“When are you gonna-”
“Joel, do you mind?”
The little boy’s head dropped and the man stopped typing and looked up from his laptop.
“I’m sorry. Tell you what. Give me five minutes so I can finish this e-mail, and we’ll go eat breakfast.”
Mitchell sipped his espresso, snow falling beyond the storefront windows into this mountain hamlet of eight hundred souls, Miles Davis squealing through the speakers-one of the low-key numbers off Kind of Blue.
Mitchell trailed them down the frosted sidewalk.
One block up, they crossed the street and disappeared into a diner. Having already eaten in that very establishment two hours ago, he installed himself on a bench where he could see the boy and the man sitting at a table by the front window.
Mitchell fished the cell out of his jacket and opened the phone, scrolling through ancient numbers as the snow collected in his hair.
He pressed TALK.
Two rings, then, “Mitch? Oh, my God, where are you?”
He made no answer.
“Look, I’m at the office, getting ready for a big meeting. I can’t do this right now, but will you answer if I call you back? Please?”
Mitchell closed the phone and shut his eyes.
They emerged from the diner an hour later.
Mitchell brushed the inch of snow off his pants and stood, shivering. He crossed the street and followed the boy and the man up the sidewalk, passing a candy shop, a grocery, a depressing bar masquerading as an Old West saloon.
They left the sidewalk after another block and walked up the driveway to the Antlers Motel, disappeared into 113, the middle in a single-story row of nine rooms. The tarp stretched over the small swimming pool sagged with snow. In an alcove between the rooms and the office, vending machines hummed against the hush of the storm.
Ten minutes of brisk walking returned Mitchell to his motel, the Box Canyon Lodge. He checked out, climbed into his burgundy Jetta, cranked the engine.
“Just for tonight?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“That’ll be $69.78 with tax.”
Mitchell handed the woman behind the front desk his credit card.
Behind her, a row of Hummels stood in perfect formation atop a black-and-white television airing The Price is Right.
Mitchell signed the receipt. “Could I have 112 or 114?”
The old woman stubbed out her cigarette in a glass ashtray and reached for the key cabinet.
Mitchell pressed his ear to the wood paneling.
A television blared through the thin wall.
His cell phone vibrated-Lisa calling again.
Flipped it open.
“Mitch? You don’t have to say anything. Please just listen-”
He powered off the phone and continued writing in the notebook.
Afternoon unspooled as the snow piled up in the parking lot of the Antlers Motel. Mitchell parted the blinds and stared through the window as the first intimation of dusk began to blue the sky, the noise of the television next door droning through the walls.
He lay down on top of the covers and stared at the ceiling and whispered the Lord’s Prayer.
In the evening, he startled out of sleep to the sound of a door slamming, sat up too fast, the blood rushing to his head in a swarm of black spots. He hadn’t intended to sleep.
Mitchell slid off the bed and walked to the window, split the blinds, heard the diminishing sound of footsteps-a single set-squeaking in the snow.
He saw the boy pass through the illumination of a streetlamp and disappear into the alcove that housed the vending machines.
The snowflakes stung Mitchell’s cheeks as he crossed the parking lot, his sneakers swallowed up in six inches of fresh powder.
The hum of the vending machines intensified, and he picked out the sound of coins dropping through a slot.
He glanced once over his shoulder at the row of rooms, the doors all closed, windows dark save for slivers of electric blue from television screens sliding through the blinds.
Too dark to tell if the man was watching.
Mitchell stepped into the alcove as the boy pressed his selection on the drink machine.
The can banged into the open compartment, and the boy reached down and claimed the Sprite.
“Hi, Joel.”
The boy looked up at him, then lowered his head like a scolded dog, as though he’d been caught vandalizing the drink machine.
“No, it’s all right. You haven’t done anything wrong.”
Mitchell squatted down on the concrete.
“Look at me, son. Who’s that man you’re with?”
The voice so soft and high: “Daddy.”
A voice boomed across the parking lot. “Joel? It don’t take this long to buy a can of pop! Make a decision and get back here.”
The door slammed.
“Joel, do you want to come with me?”
“You’re a stranger.”
“No, my name’s Mitch. I’m a police officer actually. Why don’t you come with me.”
“No.”
“I think you probably should.” Mitchell figured he had maybe thirty seconds before the father stormed out.
“Where’s your badge?”
“I’m undercover right now. Come on, we don’t have much time. You need to come with me.”
“I’ll get in trouble.”
“No, only way you’ll get in trouble is by not obeying a police officer when he tells you to do something.” Mitchell noticed the boy’s hands trembling. His were, too. “Come on, son.”
He put his hand on the boy’s small shoulder and guided him out of the alcove toward his car, where he opened the front passenger door and motioned for Joel to get in.
Mitchell brushed the snow off the windows and the windshield, and as he climbed in and started the engine, he saw the door to 113 swing open in the rearview mirror.
“You eaten yet?”
“No.”
Main Street empty and the newly scraped pavement already frosting again, the reflection of the high beams blinding against the wall of pouring snow.
“Are you hungry?”
“I don’t know.”
He turned right off Main, drove slow down a snow-packed side street that sloped past little Victorians, inns and motels, Joel buckled into the passenger seat, the can of Sprite still unopened between his legs, tears rolling down his cheeks.
Mitchell unlocked the door and opened it.
“Go on in, Joel.”
The boy entered and Mitchell hit the light, closing and locking the door after them, wondering if Joel could reach the brass chain near the top.
It wasn’t much of a room-single bed, table, cabinet housing a refrigerator on one side, hangers on the other. He’d lived out of it for the last month and it smelled like stale pizza crust and cardboard and clothes soured with sweat.
Mitchell closed the blinds.
“You wanna watch TV?”
The boy shrugged.
Mitchell picked the remote control off the bedside table and turned it on.
“Come sit on the bed, Joel.”
As the boy climbed onto the bed, Mitchell started flipping. “You tell me to stop when you see something you wanna watch.”
Mitchell surfed through all thirty stations twice and the boy said nothing. He settled on the Discovery Channel, set the remote control down.
“I want my dad,” the boy said, trying not to cry.
“Calm down, Joel.”
Mitchell sat on the bed and unlaced his sneakers. His socks were damp and cold. He balled them up and tossed them into the open bathroom, staring now at his pale feet, toes shriveled with moisture.
Joel had settled back into one of the pillows, momentarily entranced by the television program where a man caked in mud wrestled with a crocodile.
Mitchell turned up the volume.
“You like crocodiles?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“You aren’t scared of them?”
The boy shook his head. “I got a snake.”
“Nuh-uh.”
The boy looked up. “Uh-huh.”
“What kind?”