Friday, June 15
FRIDAY DAWNED DAMP AND COOL, interrupting an unseasonable, week-long heat wave. Peter drove to work under a dense cloud cover that looked more like snow than rain.
He was on Paris Street now, making a mental note to check the show times on the Internet at work, then call Mr. Prime Rib and book a table for two. He had to brake suddenly for the endless construction that went on every summer on this busy thoroughfare and his briefcase slid off the back seat, spewing books and papers everywhere. Reduced to a snail’s pace, he steered through a cordon of orange pylons, shifting his gaze between the back seat and the road ahead while using his free hand to scoop up the scattered contents of his briefcase.
The third time he glanced back the morning sun found a rift in the cloud cover and flared through the passenger-side windows, dazzling him. Peter flinched away from the glare, checking ahead of him again, then squinting into the back seat. When he saw the four candied finger smears on the glass back there he felt an actual impact below his sternum and he gasped like a man with the wind knocked out of him.
He heard a shout and swung around in time to see the hood of his Corolla crunch under the tailgate of a huge dump truck. He hit the brakes hard and the airbag deployed, releasing a dusty gas that stung his throat.
A flag girl appeared at the window and started rapping on the glass. The truck driver climbed down from his cab and a half dozen workers converged on the vehicle.
Peter forced the airbag away from his face and turned to look at his son’s smeared fingerprints on the window, still unable to catch his breath.
* * *
“Roger, it’s Peter. Did I wake you?”
“Just getting up. What time is it?”
“Five after one.”
“Damn. Still looks dark out.”
“It’s raining.”
“You at work?”
“No, Toyota dealership. I had an accident on the way in this morning; they’re giving me a loaner.”
“You okay?”
“I’m fine. Listen, I need to talk.”
“Sure. Tell you what. When you’re through there, why don’t you drop by the house? Just give me a half hour or so to shower and get dressed.”
“Thanks, Roger. What’s your address?”
Roger told him and Peter jotted it on the back of a business card.
* * *
They sat at an antique oval table in the kitchen of Roger Mullen’s tidy York Street home, Roger eating the bacon and eggs he’d been cooking when Peter arrived, Peter sipping listlessly from a glass of water. Outside a gentle rain fell from a white sky, a damp breeze sifting in through the small screen at the base of the kitchen window.
“So what’s going on?” Roger said.
Peter told him about the finger marks he’d scrubbed off the car window last week, and how they’d reappeared this morning. “I just about polished a hole in the glass getting them off. There’s no way I missed any. That glass was clean.”
“So what are you suggesting?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m here.”
“Do you think somebody’s messing with you?”
YOU ARE READING
Here After
Mystery / ThrillerLOVE. LOSS. OBSESSION. REDEMPTION. Following the death of his ten-year-old son, physician Peter Croft embarks on a desperate, seemingly random search for a missing child, risking his sanity, even his life in a grief-induced quest. His journey propel...
