Copyright Carsten Stroud 2012. All rights reserved.

. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Copyright Carsten Stroud 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

NICEVILLE
CARSTEN STROUD

Copyright Carsten Stroud 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

A Bantam book Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd Level 3, 100 Pacic Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060 www.randomhouse.com.au First published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House Inc., in 2012 First published in Australia by Bantam in 2012 Copyright Espirit DEscalier 2012 The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at www.randomhouse.com.au/ofces National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry Stroud, Carsten, 1946 Niceville / Carsten Stroud. ISBN 978 1 74275 208 2 (pbk) Married peopleFiction. Missing childrenFiction. 813.54 Cover images Trevillion/Getty Images/Corbis Map by Robert Bull Printed in Australia by Grifn Press, an accredited ISO AS/NZS 14001:2004 Environmental Management System printer Random House Australia uses papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

Copyright Carsten Stroud 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Come from the Four Winds, O Breath, And breathe upon these slain, that they may live. Monument to the Confederate Dead, Forsyth Park Savannah, Georgia

Malicious men may die, but malice . . . never. Molire, Tartuffe

Copyright Carsten Stroud 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Copyright Carsten Stroud 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Rainey Teague Doesnt Make It Home

In less than an hour the Niceville Police Department managed to ID the last person to see the missing kid. He was a shopkeeper named Alf Pennington, who ran a used-book store on North Gwinnett, near the intersection with Kingsbane Walk. This was right along the usual route the boy, whose name was Rainey Teague, took to get from Regiopolis Prep to his house in Garrison Hills. It was a distance of about a mile, and the ten-year-old, a rambler who liked to take his time and look in all the shop windows, usually covered it in about thirty-ve minutes. Raineys mother, Sylvia, a high-strung but levelheaded mom who was struggling with ovarian cancer, had the kids after-school snack, ham-and-cheese and pickles, all laid out in the kitchen at the family home in Garrison Hills. She was sitting at her computer, poking around on Ancestry.com with half her attention on the front door, waiting as always for Rainey to come bouncing in, glancing now and then at the time marker on the task bar. It was 3:24, and she was picturing her boy, the child of her later years, adopted from a foster home in Sallytown after she had endured years of fruitless in vitro treatments. A pale blond kid with large brown eyes and a gangly way of going, given to sudden silences and strange moodsshes seeing him in her mind as if from a helicopter hovering just above the town, Niceville spread out beneath her, from the hazy brown hills of the Belfair Range in the north to the green thread of the Tulip River as it skirts the base

Copyright Carsten Stroud 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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of Tallulahs Wall and, widening into a ribbon, bends and turns through the heart of town. Far away to the southeast she can just make out the low coastal plains of marsh grass, and beyond that, the shimmering sea. In this vision she sees him trudge along, his blue blazer over his shoulder, his stiff white collar unbuttoned, his gold and blue school tie tugged loose, his Harry Potter backpack dragging on his shoulders, his shoelaces undone. Now hes coming to the rail crossing at Peachtree and Cemetery Hillof course he looks both waysand now hes coming down the steep tree-lined avenue beside the rocky cliff that denes the Confederate graveyard. Rainey. Minutes from home. She tapped away at the keyboard with delicate ngers, like someone playing a piano, her long black hair in her eyes, her ankles primly crossed, erect and concentrated, ghting the effects of the OxyContin she took for the pain. She was on Ancestry because she was trying to solve a family question that had been troubling her for quite a while. At this stage of her research she felt that the answer lay in a family reunion that had taken place in 1910, at Johnny Mullrynes plantation near Savannah. Sylvia was distantly related to the Mullrynes, who had founded the plantation long before the War of Secession. Later she told the uniform cop who caught the call that she got lost in that Ancestry search for a bit, time-drifting, she said, one of the effects of OxyContin, and when she looked at the clock again, this time with a tiny ripple of concern, it was 3:55. Rainey was ten minutes late. She pushed her chair back from her computer desk and went down the long main hall towards the stained-glass door with the hand-carved mahogany arches and stepped out on the wide stone porch, a tall, slender woman in a crisp black dress, silver at her throat, wearing red patent leather ballet ats. She folded her arms across her chest and craned to the left to see if he was coming along the oak-shaded avenue. Garrison Hills was one of the prettiest neighborhoods in Niceville and the sepia light of old money lay upon it, ltering through the live oaks and the gray wisps of Spanish moss, shining down on the lawns and shimmering on the roofs of the old mansions up and down the street.

Copyright Carsten Stroud 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Rainey Teague Doesnt Make It Home There was no little boy shufing along the walk. There was no one around at all. No matter how hard she stared, the street stayed empty. She stood there for a while longer, her mild concern changing into exasperation and, after another three minutes, into a more active concern, though not yet shifting into panic. She went back inside the house and picked up the phone that was on the antique sideboard by the entrance, hit button 3 and speed-dialed Raineys cell phone number, listened to it ring, each ring ticking up her concern another degree. She counted fteen and didnt wait for the sixteenth. She pressed the disconnect button, then used the number 4 speeddial key to ring up the registrars ofce at Regiopolis Prep and got Father Casey on the third ring, who conrmed that Rainey had left the school at two minutes after three, part of the usual lemming stampede of chattering boys in their gray slacks and white shirts and blue blazers with the gold-thread crest of Regiopolis on the pockets. Father Casey picked up on her tone right away and said hed head out on foot to retrace Raineys path along North Gwinnett all the way down to Long Reach Boulevard. They conrmed each others cell numbers and she picked up her car keys and went down the steps and into the double-car garageher husband, Miles, an investment banker, was still at his ofce down in Cap Citywhere she started up her red Porsche Cayennered was her favorite colorand backed it down the cobbled drive, her head full of white noise and her chest wrapped in barbed wire. Halfway along North Gwinnett she spotted Father Casey on foot in the dense crowd of strolling shoppers, a black-suited gure in a clerical collar, over six feet, built like a linebacker, his red face ushed with concern. She pulled over and rolled down her window and they conferred for about a minute, people slowing to watch them talk, a good-looking young Jesuit in a bit of a lather talking in low and intense tones to a very pretty middle-aged woman in a bright red Cayenne. At the end of that taut and urgent exchange Father Casey pushed away from the Cayenne and went to check out every alley and park between the school and Garrison Hills, and Sylvia Teague picked up her cell phone, took a deep breath, said a quick prayer to Saint Chris-

Copyright Carsten Stroud 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

niceville
topher, and called in the cops, who said theyd send a sergeant immediately and would she please stay right where she was. So she did, and there she sat, in the leather-scented interior of the Cayenne, and she stared out at the trafc on North Gwinnett, waiting, trying not to think about anything at all, while the town of Niceville swirled around her, a sleepy Southern town where she had lived all of her life. Regiopolis Prep and this part of North Gwinnett were deep in the dappled shadows of downtown Niceville, an old-fashioned place almost completely shaded by massive live oaks, their heavy branches knit together by dense traceries of power lines. The shops and most of the houses in the town were redbrick and brass in the Craftsman style, set back on shady avenues and wide cobbled streets lined with cast-iron streetlamps. Navy-blue-and-gold-colored streetcars as heavy as tanks rumbled past the Cayenne, their vibration shivering up through the steering wheel in her hands. She looked out at the soft golden light, hazy with pollen and river mist that seemed always to lie over the town, softening every angle and giving Niceville the look and feel of an older and more graceful time. She told herself that nothing bad could happen in such a pretty place, could it? In fact, Sylvia had always thought that Niceville would have been one of the loveliest places in the Deep South if it had not been built, God only knew why, in the looming shadow of Tallulahs Wall, a huge limestone cliff that dominated the northeastern part of the townshe could see it from where she was parkeda barrier wall draped with clinging vines and blue-green moss, a sheer cliff so wide and tall that parts of eastern Niceville stayed under its shadow until well past noon. There was a dense thicket of old-growth trees on top of the cliff, and inside this ancient forest was a large circular sinkhole, full of cold black water, no one knew how deep. It was called Crater Sink. Sylvia had once taken Rainey there, a picnic outing, but the spreading oaks and towering pines had seemed to lean in around them, full of whispering and creaking sounds, and the water of Crater Sink was cold and black and still and, through some trick of the light, its surface reected nothing of the blue sky above it. In the end they hadnt stayed long.

Copyright Carsten Stroud 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Rainey Teague Doesnt Make It Home And now she was back to thinking about Rainey, and she realized that she had never really stopped thinking about him at all. The rst Niceville cruiser pulled up beside her Cayenne four minutes later, driven by a large redheaded female patrol sergeant named Mavis Crossre, a seasoned pro in the prime of her career, who, like all good sergeants, radiated humor and cool competence, with an underlying stratum of latent menace. Mavis Crossre, who knew and liked the Teague familyGarrison Hills was part of her patrol arealeaned on the Cayennes window and got the urgency of Sylvias story as fast as Father Casey had, a story she was inclined to take much more seriously than a police sergeant in any other mid-sized American town might have taken it at this early stage, because, when it came to Missing Persons, Niceville had a stranger abduction rate ve times higher than the national average. So Sergeant Mavis Crossre was paying very close attention to Rainey Teagues disappearance, and, after listening to Sylvia for about four minutes, she got on the radio and called her duty captain, who got on his horn to Lieutenant Tyree Sutter, the ofcer commanding the Belfair and Cullen County Criminal Investigation Division. About ten minutes after that, every cop in Niceville and every county sheriff and all the local staties had gotten a digital download of Raineys photograph and descriptionRegiopolis Prep kept digital photo les on every studentand every ofcer who could be spared was rolling on the Rainey Teague disappearance. This was a very creditable performance, as good as the best city police force in the nation and a lot better than most. Motivation counts. Less than an hour later, a beat cop named Boots Jackson called in from his riverside foot patrol along Pattons Hard, walked into Alf Penningtons bookshop on North Gwinnett, and developed the last conrmed sighting of Rainey Teague, which he then promptly punched in to the HQ mainframe on his handheld-computer link. By this time the search perimeter had been expanded to include all the Cullen County and Belfair County deputies as well as the State Patrol guys as far north as Gracie and Sallytown, on the other side of the Belfair Range, and as far south as Cap City, about fty miles downrange. Sitting at his desk at the CID headquarters on Powder Ridge Road, Tyree Sutter, known as Tig, a blunt-featured broken-nosed black man

Copyright Carsten Stroud 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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large enough to have his own gravity eld, saw the Alf Pennington notation appear on his Coordinated Search Screen. He immediately handed the contact off to Detective Nick Kavanaugh, a thirty-twoyear-old exSpecial Forces ofcer, a white guy, around six one, lean, hard as cordwood, with pale gray eyes and a shock of shiny black hair going white at the temples, who was standing in Tigs ofce door and staring at Tig like a wolf on a choke chain. Kavanaugh was in his navy blue Crown Vic a minute later and ying up Long Reach Boulevard, following the bend of the Tulip, his strobes lit up but no siren, on his way to see Alf Pennington, pulling up to the curb outside Penningtons Book Nook at 1148 North Gwinnett less than twenty minutes later. The time was 6:17 p.m. and Rainey Teague had now been ofcially listed as missing for one hour and fourteen minutes. Alf Pennington, late sixties, rail-thin, with a dowagers hump, bald as an eagle, with sharp black eyes and a downturned mouth, looked up from behind his bankers desk as Nick came through the door, Alfs sour expression deepening as Nick weaved his way through the bookcases. Not by nature a sunny person, Alf worked up a disapproving frown as Nick approached his desk, registering the slim well-tailored summer-weight dark blue suittoo expensive for a copprobably a bribethe unbuttoned jacketso he could get to his billy club, no doubt showing a pure white shirt, open at the neck, his tanned angular face shadowed in the dim light, the wary gray eyes, the shining gold badge clipped to his belt, the obvious bulge of a gun on his right hip. Hello. You must be the police. Would you like a coffee? Thanks, no, said Nick in a pleasant baritone, looking around the shop, taking in the titles, breathing in the scent of must and wood polish and cigarette smoke, putting his hand out. Im Nick Kavanaugh. With the CID? Yes, said Alf, giving him a quick shake and taking his hand back to see if his pinky ring was still there. Alf, a closet Marxist from Vermont, didnt like cops very much. Ofcer Jackson said youd be by. And here I am. Ofcer Jackson says you saw Rainey Teague shortly after three? Can you describe him for me? Done that already, said Alf, his Yankee accent jagged with short, sharp fricatives.

Copyright Carsten Stroud 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Rainey Teague Doesnt Make It Home I know, said Nick, deploying an apologetic smile to soften the request, but it would be a big help. Alf looked skyward, his black eyes rolling as he collected himself. See him every weekday. Hes a lollygagger. Skinny kid, head too big, shaggy blond hair hanging down in his eyes, pale skin, snubby nose, big brown eyes like a cartoon squirrel, white shirt, tails hanging out, collar open, tie all loose, baggy gray pants, blue blazer with that Christer doodad on the pocket, dragging a Harry Potter knapsack behind him like it was full of bricks. That him? Thats him. What time was this? Already said. Just once more? Alf sighed. Three oh ve, 3:10, maybe. Usually see him then, coming home from that Christer school. Nick was judging the street view from where Alf was sitting beside his desk. He had a pretty good sweep of North Gwinnett in front of him, the people going back and forth, the trafc streaming along, ashing steel in the afternoon light. You sitting here? asked Nick. Ayup. Good look at him? Ayup. Was he alone? Ayup. Did he seem in a hurry, or agitated? Alfs frown deepened as he worked that through. You mean, like someone was following him? Ayup, said Nick. Alf, a sharp old le, picked up on Nicks mimicry and gave him a censorious frown, which Nick somehow managed to withstand. Nope. Just lollygagging. He stood there for a while, looking at the books. He ever come in? Nope. Kids dont have any use for books nowadays. Always on those tweeters and such. He looks in, moves off next door. Uncle Moochies. The pawnshop.

Copyright Carsten Stroud 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

niceville
Ayup. Every day the same thing, looks in here, waves at me, and then moves down to stare at all that crap in Uncle Moochies window. They spoke with Uncle Moochie. He says he saw the kid yesterday, saw him the day before, and the day before that, but not today. Moochie, said Alf, as if that was explanation enough. Moochies window is full of stuff a kid would like to look at, said Nick. Alf considered this, blinked, said nothing. Have you ever seen anyone who looked like he might be following the Teague boy? Anyone in the street who was paying too much attention? You mean like one of those peedo-philes? Yeah. One of those. Nope. I did come to the door to look at the boy, him standing there, staring in at Moochies window. Kid always spent a good ve minutes in front of Moochies, looking at all the pawn stuff. I gure, what you should do, you should go stand there for a while, yourself, see what you get. You think? Ayup. So Nick did. The store where Uncle Moochie ran what he liked to call his brokerage service had been a fairly ornate barbershop back in the thirties, and it still had faint traces of gilt lettering in an arch across the front of the glasssullivans tonsorial academybut the window was so jammed to the ceiling with antique clocks and gilt mirrors and pocket watches and china busts of pocket dogs and rusted Art Deco lamps and cameos and brooches and gaudy costume jewelry and tiny bronze nudes that it looked like a treasure chest. Nick could see how a kid would nd the window fascinating. According to Boot Jacksons eld report, Nick was right on top of the last place on North Gwinnett where anyone had seen the kid. No one in the shops farther down North Gwinnett had seen him go by, although he was a regular at Scoops in the next block, and people often saw him climbing the base of the bronze statue of the Confederate trooper in the parkette at the intersection of North Gwinnett and Bluebottle Way. But not today.

10

Copyright Carsten Stroud 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Rainey Teague Doesnt Make It Home Today, as far as the Niceville PD had been able to determine, this spot of sidewalk in front of Uncle Moochies was the farthest Rainey Teague had gotten before . . . before something happened. Pawnshops have security cameras, Nick was thinking. There it was, in the top left corner, one red eye blinking down at him. Moochie, a morose Lebanese with a sagging face full of guile and sorrow, had once been enormous, but a severe case of ulcerative colitis had left him looking like a melting candle. He was a notorious fence but also a good street source for Nick, and he was happy to let Nick see the security video, leading him through the clutter and litter and overloaded display cases to the back of the narrow store, where, in an ofce that reeked of sweat and hashish, he opened up a cupboard concealing an LED monitor and pressed a few buttons on a panel. Its all digital. Auto-erases every twenty-four hours, if I dont cancel it, said Moochie, as the video began to roll backwards, the time marker ickering in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. They stood there in Moochies crowded ofce and watched the people in the video walk jerkily backwards through time as the seconds coiled up again. A minute and thirty-eight seconds ran off and Nick saw himself standing on the walk outside Moochies, staring up at the video camera, and then Nick walked backwards away to the left of the picture. The marker spooled and ickered, the people in the video moving as in an old silent lm, stiff and strange, as if they were all ghosts of the long-gone past. Nick was very aware of Moochie beside him and for a time he wondered if Moochie himself was the last thing Rainey Teague saw. Had Rainey come into the shop? And if he had, what had happened then? Was he upstairs right now, or in the basement? The next shop along was Toonerville, a hobby shop with a big Lionel train going around and around in a miniature version of Niceville. Rainey never failed to go inside and talk to Mrs. Lianne Hardesty, who ran the shop. Rainey was a favorite there, but today, no Rainey. Moochie? Nick had never heard anything hinky about Moochie, no hint of a pedophile streak or any other kind of chicken-hawk leaning. His record, although far from edifying, contained nothing that indicated any sort of sexual impulses at all.

11

Copyright Carsten Stroud 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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But you never knew. Moochie grunted, hit a button, and the image froze with the time marker stopped at 1509:22. There was Rainey Teague, just stepping into the picture, seen from an angle above and to his right, so that the kid seemed foreshortened. Moochie looked at Nick, who nodded, and Moochie hit a button that advanced the frames one at a time. Raineys clockwork gure ticked fully into the picture frame, exactly as Alf Pennington had described him, Harry Potter knapsack slung over his left shoulder, so full it was tilting him in that direction. Nicks heart rate climbed as he watched the kid standing there, feeling a shadow of what Raineys parents must be feeling right now, but even the shadow of that dread was cold and cutting. Moochie kept the image moving, frame by frame, as Rainey came to a stop about a foot from the plate glass, shading his eyes to stare in at the pirate treasure, even, at one time, pressing his snub nose up against the glass, attening it out in a comical way, his breath misting up the glass. People were moving past him in the image. No one was paying him any unusual attention. Freeze it there, Nick said. He leaned down to look at the kids face. The expression on it was utterly absorbed. He was staring at something in the display, and whatever he was looking at had completely fascinated him. He was held there, as if by a spell, frozen and transxed. By what? Did he ever come into the shop? Moochie shook his head. I dont let the Regiopolis kids come in. Theyre all thieves. Little Ali Babas. Just like the street kids in Beirut. Do you know what he was looking at, in the window? Whatever it is, its sure got his attention. Hes looking at the mirror. I nally gured out it was that mirror, said Moochie, staring at the boy in the frozen frame. From the way hes standing, its right in front of him. Hes looking right at it. Its the one in the gilt frame. Its very old, prewar at least. I mean the Civil War. It came out of Temple Hill, the old Cotton mansion up in The Chase. Delia Cotton gave it to her housemaid, a lady named Alice

12

Copyright Carsten Stroud 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Rainey Teague Doesnt Make It Home Bayer, she lives in The Glades, and Alice came in one day and asked me for fty dollars on it. I gave her two hundred. Its worth a thousand. I still have the ticket. Rainey liked to see himself in it, I think. He always stood there, looking into the mirror, anyway, just like that. Then hed sort of shake himself out of it and off hed go. The glass is rippled from age, so I guess its sort of a fun-house thing for the kid. Nick made a gesture and Moochie started inching the frames forward again, Nick looking for something, anything he could use. At time marker 1513:54 Rainey started to move his head backwards, his mouth opening. At 1513:55 he was starting to step back onto his left heel, and his mouth was opening wider. At 1513:56 he wasnt in the picture at all. The camera was aimed at an empty patch of sidewalk. Rainey was gone. Is it the camera? Nick asked. Moochie was just gaping at the screen. Nick asked him again. No. It never does that. Its brand-new. I got it put in by Securicom last year. Cost me three thousand dollars. Back it up. Moochie did, one frame at a time. Same thing. First frame, Raineys not there. One frame back, there he is. Hes stepping onto his heel, with his mouth wide open. Another frame back, hes still there, and now hes close to the window, but beginning to . . . To what? Recoil? From what? Something he saw in a mirror? Or someone behind him, reected in the mirror. What the hell was going on here? Whats the recording stored on? The hard drive, said Moochie, still staring at the screen. Is it removable? Moochie looked at him.

13

Copyright Carsten Stroud 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

niceville
Yes. But Im going to need it. No. Wait. Im going to need the whole system. Do you have a spare? Moochie was far from thrilled by this development. I still have the old camera, hooked up to a VCR. Run it again, one more time. This time go right through the sequence. Moochie pressed advance. They stood and watched as Rainey Teague stick-walked jerkily into the frame, leaned close to the glass, stayed there, his expression growing more xed as the seconds passed, Rainey drawing closer and closer to the glass until his nose was pressed up against it and his breath was fogging the window. Then the recoil. He steps back. And . . . vanishes. The camera kept rolling. They both stood there and watched it, riveted, locked on, with the utter wrongness of the thing rippling up and down their spines. In the frames they saw the feet of passing strollers, always that patch of bare sidewalk, now and then a piece of paper ickering through or the shadow of a bird rippling across the screen, and in the background people passing by, perfectly oblivious. They ran the frames on until a uniform cop appeared in the image, crossing from the direction of Penningtons Book Nook, reaching for the door of Uncle Moochies. Nick recognized the big bulky shape and the pale freckled features of Boots Jackson, the Niceville cop assigned to canvass this block. They rolled it back and forth a few more times, but it was always the same. At 1513:55, Rainey Teague is right there. At 1513:56, the kid is gone. He doesnt leap out of the picture, or duck to one side, or jump way up high, or fade away, or turn into a puff of smoke, or get jerked away by the arms of a stranger. He just icks off, as if he were only a digital image and somebody had hit erase. Rainey Teague is just gone. And he never comes back.

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Copyright Carsten Stroud 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Rainey Teague Doesnt Make It Home . . .

Of course in the harrowing days and nights that followed, as the CID and the Niceville cops and everybody else who could be spared tore up the state looking for the kid, no serious cop believed even for a second that what the camera was showing was literally the truth, that the kid had just snapped out of existence. It had to be some sort of computer glitch. Or a trick, like something David Coppereld would do. So they started with the security system that Moochie had installed, examining it and testing it and retesting it, looking for the glitch, looking for any sign that Moochie had rigged the entire thing to cover up a simple kidnapping. The security machine, a Motorola surveillance system, was sent off to the FBI for a complete forensic examination. It came back without a aw, showing zero signs of having been tampered with in any way. Next came Moochie himself, who was put through an interrogation that would have done credit to the Syrian Secret Police. He also came through without a hint of guilty knowledge. They took his shop apart. Nothing. They took Delia Cottons antique mirror to a lab and checked it forwell, they had no damned idea what, but whatever they were hoping for, it wasnt there. It was just a medium-sized antique mirror with a tarnished silver face inside a baroque gilt frame, with a handwritten linen card on the back: With Long RegardGlynis R. So Uncle Moochie got his expensive security system back, with their apologies, although he refused to have anything more to do with the mirror, which nally ended up in Nick Kavanaughs closet, and in the meantime they took Alf Penningtons Book Nook apart, which he endured stoically, seeing it as a nal conrmation of the innate brutality of the Imperium. They found nothing. They took Toonerville Hobby Shoppe apart. Nothing. They looked at every available frame of every available surveillance

15

Copyright Carsten Stroud 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

niceville
camera video up and down North Gwinnett between Bluebottle Way and Long Reach Boulevard. Nothing. Not a trace. Naturally, Nick Kavanaugh went effectively nuts around the ninth sleepless day, and his wife, Kate, a family practice lawyer, at Tig Sutters urging, slipped a couple of Valiums into his orange juice and packed him off to their bed, where he slept like the living dead for twelve hours straight.

While Nick was sleeping, Kate, after struggling with the idea for a time, called her father, Dillon Walker, who was a professor of military history up at the Virginia Military Institute in the Shenandoah Valley. It was late, but Walker, a widower who lived alone in faculty rooms on the edge of the parade square, answered the phone on the second ring. Kate heard his whispery bass voice in those familiar warm tones and she wished, as she often did, that her father lived closer to Niceville and that her mother, Lenore, the heart of Dillon Walkers life, had not been killed in a rollover on the interstate ve years ago. Her father was never the same after that. Something important had gone out of him, some of his amiable re. But he was sharp enough to hear the tightness in her voice when she said hello. Kate . . . how are you? Is everything okay? Im sorry to call so late, Dad. Did I wake you? Walker sat up in his leather club chairwhile not actually asleep on his military-style cot, he had been dozing over a copy of Pax Britannica, James Morris history of the British Empire under Victoria. Kates voice had that faint quiver in it that was always there when she was stressed. No, sweet. I was up late reading. You sound a little worried. Its not Beth, is it? Or Reed? Beth, Kates older sister, was in a toxic marriage to an exFBI agent named Byron Deitz, who was cordially loathed by everyone in the family. Reed was her brother, a state trooper who drove a pursuit car, a hard-edged young man who was never happier than when he was running down a speeder.

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Copyright Carsten Stroud 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Rainey Teague Doesnt Make It Home No, Dad. Not Beth. Not Reed. Its about Nick. Dear God. Hes not hurt? No, no. Hes ne. To tell you the truth I sort of slipped him a mickey so he could sleep. Hes upstairs now, dead to the world. Hes been on a case for days, and hes a total wreck. There was a pause, as if she were trying to nd a way to begin. Walker leaned over and stirred the replace embers into a soft yellow ickering, sat back in the worn leather chair, and picked up his scotch. Tepid and at, but still Laphroiag. He could hear Kates breath over the phone, and pictured her there in their old family home, a slender auburn-haired Irish rose with sapphire blue eyes and a ne-cut, elegant face, very much the picture of her mother, Lenore. He sipped at the scotch, set it down. You sound like you have a question, Kate. Is it about Nicks case? A silence. Then, I guess it is, Dad. The fact is, weve had another disappearance. She heard her fathers breathing stop, and knew she had touched a sore point between them. Several years ago her father had begun an informal personal inquiry into the high rate of stranger abductions in Niceville, only to quit the project abruptly after Lenores death. He never picked it up again, and he had delicately but effectively evaded the topic ever since. When he spoke again his voice was as warm as always, but perhaps a little more wary. I see. And I guess this case is whats keeping Nick from sleeping? Was it really an abduction? A stranger abduction? Like all the others? So far they seem to think so. Can I tell you about it? Would that be okay? Please, Kate. Anything I can do. Kate told him what they knew so far, Rainey Teague, on his way home from school, Uncle Moochies pawnshop, the security camera, and the way the boy just disappeared into thin air. Walker listened and felt his throat tightening. The boys name was Teague? Not Sylvias boy? Yes, Dad. God. Thats awful. How is she? Terrible. Falling apart.

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Copyright Carsten Stroud 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

niceville
And Miles? You know Miles. Hes a typical Teague, and they all have that cold spot. But he gets quieter every day. Theyve both given up hope. Where does the case stand now? Everyones in it. Belfair and Cullen County, the state police, the Cap City ofce of the FBI. Do they have any leads? Nothing. Nothing at all. A pause. Then he spoke again, with a kind of forced calm in his voice. Did anythinganomaloushappen? Anomalous, Dad? Like what? I dont know, really. I know youre asking me because of the research I was doing, but I dont know any more about this kind of thing now than I did then. Thats why I quit. It was pointless. You quit when Mom died, Dad. He was quiet again. She waited. She had crossed his lineshe knew thatbut she also knew she was his favorite child, the one he had always been closest to. I guess, by anomalous, I mean anything hard to explain. Other than the fact that Rainey just vanished into thin air while being lmed by a security camera? In front of Uncle Moochies pawnshop, right? Yes. You said he was standing on the sidewalk, looking at something in Uncle Moochies window? Yes. What was it? It was a mirror. Silence from her father, but she could feel his tension, like a vibration humming down the wire. What sort of mirror? An antique. Moochie said it was preCivil War. It came from Temple Hill. Delia Cotton gave it to the lady who does the cleaning and shopping. Teagues and Cottons, he said in a at tone. Yes. Two of the old families.

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Copyright Carsten Stroud 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Rainey Teague Doesnt Make It Home More silence. Finally . . . Can you describe the mirror? Gold frame, baroque, ancient glass, with the silvering coming off the back. Maybe seventeenth-century Irish. Or French. About thirty inches by thirty inches. Heavy. Has an antique linen calling card glued to the back. What was on the card? Very ne handwriting, in turquoise ink. With long regard . . . Glynis R. A taut silence again. Kate could hear him breathing, slow and steady, as if he were trying to calm himself. When he spoke again, all the genial warmth had left his voice. Where is it now? The mirror? Still at Moochies? No. Its here. Its upstairs, actually. In our bedroom closet. Why? Walker was quiet for so long that Kate began to think he had fallen asleep. Dad? You there? Yes. Sorry. I was thinking. This sounded like . . . not a lie, because he never lied to her, but at least an evasion. Can you make any sense out of all this, Dad? The connections between the old families? Nick tried to establish who Glynis R. was, but Delia said she had no idea. Does the name mean anything to you? No. No, it doesnt. Again that sense of . . . wary distance. Evasion. What should we do, Dad? Id like to help Nick. And Sylvias family. Rainey wasissuch a sweet kid. I know its late, Dad. I know you need to sleep. So do I. Can you think of anything at all? She waited. Do you use the mirror? No. Of course not. Its evidence, sort of. You should give it back to Delia. Or to her cleaning lady. As soon as possible. Im sure its quite valuable. As I said, right now its part of the case. At least Nick thinks so. Anything else, Dad? Yes. Dont ever use it. The mirror.

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Copyright Carsten Stroud 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

niceville
Im not sure I understand. Neither do I. She tried to be light. Is it cursed? she asked with a smile. Like if we break it, well get seven years of bad luck? Maybe you should do just that. Do what? Break it. Smash it. Throw the pieces into Crater Sink. Youre teasing me now. A silence. Yes. Im just teasing you. Im sorry not to have been more helpful. Honey, I need to sleep. You do too. How about you call me in the morning? Around eleven? We can talk some more? I will, Dad. Love you. Love you too, Kate. Love you very much.

Kate never quite got around to calling Dillon Walker at eleven the next morning, mainly because of the urry of activity following a call that came at daybreak, Tig on the line to say that Sylvia Teagues red Porsche Cayenne had just been found by a patrol cruiser doing a routine check of the parking area near Crater Sink. Sylvias ballet ats were found at the rim of the sink itself. Of Sylvia Teague, no trace was found, in spite of the deployment of a robot dive camera which was brought in by Marty Coors, head of the State Police HQ in Cap City. The camera went down and down into the sink, lights spearing out into the cold black water a way, only to die out, overwhelmed by the darkness. The control cable ran out at a thousand feet. The attached sonar mapping system showed nothing but rock face and more rock face with a side channel running out of the sinkhole at nine hundred and eighty feet, leading, everyone assumed, eventually to the Tulip River in the valley below the cliff face. If Sylvia Teague had gone into Crater Sinkand so far no suicide note had been found, and suicide was only one of several possibilitiestheyd have to wait for natural processes to bring her back up again. Or maybe she had been dragged into the side channel by a random

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