Free The Vanishing by Bentley Little Page B

Monday.
    ‘‘I’m sorry,’’ he told her. ‘‘My deadline’s today—’’
    Brian took a small step forward.
    The secretary nearly jumped out of her chair. Her arm shot out, trying to cover the paper on top of the pile and accidentally knocked over the entire stack. Before the top page was engulfed by the falling batch of correspondence, Brian saw dark brown smudges—
    bloody fingerprints
    —and what looked like a cross between simple hieroglyphics and a child’s scribble, drawn with some sort of charcoal pencil.
    Just like on his dad’s letter.
    The woman glared at him. ‘‘Would you please leave?’’ she asked. ‘‘I’m very busy.’’ Her eyes were angry, but her voice was frightened, and he understood that she was as lost as they were.
    What he wanted to do was quiz the woman about what she did know, then go around the desk, grab the paper and take it with him. But instead he followed Wilson’s lead, and the two of them retreated, saying good-bye and going back the way they’d come, down the elevator and out of the building. They walked across the parking lot toward the car. ‘‘If we were real reporters,’’ Wilson said, ‘‘we would drive immediately to Devine’s house and see what is going on there.’’
    ‘‘Do you know where his house is?’’ Brian asked.
    ‘‘No,’’ Wilson admitted, ‘‘but with a little bit of research we could find out.’’
    Brian looked at him. ‘‘ Are we real reporters?’’
    The older man sighed. ‘‘Jimmy won’t let us. We’re on his time here, and I don’t know about you, but I have a merger article due this afternoon.’’
    Brian didn’t really have a specific deadline today, but he was still on his probation period, and he knew how it would look if he spent the rest of the day gallivanting around the city with nothing to show for his efforts. Which is probably what would happen. His position was not secure enough that he could go on wild-goose chases hoping that something would come of it.
    ‘‘Let’s go back,’’ Wilson said. ‘‘Maybe something else will occur to us in the meantime, and we can come at it from another angle.’’
    Brian didn’t tell Wilson about what he’d seen, about the letter. He wasn’t quite sure why. Part of it was a proprietary interest in the information. Part of it was embarrassment about his dad’s connection to all of this. Part of it was . . . something else.
    They drove back to the Times building, speaking very little on the return trip. Wilson, no doubt, was thinking about his article, planning on how to write around the fact that he lacked a final interview with Bill Devine. But Brian was thinking about that letter. It was like a virus, this written language, popping up everywhere all of a sudden, corrupting everything with which it came into contact. What did it mean? he wondered. Was the secretary in on this? Could she read that letter? Did she know what those symbols meant? Was she able to communicate that way? Or was she like his mom, merely a confused recipient, trying to figure out what the hell was going on? Was Bill Devine going to end up like Tom Lowry, slaughtering his loved ones and going on some sort of murderous rampage?
    Was his dad?
    Brian pushed that thought from his mind.
    There was too much to think about, and he didn’t want to think about any of it. He glanced out the side window of the car but quickly readjusted his focus to look at the glove compartment in front of him.
    There was graffiti on the cement wall adjoining the freeway.
    And he didn’t want to discover that any of it consisted of those strange scribbled symbols.
    Once in the newspaper office, he and Wilson went their separate ways, Brian to the bathroom, Wilson to Jimmy’s office to explain what had happened. But they were apart for only a moment. Brian was just sitting down at his desk, about to check his e-mail, when Wilson poked his head around the corner of the cubicle. ‘‘Come here,’’ he said.