The pilot said their ETA was forty minutes and Vickie looked out the window at a sunlit patchwork of farmland, adrenalin erasing her fatigue.
* * *
The paramedics gave Roger a curious look through the windshield, slowing as they approached him, Roger running along the side of the road toward the T, but Roger waved them on and the ambulance accelerated away from him. He lost sight of David after that, David or whatever it was, and slowed to a walk when he reached the No Trespassing sign, already coming up with rational explanations for what he’d seen—a shared hallucination, induced by desire and dread coupled with extreme fatigue; a good old-fashioned mirage.
Then he saw the boy again, standing amongst the remains of the farmhouse that had burned to the ground, David Croft a hundred feet away in the shade of a butternut tree, tiny hands folded in front of him, knowing eyes bluer than the August sky. Roger called out to him and started running again, closing the distance in frantic strides, thinking with each blink of his eyes this ghost or illusion or hallucination, whatever it was, would vanish. Then it did, there and then gone, persisting in Roger’s vision until he was ten feet away and his foot struck something hollow on the charred wooden floor of the burnout, making a sound Roger had heard before, in Maggie Dolan’s pantry, a sound dampened by soil and encrusted moss but utterly unmistakable.
He looked down at his feet, at the raw boards scabbed over with vegetation, the earth pulling them under in its own good time, and found himself standing in the center of a perfect square crudely disguised by fallen leaves. He lifted his foot and stamped it down, hearing that hollow sound again.
Roger’s heart pounded as he stepped off the square in the earth, sank to one knee and swept aside the dead leaves. He saw a rusted ring recessed into a rotting board and looped his finger through it.
Then he pulled the trap door open, the world around him starting to spin, sunlight spilling like something molten into the root cellar beneath him.
* * *
Peter was aware of being lifted, the sensation stirring memories of his father lifting him up, that feeling of weightlessness and safety he’d cherished so much as a boy. He felt the hard surface of the stretcher under his back, then a snug sensation across his thighs and chest, the attendants securing him with Velcro straps.
The sun was in his eyes now, the tilt of his body telling him they were carrying him down the steps...then he was lost for a while in a tranquil lightness and the sun’s glorious heat, though he could smell autumn in it, anticipate its coming chill.
A sharp pain in his arm brought him back, and he opened his eyes to see the inside of the ambulance and a frightened girl, a young paramedic, taping his IV into place. He wanted to tell her not to worry, but couldn’t seem to shape the words.
He drifted off again as the vehicle started moving, hearing the urgent chatter around him, someone saying, “I’m going to have to tube him.”
And as his eyelids slid shut, he saw David smiling at him from the foot of the stretcher, his touch against Peter’s ankle like the quivering wings of a butterfly.
He slipped instantly into the most vivid dream, shimmering sunlight and the sounds of surf and laughter, the laughter broken and distant, only its tinkling high notes reaching him on a breeze that smelled of tidal flats. Reluctant to emerge from this blissful state, he kept his eyes closed, enjoying the dancing interplay of light and shadow against his eyelids. For a moment he had to think about where he was, so deep and peaceful was the plane he’d drifted into. Then the coarse feel of terrycloth and the dry rustle of fronds overhead told him he was on a beach towel in the shade of a cluster of palms, his favorite siesta spot on the beach in Barbados.
He heard footfalls now, sifting toward him through the sand, and brought his hand up to shade his eyes, seeing David in his baggy Homer Simpson trunks, grinning down at him with a piece of driftwood in his hand.
“Come on, Dad,” David said, hopping with excitement, “It’s a dead octopus.”
Peter gazed up at his son, the boy’s skin bronzed by the tropical sun, his young eyes twinkling, and thought how beautiful he was.
David said, “Dad, come on,” and took off down the beach.
With what seemed a huge effort, Peter sat up, squinting after David to see him slam on the brakes fifty yards down the beach, his lean body partially blocking Peter’s view of a tan woman kneeling in the sand in a burgundy bikini and a big floppy sunhat, poking something at the tide line with a stick. Now David hunkered down beside her and Peter thought, Dana.
He stood up and started down the beach, the white sand hot under his feet, his stride clumsy and uncertain. Dana glanced up at him and waved, making a face at the dead thing on the beach.
Peter smiled and waved back, his stride growing stronger with each quickening step.
* * *
Garbage. That was all Roger could see down there. A cereal box lying empty on its side, assorted cellophane wrappers, a crumpled cookie bag, a few crushed juice boxes. A dead garter snake in the midst of it all with its guts gnawed out.
There was no ladder, the drop about eight feet, and when Roger tilted his head to look deeper under the floor he saw something so white he thought at first it was a scrap of paper; but it was skin, a human heel intruding on the crisp line between light and dark.
He said, “Jason?” and the heel slithered into the dark.
Roger dropped into the reeking hole without touching the sides, landing hard in a puddle of muck, crouching to sweep the dark with both hands. His fingers touched a cold foot and he said, “Jason, is that you?”
There was no answer, only dry breath, a whisking sound of sickness and fear. Roger leaned into the dark and felt more cold skin, hard bone just beneath the surface, and lifted a body that weighed almost nothing, and when he shifted it into the light he saw that it was his son, “Oh, God, Jason, it’s you,” the boy wasted almost beyond recognition, naked but for a tattered pair of boxers, his body caked with mud, his bloodless skin covered with insect bites.
Roger held his son limp in his arms in an oblong of sunlight and screamed his thanks to the heavens, feeling the boy’s breath on his neck, the weak flutter of his heart against his palm.
* * *
The helicopter touched down in the yard between the barn and the house, its rotors spawning dry twisters. Vickie ducked her head climbing out, getting grit in her teeth, turning to see Laking hop out behind her. They hurried together out of the dusty maelstrom, moving toward a group of O.P.P. officers gathered in front of the house, six of them now, clutching their caps in a circle by their cruisers.
Vickie saw a bald head bowed in the back seat of one of the cruisers and thought, There she is, with a kind of cold reverence. The feeling surprised Vickie. The woman was a cop killer, deserving of little but her contempt. Yet as a mother, Vickie believed she understood, and in a strange way admired the woman’s courage and resourcefulness in achieving—not once but twice—what she clearly believed was the discovery and rescue of her abducted child. That part of it broke Vickie’s heart.
Peter Croft’s car was parked near the porch, Graham Cade sitting in the passenger seat, an older boy hunched behind the wheel. The older boy was talking to Graham, constantly pushing his thick glasses up on his nose, and Vickie assumed the kid was the Dolan woman’s other son. She’d had the Dolan file faxed to the station early that morning and had reviewed it with Laking during the quick flight here.
Graham was looking at her now and Vickie smiled, the boy wiggling his fingers at her in a little wave. He looked exhausted. Walking to the car, Vickie leaned on the sill and ran her fingers through the boy’s blond hair, feeling the sweaty heat of his scalp. The older kid, Aaron, looked away, his respirations quick and noisy through his open mouth. The interior of the car was blistering, but when Vickie suggested Graham get out for some fresh air, the boy refused. Seeing no harm in it, she told him she had good news, his parents were both going to make it. She didn’t tell him his father was on a ventilato
r in ICU after almost eleven hours of surgery and would probably end up paralyzed from the waist down. Instead, she told him she and the other officers had some work to do here, but someone would be taking him home soon. Graham said, “Can you take me?” and Vickie said sure, if he didn’t mind waiting a little longer. In a very adult manner, Graham said that would be fine.
She joined Laking and the milling cops, Laking getting the lowdown from the officers first on the scene. Vickie glanced at Maggie Dolan sweating in the back seat of the cruiser and saw her staring at Graham twenty feet away in the Corolla, a terrible longing in her eyes. Vickie heard one of the arresting officers say Peter Croft had been stabbed and taken by ambulance to the hospital in Arnprior, no word yet on his condition. He said the paramedics told him the other man had run off down the road maybe forty minutes ago and no one had see him since.
Laking said, “Okay, Vickie and I’ll take the house.” He pointed to the others in pairs, telling the first two to take the barn, the second pair the outbuildings, then split the arresting officers up, assigning the grounds to one and asking the other to go look for Roger Mullen. He said, “We’re looking for a nine-year-old-boy. Pray he’s still alive,” and the teams went their separate ways.
The helicopter was idle now, the pilot standing by the open door smoking a cigarette, his face raised to the westering sun.
* * *
Aaron said, “You sure look like ’im.”
Graham said, “Your little brother?”
“Uh huh. More’n the other one.”
“There was another one?”
“Uh huh.”
“What was his name?”
“Clay...I mean, uh, Jason. Yeah, Jason. He didn’ talk much.”
“What happened to him?”
“Ma thought he was Clay, like you. Pretty soon he got too big an’ she tol’ me to put him down the hole. Sometimes I brought him stuff. Sometimes I forgot. I liked him. We had fun.” He pushed his glasses up on his nose and said, “I like you, too.”
Graham said, “Me too,” and saw Aaron’s big eyes fill with tears. He touched the boy’s arm and said, “What’s wrong?”
“That day...we was just playin’. Clay was good at makin’ up games ’n’ I like to let him win ’cause he’s so little. I wanted to tell Ma what happen’ but Pa tol’ me don’ do it, don’ you dare do it ’cause Ma’ll kill us dead. Pa’s gone now. Got drunked an’ smacked a bridge. He bonked me on the head with his big ashtray an’ maked me lie to Ma.”
Curious, Graham said, “What were you playing?”
“Who could hold their breaths the longest under water. You know that game?”
Graham nodded, wiping a drop of sweat from his eye. “Me and my brother used to do that in the bathtub when we were little.”
Aaron grinned. “You’re still pretty little.”
Graham hated it when people said he was small, but with Aaron he didn’t mind. He said, “I wasn’t very good at it.”
“Clay neither. He said it’s ’cause he’s too little to reach the rain barrel by hisself an’ stick his face in so I had to lif’ him up, but I was squeezin’ ’im too hard’n he couldn’t hold his breath long enough. Was his idea to get in.”
“He got in the water?”
“Yup. Clay got a Mickey Mouse watch with a second hand for Christmas an’ we was usin’ that for counting who’d win. A few times I pretended I couldn’ hold my breath very long but Clay knew I was cheatin’. Said he wanted to win fair ’n’ square. I held his watch an’ under he went, but I still was winnin’. So Clay said to hol’ him under till he won so I did. That time I made sure he won, two whole minutes extra.” A terrible expression came over Aaron’s face then, a kind of scrunched red crying face that made snot shoot out his nose. He wiped it away and said, “But I drownded him. I drownded my baby brother...”
Grimly fascinated, Graham said, “Jeez.” He didn’t know what else to say.
“I pulled him out the barrel, run in’n’ showed Pa an’ he said, ‘Here’s what we’re gonna tell her. You and Clay was playin’ outside an’ a big man come out the bush an’ cracked you on your empty melon an’ when you waked up Clay was gone’.” Aaron said, “Then he picked up that ashtray an’ brained me hard with it.” He leaned forward, digging in his hair to show Graham the long scar on his scalp. “After that he wrapped Clay up in’n ol’ blanket an’ put ’im in the hole over to the Misner place what burned down. Put ’im down the rut cellar.” He pointed into the distance along the road. There was a policeman over there now, kneeling in the tall grass. Aaron said, “Pa tore out the ladder an’ tol’ me never—never—to go over there again. But I did.
“When Ma come home I tol’ her what Pa tol’ me to say an’ I seen he was right, it was better keepin’ it secret.” His face scrunched up again, turning beet red. “I never meant to hurt you, Clay,” he said, and started shaking his head again. “I never meant to hurt you...”
Graham put his hand on Aaron’s arm and sat with him in silence.
* * *
Rob Laking said, “Hey, Vick, get a load of this.”
He’d used a heavy screwdriver the chopper pilot loaned him to pry the hasp off the steel door in the summer kitchen. Once inside, he and Vickie had split up, Laking checking a series of storage closets ranked against one wall, Vickie heading down a cement-floored corridor to an open area at the end housing a sophisticated home gym with a heavy bag, a multi-station weight machine, a bench, and assorted free weights. There was a barbell on the bench with some very serious poundage attached, more than Vickie could roll across the floor, and the heavy bag looked like someone had worked it over with a twenty-pound sledge.
She heard Laking say her name and came back along the corridor to a small room near the front. Laking was inside, hunched over a desk supporting a keyboard and a flat-screen monitor. The raw particle board walls were literally papered with maps, photos and printed documents, the surface directly behind the monitor plastered with images of boys resembling Clayton Dolan, most of them culled from newspaper articles from places as far away as Alaska and New Mexico. Some were circled repeatedly with red ink, others X-ed out with the same pen.
Lying on the desk next to the screen was a printout of the article Vickie had seen on the Cade’s fridge, Graham balancing his huge gem show door prize under a proud smile. She found one of Jason Mullen too, push-pinned to the wall and faded with age, the boy staring uncertainly into the camera with a flying squirrel perched on his head, the caption reading: LOCAL BOY MAKES FLIGHTY FRIEND AT SUDBURY’S SCIENCE NORTH. The brief article even named the boy’s school.
Laking said, “Goddam Internet. That’s how she found them.” He opened her Favorites list, highlighting a few of the links, saying, “Look at this shit. How to break into a car, how to hotwire a car, lock picking, alarm systems, weapons sites, martial arts sites, those fucking mail-order drug sites. Bomb Making for Dummies?” Straightening, Laking pointed at the large, well stocked bookcase next to the computer table. “And check out some of these titles. Crime Scene Investigation, Modern Forensics, Evidence Collection. The woman turned herself into a world class criminal without ever leaving home.”
Vickie said, “Incredible,” and heard a raised voice outside, calling her name in alarm. She looked at Laking looking at her, a sick feeling in her stomach, then ran for the screen door, Laking hot on her heels. One of the cops Laking had assigned to the outbuildings was standing at the foot of the porch steps, pointing in the direction of the road.
Vickie saw the officer first, the one Laking had sent in search of Roger Mullen, the man running full out toward the farmhouse now, the gear on his utility belt jangling, one hand holding his cap on his head. He was shouting something Vickie couldn’t make out, waving his free hand in the air.
Then she saw Mullen about fifty yards behind the cop. He was running too, a haunted look on his face, a gaunt, emaciated child, naked save a filthy pair of underwear, flopping rag-like in his arms. To Vickie the boy looked dead
. It was at once the saddest and most triumphant thing she’d ever witnessed.
Now she could hear what the officer was saying, “Start the chopper, start the chopper,” but Laking was already running toward the aircraft, shouting the pilot’s name.
Vickie headed for the Corolla, hearing the prehistoric whine of the ’copter’s ignition, the first low revolutions of its rotors, and now the officer coming up behind her saying, “They were trapped down a hole over there and I heard Mullen shouting.” She saw Graham staring at Mullen stumbling through the dirt with his boy, then up at her with tears in his eyes, and opened the car door. “Come on, sweetheart,” she said, “let’s go see your folks.” She took his hand hot in hers and Graham hesitated, looking at Aaron now, Aaron still shaking his head in those vigorous, spastic rhythms, shooting guilty, sidelong glances at Mullen and his boy. She said, “Graham, it’s okay, we’ll look after Aaron,” and Graham stepped out of the car and Vickie picked him up, turning his head away when she saw him staring at Maggie Dolan in the squad car, the woman pounding on the window in there, screaming silently at the frightened boy. Passing one of the officers coming back from the barn she said, “Get her out of here,” and ducked under the throbbing rotors, lifting the boy into the chopper.
Laking said, “Heads up,” and Vickie turned to see Mullen red-faced and drenched with sweat, scuffing toward them through swirls of dust, his son unconscious in his arms. She made way for him and the pilot went down on one knee in the doorway, arms extended for the child; but Mullen refused, hefting the boy on board under his own flagging steam, then dropping spent into the nearest seat. The pilot got some blankets out of a storage bin and helped Roger swaddle his son.
Over the rising roar of the chopper, Laking told Vickie to go ahead, he’d finish up here. Vickie said she’d contact him as soon as they landed and climbed aboard. She bent to buckle Graham in and the boy said, “Clayton’s dead. He’s in the hole.”
Vickie said, “Did Aaron tell you that?” and Graham nodded. Vickie waved Laking closer and told him. Laking nodded grimly and backed away.
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