Hide in Place

by Emilya Naymark

  “You win,” said Hopper, as if they had only stopped their discussion seconds ago, not hours. “You walking through this door proves my plan is the correct one. You are the one who needs to die. Not her.” He stood. “Whichever one of you had walked through the door would have gotten it.”

  Hopper raised his arm, the gun catching a keen spark of moonlight from the window. “I wanted a different death for you.” He took a step toward Alfie, gun pointing at the boy’s chest. “But this will do the job.”

  Alfie had frozen in place. Whether it was the sleep deprivation, the exposure to extreme cold, or his swollen, bleeding feet, he couldn’t move. He felt this was the only thing that could happen—him standing in place and this man shooting the heart out of him. And when Hopper pulled the trigger and the gun clicked, Alfie still didn’t move, the sound and its meaning taking long, long seconds to reach his poorly firing synapses.

  Hopper pulled again, and the gun fired this time, and Alfie fell to his knees. He fell because he thought he should—there had been a shot and the shot had been meant for him. Obligingly, exhaustedly, he dropped to all fours, then lay down on the rug. He liked this rug—it was soft and red, with intricate, small geometries that had kept him busy during long summer afternoons of nothing to do and nowhere to go.

  He wondered if he was dying and decided it wasn’t as scary as he imagined it might be.

  Hopper knelt over him, his face veiled with shadow.

  Alfie raised his hand automatically, a feeble protest, brushing and then snagging against an object sticking out of Hopper’s pocket. What was it? It seemed significant. And familiar.

  “What are you feeling?” Hopper asked, his voice a combination of solicitous and curious.

  Alfie pulled the object out of the pocket, remembering now, and cupped it inside his hand. He thought about Hopper’s question.

  “I’m tired,” he answered, the truth always being easier than a lie.

  Hopper sat down next to him, cross-legged. “I’ll stay with you until you die,” he said. “I’ll do that for you. Nobody did that for Otto, but I’ll do that for you.”

  The object in Alfie’s hand yanked him to a sharper consciousness, and to an understanding. “Do you miss Otto?” he asked. He made his voice slow, weak. He was operating on a plane both surreal and hyperreal.

  “I miss him,” Hopper said. “Like my heart was cut out and filled with dirt. Like that.”

  Alfie raised himself to a sitting position and stabbed the hypodermic needle into Hopper’s neck, depressing the plunger with all of his remaining strength.

  The man reared back, fell, and stumbled to his feet. Silently he ripped the needle out of his flesh, and even in the dark, Alfie saw a spray of blood follow the needle’s progress, like a loosened spigot. Hopper kicked him in the legs, in his rump, his thighs, his legs again, then fell, overturning the lamp, its bulb crashing and shattering.

  Alfie crawled away from him, pulled himself into the hallway and into the kitchen. He could hear sounds coming from Hopper—wet, gurgly, gaspy, choky sounds—and he crept under the kitchen table, curled around a table leg, and pressed his hands over his ears. He didn’t notice blood pooling under him. He didn’t feel any pain. All he wanted was sleep, and, astonishingly, within minutes, sleep was what he got.

  CHAPTER

  52

  WHETHER DESPITE AN indifferent universe or because of helpful forces that aid lost mothers in need, Laney did eventually coast toward a gas station, its blue and red lights rippling in the night like a mirage at first, then solidifying into bright reality.

  She filled the tank, bought candy bars and cans of soda, a stale, cellophaned cream-cheese bagel, a map. Apparently she was only twenty minutes from the route that would detour her around the accident (terrible, the clerk said, three-car pileup, two people dead, two alive, one alive but missing a leg) and deliver her to the highway. From there, an hour and a half and she’d be home. Her phone, after a restart, finally got a signal and showed two missed calls from an unknown ID followed by a call and terse message from Holly’s husband.

  The unknown calls panicked her, but no matter what she tried, she could get no further details. She might be able to get information on them from her carrier in the morning, or even from Ed, but until then she’d have to deal with the uncertainty.

  She would shower and change, maybe lie down for an hour or two, then go see Ed, ask if he’d found anything new at the burnt house, show him the two calls. She wondered at the respite within her until she admitted it came from the conviction that Alfie had indeed started the fire and then tried to call her. And that meant he’d found a way to get on top of his situation. She had no way of knowing this for sure, of course. But it was what her soul chose to believe at that moment, and she went with it.

  She drove carefully, eating her way through the bagel and the candy bars, drinking all the soda, so that by the time she turned into her street, she felt hyped-up and not a little ill.

  She didn’t recognize the car in her driveway, but its presence chased away whatever fogginess and stiffness still coated her mind. She got out warily, unstrapped her holster, and placed her hand on the handle of her gun.

  Ice, blown down from the pines, pinpricked her face, flew into her eyes so she had to squint and hunch.

  The front door was still locked, and for a second she thought maybe the car belonged to a cop, someone assigned to guard her. Except she hadn’t been home in a day, so whose car was it? She decided against using her keys in the front. If someone was in the house, they’d hear the lock and she’d have no cover, her body an open target.

  She went around to the back, and this time the door opened silently, swinging inward on well-oiled hinges.

  Her body perceived the calamity before her mind did, adrenaline rushing to her heart, her eyes dilating, sweat breaking out on her forehead and upper lip despite the cold. She saw Alfie’s feet under the kitchen table and yelped, sliding toward him, placing her hands on his legs and pulling. The blood beneath him was dark and rank, its spoiled-meat smell sending her into a frenzy of tugging and mewling because she couldn’t scream, her voice box numb with horror. Finally, she hauled his bulk out from under the table and placed her hands on his face, his neck. He was alive, his pulse weak and uneven, his skin cool, clammy to the couch. But he breathed.

  Her phone was dead, a quick rummage through his pockets (whose clothes were those?) failed to produce his phone, so she planted a kiss on his forehead and ran outside.

  Her next-door neighbor, a young man in his twenties whose name she could never remember, answered the door in his underwear, sleep smeared and sour. A child wailed behind him, and his eyes narrowed in irritation. But he let her in and gave her his phone, and by the time she’d dialed 911 he was awake and solicitous, his baby slung over his shoulder like a towel.

  The wife had ambled down the stairs as well and, hospitality being a big thing in Sylvan, offered Laney a cup of coffee.

  But Laney didn’t hear, had run toward her house after making the call, had nearly stopped breathing as she listened for the ambulance while the trees bowed and their branches crackled and snapped in the keening, ice-filled wind. She knelt by Alfie’s side and raised his heavy head onto her lap, leaned toward his grimy ear.

  “My baby,” was all she could say to him. And it wasn’t until Alfie’s blue eyes slit open, glazed but alive, alive, that she heard another sound in the house.

  CHAPTER

  53

  STILL KNEELING, HER hand on Alfie’s head, she raised her eyes to the living room doorway. A gasping, raspy shuffling came from the other side, as if someone was limping or dragging themselves across the pine boards. She lowered her son carefully to the floor and pulled herself upright.

  The rasping neared. A filthy, blood-stained hand gripped the doorframe, and Laney drew her gun out of her holster.

  Owen Hopper coalesced out of the shadows and propped himself against the wall. His head was monstrous—red and blistered,
bleeding, suppurating. One of his eyes was swelled shut, his shirt and jacket black with blood and dirt.

  His good eye fixed on Laney with a triumphant malevolence, slid down to take in Alfie’s fetal arrangement, then back up toward her. He had to lick his lips a few times before he could make any sound, and then he spoke. “Elaine Bird,” he said.

  “The police are on their way,” Laney said, her arms raised, the gun pointing at Hopper’s head.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Hopper said. “Your son is dead. We’re the same now. You and me. Childless. You killed mine and I killed yours. A fearful symmetry.”

  Where was the ambulance? It was taking ages. Her arms trembled, the gun’s weight seemingly quadrupling every minute.

  “What happened to you?” Laney asked.

  His one eye blinked slowly. His tongue scraped along his lower lip. “You,” he said. “You happened to me. You lied.”

  She waved at his bloody, pustuled head. “Who did that to you?”

  He made a grinding noise it took her a few seconds to recognize as laughter.

  “Your son,” he said. “A chip off the old block.” Wheeze. Rasp. Cough. “You should be proud.” He coughed again and separated from the wall, spread his legs for greater balance, and leaned slightly forward. He looked as if he were on the deck of a listing ship, his knees bent to absorb the swells. He lifted his hand, and the gun he held glinted in the dim morning light.

  “See?” he said. “Fearful symmetry. I kill yours, you kill mine.”

  She pulled her trigger.

  He fell.

  Someone shoved her from behind, grabbed her arms, twisted them, the gun falling from her numb fingers. Someone screamed at her to drop the gun, even though it was already skittering out of view along the floor. Someone’s weight pressed her to the floor, and cold, sharp cuffs snapped over her wrists.

  CHAPTER

  54

  ED BOSWELL SAT across from her in the hospital room, Alfie asleep between them.

  Ed had brought her a sweater from her closet, a thick, green one with embroidered leaves along the edges and cuffs. He also brought a turkey sandwich, which she held on her lap, running a skinned-knuckled finger along the encasing plastic.

  She was lucky—the hospital had an extra bed and had allowed her to sleep next to her son, though of course she hadn’t slept, had instead spent the night watching him, helping him to the bathroom when he woke, giving him cups of water, rubbing his roughened hands.

  Alfie’s upper arm and both feet were bandaged. Owen’s bullet had gone through his left biceps, and although he had bled and would need physical therapy, the bone had not been hit. The muscle would knit.

  Frostbite on his toes was a serious concern, but the doctors thought it might be okay. The damage appeared to be superficial and would heal with time. He needed hydration and rest and warmth. His cheekbones were angular in sleep, not a child’s roundness anymore, and his hair, stringy and matted, a dull dirty-blond against the blue pillow.

  Ed Boswell studied the boy, pursed his lips, cocked his head, turned his steady gaze on Laney.

  “Owen Hopper died this morning,” he said.

  Laney nodded. In ten years of being a cop and the following three years of carrying an off-duty weapon, she had fired her gun only the once (not including target practice every May to keep qualifying), when she was jumped by the chocolate heisters. And she had missed that time.

  The shot she lobbed at Hopper hit him in the top left shoulder, shattering his clavicle, the bullet exiting from his shoulder blade and digging into the hallway wall behind him.

  Boswell crossed his arms and sat back. “He had enough heroin coursing through his system to have produced three overdoses. It’s safe to say he felt very little of his injuries.” He looked back at Alfie’s pale face with its blue shadows and hollows. “Interestingly enough, the overdose was apparently administered via a syringe to the neck.”

  Laney put the sandwich on the rolling table by the bed.

  “The only reason he didn’t die right away was because the heroin was injected into muscle and part of a tendon. That slowed absorption significantly and made him lucid enough to walk and talk when you arrived. Actually, we’re still not sure how he managed it.” He shrugged. “Hopper was a big guy with a lot of hate. Sometimes hate keeps people going.” He held her stare. Repeated, “Laney, he was stabbed in the neck. By a syringe filled with heroin.”

  Alfie stirred and twisted in his sleep, his brows creasing with pain. Laney covered his hand with hers. He was feverish, dry skinned, but she reveled in the throb of his pulse, felt it through her fingertips.

  “I’m not sorry he’s dead,” she said. Though she was sorry it had come to that. She was sorry about Otto and Harry. She was sorry her son had suffered and bled.

  “No, I don’t expect you are.” Boswell stood and shrugged into his coat. “But I’ll need to speak with your son. Soon.”

  CHAPTER

  55

  GARLIC AND MEAT, oil, butter, and cheese—the smells of a kitchen in high production. Laney removed a full tray of chicken parm from her oven, wrapped it in foil, and shoved a lasagna tray in to take its place. A third tray of baked macaroni and cheese (crusted with breadcrumbs, pricked with bacon) already waited on the kitchen table.

  It was Sunday, and Holly had sworn to never miss another multitudinous family funday, not even during snow storms, not even with her foot in a cast.

  Laney had an hour before she was to head over, so she poured two cups of coffee, added sugar and milk to both, set out two little plates with cookies. When she called Alfie to come to the kitchen, he came and sat down and ran a finger along the rim of his coffee mug.

  He’d been quiet since coming home from the hospital. Not his usual shy, introverted quiet but something different. He was still thin, but his shoulders spread wider, his head no longer drooping on a lanky neck. The end of the hospital stay coincided with the beginning of the February break, and so they’d both been home, watching television, eating three or four meals a day, sleeping through the long, blustery afternoons.

  He wouldn’t discuss his experiences. She tried gentleness, concern, then insistence—even, once, threats. But her words darted at him and were absorbed, not so much hitting a wall as being taken in and diffused. He was still her considerate, obedient boy—he set the table (asked and unasked), kept his room neat, helped with laundry, limped to the end of the driveway with the garbage can on garbage day. He sat with her, a bowl of popcorn between them, and watched movies. But if she asked him about his time in the cabin, he simply continued doing whatever he’d been doing as if she hadn’t asked, his expression as impassive as if he were alone.

  The one time he did speak, little as it was, of Owen Hopper and his stay at the cabin was on the day he came home from the hospital. Ed Boswell came by, the visit strangely both a friendly stopover (he brought a fruit basket and a bag of cupcakes from the bakery) and an interrogation.

  “How did you meet Owen Hopper?” Boswell asked, and Alfie answered in his new voice—a low and steady, unstuttered baritone. Alfie told of his and Jordan’s meetings at Hopper’s Mountain View apartment, and of the drinks and pills and videos.

  “Anything else?” Boswell asked. “What did you talk about?”

  Alfie shrugged.

  “Did you go with Hopper voluntarily?”

  Laney tensed. She hadn’t asked Alfie this yet, had been afraid to. Probably needed a drink first. But there it was, and she leaned forward to hear the answer.

  “Yes,” Alfie said. “He offered me a ride because it was raining.”

  “Did you know that he would take you away?” Boswell asked.

  Alfie paused. “I did not,” he said. His blue eyes remained turned away from Laney. “I didn’t think he would. He locked me in the basement.”

  Something in Boswell’s posture weakened, and he looked down at his hands. “Alfie, you need to tell us what happened at that cabin.”

  Shrug.


  “How did the house burn down?”

  Shrug.

  “We know you hitchhiked part of the way home. What happened to Hopper when the house burned?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you think he was still in the house when you left?”

  Shrug.

  “What happened here, Alfie? When you got home? I need to know.”

  “He shot me.”

  “Hmm. Alfie, your fingerprints are all over the hypodermic needle.”

  Alfie closed his eyes. Laney couldn’t tell if he was afraid, or if he didn’t trust himself to explain properly. The detective’s presence unnerved her as well, and she touched her son’s hand lightly to show support. For the next half hour Boswell asked the same questions, different questions, calmly, forcefully. And Alfie did not answer.

  Almost a week later, Laney had not gotten much closer to the truth. Or rather, the truth according to her son. She dipped a cookie into her coffee and nibbled a corner. The kitchen continued being steamy and garlicky. Her boy sat across from her and dipped his own cookie into his coffee and nibbled his cookie’s corner.

  And she said what she’d been thinking for this past week.

  She said, “We’re drawing a line. Today. I won’t ask you again about it. I only ask that you take better care of your life. I see you are not a child anymore. You are your own person. Everything you did was exactly the right thing, because whatever it was brought you to this day, today. Alive. That’s all that matters.”

  She touched his hand lightly, the way you would someone you knew from the office maybe, and pulled back.

  He had started out listening with his eyes on her, calm, hooded, guarded. But at the touch his lip trembled, and he lowered his head. His chest, no longer the bony, hollow chest of a little boy, rose and fell in quick succession and he opened his mouth slightly because his nose had reddened, and he had to wipe at it with his sleeve.