Dark Web (5 page)
Callie was not in bed beside him, but Mike considered that perfectly normal: Hannah still woke up in the night and sometimes Callie would crawl into bed with her to get her calmed back down, and then fall asleep herself.
His dreams hung in his mind like the after-image of a movie. There was a homeless man who lived near the Hirschl and Adler Galleries in Manhattan, just east of Central Park. He had a tent that rippled in the bitter cold. Nearby was a townhouse that had sold for millions of dollars.
Mike remembered the man and his long, Slavic face and nappy beard. Mike had brought the homeless man a battery-powered heater one particularly brutal winter.
The dream, the image of this man still hanging over him, Mike swung his legs out of the bed and stood up, rubbing his eyes. Then he became aware of voices from the living room.
Callie was up talking to someone. Braxton?
Mike walked out of the room, and, as he moved through the dark kitchen the voices grew clearer. He heard Callie take a deep breath, and then let out a moaning wail. The sound sent a tremor down the column of his spine, and he quickened his pace.
In the living room there was his wife, as he had never seen her before. She was a tangle of arms and legs, and she was being held by a man standing just inside the doorway.
Mike registered two things as he approached them: His wife was somewhere between fainting and trying to get out the door. The man holding her back was a cop. He just had that look. If Callie sensed Mike behind her, she didn’t show it. Instead, the low sound coming from her throat mounted to a mad shriek, and she redoubled her efforts to get past the man blocking her way.
“Callie!” Mike called. His voice sounded strangled. He took her by the shoulders. Only then did she seem to become aware of his presence, and turned and fell into him in a heap. Over and over again, she said, “Let me get out there. I have to get out there!” Her breath was hot against his neck. She grew rigid and pushed away from him, repeating more loudly: “I have to
get out there
!”
Mike looked beyond her at the man in front of him. “What’s going on?”
“Sir, my name is . . .”
But his words were lost amid Callie’s shrieks, as she broke loose from Mike and pummeled at the cop, knocking him backwards.
The entrance had two doors, a main door and a storm one. The main door was still open behind the man, and the storm door, which swung outward, did nothing to break his fall as Callie charged into him. The two of them went sprawling onto the porch outside. At the same moment, Reno came into the room behind Mike. “Mom?”
Mike spun around and moved instinctively towards his daughter. He had no idea what was going on, but he knew he needed to protect his family. He scooped Reno up and moved quickly into the hallway with her in his arms, as Callie and the man disentangled themselves on the porch.
“Mom!” Reno was yelling now, too. “What’s wrong?”
Mike shushed her. “You’ll wake your sister.”
He stopped just short of her bedroom and held her away from him so he could look into her eyes. She was only six, but she was smart, intuitive; you could get nothing past her. “I don’t know what’s happened yet,” he said. “But I need you to stay right here for just a minute. Let me go help Mommy.”
“Mom!” She looked past him, trying to catch sight of her mother.
“Reno,” he said firmly. “Please, honey. I’ll come right back for you.
Stay here.
”
He set her down on the threshold to her bedroom. Miraculously, Hannah was still asleep in the darkened room. Mike left Reno and turned away. Passing Braxton’s door, he stuck his head into the room.
Gone
.
The computer was lit up. A criminal-looking character stared out from the screen. The room held a faint, red pulse. Lights from outside. Cop lights. Ambulance lights –
God no.
He turned and retraced his steps down the hallway, passing Reno, who stood where he had placed her, her little face contorted with confusion and fear. It pained his heart to leave her. But he had to see to Callie.
“Right back,” he said as he passed her and ran a hand over the top of her head, across the soft, tangled hair.
He pounded back to the living room. The man at the doorway was holding Callie, who had quieted down. She was saying, “Why? Why won’t you let me?” in a breathy whisper.
Any moment, he thought, and she’ll start shrieking again. Callie was emotional; she had a short fuse, and was a bear of a mother. Now, her instincts were firing on all cylinders. Mike got his arms around her and drew her back into the house, expecting renewed protests.
But she seemed to soften as she felt his arms around her. The cop, covered in snow from his fall, came in behind them, the storm door swinging shut. He met Mike’s eyes as they all retreated from the entranceway. And then Mike saw behind him the red lights dousing the trees, turning the snow pink in rapid-fire flashes.
The cop shut the main door. Mike held fast to Callie, who was now quietly weeping.
“I’m Detective John Swift, with the State Police,” the man said, speaking urgently now. But his eyes betrayed sorrow. “Do you have a teenaged son?”
At this, Callie’s body went completely slack in Mike’s arms. He held her tightly as she brought both hands to her eyes, covering her face. Mike’s heart was pumping hard and his skin felt numb.
“We do. Is he in some kind of trouble?”
He could have left the house and done something stupid. Like walked over to the neighbors. Maybe they’d freaked and called the police. They didn’t know anything yet. Didn’t know anything.
Didn’t know. Didn’t know didn’t know didn’t—
“He is . . . there is no easy way to say this. He is deceased.”
Callie began to writhe in Mike’s grip, and then she broke free, her elbow coming back and catching him in the solar plexus, knocking the wind from his lungs.
She shoved the detective aside as he sought to grab her. She twisted the doorknob, yanked it back and pushed her way through in one unstoppable motion. She had jumped off the porch and into the frigid night before either Mike or the detective could even straighten themselves out.
As Mike caught a glimpse of her, hair flying in the darkness as the storm door began to close, his only thought was,
She’s not wearing any shoes.
* * *
She ran through the darkness toward the red lights. They stuttered and flashed in the night. They made no sense, those lights. They shouldn’t be there.
Yet they had always been there. Deep within her she knew. The lights had always been there, and this had already happened. Already happened in another life, and would go on happening, all through eternity.
She sprinted down the edge of the driveway, oblivious of her feet clad only in socks, in the snow, unaware of it coming down, melting on her face and sticking in her hair. The scene ahead seemed to get no nearer, like a mirage in a dream.
Her mind was empty as she ran. She was aware only of her breathing, the pumping of her arms and legs.
Where was she going?
She had forgotten, momentarily, why she was even here, running. And then she saw his face, with the mop of hair in his eyes, and the half smile on his lips.
Someone was trying to stop her. A big man in a uniform had his arms stretched out. His mouth was moving but she heard no sound. She surged past him. She felt his fingers brush her arm as he lunged for her. Then more men surrounded her. She ran until everything in her body sang in chorus, her blood, her nerves, the ringing of the night, all blended into one magnificent blast of sound, and her son was in the middle of it, light brighter than a thousand suns surrounding him, and he turned and looked at her.
Then it was gone..
She saw that they were gathered round something in the road.
Her gaze fell on the object of their attention. She saw his face, and she saw his arm, his hand, which seemed to be reaching out. They seemed to be clearing the snow off him. There was a woman crouched there, who now stood up.
Hands gripped Callie’s arms. She pulled at them and howled. Yet no sound escaped her.
The woman was coming towards her. She was waving her hands and her lips were moving. Callie felt the hands let go. She moved forward, and the woman came towards her. Her eyes were kind but her face was set and determined. Callie ignored her and walked on. Then the woman suddenly had her in a monstrous hug.
The next thing Callie knew, she was on the ground. She was only a few yards away from him. The woman was talking about a crime scene, that Callie must help her son by giving them space to work, that she had to be still now, be still.
Callie was looking at him.
None of it made any sense. Not the shouts nor the lights, nor this woman lying on top of her. This was a dream, wasn’t it? She was still home in Florida; she would soon wake up and go to his room, and he would smile up at her from his desk, the secret smile that only the two of them shared, because they had been through everything together; they had survived his biological father, they had survived the painful divorce, they had survived being on their own together before Mike. It had always been just the two of them, the last two people in the world.
They would survive this.
They would survive.
Mike was getting angry. He felt it rising, breaking in waves in his brain.
The detective was holding his hands out in a calming gesture.
“She’ll be okay. You need to stay here with your other children. Please. Let me ask you a few questions. We think what may have happened to your son — we think possible assailants left the scene only a half hour ago, and we’re trying to track them.”
“What?”
There were words coming out of the cop’s mouth that Mike didn’t understand. Where was Braxton? Why had Callie run off? Had the cop said something? Had the cop said something fucking stupid about Braxton? Did he say he was out there? Out in the road? What was he doing in the road?
“Anything you tell me right now could expedite their capture. Sir? Do you understand me? We can get whoever did this, but time is critical. Did your son have any enemies? Anyone who might want to hurt him?”
“What? No.” Mike kept looking out the front window. All he could see were those harsh lights in the trees. He was dimly aware of Reno crying in the other room. He needed to go to her. Just a second, though. Just a second. Hold on.
“You just moved here. He started a new school, right? Any problems with other kids? Arguments? Bullying?”
“No. Kids at school? No, no problems.” Mike’s lips felt waxy, numb. He couldn’t see Callie. He wanted to go out on to the porch. This man must get out of his way.
Shhh
, said a voice in his head.
Calm down, baby
.
Callie, where did you go?
“Ok. What about other people? Who did he hang out with?”
“Hang out? No one.” Mike strained to see further. He pressed his forehead to the window. It was cold, so cold. He shut his eyes for a moment. “Did he get hit by a car?”
“We don’t know yet. But it doesn’t appear that way.”
“Then why . . .” Mike struggled to find the words. He licked his lips. His tongue was chalky. “Why are you asking me all these questions?”
“The person who found your son out there said that moments after he arrived, there was a—”
The walkie-talkie on the detective’s belt burst with static. Then, “Detective Swift, Trooper Bronze.”
He pulled the device out, in front of his mouth and pressed a button. “This is Swift. Go ahead, Bronze.”
“Swift, Troopers Day and Wyckoff got a . . . we’ve got a dark green Hyundai at Exit 30. New York plates. Three people. One Robert Darring from New York, one Hide-oh . . . I can’t pronounce it. Hide-oh Miko? Asian kid; Philadelphia. The third has no I.D. He says he’s fifteen. The other two are older. Over.”
“They say they were at the scene?”
Static, then the trooper broke over again. “Affirmative. Say they are friends with the decedent.”
Swift pressed the button, scowling. “Say what they were doing up here at three in the morning?”
“Coming to visit. Saw the kid in the road, the old guy next to him, thought he’d done something bad, and turned and hightailed it.”
Swift made a dismissive sound, blowing air out of his lips. “Hmm,” he grunted without pressing the transmit button. Then he pressed again, and said, “Have Day and Wyckoff bring them in. I’ll contact the prosecutor. Keep old Lenny Duso handy.”
“Copy that.”
Mike withdrew from the window and watched Swift as he placed the walkie-talkie back on his belt. Swift fixed him with a level gaze.
“Okay, Mr. . . .”
“Simpkins.” His voice sounded far away. Reno was still crying. He needed to go to her now. He felt as though some explosive charge had just detonated, silently, as if underwater, bursting apart his family and flinging them all into different shoals.
“Mr. Simpkins? New York State gives us seventy-two hours to bring formal charges against the arrestees. I’m going to be honest — there’s not a lot of physical evidence out there. The wind and snow have destroyed a lot. But these kids — you just heard — might know something. And if so, they could lawyer-up real quick; obtain a writ of habeas corpus and, if there’s no charge, a judge will let them go.”
Mike tried to absorb the words. Why was the cop saying all this? He moved towards his daughters in the other room.
The detective nodded. “You stay with them. I’ll be back. We’re going to need to find out how your son knew these three, if he did. So you be thinking about that. Think about anyone who may have wanted to do him harm. Don’t worry about your wife — we’ll take care of her. We’ll bring her back in so you can all be together.”
“Mr. Simpkins. I’m very sorry.”
“Thank you.” His words seemed to come from someone else.
He turned into the hallway in time to see Hannah emerge from the bedroom, sleep in her eyes, her mouth turned down into a sad frown, Reno beside her, tears streaming down her face.
His heart broke.