What Follows After: A Novel (19 page)

“Gina, maybe you should put that away.”

It was Wednesday morning, the third day. Gina set the newspaper down and looked up at Rose. She had been holding the morning edition of the
News-Journal
, the local Daytona paper. It had run essentially the same story about Timmy that first showed up in yesterday’s evening edition, including the picture of Timmy and the artist’s sketch of the man who’d taken him.

She looked down at the picture of the man. He looked so . . . ordinary. “Why would someone take a little boy?”

“I don’t know, hon,” Rose said. “But maybe we should do something to try to distract ourselves.”

“Do what? We can’t leave the house. We’re supposed to stay by the telephone, in case it rings.” They had stayed by the telephone all last evening, but it didn’t ring once. Mike and Rose had stayed, trying to cheer them up. The five of them sat around the living room, Colt included. There wasn’t anything on about Timmy during the local news. Then Gina had to sit through an entire hour of
Combat
with Vic Morrow, Colt’s hero. Colt watched the show spread out on the living room throw rug with his pillow. But all she could think about was not seeing Timmy lying next to him.
Usually, when the show ended, it was time for Timmy to go to bed. She’d let Colt stay up another hour, since he was eleven.

She’d walk Timmy back to the bathroom to help him wash his face and hands, brush his teeth. She’d tuck him into bed, sometimes read him a story. Off and on, she’d hear Colt laughing out loud in the living room at some skit on
The Red Skelton Hour
.

None of that happened last night.

Oh, they had finished watching
Combat
, everyone had laughed at the crazy skits on the Red Skelton show, except her. They’d laughed some more watching Jack Benny. Scott even let Colt stay up past his bedtime to watch it. That was a strange moment. Colt didn’t want to go to bed at his usual time. He argued that he didn’t have to go to school the next day, since they had both agreed to excuse him. Finally, Scott had given in and let him stay up. He had looked at Gina, smiled, and said, “How can I say no, it’s Jack Benny?”

It was all so entirely . . . normal.

Was she the only one on the verge of losing her mind over Timmy? How could they laugh at Red Skelton or Jack Benny? Or anything else?

“Gina, are you okay, sweetheart?”

Gina lifted her eyes from the photograph of Timmy in the newspaper. “No, Rose, I’m not okay. I’m not going to be okay until we find Timmy.” She started crying again. Rose got up from her chair and came around to give Gina a hug. She didn’t say anything, just held her and rubbed her back.

After a few minutes, Rose said, “Mike left a little while ago. Do you know where he went?”

Gina shook her head no as she grabbed for the box of tissues.

“Watching the local news last night gave him an idea. He looked up the addresses of the news stations and said he was going to buy
three copies of the morning paper and hand deliver them to each of the local network stations. Make sure they knew about the story, see if he could get them to feature it tonight on their broadcasts. All they want to talk about is this Cuba crisis.”

That was good news of a sort, Gina thought. “That sounds like a good idea,” she managed to say.

“I saw Scott and Colt heading out the front door this morning,” Rose said. “Where were they going?”

“I think just for a walk. Scott told me he had a few things to say to Colt, mostly to apologize for asking him and Timmy to lie about our separation and for making him feel so bad he felt the need to run away to you guys.”

“Well, that sounds like a good thing.”

It did to Gina too. “I think so. I told him to make sure Colt knew that I was sorry too.” She knew she’d have to tell him herself at some point.

“And I couldn’t help overhearing what Scott said on the phone this morning,” Rose said. “Sounded like he was calling in to take the day off.”

Gina heard that too. She had been working up the nerve to ask him to consider that very thing, or at least to take the morning off. “I was glad he did that,” she said. It was actually somewhat comforting having him around.

And she’d almost said that very thing to Rose, but thankfully, she caught herself.

Colt seemed a little nervous when they’d first left the house. Scott had done his best to reassure him he wasn’t in any trouble. They walked down the sidewalk in the direction of the beach, but Scott wasn’t sure they’d get that far. He wasn’t following a preset plan. Truth was, he’d never done anything like this before with Colt. Taking a walk, just the two of them. Up ahead, the sun was beginning to climb in the sky toward midmorning.

When they reached the first corner, old Weldon’s house, Scott said, “I wonder if Mr. Weldon’s hiding out in his fallout shelter yet?”

“You mean because of all the stuff on the news?” Colt said.

Scott nodded. “When I was looking for you and your brother on Monday, I came by here to check. You know, since you and your friends sometimes like to use his shelter for a fort.”

“It’s really cool down there, Dad. Have you ever seen it?”

“I did on Monday. Mr. Weldon was loading it up with supplies, getting ready for ‘the big one,’ he said.”

“Really?”

“You want to go see?”

“You mean go down there?”

“No, we’ll just walk by.”

“Sure,” Colt said.

They turned left and headed down the side street, along the hill that bordered Weldon’s property. When they got to the break in the driveway, they heard a radio playing. They both turned to look and were surprised to find Weldon sitting up by his back fence gate, a shotgun across his lap.

Weldon seem startled by their presence but quickly relaxed when he realized who it was. “Out for a walk, boys?” he asked.

“That’s right, Mr. Weldon,” Scott replied. “Uh . . . what are you up to?”

“C’mon up here and I’ll tell you.”

“Do we have to?” Colt whispered. “He’s got a gun.”

Weldon seemed to notice their apprehension and looked down at his shotgun. “Don’t worry about this,” he said. “This ain’t for you boys. It’s for everyone else, though.”

“C’mon, Colt, it’ll be all right.” Scott led Colt up the driveway.

As they got closer, Weldon said, “Can’t be too careful these days. I’m hearing all kinds of stories on the radio of people looting. Fights are breaking out in grocery stores. People get crazy when they think the world’s gonna end.”

“There’s been looting around here?”

“No. Not yet, anyway. But you gotta be ready. All bets are off once those missiles start firing into the sky. I’ve heard that happens, and we’ve got about fifteen minutes before the nuclear blasts start vaporizing everything. Most people are acting pretty calm right now. But that will all change once the fighting begins. I can imagine almost everybody on this street running over here to my shelter, trying to force their way inside.”

He looked down and patted his shotgun like a man patting a dog on the head. “But I ain’t gonna let that happen. There’s just enough supplies in there for a few people, not a whole neighbor
hood. Won’t matter if I shoot ’em. Once that atomic blast goes off, they’ll just disappear.”

The more he talked, the more Scott felt like he’d made a bad decision bringing Colt up this driveway.

“But hey,” Weldon said, “I’m not talking about you, Scott, or your family. That is, if you find your other little boy before it all hits the fan. Real sorry to hear about him being . . . you know. Saw it in the papers last night and this morning. Couldn’t believe my eyes.”

“Thanks, Mr. Weldon. It’s been pretty awful since Monday afternoon, when we were told.”

“Any leads yet?”

“Not really.”

“Well, me and the wife are pulling for you. Sure hope you find him.”

“Thanks.”

“Either way, your family’s welcome in our shelter once the shooting starts.”

“Thanks, Mr. Weldon. That’s very kind. Hope it doesn’t come to that, though.”

“Don’t we all,” he said.

“Well, you have a nice day,” Scott said. “We’re gonna keep walking, enjoy this fresh air.”

They nodded to each other. Colt waved as they made their way down the driveway. “That was kind of strange,” Colt said.

“Yeah, it was.”

“I’m not sure I’d want to be holed up in that dark little shelter with Mr. Weldon very long,” Colt said.

“I know what you mean, son.”

They walked by a few houses in silence. “Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you really think . . . I mean, could Mr. Weldon be right?
You think it really could be the end of the world? People are talking on the news like it might be.”

“I don’t know, son. I hope not. I hope the men in charge of things, the ones who have their fingers on those buttons, have enough sense not to push them. World War III, if it happened, would be a lot different than World War II.”

“You mean like that show
Combat
last night?”

“Right,” Scott said. “World War II was bad, and so was Korea, the war I fought in. But a nuclear war . . . well, let’s just hope and pray it doesn’t come to that.”

“But if it does . . . what will happen to Timmy? I don’t want to hide out in Mr. Weldon’s shelter if he can’t be with us.”

Scott sighed. He didn’t know what to say. “I don’t either, Colt.” Before they went any farther, Scott really wanted to say what he’d come out here to say. “Colt, hold up.”

They stopped walking. “What’s the matter?” Colt asked.

“Nothing’s the matter. I just want to say something to you, and I want you to look me in the eyes as I say it.”

“Am I in trouble?”

“No, you’re not.”

“What is it?”

Scott rested his hands gently on Colt’s shoulders. “I just want you to know—your mom and I want you to know—we don’t blame you for running away.”

“You don’t?”

“No, we don’t. We never should have put you in a place where you felt so bad that you had to escape. That’s not your fault, that’s ours. We were being selfish and not thinking about how all this was affecting you and your brother. We’re real sorry about that, Colt.” Scott couldn’t help it; tears started filling his eyes. Immediately, Colt started crying too.

“And we’re real sorry, both your mom and I, that we made you boys lie to everyone so no one would know I had moved out. We should have never done that. Can you forgive us?”

Colt threw himself into his father’s arms and sobbed. Scott held on to him until he calmed down.

In a few moments, Colt pulled back, looked up in his father’s eyes, and said, “Why can’t you and Mom be back together? Why can’t we be a family again?”

Scott pulled him close. “I want that too, son. And I want your brother back here where he belongs. I want those things more than anything else in the world.”

Later that afternoon as they sat at their respective desks in the Orlando office, Special Agents Vic Hammond and Nate Winters reviewed a fresh pile of leads about the Harrison kidnapping. They had all come in either last night or this morning, since Timmy’s picture and the drawing of his kidnapper had begun to appear in local newspapers throughout the state.

There weren’t as many as Vic would have expected for a case like this, but there was still a good number, considering how distracted people were with this crisis in Cuba. Maybe a dozen of them so far. Still too many for Vic and Nate to run down all by themselves. Usually for a child abduction case, they’d have a good-sized team to share the legwork. They had just divided them into two stacks. Vic thumbed through his.

“Think we got anything here?” Nate asked.

“Hard to say,” Vic said. “Did you take any of these calls yourself?”

“A few of them. The ones I did didn’t sound too promising. They were from local cops who’d taken phone calls from concerned citizens, mostly moms. Lots of iffy-ness in the language. Nobody’s sure of anything. Like this one . . .” Nate held up one of the forms. “Near Tallahassee. Says a mom saw a strange man with a boy in a
car next to her at a traffic light. Man wasn’t wearing a hat and he had a thick, bushy mustache. The boy kind of resembled the boy in the picture, although she didn’t have the newspaper with her at the time. The officer who took the call wrote a note in the margin here, saying the woman wondered if the mustache was fake.”

“Not likely he grew a thick mustache overnight,” Vic said. “Just as likely it was his own. For that matter, could just be a dad driving his son to the hardware store.”

“Nothing strange about that,” Nate said. “I’m afraid we’re gonna be spinning our wheels here with most of these.”

Vic laid his stack on the desk. “What we really need is someone who can check these out up close and personal. Verify if it’s Timmy.”

“Since we got his picture, shouldn’t be any guesswork,” Nate said. “Might be more difficult with the kidnapper, since it’s just a sketch. And I’m guessing, based on what the deputy director said at that briefing, we can’t be calling on our guys to check these out for us.”

“That’s the way I read it too,” Vic said. “But we can’t be driving all over the state, either, eliminating the dead ends. Even if we split up, it would take forever.”

“And these are just the leads that came in the last twelve hours, Vic. We asked the papers to keep running these photos until they hear from us. We could get this many leads every day.”

The phone rang on Vic’s desk. “That could be another one right now.” He grabbed his pad and pen and picked it up. Turned out it was.

A woman from a sheriff’s office called, somewhere in south Florida. After Vic had confirmed that she had reached the FBI office in Orlando, she said, “Got a possible sighting of that missing boy of yours, the one that got nabbed up there in Jacksonville. I’m looking at his picture here in the paper . . . a Timmy Harrison.”

“That’s right, ma’am. Have you seen him yourself?”

“Oh no, just passing on a sighting by a tourist passing through. He said he was taking an airboat tour by a man who lives on the edge of the Everglades yesterday, then saw the newspaper at a café this morning. Thought this man looked like your sketch, and he had a little boy with him ’bout the same age as the one in the picture. We’re down here in LaBelle, little town in Hendry County, just a ways south and west of Lake Okeechobee.”

“Did you say Henry County?” Vic said.

“Close, but you got to add a
d
in there, between the
n
and the
r
. Not important if you forget. People call us Henry County all the time.”

Vic had spent quite a few years in Florida, but he had no idea where this was. “Well, why don’t you tell me everything you’ve got?”

She did, and he wrote it all down. Sounded semi-promising. Maybe a tad more than some of the others in his stack. But still, someone had to verify this. Someone had to look at these two people, especially the boy, and compare it to the photograph. When she finished talking, Vic asked, “Have any idea how long it takes to drive to this place from the Orlando area? You know, where the boy was last seen?”

“About three-and-a-half hours, I’d expect. Less if you rode with your sirens on.”

“Round trip?”

“No, one way.”

Vic sighed. “I don’t suppose someone from your office could go check this out for us? We’ve got about a dozen of these leads to check out already, and they’re from all over the state.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “This is an FBI investigation, right?”

“It is, but—”

“Then you’d have to talk with the sheriff about that, or one of his deputies. They’re not here in the office at the moment. We’re just a small operation here, so I don’t know how they’ll feel about that.”

“Ma’am, I can appreciate that. We’re pretty shorthanded up here ourselves, especially with all this stuff going on with Cuba and Russia.”

“That doesn’t seem to be affecting us all that much down here,” she said. “We’re a bit overwhelmed just dealing with regular stuff going wrong.”

“I understand,” Vic said. “But we’re talking about a little boy here. We don’t know what kind of danger he’s in. This guy just took him. Lured him with some comic books when his older brother was in the bathroom. This happened on Monday, and no one’s seen or heard from him since.”

“That’s a terrible thing,” she said.

“And see, he can’t be in all these places. We’ve got over a dozen leads, and if my partner and I have to spend hours and hours, or several days, driving all over the state, just to see if we’ve got the right little boy to start with, we could lose him for good. But if someone from your office can drive out there with his picture from that newspaper—probably take you all of twenty minutes—we can make sure we’re not wasting all our time chasing phantoms.”

“I see what you’re saying.”

“We don’t care who gets the credit on this,” Vic said. “We just want to return this little boy to his mom and dad.”

“Well, I’ll definitely explain all this to the sheriff. In fact, I happen to know one of our deputies is only about a ten-minute drive from where this man and little boy are supposed to be.”

“Now you’re talking,” Vic said. “Can you call him for me and see what he says?”

“Yeah, I can do that. Let me call this deputy here. I won’t call
you back unless he says he can’t do it for some reason. If he can, I’ll call you back after he takes a drive out there.”

“That’ll be great. I appreciate that so much. What did you say your name was?”

“It’s Beth.”

“Well, you’ve been a great help, Beth. My name’s Vic, Victor Hammond. When you call back, you can ask for me or my partner, Nate Winters.”

“Will do, Agent Hammond.”

They hung up and Vic looked up at Nate, who was smiling.

“That worked out pretty good,” Nate said.

“Yes, it did. If she follows through.”

“I guess that’s our strategy then,” Nate said. “Work with the locals, see if we can usher in a new era of cooperation.”

“That’s what I’m thinking. I’m sure you’ll get some resistance, but just work the angle that we’re talking about a little boy here. Most of these folks are probably parents.”

“Got it.”

“You start working your stack, and I’ll go through mine.”

“I’m on it.”

“And Nate . . .”

“Yeah?”

“Be extra nice, and if you can talk to a woman in these places—”

“I’m with you, Vic.”