Conner was practically breathless and trying to control himself, keeping the smell of alcohol at bay and praying the coffee had done enough to keep the booze off his breath, praying his hazy brain wouldn’t betray him right now.
“What the hell’s going on?”
The officers looked at him with that professional air of bored authority he despised so much, like he was a bug to be quashed, but for their mercy.
“I was trying to reach you,” Madison said. “You weren’t answering your phone.”
Conner was suddenly confused. He hadn’t heard his phone, hadn’t felt any vibrations. He instinctively searched the pockets of his jacket and pants. The phone wasn’t there. The last he had seen it was – shit – sitting on the bar at the tavern. He had been so lost in his thoughts he’d walked out without it, and now, suddenly, it was like a vital lifeline was missing.
“Your daughter was approached by a man when she was playing in the woods out back,” one of the officers said.
“What do you mean ‘approached by a man’?”
Madison, now brimming with anger, said, “He said he knew you. That he was a friend of yours and offered to take her away. Take her on a trip.”
“What?”
Madison continued. “Aria was playing out back in the woods behind the swings. And she says that a scary man came walking through the woods and talked to her and told her he was a friend of yours and could take her on a trip far away from here.”
“Jesus,” Conner said. His stomach was suddenly brimming with acid, his arms and legs hollow with the thoughts of what he could have lost.
“Your daughter is fine, Mr. Braddick,” the other officer said. “She’s just a little shook up. She was able to give a description, and we’ve got other officers driving through the area right now, checking with neighbors and seeing if we can find anyone that fits the description. If he was on foot, then he’s probably still in the area. We’re also checking any unknown vehicles in the area that might have been parked along the roads.”
Conner looked past Madison to the living room. He spotted his son and daughter watching them. Aria’s big brown eyes shone wet and strange, watching the drama unfold of which she understood little to nothing. Standing there in that room, his four-year-old daughter watched the ring of adults who, in hushed tones, discussed the events of the day under the gruesome shadow of what could have been – kidnapping, molestation, rape, death, dismemberment – all the evils and horrors that befall children who wander through this world as if lost on a highway at night.
“You don’t happen to know anyone that might try something like this, do you?” the officer asked.
“No. Of course not.” Conner brushed past the officer and Madison, picked up Aria and held her close to him, gripping her tight.
“She’s fine,” Madison said. “She was just scared.”
“It’s a typical line men use when they try to lure a child away from home,” the other trooper said.
“What was scary about the man, honey?” Conner asked her. He wanted to know what he looked like, this man who’d said he knew him, the man who’d said he would take Conner’s little girl someplace far away.
“His face looked broken,” she said.
“Broken?”
One of the officers chimed in. “We think maybe scarring. Or perhaps he was just beat up and ugly.”
“Like a doll that’s been smashed,” Aria said. “I don’t want to go away, Daddy.”
“No, honey,” Conner said. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“He said he was your friend.”
“No, honey. He’s not my friend. That would never happen.”
“I ran away and told Mommy.”
“That’s good, honey. You did the right thing. You did great.” For the first time in a long time his emotions welled up enough to bring him to the point of tears. The thought of losing her overwhelmed him, pushed everything else to the back of his mind. Everything except that boy in the box in Coombs’ Gulch. That boy’s face was broken, too. That boy was gone from someone, gone far away. Just like his little girl was almost gone from him.
“Everything will be fine, Mr. Braddick,” the officer said. “Like I said, we’re combing the area. We take these things very seriously, and we’re going to put out a warning to everyone in town, using the description your little girl gave us. We’ll figure this out, but in the meantime please let us know if you see anything suspicious or if Aria remembers any more details, anything at all.”
Conner nodded, and Madison began with the thank-yous and assurances she would be vigilant in alerting the neighbors and keeping watch, something of which Conner had no doubt. The officers left, their presence of authority suddenly gone, leaving the uncomfortable feeling of having just brushed shoulders with the law. Even when it’s on your side, the law leaves one feeling helpless and victimized. Madison shut and locked the door behind them.
Conner still held Aria, slightly bouncing and rocking her in his arms.
“Where were you?” Madison asked.
“Why was Aria in the woods alone?” Conner said and immediately regretted it. Madison stared at him with cold, brown eyes for a moment, internally considering this last comment, and then silently walked past him. Once a woman had children, he thought, you become second rate, just a piece of shit dragged along to help the mother rear them. His voice had no consequence here. His purpose in this family was to provide financial security; her purpose was much more important, and he’d just criticized her – a small uprising against the queen, all the more damaging because it affirmed his place in the family hierarchy.
“We shouldn’t argue,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“They’re allowed to play outside, Conner,” she said. “I can’t watch them every second of the day. It was just behind the swing set. I could see her through the window. I have things to do around here to keep this house functioning, you know.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m just shook up, is all.”
“And where the hell were you? Why weren’t you answering your phone?”
Now he would get to look like a real shit head. An actual family emergency, and where was he? Downing beers and forgetting his phone at a time when he was actually needed.
“And now you’re going to be gone for five days,” Madison said. “Great. Really great. Run off with your buddies to God knows where.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Fucking enjoy it.”
That night Aria woke screaming in her room and Conner and Madison stumbled through the darkness, switching on lights, and found the girl sitting upright in her bed, sheets and blankets twisted like snakes around her. Her eyes were open, but she could not see them, even when they sat beside her on the bed and held her tight.
Conner kept saying Aria’s name, trying to catch her eyes with his, but she kept staring at the window facing the trees in the backyard.
“It’s a night terror,” Madison said. “You can’t wake her up.”
Aria kept screaming, “The broken man,” as if her mouth were detached from her brain.
Conner held her tight.
“Maybe I should call a therapist in the morning,” Madison said.
Chapter Nine
The morning Conner and Michael picked Jonathan up for the trip, the air itself seemed suffused with a shade of blue. Jonathan woke early, unable to sleep. The sun had not yet fully risen, but the air glowed as if through a colored lens. He kissed Mary goodbye, and she gave a half-hearted smile, while busying herself with coffee. Jacob wandered down the stairs as Jonathan gathered his rifle case and pack. Always a bit groggy in the morning, the boy was rubbing his eyes. “Are you leaving?” he asked.
“Yeah, buddy, but I’ll be back in a couple days.”
“Are you going to shoot something?”
“I don’t know, buddy. M
aybe.” Jonathan faked a smile, trying to let the boy know everything was okay. He pulled his son close and hugged him, the boy’s head just above his waist. Jacob let himself be hugged but was too tired and unaware to fully reciprocate. It was okay, Jonathan thought. This is all for you anyhow.
Conner’s SUV pulled up the driveway. Mary stopped him as he was walking out the door. “You forgot this,” she said and lifted his rucksack with all his hunting supplies, minus the rifle. Jonathan was lost for a moment and then took the rucksack from her hand, his charade momentarily interrupted like an actor forgetting his line for a split second. Mary looked at him, suspicious, knowing something was off. “What kind of hunter would you be without this?”
“Not much of one, I suppose.”
“I found it still locked away downstairs. You didn’t even bring it up. Were you not planning on taking it at all? No bullets, no knife, anything? You’re not even taking your tree stand.”
“Don’t use stands up there. We’ll be on foot.” He stared into her eyes and she stared back through his soul. He had no more lies left to give. The truth was too close, it was burning through his skin.
After a moment of looking into him, she said tenderly, “I hope you find peace out there.”
And because he could not lie anymore, he only said, “Me too.” He kissed her for what felt like the last time of their marriage and then walked out the door to the waiting Suburban. Maybe he was confronting it, but then maybe he was burying it deeper. He was confused. He no longer knew if what they were doing was right. He had lost sight of what was right long ago. He only knew what was wrong, particularly what was most wrong for himself and his family. Nothing in any of this was right, but the boy being found by the authorities would be the most wrong thing that could happen to him. Nobility and morality had been buried ten years ago; only half-truths and survival remained.
He loaded his rifle and gear into the back of Conner’s SUV. It was packed mostly with camping gear and the small inflatable raft – a tightly wrapped piece of canvas and rubber that could be hauled on a backpack – they would use to bring the coffin to the center of the lake before sinking it to the bottom. His stomach dropped as he shut the door and Conner started the engine. There was no turning back; they had stepped off the cliff and were being pulled by gravity toward their final destination.
The three were silent in the morning hours, contemplating their ugly purpose, feigning tiredness as an excuse not to speak. Conner’s SUV was new, a big Chevy Suburban outfitted nicely with leather and all the accoutrements of modern life, a testament to his success in the insurance industry. Money to spare and show. Jonathan knew he was the third wheel in this equation. Even in silence the unspoken, psychic connection between the Braddick brothers filled the space between them. Jonathan attempted small talk, trying to rekindle the friendly, jovial banter they’d enjoyed as children and young men, and Conner did his best to accommodate, while Michael stayed largely silent. Jonathan finally turned and watched the passing landscape, wondering what else lay beyond their grasp of reality. Michael turned on the radio and scanned through static to the self-assured voices and music that had been popular when they were kids.
“Sometimes I wonder if we’re just stuck in a time loop,” Michael finally said. “Same damn music has been playing for twenty years. It never disappears, just keeps playing on some other channel.”
He finally shut it off.
They stopped for coffee before getting on the Mass Pike. They drove west into New York and then shot straight as a bullet up I-80. It was the longest part of the trip, an easy five hours even with the sparse traffic. Albany was the last glimmer of civilization before the southern half of the state locked its doors and the land began to heave – first hills, then mountains where double-hitched tractor-trailers struggled up inclines and barreled down long, winding passages, nearly out of control. The hills just north of Albany were still colorful, filled with the red, orange and shades of brown that paint autumn. Farther north, along Lake George, the leaves fell away. The bare trees reached bone-gray branches into the sky, coating the mountains in a deadly dull pallor. In the old days, it would have been a thing of beauty to the three of them, the leafless trees making it easier to spot a deer. Now it just added to their desperation.
On a long, straight stretch of highway, as the engine climbed a lumbering incline, Conner told Michael to reach in the glove box. Michael pulled out some maps. He looked at them briefly and then unfolded one like a small accordion. Jonathan could see from the back seat hundreds of lightly colored lines lying on top of each other at varying degrees of separation, revealing the topography of the mountainous region around Pasternak. The map was marked with a line running west from a region of depressed elevation to a splotch of blue buried between two steep peaks.
“That’s the route we’re going to take, as best as I can figure it,” Conner said. “I used satellite images to find the location – our starting point. At least I think it is. Hard to tell, but I’m pretty sure I remembered it right.”
Jonathan sat up in his seat, poking his head between the two front seats so he could see over Michael’s broad shoulder. The route was traced with blue marker. The cabin was marked north of Pasternak at the edge of the negative depression of the Gulch. Not far from the cabin was an X – the body. From there the blue line followed the lowest country available to the lake. Even on the map it looked long.
“The cell service is shit up there,” Conner said. “So I thought we should all have identical maps in case we get separated for any reason.”
“Separated?” Jonathan asked.
“You never know,” Conner said. Jonathan couldn’t imagine these two brothers, who had been each other’s best friend since the day Conner was born, ever being separated. Even after the incident, as they all drifted away from each other to erase the past – as Jonathan slipped into loneliness and Gene tried to drown his memories – Conner and Michael never separated. It wasn’t in their nature; they worked in tandem.
“This looks rough. A long haul,” Michael said. “You remember what that country was like. Dragging that case with us, getting through that thick ground cover. It isn’t going to be easy.”
“It’s seven miles,” Conner said. “Even if we’re only doing forty-minute miles, we can make it in a day. I kept our path in the lowest elevation possible so we’re not climbing those mountains. If you look, there’s a corridor between two of the peaks on the western ridge. There’s a field there, just tall grass, as best I can tell. We can make good time there.” Michael traced the route with his finger until he found the flattened section of meadow before a slower, more casual descent toward the lake.
“If we start in the morning, we can make it to the lake by nightfall. Camp there, head back and then get the hell out of town.”
“I don’t know,” Michael said. “It’s going to be tough, slow-going. Might actually be a day and a half’s hike with everything in tow. Tents, guns, food, the box.” Michael took out his phone and pulled up satellite images of Coombs’ Gulch. He focused in on the passage between the peaks. “It’s thick brush. It won’t be easy no matter what.”
“Let’s not make this longer than we have to,” Jonathan said. “Early up, get it done. Don’t stop moving till it’s over.”
“It’s the best route,” Conner said. “The only way there is between those two peaks, unless you feel like climbing a mountain – which I don’t. It’s kind of the long way around, but any other route would be too dangerous, too difficult.”
Michael was still on his phone. “There’s going to be bad weather moving in by day three,” he said. “Should be all right till then, but that gives us three days before the temperature really drops, and it’s either rain or snow, depending.” Michael dropped the phone and then stared at the topographic map with its hypnotic lines and swirls that masked the true nature of the place. “I don’t like it,” Michael said. “Can�
�t say why.”
“Nobody likes any of this, Mike,” Conner said, and for the first time Jonathan felt a tension between them that seemed almost murderous in its betrayal. He remembered how fast tempers can flare between brothers who have everything to lose between them. “The plan will work. The route will work. I’ve been planning this out for months. We just need to man up and get through it. I never said it would be easy, but it has to be done.”
Conner’s SUV ate gas fast enough to warrant two stops, the first just past Albany as civilization began to stretch thin. They pulled off at a quiet Shell station overlooking the highway as double-rigged tractor-trailers passed below, burning diesel and rattling jake brakes in their descent. The few cars on the highway echoed in the cold, sharp air. The sun was bright but without warmth, and there were few shadows. Jonathan crawled from the back and stretched his legs. It was a lonely place. The sound of the highway died in the trees and every second seemed like the last.
Michael and Jonathan walked inside the small store while Conner gassed up the Suburban. Jonathan retrieved a soda and pawed at some bagged snacks but didn’t have much of an appetite. He looked at the newspaper headlines, national and local, but at this point nothing could occupy space in his head.
Michael came around the corner of the aisle. He carried a case of canned beer and was loading up on chips and pretzels. “It’s gonna be a long trip. Probably another couple hours and then another hour or so to get Bill and get to the cabin. Might as well be stocked up.” Michael had an edge to him, as if the small rift between him and his brother ran deeper than Jonathan realized, or at least shook Michael enough to put him in a foul mood.
“Really?” Jonathan whispered. “I don’t think…”
“Do you really want to be dead sober this whole time? You of all people? Do you really want to remember all this?” Jonathan felt that old dread wriggling at the back of his mind, an excitement that welled up within him at the thought of drowning out reality, even if only for a short time. He took a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and gave it to Michael. Conner saw them walking from the store with the beer and seemed annoyed he would be chauffeuring them through the mountains like he had ten years ago.
Boy in the Box Page 9
