Here After

by Sean Costello

  Peter smiled, his eyes dazed, dreamy. “Pressure,” he said, lifting his hand off his soggy shirt, blood gouting from the wound. He put his hand back and Roger went inside, the boy hustling along behind him. More than anything he wanted to search this place for his son, ransack it for the slightest sign of him; but his friend needed him now. The woman said she’d got him in the spleen and Roger had no reason to doubt her. One of the members of his group had lost a child to a ruptured spleen and Roger was determined not to lose Peter Croft the same way.

  Graham showed him the phone on the wall in the winter kitchen. Roger said, “Thanks, son,” and cupped the boy’s flushed face in his palm. He said, “I need your help now, okay?” and Graham nodded. “Go find a towel and take it out to my friend. His name is Peter.” The kid ran off and Roger called 911, telling the operator a man had been stabbed in the spleen, giving her directions to the farm. The operator said she had a unit doing a drop off in Galetta and could have it there in fifteen minutes, twenty tops. Roger asked to be put through to the nearest police station and she got him an O.P.P. desk sergeant in Arnprior. As briefly as possible, Roger told the man what had transpired, telling him the Cade boy was fine, then asking him to get in touch with Sergeant Vickie Taylor of the Oakville police. The officer said there was a cruiser ten minutes away in the village of Fitzroy that was being dispatched as they spoke. Roger said, “Please hurry.”

  Then he hung up and shouted, “Jason? Jason?”

  But he got no reply.

  15

  VICKIE TAYLOR STOOD AT THE counter in the Tim Horton’s across the street from headquarters, watching a teenage girl in a two-tone brown uniform put a lid on her large double-double. The clock on the wall above the coffee machine said ten minutes to two, and when the teenager said, “A dollar-sixty,” Vickie was thinking, Thirteen hours, knowing that the majority of child abductees who didn’t turn up within the first three were usually found dead or not at all. She was thinking of the boy’s mother screaming blame at her when the teenager planted a ring-laden fist on one cocked hip, gave her that Duh look her niece sometimes gave her and said it again: “A dollar-sixty?” Returning the kid’s dull stare, Vickie handed over the exact change, resisting the urge to reach across the counter and bust the little creep in the chops.

  She took the coffee to a table for two in the sunny front window and sat alone, sipping the soothing brew and staring out at headquarters, thinking of the reasons she had wanted to become a police officer in the first place, the gloss worn off most of them now. She’d come on board at a time when the resistance to the notion of women on the force in any capacity other than secretarial was at its peak, and had put up with immeasurable quantities of bullshit because she had believed it was worth it, had believed she could make a difference. Now, with Graham Cade already a grim statistic and his parents seriously injured, one of them critically, Vickie was left to wonder if they’d been right about her all along. Maybe she should have gone into nursing like her sisters or become the happy little homemaker her mother had worked so hard to shape her into.

  When her cell phone rang, she was sipping her coffee, silently rehearsing her resignation speech to Rob Laking. She flipped the phone open, saw Laking’s number on caller ID and said, “I was just thinking about you.”

  Laking said, “The Cade boy, we got him,” and Vickie was sprinting for the exit, any thought of tendering her resignation dripping to the restaurant floor with her spilled coffee. She said, “Alive?” and Laking said, “Alive.”

  Crossing the busy street, Vickie said, “Where?”

  “About three hundred miles northeast, a farm near a village called Fitzroy.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Me neither.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  Laking said, “Look to your right.”

  Vickie stopped on the sidewalk in front of headquarters and saw Laking in his car on the parking ramp, wearing his amber aviator shades, the blue dash light already strobing. “Get in,” he said. “We’re going for a helicopter ride.”

  * * *

  Roger knew he should check on Peter, but once he’d uttered Jason’s name he could contain himself no longer. His son had been in this house, and the possibility, however slight, that he might still be here was too compelling to ignore. He had to act on it.

  He started with the upstairs, sprinting from room to room calling Jason’s name, looking under beds, in closets, clothes hampers, a big cedar chest in the master bedroom, anything that might conceal a small boy. In the child’s room at the front of the house, he found something that simultaneously set his heart soaring and tipped it into a tailspin, something he might have missed had he not dragged the bed away from the wall.

  There, behind the headboard, carved through the Batman wallpaper into the plaster underneath, were the initials JM, Jason Mullen, the J flipped around backwards in a reflection of the mild dyslexia that had revealed itself in Jason in the first grade.

  Staring at his son’s work, the plaster almost black now with mildew and age, Roger imagined him alone in this strange room, his young head filled with the bullshit that crazy bitch must have fed him. Imagined him finding an old nail or a stiff scrap of wire and carving his initials into the wall, the act symbolizing his efforts to preserve who he was under a constant assault of lies, loneliness, and fear.

  Intent on beating it out of her now, Roger headed for the stairs. Halfway down he changed his mind, deciding to check the rest of the house first, knowing the woman was as tough as any man and crazy as hell and would almost certainly lie to him no matter what he said or did to her.

  He turned right at the bottom of the stairs, into the winter kitchen again, opening every cupboard in the place, then checking the family room at the back of the house, finding no trace of his son. On his way out to the summer kitchen, he noticed the pantry next to the fridge and entered the narrow alcove stocked with canned goods and preserves. It was dark in here, and when he reached for the light switch, his foot made a hollow sound against the floor. When the light came on, he saw the trap door and bent to open it, hope warring with apprehension in his thundering heart.

  He raked the door open and bellowed Jason’s name into the earthen pit. Calling out again, he scrambled down the ladder, feeling a pull-chain brush his face as his feet touched the dirt floor. He gave the chain a tug and the light came on, stirring restless ghosts, the stench of mold and decay making him want to gag.

  There were more preserves down here, arranged on crude shelves, and two raised storage compartments like shallow grottos stocked with drifts of turnips and potatoes. It occurred to him that Jason at six might have fit into one of these damp bunkers, but not Jason at nine. The realization raised another possibility, one he’d shunned since the day Jason went missing, and he turned his gaze to the floor, searching for a soft spot in the hard-pack, a rectangle of loose earth tamped firm with the back of a spade. Tears of relief burned his eyes when he found none.

  He went up the ladder fast and out the door to the summer kitchen, his wild eyes taking in the table and chairs, the old wood stove, the screen door leading to the porch—and now the padlocked steel door facing the back of the house. He looked around for a key, thinking, This is it, this is where I’ll find him, but there was no key and he started pounding on the door with his fists, screaming Jason’s name, the rage in his heart reaching a detonation point.

  There was a hatchet leaning against the wall behind the stove, and Roger brought it to the steel door, striking the padlock with it now, sparks flying with each savage blow; but the lock wouldn’t give.

  Gripping the hatchet in frustration, he headed for the front door.

  * * *

  Graham was kneeling next to Peter on the porch, leaning with both hands on the towel bunched over the hole in his tummy, the man too weak now to do it on his own. Graham’s friend Emily got a nose bleed once at school and it bled a lot, but not as much as this. Graham had never seen so much blood, could hardly
believe a person had that much inside him. And it was still leaking out. He pressed down harder and Peter’s eyes flickered open in his white face, then drooped shut again.

  Graham could hear the other man, Roger, screaming someone’s name in the summer kitchen, pounding on that big steel door in there, and now something else—a car coming in from the highway, raising a high plume of dust. Graham saw it turn toward the house, saw the rack of flashing lights on the roof and said, “Police car,” to Peter, getting no response.

  The police car was halfway to the house when Roger came through the door, his fierce eyes aimed at the Winnebago, a small axe in his hand. Graham said it again—“Police car”—but Roger didn’t hear him either. Graham watched him walk past the hood of the gray car, Aaron still sitting in there shaking his head, then step up into the Winnebago, pulling the door shut behind him.

  The police car stopped behind the gray car and the officer at the wheel looked at Graham with round eyes, then at his partner climbing out the other side. Now he got out too, leaving his cap in the car, his hand going to his gun. Both officers started running toward the porch, freezing when they heard the terrible scream from the Winnebago.

  * * *

  Roger ripped the tape off Maggie’s mouth, the gag coming with it, slapping her hard when she glared at him and said, “I want my boy back right now.”

  Roger grabbed her blood-slicked face, pressed his nose against hers and said, “You’re going to tell me where my son is. You stole him out of his bed three years ago. His name is Jason Mullen. He was-six-and-a-half when you took him. He was in the first grade.”

  The woman jerked her eyes away and didn’t say anything, just kept breathing her stale breath at him, and Roger said, “I understand why you did it, I really do. But it’s over now. Jason’s not your son. He’s mine. And that other kid out there? He’s not your son either. His name is Graham Cade. End this now, tell me where my son is, and I swear, I’ll do everything in my power to help you.”

  Hissing at him, Maggie said, “Get your hands off me. You took my son from me. But I’ve got him back now and you have no right to keep him from me.” She lunged in an attempt to head butt him, but her bonds prevented it, and when Roger backed away, she spat in his face.

  Roger wiped the spit away, seized the woman’s right wrist and brought the hatchet down against the steering wheel, lopping the ends off her pinky and fourth finger.

  Maggie Dolan screamed.

  * * *

  Graham watched as the officer who’d been driving strode toward the porch and his partner ran to the motor home door, pulling it open and climbing inside with his gun out. Graham heard the officer shout, “Put it down,” then a gust swung the door shut.

  The other officer ran up the steps and knelt beside Graham, moving his hands away to look at Peter’s wound under the towel. Peter’s eyes came partway open and the officer said, “Hang in there, okay? There’s an ambulance on its way.” Peter gave the man a little nod. The officer said, “It’s probably better if you lie flat,” and took his jacket off, folding it into a pillow for Peter’s head, then helping him lie on his side facing the yard.

  Now Roger came out of the Winnebago with his hands on his head, the policeman stepping out behind him, putting his gun away, saying something into the radio on his lapel. He walked Roger to the gray car and told him to put his hands on the hood, then quickly frisked him, glancing at Aaron in the driver’s seat as he did, Aaron sitting still now, his shaggy head bent forward. The policeman signaled the officer on the porch, thrusting his chin at the Winnebago, then went back inside.

  The officer with Graham stood up, telling him to press on the towel again, it was almost over. Then he went down the steps to help his partner and Graham saw something at the end of the road, something that made him smile.

  * * *

  There was no pain, no fear, just this glorious glow to everything and a dreamy feeling of peace. He knew he’d been badly hurt, realized he was slipping into shock, but it didn’t seem to matter. The Cade boy was with him, a worried little angel doing his best to help, and Peter was glad it was over for him. He saw Roger down there with his hands on the car, looking back at the cop going into the Winnebago, and now he felt Graham’s warm hand on his arm.

  The boy said, “Look,” and pointed at the No Trespassing sign out there at the T in the road. He said, “It’s Tommy Boy,” and Peter saw David standing by the sign, his hand raised in a little wave.

  Smiling, Peter said, “I know.” He dug something out his pocket, then said, “Go get Roger,” and Graham scooted off down the steps.

  * * *

  Graham said, “Peter wants you.”

  Through the fading crimson of his rage, Roger stared at Graham Cade in awe. Right down to the sound of his voice, the kid was so much like Jason it was frightening. He could see how the mother in Maggie Dolan got confused, crazy or not. Part of him wanted to pick the boy up and drive away with him right now.

  Instead, he tousled the kid’s hair and said, “Okay, chum. You want to wait here?”

  The boy pointed at Aaron in the car. “Can I wait with him?” Roger looked at Aaron staring at his feet in there and said, “Tell you what.” He opened the passenger door, rolled down the window, then swung the door shut, saying, “Stand over here, okay? You can talk to him through the window.”

  Shuffling to the window, Graham said, “He won’t hurt me.”

  Roger said, “I’m sure you’re right, son. Just do it this way for me, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  The two cops were leading Maggie Dolan out of the Winnebago in handcuffs now, her right hand wrapped in a towel, and what Roger wanted to do was go over there and knock her down and make her talk; but that part of it was out of his hands now. He watched the cops march her to the squad car and put her inside, her eyes never leaving Graham’s. When they closed the door on her, Roger saw her mouth the words I love you to Graham and Roger saw tears in the boy’s eyes. Shaking his head, he told the cops his son was still missing and they were going to need a search party right away. He told them to question the woman and they told him not to worry, they’d take care of it.

  Exhausted, frustrated, feeling cheated, Roger went up the steps to Peter. Despite the amount of blood he’d lost and the deathly pale of his skin, Peter was smiling, his eyes exuding a warmth and peace that spooked Roger a little. He told Peter an ambulance was on its way, then sat by his head on the porch, resting his back against the wall.

  Pointing to the end of the road, Peter said, “See him?”

  Roger looked and saw nothing. He said, “Who?”

  “David. See him? By the sign.”

  Roger looked again, seeing only heat shimmer out there, the sun parching the dirt road. “You should rest,” he said. “The ambulance is coming. They’ll have you fixed up in no time.”

  Peter was handing him something now. Roger put his hand out and Peter dropped one of Jason’s toy boxcars into his palm. He looked at Peter and Peter said, “Don’t ask.” Then he was holding Roger’s hand around the boxcar, his skin tacky with blood, saying, “I need you to do something for me.”

  Roger said, “Anything.”

  “Tell Erika I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “She’ll know.”

  Roger said, “Consider it done. You can do it yourself once they patch that hole in your belly.”

  Squeezing Roger’s hand, Peter pointed again, saying, “See him now?” and Roger did, a tiny figure in a dark suit and white tie, looking almost solid in the heat shimmer at the T in the road. The instant Roger saw him, the boy turned to stride on wavering legs into the tall grass over there, moving away from the road, looking back over his shoulder in a way that made Roger feel like the boy was looking directly at him.

  He said, “My God.”

  “Isn’t he beautiful?” Peter said, squeezing Roger’s hand again. Their eyes met then, and Peter said, “Go to him, Roger. For me. Tell him I love him.”

&nb
sp; Roger started to say he should wait here until the ambulance arrived; but there was a siren now, and a dust trail billowing in from the highway.

  “Go,” Peter said. “I’ll be fine.”

  Roger got to his feet, squinting to see David Croft still out there, five hundred yards down the road, still moving slowly away from him yet seeming no smaller for the distance, no less real or unreal.

  Frightened, his entire world view crumbling in this strange, suspended moment, Roger looked at Peter and said, “I’ll be right back.” But Peter’s eyes were closed, his drained face expressionless. Had Roger not been able to see the shallow excursions of his chest he would have thought the man dead.

  He started down the steps, moving slowly at first, almost reluctantly; passing the Corolla now, feeling Graham’s eyes on him, then the squad car as if wading upstream through waist-deep water.

  By the time he reached the road, he was running.

  * * *

  The LE class 427 Bell Helicopter cut through the air at its maximum cruising speed of 160 miles per hour, the sleek eight-seater much quieter with its doors closed than Vickie had imagined. Though she’d been a cop for nine years, this was her first ride in a chopper and the experience was making her giddy; or maybe it was just the fatigue.

  They’d already been in contact with one of the officers at the scene and had learned that the Dolan woman had been arrested and that their friend Roger Mullen had called it in. Apparently Mullen had injured the woman in an attempt to glean information from her, an attempt that had failed. Vickie couldn’t wait to hear how those two had figured out Margaret Dolan was the kidnapper.

  She also learned that Peter Croft had been seriously injured trying to subdue the woman and that Roger Mullen was demanding a search party for his son. The prospect gave Vickie a sinking feeling in her stomach. Mullen’s boy had been missing for three years. Statistically, he was long dead.