Noah's Rainy Day (42 page)

Mom grabbed the handles of my wheelchair and pushed me toward the door that led to the garage. I heard her go back to the counter and grab her car keys and then go into the living room.

“… unconfirmed reports that it might be a kidnapping. No news so far on the boy. It has been more than twenty-four hours since his disappearance and all of America is hoping and praying for his safe return …”

“Noah, I am so proud of you for sticking with it.”

Great, but Mom, we’ve got to move,
I demanded in my head.

“I didn’t understand what you were trying to tell me. Now I understand. You were trying to tell me that Sammy was the missing boy from the television, weren’t you?”

I smiled tenuously at my mom, my eyes darting upward.
Move fast, Mom.

“Well, I’m proud of you, Noah.” Her voice was shaky. “Now, let’s get that boy some help.”

Finally!

I felt my mom unbuckle my harness and slip a coat over my arms—again—and a cap on my head. She tucked a thick blanket around me and strapped me back into my harness, scooping my blue chair from the wheelchair frame and carrying me into the garage.

I heard the little blond boy on the television run back and forth from the camera to the slide, wave and greet his parents, giggling throughout the clip. I heard the giggle. It was a very distinct giggle. Contagious. Happy.

“Oh my God,” my mom choked. “It really is the same child.”

Yes, Mom,
I said, flashing her a sad smile.

While she strapped me into the backseat, Mom explained, “We’re going straight to the Denver Police Department, Noah, to tell them all about this. That the girl, Sammy, is really Maximillian Bennett Williams III. I told Auntie Liv on the phone and she said she’d look into it right away. Dad’s meeting us down there. They’ll want our statement. They’ll want to talk with you.”

I moaned, offering a smile.

She closed my door and ran around to the driver’s side and slid in behind the wheel. I saw the garage door open as she started the car, easing us out of the garage into the dark night.

“Oh, darn it. I forgot the bath. The water’s running.”

My mom opened her door, dashed back inside the house through the garage, leaving me in the purring minivan in the driveway.

Then I heard it.

The garage door creaked open next door and a car pulled out. I heard the car stop in the driveway and the garage door close. As the car idled, I heard screaming from inside the car. It was Sammy. Little Max. I was sure of that. Mr. Fletcher was taking him somewhere.

I started to yell for my mom but all I managed to do was push my stocking cap over my eyes again. I felt tears welling in my eyes and my throat go raw from my screams. I couldn’t help it. I was scared. For Sammy. For myself.

The next thing I heard chilled me to my bones.

A car door opened.

Boots crunched through snow coming closer.

I quit my attempts at yelling and held my breath to stop the tears so I could hear what was happening outside the minivan. A rush of cold air blasted my face.

Someone had opened my car door.

Clammy, unfamiliar hands were unbuckling my seat and pulling me into the cold air.

And it wasn’t my mom.

IT WAS TIME
.

He hated to do it, but it was time to say good-bye. It was not his fault. It was that nosey neighbor lady and her husband. They had seen Sammy earlier today playing outside and then came over with the cookies to check on Sammy.

But her eyes had betrayed her.

And then she made a mistake, a big mistake. She ran off and left her son alone in the car. And the broken boy had seen everything. He would have ignored the entire mess, but the boy’s eyes made him nervous. Actually, this kid’s haunting gray eyes totally freaked him out. It was his mother’s ghost, he was sure. She had come back to haunt him, to judge him, after seven relatively peaceful years, through the broken boy.

The lady next door was the reason his time with Sammy had been shorter than he’d planned. He wanted more.

So much more.

She would lose her boy just like he had to lose his. He didn’t want to draw more attention to himself and was already terrified of getting caught. The smart thing would be to ignore the boy, pretend he didn’t exist. But
then when he came back home, the broken boy would still be next door, judging him with those eyes.

He tried to decide what was best.

Surely the kid wouldn’t be missed. He was broken. His parents had the redheaded girl. They would forget about the broken boy in time. Besides, this kid was possessed. By his dead mother. They shared the same murky gray eyes.

And without Sammy, there was no proof that he had done anything wrong.

But he would be thankful for the time he’d had with Sammy.

Sammy was special.

A gift.

He was different from the others.

Sammy was the son he’d never had. The son he wished he could have been for his own parents. Innocent and good. Compliant and carefree. Maybe if he’d been more like Sammy when he was a kid, his parents would have treated him more kindly. Maybe. If only he’d been obedient. Like Sammy.

Obedient to the end.

The screams of his parents still ricocheted in the corners of his mind.

The sound would quiet, eventually.

It always did.

I DON’T KNOW HOW
long I was with Frances and Gabriel, but it seemed like an eternity. My sister was a mess and I wasn’t much better. Noah was their world and my earth angel. My mind could not wrap itself around the idea that his fate was in the hands of a monster like Fletcher.

As the story unfolded, we all realized Noah had figured it out. He’d known all along. I should have listened more closely to Frances earlier today, asked more questions. She was thinking the same thing. Blaming herself.

I had to make this right.

Elizabeth and Michael were upstairs with Emma in her room. Gabriel had called them right away. We might have needed Emma’s help, but she certainly didn’t need to be a part of all the drama that was going on down here. She didn’t need to know that her big brother, Noah, was missing.

Frances grabbed my hand right before I left the house and had me say a prayer together with Gabriel. She prayed for little Max. She prayed for Noah’s safe return. She prayed that while Noah was gone he wouldn’t have a seizure or need his medication. She prayed for me, thanked God for having me here with her on the case to find Noah.

I felt totally helpless and inadequate.

Frances was another one of my earth angels. But even God couldn’t
keep me from getting booted off this case. I was too personally involved. Way too personally involved. And despite all my sister’s prayers, there was no way her dream that I help would come true.

I had to face the music and let Streeter do what he needed to do.

As I approached the car parked in front of Fletcher’s house, I wiped my puffy eyes and took a deep breath. Streeter was standing by Agent Steve Knapp, who was sitting quietly behind the wheel of the Bureau car with his window rolled down.

I heard Streeter ask, “Any word from Mills?”

Knapp shook his massive head. “Nope. He’s around the corner watching for Fletcher.”

They saw me. Their expressions changed. I hadn’t seen either one look like this before. I must have looked frightful.

Streeter wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “You shouldn’t be out here.”

“I have to be out here.”

I thought he would send me back inside, reminding me this case had just become a conflict of interest for me. I didn’t think I could take it if he pulled me off the case. We looked at each other for a long moment. His blue eyes with a soft greenish tint to them were filled with understanding, not judgment or pity.

“We’re going inside,” Streeter said to Knapp.

Somehow, I knew Streeter would understood what I felt, what I was going through in a situation this personal. And he knew I had to follow this through to the end. He knew I needed him to bend the rules for me.

“Do you really think he’ll come back?”

“Eventually. He doesn’t know we’re onto him about little Max. He’ll come back and have some alibi for his whereabouts tonight that explains why he had nothing to do with Noah’s disappearance. Remember what Jack described? He’s bold, above the law. He thinks we’re too stupid to figure this out.”

“I hope you’re right. It’s been two hours since Noah was taken. And no one has seen Fletcher’s car. It’s too late, isn’t it?”

Streeter wrapped his arms around me. I couldn’t handle this. Noah was everything to me. I couldn’t imagine a worse pain, even if he wasn’t my own
flesh and blood. And I understood why Jack refused to be here, wanted to stay with Chief Gates in case they found Fletcher. He couldn’t bear to see the pain in my sister’s eyes, in Gabriel’s face, or in mine.

“Don’t think that way, Liv,” Streeter was saying, holding me in his arms, the horrors of the world falling away under his protection. “He’ll be back. In the meantime, Tony has every officer in the city out looking for his car.”

To Agent Knapp, Streeter said, “Park across the street at that house. Give us a heads-up if you spot Fletcher’s car. Don’t let him get away if he spots you or Mills. Hopefully he won’t even notice you two and he’ll drive right into the garage where we’ll be waiting for him.”

Knapp grinned and nodded once as he rolled up the window. It was nearly 10:30 and the temperature was dropping rapidly.

Streeter released me and hitched his thumb toward the house, saying, “Ready to see what Fletcher is all about?”

“Not really,” I answered honestly. I would never be comfortable going into that monster’s den. Worse, he was a monster who had my defenseless nephew at his mercy. I sighed, “But thanks for letting me stay on the case. Let’s go.”

Phil Kelleher had already picked the locks on the front door and was waiting for Streeter’s instructions.

“Careful, now. If he thought we were on to him, the house could be booby-trapped,” Streeter said.

Guns drawn, we entered through the front door.

My first impression was of the overwhelmingly stuffy and pungent odor that hung in the air. It was sweet and acrid at the same time. I was not at all familiar with this odor but thought for some reason I should be.

“What the hell is that smell?”

“You don’t want to know,” Streeter answered, searching the living room, moving quickly through the kitchen and every room on the main floor.

“Smells like a cross between Vaseline and body odor,” I answered, wrinkling my nose in disgust.

“Close.”

I got it. It was the smell of body odor, Vaseline, and semen. I thought I was going to lose it. If I did, surely Streeter would send me back to my
sister’s house to wait this out. I took a deep breath and moved forward. I had to focus on little Max and the monster, work the case, and pretend Noah wasn’t involved.

“And bleach. Do you all smell bleach?” I asked, worried that we might be too late.

Streeter cut a look in my direction as he moved to the base of the stairs, shaking his head to indicate the main floor was unoccupied, clear. A faint, reassuring curl to his lip appeared. He understood that I was working hard to be an agent, not an aunt.

The house was decorated in burnt oranges and avocado greens, not a contemporary décor, but outdated and tired. The furniture was used and abused, chairs stained, table warped, and sofa damaged and sagging.

We walked up the stairs and into the two small bedrooms and bath, careful not to touch a thing since nothing had been dusted for prints yet or scanned for fluids. The first bedroom on the right was definitely Jason Fletcher’s. It had a double bed, bedding bunched in a pile, and a single dresser with a thirteen-inch TV on top, with a hanger sticking out the top wadded with aluminum foil. No cable. The walls were blank except for a crucifix and a picture of a man and woman, presumably Fletcher’s parents. They looked like middle-class Americans, white-bread, God-fearing folks. The closet door was open and the clothes were askew. It looked like a bachelor’s bedroom.

The bathroom was at the top of the stairs and was quite unremarkable—tub and shower, commode and sink. The wallpaper was white with gold and orange butterflies, yellowing with age and peeling away at the seams.

The second bedroom was small: another double bed and a small lamp beside the bed. The closet and drawers were closed, and everything was neat and tidy, except for some toys scattered on the floor. My gut wrenched for poor little Max. I looked out the window and saw Noah’s room across the short stretch of lawns, which were separated by a wooden-slat fence between the houses.

“Little Max stayed in this room,” I said. “Noah must have seen the boy yesterday. That’s what he was probably trying to tell Emma and my sister.”

And I noticed he’d made his bed, tried to clean up his room before he left, the covers rumpled as if a child had made it, not an adult.

I said, “He’s not planning on bringing little Max back, is he?”

Streeter and Phil exchanged a look.

My heart sank. I swallowed hard so I wouldn’t cry. Work, damn it! My eyes flew to the window, imagining a deep breath of fresh air.

I pointed out the window to the second floor of the house next door, my sister’s house. “Gabriel installed that picture window so Noah could lie on the floor and see the outdoors. He loves the outdoors,” I said with a tremble in my voice.

Streeter stepped beside me. “He probably did see little Max. And probably saw Jason Fletcher, too. Maybe Fletcher thought he saw too much, thought removing him as a witness might be worth the risk of a second abduction.”

“Noah knew all along. He was trying to tell us.”

“But Fletcher wouldn’t know he couldn’t talk, would he?”

“Not according to Frances. The neighbor knew nothing about them. I don’t even think he knew Noah had cerebral palsy.”

“Come on,” Streeter said and led me down the stairs.

The upstairs and main floor cleared, we descended the stairs. Halfway down, we both froze midstride. The basement was dark. Kelleher found a switch, illuminating a horrifying room.