A Measure of Blood (21 page)

“I'll get you a good breakfast in the morning. I left the candy.”

Footsteps retreat from the door. He starts to shout for help but in seconds there is loud music playing, so loud he can't hear himself.

He tries a wall switch, but sees soon enough there are no bulbs in the ceiling fixture. He backs up, trips on something—the pot, the bed pan. He's looking for a phone jack, a phone, something. He tries to open the window. It doesn't budge. Painted shut.

He has to find out about his mother, if she's coming here. If she's not, he will jump or run or …

He opens the spearmint leaves and eats.

He spies papers on the sewing table under pieces of cloth. Old envelopes. He can read them, pretty much. They say
Home Nursing Care
. He opens one.
Paid by insurance. Owed by member.
It's a bill for medicine. Is that the smell in the room? Medicine? The envelope is addressed to Arnett and Mala Brown.
Brown
. He looks at other envelopes and stray papers. All of papers are addressed to Arnett and Mala Brown. That's not his mother's name. And nothing says the name Ziad Zacour.

He cries for a long time before he goes to sleep.

BACK AT THE
THEATRE,
at eight thirty, the stage manager had called out Matt's name. Jan kept working. They were in Act II, scene i. Marina's scene had been blocked, she'd been doing her long debate with Oberon, and Jan and the cast were now ready to do the section where Titania and Oberon fight openly about the boy child he wants.

In the scene Oberon asks of Titania a price to fix their world in which everything is upside down—he wants the beautiful changeling boy she keeps with her. Titania does
not
intend to give up the child. She is committed to rearing him. She tells him, “Set your heart at rest. The fairyland buys not the child from me.” Marina was especially potent in that part.

Jan Gabriel now needed to weave Matt into the scene. Her idea was to reveal him gradually. He would start out a little behind Titania's entourage, and then come more and more into the scene as they fight over him.

The stage manager, a tall youth, came back to Jan. “Matt must be napping someplace. Can we take a break? It's time for ten minutes anyway. I'll find him.” Jan heard a trace of panic under the stage manager's upbeat assurances.

By eight forty-five, panic was in full order. The stage manager, assisted by a couple of actors, had looked under seats, in the balcony, in the dressing room, outside on the steps, but nobody could find Matt. Jan was looking everywhere, too. Earlier in the evening, Arthur had gone home.

Jan speed-dialed Matt's cell phone, but there was no answer. She punched the number in manually, so she could see the numbers come up, one by one, to be sure. No answer.

Her breath came in short, sharp jabs.
No, no, no, no, no
. Lost him. How, how? Then she reminded herself,
He runs away. He's done it before.

She called Arthur to tell him what had happened, and like the stage manager, she tried to say it calmly, but she could not keep the alarm out of her voice.

“You looked everywhere?”

“Everywhere.”

“Who saw him last?”

“Some of the kids, sitting in the lobby.”

“I'll be right there. His phone?”

“I tried, I tried. You go ahead and keep trying. I'm calling Christie. Bring … bring pictures.”

When she called Christie, she could hear a radio and the hum of a motor. She told the story quickly. “We don't know if he ran, you know, if he's hiding. You remember, he … ”

“I'm coming,” Christie said. “I'll be there. I'm on the road, but I'll turn around and be there in … about thirty minutes.”

She told the cast, “Everybody, everybody, split up and examine this building top to bottom and the lawns outside, and the streets. Start from a small core and then widen the circle.” By then she was crying. She hadn't been watching. She'd been working, trusting everyone, and she didn't see the signs that he was going to run.

Beattie took over, gathering everyone in the lobby, giving assignments. Three to the basement, four to the bathrooms, four to the balcony again, four to the dressing rooms. There were so many nooks and crannies in the building that it would take serious searching, so she put the bathroom people on nooks and corners once they had done the lavs. She sent the others in pairs to the outside in tight circles, wider ones, wider ones, and even wider. She had twenty people at work before eight patrol cars and Colleen, in a different car, got there. They consulted with Beattie and dispatched patrolmen to do much the same thing.

Colleen sat Jan down and made her tell everything from the beginning. “What was different today?”

“Nothing. He had a good day at school. He seemed a little vague tonight. I thought he was tired. That's why we thought he was napping somewhere, in a corner somewhere.”

Colleen nodded. “We'll get Dolan to trace your call to his cell. We'll get a location.”

“Can you do that?”

“Dolan can. Yeah.”

Arthur came rushing in from home. “Anything?”

Jan shook her head and he went to her. She got up and fell into his arms.

“It's not your fault,” he said. His voice lacked conviction.

Colleen told them, “Don't worry. We have all systems in place. We'll find him.”

THE WHIMPERS FROM
UPSTAIRS
drive Nadal to pace from kitchen to front door. Even with his mother's Cuban CD playing, he can hear his son. He wants to comfort the boy, but the kid is a tough one, Nadal can tell that much. Better to let him cry himself to sleep and then Nadal can make him a proper breakfast tomorrow and get around him and talk to him until they connect.

He knew what his son needed to hear—but the lie … it's going to be in the way.

He flicks on his mother's TV in the living room and in an instant his world falls apart. Of course, of course what he did is all over the news and there's even some idiot kid describing him. He can't think what to do next. He paces back and forth, hardly able to watch the news, unable to stop.

FINALLY AFTER MIDNIGHT,
the actors drift away. But not Marina. She has four identities, four roles here. She is an actress and she searched the building with the others. She is Jan's friend and she has offered words of comfort as she could. She is Christie's wife, able to see his stress, the determined way he works. And she is a woman who thinks she could do this work, too. Her husband is sweating with the tension of the last hours. He's called in Dolan and Potocki and by now the police have questioned at least a hundred people. By now they have searched every corner of the theatre building multiple times. And she knows he has sent officers to search the Cathedral of Learning. He's sent Dolan and Potocki to Jan's house for Matt's laptop. And they have nothing. The laptop only shows that Matt looked up his new parents, his mother's obituary, and various games.

Richard catches Marina's eye. Shakes his head slightly. Nothing yet.

“Please tell me something I can do,” Jan Gabriel pleads. “Please. I have to do something.”

“I understand. Let's go up to your office. Let's have a time to talk—us and the other detectives and Marina if you are okay with that.”

“I want Marina there, yes.”

“Okay, let's go.”

The Cathedral of Learning is a big faux-Gothic building with an institutional ground floor, and for thirty-six floors above it, flights of stairs, corners with stone arches and nooks. There are enough Gothic hidey-holes, offices, classrooms, and restrooms that hundreds of people with suspect intentions could be hiding out. The numbers of thefts each week of computers and audio components and handbags prove that. Marina finds the building very frightening at night, the way it offers odd noises to the easily frightened. Thumps. The occasional voice. Footsteps on stairways.

But tonight there are a group of them moving together.

The ground floor elevator doors open and they get in—Christie, Colleen, and Marina with Jan and Arthur. It's an old elevator. Even with paneled refurbishing, the age shows in the size, the grid above, the rattle as they ascend.

Then they get out and go around two corners to Jan's office.

Richard takes Marina aside. “You can get into the main office, right? The copiers?”

“Yes.”

“Make more flyers.”

Marina hesitates at the door. She whispers, “We don't need more yet. Let me stay.”

He nods briefly.

“Sit, everyone,” he orders. “We need to think. Quiet and calm.” They take their places on chairs, sofa. “Matt was up here today, you said?” he asks the parents. All the while his eyes are searching the room for anything, any kind of sign.

“Yes,” says Arthur. “Together, we were together, waiting for Jan. She was working next door.”

What is there to look for? What else can they examine?

Jan lets out a cry and Marina comes to put an arm around her.

Richard says levelly, “Help me. Think. How was Matt—earlier today? After school? Anything could have happened at school. Someone contacted him, maybe?”

“Things seemed normal when we picked him up,” Jan answers.

“No,” Arthur interrupts. “Remember at dinner. I looked over at you and we both felt worried. He seemed vague, different. I thought it was because I fell asleep in here when we were waiting for you, when I could have been keeping him company.”

“He used my computer,” Jan offers. “He was playing a game when I came in.”

“Turn it on.”

She does, grateful to have an assignment, and Richard moves closer.

“I was logged on all day. I left it on and when I came in he was playing.”

“What about your email?” Marina asks. “He might have used it.”

“Yes, email was up.” Jan types several keys fast, curses at her trembling hands, restarts the password and it goes through.

“Did he—?”

But Marina and the rest of them become aware that Jan is sitting very still. “This … this is my inbox. There's something I didn't see. I mean it's been opened but I didn't open it.” She doesn't even turn around to look at them. “It's from Blackman, our attorney. I've never seen it.” She clicks it open then tells them, “It's the letter from his birth father. It's the TPR. It means … I think Matt saw it.” There is a moment's silence. “He was different at dinner. Sad. This … this explains it. Maybe he's angry, right?” she asks. “Hiding. Run away. Could it be?”

Marina knows that's it. The kid saw the email. Just then her husband's phone rings and he takes it. He listens for a while. “Bring the guy up here.”

“What? What is it?” Jan asks.

“Someone saw a man and boy talking.”

Dolan and Potocki who have been canvassing since their search of the Morris-Gabriel house arrive at Jan's office moments later, ushering in a ragged student. Torn T-shirt and torn jeans, though the tears have a touch of fashion about them. The boy is about nineteen, with unevenly cut hair. He is wearing flip-flops that look cheap and in danger of tripping him up. He comes face to face with her husband who is studying his face.

“You saw something?”

“Maybe.” His voice is light, frightened. “I just saw what looked like a father and son arguing on the lawn and these detectives showed me a picture and I told them, ‘Yes. That's the kid.' I don't know what this is about.”

“Tell us what you saw. What you heard.”

“Didn't hear anything. I wasn't that close and I had my earbuds in. I thought, like, the kid is eating junk food and the father doesn't want him to eat that stuff and he takes the bag from him. Then they walk off together. That's what I saw.”

“What junk food?”

“I don't know. It was like a little white plastic bag. But the kid started out with one hand dipping in it so I figured chips or candy.”

“Where'd they go?”

“I didn't see where they went.”

“Describe the father.”

“Late twenties, early thirties, maybe. Dark hair. Not fat or anything. Jeans and a T-shirt I think, yeah. Regular clothes.”

“Tall, short?”

“Medium. Like what is this, one of those domestic snatches?”

“Oh, God,” Jan cries out.

Richard grabs the kid's shirt. “Get serious here. The man may be dangerous.”

“Didn't look it.”

Potocki says, “The news teams are out in the hallway. They want a piece of something. This guy's story could help.”

Richard says, “Go ahead. Take him.”

Arthur bursts out. “Tell us what we're up against. You think this Zacour drove up here after all?”

Richard shakes his head slightly. “We look at everything, of course. But it isn't my first thought, to be truthful.”

He gets another call and then he says impatiently to Marina, “More flyers. Then join us on thirty-six.”

Marina hurries off to do her other role, whichever one it is, wife, grunt-work cop.

CHRISTIE, POTOCKI, DOLAN,
and Colleen take the Morrises up to the thirty-sixth floor where a security officer is waiting to play them the DVD from the security system that captured the time between seven and nine that evening. It's a wide swatch of time, wider than they need perhaps, so Christie asks if first they can focus on seven thirty to eight thirty.

The scan is slow because the camera makes a full 360 degrees around the Cathedral. It takes in part of the lawn on Bigelow and part of the Student Union and then moves up to get some of Fifth Avenue, focusing fairly tightly on the walkway into the building. Then there's more lawn, after that the Heinz Chapel, after that the Forbes Avenue strip, then back to the lawn around Stephen Foster Memorial. The whole scan takes ninety seconds so what happens in between at any single location is lost. Still, they are hopeful.