Where Are the Children? Read online

  “Yes, I saved it.”

  “Will you get it, please?” she asked him. “I want to see the name on it.”

  Pat was studying her. When Neil left, he spoke over the heads of the other children. “Don’t tell me you put any stock . . .”

  She suddenly felt ridiculous. “Oh, eat up, dear. I guess I just have a case of nerves. It’s people like me who are always wasting policemen’s time. Kit, pass me your plate. I’ll cut up the end piece of the meat loaf just the way you like it.”

  24

  IT WAS ALL GOING SO BADLY. Nothing was working as he’d expected. That foolish woman coming here and then the little girl; having to wait till she woke up, if she woke up, so that he could feel her twisting and pulling from him. Then the boy squirming away from him, hiding. He’d have to find him.

  Courtney had a feeling of everything slipping away from him. His sense of pleasure and expectation had changed to disappointment and resentment. He wasn’t perspiring anymore, but the heavy sweat still clung to his clothes and made them unpleasantly sticky against his body. The thought of the boy’s big blue eyes, so like Nancy’s, didn’t give him anticipatory pleasure.

  The boy was a threat. If he escaped, it would be the end. Better to finish with them both; better to do what he’d done before. In an instant he could remove the threat—seal off air so that lips and nostrils and eyes were covered—and then in a few hours—when the tide was high toss their bodies into the churning surf. No one would know. Then he’d be here safe again with nothing to threaten him; here to enjoy her torment.

  And tomorrow night, with all the threat gone, he’d drive to the mainland. He’d go around dusk, and probably some little girl would be walking alone and he’d tell her he was the new teacher. . . . It always worked.

  His decision made, he felt better. Now all he wanted was to be finished with this threat. That child, recalcitrant like Nancy . . . troublesome . . . ungrateful. . . . wanting to escape . . . he would find him. He’d tie him and then get the thin sheets of velvety plastic. He’d made sure to have a brand that Nancy could have bought at Lowery’s. Then he’d seal it on the boy first, because the boy was so troublesome. And then . . . the little girl . . . right away too. It was too dangerous to even keep her.

  The sense of danger always heightened his perception. Like last time. He hadn’t really known what he would do when he had slipped across the campus to the shopping center. He’d only known that he couldn’t let Nancy take Lisa to the doctor. He’d been there before she arrived, parked on that little supply road between the shopping center and the campus. He’d seen her drive in, speak to the children, go into the store. No cars nearby. Not a soul around. In a moment he’d known what to do.

  The children had been so obedient. They’d looked startled and frightened when he opened the car door, but when he said, “Now, quickly—we’re going to play a game on Mommy for her birthday,” they’d gotten into the trunk and in an instant it was over. The plastic bags slipped over their heads, twisted tight, his hands holding them till they stopped squirming; the trunk shut and he back in school. Less than eight minutes gone in all; the students intent on their lab experiments, no one had missed him. A roomful of witnesses to testify to his presence if need be. That night he’d simply driven the car to the beach and dumped the bodies into the ocean. Opportunity seized, danger averted that day seven years ago, and now danger to be averted again. “Michael, come out, Michael. I’ll take you home to your mother.”

  He was still in the kitchen. Holding the hurricane lamp up, he looked around. There was no place to hide here. The cupboards were all high. But finding the boy in this dark, cavernous house with only this lamp to see by would be infinitely difficult. It would take hours, and where should he begin?

  “Michael, don’t you want to go home to your mother?” he called again. “She didn’t go to God . . . she’s all better . . . she wants to see you.”

  Should he try the third floor and look in those bedrooms first? he wondered.

  But the boy would probably have tried to get to this outside door. He was smart. He wouldn’t have stayed upstairs. Would he have gone to the front door? Better to look there.

  He started into the little hall, then thought of the small back parlor. If the boy had tried the kitchen and heard him coming, that would be the logical place to hide.

  He walked to the doorway of the room. Was that breathing he was hearing, or only the wind sighing against the house? He walked a few steps farther, into the room, holding the kerosene lamp high above his head. His eyes darted, picking objects out of the gloom. He was about to turn around when he swung the lamp to his right.

  Staring at what he was seeing, he let out a high-pitched, hysterical whinny. The shadow of a small figure huddled behind the couch was silhouetted like a giant crouched rabbit across the faded oak floor. “I found you, Michael,” he cried, still giggling, “and this time you won’t get away.”

  25

  THE POWER FAILURE BEGAN as John Kragopoulos turned off Route 6A onto the road that led to The Lookout. Instinctively, he pressed the button under his foot to turn on the bright headlights. Vision was still poor, and he drove carefully, feeling the slick road under the tires and the tendency of the car to skid at the turns.

  He wondered how he could possibly justify looking through that cavernous house for a small lighter. Mr. Parrish could reasonably suggest that he return in the morning or offer to search for it himself and give it to Dorothy if it was found.

  John decided he would go to the door with his flashlight. He’d say that he was quite sure he remembered hearing something drop when he was bending over the telescope. He had meant to check to see if something had slipped out of his pocket. That was reasonable. It was the fourth-floor apartment that he wanted to see anyhow.

  The hilly ascent to The Lookout was treacherous. At the last bend in the road, the front end of the car swayed precariously. John gripped the wheel as the tires grabbed and held the road. He had been within inches of veering onto the sloping embankment and would surely have hit the massive oak tree less than six feet away. A few minutes later, he turned the car into the back driveway of The Lookout, rejecting the alternative of pulling into the comparative shelter of the garage as Dorothy had done. He wanted to be casual, open. If anything his manner should be a bit irritated as though he were being inconvenienced too. He would say that since he had discovered his loss at dinner and was still in town, he’d decided to come right back rather than phone.

  As he got out of the car, he was struck by the foreboding blackness of the big house. Even the top floor was completely dark. Surely the man had hurricane lamps. Power blackouts on the Cape in bad storms couldn’t be unusual. Suppose Parrish had fallen asleep and didn’t realize the electricity had failed? Suppose—just suppose—there’d been a woman visiting him who had not wanted to be seen. It was the first time the possibility had occurred to John.

  Suddenly feeling foolish, he debated about getting back into the car. The sleet stung his face. The wind whipped it under the collar and sleeves of his coat, and the warm satisfaction of the dinner was dispelled. He realized he was chilled and tired and had a long, difficult drive ahead of him. He would look like a fool with his contrived story. Why hadn’t he thought about the possibility that Parrish had a visitor who would be embarrassed at being seen? John decided he was a fool, a suspicious idiot. He and Dorothy had probably interrupted a liaison and nothing more. He’d get away from here before he made a further nuisance of himself.

  He was about to get behind the wheel when he saw a glimmer of light from the far-left kitchen window. It moved swiftly, and a few seconds later he could see it reflected in the windows to the right of the kitchen door. Someone was walking around the kitchen with a lamp.

  Carefully John closed the car door so that it made no slamming sound, only a soft click. Gripping the flashlight, he edged across the driveway to the kitchen window and peered in. The light seemed to be coming from the hall now. Mentally, h
e reviewed the layout of the house. The back staircase was reached through that hall, and so was the small parlor on the other side. Sheltering against the weathered shingles, he moved quickly along the back of the house, past the kitchen door, to the windows that should be those of the small parlor. The glow from the lamp was muted, but as he watched it grew stronger. He shrank back as the lamp became visible, held by an outstretched arm. He could see Courtney Parrish now. The man was searching for something . . . for what? He was calling to someone. John strained to hear. The wind smothered sound, but he could make out the name “Michael.” Parrish was calling, “Michael!”

  John felt chilling fear race along his spinal column. He had been right. The man was a maniac, and those children were somewhere in the house. The lamp he was arching in circles was a spotlight that illuminated the solid thickness of Parrish’s bulk. John felt totally inadequate, aware that he was no physical match for this man. He had only the flashlight as a weapon. Should he go for help? Was it possible Michael had gotten away from Parrish? But if Parrish found him, even a few minutes might make a difference.

  Then, before his horrified eyes, John saw Parrish swing the lamp over to the right and reach behind the couch to pull out a small figure who tried desperately to escape. Parrish put down the lamp and, as John watched, closed both hands around the child’s throat.

  Acting as instinctively as he had when he’d been on combat duty in World War II, John pulled his arm back and smashed the window with his flashlight. As Courtney Parrish spun around, John reached his hand in and forced the lock open. With superhuman strength, he pushed the window up and vaulted over the sill into the room. He dropped the flashlight as his feet hit the floor, and Parrish grabbed for it. Still holding the hurricane lamp in his left hand, Parrish raised the flashlight in his right hand, holding it over his head like a weapon.

  There was no way to escape the inevitable blow. But John ducked and weaved back against the wall for time. Shouting, “Run away, Michael. . . . Call help,” he managed to kick the kerosene lamp from Parrish’s hand an instant before the flashlight crashed down on his skull.

  26

  IT HAD BEEN A MISTAKE to ditch the car. It had been an act of sheer, stupid panic. Rob believed in making your own luck. Today he had made every blunder in the book. When he saw Nancy at the lake, he should have gotten the hell off Cape Cod. Instead, he’d figured that she might be on a trip or stoned and all he had to do was lie low for a day and then go see her and her husband and get some money. Now he’d made a point of placing himself in the vicinity, and her kids were missing.

  Rob had never really believed that Nancy had anything to do with the other kids’ disappearance; but now, who could know? Maybe she did go haywire, just as Harmon used to tell him.

  When he left the car, Rob had headed south toward the main expressway that ran through the center of the Cape. But when a police car whipped past him, he’d doubled back. Even if he could hitch a ride, the odds were they’d have a roadblock at the bridge. It would be better to head toward the bay. There had to be plenty of closed-up summer cottages there. He’d break into one of them and hole up for a while. Most of them probably had some staples left in the kitchen, and he was getting hungry. Then in a couple of days, when the heat was off, he’d find a truck, hide in the back and get off this damned island.

  He shivered as he hurried down the narrow, darkened roads. One good thing: in this shit weather, there wasn’t any danger of running into people out walking. Hardly any cars on the road, either.

  But when he rounded a bend in the road, Rob barely had time to jump back into thick hedges to escape being revealed by the headlights of an approaching car. Breathing harshly, he waited till the automobile had screeched past him. Christ. Another cop car. The place was swarming with them. He’d have to get off the road. It couldn’t be more than a couple of blocks to the beach now. Moving swiftly along the row of hedges, Rob headed toward the clump of woods that edged the back of the houses near him. Less chance of being spotted there, even if it took longer to wind through backyards.

  Suppose Nancy had seen him at the lake? She did look in his direction . . . but maybe not. He’d deny he was there, of course. She was in no state to be a witness about seeing him. Nobody else had. He was sure of that. Except . . . the driver of that station wagon. Probably a local guy . . . Massachusetts plates . . . 8X642. . . . How did he remember that? The reverse. . . . oh, sure . . . 2-4-6-8. He’d noticed that. If Rob did get caught, he could tell the cops about that station wagon. He’d seen it backing out of the dirt road leading from the Eldredge property, and that must have been just around the time the kids disappeared.

  But on the other hand, suppose that station wagon was a regular delivery car that they already knew about? Rob hadn’t seen the driver at all; hadn’t paid attention, really . . . just noticed he was a big, fat guy. If he did get caught and told about the station wagon, he’d only nail himself as having been Johnny-on-the-spot at the Eldredge house.

  No, he wouldn’t admit anything if they got him. He’d say he had been planning to visit Nancy. Then he had seen his picture in that story about the Harmon case and decided to get away. The decision made, Rob felt better. Now if he could just get to the beach and into a cottage . . .

  He hurried, careful to stay well in the shadows of the stark trees; stumbled; swore softly and recovered his balance. This sleet was making the whole damn place as slippery as a skating rink. But he couldn’t have much farther to go. He had to get indoors somewhere, or someone would be sure to spot him. Steadying himself against the icecrusted trees, he tried to move faster.

  27

  THURSTON GIVENS SAT QUIETLY in his glassed-in back porch, watching the storm in the near dark. An octogenarian, he’d always found nor’easters fascinating and knew that he wouldn’t be likely to see them for too many more years. The radio was on very low, and he’d just heard the latest bulletin about the Eldredge children. There was still no trace of them.

  Now Thurston sat staring out toward the back, wondering why young people had to know so much misery. His only child had died at five from flu during the epidemic of 1917.

  A retired realtor, Thurston knew Ray Eldredge well. He’d been a friend of Ray’s father and grandfather, too. Ray was a fine fellow, the kind of man the Cape needed. He was a go-getter and a good realtor—not the kind out to turn a fast buck and the public be damned. Damn shame if anything happened to those little children of his. Nancy certainly didn’t strike Thurston as the type to get mixed up with murdering anyone. There had to be a better answer than that.

  He was drifting into a kind of reverie when some movement in the woods caught his attention. He leaned forward and peered through narrowed eyes. There was someone out there, sliding along, obviously trying to stay hidden. Nobody up to any good was in those woods in this kind of weather, and there’d been a lot of robberies on the Cape, and particularly in this area.

  Thurston reached for the phone. He dialed Police Headquarters. Chief Coffin was an old friend, but, of course, the Chief probably wasn’t there. He must be out on the Eldredge case.

  The phone was answered at the other end, and a voice said, “Adams Port Police Headquarters. Sergeant Poler—”

  Thurston interrupted impatiently. “Thurston Givens here,” he said crisply. “I want you fellows to know there’s a prowler in the woods behind my place and he’s heading towards the bay.”

  28

  NANCY SAT UPRIGHT on the couch, staring straight ahead. Ray had lighted the fire, and the flames were beginning to lick at the thick twigs and broken pieces of branches. Yesterday. It was just yesterday, wasn’t it? She and Michael had been raking the front lawn.

  “This is the last time we’ll have this job this winter, Mike,” she’d said. “I guess just about all the leaves are down now.”

  He’d nodded soberly. Then, without her telling him, he’d picked out the biggest chunks of branch and thick twigs from the pile of leaves. “These are good for fires,” he
commented. He’d dropped the iron rake, and it had fallen with the metal prongs facing upward. But when Missy came running from the driveway, he’d quickly turned over the rake. With an apologetic half-smile he’d said, “Daddy always says it’s dangerous to leave a rake like that.”

  He was so protective of Missy. He was so good. He was so like Ray. Nancy realized that in some incredible way there was comfort in knowing that Mike was with Missy. If there was any way to do it, he’d take care of her. He was such a resourceful little kid. If they were outside somewhere now, he’d make sure that her jacket was zipped up. He’d try to cover her. He’d. . . .

  “Oh, God.”

  She didn’t know she’d spoken aloud until Ray looked up startled. He was sitting in his big chair. His face looked so strained. He seemed to know that she didn’t want him to touch her now—that she needed to assimilate and evaluate. She must not believe that the children were dead. They could not be dead. But they must be found before anything happened.

  Dorothy was watching her too. Dorothy, who suddenly looked so much older and so lost. She had taken Dorothy’s affection and love without giving in return. She had held Dorothy at arm’s length, made it clear that Dorothy was not to intrude on their closed family circle. She didn’t want the children to have a grandmother substitute. She didn’t want anyone to replace Mother.

  I have been selfish, Nancy thought. I have not seen herneed. How odd that it was so clear now. How odd to even think about that now when they were sitting here, so helpless, so powerless. Then why was something reassuring her? Why was she feeling some tiny lick of hope? What was the source of her comfort?