Alex (19 page)
"Daddy, I don't like that black hat."
He felt an instant of sharp frustration, but then Ian's heart quickened.
"My ski mask?
The one I used when I was shoveling?"
"The eyes are scary on that black hat.
Will you leave it inside, please?"
His mind groped for explanations, desperate.
"Did Kelly have a ski mask?
Is that what you mean?"
The bowl returned; the car seat disappeared.
Alex was smiling.
"I'm glad you're feeling better, Daddy."
He went downstairs and went through every file he had from the time of the investigation, looking for a woman named Kelly or any sign that Eston hadn't acted alone.
He Googled "Kelly Eston," "Leroy Eston Kelly," "Kelly Shakopee Minnesota," even "Kelly Eston black hat" and "Kelly" by itself.
He scoured Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, WhitePages.com.
If he'd found nothing, it would have been easier.
There were dozens of possibilities, hundreds of permutations of the name and location.
He pored over all of them for some sign of a person who could kidnap and murder a little boy, but of course that was far too broad a criteria.
None of them were related by blood, as far as he could tell, to Eston.
None of them appeared to have a public criminal record.
He couldn't place any of them in Shakopee on the day Alex was found; not with the tools he was familiar with.
Some of them were even men, a possibility he hadn't considered before he sat down.
Every hit eroded his resolution, made him doubt what he had heard the night before.
I'm so desperate to believe his spirit is here, and here for a reason, that now my mind is making things up,
he realized.
It's my subconscious, or something.
I was already seeing things, but I was trying to get away from it, and now it's given me something to look for.
Something to believe I can affect, so I'll stop trying to get away.
He imagined going to one of the women's homes, demanding to know where they had been the first week of April.
Maybe he'd see Leroy Eston again while he was there, insisting that she was the one, that she had helped kill Alex, and then Ian could sneak in through her window the next night with his gun -
His stomach lurched.
Oh god.
The thought was sobering as a bucket of water to the face.
He closed the search windows, shut down the computer.
As the monitor fell dark he saw his own face reflected, with the utility room door standing behind it.
Despite sleeping all day, he was yawning as he came up the stairs.
He grabbed a banana and a yogurt from the fridge, and ate them both at the table as he fought to stay awake awhile longer.
Okay, so he wouldn't go to anyone's house.
That would be crazy.
But did that mean he had to forget what he had heard altogether?
What if it really meant something?
What if Alex had shown it to him for a reason?
Alex didn't show it to you.
You are seeing things, and your brain made that up.
Fine, maybe.
But even then.
Even then.
He still heard the name.
What if it meant something?
He fought past his own raging skepticism and stubbornly explored the idea.
There was nothing in the stuff Ian had saved about Eston possibly having an accomplice, but that didn't mean the police hadn't had their own suspicions.
Maybe he had seen the name somewhere, during the investigation, and his subconscious was trying to remind him of it.
An off-hand comment during a news report, or a scrawled post-it stuck to a police report.
Maybe he could call Detective Olson, the chief detective on Alex's case, and ask him -
What?
Ask him
what?
I'm not going to tell him that I saw the ghost of Leroy Eston in my son's old room.
And if I don't tell him that then I have nothing to say.
"Fuck," he muttered.
He put his elbow on the table and rested his head in his hand.
He stayed that way for several minutes as endless scenarios played through his head, all of them ending in madness.
Finally he sighed and stood up.
The clock on the microwave read
11:34
.
It was getting late, and Alex hadn't started screaming.
Ian regarded this information with a sharp sigh of relief.
He hadn't wanted to go back to seeing his son everywhere he went, but if it meant being able to sleep at night again, he would accept the tradeoff.
That meant, of course, that he had to decide what to do tomorrow.
The sudden memory of that morning's conversation with Justin made his stomach turn.
Part of him wanted to crawl into his room and hide. The job market was horrible right now.
There was no guarantee he'd find anything else quickly enough to keep the house without Alina's support.
He couldn't afford to lose his job, yet surely that was what happened this morning?
A moment ago he'd been pondering his growing madness; now, he considered the very real possibility that he'd end up on the street.
The two ideas had a dreadful synergy.
He had to hold on to his job.
There was no reason to believe that Justin was actually having an affair with Sheila.
And he'd hung up too quickly to determine whether his threat alone had had any effect.
But it might have.
Justin was many things, but at his heart, Ian was sure he was a wuss.
Ian hadn't meant to threaten him.
It had just come out.
Now it was there, and he was either going to own it or run from it.
Fuck it,
he decided.
If Justin was really going to fire him, Ian would find out about it as soon as he got to work.
It would hardly be the most embarrassing situation he'd ever encountered at a workplace.
Go in, go to my desk, work like nothing happened.
His stomach roiled.
He ignored it and went to bed.
The alarm went off at 6:30.
He snoozed it until 7, then got up, took a shower, and got dressed.
He didn't see Alex.
He got to work about ten to.
The roiling in his gut from the night before had become full-fledged somersaults.
When the elevator passed him and went down to the basement like it always seemed to do, he was grateful for the delay.
The sensation of the floor falling away was amplified; as the doors slid open on his floor, he felt a clammy wave of nausea wash over him.
He forced his feet to carry him down the row toward his cube, his eyes glued to the floor.
Don't look at Justin's cube.
Just walk past.
Don't look.
Don't look up.
He looked up.
Justin was in his cubicle, one of the supervisor ones with the clear walls.
His eyes met Ian's for just an instant.
Then he looked back to his computer screen, the color draining from his face.
Ian averted his eyes as if he'd just caught the other man picking his nose.
"Wow, Colmes," Sheila said.
As usual, she wasn't on a call.
She was dressed modestly, for a change: a loose skirt that hung to mid-calf, and no cleavage.
"Not just on time, but five minutes early."
She was smiling, like it was a joke, and for the first time he wondered if maybe she wasn't the bitch he always treated her as.
Maybe she was just teasing, trying to be friendly and fit in.
If so, she wasn't very good at taking hints.
"Morning," he answered.
He pushed the power button, tapped in his username and password, and watched the screen go dark.
He didn't realize he had been holding his breath, waiting to see if his access had been revoked, until his desktop popped up.
Four faces from last Halloween, pocked with little icons.
Brown eyes, brown eyes, brown eyes, blue.
He blew out a long, slow breath and logged into his phone.
Lunchtime.
"Hello, you've reached Shauna Douglas.
I'm not available at the moment, but please leave your information and I'll return your call.
If you have your session number, that would help me as well.
Thanks."
BEEP.
"Hi, Shauna, this is Ian Colmes from your Wednesday night counseling session at the junior high in Champlin?
I'm sorry, I don't have the session number.
But I'm sure..."
I'm sure you'll remember me, I'm the guy who got into a huge fight with his wife and accused her of essentially murdering her son through negligence.
"...ahm, you probably remember me.
I just wanted to check with someone, and if you wouldn't be the right person, maybe you could let me know... but I am looking into FMLA at work.
I have been having these extreme bouts of... I don't know, depression I guess, and it can get really bad.
It's making me miss work and now I'm in trouble because of my attendance, basically."
He rubbed his temple.
He hadn't intended to go into this much detail.
"I just... so basically I just need, um, someone to sign this form about my situation so I can get approved and hopefully not lose my job over this.
I'm hoping you can help me with that, if not, maybe you can point me in the right direction?
I'd appreciate any help you can give me."
He left his cell phone number and hung up, feeling like an awkward jackass.
He glanced at Justin's cube as he left for the day, but it was empty.
The man hadn't so much as e-mailed him.
Ian wasn't sure what that meant, but whatever it was, he was willing to accept it.
A small crowd was milling quietly at the elevator.
It was Friday, and no one could wait to get out of this place.
Ian joined them, wondering what he would do with his weekend.
He deeply regretted the things he'd said to Alina; he yearned to ease the pain he'd given her, but didn't know how.
If she wanted to end their marriage, he wouldn't stop her, but he didn't want her believing that he'd meant anything he'd said on Wednesday.
He hadn't.
He had agreed to let Alex walk home.
It didn't matter whose idea it was.
Obviously, it had been a mistake, but it was as much his as it was hers.
If she wouldn't listen to him on the phone, maybe he could write her a letter.
Try to explain.
But that prospect was quickly swept into an eddying current of clashing questions.
How much should he tell her?
Should he mention Alex, or Eston?
Should he gloss over the reasons he couldn't sleep?
He could take the dream angle, as he had with Derek.
But he
hated
the idea of lying to her.
He wanted to share the truth with someone.
And he trusted her.
God, it would be good to hear her talking about this problem, working with him to figure out the best way to handle it.
Maybe she even saw Alex too.
Maybe she -
Justin said, "Ian."
Ian whipped around.
His boss was standing behind him.
"Do you have a minute?"
