“Christ.”
There was an old shirt lying on the nightstand at the base of the lamp. He tossed the shirt aside, pulled out the top drawer, and rummaged through the contents. A telephone book. Flashlight. A couple ball point pens. A cassette by the Crash Test Dummies. An old shoelace. Some paper clips. Another matchbook.
He slammed the drawer shut, then picked up a scratch pad that had been hiding under the old shirt. Someone had scribbled a note across the pad. The top page had been torn away, but underneath a faint impression had been left behind. He pulled the matchbook out of the drawer, struck a match, blew it out, and three matches later, he held the paper up to the lamp. Most of it was sadly unreadable, even after lightly brushing the match tips across the surface of the paper. But the last five letters came through remarkably clear, and Walt didn’t like what he saw.
The letters were: B-242.
[37]
Mrs. Knight, I don’t have much time… this is your son, Gabe… I’m fine, Mom… it’s not possible… Mrs. Knight, if you’ll step back into the house, please… run!… Teri, he would be almost twenty now… it’s him… I’m sorry, I’ve got to go out of town on business… let me run some tests and get back to you… I think they’re following us… are you okay, Gabe?… what now?… we sit and wait… you think someone’s in the apartment?… we’ve gotta get out of here!… run!… run!…
Teri opened her eyes with a start.
She shuddered, fingered the damp hair away from her face and sat up in the tub.
Run!…
Run!…
Gradually, the nightmare screams drifted away and she was left with the sound of water dripping off her hair into the bath, that sound and the sound of the television in the next room. They had checked into the motel late last night, and though she had slept well for the first time in several days, she had apparently drifted off while relaxing in the tub.
There was a knock at the bathroom door. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I’ll be out in a bit.”
Just a bit, she thought, letting her eyes close again and settling back into the water.
No one had followed them out of Walt’s apartment. Heaven only knew how they had tracked her there, but somehow they had and Walt’s interior had paid the price. She had tried to reach him last night, to warn him about the danger of showing up at home. The manager at the motel where Walt was staying took half-a-dozen frantic messages before he finally put his foot down on what he considered her “damn nuisance calls.” Still, he had promised Walt would get the message when he came in if she would just quit calling. Teri still hadn’t heard back, though. She imagined the manager had probably gotten some twisted satisfaction out of tossing out the messages. At least she hoped that was the reason that Walt hadn’t called.
“Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“Just checking.”
God, who was the child here? Last night it had all come home to roost—the car chase, Walt being out of town, finding the apartment trashed, all of it—and Teri had very nearly become hysterical. Inside the motel room, she had sunk to the floor and started crying. The boy had cried, too. But it had been a sympathy cry and before she had even realized what was happening, he was trying to comfort her, telling her that everything would be all right.
And maybe it would.
Maybe in the end everything would be all right.
Just like he said.
Teri opened her eyes again. Television voices were arguing in the next room, sounding similar to the voices that sometimes came from the other side of the post office boxes in the lobby where she worked. She flipped the drain release with her big toe, stood up, and pulled the white motel towel off the curtain rod.
She had awakened with a minor headache this morning. It had not grown any worse, and as she dressed, she began to feel confident that it wouldn’t spiral into a migraine like so many of them did. It had been three days since the boy had arrived, three days of being on the run, and three days without a migraine. Try to understand the logic in that.
The boy, who had been asleep when Teri had gone into the bathroom, was up and dressed and watching The Phil Donahue Show. He watched her as she crossed the room, a question forming at his lips.
Just don’t ask me what we’re going to do now, Teri thought.
“Mom?”
She sat on the edge of the bed, drying her hair with a towel, wishing she had a clean change of clothes, and dreading where this introductory question was going to lead. “Yeah, kiddo?”
“What about Dad?”
“What about him?”
“Where is he?”
She ran the towel through her hair one last time, then dropped her hands into her lap and looked at him. God, if he wasn’t Gabriel, then who in the hell was he? Even with the blue-green eyes he looked like Gabe. “Come here,” she said, patting a soft spot on the bed next to her.
He climbed off what he had happily declared the night before as his bed, and moved sullenly to her side.
“I don’t know what to believe anymore. But I know what I’d like to believe, and I’m going to start calling you Gabe from now on. Is that all right with you?”
“That’s my name. Gabriel Michael Knight.”
“All right, then. I want you to understand that it was hard on your father and me after you didn’t come home. We both had a difficult time coping, and for some reason I guess we both held each other responsible.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I guess we just missed you so much… there was this huge emptiness in our lives, and for some reason we started filling it with accusations and fears and… I just don’t know, Gabe. It was just hard to look at each other without thinking of the son we’d lost. And that just seemed to make the hurt all that much worse.”
“So Dad moved out?”
She nodded, feeling a mix of shame and guilt. “Yes.”
“Where?”
She placed her arm over the boy’s shoulders, as if she were trying to hold the last strand of her family together. He felt so tiny and fragile. “He lives in Tennessee now. In a little town outside of Nashville.”
“Will I ever get to see him again?”
“Of course, you will.”
He nodded thoughtfully. He had begun to toy with the wedding band on her finger, and Teri realized for the first time in years that she was still wearing it. Old habits were hard to break. “You think maybe we could call him?”
“Right now?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Gabe.”
“Please?”
[38]
The morning overcast had burned off; the sun was out; and it was easily ten degrees warmer than it had been yesterday.
Walt pulled into his parking space right around the corner from the apartment. It was a little after eleven. The drive up from the Bay Area had been a good six-hour trip. He grabbed his suitcase off the passenger seat, climbed out of the car, and locked the door. Originally, he had considered packing up last night and coming home, but he hadn’t been sleeping well lately and he didn’t like the idea of possibly falling asleep behind the wheel. So instead, he had called the apartment—ten, maybe fifteen times—trying unsuccessfully to get in touch with Teri to warn her. He didn’t want her or the boy to be there alone another night. Not with what he had found at the Boyle place.
B-242.
How had Boyle been tipped?
And how had he tracked down Walt’s address?
It’s not hard to find someone who’s not hiding, Walt told himself. You know that.