So that was how for the second time in three days, Peter found himself walking into Quints Pharmacy. It didn’t occur to him, not until it was too late, that going there at that exact moment wasn’t just another random decision. And perhaps neither was coming to Gilchrist. In fact, later, Peter would think that these hadn’t been decisions at all.
The door gave its little jingle when he pushed it open.
The pharmacist looked up from his newspaper. “Morning. Here for more books already, or you still reading the first one?”
Peter winced inside. A sinking knot of dread that was more than indigestion landed in his stomach. He didn’t want to think about Jackson Hill or any of that weird stuff right now. It dredged up too much anxiety. There was something else, too—something had happened to him last night when he’d bumped into that kid on the street. He had seen something, felt something, but he wasn’t sure what it was. It was lingering on his mind like a hair on his tongue, and when he tried to get it off, it eluded him.
“It’s an interesting read,” Peter said, which was perhaps the biggest understatement of his life. “I’m going to be coming back for another one when I’m done with it. That’s a promise. You have Rolaids or something similar?”
The pharmacist smiled. “Course we do. Back wall, bottom shelf.”
“Thanks.” Peter went to the back and found the antacids after a moment of searching.
“Too much fun last night?” the pharmacist said across the store.
“Too much Dale’s Delights is more like it.” Peter’s hand automatically moved to his gut as he approached the counter and put down the Rolaids. “You ever had one?”
The pharmacist laughed. “Oh sure. More than one. It’s good stuff, but not so kind if you weren’t born with an iron stomach.” He pointed to the Rolaids. “This all? Just the relief?”
“That should do it for now.”
The pharmacist pushed his glasses up and started punching keys on the register.
Looking around absently as he waited, Peter spotted a curious thing on the counter. It looked like a missing-person flyer. The clean, uncreased paper suggested it was freshly minted. From his angle, the girl’s fuzzy, blown-up picture was upside down, but he could tell she was young. Just from the posture, he knew it was a yearbook photograph.
“What’s that?” Peter asked, his finger tapping the corner of the flyer.
“The police chief’s daughter went missing. He came in this morning, asked me to put this up. I was about to hang it out front.” The pharmacist shook his head and sighed. “I’ve known Grace since she was in diapers. I just hope the poor kid’s okay.”
“When did it happen?”
“Yesterday, I think.”
Peter slid the piece of paper toward himself and turned it around to get a right-side-up view. When he saw the girl, something inside him reacted. A fissure in his mind cracked open, and a flood of information bubbled up out of it, spilling all over his brain and threatening to short-circuit the whole operation. It was like his usual little knack for finding things, only this feeling was far more intense. There were shades of the strange, intense flashes he had been experiencing since arriving in Gilchrist.
“You recognize her?”
“Huh?” Peter glanced up.
“Maybe I read your face wrong. You looked like something grabbed you when you looked at her. Never mind.”
And something had grabbed him, only he had absolutely no idea what to do about it. When he had bumped into the freckle-faced kid the night before, he had received a disorganized package of information that made no sense. But the moment he saw the picture of the girl on that flyer, all the jumbled pieces had shuffled together to create something more coherent. He had absolutely no business knowing what he did, but that didn’t stop it from being true. Whoever that redheaded kid was, he was somehow responsible for the girl’s disappearance. And she was still alive. That part he could feel like a warm glow.
“Sad, is all. I wish I could help,” Peter said, a pang of shame sounding off inside him. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to say anything—he did want to—but he had no earthly idea how to offer up the information he thought he might have. He needed to think about it before just coming right out with it. Finding a missing person wasn’t the same as helping a guy find his glasses.
The pharmacist stopped ringing up Peter’s purchase and looked at him. His face suggested someone in the midst of a moral dilemma. “Well… you can if you’d really like to.”
“How’s that?”
The pharmacist’s face wrinkled, and he threw his head back and fired a massive sneeze into a handkerchief he had managed to pull out just in time.
“Bless you.”
“Thank you. Excuse me. Ragweed season.” He folded the hanky and stuffed it back in his pocket. “Anyway, I wasn’t going to mention it, seeing as you’re from out of town and on vacation—didn’t seem my place to put you on the spot—but if you really want to help, they’re putting together a search party this afternoon to do a sweep of the woods. There’s lots of ground to cover around here, and I know any help would be appreciated, local or otherwise. No pressure, but since you mentioned you’d like to help, that’s why I said it.”
Peter nodded, smiling. He understood. In a small town like Gilchrist, certain people got put to task when crises arose, and the pharmacist had apparently been told to wrangle as many troops as he could muster. “Would two extra able bodies help?”
The pharmacist looked pleasantly surprised. “Sure wouldn’t hurt. I know that much.”
“Then my wife and I would be happy to lend a hand. Name the time and the place, and we’ll be there.”
“Our Savior Lutheran Church at one o’clock.” He pointed over Peter’s shoulder. “It’s right across the street, in case you were wondering. I’m going to close up early and go myself. Communities have to help each other out in times like these.”
“We’ll be there.” Peter glanced at the flyer again, then back at the pharmacist. “How much for the Rolaids?”
He waved a hand. “No charge.”
“Really? That’s not necessary.”
“Neither is you and your wife spending a day of your vacation out in the woods, looking for someone you’ve never met.”
“Just seems like the right thing to do, I guess,” Peter said, and shrugged. “And if you pay me for that, I’ll feel cheap.”
The pharmacist closed the cash register and pushed the antacids across the counter with the tips of his fingers. “I could say the same thing. Name’s Teddy Halloran, by the way. Folks call me Tad, though.”
“Peter Martell.” He reached across the counter to shake. When their hands met, Peter was hit by the same violent flash he had seen when both Sue Grady and his wife had touched him, and he heard the same distant sound of a hundred screams all crying out at once. But this time, for whatever reason, he was hit with the name Lincoln. There was another name, too, but he couldn’t see it. He could taste it, though, and it tasted like blood. He didn’t know what it was, or why it was, only that it left a trace of sadness in its wake. He had stalled for a beat but finally said, “Good to meet you, Tad.”
“Likewise. So I guess I’ll be seeing you later, then.”
“Guess so. Should I bring anything?”
“Bug repellant, water, and a good pair of walking shoes. Or boots, if you got em,” Tad said. “And I think Meryl is making lunches for everyone, so I wouldn’t worry about food. There’ll be something to nosh on.”
“Noted. Take care.”
“Yep, you too.”
Peter left Quints Pharmacy and stood on the sidewalk. He shook two of the antacids into his palm and chewed them. It was a gray, muggy morning, and the sky was spitting. Cars drove slowly through a town that seemed tired and oppressed. Everybody who walked past him looked as though they knew something they didn’t want to know. His gaze shifted straight ahead to the steep granite steps that led up to a beautiful brick church. Our Savior Lutheran stood pro
minently atop a hill, set back fifty feet from the street. Seeing it reminded him of the decrepit church he’d dreamt about back in Concord, not in appearance—because the two looked nothing alike—but rather in the sense of foreboding it drummed up inside him.
He stared at it for a very long time, trying to feel God’s presence. He didn’t think that he could. Perhaps he had never been able to.
2
They arrived at Our Savior Lutheran Church at twelve forty-five and sat out front in the car, watching people trickle in. Sue Grady and George Bateman were among the earliest arrivers. There were plenty more Sylvia didn’t recognize, but a few faces were familiar from their trip to Dale’s. Sylvia spotted one of the couples who had joined them on the dance floor (not so much a dance floor as it was a sticky section of dining room that’d had the tables pushed aside).
Peter had his arms draped over the steering wheel, his chin resting on his wrist. Sylvia hadn’t seen him so nervous since their wedding. She thought: I think this place is starting to get to him. Then farther down, a softer voice: I think it’s getting to me, too.
(it’s changing me it’s changing him)
When Peter had returned to Shady Cove from his trip to the pharmacy earlier, he had told her about the missing girl. At first he hadn’t said why he wanted to help so badly, just that he thought it was the right thing to do. But she had known there was more, and when she asked, Peter had told her. And she wasn’t the least bit surprised when he mentioned that greasy kid from outside the bar last night because she had felt something about him, too. Something she hadn’t been able to put her finger on. Whatever it was, she hadn’t liked it.
Peter finally broke the silence in the car. “I think that must be him.”
“Who?” Sylvia asked, trying to follow her husband’s gaze. “The policeman?”
“Yeah. He looks like a police chief, doesn’t he?”
A man in police uniform had come out of the front door of the church and stood looking around for a moment before turning and heading back inside. He was tall and broad shouldered, with a middle-age gut. His clothes were wrinkled, and his face sported a day or two of stubble. Something was fraught about him; Sylvia recognized the look of a person dealing with the unimaginable, the thing that was never supposed to happen to them, only to other people.
“We should go in. It’s almost one.” She secured her hair in a ponytail with an elastic she had taken from a collection she kept stored on the passenger-side door handle.
Peter looked at her. “How am I supposed to do this?”
“Let’s just go in, and you can feel out the situation. You’re good at that.”
“What if I’m wrong, Syl? I probably just have a brain tumor or something. That would make a hell of a lot more sense than me suddenly gaining some sort of second sight.”
“I don’t think it’s all of a sudden,” Sylvia said. “I think you’ve always had a little bit of a gift. Think of it as powerful intuition. And maybe this town has a way of making it a little stronger. Who knows?”
“I sure as hell don’t,” Peter said.
She shook her head and smirked.
“What?” Peter said.
“I was just thinking about what someone would think if they heard us talking right now. We sound sort of—I don’t know—silly, don’t you think? I keep thinking Rod Serling is going to start narrating from the clouds at any moment.”
Peter laughed. “Yeah, I’ve had more or less the same thought a few times since we showed up here. We’re a long way from a week ago, huh?”
“Wasn’t that the point of coming out here?”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“Ready to go?”
“As I’ll ever be, I guess.”
They got out of the Dodge and headed into the church.
3
At least fifty people were gathered inside Our Savior Lutheran. Most were milling around, drinking coffee out of paper cups and eating pastries off paper plates, talking amongst themselves. They were clustered in little groups in front of the raised pulpit stage. Five or six policemen were huddled around a foldout table, going over a map. Sylvia spotted the policeman she had seen out front. He was at the center of it all and clearly in charge.
Across the back wall, bagged lunches covered another table in neat rows. The woman behind that table was making sandwiches in a hurry, and a man in a wheelchair was wrapping them in parchment and dropping them into brown lunch sacks. The woman shared the same look as the fraught policeman—tired and pushed beyond anything she had ever thought she would have to endure.
The sense of community in the room was almost palpable. A beautiful thing to behold.
Peter leaned over and whispered, “What’s our first move?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we should find out what the plan is. Looks like they’re still getting organized.”
As Sylvia scanned the room, she inadvertently made eye contact with a blond woman in one of the small groups of people. The woman, carrying a clipboard, excused herself and approached them.
“I don’t think I recognize you,” the woman said. “I’m Beth Bateman. Are you here to help with the search? Please say you are.” She smiled guiltily and pressed the clipboard to her chest, her fingers tapping the back of it.
“We are,” Peter said, putting his hands in his pockets.
“Thank goodness.”
“Tad Halloran told me this was the place. Said you could use some extra help. We’re renting up at the lake, but that didn’t seem like a reason not to lend a hand.”
“Tad, what a saint. I expect he’ll be here soon,” Beth said. “What’re your names? It’s good to have a list of who’s out there so we don’t lose one of our own. Roll call when we head out, roll call when we return.”
“Peter and Sylvia Martell,” Peter said.
Beth wrote down their names. “All right, Peter and Sylvia. Just sit tight, and they’ll go over everything soon. They’re just trying to figure out where’s the best place to start first. Time’s always ticking with these kinds of things.” She turned and went back to the group she had been talking with.
“You hear that? They need the best place to start,” Sylvia whispered to Peter. “You said by running water… you heard running water.”
“I know. I need to think. Let’s grab a seat,” Peter said, and shuffled into one of the pews. He and Sylvia sat, and he started chewing his nails.
“Martells, what’re you doing here?” Sue Grady poked her ruddy face between them from the pew behind.
“Hi, Sue,” Sylvia said. “Didn’t see you there.”
“I saw you,” she said, and snorted a small laugh. “Didn’t think it was you at first. Then I said I knew it was you. You here for the search?”
“Yes.”
Sue nodded. “I knew you were good people. When I first met you, I said to myself, ‘Sue, these are nice folks.’ And darn it if I wasn’t right. Not great swimmers… but nice folks.”
“Have you done this before?” Sylvia asked.
“Oh sure. A few times. Lotsa places to get turned around out in them woods. Happens at least once a year.” Sue’s face stalled. “Course, with a teenage girl… well, the situation could be different. Don’t have a good feeling about this one.”
Sylvia hadn’t known what to think of Sue when she had first met her three days ago. At first, she had thought Sue’s personality was slightly abrasive, bordering on unintelligent. But she was starting to think she might’ve gotten it wrong. Sue simply said what she felt or thought, without any beating around the bush. And in that way, Sylvia respected her. When Noah died, she could’ve used a strength like that. Maybe if she had been able to say the hardest things to say, then she wouldn’t have ended up nearly killing herself with a handful of pills. Maybe she wouldn’t have needed the pills at all, ever.
Sylvia smiled politely. “I hope it turns out for the best. Which are her parents?”
That question seemed to grab Peter’s attention.
He looked up.
“The one making lunches, that’s Meryl, Grace’s mother. The big guy up there standing over the map, that’s Chief Delancey. He’s Grace’s father.”
Just as Sue was saying that, a man and a woman stormed down the aisle and went right up to Chief Delancey. The man looked angry. The woman like she had been trying to calm the man down on their trip over.
“And where the hell is the search party for my boy?” the man said.
All other conversations in the church stopped. A man wearing a clerical collar, who must’ve been Our Savior’s pastor, went toward the commotion. But Delancey held up a hand while maintaining eye contact with the angry man.
“Let’s go. Outside. Now,” Delancey said. “If you want to talk to me, then we’ll talk. I wanted to ask you a few questions anyway.” He grabbed the man’s arm and started leading him toward the door.
“That’s Mr. and Mrs. Collins. They got a boy, Chris. He’s a little older than Grace. He must be missing, too. First I heard of it. What the heck’s going on around here? Pardon my French,” Sue whispered, her eyes following the action.
Sylvia looked at Peter. He shrugged.
They caught a piece of the police chief’s conversation as he walked the man up the aisle:
“We’re doing a search. If Chris is out there, we’ll find him. What’re you thinking coming in here like this and making a scene?”
“Well, why the hell didn’t you put up no flyers about Chris? I only see ones for your daughter.”
“I didn’t even know he was missing, Chuck. This is the first you’ve said anything about it to me.”
This variety of common sense seemed to stump Mr. Collins.
“I’m sorry, Corb, but he didn’t come home last night. Then I heard about this, and I guess I lost my head.”
Delancey pushed open the big double doors at the end of the aisle, and he and Mr. Collins disappeared outside. Mrs. Collins watched them from the front of the church until the doors closed. Then she grabbed a cup of coffee and took a seat without speaking to anyone.
Gilchrist: A Novel Page 37
