The story finally got around to their family. There he was, shouting his technical explanations to the crowd, except his words were unintelligible under the narration. He was described as a suspect and then Sarah was shown, sobbing with Justin’s picture held aloft. The anchor reported that whether or not there was any connection between the virus and the boy’s disappearance was unknown.
“We look like a couple of freaks caught up in some tabloid tragedy,” said Sarah. “Who would kidnap Justin because you released a virus?”
He shot her a glance and pondered her words. He had been so deep in shock today that he hadn’t considered the possibility of a connection between his two fantastic strokes of misfortune. He recalled that Arthur Conan Doyle had once written about fantastic coincidences in the guise of Sherlock Holmes. The gist had been that uncommon events occurred fairly often, but rarely did chance play two unusual cards at the same time-unless the dealer was a card shark.
He turned that over in his mind. The more he thought about it, the more he became convinced that there had to be a connection of some kind. He stood accused of a crime he did not commit, and his son had been kidnapped. All of this had happened in a single day. Assuming that the same party was responsible, who could it be? He simply couldn’t come up with anyone who wanted to destroy him. He had a few people that were enemies, he supposed, such as Abrams. But the furthest he could imagine Abrams going would be to attempt to block his tenure approval. Criminal frame-ups and felony kidnapping seemed far beyond his scope. Still, there had to be something. He felt sure of it.
He leaned forward and put his head in his hands. His fingers slowly gripped his hair and pulled. The sensation on his scalp felt good somehow. He needed to figure this out. He had to get Justin back, and he had to do it fast. But how?
She put a reassuring hand on the back of his neck. He didn’t move. He decided a good first move would be to replay the events of the day carefully through his mind.
Before he could begin, however, there came a knock at the door. This knock was different somehow from the knock of the countless reporters. It was louder, more authoritative. It was a heavy knock that demanded to be answered immediately.
Ray and Sarah glanced at each other. Her eyes were haunted, and he felt something snap inside him. He felt anger and decisiveness overtake him. He had sat around long enough while someone else’s virus was assigned to him and some half-interested stranger searched for his missing son. They didn’t have a peephole, so he rose and moved quickly to the kitchen window. The kitchen nook thrust outward from the house in the front and offered a better view of the porch. Besides, it was nice and dark in the kitchen. It was dark on the porch too, but he instantly recognized the silhouette of agent Vasquez and the bulkier outline of agent Johansen. Agent Vasquez had a sheath of papers in her hands. Out on the street, he saw a squad car pull up and two sheriff’s deputies climbed out. He knew in his heart that they weren’t coming just to question him this time.
Quietly, he slipped back out of the kitchen and into the living room. Sarah met him in the front hall, her face apprehensive. He raised a finger to his lips and kissed her on the forehead. She looked at him for a second and then flung herself on him.
“You’re leaving,” she whispered hoarsely in his ear.
He nodded, for a moment beyond speech. He held her shoulders and when he found his voice he spoke into her ear. “I have to try to help Justin. If I’m sitting in jail, I can’t do anything.”
She hugged him harder and made an odd sound of anguish. She didn’t argue aloud, they both knew there was nothing to say. The doorbell rang loudly then, and both of them jumped. He glanced at the door and gently pried her from his chest.
“I’ll be okay,” he said. “I’ll use Mrs. Trumble to communicate when I can. Also, try accessing my school account if they get the system up again. I’ll send e-mail. Delay them all you can, say I walked to the store an hour ago, say anything.”
Then he kissed her again and headed down the hall. His heart thumped so loudly in his chest that he wondered if the agents would hear it. His mind raced. He didn’t own a gun, and it probably would have been a bad idea to take one anyway. He had around a hundred bucks on him, and there was no time to pack anything. He snatched up his notebook computer from his desk. Fortunately, it was still packed up in its carrying case, the way he had brought it home from the lab last night. He hadn’t bothered to take it to work today as he was tired and had planned to come home as early as possible.
The hammering at the door grew more pressing. “Dr. Vance,” he heard Vasquez call out from the porch. “Open the door.”
He slung the black leather strap over his neck, feeling like a high tech thief on the run. The entire idea was insane. Then reality set back in and his smirk vanished. He went to the sliding glass door that led from the master bedroom into the backyard. His car was out front and hopelessly beyond reach. Stepping out into the night air, he was suddenly aware of every sound he made. Although it was nearly silent, the swish of the slider behind him seemed to roar out his presence to the world at large. He paused, breathing through his open mouth so that his whistling nostrils didn’t give him away. He took a deep breath and forced himself to relax. He couldn’t do Justin any good if he panicked and froze like a deer caught in a pickup truck’s headlights.
He considered the back gate and the alley beyond, then rejected the idea. For all he knew there was another squad car out there waiting for him. He listened for an idling engine, but heard nothing. He forced himself to trot to the fence separating his yard from the Trumbles and vaulted it. He would have had trouble getting over the five-foot tall fence any other day, but tonight adrenalin was dribbling into his bloodstream at top output. He knew the Trumbles didn’t have a dog and rarely ventured into the backyard except to keep it immaculately well- trimmed. His own was an overgrown jungle by comparison. He trotted across the lawn and moved to their side gate. Their house was on the corner, so they had easy access to the street. The gate clicked and stuck for a maddening moment, then squealed open on unoiled hinges. Irrationally, he cursed the Trumbles for shoddy maintenance, although the lord only knew the last time he had oiled anything on his property.
Once on the street, he headed across to the other side and walked swiftly into the nearest open alleyway. He knew the neighborhood well and it only took him minutes to get to an all-night gas station and used his wife’s cell phone. He hoped they weren’t tracing that one yet, but he knew it was only a matter of time. He called Brenda’s cell phone, got no answer, then called her house.
While he was waiting for her to call back, he saw two squad cars pull up to the stop sign fifty feet away. He tried to shrink into the shadows. Fortunately, the closest streetlight was out and left him a comforting pool of shadow to stand in.
It took long seconds for the squad cars to move on. Immediately after them, a featureless blue sedan pulled up that had government plates. Agent Vasquez sat at the wheel. She crashed the stop sign and headed for the I- 80 onramp.
Soon after they were gone, the phone rang in his hand.
“Brenda?” he asked.
“Who’s this?” she barked back suspiciously. Ray felt a wave of relief to hear her voice.
“Brenda, I need your help.”
“Ray?”
“Dammit, Brenda,” he said.
“Oh, sorry. Right. Well, Nameless One, no shit you need my help.”
Ray smiled and frowned at the same time. “Do you believe I’m innocent, Brenda?”
“Of course I do!” she exclaimed, sounding offended that he should ask. “Fucking feds are wasting precious resources on you while they could be solving two serious crimes.”
“Can you pick me up?”
“Name it.”
“The Wendy’s on-the one we hate to go to.”
“Right. Give me twenty minutes. Make it fifteen.”
“Brenda?”
“What?”
“Thanks.”
“Remember me at Christmas,” she said.
Ray took the time to buy a new prepaid phone at the first shop he passed. The whole shock of the idea that
