“No, I’m just an asshole,” Spurlock replied.
“Good. Now, here is what I want you to do: First, you will remove your rear license plate, just in case the child reads it and remembers things well. You will drop the kid off near the highway, under an overpass in a dark and quiet spot and then get back onto the highway going east. You will then pull off the very next exit, replace the license and get back on the highway going back west. When you get to the station in San Francisco, call me and if the kid has been recovered, I’ll give you your money.”
Spurlock was silent for a second. All through the explicit directions, he had been grinding his teeth. This guy always talked to him like he was some kind of overgrown dangerous baby. He took several deep breaths and wished desperately for beer. A twelve-pack of it.
“Look, Santa-frigger, don’t sweat the kid. I’ve got a plan for him. It’s all taken care of. Just give me the locker number.”
“Let him go. I’m not going to be an accessory to any such thing.”
Spurlock shook his head violently. “Can’t you see, man? I can’t do that. He can ID me, sure as shit. I’ve got a contact down in L.A. I’ll take him there and he’ll disappear. End of story.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“I mean: no money.”
Spurlock finally lost it. He dropped the phone, grabbed the gas sign with his left hand and beat the thing with his right, growling while he did it. After several smashing blows, he picked up the trash cell again and pressed his lips to it.
“I say: FUCK YOU, MAN!” he shouted. Then his voice lowered to a growl. “I’m dumping this kid the way I want to, then I’m calling back for the locker number. If you don’t come across, I’ll hunt you down and beat your fat guts in until you shit blood.”
Spurlock closed the phone and climbed back into his van. He could hear the kid, quietly crying in his cage. Maybe he’d heard some of the conversation.
“SHUT UP!” Spurlock roared into the back, just the way his stepdaddy had always done before a beating.
The van’s engine rumbled into life and soon rolled up the onramp.
… 71 Hours and Counting…
It was almost eight o’clock when the fingerprint crew left, taking with them six copies of Justin’s school photos. Sarah went to the bathroom to wash her face. After drying off, she opened up the hamper and felt silent tears run down her cheeks. She ignored them, letting them slide down to her chin and grow cold before they fell and splattered her bare feet.
The bathroom had the classic look of any California tract home from the last century. Wallpaper depicted baskets of unlikely-looking flowers of blue and pink on a background of beige. The chromed towel rack was of the cheap-motel variety, and tended to fall off the wall at inopportune times. There were signs of Justin’s passing everywhere, plainly evident to the trained eye. Sarah noted the splattered droplets of toothpaste on the mirror. Of the four towels in the bathroom, only one of them was in its place, and that one hung oddly, as if it had been grabbed and yanked upon, but not quite firmly enough to pull it down. Two others lay in wads of blue terry cloth on the checkerboard vinyl floor. The fourth she held in her hand.
But none of these things had brought on her tears. It was when she opened the hamper, which overflowed with underwear, socks, shorts and t-shirts, that she saw the sweatshirt. There, stuffed in among a dozen dirty items, was the red sweatshirt that she had insisted that he take with him this morning in his backpack. He had ditched it, stuffing it in the hamper rather than carrying it all day. It was ironic, she thought, that only this morning her biggest concern had been Justin’s sweatshirt.
She closed the hamper and padded down the hall. As she walked through the house, it seemed as though she was a stranger here, or rather that this house was one that she had lived in long ago. She stepped into the sunken living room/dining room combination. She recalled that when they had bought the house, the original floor plan had called it the ‘great room’.
“I’ve got to do something,” said Ray, talking to the coffee table. He sat on an off-white leather couch with his elbows on his knees and his hands pressed up into his cheeks. He took up a cork disk that served as a coaster.
Sarah watched him for a moment and recalled how much trouble she had gone through to train Justin to use them. Ray tossed the coaster away and leaned back on the cool soft leather cushions. Sarah silently joined him, trying to force herself to relax. That backfired immediately. The couch, too, reminded her of Justin. He loved nothing better than to jump from the loveseat to the sofa and back again. Numerous scoldings and punishments had only taught him to be more discreet about it.
Leaning forward again with a sigh, Ray grabbed up the TV controller flipped and it on. The screen flashed, dimmed, then slowly brightened. It was Nickelodeon. Sarah wondered if Justin had had time to watch a cartoon this afternoon before-before whatever happened-or if it had just been left there from this morning.
Ray flipped to CNN Headlines and together they watched without seeing and listened without hearing. TV was good for that sort of thing, she thought. Sometimes it served to empty your head and numb your mind. When she was sick she always watched a lot of TV as it took her mind off of all the painful toxins that the bacteria were generating in her body.
Sarah broke the silence. “Have they called yet?”
“Nothing yet. I’m sure they’ll pick him up soon,” Ray told her with all the confidence he could muster in his voice.
“It’s getting dark,” she said in a hushed voice. “He didn’t take his sweatshirt. It’s still here.”
“The night is a warm one, Sarah,” said Ray, but she could tell that it was almost more than he could do to keep his voice from cracking. “He’ll be fine.”
Sarah went to the front window and gazed out at the darkening streets.
“Did you pick up his room?” asked Ray.
“No, I changed my mind. He’ll do it himself when he comes home. I don’t want you to touch a thing in there, either.”
“Okay.”
For a time the only sound was that of the TV. A commercial came on selling diet soda. Next there was a car ad that told a funny story about animals but seemed to have little to do with cars. Sarah wondered vaguely if such ads sold cars, or if the ad men were just running out of fresh ideas.
A sudden, sharp knock at the door made them look at each other. It was an almost musical series of knocks, a rythmic rap-rap-RAP-rap-rap. Sarah and Ray glanced at each other. It was the kind of a knock that a friend would use to let you know who it was.
“I’ll get it,” said Ray, heading for the door. Sarah followed him, hoping, but trying not to, that it would be a smiling policeman with their sheepish son at his side.
Ray threw open the door with Sarah right behind him. They both blinked in confusion. An attractive woman in a red business dress greeted them. Her hair and nails were perfect. Her nail polish matched the red of her dress as exactly as her white teeth matched each other.
“Dr. and Ms. Vance, I’m Susan Cohen,” she said.
Ray and Sarah just stared at the woman without responding. Sarah blinked in confusion. Where was Justin? Then she saw the wire running up from the woman’s collar to the earplug. Her eyes followed the wires down to the microphone that she held nonchalantly at her side. Then she saw the men coming up behind her with camera equipment. One man with a boom-mike was shrugging on his jacket and slamming the door of their van. CHANNEL 7 NEWS blazed across the side of the van with the seven stylized as a jagged lightning bolt. Sarah’s frown grew as she realized that they had even had the gall to park in their driveway.
“Dr. Vance, we would like to interview you. We want to know if there is anything to the rumor that you are the man who released the virus that is even now raging across the internet?”
“No, we don’t have anything to say about that,” replied Ray.