End Time by Keith Korman

point as always: “We’ll take my car.”
    First to the sheriff’s office at the courthouse.
    Closed, naturally, but there was one light coming from an office down the hall. Bhakti and Chen banged on the courthouse door. For a few moments nothing. They banged again. Then from inside a door opened, throwing down a bar of light, and the dark figure of a man tromped out into the hall rubbing his eyes. Deputy Jimmy, who had no doubt been sleeping—with his feet on the desk, the radio humming softly. The police scanner and dispatch radio lit but silent. From dead snore to roused in all of three knocks. Now rubbing his face and peering through the glass front doors.
    â€œMr. Chen, Mr. Singh—what’s the trouble, fellas? Why didn’t you call?”
    Deputy Jimmy sat and listened. The two girls went to a music festival near El Paso—our side of the border—earlier in the evening. They were supposed to be home by 2 a.m., understandable—the long drive. They’d never been late before. Neither girl was answering her cell phone. And that never happened. There was something wrong.
    Mr. Chen was getting more and more irritated. He’d shoved over his wallet photos, slightly out of date, given a detailed description—height, weight, hair color, name, Social Security number. Bhakti too. Angry now, Chen was losing control. “I’ve given you everything here, why can’t we—what do you call it, put out an Amber alert?”
    Deputy Jimmy wasn’t such a bad man, as lawmen went—but now tried to explain, the excuses ringing hollow in the concrete Sheriff’s Office. “I’m sorry, Mr. Chen, Mr. Singh—the children have to be seventeen or younger. Neither girl is. And we have to know they’ve actually been abducted. And we don’t know that for sure yet. There may be another explan—”
    â€œWe know, ” both men said at once.
    Didn’t matter. What was worse; three days were required to elapse before Janet and Lila could be registered as missing persons. Still, as a matter of procedure, smart thinking, and an effort to mollify the fathers, Deputy Jimmy promised to notify the Texas Rangers, the Hudspeth County Sheriff’s Department halfway to El Paso, and every church or mission they could find in the county phone book. In this empty part of the world, not that many.
    And naturally if the girls phoned home they could use the cell phone service provider to trace the location. Provided there was an emergency. In a flash of foresight, Bhakti showed Chen his BlackBerry. “This has a recording feature somewhere. I’ll have to look up how to activate it.” Chen nodded silently, good idea.
    That’s when things got really ugly.
    Bhakti returned home to find Eleanor still standing by the window, staring at the closed curtains.
    She didn’t have to ask him. “Well?” It was as though she already knew.
    Without speaking to her he went to the bathroom to splash cold water on his face. Somehow Bhakti didn’t want to do it in the kitchen in front of her. It seemed somehow irresolute, weak. And for the life of him he couldn’t fathom why something as simple as that would feel that way.
    The tap from the bathroom sink was warm, as always. Water was always warm in this part of the world. Funny, just like home too, India. Water always warm. That’s when he noticed the graffiti. At some point during the night Eleanor had scrawled some lines on the bathroom wall in lipstick. A little ditty right by the toilet, frat rat stuff, as if in the time it took to sit down and then find her legs she had somehow lost her mind:
    Here I sit, Muscles Flexin’
    Giving Birth to another Texan.
    Crazy talk.
    That’s when his BlackBerry rang; and things spiraled down.
    The caller ID read JANET . At first Bhakti breathed a deep sigh of relief, a whoosh of sweat flushing his system of fear. But something about Eleanor