“I imagine you did, with that much whiskey in you.”
“For the first time in my life, I felt so afraid, I needed to black out.”
“Oh, baby,” she said, throwing her arms around me.
We hugged in silence for many minutes, and in the love I felt from her and gave to her, I began to come more alert.
When we broke apart, Bree kissed me and then gave me a disgusted look. “Your breath could stop a train, and you look even worse.”
“Thanks.”
“Anytime. Sampson said he sent you a Wickr message?”
I nodded and gestured to a piece of paper on the desk where I’d written it down because I’d forgotten to take a screenshot of it. But the words were indelible in my mind:
Have you noticed I’m always three steps ahead of you? Your son now suffers the sins of his father. Soon the rest of the family will be like him and Granny, gasping and clawing for air.
Bree read it.
As she did, my hungover mind keyed on the words now suffers, unable to control the things my imagination threw at me. Then the sins of his father.
What were my supposed sins? What had I done to M to make him come after me like this for so many years? I couldn’t...
“I think we need to get Nana Mama and Jannie out of here,” Bree said.
I looked at her dumbly.
“He said that the rest of the family would be gasping and clawing for air, Alex,” she said. “We have to get them somewhere safe.”
I didn’t reply, just read the last sentence again. Soon the rest of the family will be like him and Granny, gasping and clawing for air.
Something there bothered me, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
“Alex,” Bree said again.
And then I got what was bothering me, and held up my hand, seeing all the implications of that last sentence. I cleared my throat. “I agree. I’ll call Ned, ask him if you, Jannie, and Nana Mama can use his beach house. It’ll be safe. You can work from there.”
“What about you?”
“I want to stay close to home.”
Bree gazed at me, puzzled, but said, “Okay, I’ll get them packing.”
Chapter 96
On the seventh evening after Ali’s kidnapping, I trudged up the stairs to my front porch, feeling lost, heartbroken, and dreading the loneliness inside.
My head was splitting again. At the front door, I was shaking so bad I had to put down the heavy brown paper bag I was carrying and use both hands to get the key in the lock. The door opened and swung inward.
I picked up the bag, but then I stood there, unable to take the first step inside.
The past few nights I’d been unable to detach from the case. I’d gotten so worked up and was so sleep-deprived, I’d had terrible visions of what M might be doing to Ali.
The nightmares had been so real, I’d screamed out several times and then cried myself back to sleep. I didn’t know if I could face another night in my empty home and considered taking the car right then and driving to the Delaware shore to join my family.
But Ali needed me, even if it was the wreckage of me. I stepped inside and closed the door. I felt my way into the kitchen. After setting the bag on the counter, I finally turned on a light and looked around dully before pulling out my phone.
Nothing. No texts. No Wickr messages.
I was about to set the phone down when it rang. Bree. I put her on speaker.
“Anything?” she asked.
“Report came in. DNA seals it. That was Kyle Craig in the box.”
“Kind of makes it worse, you know?”
“I do.”
“Nothing else?”
“Not a word from M in six days,” I said, my stomach in knots. “He’s getting his torture in.”
“Do you have to stay there all by yourself?”
“I ate dinner with Ned, John, and the others.”
“I’m worried about you, Alex,” she said. “You haven’t seemed like yourself at all.”
“I can’t imagine why.”
“Ali’s counting on you to be strong.”
“And here I am feeling weaker than I’ve ever felt.”
After a beat, she said, “Have you been drinking again?”
“Today? No, and I have no plans to.”
“Do you want me to come home, baby? Keep you company?”
“I’ll come tomorrow, spend the day.”
Bree’s voice came back lighter. “That would be good. For you and for us.”
“Family therapy.”
“I think you need a good dose of it.”
“I do.”
“I love you, baby. Call me before you go to sleep, no matter what time it is. Promise?”
“Promise. And I love you too. Kiss them good night for me.”
“I will,” she said, and she hung up.
After I put the phone down, I stood there at the kitchen counter for a good two minutes, staring at that brown paper bag. Then I got the television remote and turned on the small screen we had mounted for Nana Mama above the refrigerator.
I thumbed through the channels, pausing on the two stations broadcasting local news. There’d been a fire overnight that took the lives of four children.
I shut the television off, muttering bitterly, “Media bastards. How long until the cameras start feeding on us?”
I put my hands on the counter and hung my head, despondent.
And no wonder. We’d made no significant progress in days. Security cameras at the Fort Totten Metro station hadn’t picked up Ali after his friends the Kent twins had seen him walking in that direction.
FBI agents had discreetly canvassed the seven blocks between the school and the subway stop, but no one seemed to remember seeing Ali or anything out of the ordinary the afternoon he vanished.
Other investigative threads had led nowhere. The Willard Hotel, for example, did not keep a security camera in its storage area, and the bellmen had no clear memory of the carry-on bag M had supposedly left for William Nolan two weeks before.
And no word whether my boy was alive or...
We were stuck, and I was left alone in my house to wait M out. As it had every night that week, my anxiety level rose with each passing minute. And as I had every night that week, I pulled a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the bag and opened it.
I poured twice what I’d consider healthy into a tumbler and downed it. I shuddered at the fireball that went down my throat and boiled in my belly. I poured another in anticipation of a third.
In twenty minutes, I knew, I’d be feeling less pain. In an hour, I’d find moments of pleasure where I wouldn’t think of Ali at all and stretches of suffering where all I could see were memories of him.
And sometime after that, I thought, picking up the bottle and tipping it to my lips, my world would go blank and dark again.
Chapter 97
I was well into the whiskey bottle but not yet into the darkness when I began to feel claustrophobic, and then I was simply unable to stay inside. Weaving slightly, I went to Nana Mama’s pantry and found a go-cup.
I poured the cup full, put on the lid, slurped a little, and then a lot. I set the cup down, my mouth open to soothe the caramel burn in my throat, my hand on my belly to calm the nausea and cool the fire.
I left the kitchen but had to grab at the wall with my free hand before going out onto the porch. April coming on, and the night air was warm, thick, and breezy; somewhere upwind, azaleas were blooming.
A good night for walking drunk, I decided.
I did not want lights. I wanted shadows. So I headed not toward Capitol Hill but deeper into Southeast DC, toward the Navy Yard and eventually Anacostia.
In general, Southeast wasn’t as dangerous as it was back when crack cocaine was king and violence erupted at all hours on every corner. But parts of Southeast remained mean streets by anyone’s definition.