On cue, Bob L. spoke up.
“Why were you going for a hike in a storm?” he asked the elder Van Laar.
The question was abrupt. Lewis tempered himself. “If you don’t mind my asking, sir.”
“The storm was sudden,” said Mr. Van Laar. “It came from nowhere. The sky was clear when we left the house. The sun was out. Not a hint of moisture in the air. And then,” he said. But he didn’t continue.
Dick Shattuck cleared his throat. “Mr. V,” he said, “how long would you say you waited for Bear at the trailhead, after he turned back?”
“Difficult to say,” said the elder Van Laar. “Fifteen minutes, maybe. Twenty. I didn’t check my pocket watch when he left, but I did when the rain began. That was at three thirty-five. That’s when I lost patience and headed back myself. The path through the woods is short. As I said. It shouldn’t have taken him so long.”
• • •
The conversation continued, but Carl stayed silent. Calculating. Mr. Van Laar had said Bear had set off on a hike with his grandfather at three p.m. Carl had left work early that day, at half past three. That was when he saw the boy bent down in front of the house, tying a shoe, about to set off someplace.
If he was doing his math correctly, it was possible that he, Carl Stoddard, was the last person to see the boy before he disappeared.
He thought of speaking up about it. Decided against it, for now.
Both Van Laars simultaneously leaned their weight against the countertop behind them, suddenly exhausted. In general, they moved as a pair. Same height, same eyes, same steady fluid movements. There was an athleticism to them that Carl didn’t generally associate with rich people. He had once seen Peter III playing an impromptu game of baseball on the lawn during a different year’s Blackfly Good-by. He had knocked a ball completely out of sight and then run around the improvised bases in a casual lope that concealed what Carl, from his football days, immediately understood to be an impressive reserve of speed.
“Did anyone see him after that? Anyone aside from you, I mean,” said Shattuck.
“No one that I know of,” said the elder.
“Do you think he ever reached the house?”
“Unclear,” said the younger. Bear’s father. “No one saw him there, but many of the guests were resting at that time. Or outside, I suppose.”
Carl swallowed hard. He wanted to speak up. To say, I saw him. He was tying his shoes. It was half past three. But he understood what would change the moment he revealed it.
Shattuck continued, and the moment passed.
“Who do you believe was inside the house?”
The younger Van Laar nodded. “I was,” he said. “My wife was. Certain guests, as I said. Certain members of the staff.”
“And when did you start searching for Bear?”
The two Van Laars glanced at one another.
Then the younger spoke. “Dad found me at the house,” he said. “Around a quarter to four. I’d been resting in my bedroom. He told me he couldn’t find Bear.”
On saying the name, his voice rose.
Carl looked away, afraid suddenly that he would cry.
“And then,” said Shattuck, more gently.
“We went out, the two of us, into the rain,” said the elder. “We didn’t want to alarm anyone just yet. We began—calling for him. For Bear. And I suppose people heard us. And slowly a group formed. We fanned out. We all wandered in the woods for a while. We split into smaller parties. One group went all the way up Hunt, all the way to the top of the mountain. Another went down to the beach to walk along the waterline. Another searched Camp Emerson, all the cabins, every building. There were twenty of us searching, or thereabouts. We spent about three hours searching, all told. Got thoroughly soaked in the process.”
The four volunteers nodded collectively.
“When did you let the boy’s mother know?” asked Bob Lewis. Again, the question felt wrong, too abrupt, the subject too tender.
It was the younger Van Laar who answered. “She heard us calling,” he said. “She came outside.” His voice was tight.
Carl had stopped looking in the Van Laars’ direction altogether. If he cried now—
At last he allowed himself to bring forth, queasily, the memory that had been threatening to surface for hours. It was of Bear last summer, little and strong, sitting on a stump beside Carl as he planted flowers in the earth. The boy had been whittling contentedly, something of his own creation. Then, hearing a low male voice calling for him, he had paused in his efforts, and stiffened.
Carl had glanced up at him. Watched him for a moment, waiting for him to respond.
He hadn’t.
“That your dad calling?” Carl prompted him, gently. Again came the voice: “Bear Van Laar! Peter Four!”
Bear shook his head. “That’s my grandfather,” he said. And then, so quietly that he almost couldn’t be heard: “I don’t like him much.”
At that he collapsed his little knife, sighed heavily, and put it into his pocket. He stood, shoulders hunched, and walked in the direction of Self-Reliance.
• • •
It was 8:45 now. The sun was down. They walked back through the somber main room, which had emptied a bit since they’d entered. Then out through the front door and onto the lawn, plump with groundwater, squelching with each step. There was a very full moon that night, so bright that it cast faint shadows in their wake. The four of them and Vic Hewitt walked north, in the direction of the path through the woods that the boy and his grandfather had taken together earlier in the day.
“Do you know what he was wearing?” Bob Alcott asked Hewitt.
“Short pants, as I recall,” said Hewitt. “And a red shirt, I think. Short-sleeved. Least that’s what he was wearing when I saw him this morning.”
