They Never Came Home

by Lois Duncan

  “Damned right, I think he’s alive somewhere. Not that any of us are likely to see him again. And wherever he is, that kid is using everything he learned from me to make himself a small fortune before he’s twenty-one. But that’s beside the point. The question now is, who do we get to fill Larry’s spot with us? And the answer now is, Frank Cotwell.”

  “That’s not the answer I get,” Frank said shortly. “I don’t want to get involved in this sort of thing.”

  “It’s not a question of getting involved,” Mr. Brown informed him easily. “Son, you are involved. You’re in far too deep right now to be able to pull out without getting yourself thrown into a juvenile detention home.”

  “You’re nuts,” Frank said.

  “I’m afraid not. Frank, you’ve been importing heroin for months now. Every trip you made across the border has been a drug run. Every time you’ve parked outside this motel and come in this room with a jewelry package, a colleague of mine has been outside in the parking lot, emptying the box. He’s also taken pictures of your car showing how the stuff was imported.”

  “You can’t make me work for you if I don’t want to,” Frank said angrily. “I can report the whole operation to the police!”

  “The only person you can report to the police,” Mr. Brown told him, “is yourself. You’re the one who is on record as having made the trips across the border. You’re the one whose car has been photographed. There are also several young people here in Las Cruces who would be willing to swear in court if necessary that you tried to get them to purchase heroin. You, on the other hand, have no proof of anything. Any investigation in Juarez will bring forth only a little novelty store, run by a poor but honest little man, struggling to support his family. Here in Las Cruces, you don’t even know my real name, much less where to locate me. You aren’t in a position to do very much bargaining, Frank.”

  “The police will believe me!” Frank said. He got to his feet, feeling the heat of his fury coursing through his body. Everything within him was urging him to reach out for this little man and smash his face halfway through his head. “They’ll believe me! I’ll make them!”

  “Without proof, you won’t have a leg to stand on,” Mr. Brown said calmly. “Face it, son, whether you think you want to be or not—you’re now firmly instated in the import business!”

  Frank was halfway to the door when the man spoke again. He had not moved from where he sat; his voice was gentle, as though soothing a startled child.

  “You think this over, Frank. I’m sure you don’t want to get yourself into trouble with the authorities. Your family has surely suffered enough this year without more problems. I’ll be in touch with you soon, to get your decision.”

  Frank snatched at the door and wrenched it open.

  My God, Joan, he thought wildly, what have you done to me! You were supposed to have got hold of the police by this time! They should have been here half an hour ago! Now it’s too late—the stuff is out of the car—Mr. Brown will be gone! Like he says, I can quote this whole conversation, but there won’t be any proof to back it up!

  He thought, Dan—oh, Dan! If it’s true, what Mr. Brown says, what happened to Dan? Larry couldn’t have taken him along. Nobody ever took Dan anywhere he didn’t want to go! If something happened to Dan up there in the mountains, Larry made it happen!

  Blindly, miserably, he started across the parking lot toward his car. He had almost reached it when a voice spoke softly from the shadows.

  “Hi, kid. Looking for someone?”

  “Who? What?” Frank stopped short.

  The man moved out in front of him, and he saw the uniform.

  “The window to that motel room is half open,” the policeman said in a low voice. “There’s a man up there with a recording device, taking down everything from inside. There are two men up there by the door ready to take your friend, Mr. Brown, when he walks out. The other one we picked up nice and easy, when he was extracting the box from under your car.”

  “Oh, thank God.” Frank reached out for support and found the fender of his car. “Joan did tell you!”

  “In detail. It wasn’t really a surprise to us. We’ve known something of this sort was going on. It was just a matter of pinpointing who was involved and how it was arranged.”

  “Will people …” Frank struggled for words, “will they have to know? I mean, everything? Joan’s mother—she’s been sick—it might be awful—”

  “Don’t worry, Frank. We’re not going to see innocent people hurt if we can help it. Joan told us about her mother.”

  The policeman had his arm now and was opening the car door.

  “Get in and sit down. You’ve had quite an evening. Just sit there and get hold of yourself for a few minutes. We can see the action from here.”

  “Great,” Frank said grimly. “I’ll enjoy every minute of it.”

  He sank into the car seat and directed his eyes toward the door of number eighteen.

  SIXTEEN

  AS SHE LEFT THE plane and moved with the crowd through the covered tunnel into the Los Angeles Airport, Joan found that her legs felt weak beneath her and the hand that clutched her brown leather traveling purse was trembling.

  The tension had been building inside her ever since she had left New Mexico. For hours she had sat quiet and alone in the seat of the plane, staring out at the heavy mattress of clouds, reliving the telephone conversation over and over again.

  “I can’t be sure, Joan,” Anne had said, her voice shrill with excitement. “It’s so incredible that I haven’t known whether or not to call you. The thing is—I think I’ve seen Dan.”

  “Seen Dan!” Joan’s own voice had been a gasp. “What do you mean, Anne? How could you?”

  “Well, last Saturday I had a dinner date, and this guy and I and another couple went to a little seafood restaurant called the Green Cove. We were late and the place was getting ready to close, with waitresses running around, wiping off tables and things, when this boy came in. I didn’t see him at first—I was busy talking to my date—but then I saw this waitress smile across the room, like she knew somebody, and I glanced over and he was sitting at a little table by the door. He looked so familiar, but then the place was kind of dark, with colored lights and things, and I was sure I was mistaken.

  “It wasn’t until we got up to leave that it really hit me. I was standing at the door, waiting for my date to pay the bill, and the boy came over to pay his bill, and—Joan, I could swear he was Dan!”

  “But how could that be!” Joan exclaimed.

  “I don’t know. I can’t explain it. I know Dan, Joan. I dated him before he started going with you! It’s not like he was just a casual acquaintance. This boy had the same walk, the same way of holding his head, the same smile! It was like seeing a ghost!”

  “But did you just let him go by?” Joan asked incredulously. “Didn’t you speak to him?”

  “Of course! I called out his name, and he turned around! That’s the part that kept me from thinking I was really crazy! When I said, ‘Dan’ he froze and turned his head. Then—well, he acted as though he didn’t know me at all. He said I had him confused with somebody else. He had a girl with him, one of the waitresses, and he grabbed her arm and took off out the door, almost running.”

  “But, if it were really Dan, he wouldn’t have done that,” Joan said, perplexed. “He would have recognized you too.”

  “I don’t know, Joan. Think about it a minute. If it was Dan, if he left New Mexico and came out to California and let us all think he was dead, it sounds impossible doesn’t it, but if he did do those things, he must have had a reason. And whatever that reason was, he wouldn’t want to be found. It would be perfectly logical that he would react to his name, and then, when he saw me, pretend he hadn’t.”

  “I … suppose so.” Joan’s heart was pounding. “I can’t believe it. I mean, I believe you—I know you wouldn’t call me with something like this unless you really thought it was true—but, oh, Anne,
how could it be?”

  “I can’t figure it out any better than you can,” Anne said, “and as I say, I’m not sure. I can’t be. But you would be! If you saw him, you’d know!”

  “Yes!” Joan’s hand tightened on the receiver.

  “Come on out here, Joan! I’ll meet you at the airport. We talked about your coming before I ever left Las Cruces. Your dad won’t think it’s strange. Just tell him I called and renewed the invitation.”

  “Yes. Yes, I will,” Joan said. “I’ll go online and make plane reservations right away. Then I’ll call you back and let you know when to expect me.”

  It was crazy, of course—absolutely crazy. It couldn’t be Dan. And yet, if it were! She replaced the receiver on the hook, knowing that she could no more stay at home now than she could have taken the photograph by her bed and dropped it into the wastebasket. In her heart, Dan was alive, as alive as he had ever been. Steady and strong, he had stayed with her no matter how firmly she had told herself that he was gone forever. It was not a refusal to accept reality, as it had been with her mother. She had accepted with her mind the fact of the boys’ deaths, but deep below consciousness, somewhere in the heart of her, a spark of hope had flickered still. She knew that now—she could admit it! It had taken something as positive as Anne’s phone call to set the spark into a blaze of flame!

  She did not tell Frank. It would have been too cruel to have built up hopes, which would, in all probability, be shattered. Besides, his mind was completely occupied with the excitement of being asked to give testimony against John Brown, whose name, it turned out, was Thomas Lupino. The hearing was to take place in closed court with the names of all minors involved kept out of the papers.

  To her father she said only that Anne had invited her to come spend a week in California.

  “It sounds like a good plan,” Mr. Drayfus said immediately. “I couldn’t be more in favor. Visit with Anne, see the campus, go to some football games and dances and things. You need the break, Joan. With your mother coming home in a couple of weeks, you’re going to be tied down here for a while.”

  There had been no problem about reservations—no problem about anything. She had withdrawn money from her savings account to purchase a ticket, put a few clothes in a suitcase, and the next moment, it seemed, she was at the airport.

  “Have fun, honey!”

  “I will, Daddy!”

  For a moment she had clung to him hard, wishing she could tell him, but knowing that she must not. All the common sense she had told her that this was impossible, a wild-goose chase leading nowhere.

  Anne is bound to be wrong, she told herself over and over. She admits she wasn’t close and the place wasn’t well lighted. Many people resemble each other. Mother took Frank for Dan right in the broad light of day. There are lots of tall, freckled, cinnamon-haired young men in the world.

  How could it be Dan? Why should he be in California? How could he do a thing like this to his family—to me—to himself? And if Dan is there, what about Larry—might he be there also? Could they both be safe, both there in Los Angeles, somehow, through some miracle?

  Now, standing at the end of the tunnel, she glanced about her, lost in the crowd that seethed in all directions. How could anyone locate a single face among so many? If one of those faces should be Dan’s, would she even know it?

  A sense of panic filled her, and she clutched her purse more tightly against her side.

  “Joan!”

  A light, clear voice called her name, and a moment later Anne was there beside her, her arms around her in a tight hug.

  “Oh, Joanie, I’m so glad you came!”

  “Oh, Anne!” Joan clung tightly to her friend. Now, suddenly, seeing the familiar face, the immense reality of the situation swept over her. Anne was not a dreamer, a clinger to wishes! Anne was sensible and down to earth and always had been. If Anne was sure enough to telephone and ask her to come here, her reasons must be good ones.

  “Have you found out any more?” Joan asked breathlessly. “Have you see him again?”

  “No, not the boy himself, but I have a lead to him. I went by the Green Cove last night and described the girl, the one he was with, to the manager. Her name is Peggy Richards. She wasn’t there when I went by, she goes to college in the daytime and works just weekends, but she should come on duty today at four. We can catch a cab and go over there right now!”

  There was not going to be any more time.

  The realization was heavy and complete. It came with the same certainty and sense of finality that the other realization had, back in Las Cruces, that spring day when he had known beyond a doubt that he would have to go, that the time was right, the situation perfect.

  That’s the thing that so many people can’t seem to understand, Larry Drayfus thought. There has to be a sense of timing. You have to have a feel for the time when things are right and act then, not later. Later is too late.

  Like Dan’s mind, for instance. It was clearing. It was coming back quickly, much more quickly than he had ever imagined it would. Since that night less than a week ago when he had remembered Joan’s name, the light within him had been growing brighter. He had seemed to accept, at first, the things that Larry had told him:

  “How could I?” he had asked in agonized confusion. “How could I have gotten involved in anything like that!”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” Larry had told him. “God it wasn’t as though you murdered somebody. Somebody was going to cart the stuff across the border. Somebody was going to distribute it. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been any of a dozen other guys.”

  “Am I really the kind of person who could think that way!” Dan had exclaimed. “Could I start kids out on a life of mind-wrecking drugs without even a qualm of guilt! What kind of creature am I?” His voice had been grim. “And if I am that sort of guy, why did I want to run away? Why didn’t I just sit there smugly raking in the cash?”

  “Things closed down on you,” Larry said. “You were at a party that got raided. You had brought the stuff over and were just getting ready to leave. Nobody had even started on it yet, when suddenly the police walked in. The whole gang was hauled down to the police station, you among them. Nobody realized you were the source of the stuff, you were just another unsuspecting guest. You would have got off free and clear just like the others if it hadn’t been for your dad.”

  “My dad?” Dan asked. “What did he do? Did he know I was responsible for the drugs being there?”

  “No, but that didn’t make any difference, not to him. He decided you had to be sent away to keep you from associating with evil elements! To military school, yet! Can you imagine marching around a drill field in a cute little uniform, having to be in bed at ten o’clock every night, doing KP duty—it would have been just like the Army! A whole year of that! A whole year, gone out of your life!”

  His voice shook with bitterness.

  Dan was staring at him.

  “He must have loved me, to care that much about what became of me.”

  “Love you!” Larry said coldly. “Don’t fool yourself. Your dad took pleasure out of making your life miserable. He never let you do anything. Your mom was just as bad in another way. She was a fool, always hanging onto you, treating you like you were a baby. And you had a sister too, a Goody-goody Two-shoes, big as a horse—the efficient kind who always wanted to run everything. You were right in taking off when you did. You were well out of that dumb family.”

  Dan had seemed to accept it then. Now, however, most of a week had passed. Each new day seemed to be drawing his mind upward.

  There were times when Larry found the other boy watching him, a strange look in his eyes.

  There were questions:

  “You’re sure I didn’t have a brother? Or, maybe, two brothers? It seems to me there was somebody I used to talk to—to kid around with.”

  “My mother—what did she look like? Where did my dad work?”

  “That camping trip—I r
emember, it was raining. The rocks were slippery, but somehow I don’t think that was the reason I fell. There was something that made me fall—something that fell against me or bumped me or something.”

  Time was growing short. It was coming back too quickly now, gathering momentum like a stream, starting slowly and then moving from its original trickle into a rushing downhill current. It would not take much now to cause the gates to break wide and memory to come flooding back in its entirety.

  Would he remember the hands upon his back, shoving him forward? It had seemed so simple there on the cliff above the river. One boy’s body would be found and the other not; the natural assumption would be that both had fallen into the swollen river.

  Except, it had not worked that way. Dan had fallen, yes, but he had rolled against a boulder, not over the edge of the bank. When Larry reached him he had been sitting up, gazing dazedly about him.

  “What happened?” he had asked dumbly. “Who are you?”

  Larry had dropped to his knees beside him.

  “Dan,” he had begun—but the other boy’s eyes had been blank.

  “Don’t you know who I am?” Larry had asked softly.

  “No,” Dan had said, and pain had swept across his face like a screen, masking off everything else.

  There had been nothing to do, then, but take him along. He could not leave him, for he would not have died there, not a hulk like Dan Cotwell. There was something in Dan that carried him through everything that ever happened to him. A fall that bad would have finished anyone else, but there was Dan, sitting on the ground, wiping the mud from his face, struggling through the pain to ask, “What happened?” He could not be left there to be found alive to tell his stumbling story of “a guy who pushed me and went off and left me.” There was no choice but to take him along.

  They had climbed slowly and painfully back up the bluff to the road, where a little gray Volkswagen was parked in just the place that Larry had seen it the day before, with the keys left conveniently above the windshield. Once inside, Dan had passed out on the back seat. It had been a simple thing to stop at the Drayfus house and collect some clothing and the money, which had been stored in a zippered Dopp kit under the mattress, to stop on the far side of town to exchange license plates with a rundown car parked on a side road, to tell Dan when he sat up, groaning softly, “Lie down. Lie back. You’ve been sick. You need to rest.”