The Driver Read online

  The police had taken about three hours to trace them.

  Trip was sentenced to three years in a juvenile facility. He served most of the time at the New Jersey Training School for Boys in Jamesburg. He did thirty months, all told, most of it spent in boot camp, living in barracks with fifty other young convicts. He was twenty when he finally came out. He had relatives in San Francisco, moved west to get out of the way of temptation and enrolled at community college to try and round out a few qualifications so that he could fix himself up with a job. He found out that he had an aptitude for electronics and he took a course in electrical engineering. He parlayed that into an apprenticeship and now he was employed fixing up the power lines.

  He met Madison while he was out celebrating his first pay packet. She had been at the bar on her own, reading a book in the corner and nursing a vodka and coke. He introduced himself and asked if he could buy her a drink. She said he could and they had started to get to know each other. She was a big talker, always jawing, and he said how it was sometimes impossible to get a word in edgeways. (Milton said he had noticed that, too.) She was living out of town at the time, taking a bus to get into work. She said she was a secretary. Trip figured out the truth by the time they had been on their third date and he had been surprised to find that it didn’t bother him. If he didn’t think about it, it was bearable. And, of course, the money was great and it was only ever going to be temporary. He always tried to remember that. She had big plans and she was just escorting until she had saved enough to do what she wanted to do.

  “She wants to write,” Trip said. “A journalist, most likely, but something to do with words. She’s always been into reading. You wouldn’t believe how much. All these”––he pointed at the books on the bookcase––“all of them, they’re all hers. I’ve never been into reading so much myself but you won’t find her without a book. She always took one when she went out nights.”

  Milton looked at the bookcase, vaguely surprised to see so many books, always a clue to a personality. They were an odd mixture: books on astrology and make-up, novels by Suzanne Collins and Stephanie Meyer. Some books on fashion. The Collected Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Milton pulled it out to look at the cover. Several pages had their corners turned down. Not what he would have expected to find. He slipped it back into its slot on the shelf.

  “That’s one of the things I love about her, Mr. Smith. She gets so passionate about books. She writes, too. Short stories. I’ve seen a couple of them, the ones she doesn’t mind showing me. And I know I’m no expert and all that and I don’t know what I’m talking about but the way I see it, I reckon some of her stuff’s pretty good.”

  “What’s she like as a person?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He searched for the right word. “Is she stable?”

  “She gets bad mood swings. She can be happy one minute and then the whole world is against her the next.”

  “You know why?”

  He screwed the cigarette in the ashtray and lit another.

  “Family.”

  He explained. Madison had been born and raised in Ellenville. The place was up in the foothills of the Catskills, right up around Shawangunk Ridge, and it was on its uppers: the local industry had moved out and Main Street had been taken over by dollar stores and pawn shops. Madison had two sisters and a brother; she was the oldest of the four. Her father had left the family when she was five or six. Her mother, Clare––a brassy woman full of attitude––told the children it was because he was a drunk but Madison had always suspected that there was something else involved. She had no memories of her father at all and, whenever she thought of him she would plunge into one of her darker moods. Clare moved a series of increasingly inappropriate men into the house and it was after one of them started to smack her around that the police were called. He had been sent to jail and the children had been moved into foster care. Clare got Madison’s sisters and brother back after a year once she was able to demonstrate that she could provide a stable environment for them but she had left Madison with the family who had taken her in. She would run away to try and get back home and then be taken back into the foster system. There was a series of different places, several well-meaning families, but she never settled with any of them.

  “Have you spoken to her mother?”

  “Last night. She hasn’t seen her. Same goes for her sisters and brother.”

  “Does she get on with them?”

  “They used to go at it all the time but I think it’s better now than it was.”

  “Why?”

  “The others got to grow up at home and she didn’t. She hates that. She said felt like no-one wanted her. Always on the move and never where she wanted to be.”

  “Why didn’t her mother take her back?”

  “She never said. I think Madison was a little wild when she was younger, though. Maybe they didn’t know what to do with her. She has triggers like we all do, I guess—she’ll go off if she thinks somebody has lied to her, or if we’re running low on money, or if she’s having one of her arguments with her mom or her sisters. If she feels like she’s being ignored or rejected it all comes back again, and then, you know”––he made a popping noise––“look out.”

  “Could that be a reason for what’s happened? Something’s upset her?”

  “No,” he said. “She’s been really good with her mom for the last couple of months. They’ve been speaking a lot. Now she’s got money she’s been buying things for them––for her mom, her sisters, for her nieces and nephews, too. I’ve tried to tell her she shouldn’t need to do that but she likes it. They never had much money growing up and now she has some she likes to spread it around, I guess.”

  “Alright,” Milton said. “Go on.”

  He did. Around the time of seventh grade, Madison moved across country to live with her aunt in San Diego. The woman was young and Madison felt that they had something in common. It was a better town, too, with better schools, and she was encouraged to work hard. That was where her love of reading and writing found expression and she started to do well. For the first time in her life, he said, she felt wanted and useful and she started to thrive.

  “Have you spoken to her? The Aunt?”

  “No. I don’t have her number.”

  Milton’s cellphone vibrated in his pocket. He scooped it up and looked at the display. He didn’t recognise the number.

  “John Smith,” he said.

  “Mr. Smith, it’s Victor Leonard from Pine Shores. We spoke last night.”

  “Mr. Leonard––how are you?”

  “I’m good, sir,” the old man said. “There’s something I think you should know ––about the girl.”

  “Yes, of course––what is it?”

  “Look, I don’t want to be a gossip, telling tales on people and nonsense like that, but there’s a fellow who’s been saying some weird things about what happened up here the other night. You want to know about it?”

  Trip raised his eyebrows: who is it?

  “Please,” Milton said.

  12

  MILTON WAS GETTING USED to the forty-minute drive to Pine Shores. Trip was in the passenger seat next to him, fidgeting anxiously. Milton would have preferred to go alone but the boy had insisted that he come, too. He had been quiet during the drive but the mood had been oppressive and foreboding; Milton had tried to lighten it with some music. He had thumbed through his phone for some Smiths but then, after a couple of melancholic minutes, realised that that hadn’t been the best choice. He replaced it with the lo-fi, baggy funk of the Happy Mondays. Trip seemed bemused by his choice.

  Milton drove to the address that Victor Leonard had given him and parked. It was eleven in the morning. They walked toward the house, a Cape-style cottage, raised high with a carport at ground level. Milton climbed up a set of steps that rose up beyond the level of the sidewalk and rapped the ornate iron knocker three times. There was a vertical panel set into the side of the door and
Milton gazed inside: he made out the shape of a telephone table, a flight of stairs leading up to the first floor, a jumble of shoes against the wall, coats draped off the banister. It looked messy. A man turned out a doorway to the left of the lobby and came towards the door; Milton stepped away from the window.

  The door opened.

  “Dr. Brady?”

  “Yes? Who are you?” Andrew Brady was very tall, with a plump face, greasy skin and a pendulous chin. His hair was chestnut streaked with grey and his small eyes had retreated deep into their sockets. He was unshaven and, despite his height, he was overweight and bore his extra pounds in a well-rounded potbelly. He was wearing a fuchsia-coloured windbreaker, a mesh cap and a pair of wading boots that were slicked with dried mud up to just below his knees.

  “My name is John Smith. This is Trip Macklemore.”

  “I’m sorry, fellas,” he said. “I was just going out. Fishing.” He indicated the waders and a fishing rod that was propped against the wall behind him.

  “Could we speak to you? It would just take a moment.”

  He glared out from the doorway at them with what Milton thought looked like an arrogant sneer. “Depends on what about.”

  “The commotion around here the other night.”

  “What commotion?”

  “There was a girl. You didn’t hear?”

  “The girl––oh, yes.”

  “I understand you spoke to her?”

  Brady’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Who told you that?”

  Milton turned and angled his face towards the house diagonally opposite. “Mr. Leonard. I spoke to him earlier. Is it true?”

  “No,” Brady said. “It isn’t.”

  “Do you think we could have ten minutes of your time? It’s important.”

  “What do you both have to do with her?”

  “I’m her boyfriend,” Trip explained.

  “And you, Mr. Smith?”

  “I’m a taxi driver. I drove her up here the night she went missing. I’d like to see that she gets home safely again.”

  “How honourable,” he said with a half-smile that could have been derisory or amused, it was difficult to tell. “A knight of the road.” The bluster was dismissed abruptly and Brady’s face broke out into a welcoming smile. “Of course, of course––come inside.”

  Milton got the impression that this was a man who, if not exactly keen to help, liked people to think that he was. Perhaps it was a doctor’s self-regard. He bent down to tug off his boots and left them against the wall amidst the pile of shoes. As he led the way further into the house Milton noticed a small, almost imperceptible limp. He guessed he was in his early fifties but he might have been older; the greasy skin made it difficult to make an accurate guess.

  He led them both into the main room of the house, a double-height living room that captured the light from large slanted windows. There was a galley kitchen in the far corner, a breakfast bar with barstools arranged around it. There was a large television tuned to CNN, a shelf of medical textbooks and, on the wall, a picture of a younger Brady––perhaps ten years younger––posing in army uniform with a group of soldiers. The photograph was taken in a desert; it looked like Iraq. He cleared the sofa of discarded remnants of the newspaper so that they could sit down.

  “Could I get you something to drink?”

  “No thanks,” Trip said, struggling with his impatience.

  Milton smiled encouragingly at the boy. “No,” he repeated. “That’s alright. We’re fine.”

  Brady lowered himself to the sofa. “So what did Victor have to say about me?”

  “Just what he said that you’ve been saying.”

  “Which was––”

  “That she––the girl, Madison––was here. That she knocked on the door and you took her in. He says you used to specialise in getting kids off drugs and that you run a retreat here. Kids with problems come up here and you help them get clean. That true?”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “And Madison?”

  “No, that isn’t true. And I don’t know why he’d say that.”

  “It didn’t happen?”

  “I heard the clamour––my God, the noise she was making, it’d be impossible not to hear her. She must’ve clambered over the wall at the bottom of the garden and went straight across, screaming for help at the top of her lungs. I was up working.”

  “At that hour?”

  “I was an Army doctor, Mr. Smith. Served my country in the Gulf, both times.” He indicated the photograph on the wall. “Second time, one of our men ended up with both legs blown off after he stepped on an IED. I went to try and help stabilise him before we got him out. Didn’t notice the second IED.” He closed his hand into a fist and rapped it against his leg; it sounded a hollow, plastic knock. “Gets painful sometimes so that I can’t sleep. It was like it that night. Kept me awake so I thought I might as well make myself useful.”

  “I’m sorry,” Milton said.

  “No-one notices. That’s the beauty with prosthetics these days. You wouldn’t know unless you’re told. They’re not quite so inconspicuous if you have to wear one, though. But, you know, we’re getting better at it all the time. Another five years…” He spread his arms wide. “It’ll be good as new. You won’t even know it’s there.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  “I manage.”

  He tried to make a connection with him. “I served, too,” he said.

  “Iraq?”

  “Yes. Both times.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Just a squaddie the first time. Then special forces.”

  “SAS?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You boys are tough as hell. Came across a few of your colleagues.”

  “That right?”

  “Helped one of them out. Crashed his jeep. Ended up with a broken leg.”

  “You know what,” Milton said, smiling at him. “I will have that coffee.”

  Brady smiled. “Not a problem. Young man?”

  “No,” Trip said. “I’m fine.”

  Brady got up and went to the kitchen. There was a coffee machine on the countertop and Brady made two cups of black coffee. “You been to Afghanistan, too?” he asked.

  “Several times,” Milton replied.

  “What’s it like?”

  “It wouldn’t be on my bucket list, put it like that.”

  “Never been out there myself but that’s what I heard from the guys I know who have. Ragheads––you ask me, we leave them to get on with whatever it is they want to do to each other. One thing you can say about them, they know how to fight––right?”

  Milton ignored his distaste for the man. “They do.”

  “Gave the Russians a bloody nose when they tried to bring them in line, didn’t they? They’ll end up doing the exact same thing to us. If it was my decision, I’d get us out of there as soon as I could. We should never have gone in the first place.”

  Brady rambled on for a moment, his remarks scattered with casual racism. Milton nodded and made encouraging responses but he was hardly listening; he took the opportunity to scan the room more carefully: the stack of unpaid bills on the countertop; the newspaper, yellow highlighter all over a story about the Republican primary for the Presidential elections; a precarious stack of vinyl albums on the floor; the textbooks shoved haphazardly onto the shelves; framed photographs of two children and a woman Milton guessed must have been Brady’s wife. Nothing stood out. Nothing out of the ordinary. Certainly nothing that was a reason for suspicion.

  “Milk and sugar?”

  “No thanks. Black’s fine.”

  He passed him a mug of coffee and went back around to sit. “So––the girl.”

  Trip leaned forwards. “Madison,” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Did you speak to her?”

  “Not really. I went to the door and called out but she didn’t even pause. Kept going straight on.”

>   “She didn’t come in?”

  “No, she didn’t. Like I said, she ran off.”

  “Why would Mr. Leonard tell me that you said she did come in?” Milton asked.

  “You’ll have to ask him that. Between us, Victor’s an old man. His faculties… well, let’s be charitable about it and say that they’re not what they once were.”

  “He’s lying?”

  “I’m not saying that. Perhaps he’s just mistaken. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Right.”

  Brady spoke easily and credibly. If he was lying, he was good at it.

  The doctor sipped his coffee and rested the mug on the arm of the chair. “You’ve reported her missing?”

  “Of course,” Trip said tersely.

  “And?”

  “They were useless.”

  “Well, of course, in their defence, this isn’t a lost child, is it? She’s a grown-up. I suppose they might be inclined to think she’s gone off somewhere on her own and she’ll come back when she feels like it.”

  “She’s missing,” Trip said, his temper up a little. Milton felt the atmosphere in the room change; the boy was angry and the doctor’s air of self-importance would only inflame things. They had got all they were going to get from this visit. It was time to go.

  He stood. “Thanks for the coffee. I’m sorry we had to bother you.”

  Brady stood, too. “I’ll tell you what,” he said, reaching into his pocket and fishing out a business card. “This is my number. I’ll be happy to help out if you need anything. I’m on the board of the community association here. If you want to speak to anyone else or if you want to put flyers out, that sort of thing, please do just give me a call. Anything I can do, just ask.”

  Milton took the card. “Thank you,” he said as they made their way back down the corridor. They shook at the door. Brady’s hands were bigger than his but they were soft and his grip was flaccid and damp, unimpressive. Milton thanked him again and, impelling Trip onwards with a hand on his shoulder, they made their way down the steps to the pavement. Milton turned back to the house and saw Brady watching them from a side window; the man waved at him as soon as he realised that he had been seen. Milton turned back to the car, went around and got inside.