Shallow Graves

by Jeffery Deaver

  He gave the man a dollar for ten arrows and the hawker gave him a smaller bow, a straight pull, not one of the pulleyed hunting bows. Sam took it and notched an arrow, the way he'd done at camp. He went into position and pulled the string back. His muscles were quivering and his fingers let go quickly, before he'd sighted properly. He hit the deer in the rump.

  "Hey," the voice called, laughing, "Got him in the ass." Sam turned. It was one of the boys from high school. A senior, he thought. He believed his name was Ned. He was smiling but Sam followed the grade schoolers' general rule that every high school boy was a potential terrorist. They'd take your lunch away from you, tie your Keds together and swing them like gaucho's bolos over electric wires, swear and spit on you, use you for a sparring partner.

  Sam swallowed and ignored him. He concentrated fiercely on the target, the way his mother had taught him when he shot-not paying attention to the bow or arrow, but to where the arrow should strike. He drew the bowstring back and fought the agony in his thin arms as he stared at his target. Finally, he released the arrow.

  Thwack.

  A heart shot.

  "Fucking good," the boy was saying, shaking his head.

  Sam looked at him cautiously. Ned wasn't being sarcastic. "Thanks."

  Two more heart shots, a gut shot, and then his strength started to go. The next four hit the bale of hay, but missed the deer. The last shot was another gut shot.

  "Okay, you won yourself anything from the bottom shelf, son. What do you want?"

  Sam hesitated. The kid was going to take his football away from him. He'd just grab it and run. He muttered, "One of those footballs."

  "Okay, there you go."

  Sam took the green plastic ball. He started to walk away quickly but the boy was making no moves toward him. He just said, "That was some good shooting. I wish I could shoot like that."

  Sam laughed involuntarily. Here was a kid who was, like, seventeen telling Sam he couldn't shoot bow and arrow as good as him! Totally weird. "It's not hard. You've just gotta, you know, practice."

  "What's your name?"

  "Sam."

  "I'm Ned." He stuck his hand out. No high school kid ever shook hands with grade school kids. Sam reached out tentatively and shook.

  "Hey, you wanta see something?" Ned asked.

  "Like what?" Sam didn't feel uncomfortable anymore. The boy could have grabbed the football and pushed him down any time. But no, he was just smiling and seemed to want to talk.

  "Something neat?"

  "I guess," Sam said, glancing toward where his mother and Mr Pellam were walking slowly, the same way his mother and father walked.

  The boy walked off into a thick woods off the side of the football field. "What's here?" Sam asked.

  "You'll see."

  About thirty feet inside the woods was a small clearing. The boy sat down. He patted the ground next to him. Sam sat. "Let's see the ball."

  Sam handed it to him.

  "That's all right." He tossed it in his hand. "Feels good."

  "I'm going to give it to Mr Pellam. He's the man with the movie company."

  "Yeah, I heard about that. Totally excellent, making a film here." The boy handed the ball back to him. "Here you go."

  There was silence for a moment.

  Ned said, "I like it here. It's kind of secret."

  Sam looked around and thought it looked like a clearing in a forest. "Yeah, it's okay."

  "You got ten bucks?" Ned whispered.

  "Naw," said Sam, who did in fact have eleven dollars and some change in his jeans pocket.

  "How much you got?"

  "A couple dollars. I don't know. Why?"

  "You wanta buy some candy?"

  "Candy? Ten bucks for candy?"

  "It's special candy. You'll like it. I thought I saw you had ten bucks when you paid the guy at the arrow shoot."

  Sam looked away from the older boy and squeezed the football. "Well, that, like, wasn't mine. It was my mom's."

  Ned nodded. "I'll give you a sample. Then see if you don't want to buy one." He opened a yellow envelope and shook a dozen cubes of crystal candy into his hand. He held his palm out to Sam, who looked at the tiny bits cautiously. Ned laughed at his wariness and put a candy in his own mouth. "Come on, don't be a wuss."

  "I don't really-"

  Ned frowned. "You're not a pussy, are you?"

  Sam suddenly grabbed most of the candies and slipped them into his mouth, chewing them down.

  "No!" Ned shouted in horror. "You stupid shit! You weren't supposed to eat 'em all! They're ten dollars each!"

  "I didn't mean…" Sam backed away in fear. His mouth was filled with a powerful, numbing sweetness. "I didn't know. You didn'ttellme…" He suddenly felt warm and giddy and dizzy. In his mouth was a funny aftertaste, reminded him of the chewable vitamins he took in the morning.

  Ned stepped close to him, reaching for Sam's collar; the young boy cowered away, feeling the heat and the dizziness flow over his body.

  "Sam!" It was his mother's voice and from not very far away.

  Then he was being lifted up. Ned had him by the shirt. "You dumb little prick! You tell anybody about this, I'll find you. I'll come get you and I'll beat the living shit out of you, you got that?"

  Sam thought he should be afraid but he felt so good. He laughed.

  "You hear me?"

  Laughing again.

  He felt himself falling into the leaves, which seemed suddenly like the ground in the Candyland game he played with his babysitter until he outgrew it. Cotton candy grass, marshmallow rocks. Candyland. Hey, just like the candy he'd eaten, he thought. That thought made him laugh too. He felt like laughing forever, he felt so good.

  Strange thumping noises. He looked up. Ned was running, running fast, deep into the forest. Sam thought he saw the boy turn into a tree. He stared at the spot for a long time.

  He tried to stand.

  Laughing.

  Fireworks, black sparklers, cascades, and Roman candles, pouring their fire all over him. A huge roaring hum in his ears.

  Warmth and humming music.

  "Sam?" His mother's voice was both magnified a thousand times and very distant, like she was trapped in an airlock on the Starship Enterprise.

  Then the fun started to leave. He felt he was going to sleep, only it was a funny kind of sleep, like the way he felt when he'd had his tonsils out and woke up in terrible pain and so thirsty he thought he'd die. He'd been lonely when he awoke in the hospital and he cried for what seemed like forever, until he saw his mother, asleep, across the room.

  That's who he wanted now. "Mommy," he called.

  Sam managed to struggle to his feet. He walked forward a few steps. "Mommy, help me!"

  A man's voice called, "Sam!" Mr Pellam's. And that reminded him of the football. He turned back into the black explosions, the heat, the cracking fireworks, the hum, and stumbled into the clearing, where he bent down to pick up the football. He was certain he had it but as he reached forward his hand came up with nothing more than leaves. He fell to the ground.

  Then he saw nothing more; a huge wave of black filled his vision. But he kept patting the ground around him for the football. He had to find it.

  He'd won it for Mr Pellam.

  14

  Her face scared him. It wasn't just that she'd been crying, which changed the density and texture of her skin and gave her the contours of a battered wife; it was more the fluttering of the irises of her eyes, unable to alight.

  What Pellam saw in Meg Torrens's face was panic.

  He just stood there, beside her, not knowing what to say or whether he should touch her in a brotherly way. Thinking he should be taking charge but with no idea of what needed to be done.

  Meg sat with her legs spread outward, boot tips pointed at an oblique angle, her body forward, elbows resting on her thighs, her hands washing each other absently in invisible water. Occasionally she'd glance up and Pellam would smile in a way that screenwriters woul
d describe as sympathetically concerned.

  They'd waited for twenty minutes.

  Keith arrived and as soon as he did, Pellam felt himself relax; he realized he'd been standing hunched forward, jaw tight. He watched the couple embrace. Keith nodded to him.

  "What the hell happened?" husband asked wife.

  Meg brushed aside her hair, which had come undone from the ponytail and was strewn across her face.

  "We found him," she said and started sobbing again.

  Pellam said, "Sam passed out and we couldn't revive him. The doctor's been in there since we got here. He hasn't said anything."

  "Oh, Keith, he was so pale. It was terrible…"

  With an anger they knew was not directed toward them Keith asked, "What happened? Did he fall? Is it a seizure?"

  Meg wiped her face. "We just found him. Keith, it was so horrible. He was just lying there. It was like he didn't have any muscles. I tried to wake him up. He wouldn't wake up." She looked at Pellam with her trapped animal eyes, staring at him but undoubtedly seeing the horrific image of her son's pale skin against the autumn leaves. "He wouldn't wake up."

  Keith looked like he wanted to hurt someone. It didn't seem to matter to him whether this'd been caused by another human being or an animal or some haywire connections in the boy's bloodstream. He wanted revenge.

  Meg pressed her cheek against her husband's chest and didn't say anything. Slowly she calmed.

  The doctor who resembled a vet, the one who'd tended Pellam, appeared and walked slowly down the corridor.

  The man had such an expressive face that no words were necessary. There was no doubt about the boy's condition. Pellam remembered the way the man looked at him when he'd entered the room to tell him about Marty's death.

  This was no tragedy.

  The doctor's round jowly face zeroed in on Meg's eyes and he said, "He'll be okay."

  Meg began crying again, quieter, but more desperately. "Can I see him?"

  "Sure, Meg. In just a second."

  Keith's anger vanished at once as if he were afraid prolonged hate might reverse the results. "What happened to him? Was it a seizure?"

  "Keith, I need to ask this. Does Sam have any history of drug use?"

  "Drug use?" The laugh was explosive.

  Meg let go of her husband and turned to face the doctor. "He's ten years old, how could he-?"

  "Drug use?" Keith repeated as if he hadn't heard correctly.

  "What did-" she began.

  The doctor said, "He overdosed on drugs."

  With a blustery edge in her voice Meg said, "No! Not Sam."

  "Oh, give me a fucking break," Keith growled. "Are you nuts?"

  The doctor continued. "It's true, Keith. It looks like it was an opiate of some kind. Probably heroin."

  Keith exploded. "Are you saying he was shooting up? That's the craziest, fucking thing-" Meg touched her husband's arm. He calmed. "I'm sorry. But you made a mistake."

  "I'm as disturbed about this as you are…" The doctor lifted a small plastic envelope out of his pocket. Inside were tiny fragments of crystals. "These were in his mouth. It's extremely soluble. Which means he ingested much more than this." All three stared at the bag.

  "It's a dextrose base-sugar-but it's mixed with something else. I don't know what exactly. A synthetic heroin of some kind. Stronger than Percodan. I've never seen anything like it."

  "Somebody put heroin in candy and gave it to my son?" Keith whispered. He looked at Meg and said, almost accusingly, "Who was he with? Did you see anybody, weren't you watching him?"

  Pellam bristled, felt defensive for Meg. "We were both with the boy. He'd run off every once in a while but we-"

  "For God's sake, Keith, we were at the Apple Festival. I wasn't letting him wander around in the South Bronx-" He blinked. "I'm sorry, I just-" She took his hand.

  The doctor said, "I've called Tom. I had to. Whatever this is it's a controlled substance and I've got to report it."

  "Fucking right you're going to report it," Keith growled. "But I don't want a story in the Leader. I don't want it to sound like he was doing drugs."

  "I won't say anything to the paper. But this's serious, Keith. I don't know-Tom may want to bring somebody from Albany in."

  In a faint voice, Meg said, "Please let me see my son."

  "Come on," the doctor said. He glanced at Pellam, then down at the leg where the bruise resided. "How you doing, sir?" he asked pleasantly but without particular interest.

  "Fine."

  The doctor put his arm around Meg and led her down the corridor. Keith said, "Excuse me," to Pellam and followed.

  Pellam sat down in an aluminum-and-orange-naugahyde chair and looked at a month-old People magazine without reading a single word, or seeing a single picture.

  An hour later, Sam walked unsteadily out of the room. Meg had her arm around him and Keith was trying to sound cheerful while he recited phrases like, "You're doing great, skipper" and "You're a tougher man than I." Sam would blink and look at his father as if he were speaking a foreign language.

  "Hi, Mr Pellam," Sam said. His face brightened a little but there was hardly any color in it.

  "How you feeling, son?"

  "I got sick."

  "You'll be fine in the morning."

  "I don't feel too good."

  "Well, get better soon. We've got to practice our football, remember?"

  "Yeah."

  Meg, Sam and Pellam stood together, silently, while Keith paid the bill with a check and took a prescription and instruction sheet from the doctor.

  The door opened and the sheriff walked into the clinic.

  "Meg, I just heard."

  "Tom," she said, nodding toward him.

  The sheriff looked stonily at Pellam for a long moment, then glanced down at Sam. "How you doing, young man?"

  "Pretty okay, sir."

  "Attaboy."

  The doctor joined them, along with Keith. Meg told the sheriff about finding her son in the woods and the doctor explained about the drugs.

  "What is it, you know?"

  "I'm sending the sample to a lab in Poughkeepsie. I'll get you a copy of it. I think it's a heroin derivative."

  The sheriff winced. "Yeah, guess I'll have to go to the NYBI."

  "Second time we've had an overdose," the doctor pointed out. "That boy last year."

  Tom nodded. "He was in high school. They're getting younger."

  The sheriff looked down at Sam then said to Keith. "You mind if I talk to him just for a minute?"

  Meg asked her son, "You mind, honey?"

  "Uh-uh."

  "Maybe just you, me and the boy?" Tom asked her.

  Pellam and Keith took their cues and stepped outside.

  The sheriff crouched next to a jaundiced potted bamboo palm, vainly reaching for a tiny, greasy window in the front door, the only source of natural light in the waiting room.

  Meg was struggling to stay calm, struggling to concentrate. All she wanted to do was throw her arms around the boy.

  The sheriff looked into the boy's eyes. "What happened, Sam? You remember?"

  "I found this envelope. And there was some candy inside. I ate it."

  "You ate it?"

  "A bunch of it. I guess I shouldn't've. Mom's pretty mad at me."

  Meg said, "No, I'm not, honey."

  Tom said, "She's just worried about you, that's all. So you don't know where the envelope came from?"

  "No, sir."

  "You're sure nobody gave it to you?"

  "No, sir. I mean, yeah, I'm sure nobody gave it to me."

  "You just found it."

  "Uh-huh."

  "You know what happened to the envelope?"

  "No."

  "I'm going to ask you a question, Sammie, and I want you to answer it truthfully."

  "Sure."

  "You know Mr Pellam."

  "Sure."

  "Did he give you the candy?"

  Meg stiffened when she heard this. Thi
s hadn't even occurred to her. She started to speak but the sheriff waved her quiet.

  "You mean, that he won?"

  "What?"

  "He won a chocolate turkey and gave it to me."

  "When was that?"

  "Just before I got sick."

  "It was a game," Meg said. "A booth at the fair."

  The sheriff ignored her. "Did he give you the candy in the envelope?"

  Sam shook his head. "No, sir."

  "You found it, right?"

  Sam swallowed. "Yeah, it was just lying there. I found it."

  "Okay, Sammie. You go home now and get some rest."

  "So he gave the boy some candy," the sheriff said.

  Meg frowned, repeated, "From the turkey shoot booth. Chocolate. Not… that crap."

  "Look, Sam claims he found the envelope but he's lying. I can see. All right, not lying exactly. He's confused. You know kids, Meg, come on. What I'm saying is I know somebody gave him those pills and he knows who it is."

  Meg asked, "You think it was Pellam?"

  "Kind of a coincidence, wouldn't you say? His friend's doing drugs and gets himself killed. Then your son overdoses." He asked, "Was Sam alone with Pellam today?"

  She didn't answer at first. "No."

  "Any other time they may have been together alone?"

  She swallowed and shook her head. "I want to be with my son."

  "Sure, Meg."

  Outside, Pellam watched the two of them push out the door and head toward Keith's car. Meg hugged Sam. "Let's get you home, into bed."

  "I don't feel good."

  Pellam stepped forward, crouched down and took the boy by the shoulders. "When you're better, young man, you and I're going to-"

  Meg took her son's hand firmly in hers and practically pushed the boy into the Cougar. Pellam stared at her. She wouldn't look back. Meg didn't say anything as she walked to her car and started it.

  Keith got in the Cougar, put Sam's seat belt on him.

  Both cars pulled out of the parking lot, Keith's red Mercury and Meg's gray Toyota. She didn't even look at him. Pellam stared after the import for several minutes. Finally, there was nothing left to see but a residue of haze above the asphalt in the car's wake. It was only then that he realized that while he was looking at the spot where Meg's car had disappeared the sheriff, sitting in his glossy, pristine squad car, had been staring at him.