In Things Unseen Read online

  Rutherford wasn’t wrong by much.

  The first thing Jeffries said to Carrillo was about the kid: “Laura, do you know where the boy is?” But once she’d given him an answer—”Elliott, I swear I don’t. I don’t!”—his concerns for Adrian Edwards’s welfare evaporated and his only interest was to shut his fiancé up until they could both talk to a good attorney.

  Luckily for Rutherford and Neely, Carrillo remained as disinclined to seek legal counsel as ever. She wasn’t worried about her own skin. She was solely focused on telling Jeffries the exact same story she’d been telling the detectives since they’d brought her in. Sobbing hysterically one minute, plainly stating her case the next, she didn’t seem to know or give a damn that she and her boyfriend weren’t technically alone.

  When Jeffries finally withdrew from the room, shaken and exhausted, all the detectives were left with was what they’d had at the start: a suspect who either didn’t know where her kidnap victim was or was not prepared to say.

  “She’s telling the truth,” Jeffries said. “She really doesn’t know where the boy is. She would have told me if she did.”

  “Through her lawyer, you mean,” Rutherford said.

  “So I advised her to get a lawyer. That proves she’s guilty?”

  “She’s already confessed to being guilty,” Neely said. “She took the boy by her own admission. What she needs to do now is prove he’s still alive.”

  “She doesn’t know where he is,” Jeffries repeated. “You heard what she said. He ran away. Something she said upset him and he took off.”

  “Just like that,” Rutherford said. “He took off and hasn’t been seen since. A seven-year-old boy. Every cop in the city and half the populace out looking for him and he just went poof! Gone.”

  Jeffries glared at her. His girlfriend’s story didn’t add up and he knew it.

  “I need to talk to Adrian’s parents,” he said.

  * * *

  “I can’t do this anymore.”

  Milton’s son-in-law turned to face him. “What?”

  “I have to go. I can’t just sit here like this, doing nothing.” Milton killed the TV with the remote and got up.

  “Wait, what are you talking about? Where are you going?”

  It was the very same question Milton was asking himself. He had no inkling, but it didn’t matter. The boy was out there somewhere, and if no one else could find him, maybe Milton could.

  He went to get his keys.

  “No,” Alan said, placing himself between Milton and the door. “I can’t let you leave.”

  “You can’t?” Keys in one fist, Milton marched right past him.

  Alan leapt to the door and braced his back against it. “Please. You can’t do this. You don’t know what you’re doing.” The poor bastard was practically in tears. Janet had given her husband the thankless task of sitting on Milton for a few hours until she could get free to do it herself, and here Alan was, on the brink of having Milton slip through his fingers on his way to God knew where.

  “I know exactly what I’m doing,” Milton said. “I’m going out through that door. And you can either put me in the hospital trying to stop me, or you can come with me. Those are your choices.”

  He gave Janet’s husband a good, long look at the determination on his face, so Alan couldn’t say later he hadn’t known how serious Milton was.

  “I’ll drive,” Alan said.

  In the car, he started the engine, turned to Milton, and asked, “Now will you tell me where we’re going?”

  Without pausing to think, Milton said, “The park. We’re going to Lakeridge Park.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  ONE LOOK AT ELLIOTT Jeffries’s face and Diane knew: something had gone terribly wrong.

  From the moment she’d heard Laura Carrillo’s account of how Adrian had vanished into thin air at the ice cream shop, Diane had known. Her son hadn’t just walked away.

  Adrian had been taken back, this time for good.

  “I have a message from Laura,” Jeffries said.

  The police had found an empty office where the three of them—Jeffries, Michael, and Diane—could talk in private, and Carrillo’s boyfriend wasted no time speaking his piece, his anger as evident as the floor beneath their feet.

  “But first, here’s one from me: I don’t know why you’re doing this, but I’m going to find out. I promise you. Laura will never be the same. If they let her walk right now, gave her her job back tomorrow, she’d still bear the mark of what you’ve put her through this week, and she’ll probably have to bear it forever.”

  “What we’ve put her through?” Michael said.

  “That’s right. If you didn’t plant all these insane ideas about your son in her head, who did? You’ve finally got her convinced he’s a dead child walking among the living. If that’s what you wanted, you win. She’s a believer.”

  “All we want is our son back,” Diane said. “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know, and neither does she. Are you sure that you don’t know?”

  “What?”

  “For all we know, the old man has him. Your partner. Weinman, is it? You and your husband have been using the boy as a straw man so far, why quit now?”

  Michael took a step toward him but Diane was quicker. Her open right hand snapped Jeffries’s head to one side like the sprung armature of a trap.

  “Where is our son?” she asked again.

  Stunned by the blow, Jeffries seemed about to strike back, only to remember Michael standing there. “I told you! She doesn’t know. He just disappeared, like she’s been saying all along.”

  Diane closed her eyes and kept them closed.

  “It’s the truth! She would never have hurt him. Never. I know her like I know myself and I swear to you, she didn’t lay a hand on Adrian.”

  “Then where did he go?” Michael demanded. “If he’d been at the shop with her like she says, somebody would have seen him. And he would have shown up somewhere on the security videos.”

  “You’re saying he didn’t?”

  “Detective Neely says the videos show your fiancé walk in alone and sit down alone. Adrian’s nowhere to be seen.”

  Jeffries fell silent. Diane watched his anger seep away, giving in to something else: fear.

  “You said you had a message for us from Laura. What is it?”

  “She wants you to know she’s sorry. That she shouldn’t have taken him from school today and, obviously, she wishes she never had. She asks for your forgiveness.”

  The words had been a bitter pill for him, but not because they weren’t true.

  “No. That’s not all of it. There’s more,” Diane said.

  “That is all of it.”

  “No. She’s right,” Michael said. “Tell us the rest.”

  “It won’t help you.”

  “We don’t give a damn. Say it.”

  Jeffries continued to squirm, and now Diane thought she understood. He was only doing this because he’d promised Carrillo he would.

  “She blames herself. Not just for the boy’s kidnapping, but for his disappearance. She thinks. . . .” He had to reset himself before finishing. “She thinks it happened because of something she said.”

  He left it at that.

  “What did she say?” Diane asked. The room was already starting to blur.

  Jeffries gave Michael a look, seeking a reprieve to no purpose.

  “They were talking about faith. She was trying to find out what he knew about it. He asked if she believed in God and. . .and she told him the truth.” He paused to see their reaction. “It was right after that that the cops showed up. She says she only turned her head for a minute to watch them pull into the lot, and when she turned back—”

  “He was gone,” Diane said. At least it sounded like her voice. It see
med nothing she did now was of her own volition.

  Jeffries nodded.

  She reached out for a chair and would have missed falling into it had Michael not caught her. He held her tight to his chest as Jeffries looked on.

  Diane began to cry.

  * * *

  “What are we doing here?” Alan asked. “What are you looking for?”

  “Nothing. Go home. Leave me alone.”

  Milton was sitting on the same bench he and Diane Edwards had shared at Lakeridge Park the day before. It was after five and a gray sky was turning black, a light rain falling to complete the gloom. What few children remained on the playground were being ushered away by adults, promising Milton and Alan they’d soon have the grounds to themselves.

  “You know I can’t leave you here. Janet would have my head. And it’s starting to rain, for chrissakes.”

  Milton didn’t answer, eyes still scanning their surroundings, looking for something he couldn’t name.

  “The Edwards boy isn’t here because we’ve looked. So what are we doing? What are you hoping to find?”

  “A sign. An answer. I don’t know!”

  There was nothing he could tell Alan that wouldn’t make Milton sound more insane than he already appeared to be. He hadn’t been called to the park by reason; he’d come at the behest of impulse. He was supposed to be here. Hidden somewhere in plain sight, like a single pine needle among the millions littering the park, was a message only he was meant to receive. But where? And what?

  He rose to walk the grounds again, as he had when they arrived. Alan let him go, weary of following Milton around like a puppy. Janet’s husband had placed a call to her minutes ago and she was no doubt on her way, so Alan’s sense of responsibility to Milton was waning.

  The rain was holding steady but was barely noticeable against Milton’s focus on the task at hand. The two men were alone now, and the only sound was an occasional jay chirping in the distance. Milton circled the play structure, spying half-formed castles in the sand. A pair of squirrels skittered across his line of sight, chased each other up the trunk of a maple tree, and disappeared among the leaves. Milton turned his head. . .

  . . .and saw it.

  “What? What is it?” Alan asked, seeing him stop.

  Milton couldn’t move, but he had to. Willing himself forward, he closed in for a better look.

  * * *

  In the aftermath of hearing the last words their son had spoken before his disappearance, coupled with Laura Carrillo’s response to them, Diane had taken to praying without concern for discretion. Even before the detective named Neely had ushered Elliott Jeffries from the room, leaving them alone again, Diane had started saying the Lord’s Prayer out loud, as if there were no one else but she around to hear. She and Michael had just learned their son had vanished on the heels of Carrillo virtually spitting in God’s eye, and neither could believe one event had had nothing to do with the other.

  So Michael, too, was praying, just not so anyone might notice, least of all Diane. He didn’t want his wife to know her fear was his as well. All hope would be lost if she did. The logical conclusion to be drawn from what Jeffries had told them was terrifying, and Michael wasn’t ready to accept it. Diane’s faith had brought them this far, and now it was his turn to be the strong one. Adrian was still out there somewhere and they were going to find him. They had to.

  The police were continuing the search but had decided there was nothing more Michael and Diane could do to assist them. They were operating on the assumption, and all the available evidence, that Laura was the key to Adrian’s disappearance, and felt it was just a matter of time before she broke down and revealed Adrian’s whereabouts. Neely offered to drive Michael and Diane home to get some rest, with Michael’s car still sitting in the Yesler parking lot where they’d left it, but Michael declined. He’d seen all the police he could take for one day. Rutherford raised an eyebrow, her suspicions not yet laid to rest that Michael and Diane knew more about their missing son than they were telling, but Michael was insistent. He and Diane would find their own way home.

  Neely walked them out to the front desk, where they were all surprised to find Hope waiting.

  “What are you doing here?” the detective asked angrily. “I thought we left you back at the school.”

  “You did.”

  Neely waited for an explanation.

  “I called her,” Michael lied. Neely and Diane both turned, taken aback, but his wife kept silent.

  Michael had no follow-up. He started to stammer something. . . .

  “I’m an Uber driver,” Hope said. She tapped her phone and turned the screen around so Neely could see the tell-tale company logo.

  The detective looked back at Michael. “You called her for a ride?”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “If all she is is an Uber driver and a friend? No. But she told us she’s a news writer, and if you tell her anything about what’s happened here tonight, you can bet it’s going to be all over the web and television tomorrow. You want to help us find your son?”

  “‘Keep your mouths shut.’ We will, detective. I promise you.”

  “And you’ve got my word I won’t ask them anything about your investigation,” Hope said. “If I do—”

  “We’ll get out and walk,” Diane said, for Hope’s benefit as much as Neely’s.

  The cop wasn’t fooled—only a rookie would have been, really—but he didn’t have any grounds to argue.

  “We’ve got a unit watching your home, in case the boy shows up. If you need anything or hear anything, just let the uniforms know.”

  He stormed off.

  * * *

  Outside, a gentle rain was falling in the last throes of daylight. Only a handful of reporters and newspeople were waiting to pounce on them, rather than the mob Michael was expecting. He and Diane and Hope pushed their way through with little trouble. It was as if Adrian’s disappearance had already become old news.

  Once they were out of the parking lot and well on their way, Michael and Diane clinging fast to each other in the backseat, Hope broke the silence.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “You weren’t going to ask any questions, you said. My wife told you what we’d do if you did,” Michael said.

  “Please. I need to know.”

  “Need?”

  “Yes, need. I’m involved in this now, almost as much as you are, and maybe not by accident. You told me that yourself, only hours ago.”

  Michael didn’t say anything, and neither did Diane.

  “For God’s sake, look at me! You think I give a shit anymore what kind of story this will make?”

  They made her say the word again: “Please!”

  Michael finally turned to Diane, seeking his wife’s permission. Off her silent nod, he told Hope everything, in the broadest strokes he could devise.

  “But you guys aren’t thinking—”

  “No. We’re not.”

  Hope didn’t ask any more questions, but Michael could practically hear the wheels turning inside her head, doing the same math he and Diane had when Jefferies offered them Laura Carrillo’s account of how, and precisely when, Adrian had gone missing. Coincidence was always an inadequate explanation for the improbable, but this. . . .

  There was next to no conversation after that, save for a pointless apology Hope made for the unkempt state of her car. Michael paid her words no mind and Diane was unlikely to have heard them at all. Then, only blocks away from home, Diane’s phone rang.

  She sat up, gave Michael a look that was a mixture of dread and cautious optimism.

  She hit the phone’s answer button. “Hello?”

  The call was painfully brief, Diane’s part consisting of only two questions: “Who?” and “Where?” With Hope stealing glances at them in her rear
view mirror, Michael could draw no conclusions from the strained look on his wife’s face but one: this wasn’t good news.

  “That was Milton Weisman’s daughter,” Diane said after hanging up, all color drained from her face. “She said Milton’s at Lakeridge Park and there’s something there he needs us to see.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  IT HADN’T HAPPENED all at once.

  The change had come over the park in pieces, like segments of a painting being filled in over time. Milton would blink, and something would be different. Small details that slowly and inexorably kept adding up to larger ones.

  It had started with the lamppost, the one his car had clipped on its way onto the playground, and then the tree that had brought the Honda to a halt. After the accident, the post had been replaced, but not in its original position. To better light the new, larger play structure, the city had moved the lamppost several feet. Not much more than twenty-four hours ago, when Milton had been here with Diane Edwards, the post had been in its old familiar place, in perfect harmony with everything else in the park that had traveled back in time to the days before Adrian Edwards’s death. But now, to Milton’s horror, the lamppost stood in its new position, shedding light where the old metal play structure had no use for it.

  Of course, Alan and Janet, who’d raced to the park at her husband’s call with the urgency of a paramedic, were oblivious to the metamorphosis going on all around them. Nothing Milton did could make them see what was happening, and he’d finally given up trying. All they cared about was getting Milton home and, he imagined, in bed asleep, so they could plot out the steps necessary to have him psychiatrically evaluated or placed in a rest home as quickly as possible.

  He’d had to beg Janet to call Diane Edwards. His daughter and Alan were loath to facilitate Milton having any further contact with Adrian’s parents, convinced the two were somehow at the root of Milton’s delusions, if not their son’s disappearance. But Milton needed the Edwardses there, to witness what he was seeing and to tell him—convince him—it did not imply what he feared it did.