Paranoia (The Night Walkers) (13 page)

“Hi Mia! Hi Parker!” He grinned and tried to wrap his fingers around the door handle without dropping the bags. We both stood immediately. I took both bags and put them on the counter, and Mia closed the door. Mr. Patrick laughed. “Who needs to pay servants when you can just feed teenagers?”

Finn popped his head around the doorframe. “Did I hear you say ‘feed teenagers’?”

“Exactly.”

While Mr. Patrick went to the living room to make a phone call, Finn and Mia unpacked the groceries together. When she wasn’t looking, Finn raised one eyebrow in my direction. I shook my head and mouthed the words, “all yours” to him. He grinned widely and stole one of the boxes from her hands to slide onto the top shelf. She laughed and swatted his hands away when he tried to steal her other box. Mia definitely treated Finn differently than she did me. It was subtle, and I wasn’t sure if she even realized it, but it was definitely there. I’d seen Addie look at me that way before.

“I think I’m going to vomit.” Darkness appeared right next to me, staring at Finn and Mia.

“I think I’m going to leave.” I stood up and moved toward the back door. Finn and Mia both looked at me.

“You aren’t staying for dinner?”

“No. I’m going to go home and work out a few things. Please … do the protective big brother bit when Addie gets home?” I looked at Finn, and Mia’s eyes widened.

“Sure.” Finn nodded. “And if Jack shows up with her, I’ll kick him out.”

Mia looked confused, but I left it to Finn to tell her whatever he wanted to. I trusted him to decide how much Mia needed to know.

eighteen

I called Finn first thing the next morning. “You up for some more detective work? Your suspect lists were pretty spectacular last fall.”

“Um … do you even need to ask?”

We agreed to meet after school, and before we even got off the phone, Mia had asked to join in. They were waiting at my car by the time I got out to the parking lot. I didn’t know where Addie was. I figured it probably had something to do with Jack, and I really didn’t want to know.

“So what’s up, Sherlock?” Finn hopped in the backseat after opening the front passenger door for Mia. “By the way, do not take this to mean that you
must
call me Watson … I’ll also take Professor Plum, Colonel Mustard, Scooby Doo, or Batman. You’ll have to be Robin. He’s kind of a tool.”

“Then who am I?” Mia grinned.

“Miss Scarlet? Daphne, maybe?”

“Okay, Watson … are you interested in what the plan is? Or should we spend the night on the Internet searching for cool nicknames?” Resting my elbow on the back of my seat, I turned back to face him and wasn’t at all surprised to see him muttering to himself as though seriously weighing the merits of these two options.

When Finn saw me watching him, he nodded firmly. “Let’s investigate. What are we investigating?”

I clicked my seat belt into place. “With people disappearing and other people doing bizarre things while they think they’re asleep, I’ve wondered whether it’s related to Takers. But I didn’t know what to do to find out more. Then I got an idea about how to get some information.”

“How?” Mia faced forward in her seat and pulled her seat belt on.

“We’re going to the police station.”

“Why?” they both asked in unison.

“I’m thinking maybe we can pick up clues about whether the police have discovered anything new. Jack wants me to wait on investigating the Takers until they make a move, show their hand, but so far, nothing’s happening and I’ve got nothing. But if the Takers are involved with the weird incidents, then maybe we can learn something about their plan for my dad. Besides, Jack and I aren’t exactly friendly at the moment. He isn’t going to tell me anything more about the Takers.” I started the car and turned the wheel toward the parking lot exit. “And I’m not done asking questions.”

The Oakville police station seemed surprisingly busy for our relatively small town. There were officers walking people in cuffs this way and that, while others filled out paperwork or asked people questions at desks. I saw a holding cell at the back that contained even more people than had been in mine. Some of them looked like they’d been sleeping on the street, while a couple of others were in expensive-looking business suits. That seemed odd …

I rubbed the back of my neck with one hand. Apparently I was getting far too familiar with police stations.

Darkness appeared, sitting in the middle of the floor in front of me. “Don’t look at me. You came here of your own free will this time.”

“I’m not sure I have such a thing anymore.” I breathed the words, but not soft enough for my friends not to hear.

“What did you say?” Mia leaned closer, like the reason she hadn’t heard me was the noise level.

“Nothing,” I answered, and Finn squinted at me like he might be able to figure out how to fix me if he looked close enough. I wished he could, but I was still relieved when he looked away. Everything with Darkness was getting so real lately that it was hard to remember when to speak out loud and when to keep my answers in my head. Of course, ignoring him was the best option … but he was making that increasingly difficult to do.

“You sure this is where you want to start?” Mia asked me as she shuffled two steps to one side, putting herself in the perfect position to block Finn’s gaze. Which was now focused on what was most likely a prostitute sitting next to a cop in a chair against the far wall. She was so subtle, I almost wondered if I was imagining it.

“Yes. Just not sure exactly why … ” An officer walked in with a chubby older man wearing what could only be described as clown pants, suspenders, and no shirt or shoes. He walked the man to a bench.

“Sit here while I get the paperwork. Don’t move or I’ll cuff you to the chair.” The officer turned toward a nearby counter with a clerk behind it and said, “Got another one.”

“Let’s start there.” I pointed to clown-man and walked right through Darkness on my way over. When the man saw us coming, he moved his hands like he was trying to cover up his shirtless chest.

“Oh great,” Finn muttered behind me. “I hate clowns.”

“I don’t think that guy is a clown … ” Mia whispered back.

“What happened to you?” I took a seat one spot away from him and picked up a magazine, pretending to look through it.

“Me?” He had red lipstick smeared from his chin to one earlobe.

I looked over at him and nodded, then took off my hoodie and handed it to him.

The man-clown nearly broke down as he pulled it over his head and tried to make his shaking fingers zip it all the way up. “I have no idea. I went to bed and woke up like this! In a … ” He looked around him like he was afraid someone might hear. “A strip club … on the stage. I don’t even—I don’t know—Margie is going to kill me.”

Finn leaned around me. “I take it clown stripping isn’t your usual Tuesday evening activity?”

The man shuddered and vehemently shook his head. “I’m a pediatrician. I could lose my patients, my practice, if people saw me like this.”

“Come on, buddy.” The officer came back. “Enough chit-chat. Let’s go call your lawyer.”

The man got to his feet, then pointed to my hoodie and started to unzip it.

“Keep it.”

“Thank you.” He pulled the hood up over his head and looked like he was trying to hide from his entire life.

“That was my favorite jacket … ” Darkness’s voice spoke from directly behind my ear. It took all my restraint not to whirl around to face him.
Ignore him … just ignore him.

“Well, that was interesting.” Mia watched clown-man until he went into an office on the opposite side of the station.

“Drunk?” Finn asked, his fingers tugging on his ear.

“Maybe … he smelled like booze.” I rubbed my knuckles against each other and then shook my head. “But he didn’t seem out of it. He seemed genuinely panicked … scared.”

Scanning the room, I spotted something I’d been hoping to find here. A sign with all the Missing Persons fliers. There was someone standing in front of it, so I’d almost missed it. “Over here.”

Finn and Mia followed me over, but I stood back a few feet so as not to crowd the guy already there. I didn’t realize he wasn’t real until Mia walked right through him.

Darkness.

I went cold inside and out. How much further could he take this? As soon as I thought the question, I wanted to take it back. The last thing I needed was for him to take it as some sort of challenge.

“You have to accept it. Ignoring me won’t work.” He pivoted in place. Mia still stood merged with his entire left side. “Otherwise—I haven’t even skimmed the surface of the kind of things I could make you see.”

I swallowed hard and nodded. And sent him a thought loud and clear:
You win. Stop messing with my head like this and I won’t ignore you anymore.

“That’s all I want … for now.” Then he disappeared. Darkness really had a flair for the dramatic.

Shaking off his ominous departure, I stepped up next to Finn and Mia and examined the board. There were at least as many fliers here as there’d been at the Newton City Jail.

“What are we looking for?” Finn whispered next to me, then looked around like someone trying to steal a car.

“I don’t know … ” My eyes scanned the faces, but I really had no clue what I thought I could learn from this. “A pattern, maybe?”

“Can I help you kids with something?” A female officer walked up behind us with a wary smile. Her badge said
Officer Sweeney
.

“Is this a normal amount of missing people?”

She gave me an odd look but answered my question. “I would hope zero would be a normal amount … but we’ve
definitely had a bit of an uptick over the last couple of months. Are you doing an article for the school paper or something?”

“Yes,” Mia answered at the same time Finn said “No.”

I put my hands on their shoulders. “She is. He isn’t.”

Officer Sweeney slowly nodded, then turned to Mia. “Any other questions?”

“You said it’s increased … is there anything else weird about it?”

“Well, many of the missing aren’t considered individuals with high-risk lifestyles … which is odd, as most disappearances fall under that category.” She rubbed the ends of her fingers together and studied the fliers.

“Did a lot of them go missing at night?” I asked.

“Some … why?” Sweeney focused on me for the first time, her eyes narrowing.

“Just wondering.”

“Oh … kay.” The officer raised one eyebrow, then turned back to Mia. “I’ll be over there if you think of anything else. Good luck with your report.”

“Thanks.”

We stood beside the board for a few more minutes before Finn groaned and said, “I’ve got nothing. “You guys?”

“Excuse me, please.” A male officer spoke from directly behind Finn, and he jumped to one side.

This officer—his nametag read
Jensen
—walked up to the board, opened the plastic case, and put up a new flier. With one forearm, he lifted up the bottom row of papers to reveal a state map that hadn’t been visible before. Then he lifted a red pin from a small tray below the board. With a frown, he checked something on the new flier and pushed a pin into an empty spot on the map. Another missing person.

There were
so many
red pins … I tried to count them, but I only got to twelve and was nowhere near done when Jensen dropped the fliers and the map was hidden away from sight again. As he closed and locked the case, my gaze landed on the new flier. Audrey Martin—blond hair, brown eyes, last seen coming home from school today by the school crossing guard. She was seven years old. The picture of her showed a missing front tooth. She was holding out a flower.

Finn, Mia, and I stared at it in silence as the officer pulled his key out and walked away. Then I heard soft sobbing coming from nearby. I searched the room and found a couple seated at a desk opposite Officer Jensen. The woman had short blond hair and her eyes were red and swollen, her shoulders trembling. The man beside her rubbed his hand across her back over and over until I wondered if he might take off skin. She seemed numb to it. They were wearing nice clothes, were obviously wealthy … and they looked absolutely powerless.

The man stared hard at the officer. “What do you mean, ‘all you can do for now’?”

“Sir, we’ve sent Audrey’s picture everywhere. I told you we have officers combing the area. We’ve sent out alerts statewide. We’re investigating where she was last seen, asking around the neighborhood. If you’d like to call family, it might be good to have a support system right now.”

“A support system? We don’t need support. We need you to stop asking us questions and figure out who has her. Someone took her. We need to find her!” He slammed his fist down on the desk.

“Sir, I know this is difficult, but you need to try to stay calm and be patient. We’re trying to help you. Let us do that.”

The woman leaned her head against her husband’s chest and clutched her fingers in his shirt. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head as he murmured something to her.

Jensen cleared his throat and stood up. “I’ll give you a minute.”

I was next to the desk without even thinking. “I—I just saw your daughter’s picture. I’m so sorry.”

My heart broke for them. This scene was bringing back memories of when we’d reported Dad missing: Mom breaking down every time she thought I wasn’t watching, everyone acting like he was probably dead. They didn’t know … they couldn’t know. And it turned out, they’d been wrong.

The man nodded but didn’t speak.

I felt like there was more I should say … but I couldn’t figure out what it was, so I just stood there.

“Come on, Parker.” Mia put her hand on my elbow and started to pull me away.

“M-my dad disappeared a few years ago.”

The woman pulled back from her husband’s chest and now they both were looking up at me. Waiting to hear whether my story had ended the way they’d hoped theirs would.

“Did they find him?” Her words were hushed, raw with hope and misery.

Darkness appeared behind them and smirked. “Now what, genius?”

“Yeah … ” My voice cracked on the lie. “Yeah, he’s fine. I’m sure your daughter will be, too.”

They hugged each other again, but this time there seemed to be a little more hope and a little less despair. The man said, “Thank you.”

Neither Finn nor Mia spoke as they followed me out the front door of the police station. I felt defeated, deflated. No one at the police station had helped me learn anything, because none of them
knew
anything. I’d discovered nothing except that the world still sucked just as bad as I thought it did. And I didn’t know how I would be able to learn more.

When we got in the car, Finn spoke first. “So I get the clown guy. There could be a Taker messing with his head …
not cool, but I get it.”

“Right … ” I turned on my blinker and pulled into the left turn lane, then looked at Finn in the rearview mirror. He was rubbing his forehead with his fingertips.

“But why are people completely disappearing? Why kidnap that little girl?” he asked.

“I don’t know. That might not even be related to the Takers.” The light turned green and I turned, putting my foot on the gas a little harder than necessary. My thoughts went to Addie, and my stomach clenched down hard with fear before I continued. “But Jack said they capture other Night Walkers … that they kill people they even suspect might be Builders. If they’re kidnapping regular people, too, there could be a million reasons why that we’ll never understand.”