Here and Gone(43)

As Abrahms and Mitchell hauled her upright once more, a door opened, and Audra was swallowed by the building’s cool interior. She heard the door slam shut behind her, Showalter’s voice on the other side telling the reporters to back off, now, that’s enough, just back off.

Her arms free, Audra pulled the jacket from over her head, threw it down on the floor. Her heart thundered so hard she felt it in her head, in her neck. The adrenalin had turned to a queasy rattle around her body as she tried to breathe. She leaned against a wall, her forehead against her forearm.

‘You’re all right,’ Mitchell said, breathless herself. ‘Just take it easy.’

‘What was that?’ Audra asked between gulps of air.

‘You’re big news,’ Mitchell said. She bent down, picked up Abrahms’ jacket, and handed it back to him. ‘Didn’t you know that?’

Audra looked to the door, through the glass, and saw the wall of men and women. The microphones and cameras. Showalter with his hands up and out, trying to placate them.

‘Jesus,’ Audra said.

‘Worry about them later,’ Mitchell said. ‘Let’s get you somewhere to sleep.’

Audra looked around, found herself in the hallway of what was once a grand old house, with its wide staircase and high ceilings. A small reception desk at the foot of the stairs, a dozen empty hooks that once held keys on a board behind. A musty scent about the place, the smell of disuse, abandonment, of doors kept closed.

An elderly lady stood by the desk, her gray-eyed gaze hard on Audra.

Mitchell placed her palm at the small of Audra’s back, guided her deeper into the hallway, closer to the desk.

‘Audra, this is Mrs Gerber. She has very kindly agreed to let you a room for a few nights.’

Audra was about to thank her, but Mrs Gerber spoke first.

‘As a mother, I’d like to kick you out on the street,’ she said. ‘But as a Christian, I won’t turn you away. Now, it’s almost a year since I let a room, so don’t expect much. I’ve aired it best I can, changed the sheets and whatnot. There’ll be no meals prepared, I’m not willing to share a table with you, so you’ll have to figure something out for yourself.’

Mrs Gerber reached into the pocket of her cardigan and produced a long brass key with a leather fob attached, the number three barely legible. Audra reached out her still-shaking hand, but Mrs Gerber ignored her, instead placed it in Mitchell’s palm.

‘Thank you, ma’am,’ Mitchell said. ‘We can find it.’

She told Abrahms to wait there, then guided Audra to the stairs, up to the second floor. Audra waited while Mitchell unlocked the door, opened it, stepped aside to let her in. The room was modest, a queen-sized bed, a bathroom. The sole window overlooked a garden and the rear of another property, an alley in between.

Mitchell placed the key on a dresser. ‘Lock the door behind me when I leave. I’ll come back this evening, bring you something to eat, some more clothes, some wash things. All right?’

‘Thank you,’ Audra said. ‘For everything.’

Mitchell’s expression hardened, as if Audra’s gratitude offended her. She came a step closer. ‘While I’m gone, I want you to think very hard about what you’re going to tell me. Your children have been missing for at least forty-eight hours now. I hope they’re alive, but everything in my experience tells me they’re not. And everything in my experience tells me you know where they are. When I come back, I want you to tell me. I’m running out of patience with you, Audra. There’s only one way to fix things now. You know what to do.’

The agent walked back to the corner, where an old cathode-ray television sat on top of a dresser. Mitchell pressed a button and its screen flickered into life, the image distorted and jittery. She scrolled through the channels until she found a news station.

Audra saw her own face and felt a cold dread.

‘You better watch this,’ Mitchell said, tossing the remote control onto the bed on her way to the door. ‘Maybe help you think.’





22


‘UP NEXT,’ THE female anchor said, ‘disturbing new details emerge in the case of missing children, Sean and Louise Kinney, in Silver Water, Arizona.’

The male anchor turned to camera. ‘And, believe me, you don’t want to miss this latest turn in a story that has already gripped the nation.’

‘Oh God,’ Audra said, putting her hands either side of the screen as if the images would burst it at its seams.

A fanfare, the station’s logo spinning through space, then an ad break. A pharmaceutical commercial for a prescription antidepressant. A grayed-out woman turning to beaming color as she said how glad she was she talked to her doctor about it. Then a man’s voice with a long list of possible side effects, including suicidal thoughts. Audra might have laughed if she wasn’t holding her breath, waiting for the next news segment.

Another fanfare, another spinning logo, and the hosts reappeared.

‘Welcome back,’ the woman said. ‘As we said before the break, disturbing new details have emerged in the case of the missing Kinney children, ten-year-old Sean and six-year-old Louise. The children’s mother was arrested on Wednesday evening just outside the small Arizona town of Silver Water, for possession of an illegal drug. The thirty-five-year-old woman left Brooklyn, New York, four days prior to that, with her children in the backseat. When the Elder County sheriff stopped her car for a minor traffic offense, the children were nowhere to be seen. In a surprise twist today, the possession case was thrown out of court, Judge Henrietta Miller ruling the search of the car to have been illegal. Our reporter in Silver Water, Rhonda Carlisle, has more.’