Dead Silence Read online

  For the first time, the Angler allows himself to doubt his instincts. What if something really is wrong?

  He thinks of Pascal’s wee-hour abdominal pain. Remembers, with a sickening twist in his own stomach, how he’d dosed—overdosed?—the boy with sticky purple medicine.

  “What’s going on?” he asks the nurse.

  “They’ll explain upstairs.”

  What if the cops are waiting for him? What if they know about the purple medicine? What if they know about everything else?

  Thank goodness he’d been careful, resisting the urge to use something stronger on Pascal as he does on the other boy. No, he wouldn’t administer Rohypnol to this child, even though he knows that it would never be detected in routine bloodwork unless it was suspected and sent to a forensic lab.

  The doors slide open and several people get off. The nurse steps in.

  “Coming?” he asks, a hand on the doors to keep them from closing.

  The Angler nods, resisting the urge to bolt.

  They ride to the fourth floor in silence.

  Surely this isn’t some kind of elaborate trap.

  If it is . . .

  I’ll deny everything. They’ll have no evidence. I’ve covered my tracks.

  What about the computer search? He’s almost positive he hadn’t erased it. He’d been eager to escape the house, so exhausted, concerned that he’d left the boy alive out there in the orchard . . .

  Dammit. Dammit!

  He’s always been careful to clear his computer activity, so cautious about where he disposed of the remains. The few girls who’d turned up over the past decade had been too decomposed for identification or had been such lost souls that not even the authorities seemed to care who they’d been or how they’d died.

  It was different with Monique, though. She has a family, and they haven’t given up on finding her. Early on, he’d taken great pleasure in lurking on their social media pages as they chased leads that would never go anywhere. Photos and sketches of the wholesome teen who’d disappeared four years ago bear little resemblance to the gaunt corpse he dumped into the lake.

  There’s no way, absolutely no way, that anyone could have found her there.

  And her son . . .

  No one on this earth knows she even had a child. Now that she’s gone, no one cares about him—cares that he existed. No one is looking for him. If he’s found, no one will ever know his name.

  The elevator stops, and the doors slide open with a ding.

  The nurse steps out, again giving him an expectant look. He forces himself to step out, to follow along another corridor. The nurse stops and opens a door, gesturing. “Go ahead in.”

  The room beyond is shielded from view, shades drawn over the wall of glass.

  He has no choice but to cross the threshold, bracing himself for police.

  But it’s an ordinary waiting room—a wall television tuned to CBC News, a low table with magazines surrounded by a cluster of chairs, all empty. Cecile, the sole occupant, turns toward the door, hope and dread mingling on her face until she sees that it’s only him.

  She’s impeccably dressed as always, in a black cardigan, dark jeans, and heeled boots. But she looks pale and washed-out—no cosmetics, he notes with surprise. She doesn’t leave the house without eyeliner and lipstick—or accessories, for that matter. She’s fond of hoop earrings and silk scarves, yet her neck and earlobes are bare.

  “It took you so long.”

  “I came as fast as I could.”

  “The plant is fifteen minutes from here.”

  His house is thirty-five without sun glare and brake lights. It had taken him nearly an hour.

  “There was traffic. Where is Pascal?”

  “In surgery.”

  “Surgery!” He turns to the nurse, but the man has disappeared down the hallway. Slowly, he faces Cecile again. “Why is he in surgery?”

  She says something, but her accent makes it difficult to comprehend.

  “Did you say it’s his appendix?”

  “Oui. They are taking it out now. What if it is too late?” She clasps a fist to her colorless, trembling lips and spins away.

  He turns to leave the room, notes that someone is about to enter, and instead moves toward Cecile, placing his hands on her shoulders. She stiffens.

  “It will be all right, my darling.”

  There had been a time when he might have said just that, perhaps even without benefit of a witness. But he’s long since lost any affection he once felt—or at least feigned—for her.

  He expects her to recoil, but her shoulders slacken beneath his hands. She turns slightly to rest her head on his shoulder, and there’s nothing to do but embrace her. He pretends not to see the person in the doorway.

  Whoever it is—a woman—clears her throat. Cecile pulls back, spots her, and is once again seized by that anticipatory expression of trepidation tinged with optimism.

  “Dr. Lee. How did it go?”

  The Angler turns to see a small woman in surgical scrubs and cap, a mask dangling from her neck. She strides toward them, briefly introduces herself to him as the surgeon who’d been about to operate on Pascal.

  “About to operate?” Cecile sinks into a chair, braced for bad news. Her voice is high-pitched, frantic.

  The surgeon turns to the Angler. “Please, sit.”

  He forces himself to sit beside Cecile and to place his hand over hers on the wooden arm between them in a show of husbandly/fatherly concern.

  Dr. Lee tells them that Pascal’s appendix had become inflamed and perforated, leaking pus. His body had sealed it off in an attempt to isolate the infection, resulting in a bacteria-filled abscess surrounding the organ.

  “While the usual treatment for an inflamed or ruptured appendix would be surgical removal, an abscess creates a significant complication risk.”

  “But you cannot just leave it!”

  The Angler resists the urge to slap Cecile.

  Dr. Lee explains that they’ve started Pascal on triple intravenous antibiotic therapy. He’ll remain hospitalized for at least a week, maybe longer, depending on how the infection responds. If all goes well, they’ll schedule the appendectomy.

  “Any questions?”

  Cecile has many. The Angler remains silent, pretending to listen.

  So he’d been wrong about Cecile’s mental disorder. She hadn’t exaggerated her son’s illness—at least, not this time.

  His thoughts drift back to the boy in the orchard.

  Staggering coincidence. One son dead, the other clinging to life, all within twenty-four hours.

  “How did this happen?” his wife is asking. “It was something he ate, oui?”

  “No, that’s very unlikely.”

  “He did not catch it from me,” she tells the surgeon.

  “Oh, it’s not contagious. Nothing like that.”

  “It is hereditary, then? Because we have never had this in my family.”

  “We’ve never had it in mine, either.” The Angler fights to keep his tone level, when he wants to spit at her.

  “How would you know? You have no family.”

  The surgeon clears her throat. “Appendicitis isn’t a congenital condition. There are only theories on what causes it.”

  Purple pediatric syrup can’t possibly be one of them. If anything, the medicine had allowed the boy to get some sleep so that he’d been rested before this ordeal.

  That makes two of us.

  “I’ll send someone to escort you to Pascal’s room as soon as he’s settled,” the surgeon says, and is gone.

  Left alone with Cecile, he watches her rub her eyes with both her hands. When she looks up, he is again caught off guard by her appearance. Her unblemished complexion is sallow in the fluorescent light, and a web of faint wrinkles surrounds her eyes.

  He hasn’t been attracted to her in years, nor, he supposes, has he truly looked at her. Now that he has, he feels repelled. She’s transformed into a plain, middle-aged woma
n, the epitome of the very ordinariness he’d once coveted.

  The novelty has long since worn off.

  But she’ll never give him a divorce without a bitter struggle—lawyers, financial disclosure, the kind of scrutiny he’s managed to avoid thus far. She needs him—as provider, if nothing else.

  He supposes he needs her as well. Needs what she and the children represent. No one would ever suspect a hardworking family man of what he’s done.

  “Renee,” she says suddenly, looking up at him.

  He frowns. Has she somehow mistaken him for their daughter? Is this some kind of mental breakdown? Ah, there would be his ticket out of this marriage, this life.

  “I called the school earlier and sent her home with a friend. You will need to pick her up, make her dinner, check her homework.”

  He shakes his head. That’s always been her department, not his—shuttling the children around, feeding them, anything to do with school.

  “Go. She cannot stay alone, and I will not leave Pascal!”

  “He’ll be here for days. I have a job to go to.” A trip to make; a body to bury.

  “You do not work on weekends.”

  She’s right. He’d lost track of which day it is.

  He weighs his options.

  He can walk out of here, get into his car, and keep right on driving. He can forget about Cecile and her demands, about Pascal, and Renee . . .

  Forget all of them, and this life, forever. He can leave town, leave the country, start anew.

  Five minutes later, he exits the hospital, car keys clasped so hard that his palm may be bleeding. Striding toward the car, he catches sight of the young girl, still sitting on the bench.

  She’s no longer reading, but has her phone in hand, texting.

  His legs break stride of their own accord.

  She looks up, seeing him.

  “Are you all right?” he asks, and she looks around, uncertain whether he’s talking to her.

  “Me? Yeah. Why?”

  He shrugs. “Just making sure. This is a hospital.”

  “I’m waiting for my mom. She’s visiting my grandpa. I’m not allowed to—” Her phone buzzes, and she glances down. “Good, she’s coming. About time.”

  She stands, gathering her book and backpack. When she shoots him a sidewise look, he realizes he’s rooted, staring at her. He forces himself to walk on toward his car without a backward glance.

  If her mother weren’t coming . . .

  There are others, though, out there. Others just like her.

  Chapter Eight

  Jessie looks up from her laptop as Billy descends the stairs for the third time in an hour.

  “Still asleep?” she asks.

  “Looks that way, unless he’s faking it. How’s the work going?”

  “Oh, you know . . . it’s work. But I’m done.”

  She’d spent today catching up on endless forms and paperwork, and finally just finished reconstructing the report she’d lost the other night when the power went out. She saves it to her hard drive, closes her laptop, and glances at her watch. It’s well past six o’clock.

  Theodore will be home soon. He stays late at school on Fridays for the computer club they’d convinced him to join in an effort to make some new friends. Well, any friends at all. When she asks him about the weekly meetings, he answers in broad terms and refuses to elaborate.

  Oh, Theodore. Sometimes, I don’t feel equipped to help you navigate this world. On days like this, I don’t know how I’m doing it myself.

  “Do you think he’s okay, Jess?”

  She looks up at Billy, thinking he’s read her thoughts and is talking about their son until she sees his worried glance toward the stairs.

  “Little Boy Blue? He’s probably just exhausted after all he’s been through. But I’ll look in on him. I have to go up and get my phone to check my email. Though I have to say, it was a nice afternoon without it. Amazing how much more productive I am when I’m not distracted by online stuff.”

  “Then you’re going to get a lot done, because I doubt the Wi-Fi repairman is going to show today.”

  “You’re probably right. Good thing Theodore can get online using his cell phone while it’s down.”

  “And use up our entire monthly data allotment? No way. He’ll have to wait.”

  “Come on, Billy, Theodore’s going to have a hard enough time this weekend as it is, with . . .” She nods at the second floor. “He’ll be even more upset if he can’t escape to the internet.”

  “So you want to pay for something we can’t afford because he’ll be upset? Would we have done that with Chip and Petty?”

  “He isn’t Chip and Petty.”

  Billy sighs and settles into the worn recliner. “We always seem to be reminding each other of that, don’t we?”

  How many variations of this conversation have they had since Theodore came to live with them? Will they ever be able to define the line between accommodating special needs and spoiling him?

  Billy is scrolling through his cell phone again. He’s been compulsively checking it all day, and she knows what he’s looking for. “Anything new?”

  “Nothing. He doesn’t fit any missing child reports.”

  “If nobody’s noticed by now, then nobody cares. You know who we need? Mimi.”

  He blinks. “She’s a genealogist, not a detective.”

  “Hello, she’s an investigative genealogist? That is a detective. Figuring out where people belong is what she does for a living. I bet she’d be able to—”

  “Whoa, we’re just the fosters. I’m not working this investigation. And you are definitely not working it, with or without Mimi.”

  “Yeah, don’t worry, Ricky Ricardo. We aren’t going to barge on stage at the Tropicana and muck up your career.”

  “Not to change the subject, Lucy, but what were you thinking for dinner?”

  “Broiled chicken and salad for us. A vegan hot dog for Theodore.” He’d stopped eating poultry when Espinoza came along. “Oh, and I’m going to make some buttered egg noodles.”

  His face lights. “I love buttered egg noo—”

  “Not for you, for Little Boy Blue. I’m hoping he’ll be hungry when he wakes up.”

  “I am. I’m starved.”

  “Oh, for . . .” She shakes her head. “You just had a snack.”

  “You mean that tiny bag of microwave popcorn? It was only a hundred calories. I’m a big guy. I need—”

  “To be a smaller guy. That’s what you need, unless you have a death wish, and I swear to God, Billy, if you keel over and leave me now with this leaky roof and the rooster fiasco and no Wi-Fi, I will kill you. Again,” she adds when he opens his mouth. “Just to make sure you’re good and dead. And don’t you dare even think about haunting me.”

  He flashes a wry smile. “So sweet. Love you, too, babe.”

  She sighs and heads for the stairs. “I’m just trying to take care of you.”

  Of everyone.

  She shares with Little Boy Blue something that no other child who’s come into this house—including her biological children and even her adopted son—can ever understand, something even Billy can’t fully fathom, nor Si back in his lucid years. Of all the people she’s ever known and loved in her life, only Mimi grasps the complex emotions that accompany being a foundling, and the irony in the term itself. Some days—most days—you feel far more lost than found.

  As she puts her foot on the first step, she hears cellophane crinkling in the living room. She tiptoes back to see him pop something into his mouth. “Hey! What is that?”

  The answer is thick with sticky-sweet crunch.

  “Billy, are you kidding me? You’re eating a doughnut after the cardiologist told you that’s one of the worst things you can put into your body?”

  He finishes chewing and swallowing. “No! You know I swore off doughnuts.”

  “Oh, good. You had me worried.” Seeing a guilty tinge in his eyes, she narrows hers at him. “
What was it?”

  “Zagnut. They had them in the hospital vending machine. What? Don’t look at me like that. It was a long night.”

  “And you’re going to have a short life if you die of a heart attack.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t want to die of starvation, either.”

  “Believe me, you won’t—” She breaks off at a knock on the door. “Theodore must have forgotten his key.”

  “He never forgets anything. It’s probably the caseworker. Or the Wi-Fi repairman.”

  “Oh, right.”

  Someone is silhouetted through the frosted glass. She opens the door to an astounding sight.

  “Thirty years, and the doorbell is still out of order?” Mimi asks with a laugh, and Jessie throws her arms around her.

  “Holy crap—are you magical? I was just wishing you were here, and you appeared!”

  “You invited me, remember?”

  “Yes, but . . . what about your anniversary?” She holds the door open so that Mimi can step into the vestibule, with its ancient mosaic tile floor and cedar-lined coat closet that holds everything but coats. Those, they drape over the antique coat tree in the foyer.

  “Aaron and I already celebrated. He, uh . . . threw us a party.”

  “That’s . . . great. How sweet.”

  “I’m sorry, Jess. I wish I’d known about it. I would’ve made sure you were invited.”

  “If you’d known about it, it wouldn’t have been a surprise party.” She forces a smile, trying not to take the slight personally.

  Jessie had gotten along well with Aaron in the early days, and she’d thought he was good for Mimi. But as his wife matured and became successful with her own business, Aaron had changed. Or maybe it’s Mimi who’s changed, and Jessie along with her. Maybe Aaron has always been somewhat rigid, self-satisfied, and a little too urbane for her taste.

  The few times he’d accompanied his wife on an Ithaca “getaway,” it had been pretty obvious that he couldn’t wait to get home.

  “He’s a New Yorker,” Billy had reminded her. “A commercial litigation attorney. Things are different there. To him, we’re country bumpkins.”