In Things Unseen Page 24

  THIRTY-THREE

  “WE WERE JUST TALKING. I swear, that’s all we did, was talk. That’s the only reason I took him, was to talk to him. I never—”

  “About what?” the detective asked. He kept doing that to her, interrupting, and it was trying her patience, which she understood was the whole point.

  “You know what about. About his parents. About this sick game they’re trying to run on everyone.”

  “Which game is that?”

  “They faked his death. They kept him out of school for nearly a year, and now they want people to believe—”

  “That he’s come back from the dead.”

  “Yes!” He’d cut her off yet again, but Laura was too tired to call him on it. They’d been here in this tiny, depressing icebox of a room, talking in circles, for almost two hours now, her refusal of a lawyer having clearly proven nothing to these people about her good intentions, and if they didn’t give her a moment to rest soon, she was going to scream until her lungs bled. “Haven’t you been listening to me? Haven’t you heard a single word I’ve been saying?”

  His name was Neely. With a face nearly square enough to have corners and a toupee that made a poor replacement for a hat, he seemed as prone to showing emotion as a toad. “Let’s go back to the ice cream place,” he said.

  Laura buried her face in her hands.

  “You said you and the boy were talking about his parents before he disappeared. Is that right?”

  “Yes,” Laura said without looking up.

  “Is that all you talked about? His parents?”

  “No. We talked about a lot of things. We always do. We have a—” She was about to say something she’d once considered only hers to know. “We connect in a way that’s unique. Adrian’s a special little boy.” She raised her head, met Neely’s gaze. “I would never do anything to hurt him!”

  “So. . .?”

  “We talked about religion, mostly. What they believe in, what he believes in. About God and miracles, or so-called miracles. I was trying to figure out why they. . . .”

  A thought snapped into place.

  “What?”

  Laura didn’t answer, staring past Neely’s right shoulder into space. She was playing it all back in her mind: the flash of black and white in the parking lot, the boy posing a question she almost doesn’t hear. She turns to see the patrol car, starts to ease out of the booth, Adrian asks his question again, and this time she responds. Angry and distracted, with a brutal honesty she doesn’t have time to second guess.

  The cop eyed her, waiting patiently.

  “Oh, no,” Laura said.

  * * *

  Michael had seen Diane this despondent only once before, in the first few weeks after Adrian’s death. She had been just a wisp of a woman sleeping through the day and night back then, her eyes sunken and dark, her voice never more than a whisper when she found the strength to speak at all. This wasn’t as bad, not yet, but it was getting worse as every minute passed without word of their son having been found.

  They had already been at the Bellevue police station for well over an hour, having arrived with the detectives who’d been at Yesler working Adrian’s disappearance. Laura Carrillo had been arrested at a neighborhood ice cream shop, alone, and this was where she’d been brought in for questioning. Everyone was treating Michael and Diane well enough, but nobody was telling them anything, aside from Laura’s initial statement: she’d brought Adrian to the shop to talk to him and he’d disappeared. One minute he was there and the next he was gone, she had no idea where.

  Michael’s heart had sunk at the news, but for Diane, it was the equivalent of being told their son had died all over again. The lead detective on the case—a veteran named Daniel Neely, with a sour-mash face and demeanor to match—had let slip that nobody at the ice cream shop could recall seeing a child in Laura’s company, and from that moment forward, Diane was convinced Adrian hadn’t simply gone missing, he’d been taken away. For good this time.

  “He wouldn’t have just walked off. You know that, Michael,” she’d said.

  And Michael did know it, but he also knew that to admit as much was to concede the point God had taken a hand in their lives yet again, for reasons known only to Him, and that Michael and Diane were right back where they started: mourning a child they would never see again in this lifetime. It wasn’t a thought Michael was ready to accept. Up until last Tuesday, his wife had been the one strong enough to believe Adrian was not lost to them forever, that there was a measure of faith in God’s mercy sufficient to earn the gift of the impossible, and now it was Michael’s turn to carry that torch. This wasn’t over.

  His son would be found.

  Neely and his partner, a chunky blond woman with bright blue eyes and a voice like a tugboat horn, had left them in the lunchroom to wait. Michael was standing in the hall, trying to give his wife’s encroaching terror space to breathe, when the blonde finally came back for them.

  “She wants to talk to her fiancé,” she said, “and we think we’re going to let her.”

  “Is he here?”

  “He arrived about forty minutes ago. He says he hasn’t heard from Carrillo since early this morning and didn’t know she’d grabbed your son until he heard about it on the radio. Funny thing, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He backs up a lot of what his girlfriend says about you and your wife. About how you’re somehow behind this whole thing.”

  She watched Michael for a reaction. Michael didn’t give her one.

  “You and your friend Weinman. The one she says was driving the car.”

  They’d already asked Michael and Diane about “Weinman,” first name unknown, earlier, and been told neither knew anyone by that name. Neely’s partner seemed to need more convincing. Michael recalled now her name was Rutherford.

  “There was no car. And we still don’t know anybody named Weinman.”

  “That’s not what Jeffries says.”

  “He’s her fiancé,” Michael said. “She’s been telling him the same story she’s been telling you and her life is on the line. What would you expect him to say?”

  Rutherford shrugged. They went inside to repeat the news to Diane.

  “What about Laura? What did she say about Adrian?” she asked.

  “Nothing new, I’m afraid. She still insists she doesn’t know what happened to him. He was there at the ice cream shop with her and then, all of a sudden, he wasn’t.” Rutherford raised her shoulders once to convey the height of her skepticism. Diane shook her head with despair.

  “You don’t believe her,” Michael said, addressing the detective.

  “Frankly, no, and neither does Danny. If your son had been there, somebody would have seen him, surely. And the cashier receipts prove she only placed an order for one, not two. But. . . .” She waited a moment to go on. “That’s not to say we’re entirely convinced she’s lying.”

  “Then. . .?”

  “She stashed him somewhere. We don’t think she hurt him. That’s the one thing we can say with an ounce of confidence, maybe Danny more so than me. He’s been in the room with her, I’ve just been observing. But it’s for sure Ms. Carrillo knows more than she’s told us so far. She has to. And maybe, whatever it is, the fiancé can get it out of her for us.”

  * * *

  Flo called her. It was the last thing Allison was expecting.

  She was sitting in the reception area near the front desk of the Bellevue police station, having no right to be here and no intention of being anywhere else. The detectives who had whisked Michael and Diane Edwards away from Yesler had stranded her there and she’d had to do some real scrambling to catch up. A fellow Uber driver had taken her back to the Edwardses’ home to retrieve her car and from there, she’d driven herself to the police station. The Uber fee had tapped her out but that
couldn’t be helped; nothing was going to stop Allison now from finding out how this terrifying night would end for Diane and Michael Edwards.

  Not that she was in any position to know what was happening. She was in the same building as the Edwardses and nothing more, killing time in the station house lobby like a dog told to sit and stay. Only the media had a worse view of things than she. They had followed the Edwardses’ trail from Yesler and were gathered outside in hordes, and the only reason Allison wasn’t among them was the lie she’d told the cop at the front desk: she was related to Adrian’s parents. The cop had taken one look at her—an even more disheveled rag doll of misery than she had been at the park that morning—and decided it was easier to believe her than envision her a card-carrying member of the press. So he’d let her stay, to watch the steady trickle of people walking into the station to file complaints, some angry, some miserable, but all of them desperate for help.

  It was worse than being in the backseat of Michael Edwards’s car. In the car, Edwards and his wife had at least provided a distraction from her thoughts of Flo. Here she had no such diversion, beyond the continuing struggle between the part of her that wanted to believe this was all a dream and the part that was terrified it wasn’t. The tug of war was draining her of what little strength Flo’s leaving her had not already claimed.

  And then her cell phone rang, and it was Flo.

  “Hello?”

  “Ally, where are you? Those people you’ve been talking about all week are all over the news. You aren’t—”

  “Yes, I know. I’m with them now.”

  It was all Allison could do to raise her voice above a whisper and put a sliver of iron in it. Flo would still know she was dying inside, but hell if Allison wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.

  “You’re with who? Where?”

  “I’m with the parents. At the police station in Bellevue.” The cop at the desk gave her a look. She left her seat and moved to a corner of the room where she could huddle with the phone in peace.

  “What are you doing with them? Do they know you’re there?”

  The question put Allison on edge. Flo couldn’t imagine her being there legitimately, operating as a professional in her field. Surely Allison was only on the scene as a trespasser, soon to be discovered and sent on her way.

  “Of course they know. They asked me to come, Flo.”

  Her partner’s silence said she still couldn’t fathom it. Finally: “Are you okay?”

  “Define ‘okay.’”

  “You know what I mean. How are you doing? I haven’t heard from you all day and I’ve been worried about you.”

  “Have you?”

  “Yes. What do you think? You think I don’t care what happens to you anymore? This is hard for me, too, you know.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  “You think this is funny?”

  “No, no. It’s not funny at all, actually.”

  But Allison had to chuckle.

  “You’re laughing.”

  “No. I’m really not. I’m just trying to wrap my head around it, is all. How I’m supposed to feel sorry for you.”

  Tears filled her eyes without warning and she had to throw a hand over her mouth to hold the rest of her anguish in.

  “I can see you’re in no condition to talk right now,” Flo said. “So I’ll call back later.”

  “No! Wait!”

  She thought she was too late, but Flo was still there. Allison had to unburden herself, let out everything she’d been thinking and feeling for the last ten hours for the benefit of someone whose wisdom she trusted, if not their promises, and she didn’t know when she might get another chance.

  “Something’s happening here. Something I don’t. . .that I can’t explain.”

  “Something like what?”

  Where to begin? With Michael Edwards’s tale at the park, or the one his wife had regaled Allison with at their home? What words could she use to convey the power each had held over her, or to confess she believed them both? How could she talk about Milton Weisman without sounding like a fool?

  She realized she couldn’t. There would be no point. Because Flo would hear only what she could hear, the half of Allison’s story that could withstand the tests of proof and reason. All else would get chucked to the side as sentimental rubbish, spiritual mumbo-jumbo to which only the weak-minded gave more than a passing thought.

  This was the great divide between them, not love. Allison could dream and Flo could not. Flo could only plan and do.

  “I’m sorry,” Allison said, “but I have to go.”

  And she hung up as if it were true.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  “I GUESS YOUR WIFE couldn’t get off work, huh?”

  Milton had answered the doorbell expecting to see Janet, but he found Alan standing there instead. Milton walked back to the couch and the television without even waiting for his son-in-law to enter.

  “And Lisa is at school so. . .you know how she is,” Alan said.

  “Yes. I know.”

  “And this thing with the Edwards boy has her. . .well, she’s a little freaked out.” Alan was standing behind Milton now, eyes on the latest television report of Adrian Edwards’s kidnapping.

  It appeared the boy’s teacher, Laura Carrillo, had indeed stolen him away from school that morning, but now she was in police custody and Adrian was still missing. There was no evidence yet to suggest Carrillo had harmed the child, but neither the police nor the press was ruling out the possibility. Unconfirmed sources reported the teacher had suffered a nervous breakdown in Adrian’s classroom earlier in the week and had been placed on suspension, pending the results of a psychiatric evaluation. In her present state of mind, the newspeople were saying, what she was capable of doing to Adrian was anybody’s guess.

  “Milton. Did you hear what I said?”

  Alan wasn’t one to raise his voice often. Milton turned around to face him. “So she’s freaked out. What can I do about it?”

  Milton didn’t need his daughter’s mothering right now, nor his son-in-law’s badgering. He didn’t know Laura Carrillo but he knew what she was feeling, because he’d felt the same way himself not that long ago. She would be angry and confused, terrified and overcome with doubt, and she would have no one to blame it all on but Michael and Diane Edwards.

  Milton feared the worst. What little peace he’d been able to make with God and the jigsaw puzzle the world had become was quickly coming unglued, and it was taking every shred of strength he had to do what Michael Edwards had demanded of him: nothing.

  Alan found the remote to the television and turned it off. Milton’s jaw dropped.

  “Is he here?” Alan demanded.

  “Who?”

  “The boy. Adrian Edwards. You know who I’m talking about, Milton.”

  “Is he here? Of course not! Why would he be here?”

  “Because I don’t think it’s just a coincidence that you’ve been talking about having killed him in a car accident for the last two days and now he’s the victim of a kidnapping. There has to be some connection. What is it? Is it the teacher? Do you know her from somewhere or something?”

  “You’re crazy,” Milton said angrily, looking to end this line of questioning before it could begin. He put his hand out for the remote.

  “Answer my question. What’s your connection to the boy?”

  “There isn’t one! Why are you talking to me like this? You think I would help someone steal a child?”

  “No. No,” Alan said, retreating. “But I do think you haven’t been honest with us. Something’s going on with you and this boy that you haven’t told us about. And I need to know what it is, Milton. Right now.”

  Milton faltered. “I can’t.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t?”

  “I mean that it wouldn�
�t do any good telling you. It won’t change anything.”

  “Then you do know him.”

  There was no going back now. “Yes. But that’s all I can say. I’ve told you enough already.”

  “Milton—”

  “Do you believe in God, Alan?”

  Alan stopped short. “What?”

  “Do you believe in God? Yes or no? It’s a simple question.”

  “Yes. Of course I do.”

  Alan was a good Jew, he went to temple regularly, he kept the mitzvahs. Milton would have been surprised to hear him say anything else.

  “No. I don’t mean the god of Abraham and Moses. I mean this god, the god of the right here and right now, today. Do you believe in that god?”

  “I don’t understand the question. What has God got to do with what we’re talking about?”

  “Nothing that you would ever accept as the truth. Which is why I’m not going to bother trying to explain it to you.” He put his hand out again. “Now give me my goddamn remote and get away from the television.”

  Alan returned the remote but remained where he stood. Milton turned the flat screen back on again.

  “I think I may have to go to the police, Milton.”

  “Yes? And tell them what? That your father-in-law had a dream about killing a little boy named Adrian Edwards with his car? You think that’s going to help them find him now?”

  Alan was silent.

  “You want to help the boy? Sit down and be quiet and do what I’m doing.”

  “And what’s that?” Alan took a seat beside him on the couch.

  “Calling on the god you say you believe in to bring the child home safe to his family,” Milton said.

  * * *

  As Helen Rutherford had suspected, the boyfriend’s confab with Laura Carrillo was a bust.

  Elliott Jeffries was no dummy. You could take one look at him and see that. He wasn’t going to join his lady friend in the interrogation room, knowing Rutherford and her partner were outside hanging on to their every recorded word, and draw her into saying something incriminating. “He’ll tell her to lawyer up,” Rutherford had warned Neely. “Before he asks her question one about the kid, he’ll tell her to lawyer up.”