by The Behrg
3
Blake hadn’t seen Officers Randall or McClellan since stepping into the downtown Los Angeles Police Department off East First Street. Nor had he been allowed to see his wife despite his repeated requests. The men sitting in front of him weren’t police officers, they were FBI. At least they had been kind enough to bring in a donut and mildly warm coffee.
“Look, I believe you believe this man was Rory. If you manage to make us believe, you’ll be the first person on record to have ever seen him.”
The handcuffs were beginning to rattle with the shaking that had now traveled from Blake’s hands to his arms. “I should’ve seen it. He kept saying, ‘I wowee, I wowee’ . . .”
“I worry?”
“Not ‘I worry,’” Blake said. “‘I Rory.’”
“Why don’t you start at the beginning for us.”
4
Someone whistled, that forceful hail Blake had never been able to manage using fingers in your mouth. He turned, hand still raised at the door. A black boy, so skinny the flesh on his arms clung to the bone, stood at the corner of the street. Staring at Blake.
The kid nodded. He couldn’t have been more than ten. His chin was smaller than the rest of his head, giving him the look of a drawn caricature at a carnival, or maybe it was his uncombed afro. He wore a stained nightshirt, his feet bare against the cold and litter-strewn sidewalk.
Blake walked over to join him, more aware than ever of the scraps of metal and glass, broken needles and garbage he was stepping over.
“You’re Stitch?” he asked.
Now that he was closer Blake could see the long, thick scar that ran across where the boy’s right eyebrow should have been. It climbed his forehead, disappearing beneath the tangles of stringy hair.
“D’you bring it?” He was chewing gum. Or tobacco.
“Is this your home?” Blake asked, gesturing toward Saint Helena’s. Any plans of beating Joje’s whereabouts out of whomever he was supposed to meet quickly fled.
The kid started walking away.
“Wait!” Blake cried out after him.
“Show me the coin,” Stitch said.
Blake brought out a thin leather case. He had found it in JT’s glove box, a way to keep his insurance and registration in one place. But it could have as easily held a valued coin.
The kid stopped, now intrigued.
“You should keep it,” Blake said. “Don’t give it to him. You know how much it’s worth?”
“Not as much as my life.”
Blake smiled. He liked the kid. “How do I get ahold of him.”
Stitch shook his head.
“How do you get ahold of him?” Blake asked.
Stitch held his hand out, lips closed.
“He took my son,” Blake said. “I need to find him, tell him I know who he is. And I will expose him if he doesn’t send Adam back. Can you tell him that?”
The kid’s bright eyes remained fixed on the case.
Blake sighed. The exasperated release of a man admitting defeat. “Is this where he grew up? Joje? Rory?”
Stitch wriggled his fingers, bidding Blake to hand him the envelope.
Blake held it out. Stitch grabbed the other end. Blake still held on to his side.
“Don’t become like him,” Blake said, then released it. Stitch bolted down the street then scampered up a block wall. At the top of the wall, he opened the envelope. He spent some time looking at what was inside, a single piece of hair along with a message for Joje and the location of the Liberty nickel, just in case it was what he wanted. Stitch looked back up at Blake, his face expressionless, then disappeared on the other side of the wall.
Head down, Blake turned back, remembering he had given his car away. He had passed a police station a few blocks north. Maybe he’d be able to make it there in one piece.
5
The bars slid shut with a pervasive ring. An hour later Blake still felt the rattle in the fillings of his teeth. There was no bed in this cell, just a long metal bench like you would find on a bleacher. Blake stood until his legs gave out, then sat on the ground, the base of his neck leaning against the cold metal seat.
It hadn’t been enough. When truth was more fanciful than lies, he should have known better than to stick to it. He pissed in a seatless toilet at the back of the cell. A meal was brought at some point. He ate some of it.
Blake looked up at an officer calling his name. From the unpleasant look on the guy’s face, he had been calling Blake for some time.
“Stand up, spread your legs, and put your hands against the wall.”
Blake did as he was told.
Through several hallways, they buzzed him in to a locked room. The officer held the door back for him. Jenna was inside.
Blake looked back at the portly officer at the door, who simply nodded back at him. Blake rushed into the room. Jenna was in a wheelchair, a blanket covering her lap and draped down around her.
“Careful,” she said, but when Blake embraced her she squeezed back, her arms wrapping around him, hands gliding up and down, wet cheeks pressing against his own.
“How . . . Why?” Blake began.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Does it matter?”
“Have they charged you?” Blake asked.
“Shhh,” she answered, bringing him back down to her and holding him.
“I’m so sorry—”
“No! None of that,” Jenna said. “We’re alive. It’s over.”
“Adam.”
She ran a hand through his hair, the other caressing his bruised and mottled face. “We just have to believe.”
“And you? You’re okay?” he asked.
A faraway look came over her momentarily, and then she was back. She pulled the blanket up around her, exposing the metal rack at the bottom of the chair where her feet were resting. But it was only one foot. Farther the blanket rose, until her right knee came into view, covered in wrappings. Nothing emerging from the other end.
Blake couldn’t dam the guilt that swept through him, but Jenna gently lifted his face to look into hers.
“Believe with me?” she said.
Through the tears, soon Blake was nodding.
6
Blake wheeled Jenna into what appeared to be a conference room, the long table in the middle of the room much nicer than any of his previous holding rooms. A thin black woman with a beige skirt and enough jewelry to prove she was not only married, but married well, greeted them at the door.
“I’m Lieutenant Whitaker. Thank you for joining us.” She extended a hand to each of them, gold bracelets accentuating the movement. The gesture of kindness seemed so foreign. Before Blake could ask any questions, she continued. “There’s been a . . . development.”
Blake recognized the two FBI men from what they had deemed his “story time.” Two other men and one woman were new faces in the room. One of the men stood, moving out a chair so Blake could push Jenna up to the table. He sat beside her.
“Did you find him?” Blake asked. “Our son?”
The lieutenant exchanged a glance with one of the new faces, a large man with a thin black goatee. In that brief glance his hope was shattered. Jenna took hold of his injured and bandaged hand beneath the table, encasing it with both of hers.
“We have reason to believe your . . . story,” Whitaker said, standing across the table from Blake and Jenna. “And that the kidnapper was in fact who you say he was. At this time, unfortunately, we don’t have any leads to his whereabouts or the whereabouts of your son.”
Jenna’s grip tightened on Blake’s hand, his arm flinching back at the sudden jolt of pain.
“Sorry,” she said and moved to wipe the tears from her eyes.
“I don’t understand,” Blake said. “These two said I should’ve been a writer, what with the crazy shit I came up with. What changed?”
Again that shared glance.
“Enough!” Blake shouted. “Either tell us or throw us back in a cell!”
“We’re hoping for your cooperation,” Whitaker said. “No one’s ever been that close to Rory before. With a little luck and your help, we can use that information to determine what he’s planning next.”
“What he’s planning? He’s planning on disappearing! With our son!” Blake’s head was pounding from the incompetence in the room.
The large man with the goatee spun his chair to face Blake, one leg up, crossed over the other, as if they were old friends having the most casual of conversations. “We received an e-mail,” he said. “Did you want waters by the way?”
Blake stared down at the table in front of him, trying to keep himself in control. “Who’d he send it to?” Blake felt the man’s eyes begin to drift to Whitaker. He slammed his fist down on the table. “Who!”
“Every damn one of us,” Whitaker said. “And keep your voice down. You’re still under custody.”
“Every agent and police officer even remotely involved in your two cases received an e-mail at approximately eleven forty-two this morning,” the other man said. “Sent to our departmental e-mail and, as far as we can surmise, every officer and agent’s personal accounts as well. The district attorney was also copied, as was the mayor.”
“So what . . . ?” Jenna said.
“As far as our sources have been able to ascertain, it appears the message was sent from the president of the United States’ own e-mail account.”
“It’s him,” Blake said.
“What’s it say? What’s he asking for?” Jenna asked.
But Blake already knew. There were no demands. There never had been.
Whitaker took over, motioning toward one of the men at the end of the table. He rose, turning on the small flat-screen TV mounted on the wall. “We felt it appropriate you see for yourselves,” she said. “Dim the lights?”
The man who had turned on the TV typed into a wireless keyboard, opening an e-mail account on the TV screen. Blake felt his body tense as he read the subject line before it was even clicked on.
Subject: Farewell
The e-mail contained a single link that had been opened before. The officer or agent or whoever was typing at the table clicked on it. A video screen opened up.
On the screen Joje smiled into the camera. The same smile Blake saw every time he closed his eyes. After a quick buffer, the video began to play.
“I’m sending this to help a good friend of mine. Blake Crochet.”
Blake felt a shudder that wouldn’t come out, as if every internal part of him was contracting and trembling, unable to accept the reality this video presented.
Joje was speaking without a speech impediment.
He continued, without the slightest hint of a lisp. “I accept full responsibility for the unfortunate loss of lives over the past few days surrounding the Crochet family. Everything Blake has told you is true, with one exception. I did not kidnap his son. Adam Crochet, now Adam Shepard as of nine a.m. eastern standard time, willingly chose to come with me.”
Blake felt like his ears had been filled with hot wax—the pressure in his head unable to escape.
Adam Shepard.
Joje continued speaking, though to Blake his words were just the monotonous buzz of an angry swarm of bees. Until Adam came on screen.
He looked older. His ears were pierced, both lobes a bright reddish pink, but it was his eyes Blake focused on. Unaware, he wiped at his dripping nose.
“Jenna, Blake,” Adam said, not even giving them the comfort of calling them Mom or Dad, “I want you to know I’m okay. I want to be here with . . . Rory. My brother. I’m happy.”
His eyes, Blake thought. He’s scared, not happy. Jenna’s breaths next to him came in quiet sobs.
Blake found his mind wandering, reliving each decision of the past week. So many mistakes. The screen in front of him multiplied into a dozen more, each playing out differently as he consciously made new decisions. Joje played his message for help at the restaurant in English, and this time Blake shouted at the manager to call the cops. After slamming the crystal globe into Joje’s head in his office, he quickly locked the doors, preventing Drew from finding him unprepared. Out on the cliffs while looking for Adam, Blake barreled into Joje, driving him over the edge.
The screens split into a dozen more, each new decision taking him to unforeseen consequences. A massacre at the restaurant, Blake stepping over the body of the manager and server, blood still pumping from their torsos like water from a garden hose. Blake clobbered from behind as he turns from locking the doors, Joje cracking the butt of his gun repeatedly against Blake’s skull until the pounding at the doors grow as distant and soft as the beating of his heart. Joje snagging at Blake as he tumbles off, pulling Blake with him, and in the few seconds before they hit, Blake spots his son clinging to a rock where he will soon drown.
The room became a multiplex of screens, every word, every exchange, playing to an infinite array of possibilities. Blake followed them all, his fractured mind capable of viewing each screen independently, tracking each toward their inevitable and tragic conclusion until they all coalesced into one panoramic screen revealing Blake, sometimes sitting next to Jenna, sometimes alone, in this conference room, watching Joje—Rory—look down from above with a smile on his face.
Distantly he heard people calling his name, tugging against a shoulder or arm, but they were only static, one tiny screen as far away from him as his son. On every screen he heard himself make a promise—an oath—one that breathed new purpose into a life that would otherwise be vacant.
“It’s not the journey,” he muttered, a million screens aligning for a single moment. “It’s the destination.”
And his family had yet to arrive.
Epilogue
Post-Pwoject
Two Years Later
1
Blake’s fingers came to a halt, thoughts fizzling at the slam of the front door. He lowered the screen to his Vaio laptop, peering toward the door from his desk, which occasionally functioned as the small kitchen table it actually was. His work files were spread out like giant-sized crumbs in need of a good sweep.
“Honey? That you?”
The light bleeps of the house alarm went unanswered. If it had been Jenna, she would have disarmed it by now.
Thick arms wrapped around Blake from behind, squeezing his chest and stomach until he had to gasp for air. Six months of psychiatric rehabilitation after his short stint in jail and over a year on meds, and his anxiety still had a better hold on him than he’d ever admit.
He stood, chair squeaking against the linoleum floor. He undid the clasp at his belt, gripping the handle of the sharp hunting knife that never left his side. He even required it for sleep, the hard knot beneath his pillow from the blade’s case better than any sleeping pill.
“Who’s there.”
His voice fell flat, without the confidence he had hoped to project. Another twenty seconds and their security company, Alliance, would be notified of the illicit entry. Five minutes and twenty seconds and three security professionals would surround the home, AK-47s at the ready.
But a lot could happen in five minutes.
The door to the kitchen swung inward. It began to swing back but was blocked by someone’s hand. Blake was practically chewing on his heart, it had risen so high.
A man’s head peeked out from the doorway, gaunt cheeks hidden by long, bushy sideburns, shaggy hair spilling from the ball cap on his head. “Dad?”
Blake exhaled, letting go of the breath he had been holding for two years. “Adam?”
Adam stepped into the room. He looked like a bum off the street, his clothes worn and tattered, his shuffle the walk of a man who’s been lost so long he’s unsure if there’s even anywhere to go.
He was so much taller. At sixteen he looked like he could be in his midtwenties. His eyes revealed a man who had seen more than any sixteen-year-old boy should.
Blake glanced past him at the door swinging closed.
“It’s
just me,” Adam said.
Blake nodded, his eyes welling. “Welcome home.”
He didn’t walk, he ran, wrapping his arms around Adam and lifting him off the ground, damn his lower back and all.
“I’ve dreamed of this day for so long!”
“Me too,” Adam said, his voice choking with emotion. “I didn’t know if . . . if you and Mom would, would want me back.”
Blake accidentally knocked the cap from Adam’s head. His hands ran through his son’s tangled hair. “You’re all we’ve thought of! We spent everything we had trying to find you! Why . . . How? How’d you get away?”
Adam took a step back, pulling himself from his father’s grip. Blake kept his hands on Adam’s shoulders, not ready to let go of his son. “Rory . . . he passed,” Adam said.
Blake saw the grief in his son’s eyes. Like any father, he wanted to console him but couldn’t force an “I’m sorry” from his lips. Not for Joje.
“It wasn’t what I thought,” Adam continued.
Blake brought him back in, wondering if somehow this was all a dream. “Let’s get you cleaned up. Before your mom gets home.”
2
By the time Jenna got back from her run, Adam had showered and dressed, Blake’s clothes still a few sizes too large despite Adam’s physique. They were sitting in the living room across from each other, Adam picking at the sandwich and apple slices Blake had prepared while Adam had been dressing.
In his excitement he had forgotten about the alarm and had to send the three ex-military men away. Still the three-hundred-dollar charge was worth the assurance that no albino delinquent or stuttering psychopath lurked around the premises.
Jenna came in, immediately turning to the side wall and keying in the code for the alarm. She still held the leash for Truce, their Labrador. The dog looked more beat than Jenna, lying against the cool tile floor rather than attempting to greet the new person in the room.
Blake felt Adam’s eyes move to Jenna’s legs as his had at first. The sleek curved carbon fiber attachment to her right leg was something he had now grown used to. He loved the fact that she still ran. She was a fighter until the very end. And there wasn’t a single run in which she wouldn’t take the dog.
