Boy, 9, Missing

by Nic Joseph

  “What did he need to talk about?”

  She smiled wryly. “But you know I’m not allowed to answer that.”

  “Even if it will help find a missing child?”

  “Especially since that’s why you’re asking. Now that you’re here, I expect the police will be making their way by sometime soon too,” she said. “Believe me, patient confidentiality isn’t something I’m inclined to break.”

  “So he is a patient.”

  She continued without acknowledging me. “Also, I’m not convinced your father had anything to do with that boy.”

  “But you think it’s possible.”

  “I think he and the boy are the only ones who know that. You don’t seem as convinced as I am,” she said. “Is that right? You think your father had something to do with Matthew Farr’s disappearance?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m here to try to find some answers. Look, I know you’re not allowed to tell me what you and my father talked about. But can you tell me this—was my father in any kind of trouble? Was he telling you about something that was bothering him? Please, it could be important to finding both him and Matthew.”

  She seemed to think it over for a while, and I could tell she was debating how much she should tell me.

  “Look, your father was battling a lot of things, but if you’re asking me if there was one specific thing he was worried about these days, the answer is not really.” She shook her head. “But I’m unable to address that any further. I hope you can respect that. It’s at the core of what I do.”

  I nodded, even though shaking her was at the core of what I wanted to do.

  “You know, the fact that you’re so worried about him… Alex would be thrilled to know that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your father… I tried to tell him that it was the circumstances. That you would have been there for him if you could’ve.”

  Jab.

  “What?”

  “He wasn’t sure you cared about him anymore.”

  Cross.

  “He told you that?”

  “He told everybody that.”

  Uppercut.

  The words stung, hitting me in the face. She shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m saying all of this, but it seems you should know. And you should know he felt like it was his fault. That he’d lost you, and you’d made the decision to let him go. So to see you here, to see how worried you are, I just…I wish I could talk to him, tell him. It would matter to him. It would matter a lot.”

  I bit my lip and was surprised by the emotion that had welled up. I cleared my throat and stood.

  “I should get going,” I said. “But thanks for your time.”

  “Of course,” she said. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about him. I hope you’ll keep me informed if you hear from him.” She reached over and grabbed a card from her cardholder. She walked around the desk and handed it to me. I took it, hesitant to tell her that I’d already taken one from outside. I glanced at it and was surprised that it only had her hospital address and phone number—the Orland Park address wasn’t listed.

  I looked up, and she was still staring at me, waiting for a response.

  I nodded. “Of course. I’ll let you know if I hear anything, and I hope you’ll do the same. We need everyone on board to find Matthew Farr.”

  “Of course,” she said quickly. Too quickly.

  We were lying, and we both knew it. She wouldn’t contact me, and I wouldn’t contact her.

  As I turned to leave, it occurred to me that Dr. Christine Sharpe was hiding a hell of a lot more than she wanted me to know.

  And I had a feeling that the more she had to hide, the more my father had to hide.

  • • •

  I arrived home that night to a silent apartment.

  I cracked open Amy’s door and saw her curled up on one side of the bed, fast asleep.

  Her laptop was lying on the bed beside her, still open. I walked over and picked it up.

  As I did, my thumb brushed the touchpad, and the screen lit up the room.

  I froze and looked down again at Amy’s sleeping figure. She didn’t move, which was refreshingly familiar—since the day she was born, she’d had the uncanny ability to sleep like a log, no matter what was going on around her.

  I walked the laptop over to her desk and put it down. With one hand on the lid to close it, I—for reasons I wouldn’t have been able to explain if she had woken up—let my eyes linger on the screen for just a moment.

  I sucked in a breath when I saw what she’d been doing.

  Her screen was open to her Facebook page, and at the very top of her feed, she’d posted a link to a broadcast story about Matthew Farr: Some people want to give up, but we can’t stop until we find him. #WheresMattFarr. Her post had been liked by fifteen people, and a quick scroll through the comments let me know that they were mostly friends of hers from New York.

  Super tragic, ugh. Miss you, Ames.

  Ew. Come back. Civilized society misses you.

  I sighed and closed the laptop, pushing it back farther on the desk. I took one more glance at Amy before walking out of her room and pulling the door closed behind me.

  I didn’t have days or weeks or even hours anymore. I had to tell her. It was going to be the hardest conversation of my life, but there was no more time for excuses.

  I’d tell her in the morning.

  For sure.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Monday, 7:15 a.m.

  I tried; I really did.

  Before I went to bed, I set an alarm to wake me up at six thirty—plenty of time to talk to Amy and help her get ready for her first day of school.

  But when I opened my eyes a little after seven, certain I hadn’t heard an alarm go off, I leaned over to find that I’d set it for six thirty at night.

  And that Amy had already left.

  I walked to her door and pushed it open, peeking inside. Empty. I sent her a text.

  Hey u ok? Sry I missed u. U should’ve woken me up. Would’ve dropped u off.

  I was halfway back to my bedroom when my phone lit up.

  Yeah tks no worries. I’m here, it’s super close.

  I sighed, staring at the text before walking into the bathroom to get ready. When I got out of the shower, I noticed a little envelope on my cell phone, alerting me that I had a voice message. The man’s voice that filled my ears was gruff and to the point, his drawl instantly familiar.

  “Francis, this is Banks. I got your message and…well, I’m not too sure how I can help you, okay? I don’t mind if you want to come by, but I mean…I can tell you what I know, but it’s not a lot. Anyway, I’ll be at my office until about three o’clock this afternoon, if you want to stop by. Okay.”

  Banks left his address and hung up.

  I pulled up in front of Banks’s office around nine thirty. It was small and nondescript, in the storefront of a narrow plaza. It was flanked by a taco joint and a nail salon.

  The front door was open, and I walked inside. The room was outdated, with ripped tan leather chairs and a worn, dark-gray rug. A desk near the front of the office was covered with papers. I walked past it and peered toward the back, where there was a cluttered corridor.

  I was about to call out for assistance when I heard a noise, and a figure suddenly appeared in the passageway. I recognized him immediately.

  “Mr. Banks,” I said.

  His eyes widened when he saw my face. “Francis Scroll. I didn’t hear you come in.” He stepped closer and reached out his hand. “I didn’t know if you were actually going to come.”

  “I appreciate you taking the time,” I said.

  “Oh, don’t worry about it,” he said.

  Raymond Banks was a tall, portly man in his early sixties, with
shrewd, gray-blue eyes and a lilt in his voice that gave him an air of the South, even though I was pretty sure he’d never spent any real time there.

  “I have to admit, I was intrigued when I got your message, but like I said, I don’t have much to tell ya that you don’t already know.” He turned and walked toward his desk. “I guess we’ll just…” He grabbed a large stack of papers and placed it on the floor. “Can I get you something? Coffee?”

  “No, I’m good,” I said, sitting in one of the empty chairs as he took the other.

  “So, what exactly can I do for you?” he asked. “I didn’t think I’d have to talk about this again for a long time, or ever, really.”

  “I was hoping you could tell me a little bit about my brother’s case,” I said.

  “Now why would you want to know a thing like that?” he asked. “There wasn’t much of a case, to be honest. Now that I’ve had some distance, you know, a little bit of space…I can see that clearly. It was two sets of parents, desperate to find justice for their children. Nothing more than that, nothing less.”

  “But you represented my father. You believed the same thing he did, that Sam had something to do with my brother’s death. Didn’t you?”

  Banks didn’t say anything for a moment. “You do know that not every lawyer defends cases they truly believe in, right?”

  “Well, yes, but I thought—”

  “No, you’re right. I mean, I don’t know if I can tell you what I think happened that night, because like everyone else, I really don’t know.” He shook his head. “People think lawyers have some sort of magic wand that can dig up the truth. Get ready for this knowledge bomb, Francis: we don’t! We look at the same things everyone else does; we just have more experience in where to look and what to look for.”

  He leaned forward, resting both hands on the table. “Sometimes, it comes down to the most educated guess you can make based on the facts you seem to have, and I mean it when I say ‘seem to.’ Because in a case like this, nothing is really ‘factual,’ not when you don’t have much to go on. You got a dead kid, no offense, a lot of possible scenarios for what could have happened, and only one other person on earth who may—and I do mean may—have seen something or been involved. And that person was a shy little ten-year-old who, let’s face it, wasn’t going to win any congeniality awards, that was for sure. So a case? I guess you could call it that. It was more like an unfortunate set of events that weren’t ever supposed to have any sort of satisfying ending, not for anyone involved—”

  “Until Matthew Farr went missing.”

  He stopped and stared at me before sitting back in his chair. Then, he began to nod slowly.

  “So that’s why you’re here.” He ran his hand over his mouth and down his chin. “Yeah, I heard about that, and I don’t really know what to make of it, I’ll be honest witcha.”

  “I do,” I said. “I need to get inside my father’s mind, and the only way I can do that is to go back to what’s been driving him all these years. Can you help me with that?”

  “I can try.” He shook his head. “What a trial. Did you follow it? You went away for school, right? I remember that. When did you get back?”

  “About a year and a half ago.”

  “Oh, wow. Did you follow it while you were away?”

  “Some,” I said, clearing my throat. “I mean, it was impossible not to. But I was in a new place, and I think it was good for me to stay away from—”

  “Oh, I’m not suggesting it wasn’t,” he said with an understanding smile. “You were just a boy back then too. They wanted to keep you out of it as much as possible. But I’m assuming you looked into it at some point, right? I mean, you had to be curious.”

  “I’m curious now.” It came out more curtly than I’d planned, and his expression changed slightly before he nodded.

  “Well, what can I tell you? I’ll help you as much as I can.” He frowned. “But you should remember the details of the night better than I do. Seeing as how you were actually there.”

  “Yes, but I’d like to hear what a jury heard,” I said. “Please, it will be helpful.” I felt dangerously behind everyone else, and I couldn’t help but think that getting to the heart of what my father thought he knew about Sam Farr was the key to helping us find Matthew.

  “All right,” the lawyer said. “Well, as I recall, and correct me if you remember differently, but you guys finished dinner that night around eight?”

  “Yeah, it was something like that.”

  “Nobody ever talked about the dinner that much. Just that eight o’clock was when everything started. For the sake of the trial, that’s when the night really began, I guess.”

  “Yeah, I guess it did,” I said, my mind reeling back to that cold night more than two decades ago.

  • • •

  It was amazingly quiet now, in contrast with the bass-ridden pop songs my mother had been playing all night, and the uproar following Sam’s soaking-wet appearance in our living room. I stared at the backs of Rudy and the detective as they continued to throw out words like “tragedy” and “useless” and “reports.”

  Then Rudy stepped aside, ungluing his shoes from the bottom of the tub.

  I didn’t realize how much his large frame had been blocking, and suddenly, I caught sight of that tie-dye shirt Lucas had been wearing. Immediately, my stomach lurched. I threw up again, and the sound attracted the attention of both men.

  “What the—” the detective said as they turned and caught sight of me. I stared at them, scared of getting in trouble and also scared I’d see him.

  Lucas.

  In the tub.

  Floating.

  “Oh, it’s the older one,” the detective said. “Kid, you shouldn’t be in here.”

  I heard him, but now they’d both shifted in my direction, and there was that shirt again, and I knew that at any minute, I’d see his face or his hair, and I was certain that if I did, I would die too.

  “Son?” The two men glanced at each other uncomfortably, and then the detective walked closer and put his hand on my shoulder. “C’mon, let’s get you outta here, okay?”

  And then his body was in the way, blocking my view. I felt sad, because I knew it was the last time I’d ever see Lucas, except for maybe in a picture, but I was also happy, because I couldn’t stand the thought of even a glimpse of his lifeless body.

  He ushered me out of the bathroom, onto the landing, and looked around for someone to hand me off to.

  “Lucas…” I said, his name coating my tongue, and I stared through the open door at the edge of the bathtub. “I can’t—”

  “Hey,” the detective said, crouching down, and I could see he wasn’t as hardened or detached as I’d thought he was. Like Rudy, his eyes were watery, and he clenched his jaw tightly as he knelt in front of me, grabbing me by both arms. “It’s going to be okay, you know. I know you can’t understand it now, but it’s going to be okay.”

  “But he’s…” I struggled to get the word out. “He’s d… He’s d…”

  “He’s dead,” the detective said, still watching me carefully. “And I’m so sorry. But you’re going to be okay. I promise you.”

  He stood up and searched the halls again for someone else to take me. But everyone had pulled away, retreated, and I was left alone. That’s the thing about death. We’re taught so long how to live correctly, how to act properly while we’re alive, but when somebody dies, we’re taught nothing except that it is okay to act as we feel. It was okay for my parents to leave me standing there, alone, scared on the landing, with all of the ghosts in the small bathroom next door, and nobody around but a detective who seemed ready to unleash me on the first capable adult he could find.

  That adult turned out to be my grandfather, Grandpa Zach, who was coming up the stairs at that very moment, looking for something, when his gaze landed on m
e. He almost seemed not to recognize me at first. When he did, he nearly toppled over himself in his haste to get to me.

  “Come on,” he said. “You don’t need to be anywhere near there, Francis.”

  That’s when I lost it, lashing out, kicking and screaming, desperate to go back into that bathroom, because as much as it scared me, this couldn’t be it; this couldn’t be the end.

  “Francis, come on, shhh, please!” my grandfather cried out as he dragged me down the hallway and away from Lucas for the very last time.

  • • •

  “Francis?”

  I blinked and stared into the face of Raymond Banks, who was watching me closely, waiting for me to respond to something he’d said.

  “Sorry?”

  “I asked if you heard the argument Lucas and Sam had after dinner.”

  I shook my head. “No, I was in the kitchen, I think.”

  “Your father really thought that would seal the case, you know? Catching the boys fighting like that, just an hour or so before the accident.”

  “What exactly did he hear?”

  “According to your father, he was standing at the bottom of the stairs when he heard screaming from up in Lucas’s bedroom. It was hard to make out over the music, but he was pretty sure it was Sam who was yelling at your brother, calling him all sorts of names…”

  “But Brian Farr heard it too, right?”

  “Yeah, he did. He went upstairs to calm his son down. Farr tried to downplay it at first, but he later admitted that Sam was the aggressor, throwing things around and everything. That boy was quiet, but he had a temper. We never found out what that fight was about.”

  “That Sam and Lucas got into a fight doesn’t prove anything,” I said.

  “No, it doesn’t. It didn’t back then, either, obviously.”

  “Was there ever any sort of explanation given for why Sam Farr was soaking wet when he came downstairs?”

  “His parents and lawyers came up with the story that he probably leaned into the tub to try to get your brother out, ya know, tried to save him. But the boy never said it himself.”