by S. D. Perry
Poppy shook his head. “I’m not even in the loop anymore, Bob; you must know that.”
Bob’s face was flushed. “Rick Truman killed people, Ed Billings killed people, a woman was raped. Your friends and neighbors are fighting, stealing, beating each other up, doing God only knows what else—and you know it’s happening, and you don’t think you should do something to stop it?”
“I understand where you’re coming from,” Poppy said. “But I can’t make other people’s choices for them, and neither can you. Things are how they are.”
“So that’s your rationalization for not caring?” Bob snapped. “You seeing the big picture now, is that it?”
“It’s not about caring or not caring,” Poppy said sincerely. “It’s about accepting the truth. Life is chaos, and everyone dies. Everyone. My Shirl died, and so will I. Coming to peace with that, letting go of our attachments, loving the people we chance to know…it’s the best we can do.”
Bob wasn’t on the same page. “You think Rick Truman was letting go of an attachment when he killed his wife? When he killed Annie?”
“Some people are afraid; they lash out,” Poppy said. “But they’re the exception, I’m sure.”
“We can at least warn them,” Bob said. “That’s reasonable, isn’t it? I wrote a story about this, this epidemic of violence, of madness. Dan Turner pulped the entire paper and fired me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Poppy said. Bob was a fine writer. He’d done a heck of a job with the Port Isley Press. “I’m sure if you take it before the council, you’ll get your job back. If you’d like, I could talk to Dan, or—”
“It’s not about the job, fuck the job!” Bob gritted his teeth and lowered his voice. “People are getting hurt, Poppy. Not everyone is making good choices. I got a call from Nancy a little while ago; she said the phone’s been ringing all morning, people waiting for the paper, asking for news…and passing things along. She heard from three separate sources that a man got beat up and thrown off the pier last night. No one seems to know if he died, or where he is—although everyone seems to agree he was of a ‘foreign’ persuasion. There was a big fire just outside town, one of those old barns by the turnoff. It’s smoke and ashes now. Someone lit a match. Kids are running away or disappearing. Nancy called the police for verification on any of this—and the cops are saying that nothing has happened, no comment, matters will be ‘handled.’”
He was in Poppy’s face, his voice sharp and accusing. “So the police aren’t going to help, and Dan Turner’s gone ass up for Jesus, and better than half the council can’t be reached for comment because they’ve left town or holed up somewhere, God only knows. I’m on my way to babysit a girl whose boyfriend is stalking her, by the way. And maybe I’m not handling things so well myself. Your patronage is not appreciated. If I wanted to be converted, I’d go talk to Dan. Maybe some of us are evolving, Poppy, but what about the rest of us? You could talk to people. They need to know that something is happening here, now, this summer, something inexplicable and real and dangerous.”
Poppy wasn’t sure what to say. He believed that Bob’s heart was in the right place, wanting to help…but what was happening was only change. And change, by its nature, was traumatic; it was birth, it was rebirth, it was being hurt so that one could also be healed. A forest fire. A comet. An ice age. Or something as mundane as a summer season in a small town.
“You underestimate what’s inside us,” Poppy said. “What’s inside you. We agree, something is happening. But where you see apocalypse, I see…” He took a breath of his own. “Freedom. A chance for real freedom.”
“That’s great,” Bob said, backing away from him. “What a pleasure it’s been, discussing this with you.”
“Don’t be like that,” Poppy said, taking a step after him. It hurt to see Bob so upset. He’d always liked Bob, respected him. “I don’t mean to be patronizing. Let’s talk about it. Why don’t you walk with me?”
“I think I’d rather do something,” Bob said. “I’ve already done my time talking. But call me if you wake up. Maybe when one of your own gets hurt.”
The reporter huffed back around to the driver’s side, started his truck, and rattled off. Poppy watched him go, frowning. After a moment, he started walking again.
The big house was quiet, Karen and Tommy both sleeping, and John asleep in her bed. She’d slipped from his embrace, thirsty from the wine, and she had to pee…and she was worried, and she couldn’t fall asleep worried.
She stood in the kitchen, wrapped in an oversize flannel shirt she used as a robe, glass of water in hand, and thought about what John had told her when he’d finally come to her, after their first hungry embrace in the dark hall. He’d whispered the day’s events after they’d made love the first time. It seemed his teenage psychic was being stalked, and was now staying in John’s guest room…not a development that seemed so great to her. He’d apparently spent a good part of his day trying to track down the estranged boyfriend, with no luck—until said boyfriend had shown up on the girl’s doorstep—well, her uncle’s or her friend’s uncle, she was unclear on that part—and shouted for her, and the uncle had called the police. The boyfriend had run off, but it all sounded dangerous to her; she didn’t like the idea of a human target living in John’s house.
A young, pretty target, maybe. The thought was beneath her, and she immediately dismissed it. John was as entranced by her as she felt by him. They both agreed it was madness, what they were feeling, what they were doing, but why couldn’t there be good kinds of madness?
Tommy was her first priority, of course, his safety. If there were crazy people running around, she should leave. But Karen…Karen had been prescribed pills, and she took a lot of them. She wanted to sleep all the time, and when she came out of her room—either to shower until her skin was a blotchy pink or to get something from the kitchen—she seemed not quite there. John had seen her twice, then sent her to a counseling center in Port Angeles. A dark-haired woman from the center came over every other day now, sat with Karen for an hour or two, then lectured Sarah about vitamin combinations. Karen seemed to like her, so Sarah tolerated it; she didn’t know what else to do for her sister. The times she’d tried to edge in to talking about leaving in the fall, Karen had withdrawn completely. She wouldn’t feel right about leaving her or moving her…or leaving John. She loved him, simple as that.
“Simple,” she whispered, then took another sip of water. Was Tommy pulling away because she’d met a man? John seemed to think it was his age, perhaps exacerbated by the effect…the effect that might or might not be influencing people in a harmful way, even he couldn’t say. Not with what was between them. The stalker, though. The murders. And that terrible man at the pier. She’d taken a sullen Tommy to talk to Stan Vincent, who’d tried to insist that she not be in the interview room when Tommy gave his statement. She’d ignored him, of course, but watching her son apathetically tell the story in a few short sentences—there was a guy, he had his hand in his pants, I yelled, he ran—made her feel almost unbearably sad. He continued to answer her in half sentences, and to look away from her when she spoke, as he had throughout their one-sided conversation about moms having the same rights as dads when it came to moving on. He wouldn’t talk to her, and she couldn’t make him.
She should leave. They would leave. She’d tell the woman from the center, day after tomorrow, ask for advice on how to handle it. And she’d tell John…not tonight, at least, not tonight. She’d talk to Tommy first. Or maybe she should talk to John, maybe he would come with them.
Is that what I want? Yes. Yes, and yes, but she didn’t think she could without Tommy’s blessing. It was too big a step. Besides, he had a practice here, a house, a life. Would he come? Was it fair of her to even ask?
Her feet were cold. She put the water glass by the sink and pulled the shirt close, hurried on bare feet back to her warm bed, to John. Tomorrow, she told herself; she’d think about it tomorrow.
; CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Stan Vincent sat in his office, waiting for the call. Henderson was out cruising Route 12 where it connected to the highway, watching for Dean. The deputies would be here any time, ready to take over the barely five-hour-old search for Max Reeder, a missing ten-year-old boy. Wes Dean would be sticking his big fucking face into Vincent’s yet again, grilling him on what he’d done so far, pushing his way in, mucking things up. This time, Vincent wasn’t going to step aside just because Dean thought he should.
Got my own boys now, he thought, and smiled, a grim little smile. Four of them, as dedicated to him as he was to seeing justice served. Ian Henderson, of course. Frank LaVeau. Kyle Leary. And the kid just on this summer, Trey Ellis; Trey had already proved his usefulness, making conversation over coffee, drawing out the uniforms who weren’t ready to make the leap. Margot Trent, Dave Miller, a couple of others, they were mostly on board but with reservations, so Vincent left them out of the serious planning. He needed to know who he could trust if things went hard, who he could count on, and he was satisfied that his people could go the distance. They’d already handled the thing at the marina, and some other things as they’d come up…
He’d assigned Trent and Miller to head up the search for the missing child, and they were doing a damned fine job. At least fifty volunteers had shown up for the door-to-door, and there’d be a hundred more searching the woods and beaches if the kid didn’t turn up by tomorrow. Max Reeder appeared not to be the only missing child, unfortunately, and wouldn’t Dean just love to jump all over that, tying in the runaway from last week…or the three last month. But it was Port Isley’s business, not county, and Vincent would handle the matter.
The radio on his desk blipped, and Henderson’s voice spilled out. “I see ’em, chief. Three, four cars coming in. Dean’s in front.”
“Follow them in,” Vincent said. “We’ll meet you here.”
Vincent stood up and paced around in front of his desk. Everything had fallen so neatly into place, it was as though his fondest wish—to get Western Dean the fuck out of his hair—were destined to become a reality. LaVeau had gone through their files of plates recorded leaving town in the last six hours and had already matched two to registered sex offenders. One of them was certainly harmless, guy named Armstrong; he’d had sex with a seventeen-year-old girl eleven years before, when he’d still been a teenager himself. No play there, but the other one, that was their ticket—Neil Elwes had twice exposed himself to grade-school kids at an elementary school in Texas back in the late eighties, flapping his penis at them through chain link while the children screeched and laughed. He’d spent some time in a hospital, done some community service, and had not reoffended. Elwes had moved to Port Isley six years ago to see an uncle through end-stage cancer and had stayed on after his uncle’s death—and stayed on the straight and narrow, so far as anyone knew. The man worked from home and kept to himself, he didn’t have any friends, and best of all, according to the recorded message on his phone, he would be in Bend, Oregon, until next week, visiting his cousin. They couldn’t have planned it better.
Vincent stepped out of his office, nodding at Kyle Leary, who was on the phone. Leary nodded back at him. The station was quiet, every free hand out looking for the Reeder kid. Except for one of their part-timers at the front desk and Debra on dispatch, they were alone. The station was an antique in its own right; built in the forties, the two-story building was a monument to sturdy, handsome architecture. The airconditioning sucked, though, and the showy, period ceiling fans actually served a purpose, pushing the stuffy air around a bit. Vincent liked the heat; it felt like movement, like action, like things getting done.
Leary hung up, stood, and moved to meet him.
“They here?”
Vincent nodded. “Five minutes, give or take. Was that Trey?”
Leary grinned. “Kid’s got a pair, don’t he? All taken care of.”
Vincent nodded, not ready to smile yet. Poor Mr. Elwes was going to be the focus of a statewide manhunt pretty soon, considering what Wes Dean was going to find in Neil’s closet. Nothing like trying to explain a box full of boy porn, latex gloves, condoms, and duct tape. Young officer Ellis was also going to make a point of breaking the glass pane set next to the front door so that there’d be sufficient reason to walk in. None of it would hold up if Elwes got himself a half-decent lawyer, but it’d take some time to sort everything out; enough time for Vincent to figure out who’d really snatched up Max Reeder. He was sure he could find him if Dean would fuck off. All they had to do was drop the name; Dean would do the rest.
Once that fucker’s gone, we can get some actual work done; we can get down to brass tacks. He had some ideas about staking out the parks, getting more cameras set up to track down the bad guys—including, maybe, the sicko who’d taken Max Reeder, the real offender…assuming that was what had happened, which he did; things were too batshit crazy for him to dismiss his gut instincts. Vincent was already in the early stages of organizing a neighborhood watch, one that included blunt instruments, as needed; he thought he might get the Jessups involved, maybe a few of the dockworkers. The streets would be safe if they had to walk down each and every one of ’em…and once everything was firmly in hand, Vincent’s family could come home.
He felt his heart break a little, thinking of Lily. He’d apologized enough to Ashley; she understood that he was under tremendous stress, and she would come back when she realized that he would never hurt Lily, never would have except that he’d been on the phone to one of his boys after what had happened in the marina and it had been very, very important to get things done in a certain period of time, to make sure that no one went to jail for taking out the trash. The trash in that case had been a seedy Mexican dope peddler who’d been working the docks, and some local boys had taken offense. Someone had called the station, and LaVeau had caught it, and there had been decisions to be made, serious, life-changing decisions. And Lily kept talking, repeating the same nonsense phrase over and over again, trying to crawl up his leg, and he’d been trying to hear what LaVeau was telling him, and she wouldn’t shut up, she wouldn’t stop pulling at him, grinding her grubby heels into the tops of his feet, tearing the skin there, hanging from his pockets. When he’d snapped he’d only pushed her, he hadn’t hit her, and she needed to learn that there were times she had to listen to Daddy, that Daddy’s voice was the law. That was just a safety issue, really. Ashley should have been on top of her anyway, would have been except she’d run to the store for “half a second” about half an hour before, leaving him to watch the baby, who was still screaming and rubbing at the spreading bruise on her back when Ashley finally came home. Kid had landed on one of her own goddamn baby dolls, that was bad luck, just bad fucking luck, but she was fine, she’d hurt herself worse that time she’d slipped in the tub, also because Ashley wasn’t watching her…which he’d been forced to point out once she’d started accusing him of things. She’d taken the baby and gone to her mother’s, and although he missed them, it was better that they were gone, for now; he needed to be able to think, to listen to the cool voice that told him what was what, that reminded him of his duties. He could hear it best at night, before he slipped into the brief two-or three-hour coma that passed for sleep lately, the cool voice echoing sometimes in the empty house.
“Lucky break,” Leary said.
“What?” Vincent blinked at him, frowned.
“Elwes going out of town,” Leary said, and chuckled. “This’ll keep that asshole busy.”
Vincent looked around them, back at Leary. “Shut the fuck up,” he said. Of all his boys, Leary had the biggest mouth; he’d want to watch that. Besides, it wasn’t luck, it was fucking fate. He had the town’s best interests at heart; he would keep it safe.
“Did you hear about Jaden? Jaden Berney?”
Tommy shook his head, and Jeff smiled, a weird, excited smile. “I knew him, kind of. He moved here last year. Ninth grader? They think some pervert got hi
m. His mother thought he ran off, like, a week ago? But some other little kid disappeared, day before yesterday, ten years old. Another boy. You think it was that same guy off the pier?”
They were in Tommy’s room. Up until five minutes ago, he’d been alone in his room with the door locked, surfing the net for pictures of naked girls. Not the gross stuff; he didn’t want to see all their…their parts, but the pretty girls, the smiling ones that weren’t wearing much and seemed to be looking at him while they smiled. He’d looked around for stuff every day, lately. Sometimes for way longer than he realized.
Thinking about the guy on the pier in connection to his own jerking off made him feel uncomfortable. Not the same thing at all, except it was the exact same thing. Not in the same way, then. Tommy shrugged. “Maybe, I dunno.”
“I bet it was. I read this thing once about a guy who ate little kids, you believe that? Like in the twenties or something, his name was Albert Fish. He molested them and then he ate them.”
Jeff’s inappropriate smile had widened. Tommy had no idea what to say. He’d been looking at a girl named Angel and playing with his second boner of the day, and then there was his mom’s voice, calling up that Jeff had come by and he’d had to scramble to put everything away and unlock the door before they came up the stairs. It was weird; Dad had given him “the talk” when he was ten, about how jerking off was normal and sex and stuff, but it was still totally embarrassing. He still felt a sick thrill of something like guilt every single time he did it. He didn’t even like to think the word masturbation; jerking off seemed way less disgusting than masturbating. He couldn’t imagine getting caught by his mother, how terrible that would be. Especially now, with what she’d been doing.
“Maybe that guy is like that; maybe that’s where Jaden and that ten-year-old ended up. Like, boiled, on his stove.”
