“What about the others?”
“They’re already out of the area.”
“And Anderson?”
“Clean up took care of him.”
D.C. nodded. “I want you to stick around for awhile.” He pulled a white business envelope out of his jacket and tossed it across the table. “A little something for your troubles.”
Mitch picked it up. He tapped the edge a couple of times, nodding and looking undecided. Then he opened the envelope and fanned through the bills. “How long?”
“Until things settle down. That a problem?”
“Not for me.”
“I want you to keep an eye on the woman.”
“Mrs. Knight?”
“Yeah.” D.C. stared absently out the window. He should have been feeling a sense of relief, but he wasn’t. Instead, it was more a sense of having awakened a sleeping beast. Things were going to be tricky for awhile. “And be careful about it, all right? The only thing more dangerous than getting between a grizzly and its cub is getting between a mother and her child. She’s not going to let go of this for awhile, not without a fight. Remember that. Never underestimate an angry mother.”
Mitch nodded, noncommittally. “Anything else?”
“Just keep an eye on her.”
“You got it.”
[65]
Walt answered the door, and was both surprised and relieved by what he found.
It was around one in the afternoon, and he had spent most of last night and all of this morning puttering around the apartment, trying to keep himself busy while he waited for Teri to call. Waiting wasn’t a far cry from dying, he had decided. They could both be agonizing, and they both involved a painful degree of uncertainty. It was the uncertainty that annoyed him the most.
Sleep had come a little after two last night, while he watched the end of a movie called Don’t Talk to Strangers. He didn’t remember how the movie had ended. In fact, he didn’t remember much about it at all. There had been other things occupying his thoughts. More specifically, he had been worried about Teri and the boy.
Something had happened.
Something terrible.
He awakened several hours after nodding off, the television still flickering its images across the living room walls. An infomercial, something having to do with a super absorbent mop, was at the midpoint and an 800 number was on the screen, with a dollar amount in smaller type in the upper right-hand corner. Walt came awake, one eye open, then rolled over and drifted off again. It had been like that all night.
Teri still hadn’t called by the time he finally crawled out of bed, a little after ten this morning. He had decided to give her until two. Then he was going to take to the streets looking for her. Waiting was a death of its own, and he had struggled with it all night. That was long enough. He needed to do something, anything, to make the waiting less painful.
Though that was all mute now.
Teri was standing in the doorway.
She wasn’t alone. She was in the company of two police officers, neither of whom Walt recognized. It had been nearly three years now since he had last worked for the department. Situations changed. No doubt some officers had retired and headed for the countryside. And others had surely come on as new recruits. Nothing in life was ever static. So it wasn’t surprising that he didn’t recognize these two.
“Mr. Travis?”
“Teri? Are you all right?”
“They’ve got him,” she said, her voice caught between something of a whisper and something hollow. A white bandage slanted across her forehead, dotted by a red spot where blood had soaked through. Both cheeks were spattered with cuts and scratches. Thick, dark circles underlined her eyes, giving her what Walt’s aunt had once referred to as “raccoon eyes.”
“They’ve got Gabe.”
She pulled away from the female office, and fell into Walt’s arms. No tears. Just a need to be held by someone she trusted.
“It’s all right,” he said. “We’ll get him back.”
He helped her into the living room, onto the couch, and brought a pillow out of the bedroom for her. He did this while trying to calm the ugly self-accusations tearing at his insides. If only he hadn’t been late yesterday. If only he had left a few minutes earlier, just a few minutes, just to be on the safe side.
Teri closed her eyes.
Walt went back to the officers, who were waiting patiently in the doorway.
“Is she going to be all right?” the woman asked.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Has this ever happened before, sir?”
“No, of course not.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Why?”
“No reason, sir.” But of course, you didn’t ask questions like that for no reason. “It’s just that we found her this morning, walking along Locust Street, looking pretty banged up. We thought she might have been assaulted or something, but she kept insisting that her son had been kidnapped.”
“Yes, last night, apparently. I was supposed to meet them at the plaza near City Hall, but I got there late, and they were already gone.”
“And by them you mean?”
“Teri and her son.”
“Gabriel Knight?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever met her son, Mr. Travis?”
“Yes, of course.”
The woman glanced down at her notebook again. “Gabriel Knight? Is that right?”
“Yes,” Walt said, instantly wishing he could catch it and reel it back in. Apparently, they had believed Teri when she had told them Gabe had been kidnapped. They had believed her, and they had followed up, and they had come across some interesting background information.
“Are you aware that she reported him missing almost ten years ago?”
Yes, of course, Walt thought. But he only thought it. He didn’t say it. Because if he had said it, it would only have served up more questions. And then questions on top of questions. And eventually it would have all lead back to how he had worked for the department, and how he had worked on the Gabriel Knight case. And how, my dear man, did he intend to explain all that?
“No, I wasn’t aware of that.”
“I think you might consider getting your friend some counseling, Mr. Travis.”
“Yes. I’m sorry. I’ll mention it to her.”
“You do that.”
The officer presented him with a business card and suggested he call if he needed anything else. Walt accepted it without comment. He turned it over several times in his hands, glancing only cursorily at the name—Officer Debra J. Pettitt—before thanking her for her trouble and tucking it into his pocket. Neither of them carried any false illusions. The card would be lucky to make it past the first trash can.
By the time Walt made it back to the living room, Teri had already drifted off to sleep. He brought a blanket out from the linen closet, unfolded it, and covered her. Then he plopped down in the chair across the room and watched her. He watched every breath go in, every breath come out, and he promised himself he would never let another bad thing happen to her.
[66]
Paranoia was new to Michael Knight.
That thought came to him in crystal-clear clarity as he walked off the plane and crossed the tarmac to the airport terminal. Just inside the doorway, a small crowd of people had gathered, waiting to greet arriving friends and relatives. He looked at each of them, directly, in the eyes, wondering if maybe this one might be waiting for him, if maybe that one might have a gun.
Paranoia was not comforting. It did not make for polite conversation with strangers. But ever since he jumped the backyard fence back in Tennessee and headed down a side-street in as stealthily a manner as he could muster, the paranoia had been following him relentlessly just the same. Somewhere behind him, sitting in a van, people had been watching the house.