Halo®: Mortal Dictata

by Karen Traviss

  “I’m going. Keep an eye on the stove.”

  Staffan fretted for a few moments, trying to work out if this was Dad worry or rational anxiety. Naomi wasn’t the kind of kid to wander off or lose track of the time. Okay, he’d do some more overtime and get her her own phone. That would keep Lena happy.

  He opened the front door to take a look. The bus stop wasn’t that far: he could see the string of streetlights dotted along the road in the distance and the silhouette of the climbing frames and swings in the park. He expected to see Lena and Naomi walking back across the grass, but there was just Lena. And she was running.

  Oh God. Oh God, no.

  Some things were instantly understood.

  In the moments it took to close the distance between them, Staffan had thought a hundred terrified, stomach-churning thoughts about perverts, road accidents, ponds, and God I should never have let her go out on her own, I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t—

  He ran down the drive. Lena almost cannoned into him and grabbed his arm, wide-eyed and distraught. “She’s gone. He called the depot.”

  Staffan could hardly breathe. “Whoa, slow down. Who?”

  “The bus driver. He just called the other driver, the one on the earlier bus. He said she got off a stop early. She just got off the bus. I told you. I told you she was too young—”

  “Then she’s just walking a bit farther. Nothing to worry about.” It was a lie and Staffan knew it. There was everything to worry about. His heart pounded. He thought immediately of his neighbors, trying to work out which of them had always seemed a bit odd. Everyone warned kids about strangers but forgot to mention it was the people they knew and trusted who were the biggest danger.

  Did I do that? Did I teach her to be too trusting? Is it my fault?

  Staffan fumbled in his pockets for his keys. “I’ll drive back down the route. I’ll find her. You stay here in case she’s taken a shortcut.”

  Lena was shaking. “He said she’s done it before. This is your fault.”

  “Yeah, I knew it would be.”

  “If anything happens to her, I’ll never forgive you.”

  “Jesus Christ, Lena, this isn’t the time, okay? Stay here. She’ll probably be back before I am.”

  He backed the car out of the drive and headed for the main road. Naomi would have been home by now if she’d walked that distance. Please be all right, sweetie. Please. God? God, if you’re there at all, if you’re listening, you haven’t done a whole lot for my family, so maybe now would be a good time to show yourself. Let her be okay. Please. He drove along the bus route back to the school, now shuttered and in darkness, before looping around to scan both sides of the road. He didn’t even pass anyone out walking. Maybe she’d taken a shortcut through the new houses that were springing up to the west of the park. He doubled back and turned into the tract.

  Or maybe she cut through the construction site.

  Staffan slowed to a crawl to press the receiver into his ear and call Lena, but the number was busy. She was probably ringing around Naomi’s friends’ moms to see if she was with them. Which direction would Naomi have taken? He drove around every possible permutation of roads he could think of, but he knew damn well that she would have been long gone if she’d actually walked through here.

  So am I looking for a body? Am I? Is that what I’m doing?

  He could hardly bear to listen to his own thoughts. He headed home and turned into the drive, willing Naomi to be back and in need of nothing more than a talking-to about staying on the bus and not scaring Mom and Dad, followed by being escorted to and from school for a few weeks. But Lena was standing at the front door, eyes glassy with unshed tears.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  He wasn’t sure if it was a statement or a question. “Well?”

  “Everyone’s calling their neighbors. They’re going to search for her. I’ve called the police. They’re putting out alerts.”

  “I’m going back out, then.” For no good reason, Staffan was suddenly grateful that his mother was days out of communication range and Lena’s folks hadn’t spoken to him—or her—in years. It was one less set of explanations and recriminations to think about. “Someone’s got to organize this. How could she go missing between a couple of bus stops?”

  It was a stupid question because the answer was both obvious and terrifying. He wished he hadn’t said it. As he checked the map of the area on his datapad, he was still thinking through the list of everyone he knew in the village, trying to work out which one was the pervert that he’d never suspected. Naomi would never have gone off with a stranger.

  Or she’s lying in a ditch, hurt. Or worse.

  “I’ve got to look for her,” Lena said.

  “No, stay put. Someone’s got to be here to talk to the cops.”

  Staffan had already covered all the roads he could think of. The places he hadn’t searched—the construction site, the stream, the farm—were the kind of hazard-ridden places where kids were found dead. In less than two hours, he’d gone from worrying if Naomi would be disappointed by her birthday present to not knowing if he’d ever see her again. Lena stood with one hand to her mouth, tearful and accusing at the same time, while he rang friends and tried to coordinate the search.

  Alstad was a small place. All the kids who went to Naomi’s school were from three villages in an eight-kilometer radius. This wasn’t like a big city where a kid could vanish in seconds.

  But we don’t have all the street cameras that a big city would have, either.

  Someone hammered on the front door. Lena rushed to answer it, but it wasn’t the police. Twenty or more neighbors, including a couple with dogs and night hunting scopes, stood outside, clutching flashlights and looking grim. It seemed like the entire village had turned out in a matter of minutes.

  “We’ll find her, Staf,” said Jakob. He was the district councilman, the kind of guy who always stepped up with a plan. “She’s only been gone a few hours. She can’t get far. They’ve got cams on all the buses.”

  It was just comforting noise. If she’d been taken by someone in a car, that meant nothing. She could be anywhere by now, unseen and unheard. Staffan gave Lena as reassuring a hug as he could manage.

  “Call me if you hear anything,” he said, as if it needed saying. “I’ll keep my line clear.”

  Jakob took over as if he knew Staffan was now going in circles and needed steering. He’d already divided everyone into teams and given them areas to search—the sheds and slurry pit at the dairy farm north of the main road, the construction site, and the park. Others were tasked to go door to door, asking people to look in their sheds and outhouses. Nobody suggested waiting for the police. Staffan felt useless. He wasn’t sure what the dogs would be able to achieve, either, but everything was worth trying.

  Every minute that passed became the worst of his life, a steady downward path. The construction site was a list of fatal accidents waiting to befall a kid, from the holes full of water to the stacks of building materials that could fall and crush the unwary.

  “She wouldn’t come in here voluntarily.” Staffan poked a long piece of wooden batten into a water-filled trench. Reflections of the security lights danced on the surface. “I know my daughter.”

  While they were dragging the ditches, the construction manager showed up with half a dozen guys and started opening every storage hut and locked door, working through half-built houses with no floors or stairs. When the search party drew a blank on the site, they moved on to the occupied houses. With every door that opened, someone offered to join the search. Even strangers cared what happened to a little girl.

  Staffan’s phone rang a while later, showing 20:05 on the screen. He realized he’d completely lost track of the time. His heartbeat and the strangled sound of his own breathing almost drowned out Lena’s voice.

  “I gave the police one of her blouses from the laundry basket,” Lena said. “For the canine unit. They’ve called in a Pelican with th
ermal imaging to scan the ground.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re going to carry on anyway,” Staffan said. Thermal imaging. That meant they thought she was alive. That was a good sign, wasn’t it? He clung to the belief like a life belt. “We’ve got half the village out here now. We’ll find her. I promise.”

  Staffan went back to sit in the car for a few minutes to check the local news, just to be sure something was being broadcast and that they’d gotten the detail right. He didn’t catch anything on the radio. But his datapad showed an appeal for sightings on the local news site, complete with a picture of Naomi.

  A police car with a flashing light bar slowed to a stop alongside him. The driver got out and Staffan lowered the window.

  “Have you found her?” Staffan asked.

  “Not yet, sir.” The cop’s comms unit was burbling quietly on his lapel like a second conversation in the background. “The dog’s tracking right now, and we’ve got the bus security footage, so we know that she got off at—”

  “Yeah. We knew that hours ago.”

  “Look, most kids usually turn up again safe and sound. Sometimes they forget the time and go playing somewhere, and then they’re too scared to face the music for being late.”

  “Yeah, but not Naomi,” Staffan said. “Not my daughter.”

  He drove back to the bus stop and sat watching the police dog and its handler. The dog was wandering back and forth on a long leash about fifty meters from the road. In the distance, flashlight beams crossed and wobbled between the trees as people searched the woods. Staffan decided he’d had enough and went to talk to the dog handler.

  He stopped on the paved path. “What’s the dog found? I’m her father. I want to know.”

  “He’s picked up a trail from the bus stop, sir, but it doesn’t go very far.” The handler nodded in the dog’s direction. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. It might not be the right one.”

  Staffan wasn’t stupid and he knew the dog wasn’t, either. The trail ended abruptly a distance from the road because someone had lifted Naomi off the ground at that point. It was the only explanation.

  “She’s been taken,” Staffan said. The words were strange and distant, completely unreal. “Some bastard’s snatched my little girl. You know it.”

  In three hours, Naomi could have been a long way from Alstad—or dead. Staffan had no idea what to do next except not stand here talking a second longer. He got back into his car and just drove blindly. He should have been home with Lena, but he felt helpless, useless, guilty. He had to do something or go crazy.

  Lena was right. He should never have let a six-year-old out on her own like that.

  He headed for New Stockholm, praying one minute and swearing the next, cruising the streets while he scanned pedestrians and every single car that passed. There was no reason to think anyone would have brought Naomi here, but he didn’t have a better idea. It wasn’t until his phone bleeped again that he snapped out of it and accepted this was all random and pointless.

  “Come home,” Lena said. “I can’t stand everyone calling to tell me it’s all going to be all right.”

  It was nearly midnight. It was shocking how much life could change in a matter of hours.

  I could have just driven to the school and picked her up.

  Why the hell did she get off the bus early?

  When he got home, there were neighbors’ cars still parked in the road outside, but Lena was alone, sitting in the kitchen with her arms folded on the table. She had the radio and TV on at the same time. The competing audio streams merged into a quiet babble in the background.

  She looked like she’d been crying. Staffan waited for the what-ifs and if-onlies.

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said. “I’m so sorry. But we’ll find her. She can’t just disappear like that.”

  “But they do, don’t they?” Lena had that look on her face, the one that stopped short of saying this is all your fault. He didn’t need reminding. “You’ve only got to watch the news.”

  Staffan knew he wouldn’t get through the next hour if he let himself think that. He’d expected to find himself crying and pacing the floor, but he and Lena just sat at the kitchen table, not talking, not looking at each other, just fending off sporadic knocks at the door from well-meaning neighbors. The police called pretty well on the hour, but they had no more news.

  “I should go out again,” Staffan said. It’d be light in a few hours. His eyes kept closing. How could he be tired at a time like this? “I really should.”

  Lena poured a pot of cold coffee down the drain. “I’ll go. You stay here.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’ve done all the sitting and waiting I’m going to do.” She took the keys. “She’s out there. I know she is. I refuse to believe she’s gone. Don’t you dare tell me she is.”

  “Okay, honey. I know. I know.”

  Staffan had expected himself to be more than this somehow: more decisive, more logical, more grief-stricken, more angry. He felt like he was bargaining with fate. If he didn’t actually say the words or think the worst, then it wouldn’t happen. Naomi was still alive; he’d see her again. Repeating that mantra was the only way to cope with the unthinkable.

  He switched to another TV channel and rested his head on his hands, trying to think of something that he’d overlooked. Had anyone rung around the hospitals? Maybe she’d been hit by a car and they couldn’t ID her.

  Maybe …

  This is crazy.

  His head started to buzz. He closed his eyes for just a moment.

  The phone rang and woke him. He hadn’t even realized he’d fallen asleep at the table. Lena was back. She stood with the handset pressed to her ear, sobbing. “Are you sure? Are you sure? Oh, thank God…”

  Staffan jumped to his feet, heart pounding, trying to listen in on the call. Lena put the phone down and cupped her hands over her mouth, eyes tight shut.

  “Jesus, honey, just tell me.”

  “They’ve found her. She’s okay. They’ve taken her to the hospital to check her over.”

  The relief was so powerful that his legs almost buckled. “Where?” He looked at the clock on the wall. It was just before six in the morning. Was he really awake? Yes, he was. The nightmare was over. “Goddamn it, you should have let me talk to them.”

  “She’s okay. Come on. Let’s go.”

  “Who took her? What did they do to her?” Staffan’s dread was already giving way to a panicky anger. “I swear I’ll kill the bastard if he’s laid a finger on her—”

  “They said she’s fine. She’s safe. Come on.”

  “What the hell happened? Where was she?”

  “Five klicks southwest of New Stockholm,” Lena said. “She was sitting at a bus stop. A bus driver stopped to check on her and she asked him to help her find her way home.”

  That was an hour or so from Alstad. “What was she doing out there?”

  “No idea. She can’t remember. She didn’t show up on any other bus cams, so they’ll want to talk to her again later. She certainly didn’t walk there on her own.”

  Staffan had to search for his keys. He realized he hadn’t called the factory to let them know he’d be late, either. Well, too bad. He struggled to keep his mind on the road while he tried to make sense of what he knew.

  “I don’t believe it. Six in the goddamn morning? Nobody notices a kid out on her own all night?”

  “Someone did spot her. Eventually.”

  “But where was she for the rest of the time? She was gone for twelve hours. She couldn’t have done that on her own. What were the goddamn cops doing? They couldn’t even find her with a dog and a dropship. Useless assholes.”

  Lena held up her hands to silence him. “Look, we’ll find out later. All that matters is she’s alive and she’s coming home. Just stop this. Please.”

  Staffan hardly dared say it. But Lena had to be thinking it as well. “I swear if anyone’s touched her, I’m going to find him and cut off his ball
s. Because all he’ll get from the judge is a rap across the knuckles and his own personal social worker to—”

  “Staffan. Please. Don’t.”

  “Why aren’t they telling us what happened?”

  “Because they don’t know. For Chrissakes. Just stop it.”

  It confirmed the worst for him. Naomi was probably too traumatized to speak. When they got to the hospital, they had to wait with a woman police officer for the best part of an hour before the doctors were ready to let them see Naomi. Staffan braced himself. When he and Lena were shown into the private room, Naomi was sitting cross-legged on a metal-framed bed, hands folded in her lap, still wearing her bright red dress and blue jacket. She looked more baffled than terrified.

  Lena grabbed her and crushed her in a tearful hug. Staffan had to wait to get a look in. When he cuddled Naomi, she looked at him blankly for a second, as if she was working out who he was, but then she smiled. It worried him. Maybe they’d sedated her.

  “Wow, you’re away with the fairies, aren’t you, baby?” he said. “What did they give you?”

  “Breakfast,” she said. “I had eggs.”

  Staffan looked at the doctor. “Have you given her any drugs? She seems pretty spacey.”

  The doctor shrugged. He had no way of knowing what was normal Naomi. This wasn’t. “No sedation,” he said. “She wasn’t agitated. And she has no injuries at all. Which is odd, given that she can’t remember how she got to the bus stop. Has she ever had seizures or blackouts before?”

  “No.” Seizures? My little girl? “She’s perfectly healthy. Lord knows she’s had enough medical examinations at school this last year. They’d have spotted anything odd. Look, when you say no injuries…”

  “No, she hasn’t been molested, if that’s what you’re asking. We do check in these cases.”

  It was a massive relief. Staffan found himself breathing normally for the first time in what felt like forever. “Well, she’s never had fits. Are you sure she wasn’t drugged by whoever took her?”

  “We’ve run a tox screen—all clear so far. And nothing on the brain scan. She just doesn’t remember anything before she arrived at the bus stop, let alone anyone taking her, and she still seems disoriented.” The doctor ruffled Naomi’s hair and gave her a big smile. “But you ate a pretty good breakfast, didn’t you, poppet?”