The Forgetting Time(52)

“There are similarities?”

He sighed. “The boy was nine. African American. There was a bike found.”

“A bike? But—but—but there was a bike. We found Tommy’s bike—by the road.”

“I’m aware of the details of the case, Mrs. Crawford.”

“And the man that did that—who murdered this Florida boy—”

“Has not been caught, no. They’re working day and night on it, I can assure you.”

“Day and night. Right.” She’d seen how night and day went. Urgently enough for a day, a week, a month, and then it was an hour here, a few minutes there.

“Look, I’ll keep you posted if we hear anything. Even if they find the perpetrator, there’s no likelihood that there’s a connection. You know that, right? It’s more than likely it was someone who knew him, a relative, friend of the family—”

“Where was the body found?”

“Mrs. Crawford.”

“Where was it found?”

“In a creek in back of the boy’s school.”

“But—we’ve got creeks all over the county. We need to get a crew together—”

“Mrs. Crawford. There’s not an inch of this county I haven’t covered myself. You know this. I will call you personally if there is anything relevant to the case. Look, even if there isn’t, if they find this motherfucker in Florida—I will call you that day. All right?”

“Personally.” She exhaled bitterly.

“Yes.”

“It’s his birthday today.”

“What?”

“It’s Tommy’s birthday. He’s sixteen years old.”

A pause.

“You take care now. Okay? Mrs. Crawf—”

But she had hung up the phone.





Nineteen

In the motel, Anderson stretched out on the bed, aching with dismay.

He had made a mistake. His faculties had not been fully operational. He hadn’t found the word lizards and he had written reptiles instead. My god, he couldn’t even follow a GPS anymore; the voice said one thing and his brain heard something else.

He had been too eager. A solid, well-documented, American case: he had thought that would make all the difference. He had been flying with possibility through the last few weeks, nodding off at night on dreams of validation, only to wake up to … mistake after mistake. And now he was finished.

He could hear the boy crying in the room next to his, the mother trying to calm him down. The cries fell on him like needles. Through the thin wall he could hear the words Asheville Road.

*

“When are we going to Asheville Road?” Noah had asked cheerfully when he awoke in the car. “When are we going?”

Even in his demoralized state, Anderson had felt the words bolting through him, the boy’s excitement igniting his own. Asheville Road!

“We’re in Ashview now, honey,” Janie had answered.

“But it’s the wrong one,” the child said patiently.

“Maybe, sweetie.” She looked pointedly at Anderson, as if she could see his raw exhilaration, and it pained her. “But we’re done here.”

“So are we going to the right one now?”

“I don’t think so, baby. No.”

Noah sat back in his car seat, glancing from one of them to the other with a look of incredulity. He turned to Anderson. “But you said you’d help me find my mama.”

“I know I did.” He gave a defeated nod. He had hurt them, the mother and the child. “I’m sorry, Noah.”

“Noey,” his mother said, “would you like some ice cream?”

The boy ignored his mother. His eyes, piercing Anderson’s, were suffused with a despair that seemed too knowing for a child. “I’m so disappointed.”

And he had turned his head, blocking out both adults, put his hands over his face, and started to cry.

*

Anderson got out of bed. He opened the minibar, removed a tiny container of vodka, unscrewed the top, and put it to his mouth, experimenting. He hadn’t drunk vodka in decades. He tipped a bit on his tongue, letting it tingle there, deciding, then gulped the rest of it down.

The vodka warmed his body nicely, like an invisible hand stroking him in places no one had touched in years. His mind shivered, sensing its coming annihilation. He wiped a hand across his face, brought it back smudged with rust. What now?

He looked in the mirror. A trickle of dark blood from nose to lips, his cheeks smeared with it. He could not meet his own eyes.

He shoved some tissues up his nostrils, staggered back to the bed. He was losing control; his roots were loosening under the power of the liquor like a tree in a windstorm, his mind veering suddenly, inexorably, toward the one thing he never let himself think about. The file he would shred to pieces, if it weren’t evidence. His worst case.

Preeta.

He lay back in bed and tried to put her back where he had kept her all these years, away from his daily thoughts. Yet now he couldn’t stop seeing her. A girl of five running through the courtyard with her brothers, chasing a ball, her shiny hair flying. He’d been happy to have such a delightful child for a subject, after a long stretch working with the timid, battered children of the mud flats.