Time Travelers Never Die - Jack McDevitt [5]
“Let’s wait till we see what’s going on. We’d look kind of foolish if we get an ambulance in here, and he’s just fallen asleep.” He rang the bell again.
Shel tried a couple of the windows. They were locked, of course. No rocks were visible on the lawn, but there was a broken branch that had fallen into the driveway. He picked it up and came back. Jerry told him which window to break. It was one of the reasons he and Jerry didn’t do much socializing.
Before going any further, Shel called Servio’s. “No,” they said, “he hasn’t come in.”
He picked a different spot from the one Jerry had suggested and rammed the branch through the glass. He reached in, turned the lock, and raised the window.
Jerry stood aside and waited for Shel to climb through and open the door. “Very good,” he said, as if Shel had done an outstanding piece of work.
They called out again. Still no response. Shel hurried upstairs and looked into his father’s bedroom. It hadn’t been slept in. Two pieces of luggage, full but unopened, had been placed by the window. The other bedrooms were also empty. He returned downstairs, where Jerry was coming out of the den, shaking his head. “He’s not here. His luggage is up there. It looks as if he just came in and dropped them.”
“I can’t figure it,” said Jerry. He held up a wallet and a set of keys.
“Where were they?”
“On the dining-room table.” He started going from window to window, trying to lift each one.
“What are you doing, Jerry?”
“The other doors, side and back, are both bolted.” He turned and shrugged. “The windows are all locked. He has to be here somewhere.”
Shel couldn’t picture his father climbing down from the second floor. Nevertheless, he went back up and looked through the rooms, one by one. The windows were all locked.
He was not in the bathroom.
Not in any of the closets.
Not under the bed.
“He got out somehow.”
“When’s the last time you were here, Shel?”
“Wednesday.” Five days ago.
“Chain wasn’t on when you left?”
“How could it be?”
Jerry picked up the keys again. “He never goes anywhere without his car.”
Shel went back outside. The neighbor across the street, Frank Traeger, was raking leaves. Shel went over.
“Shel,” he said, “good to see you again. How you been doing?”
“Okay, Frank. Listen: Have you by any chance seen my father?”
“No,” he said. “I assumed he was home, though.”
“But you didn’t see him?”
“No. Just the car.”
Back at the house, Jerry was calling the police.
TWENTY minutes later, a car arrived. Two uniformed officers, both males, got out. They asked a few questions, whether their father had any health problems, whether he was prone to walk off without warning, whether anything like this had happened before. They conducted a search of the house. Then they asked some more questions. When Jerry mentioned that they had no idea how his father could have gotten out of the building, the shorter of the two, who seemed to be in charge, responded that the exit was really a secondary matter. “Let’s find him first. Then we can worry about the details.” When they’d finished, he said okay, they’d make a report. “We’ll call it in,” he said. He was overweight, African-American, and he would now have one more crazy story to tell his kids. Shel suspected he’d concluded this was a hoax, that their father was playing some sort of elaborate joke on his sons. “We’ll need a description,” he added.
Shel found some pictures. Several with both parents and their two sons. Another with Michael and his nearly grown-up boys standing under a tree. And several relatively recent ones, including a photo of the father and his sons raising a toast while they celebrated the opening of Jerry’s law office.
“Okay,” the smaller officer said. “If he gets in touch with you, or if you find out what happened, we’d appreciate it if you’d let us know.”
The officers went outside and walked around the perimeter of the house. They asked Jerry to open the garage door, and they looked at the Skylark. “Is that the only car he has?” they asked.
“Yes, sir,” said Shel.
“It is strange,” said the partner.