Kidnapped

“That would be great! I mean…I can make it. Ben, how about you?”

I managed not to smile. I think Ben would have come just to see how Ethan was doing, but I also knew there was no way on Earth that he would let his graduate student spend time with two reporters without being there to oversee matters.

Ben gave me a hard stare but then sighed and said, “Yes, I’d like to see how Ethan’s doing, too.”

Vince said, “Caleb found a wallet. As you know, that is not even close to a positive ID. May not even belong to the deceased. But make sure Mark gives me that call, all right?”

“For a guy who just got a big break on a case, you’re looking mighty grim,” I said.

“Let’s just say life is full of surprises.”

I tried to get more information out of him, but he said that until he cleared things with his department, he wasn’t going to say more. I made sure he meant it, then left.

As I drove off, I glanced in the rearview mirror and caught Caleb Fletcher staring at my car. That was okay. I was curious about him, too.

CHAPTER 12

Monday, April 24

3:30 P.M.

A HOME IN HUNTINGTON BEACH

CARRIE smiled to herself as she washed the lunch dishes, thinking of being able to spend more time with Grandfather Fletcher as soon as she finished. The visit from her uncle and her grandfather had been a surprise. Uncle Giles was always nice to Carrie, but it was Grandfather she was most happy to see. Everyone loved Grandfather.

Her sister, Genie, and their brothers were upstairs with him now, while Carrie washed the lunch dishes. Mom and Dad were in Dad’s office, here at home, talking with her uncle. Family business. Uncle Giles was in charge of Grandfather’s private school-Fletcher Academy. Carrie wondered if she would be allowed to go there one day. Home schooling was okay, but she wished sometimes that they got out of the house more, could meet children who weren’t her cousins. She always tried to be extra nice to Uncle Giles, thinking he might let her in.

Today her parents and Uncle Giles had gone off to talk almost right away. Grandfather had said the children could all take a little break before they went back to their studies.

Carrie dried her hands and went upstairs to their big playroom. Grandfather turned and winked at her as she slipped in, but went on playing the piano, singing to her little brothers, Aaron and Troy. The boys stood as close to him as they could, eyes bright, joining in on the chorus. It was a song for young children, one Grandfather had written. Her nine-year-old sister, Genie, was quietly drawing. She smiled at Carrie, flashed a quick greeting in sign language, then bent her head over the big pad of drawing paper Grandfather had brought her.

Grandfather had taught all of his grandchildren some sign language so that they could communicate with their two deaf cousins. “And when my hearing goes, you can use it to talk to me,” he’d say.

As usual, he had brought a little gift for each of them. The drawing pad for Genie. For Carrie, a disposable camera, which made Mom roll her eyes but delighted Carrie-Grandfather had smiled at her excitement. The boys had been given storybooks, carefully chosen for their reading levels and interests-Troy’s was a book about dinosaurs, Aaron’s about astronomy. The boys loved books.

Carrie went to sit on the cushions on the window seat of the big bay window. She listened to the lyrics of Grandfather’s song, which was about the planets in the solar system. Carrie was old enough now to know that most of the songs Grandfather wrote were teaching songs, because Grandfather loved teaching almost as much as he loved children. The song was just the right thing for the boys. Aaron was five and Troy was six. Both of them could name the planets, because they knew this song so well.

Carrie had been able to name them at the age of four. She had learned them without the song.

Grandfather began to play a different song, a song about raindrops. He said that it came from a movie. Carrie, who was sitting away from the others, listened to Grandfather sing it as she watched raindrops on the windowpane.

Suddenly a strange feeling came over her. Inside her head, she could hear another voice singing the song. A man’s voice, soft and gentle. She was remembering that voice.

Someone else has sung this song to me. Another man. He sang it to me so that I wouldn’t be afraid of the rainstorm, the thunder.

She could almost see the man. In her memory, she could find the scent of him-it was a good and comforting scent, maybe from his soap or shampoo. Then, in snippets of memory that were nevertheless quite clear, she could see the man. His eyes were blue, like hers, and his hair was the same dark gold. As quickly as the images and memories had come to her, they were gone.

She watched the raindrops more intently. She had come up with a term for these experiences: a remembering. She knew Mom would scold her if she knew Carrie had tried to make a noun out of a verb, but Mom didn’t need to know all of Carrie’s thoughts. Mom would say they were memories, period. They weren’t exactly memories, to Carrie’s way of thinking. They were something on the way to being a memory. One day, she would remember more, and then they’d really be memories, not these vague impressions.

When the rememberings first came to her, she had been frightened and upset, and-for reasons she couldn’t immediately explain-sad. She knew she was adopted-they all were-but Mom and Dad said she had been adopted as a baby, not at three years old, as Genie and the boys had been. So how could a baby remember a song?

She was a sensible girl, as Dad was always saying, so she didn’t stay upset for long. She worked out several possibilities. She decided her parents had probably lied to her. She must not have been a baby when they adopted her. She must have been older. She looked something like Mom-and was probably chosen on that basis. After her, they gave up on that-Genie and the boys didn’t look anything like their adoptive parents. They just didn’t want her to be hurt by the knowledge that her real parents had a chance to get to know her before they decided they didn’t want her any longer.

She had seen how the boys cried when they first came to live here, each in turn. She had watched how wonderfully patient and kind Mom and Dad had been. Now, two years after the youngest, Aaron, had come here, he seemed not to remember being part of any other family. He didn’t cry out for his dead parents, or try to make up another name for himself.

Mom and Dad said Carrie’s parents had died not long after she was born. But she was sure that was a lie.

It made her feel sad that her adoptive parents had lied, even if it was a white lie. She was old enough now to realize that everyone lied, but still, you didn’t have to like it. She knew she was kind of a liar, too, because she kept secrets, and if her mother asked, “What’s on your mind, Carrie?” she didn’t always answer truthfully.

She wished she could ask questions about her birth parents, but she was afraid, she admitted to herself. What if she hurt Mom and Dad by asking? What if they decided she was too much trouble to keep? She was happy here, and loved her family. What good would it do to ask questions, especially if she might not like the answers?

She leaned her forehead against the cold glass and closed her eyes. The voice of the man of her remembering came back to her, and she found that she liked thinking about him. She had a series of private daydreams about this father who had not wanted to give her up, but a mean mother who insisted. The mean mother variously kept her locked in a closet, put her in a trunk, or sold her to strangers.

She never came up with a mental image or even a remembering of her birth mother. Only her father. She had another daydream in which her mother died just after Carrie was born, and then her father was in a terrible accident and hit his head and couldn’t remember anything and didn’t come home, and Carrie was put up for adoption.