by Jeff Ross
“That was a total misunderstanding,” I say.
“Nevertheless, it is causing us some concern.”
“It shouldn’t. Nothing happened.”
“Lauren—” she begins, but I’ve had enough.
“Go!”
“Lauren, I need you to try to help your brother here. I need—”
“I need you to go,” I say, and I must look crazy because Detective Evans pulls a card from her pocket and lays it on the coffee table, then backs away.
“I’ll go. It’s okay, Lauren. I know this is difficult. But if he comes back here, you need to call me. Do you understand? I can’t say what will happen if someone else finds him first.” Her cell rings as she’s opening the door to leave. She answers it, there on the threshold. Looks back at me.
“It’s Erin,” she says, holding the phone out and switching it to speaker.
“Lauren?” Erin’s voice fills the room. “Lauren, can you hear me?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Lauren, would you mind coming over here with Detective Evans?”
I stare at the stupid green carpet. I’ve hated this carpet since day one. So did my dad. It was one of the last things he mentioned before walking out the door. This stupid green carpet.
What a mess.
“Lauren,” Erin says. “Please.”
“Okay,” I say. “Fine.”
SEVEN
The Carters.
Erin, Jack, JJ and Steph.
They’re all here.
We enter through the kitchen, avoiding most of the madness. There are news vans and journalists outside. A group of them moved toward the cruiser as we pulled in. A uniformed officer had to shield us, arms out, shaking his head as photographs were taken. I wonder if this much attention would be given to Benny if his father wasn’t the mayor.
I spot JJ standing beside a fit-looking female officer, a few strands of his perfectly coiffed hair gently waving in the air-conditioned breeze. The officer stifles a laugh at something JJ says, and he straightens up.
Steph is at the kitchen table, a book of photographs in front of her. She immediately stands when she spots Detective Evans. “I don’t recognize anyone in here,” she says. I catch her glance. The one she saves for the unworthy.
“I’d like you to keep going, Stephanie,” Detective Evans tells her.
“I’m never with Ben,” she says.
“But you might have noticed one of these men nearby. Maybe at a park or outside your house. Maybe not even when you were with Benjamin.”
“They’re all starting to look the same,” she whines.
“Stephanie, you told us you wanted to help in any way you could. This is helping.”
“I don’t notice old guys, and these guys are all old and creepy.”
“Please, Stephanie,” Detective Evans says.
Steph closes her eyes and exhales sharply. “I need to make a smoothie before I can go on,” she says, opening the fridge. She’s wearing a pair of shorts only slightly larger than the panties beneath. A blue dress shirt is open farther down than it should be and tied above her waist.
“Thank you,” Detective Evans says. She moves me through the kitchen toward the living room. We’re no more than three steps in before I find myself wrapped in Erin’s arms.
“We’re going to find him,” she says. Her eyes are huge, round, red-rimmed. She nods in agreement with herself. “We are.” She releases me. Erin is thin and has these perfectly formed lips. Her hair is tied up now, but when it’s down it’s a great, flowing waterfall of curls. She has big green eyes, just like Benny. Strangely, for a woman her age, she’s never had her ears pierced. In fact, she rarely wears any jewelry at all. There have been a few times at the park when people asked if we’re sisters. Though I think that’s more about how young Erin looks than because of any similarities we might possess.
“Let’s go outside,” Detective Evans says. “Where it’s a little quieter.”
As we’re stepping out the patio doors, Jack Carter is coming toward us, cell phone pressed to his ear. He stops to let us out, covering the phone with one hand.
“Who’s this?” he asks, gesturing at me.
“This is Lauren Saunders, Jack,” Erin says. “You know Lauren—she looks after Benny.”
He looks at me in the way people look at foreign fruit.
“Of course,” he says. I can tell he doesn’t recognize me at all. “Yes, yes, of course.” He reaches out and pats me on the shoulder, then puts the phone to his ear again as he goes inside and closes the patio door behind him with a bang.
The pool glows in the early-afternoon burn of the sun. We sit at a glass table on well-cushioned chairs.
“Can you think of anywhere he might be?” Erin asks. And I know that she, unlike Detective Evans, means Ben, not Tom.
“No. I’m sorry—I just can’t,” I say.
“Lauren has been with me all morning,” Detective Evans says. “She has been very helpful.”
“What about your brother?” Erin says, never taking her eyes off me. “I saw his picture on the TV…but he couldn’t have done this.”
“No,” I say. “He couldn’t have.”
“No, of course not,” Erin agrees. “He’s your brother.”
I have my cell out, rubbing its side and staring at the blank screen.
“It’s like we’ve raised him together,” Erin says, turning to Detective Evans. “Ben looks up to Lauren. She’s always taken very good care of him. I never worry about him when he’s with her.”
“Have you thought of anywhere he might be? Anywhere at all?” Detective Evans says. Her tone has changed. It’s lighter, though she could just be playing good cop with Erin.
“No,” Erin says. “I have been racking my brain, and no. He’s always either with me or with Lauren.”
“You’ve had some time now, Erin. Can you recall seeing anyone around? A stranger you may have noticed on more than one occasion?”
Erin shakes her head. “No. I’ve tried and tried. I did what you said and walked through my days in my mind. But I can’t think of anyone. I didn’t notice anyone watching us, I mean. Maybe I’m not observant enough.”
“What about you, Lauren? Have you thought of anyone who might have been watching you?” Detective Evans asks. She seems to have forgotten about me yelling at her to get out of my house. It’s like her ability to shift into a completely different person somehow allows her to pretend nothing has happened.
“No,” I say. “No one.”
She turns back to Erin. “We’re examining some of the closed-circuit camera footage at the stores you’ve visited recently. We’ll be looking to see if the same face pops up more than once. If we find anyone, we’ll have you look at the footage right away.”
“Okay,” Erin says, nodding.
I can only imagine what a parent in this type of situation must go through. Every ounce of new information must feel like a glimmer of hope.
“We’re going to find him, Erin. I know we will,” Detective Evans says. She reaches out and puts a hand on Erin’s shoulder.
Erin swallows and nods again. “The thought of someone taking him. The things that could—”
“Don’t think like that, Erin. It’s not good.”
“Oh God, some little room or a basement and…”
“Erin,” Detective Evans says. “You can’t…”
I sense something in my peripheral vision and look up to find JJ at the patio door. He’s just standing there, starin
g out at me. He has his cell phone in one hand and a Coke Zero in the other. His expression doesn’t change when I look at him. He keeps staring as though somehow I can’t see him, like the glass door is a one-way mirror and he could stand there watching me forever and I’d never be the wiser.
He suddenly looks over his shoulder, then moves to the side as a male officer opens the patio door and steps out.
“Detective, we’ve found something on the closed circuit from the grocery store.”
“What is it?” Detective Evans says.
The officer has these ridiculously blue eyes. A really deep blue. I stare at them, which is, I assume, why he glances at me before he speaks.
“Tom Saunders, Detective.”
The video is black and white and grainy. It’s washed in stuttered motions. It isn’t truly video, the officer explains. It’s a still camera taking thousands of snapshots a day, then splicing them together.
The officer points at Erin and Ben on the laptop screen. “This was last Wednesday at the Whole Foods.”
Ben is in the shopping cart’s seat. He has his favorite stuffed animal, a elephant, clutched in his little hands. Erin seems to be examining her receipt.
“And if we advance a few frames…” the officer says, moving the pictures along. “Yes, right here. This is Tom Saunders, correct?”
It is.
It’s Tom.
It’s really difficult to miss him. He’s standing at the end of an aisle at the front of the store. The officer advances a few more frames. It’s hard to tell because of the quality of the picture, but it looks like Tom is watching Ben and Erin as they pass. At the last second, as Erin and Ben are leaving the area, Tom raises a hand and waves.
“He leaves a second later,” the officer says.
“Did you speak to Tom that day, Erin?” Detective Evans asks.
“No. I had no idea he was there.” She looks at me as if I might be able to decipher what we are seeing.
“Benjamin didn’t say anything?” Detective Evans says.
“Nothing. I remember looking at my receipt. There was something on it that I wasn’t certain I’d meant to buy. So I was in my own little world. We left the store and came straight back here.”
“Moving on to the next day,” the officer begins, cueing something on the computer.
Erin interrupts him. “The next day I went back because we needed cream cheese. That was what it was. I’d picked up cottage cheese rather than cream cheese by mistake.”
“Yes, we have that here as well.” He advances a new recording. The grainy picture shifts slowly along. Everyone looks like out-of-sync zombies. “Here you are at the customer-service counter. If we wait a moment, we’ll see Tom Saunders.”
“He was there again?” Erin says.
I turn around to find JJ across the room, arms crossed, staring at me. Or at the video screen. I can’t tell. But when I look at him, he again doesn’t look away.
“He was. He came in less than a minute after you.” Tom moves into the store, looks around, then enters an aisle where he has a clear view of Ben in the cart. Erin finishes paying for the cream cheese, all the while holding Ben’s hand. As they’re about to leave, Erin stops to talk to someone.
“That’s Katherine Hobbs, the councilor,” Erin says.
“Yes,” the officer says. “Someone is contacting her now.”
“Why?” Erin asks.
“Just wait.” In the video, Ben twists from side to side on the link of his mother’s arm. The two women go on talking. At the end of the aisle, Tom stands stock-still, watching. He waves and Ben waves back.
“So they know one another,” the officer says. Everyone looks at me.
“Yes, I told you that already,” I say. “Tom would sometimes come to the park with us.”
“But the interesting thing is that Benjamin doesn’t let his mother know Tom is there. And if you look here,” the officer says, leaning forward, “it seems as if Tom has raised a finger to his lips. And Ben nods in return.”
Everyone looks at me again, as if I can explain any of this.
“Are you entirely certain you have no idea where your brother is?” Detective Evans says.
I inhale quickly, trying to keep my emotions in check. “I honestly don’t,” I say. I’m about to go on. To tell them how Tom and I grew apart when he moved in with our dad, and we’ve only recently begun to talk again about anything of any importance. I say, “I wish I could help, but I can’t.”
“I know, Lauren,” Erin says. “I know.”
JJ’s voice comes loud and sharp from behind us. “That freak took my brother!”
“JJ,” Erin says.
“He’s always been like this. There was that kid in the park.” JJ is right beside me now, his finger in my face. “Where’d he take Ben?”
“He wouldn’t—”
“He did it before.”
I close my eyes. When I open them, I find Steph watching me. She gives a quick headshake and narrows her eyes.
“JJ,” Detective Evans begins.
“We found him bugging this kid in the park. This was three years ago,” JJ says. Everyone has fallen silent. “The kid said Tom was trying to get him to go into the woods with him.”
“He was asking what the boy was building,” I say. “The kid was playing in the sand, and Tom asked him—”
“Bullshit. He’s a creep and he’s finally grabbed a kid. We all knew it would happen.” JJ turns to Detective Evans. “It’s like I told you. We chased him, but he got away. If we’d caught him that day we would have—”
“Okay, JJ.” Jack Carter’s voice booms over the crowd. Everyone turns to find him standing at the door to the kitchen. “That’s enough.”
“Her creepy brother took him, Dad.”
“JJ,” the mayor says again. “Enough.”
“Where does he go? Huh? Who does he hang out with? We find Tom, we find Ben.” JJ is too close to me, but there’s nowhere for me to move. For some reason, no one immediately steps between JJ and me. Detective Evans is within arm’s reach, but she just stands there, watching.
Erin finally stands and slips in between us. “JJ, this isn’t helping anything. We’re doing all we can here.”
“All we need to do is find her freak brother,” JJ says. He backs away from his stepmother, then pushes through the crowd of people and is gone. Steph lingers, her phone out in front of her. She’s texting someone. She looks up at me one last time before turning and following her brother down the hall.
EIGHT
Erin catches me trying to sneak out of the house while no one is looking. She doesn’t say anything. She just holds my shoulders for a moment before I leave.
I cut across the neighbor’s lawn in order to dodge the journalists outside. The crowd has expanded to include talking heads doing stories with the Carter house as a backdrop.
I don’t expect to find the same thing at my house, but as I approach, I see six journalists standing around drinking coffee and chatting with one another. One of them, a redhead in a pantsuit, recognizes me and rushes down the sidewalk to intercept me.
“Lauren Saunders?” she says. I duck my head down and try to pass by her, but she steps in front of me. “Just a couple of questions, Lauren, please.”
“I don’t have anything to say,” I manage.
“Do you know where your brother, Tom Saunders, is?” She thrusts a microphone into my face.
“No. I have no idea,” I say.
“Can you explain why he would have done something like this?”
I stop.
“He didn’t,” I say.
“So you have spoken to him?”
“No.”
“Then how can you be certain he has nothing to do with the disappearance of Benjamin Carter?”
“Because he doesn’t,” I say. I try to push past her again.
“Can you tell us about this previous incident involving your brother and a young boy?”
“Nothing happened,” I said. “It was a misunderstanding.”
“Can you explain to us what this misunderstanding was, Lauren Saunders?”
“No,” I finally say. Which is all I should have said in the first place. I push past her and run up the driveway with my head down.
My father’s voice assaults me the second I step inside the door. “This is why he should have moved out here with me.”
I look around for him, somehow thinking that he has actually returned to Resurrection Falls to see us. I am, inexplicably, hopeful for a moment.
You have to understand my father. He’s used to getting what he wants. He once wanted my mother, and he got her. He wanted out of the marriage and managed that as well. He wanted Tom, and Tom went to live with him downtown. Though that’s a little more difficult to understand. My father would never admit it, but it’s pretty evident that he only ever wanted Tom in order to hurt my mother. Tom had always been her little boy. I won’t say her favorite, because I can’t see her truly having favorites. When she was ill, Tom would be there for her. He would pick up her medication. Make her soup. Bring her water and warm face cloths. Unlike our father, Tom thought of others first.
I think our father saw this and decided Tom needed to be a man. Needed to be more like him.
“I suppose,” my mother says. I can see her now, on the couch, her cell phone propped up before her. My father’s voice, filled with static, is coming through the little speaker. “But he’s been doing so well here, and—”
“He’s abducted a child, Janet.”
I stand beside the couch and look at my mother. Her face is red and streaked with tears. I hold my hands out in a questioning manner.
