Do Not Become Alarmed(60)

The police found Penny’s and Sebastian’s swimsuits at the house, and Marcus’s and June’s, but not Isabel’s yellow bikini or Hector’s madras shorts. They’d also found two computers, but the hard drives had been destroyed.

Most important to Liv, they had found the empty boxes for a finger-stick monitor and an insulin pen, which meant that someone had wanted the children to stay alive. That was the hope she was clinging to.

Next they learned that one of the Herreras had been killed in a car accident, on the road between the house and the capital. There was another car involved, but no sign of the kids. Raymond got permission to go to the accident site, and Kenji sent another Suburban for them. The press must not have learned of the new developments yet, or else they were all still drunk from New Year’s, because the street outside the hotel was deserted, shiny and tacky underfoot. There were white squares of paper everywhere and the air smelled of hot beer.

Camila still had that careful stillness, like she was holding herself together with great effort. She slid into the middle row of the Suburban, next to Liv.

“Are you taking something?” Liv asked.

Camila nodded. “Xanax.”

“Can I have some?”

Camila handed over a metal pill case with painted roses on the lid. Liv shook out a pill and swallowed it dry. They were still waiting for Nora. No one had seen her since the morning in the club room and she hadn’t answered any of Liv’s texts. The husbands were debating leaving without her when a cab pulled up and Nora got out. Liv heard Fleetwood Mac playing on the cab’s radio until Nora slammed the door.

“Where were you?” Raymond asked.

“I went for a walk.” Nora took a seat in the back of the Suburban without looking at Liv.

Unbelievable.

The men got in and Benjamin took shotgun. Penny liked to claim the front seat, and Liv kept seeing her in the passenger seat of a car rolling over. Penny’s desire to assert herself was fine at a progressive LA school with feminist teachers, but was it working for her now? Liv could imagine it not going so well. The obscene jungle rolled by. Liv was so sick of this fucking country, the humidity, the endless green. At least Sebastian had insulin. Sebastian had insulin.

As they drove, Kenji told them what he knew. The dead guy in the Jeep was Raúl Herrera, and he lived at the house where they’d found the swimsuits. His Jeep had collided with another car, which was empty when the police arrived at the scene.

“It belonged to a teenage girl, who reported it stolen by her friend Oscar,” Kenji said. “She said he had a lot of kids in the car.”

“And who’s Oscar?” Raymond asked.

“The son of the Herreras’ housekeeper.”

“I told you!” Liv said. “I said there has to be a woman, who’ll have a conscience.”

“We don’t know yet what the scenario is,” Kenji said. “Here’s the kid.” He passed his phone around, the photograph on the screen of a teenage boy with short dark hair, unfashionable glasses, and a scruffy bit of untended mustache.

“How old is he?” Benjamin asked.

“Sixteen.”

“You’re fucking kidding me,” Raymond said.

“Nope,” Kenji said.

“And he’s made six kids disappear?” Benjamin said.

“Not for long, let’s hope,” Kenji said.

They drove. Camila fell asleep.

“Monkeys,” Benjamin said listlessly, and they all looked out the window at some black shapes in the tops of the trees. One swung by the arm from one tree to the next. Liv heard a faint hooting through the window. The monkeys seemed to be mocking her, for once having wanted to see them on a zip-line tour.

The Suburban pulled abruptly across the road, onto the opposite shoulder, then bumped over uneven ground. There was police tape marking off an area in the trees. The Jeep had already been removed, its position marked with police tape, but a small red Fiat remained, upside-down. A police officer stood guard.

Gunther looked at the red car. “You’re saying six kids, plus this Oscar, were in that little thing?”

“I told you,” Kenji said, “we don’t know the scenario.”

“Five in the back?” Gunther said. “Or three in the front?”

“Where did they go?” Raymond asked. “Has there been a search?”

“The police combed a mile radius this morning,” Kenji said.

Liv looked around. “Five minutes into a nature walk, my kids are complaining.”

“Could they have hitchhiked from here?” Benjamin asked. “After the accident?”

“I think we would have heard from a driver,” Kenji said. “Someone would’ve seen them.”

“What of the housekeeper?” Camila asked.

“They found her at home. She’s asked for a lawyer.”

“Can we look inside the car?” Liv asked.

Kenji spoke to the police guard, and said, “You can look, but don’t touch anything.”

They moved closer to the turtled red car. Liv crouched to peer through the windows. She tried to focus, to pay attention, without being overwhelmed by the idea that her kids had been inside. She had a sudden clear memory of the last book she’d read aloud to Sebastian. Benjamin usually did the bedtime reading, but he’d been out of town, and they had started one of those wish-fulfillment kids’ adventure books, where the boy hero has exactly the qualities he needs to triumph, at every moment. You could feel the next beat coming, like the kind of country song where you can guess the next rhyme. She’d been bored and annoyed, and at one point she tried to explain to Sebastian why it wasn’t her favorite of his books. But Sebastian had loved the book unreservedly. Why hadn’t she just read the thing with gusto, and relished every moment with her son? Why had she brought her adult judgment and her professional story opinions to a book her kid loved? Of course the child hero should always triumph! Who wanted a kids’ book to feel like real life? Real life was fucking intolerable.