In Things Unseen Read online

  “No. I’m fine. I’m fine.” He had to get to the television.

  “Daddy, can’t you please tell us what’s going on? What’s really going on?”

  “Nothing’s going on. I have to go.”

  “No, wait! The police—”

  —might come looking for him. That thought had already occurred to Milton. If the boy had been taken from school by someone, who more than Milton would his parents suspect?

  He hung up the phone in the face of Lisa’s blathering and turned the television on. The first station he came to was broadcasting the news he was looking for.

  It was a live remote from Adrian’s school. Henry Yesler Elementary looked like the site of a bomb threat. Parking lot overrun with police vehicles, bystanders swarming along the perimeter, uniformed officers manning the entrance. A female reporter stood before the camera, describing the situation, her grave expression in stark contrast to her Hollywood starlet appearance. Adrian Edwards, seven years old, had vanished from the Yesler campus sometime after 10:30 that morning, and police were looking for his teacher, Laura Carrillo, in connection with his disappearance.

  There was no mention of Milton.

  The boy’s teacher. Of course. She was the other one who knew what had happened, the atheist Michael Edwards had said was convinced Adrian’s return was just a hoax. Could she have abducted the child?

  Milton could not imagine a more terrifying scenario. He feared for the boy’s safety, first and foremost. From everything Michael Edwards had told him about Carrillo, and everything the reporter on television was saying about her now, the teacher seemed to be a very disturbed young woman. Perhaps even a dangerous one. But whether or not she ever came to harm Adrian, the damage she’d already done was irreparable. There’d be nothing Milton or the boy’s parents could do now to keep what had happened last Monday out of the public eye. Questions would be asked of all of them, by reporters like Allison Hope, the police, believers and nonbelievers, and simply repeating that Laura Carrillo was a madwoman wouldn’t make them stop.

  It could begin at any moment. The next knock on Milton’s door could be the police, checking to see if he had taken Adrian instead. In their desperation to find their son, the Edwardses might have implicated Milton. And why not? He was old and confused and had professed to be no less skeptical of God’s existence than the teacher. Why shouldn’t they wonder if he was capable of kidnapping their son out of sheer bewilderment alone?

  The absence of any phone messages from either the police or one of Adrian’s parents meant nothing. He had never given Michael or Diane Edwards his number and it was supposed to be the kind that was blocked, so it wouldn’t have shown up on her phone when he’d called Diane Wednesday night. In all likelihood, the Edwardses had been awaiting his call for hours.

  With hands that wouldn’t stop shaking, Milton picked up his phone once more and redialed Diane Edwards’s number. Hoping she’d answer right away so that he wouldn’t have to make this call more than once.

  THIRTY-TWO

  BY THE TIME DIANE and Michael arrived at Yesler, with Allison Hope in tow, a consensus had been reached that Laura Carrillo was likely involved in their son’s disappearance. She had been there earlier that morning, a subdued Howard Alberts said, and had spoken to Adrian shortly before he vanished. Since then, attempts to reach Carrillo had been futile. She wasn’t at her apartment in West Seattle and wasn’t answering her phone. The police were being careful not to state outright that Adrian had been kidnapped and Carrillo was their prime suspect, but they seemed to be operating as if no other possibility was viable.

  This was in part because Diane had yet to mention Milton Weisman, and neither had Michael. If Carrillo was the most obvious suspect in Adrian’s abduction, Weisman had to be a close second. But they had no immediate way to reach him. The one time he had called Diane’s phone, he had done so from a blocked number, as had his son-in-law prior to that.

  In the car on the way to Yesler, Diane and Michael had hotly contested the pros and cons of putting the authorities onto Weisman, only to decide against it. He was old and unsteady, to be sure, and no one had been shaken worse by the events of the last three days than he, but Milton Weisman had promised he would keep his distance from them all forever, and neither Diane nor Michael could see where he had any reason to renege, much less steal their son away from school.

  “You’re crazy,” Hope had said from the backseat, having remained a silent observer until then. “You have to tell the police about Weisman. For all you know—”

  “We don’t have to do anything,” Michael said. “And I’d advise you to stay out of this.”

  “Michael—” Diane said, her confidence wavering.

  “No. She’s got no say. She’s only here because I didn’t have time to throw her out of the car when she invited herself in.” Michael used the rearview mirror to stare the writer down. “We’re gonna do this my way, lady. Adrian’s my son, not yours. The minute I can’t trust you to be okay with that, you’re going to be gone. You copy that?”

  Hope said she did.

  And so far, she had done nothing to prove herself a liar. They had been at Yesler for well over an hour now, Diane and Michael being shuffled from one police interview to another—no, they didn’t know where their son was; no, they couldn’t imagine where Carrillo had gotten the insane idea he had passed away last spring—and as long as she was in their sight, Hope had held true to her word, speaking only when spoken to, watching and listening to everything around her without attempting to intrude.

  Not that Howard Alberts gave a damn.

  “Who’s this?”

  The principal had given Hope the side-eye the minute she, Diane, and Michael arrived.

  “Allison Hope.” The writer gamely stuck her hand out for Howards to shake. They were all huddled outside the bustling administration office, which the police were using as a command center. “I’m—”

  “I know who you are.” Alberts let her hand hang in the air and turned to Michael. “She’s with you?”

  “Yes,” Michael said.

  Alberts looked now at Diane. “I thought we had an understanding.”

  “We did,” Diane said. “But she’s not here as a reporter. She’s here as a friend.”

  “A friend?”

  “Maybe not a friend. But not an enemy, either,” Hope said. “I was there when they got the call to come and I forced them to bring me along. I’m only here to see if I can help somehow.”

  “You? Help?”

  “I interviewed Laura Carrillo yesterday. She might have told me something the police will find useful. Have they found her yet?”

  To Michael, Alberts said, “Are you sure about this?”

  “Have they found her?” Michael asked.

  “No. Not yet. But they will.”

  After that, making a point of leaving Hope behind, Alberts had brought Diane and Michael into the office to meet the gaggle of police officers and detectives ensconced there, waiting to interrogate them in earnest.

  The same questions were asked by different people, whose suspicion was sometimes disguised, sometimes not. Had Carrillo tried to contact either of them? When had they last spoken to her? Did Adrian and the teacher have a falling out recently? What were the reasons for Diane and Michael’s marital separation? This last just a poorly veiled admission Diane and Michael were suspects, too.

  And all the while, there’d been no news of Adrian.

  Eventually, the police let them go, drawn to the inescapable conclusion they were torturing Diane and Michael to no constructive effect. Released on their own recognizance, they fled the office together to find Hope, who stood outside the nearest bungalow, waiting for them. That no one had asked them a single question about Milton Weisman seemed proof enough the writer had made no mention of him in any conversations she herself may have had with the police, as agreed
, but Michael needed to be reassured.

  “Has anybody talked to you?”

  “Of course. An Officer Petrie, I think it was.”

  “And?”

  “If you’re asking whether I—”

  “Yes. That’s the question.”

  “No. Did you?”

  Diane shook her head.

  “Jesus! I’m sorry, but I have to ask both of you again: Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  “No,” Michael said.

  “If you’re wrong and Weisman has him—”

  “Weisman wasn’t here today. Laura Carrillo was. And if we turn the police on to him and he doesn’t have Adrian. . .”

  “He’ll tell them everything,” Diane said. “He won’t be able to help himself. And that will be the end. After that. . . .”

  Hope eyed her expectantly. “What?”

  Diane and Michael looked at her as if she were a child they would never be able to talk to on their own level.

  “You still don’t understand,” Michael said.

  “Understand what?”

  “That it’s all happened this way for a reason. Nobody else is supposed to know. If Mr. Weisman talks and essentially corroborates everything Laura’s been saying has happened—”

  “It won’t just be one woman’s word against yours anymore. I do understand. But what if he does have Adrian, or knows something that could help the police find Carrillo before she harms your son, or worse?”

  “She won’t,” Diane said.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Laura won’t hurt Adrian. She cares for him. She loves him.”

  Diane had always known it, but had given it little thought until Adrian’s funeral, when the teacher had practically matched Diane’s own show of devastating grief, tear for tear.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Hope said. “In her present state of mind, she can’t be trusted to be rational. Every minute you’re silent about Weisman is a minute lost in the search for your son.”

  “We get it,” Michael said angrily. “But there’s a bigger picture here that you still don’t see. You say you understand what’s going on here, but you don’t understand at all.”

  “We don’t just want Adrian back safe,” Diane said. “We want him back for good. He can’t tell Laura or anyone else what God has done because he doesn’t know himself.”

  “But Weisman does,” Michael said. “And if he starts talking to the police, we won’t be able to stop what happens next. We’ll all become a carnival sideshow on a global scale, and that’s not what God wants. If it were—”

  “He would have brought Adrian back and left everything else as it was,” Diane said. “He wouldn’t have fixed things like this, given sight to only four people in the world with which to see the difference between what was, and what is.”

  “Five people, including you,” Michael said.

  “Me?” The thought clearly made Hope uncomfortable. She smiled to make light of it. “You aren’t suggesting I play some part in this?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything. But I’m not ruling anything out, either. And maybe neither should you.”

  Diane’s cell phone rang.

  She snatched it from her purse and checked the incoming number: UNKNOWN.

  “Hello?”

  Milton Weisman identified himself.

  A uniformed police officer hovering a short distance away, no doubt assigned to keep a close eye on them, began to close in. Diane waved him off and dropped her voice to a whisper.

  “Mr. Weisman, do you have Adrian?”

  “No,” he said. “I thought his teacher had him. On the news—”

  Crestfallen, Diane shook her head to deliver the news to Michael and Hope. “Yes, I know what the news is reporting. But no one’s been able to reach Laura yet and she was here at school earlier, so we’re all just assuming Adrian is with her.”

  “Or me. Have you told the police about me?”

  “No. And we won’t unless we have reason to. Are you sure you don’t know where Adrian is?”

  “Yes, I swear it. You’ve got to believe me!”

  “I do believe you, Mr. Weisman. But I had to be certain. I’m sorry.”

  The old man was silent for a moment. “So what do you want me to do? What can I do to help?”

  “I don’t know.” Diane looked to Michael, said, “He wants to know what he can do to help.”

  Michael reached for the phone. Diane and Hope listened in as he told Weisman to just sit tight and wait. They would let him know the minute there was news of Adrian, good or bad. He asked for the old man’s number, repeated it for Diane to record in his own phone, and said good-bye.

  But not before Weisman said, “I’ll pray for you.”

  * * *

  Much to Laura’s chagrin, Adrian knew very little about God.

  Few children his age did, but she had thought this child would be an exception. His mother was a religious fanatic of some stripe and his father was likely another, so it stood to reason their son would bear some mark of their perverted faith. But Adrian exhibited no such mark. All he had to offer about God and Jesus Christ, the rationale for prayer and going to church on Sundays, were the same vague generalities any seven-year-old exposed to religious services and a handful of Bible classes might have posited. He couldn’t cite Scripture or quote the prophets. Asked to relate his favorite story from the Bible, he just shook his head.

  And as for miracles?

  “I am a miracle,” he said.

  “You are?” Laura brightened, sensing a breakthrough. “How do you know?”

  “Because Mommy calls me that sometimes. ‘My little miracle.’”

  “Do you know why she calls you that?”

  Adrian shrugged. “Because she loves me, I guess?”

  “Well, she does love you, of course. But maybe there’s another reason. Can you think of any other reason she might have to call you a miracle?”

  The boy answered with another shrug.

  Laura slapped a palm on the table, creating a thunderclap that silenced the entire shop. Adrian stared at her, shaken. She was out of patience. This had all been a waste of time. She had learned nothing from Adrian of any import, and could feel the dire consequences of her actions closing in on her.

  What more could she do to make Adrian tell her what he knew, what he had to know, about the game his parents were playing on her? What other method of persuasion could she use to pierce the armor of his loyalty to them? She could never hurt him; that wasn’t a level of debasement to which she could ever descend, but. . . .

  She remembered the gun.

  The one in the car, in the glove box. The black, horrible little thing Elliott had bought for her and forced her to keep in the Chevy after she was nearly assaulted in a bank parking lot by a pair of thugs late one night last Christmas. The gun had always scared the living hell out of Laura. Surely it would scare Adrian, too.

  Just the sight of it might be all the shock he needed to offer up the truth. . . .

  “Are you okay, Miss Carrillo?”

  She snapped to, the boy’s voice calling her off the edge of the black hole she’d been about to plunge into. She’d been that close to threatening a seven-year-old with a loaded gun.

  She had to save herself somehow.

  Maybe it wasn’t too late. She would take him back, and quickly. If they were found together, there would be no mercy; the authorities would charge her with kidnapping and brand her a felon for life. But if she brought Adrian back of her own volition, safe and sound and untouched, they might yet treat her with leniency. She was not a monster and she wasn’t crazy, and maybe she could make them all see it by undoing what she had done before the chance was gone.

  She glanced around the ice cream shop, certain someone was watching her. There were only t
hree other people in the place: a uniformed girl behind the counter, a boy in the same uniform, sweeping, and an old man in a booth on the other side of the room, talking on his cell phone. Being discreet about it, the way he might were he talking to the police.

  It seemed a silly thought until a car pulling into the parking lot drew Laura’s eye. . . .

  “Do you believe in God?” Adrian asked.

  Oh, Jesus, Laura thought. The car was a black-and-white sedan, bearing the markings of the Bellevue Police Department, and it was moving toward the far end of the lot where she’d parked her Chevy, beyond her range of view.

  She started edging out of the booth to follow the car’s progress. Adrian repeated his question. “Miss Carrillo, do you believe in God?”

  Without thinking and desperate to silence him, she spat out the truth: “No.”

  She left the booth and inched toward the back of the shop, where she peered out the window to see the patrol car pull into a space right next to her Cruze, the uniformed driver and her male partner exiting with some urgency.

  Laura turned to grab Adrian. . .

  . . .but he was gone.

  The booth was empty and only the remains of Laura’s order was visible on the table.

  “Where did he go?”

  None of the three people now watching her with interest answered. The old man put his cell phone away. The Bellevue police officers entered and went straight to the counter, looking like two more customers in the market for some ice cream and nothing else.

  They aren’t here looking for me, Laura thought. She had to find Adrian and leave. Fast.

  “My little boy. Where did he go?”

  The boy in the uniform wielding a broom stopped sweeping the floor. “Little boy?”

  “Yes. He was right there just a minute ago.” She pointed to the booth. Her heart had begun to race and she could feel nausea rearing its ugly head.

  Again, nobody answered her, choosing instead to look at each other as if to say, What the hell is she talking about?

  And that was when Laura knew, even before the two cops started moving toward her, that her real nightmare was only about to begin.