“Better let Bandit in,” he called. “He sounds cold.”
Cal didn’t answer.
“Hey, Cal, a little speed here, buddy. I promised Deborah we’d be home before bedtime.”
He set the suitcase down in the living room beside Cal’s backpack and went to see what was keeping the boy.
He was not in the kitchen, and Dwight followed the barks of the dog through the utility room to the side door. The instant he opened it, the terrier darted inside, shivering from the icy wind.
“Cal?”
Dwight stepped out into the snow-covered yard. There was no sign of his son. Was he still in the house?
“Cal?”
The little dog looked up at him anxiously.
Dwight went back outside and called again, roaring Cal’s name.
Beyond the snowcapped hedge, he saw the same un-friendly neighbor appear in the window. This time, the man opened the window without being asked and called,
“If you’re looking for that boy, he just left with his mother.”
C H A P T E R
5
Friday afternoon, 21 January
“How many times do I have to tell it?” Leonard Carlton asked testily, his white hair standing up in tufts where he’d plunged his fingers in exasperation.
“As many times as it takes,” Paul Radcliff said, exercising his authority as Shaysville chief of police. “You told Major Bryant. Now tell me.”
“There’s nothing much to tell. The kid opened the door and let the dog out. A few minutes later, he walked out, too. Mrs. Bryant came out right behind him and took his hand. He didn’t want to go at first, but she said something to him and they both came through the side gate, closed it so the dog couldn’t get out, then walked down the drive to the street pretty fast and turned the corner, and that was it till he came out.”
“By ‘he,’ you mean Major Bryant?”
“The kid’s dad? Yeah.”
“Did they get in a car?”
Jonna’s elderly neighbor gave an indifferent shrug, and it took all of Dwight’s self-control not to pick up the sour little man by the scruff of his skinny neck and shake him till he turned loose something that would lead them to Cal.
Instead, he leaned against the doorjamb and looked through Carlton’s window, past the hedges, to the side door of Jonna’s house, where Paul, as a favor to him, had his people processing the door, the yard, the gate, and the drive where Cal and Jonna were last seen a bare two hours ago.
Virginia’s blue sky had gone a dirty gray and the air felt as if more snow was on the way, snow that could blanket all traces of his son.
What the hell was going on here? he wondered. Why would Jonna sneak around her own house and take Cal without saying a word to him?
“How come you say that he didn’t want to go with her?” Radcliff asked.
“Just at first,” said Carlton. “When she took hold of his hand, it looked to me like he was trying to pull away and go back in the house. But whatever she said, he quit arguing and it was almost like he was the one pulling her down the drive.”
“You said you didn’t see them after they turned the corner, but could they have left in a car? Did you hear one drive off?”
“Cars are back and forth all day. Can’t say as I’d’ve noticed. But they did turn to go in front of their house, like they were going over toward Main Street.”
“When did you last notice Mrs. Bryant’s car here in the drive?”
“Yesterday morning. I saw her drive off with the boy, but that’s the last time.”
“Can you describe how she was dressed?”
Leonard Carlton squinted his faded blue eyes as if trying to picture again what he had seen. “One of those puffy blue parkas. She had the hood up and it had black fur around the edges.” His wrinkled hand traced a circle around his face. “The sun was real bright on the snow and she had on a pair of those . . . what do you call ’em?
Wraparound sunglasses?”
“Was the parka dark blue or light blue?”
“More like navy, I’d say.”
“Pants or a skirt?”
