The Leaving(6)

Right?





Lucas


First came the ambulance then the squad cars then the bad news was confirmed—his father was dead—and next the questions.

“Do you have ID?”


POCKETS EMPTY NO.


“You were just let go?”


VAN. BLINDFOLD. TAILLIGHT.


“And the others are back, too?”


SCARLETT. SCARLETT. SCAR.


“What do you mean, you don’t remember?”


CAROUSEL. BEACH. HORSE.

SPINNING.


The back of the police cruiser was, at least, quiet as they rode through town—Fort Myers Beach, Florida, he’d discerned from signs. The sidewalks bulged with college types out barhopping. Cars crawled through the main intersection in town, even at 2:00 a.m.

They were stopped in front of an aging hotel called the Tiki Tower, where the parking valets wore leis; totem poles flanked a fountain lit with blue and green spotlights. A group of girls in a white convertible were stuck in the same traffic but in the opposite direction. They all had long ponytails, and bikinis under their tank tops, and they were singing along—poorly, drunkenly—to some pop song Lucas didn’t know. Two guys walking on the opposite sidewalk stopped, red plastic cups in their hands, and one of them shouted, “Ladies! Where’s the party?”

So this was what he’d been missing.

Eleven years, the cops had said.

Two-thirds of his life.

It didn’t make any sense.

He had to make sense of it.

The car started to move again and passed a massive inflatable water slide on the beachfront side of the road, and then a bunch of tourist shops, and restaurants, and bars, and psychics, and massage parlors, and then, finally, they went up and over a steeply arched bridge. The view from the backseat turned into rooftops and distant marinas, and so Lucas closed his eyes; there’d been a shirt in one of the shop windows that read: SUN’S OUT, GUNS OUT.

What did that even mean?

As the speed of the car picked up, he took a few deep breaths of warm, briny air.

He felt free.

The feeling was new.

Or maybe old?

He felt his body preparing to weep, but felt it fighting, too.

Why so much fight?

His father was dead.

Why not weep?

The car stopped, the door opened, and he was pulled out into the precinct, and then escorted through the main hall. All eyes on him. Most of them . . . what? Suspicious? Confused? Surprised?

He was put in a room alone.

Locked in, actually.

Was he accustomed to being locked up? Used to being alone?

He had to have been imprisoned.

Right?

For eleven years?

The room started to spin, so he sat down.


THE HORSE. TEETH YELLOWED, CHIPPED.


He let his head fall to the table, forehead first, heard the door click open.

“You okay there?”

“I will be,” Lucas said. “When I get some sleep. And some answers.”

“Answers?”

“Answers.” Lucas looked up.

A middle-aged detective who’d shaved what was obviously a balding head now sat across from him. He was thinner than seemed healthy, and something about his mouth seemed British, but he had no accent. He said, “I never thought I’d see the day.”

“What day is that?” Lucas asked.

“I’m Mick Chambers. I was the lead investigator when you all went missing.” He folded his hands together on the table in front of him. “I figured by now you were all, you know . . . dead.”

Lucas reached down and checked his pulse on his wrist with two flat fingers. “Not dead.”

“Yes.” Chambers shook his head and smiled. “I see that.” Then he leaned forward, cleared his throat. “This whole thing? The Leaving? Pretty much ruined my life.”

“And that’s supposed to be my problem?” Lucas didn’t have to put his fingers back to his wrist to know that his pulse was quickening with irritation; the cops on the scene had called it that, too—The Leaving—right before cuffing him. Would they give that whole mess a catchy name, too? The Cuffing?

“No,” Chambers said matter-of-factly. “But this is all very strange.”

“You have a reputation around here for being a master of the obvious?” Now he could almost feel the tapping in his wrists, blood boiling from the inside out.

Chambers smiled again, wider this time. “Listen, Lucas. I don’t need you to like me. I honestly couldn’t care less. But I got guys who are going to be banging down that door right there in about ten seconds. FBI. Younger guys. Hungrier guys. I may not even end up as lead on this case and there’s not a lot I can do about it, so let me just ask you something.”

“Fire away,” Lucas said.

“If you were me, and there were a bunch of kids who were abduct ed years ago, and when they came back—just showed up—they said they didn’t remember anything—about ten-plus years?—would you believe them?”

He pictured the others.

Wondered whether Scarlett was having a better homecoming.

How could she not?

Was she his . . . girlfriend?

“Would you?” Chambers pressed.