Winter and Night (5 page)

I said nothing, drank my coffee. It was rich and fragrant, hometown coffee served with hometown smiles by women who knew most of their customers and called them by name.

Helen picked at the cinnamon bun in front of her and went on with her story. When the firm Scott worked for was bought by a bigger one, he was offered a promotion, given a choice of three branch offices to relocate to. He'd chosen Newark. He'd always talked about Warrenstown, what a great place it was to grow up, and he'd been saying it was time to come back. They'd packed up the family and moved.

Did she like it here? I asked, wondering why I was asking. It didn't matter to the job I was doing. But she answered just as she had everything else I'd asked. I was the expert she'd decided she needed, and my role seemed to give me rights she didn't question. She wouldn't argue with the plumber over which valve to repair, with the doctor over which drug to prescribe. She wouldn't argue with Scott over whether to uproot them all and move, over and over again, and she wouldn't think to wonder how I chose my questions. I felt my shoulders tighten, wanted a cigarette, settled for getting up for another cup of coffee. Helen had barely touched her first cup, didn't want more.

Yes, she did like it here, she told me when I sat again, and she hoped they'd stay, and I tried to listen through my new impatience, my need to be in motion. It would be nice for the kids to be able to settle somewhere, she said. Of course, that would depend on Scott's job. Each time they'd moved it had been so Scott could do better, provide better for his family, and he'd done well and she was proud of him. It was nice, she added, it was a kind of relief, to be where Scott had grown up, where it felt like the family had some roots. Did I understand that? Although moving around, well, it wasn't so bad, really, and it could even be fun— we knew all about that, she and I.

She gave me a small smile when she said that, the first I'd had from her. I smiled back automatically, the smile I use to reassure a client. She glanced away uncertainly, and I didn't know if that was because of my smile or her own.

"Tell me who Gary's friends are, Helen." I took pen and paper from my pocket. "The ones the police already talked to, and anyone else you can think of. Any girls he's interested in?"

She sipped her coffee, though it must have been cold by now. "He was seeing a girl for a little while in the summer, but that stopped before school started. He's too young to really date, but they went for ice cream and things like that."

"What's her name?"

Her brow creased in thought. "Victoria," she finally said. "Such a lovely name, old-fashioned. They call her Tory."

"Last name?"

"I don't remember," she said. "He didn't see her for very long."

"Okay," I said. "What about other kids?"

She looked into the distance. "Gary always makes friends in a new place once the school year starts, especially once the boys start to play sports, but it takes me a while to know who they are," she said apologetically. "There's a tall boy named Morgan Reed— I think he's one of the quarterbacks— and there's one called Randy Macpherson. He plays in the same position as Gary, but he's a senior, so he always starts the games. And a boy near where we live. Paul Niebuhr." This she said in a more tentative way. "He's older than Gary, and he doesn't play football. I haven't seen him much since school started, but they were friendly during the summer— they went skateboarding together. Paul used to come over for dinner. I don't think his mother cooks much." Helen's voice held a note of disapproval. A good mother, her tone said, cooks for her children. "But some of the boys aren't around this week, you know."

"They're not?"

"It's Camp Week at the high school. The seniors from the football team are all at camp. And some of the other families go away, because the high school's closed."

"What's Camp Week?"

"In Warrenstown, the high school starts a week early. Before Labor Day. Then, if the football team makes the play-offs, they send the senior boys to football camp at the end of the season. For a reward, to help them get ready for playing in college."

"A reward? Camp at the end of the season?"

She looked at me blankly. "Why, is that strange?"

I shrugged. "I never played. But from what I remember, football players are pretty beat up by the end of the season. Camp's usually in the summer."

"I don't know," she said, and her voice rose and her hands started to twist a paper napkin, as though not knowing was a frightening thing.

"They close the whole school for Camp Week?" I asked, because that was something she did know, could tell me.

"So the boys won't have to miss classes and make up any work."

"What if they don't make the play-offs?"

"Everyone just stays in school and does a week of special projects."

I get it, I thought: You make the play-offs, you go to camp and everyone else gets the week off. You screw up, everyone stays in school. But no pressure.

"Intriguing place, Warrenstown," I said.

"Scott always said that," she agreed with me, either not hearing, or totally ignoring, my tone.

I asked her, "Where is this camp?"

She tilted her head in thought. "Hamlin Sports Camp," she finally said, not sounding entirely sure. "Somewhere on Long Island. The sophomores and juniors from the varsity team, plus some of the boys from the junior varsity, go up there on Saturday to play against the other boys. Gary's excited about that game." She bit her lip, looked away again. "Why?" I heard a whisper of hope in her voice. "Is it important?"

"I don't know. But New York's between here and Long Island. Maybe he's headed there."

"Why would he do that?"

"I have no idea. And I suppose the police already checked that."

"Well, if they talked to Randy, it would have to be there. I think they said they talked to him. Or maybe they talked to Morgan." She looked up at me with a hint of the same desperation in her blue eyes that I'd seen in Gary's, in my apartment, in the middle of the night. "I don't remember what they said—"

"It doesn't matter," I told her, trying not to grit my teeth at the tremor in her voice. "You don't have to. I'll talk to the police and I'll find whoever I need." I slipped a card from my wallet, handed it to my sister the way I do when I meet a new client. "Here's my office number, my cell phone. I want to look at Gary's room, and then I'll be in town for a few hours at least. I'll let you know what I find."

She held my card, studying it as though every piece of information on it was elusive and valuable. Maybe it was, now; but nothing on that card except the number of my cell phone was anything she hadn't had for years.

* * *

We walked in silence through the crisp morning air back to her house. I followed her upstairs; she showed me which room was Gary's. Standing just inside the door, looking around, I did it the way I was taught: start in front of you, back and forth, fanning out, nothing but your eyes until the place has lost its newness, is familiar. Then you can go inside.

The room was neat, but not so much you'd say this wasn't a normal kid. A plaid spread was stretched over a bed made dutifully if not overly well. The bookcase was full and more books sat in piles on the desk and floor. I looked them over: schoolbooks in the piles; thrillers, science fiction, and, from Gary's younger days, stories of knights and pirates in the bookcase. The top shelf held sports books, mostly football: training manuals, playbooks, athlete's biographies. On top of the bookcase trophies crowded each other, again mostly football, but also baseball and track: school championships, summer league teams, division winners. A Jets poster hung on the wall above the bed, the entire team in three rows, helmets under their arms, grease on their cheekbones, fierce unsmiling faces.

"Was Gary always a Jets fan?" I asked Helen. "Or just since you moved here?"

"No, in Florida he liked the Dolphins," she said. "And when we lived in Kansas City it was the team there."

"The Chiefs."

"Chiefs, that's right. I don't always remember." She gave an apologetic shrug. "I think it's part of how he makes himself belong. The way you used to learn the language every place we moved to."

I turned to her, surprised. After a moment I said, "You remember that?"

"Of course. I wanted to, too, but I couldn't. You were smarter."

I shook my head. "Just older."

"Well, anyway," she said. "Besides, Dad didn't like it."

That stopped both of us. We looked at each other in this bright room in this still-new house, the quiet suburban day just outside the windows. Goddamn it, I thought: It's over twenty years.

"I don't think he cared that I spoke the language," I said, deliberately not giving it up. "What he didn't like was the friends I made."

"No, you're wrong." She had looked away, but now she brought her eyes back to mine. "He thought you didn't want to be American, and that made him mad. You never understood. You never listened."

I felt my jaw tighten. I turned to the desk, pulled a cigarette from my pocket. I almost lit it, but I didn't know which would be worse, if she asked me please to put it out, or if she just stood there and said nothing. I crammed it back in the pack and started going through the papers Gary had left behind: an algebra quiz, research notes on the Iroquois. I knew exactly where Helen was, standing behind me.

"Bill—"

"Do you know how to work this thing?" I switched on the computer on Gary's desk.

First she was silent. Then she said, in a soft voice, "He has a password. I don't know it."

With Helen quiet behind me, I tried a few obvious things: Gary's name, his birthday, his sister's names. None of them worked, but they hadn't been likely to. He probably used the title of a hit song by some rock group I'd never heard of, or maybe the name of an NFL receiver he was modeling his game after. I tried Jets, Dolphins, and Chiefs and then gave up.

"I'll send someone out who's better at this than I am," I said. "Does he have e-mail?"

"Not his own." Helen spoke now in a quiet monotone, the voice I imagined she'd used when she'd answered questions from the police. "We have a computer in the family room that's online. The kids can all use it whenever they want, but we have only one account. Scott thinks they're too young for us not to monitor what they're doing. Because of what you hear."

"Did the police look at it?"

"One of the detectives did. But he said he didn't find anything. Things the kids needed for school, and some sports sites."

"NFL.com, that kind of thing?"

"That's right."

"The guy I send out here, can he look anyway?"

"I… I'm nervous about you sending someone."

"Why?"

"Scott won't like it."

"Scott's in New York."

"He'll know."

Meaning: The only things she'd ever successfully hidden from Scott were things he didn't give a damn about anyway.

I said, "If it helps find Gary, what's the difference what he knows?"

She didn't answer, and I took that to mean what I liked. I asked her for the name of the local cop in charge and left it at that, for now.

Helen showed me the note Gary had left, but it didn't say anything other than what he'd told me: I have something important to do, I'll be back as soon as I can, don't worry. I stayed a little longer, looked through this and that, the pictures and papers, CDs and books and clothes that made up Gary's life, but I didn't turn up anything that would help me understand where he'd gone, what it was he had to do. I faced my sister, standing silent in the doorway.

"Is it Scott?" I asked quietly.

"What do you mean?"

"Did Gary leave to get away from Scott?"

She flushed. "Why would he?"

"Because Scott's not a nice man."

"You're wrong. He's not nice to you. He loves the kids. And me," she added. "He's very good to us."

"Gary has a bruise on his jaw."

"He does?" Her eyes grew anxious, worried about her baby; then she must have realized why I'd told her that. "You think Scott did that?" She drew herself up, her small chin thrust out, quick to rally to Scott's defense. Too quick, I thought; and this was not the first time I'd seen that posture, though the image that flashed in my mind was not of Helen.

"Tell me he doesn't hit the kids." My words were calm but it was clearly a challenge.

"No." Her voice matched my own. "When they were small he spanked them sometimes, we both did. We're strict with them. It's very important to Scott that they know right from wrong. But what you mean— no, he doesn't do that."

We both knew what I meant. I looked at her, standing in her son's room, the sixth or eighth or tenth place he'd tried to make his own in his fifteen years. When we were young, Helen never lied to me. But it had been a long time since either of us was young.

When I drove off, she stood at the curb and watched me. She stayed in my rearview mirror until a curve in the road set someone's home between us. She didn't wave, but she didn't turn away, either.

* * *

I headed into town, pulled into the lot behind the solid brick building that held the mayor's office, the town council chambers, the Warrenstown Police Department.

"I'm Bill Smith," I told the cop behind the counter. The counter's brass rail gleamed under the old-fashioned ceiling globes. A WARRENSTOWN WARRIORS banner hung on the back wall, between a JUST SAY NO poster and one listing ways to TAKE A BITE OUT OF CRIME. "I'm a private investigator from New York. I'd like to speak to Detective Sullivan."

"About what?" The cop, a muscled young guy with an open, friendly face, turned my card over in his hand, found nothing hidden on the back, looked at me again.

"Gary Russell."

He looked blank.

"Runaway," I said. "Hasn't been home since Monday."

"Oh, yeah. New kid in town. Sorry, now I remember." The cop grinned. He didn't look any older than Gary himself. "Sullivan's in a meeting." He said meeting as though having to be in one was one of the penalties of adulthood, and something he wasn't looking forward to when he got there.