Missing Child (7 page)

‘Geordie is . . . a wonderful little boy.’

‘No arguments?’

‘No. Well . . .’ Caitlin glanced at Noah. ‘I mean, yes, of course, the usual things,’ she said uncertainly.

Sam Mathis detected her hesitation. ‘Like?’

Caitlin threw up her hands. ‘Nothing. I don’t know. Bedtime, food preferences, manners. The day-to-day things.’

‘Detective,’ Noah interrupted. ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree. Caitlin loves Geordie as if he were her own.’

As if he were mine, Caitlin thought. Even Noah says, as if . . .

‘The reason I ask is,’ said Sam, ‘that sometimes a disagreement, even when an adult doesn’t think it’s important, it can cause a child to run away. They tend to exaggerate everything in their minds.’

Caitlin looked at him levelly. ‘I know that. There was nothing.’

‘Do you ever strike your son, Mr Eckhart?’

‘Spank him, you mean?’ Noah asked.

Sam nodded.

‘No,’ said Noah wearily. ‘I don’t believe in spanking.’

‘What about you, Mrs Eckhart?’

‘No, I don’t hit Geordie.’

‘Even when he’s acting up? He’s not your child, after all. Sometimes it’s hard not to get angry.’

‘I didn’t say I never got angry,’ said Caitlin. ‘I said I never hit him.’

‘You can corroborate that?’ Sam Mathis asked Noah.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Noah. ‘You’re wasting your time here, Detective. My wife and I love Geordie more than anything. No parents ever loved their child more.’

‘That’s really true,’ said Caitlin fiercely, her voice choked with tears. She and Noah had their hands locked together.

Sam Mathis was moving on. ‘What about friends – anybody whom Geordie sees on a regular basis. Is there anyone he sees regularly who has been in trouble with the law? That you know of.’

‘No, of course not. That I know of,’ said Noah.

‘What about in your work?’ Sam asked. ‘You’re an attorney. Do you have any enemies as a result of cases you’ve been involved in?’

Noah shook his head. ‘I do mostly contracts, business law. I rarely do criminal and almost no family law. The odd divorce.’

Sam Mathis sighed. ‘If a stranger tried to take Geordie out of the building, would Geordie know enough to resist? To try to fight back?’

Noah nodded. ‘Oh yes, definitely. He knows about strangers. I can’t imagine he would ever go willingly with a stranger.’

‘You’d be surprised. Tell a kid you need help finding your puppy and watch everything they’ve ever learned about strangers go right out the window.’

‘That’s really comforting,’ said Noah.

‘Sorry,’ said Sam. ‘But it’s true. We are scrutinizing the background of every teacher in the school, everyone who lives or works near the school, including the crossing guards and the janitors.’

‘You already said these people have to go through clearance before they can work in a school,’ Noah said.

‘Yes,’ said Sam. ‘But things get overlooked. It happens all the time.’

‘Great,’ said Noah. He leaned forward and put his head back in between his hands.

‘Our problem is that the general public was invited to this Fall Festival today, so there could be any number of people who came and went and we have no idea who they are.’

‘Don’t they have security cameras?’ Noah asked.

‘At the front door,’ said Mathis. ‘They have a camera there, but not on the other doors. Those doors only open from the inside, and they are normally kept locked. They don’t usually leave the door by the auditorium open.’

Caitlin understood what he was saying. The camera would be no help. ‘It’s almost as if someone chose this day on purpose, knowing the security would be lax. Or non-existent,’ she said.

‘That’s a possibility,’ said Sam. ‘Maybe now the school will get serious about it.’

‘Too late,’ Noah said.

The evening was long and miserable. No ransom call came, though everyone jumped when the phone rang. Mostly it was other people in town who had heard the news on television or through the grapevine. A child had gone missing from Hartwell Elementary School. That information spread from one home to another in no time, and there were a lot of people who sincerely wanted to help. Their calls were dispatched instantly to keep the line free.

At around nine o’clock, Paula and Westy arrived, driven over by one of the officers assigned to their house. Paula announced that she had made food.

‘She couldn’t help herself,’ Westy explained. ‘It’s how she deals with stress.’

Paula took the lid off her casserole, and began dishing it out of plastic plates.

Noah just stared at it, as if the very sight of food was sickening. On the other hand, the police officers who were coming and going did not need to be asked more than once to take a plate and the serving dishes were empty in no time. The coffee pot held only dregs. Westy sat with Noah, who sat staring blankly ahead, while Caitlin joined Paula in the kitchen and helped her to clean up and organize her kitchen gear.

‘I wish I could do more to help,’ said Paula.

‘Bringing all this food was a help,’ said Caitlin.

‘Haley called. She talked to Dan.’

‘Noah did, too,’ said Caitlin.

‘I thought Naomi would be here,’ said Paula.

Caitlin shrugged. ‘She called to say that Travis was too upset about Geordie to come over.’

Paula looked skeptical. ‘Really?’

‘Probably feels guilty for having picked on Geordie so much,’ said Caitlin, putting Paula’s casserole dish back in her carrier bag.

‘Well, that boy hasn’t had an easy time of it,’ said Paula. ‘Losing his father in the war like that. And then his mother was depressed for such a long time. All she ever did was sit with her nose in a book.’

‘I know. But sometimes I get so mad because Naomi won’t scold Travis no matter how badly he treats Geordie,’ said Caitlin. ‘Noah won’t either. He feels too sorry for him.’

‘We’ve all tried to help Naomi out with that child. It hasn’t been easy for them,’ said Paula. ‘We try to include him whenever we can.’

Caitlin felt as if she had been unkind. ‘I know you have. And Noah really appreciates it.’

Paula suddenly lifted a soapy hand from the dishwater and patted Caitlin on the forearm. ‘Thank heavens Noah has you,’ she said.

Caitlin tried to smile as Emily’s mother looked at her with such kindness in her gaze. ‘That’s really nice of you,’ said Caitlin. ‘I mean, especially because . . . because of Emily.’

‘Well, it’s not as if it’s your fault. It was just a horrible, horrible thing that happened to my Emily. But I know my girl is up in heaven, and I’m sure she’s happy that Noah and Geordie have someone like you in their lives. I just feel it.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ Caitlin whispered. She could barely speak. Paula is right, she reminded herself. It’s not your fault. But it didn’t matter what she told herself. She felt as if guilt was rising in her throat, and choking off her breath.

SIX

G
eordie was running down a strand of sunny beach. The water was silvery and calm. The sand was a shade of dusty bisque but, as he ran, his heavy sneakers did not kick up a cloud of it. His backpack bounced against his hoody as he went. ‘Geordie,’ Caitlin whispered. He did not turn around to look at her, but kept on running. She tried to call out to him but her voice, no matter how she tried, would make nothing more than a squeak. She tried to run after him but she was frozen in place, and he was disappearing into the distance.

Caitlin awoke. Gray light was filtering through the space between the curtains. Day. As soon as she woke up, she remembered. No word from him. No ransom demand. No sightings of him. Nothing. Nearly twenty-four hours had passed. Geordie was still gone. He had vanished completely, as if he had never existed.

Caitlin rolled over in bed and saw that Noah’s side of the bed was empty. She was not surprised. Still in her clothes, she had succumbed to exhaustion at about five o’clock in the morning. Obviously, he did not join her. She could hear voices in the other room.

There was no excited note from those voices. No one had come to wake her. That had to mean that there was no news. By yesterday afternoon a search had been mounted with volunteers from all over Hartwell willingly giving up their time. It had gone on late into the night. The leaders of each group of searchers reported in at regular intervals. Noah and Caitlin had wanted to join the search. Sam advised them that they needed to stay right there in the house.

Caitlin let herself think about Geordie. Yesterday, of course, she spent the whole day thinking of Geordie. But that wasn’t exactly true. They all spent the whole day thinking about what might have happened to Geordie. Going over mugshots, and surveillance footage, and teacher’s statements and neighbor’s statements. It was like an invisible puzzle that the police were trying to reconstruct out of thin air. They thought about different aspects of the puzzle. But they tried not to think about Geordie.

At one point she went into Geordie’s room and stood there, gazing at his belongings. Noah angrily told her to get away from the door. ‘Why?’ she had demanded.

‘You look as if you’re . . . remembering him,’ he said. She understood his anguish, and closed the door to the room. Geordie existed somewhere out there in the wide world. Not in memory. He wouldn’t allow it.

Now, lying there, looking at the band of gray light at her window, Caitlin allowed herself to think of him. His small, earnest, bespectacled face. His high voice. His giggle. The way he concentrated. The way his teeth, present and absent, took up all his mouth when he grinned. As she pictured Geordie, tears seeped from her eyes and ran down her face into the pillow. She began to gulp back sobs until it was becoming difficult to breathe.

‘Caitlin,’ Noah’s voice called out. ‘Are you awake?’

‘Yes,’ she called back, her voice thick.

‘Haley’s here.’

Haley. Caitlin could picture her friend’s sweet, earnest round face, her blond hair, her clothes dusted with flour. It would be good to see Haley, she thought. Get out of bed, she told herself. Change your clothes. Go out there.

She forced herself out of the bed. She went to her closet, took off yesterday’s rumpled suit and silk shirt and left them where they fell on the floor of the closet. She pulled out leggings, knit boots, a sweatshirt tunic. Clothes for warmth. Clothes for comfort. She put them on, brushed her hair up into a loose ponytail and looked at herself in the mirror over her dresser. Her face was gaunt and gray, her cheekbones jutting out from beneath her dark eyes. Her hair, normally coffee-colored and shiny, looked dull and lifeless. Caitlin turned away from the mirror. With an effort, she opened the door and left the bedroom.

Noah was seated at the kitchen table with Haley. He looked up at Caitlin, who had appeared in the doorway. ‘Hi, sweetheart,’ he said. Haley got up from the chair and came around to where Caitlin stood. The two women embraced, and Haley rubbed Caitlin’s back briskly, helplessly.

‘How are you holding up?’

‘One foot in front of the other,’ said Caitlin.

‘I brought sticky buns,’ said Haley, pointing to her gooey confections on a doily-topped plate sharing space with paper coffee cups, notepads, and newspapers on the surface of the kitchen table.

‘Thanks,’ said Caitlin. ‘You’re so good.’

‘I didn’t know what else to do.’

‘That was exactly what we needed. They’ll all get eaten, believe me,’ said Caitlin, thinking of the cops who were coming and going from the house.

‘Well, I know everybody says this, but if there’s anything more I can do . . .’

Caitlin hugged her friend again. ‘I know you mean it.’

‘I’m gonna go but . . .’ Haley made a phone receiver out of her hand and held it to her face.

Caitlin nodded. ‘I’ll walk to the door with you.’

Caitlin led Haley through the house, past the two cops who were poring over computer printouts in the living room. ‘Good morning,’ she said.

They nodded gravely as Caitlin walked by. She and Haley stopped at the front door, as Caitlin held it open.

‘I can see you’ve been crying,’ said Haley sympathetically, squeezing Caitlin’s hand.

‘I was dreaming of Geordie,’ she said.

‘They’ll find him, Caitlin. They have to.’ The two women embraced again, and then Haley headed out to her delivery van, passing Sam Mathis who had just arrived in the driveway and was coming up the walk.

‘Anything?’ Caitlin asked him.

‘Maybe,’ said Sam.

‘Really?’ Caitlin cried. ‘What?’

Sam did not reply but walked through the house to the kitchen. Caitlin followed him, and sat down beside Noah at the kitchen table. Caitlin pulled her folded legs up to her chest and rested her feet on the chair seat beneath her.

‘They might know something,’ she said to Noah.

Noah looked up. Before he could blurt out his question, Sam raised his hands as if to calm their expectations.

‘A teacher’s aide who is new to the school came forward. She’s young – just out of college – and she doesn’t know Geordie so she couldn’t be sure. But she was coming out of the ladies’ room on the morning of the festival and she saw a boy matching Geordie’s description – a boy with glasses, skinny, wearing a hoody, leaving the auditorium with a man in a ball cap.’

‘Oh my God,’ Caitlin gasped.

‘What do you mean?’ Noah demanded, jumping up. ‘Was he being dragged away? Why didn’t she stop him?’

Sam shook his head. ‘The child appeared to be accompanying the man willingly. It seemed perfectly innocent. She thought it was a parent, walking the child back to his class.’

‘And she’s sure it was Geordie?’ Noah demanded.

‘As I said, she doesn’t know Geordie, so she couldn’t be sure.’

‘Jesus,’ said Noah.

Caitlin briefly rested her forehead on her knees.

‘What did the man look like?’ Noah demanded. ‘Young, old, what?’

‘She only saw them from behind,’ said Sam.

‘Did she see them leave the school?’ Noah persisted.

‘No. She said the only reason she noticed them at all was because the man was wearing an Eagles cap, and she’s an Eagles fan. She just noticed it in passing.’

‘She and every other football fan in South Jersey,’ Noah said disgustedly.