Here and Gone(18)

As Danny opened his mouth to speak, a movement on the TV screen distracted him. Fuzzy CCTV footage: a jail cell, a cop standing at one side, a woman sitting on a bunk at the other. Then the woman threw herself at the cop, knocked him to the ground, clawing and punching the big man.

‘You talk him out of it,’ Danny said, turning his attention back to Pork Belly. ‘Tell him Johnny Woo was too soft for the life, he’d have been more trouble than he was worth, that I did you a fav—’

Two words from the television stopped him. Missing children, the newsreader said. He looked back to the screen.

‘I’ll try,’ Pork Belly said. ‘I don’t know if he’ll accept it, but I’ll try, just because I love you like a brother. But you pull that shit again …’

The news ticker along the bottom of the screen read: ‘Woman left New York days ago with her children, but local sheriff found no children in the car when it was stopped for a minor traffic offense.’

The same image again: the woman throwing herself at the cop.

Cut to the anchor, a serious expression on her face. ‘State police and FBI agents are traveling to the small town of Silver Water, Arizona, to question the as-yet-unnamed woman about the whereabouts of her two children. More on this story as it unfolds.’

Pork Belly said something, but Danny didn’t hear. His gaze remained on the television, even though the anchor had moved on to some other story. A woman traveling alone with her children, then she’s picked up by a cop, and the children are gone.

Chills ran across Danny’s skin. His heart raced, his lungs working hard.

No, he thought, shaking his head. You’ve been wrong before. Probably wrong this time too.

Pork Belly’s hand gripped his arm. ‘What’s up, man?’

Danny’s head snapped around to him, staring, as his mind tumbled.

‘Shit, man, you’re creeping me out.’

Danny climbed down from the stool. ‘I gotta go. We good?’

Pork Belly shrugged. ‘Yeah, we good.’

‘Thank you, dailo,’ Danny said, putting a hand on Pork Belly’s shoulder, squeezing. Then he walked out of the bar, onto the street, without looking back. His phone in his hand before his feet hit the sidewalk, his thumb picking out the search letters, looking for more on this woman in Arizona and her missing children.

As the screen filled with a list of results, he wondered if the woman had a husband. A husband whose world was being blown apart right now, just as Danny’s had been five years ago.





9


SEAN SAT ON the floor, his back to the wall, knees up to his chin. A blanket wrapped tight around his shoulders. Louise lay on the mattress in the center of the room, her eyelids rising and falling in a sleepy rhythm, a candy wrapper still in her hand. The deputy had left them a bag of candy bars, a few bags of potato chips, along with a case of water bottles. She said she’d be back later with some sandwiches. Sean didn’t think she was coming back at all.

Cold in the basement, the air damp in his lungs. A smell of mold and moss and rotten leaves. Both the floor and the walls were lined with wooden boards, the packed earth visible between the slats. Sean wondered how it didn’t all cave in on them, bury him and his sister alive.

The cabin had looked old, from the little he’d seen of it as they approached the clearing. Collins had let him and Louise out of the van on a trail deep in the forest and made them march through the trees. He had been glad of the walk after the time spent in the van, but Louise mewled for the duration of the trek, coughing as she walked. She had wet her pants, and now she complained her jeans were cold and stinging. Sean had barely managed to hold on himself, as he sat in the dark.

It had seemed to grow cooler as they drove. Shade had kept the van from becoming an oven while it was parked by that shack, but it had warmed as they traveled, making the air thick and heavy. Sean could feel the rise and fall of the road, more up than down, and after some time he began to feel pressure grow in his ears, like in an airplane. They were going somewhere higher up, maybe into those mountains that had seemed to haunt the horizon as Mom drove across Arizona. He didn’t know much geography, but a vague recollection told him Arizona’s desert gave way to forests in the north, rising thousands of feet above sea level. That would explain why the temperature had dropped so fast, he and his sister sweating one minute, shivering the next.

Louise had cried hard when she wet herself, desperate, shameful tears, punctuated by the coughs and rattles from her chest, even as Sean said it was all right, he’d never tell anyone. He felt bad now for edging away from the wet spot on the van’s plywood flooring when he should have held his sister in his arms. However ashamed Louise might have been for not holding on, he was more so for not comforting her.

He remembered quite distinctly the feeling of the van leaving the road, and the judder and rattle as it crossed rough ground. Not long after, the sound of branches against the outside, scraping and clanging. What kind of trees did they have in Arizona? High ground, cooler weather. Sean guessed pines. He was proven right when the van stopped and Deputy Collins opened the rear doors.

Sean and Louise both shielded their eyes, even though by that time the sun had sunk well below the trees, making the light beneath the canopy a milky blue.

‘Out,’ Collins said.

Sean and Louise stayed where they were.