Page 52 of Whistle

Annie had decided it didn’t matter whether Lucknow had become a ghost town. Just because there was no one there didn’t mean

Charlie wouldn’t still consider it his destination. When he left, he probably didn’t know any more about that place’s history

than she had before reading about it on her phone.

After an hour’s sleep at the service center, she continued on, and was traveling some secondary roads north of Albany, asking

Sherpa how much longer it would take to reach Lucknow as dawn began to break.

Her cell phone rang.

Her heart leapt. The first thing she thought was that it would be Charlie, but Charlie did not have a cell phone. But it could

have been someone calling on his behalf, a Good Samaritan who had found her son and was trying to reunite them.

She thumbed a button to accept the call.

“Hello?”

“Ms. Blunt?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Officer Standish.”

Annie said nothing.

“Hello? Are you there?”

“I’m here,” Annie said, suddenly thinking that her trip to Lucknow was pointless, that maybe Standish had news. And that it

wasn’t good. “Have you found Charlie?”

“I’m sorry, no, but we’re back out this morning. Where are you, Ms. Blunt?”

“I’m out looking for my son.”

“And where is it that you’re looking?”

“Just around.”

“I came by your place last night and you weren’t there, and you’re not there this morning. What is your location?”

“I’m kind of on the move.”

“I would ask that you return, Ms. Blunt. Your presence is necessary as we continue our investigation.”

It struck Annie that Standish might be able to track where she was through her phone. And if she could, wherever Annie happened

to be, Standish might send the police after her and bring her back.

Anne couldn’t allow that to happen.

“Okay,” Annie said. “I should be back in half an hour, tops.”

“That would be good,” Standish said, unable to hide the skepticism in her voice. “I’m holding you to that.”

“Of course,” Annie said. “Talk soon.”

She hit the button on her steering wheel to end the call, then pulled over to the side of the road so that she could take

her phone from her purse and shut it down completely. Once that was done, she tossed it back into her bag and hit the road.

She was clipping down a country road and sped past something that caught her eye for a millisecond. She glanced in her mirror,

hoping for a better look, but whatever it was could not be determined from a distance. She hit the brakes, careful to make

sure no one was behind her, put the SUV into reverse, and backed up about a hundred yards. She put the car in park, got out,

and walked over to the shoulder to see what had drawn her attention.

A bicycle on its side.

She knew instantly that it was her son’s. A girl’s bike with the sloping center bar, the banana seat, the angle handlebars. She felt her legs go weak and then she went down, gravel digging into her knees and one palm as she grasped one end of the handlebars for support.

“Oh God, oh God,” she said.

And there, in the ditch, was her son’s backpack. She gasped for air, wondered whether she might faint.

Hold it together.

This did not have to be bad news. The abandoned bike showed that Charlie had somehow made it this far. Aside from a busted

chain, the bike was more or less intact. It wasn’t mangled, as it would have been if Charlie had been hit by a car while riding

it. There was no blood. Not on the bike, not on the road.

She managed to get to her feet and edged her way down into the ditch to get the backpack. She looked inside, found a bottle

and a knife from a cutlery set and not much else. She surveyed the landscape in all directions and shouted: “Charlie! Charlie! ”

No reply.

Annie tried to think it through. The bike broke down. Charlie had decided to start walking, and didn’t want to be weighed

down by the backpack, so he pitched it. It was possible. And if that was the case, he might be up ahead somewhere.

She got back into the car, kicking up gravel from all four wheels as she hit the gas.

“I’m coming, Charlie. I’m coming.”

Looking for more upsides, she told herself that she’d been right all along. Charlie really was heading to Lucknow. She’d interpreted

the message from that upturned toy train correctly. The invitation had been real.

But for the first time a question that had been lingering in the back of her brain moved to the forefront.

Why?

Why did Charlie want to go to Lucknow? Did he imagine his toy train world to be that town? He had told his mother that this was where his father now lived. When he’d said that, Annie had written it off as the wishful imaginings of a heartbroken child. But what if he hadn’t so much imagined it, as the idea had somehow been implanted in him?

What if Charlie, and now Annie, was being lured to Lucknow? And if that was true, by whom, and for what possible reason?

It didn’t make any sense. But so many things that had happened lately fell into that category. After a while, you almost started

to get used to it. In fact, there was a small comfort in believing she and Charlie were being drawn to Lucknow for an unknown

reason. It meant that something was looking out for them, that Charlie was okay.

She had just crossed the New York–Vermont state line when Sherpa informed Annie that she was nearly to her destination, and

that the exit was ahead on her right.

She saw a sign that said lucknow 6 , but nailed over it was a narrow yellow strip with black letters reading closed . She took the right anyway, and a mile later she found the road barred by a ten-foot-high stretch of chain-link gate from

which similar fencing ran off in both directions, into the forest. More than the road to Lucknow was closed off. There’d clearly

been a perimeter fence established around the entire town.

There were several signs attached to the gate.

keep out

no trespassing

violators will be arrested and prosecuted

by order of the vermont state police

Annie hadn’t finished reading that piece in the Times she’d found on her phone, but she was willing to bet the entire town was an environmental no-go. While the chlorine gas in

the air would have eventually dissipated, whatever liquids had leaked out of those derailed tanker cars could have leached

down into the ground and poisoned the town’s water supply.

All of which suggested that there was nothing going on in the town’s center, and no reason for Charlie to be there. Would

there have been a way for him to have made it through this barrier? Maybe there were gaps somewhere, or access into the town

from another direction.

Annie left the engine running as she got out of the car and walked up to the gate. It was secured in the middle by a chain

and lock. Annie gave it a tug, on the off chance it hadn’t been secured, but there was no luck there.

She went back to the car and took a look at the map on the dashboard navigation screen. She moved it around with her fingers,

looking for another way in. There were two other roads that led into Lucknow from the other side, and it would take a long

time for her to get to them, only to find that they’d be padlocked, too.

Annie took a deep breath. She could think of only one way to get this done.

She didn’t want to set off the car’s airbags by hitting the gate with the front end of the car, so she did a three point-turn

so that she was looking at the gate in her rearview mirror. She wanted to get a good run at it, so she drove forward about

twenty yards, stopped, moved the gearshift from forward to reverse, grabbed hold of the steering wheel as firmly as she could

with both hands, lining the car up with the center of the gate, took her foot off the brake, and tromped on the accelerator.

The car’s wheels squealed, the engine roared.

Gritting her teeth, preparing herself for the impact, Annie had the car doing at least thirty miles per hour by the time she hit the gate.

Her scream was drowned out by the sound of the chain snapping, the two halves of the gate swinging back and scraping along

the pavement, the car’s bumper and tailgate taking a hit. For half a second, Annie wondered whether her insurance would cover

this, and she almost laughed. She’d had her eyes locked on the mirror, but now she looked forward to a view of the buckled

gate from the other side.

“Fucking-A,” she said to herself, hitting the brakes and bringing the car to a stop.

Any other time, she might have gotten out and had a look at the damage she’d done to her car, but right now she didn’t give

a shit.

She turned the SUV around and headed into downtown Lucknow.