Leaving Time(96)

Then I went to the bathroom and unwound the scarf from my neck, where it had dried in wrinkles after my swim with Maura. There was a string of fingerprints, dark as South Sea pearls, ringing my throat.

A bruise is how the body remembers it’s been wronged.

Padding down the hall in the dark, I found the Post-it note that Thomas had left in the kitchen. MORGAN HOUSE, he had printed, in his linear, architectural handwriting. STOWE, VT. 802-555-6868.

I picked up the phone and dialed. I didn’t need to talk to him, but I did want to know that he’d gotten there safely. That he was going to be all right.

The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please check the number and dial again.

So I did. And then I went to the computer in Thomas’s office and looked up Morgan House on the Internet, only to find it listed as the name of a professional poker player in Vegas, and a halfway home for pregnant teens in Utah. There was no inpatient facility anywhere by that name.





VIRGIL




We’re going to miss the goddamned flight.

Serenity booked the tickets by phone. They cost as much as my rent. (When I told her that there was no way I could afford to pay her right now, Serenity just waved away my embarrassed concern. Sugar, she said, that is why God created credit cards.) Then we drove eighty-five miles per hour down the highway to the airport, because the flight to Tennessee left in an hour. Since we didn’t have luggage, we raced to the automatic ticket machines, hoping to avoid the line of people checking baggage. Serenity’s ticket spit out, no problem, with a free drink coupon. When I entered my confirmation code, though, I got a flashing message: SEE TICKET AGENT.

“Are you shitting me?” I mutter, looking at the line. On the loudspeaker, I hear flight 5660 to Nashville being announced, leaving from Gate 12.

Serenity looks at the escalator that leads to the TSA checkpoint. “There’ll be another flight eventually,” she says.

But by then, who knows where Jenna will be, and if she’ll have gotten to Gideon first. And if Jenna’s come to the same conclusion I have—that Gideon could have been responsible for her mother’s disappearance, and possible death—who knows what he’ll do to keep her from telling the rest of the world what he did.

“Get on that flight,” I say. “Even if I don’t make it. It’s going to be just as important to find Jenna as it is to find Gideon, because if she finds him first, it could be bad.”

Serenity must hear the urgency in my voice, because she nearly flies up the escalator and is swallowed by the queue of sullen travelers removing their shoes and belts and laptops.

The line for the ticket counter is not getting any shorter. I shift from foot to foot, impatient. I check my watch. Then I tear away from the pack like a tiger that’s been unleashed and cut to the front of the line. “Excuse me,” I say. “I’m about to miss my flight.”

I’m expecting outrage, shock, swearing. I even have a ready excuse about my wife being in labor. But before anyone can complain, an airline employee intercepts me. “You can’t do that, sir.”

“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “But my flight’s leaving right now—”

She looks like she’s well past the age for mandatory retirement, and sure enough, she says, “I’ve been working here since probably before you were born. So I can tell you unequivocally: Rules are rules.”

“Please. It’s an emergency.”

She looks me in the eye. “You don’t belong here.”

Beside me, the next guy in line is summoned to an agent. I consider tackling him and taking his place. But instead, I look at the old woman, the lie about my pregnant wife caught between my teeth. Yet I hear myself say, “You’re right. I don’t. But I’m trying like hell to get there because someone I care about is in trouble.”

I realize that, of all the years of cop work I did, and all the private investigations, this might be my first true confession.

The agent sighs, walking toward an empty computer terminal behind the counter, gesturing for me to follow. She takes the confirmation number I hand her, keying in letters so slowly I could invent entire alphabets between the touches of her fingers. “I’ve been here for forty years,” she tells me. “Don’t come across a lot of guys like you.”

This woman is helping me; she’s a bona fide human willing to work her magic instead of leaving me at the mercy of a glitched computer terminal—so I bite my tongue. After an eternity, she hands me a boarding pass. “Just remember, no matter what happens, you’ll get there eventually.”

I grab the boarding pass and start to run for the gate. I take the escalator steps two at a time. To be totally honest, I can’t even remember getting through security, I just know that I am racing down the hall to Gate 12 as I hear the loudspeaker announcing the final call for travelers headed to Nashville, like a narrator broadcasting my fate. I sprint toward the gate agent as she is about to close the door and fling the boarding pass in her direction.

I step onto the plane, so winded I can’t even speak, and immediately see Serenity in a seat about five rows back. I collapse beside her as the flight attendant begins her spiel for departure.

“You made it,” she says, nearly as amazed as I am. She turns to the guy in the window seat to her left. “Guess I got all worked up for nothing.”