The Murder Artist

CHAPTER 6

Then a click, and the candle goes out as suddenly as it flared.

“Kevin? Kevin?!”

I punch on the Jeep’s overhead light and stare at the tiny glowing rectangle of the phone’s LCD screen. Like most cell phones, mine displays the numbers of incoming calls. But only, I remember, until you press the key to answer. The screen tells me: CURRENT CALL: 18 SECONDS.

“Sir?” Christiansen says. “Who was that? Who called you?”

“Hang on just a minute.” I stay with the telephone, tapping through the menu selections until I get to RECEIVED CALLS. The list keys up. I tap RECEIVED 1, and read: 202-555-0199.

This can’t be right. It’s the number at the house, my own home phone number. Does this mean – my heart does a somersault in my chest – that the boys are at home?

I don’t see how it’s possible, how the boys could be home, and yet no one – not the boys or whoever took them there – ever bothered to call on my cell phone during the eleven hours they’ve been missing.

It makes no sense, but still, I go nova with happiness.

My cell phone must have cut out on Kevin’s call. I drove through a black zone; it happens all the time. The signal is strong now, though, so I press the 2 key, which automatically calls the house. I’m impatient for the sound of my son’s voice, and the explanation.

The phone rings four times, and then I hear my own voice. “Hi, you’ve reached Alex Callahan. I can’t come to the phone right now, but…”

I hang up. The phone has call waiting, so if you’re on the line and you don’t cut over to the new call, the machine picks up. The boys must be calling at the same time I’m calling the house. Our calls are blocking each other. I wait, try again, get the machine again. Repeat the process, in the meantime explaining to Christiansen what I’m doing – and that it was Kevin who called.

After the fourth try, I give up. Maybe I jumped the gun, maybe it took a minute or two for calls to post up. I click back to RECEIVED CALLS, but the number displayed for RECEIVED 1 is still the same, my home number. I press the tab for time of call. The time tag pops up: 4:42 A.M. A glance at the dashboard tells me it’s 4:48. So that means the call from Kevin did come from the house in Cleveland Park.

In which case – why doesn’t anyone answer?

“Mr. Callahan,” Christiansen says, “you sure that was one of your kids?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” I say, voice shaky with emotion. “It was Kevin.”

“How could you tell – them being twins and all?”

“Because it sounded like Kevin,” I snap. I don’t bother to explain that most of the time Kevin still calls me Daddy while Sean calls me Dad – and is quite militant about it.

“No kiddin’,” Christiansen says in a dubious voice.

Suddenly, I’m not so sure. Maybe it was Sean. The lack of certainty bothers me.

“So what did he say?” Christiansen asks. “What happened to them? Where are they?”

I’m pulling back onto the road, accelerating into the traffic. I don’t answer Christiansen, but what I’m thinking is: What did he say? He said, Daddy. I can’t get Kevin’s voice out of my head, the sweetest elixir, the hoped-for sound:

Daddy.

I flick on the phone’s light and try home again, impatiently waiting for the end of the message and the beep. “Whoever is there with the boys,” I beg, “please pick up the telephone. Please.”

Shortly after the kids were born, Liz and I got so busy, we developed the habit of letting the machine answer the phone most of the time – leaving the speakerphone on so we could hear whoever called and pick up if we could… or wanted to. Friends and family knew this, as did half a dozen people at the station. Messages often started, “Alex… if you’re there, pick up…” Or “Liz – it’s Mom. Don’t bother picking up, I just wanted to let you know…”

There are several telephones in the house, but I focus on the phone in the kitchen. It sits on the little red table Liz bought at a yard sale. The phone is an old one, beige, its black curly cord extra long and usually bunched into a messy tangle. Next to it is the square, white answering machine, red button flashing to indicate it holds messages. It is from the tiny grid of this machine’s microphone, that I imagine my amplified voice speaking into the kitchen.

“Kev? Sean? If you’re somehow there by yourselves, pick up the phone, okay, guys. It’s Dad. Just pick up the phone.”

Nothing.

Above the telephone table is the bulletin board, its wooden frame stained with green ink in one corner, where Sean colored it as a toddler. In Liz’s absence the cork rectangle has become the permanent home of a haphazard collection of cleaning tickets, news clips, take-out menus, Post-its with scribbled names and numbers, the car-pool schedule, photographs, kid art, old lottery tickets.

“Pick up,” I plead, “come on.”

The machine picks up and I hear my own robot voice again: “Hi, you’ve reached…” I try to imagine Kevin or Sean with the same detail in which I saw the bulletin board, but for some reason I can’t do it.

“What are you doing?” Christiansen asks.

I ignore him, punch 411. I ask for Yasmin Siegel’s number but then change my mind and instead call my next-door neighbor, Fred Billingsley. Yasmin is in her eighties. It will take her too long to get out the door. Fred, whose wife Nancy died two years ago, lives with his adult daughter. He’s efficient and reliable if not friendly.

“Sir,” Christiansen says, “I need to report to Detective Shoffler. Can you tell me-”

Fred is more than surprised to hear from me at this hour. “Alex? What time is it?” His voice is alarmed. “Is there a problem?”

“Can you do me a huge favor?” I ask him.

I explain the situation, tell Fred where to find the key for the front door. Fred promises to go right over; he’ll call me back on my cell phone in a few minutes.

Christiansen leans over, peering past his shoulder toward the dashboard. “Whoa!” he squeals. “Sir! Sir! Slow down! You’ve got to slow down.”

I’m on the Beltway by the time Fred gets back to me. “No one here,” he tells me. “I don’t see anything unusual or peculiar or out of place. You sure they called from here?”

I tell him my cell phone listed the call as originating from home, but maybe there’s some mistake. I thank him profusely.

“Your boys are really… missing?” Fred says. “Good Lord, is there anything else I can do?”

I have it in my mind that the kids are in the house, hiding from Fred. For no particular reason besides the man’s stiff formality, they’ve always been afraid of “Mr. B.”

“Thanks for checking, Fred. I owe you one,” I say. “I don’t think there’s anything else you can do. I’ll be there in half an hour. You should just go back to bed. I’m really sorry I woke you up.”

“Not at all,” Fred says, in a remote voice. “Glad to be of assistance.”

Christiansen finally gets through to Shoffler just before I turn off Connecticut onto Ordway. They’re still talking when I pull into the driveway. And then I’m out of the car, running toward the house.

I yank open the screen door, turn the dead bolt, and then I’m inside, charging from room to room at warp speed, yelling the boys’ names, throwing open doors, flipping on lights, my eyes practically strip-searching the rooms. I check their bedroom last. Some demented optimist inside me continues to hold out hope that somehow I’ll find them here, asleep in their beds.

But their room is deserted. A void.

With Christiansen trailing behind, I check the attic, then the basement, then make another round of the rooms, this time opening closet doors, looking under the beds, behind furniture, anywhere, everywhere that might conceal a little boy. Again I finish in their bedroom, drifting toward the front window.

Yasmin Siegel is not just a night owl; she claims to sleep only two or three hours a night. She’s also one of those women who seems to know everything that happens in a neighborhood. Maybe she saw something – a car, the boys, whoever brought them to the house – something. She’s awake, too. I can see the bluish glow of the television through the windows of the Siegels’ family room.

I’m on my way out of the bedroom, heading for the phone in my study to call Yasmin, when my eyes catch on something I never noticed before.

It’s some kind of little rabbit, perched on the double dresser, a low-slung many-drawered thing Liz got from Ikea. It’s on Sean’s side, which, unlike Kevin’s half, is almost free of clutter – or I never would have noticed it. Up close, I see that it’s origami, the little figure maybe four inches tall, folded out of brown paper. I don’t know anything about origami, but this is not some simple cartoonlike rendition of an animal. It’s sleek and sophisticated, more like a piece of miniature sculpture.

And when I pick it up, it feels weird. It’s not made out of paper, but some kind of animal’s skin. Which spooks me, somehow.

Was this always here? I don’t think so. I would have noticed it.

But maybe not, I think, setting the little figure back on the dresser. After all, did I notice the boys’ obsession with knights? No. And Liz was always taking them to workshops… of every kind imaginable. Although… there’s no way Kevin or Sean made this thing. Their mother, maybe.

The thought of Liz hits me like wind shear.

Ohmigod. I’ve gotta call her…