“Absolutely,’” said DeAnne. “But Step, didn’t you notice?”
“Notice what?” he asked.
“You’re going to think I’m crazy.”
“Probably,” he said. But his joking tone didn’t fit now; he realized that DeAnne had sounded genuinely scared. She really thought that whatever she was about to point out to him would make him think she was crazy. “Show me,” he said.
“I was hoping you’d just see it yourself. Look at the pictures of the lost boys, Step. Look at their names.”
He did. “Do we know any of their families or something?” That was absurd—if anyone they knew had had a child disappear, they’d have known about it before now.
DeAnne laid a list of names on the table. It was written in her handwriting. Step compared them to the names under the pictures, since that seemed to be what she intended. Most of the names under the pictures were listed on the paper, or at least were similar. Scott Wilson matched the name “Scotty” on the list. “David” matched David Purdom. “Roddy” would be Rodd Harker. “Jack” could be a nickname for Jonathan Lee.
“Does the story say anywhere that this Jonathan Lee is nicknamed Jack?” asked Step.
“No,” said DeAnne. “I hope he isn’t.”
“Well, then, what were you writing this list for?”
“Step, I didn’t write this list today. I wrote this list back in June.”
Step waited for the other shoe to drop. Then he made the connection. “That’s a list of Stevie’s imaginary friends. I remember Jack and Scotty.”
“It’s more than that now,” she said. “I’ve heard other names since then. I know I’ve heard him talking about a Van and a Peter, and look.”
Step looked, and two of the boys were Van Rosewood and Peter Kemeny. “Good heavens,” he murmured. “This is really weird.”
“Is that all you can say?” she said. “That it’s weird?”
“It scares the shit out of me,” said Step. “But usually you prefer me not to talk like that. What does this serial killer thing have to do with our son?”
“I don’t know,” said DeAnne. “Nothing. It couldn’t.”
“Maybe Stevie’s been reading the newspaper and picking up the names or something.”
“But three of the boys disappeared before we moved here. We never would have seen articles about them. This article here is the first one ever to list all these names together. Think about it, Step. Stevie came up with almost the same list as these detectives did, and there’s no way he could have done it. No way that makes any sense.”
Step’s hands were trembling as if it were cold. He was cold. “It’s not just almost the same list,” he said. “If Jonathan really is Jack, then this last one, Alexander Booth. . . .”
“He’s never talked about an Al or an Alex,” said DeAnne.
“But I watched him playing a computer game this morning and I heard him saying, like, Come on, Sandy. Sandy’s a nickname for Alexander, too.”
DeAnne pressed her face into her hands. “This article already scared me, Step. But then when I saw this—what can we do?”
“I don’t know,” said Step. “I don’t even know what it means.”
“Remember that record we got in the mail? The anonymous one?” asked DeAnne. “The song about I’ll be watching you?”
He hadn’t thought about it in a long time. It was still on the radio a lot, but all the things that had happened since the record came had put that old scare far into the background. Now, though, it took on truly sinister overtones. “Do you really think . . .”
“What if this . . . serial killer . . .”
“Watching us,” said Step.
For a moment DeAnne seemed to go out of control, uttering some high whimpering cries while she hid her face in her hands. Step wasn’t sure how to deal with this, or what was happening to her; he put his hand on her back, as if to steady her, as if she were tipping and he was going to put her back upright. “Oh, Step,” she whispered. “Oh, Step, I’m so scared. Who could it be? What if the serial killer has . . . talked to Stevie?”
“Impossible,” said Step. “You read the article. They say that this serial killer is extremely dangerous because he isn’t leaving any evidence anywhere. They aren’t even sure there’s a serial killer anyway. Because they haven’t found a single body. That’s how these boys got on the list—their bodies haven’t been found.”
“But maybe he . . . No, Stevie would have told us.”
“We could ask him. If anybody has ever talked to him.”
“No,” said DeAnne. “He’s going to school tomorrow. There’s going to be talk about this serial killer everywhere. They’re going to be warning all the children about talking to strangers. He’ll connect that with us asking him if somebody already talked to him. He’s got trouble enough already without his own parents connecting him so personally to this.”
“But he’s already connected,” said Step.
“Might be connected. This might just be a coincidence.”
“Van and Sandy aren’t such common names,” said Step.
“Well, Sandy isn’t Alexander and Jack isn’t Jonathan.”
“So what else do we do? Call the police? Oh, yes, Officer, we have a real lead for you in this serial killer thing. Our son, you see, has been hallucinating these imaginary friends, and they happen to have the same names as those lost boys. What? Oh, don’t you have time to talk to us?”
“You’re right,” said DeAnne. “They’d think we were crazy.” She fretted with the list, something she did when she was nervous, folding and tearing at paper until it was reduced to confetti. Step reached out his hand and put it over hers.
“Don’t tear up that list,” he said. “You wrote that before this article came out.”
“Yes, but I don’t have any witnesses of that.”
“You sent a copy of it to Dr. Weeks, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, that would prove that we had at least some of the names before. And we did get that record.”
“I think you’re saying that we should call the police.”
“We should call somebody,” said DeAnne. “We should do something. You don’t find out that there’s some weird kind of link between your son and a serial killer and then just fold your hands and say, How interesting.”
Step looked again at the newspaper. “So, how accessible do you think this Doug Douglas is?”
They soon found out. DeAnne looked up the number of the police department and Step called. He asked the switchboard operator to connect him with Detective Douglas. “He isn’t in on Sundays, but I’ll try his line.”
It rang once and a man picked it up. “Is this Mr. Douglas?” asked Step.
“No,” said the man.
“Is he there? Can I speak to him?”
“Can I tell him what it’s about?”
Step covered the receiver and whispered to DeAnne: “I think he’s there.” Then, into the receiver, he said, “It’s probably about nothing. It’s something that doesn’t even make any sense to us. But maybe it’ll mean something to him.”
“Can you be more specific?” asked the man.
“About the story in the paper this morning.”
“The serial killer story,” said the man.
“Yes,” said Step.
“I’m the one designated to take down all reports and information, so you’ve already reached the right place.”
“But we don’t have any report to make,” said Step. “And what we have might not be information. And—look, can’t I just talk to Mr. Douglas? It’ll only take two minutes and then I’ll be out of his hair.”
“You’ve got to understand, sir, we’ve already received more than two hundred calls today about this story, and if Detective Douglas took all those calls personally . . .”
“Fine, then,” said Step. “We don’t want to bother him. Let me just leave you my name and number and he can call me back when he has time.”
�
�Wouldn’t it be easier just to tell me your information?”
Yes, it would, thought Step. But you’re the guy whose job it is to take down all the crank calls and the sincere but irrelevant calls and filter them out, and you would think our call was one or the other of those and so you’d never mention us to anybody in a serious way and then we’d never know whether we were even right that the names matched—or, more important, we’d never know if we were wrong, so we could breathe more easily.
“No,” said Step. “Here’s my number. Take it down if you want.”
The man took it down and read it back. Step said good-bye and hung up.
“Dead end, huh?” said DeAnne.
“I don’t know,” said Step. “The guy wanted me to tell him, but I didn’t want to get put on their list of cranks. So I’m betting that the fact that I wouldn’t talk to anybody but Douglas either puts me on their serious crank list or it gets Douglas to call me back. Either way, maybe somebody talks to us.”
The phone rang.
DeAnne laughed nervously.
Step picked up the receiver.
“This Stephen Fletcher?” asked a man with a soft tidewater accent.
“Yes,” said Step.
“This is Doug Douglas, Steuben Police Department. What’s on your mind?”
Step mouthed to DeAnne: It’s him. Then, to Douglas, he said, “Mr. Douglas, this is probably crazy and we’re probably going to end up on your crank-call list, but we’ve got something here that if we don’t tell you about it we’re probably going to go out of our minds worrying about it, so if you’ve got two minutes I’ll give it a try and then you can tell me I’m nuts and I’ll go away.”
“I got two minutes, son,” said Douglas. “Go ahead.”
“We’ve got a list here that has four names on it. Jack, Scotty, David, and Roddy.”
“Mm-hm.”
“That list was written early in June. Since then, and before we saw this article in the paper, we added three more names to it. Peter, Van, and Sandy.”
“So you telling me you’re a psychic?” asked Douglas. The weariness in his voice told Step what he thought of psychics.
“No,” said Step. “Far from it. We got these names from somebody else, for a completely unrelated purpose. But you don’t have to take just our word for it. That same list is also in the possession of a doctor here in town, who also collected it for a completely unrelated reason.”
“Mm-hm.”
“So then back in June we also got a forty-five rpm record in the mail, anonymously, but it was postmarked Steuben. And the record was that one by the rock group The Police, the song called ‘Every Breath You Take.’ It has a part about how the singer of the song will be watching. We figured it was just somebody who wanted to scare us or punish us for something, and we didn’t think the police would be interested or even if you were, what could you do? So we didn’t report it. But now this article comes out, and we think—maybe the reason we had these names is somehow connected with the person who sent us that record. And maybe that person is somehow connected with the serial killer. And so maybe . . .”
“You’re being a little cute with me, Mr. Fletcher. You keep not telling me why you have that list of names.”
“I’m not trying to be cute, I’m just trying to tell you the parts that matter before I tell you the part that makes it all so hard for anybody to believe, including us. I mean, we want you to take this seriously.”
“So far I’m listening serious, and I’m waiting for you to talk serious.”
“Yes. Can you—first can you just tell me if our list really does correspond? I mean, was Jonathan Lee, was he ever called ‘Jack.’ Did Alexander Booth go by the nickname ‘Sandy’?”
“Mr. Fletcher, I’m still on the phone with you. Doesn’t that answer your question?”
“Yes, I guess so.” Step took a deep breath. “Mr. Douglas, that list was written by my wife.”
“She’s the psychic?”
“No, she’s the mother. I’m the father. The other person who assembled the same list is a psychiatrist. Our son’s former psychiatrist. It’s our son who came up with these names.”
Douglas let out a stream of air into the phone. It occurred to Step that he was probably smoking. “Well now, that’s interesting,” he said. There was a pause on the line, as if Douglas was thinking. Then he spoke again. “Does your son live with you?”
“Of course,” said Step.
“Does he have a job? I mean, is he working today, or is he home?”
“Mr. Douglas, our son doesn’t have a job and of course he lives at home. For heaven’s sake.”
“Mr. Fletcher, how old is your son?”
“He turned eight in June.”
There was a loud squealing sound over the phone. Step thought: He just sat bolt upright, and his chair squeaks. “Eight years old?”
“Yes sir,” said Step.
“Jesus H. Christ,” said Douglas.
“I suppose so,” said Step.
“I mean, you said your son’s psychiatrist, your son came up with the list—I thought you were telling me your boy might be the serial killer. Hell, I’ve been having my boys here check out your address and I’ve got three patrol cars heading for your house right now and you’re telling me that your son is eight?”
“Yes!” said Step. He leapt to his feet, started pacing as he talked, urgently. “I’m only thirty-two myself, for pete’s sake. Don’t send a bunch of police cars here, we’re not going anywhere! I was thinking about my son as a possible victim, that maybe this guy’s been stalking us, stalking our son, trying to scare us or maybe even setting us up or something and you’re sending police cars to arrest him?”
“Oh, Step!” cried DeAnne. “That’s insane! Are they really—”
Douglas started talking again; Step held up a hand to make DeAnne be quiet so he could hear. “. . . already called them off, don’t worry.” Douglas chuckled. “See, we’re a little excitable around here. The SBI wants to shove us aside on the investigation and so we kind of feel the tiger breathing down our necks, you know. But those cars are going back on patrol and so don’t you folks worry. Still, I’d kind of like to come on over and talk to y’all. Think that’s possible?”
“We’ll be here all afternoon,” said Step.
“Give me about thirty minutes, then.”
DeAnne immediately began worrying about what might happen if the kids woke up and found a policeman in the house.
“He’s a detective,” said Step. “He’ll be in a suit.”
“And they’ll be in the family room, and there’s no way to shut this door so they can’t hear.”
“So we’ll take him in the bedroom and close the door.”
“With our room in the mess it’s in?”
“So throw the bedspread up over the bed,” said Step.
“You really don’t care, do you!”
“I really don’t think the appearance of our room amounts to a sparrow’s fart in a hurricane compared to what he’s coming over here to discuss, that’s true.”
“That’s your philosophy. Mine is that I don’t want him to think he’s just found another lowlife family who don’t care about their living conditions.”
“But we don’t care or our bedroom would already be cleaned up,” said Step plaintively. But he followed her into the bedroom and joined her in a flurry of straightening. They were done, with a couple of folding chairs set up, when the doorbell rang. It had only been fifteen minutes.
“Maybe it’s not him,” said DeAnne.
It was Douglas, all right, standing on the porch, lighting up a cigarette. After the normal civilities, but before inviting him in, Step cleared his throat and said, “Excuse me, but we don’t smoke.”
It took Douglas a moment to realize that this actually meant that he was expected to respond in some way. “You mean to tell me you don’t ever have any visitors who smoke?”
“We don’t even own an ashtray,” said Step. “And we
have a new baby, which means that we just can’t have smoke in the house.”
“Well don’t that beat all. Antismokers in a tobacco town. My daddy worked in the tobacco factory all his life. What’s North Carolina coming to?”
“As soon as that’s out,” said Step, “we’d be honored to have you come in.”
Douglas hooted, then dropped the cigarette and ground it out with his shoe. “No offense intended,” he said.
“None taken,” said Step. “And vice versa, I hope.”
This really wasn’t the best beginning to their conversation, Step realized. And since the kids were still asleep, or at least quiet, DeAnne sat down across from Douglas in the living room while Step went back and quietly closed the kids’ bedroom doors. When he got back, they had apparently got right down to business, because DeAnne was showing him the list.
“Well, you know, this could have been written anytime,” said Douglas.
“It’s not evidence anyway,” said Step. “I mean, how could it be? But if you need corroboration, Stevie’s psychiatrist at the time, Dr. Alice Weeks, has a copy of this list which DeAnne gave her back in early June. And she made her own list of the others.”
“We deliberately kept the nicknames out of the papers,” said Douglas. “We do that, among other things, so that we can tell the hoaxers from the real thing. Like they’ll ‘remember’ seeing a man dragging a little boy along saying, Hurry up, Alex, only we know that Alexander Booth would have told anybody who asked him that his name was Sandy. So it’s a fake.”
“And so you took us seriously,” said Step.
“Jack was the clincher,” said Douglas. “Your wife was telling me while you were down the hall there that these are the names your son gave to his imaginary friends.”
“That’s right.”
“Pretty amazing,” said Douglas. “And then this forty-five, this record. Comes in the mail. ‘Every Breath You Take.”’
“We didn’t think that much of it, after a while. Till the article.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“But, I mean, an anonymous package like that, it had to be meant to scare us.”
“Oh, no doubt about it,” said Douglas. “The trouble is, it doesn’t help us much.”
“No?’
Lost Boys: A Novel Page 41
