by J. M. Snyder
It must be by now—Alan glances at his watch and discovers the morning’s slipping away from them. It’s no longer early—it’s already 10:30.
Who’s he kidding, though? It feels like days have passed since he first noticed the broken window in the back door and subsequently discovered Brooks was gone.
Jim closes his notepad and nods. “Alright, thank you. We’ll check it out.”
“When you find him,” Kylie says, “tell him he better text me first thing, or else.”
Alan rises to his feet at the same time Jim does. “Right, well, you’ll have to wait a bit, I’m afraid. He left his phone at the house.”
“He didn’t take it with him?” Kylie’s eyes widen in surprise. “Damn, are you sure he wasn’t kidnapped or something? I mean, who leaves the house without their phone?”
Chapter 24
Back in the car, Jim radios headquarters while Alan sips from a travel mug full of warm tea so sweet, it makes his teeth ache. He tried turning it down—they were leaving, after all—but Mrs. Simmons wouldn’t hear it. “You can just give the mug back to Kylie the next time you see her,” she said.
Now Jim grins as Alan takes another sip. “If you don’t like it, don’t drink it.”
As if it’s that simple.
“She might be watching me,” Alan mutters, half into the mug.
Jim starts, “I really doubt she’s—”
The radio between them blares to life. “Dispatch. Go ahead, 223.”
Jim talks into the mic. “Any news on the 10-57 from this morning?”
Alan winces as he sips from the mug. “What’s a 10-57?”
“Missing persons,” Jim explains.
Really, like I had to ask.
Alan waits, anxious, until the dispatcher speaks again. “Nothing yet. Forensics is finished with the scene and an officer is posted there until further notice. What’s your twenty?”
It all sounds so foreign to Alan. “Twenty?” he mouths.
Jim shakes his head, distracted. “Outside the girlfriend’s house. He isn’t here. She gave me a possible lead so I’m headed to the mall now. Keep me posted.”
“Ten-four.”
Alan grunts as Jim returns the mic to its spot on the center console. “I didn’t think anyone actually said that. Ten-four. You sound like a trucker with a CB radio. Over and out.”
“Where do you think they got it from?” Jim turns the key in the ignition, starting the car. Then he frowns at Alan. “Spill that out, will you? You’re not going to drink it.”
“Not where she can see.” Alan glances at the house, nervous.
Jim pulls away from the curb. “She isn’t watching you.”
“You don’t know that.” And, just to be safe, Alan waits until the second stoplight that catches them before opening the car door and upending the contents of the travel mug onto the tarmac.
* * * *
At the mall, there are a handful of parked cars scattered around the lot, employees arriving before the shops open to the public. Jim drives up to one of the entrances and stretches an arm across the passenger seat to hold Alan back so he can see out the passenger window. Alan follows his gaze, but there isn’t anything to see. The doors are locked; even from here, he spies the chains hanging on the interior push bars.
“Maybe he got inside somehow?” Alan offers, though he doubts it.
Jim gives a dubious shrug. “Maybe, if one of these doors is open somewhere. We’ll drive around, have a look.”
“I don’t really think he’s here.” Alan doesn’t want to point out he didn’t think Brooks was at Kylie’s, either, and he was right about that, wasn’t he?
But Jim asks the question they both want answered. “Where else can he be?”
It sounds like an honest inquiry and not a smart aleck response. Alan frowns at his faint reflection in the window, trying to think of something—somewhere—he hasn’t already. Softly, half to himself, he murmurs, “I don’t know.”
Jim cruises around the mall at a slow and steady ten miles an hour, one foot on the brake as the both of them keep an eye out for Brooks. Alan has worried over his nephew for hours now, and he’s beginning to feel exhausted. Not tired, but wiped out, as if the next time he closes his eyes for any length of time, he just might drop off into a sound, dreamless sleep. But at the same time he feels anxious, and the moment his mind drifts to anything that isn’t Brooks, he snaps it back where it belongs.
Before long he begins to see things he doesn’t think are there—shadows which may conceal a teenage boy, door chains swinging as if they just closed behind someone, movement around trash bins that could be Brooks ducking out of sight. He even scrutinizes the people parking their cars and walking to the mall, as if Brooks could’ve somehow driven here. But with whose car? And how?
He’s fourteen. Too young for Driver’s Ed, but he’s seen me drive plenty of times. He isn’t dumb. He could’ve picked it up.
But why? That’s the question troubling Alan the most. If Jim is right and there wasn’t a thief or kidnapper who whisked away his nephew, then why did Brooks leave in the first place? Where would he go?
The one place he always hangs out at is the mall. And we’re here but he isn’t.
Does that mean someone did abduct him? Or are they simply looking in the wrong place?
“It seems like we’re just driving in circles,” Alan mutters eventually.
With a quick bark of laughter that sounds anything but funny, Jim admits, “We’re back where we started. So I’m going to have to say you’re right, he isn’t here. You’re two for two now.”
“I wish I wasn’t,” Alan admits. “I wish you were right and he was here, waiting for us to find him.”
But the more time that passes, the less likely it seems that will happen. Staring out the window at a parking lot that’s beginning to fill up, Alan sighs. Where are you, lad?
“Don’t,” Jim warns.
Sitting back, Alan asks, “Don’t what?”
“Don’t give up.” Jim’s brow is furrowed, his mouth set, his jaw clenched with determination as he grips the steering wheel in both hands and navigates the parking lot. “We’ll find him, I promise. I’ll find him. I will.”
Alan reaches across the center console and pats Jim’s thigh. “I know you’re doing everything you can, and I thank you.”
They pull into an empty spot with an eyeline to the mall’s main entrance. The doors are still closed, but now a small clutch of people have gathered around them, waiting for the mall to open. From the sweatpants and leggings most of the people wear, they’re likely mall walkers looking to get in a few circuits before the crowds come.
Putting the car into park, Jim relaxes into the driver’s seat. His hands release their grip on the steering wheel, and one drops to cover Alan’s, still on his leg. He squeezes Alan’s fingers, a comforting gesture. “Do you have any other suggestions for where he might be?”
Alan shakes his head. “None. He goes to school, goes to the mall, that’s about it. He has friends, of course, but as far as I know, he doesn’t hang out with any of them. Once he started dating, the only person he wanted to do anything with is his little girlfriend.”
“Anyone he’s met online?” Jim asks. “Anyone he texts that you don’t know?”
“No one comes to mind. Then again, it wouldn’t, would it? If I didn’t know.” Alan gives a little rueful laugh. “Other than Kylie, of course.”
But Jim persists. “No one online? Are you sure?”
Alan frowns. “What are you getting at?”
Holding Alan’s hand tight, Jim tells him, “I’m just trying to cover all the bases. You never really know who’s on the other side of the computer screen. A lot of times kids are chatting with a stranger they think is their own age and it’s some adult, a sexual pervert trying to lure them away.”
Alan runs his free hand through his hair, disheveling it. “Jesus wept. Are you serious? You think Brooks…?”
“I’m just sayi
ng.” Jim taps Alan’s hand on his thigh. “Thinking out loud. It’s something we have to keep in mind.”
“I hardly think—”
But he doesn’t get a chance to say what he thinks, hardly or otherwise, because Jim’s cell phone rings, interrupting him. Since the car is still running, the ring comes through the stereo speakers, amplified.
Seeing the number on the display, Jim says, “It’s the station.” He gives Alan a silencing look before pressing the answer button on his steering wheel. “Garrison.”
A woman’s excited voice fills the car. “Jim, we got him.”
Alan’s heart stutters and Jim fists his hand around Alan’s, mouthing a silent, “Yes!”
“Brooks?” Alan whispers.
Jim signals for him to hush. To the caller, he asks, “The kid from my 10-57? Are you sure?”
“He’s here at the station,” the woman replies. “One of the cycle cops saw him getting on a bus downtown and flagged it over. He’s in one of the interrogation rooms with a cup of hot chocolate as we speak.”
Still whispering, Alan asks, “Did he say what happened?”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Jim murmurs. Louder, he says, “Keep him there. I’m on my way.”
Alan almost can’t believe it. But Jim puts the car into drive and pulls out of the parking spot with squealing tires. As they approach the stoplight at the end of the street leading away from the mall, the stoplight turns red.
Of course. Alan could growl in frustration.
Jim mutters, “Hold on.”
He presses a button on the center console and the blue and red lights above the visors start to pulse. With a quick look around for oncoming traffic, Jim drives through the light and hits the gas, zooming down the street.
Alan’s heart rises into his throat. Jesus God. He closes his eyes and prays they get there in one piece.
Chapter 25
By the time they reach the police station downtown, Alan’s worry and concern have morphed into anger. Now that Brooks has been found, safe, Alan can’t wait to lay into him about causing all this fuss. For what? Why? That’s what Alan wants to know.
Brooks has some answering to do.
As he pulls into the garage behind the station, Jim cautions, “Now remember, take it easy on him. I mean, we don’t know his side of the story yet.”
“Hmm. We’ll find out.”
Alan can’t think of any reason why Brooks would be traveling on a city bus miles from home except that his nephew left without telling him. No note or text, nothing saying hey, I’m heading out, I’ll be home by noon, nothing like that. Add in the broken window in the back door and the mess in his bedroom, and the only thing Alan can come up with is Brooks didn’t stop to think what the scene might look like to someone else. He just left without any regard or respect for how Alan might feel upon finding him gone.
Jim parks in his assigned spot and turns off the car. Then he places a hand on Alan’s thigh. “Relax, will you?” he says softly.
“I’m a little angry,” Alan admits.
“No shit.” Jim rubs down Alan’s leg to pat his knee. “But going in there with your guns blazing is sure to make Brooks clam up. Let’s just hear what he has to say.”
As Alan gets out of the car, he mutters under his breath, “This better be good.”
* * * *
From the parking garage, Jim leads the way into the police station through a back door he has to swipe his badge to open. Inside, Alan follows him through a maze of corridors lined with doors—some open, most closed. From what he can see as they pass, many of the rooms are offices. “One of these yours?” he asks softly.
“Detectives are upstairs.” Jim turns a corner and nods at the elevator at the far end of the hall. “This is mostly beat cops, records, accounting. The only working copier in the whole building is in a tiny room off the employee lounge, which is back that way. Plus the bullpen—where most of the officers’ desks are—and the booking and interrogation rooms.”
Alan strides at a fast clip, not sure if he’s trying to keep up with Jim or if Jim’s hurrying after him. At this point, it doesn’t matter. He wants to see Brooks, and he wants to see him now.
It seems like they’ve been walking forever when Jim finally stops at a door and swipes his badge again. The door opens onto some sort of lobby, with a long desk behind which a uniformed officer sits. She glances up as they enter, a quick look at Jim and a longer stare at Alan. She’s still studying Alan when she says, “Garrison.”
“Hey, Tiff.” Jim pockets his badge. “Which room’s the boy in?”
She answers with a question of her own. “This the father?”
Alan replies before Jim can. “Uncle, really. Legal guardian. Is he here?”
“He’s here. Room three.” She indicates a door behind them with a jut of her chin.
Alan turns to see six closed doors lining the wall across from the reception desk. They’re grouped into three sets of two; between each set is a numbered brass marker. Every other door has a window of wired glass that’s most likely bulletproof, while the one beside it is dark and imposing.
The sign that reads Interrogation 3 indicates the two doors farthest away from Alan. From where he stands, he can’t see anyone inside the room with the window in the door.
When he tries to take a step closer, though, Jim holds him back. “Wait a minute.”
Alan shrugs him off. “I want to see him.”
“I know,” Jim concedes, grabbing Alan’s arm to keep him in place. “Just…take a deep breath first, okay? Calm down.”
Alan snaps, “I am calm.”
The look Jim gives him says he isn’t the only one who can hear the anger in his voice. “Yeah, you’re not. Look, just give him a chance to explain, okay? Let him tell you what happened, whatever it was. Don’t go in there all mad—”
“I’m not,” Alan lies.
“You are,” Jim counters. “I know he’s your nephew, and I know you know him better than anyone else probably does. But I’ve dealt with a lot of people in these rooms, all ages, and the one thing they all have in common is they shut down if you come in swinging. So don’t go in there yelling and risk that, okay? The important thing is he’s safe.”
“I know.” This time when Alan pulls away, Jim lets him go.
Suddenly he finds himself in front of the door, one hand on the knob. Through the window Alan can see Brooks sitting at a battered table, hands folded in front of him, waiting. He’s dressed in his usual attire, a black hoodie similar to the one Alan picked up off the floor last night. A large mirror covers the wall behind Brooks—two-way glass, most likely, which explains the room next door, then. There’s probably a video camera in one corner of the room, as well, tucked out of sight.
As if Brooks can sense Alan’s presence, he turns towards the door. They stare at each other for a breathless moment, and a surge of emotions threaten to overwhelm Alan. Relief, first and foremost, at seeing Brooks after a morning of worry. But there’s anger, too, no matter what he told Jim.
Still, he can stay calm, handle this like an adult—Brooks is safe, after all.
And that might’ve been the way he would’ve handled things if Brooks didn’t give him a slow smirk that set his blood boiling all over again.
Why I oughta…
He shoves open the door and slams it shut as Jim calls out his name. Once inside, Alan swoops down over the table, so fast and so close, Brooks jerks back in surprise. If nothing else, at least he wiped that insolent smirk off his nephew’s face. Alan’s voice rings off the walls around them when he demands, “Where in the bloody hell have you been?”
A hint of uncertainty flickers across Brooks’ face. “I…I—”
“You what?” Alan demands, but he doesn’t give Brooks a chance to answer. “This is a royal load of shite you’ve gotten into here, son. Where in the blue blazes did you go? And Christ, what for? I wake up to find you gone this morning and don’t know what the hell to think, do I? You�
��d run away, or been kidnapped—been killed. For all I knew, you could’ve run off and got married. What the hell, son?”
Brooks snickers, a sound that seems to relax him a bit but which only sets Alan’s nerves on edge. “Married? I’m not old enough for that.”
“You could’ve eloped. I wouldn’t put it past you.”
Alan paces as he hollers. When he turns, he accidentally kicks the table leg, jostling it, and Brooks puts both hands flat on the table as if trying to hold it in place. Shaking his head, Alan runs both hands through his hair to get a grip on himself, on the moment. God, I’m glad Brooks is okay, thank God he’s alive, but the impertinent little sod acts like he’s done nothing wrong here.
As he turns again, he catches sight of himself in the two-way glass. Hair disheveled, shirt askew, face red with emotion. He catches his breath—that can’t be him, can it? In the reflection, Brooks is hunched into himself and Alan appears to be roaring in anger.
Don’t shut him out.
It’s Jim’s voice in his head, as clear as if the detective stands beside him, playing the classic good cop to his bad. Taking a deep breath, Alan struggles to calm down. He told Jim he’d stay calm, right? So breathe in…breathe out…
Where were they? Oh, right.
“Lucky for me your little girl’s mum wouldn’t allow it,” he growls.
Brooks rolls his eyes. “Yeah, tell me about it. Last night she made me sit in the back seat all by myself.”
“Aww, poor baby,” Alan snipes, sarcastic. “So you ran away, is that it? Muck up my morning because you couldn’t snog in the car after the film?”
Brooks shrugs. “Kylie says she won’t go out with me again unless you drive us next time.”
“Next time? Next time?” Alan laughs at the thought. “After this little stunt, there will be no next time, mister. You’re not going out with anyone ever again. At least not until you’re old and gray.”
Now Brooks starts to pout, sullen. “You know, you could say thank you.”
“Thank…?” Alan can’t believe what he’s hearing. “Thank you? For what? Nearly giving me a heart attack? Putting me in an early grave? What on earth do I have to thank you for?”
