Reunion at Red Paint Bay (6 page)

Simon drank the last of his water. “If that’s the mysterious card sender, he’s had his fun.”

He sits motionless
in a maroon Chevy Lumina, the most nondescript of automobiles. The
Register
lies folded across his lap. As each man walks toward the River View, he glances down at the thumbnail photo accompanying the editor’s column,
Setting the Record Straight
. Shortly after seven o’clock a white Toyota pulls into the parking lot and turns into a space a few cars down. The driver steps out, tries to glimpse the river through the buildings. The waiting man doesn’t have to check the picture. Even from a distance he can tell. His face flushes, his pulse races. Can he do this? Do what exactly? He’s only planned so far ahead, to this moment outside an unremarkable restaurant, sitting in a forgettable rental car waiting for
his invited guest to appear.
What am I going to do now, God? Do You know?

A car door slams shut. Then a second one. He leans forward and sees a slim dark-haired woman walking next to Simon Howe. They stroll past the Lumina oblivious to the possibility that anyone might be sitting inside there, watching them. How can people be so unaware of the threat around them? She whispers something in his ear and they clasp hands, like school kids at a dance. In a few seconds they are at the restaurant entrance. They go inside and stand by the large window, talking to the hostess. The man in the car raises his right hand, his index finger sighting the target, his thumb cocked. How easy it would be to kill someone. Motivation is never the problem, nor opportunity. Only will.

He didn’t expect this, facing two of them. It throws him off. He assumed he would reach this point and find Providence taking his arm, steering him down one course or another. He closes his eyes and rubs the side of his head in circular movements. He empties his mind, letting his thoughts dissolve into nothingness, and waits for the still small voice to whisper in his ear.

In a minute his hand turns the ignition key. The Lumina rumbles to life.

The house on
Fox Run is smaller than he expected, just average size for Red Paint, with scrubs of bushes
in the front and thick overgrown grass. It’s a place that doesn’t seem tended to. He would care for it if it were his, mow the lawn, thin the ungainly plants, paint the peeling shingles. People don’t deserve what they aren’t willing to tend to. He gets out of the car, gazes up and down the street bathed in the hazy yellow lamp light. It seems strange to him, how everything looks like something else at dusk. The hemlock in the neighboring yard like a giant hooded monk waiting to cross a courtyard at vespers. A rounded bush like the top of a head, with shaggy hair. At this time of night, you can never be sure what you’re seeing. Music floats through the air, from a radio or TV, and every few seconds a dog barks, as if demanding to be let out. There could be a dog inside this house, some large mutt trained to attack anyone unfamiliar. The possibility doesn’t discourage him from crossing the street and walking up the uneven slate pathway. A dog is just one more thing to watch out for.

The front door is painted sea blue, a calming color. He takes a deep breath and turns the knob. It moves a little, gives him hope, then stops. People never locked their doors in this town when he grew up there. What was the danger now?
I am. I’m the unpredictable thing people lock their doors against
. Light beams pass over him, and he turns as a police cruiser creeps past. He can’t see the officers inside but waves in case they are watching. A person waving would never be considered
suspicious. It wouldn’t matter anyway if they stop to question him. “Just visiting an old schoolmate,” he’d say. “Doesn’t seem like he’s home.” All perfectly true, or true enough. The cruiser turns the corner and is gone.

He looks over at the neighboring house, lit up in the second floor. He considers going down the side walkway, checking the bulkhead or kitchen door, perhaps find an open window. But this early in the night he might be seen by the neighbors, and how could he explain what he is doing? A door opens at the back of the house, a screen bangs. He listens for a minute in the darkening air, trying to understand what the sounds mean. He takes a few steps and peeks around the edge of the house. In the backyard something short and quick rushes across the dark grass.

“We’re home,” Simon called out
as he stepped into the hallway. “Davey?”

Amy set her pocketbook on the small table. “He probably has his earphones in.”

Simon watched as she glided up the stairs. He liked how easily she moved through the world, with so little apparent effort. She went out of view for a moment, then reappeared at the railing. “He’s not up here.”

“Check our room. He might be watching our TV.”

“I already looked,” she said, coming down the stairs. “Maybe he’s in the cellar.” She hurried by him and pulled the door open. “Davey, are you down there?”

“He wouldn’t be in the cellar with the light off,” Simon said. “He’s scared of the dark.”

She flicked on the switch and went a few steps down. “Davey?”

They listened for his answer, but Simon figured they should be listening for something else, a moan or scratching, any odd sound at all. Amy came back up and shut the cellar door behind her. Simon tried to remain casual. “He probably went for a walk.”

“Davey?”

“Maybe a bike ride.”

“It’s dark and his bike’s in the yard. I saw it when we came in.”

Simon ducked to see out the side window to the house next door. The lights were on upstairs, a comforting sight, as always. “Maybe he got spooked by some noise and went over to the Benedettis’ like we told him. I’ll give them a call.” Simon picked up the hall phone and dialed, trying not to rush. She was watching. “Hey Bob, this is Simon next door. David’s not over at your place, is he?” Simon shook his head so that Amy could see the answer. “No, nothing’s wrong. We just got back after being out, and he isn’t here. We thought he might have gotten a little scared and gone to your place. But he’s probably just down the street at a friend’s.”

Simon hung up the phone. “All right,” he said, “let’s go over the possibilities.” She just stared at him, waiting. It was obviously his responsibility to come
up with a plausible reason why their grounded son would not be home. “I guess he could be out looking for Casper.”

“She’s sleeping on Davey’s bed,” Amy said.

“Maybe a friend called him to come over.”

“He’d leave a note if he went out. I’ve told him to do that a thousand times.” She hurried to the kitchen, with Simon following. Her eyes swept across the counters for a scrap of paper.

“He’s not going to leave a note telling us he’s doing something he shouldn’t,” Simon said. “He probably thought he’d be back before we got home. We told him not to expect us before 9:30.”

She looked past him to the phone on the wall. “Check the call list.”

He picked up the receiver and punched the directory button. “There’s one at 8:15—Unknown Caller.”

She grabbed the phone from him and saw for herself. “Oh God.” She took a step toward the hall then turned around. “I knew this was too soon to start leaving him alone.”

“Girls are babysitting at his age, Amy.”

“He’s not a girl. He’s an immature boy,” she said, her voice rising. He reached toward her with a calming hand, but she jerked backward. “You just couldn’t resist the idea that someone was going to hand you a million dollars for doing something wonderful.”

A thousand dollars
, Simon thought. “Look, this isn’t about me. It’s—”

“Of course it’s about you—
Master
Simon Howe.”

“Nobody could know we’d leave Davey alone. You could have been home, or we could have dropped him off at a friend’s, or—”

She slapped the counter with her hand. “Would you shut up and call the police?”

Simon couldn’t remember Amy ever speaking to him like this. But Davey was missing, so he did shut up and dial 911.

Of the ten men
on the Red Paint police force, he knew nine. The tenth, a new patrolman barely out of training, stood in the Howe living room rocking from one leg to the other. “Which restaurant did you say it was, Mr. Howe?”

“The River View, in Bath,” Simon repeated, resisting the urge to suggest that Officer Reade write the name down this time.

“Is your boy used to you leaving him alone?”

“He’s eleven,” Simon said, “and this is his second time home alone at night.”

“If he knew you were going all the way to Bath, he might have went downtown to hang out for a while. A lot of kids skateboard in the Common in the summer.”

“Our son wouldn’t do that.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because he was grounded.”

“I see,” the young policeman said, and Simon wondered what exactly he saw. “Bath’s pretty far away. Do you go to the River View regularly?”

“No, the food’s lousy.”

“Think so? I used to live up that way. Went there all the time.”

“I guess it appeals to different tastes.”

Amy jumped up from her chair between them. “Would you two stop debating the stupid food? Davey’s missing.”

Reade rolled his eyes at Simon as if
Can’t you control your wife?
The truth was, no, he couldn’t. He said, “I know you’re upset, Amy, but—”

“Don’t be condescending.”

“I’m sure Officer Reade is just following the protocol for getting the information he needs.”

“Then speed up the damn protocol.”

“How did you come to go to the River View,” Reade said with what seemed to Simon like intentional slowness, “if you think the food’s so bad?”

“I suppose you could say we were invited.”

“Invited by who?”

“We don’t know by whom. I received a postcard last week from someone saying he wanted to repay me for something I did.”

“Can I see this postcard?”

Simon gestured to Amy. She rooted through her pocketbook, her hand plunging in and out of the various pockets. “Just dump everything out,” he said.

“It’s not here. We must have left it on the table at the restaurant.”

“You left it at the restaurant?”

“
We
left it.”

“But that’s our only connection to—wait a minute, I kept the other ones.”

Simon hurried to the kitchen. The yellow fish magnet was gone from the side of the refrigerator. So were the postcards. He came back to the living room empty-handed. “They aren’t there.”

Reade nodded as if that confirmed some theory of his. “How were you and your son getting along, Mr. Howe?”

“Why are you asking that?”

The policeman shrugged as if the reason was obvious. “You said he was grounded. Did he get into trouble recently?”

“Is that important?”

“It might figure into where he is, if we knew what was bothering him.”

“Okay, what he did was swing his fist at a classmate.”

“Your son hit him?”

“It was more of a shove,” Simon said, “but he shouldn’t be touching anybody like that. That’s why we grounded him for a week.”

“Did you do anything else—corporal punishment of any sort?”

“I don’t think the best way to teach our son that hitting someone’s bad is by hitting him ourselves.”

Reade shrugged. “There’s a lot of that happening these days, more than you’d think. My parents hit us big time.”

Simon imagined the page-one story—
Spanking Makes a Comeback in Red Paint
. Another scarier headline popped into his mind—
Search on for Editor’s Son
.

“I’m a therapist,” Amy said with her fingers touching at the tips, her way of keeping composed, “and I would never spank a child. So before I explode would you get on your radio and broadcast that our son is missing?”

Reade nodded amiably, as if he was agreeing with her. But then, “The thing is, we don’t really know he’s missing, Mrs. Howe. All we know is that he isn’t where you expected him to be. Happens all the time with kids.” The officer walked to the front door and crouched down to inspect the knob. “No sign of forced entry here or at any of the windows. It appears your son let himself out. Maybe a friend rang the bell and he answered it.”