Hear the Children Calling (8 page)

11

J
ILL PACED THE BLUE CARPETING OF HER APARTMENT
, following the same path through her living room, bedroom, and kitchen over and over. The hair she had clipped back so neatly that evening hung loosely now. There were dark circles beneath her eyes, mascara blended there by tears. She ached all over; she was exhausted, but she couldn’t sleep.

The police had escorted her back to the station for questioning, but after a time had finally determined she was just a casual acquaintance of Deliah’s and that the woman’s death was probably a freakish, tragic accident. Drawing her strength back together, Jill had managed to get home safely. After a weary climb up the flight of stairs to her apartment, it took three tries to unlock her door.

Jill flopped into an easy chair and began to swivel it back and forth. It was so hard to believe: one moment, Deliah was alive; the next, she was gone. Worse, she hadn’t even tried to save herself. Why? What was going on in her mind when she saw that boat racing toward the dock?

“She never finished talking to me,” Jill whispered. She wondered, with some shame, whether she was
more upset about the accident or about the fact that Deliah was no longer around to answer questions. Now what was she supposed to do? She jumped from the chair, moving with newfound energy into her bathroom. The bright light stung her eyes, but when she had splashed cold water on her face, her weariness vanished. Whatever reason there was for Deliah’s death, it wasn’t the end of her hopes. Someone would answer her questions, and she had a good idea where to start asking them.

Jill returned to her bedroom and opened the drawer of her night table. She pulled out a green leather address book filled with names of friends she’d made on Long Island, and then she finally unearthed an ancient, battered directory. Jeffrey had given it to her their first Christmas together, and in it she had listed all the people she knew in Wheaton, Michigan. There was a final entry listed, just a few months before she left for New York—the number of her local police station.

If there was anyone to set her mind at ease, it would be Craig Dylan, the detective who had been in charge of investigating Jeffrey and Ryan’s accident. As Jill listened to the phone ring, she closed her eyes and tried to steady her nerves. The detective was going to think she was crazy.

The line clicked.

“Wheaton police.”

“Hello, may I speak to Detective Craig Dylan, please?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Dylan is no longer at this precinct,” the woman’s voice said.

Jill rubbed her eyes wearily. She should have known it would be a waste of time. “I really need to speak with Detective Dylan,” she said. “Has he moved to another precinct?”

“Are you a friend?” the woman asked chattily. “You’re a little late. Mr. Dylan moved away about, oh, five or six years ago.”

Jill shot to her feet, her eyes opened wide; Six years ago—about the time of the accident!

Calm down, Jill! It’s just a coincidence.

“If you give me your name and number, I can have him call—”

“It would be easier for me to call him,” Jill interrupted, quickly fabricating a story. “You see, we’re having a class reunion, and I’d like to invite him. He’d be terribly disappointed if he didn’t receive an invitation.”

She heard the woman mumble something. “I’ve got a crowd here at the desk,” she said. “Trouble at the local gin mill. Here, I’ll give you Craig’s number. Just don’t say where you got it from, because I’m not sure I was supposed to give it out.” She rattled off the number.

“That’s not a Michigan area code,” Jill pointed out.

“It’s Florida,” the voice said. “Fort Lauderdale, Florida.”

Jill hung up and dialed Craig Dylan’s new number.

After just three rings, a woman’s weary voice came over the line. “Yes?”

“May I speak to Detective Dylan please?”

There was a pause.

“Who—who is this?”

“My name is Jill Sheldon, and I—”

“What do you want from us?” the woman cut in.

“I need to speak with the detective,” Jill said, confused by the woman’s tone. “I’m sorry to call so late, but it’s urgent.”

She heard a man’s voice in the background and the woman saying who was on the line. There were words that sounded like an argument and then a man’s voice came over the line.

“Mrs. Sheldon,” Craig Dylan said. “How did you find me?”

“From your old precinct,” Jill said. “Please, Defective Dylan, something has come up regarding Ryan’s accident. It’s important that I talk with you.”

“What—what’s wrong?” There was an uneasy tone in the detective’s voice.

“I have reason to believe Ryan is alive,” Jill said. “There’s a very strong possibility that he wasn’t the child they found in my husband’s car. I remember you saying there were some questions about the case, but you never elaborated. I need to know now what you meant by that.”

“I don’t remember saying anything like that,” Craig replied. “Mrs. Sheldon, what makes you think there was a mistake?”

Jill told him about Deliah, ending her story with the woman’s accident.

“Maybe I’m crazy to believe someone like that,” Jill said, “but I’ve got to find out for myself. And I don’t know of anyone else who can help me.”

“You’re not crazy,” Craig answered. “Look, Mrs. Sheldon, there’s only one piece of advice I can give you: forget about Ryan. Forget whatever it is this Deliah person told you. Maybe Ryan is alive—I don’t know. I had doubts myself. But I can assure you the people responsible for the accident will not let you get to him. You want him safe? Forget about him. Because even if he is alive, they’ll kill him before they give him back to you.”

“Who’ll kill him?” Jill demanded.

“Forget about it, will you?” Craig said. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with. These are terribly dangerous people. If they find out you’re looking for Ryan—”

“Then he is alive,” Jill gasped. “Where is he? You’ve got to tell me where he is.”

“I can’t,” Craig answered. “I just can’t!”

Now Jill was screaming, tears running from her eyes. “You bastard! You can’t keep my little boy from me. Where is he?”

It was Craig’s wife who came back on the line.

“My husband doesn’t know a thing,” she said, her voice cold. “Please don’t try to call us again.”

There was a click. Jill called into the receiver, but no one answered. They had hung up on her.

“No, you don’t,” she said. Her hand was trembling as she redialed the Dylans’ number. This time, she reached a busy signal.

She couldn’t let it go at this. The detective had indicated Ryan was in danger—and that meant he was alive. There was only one way she would ever get a straight answer: she would have to go to Fort Lauderdale to confront the man in person.

It would be the only way to find out what he was afraid of.

12

T
HE SMALL SCHOOLHOUSE, TUCKED AWAY IN A
remote mountain community in the Southwest, had room for only fifteen children. They were all about the same age, between eight and ten. Jenny Segal sat in the second-to-last row, right behind Tommy Bivers. She often stared at the curls on the back of his head and tried to send him thought messages. Ever since her own experience at the clinic, when unseen voices told her not to do what the grown-ups said, she had wanted to talk with Tommy and ask what made him fight back.

“Pay attention, Miss Segal,” the teacher snapped.

Jenny sighed and went back to work. She didn’t understand why she had to learn a lot of things, like calculus and physics. It was easy enough, but she didn’t understand what a kid was supposed to do with all this information. Still, the grown-ups in her life kept insisting it was important, and she had learned not to argue.

Until the other day.

What had given her the strength to cause such a scene? What had given Tommy his strength?

At last the bell rang and school was let out. As usual, Tommy took off with all his friends. Jenny’s own friends sidled up to her. As they headed down the sand-dusted main road that branched off into their own streets, Cissy Critchfield nudged Jenny and pointed to a lone figure up ahead. Jenny followed her gaze and saw one of the maintenance workers leaning against a lamppost. She never paid much attention to the workers at the center, but all the children knew this man. Well, he really didn’t seem much older than any of them. Fifteen, Jenny guessed. No one knew his name, and no one was brave enough to ask him. Jenny thought he had the scariest eyes she’d ever seen, blue so pale they seemed transparent. He often leered at the younger children, as if he knew his eyes were frightening.

“Look at that creep,” Cissy said. “Look at those sloppy clothes. He’s always hanging around, staring at everyone.”

“I wonder what he does here?” Jenny said.

Another girl, Bambi Freed, put on a grin that was downright feral. “Do something to him, Cissy,” she urged.

Cissy’s eyes gleamed. She focused them on the scraggy young man up ahead. A moment later, he threw back his head and let out a loud noise that sounded very much like a duck’s quack.

“Stop it, you guys,” Jenny scolded. “How mean! Leave him alone.”

“We’re just having fun, Jenny,” Bambi said.

Jenny grumbled. “Well, have fun with someone else. Just ’cause you can make people do things . . .” Her eyes went very round suddenly, and she pointed at something over Cissy’s shoulder. Bambi started screaming, backing away. When she felt the tickling on her cheek, Cissy started to scream, too.

“Get it off! Get it off of me!”

Other children came running to see what was happening, and screamed and yelled at the sight of a huge, multilegged thing crawling over Cissy’s back. Its odd colors told Jenny where it had come from.

A moment before, it had been Cissy’s pink-and-apple-green backpack.

“Get it off!”

“Who did that?” someone shouted.

“Cut it out, you’re scaring her,” a boy yelled.

Cissy went on screaming and screaming. The spiderlike creature moved with watery slowness, and at this point it was almost up to her shoulders. Finally, Michael Colpan came to his senses. He took his own backpack and swung it hard at Cissy’s back, sending the monster flying to the pavement.

Instantly, it turned into a backpack again. And as if on cue, several grown-ups came running. Among them was Dr. Adams.

“Cissy,” he cried, concern in his blue eyes. “What happened, sweetheart?”

Cissy was too hysterical to answer, so Jenny came forward. She told him how the backpack had suddenly changed into a monster, but she left out the part about teasing the maintenance man.

“Who did this?” Dr. Adams demanded, swinging around to glare at the children in the crowd.

They all took a step back from him.

“We don’t know, Dr. Adams,” Bambi said. “None of us kids would hurt one another.”

Jenny’s mind replied to her: No, you little jerk, but you’d hurt a defenseless worker.

Then Jenny wondered if he was so defenseless. She looked toward the lamppost, but he was gone.

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t,” Dr. Adams agreed. “But I don’t know how this could have happened. You children must be in control of your thoughts at all times. This is what the clinic is all about, for those of you who seem to have developed a distaste for it.” He looked directly at Jenny when he said this. Then he put his arms around Cissy’s shoulder and led her away.

The other children walked off and Jenny was soon standing alone. She still stared at the lamppost, wondering about the strange maintenance worker. Well, not quite alone . . . She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to see Michael Colpan. She smiled shyly at him.

“That was a brave thing, knocking that monster off Cissy.”

“Whoever did it to her,” Michael said, “she probably had it coming.”

Jenny frowned. “That’s mean!”

“Sorry,” Michael said, “but Cissy Critchfield’s a snob.”

He dropped the subject. “Can I walk with you?” “Sure,” Jenny agreed.

He looked at Jenny and smiled. Strangely, in spite of his crazy red hair and zillion freckles, he was kind of cute when he smiled. And he didn’t seem to mind that Jenny was a few inches taller. It was Jenny’s turn to stare at her own shoes.

“You’re nice,” Michael said. “You think the same way I do, sometimes.”

Jenny squinted at him. “I know we can talk with our minds, but stay out of mine. I don’t like that.”

“But sometimes I can’t help it,” Michael said. “Sometimes you think words so loud that they come right to me. I know you have dreams about a lady and a dog.”

Jenny’s heart started thumping.

“You—you won’t tell, will you?”

“’Course not,” Michael said. “I hate this stupid place as much as you. I know you wonder what’s on the other side of the big fence and what the Outsiders are really like. I was thinking that maybe—maybe someday we could find out.”

“Maybe, someday,” Jenny agreed, nodding slowly. “But I don’t want to talk about it now. This is my street. Good-bye, Michael.”

She turned and hurried away, leaving the scrawny red-haired boy alone. Thoughts raced through her
mind as she headed home. Imagine, sneaking away from the clinic and seeing what was on the other side of the mountain. The thought both excited and terrified her. What if the Outsiders really were cruel? What if the woman she saw in her mind was as evil as the others?

“She can’t be,” Jenny cried. “She’s nice. I know she is.”

“Who is?” her mother asked.

Alice Segal was standing in the front yard, taking pictures of a flower that had budded on her cactus. Jenny hadn’t realized she’d been speaking out loud. She thought of a quick response.

“A girl at school,” she said. “Some of my friends don’t like her.”

Jenny’s mother made a noise behind her lips. “We’ll have to work on you kids getting along together,” she mumbled. “Can’t have the project ruined with bickering.”

Jenny felt her stomach tighten. Her mother had caught her in a lie. What if she tried to investigate further?

“I—I have homework,” she said quickly. She rushed into the house.

In the front yard, Alice Segal let her camera fall on its strap. She walked into the house herself, determined to find out who Jenny had been talking about. The girl was being entirely too recalcitrant lately. She would not allow her to misbehave. She would not allow the child to ruin what she and others had worked so long to achieve.