Hide in Place Page 2

  Her cell rang, and she jumped, spilling coffee over the table, dropped the phone, grabbed it with slippery-wet fingers, jabbed at it until it finally answered the call.

  “Hello?” She was breathless, her voice strangled, thin.

  “Laney? You weren’t sleeping, were you?”

  Goddammit, it was her supervisor, Janine. Laney’d forgotten to call in sick. She should have been at the garage fifteen minutes ago.

  “Janine, no, sorry, no, I wasn’t sleeping.” Then, quickly, to fill the silence, “Listen, I can’t come in today. I’m sorry, I can’t.”

  Janine sighed. Laney pictured her eyebrows rising, her mouth pursing, her manicured fingers tapping her desk. “Laney, you’re putting me in a difficult spot. There are other people to consider. Children will be waiting. I know you know this, and I know you’re not a fuck-up, but what am I supposed to do?”

  Laney couldn’t imagine going to work, driving for hours while Alfie was who knows where. But she needed this job. She barely made the rent every month as it was, and who would pay for Alfie’s speech therapy if she lost her insurance? The therapy had been helping. His stutter had all but disappeared in the past six months.

  “You’re right,” she said, her tone all wrong—resigned instead of remorseful, sad instead of diplomatic. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. I’ll work an extra shift if you need me to make up for it. Okay?”

  “Laney, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but this is your job. If you can’t be professional, you might need to start looking for something else.”

  She pressed her fingers into her eyes. She’d have to beg. “It’s Alfie. He’s gone.” Beg, yet reassure. “But the police are on it. They’re looking for him. So, I can come in. Just give me ten minutes.”

  Usually that’s all it took, showing Janine how much of a mess she, Laney, was, so that Janine could feel safe and secure in her universe by comparison. But now a tense silence stretched between them.

  Laney couldn’t count how many times she’d called in sick or taken personal days. For two years she’d had to take personal days without pay, since she would usually burn through all her allotted time off by May or June—Alfie’s meltdowns, the anxiety attacks, and once, the suicide threat.

  Not that she’d ever told anyone about that. She’d barely even processed it herself. When he said it, she had grabbed his shoulders, knelt before him, and told him that if he killed himself, she’d die too, so unless he wanted to be responsible for killing his mother, he better eject that thought right out. She stared into his eyes until she saw the agony in them transform to garden-variety sadness, at which point she pressed him to her chest so tight she felt his heart rat-a-tat-tatting. He never said it again, and she would not think of it now. She would go insane if she did, and then she’d be no use to him at all when he came back.

  “Janine, are we good? I’m on my way.” And yet she didn’t hang up, wasn’t on her way. This silence was different than usual.

  “I’m so sorry, Laney. I hope your son is okay.” More silence. More sighing. “Look, every time you don’t come in like this, I get dozens of calls from pissed-off parents. I don’t want to sound like I don’t care about your situation, because I do. I feel for you.” The next silence was brief. “But I just can’t keep doing this. I need drivers I can rely on. I’m going to give your route to another driver for now. Call me after the February break, and we’ll see if there’s something else for you here. Okay?”

  Laney nodded at the phone. “Okay.”

  That was that, and she couldn’t think about it now. Later. Later, when Alfie came home, she’d let him have it, show him how his selfishness was destroying them.

  She cursed, grabbed her parka, shoved her feet into her boots and barreled outside. The night’s storm had expended itself, and the roads were slick, slushy, ugly. She’d walk. She’d go to the lake. Alfie liked the lake, loved the woods surrounding their tiny house. Maybe he was camping out. Though why he’d do that in the middle of a sleet storm, she didn’t know. But then again, there were many things Alfie did that she couldn’t understand.

  She checked her phone. And almost walked into Holly.

  CHAPTER

  3

  HOLLY, MIDTHIRTIES, PETITE, girly in a pink knit hat and a fitted pink puffy jacket, gently touched Laney’s shoulder. Laney had never had a friend like Holly; as a teenager she had found girls like Holly silly, even pointless. Coming from a family both strict and overprotective, Laney had been athletic, no-nonsense, the NYPD her goal from toddlerhood. She’d never had a mani-pedi, despised high heels, owned just one dress.

  And yet, over the three years she’d lived on this woody, lovely street, Holly, who’d die before leaving her house without lipstick (was even at this unholy hour wearing a soft-pink gloss) had become her best friend. Funny, sociable, genteel in an almost old-fashioned way, Holly never judged, never gave Laney advice, laughed at her jokes. Hell, laughed at Alfie’s jokes.

  “I saw all the lights on,” Holly said. “What’s going on?”

  Laney’s supervisor wasn’t the only person overly familiar with Laney’s sudden schedule changes.

  “Is Alfie all right?”

  “He’s gone!” Laney said, then shook her head to forestall questions. “I don’t know where. I’ve been to the police.” She peered at the snowy path winding into the woods from her house. It was still dark, the streetlight a stark yellow cone through the shadows. “Why are you up?”

  “Oh, Buster was asking for a pee.” Buster was Holly’s tiny shih tzu—a grayish-white bundle snuggled in the crook of her arm. “Then I saw you, and I know you’re usually gone by now.” She shrugged. “Thought I’d see what’s up.” She took in Laney’s face. “Let me get Buster home, and then I’ll come and help you. Okay?”

  “I was going to walk to the lake,” Laney said.

  “I’ll walk with you. Just give me a minute.”

  As she waited for Holly to come back, Laney called the station house. Ed picked up the phone.

  “No,” he said when she asked. “Alfie’s not at the school. Yes, we checked the basement. Yes, the kitchen too. And the locker rooms. Yes, the auditorium. No, there’s nobody in the building now, and it doesn’t look like he was there overnight. He’s not at the lake. Yes, we sent a description of him to all local patrol cars and to the nearest towns too. Everyone’s aware, yes. We’re looking for him, Laney. We’ll find him. Aha. Yes. Oh, and be sure to call us when he comes home, okay? Yes, I know you know to do that. Okay. Got it. We’re on it. Good-bye. Yes. Okay.”

  By the time she hung up, she’d started sweating. She knew the cops were going by the book, following the patrol guide. She knew they’d filed all the right papers, filled out all the necessary forms online. And yet. She could hear in Ed’s voice that he thought Alfie was just being Alfie. Not knowing where her son was or the reasons for his absence oppressed her, and she tried to find comfort in Ed’s evident confidence. She should refrain from imagining the worst. Her child was not an infant, was taller than she, could hold his own if cornered.

  God! Had he been cornered?

  She turned to the road he’d taken to walk to school yesterday afternoon. Surely the weather had destroyed any evidence by now, washed away shoe prints, car tracks. But she walked down the slippery path anyway, head down, feet toeing debris for anything out of the ordinary. She glanced at Holly as the woman joined her.

  “I just spoke to Ed Boswell. Alfie’s not at the lake,” she said, and her friend changed direction, matched her pace to Laney’s.

  Tall, shaggy pines shook with icy drops overhead as she and Holly made their way slowly toward the school, the frozen ground crunching under their boots. Having grown up and lived most of her life in Long Island in an overcrowded colonial on a lot just big enough for a carpet-sized front lawn and a patio-sized backyard, Laney invariably marveled at the violent and wild beauty of her new hometown.

  “I started a Facebook post for you,” Holly said.

&
nbsp; Laney squinted at her friend. “For me?”

  “You know, have you seen this boy, share it.” Holly looked ahead. “It helps. Kids have been found this way.”

  “Isn’t that what you did when Buster ran off?”

  “Yes. Anyway, it just proves my point. People will see the post.”

  Laney sighed. “Okay. Why not.” They walked for a few minutes in silence. “Thank you. I should have thought of that.”

  “Hmm … You would have. How’s he been? I mean lately?”

  She’d been asking herself the same question over and over for the past five hours, barring the hour or two when she dozed fitfully on her couch. “Good. Weird, right? I can’t think of a single bad day in the past month.” Not since that last time. He’d been golden. “He’s sweet. He did great on his geometry test. Last week he did my laundry as well as his. He even talked about school. A bit. But still.” She raised her eyes to the lightening sky. “I thought he made a leap, you know? Progress.”

  They slid on the hard snow but caught each other, hands on forearms, knees against thighs. A crow cawed above them, pushed away from a bough, and flapped into the forest, sending white flurries onto their heads.

  Holly opened her mouth, closed it. Took a breath, opened her mouth again, closed it again.

  “Go on,” said Laney. “Out with it.” She had an inkling what her friend would say.

  “Do you think he was covering something? You know, something was going on and he was being good so you wouldn’t get suspicious?”

  Yep, it was what she thought Holly would say. “Tell you what,” Laney said. “If he developed that kind of self-control, my job here is done. But it’s not impossible. He’s bright enough.”

  “No one says he’s not bright. Or that he has to playact to pretend being sweet. He’s a very sweet boy.”

  A part of Laney was so ridiculously grateful to Holly for her words that she had to fight the urge to grab her friend and hug the crap out of that pink puffy jacket. She couldn’t afford getting emotional right now. If she did, she’d be no use to her son or anyone.

  They started to walk again, carefully. “What would you do if you were the detective on the case?” Holly asked.

  Laney kicked a fallen branch out of the way. “I’d start by talking with everyone who saw him yesterday.”

  “Well, it’s early. Nobody’s up yet. I’m sure the police will do that.”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “What do you mean, what?”

  “Your voice. You don’t think the police will do that?”

  “I don’t know, Holly. Will they? I would if I were investigating a missing child in the city, sure. But here in Country Home and Gardens Sylvan? I get the feeling they’re just waiting for Alfie to mosey on out of the woods all on his own.” There was a time she’d been a damn good detective. Even better than she’d been an undercover, and she’d been excellent at that. Maybe Ed’s colleagues would do everything they had to. But would the kids talk to them? Would the teachers?

  While still on the job, Laney learned that people got all weird around a uniform. They held their bodies differently. They used big words inaccurately. They wouldn’t volunteer information. When she interviewed witnesses or suspects wearing a suit, she’d get slightly more cooperation. As an undercover, in shorts and tees, her hair mussed, she could get anybody to tell her anything.

  “What?” Holly had stopped with her. “What? What are you thinking?”

  “You’re right,” Laney said.

  “I am?”

  “I need to go home. I’ve got people to interview.”

  CHAPTER

  4

  DURING ALFIE’S THREE years’ enrollment in the Sylvan school district, Laney had been called to see the principal fifty-four times. She knew exactly how many because starting with the thirteenth visit—“Lucky thirteen, eh?”—the principal made it a point to give her the count every time she walked through the door. On her twenty-fifth visit, after Alfie had collapsed in stutter-fueled agony in French class, he’d said, “What, no silver anniversary present?”

  Sometimes she tried to remember what she’d fantasized her child would be, before she had him, when Alfie was only a teeny bean inside her uterus and every possibility seemed magic. She was certain she’d never envisioned fifty-four visits to the principal.

  Her pregnancy had been miraculous to her, a gift from an otherwise greedy God who had taken her entire family before she’d turned eighteen—parents by a his-and-hers calamity of cancers, brother following shortly by suicide.

  She was in her first year at John Jay College of Criminal Justice when she met Theo and a year out of the police academy when she fell pregnant. And just like that, at twenty-two, she was part of a family again.

  Theo moved his easels and paints and brushes and took over her brother’s bedroom as his studio, and the little colonial on Long Island ten minutes from the beach where she’d grown up was once again full of chatter and love and family dinners. And wine. Bottles upon bottles upon bottles of it, rubied or golden, refracting warm light throughout the rooms.

  The division of labor had been an easy decision. She worked; Theo painted and, when he wasn’t painting, cared for little Alfie.

  As far as Laney saw it, she had a perfect life. She worked the only job she’d ever wanted, and she was good at it. Her husband was a breathtakingly beautiful man who loved her and loved their equally exquisite son. Sure, Alfie was not an easy child, and together they had already accumulated plenty of hours with principals and therapists. But he was hers, molded and baked inside her body, knit from Theo’s artistic compulsions and her need to instill order on a chaotic world. No wonder he had difficulties adjusting to changes, following commands, making friends. She accepted him and his troubles, accepted Theo and his moods. They were her family and she was devoted to them.

  It was all peaches and kittens until the day (a brutally cold, bleak November day) when she came home from a thirty-six-hour shift, bleary and shaking with sleeplessness, to find Theo sitting at the dining room table, an empty bottle of Pinot Noir by his elbow and a half-empty glass in his hand. Three suitcases crowded his feet, and the way he looked at her woke her real fast.

  It’s your turn, Theo had told her, then called the cab that would take him to the airport. You deal with him, he’d said. You cook the three things he will consent to eat. You placate the principal, the other parents. You deal with the kids who beat him, who tease him, who hate him. Your turn. It’s my turn to focus on me.

  And then, before she could ask her question, before she absorbed his announcement, he said, “I don’t love you. I don’t want this. I don’t want you. I don’t want him.”

  He blew away on the wind, scraping aside twelve years of marriage like dung on his shoes. It wasn’t until two weeks later that she found out about the credit cards he’d used to buy canvases and paints and brushes and all those bottles upon bottles of (apparently very good) wine, somehow accumulating over eighty thousand dollars’ worth of debt.

  Although Alfie was ten at the time and much too old for such things, he wore Theo’s sweatshirt (old, ratty, stinking of turpentine) every day and night for one month after his father left. He slept in it, crying when Laney tried to take it off. He asked to speak with his dad every day. But when Theo left, he didn’t say where he was going, and he didn’t answer calls, and he never called back.

  “It’s my fault,” Alfie whispered to her one night, his voice clogged with tears. “Dad’s gone because of me.”

  “No, honey.” She gathered him into her arms, even though they were already almost the same size—she’d always been tiny; it was why she was an ideal undercover. “It’s his fault. You’re awesome.”

  She watched her son at the bus stop, alone while the other children huddled and laughed and talked. She came to get him when the principal called, when the nurse called, when the school psychologist called. At home, he clung to her like a monkey while she lurched from roo
m to room, his hot face pressed into her neck, his feet hooked around her calves, his chest heaving with suppressed sobs.

  In January, as she was back to buy-and-busts in the aftermath of a disastrous Russian mob racketeering case, Alfie broke.

  He’d gone to school as usual, silent, eyes downcast, gait slowing as he approached the giant metal doors, led by Laney’s occasional babysitter. When a young, male teacher reached for him, intending to help him with his bag, his saxophone case, whatever it was he felt was too much for the little boy, Alfie began to scream. He opened his mouth and shut his eyes and bellowed, howled, shrieked, the startled teacher stepping back with his hands raised and helpless. Alfie fell to the black mud, bucked his legs, his tongue bulging inside his open red mouth.

  Blindly, he kicked the teachers who tried to calm him, he punched the frigid, viscous earth, he bathed his bright hair in it. He yelled until his vocal cords broke and he could do nothing but lie in the dirt and heave, shaking.

  It took Laney two hours to make her way to the school from Brighton Beach. She’d been assigned to a location far from her last case, but it was clear to her she was already burned. Everyone seemed to know who she was and stayed clear. She had requested a transfer, but who knew how long that would take.

  She was still in her undercover makeup and clothes (leather miniskirt, bare legs, low-heeled booties, and a white leather jacket crunkly with zippers). As soon as Alfie saw her, he closed his mouth, got to his knees, then to his feet, then plastered his muddy little body against her. And she held him, rocked him, smoothed his filthy hair, kissed his feverish skin.

  Her boy was grieving. She was as well. The way she saw it, the only difference between them was she could control herself and Alfie couldn’t.