Free Shivers by William Schoell Page A

sleep. Sorry if I kept you up.”
    Gloria Albright sat down in the chair opposite him and fingered some stale donuts lying in a battered carton. “You didn’t. I’ve been sleeping like a log. I just woke up a little while ago and wondered where you were.” She was worried. She could tell that something was bothering her husband, and been bothering him for quite a few weeks. He always kept things bottled up, unable to express his feelings with the ease some people could. She put her hand on his, her fingers tiny against his big red knuckles. “Is something worrying you?”
    “No, no. It’s nothing, honey. I don’t know—I just couldn’t fall asleep.”
    “Did you get any sleep at all?”
    “A little bit. Not much. Kept waking up again. My stomach didn’t feel too good.”
    “You had to have a milkshake. You know what they do to you.”
    “I know, I know.”
    Milkshake, like hell. Gloria knew it was something far more serious than stomach distress. Was he feeling the same tensions and stress of middle age that she sometimes felt? One kid married, another in college, the little one at home. Thought a third child would keep them young. It hadn’t worked. Looking at the little fellow, feeling more tired taking care of him and cleaning up after him and running after him, only reminded her of how old she was getting. It had been so much easier with the other children. Stupid, she often called herself. Stupid. You could have done things, gone places with the money you’d saved. You and Johnny. You alone. You could have done something more with your life.
    “What are you thinking about?” John asked her.
    “I was just wondering what you were thinking about.”
    “Why don’t you have a cup of coffee?”
    “I might as well.” She got up and went to the stove. When she came back with the cup of coffee, he hadn’t shifted position; his countenance was just as morose as before.
    “John, honey,” she said sweetly. “What’s the matter? I can tell that something’s bothering you. Tell me what it is.”
    “It’s that damn milkshake. I told ya.”
    “I told you, but that’s not the point. Now don’t change the subject on me like you usually do.” She put her hand on top of his again, looked into his eyes, trying to read them.
    How could he tell her what he couldn’t quite put into words?
    “Is it the job? Is that what’s bothering you?”
    “I don’t know,” he said, trying to suppress a yawn, failing.
    “Don’t go to sleep on me now.”
    “Something funny’s goin’ on Gloria. I’m told not to worry, but I do. I do.”
    “What’s funny?”
    “Gloria, today I was given fifteen cases to look into. In one day.”
    “Was somebody sick? You always get a bigger workload when somebody’s out sick, you know—”
    He cut her off, not wanting to rationalize any longer. “No one was sick. It wasn’t that. Nobody was laid off. It’s just that—we get more cases.”
    “So you had more reports today than usual.”
    “It’s been like this for a long time.”
    “But Johnny, you’ve been through this before. The runaways, the missing daddies, the wives who run off and leave their kids. All that sadness. It’s bound to get to you now and then. But you guys find just about everybody and bring them all back home, don’t you?”
    “Not anymore,” he said grimly. “Not lately, Gloria. The number is rising. Higher each week. Not only are there more reports of missing persons, but we’re not finding nearly as many of them as we used to.”
    “Somedays it’s worse than others. Don’t let it get you down.”
    “No, it’s not that. I can deal with my job, with the sadness, and all the rest. I can’t deal with this strange—epidemic we’re having. The other guys on the squad talk the way you do. “More people. Sicker society. More yoyos running away, dying, killing themselves.’ But I’ve looked at the statistics. I went through the files and the charts and the papers. More and more people are