The Witch.
Walt believed most of what his father told him, but even as a seven-year-old he didn’t believe everything. He didn’t believe he’d have to go to jail. And he didn’t believe his mother was a witch. Not the woman who used to tuck him into bed at night and read to him from The Cat in the Hat or Horton Hears A Who. That woman was his mother, and as far as Walt was concerned she would always be his mother.
At the age of sixteen, when he was finally old enough to go looking for her, he went back to his home town again, only to discover that she had died some three years earlier from ovarian cancer. She had spent the final six months of her life in a hospital bed, alone, surrounded by people who cared but who were strangers just the same.
Walt had made it back home, but he had made it back too late.
Just another of the disappeared.
Last night, he had conjured it all up again, like Black Magic, all the way up to three years ago, when he had sat at the side of his father’s death bed and forgiven him for the lost years and the loss of his mother. The trouble was… Walt had never forgiven himself. And that was the reason he had first become interested in law enforcement. And that was the same reason he had quit the force and had taken up the challenge of finding lost children on his own terms. The guilt had never seemed to let him forget.
So he hadn’t been completely honest with Teri.
And he hadn’t been completely honest with himself, either.
He stared reminiscently out the window at the Motel Six sign across the street and closed his eyes. Just a little sleep. That’s all he needed.
And then the phone rang.
[27]
Teri unlocked the car door on the boy’s side, then went around and climbed into the driver’s seat. They were both feeling a little worn down after their visit with Dr. Childs. Especially the boy, who had been terrified by the thought of some nurse sticking a needle the size of a number two pencil into his arm just to draw a little blood.
“Is it going to hurt?”
“A little,” Teri had told him. “But if you keep your eyes closed, it won’t seem so bad.”
“Really?”
“Scout’s honor.”
“Mom…”
“What?”
“You’re not a scout.”
The needle hadn’t been as big as he had let himself imagine, but it had been plenty big enough, and Teri had felt that terrible guilt of motherhood when a silent tear had slipped out of the corner of the boy’s eye and trailed down his cheek.
But that was over now, and behind them.
“What do you say to an ice cream?” she asked, buckling the seat belt.
He nodded, still a little angry at her.
“Baskin Robbins?”
Another nod, just as unforgiving.
She started up the car, the engine cold and registering its complaint with a knocking sound that Michael would have described as nothing more than a ping. It was a tight squeeze backing out. An old Toyota pickup had moved into the space on her left and there was a concrete block wall on the right. She backed out slowly, making a hard turn once the front bumper was clear.
“I’m sorry it hurt so much,” she said apologetically.
“You said it wouldn’t hurt.”
“I know. And I’m sorry.” She shifted into first and started out of the lot. “It’s just that sometimes adults forget how much things can hurt.”
“Did you ever have to give blood?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did it hurt?”
“You bet,” she said, checking the rear view mirror. There was a black, late model Ford in the outside lane, maybe half a block behind her. She glanced over her shoulder to make sure she hadn’t lost sight of a car in her blind spot, then turned on her signal and moved to the inside lane.
“But sometimes you just have to do things you’d rather not have to do,” she said. “You remember when you and your father drove over to Reno to pick up your grandfather’s bedroom set?”
“Yeah.”
“You remember how you got caught in that snow storm, and how your father had to get out of the truck and put chains on the tires?” She turned left at Bellows Road and moved back into the right lane. Baskin Robbins was another two miles down the road, a small shop that sat just outside the Shasta Valley Mall.
“It made his fingers hurt,” the boy said.
“But he still had to get the chains on, didn’t he?”
“It’s like the summer, when you make me mow the lawn every week.”
She laughed and glanced across the seat at him. He seemed so tiny, sitting there staring out the window. She had almost missed the fact that for a moment he had been Gabe in her mind and they had taken a trip far back in time. She wondered now who he really was, this boy. She found herself wondering even louder when he began to chew on his fingernails again.
The weather had been moody all morning, a little patch of sunshine here, a little sprinkle of raindrops there. But it was beginning to turn serious now. The sky had darkened noticeably, and off to the west, she could see a sheet of rain falling out of the clouds, all the way to the ground like a huge drape across the horizon.
“Mom?”
“What?” She checked the rearview mirror again. There was a white van keeping a safe distance not far behind, and a small foreign car—a Yugo or some such thing—in the other lane, a little further back. Traffic was light for this time of day.
“What about Dad?”
“What about him?”
“Where is he?”
And there was something else. She had come away from the doctor’s office with a feeling of unease in the pit of her stomach. For awhile, she thought it might have been something the doctor had said or maybe something he had done, some little signal he had sent that her brain had missed but her intuition had caught. Only now, she realized it hadn’t had anything at all to do with the doctor. It had been about the black, late model Ford she had noticed outside his office. It had pulled out behind her innocently enough, but it was still trailing along not far behind the white van.
That was the reason for her sense of unease.
They were being followed.
[28]
Walt answered the phone in that tone of his that could be gruff and unforgiving. He was like that most often when he felt interrupted. In this case, though, it was because he hadn’t been expecting a call, and a call unexpected was usually bad news.
“Yeah?”
“Walt?”
“Who’s this?”
“It’s Mark.”
Mark Sessions worked in the computer section of the local baby Bell. Walt had met him years ago in the midst of a department tap on a suspected drug smuggler. The tap had snagged the smuggler; Mark had received a letter of appreciation from the department; and Walt had made himself a friend inside the phone company.
“What’s up?” Walt asked.
“I can’t talk long, but I thought I’d let you know that you were right. There was a call made from the Knight house a couple nights ago.”
“What time?”
“A little before ten.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear, Mark. Hold on a sec and let me get a pencil and paper.” He pulled open the drawer of the night stand and rummaged around blindly under the Gideon Bible.
“Don’t bother.”
“Why? What’s the problem?”
“You aren’t going to like this. The number belongs to a phone booth.”
“Jesus.”