A Measure of Blood (24 page)

Jan looks at him, surprised. “Shouldn't we …”

“And do what?” he asks in a voice so loaded with failure that Jan stops herself.

She wanted to go up and down streets with flyers. Asking. Now she watches the girl pouring oatmeal into a bowl, then water, then a pinch of salt. How can Arthur eat? “Tell me anything Matt said.”

“He talked about video games he liked, he talked about school a bit, and he talked about trying to figure out what to call you.”

“What do you mean?”

Meg pauses. “He didn't want to use formal names, you know, Mr. and Mrs., and yet he wasn't quite ready for Mom, Dad, or anything like that, and he said first names felt funny.”

Soon after the oatmeal is microwaved and eaten, Colleen Greer and John Potocki arrive and ask the same questions of Meg all over again. But the detectives have one new item. They have a name to ask about. “Did Matt ever mention a fellow named
Nadal
. Nadal Brown.”

“No,” Meg says. “Never.”

“A relative?” Arthur asks.

“We don't know.”

“He's who was walking away with Matt?”

“We think so. You've never heard of him?”

“No,” Meg tells them.

Arthur shakes his head. Jan feels tears begin again. Who is this man? “Marina said he looked disturbed. I thought so too. His walk.”

Colleen nods. “Matt is smart. Right? Let's rely on that.”

NADAL IS NO
T
CERTAIN
he can find the cabin. He looked it up, Google-Mapped it, but he had no printer at his mother's house, and when he gets into the wooded area, no Internet, he has to rely on memory of the time Arne brought him here. Twice. Not exactly a good memory and yet … somehow it's turned into a good one. The woods are deep, so thick that he feels comfort just in knowing the bright-red car can disappear from view. The boy won't be able to run. There is no place to run.

What he thinks he remembers is a deeply rutted road, then a gravel road, then something that is more like a weeded path. One such muddy, deeply ditched road seems to be the correct one, until he follows it to the end and sees two hunting cabins side by side—he's in the wrong place. It's difficult to turn the car around, briars everywhere. He watches, fearful that someone with a shotgun will emerge.

His father's friend's place—where the hell is it? Why can't he remember?

His heart thumping hard, he gets himself away from this wrong place he's ventured into. Soon the pumping blood gives him a headache that feels like a tight band across his forehead. What if he can't find the right camp? What if he drives and gets lost and the boy wakes up? What will he say?

Studying Matt through the rearview window, he is pretty sure it's a real sleep, maybe deep. The boy's mouth is open.

Those are white pines, these are hemlocks, he will explain. When we get farther in, there will be oaks. They have the distinctive big leaves.

Oh, if someone is there at the cabin, it's no good, no good at all. Just … just leave is all he can do.

Puerto Rico is only four or five days away once he gets on the road south. He can make Florida in two or three days. His thoughts jump and weave, knitting uncertainty with images of a calm, good life. Confession, at some point, about the accident, the error that took the mother's life. Explanations. Assurances about the love he feels for his son, felt from the moment he saw him in that parking lot.

The boy has not asked about his mother.

Nadal is thinking, thinking, when he finds himself on another rutted road. This one jostles his mother's car just the right amount. The ruts are deep, just the right depth. Then some gravel, crunching and spitting. Could this be it? His breath catches. The gravel path seems longer than he remembers, but he keeps going, no backing out now, he has to find out if this is it. Then the branches of trees reach over and swipe at his windshield. He doesn't want to think about what they're doing to the paint on the car.

And there it is, his father's friend's cabin. No smoke curling from the chimney. No cars parked in front. He pulls up close to it. The boy does not move. Suddenly and without warning, a panic about his son hits him so hard he cries out. Still nothing from the boy. Oh, God, oh, God. He jumps out of the driver's seat and leans over the backseat, holding a palm to his son's mouth. There's breath, steady even breath.

When he's calmed himself, he approaches the cabin, a tidy thing, almost like a house, this one of logs, real logs.
Pretty place
, his father used to say.
Graceful
. The door is locked.
Not that it matters
, his father would say.
When thieves want to get in, they get in. The trick is to expect it
.

Nadal hurries to the carport at the back of the cabin. The truck is there. Same truck. Old. Must be a 1980 or something. At the top of the carport, stuck into the slat, used to be a key. Yes, still there. He pulls it out and hurries around and opens the door.

A safe place. Two rooms. A bunk bed and two other beds in the small room. A kitchen and a rocking chair and an old sofa in the main room. Running water. A battery radio. And other than that, silence, peace.

He goes out to the car and carries in his son, who is heavy, much heavier than he would have guessed. Back arched, arms already weary, he lays the boy on the bottom bunk. He pulls up a wool blanket that's folded at the foot of the bed and covers Matt, who stirs, murmurs, but doesn't come awake.

Nadal goes out to the main room and looks about. Is peace overrated? He does not know how to exist without a computer connection. He opens the refrigerator. Beer. Lots of beer. A couple of beef jerkies.

CHRISTIE AND DOLAN
MAKE
it to the address on South Neville where they come face to face with three Korean grad students. One wears jeans, two wear pajama bottoms, all three, like the undergraduates the detectives have awakened on this Saturday, struggle not to yawn.

“Nadal? Don't know Nadal. Nate? We know Nate.”

“He's here?”

“I don't think. This his room.”

Christie opens the door to a room that is so small it must have originally been meant for storage. It has no window. There is a cot in it, and—he draws on gloves he's carried in his pocket—he finds a few clothes in the closet, mostly winter things, boots. Some school texts.

“What's missing?” he asks one of the young men.

The student pokes his head into the room. “Computer. Some clothes maybe. Backpack.”

“He brought a child here?”

They shake their heads.

“Ever?”

“No.”

“Did he talk about a child?”

“No.”

“How long was he here?”

“From … May,” says one of them.

“We only know Nate. No last name,” says another.

“Where would he go?” Christie asks.

“He have car,” the one says.

“I don't see car this week,” another says.

They identify themselves. Dolan makes them write it all down while they are saying excitedly, one overlapping the other, all they know about the suspect—which isn't much. A first name: Nate. Had a car. A Pontiac, yes. Was mysterious and not friendly. Worked at the computer lab. Was often absent.

“Did he want to be in that storage room with the cot? Did he
ask
for that? No windows?”

“No. Yes, I mean. We put his bed in big room with ours, but he say no, this room is good for him.”

“Four people here?”

“Lower rent.”

“Landlord's idea?”

“Was not official on the lease,” Gab-do says. He looks embarrassed. “Our idea.”

“Ah, I see. A source of income.” So they had little contact with him and didn't know his last name. How much help could they be? It's not likely Matt was ever brought here, but they must print the place anyway. At the very least, they'll have DNA and Nadal's prints.

Dolan is already on the phone to the lab. “We need a mobile unit. Prints, trace, DNA. Yes, I kn—” Dolan is interrupted by a call from his contact at the phone company. Christie pauses in his interrogation of the students to listen to Dolan's end of the conversation.

“What do you see?” Dolan asks. Then he listens and repeats what he hears. “No calls since day before yesterday. Most calls from a number in State College belonging to a Mala Brown. A series of other calls … almost all incoming, seems he never calls the numbers back. Okay, couple of calls a week ago. He writes down names. Angela Piero, James Grogran, Nalin Patel.”

“The car ad,” Christie says.

“That it? Can you get me a location? ASAP?” Dolan hangs up. “Bless Sprint for fast answers.”

“State College,” interrupts the one named Gab-do. “State College is his mother.”

Dolan calls Nalin Patel first, gets him, and learns the car was sold last Saturday, a week ago, which makes sense as to why it is not yet on the DMV listings. It takes two weeks, generally. The purchase price was eighty-five hundred dollars and the guy cashed the money order right then because he wanted to make sure it was good. So Nadal Brown no doubt still has cash and the maroon Pontiac is gone. Shit.

Christie is on his phone asking cops he knows in State College to help them by going to Mala Brown's house. He tells them everything he can, frustrated that he wants to be there himself. On the other hand he wonders if he can manage a three-hour drive.

Dolan, reading his mind, says, “I'm okay, Boss. I can drive.”

Dolan's phone rings. “Sprint again,” he says. He listens. His face looks sick. Ending the call, he tells Christie, “Last location for the phone was near a tower in Blairsville. Same as the boy's phone. Shit.”

The Koreans watch them intently. “You don't talk to the news,” Christie orders them. “This is serious. You hear?”

Soon Dolan is beginning the long drive to Mala Brown's house. The State College police call back a half hour later when Dolan has gotten to Route 22. At the house: no Mala Brown, no anything. A light left on, a bed rumpled—it's everything and nothing.

“Get your guys in there ASAP,” Christie says. “Print the place. We'll be there to see what we can see.”

NADAL'S FATHER,
after the first trip to the woods, had insisted upon therapy. “You're too quiet, Nadal. You don't talk. You have to talk.” Nadal didn't want to see a shrink, but he went, thinking he could quit right away, after a session or two. He told the therapist he didn't talk because he didn't have anything to say. He did have secret thoughts, though. He wished he'd never come to the United States and he didn't like his father.

Now he sits in the main room of the cabin, trying to imagine the conversations he will have with his son. He will have to be clever, like a therapist, to get his son to talk. Dr. Solar, whose name was like the word for sun, was clever enough to get
him
to talk. Solar even understood things that weren't said. Once he smiled and said, “You don't much like it here and you don't much like your father.”

“That's right,” Nadal said, surprised. “You got it.”

“In fact, it doesn't seem you like anyone. Well … except your mother. You say positive things about her except for the fact that she took up again with your father.”

Nadal found himself talking, telling, then. “I lost respect. He's using her. It's just because he's sick and he wants a nurse.”

“Can you think of other reasons?”

“No.”

Nadal looked out the window to a large tree, all the branches full, but the leaves starting to get yellow. He tried to concentrate on the tree instead of the question.

“No other reasons?”

“No. Well, his first wife died. So there was a job opening there.”

Dr. Solar laughed a little. “A job opening, huh? But, to stick with your mother, is it possible she genuinely cares for him?”

“She's nuts if she does.”

“But her feelings might not be your feelings. That's all I want to point out. I guess they both
know
you have these negative feelings. So it must get tense. I just want to ask if your father has shown you any care, any warmth. Has he done things for you?”

“He thinks he has.”

“Like?”

“Sending me to college.”

“Paying?”

“Not very much. He gets tuition benefits. His colleagues think I'm his stepson. He doesn't tell them otherwise.”

Solar grunted as if this made Nadal's negative feelings make sense, but he asked, “Anything else he's done for you?”

It was his third appointment, and he was only just calm enough to notice things at all—the shiny tables, the rug with vacuum marks, the little gold clock. Nadal tried to think about what his father might have done for him and how he could explain to Solar that what drove Arne Brown wasn't love. “Clothes. Food. A room. Sending me here. He wants to make me fit in. He wants to control me so he's not embarrassed.”

Dr. Solar touched his mustache, which is what he did between thoughts. “I see what it feels like from your perspective. I take that seriously. Does he talk to you?”

“He took me to a cabin in the forest to show me plants and animals. He said it was a time to talk. We went two times, but I couldn't think of anything to say. He wanted to go again, but I had a … trip I had to make. Out of town.”

“To see friends?”

“Sort of.”

“So there are friends, people you talk to?”

Nadal shrugged.

“Are there people who comfort you, women in your life?”

“Why do you ask?” He wondered if shrinks could spy telepathically. This meeting was right after Maggie had dumped him.

“Have these women understood you?”

The plural threw him off. Maggie was the only one. But he didn't plan to tell Solar any of that. Some things were off-limits. He would never tell anyone how desperate he had been, the way he hitchhiked to Pittsburgh and got dumped. And when he got back, old Arne and his mother studied him, trying to figure out what was wrong and where he'd been.