Vanished (19 page)

52.

W
hen my Delta flight landed at Reagan National, I switched my phone and my BlackBerry back on. I had five voice messages on my cell. Three from Lauren.

Gabe had gone missing.

My first thought, before I returned her call, was that Gabe was probably just acting out. After all, he was upset, under pressure, worried sick about his dad. On top of his problems at school. And . . . well, just being Gabe.

But when I finally reached her, she told me he’d been picked up by a couple of uniformed D.C. cops, and she’d been unable to reach him on his cell phone. She was terrified. I tried to calm her down, assured her it was very likely Lieutenant Garvin or his guys, and that I’d give him a call.

But then she told me about an anonymous e-mail she’d gotten at the office—a video clip of Gabe asleep in his bed, clearly a surveillance video taken by a concealed camera in his bedroom.

At that point I knew something was very wrong. I reached Garvin on his cell phone and asked him whether he’d sent uniformed officers over to St. Gregory’s School to talk to Gabe for some reason.

He hadn’t. They weren’t from Violent Crimes, or he’d know about it.

I asked him to check the radio runs to see if any police officers had been dispatched to Gabe’s school for some other reason. None had.

I drove to Chevy Chase at top speed.

LAUREN LET
me in. Her face was flushed and her makeup was smeared and she’d obviously been crying.

“We’ll find him,” I said.

She shook her head, sniffled, rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. She was still dressed in work clothes, still as gorgeous as ever, but she looked gutted.

“He’s here,” she said.

“He’s been here the whole time?”

She shook her head again. “They brought him home. They picked him up at school and brought him home.”

“Who did?”

“I don’t know. It just sounds totally bizarre. It doesn’t make sense to me. . . . Just, can you talk to him, Nick?”

“What happened?”

“Maybe he’ll talk to you. He won’t talk to me.”

“Is he okay?”

“
He’s
fine. But we can’t stay here anymore. It’s just not safe.”

“Lauren.”

“I’m taking Gabe, and I’m getting out of here. Go stay with my sister, maybe.”

“Lauren,” I said. “Let me talk to him.”

53.

I
could hear the tinny rasp coming from Gabe’s iPod earbuds even before I opened the door. He was lying on his bed, wearing a black
Nightmare Before Christmas
T-shirt, reading a paperback. On the cover was some guy in a Roman-gladiator outfit holding a gleaming sword and flying through the air. No doubt one of the sci-fi/fantasy series he devoured along with every comic book ever published.

He didn’t look up.

I sat down on the side of the bed. “Hey,” I said.

He kept reading. Maybe it was a generational thing, but I didn’t understand how he could read at the same time he was listening to music like that. I couldn’t.

Actually, I couldn’t floss my teeth while listening to music like that, but whatever.

“I want to hear what happened,” I said.

He kept looking at the book, but his eyes weren’t scanning the page.

“What happened, Gabe?” I said.

No response.

I reached over and yanked the earbuds out of his ears with one hard tug.

“Hey!” he squawked.

“What’d they do to you?” I said.

He glared at me. “Why? So you can tell Mom? She’s all whacked out over it.”

“She was scared. Can’t blame her. What’d they do?”

“Like, did they arrest me or something?” He gave me that prototypical teenage glower and put his book facedown on the bed. “They wanted to ask me stuff.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, all kinds of stuff.”

“Did they take you somewhere?”

“No. They just talked on the way.”

“On the way?”

“They picked me up at school and brought me home. They knew where I lived and everything. I didn’t even have to give them directions.”

“And what did they ask you?”

“Lots of questions.”

“Like?”

“Like, does Dad have any safe-deposit boxes, and where he keeps the keys, and like that. Does he stash stuff anywhere in the house. Is there like a panic room or some kind of hidden room in the house where he might have kept stuff. Where do we go on vacation, and do Dad and Mom have any places they like to travel to. They wanted names of Dad’s friends and relatives and like that. Anything I could think of.”

“Did they tell you why they wanted to know all this?”

“Of course. They said they’re trying to find him. They said maybe he left files or notes or something. Stuff that might tell them where he went. People who might know where he’d gone.”

“And . . . you answered all their questions, right?”

“I sure did.”

My stomach sank.

“I told them Dad has a safe-deposit box at Chevy Chase Bank, only I forgot which branch. I told them I was pretty sure Dad was hiding out at our house on Cape Cod.”

“House on Cape Cod,” I repeated.

“Wellfleet.”

“No one told me about this house in Wellfleet,” I said.

“That’s because we don’t have one. He also doesn’t have a safe-deposit box at the Chevy Chase Bank. As far as I know. Come on, dude, what kind of detective are you, anyway?”

54.

M
omentarily stunned, I noticed the little smile pulling at the edges of Gabe’s mouth, and I couldn’t help smiling myself. “You lied to them,” I said.

“Misled them,” Gabe said. “Okay, I lied to them.”

“You figured out they weren’t real cops.”

“Thing is, Uncle Nick, they were driving a Crown Vic like all plainclothes cops drive, and they were wearing blue uniforms with shoulder patches that said
METROPOLITAN POLICE
, so at first they looked totally for real. They even showed me their badges. But you can buy badges and police uniforms and all that stuff on the Internet.”

“So what made you realize they were fake?”

“They didn’t have a police radio installed.”

“Excellent.”

“And they didn’t have those strobe light thingies, the kind the cops take out and put on the roof of their car when they’re chasing speeders.”

“Very nice.”

“And I didn’t smell doughnuts.” He grinned, and I grinned back.

“You did good,” I said.

“Tell that to Mom.”

“I will.” I leaned over to pat him on the shoulder, and I noticed his face had gotten strangely contorted, and there were tears in his eyes. He made a hiccuping sound. He was trying not to cry.

“I was scared out of my mind, Uncle Nick,” he said.

“I know,” I said. I tried to hug him, but it was awkward, the way he was lying back on the bed. Then he leaned forward and gave me a hug.

“Who are they?” he said.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know, or you won’t tell me?”

“At this point, I can only guess, and I don’t want to do that.”

He let go, turned around, sat on the edge of the bed, looked back at me. “So what was the point of all that? Were they just trying to scare Mom and me?”

“Maybe.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are . . . are we safe?”

I hesitated far too long. “I don’t know.”

“Are you going to stay in the house, or are you going back to the fortress of solitude?”

“I told you, Gabe. You can’t get rid of me that easy.”

“Are you going to teach me how to use a gun?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Have a little faith in me,” I said.

He made a derisory snort.

“What’s the matter?” I said. “You don’t trust me?”

He rolled his eyes.

“Listen,” I said. “There was once this legendary French acrobat named Charles Blondin, okay? He was famous in the nineteenth century for doing these impossible daredevil tightrope-walking stunts. He strung a rope across Niagara Falls, a thousand feet long. And this crowd gathered and he walked on the tightrope over the falls, hundreds of feet above the gorge, and the crowd went crazy when he got to the other side, clapping and cheering.”

Gabe gave me a skeptical glance. “Yeah?”

“And then he said to the crowd, ‘Do you believe I can do it again?’ and the crowd cheered, ‘Yes!’ And he did it. And the crowd cheered even louder, and he said, ‘Do you believe I can do it wearing a blindfold?’ And some people in the crowd got scared and shouted, ‘No, don’t do it,’ and others said, ‘Yes! You can do it!’”

“And he fell,” Gabe said.

I shook my head. “He did it, and the crowd cheered even louder, and he said, ‘Do you believe I can do it on stilts this time?’ And the crowd shouted out, “Yes! You can do it!’ And he did it, and the crowd roared and got even wilder. So then he said, ‘Do you believe I can do it pushing a wheelbarrow along the rope?’ And the crowd roared and cheered and said, ‘Yes!’ And Blondin said, ‘You really think I can? You believe it?’ And they shouted, ‘Yes! Yes, you can!’ ”

Despite himself, despite his teenage cynicism, he was actually listening. For a moment he almost seemed to be a child again, listening to a bedtime story. “Is this true?”

“Yes.”

“He actually did it?”

“Yep. He did it. He walked across the tightrope hundreds of feet above the gorge pushing a wheelbarrow, and when he made it to the other side the audience had grown huge and frenzied and totally worked up and they cheered. Really went crazy. So Blondin said, ‘Do you believe I can do it again but this time pushing a man in this wheelbarrow?’ And the crowd roared and said, ‘Yes!’ He said, ‘You really believe I can do it?’ And they all went, ‘Yes, definitely! You can do it! We believe in you! Yes! Absolutely!’ By that time the crowd was completely behind him. They thought he could do anything. So Blondin said, ‘Then who will volunteer to sit in the wheelbarrow?’ And the crowd suddenly went quiet. Totally silent. And he said, ‘What’s the matter? You don’t believe in me anymore?’ And they were silent for a long time before someone from the crowd finally said, ‘Yes, we believe in you. But not
that
much.’ ”

“Huh. Did anyone ever volunteer to get in the wheelbarrow?”

I shrugged.

“How’d the guy die?”

“In bed. Forty years later. From diabetes.”

“Bummer.”

“Better than falling to his death, don’t you think?”

“Can I use that in my novel?”

“All yours.”

“So what’s your point, Nick? We all die someday, is that it?”

“No. I’m just telling you, sometimes you just gotta have a little faith.” I stood up. “Good night, Gabe.” As I walked out of his bedroom, he said, “Hey, Uncle Nick?”

“Yeah?”

He hurled something at me, and I caught it in midair.

His notebook. His graphic novel.

“Let me know what you think,” he said.

Then it was my turn to tear up.

55.

L
auren was racing wildly around her bedroom, tossing clothes into a couple of suitcases on the bed. Her face was flushed, glistening with perspiration.

“Chill,” I said. “Take a nice, deep breath.”

“No, Nick. I can’t. We can’t stay here.”

“Lauren, sit down, please.”

“Will you at least tell me what happened to him this afternoon?”

“I will if you sit down.”

Slowly, grudgingly, she lowered herself onto the ottoman of the big overstuffed reading chair in the corner. I gave her a quick summary of what had happened to Gabe and how deftly he’d handled it.

“So they were fake cops,” she said. “Impostors.”

I nodded.

“They’re trying to find Roger, aren’t they?”

“Maybe,” I said. “But I don’t think getting information was the point of that exercise. That was a threat. Just like that video clip you got today. We’re watching you. You and your son, you’re vulnerable. You’re not safe anywhere.”

The blood seemed to drain from her face. “And this is supposed to calm me
down
?” she said, her voice rising.

“I’m not here to calm you down.”

She began speaking quickly, almost muttering to herself. “My sister doesn’t have room for us. But we can stay with Mom for a few days while I look for something.”

“What makes you think you’ll be any safer in your mother’s apartment? Or in some Comfort Inn somewhere? You think they can’t track you down? I don’t think there’s any hiding from them.”

“Jesus, Nick!” She got to her feet.

“Did my guy Merlin come by today to put in the new security system?”

“Yeah?”

“I want you to start using it.”

“For what?” she said sharply. “So we can stay locked up inside the house all day with the alarm on like, like, it’s a fortress? You think we’re really safe here? And what happens when Gabe goes to school? You think they’re not going to grab him again? And this time—”

“If anyone wanted to hurt you or Gabe, they’d have done it already. I don’t think that’s what they want.”

“Then what do they want?”

“My guess? Cooperation.”

“Cooperation? On
what
?”

I answered her question with one of my own: “What are you keeping from me?”

“I’m not keeping anything from you.”

“Lauren. You have something they want.”

“I have no idea what anyone could possibly want from me.”

“Look,” I said. “I saw my father this morning.”

“Victor? In prison?”

“Where else? And he told me that Roger tried to extort a lot of money from a private military company called Paladin Worldwide.”

Eyes wide, she shook her head. “I don’t believe that. Roger? No way.”

“Well, whatever Roger did or didn’t do, I’m sure that’s who these people are. Paladin. And they’re not messing around. You have something they want. Maybe something Roger left for you, whether you’re aware of it or not. And if you don’t give it to them, they’ll take something from you. Something very important to you.”

“Don’t say that. God, Nick, don’t say that.”

“The meaning of the threat was obvious. But it didn’t contain a single explicit demand. So what do you have that they want?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea!”

“Roger said in that e-mail that he’d taken precautions to protect you. That he’d given you the means to hold them off. What else aren’t you telling me?”

She shook her head again, this time more violently. “I don’t know what he meant by that. He never told me anything about any extortion. He never mentioned this . . . Paladin. You have to believe me. I’m telling you everything I know.”

“You told me everything was fine between you two,” I said.

She paused, frowned, and said, “That was different. That was . . . personal. I didn’t think it was right to talk about that with you. I’m not withholding anything.”

I was tempted to press her on that point. But instead I said, “Look, I want to do everything I can to protect you guys. So I need you to think really hard about anything Roger might have said to you, maybe something that didn’t mean anything at the time. Or something he gave you.”

“I’m telling you, Nick, I can’t think of anything. You think I’d ever hold out on you, with Gabe’s life at stake?”

“Of course not. Not knowingly. Not consciously. But I need you to think really hard.”

“I will.”

“And give me the chance to find these guys. The only solution is to flush them out and neutralize them.”

“ ‘Neutralize’? Meaning what, exactly?”

“I’ll know when I get there. Have a little confidence in me, please.”

She paused, swallowed hard. “All right,” she said. “But one more threat—one more phone call or e-mail or anything like what happened today, and I’m taking Gabe and driving as far away from here as I can.”

“Deal.”

She reached out her hand, and we shook. Once, up and down, firmly. Then for the first time she noticed Gabe’s notebook in my other hand. “He gave that to you?”

“He just wants my expert opinion.”

“Why you?”

“No idea,” I said.

“I’m his
mom,
for God’s sake.”

“Maybe that’s why he didn’t want you to see it.”

The doorbell rang, and she looked at me, her eyes wary. “Who could that be?”

“Merlin again. And Dorothy, a colleague of mine at work. They’re here to sweep the house.”

“Sweep it…?”

“For electronic devices. Hidden cameras and microphones, all that sort of thing. And I’m going to have them start in Gabe’s room.”

“Gabe’s room? I don’t want him to know about that video thing, Nick. He’ll freak out.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said. “At first. But give him a little credit. He can handle it.”

“You have no idea what it’s like to have a kid,” she said.

“Can’t argue with that.”

“It’s like you go from all-powerful to powerless. You—you produce this
being
that you want to protect with all of your heart and all of your strength, but then you discover that you can’t. You realize that at some point you just can’t protect them anymore.”

“You know what you can do?” I said softly. “If you really want to protect Gabe and yourself?”

“What?”

“Open up. Level with me. Whatever you’re hiding, you need to let me knowwhat it is.”