by Haylen Beck
He told her he was leaving as she ate breakfast. Ethan was having his morning nap, and she had stolen a few minutes for herself, a fresh pain-au-chocolat and a mug of coffee on the table in front of her. It had been weeks since she and Mason had shared a meal together, one of the casualties of their slow parting.
“Do you understand?” he asked as he sat across from her. “I can’t do this. I just can’t.”
There had been a time when she would have begged him to stay, promised him anything to reconsider. But not now. He had proved himself unfit for the task of being their son’s father.
“Then go,” she said.
That moment played in her mind, like an old and familiar movie scene, as she awoke on the marble floor in front of the elevator bank. People gathered around, strange faces hovering over her, filled with concern. A security guard pushed his way through.
“Step back, please. Step back.” He knelt down beside her. “Ma’am, can you hear me?”
Libby sat up despite his efforts to keep her down.
“I’m okay,” she said, her voice rasping, her head still swimming. A deep ache registered beneath her right eye.
“Don’t try to get up,” the guard said. He turned to the people gathered around them. “Ladies and gentlemen, everything’s under control, so I’d appreciate it if you’d go about your evening. Please use the elevators and not the stairs. Thank you.”
The stairs? Then she remembered the blood on the marble, the gash in his scalp.
“Charles,” she said. “Is he okay?”
“My colleagues are with him, they’re trained in first aid, they’ll take care of him until the paramedics get here. Please, stay down.”
Libby tried to push his hands away, tried to shift her balance to get her legs under her, but nausea flooded her senses. She covered her mouth and swallowed bile.
The security guard’s radio crackled. He brought it to his mouth and said, “Yeah?”
He listened to words Libby could not decipher, the radio now pressed to his ear. His eyes met hers, and he said, “Okay, give me a few minutes.”
The guard returned the radio to his belt and asked, “Do you think you can walk?”
“I can try,” Libby said. “Why?”
“My boss wants you to come to the control room,” he said. “He says there’s something you need to see.”
10
VILLALOBOS MET HER AT THE door to the control room and guided her to a chair. He noted her bare feet and spoke to one of his underlings. “Call housekeeping, get a pair of slippers and a bathrobe sent down here.”
The control room was on the southern side of the hotel’s main block, one level down from reception. The guard had brought her along fluorescent-lit hallways lined with pipes and ducts to what felt like an underground bunker. The room was perhaps twenty feet square, and one side housed a computer terminal with four flat-screen displays, each subdivided into four sections showing different views of the resort.
Libby sat down, the swivel chair creaking beneath her weight. Villalobos placed a hand on her shoulder.
“I want you to know,” he said, “we’ve already called the police. They’re on their way.”
“The police?” she echoed. “Why? What did you see?”
He turned to the man at the console. “Alejandro?”
Alejandro operated a tracker ball, spinning it, clicking buttons. One of the displays changed, became one large moving image. The lobby, by the elevator bank. Libby recognized herself in Charles’s arms. And there, Ethan, wandering in a circle, seeing the open elevator, and running toward it.
Libby choked on a sob as she watched herself not notice her son’s dash through the doors. Then Charles pulling away, pointing, her running, too late, the doors closing.
“Our elevators are getting old, almost twenty years,” Villalobos said. “Newer systems sense the weight of the passengers. A boy this size, the system would cancel the calls and the car wouldn’t move. But not these, I’m sorry to say.”
Alejandro clicked, turned the ball. The image shrunk, was replaced by another. In white superimposed letters it said N EL BANK 3.
“Third floor,” Alejandro said.
The elevator doors opened. Just visible inside, Ethan still hitting buttons, then the doors closed again. The image was replaced once more. N EL BANK 4.
“Fourth floor,” Alejandro said.
This time, Ethan stood still in the elevator, went to step out, but the doors closed before he could.
“Little man,” Libby whispered, one hand clutching at her stomach.
“Fifth floor,” Alejandro said.
The doors opened and Ethan stepped out, his hands raised up to his chest, his fingers twined together, the way they did when he was scared. His lips moved, and Libby knew he said, Mommy.
“Oh baby,” she said, unable to hold back her tears.
The elevator doors closed. Ethan turned to look at them before wandering in a slow circle, his gaze going in all directions. His face creasing, the fear written on his features.
“Oh no,” Libby said, reaching for the display.
Part of her wanted to scream at them to turn it off, she couldn’t watch, but she knew she had no choice but to see her little boy take slow, frightened steps along the hallway until he disappeared from view.
“Where did he go?” she asked, her voice rising. “Find him again.”
Villalobos’s hand tightened on her shoulder.
“Please watch,” he said.
Libby wiped at her eyes, pressed the heels of her hands against them, then shook her head, fighting for clarity.
She almost missed the form of an adult running across the bottom of the screen.
“What was that?”
“Wind it back,” Villalobos said.
Alejandro did as he was instructed.
A head and shoulders moved backward at double speed, then forward again. A hooded top hid the hair. Male or female, Libby couldn’t tell. But there was no question the figure was following Ethan.
“And now the last feed,” Villalobos said.
The image disappeared, replaced by another. A hallway, seen from one end.
“This is three minutes later,” Alejandro said, pointing to the time stamp in the image’s upper-left corner. “The hall leads to the south tower.”
Libby watched the screen, saw nothing but a corridor lined by doors. Then a movement at the far end. An adult and a child walking hand in hand.
Her stomach lurched. “My God, someone has him.”
“The police are on their way,” Villalobos said. “We can hope that whoever this is, they will bring your boy to us. But these images are from thirty minutes ago. I have colleagues on every exit watching who comes in and out. If they try to leave the resort with your boy, we will stop them.”
A voice came over his radio. “Boss,” it said. “Cops are here.”
* * *
—
VILLALOBOS GUIDED HER back up to the ground floor. The slippers were a poor fit, but she was glad of them all the same. She held the bathrobe tight around her body, feeling irrationally ashamed of the dress she wore.
When she reached the lobby, she saw Charles on a gurney, being wheeled toward the main doors. Gerry followed, blood on his hands, worry on his face.
Libby called his name and he came to her. “I have to go with him,” he said, “but I’ll be thinking of you and Ethan. They’ll find him, I promise.”
They embraced, then as Gerry turned to go, a uniformed police officer jogged over. “Sir, just a minute.”
Gerry paused. “Yes?”
The officer carried himself differently from the others, like a man of authority. Some part of Libby’s mind noted the gold bars on his collar.
“You were with the child before he disappeared, correct?�
�� the cop asked.
“That’s right.”
“Then I have to ask you to stay here.”
Gerry shook his head. “But my husband, I have to—”
“The paramedics and the ambulance crew will take good care of him, I assure you, but I need you to stay here.”
“I can’t,” Gerry said.
“I’m not giving you a choice, sir.”
Gerry stared at the cop for a moment, then turned his gaze to the exit, watched Charles being wheeled out into the darkness. He put a hand over his mouth as his eyes welled. His fingers left a bloody smear on his face.
A suited man approached, his cheeks flushed, breathing hard. “Officer? I’m Saul Reed, the manager here at the hotel. I’ve opened up the Atlantic Room for you. Would you mind setting up in there? I have the other guests to think about, and I’d like to get things back to normal as far as I can.”
He opened his arms and tried to herd them away from the lobby. Libby resisted, even as he placed a hand on her arm. She shook him off.
“I’m going to look for my little boy,” she said.
“Ma’am,” the cop said, “it really would be better if you came with me. Let my people do their jobs.”
Gerry put an arm around her shoulders. “Come on.”
They followed the manager past reception, through a set of doors that led to the concierge desk, and then to a corridor lined with double doors labeled with ocean names. The Pacific Room, the Mediterranean Room, the Adriatic Room. At the far end, the Atlantic Room. Reed used a keycard to open the doors and stood back to let them enter.
“Maybe you could have someone bring us some water?” the cop said.
“Of course,” the manager said, and scurried away.
The room contained a group of tables arranged into a U shape, chairs along each side. The policeman indicated that Libby and Gerry should sit.
“I guess I should introduce myself,” he said. “I’m Lieutenant Michael Cole, Naples Police Department, Child Protection Unit. Ma’am, we’re going to get your son back.”
Libby had to force herself to sit down. The nervous energy that crackled through her body fought with the weariness in her head. She could barely hold a thought in her mind other than the need to look for Ethan. Gerry sat beside her and held her hand. She didn’t care about Charles’s blood on his fingers; she already had it on her feet, her knees, her clothes.
A memory crashed in on her, one that had remained buried for years, maybe decades. A fight in the schoolyard. Over what, she couldn’t remember. What she did recall was scratching another girl’s face, hard, drawing blood. She remembered the red trickling lines, the shock in the girl’s eyes, the squealing of the other kids.
The parents had insisted on involving the police. An officer with a weary face and a quiet voice had spoken with her in the principal’s office. He convinced the parents to let it drop if he drove her home and talked to her mother. When the officer left her house, her mother upturned the table and the cups of instant coffee, then smashed the one framed photograph of Libby against the wall.
Cole took a seat opposite as he spoke, fetching a small notepad and pen from his breast pocket. “I’m going to ask you both some questions. I warn you, some may be personal in nature, and you may not be comfortable answering them. But the more honest you are with me now, the quicker we’ll find Ethan. Right now, we’re still treating this as a lost-child case, not an abduction. Is there any reason we should think otherwise?”
“What do you mean?” Libby asked.
“Well, for example, the boy’s father. Where’s he?”
“He left when Ethan was around six months old. He lives in Seattle now.”
“Any contact?”
“He visits twice a year.”
“Any reason to think he’d come around now?”
Libby shook her head. “He didn’t care enough to stick around three years ago. I don’t see why he’d be interested now.”
Cole scribbled something on his notepad. “You arrived yesterday, early afternoon, correct?”
“That’s right.”
“You notice anyone hanging around, anyone paying attention to you and your boy?”
“No one.”
“What have you been doing since you got here? Hanging by the pool?”
“Mostly,” she said. “We hadn’t even left the grounds. We spent some time with Gerry and Charles. Ethan really likes Gerry.”
Cole turned his attention to the man beside her. “And what exactly was your interest in the boy?”
Gerry tilted his head. “Excuse me?”
“Why were you so keen to spend time with the boy?” Cole asked, meeting Gerry’s hard stare. “He and his mother were strangers to you yesterday. I’m just curious why you and your boyfriend would take up with a single mother and her son.”
“What exactly are you insinuating, Officer? If you have an accusation to make, please go ahead and make it.”
Cole smiled an icy smile. “I’m not insinuating anything. No accusations. I’m just asking a question. What age are you? Thirty-five, something like that?”
“I’m forty,” Gerry said. “Forty-one next month.”
“Well, see, I’m just wondering why a forty-year-old man wants to go swimming with a three-year-old boy that isn’t his.”
Gerry stared for a few moments longer, then got to his feet. “I’m not a lawyer, but I think I’m right in believing I’m not obliged to sit here and take this bullshit from you.”
“Not unless I place you under arrest.”
“Then I’m done here.”
He walked toward the door.
“All right,” Cole said. “But don’t leave this hotel.”
“I want to go to the hospital,” Gerry said, his voice trembling with anger. “I want to see my husband.”
“If you try to leave these grounds, then I will have you arrested.”
“You can’t do that.”
“I guess we’ll find out.”
Gerry turned to Libby. “I’m going to help look for Ethan. You have my number. Call me if you need me.”
“Thank you,” she said, and Gerry left the room. She looked at Cole. “There was no need to talk to him like that. He’s a good man. Him and Charles both.”
“I’m sure,” Cole said, “but I’m not interested in being nice. I’m interested in finding your son. Now, how much did you have to drink this evening?”
“I don’t see why that matters.”
“Please answer the question.”
“I had two glasses of wine with dinner, I think, and two cocktails on the terrace. Maybe three.”
“Would you say you were drunk?”
“No, not drunk, maybe a little tipsy, I don’t—”
“A little tipsy,” Cole said, writing it down. “Okay.”
Libby felt anger rise through the emotions already crowded inside her. “Look, I was not neglectful.”
“I didn’t say you were. Do you often drink when you’re looking after your child?”
She slapped the table hard enough to make him flinch. “For God’s sake, I turned my back for a second, maybe two, and he ran to the elevator. What do you want from me? A confession of guilt? All right, I’m guilty, I didn’t pay enough attention, and now my son’s missing. Now, please, help me find him.”
Cole remained quiet for a time, first watching her, then studying the few lines of notes he’d taken. The only sound in the room was Libby’s angry breathing. She brought her hands together and forced herself to be calm. The cracks were lengthening and widening; she could feel them branching through her. Then he spoke again.
“Can you think of anyone who might want to take Ethan away from you? Anyone you know? Anyone that’s had contact with you or him recently or in the past?”
He sees t
hrough me, she thought.
“No,” she said.
Right through me, she thought.
“It’s just that, in most cases of a child abduction—and I’m not saying we’re dealing with an abduction, not yet—in most cases, the abductor is someone the child already knows. Is there anyone you can think of who might—”
“No,” she said, too quickly, too forcefully.
Cole held her gaze.
“No one,” she said.
He remained still and watchful. She had to look away.
“Ma’am, is there something you want to tell me?”
“No,” she said.
And it was the truth. She didn’t want to tell him anything.
11
AS VILLALOBOS EMERGED FROM THE stairwell that connected the basement to the ground floor, he saw his old colleague Mickey Cole step out of the Atlantic Room. He considered trying to slip away unseen but decided against it. He had thought Cole to be an insufferable prick from the first time they met on the job, more than twenty years ago. Cole was one of those men who thought racist jokes were simply jokes, nothing more, and anyone who was offended was just too damn sensitive. Villalobos had taken him at face value at first, done his best to accept Cole’s spic gags as if they were friendly banter, and laughed along. Then one night, when they were both at the deep end of a late shift, he had watched Cole beat the shit out of a black kid because he didn’t tell him his name fast enough.
But Cole had good instincts, a natural detective, with an innate pig ignorance that allowed him to bulldoze his way through a case. He might have been a racist, misogynist, homophobic asshole, but he got results. Therefore, he was worth talking to.
“Hey, Sergeant Cole,” Villalobos called along the hall.
Cole looked up from his cell phone, surprise and confusion on his face. The expression changed to recognition, and broke into a grin.
