Disappeared

by Lucienne Diver

  “Hang on. Mom,” he yelled back into the house. “The Graham girl is here. I have to get to work.”

  The Graham girl. She huffed.

  “Well, let her in!” Ms. Carla called. She appeared about a second later, as Andrew was excusing himself to squeeze past her and take off to work.

  “Emily, what’s wrong?” she asked, as soon as she saw her. Apparently, her upset could be seen from space.

  “There was a guy at the house, asking about Mom. He … freaked me out.”

  It sounded so stupid now that she said it. He hadn’t actually done anything, but was she supposed to wait until he made a move?

  But Ms. Carla took her seriously enough. “A man? Wait here.”

  She took off, leaving Emily standing there on the doorstep, watching as she fast-walked down the block to check things out. Emily couldn’t actually see her driveway from there, not past various shrubberies and fences. She half wanted the guy to be gone, hopefully for good, and half wanted someone else to see him, to validate her fear or to be able to say she was just being silly.

  Ms. Carla reappeared a few seconds later, shaking her head. “He’s long gone. Do you want to come in and tell me about it?”

  Did she? Maybe. She certainly wasn’t ready to go home to an empty house.

  “Maybe just for a glass of water.” She was so dry, she realized, now that the adrenaline was wearing away.

  “I can do better than that. Andrew brought home some donuts last night. They may be a touch on the stale side, but I find that warming them in the microwave wrapped in a damp towel makes all the difference.”

  Stale donuts sounded surprisingly good. She suddenly craved sugar like a caffeine addict craved coffee.

  “Thanks.”

  Ms. Carla lead her to the kitchen, a mirror image of their own, only with all-white cabinetry rather than their lighter wood and with a pressed metal backsplash as opposed to their tile. She liked it. It looked so clean.

  Ms. Carla waved Emily to a seat at the breakfast bar as she grabbed a glass and clattered ice into it from the refrigerator, then hit the button for water.

  She handed it over to Emily and watched her drink before prepping the donuts. Seconds later, she set a warm glazed donut in front of Emily, the frosting just a bit melted and sticky. She took a bite, and it was heaven. It practically melted in her mouth like cotton candy.

  “So, tell me about this man,” she asked when Emily had finished chewing. “He scared you?”

  “No,” she said. “I mean, yes, but he didn’t actually do anything threatening. He just asked about Mom, and it seemed like he was going to follow me into the house to wait for her, which creeped me out, so I ran.” She felt a little stupid now that it was all over, but still her heart raced just thinking of him coming toward her. If she had it to do over again, she’d probably run again. Better paranoid than dead.

  Holy drama llama, Emily, she thought to herself. But no matter how much she beat herself up, she couldn’t change how she felt. The guy had scared her. Maybe Mom’s absence had her on high alert.

  “You did the right thing,” Ms. Carla said. “Do you want me to call your father?”

  Emily shook her head no. Her father didn’t even take her fears about her mother seriously. She didn’t want him using this to downplay her other fears, like she flew off the handle at every little thing.

  Thirteen

  Jared

  Holy hell in a handbasket.

  Jared’s hands went up. Aaliyah’s too. She was going to kill him. Probably not the first thought he should have had, but there it was.

  Second thought was that Dad was going to kill him more.

  Oh hell no. Dad could not find out.

  “Move away from the counter,” one cop said.

  Jared got awkwardly off his stool and moved away from his mother’s laptop. “We didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “This is my mother’s place. She lives here.”

  He wanted to glance at Aaliyah, see how she was doing, but he couldn’t make himself look away from the guns.

  “Uh huh,” the officer said. “You can tell us all about it down at the station. Turn around and put your hands behind your backs.”

  They were getting arrested? Oh no. No-no-no-no-no. His life was over.

  “But—”

  “Turn. Around.” The cop bit off each word and his gun came up fractionally higher. Right at about heart level.

  Would he really shoot an unarmed kid? Jared didn’t want to find out. He sensed more than saw Aaliyah already turning around. He did the same, feeling like there was a target right between his shoulder blades. Blind to what was going on behind him and with his hands behind his back, he felt horribly vulnerable. And stupid. So, so stupid. They couldn’t go to jail. Not for stupidity.

  But for breaking and entering?

  He hated the feel of the cold metal cuffs being snapped around his wrists. They felt like prison bars closing on him. Worse was the quick, brusque frisking, knowing it was his fault Aaliyah was going through it as well.

  He risked a glance at Aaliyah, but she wouldn’t look at him. She had her head held high, her chin up, her features frozen in place. Jared had seen her like that before, her jaw clenched to keep from crying. It was her defiant face, but behind it there was fear. Well, sure, people didn’t defy what didn’t stand against them, but in this case it was him and the police. And he was the one who put her in that position.

  The cop frisking him had found and removed his wallet, flipped it open to his ID and was studying his learner’s permit.

  “Jared Graham, eh? Well, Jared, you have the right to remain silent. You too,” he added, giving Aaliyah the side eye. “You have the right—”

  He was reciting their Miranda warning. They were being arrested.

  Really and truly arrested.

  Like criminals.

  “But I told you,” Jared cut in, one last ditch effort. He hoped he was the only one who could hear the tremor in his voice. “I live here. Or anyway, I’m supposed to. Part time. My mother was supposed to come and get us—me and my sister—this weekend, and she didn’t. Or, she did, but then she disappeared. My girlfriend and I only came over to check on her.”

  “And broke in,” said the one cop, totally emotionless, as if that was all there was to the story. Over and done.

  But the other cop, the one who’d held the gun while his partner had done the cuffing, said, “We can’t talk to you. Not without a parent or advocate present.”

  “But you’re not talking to me. I’m talking to you. I’m trying to tell you our side. We had to see—”

  “My momma always told me ‘you don’t see with your hands,’” handcuff cop said. “And yet, you went right for her computer. Is that the problem? You a little too handsy with people’s stuff, maybe with your mother herself? Is that why she left?”

  Jared gaped. Wait, what?

  Where would the police come up with something so disgusting? Sure, he and Aaliyah had broken in, but … he never imagined how that might look. Hell, he never imagined they’d get caught, despite Aaliyah’s warning. All he could think of was finding his mother. He knew her best. He cared the most. He had to do everything he could. Yeah, his aunt had filed a report, but with his mother a grown woman, he didn’t know how seriously the police would take her disappearance. Certainly not as seriously as he did. How was he supposed to sit back and wait? What had he done that was so wrong?

  To his surprise, Aaliyah came to his defense. “He’s completely torn up about his mother, can’t you see that? All he wants is to find evidence leading to her, not destroy it.”

  “So you broke in? You didn’t think the police would have looked for her here already? When the missing person’s report came in with the allegations of abuse, we did a wellness check. It’s what we do, and it’s a job for the police, not a couple of juvenile delinquents.”

  “Abuse?” Aaliyah asked. She sounded faint, shaken enough she didn’t even take issue with being called a de
linquent.

  She shot Jared a glance, eyes wide. Aaliyah was a smart girl. He knew she was connecting the dots between Richard Travis’s message to Mom—Did he hurt you?—and the cop’s statement and coming up with violence. He was sure that despite the cop’s implication, she’d realize it was his father and not him. But the fact was, he hadn’t told her. She’d had to hear it elsewhere.

  Would she think he was covering for his father, keeping secrets? Would she worry it would be a case of like-father-like-son?

  But someone was sharing secrets, and if abuse was mentioned in the missing person report, that meant Aunt Aggie had to know, but … what had Mom told her? And why tell Aunt Aggie, but lie to Jared when he asked? Did Mom think she was protecting him?

  He’d been such an ass to her after she moved out. He wished desperately that he could take it all back.

  “We’ll talk about all this down at the station,” the first cop said. “That yours?” he asked Aaliyah, nodding to the purse on the counter next to his mother’s laptop.

  She nodded wordlessly. Stunned speechless, he thought.

  “ID in there?”

  She nodded again. “In my wallet.”

  The cop grabbed for the purse, picking it up with the straps bunched in his hands and holding it out from his body like a trash bag he didn’t want too close.

  “Let’s go.” His partner gestured them toward the door with his gun. When Jared looked back, he was re-holstering it, but his hand stayed nearby. If he’d even thought of taking off, that would have stopped him. But he didn’t want to run. Not in cuffs and not as a fugitive. Where would he go? He just wanted to get everything cleared up.

  But they didn’t go to the station right away. First, the cops sat Jared and Aaliyah down in the back of their cruiser and shut the doors. There was a cage between them and the front seats. Neither cop got into the car. One dropped Aaliyah’s purse on the hood of the cruiser and reached for her wallet. The other stood outside the driver’s side door on his radio. They heard him call in the address and that they had two suspects in custody for the B&E … or at least Jared hoped the code stood for B&E and not kidnapping or whatever they thought had happened to Mom. The cop read numbers off their IDs, mentioned that parents would have to be called. He also asked for a forensics unit to be sent out to Mom’s place. Maybe that was a good thing? If there was any evidence to be found, maybe the police would discover it because Jared had given them probable cause to search? He had to find a bright side in all of this.

  When the officer finished, he handed the IDs back to his partner, who left Aaliyah’s purse on the hood while he sat half in and half out of the car, a clipboard leaned up against his open door, making notes. Names, addresses, license numbers. All that sort of thing.

  He and Aaliyah were so dead. They were going to have a criminal record.

  Aaliyah would never forgive him, and he couldn’t blame her. Her future had been so bright … what had he done? He was never going to forgive himself.

  Maybe it was better that his punishment come from the police rather than Dad.

  Oh god, they were going to call Dad.

  “I’m sorry,” Jared said quietly to Aaliyah, shifting around so that he could sit sideways on the seat facing her.

  “Yeah,” she said, watching the cop making notes rather than looking at him.

  “I really am,” he said. “I had no idea this would happen. I didn’t think.”

  She turned on him. “But I did. I thought about it, and I knew it was a bad idea, and I said so. But I let you go through with it. Hell, I helped. That’s on me.” Her eyes were a flashfire, but her voice hissed more like steam, almost too quiet to hear. Probably so the cop in front of them couldn’t use anything she said against them.

  Jared didn’t know how to answer that. He was prepared for Aaliyah to hate him, but blaming herself, even partway, that was worse.

  It was forever until another unit arrived to secure the scene. Officer Cuffs walked them through everything, and when he returned, there was a short, silent trip to the station, followed by finger printing and the whole nine yards. They separated him from Aaliyah almost as soon as they got to the station and his mood tanked until it took all of his energy just to follow directions. He asked about his one call, prepared to make it to Aunt Aggie, but they took that decision out of his hands. He was underage. They had to have a guardian present. Dad was already on the way.

  Jared felt sick. The pounding in his head was back, and all he wanted was to time travel back to the nurse’s office to rethink his life decisions. The police had re-cuffed his hands in front of him after the finger printing, but they hadn’t given him back his phone or any of his stuff. All he could do was stare at his hands, or tap out his own drumbeat. Or count the crappy acoustic tiles in the ceiling. Or follow the cracks in the plaster of the wall like they were lifelines that might tell his fortune (murky, chance of incarceration).

  If only the boredom was the worst part. But it was the anger at himself and the fear of what was coming next that gnawed at him.

  By the time the door finally opened, he was ready to scream or confess to anything as long as it came with a deal to spare Aaliyah. In walked a woman he’d never seen before, dressed in a button-up shirt the ominous gray of a stormy New York skyline and black pants only a few shades darker than her skin. Her hair was cropped closely to her head, and had a henna sheen to it, the only spot of color beside her lips, which nearly matched her hair. She held a file, although there couldn’t have been much in it. Yet. She turned a hard look on Jared that told him how much trouble he was in. There was no sympathy there. He could try to explain, but he had the sense that she’d heard it all before.

  But she wasn’t nearly as intimidating as the man who entered behind her. His father.

  If the detective—he was guessing she was a detective, since she wasn’t dressed like a beat cop—was a brick wall, his father was a steel trap, full of spikes and ready to close on him. He looked deadly. Homicidal. The police setting seemed the only thing holding him back from tearing into Jared.

  “I’m Detective Karen Anderson,” she told Jared, ignoring his father for now. “I’m investigating your mother’s missing person case.”

  Jared instinctively lifted his hands to shake, but realized that cuffed together as they were, that wasn’t going to be an easy thing. Detective Anderson met his gesture anyway, and shook his one hand. She’d clearly had practice. It wasn’t nearly as awkward as it could have been.

  “You have nice manners,” Detective Anderson said. “It seems a boy like you would know better than to break in where you’re not invited.”

  Wow, and there it was. First shot fired.

  He looked at Dad, who fought back his explosion and put a smile on his face. “Yes, he does. His mother and I raised him right. You must understand that there’s been some kind of mistake. My wife isn’t missing. Or, if she is, it’s by choice. She—” Dad broke off and glanced at Jared, moved around the table and put a hand to his shoulder, as though it might comfort him to have it squeezed to the point of pain. “She left us. I told that to the police her crazy sister sent to question us. If Jared let himself into his mother’s apartment, it was because he was worried about her.”

  Detective Anderson didn’t even glance at Dad, so his smile was wasted. She was busy flipping through the folder in front of her, which she then laid out on the table. She slid a second folder out from underneath the first and arranged them just so. Parallel, edges perfectly aligned. When she glanced up at Jared, her gaze speared his until he felt like a fish dangling at the end of a harpoon. “Jared, the officers who brought you in read you your rights?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, then you understand that you have the right against self-incrimination. You don’t have to answer my questions, but I hope that you’ll want to clear things up. Your girlfriend is really worried.”

  “Aaliyah! How is she? You have to let her go. She didn’t have anything to do with this. I ma
de her bring me out here. It’s all my fault.”

  Jared winced as his father squeezed even harder. He couldn’t help himself.

  Detective Anderson’s gaze shot up to him then. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to step away from the child and take a seat. He’s under sixteen, so you have the right to be here during questioning, but I don’t want anything to happen here that can be misconstrued as you influencing his testimony.”

  Dad immediately unclenched from Jared’s shoulder and raised both hands as though to show he meant no harm. He moved off to a chair at the end of the table, catty-corner to the one where Jared sat that was bolted to the floor, but he threw Jared a significant look. Jared didn’t know how to read it. “Keep your mouth shut?” “Don’t screw this up?” Things were already all screwed up. He didn’t see how he could make them worse.

  “Aaliyah is fine. Her parents are with her,” Detective Anderson said finally.

  “Both of them?” Jared asked. It was a stupid question. They’d both know eventually. What did it matter who was here now?

  Detective Anderson just stared him down. “Let’s talk about you,” she said. “Tell me how this is your fault.”

  He stared back. Had he said that? Oh, god, he had. Was that a confession, saying it was all his fault? No wonder Dad had dug in. Maybe if he met the detective’s gaze without flinching, she’d know he was being straightforward with her. If he could just explain …

  “It was all my idea.” He didn’t look at Dad. He’d falter if he did, and he couldn’t afford to do that if he wanted to get himself and Aaliyah out of trouble. “Dad said Mom left us, and I know she sent a text saying she had to get away for a while.” If that had really been her. Had the local police shared the text with Detective Anderson? He gave a second’s pause for her to ask about it, but she didn’t, so he figured she knew. “But I couldn’t believe she’d just disappear. Even when she moved out, she called every day. She broke up with Dad, but … she didn’t break up with us. She wouldn’t. Especially not Emily. My younger sister,” he added, in case that wasn’t in the detective’s file.