Undeliverable (16 page)

She was at his desk with a pile of auction items, frowning at the computer screen. “Nothing fun in this pile. All totally researched and shelved. No fun at all.” She hit the return key and tossed another book into the cart of items to go to the auction storage bay.

“So, it’s five o’clock. How late are we staying tonight?” He came around behind her and leaned on the chairback to look over her shoulder at the screen. She typed in the code for the next item, but brought up an error screen. “I think you mistyped that number; I don’t think it was the thousandth item cataloged that day, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Slip of the keys. I think we should stay as late as we can stand it. Order a pizza or something for dinner.” She entered the right numbers and found the hedge clippers she had been trying to look up.

“I was afraid you were going to say that. Alright. Order that pizza and then come help me with this damned list. I think it’ll go a lot faster with one of us on the shelf and the other on the list.”

“Meat lover’s okay with you?”

“Perfect. Girl after my own heart.”

“Well, dunno about that. A girl with a healthy appetite maybe.”

Ben laughed and headed back into the warehouse with the list as Sylvia picked up the phone to order pizza.

They stayed until around nine that night and returned again at the usual time the next morning. They alternated working on the cataloging, auction preparation, and inventorying together and again spent the evening working, this time with Chinese. And again on Friday, the only change being that this time Sylvia stepped out to get hoagies.

“Lord, do we seriously only have four more work days until the auction?” Sylvia stretched her shoulders by holding onto one of the shelving units behind her and leaning forward.

“I know, only half done with this and about half done with the auction items. I haven’t even started to add suggested prices to the auction list.” Ben tossed the inventory list on top of the safe and did a few squats.

“Break time, definitely.” She dropped to the floor and started doing simple yoga stretches, trying to work the kinks out of her neck from such prolonged hours of abuse. “We’re so not going to make it if all we do is work a few nights. I think we’ll have to hit it this weekend as well.”

“I can’t,” Ben replied without thinking.

“Why not?” She had her legs spread nearly into a split and was stretching her left arm over top of her head and leaning toward her right foot.

Ben tried not to follow her distracting movement. “I’ve got things to do this weekend.”

“Meaning you’re handing out flyers, am I right?”

“Well, yes, and I have a few things to look into that I don’t want to delay more than I have to.”

“Where were you planning to paper this weekend?” She leaned over to the other side now.

“I was thinking the theater district. Hit the late shows, lots of people at those.”

She stood and shook out her limbs, bouncing a bit. “I’ll make a deal with you. Saturday, we come here. Nobody’s going to want to talk with you during the late shows on Saturday; they’re all out to have a good time, and they don’t want the downer.” Ben started to open his mouth, but she held up her hand. “We’ll hit the matinee on Sunday instead—lots of people, lots of families, and they’re more likely to stop, because families care more about kids than the trendy hipsters at the late shows.”

“But the research I wanted to work on.”

“It’ll still be there after the auction. Can you really tell me that one week of intense labor is going to make a difference? Be honest.”

Her cavalier attitude was starting to make him angry. “You never know what’s going to make the difference.”

She stood, legs shoulder width apart and hands on her hips, eyebrow quirked. “But you can do without one day of research and come do your friggin’ job, mister.”

He struggled with himself a moment more before nodding his assent. He couldn’t stay mad at someone who looked like Peter Pan lecturing the Lost Boys. All the same, after they called it quits for the night, he headed straight home to his desk covered in papers and the map on the wall. The first thing he did was plan out the area he wanted to cover for the weekend. He was low on flyers, but he could just copy those at the Center the next day. Then he sat at his desk and decided to get up to date on the websites that reported on missing children.

As per usual, he was disappointed in the results. More children listed, but nothing posted about his son and sadly few happy posts. For every twenty or thirty posts about a child missing, there was maybe one response of a child later being found, typically with the estranged parent.

He closed those windows and opened another bookmark. The Take Root website loaded, and he took a moment to examine the illustration of a tree that adorned the home page. It was a site he went to occasionally when he tried to picture what it would be like when Benny came home. It was dedicated to ensuring that children who were returned to their parents were not then forgotten. The found children often needed years of therapy, depending on what the situation was, and Take Root made sure that the parents were aware of this.

Ben liked to visit it and plan the aftercare for his son. He had several different plans, depending on what had happened to Benny. If it was a desperate person who simply wanted a child to love who had taken Benny, the care wouldn’t have to be as extensive. A few light counseling sessions maybe; perhaps after a year he might have some readjusting to do, but Ben was sure that his son would fly straight back into his arms.

On the other hand, if some sadistic bastard had taken hold of him, Ben had already researched the best counselors in the area for children’s trauma and had even contacted a few of them. They had kindly requested that he wait until his son was returned to him before going ahead with discussions about treatment. They also offered the name of a therapist to help him deal with the separation—that’s what they called it—which he roughly declined. He was doing fine on his own.

They had also suggested keeping an eye on the state’s clearinghouse for missing children. He hated that word—clearinghouse. It sounded like the children were overstocked commodities or there was a going-out-of-business sale. In fact, this was the nervous center in each state for the information related to missing people. Of course, it would be easier to “keep an eye” out as suggested if Georgia would come out of the stone age and put it online, like Ohio and other states. But no, its clearinghouse was still paper and phones, run through the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. And they had asked him to stop calling. The only thing they kept online that was of any interest was a report of the crime statistics for previous years. And it didn’t even include missing persons, so it was obvious to him where their priorities lay. It did, however, include citations written up against runaways.

He logged into his email and saw that he had received another two pages of tip-line transcription from his friend. The first in months. It took a moment to download, but when he opened it, it was just more of the useless and attention-seeking comments that plagued the transcripts he already had.

I don’t know about that boy, but when I was at the supermarket, som’un about run me down. Who do I talk to about that?

Of course, he came to me in a dream, wanted me to tell everyone that he’s with God now, and you don’t need to be looking for him anymore. He’s having a grand time hanging out with Elvis.

Benny had always thrown a fit when Ben had played anything by Elvis. He was more of a classic hard rock fan. Or Tchaikovsky. He really loved the cannons in the 1812 Overture and had someday wanted to play them, but he’d never liked Elvis.

He printed out the email anyway and added it to the stack of tips he already had. For the rest of the night, he spent his time refining the list of things he had determined to research on the search engines at work, after the auction prep and inventory were finished.

A
knock on the door nearly caused Ben to fall out of his desk chair where he had once again fallen asleep. With effort, he managed to not vocalize the line of cusswords streaming through his head, aimed at both himself and whoever had woken him up. He glanced at the time showing on his computer and saw that it was nine o’clock, an hour before he was supposed to meet Sylvia. He stumbled to the door and opened it.

“Thought I’d bring some breakfast, you know, to get us started this morning.” The minx herself stood there, holding up a Dunkin’ Donuts bag and tray of coffees, and tried to scoot past him into his apartment.

Ben rubbed his hands briskly over his face before standing aside to let her in. “Morning. Wait, how?”

Sylvia arched an eyebrow at him. “My, my, aren’t you eloquent this morning. Your address is in the employee database at work. Don’t look so surprised to see me.” She walked into the kitchen and put the breakfast items down on the counter. “Or is that just a hangover in your pocket?” The empty alcohol bottles on the counter—three beers and an empty whiskey bottle—received momentary consideration before she swept them into the trash.

He frowned, not remembering having drunk that much the night before, but there were the bottles. “You’re early.” He stumbled back to his desk and started to straighten the papers on it.

“I know.” She finally noticed the map and papers on the wall and made her way over to it. “Great interior decorating taste, if I may say so. The black stage effect with the lack of furniture really makes the wall decorations pop.” She ignored his glare and continued to study the map, fingering the pushpins. “Tips?”

“Yeah. Hands off, please. It’s quite precise.” He left the living room and grabbed a coffee out of the tray, hoping she would follow him away from the wall. It was entirely too early, and he was not awake enough to be able to defend against whatever she was going to say about the wall. He wondered, not for the first time, what it would look like to someone who didn’t know, who hadn’t had someone go missing. When she didn’t follow, he returned to the living room, finding her with her nose inches from the wall. “I said, I would appreciate it if you didn’t touch that. It’s organized in a particular way.”

She held her hands submissively in the air and wrinkled her nose. “Oh yeah, I can see that.”

“I know what is going on and what it means. So leave it.” He took a sip of the coffee, nearly scalded himself, and swore. This morning was just getting better and better.

She ignored him and continued examining the map wall. “What I don’t understand is how someone so organized at work can have something this chaotic at home.” She retreated to his office chair and spun it a couple times. “So, are you ready to get to work?”

It was an immense relief to have Sylvia step away from his wall, and Ben could feel his irritation start to fade. She had delivered coffee, after all. “I have to shower and change first.”

She chuckled and spun the chair all the way around. “Yeah, I noticed those are the same things you were wearing yesterday. Fall asleep at your desk often?”

“Only when a harpy shanghais my weekend.” And with that he left her laughing in his living room while he went to shower.

The Center was silent as they keyed in, no rustling of mail or loud Latino radio from the sorting room, no keyboards or murmured conversation from the bullpen. The first thing Sylvia did when they got to the warehouse was boot up Ben’s computer and open a radio site on the Internet. The strains of nineties grunge rock filled the building, and they both relaxed a little.

“God this place is eerie when it’s dead.” Ben put down his coffee cup and picked up the inventory lists.

“Completely. I hate coming in on weekends just for that, but the music helps. Otherwise it feels almost like you can hear the stacks of mail whispering.” Sylvia shuddered and snatched the list from his hand and wandered off to the bay. “You’re playing with the shelves today. My throat is still sore from the dust yesterday.”

“Fine with me.” Ben completely agreed with her on that particular flight of fancy and followed her to the bay where they had stopped yesterday. “Do we plan on doing anything other than this today?”

“I was thinking of shredding. Haven’t done it in a few days ,and it’s really piling up.”

“Our lunch break then. Oh fun, we’re to the stacks of canvases now.” When he pulled off the first canvas, a cloud of dust filled the air and he coughed until it dissipated enough for him to read the numbers on the claim tag affixed to the back of the frame. “Okay, 1980, July 16.”

“Got it.”

“Number thirty-four.”

“Check. Next.” She drew a line through the item as he lifted off the next canvas.

They worked steadily for three hours, taking the occasional drink and bathroom breaks before Ben called a halt. “I am starving, and I want another hoagie. Why don’t you go start doing some shredding while I get sandwiches? I really don’t feel like shifting any more paper right now, and I would like to see the sun at some point today.” He stretched hard and ended up with another coughing fit from the dust, wondering idly if he shouldn’t pick up some masks on the way back to keep from getting miner’s lung.

Sylvia perked up at the suggestion of food, slapping the list down on the shelf. “One hero for me!”

Ben grinned. He was astounded at the amount of food she could tuck away, a good trait in a woman in his opinion. “The works, right?”

“They make it any other way?”

Ben dusted off his hands and headed to the door. “Be back in twenty. Think you’ll be done shredding by then?”

“Fat chance. Have you seen the bins?” She held her hand above her head. “I think I’ll have to grow a few inches just so I won’t be buried by the avalanche I’m about to cause. Got a shovel?”