Tall Oaks: A gripping missing child thriller with a devastating twist

by Chris Whitaker

  He heard the bell. Though the sound was nothing more than a tinkle, Jerry heard a clanging so thunderous he fought the urge to place his fingers into his ears.

  He stood, switched the light off and closed the door, then slowly made his way up the stairs.

  He walked into the bathroom and opened the cabinet, taking out three candles. It was Monday, and Monday meant sandalwood and ginger.

  He set them down in a line along the edge of the tub and lit each in turn. Then he ran the water.

  He poured in the bath oil—geranium and orange—and watched it turn the water cloudy. He swirled it with his hand, wetting the sleeve of his shirt as he did.

  “Jerry.”

  He walked into his mother’s bedroom.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  She stared at him.

  He walked over to the window and closed the drapes.

  “Are you feeling any better today?” he asked.

  “No.”

  The tumor was aggressive. He knew that much. She wouldn’t let him go to any of her appointments, said he wouldn’t understand anyway.

  “Did you take the pills? The new ones? All of them?”

  “I don’t know why they make them so big. I’ll choke one of these days.”

  “And the pain?”

  She shrugged. “Are you praying for me, like I asked?”

  “Yes.”

  She reached out. He took her hand.

  “Ready?” he said.

  “Ready,” she said.

  He helped her stand. Her feet were swollen, her ankles vast.

  Together they panted and wheezed toward the bathroom.

  She dropped her robe. He looked away.

  5

  Mayor of Despair

  “You can’t go out dressed like that, Jess.”

  Jess looked into the small mirror and finished putting on her makeup. She applied it with a heavy hand. She didn’t want to be recognized. Her knee bounced, her hands shook. She had drunk what was left of the vodka bottle hidden in her closet, but still she couldn’t stop the movement.

  Hiding vodka and living with her mother. She was seventeen all over again.

  “Leave me alone, Alison.”

  It was Alison, not Mom anymore.

  “I’m worried about you, Jess. It’s too much—the drinking and staying out all night. I can’t sleep; I don’t know where you are half the time.”

  “Yeah, well, that makes two of us.”

  Jess looked up at her mother and saw the worry in her face, saw it in the bags beneath her eyes, in the lines that streaked her forehead.

  “Where are you going tonight?”

  “Out. Out of town. Away from Tall Oaks.”

  “Why don’t you go down to the country club if you need to get out? They have a nice bar there. I’ll come with you.”

  She could hear the pleading, the desperation in Alison’s voice.

  “I can’t go out in Tall Oaks. Everybody knows me here. They all know what’s happened.”

  “And why is that a bad thing? You have friends here, Jess, people that care about you.”

  Jess turned back to the mirror, painting the anguish away with each stroke of the brush.

  “Jess, are you listening to me? Let’s go to the country club. I’ll buy the first round.”

  Jess stared at her. She could see traces of Harry in her mother’s face. Not always, mercifully, but sometimes. It made being around her all the more difficult.

  “You took his picture down,” Jess said, staring at the wall behind Alison.

  Alison swallowed. “I didn’t know if . . . I saw you staring at it during dinner . . . you’re not eating . . .”

  Jess nodded. A week had passed since Alison last mentioned his name. Jess could remember a time when her mother had spoken of little other than her grandson; a time when Alison had hovered over her as she changed his diaper, watched every spoonful of food she fed him, called night and day whenever Harry was sick. It had gotten to the point where Jess had to tell her Michael was tiring of her visits.

  “I can put it back,” Alison said quietly.

  Jess snapped her mirror shut and looked for her keys. She’d left them on the hook by the kitchen door.

  She looked at the empty hook, at the plaque behind it. THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME.

  She used to like that saying. Before that night. Before someone switched the color off in the world. Now it was just dark, the words looking more like a threat than a promise.

  “Where are my keys, Alison?”

  “I’ll call us a cab. Then we don’t have to worry about having too much to drink. I’ll get us a bottle of that wine you used to like; I forget the name . . . the pink one. We can talk, or just sit there and drink. Whatever you want.”

  “I just need my keys. Please give me my keys.”

  Jess kept her voice even, though she wanted to scream. She could feel it now. She needed to go.

  “Or we could have a gin and tonic. You used to beg me for a taste when you were younger. Then when I finally relented you’d purse your lips from the sharpness, but you’d always say that you wanted another sip a few minutes later.”

  Alison tried to laugh. It sounded wrong, forced.

  “Please, Alison. My keys, give them to me now.”

  “Tell me why we can’t go to the country club.”

  Jess took a breath. “Because people look at me. People I thought I knew. People that I thought were friends. They look at me and they whisper to whoever they’re with. “There goes Jess Monroe. Still no news about Harry. Terrible thing that happened, wasn’t it? She’s falling apart. Look at her. She’s a fucking mess. She should be home, sitting by the phone. She should be doing more to find him.”

  “No one thinks that, Jess.”

  Jess stood and paced the kitchen, opening cabinets and slamming them shut.

  “And then, if I look at them, let them know that I know what they’re thinking, they turn their heads or pretend to look at their phones, or in their bags, anywhere but at me.”

  “They’re just worried about you, Jess. Everyone worries because everyone cares.”

  “Maybe. But they want to do it from a safe distance. They don’t want any of the shit that I carry around to be passed on to them, like some fucking disease. God forbid I might stop and chat for a while, or worse, ask if I can join them. Then they won’t be able to smile, or laugh, or talk about their own problems, because their own problems are so fucking small and trivial compared to mine.”

  Jess opened kitchen drawers, tossing the contents to the floor.

  “They’ll wonder why I finish my drink so quickly, and then wonder if they should offer me another, or will that loosen my tongue too much and make me start to tell them what my life is really like now.”

  Alison flinched as Jess knocked a glass to the floor, watching it shatter around her feet.

  Jess stood still. She could feel the tears begin to blur her eyes. She looked up at her mother.

  “Please,” she said, in a whisper.

  Alison reached into her pocket and handed Jess her keys.

  It was only when Alison heard the engine start and the car pull away, and she was sure that the door was locked and the windows closed, that she allowed herself to cry for her daughter and for her grandson.

  Jim watched Jess pull away. He made no move to follow her, though he felt the urge.

  He reclined his seat. She might be back tonight, might be back sometime tomorrow. There was no set pattern.

  He opened his window and breathed in the warm night air. He thought of Harry often; more as each day passed. He thought that funny. When the calls stopped coming in, when the urgency was beginning to ease, when people had no choice but to carry on with life, he’d stood still. Stood still beside Jess.

  He kept a photo of Harry in the glove compartment. He didn’t need to show it anymore. Everyone knew who he was.

  He leaned back, closed his eyes and tried to get some sleep.

&nb
sp; The shit-hole bar was in a hick town called Despair. Jess smiled when she saw the sign, thought she might be the perfect candidate to run for Mayor.

  She parked in the gravel, between two pick-ups.

  She reached for her phone and dialed Michael. He didn’t answer. He never did. She listened as his answerphone clicked on. He hadn’t recorded a greeting. She longed to hear his voice.

  “It’s me . . . I’m not sure if you listen to any of these. I hope you do. I’m out. Not sure where really . . .” She cleared her throat, surprised by how quickly the tears formed, by how warm they felt as they rolled down her cheeks. “Do you think about him? You must. Do you think about me? Do you sleep well? Do you sleep at all? I was thinking back to when we brought him home for the first time. He had that fluffy hair. You kept kissing his head . . .”

  She choked back her words, held the phone to her ear until she heard the click.

  She took a moment, wiped her eyes, put her phone in her bag.

  She sat still for a long while, waiting. She looked down at her hands, then up at the sky. The moon was big, full but dull.

  As she walked into the shit-hole bar with the equally shitty name, The Squirrel, she felt every pair of eyes in the shitty place look up from their beers and find their way either to her tits or her legs.

  The floor was wooden, her heels clicked across it. Smoke swirled above the pool table, empty glasses lined up on the torn felt.

  She kept her head up, her eyes fixed straight ahead.

  As she made her way to the bar, with its flickering neon signs, its sticky coasters and elbow dents, she felt the eyes leave her tits and her legs, and focus on her ass.

  She ignored the stares. She wouldn’t later, but for now she was content to drink alone.

  The bartender was tall and heavy. He reached for one of the pumps, pulling it down and revealing yellowed sweat stains that hung low beneath his pits.

  He smiled at her—a warm smile, though missing a tooth here and there.

  “Be with you in a minute.”

  He turned back to the pump, leaned down to collect the glass. Strands of greasy hair fell from behind his ear. The rest was tied back tightly, highlighting a misshapen head. His sleeves were rolled up, exposing meaty forearms. Tattooed, naturally. The left bore a scantily clad lady, and some illegible writing; the right, a large splodge of gray black.

  He turned to her.

  “I’m Rex, but everyone here calls me Guns.”

  She glanced at his flabby biceps, fought the urge to roll her eyes.

  “Well, Mr. Guns . . .”

  “Oh, it’s just Guns. We don’t go in for all that formality here in Despair.”

  She glanced at the photographs tacked to the back wall, all of unsmiling men, mostly shirtless and barefoot.

  “That’s my dad, second from left, with the hair.”

  She smiled, unsure of what to say.

  “His name was Guns too. Used to bench three-fifty.”

  “So you’re Guns Jr.”

  He shrugged.

  “Well then, Guns Jr, I’ll have a vodka, please. No water, no ice.”

  He free poured a misted glass halfway to the top.

  As she reached for her bag, a large, calloused hand slapped a ten-dollar bill down in front of her.

  “This one’s on me.”

  She looked up. The guy was tall, broad. Might once have been good-looking but the years had taken their toll.

  “Thank you –”

  “Billy. Billy Brooks.”

  She drank her vodka in one quick and impressive gulp, her throat long since numb to the burn.

  Billy nodded at Guns to pour her another, told him this time be generous with the measure.

  She saw the look that passed between them, conspiring to get her drunk. She wondered if Billy’s pride would’ve been hurt if he’d known that tonight she was anyone’s, literally anyone’s at all: anyone that might take her away for a night, even if it was to some place awful, where the sheets were stained and the walls crawling with mold. Where clothes lay on the floor and you needed a tetanus shot after using the bathroom. Wherever it was, it couldn’t possibly be as bad as the place she had come from.

  After her seventh, or maybe eighth, vodka, she felt the knots unfurl, her shoulders drop, her hands stop shaking and her mind begin to swirl. The bar wasn’t as shitty. Billy had gotten better looking.

  His hand was on her back, kept slipping to her ass. She pretended not to notice. Billy kept telling her about his business, like she gave a fuck. He owned a farm, or a mill . . . something like that.

  They’d been joined by some of his friends. Guns had locked the door, poured himself a whiskey and put some money in the old jukebox next to the pool table. And then one of Billy’s friends, could’ve been Duane or Bobby, or some other name you gave a kid to make sure he never got a white-collar job, lifted her up onto the pool table and she started to dance. As Donna Summer sang about “Bad Girls,” Duane or Bobby jumped up onto the table and started grinding her from behind, and then Billy was rubbing her leg as she danced, his hand inching higher and higher. He wasn’t smiling anymore.

  She knew she was in trouble, especially when he pulled her down and started trying to ram his tongue into her mouth. His breath smelled sour, his tongue felt rough. She tried to push his face away. He just laughed—a wheezy laugh tinged with desperation.

  Billy was breathing hard as he grabbed her breast.

  She lay back and closed her eyes, saw the Clown grinning back at her, and so opened them wide.

  And then the men were all on her, hands going everywhere, clawing at her clothes as they laughed and shouted.

  This is what you wanted. You’re not a victim if this is what you wanted.

  But as she caught a blurry glimpse of Billy pushing another man away, and opening his belt, she knew that it wasn’t really what she wanted. It was what she deserved . . . because she didn’t protect him. And now he was gone.

  She tried to sit up.

  Billy punched her in the mouth, hard.

  She fell back, her head hitting the felt and her mouth filling with blood.

  She licked her front tooth and felt it loosen.

  “Now lie still, or I’ll really hurt you.”

  She met his eye.

  “Hurt me?” she whispered.

  He glared at her.

  She began to laugh. “Hurt me?”

  She laughed again. It was a loud laugh, high and manic.

  The song ended.

  She kept on laughing.

  Duane or Bobby stopped whatever it was he was trying to do with her arms and stared at her. She sat up, her laugh now hysterical.

  They took a step back.

  She held her stomach, laughing so hard she thought she might die.

  She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror behind the table. As she laughed blood spilled down her chin and onto her chest.

  She turned to Guns and spat at him, thick lines of stringy blood that landed on his face.

  He backed away, panic in his eyes.

  That made her laugh even harder.

  The other men stepped back too.

  She stood up, lopsided, missing a shoe. She pulled her skirt down.

  Her eyes were dark, darker than Billy’s, and when she stared him down she saw his desire fade under a torrent of more laughter and another bloody smile.

  She limped to the door, turned the key and felt the air on her face as she walked to her car.

  “Hurt me?”

  She laughed again. To hurt her she would have to feel something. But there was nothing left inside of her, not after what she had been through.

  Nothing at all.

  6

  The Trick

  It was dawn when Jim made it home. He’d fallen asleep in his car. His neck hurt. He’d seen Jess’s car in the driveway when he woke, relaxed a little, then driven back to his apartment. It was on the ground floor, cramped, though the small yard made up
for it.

  He walked into the living room. It was sparsely furnished: a leather sofa facing a television, a couple of bookshelves, a few books on each.

  He reached for a tape from the stack, slotted it into the machine and pressed play.

  He stayed standing, yawned and stretched.

  He thought back to the day, two weeks after Harry got taken. He could see Jess in his mind, her eyes bloodshot as she set her bag down on the floor and sat on the plastic chair. He remembered leaving the door open—she’d asked him to, after that first time, when she’d gotten freaked out talking about the Clown. She said she couldn’t breathe, that she felt dizzy, trapped when he closed the door.

  He skipped forward.

  “Where The Wild Things Are. That was Harry’s favorite book, except he used to get scared when I read it to him. He’d ask for it, every night he’d ask for it. But then as I soon as I turned to the first page he’d cuddle up close to me. I’d be trying to read and he’d be asking questions, asking if the monsters were going to eat the boy. We’d read it maybe a hundred times, but he’d still ask. He wanted a wolf suit.”

  He remembered her smile, beautiful, under different circumstances.

  “Seriously. I’m glad he didn’t tell my mother otherwise she would’ve tracked one down and bought it for him.”

  He paused the tape. There were lots of tapes, the original copies at the station. He’d listened to them all a dozen times; the interview with Michael two dozen. They’d asked Michael to come back in again, to help them out. His lawyer said that unless he was under arrest then he wouldn’t be coming back. There wasn’t much Jim could do. He didn’t need to ask Jess twice. She’d said if there was anything they needed to just ask. And he had. They’d spent hours talking. He wasn’t sure if it had been necessary, they had enough background. But he liked seeing her, knowing where she was, seeing how she was holding up.

  He walked into the small kitchen and grabbed a drink from the empty refrigerator. He was becoming one of those cops. He hadn’t wanted to. It had sucked him in, before he knew what was happening he lived the case: the case and Jess. Nothing else.