Every Fear by Rick Mofina

his arm. He walked to his car and considered the odds. Dylan Colson was probably dead. And his mother was probably going to die too.
    It was a horrible tragedy and—God forgive him—a helluva story.

15
    J ason drove along Denny Way toward Broad Street.
    The Space Needle rose before him, reaching some 600 feet into the night, the red beacon at its tip pulsating like a fading heartbeat, he thought, before glancing south at the skyline rising over the metropolis.
    Jet City.
    Dylan Colson was out there somewhere.
    Was he dead?
    Had he been tossed into a back-alley Dumpster? Or buried in a shallow grave in a park to be discovered on some rain-misted morning by the proverbial jogger or dog walker? Or maybe he’d been put into a sack weighted with cinder blocks and dropped into Elliott Bay?
    Anything was possible. There was no shortage of evil in the Pacific Northwest. It visited in many forms and Jason had seen them all.
    Some up close.
    He glanced in his mirrors, then changed lanes.
    Maybe Dylan was alive. Maybe this case would beat the odds.
    Who knows.
    As he headed north on Aurora, light from the streetlamps flashed on Maria and Dylan. Their faces stared at him from the front page splayed on the passenger seat as he approached the Aurora Avenue Bridge, which spanned Lake Union. The bridge was the gateway to Fremont and Wallingford and the fringes of the small neighborhood where he lived in a huge nineteenthcentury house that had been divided into apartments.
    His place was on the third floor.
    But he couldn’t bear to go there right now; couldn’t bear to climb the creaking stairs to his empty living room, his empty bedroom, his empty kitchen; his empty life where nothing waited for him but the tropical fish gliding in the tank and the half-eaten can of baked beans in his fridge.
    It’d been a hard day. He dragged the back of his hand across his mouth. His throat was dry. He could always stop off at the liquor store, pick up something to get him through the rest of the night.
    No.
    He fought the temptation. One drink would lead to another, then another. And he knew where it would ultimately end. He wrestled his craving into submission, exhaling his relief when he turned off Aurora to a darkened, deserted back street and a small sign with the word Ivan’s flickering in neon.
    The little all-night diner was Jason’s fortress of solitude, a place where he could endure the bad nights. Besides, he was hungry and the food was good, he thought after locking his Falcon.
    Ivan’s had a checkered linoleum floor and eight redvinyl high-backed booths, six of which were empty tonight. Fourteen red vinyl stools, most patched with duct tape, stood before the Formica counter. The walls had dark fake wood paneling, dark fake brick. Above the cash register, next to permits, business cards, and phone numbers, was a 1990 Seattle Times profile of retired Navy cook Ivan Sulaticky’s no-frills diner.
    “A decent place for decent food for working people.”
    After taking a back booth, Jason took stock of the few nighthawks. An old man alone on one of the stools was staring down at the counter in front of him. At a front window booth sat an older couple: the woman was reading a fat paperback, the man was staring off into the night. In a booth nearby, a solo white-haired woman peered over her glasses at her crossword puzzle.
    “What’ll it be, pal?” An unshaven man in a white T-shirt, chewing on a toothpick, nodded to Jason through the pick-up window to the kitchen.
    “BLT toasted on white with fries and a large glass of milk.”
    The man nodded and Jason heard the sizzle of bacon as he spread his newspaper over his table and went back to the story. He studied the pictures, then reread every word of every item on the abduction as he searched for answers.
    Who would do this? And why? For money? As far as he knew, no ransom call or demand had come. Lee was a tow truck driver. Maria was a supermarket cashier. Not wealthy people. Was it