Empathy No. 167

06/10/03, Levitt living room – Morning

The Levitt family, as a group, was never gifted with the discipline to awake and organize in a timely manner, but that morning was an exception. Lloyd marshaled his troops with the haste of a seasoned general preparing to receive an unexpected attack. No one complained, and no one would resist his orders. This was a mission with little precedent, and it was going to be executed in an orderly fashion.

Lloyd clapped his hands to call his unit to attention. "Okay, does everyone know what you're doing?"

"Shouldn't we call the cops?" said Jason.

"If he's not back by this evening then we will, but let's hope that's not necessary," said Lloyd. "Let's run down those assignments one more time. Brooke?"

Brooke waved the cordless phone with an imposed enthusiasm. "I'm here if anyone calls. I take a message, I get it to anyone who comes by."

"Good," said Lloyd. "Okay, Jason, you're-"

Lloyd's command was interrupted by a knock at the door. For a moment, every one entertained the possibility that Roderick had broken in on their efforts to find him, but that idea faded from each mind as, one by one, they acknowledged that this wasn't how Roderick would make himself known.

"Who the hell is that?" said Lloyd. "Who's coming by this early?"

"I'll get it, it might be Gary," said Allison as she jogged to the door. "I was up early this morning so I called some people who know him, they're gonna drive around and look."

Allison opened the door to a frenzied figure - Carlie, who likely had missed more than an hour of sleep herself. "Allie, did he come back yet?"

"No, and we haven't heard from him," said Allison. "You heard anything at all?"

"Nothing!" Carlie swayed as she spoke, the tension spoiling her already unsure posture. "Look, I know some places he likes to go, I'll check those out and I'll talk him into coming back if I see him. Okay?"

Again the moment was disturbed, this time by the rude voice of the telephone. Eleanor snatched the cordless phone from Brooke's hand, too twitchy for the usual courtesies. "Hello?...You're sure? Where...Thank you, bless you." She was both relaxed and invigorated as she silenced the phone. "Ms. Shaw says she saw him near Mansion Park this morning, but he ran off before she could talk to him."

Carlie perked up at the statement. "Mansion Park? Okay, there's a place down there he likes to go. Maybe he's still there."

"He's not gonna stay there," said Jason. "He's trying not to be found."

"Who says he's avoiding us? I know exactly where he is now." Carlie was off so fast that she scarcely had time for parting words: "I'll get him to come back, I swear."

"It's as good a start as any," said Allison. "I certainly don't know where else he'd go, he didn't exactly spill to me. You think there's something in his room?"

"You can't go through his stuff! Hey!" Jason jumped in front of the group as they rose and turned towards Roderick's bedroom. "That's a violation of-"

"Rules are off today," said Allison. "You disappear for a day, people have the right to find out where you went."

Jason fell to the side as his family marched single file into Roderick's tiny sanctum. For the panic of the moment, this space was much as it had been since Roderick took up residence. There was the same trophy shelf, the one he always talked about taking down; the radio that kept him company when he couldn't tolerate the presence of others; the collection of books, half of them arranged by category and size in the shelves, the rest in odd piles around the room; the stacks of tapes, lovingly mixed by his sweetheart.

"What are we even looking for?" said Lloyd.

"I can't imagine what," said Eleanor. "He never writes anything down, he keeps it all in his head."

"Maybe not everything, look at all these," said Lloyd, picking up one of the thick three-ring binders stacked on Roderick's desk. "There's a lot more in the shelf, too. There must be a dozen of them."

"I don't think so," said Eleanor. "Those are just notes for things he works on."

"Well, let's hope that one of them's different." Lloyd flipped open the binder in his hand and began paging through the papers locked within. "Look through these binders, maybe there's a marked map or a flyer or something. Anything that points to a place."

Allison leaped eagerly to the task, pulling another binder out of the shelf without hesitation, but she froze a moment later as her eyes landed on the first page. "Oh my God." She pressed a finger to the page, then repeated, louder: "Oh my God!"

Eleanor leaned over Allison's shoulder. "What is it?"

"Dad, the binder on his desk, this thing he wrote here?" said Allison. "This is my MasterHub password."

"For that instant messenger thing you're always on?" said Lloyd.

"Look at this page, there are so many numbers and phrases here, he was writing and scratching out..." Again Allison froze, the shock growing stronger. "This one! This number here! It's the combination on my diary!"

"Let me see that..." Lloyd took the binder from his daughter's faintly trembling hands and started reading. "This is really strange. A lot of these pages look like transcripts."

"Transcripts?" Eleanor sat down, weakened by disbelief. "Lloyd, Dr. Brawney told me that she suspected Roderick of watching her session tapes! I didn't believe it, I couldn't..."

Lloyd continued reading, now invested in what each page brought. "Some of these do look like therapy sessions, but there's a lot more. There must be dozens of conversations transcribed in here. From us, us again...some of these are from his school, how was he managing this?"

"Dad, the tape deck!" Allison pointed at the old recorder on Roderick's desk. "What if he was..."

Allison hit the play button on the device and was greeted by her own voice: "I hate that I think these things, but I do. I'm sorry." She fell back again the wall, wanting badly to run and pretend she hadn't heard it even as she was compelled to stay.

"He's been watching us," said Lloyd. "They're dated and they go back before he moved here!"

"Wait, what's that in the back?" Eleanor took the binder and flipped to the back, finding not a single page like the rest but a small collection of loose sheets torn out of a memo book. "It's like a little journal. These were his own thoughts, not our words. Oh God, maybe there's a clue in here..."