I lay down on the wet grass at the lip of the garden and sighted the entire length. Every ten feet or so, the garden had small rises in the grade of the soil, including the two barest spots close to me. I barely became aware that I had stopped breathing as I forced myself up and buried the point of the shovel into the farthest of the grassy rises. The earth turned easily.
I could feel everything. The mix of condensation and sweat rolled down my face and body and every single hair on my arms rang out with alarm at each drop’s passing. There was a humming sound in my ears and my nose smelled a sharp coppery smell that nauseated me. The smell of blood. My vision narrowed to a thin tunnel where I could see only the blade go in and out, in and out, until I felt a dull resistance. I had struck something. Casting the blade aside, I fell to my knees and began to dig with my bare hands, clearing the object below me.
It was a plastic bag.
Black and thick, the bag resembled the kind that Jeanie would hand me with a resigned shrug: “I’m sorry, Bennie – you can’t hang on to those old clothes forever.”
The shovel had torn a small rent in the plastic and my soiled hands pried it open further to expose... a hand. A thin, pale, decomposed hand that hung in mid-air and seemed to admonish me for disturbing its rest. I fell back on my rear and the tears began. Torrents. Waves. Out of a strange blackness I realized that I was screaming but no sound was coming out. Over and over I screamed but the only sound my dulled ears heard was a guttural scrape like sandpaper. My tunnel vision narrowed to the woven cloth bracelet around the child’s hand, its rainbow-hued message burning into my swollen eyes.
“W.W.J.D?”
I could feel heat coming off of my body as I ran back down the hard-to-see path to the shed where I had imprisoned Arnie.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Even as I entered the shed I could tell that Arnie had continued babbling while I was in the grove of trees but he stopped immediately when I slammed the door behind me. Fixing me with a mad, contemptuous leer he said, “I’m sick, you know.”
I crossed the shed to the tiller, a dark-green shape standing alone in the corner with no cover on it. I looked down and there was a thin crust of red/brown dirt on the tines.
“I’m sick. I can’t be held responsible if I didn’t know what I was doing.” The same incomprehensible “hee-hee” sound punctuated his phrases.
“I’m sick and everybody knows that you don’t send sick people to the gas chamber – you send them to a hospital. A nice, cozy hospital where they have TV and ice cream and good family- orientated magazines with crossword puzzles that make sense – not like those other kinds that use words nobody ever uses. You know?”
I unscrewed the gas cap and peered inside. Full.
At the top of his lungs Arnie yelled out, “I SAID I’M SICK!”
I wheeled the tiller over to Arnie, unscrewed the gas cap again, turned it on its side, and the fuel spilled out. Arnie’s eyes looked on in horror at the slowly advancing river at his feet.
“Are you deaf?!” he yelled, “I said I’m sick! I’m…”
I stuffed the red Nerf ball into his mouth, his words turning into choked “snuh... snuh” sounds.
“The lone gunman has no choice.” Horowitz had said. “He cannot reason it out. He cannot consider another opinion.”
I lashed out a foot and kicked the top fertilizer bag onto Arnie’s feet.
I tugged the bottle and the old hanky/rag from my coat pocket, dipped one end of it into the liquid in the plastic bottle, and dug into my jeans for my cigarette lighter. Lowering my face to Arnie’s, I made solid eye contact and said, “What would Jesus do? You’ll never know.”
I stepped back and threw the rag at Arnie’s feet. I didn’t even look back. I turned and walked to the shed doors, hearing a sick, popping sound behind me. I exited and closed the doors, and the final chapter of Arnold Mueller’s life, behind me.
Waiting outside, dangling my .45 caliber pistol from a bent finger and smoking a cigarette, was Special Agent Fulton.
*
The rain had finally relented but Fulton was sitting in raindrops on top of the hood of a late-model white Ford, his feet on the front bumper and the ends of his suit coat pulled into his lap to keep them from getting wet. The car was far enough from the building to be safe from any danger but the escalating fire behind me was enough to cast the Agent’s face with an unnatural glow. I slowly walked to the Ford, pulled myself up, and sat next to him and regarded the fire, bone-weary and unable to move.
Staring at the shed, Fulton said, “Russell?”
I nodded.
Taking a long draw on the smoke, “Anybody else?”
I said, “No. Is Kyle safely back home?”
“Yes. We’ve got the woman under custody and Social Services are moving on their children. She dropped them off with their pastor, if you can believe that.”
I could. “How’d you find me?”
He blew a huge puff towards the stars. “The wife sang like a canary once we started describing what was going to happen. She’s nuts, by the way. She gave us this place, gave us a sob story about being abused by the hubby; how it’s not her fault and she really didn’t know what was going on.” Fulton flicked the cigarette in the direction of the fire and immediately lit another one.
“Cigarette?” He offered me one.
I accepted and searched my pockets. “Do you have a light? I seemed to have misplaced mine.”
He ruefully smiled and said, “Sure.”
I said, “You don’t really buy her story, do you?”
“You kidding? We’ve got her on the kidnapping, we’ve got her on the phone, attempted murder because of the knife, child endangerment... you name it. She’ll never see daylight again.”
“She knew about the boys. All along. She helped.”
Fulton turned to look at me. “They’re out back?”
I said, “A field. I think it’s all of them. Maybe six.”
Fulton reacted as if I’d slapped him. He very softly said, “Your boy?”
I just nodded.
The fire was an inferno. The dry interior had ignited so fast that the wet exterior and roof began caving inward. By morning the shed would be a carbon copy of the Mueller house out front.
Fulton was studying the stars above him as we listened to the fire crackle and smoked cigarettes. Finally, I said, “You don’t have to bother with any cuffs. I won’t give you any trouble.” I listened for fire trucks and heard none but wondered if Rudy Grieves would be among the crew when they finally arrived.
“That’s right, Mr. Cain... Ben. You won’t be any trouble at all. You were never here.” He retrieved another smoke.
“Come again?”
He drew in a puff, shielding one eye from the vapor and pocketing the lighter. Holding the .45 in the palm of his hand, he said, “This thing registered?”
“No.”
Fulton got up, walked to the blazing shed and fired three rounds into the building. Then he threw the gun into the flames. Removing his own service revolver from the pancake holster under his arm he discharged two rounds, thought better of it, and fired two more. The white Bono’s van caught fire as Fulton came back to the Ford.
Re-seating himself next to me, he said, “Once Russell’s wife is called to testify I’m not sure we can keep your name out of the papers, but for now I’d suggest you go home – your real home; lock the doors and watch a lot of TV.”
My eyes were fixed on the fire but I said, “Why?”
Fulton looked off into the night. “Did you know that part of the process of becoming an Agent with the Bureau is you have to attend at least one year of Psychology?”
“Of course. That’s what I teach... er, taught.”
“Then you know that sometimes the aberrant behavior of a person can’t be explained.”
Right. Texas born, Texas educated.
I said, “UT?”
“Yep.”
“Horowitz?”
I won�
��t say he smiled, but Fulton’s tired face took on a look that was half-sad, half-wise as he spoke.
“Crazy is crazy.”
Fulton sighed and pulled out one more smoke for the both of us. Once we were lit, he resumed looking at the now-expanding blaze and said:
“Mr. Benjamin Cain, you were never here and here’s how it’s going to go…”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
It seems the intrepid forces of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, after a painstaking but aggressive investigation, linked several important clues in the kidnapping and subsequent murder of several young boys to one Arnold Mueller, Aka Arnold Russell, resulting in a fiery shoot out with Special Agent Calvin Fulton. Russell was killed but there were no other injuries. Authorities said Russell’s wife, Launi, was taken into custody and unspecified charges were pending. When asked why Russell committed these alleged acts, a FBI spokesman, who asked to remain anonymous pending further investigation, said: “Who knows why people do these seemingly unspeakable things? Rest assured, the FBI will be adding the Russell case to its extensive profiling procedures and studies.” Agent Fulton, who is slated to retire in six months, was only heard to say: “No comment.”
*
It was nearly midnight by the time I sat on the old steel swings on the playground at Jefferson Elementary, stone-cold-sober and feeding Rocky some sunflower seeds. Not Keeley’s – I buy a different brand now. I thought of my son and my last sad days with him, joking, arguing, fussing over a stubborn cow-lick in that long blond hair of his and I thought of the year it had taken to find some kind of closure. There is closure but there will never really be an end. There can be no end because I will miss my son until my eyes close for the very last time... and perhaps beyond.
I gaze at the clear Texas sky, black and filled with more stars than there are grains of sand on all the beaches in the world. In a moment of sad clarity I know that somewhere in this country there is another father, swinging on a swing or taking out the trash or smoking a cigarette on his front porch, who wonders when his son will be found, when his son will come back.
You lose so many, you know?
Halting the swing, I take the cell out of my coat pocket and punch numbers. Jeanie picks up on the second ring.
“It’s over.” I say... and hang up.
EPILOGUE
One year later…
“Lola! Here, girl!”
Damn dog.
Frank Devereau was getting worried. It wasn’t like Lola to stray far from home but then she’d been acting strangely for the past week or so; so much so that even Brie, his wife (who didn’t want to be bothered by “these kinds of things”), had started to comment. Usually Lola could be counted on to lie on her mat on the back porch and not fuss too much with the garbage man or the guy that reads the gas meter – even old lady Grossman two-doors down had remarked that Lola was the best-behaved-mutt on Parkway Circle (or as she pronounced it: “Coickle”, in that cock-eyed Jersey accent), and she’d be proud any day to own a dog like her.
Frank was worried about the girls, too. It’s not like they had taken to Lola like he’d hoped but he and Brie wanted to avoid any disruption in Connie and Gabby’s lives since they’d already been through so much. It had been a God-given miracle when they’d been able to keep both the girls together and qualify to foster-care them both and he didn’t want anything to rock-the-boat now because getting those two to come out of their shells was like pulling teeth. Usually they could be found huddled in a corner of their bedroom, heads pressed together like Siamese-twins, quietly giggling about some secret girly-thing that even Brie couldn’t figure out. To tell-the-truth, sometimes all that whispering and giggling gave Frank the heebie-jeebies.
And now Lola’s missing. One more day and Frank was going to have to put up some posters with that picture from last Christmas where Lola’s in front of the fireplace with the Santa hat on. He and Brie couldn’t afford much of a reward but he’d staple a few on the telephone pole, and maybe one on the fence and maybe that Arab guy with the funny name down at the Quikee-Mart would let him put one in the window.
“Lola!”
Where on earth could that dog have gone?
Finis
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