"Yeah, two cars!"
But who will help the other one?
Alex disappeared.
He checked in to a hotel.
He didn't pack a bag.
Every time he was about to fall asleep, he was jerked awake by the memory of his son screaming.
The phantom of the sound clattered in his ears as he stared toward the dark ceiling.
It reminded him of the first week after Alex had come home from the hospital, when his whole life had become a dream dominated by his son's cries.
He had heard them all the time then, too: whether he was awake or asleep; whether he was eating, reading, or talking; whether they were real at any given moment or imagined.
He woke late and checked out, planning to head home, but got on 94 instead.
He stopped at Best Buy again, but didn't buy anything, then got a late lunch and spent the afternoon browsing a used book store.
The day dragged past, and he wondered what he was waiting for.
He had to go home.
But when he saw the front door, he turned and went back to the hotel.
He left the TV on, hoping the steady babble would help tamp down the echoes of Alex's cries and let him get some sleep.
He had a steely headache, gleaming like a knife.
They said that people didn't sleep well in strange beds the first night.
Maybe tonight would be better.
He still woke up every couple hours, but at least he slept.
Every time he came awake he saw the clock and glanced blearily at the TV.
10:31 pm: some game show.
12:29 am: a music video.
1:47 am:
infomercial.
At 3:16, Alex was standing at the foot of the bed, naked and shivering.
"I'll just call for you," he said.
Vines of ice wound up the back of Ian's neck.
He sat up, put a hand to his forehead, and tried not to scream.
"I'll just call for you or Mommy," Alex reiterated.
The bulge of his pre-schooler belly glistened with bathwater.
Oh, god.
Ian recognized this conversation too.
And what else?
"Kick and scream!" Alex said, louder.
And bite.
And kick them in the balls.
"Yeah, and call for you and Mommy!"
Call for anyone who can help you.
Anyone.
Most people are nice.
They'll come running.
But Alex had been smiling in the tub, when Ian had warned him the last time about strangers.
Like it was a game to him.
He was smiling the same way now.
He didn't understand how badly people could hurt him.
"Yeah, and I'll bite and stick my fingers in their eyes.
Right, Dad?"
And he had.
The police said that the kidnapper's arms had been bitten in three places.
His face had been scratched, one eye a gouged, bloody mess.
The gunshot wound that eventually killed him had, they believed, come from the weapon discharging on accident as he wrestled with Ian's son.
Alex had put up a devil's fight.
He had almost gotten away.
But in the end, Ian's blithe advice hadn't saved him.
"Alex, I'm so sorry," Ian breathed.
"God, I am so sorry."
I should've been there.
I should've been there.
"I'll just call for you," Alex said again.
He was still smiling.
Sunday.
On the way home, Ian reached for his phone to call his wife before he remembered how their last call had ended.
He waited until he got in the front door.
Then he pushed her speed dial number -
1, SEND
- and turned carefully away from the hall leading to his son's room as the tones trilled.
Voicemail.
"Sweetheart, it's me.
I'm sorry I didn't call Friday night.
I didn't forget, I just have a lot going on.
I wanted to talk to you, but I couldn't give you my full attention, and... Look.
I've been thinking about what you wanted.
I want to talk to you about it.
Maybe... maybe we can do something together?
I don't think it would be so bad if you came with me.
And I want to tell you -"
"
You have.
Ten.
Seconds to complete your message.
Begin at the tone."
BEEP.
"I'm just thinking maybe you can come with me.
I just want to tell you some things about why this has been..."
He trailed off as the old anger shook its head, climbed to its feet.
Why this had been so hard for him?
Alex had been murdered.
How could she not get that?
Why should he have to explain to her why it was so hard that his
son
had been
killed?
BEEP.
Click.
He snapped the phone closed, nearly hurled it against the wall, stopped himself.
Then, before he could think about what he was doing, he cried:
"Alex!
Are you here?"
He did some chores, trying to clear his head.
Took out the kitchen garbage; made a dent in the pile of nasty dishes in the sink.
His hands finally stopped shaking as he hit the GO button on the dishwasher.
They hadn't been shaking because he was still mad.
Or frustrated, or whatever he was.
They'd been shaking because he had called for his dead son, and he was afraid he was losing his mind.
He undressed and turned on the shower.
The steaming rivulets on the curtain reminded him of Alex in the bathtub.
He turned it back off and put on a bathrobe.
The house was empty, heavy with silence.
He thought about dinner, but had no appetite.
He reached for the remote, but the noise of the TV would have made the silence worse, not better.
He knew this because of all the other nights.
Finally he went to his computer downstairs.
Stale habit forced him to open Facebook, where he stared blankly at a page full of people who had moved on.
He had stopped posting after Alex died.
What would he say?
"
Ian Colmes
identified Alex's dead body today :(
Gonna miss him."
No one had commented on his absence, except for Derek and a couple friends from raiding.
Most of his Facebook friend list consisted of old classmates from high school and college.
He had been part of the smart group, the ones with sharp minds and a keen eye to the future, the ones who were supposed to change the world.
They were living in
Singapore
and
Germany
now, had degrees in astrophysics and philosophy.
He was working in tech support.
He closed the window and clicked on the folder on his desktop labeled
Alex.
There were a lot of pictures there, files with names like
BigGrin.jpg, FloppyBaby.jpg,
or
ChldrnsMuseum.jpg
, but between these, like thistles in a garden, were Word documents and saved html pages.
MissingChild.doc.
PoliceReport.pdf.
PossblLead.htm.
The worst of these was
news_article.htm
.
He opened it and saw Alex smiling, his piercing blue eyes dulled by their translation into cyberspace.
The caption read:
BODY IN SHAKOPEE IS MISSING
HOPKINS
BOY
They'd found him in a ditch just off the road, not far from O'Dowd Lake.
He had been shot in the face at point-blank range.
At the morgue, Ian had dared to hope it wasn't Alex, at first.
The body's face was unrecognizable.
But Alex had a mole low on his left side, just above his groin, and it had stood out against the pallid flesh of the corpse like an accusation.
Ian scrolled down to a grainy photo of a white man with wild, grey hair and a clinging scrub of beard.
He was wearing a jean jacket.
This caption said:
Leroy Eston, Colm
e
s' alleged kidnapper
Mr. Eston had been discovered a few miles away when his rusting van had sidled casually off the road and into a pine tree.
When the cops got there they found him with his guts spilling between his hands and onto the brake pedal.
He died of blood loss before the ambulance showed up.
The official report theorized that Mr. Eston was taking Alex down to the lakeshore to kill him, intending to bury the body or hide it in the woods, but that the boy had somehow gotten loose.
They had fought.
Alex was obviously no match for his captor, but he may have had the advantage of surprise.
In the struggle, Mr. Eston's weapon had discharged into his own stomach.
Finally, Eston had shot Alex in the face, killing him instantly, and apparently returned to his van.
Ian closed the document.
He didn't know why he was reading it.
It was stupid; a waste of time.
He opened
MissingChild.doc.
The same picture of Alex, this one slightly less dulled.
Alex Colmes, 5, missing in Hopkins
.
He had been at Rita's house.
She was their daycare lady.
Ian had gone over there the next day and demanded to know what happened, where Alex was.
He had made her show him through the basement and the shed in the backyard.
He had refused to leave until she called the police.
Alina had apologized for his behavior.
In the next file he saw Alina, Alex, and himself at
Lake Superior
.
Alex had thought it was the ocean.
Ian stared at that one for a long time.
In the elevator the next morning, his watch read
8:09.
When the doors opened, the clock on the wall said
8:12.
Sheila was wearing a brilliant yellow sweater that hugged her breasts and showed off her cleavage.
She didn't say anything to him, but she looked at the clock, shook her head, and rolled her eyes.
He imagined kicking her chair over.
The callers were idiots, as always.
Their computers wouldn't turn off, or they wouldn't turn on.
They had moved their taskbars and were too stupid to find them again.
Every one of them believed their machine was out to get them.
Just after 10, he got an email from Justin.
He braced himself, expecting a summons to his boss's cube for his daily reprimand, but he was surprised.
The email said,
Is this something you might be interested in?
It had a link to a job opening for a Senior position on another team.
The money was good: at least two dollars an hour more than he was making.
More, maybe, if he could shine in the interview.
And since it was on another team, he wouldn't have to deal with Sheila or Justin anymore.
He hit Reply and typed out,
Could be.
Thanks for the heads up.
It would be nice to tell Alina he was finally moving up a bit at work.
Making some extra money.
Those things had nothing to do with why she had left him, but more money always helped make things easier.
It would also be a way to show her he was looking forward, moving on...
He blinked.
That was why Justin had sent him the posting.
He wanted to get Ian off his team, turn him into someone else's problem.
Maybe he'd even grease the process a bit, just to move him out.