’re telling me, Benjamin isn’t the most independent of kids. Plus, with him and his mom being like they are? I don’t see it. Two, one of the parents has taken the kid. There’s some kind of abuse going on in the home, or you’re looking at a divorce and one of the parents feels like they’ll lose the child, so away they go. But I don’t see that either. Do you?”

“What?” I say. I’m trying to put as much distance between myself and the stink of garbage as possible.

“Have you seen abuse or anything with Benjamin?”

“From Jack?”

“Or Erin.”

“No. Not at all. They’re like…” I stare at the ground. “They’re
perfect
.”

“No family is perfect.”

“They seem as close as you can get,” I say.

“Well, they’re both sitting home worried sick. When a parent takes a kid, they’re gone in the middle of the night. Not at home calling the police.”

“What’s the third option?”

Detective Evans wrinkles her nose as she puts her sunglasses on. “Abduction. Someone watching the kid who decides, for whatever reason, to take him.” I can see myself in her sunglasses when she turns toward me. “Benjamin’s room is on the ground floor,” she says.

“You don’t think that’s what happened,” I say.

“We can’t discount it. The window doesn’t appear to be damaged. But the Carters’ house doesn’t have screens. Benjamin’s window just had to be unlocked and someone could step right in.”

“That can’t be. There has to be a fourth option.”

“If so, I don’t know what it is,” she says, beginning to walk again.

“There has to be something,” I say.

“Such as?” Detective Evans says.

“He’s hiding in a closet.”

“Checked. The house has been swept.”

“The attic?”

“We went through every inch.”

“The tree house they have out back? It’s totally enclosed. We play there sometimes.” I can picture the tree house with its little fake shutters and Ben inside, eating Oreos until he’s sick.

“It and the surrounding area as well. A canine unit is there now.”

I imagine Benjamin being led by the hand across his moonlit lawn by some creep.

“Have you noticed anyone around?” Detective Evans asks.

“No,” I say. Though I wouldn’t necessarily know. Ben brings you into his own little world, and everything else disappears.

“Watching him from afar maybe? At the park or the Dairy Queen.”

We’ve reached the school. The shaded windows are like mirrors. “I can’t think of anyone anywhere,” I say. “I honestly can’t. It always seems to be the same people in the same places, you know?”

“Maybe you were sitting on a bench and he was playing? Someone came and talked to him?”

“I don’t do that.” I shake my head. “We always play together. Hide-and-seek or tag or Sandman.”

“No one else is ever with you while you’re babysitting?” Detective Evans asks, looking in a window.

“I used to go to this school,” I say.

“Shouldn’t Benjamin be in school? Mine started school when they were five.”

“Erin wanted him home for the extra year. He’ll go straight into first grade. A lot of kids do that. Did Erin mention anyone suspicious? Or maybe JJ or Steph have seen something?”

Detective Evans looks away from the window. She leans against the wall and looks out at the baseball diamond. “What I hear from Jack and Erin is that JJ and Stephanie
aren’t around their place much. Maybe every couple of weekends? Jack says it’s because they’re teenagers and have their own lives.”

“Yeah?” I say, going up on tiptoes to look down the dark interior hallway. There’s a wash of memories here. My old friends. The teachers. The ridiculousness of being herded into such a place five days a week. The single most important lesson is how to make teachers happy with the right attitude. Looking back, it seems absurd. There is no right attitude.

“What do you think?”

“About what?” I say. I look away from the window.

“Why JJ and Stephanie aren’t around the Carter place much.”

“I don’t know. They live with their mom, right?”

“You ever see them over at the mayor’s place?” Detective Evans asks.

“Sometimes. You don’t think they have anything to do with Ben’s disappearance, do you?”

“I’m trying to understand the family, that’s all. Did you get a feel for how they are with Benjamin?”

“No. They talk with him, and Steph calls him cute, but that’s about it. I saw JJ throwing a football with him one day, but football’s not really Ben’s thing.”

“What do
you
think of them?”

“I don’t know,” I say, because I don’t feel like getting into it with Detective Evans. Then she takes her sunglasses off
and examines me, and I feel like I’ve been placed on the stand again.

“Everyone knows everyone in high school,” she says. “What kind of reputation do they have?”

“JJ plays water polo and basketball,” I say. “He works out a lot. Steph is…Steph spends a lot of time making certain she looks perfect. I don’t mean that in a really negative way. She’s a year younger than me and super popular.”

“What about their friends?”

“I don’t know,” I say again. “Our school is weird. People go in their own groups, which pretty much leave one another alone. There’s none of that jocks-beating-up-on-nerds stuff.”

“JJ’s in your grade, right? Do you two run in the same circles?” Detective Evans says.

Conversations with her are like building blocks. She has the end result in mind but needs to lead you there first. “Sometimes,” I say. “But only if there’s a larger group around. It’s never a one-on-one thing. We’re in the same History class, and earlier in the semester we did a group presentation together.”

“Okay,” she says. She sounds disappointed. I’m not certain where it was she wanted to lead me.

We stop at the end of the asphalt. The yard has a gentle slope to the playground and some tennis courts farther along. The rest of the view is residential. Duplexes, single-family homes, a block of row houses.

“So, where now?” I say.

Detective Evans is about to respond when a patrol car pulls into the parking lot and everything changes.

FIVE

A quick glance at her cell-phone screen, a slightly raised eyebrow, then, “I’ll be right back.” Detective Evans crosses the lawn to the opened window of the cruiser. I can’t see who she’s speaking with. Eventually she points toward the park, and the cruiser pulls away.

“Where’s your brother?” Detective Evans asks as she nears me.

“Tom?”

“Yes,” she says. “Where is Tom?”

“At home, I guess. Why?”

She holds her phone before her. “Call him.”

“What’s going on?”

“We need to know where he is.”

“He doesn’t have a cell,” I say. “Why do you need to know where he is?”

“Call your house.” Her sunglasses come off, revealing her penetrating stare. As if she’s trying to read my mind. I open my mouth but am cut off before I can speak. “Call. Then I’ll explain.”

My mom answers on the first ring.

“Is Tom there?”

“Lauren?” A hazy, sleepy voice. It had seemed as though she was about to be hit by a migraine before I left the house. Everything she did was slow and delicate.

“Are you okay, Mom?”

“I was just about to lie down,” she says.

“Mom, is Tom there?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Can you check his room?” I hear her moving through the house, then knocking on Tom’s door, calling his name.

“He’s not here.”

“Okay,” I say. I shake my head no at Detective Evans.

“Why are you looking for Tom? What’s going on?” my mother asks.

“Tell your mom to sit tight,” Detective Evans says. “We’ll be right there.”

“We’ll be right back, Mom,” I say.

“What’s going on?” she asks. “What does Tom have to do with anything?”

“I don’t know. We’ll be right there.” I hang up and hand the phone to Detective Evans.

She starts right back in on me. “Did Tom ever babysit Benjamin with you?” She’s texting someone as she speaks.

“No,” I say, then, “Well, not really. Sometimes he’d walk with us to the park or have ice cream. But he was never, like, officially there.”

“Where does your brother hang out? Who are his friends?”

I stop.

Detective Evans takes another couple of steps, then turns back.

“What is going on?” I ask.

She pockets the phone. “Maybe nothing, Lauren.”

“Then why all the questions about Tom?”

She puts her sunglasses back on so I can see myself again. “He was seen in the vicinity of the Carters’ house last night.”

“We do only live two blocks away.”

“It’s more than that, Lauren. A neighbor saw him out in front of the Carters’ house around midnight.”

“He could’ve been walking home,” I say.

“He was across the street for more than twenty minutes. When the neighbor approached, your brother took off.”