"Blue hell," from the partition, "I've lost him. What's the matter with the phone?"
Mechanically, Andy tried again to get dial tone, because it was second nature to try again, because no one, not even a telecom engineer who had a damn good idea what was happening to the switch, could accept without trying again that the phone didn't work. He tried again and got what he expected, silence.
Dr. Kolsrud appeared, face taut. He snatched up the handset of the receptionist's phone, listened, then slammed it down. Andy could see the darkened skin around the man's eyes, weariness indeed. "They know what they're doing," the doctor said, to himself, but it sounded more like a wish than a statement of fact.
The emergency room doors banged open and a gurney shot inside, driven by two paramedics, one holding aloft an IV bottle. Andy twisted to see the form strapped under the blankets. A beefy arm was exposed, impaled by a long needle. Not a boy's arm.
Already, Dr. Kolsrud was bent over the form on the gurney, and the IV paramedic stood respectfully by, tending the needle in the inert arm. Dr. Kolsrud had to move on; his phone patient was lost to him.
The phones were down, Andy thought, and his car was all the way across campus.
He ran.
CHAPTER 17
Andy couldn't get the key into the lock; he cursed, tried it again, and Helen yanked open the door.
"He's gone," she said.
Was this the end of the game? His clothes smelled of eucalyptus.
She followed him as he pushed past her to Wayne's room. "He's not there. He's not anywhere in the house, he's not in the garage. What do you want to do?" She was calm, the kind of practical let's-prioritize calm some people mustered in emergencies.
Wayne's room looked normal, untouched by any intrusion. "What time did you say?" he asked Helen, and his own voice sounded amazingly calm.
"I don't know what time he left," she said. "After you called, the last time, that call that was cut off, I went to check on him and he was gone."
He left. That sounded voluntary. Through the door that led from his room to the back patio, how else?
"I checked out there, Andy."
The backyard was small, enclosed by a fence. There was the patio with the basketball hoop where Wayne shot endless baskets. Browning grass, a stretch of pyracantha clawing up one side of the fence, and the hedge of oleanders.
That's where Interrupt was the night of the storm, obviously. Easy to hide in the oleanders. Andy pawed through the branches, snapping off stems and scratching his arms. Christ, Wayne was too old to be playing hide-and-seek.
Nothing.
He circled to the side yard and ransacked the oleanders that hugged the windows.
He wound up in the front yard. If Wayne left through his door, he came out around the side yard to the front. Then where? Andy scanned the street. Tree shadows, felled by the late-afternoon sun, striped the sidewalks and asphalt. Cars roosted at the curbs, in the driveways. No movement, nothing, not even squirrels on the phone lines overhead. Where were the neighbors? This was supposed to be a neighborhood, that was the point of the suburbs.
Someone was walking out to the mailbox on the other side of the street. Mayerle.
Andy sprinted across the street, shouting, startling the old man. He made himself ask slowly, but his voice shook. Yes, sure, Mayerle knew who Wayne was. No, he hadn't seen him lately.
Helen was in the front yard. He sprinted back. "Did you check the neighbors?"
"No," she said, "he doesn't play with anyone in the neighborhood."
"Maybe someone saw him."
Helen took one side of the street and he took the other. He knew by sight and an occasional exchange of greetings most of the people who lived here.
The first two houses, no one was home. At the third house, his banging on the door brought an angry response and he forced himself again to calm down.
Wayne wasn't with the neighbors, nobody had seen him, one didn't even know who he was.
It made no sense anyway. Wayne didn't go for walks in the neighborhood. Andy crossed the street, looking for Helen. Maybe he did this time. He was under stress, Andy's stress, he bled when his father bled. Maybe he just had to get out of his room, out of the house.
Three houses down, a beige mirror-image of his place, Helen was standing on the porch with a girl and yelling to Andy.
He ran.
"She saw him." Helen's voice had notched up; she was ruffled.
"Walking down the sidewalk toward the intersection," the girl started before Andy could reach the porch. "I passed him on my bike." She still wore black bike shorts, shiny and tight over plump muscled legs.
"Did you stop him?"
The girl gave him a look of teenage disdain.
Helen took hold of his arm and questioned the girl. She had seen a tall boy, brown hair, wearing jeans, she thought, walking head down like he was looking for something on the sidewalk. Maybe an hour ago. He was carrying a small suitcase, something like that, maybe not a suitcase, it was pretty small.
The portable TDD. Andy felt a letdown of relief. If he took the TDD, then there was some logic in where he was going.
They hurried to the intersection. It was a four-lane road, a major road. Gas station and liquor store on the opposite corners. Check there.
"Oh." Helen had a hand up, finger extended as if checking for wind. "Andy, there was a phone call."
He snapped around to her. "What call?"
"Well, let me get the time straight. The bus came at two-thirty as usual, and Wayne came in and we talked some.... you know he's teaching me sign?"
"Helen."
"Then he went to his room. As usual, he closed the door, he wanted his privacy. The first two times you called, I went in there, and he was on the computer."
A bus rumbled by; Helen raised her voice.
"Then, oh, three-thirtyish, a TDD call came in on Wayne's number. You know, I heard the two short rings and I waited for Wayne to take it in his room. As usual."
Three-thirtyish; when Andy was on his way to the emergency room. Wayne got a TDD call around three-thirty and then he disappeared.
Andy started back to the house, running. He felt he'd been running for days.
The front door was still locked, his fingers couldn't even find the keys this time, he dashed around to the backyard and through the open door.
He didn't see the message on the TDD printer until he looked closely.
It was short, words like quick thrusts of a knife. "Be deaf and dumb, like your son. Forget the switches. Remember Candace Fuentes."
He ripped the strip of paper from the printer.
Andy's throat muscles constricted. He saw Helen in the doorway but he couldn't hear what she was saying, indeed he was deaf like Wayne. A nauseating pain bubbled up in his chest and he cried out in rage, only Helen wasn't hearing it, the howl stayed inside him. He gulped a breath of air.
"What does it say?" She was coming toward him, reaching for the paper in his hand.
He crushed it.
She stopped and looked at him with that damned motherly calm.
He forced himself to think. When had the message come? While they were out? Before? She couldn't have seen it or she would have told him, she might have called the police. Call the police. No, not the police. Call Feferman? No, especially not Feferman. Forget the switches.
He faced her. "He sent a message. It's okay, he's with Jacky."
She looked at the TDD, at the crumpled paper in his fist, at his face. "Andy, that boy wouldn't go out without telling me."
"He's with Jacky," Andy repeated. "He was going over to Jacky's today, I'm sorry, I forgot."
"He walked?"
"It's not far, a few blocks." This was unbearable, he had to get her out of here,
"He left without telling me?"
"He's been under a lot of stress, he forgot."
"That's impossible."
"Are you calling me a liar?"
Her head jerked as if he had slapped
her.
"I'm sorry, Helen, we've been under a lot of stress." Stiff, he put his arm through hers and guided her out of Wayne's room toward the front door. "You can go, he's okay, he's with Jacky. Thanks." He might as well have told her Wayne was on the moon. She stopped like a mule by the door. Please, Helen, he begged silently, I can't keep this up. "Do you want to call Jacky's?" She didn't know Jacky, she didn't know his last name, she didn't have the number. She didn't believe him, she couldn't possibly have believed him, but she shook her head and said, "Call me if you need me."
His legs weak, his whole body icy cold and weak, he walked back into Wayne's room and sat at his son's desk. The bookshelf, pine boards painted black, hung on black brackets, was slightly crooked; Wayne had helped to paint it and hang it. One book protruded, as if Wayne used it often and never pushed it all, the way back in line with the others: a book of slang. Hearing people picked up slang and idioms without conscious effort, part of everyday life. The deaf had to study.
He closed his eyes, a mistake, throwing him back eleven years.
"Will he talk?" Sandra had demanded of the neurologist, loud, angry, almost shouting, and Andy had pressed the baby's head against his chest so he wouldn't be scared by his mother's voice. Still not accepting that the baby couldn't hear his mother's voice. "Unlikely." The neurologist, talking fast to get them out of his office, his job over with the diagnosis. Unlikely with this kind of sensori-neural hearing loss. At best, speech distortion. Flattened inflections, articulation poor. The - high-frequency consonant sounds slushy, s, z, ch, sh, zh, the neurologist hissing like a snake. Wayne struggling and crying because Andy had been holding him too tight. The neurologist abruptly leaving, giving them time to "compose themselves," and Sandra already talking about a lawsuit, the obstetrician should have given her something to prevent the premature birth, there were drugs. Andy light-headed, as if like the baby he had been deprived of oxygen.
Andy opened his eyes, opened his hand and let the crumpled strip of paper drop on Wayne's desk. Be deaf and dumb, like your son. Did the bastard know Ameslan, did he know how to speak so the boy could lip-read?
No, he wouldn't give a shit.
But he knew how to use the TDD.
Think it through, that's what Andy always preached to Wayne.
Andy took a pencil and a pad of graph paper, AT&T paper, from Wayne's desk and roughed but a timeline, beginning at 2:30 p.m. He entered the data points: W comes home, W into room, TDD call, bike girl sees W, H checks room and W gone, A arrives home.
He stared at the paper. Then he entered one more data point: A gets message from Interrupt, thinks it's from Zot. Meet me at the telecom lab in one hour. And A went.
Interrupt got him out of the house before he called Wayne.
Andy gripped the pencil.
But what about Helen? Did Interrupt assume that Wayne was home alone? Or didn't he care?
Data point: TDD call for W. Interrupt assumed that Wayne would do whatever Andy told him to do. And that included leaving without telling the baby-sitter. Good assumption.
With a TDD, Interrupt could be Andy.
Interrupt had been in the house to tap the phones, he knew Wayne's room, he knew about the door to the backyard.
Interrupt could instruct Wayne to leave the house and say nothing to Helen, and Wayne would think he was obeying his father. Did Interrupt make it a game, a secret? How had he manipulated the boy? Meet me... where?
And Wayne had typed back, sure, Dad.
This time the rage boiled out of him. "Sonofabitch."
He slammed out the back door, he could feel his boy's anxiety, curiosity, around to the front, pounding out to the sidewalk.
Wayne, head down, carrying the TDD, going toward the intersection. Wondering what was wrong with his father.
Andy followed.
Now, at the intersection, where now? Keep on walking, which way? A car stops, a man says get in and I'll take you to your daddy. But he doesn't sign, does he? He forces Wayne in.
Oh, Christ.
He bolted across the intersection. Cars honking.
The gas station attendant doesn't know him because he gets his gas at Rotten Robbie's, cheaper, blocks away. The attendant doesn't remember a boy with a small suitcase and he's got gas to pump, he's busy.
The liquor store, kids in here for candy sometimes, not today.
Outside again. Panting, pain in his chest, the cars chasing past, rush hour.
Andy froze.
There, across the street, the blue sign.
He waited, growing certain, then grabbed his chance and recrossed the intersection.
There it was, you looked at it and didn't even see it because it was common as telephone poles. Metal pole, blue sign, wooden bench.
A bus stop.
Leave the house, don't tell anyone, go to the bus stop at the intersection, take the... a number, a time.... bus to....
A metal box was bolted to the pole. Andy seized a slick brochure out of the box, the bus schedule and route map.
He tried three times to read it, then sat on the bench, put his head in his hands, and waited. He looked again, and the fine print of times and numbers became legible, more data points. The timeline was in his pocket; he didn't remember taking it but there it was. He spread it out beside the bus schedule.
Only one bus fit the time Wayne had left. He followed it on the transit map. After this intersection, the route crossed four city boundaries, made eleven stops, and ran along one of the busiest arteries in Silicon Valley. It intersected hundreds of side streets, thousands of buildings.
He would have to go to the police, or the FBI. They knew what to do, they had the people to do it. Every kidnapper warns the family not to go to the authorities, but they know what to do.
No. Interrupt was spliced right into the telephone system. He would know just what Andy and the authorities were doing.
Go to Feferman. Only, right about now, Feferman would be checking the call records on the Stanford switch failure, and then he would be getting up a posse to nail Andy. Your son is gone? How do we know you haven't stashed him somewhere, made it look as if he's been kidnapped, how do we know you haven't concocted this whole scenario?
There was no one he could go to.
If his father had been alive, he might have gone to him. He just might have asked Joe Faulkner for help.
But John Roebling was dead and Washington Roebling ended up crippled.
Talking to the dead. He can't hear you.
CHAPTER 18
Andy sat at a polyurethaned orange table near the pay phone in Burger King and waited. County transit wouldn't tell him who had driven that bus, they didn't give out personal information about their drivers, but they had agreed to leave a message for the driver.
Call.
The Burger King staff had begun to take notice of Andy. The tense guy in the corner, been here for a couple of hours, fidgets whenever someone uses the phone.
Sorry, can't use my home phone. Could be tapped; may be a device on the line. Maybe Feferman's on my doorstep.
Andy got up and bought a hamburger. When it was cold he dumped it and bought a cup of coffee.
A man headed for the phone and Andy tensed, but he bypassed it and went into the men's room.
The phone rang, and Andy lunged.
It was a driver named John Carelli. He was beat, and he hadn't even had his dinner yet, and this better not be a joke.
No joke, Andy told him. Eleven-year-old boy, tall, brown hair, green eyes, wearing jeans, carrying a small case. Deaf.
Yes, Carelli said.
Oh, my God. Andy's hand tightened on the receiver. Don't lose this call.
Andy swallowed, his throat dry, and asked if anyone sat with the boy. No, nobody. How did he know? Carelli knew because he kept an eye on things in the rearview mirror, he didn't want any trouble on his bus.
How far did the boy go? Where did he get off the bus?
Carelli didn't know. The bus had a back door.
>
Maybe some of the other passengers saw him get off. Did Carelli know any of the passengers, any regulars who Andy could get in touch with? No, no regulars on that run, you get regulars on the commute runs. And Carelli had a run tomorrow morning at seven and if that was all, he wanted to get some dinner and sleep. Click, dial tone, and Carelli was gone.
Andy left the Burger King and began to walk. What now? It was dark; Wayne didn't like the dark, because it deprived him of one of his remaining senses. Andy checked his watch. It was nearly nine o'clock.
What now? Follow his boy, as best he could.
Andy waited at the bus stop. Morning traffic: cars, trucks, buses, vans, bikes. He thought, you notice the colors more. And speed is altered, everyone looks like they're going too slow.
Huge, close, out of the blue, it was suddenly on top of him. His neurons fired and he jumped, even as he turned to get a good look. The bus stopped at his feet, tires hard against the curb, and the door swung open in his face.
This is what it was like to be deaf. You were out of synch with the world. .
He hadn't remembered it this way. They had run the exercise on the school grounds, just an hour in a controlled environment. Families of the deaf students soundproofed themselves and became "aware" of what it was like for their loved ones. Of course, it was impossible for hearing people to actually reproduce profound deafness; instead, they wore hearing aids set to create white noise, a random background buzz that drowned out most everyday sounds, including speech. The teacher had encouraged them to try it on their own, out in the world, to really get a feel for it. But Andy had felt uneasy at playing deaf, like a voyeur, and had not continued the exercise.
Until now. He had gone to Sears last night and bought a pair of hearing aids.
He gathered his wits enough to check the bus number, then boarded. John Carelli, ID'd by his badge, gripped the handle holding the door open, jiggled his knee, stared right through Andy. He looked like a cop with his thick mustache and slit eyes. Carelli's arm flexed and the air compressed behind Andy. He felt the door snap shut.
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