Your Son Is Alive

by James Scott Bell

  “Ingmar Bergman?” Petrie said.

  “That’s the one. Made me want to hang myself. Thanks for bringing back the classics. Like Casablanca.”

  “My pleasure, sir.”

  “And another thing, I hate to mention it …”

  “What is it?”

  “You always have such clean bathrooms.”

  “We want our customers happy,”

  “Yes, you do. But, well, it’s not tip top right now. There’s a smell. I just thought you ought to know.”

  “I do want to know,” Petrie said.

  “The young man who cleans it, maybe he hasn’t been in there yet.”

  “Oh yes he has,” Petrie said. “I’ll make sure he goes back in there. Pronto.”

  “He’s a nice boy, even if he’s a little slow.”

  “Not so slow that he won’t understand what I tell him,” Petrie said. “Enjoy the movie, Mr. Weathers.”

  26

  Dylan, at home, circled his phone as if it were radioactive. It sat on his coffee table, inert and secretive, holding inside it a message he knew he would listen to. Eventually. Because in the end it really was about Kyle. She had the upper hand, the leverage, the aces. His bluff about not caring was mere puffery. He knew he couldn’t walk away, and she knew he knew.

  Still, making the message wait felt like a momentary victory. But a child’s victory, about as meaningful as I know you are but what am I?

  Then it was time to stop being a child. He sat down and played the message. Tabitha’s voice was as clear and calm as the first time they’d met.

  “Dearest, I need you to know that I forgive you. I’m not hurt, except for a bruise on my arm. You don’t know your own strength, baby. I know you’ve got some demons in your past and that maybe they come out like this. I don’t want this to break us up. One of the things people do when they love each other is work through things, you know? I’m willing, if you are. I’m willing to say it was just a burst of anger that came from stress or something. We can deal with that, I know we can. Call me when you can. One more meeting. Hear me out. You didn’t mean the last thing you said to me, about not caring. I guarantee it. And I miss you already.”

  A thousand spiders spun a web around Dylan’s mind, binding his thoughts, sticky and secure. He awaited giant mandibles.

  Who was he dealing with here? Someone clever enough to reel him in via a dating service. To pose and charm. And he fell for it like one of those saps in film noir.

  He had no doubt she had a self-inflicted a bruise on her arm. And now had left a few breadcrumbs in the form of a voice message, which could lead an inquiring police detective to question Dylan.

  If they searched his phone.

  He could just delete it.

  But wasn’t the message up in a cloud somewhere?

  Could she plant it?

  Could he get any more paranoid?

  All he had on his side were those two notes, but she could deny any knowledge of them.

  If she was this careful, this clever, maybe she did have a lead on where Kyle was.

  But if so, why hadn’t she asked for money?

  And if not, why this elaborate play?

  27

  The man at the front desk of the Salvation Army said, “May I help you?”

  Erin said, “My mother donated some boxes to you about a week ago.”

  The man was thin and sixtyish, with wispy white hair and glasses that perched on the lower portion of his nose. He looked at Erin over the lenses. “Oh?”

  “It had some things in it that I need. Is it possible it’s still here?”

  He smiled. “You ever heard of the needle in the haystack?”

  “That bad?”

  “Could be. Cardboard boxes?”

  “Plastic, you know, with a lid that snaps on. The boxes were clear and the lids were blue.”

  “I personally don’t recall.”

  “Is there any way to check?”

  “You know, these items are donated. They belong to the Salvation Army.”

  “I’m aware. I’d pay for it. I’ll make a donation. If only I can check.”

  “That important?”

  “Yes.”

  “You look serious.”

  “As the proverbial heart attack,” she said.

  His reserve changed to a sympathetic warmth. “Let’s not have one of those. Come on then, we’ll give it a try.”

  He took her to a back room that was stuffed with boxes, bags, books, shelves, clothes on hangers on portable rods, appliances, furniture, toys, and at least one canoe.

  “Welcome to my world,” he said.

  “How long have these things been here?” Erin asked.

  “Varies. You’re welcome to look around.”

  “Thank you.”

  She began making her way around the space, scanning for a visual of the box. But the boxes she saw were all cardboard. Some of them were hidden behind piles of clothes or chairs or some other obstruction. She powered past every one.

  At one point she accidentally kicked a paper bag full of books. The bag burst and the books spilled out, sliding like dominoes upon each other. She looked upon them, fascinated, as if the accident were a casting of lots in a cultic ritual.

  Amused, she took note of two Danielle Steel novels, a book about the interpretation of dreams, and a chili cookbook.

  But it was the last one that kicked her in the heart. It was a big, glossy encyclopedia about the TV series Lost.

  She almost burst out laughing and crying at the same time.

  Lost indeed!

  And she wasn’t going to take it. She picked up the book and threw it. It sailed over pile of clothes and landed on the other side with a hollow thunk.

  Erin followed it.

  And there it was, the book of Lost, sitting on top of a large plastic box with a blue top.

  28

  Petrie said, “Biggest thing is, you don’t kill him.”

  Carbona shrugged.

  “You want to get paid,” Petrie said, “you make sure it doesn’t happen.”

  Petrie had paid a lot of money to Carbona in the past. He was a professional. The consummate pro, he once bragged. So he better be able to follow instructions. To the letter. Or this whole thing, this meticulous and beautiful plan, would crumble at the very end. Petrie could not allow that to happen. If it did, and Carbona was the reason, he would make sure the big man suffered. Carbona, ex-LAPD, had smarts. But he wasn’t as smart as Petrie. No one was.

  “I better get all the money,” Carbona said. In his floppy Hawaiian shirt, Carbona resembled a middle-aged Margaritaville fan. But his eyes were straight whiskey. “I’m hitting the road after this one.”

  “You’ll get it,” Petrie said, “if you deliver a live package.”

  When they first did business together Petrie was running a low-level meth trade out in Mojave. A biker named Steele had recommended Carbona’s security services. When they first met Carbona tried to put the fear of Satan in to T. J. Petrie. Having studied the ways of the devil himself, Petrie laughed inside.

  He’d agreed to give Carbona two million cash. The one hundred grand Petrie already paid him might never be recovered, but that was a small price to pay for the plan. And Carbona would never see the rest of it.

  Carbona said, “How much does that retard know? The one you let hang around?”

  “Leave him out of this.”

  “I don’t like him.”

  “I’ll take care of him,” Petrie said. “I always have.”

  “He makes me nervous.”

  “You’re getting paid not to be nervous.”

  Carbona smiled. He had perfect teeth. Petrie had to give him that.

  29

  To breathe, to clear his mind, Dylan walked the mile to John Greenleaf Whittier Park in the center of old town. He liked the friendly little swath of green that took up one block. It had a play area for the kids, and even a statue of old Whittier himself, a somewhat forgotten figure in America
n letters.

  When Dylan first moved here and discovered the park, he did some research on Mr. Whittier. He was a poet and devout Quaker who became an early leader of the abolitionist movement in America. He also hobnobbed with people like Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Oliver Wendall Holmes.

  A good and noble man, everyone said. Which, when he thought about it, was all Dylan wanted to be. He was certainly no poet. But he was a darn good chiropractor and he had modeled his life on the idea of decency.

  Which was why this whole matter of Tabitha Mullaney was such a swift kick to the gut. Oh, not that he was naive about people’s capacity for evil deeds. But that such a person could be as smooth and deceptive as this woman. And he’d been completely taken in.

  As Dylan walked around the park, taking deep breaths to pump oxygen into the blood, he passed a church on Penn Street. The people were coming out the door. Some dressed up in their Sunday best, others in business casual, and at least one man in shorts and Hawaiian shirt.

  Ah, Southern California.

  What were they getting inside? The reason why God allows shootings and kidnappings and leaves grieving parents hanging, never knowing what happened? At least give us a little mercy, a tiny drop of it, the ability to sleep without nightmares. Just that cup of water in the desert.

  The only hope was that there was some sort of balancing act going on. That the scales would get righted somehow. He’d been waiting years for proof that it could be so. He hadn’t seen it yet.

  Maybe hope was not the best word after all.

  What about love?

  Dylan had been in love three times in his life, and only once deeply.

  The first time was high school, when he’d dated Erin for half a year.

  The second was a girl named Cara Rennie at U.C. Davis. She was a volleyball player and majored in sports medicine. They were together for two years, even talked about marriage. But when she made the Olympic team, she went off for training and met, surprise surprise, a trainer. Who she married right after the Games.

  The third time was Erin again, ten years removed from high school. And that was the deep one. The sure one. The one that lasted, until it cracked under the strain of losing Kyle.

  There would be no more deep ones, he was sure. The universe had taught him not to expect anything good. But in the last year or so he’d allowed himself the possibility of finding someone to share some life with. A companion, to fend off the loneliness. He’d tried a couple of times with the dating site. But it was one disappointment and one disaster.

  He almost gave up.

  Then he met Tabitha. And despite his caution at their first lunch, he thought he heard the furtive tiptoeing of love coming up the back stairs of his mind, reaching for the doorknob …

  It wasn’t reaching anymore.

  Never again, he thought. He would not be stupid. He would not be a schoolboy. He would not let anyone get to his soul again.

  His phone buzzed.

  It was her.

  30

  I mustn’t touch the clothes, Erin thought. I can’t disturb the DNA, if it’s there. The TV shows all tell us that.

  But I can smell them.

  The box was on the dinette table in front of her. She’d placed it there when she got home from the Salvation Army but didn’t immediately open it. She wanted to pray first. She even recovered a birthday candle from a kitchen drawer and lit it. God wouldn’t care if it had come off a cake now, would he?

  Now she was ready. Or so she hoped.

  Erin popped the corner of the lid. It unsnapped easily, the box being overstuffed with Kyle’s clothes.

  Erin put her nose to the crack and inhaled.

  And went back in time, covering a span of Kyle’s childhood all at once. The smell of the clothes was a time machine. She was back there now, the pictures in her mind more vivid than photos or movies. The shirt that was on top, red flannel, she remembered when she bought it at Costco because it was on sale and it looked warm and Kyle did not like being cold.

  That shirt she saw on Kyle when they went to 31 Flavors, just the two of them, because Dylan was at a seminar. Kyle was three then and wanted a rocky road cone and that’s exactly what he got. Erin got mint chip like always, that was her favorite. They sat at a table by the window looking out at the parking lot and Kyle was in his flannel shirt and smiling.

  “My mouth is happy,” he said after a good, sturdy lick.

  It was the perfect thing to say. And then the inevitable dripping over the cone began, and Kyle’s tongue, not yet as skilled in ice cream maintenance as older kids, tried to keep up with the trickle. But a dime-sized drip of chocolate found its way onto the flannel shirt. Erin moved with motherly precision with the extra napkins she’d placed between them. She went for the cone first, wrapping two napkins around it then handing it back to Kyle perfectly straight and over the table.

  Kyle understood and went back to his work in earnest. Erin took two more napkins to the drinking fountain near the back. She wetted the napkins and came back and wiped the chocolate stain with downward strokes, without interfering with Kyle’s enthusiastic anti-drip program.

  “There,” she said, sitting back. “No harm done.”

  Kyle smiled one of his big smiles, the kind he would put on when any picture taker would instruct, “Smile!” or “Say pizza!” But this time the smile was just for her benefit, because Kyle said, “That’s what moms are for!”

  And Erin, now remembering it all, and even more, the flashing of memories of Kyle in that shirt, closed the lid of the box again and pounded it with her fist.

  Again and again and again.

  31

  “Isn’t the view gorgeous?”

  Tabitha Mullaney made a grand gesture with her arm. Presenting the San Fernando Valley! From the top of Topanga vista point. As if she were trying to sell a view lot to a wealthy buyer. She leaned against the split-rail fence. The sun on her face gave it a sheen like the skin of a rattler basking on a rock.

  “You better get right to it,” Dylan said. “Or this is the last time we meet.”

  It was Monday morning, and Dylan had cleared his appointments because Tabitha was insistent they meet one last time and he felt compelled to do it. Only part of it was about Kyle now. He was just as driven to find out what was inside this woman. He wanted her with the police. He was looking for an opening of any kind.

  The Topanga view area was at the apex of the boulevard, coming from the beach through the canyon before descending into the massive maw of suburbia below.

  Tabitha said, “First, if you’ll just do something for me, dear. Raise your arms.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “So polite!” she said. “I love that about you.”

  “What, you think I’m packing heat or something?”

  “You’re also cute. Packing heat! But yes, something like that.”

  “Come on, you don’t really think I would, do you?”

  She laughed. “It’s just a fashion thing. I love that outfit. Go on.” She made a gesture for him to raise his arms.

  “Why should I?”

  “Because I have some good news for you. You’ll see. Please.”

  He’d come this far. He raised his arms. The moment he did, Tabitha’s hand came out of her purse holding something. A gun? No. Some other kind of device. She waved it in front of him, scanning him up and down.

  Impulse. Sometimes you just follow it. Dylan, who in high school had prided himself on being able to take a football right out of a receiver’s hands, snatched the item from her grasp.

  The look on her face was not so much one of surprise but of disappointment. She didn’t make a move to get it back, whatever it was.

  Feeling he had the advantage now, Dylan looked at the gadget. It resembled a handheld recording device. But it wasn’t recording anything that he could see.

  Tabitha said, “It’s just to tell me if you have any active electronics on you. And it appears that you’re clean. Your phone isn�
��t doing anything but sitting in your pocket.”

  “Fantastic,” he said. “Why don’t we take this little thing to the police and talk about it?”

  “That would be inconvenient,” she said. “Especially for you. Whose fingerprints are on it?”

  “Both of ours.”

  She shook her head, raised her hands and wiggled her fingers. There were small squares of what appeared to be clear tape on all of her fingertips.

  Impulse again. Feeling the heat in his cheeks Dylan turned and threw the device as hard as he could. It whirligigged through the air and disappeared into a clump of brush.

  “You owe me fifty dollars,” Tabitha said calmly. “I’m giving you a discount.”

  “I’m done with you.”

  “You don’t really mean that,” Tabitha said.

  “I’m prepared to walk away,” Dylan said, wondering if he really was. He wanted to be. But like a steel shaving on a magnet he couldn’t pull away. Yet.

  “I don’t think so, dear,” Tabitha said.

  A cool breeze was blowing from the ocean side, pouring over them, down toward the warm valley where it would die.

  “You haven’t seen what I have,” she said.

  “I don’t care—”

  “Or heard.”

  “Heard?”

  “So many things. You can be happy. We can be happy.”

  We? It was a word that was poison now, transformed from the promise it once held. That she could throw it out with any kind of sincerity was enough to get him to say—

  “Tabitha, you must know you need help.”

  “Sexually?”

  What a strange and off-putting answer. What was in this woman’s mind?

  “I know people,” Dylan said. “I can get you help. I’m willing to forget all of this, if you’ll just once and for all tell me everything you know about Kyle, and back it up with proof.”