The side of the suitcase slammed against the rail near the top of the stairs. He switched it from his left hand to his right, and started down the corridor, tossing around ideas for where he thought Boyle might head next. Upper Oregon, he reminded himself, and that was as far as his thoughts took him.
The door to the apartment was open.
Instinctively, he dropped the suitcase and hugged the wall. Maybe not quite as far as upper Oregon after all. He reached around the corner and palmed the door. It creaked lightly as it swung all the way to the stop, not a sound coming from inside.
He moved across the doorway and hugged the wall on the other side, taking a peek through the kitchen window. Someone had gone out of his way to make one hell of a mess in there. His angle of vision allowed him a look past the kitchen doorway, down the hall to the corner of the living room. There was an eerie stillness over the place, a kind of peacefulness after the body’s been laid to rest.
“Teri?”
No answer.
After another peek around the corner, he decided that whatever had gone on here, it had gone on some time ago. The damage was done now. All the participants had skittered back into the wood work. The apartment was empty.
He listened to the heater kick on, thought distantly that he’d probably been paying to heat the outdoors since last night sometime, and moved down the entry and into the kitchen. A small flurry of white flour kicked up from the floor vent. From there to the living room, from the living room to the bathroom and finally into the bedroom, he carefully covered every square inch of the apartment.
There was no sign of Teri or the boy.
There was also no sign of blood.
He chose that ray of hope to hold onto as he went to the back of his bedroom closet. After moving into the apartment, he had added a false wall at the far end. He ran his hand along the top inside edge of the framework, found the release, pressed it. A small side panel clicked open.
Apparently, the safe had gone unnoticed.
He fingered through the combination, pausing to refresh his memory after the second number. It had been a long time since he had first installed the safe. This was the first time he had felt a need to open it.
The door swung open.
[39]
“Michael?” Teri switched the phone to her other ear and turned away from the boy, who was sitting on the other bed and watching her with anticipation.
“Teri?” There was more than just surprise in his voice. There was something underneath, something that sounded a bit like relief. She had a hard time imagining a situation in which Michael would be relieved to be hearing from her. After they had separated, he put a bumper sticker on his car that said, I still miss my “ex,” but I’m getting closer. Meaning, of course, that he was still aiming for her. Teri hadn’t been completely innocent herself. Her bumper sticker had said, Who cares what Mikee likes?
“Everything all right out there?” he asked.
“Not exactly.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m not really sure where to start.”
“The job okay?”
“Yeah.” The boy tugged at her shirt sleeve and when she turned toward him, he mouthed the words: Is that him? She nodded and he motioned for her to hand him the phone. “Uh… listen… there’s someone here who wants to talk to you.”
He grabbed the receiver out of her hand. “Dad?”
There was silence on the other end.
“It’s me, Gabe.” A long pause took breath before Michael finally said something back, and the boy—looking disappointed and more than a little dejected—handed the phone back to her. “He wants to talk to you.”
“Michael?”
“What the hell are you trying to pull? Jesus, Teri, you think I’m that stupid? You think I’m really gonna buy that this kid – what is he? Ten, eleven years old? – is supposed to be Gabe? It’s not funny, Teri. Not funny at all.”
“Just settle down, Michael.”
“Settle down? Man, nothing’s changed, has it? You’re still chasing his ghost all over the whole damn country, aren’t you? Till the day you die, you’re gonna be chasing that kid’s damn ghost.”
“It’s him, Michael. I’m really beginning to believe it’s him.”
“It can’t be him. Christ…” He let out a long, calming breath, the way he always did when he realized he was becoming agitated. Teri already knew what he was going to say next and how he was going to say it. He was going to tell her, in that almost but not quite patronizing tone of his, that she had to try to keep a perspective on things, that she was losing sight of reality here. Teri had heard it all before. After Gabe’s disappearance, it had become her husband’s marching song. And who could have really blamed him?”
“Okay,” he said evenly. “Let’s try to think this thing through, Teri.”
“I know what you’re going to say.”
“It’s impossible. Gabe would be… what? Twenty? Twenty-one years old?”
“I know. And I know it sounds crazy. But it’s him, Michael.”
“What? He just showed up one day?”
“Something like that.”
“Oh, Teri.”
“Michael, he’s sitting right here. I’m looking at him. Don’t you think I’d know my own son when I saw him?”
“He hasn’t changed? Not at all?”
“No.”
“Did you ever stop to think that someone might be trying to con you?”
“Why? It’s not like I’m Leona Helmsley.”
“You own the house free and clear.”
“It’s him, Michael.” She leaned back against the headboard, feeling tired from having to defend a position that she knew was indefensible. Some things in life, though, you just had to accept for what they were. Without question. Without explanation. On faith. The boy crawled into her lap and leaned back against her chest, and she knew, as she had known from the very first, that this was one of those things. “All he wants is to talk to his father.”
“That’s why you called?”
“The one and only reason.”
“Did you tell him I’m poor as a dog?”
“No. You tell him.”
“I don’t want to talk to him, Teri.”
“Why? What are you afraid of? That maybe it’ll really be Gabe?”
“Of course not.”
“Then talk to him.”
“What am I supposed to say?”
“Whatever a father says to his son.”
“But he’s not… Christ, Teri. You aren’t going to drop this, are you?”
“No,” she said firmly. Though if it had been about her and Michael and only her and Michael, she probably wouldn’t have been as adamant. But this was about the boy. The boy and the man who was supposed to be his father. For that, she was even willing to turn a deaf ear to the voice inside her head that was saying, See? I told you he’d come home someday. I told you and you didn’t believe me and I was right. I was right, Michael.
“Talk to him, Michael.”
“All right. I’ll talk to him.”
[40]
Walt removed the handgun first.
It was a Ruger P-85 he had bought from one of the detectives down at the station. The frame was a lightweight aluminum alloy, matte black finish. He held it in his right hand, the trigger finger straight along the frame, the gun tilted to the side. He popped in the magazine. With the heel of his left hand, he slammed the magazine home, and retracted the slide to check the chamber. It was empty. He tucked the gun under his belt, against his back where he could feel it.