The Shore

by Robert Dunbar

  “What?” His own voice grated in his ears.

  “Mrs. Chandler’s maiden name. It’s the same. Chandler. According to this anyway. Could be a mistake. Did you say something?”

  “Never mind. What else?”

  “A business address I didn’t know about and…”

  “Any other family?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Could you check?” he snapped. After a pause, he added, “Please.”

  “Just a minute.”

  He heard the phone clack down on the desk. Hollow footsteps faded; then he heard the muffled clang of a file drawer.

  “Hello?” Soft rustlings accompanied her voice. “Yes, it’s here.” Loudly, she rifled pages. “Another boy and a girl.”

  “How old?” Tension twisted deep in his stomach.

  “Uh, the girl, let’s see, she’d be…seventeen.”

  He forced himself to inhale calmly. “And the boy?”

  “I guess he’d be about…thirteen or so.”

  His lungs emptied out, purging him.

  “Barry? Are you there?”

  He could hear her voice, but bright spots pulsed around him.

  “Barry?”

  “Yeah.” Light-headed, he breathed again.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I…I’ll tell you about it when I see you. Get out of there now. I’m…not feeling too well. My head.”

  “Of course.”

  “We need to plan our next step. Come over and…”

  “You need to rest. I’ll pick you up in the morning, and we’ll go get your car.”

  “Come now.”

  “Quit giving me orders.”

  “You have to…”

  “I have to take these keys back now.”

  The line went dead in his ear.

  At least I can still hang up on him. She slumped back in the chair. A bit of light burglary, some mild illegal entry. Throw in “withholding information pertinent to a criminal investigation.” Not bad for one night. She scooped the contents of the file back into the folder. What else would I do if he asked?

  The phone rang.

  “Look, I told you—I have to take these keys back. We can start looking for Ramsey in the morning and…”

  She stopped talking. She knew.

  “No need to look further, dear woman.” The words pushed through with a mushy quality. “She will die. Can your limited mentality comprehend this? If the boy spots anyone around, if he so much as suspects the police are after him, he will take her life.” The voice slurred and choked. “You cannot imagine what he is.” Groaning wind all but drowned out his words. “And for my part, I cannot let you endanger her with your meddling. Do you understand? I cannot allow it.”

  She leaned over the phone, as though sucked in by his words, and she gripped the receiver so tightly her fingers ached. “If you have any information regarding this…”

  Branches rattled in a sudden gust; then the dial tone rose loudly.

  “Hello?” Panic settled on her. Get him back on the line. Try star sixty-nine. Her numbed fingers stabbed at the buttons. Get him talking, get him to say something useful. Act like a cop for once.

  In the distance, she could hear a phone ringing. Not over the instrument, but faintly through the windows behind her. She replaced the receiver, and the ringing ceased.

  The phone booth outside.

  She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. Don’t scream. She bit down, hard. Don’t make a sound.

  I’m unarmed. She had to will her numbed fingers to move, to pick up the phone again, to punch out the number of Barry’s hotel, but panic boiled through her. three and then eight and then She more felt than heard it, a strumming vibration, a change in the quality of silence, almost in the air pressure. Did I lock the main door behind me?

  Faintly, the floor beneath her feet vibrated, and she knew the heavy front door had just closed.

  She put the phone down. With painful slowness, she inched closer to the doorway. Almost imperceptibly, the glass panel rattled. Feeling along the wood of the door, she found a small latch. She twisted it, backed into the light. Her hands traveled to the desk drawer. Rubber bands and paper clips scattered under her fingers, and she lunged to the other desk. A side compartment squealed open.

  A heavy pair of scissors lay on a pad of paper.

  Clutching the scissors, she fumbled with the lamps until darkness thrummed around her, and papers slithered from the desk to the floor. For an eternity, she listened.

  The shuffling of cloth drifted in the air, and the sliding of soft footfalls scuffed to a halt.

  A whisper seeped through the cracks. “…never hurt you…” The doorknob rattled. “Don’t be afraid.”

  “I have a gun! I’ll shoot if I have to!”

  Expecting him to come right through the glass, she backed into a file cabinet. Terror crept along her veins like smoke.

  Nothing. No sound. No movement.

  Then she felt the change in pressure, heard the muted vibration of the front door closing again, and she leaned against a desk until the roaring darkness quieted.

  The ringing roused him, not from true sleep, but from some miserable condition beyond the edge of consciousness. Fully clothed, he sat on the bed still, his shoulder to the wall. his name I know his name have to He started at the next ring, almost pitching forward, then grabbed the phone before it screamed again. “Who…?” His tongue felt thick, and he had difficulty forming words. “Kit, is that…?”

  “He’s been watching us.”

  He knew fear too well not to recognize it in her voice. It brought him fully awake. “Are you all right?”

  “There’s something else.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Something we didn’t know about. I think he has a hostage.”

  XIV

  At least the sun’s out today. A pale slab of light pressed the concrete. First time in weeks. Slamming the car door, she surveyed the empty sidewalk. Not that it feels any warmer. Once this neighborhood had been the business hub of Edgeharbor, and she still remembered it seething with activity. A sheet of newspaper clutched at her ankles, then ghosted away down the street. Solemn gusts clutched at the bit of paper in her hand.

  Scanning addresses, she peered at a shop window. A hand-lettered placard proclaimed USED BOOKS, and the whitened covers of comics curled amid a clutter of souvenir pennants and plastic fish, tiny dolls with bulging foreheads. Farther down the street, a sign swayed above what had once been a candy shop. The doctor’s office beside it, she knew, still opened for a few hours each week during the summer months, the doctor—well into his eighties now—dispensing little beyond tetanus shots and bandages.

  She paused to peer at each storefront. Few of the doorways sported legible numbers. Checking the slip of paper again, she crossed the street.

  A square of raw wood patched the grimy door of what apparently had once been a real estate office. The window had been soaped, and sharp angles of light splintered against the translucent film, bright patches sliding rectangles of grime down the far wall. She found a clear crevice but could make out only bailed papers within. Dimly reflected, the whole of the desolate street floated behind her, and a plastic bag drifted along the sidewalk like a jellyfish.

  Remnants of cellophane tape still clung to the row of buttons, and she tried each of the silent buzzers in turn. A second door, hung with venetian blinds, angled into the frame. Cupping her hands, she squinted through a gap. Gradually, stairs coalesced from the gloom. Behind the stairs, at the far end of a hallway, daylight pried around the frame of another door: a rear entrance.

  Well…here goes. If someone spots me, I stick to my story—I’m checking out a report of a break-in. Strolling around the side of the building, she tried to look somehow both casual and official. Not that I expect anyone to see me. This has got to be the most deserted part of town these days.

  The empty lot could have accommodated half a dozen cars, and her shoes
scuffed at the gravel. Hell. Crushed stones bounced, clattering. So much for sneaking up. No windows interrupted the blankness of the stucco. At least, no one in there can look out. At the back, a gate swung, the rusted padlock uselessly clasped through a link in the fence.

  As she stepped into the shade behind the building, dried leaves skated up against a row of metal trash cans from which painted addresses flaked away. It wouldn’t be the first time a cop jimmied open a door, she reasoned, but the knob turned easily, the hinge whistling. Only as the door grated inward did she notice the cracks. Half the lock dangled from a broken wood screw.

  Allowing dim light to stream in around her, she took a cautious step. The break-in could have occurred long ago, she told herself. She unzipped her jacket, and her hand moved to her holster. No reason to get nervous. She wore the gun all the time now.

  Behind her, the door tapped the wall, and venetian blinds clanked at the other end of the corridor as a faint gust stirred up the musty smell of the carpet. Cautiously, she crept forward and checked a door beneath the stairs. Locked—broom closet or stairs to the cellar, she guessed, moving on.

  Stepping on a smear of light, she peered out through the blinds of the front door. Across the street, a thin layer of sunshine coated the jeep, still the only vehicle in sight. If anyone did notice it, at least the broken door would enhance the credibility of her story, she decided. Still, I’d better be quick.

  Letting the blinds click back into place, she turned to the stairs. “Police,” she called, flicking reflexively at a useless light switch. “Is anyone there?” The first step groaned softly beneath her tread. “Did you know your back door was open?” Linoleum had worn through to pine planks, and paint splintered from the wobbling banister at her touch. “Can anyone hear me?”

  The tracery of age mapped the plaster walls, and a dank chill filled the stairwell. First, I sneak into the courthouse. The unseen strands of a spider’s web melted across her lower lip, and she rubbed her knuckles against the withered taste. Now, I’m breaking into an office. Through thickening haze, she ascended, thoughts scurrying in her skull like mice. Who would have believed it could get so much easier so fast?

  A thin smear of dust coated her teeth, and she took her hand from the banister to rub her gritty palm on her jacket. Why would Chandler have an office in a dump like this? She became aware of the barest tickling of a pulse in her throat, and by the time she reached the upper hall, she’d grown accustomed to the muddy dimness. A wan gleam illuminated curtains that appeared to be made of vinyl, and she could smell old rain. Concentric blurs on the carpet marked where puddles had dried around the grime-matted radiator.

  One of the doors sported a stained card that read

  CHANDLER PROPERTIES. She knocked, then felt the furred ledge above the jam. Doesn’t look too solid—I could probably break it down. But this door also swung open, the faint illumination from the hall shaping a phantom arch on the opposite wall. Hell, if someone catches me searching the guy’s office, nothing I tell them is going to matter anyway. A sigh stirred behind her, a rustling cough of wind in the curtains.

  So I’d better be quick. Closing the door behind her, she just stood for a moment in near darkness, then groped for the outline of a window shade. She banged her knee on something. “Shit!” Her outstretched hand touched a stiffly yielding and scratchy mass, and she knelt on it to reach the window. At first the shade resisted her tugging, then it hissed and rustled to the floor.

  Sunlight flooded the office, and dust motes ignited. Dry as a leaf, a dead moth spiraled to the carpet. The sofa she crouched on all but filled the cramped space, wedged between a pair of gray file cabinets and an old wooden desk, lumpish with disordered paperwork. This is Chandler’s office? No trophies or civic awards. No pictures on the dingy green walls, no framed photographs on the desk. She noticed faded rectangles on the walls, however, as though things had been removed.

  I’d better put this back up, just in case. Clambering onto the back of the sofa, she hooked the shade, lowered it partway. As she did so her glance settled on the empty street below. Only the gritty wind stirred.

  The shade hung crookedly above an ugly orange sofa. Cheap-looking, it seemed to be the sort that folded down flat to form a kind of lumpy cot, and she noticed stains on the ugly fabric that seemed to radiate musty dampness.

  Hell, it’s freezing in here. I can practically see my breath. One of the cabinet drawers stood open and empty. She moved to the desk, feeling the thin carpet slide and crumble beneath her feet. Stacks of canceled checks had been strewn with old insurance documents and leases, and they mounded on the desk, cascading to the floor behind it. Examining papers at random, she lifted a sheet of torn notebook paper. Numbers covered it, columns of figures penciled so precisely they might have been typeset.

  Wind clanked at the window, shifting dust. Strands of cobweb that threaded the ceiling waved like tentacles.

  The middle desk drawer snarled open, empty save for a single frayed and wrinkled envelope. Even before she fumbled the flap open, her fingers had identified the contents as snapshots. She slid them into the open drawer, expecting to find photos of various properties.

  She blinked. One hand covered her mouth.

  Polaroids. Thirty or so. Yellowed. Images fuzzy and poorly lit. In some, the children wore T-shirts or socks, the brown sediment of the shadows seeming to engulf their pale bodies. But in others…

  Many different children. Often bound. She blinked again. No. Not different children. The same three over and over, at different ages. In some, the little girl seemed scarcely more than an infant. In the last few, the biggest boy was already old enough to…

  Stop shaking. She covered the photos with her hands. Get hold of yourself. Be a cop.

  She forced herself to look at them again, this time slowly. Different rooms appeared in the backgrounds; nothing remarkable except that in several the predominant color seemed to be an unusual blue. She froze. In one, the corner of a mirror had captured the photographer himself. The flash obscured his face, but his chest could be made out through the glare, the body hair so thick he might have been covered with fur. Several shots of the little girl looked different from the others. She was photographed alone, deeply asleep. Or drugged.

  With a start, she recognized the sofa on which the child lay as the one by the window. Fighting nausea, she flipped back to the last photograph. The oldest boy covered one of the other children, impossible to tell which one. The older one’s body had already thickened into fat. She felt dizzy.

  Evidence. Sickened, she slammed the drawer. I’ll have to take them with me. But she wondered if she could even force herself to open that drawer again.

  Wanting to put her fist through something, she looked about wildly.

  Something hung above the file cabinets: rows of empty hooks studded the Peg-Board, each hook bearing a number on a bit of tape, all in that same perfect script. Glancing down at the strewn pages, she began to spread them. A three-digit number caught her eye, and she glanced up at the board. Yes. She sorted through more papers. The number repeated—a lease from four summers ago. An electric bill from last year. She pawed through more documents. Dozens of different addresses appeared over and over, sometimes with different units referenced, and a labeled hook corresponded to each number. An actual clue. She carried a handful of papers closer to the light of the window.

  Face pressed to the scratchy fabric, the boy lay on the sofa, a blanket twisted around him like a cocoon. Even asleep, he tensed, listening for the droning hiss of her breath from the next room. Daylight bled in around the shade, and he shivered, his eyelids twitching.

  The sound that had awakened him scratched in the air again. Kicking free, he stumbled up from the sofa, nearly tripping on the blanket as he shuffled into the bedroom. The floor felt like ice through his socks.

  Even in the sealed room, some sunlight filtered in, and a streak of it touched her face. She twisted in hot, fitful sleep, her corn silk hair writhing on t
he pillow, coils of it igniting with the faint radiance. As he watched, she kept trying to twist over on her side, but cloth bandages bound her wrists to the headboard. Through painclenched lips, she groaned. Her eyes looked puffy. The dusty dimness played tricks—her lashes looked longer and darker, and rosy welts stood out angrily where she’d somehow managed to scratch her cheek. Or had he been hitting her last night? He couldn’t remember, but he wished she wouldn’t make him hurt her.

  The pressure in his bladder demanded release, but he kept the bathroom door open so he could hear her if she stirred. After the splashing stopped, he listened again. Silence in the next room. Running water in the sink, he flinched from the sight of himself in the mirror—the puny arms, the hairless chest. His sweatpants hung loosely. Tensing his shoulders, he tried to bulge out his muscles, tried it a number of different ways, but still looked emaciated and pale as a worm, his ribs actually showing. Some stud, he thought, and wanted to laugh, but his eyes looked charred, dead, and he backed away from the mirror.

  One of his socks had fallen past his ankle and flapped over his foot with every step. The bedroom rug felt rough through the cloth. He bent to stare at her, drawing in the faint warm smell of her soft neck.

  Wrenching her head from side to side, she whined softly.

  Thinking she might be cold, he returned to the living room. When he tugged at it, the thinner of the blankets scraped across the rough fabric of the couch. He wrapped it around his shivering shoulders, then found the one he’d kicked to the floor and padded back to the bed, carefully draping it over her. As he yanked a corner down, she murmured.

  Dumping soiled clothing out of it, he dragged a wicker chair up alongside the bed and pulled the blanket tighter about himself. The wicker creaked while he curled into the chair to watch the slow heave of her breasts. One of his hands strayed toward her, but after a moment, drowsiness began to claim him.

  XV

  The sky had tarnished to the color of old silver.