Just Fall (5 page)

He wakes for real, gasping and sweating.

Detective Broussard has been having the dream ever since the first child disappeared. Seven months ago, 219 days. Three more boys have been reported missing since then, a total of four small children, their families first frantic, then as time went on, sodden with grief, guilt, and the loss of hope. The latest report had been filed just four days ago, another boy, aged five, who had been with his mother in an outdoor market, drawn to the sounds of the steel drum band playing nearby, and then simply gone. Little Olivier Cassiel, last seen in jean shorts and a red T-shirt. A little boy lured by the carefree, spirited music of the island to an unknown fate. Lucien rubs his eyes hard as if trying to erase the image of the photo of the boy the child’s mother had given him: impish smile, frizzy curls, scrawny arms braced in a classic muscleman pose.

Lucien’s wife, Agathe, is already up; he can hear her softly humming along to the radio playing in the kitchen. He is relieved; he does not want her to see him like this, unnerved and distressed. He showers and dresses. As he does, he desperately catalogues what he knows about the missing children, raking through the facts as if doing so will somehow provide the answers that have so far proved elusive. Four boys, taken respectively from an outdoor market (Olivier, five), a playground (Jacob, six), a harborside diner (Pierre, four), and most eerie, the boy’s own trundle bed in the dead of night (Sebastien, three). Little boys, there one minute and gone the next. The dark shadow spiriting away these children stalked the island with no apparent fear of getting caught. No one had been spotted and no clues left.

Then there were the places the St. Lucia police had searched for the kids: the docks; the warehouse district; Constitution Park (known for its homeless population despite a recent renovation); Maison Marianne (a now-abandoned mansion that had been the scene of an infamous triple homicide); a banana plantation that also housed one of the island’s tawdriest brothels; an under-construction resort hotel. Anywhere and everywhere children could be hidden. But the four boys had simply vanished.

Lucien contemplates himself in the bedroom mirror. His coal-black skin looks rough, his large eyes deeply weary. He puts on his game face and emerges composed into the cozy kitchen.

Their cottage is cheerful. Bright yellow café curtains, sewn by Agathe, lend warmth to the kitchen, which is the heart of their home, as do the madras plaid tablecloth and the array of carved masks by St. Lucian artists gracing the walls. Lucien and Agathe have lived in the city of Castries, the capital of St. Lucia, their entire lives, and the masks are the works of their friends. Each one has a story.

Agathe, her green eyes (as ever) glowing against her café-au-lait-colored skin, thick curls caught up in a glossy ponytail, hands him a cup of strong coffee.

“Didn’t you sleep?” she asks.

“Not too well. But I’ll be fine. Baby still asleep?”

“Yes. I just checked on him. We get to have breakfast alone for a change.”

He grins at her, pleased. Agathe serves him: French toast, fresh fruit. He grasps her hand and kisses it after she lays his plate down, and is rewarded with a honeyed smile. They eat in silence, Lucien grateful for the sweet taste of the food and Agathe’s understanding that he needs quiet.

But then his wife, his lovely, trigger-tempered wife, informs him she is pregnant again. With a baby only thirteen months of age, and the notion of uninterrupted sleep only a recent rediscovery, Lucien does not react to this news with the adoring jubilation Agathe has clearly anticipated. When he asks if she is sure, she flings a china plate at his head. The shattering plate wakes the baby, Bertrand, who begins to wail. Lucien begs off; he has to get to work. This only infuriates Agathe more. There he goes again, hiding behind work and avoiding his family! It is like he is always trying to avoid them as of late! His mind is absent even when his body is present! She could have predicted this reaction! Agathe rants on.

Lucien retreats into the baby’s room and picks up the crying Bertrand. He strokes his son’s small, fragile back, calming him. Then he hands the baby over to Agathe, kisses her on the forehead, and makes for the door. He can’t tell Agathe how heavily the four missing boys are weighing on him. Can’t bring any of this case home to her warm embrace. Not with their baby boy, and now another child on the way.

“Where are we going?”

Ellie was practically skipping, leading Rob down the Chelsea street.

She smiled at him. “I told you, it’s a surprise.”

She brushed a wisp of blond hair from her forehead. Light fractured in Ellie’s brand-new diamond engagement ring. The day was fine and clear, and even if Ellie wasn’t trying to move her hand just so to catch the light (which of course she was, just a little bit), the sun would have worked its magic. The diamond refracted spectacular prisms with every move.

They turned the corner.

“Here we are.”

Now Rob knew. Before him was a little pocket park. But the playground at its center was like nothing he had ever seen.

Four topsy-turvy miniature skyscrapers, paired off like two sets of lovers, rose from a padded, softly molded magic garden, a riot of fantastic shapes in brilliant hues. The skyscrapers resembled the buildings around them in appearance (except for their scale, of course); they looked like they were constructed of glass and steel. They were in fact the latest in environmentally sound “green” technology, and also crafted to reflect the latest concepts in the “science of play.”

The four play structures were spirited little imps with attitude: windows placed strategically to suggest faces, rope bridges suspended between each pair suggesting dance partners who might burst into movement at any moment. Sturdy ladders twisted around and led inside each building up to a porthole, out of which a child could gleefully slide shrieking to the padded ground below. A protective, slightly raised circle of bleachers enclosed the playground like a hug.

The project had been Ellie’s baby. Rob had been hearing about it as long as he had known her. He had seen her sketches, had heard her talk about the project, but she had wanted him to wait to see it until the playground was officially open and put toward its intended use. Kids now jumped and swung, clambered and climbed on the structures that had sprung from Ellie’s research and imagination, while their mothers, fathers, nannies, and siblings reclined on ergonomically designed benches that offered comfortable views of the entire park.

“Wow. Baby, it’s amazing.” Rob’s admiration was genuine. She showed him around, delighted with his reaction, reminding him excitedly of things he had seen in the design phase and showing him how, now, they were manifest.

Rob was suffused with love for her. She had put her mind and heart, time and energy, into creating this safe harbor. They found themselves kissing deeply, oblivious for a moment to the world around them. Then they parted lips, foreheads still touching, bodies close.

“Let’s go.”

They held hands tightly as they exited the park. Rob steered Ellie away from the three men walking none too steadily toward them. Well fed and sleek, with two-hundred-dollar haircuts and Brooks Brothers attire, the trio emitted an air of entitlement and a waft of lunchtime gin martinis. They were like a herd of fat cows, in the wholesale complacency of their own luxurious, cud-chewing existence. They pivoted to give Ellie a pathetically unsubtle and lascivious once-over twice.

Then one of them, prematurely thinning hair and a jaunty polka-dotted silk pocket square, locked his gaze on Rob.

“Kevin?” the man asked, incredulous.

Rob looked directly at the man for the first time. For an instant Rob froze, his body stilled to a single heartbeat.

“You’ve mistaken me for someone else,” Rob answered, trying to move past them. But the man was insistent. Blocked his path. His two companions stopped, waiting, looking, listening.

“It’s me—Spencer. I never thought I’d see you again!”

Spencer wavered on his feet, then lurched forward and tightly gripped Rob’s elbow, his fingers pinching.

Spencer addressed his companions. “This is the guy!” His friends looked mystified. “You know. My best friend from back in the day. The one that I was just telling you about last week?”

Rob pulled away from Spencer’s grasp. “Like I said, you’re making a mistake.” He draped his arm around Ellie’s shoulder, moving away.

Spencer said in a stage whisper: “Hey, I get it! You don’t want me to say anything out loud, still on the run!” Then a happy drunken bellow, “But I know it’s you. What are the odds?” he asked his companions. “Isn’t that just the craziest thing?”

Rob kept his arm around Ellie’s shoulder. They turned the corner.

“What was that about?” Ellie asked.

“I have no idea.”

Rob’s mouth was tight, his face white.

“Are you sure you didn’t know him?”

“Of course.” Dismissively, he continued, “He was drunk. I just didn’t like his aggression.” Then, tenderly, “It worries me sometimes, when I think about how vulnerable you are…walking around the city by yourself. After all, it is my job to keep you safe, right?” He pulled her closer to him, and she snuggled in.

Ellie accepted this explanation. Why shouldn’t she? She was loved, wholly loved, by a man who wanted to take care of her and who had put a ring on her finger to tell the whole world just that.

They went home and fell on each other in mutual, silent agreement, hungry for the other’s body as they had often been, but today there was a new intensity.

Clothes dropped and peeled, shoes were kicked off, breath quickened, buttons popped. Ellie felt slick and liquid. Rob was urgent, rigid. He laid her back on the bed. Climbed atop her with delicious deliberateness and mounted her slowly. Teasing and tormenting. She pulled her legs up high. He held her face still between his hands. He looked directly into her eyes. It was almost too much for her. When her eyes closed, he brushed them open with the pads of his thumbs.

The rhythm of their bodies, now that they were more familiar with each other, the way he cradled her head like it was a priceless objet d’art, the intensity of the silent communication of staring into each other’s eyes. The intimacy of it was like nothing she had ever known.

When she came with a heaving cry, his grip on her face tightened almost painfully. He kissed her deeply, then finally loosed his hands and closed his eyes as he too was swept into orgasm, his body shuddering on top of hers. He burrowed his head into the soft curve of her neck.
I’ve never been so happy,
she thought. Then she said it out loud.

Ellie lifts Harry’s arm, which is draped over her midsection, and gets out of the bed they share. They are in a sweet little beach bungalow, nicely furnished: carved wood furniture and batik cushions, sisal mats on the hardwood floor, a private little patio, a luxurious and well-appointed bathroom. Ellie peeks through the window. The hot noon sun bakes the soft sand. Seagulls circle and cry. She’s stayed as long as she can in the relative safety she’s wrangled. She hasn’t slept, really; every time her eyes drifted, she jolted awake, breathless, chest squeezing. She’s exhausted. Her brain feels fuzzy, her thinking blurred by the endless convoluted permutations of “what next” she’s been running all night.

She turns and looks at Harry, his position an eerie mirror of the dead man she left in the hotel room twenty hours ago.

Look closer. Is there a knife? Is there blood? Has Harry met the same fate?

No. He groans heavily and rolls to his side, twisting himself up in sheets.

Ellie moves swiftly and quietly, gathering her things. She steps into the bathroom and closes the door, locking it behind her. She takes a good long look at herself in the mirror. Not too bad, considering. Dark patches beneath her eyes, her skin is a little dry, but beyond that her face does not reveal the ordeal that has become her life.

She checks that the door is locked and pulls out the box of hair dye. “They” are looking for a blonde, so she can be blond no more.

She slips the plastic gloves from the dye kit over her hands. Mixes the dye with its activator and shakes the bottle. She takes one last look in the mirror. Contemplates her pale skin and shiny blond hair, the girl she has always been. A look of pure melancholy crosses her face. Her entire body slumps; she places her palms down on either side of the sink, stands there, curled over, staring at the drain. Can she do this? Who is she? Who is she becoming? Should she have walked away when she had the chance?