The Darkest Time of Night Read online

  “Chief Stacks is coming with a few of his guys. They know to keep it off the scanners.”

  I felt a bit of anger flare, but I swallowed it as I hurried back towards the house. What Tom was saying was right. Once it hit the scanners that a boy was missing in Belle Meade in the middle of the night, the overnight photographers from the local stations would be jarred from where they napped in their news cars. Live-broadcast trucks would soon follow.

  We’ll find him long before that, I promised myself. Feeling my pants pocket, I pulled out the key fob to the Volvo, pushed the button, and saw the headlights flare to life.

  I tried not to think about how relieved I felt stepping free of the trees.

  When I drove back up the driveway a half hour later, two unmarked squad cars and an old Dodge pickup sat with their headlights on. I pulled up behind and hurried out. The beams from the vehicles shined on Anne frantically talking to one of the officers, who was taking notes and trying to calm her down. When she saw me, she once again burst into tears.

  “We’re gonna find him, we’re gonna find him,” I whispered as she collapsed into my arms.

  “Ma’am, we’re quietly calling in metro police to help comb these woods. If he’s here, we’ll find him,” the officer said.

  “If he’s here? Of course he’s here!” Anne cried out.

  I petted her hair. “Shhh, Anne.”

  “Are you suggesting someone has him? Mom, what if someone was in the woods? What if he got to the road before you, and someone picked him up?” she asked.

  “Excuse us, officer.” I took Anne aside. “Honey, call your sisters. We need everyone’s help. I’m going to get Brian and bring him into the house. He doesn’t need to be standing out there.”

  “He won’t talk to the officers, Mom. He won’t talk at all. It’s like he’s in shock.”

  “Just call your sisters.”

  At the clearing, I was not surprised to see my daughter Kate had already arrived. She was pacing back and forth, talking on her cell phone in the same suit coat she had worn home from Washington. Tom and Belle Meade’s police chief were kneeling in front of Brian, who looked exactly as he did when I left him forty minutes ago.

  Kate reached out and gave my arm a squeeze, continuing to talk quietly on her cell. Tom spoke in a low voice at my approach.

  “Brian’s not speaking. Kate is on the phone with the feds.”

  He explained volumes in those two brief sentences. He believed Brian was in shock after experiencing something traumatic. And the fact that Kate, who along with being our daughter was the chief of staff in Tom’s senatorial office, spoke intently on the phone with Washington meant she was talking to the FBI.

  I headed straight for Brian. “I’m taking him to the house. He doesn’t need to be out here anymore. Come on, baby.”

  I scooped him up, knowing he looked comically large in my arms.

  “I’ll carry him—” Tom began.

  “Keep searching. William’s here, we just haven’t found him yet.”

  I could feel the heat from Brian’s body as I whispered soothing words to him on our way out of the trees. Thankfully, as we reached the yard, I saw that the officer and Anne had returned to the woods. I didn’t want her to see me carrying her son like a limp doll.

  We entered the house, heading straight for the back rooms where I kept spare pajamas for all my grandchildren. I quickly found his favorite: a pair of Avengers shorts and a T-shirt. I undressed him and slipped on the pajamas.

  We went into the kitchen next, where I poured him a glass of cold milk and handed it to him with an Oreo cookie. He held the cup in one hand and the cookie in the other, continuing to stare, bringing neither to his mouth.

  “Let’s take them upstairs,” I said, relieving him of both, knowing I was moving too fast, that I needed to calm down myself. But instead, I hurried us up the stairs to my bedroom, turning on one small lamp. I peeled back the quilt on my side of the bed and guided Brian inside, kissing his forehead, then rounded the bed, took off my shoes, and climbed onto Tom’s rumpled side.

  I took a deep breath and gently turned Brian’s rigid body towards me, looking directly into his eyes, brushing his hair with my fingers.

  “I love you, Brian bear. I want you to go to sleep. But we have to find William. Can you tell me where was the last place you saw him?”

  He closed his eyes, and I rested my head on his pillow. His eyelids then slowly drifted open, only for a moment.

  “The lights took him,” he said softly.

  THREE

  My hands tested the strength of the ceramic mug as I watched the flashlights move in the trees. I’d come downstairs after Brian had rolled over and refused my repeated questions to explain what he meant about the lights. I’d covered his shoulders with the quilt, even though I was the one who was suddenly cold.

  I almost wished to experience Anne’s bold and unhinged panic, weeping and crying out William’s name. Instead, my fear manifested differently, in horrible thoughts of my grandson, hurt, lying on the floor of the forest, unconscious from tripping, his bright red hair tangled with leaves, unable to alert even the police officer who stood unknowingly a few feet away. Or perhaps he was wandering in some nearby street having long since left the trees, his face flushed in tears, unaware of where home was and why no one had come to find him. In the darkest parts of my mind, I thought of William in the backseat of some stranger’s car, a stranger who coaxed him through trees, loaded him into the car with promises of going to see his parents, and was driving him farther away with each passing minute.

  I glanced at a sudden series of snaps from one of the outdoor lights on the porch. I expected to see a singed cicada, or perhaps a wounded moth, drifting to earth. Instead, the lantern was nearly covered in a mass of movement.

  Ladybugs swarmed the light, popping like kernels in oil. I realized why all the lights were so dim on the porch: All the other lantern sconces were also covered in the beetles.

  When I was a little girl, Daddy brought them to the property. Since the beetles were known to kill other plant-eating insects, he purchased hundreds of them through one of his mail-order catalogs. They’d been in the lanterns my father and those men had carried that day in the woods—

  The coil on the screen door squeaked. Tom, Chief Jeff Stacks, and another officer walked out. I inhaled sharply at the sudden recognition. Paul Strombino was the metro detective I always saw on the news, with his fierce, full mustache and sunken eyes, the one who was always assigned to investigate the most disturbing crimes in the city.

  “I can’t get Brian to wake up,” Tom said. “I’d forgotten what’s it’s like to try and rouse an eight-year-old when they’re dead asleep. But he has to wake up, Lynnie; he’s the last one to see William.”

  “What, again, did he say to you?” the police chief asked.

  I cleared my throat, the words like thorns in my throat. “That the lights took William.”

  “Could be someone with a flashlight. Or the headlights of a car,” the mustached detective said quietly.

  “Lynn, this is detective Paul Strombino, with Metro PD,” Chief Stacks motioned. “He’s the best detective in town, maybe in the entire state.”

  “Not true, but thanks.” The detective nodded in my direction. “I hope I can help, ma’am.”

  “Thank you for coming,” Tom said. “I certainly hope you’re not needed.”

  “I am not an alarmist, Senator. But I do not like the sound of this.”

  “He’s got to be out there.”

  “I’m sure he is. We just haven’t found him yet,” the police chief said, his hands on his hips. “We have thirty men in the woods right now. Those trees aren’t more than a square mile. We’ll find him. And our patrol units are combing the neighborhood. We haven’t issued an Amber Alert yet, but your grandson’s photo is quietly being distributed throughout all police channels.”

  “Why would it be quietly sent out?” I asked. “Shouldn’t we let as many people k
now as possible know that he’s missing?”

  Chief Stacks lowered his gaze and Tom squared his shoulders to me. “Because we have to be smart about this, Lynn. William is in those woods. Or he’s wandered somewhere in the neighborhood. If we go sounding the alarm, and he’s quickly found, never in harm’s way, it will reflect badly upon Chris and Anne.”

  What you mean is it will reflect badly upon your political career—

  A car came tearing up the driveway, squealing its tires as it came to an abrupt halt behind the police cruisers. Our youngest daughter leapt out of her Honda Accord, dropping her cell phone from her ear as she ran towards the house. Stella’s hair, usually styled professionally for morning television, was pulled back in a hastily assembled ponytail. “Why didn’t anyone call me sooner? Oh my God, Strombino? Why is he here?”

  “It’s OK, Stella. Detective Strombino is here as a precaution,” Tom said.

  “No sign of William?” she asked. “I couldn’t reach Kate or Anne on their phones.”

  “They’re in the woods with everyone else.”

  “Where is Greg?” Stella asked.

  “Anne just checked on him. He’s asleep at her house with the neighbor watching him.”

  “Oh my God, William,” Stella bit her lip.

  “Go, Stella, we’re right behind you,” I waved her on.

  “Do I need to call the TV station? Get William’s picture out?” she asked.

  “No, not yet,” Tom responded. “Go to your sisters, Stella.”

  Stella dashed across the lawn with the speed of the former track star she was in college.

  “Let’s all go,” Tom took my hand. “We all need to keep searching.”

  “Brian shouldn’t be up there alone.”

  “There’s an officer stationed here,” Chief Stacks motioned upstairs.

  “Come on, Lynn.” Tom tugged at my hand.

  I swallowed, looking up at the bedroom window. I still wasn’t convinced Brian was sleeping.

  * * *

  Once, when we were teenagers, my best friend, Roxy, stole some cigarettes. We snuck off towards the tree line with them when Daddy saw us from the nursery. “Lynn Stanson! Roxanne Garth! You take one more step and you’ll wish the only trouble you were in was because of those smokes!”

  I remember tilting my head, a rare flash, especially for me, of teenage defiance. But I saw Daddy approach with all the intensity of a bull, and I snatched Roxy’s hand and dragged her back to the house. I’d glanced over my shoulder at Daddy, but he wasn’t looking at us anymore. He was staring into the woods.

  I should have asked you then. I should have made you tell me what happened that afternoon. Why those men wanted to go to that clearing with the gravestone. It was a gravestone—a child’s gravestone. I know what I saw. Why did they carry lanterns with ladybugs inside? There was so much I wanted to ask you, but I didn’t learn to only fear the woods that day.

  After Daddy died, and Tom and I moved into and remodeled his house for our growing family, I made sure to read fairy tales to my girls of haunted forests where witches lived and children got lost. I routinely emphasized Lyme disease, and I sighed with relief when Anne declared she wasn’t the nature type—and her younger siblings were thankfully in the throes of older sister worship.

  But decades later, it was the grandkids who salivated for the woods. When Tom finally succumbed to years of whining, he tried to sneak them out back. I saw them through the dining-room window and came out blazing from the kitchen.

  Poison ivy! Chiggers! Ticks! Underground caves! Old bear traps! I tried to remember every line my father used on me. I held back on telling them about the monsters. They would have laughed, and I would have lost ground. Instead, I got a lot of groans, but ultimately the sad parade marched back in the house, with my husband shaking his head.

  But there was nothing I could do to keep Anne’s boys from entering the woods from their own property. I knew Chris and Anne were wishing they had heeded my warnings, considered, up until this point, unwarranted. I had seen my son-in-law briefly in the last hour, and I wanted to grab his arm, tell him everything was going to be all right, that we would find his son. But Chris’s face was so full of despair I let him go. His voice was already growing hoarse.

  I tried to banish the thought of William unconscious, dirt smeared over his sweet face, lying on the ground. He’s wandered off, I told myself. He’s asleep on someone’s screened-in porch. There are so many sprawling properties out here, mansions and estates filled with gardens and guesthouses and pergolas. Country-music executives, lawyers, doctors, and a few celebrities were our neighbors. There were so many places for William to go.

  My phone began to vibrate again. Stella’s name came up on the screen.

  “Mom, my overnight assignment editor called. I let it go to voice mail. They know something is going on; the cops are everywhere. It’s only a matter of time. I’m not returning the call. Dad needs to know it’s started.”

  “I’ll tell your dad. Keep looking.”

  “Mom.” Stella’s voice quieted. “Has Dad had the cops run the addresses of the registered sex offenders in the neighborhood?”

  “Stella, there are no registered sex offenders around here.”

  “Mom, there are registered sex offenders in every zip code in the city. We have to think about these things. I’ll find out myself if I have to.”

  “Keep looking, Stella.”

  I hung up and saw Chris’s face among the flashing lights in the clearing, his fingers laced behind his head.

  I hurried over. “Chris, where’s Tom?”

  “It’s my fault, Lynn. I shouldn’t have let them camp out tonight. Especially with rain still in the forecast. Will was so upset, he cried himself to sleep. I should have brought them all inside, if only to calm William down.”

  “Chris, I don’t want to hear you say that again. No one is to blame. We will find him. Where is Tom?”

  “I’m here,” Tom said, walking up with Detective Strombino.

  “Stella called. Her station knows something is happening. She says she won’t return their call. But they’ll figure it out. They may already have cameras outside.”

  Tom whipped out his phone, turning his back to us.

  I looked to the detective. “Has he told you yet?”

  Strombino paused, and Tom looked back at me. He whispered a few more words and jammed the phone into his pocket. “Lynn, this isn’t the time.”

  “Tom, these detectives need to know everything.”

  “Lynn, I will handle this.”

  Before I lowered my chin, I saw Strombino look at us, obviously uncomfortable in the simmering air.

  “I’m not sure what the two of you are talking about, but I advise you to go public. The first twenty-four hours a child goes missing are crucial, and yours has already been gone for roughly two. I don’t want to rattle off the statistics of how many children are actually found after that twenty-four-hour window closes—it ain’t pretty. The longer this goes on, the more concerned I’m becoming about what your other grandson said. Lights don’t take children—people holding flashlights or driving cars with headlights take children.”

  No, Detective. My throat was suddenly so tight I couldn’t have spoken if I wanted to. Not always.

  “I just ordered my staff to reach out to the TV stations, the papers and the radio stations, and to get it on social media. We need the most recent photo of William possible. But no news conference yet. Only that our grandson is lost in the woods,” Tom said.

  I almost didn’t hear my husband; I was so alarmed by what Strombino had said about the lights.

  It can’t be. After all this time … it cannot be.

  “Find a recent picture and send it out with the alert,” Strombino suggested.

  “We have the family picture on my dresser, but William was only a baby,” Tom said. He then snapped his fingers. “Get the magazine cover. It has a huge picture of William.”

  “The boy was on the
cover of a magazine?” Strombino asked, and then cleared his throat. “Get that photo out now.”

  AP NEWS ALERT—NASHVILLE, TENN.

  The seven-year-old grandson of U.S. Senator Thomas Roseworth is missing and a massive search is underway in the woods directly behind the Tennessee lawmaker’s home.

  The metro police department confirmed the identity of the boy as William Thomas Chance, the youngest grandson of Roseworth.

  Police said Chance was last seen Friday night entering the woods.

  William Chance is the son of Roseworth’s oldest daughter, Anne, who lives on the other side of the wooded area behind the Senator’s home in Nashville.

  The neighborhood is known for the estates of other prominent politicians, including Al Gore.

  Chance was recently appeared on the cover of Southern Living, for an article profiling the home and garden shop of Roseworth’s wife, Lynn.

  Senator Roseworth is in Nashville to help in the search.

  —Copyright Associated Press

  “The lights took him.”

  I awoke to Brian’s words, the last memory of a disturbing dream. I lay in a pool of morning sunlight, already hot from the August sun.

  I slid out of bed, almost stumbling in my haste. I’d come up to check on Brian and found him tossing, so I sat down to pat his back as I had when he was a toddler with the croup. I’d lain down for only a moment.

  How could I have done that, knowing William was out there somewhere? And if it was because of the magazine, it was all my fault.

  I’d known, even then, the cover had been a terrible idea. A freelance writer for Southern Living had showed up early one morning in early spring, gushing about the store, my garden, and the house. I declined an interview and repeated over and over again that there was nothing special about any of it. Roxy, who managed the shop with me and had not had her coffee yet, wordlessly led the writer outside, took me by the hand out the front door, promptly went back inside herself, locked the doors to the building, told me through the glass to enjoy the early May heat wave, and to come back in the air conditioning when the interview was done.