by Richard Cox
Or was he?
Surely the motivation that drove him to amass unspendable wealth wasn’t something more personal, like for instance revenge. Or pride. Surely his life hadn’t been written as a hackneyed son character whose entire adult life was a bid for his father’s approval.
Surely not. Definitely not.
David put his father out of his mind and drove to the kid’s house. He was relieved to see the mother’s car was not in the driveway, which meant at least the first step of this process would proceed smoothly.
He found Thomas on the porch, waiting for him, a strangely confident smile on his face.
The kind of smile David liked to see on his own face.
82
To Jonathan it felt like the world was coming apart. He was sitting in the front seat of Gholson’s police cruiser, watching out the window, and everything seemed out of focus. The sounds he heard might have been drenched in static, like he was tuning into the world with an AM radio. Alicia was in the back. All Jonathan could think about was what Adam had said before they left the police station.
I’m thirty-eight years old and I’ve barely lived any life at all.
He should have known what that meant. It was related to something Todd had told them many years ago, right before they burned down the restaurant. Something strange and amazing and horrifying about the world. Whatever the truth was, it had touched every day of his entire life. It had been driving all of them toward a conclusion that felt moments away. He imagined he could hear the energy of the end as it approached, like the whooshing sound of a tornado directly overhead.
“The mother didn’t answer,” Gholson said, putting away his mobile phone.
“If David picks him up,” Alicia said, “then what?”
“I’ll put out an APB on the rental car. We could issue an AMBER alert, but not until we have confirmation the kid is missing. We could be chasing a wild goose here.”
“By then David could have taken him anywhere,” Alicia said. “Can’t you call backup? Wouldn’t there be a cop closer to their house? This shouldn’t be up to just us.”
“Call backup and tell them what?”
“Anything! Shouldn’t we save Thomas first and worry about explanations later?”
“We don’t even know for sure he’s going after the kid,” Gholson said.
“We’re talking about a little boy’s life, for God’s sake.”
“A boy you seem to believe has committed some pretty serious crimes. That’s not any kind of boy I’m going to put in front of my career, no offense. And anyway we’ll get there in time. You’ll see.”
Soon they had left the city proper and were driving south on its perimeter. Thomas’ house was only a couple miles away, and Jonathan watched the road for David’s rental car.
Something caught his eye on the right, out the passenger window, and Jonathan turned his head in that direction. To the west and south he saw a tall cloud. A thunderhead. The base of it was wide and dark, but the rest was a large, white tower, stretching high into the sky like stacked popcorn.
“That’s a supercell,” Alicia said. “The kind of thunderstorm that produces tornadoes. I’m going to call my dad and see if he knows anything.”
She reached into her purse and keyed a number into her cell phone.
The tower seemed to grow even as Jonathan watched it, erupting into the atmosphere as if shot from a gun, as if it had previously been held in place by some invisible barrier and had only now managed to break through. As they neared Thomas’ house, he could tell the thunderstorm was strengthening and leaning toward them.
“No answer,” Alicia said. “Shit.”
“It looks like it’s coming this way,” Jonathan said.
“Yes, it does. It’ll be over the city before we know it.”
David’s rental car was not parked in the driveway of Thomas’ house.
“What if he already left?” asked Alicia. “What if he’s already got him?”
Gholson nodded. “Let’s knock on the door and find out.”
He steered his car into the driveway and jumped out. Jonathan and Alicia followed. The detective pounded on the door.
“Thomas Phillips! Christine Phillips! Are you inside? This is the Wichita Falls Police. Please open the door!”
As they waited, Jonathan noticed the daylight had dimmed. He could see high, wispy clouds blotting out the sun. The storm was approaching quickly.
Someone unlocked the door. It was Christine Phillips. Eyes bloodshot, entire face flushed, cheeks shiny with tears.
“Ms. Phillips,” Gholson said. “I’m—”
“He’s gone,” she cried. “Your friend drove up in his car and my son just climbed in. Like he knew someone was coming to take him away.”
“What?” Jonathan asked. “He left voluntarily?”
“Please,” she said to them, to Gholson specifically. “My son is sick. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Can you please get him back for me?”
“Do you know where they went?” asked the detective.
“He said he was flying far away from here and never coming back.”
“We have to do something,” Alicia said to Gholson. “Can you call the airport?”
“Ms. Phillips,” Gholson said. “I will get your son back. I need you to go back inside and call 9-1-1 and tell them what happened.”
“He told me not to do that. He said he would hurt me if I did.”
“Who? Mr. Clark?”
“No. My son. This morning he drove my car into a ditch and wrecked it so I couldn’t follow them.”
Jonathan, Alicia, and Gholson all looked at each other.
“You call, anyway,” the detective said. “Go back inside and call. I will get some backup and we will stop your son before he leaves town. Do you understand?”
“I am so scared,” Christine said.
“Just go inside. Let me take care of it for you.”
On the way back to the car, Detective Gholson said, “I’m calling this in now. We’ll enter the data into NCIC and then I’ll ask my sergeant to contact the airport and ground all flights. His plane is at Municipal, correct?”
“Yes,” Jonathan said. “I flew in it with him this weekend.”
They reached the car and Gholson got on the radio. Outside, the sky was growing ever darker, and Jonathan could hear the rumble of thunder. Except the sound of it was constant and growing ever louder, which wasn’t like thunder at all, which was more like the sound of a jet airplane.
Jonathan threw open the car door and ran out into the yard. The sound was even louder now, so immediate that the jet couldn’t have been more than a mile away and flying low, much too low to be safe. Unless . . .
He ran back to the car.
“Isn’t there another airport around here?” he asked Gholson. “Like a small one?”
The detective was barking information into the radio about Municipal Airport. But it was all wrong. David was two steps ahead of them.
“You mean Kickapoo?” Gholson finally said. “It’s on the other side of the highway. Like right there. But what—”
“David wouldn’t try to take the kid out on his own plane. He would expect you to be looking there.”
“So then what—”
On the radio, a male voice said, “Detective, a Gulfstream jet departed about an hour ago. Appears to be the plane you’re looking for.”
“Is he gone?” Alicia shrieked. “Did they already fly away?”
Raindrops began to hit the windshield. They were loud and fat. Jonathan walked around the house and looked west, in the direction of the airport. The storm was almost on top of them, its underside gray and blue and black. In the foreground, just above the treetops, Jonathan saw what looked like a small private plane flying parallel to the highway. It dropped out of sight. A moment later he heard the high-pitched shriek of tires skidding against asphalt.
“Let’s go,” he yelled at Gholson. “A plane just landed at that airport. It’s for David
. It has to be.”
On the radio, the male voice was yelling. Gholson reached forward and switched it off.
“If Clark left on his plane,” he said. “It’s all over. Let’s hope that was some kind of misdirection and go find this other plane.”
“This is awful,” Alicia said. Jonathan looked into the back seat and saw her skin was the color of plaster. “Not only is David trying to steal a child, but look outside. We read about this, Jonathan. On that fucking paper Pete Willis showed us. Thomas knew about this. He knew about it two years ago.”
Gholson drove back onto the highway. At the intersection with Southwest Parkway he turned west, and then took an immediate north. On their right Jonathan could see white buildings made of corrugated steel. Plane hangars. The airport was that close.
“Over there!” he said, and pointed.
Gholson turned down a narrow asphalt road and soon they reached a chain link gate. The gate was closed.
“Now what?” asked Alicia.
Gholson backed the car up, across the narrow road, until a fence would allow him to go no farther. Then he threw the car into gear and pushed the accelerator to the floor.
“Oh, shit!” Alicia cried.
“Hold on,” Gholson said.
Jonathan didn’t think they were going to make it. There wasn’t room to generate enough speed. He braced for impact as they hit the gate, expecting to feel the seatbelt grab him across the chest, but it didn’t. Instead his ears winced from the deafening screech of metal on metal, the sound of it like monstrous fingers being raked across a giant chalkboard. Gholson jerked the car right to avoid a white airplane hangar, and Jonathan could see a flat plain of grass where the runway surely was. In the distance, a private jet had just landed and appeared to be slowing down. Closer to them, about fifty yards ahead, stood a silver BMW SUV.
83
As Gholson watched the aircraft taxi slowly toward them, he wondered exactly when he would understand what to do. Sally had known about the kid, Thomas, and she had apparently known about the impending tornado. She also had suggested he could change the ending of something. But he did not understand what he was supposed to do or how to do it.
Crane and Ms. Ulbrecht obviously knew things he didn’t. If he was going to pick the right course of action, he would have to trust them. Share what he knew and hope they would do the same.
“Let me tell you something,” he said to Crane. “I knew you were lying to me from the first time I interviewed you. I knew you were hiding something. But I couldn’t act upon my suspicion because the thing I knew wasn’t something I was willing to share, either.”
“Detective Gholson—”
“I know all about Todd. I have a journal of his with song lyrics in it. Lots of songs. And though this began for me as a law enforcement investigation, now it’s become personal.”
“You have a journal?” Crane said. “What else does it say?”
“If there was anything else useful in it, I would tell you. But listen to me: My wife is in a mental hospital. Over there by the lake.”
When he pointed out the window, it looked like he was gesturing at the storm, which was approaching from the same direction.
“She’s sick. She suffers from the exact same condition Todd Willis did, and she hasn’t been able to speak to me in three years.”
“That’s terrible,” Ms. Ulbrecht said. “But—”
“At least not until yesterday. Yesterday she came out of the coma long enough to tell me something I think you two ought to know.”
Gholson imagined he could hear a clock somewhere, ticking off measured seconds one after the other. He imagined he could watch the scene unfold before him in slow motion, frame by frame, could hear the gears of a great film projector turning, pushing the aircraft forward, dragging the thunderstorm toward them.
“She told me the cyclone was almost upon us, which I suppose means this storm. But she also said a kid had changed the beginning and the ending. I don’t know what she meant by the beginning, but I assume the ending means this. Right here and now.”
Crane turned and looked at Ms. Ulbrecht. Then he looked back at Gholson again.
“We found a sheet of paper,” Crane said. “Like a page from a book manuscript. Apparently Thomas wrote it. Maybe that was the beginning.”
“What did it say?”
“That readers of the story that followed would find clues to a book that helped destroy Wichita Falls. On June 2, 2008. Today.”
“Do you know what that means? This book he was talking about?”
“We don’t,” Crane said. “But I think we’re about to find out.”
Rain was still falling, the drops few in number but large in size. The wind strengthened to an intensity Gholson had seen only one other time in his life. He looked out his window, to the west, and a childlike sense of fear washed over him. The sky in that direction was a shade near black, and the clouds were moving in ways that didn’t seem real. The ragged base of the storm looked almost as if it were squatting upon the ground.
Ahead of them, the aircraft had reached the end of the runway and appeared to be turning around. The BMW began to move. It rolled toward a road that joined the concrete driveway with the runway proper. Gholson followed.
“What are they going to do?” asked Ms. Ulbrecht. “Just get out of the car and into the plane as if we aren’t right behind them?”
“I will put a stop to it if they try,” Gholson said.
Clark’s BMW reached the runway and turned left. It rolled toward the aircraft. Gholson followed and pulled closer. Finally both vehicles reached the end of the runway, where the aircraft had completed its turn and was now pointed in the direction opposite from which it had landed.
This was it. The whole story would be decided in the next couple of minutes. Gholson had been smart to ask what his passengers knew, because now he understood, as unbelievable as it sounded, that everything Sally said had been correct. He suspected the beginning and ending Thomas had altered was to destroy the city while he flew away to California or wherever he planned to go. Which meant Thomas was behind everything. The fires he set, the damage he caused, the men he killed—all these crimes had been committed to set in motion a chain of events that would lead to this ending. Fred Clark’s death had brought his wealthy son to Wichita Falls and now Thomas would use David to escape just before the city was destroyed.
But apparently the moment they were living now had not been intended as the original ending. And if it could be changed once, as Sally had suggested, maybe it could be changed again.
In order to take Thomas Phillips from here, Clark would be forced to exit the vehicle. When he did, Gholson would intervene.
They all watched the BMW carefully. There appeared to be motion inside. When Gholson looked at the aircraft again, he saw a door open and a staircase emerge.
The large drops of rain slowed and stopped.
Everything seemed to stop.
The driver’s side door of the BMW opened.
84
The kid wouldn’t talk and it gave David the chills.
It was strange enough that Thomas had called him the night before to make sure the plane was ready, that he had instructed David to arrive at a specified time. But to watch the kid climb into his rented SUV as if he’d been waiting on a bus, this was surreal. He had spoken two words then and none since:
“Let’s go.”
David was short on time because Jim had instructed him to be ready to board as soon as the plane was on the ground. Even so, he couldn’t quiet his curiosity.
“So I guess I understand how you knew I was coming for you. But how long have you known?”
Thomas answered him with a withering look but declined to elaborate.
“What do you want from all this?”
For a while David was content with the silence that followed, willing to drive to Kickapoo Airport and wait for the plane while Thomas sat next to him. It was a hell of a lot easier than what he
had feared, that the mother would be there to put up a fight and oblige David to neutralize her.
But his mind wandered as they waited for the plane to arrive, and he began to consider the kid’s position more closely. If Thomas could know the details of David’s idea, if he was voluntarily willing to comply, that meant he wanted out of Wichita Falls as badly as David wanted it. It meant he had his own reasons for leaving. His own plans.
Was David using Thomas to improve his fortunes or was Thomas using him?
The implications of the answer were staggering and David’s head swirled with questions. He remembered the page Pete Willis had showed them. The page that implied Wichita Falls would be destroyed by a tornado today. That text had been written, according to Willis, at least two years ago.
Two years ago.
He looked over at Thomas. Thomas didn’t look back.
“How far away is the plane?” David asked him. “How much longer before it lands?”
The kid said nothing.
It was clear by looking out the window that a storm was on the way, presumably the one Thomas had written about, and David wondered how the plane was going to land and take off again if the storm arrived first.
“Is the plane going to arrive on time? I mean, look at that storm.” The kid still said nothing.
They were parked inside the airport gates on the road bordering the runway. David watched the storm approach, an apocalyptic sky gathered over the flat and barren prairie, and was consumed by a loathing for his hometown. He hated the iron-rich soil that stained everything red. He despised the ever present wind and heat. You could be driven mad by looking into the hollow eyes of the overworked and underprivileged citizens, by sensing their resentment and despair. And if not for that day in the forest, if not for the storm that had changed the lives of everyone in Wichita Falls, he might be one of them. Instead, he had been selected for a different fate. On a late afternoon day in the spring of his tenth year, a day that looked a lot like this one, something had happened to him as he ran through the trees, as he dodged hailstones large enough to kill him.
