Looking Glass (The Naturalist Series Book 2)

by Andrew Mayne

  Artice looks into space as he thinks it over. I give him a moment. Clearly he’s buried this deep inside.

  He glances at the sheet again, his voice almost inaudible. “They told me I made it up. They called me a liar. I was just a kid. I wouldn’t have known how to make up something as fucked-up as that.”

  “How fucked-up?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  WHITE CAR

  Artice has his head cupped in his hand as he stares at the table and recounts his experience with the Toy Man. I keep my mouth shut and just let him talk. I get the feeling that this is the first time he’s articulated what happened as an adult. While some details may fade, the passing of years can also bring on a deeper understanding of what actually happened.

  The first thing I realize is that Artice’s dates are fuzzy. Although I’ll never know exactly when he first ran into the Toy Man, a quick bit of math reveals that it probably happened between six months and a year after Christopher Bostrom went missing.

  Given the pained expressions on Artice’s face, I can tell the memories remain vivid.

  “Even before I saw him, I heard kids talking about the Toy Man all the time. He was supposed to be this dude who’d drive around in a big white Cadillac and roll down his window and ask if you’d been a good boy or not. If you said yes, he’d give you five bucks or maybe some action figure or something. Then he’d tell you it was a secret. He didn’t want the other kids getting jealous.

  “Of course kids being like they are, everyone talked. They’d whisper to you, ‘Have you heard of the Toy Man?’ They’d ask if you’d ever met him. Some kids would even lie because they didn’t want to miss out.

  “I never had shit. So you can imagine how excited I was about the idea of the Toy Man rolling up next to me. I swear I even stood on sidewalks, staring at every white car, hoping it was the Toy Man.

  “Then one day, I’m walking down 120th, and along comes this big white Caddy. ‘You there!’ he yells out at me. Deep voice. Deep motherfucking voice. ‘Have you been a good boy?’

  “‘Hell yes,’ I tell him. And just like that, he waves five dollars at me. I walk up to the window, and he reaches out and grabs my hand. Gentle, but firm, and pulls me closer. He looks me in the eyes and asks again if I’ve been a good boy.

  “I say, ‘Yes, sir.’ He asks my name, where I live, and then gives me five dollars. He says keep it a secret, then drives away.

  “I’d never had five dollars in my life. You would have thought I’d won the lottery. I went straight to the ten-cent candy section in the store and bought me one of everything I could.

  “I remember sitting on a bench eating all that candy, thinking that was the best day of my life. I was a dumb little fucker. For five bucks, he bought me.

  “For days I kept hoping he’d show up again. Finally he pulled up again in that Caddy and asked if I’d been a good boy. I said, ‘Yes, sir.’ He then said he heard that I told some other kids he’d given me five dollars.

  “I started bawling, saying at first that it wasn’t true, those other kids were liars. Then I told him it was true and I promised I would never tell anyone again.

  “Well, he started to drive away and, to me, it felt like Santa Claus flying right past your house. Then all of a sudden his brake lights come on, and it’s like Santa changed his mind.

  “The passenger door opens up and I hear his voice ask me, ‘Do you want to go to Toy Land?’

  “I had no motherfucking idea what that meant, but I knew I sure as hell wanted to go there. So I say, ‘Yes, please, Mr. Toy Man.’

  “And he says I have to get down on the bottom of the floor of his car because he’s going to have to sneak me into Toy Land because kids ain’t allowed.

  “I was nine, man. That shit made sense. I wasn’t thinking this was so he could keep me from knowing where the hell we were going.

  “It could have been minutes. It could have been hours. I was so excited, I didn’t care. Finally he says I can get out. We’re in Toy Land. I open the door, and sure as hell, I’m in motherfucking Toy Land. I know it was a garage now, but back then, it might as well have been the North Pole. There was walls full of action figures, games, a whole fucking toy store. Plus there were balloons and music.

  “He led me into another room where a big-screen TV was playing cartoons. Another one had video games. He let me play as much as I wanted.

  “I remember he gave me some juice to drink, and I felt a bit weird. I was thinking it was just the way you felt in Toy Land.”

  Artice catches his breath. “So I play those games, and he does stuff. Grabbing me like it’s a game. I was laughing and having fun. I didn’t know what was going on.” His face takes on a tortured look. “I was just a kid. Nobody ever gave me any attention.”

  My stomach is churning. “I’m sorry, man. Sorry for bringing it up.”

  He looks at me funny. “Shit. That ain’t the real bad part. Fuck, I had counselors in juvie pull that kind of shit. It’s where it went from there. After he’d grabbed my dick and all that, he had me get back in his car and hide down on the floor and he took me back to where I was picked up.

  “Now, another kid, he’d mentioned the Toy Man grabbed him and all that. Some other kids called him a faggot, so I made sure that I kept my mouth shut.

  “The Toy Man picked me up again a few days later. He asked if I told anyone. I said I hadn’t. This time he believed me. He said he was going to take me to Toy Land again and had me crouch down on the floor of the Caddy like the last time.

  “When we got to his place, he offered me some more red punch. But I remembered the last time I drank it I couldn’t play Super Mario Kart worth shit, so I pretended to drink it but actually dumped it on the floor.

  “I was sitting in a game chair, playing, when he comes in the room and tells me he wants to take me to a special room only the best boys get to go to.

  “I remember asking him what was in there. He said a surprise just for me.

  “So of course I followed him. We went into his backyard, and there was this garage. We went inside, but it was all dark. I was scared, but Mr. Toy Man told me it was okay. He turned on some music, and it was real loud.

  “I could feel him shuffling around in there. We were standing on something like a gym mat, and every time he moved it slid a little.

  “The light comes on and . . . Holy shit.” Artice closes his eyes. “Mr. Toy Man is standing there buck-ass naked in front of me. The first thing I notice are all these scars on his body. Fucked-up shit. Then I see he’s got a knife. A big-ass OJ knife. Worse thing, though, was the look on his face. Scariest thing I ever seen. He’s always been this smiling, happy guy. This was like a demon took over.

  “I didn’t even notice the first cut.” Artice makes a striking motion across his chest. “I had on some baggy, hand-me-down shit, so it didn’t go in all that deep. But deep enough. I ran for the fucking door. Toy Man must have thought he locked it, or was too drunk to move fast. I don’t know.”

  Artice pauses for a moment, his breath coming more quickly, his gaze far away. Then he smiles.

  “Man, I was out that door and across his yard faster than a cat on fire. He had a fence, but I was a good climber. I remember the sound he made when he hit it like a rhino. Boom!

  “He yelled, ‘Come back! It’s just a game!’ Bull. Shit. I wasn’t that dumb. I kept running and running until I came to a bus stop and some Mexican lady started screaming when she saw me.

  “Next thing you know, I’m in an ambulance and some cop is asking me what happened. I told him I was in Toy Land and a monster took over Mr. Toy Man. So of course they thought I was nuts.

  “A couple of days later, they had me drive around in an unmarked car and tell them which house it happened at. But I couldn’t say. When I ran, I just ran. I never looked back.

  “Counselors decided it was some gang-initiation thing and I was lying. Nine. There are some hard-core motherfuckers out there, but there wasn’t no baby gang doing that
kind of shit then. But they believed what they wanted to believe. Eventually, so did I.”

  I speak for the first time in several minutes. “I’m sorry to put you through that again. So, when you painted the picture of him . . . ?”

  “That was me trying to warn kids, I guess. But the truth is, I didn’t remember much. Little things would come back to me now and then, even years later . . . like the smell of that garage. Shit died in there. And other things—there were jars of shit on the walls. I don’t know what, but it wasn’t goddamn peanut butter.” He lets out a long exhale. “And there you go. Artice versus the Toy Man.”

  “Jesus Christ.” It’s all I can say.

  “Don’t feel bad for me. Feel bad for all the little brothers who didn’t want to cheat at Mario Kart.”

  “And you never found the house again?”

  He shakes his head. “When I got older, I’d drive around, trying to find it, with a gun in my lap, looking for that white Caddy. I never found it. I don’t know how far I ran that night. It couldn’t have been that far. I was bleeding heavy. But far enough for the cops to not find him.”

  “Do you remember anything? Houses? Landmarks?”

  “Sort of. But it’s all jumbled.”

  “What if there was a way to retrace your steps?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There can’t be that many houses that match that description with the garage and the fence.”

  “If you got some photos, I’ll look at them.”

  I think for a moment. “We may have something better.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  SIMULATION

  An hour north of Barstow, California, there’s a city that looks like something in Afghanistan. Complete with markets, mosques, and even a soccer stadium, it could be mistaken for a thousand places in the Middle East with its desert backdrop.

  Located at Fort Irwin, it was built to train US soldiers before they’re deployed overseas. There are similar training facilities at other bases, including a three-hundred-acre city in Virginia used for practicing urban counterterrorism tactics—it even has a partial subway.

  Since the war on terror began, we’ve spent billions of dollars building simulations of the places where we might have to send troops. Some of these simulations are virtual.

  When I went to work for OpenSkyAI, I was given access to an urban-threat assessment tool that’s basically Google Earth from the future. Somewhere in the Northeast, there’s a server farm with high-resolution images of every square foot of America (and other countries), complete with in-depth data that effectively creates a 3-D model of whatever you want to look at.

  I can pull it up on my phone. As Artice relates certain details, I run a script that finds matches for what he said. We already know the bus stop where he was found. The next step is identifying the house.

  I pull up the six closest candidates and create a 3-D run-through for him to watch. The first-person perspective is accurate even down to his height at the time.

  I push my phone against the glass and play the locations through for him. The first four don’t get much of a reaction. It’s the fifth one that tells me we have a hit by the way his pupils dilate.

  “That’s the motherfucking house!” he yells, getting a stern look from a guard who’s about to call our session to an end. He lowers his voice. “Goddamn it. If I wasn’t in here . . .”

  It’s probably a good thing that he is. I’m not sure what he’d do to whoever opened that front door. In his shoes, I’m not sure what I would do, either.

  “Artice,” I say to get his attention. “It’s possible this may not be the house.”

  He glares at me. “Don’t be like them. Don’t be like them.”

  “I’m just saying. Time changes things. The Toy Man may not even live there anymore.” There’s also the chance that Artice concocted all this. I can’t fully rule that out.

  Instead of getting angry, he just nods. “So now what? Call the cops? They’ll believe you.”

  “You overestimate the credibility I have with them. I can’t just call 911 and tell them I have the location of the Freddy Krueger of Compton based on the testimony of an inmate at county.”

  He lets out an exhausted sigh. “It’s like when the Grim Sleeper was icing all those hookers. One of them even told the cops where it happened.”

  “She was wrong by one house,” I point out.

  “And that made all the difference in the world. So what are you going to do? Write an angry tweet? Tell all your white liberal friends how you helped out the poor black boy?”

  “I was going to go knock on the front door.”

  Artice stares at me without blinking those penetrating gray eyes. “Are you fucking nuts?”

  “It’s not like I’m a nine-year-old kid. If he invites me inside, I’ll decline. But I’m betting he’s long gone.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because you got away. If he’s smart, he stayed clear of the house for a while and then moved a few months later.”

  “To where?”

  “I think he stayed in the general area, not too far away.”

  “So how do we find him?”

  “Housing records. Utility bills. If this was his house, then he had to leave a trace.”

  “Yeah . . .” Artice thinks for a moment. “There’s one other thing about him. I couldn’t quite describe it when I was a kid, but it makes more sense now.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He talked funny. Kind of like a white guy, but not. Like he wasn’t from here.”

  “New York?”

  He shakes his head. “I didn’t know accents back then. There was street talk and TV talk. I learned both. One to talk to my friends. The other to talk to any adult who could make my life difficult in a facility.” He pauses again. “Man, I don’t think you should be just rolling up there. Wait for me to get out, and we’ll both go.”

  “When is that going to happen?”

  “Maybe if you can say I helped get the Toy Man, sooner. Nobody got hurt. It was all a misunderstanding.”

  I’m not sure if I buy that, but that’s not for me to decide. “I have to get something. Some kind of proof. Otherwise it won’t mean anything.”

  “Yeah, well. Once you do, we can show them this.” Artice lifts up his shirt and shows a huge scar that goes from his hip to his shoulder.

  “Holy shit.”

  “You got that straight.”

  “How the fuck did you get away?”

  “Fear, man. Fear. It’s your best friend.” He pauses for a moment. “But you know that. Don’t you?”

  “I’ll show you mine another time.”

  Artice shakes his head and glances around furtively. “Don’t say that in here.”

  “Oops, sorry.”

  “Let me know what happens. If you don’t, I’ll just assume the Toy Man got you. Whatever you do, don’t drink the red punch.” Artice has slipped back into his jovial persona, which I guess is a good thing for his sanity’s sake. “You’ll never beat Bowser in Mario Kart.”

  “Noted.”

  “Seriously. Watch yourself. Don’t think just because you survived one monster you’ll survive the next. I’m alive because I kept running from them. Not to them.”

  As he walks out of the visiting area, I take heed of his advice. The Toy Man went from a mathematical curiosity to a very real possibility in just a few days.

  Artice could be messing with me like those kids back at Rico’s house. He might just be a skillful liar who knows how to tell you what you want to hear. Although the only benefit in it for him that I can see is if he’s telling the truth.

  Finding the Toy Man might help his case and get him out. I don’t know if that’s overall a good thing for society, but I get the feeling if his life hadn’t been such a shit show from the start, he wouldn’t be in here.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  DEED

  The title to 17658 Wimbledon has had four owners since it was built
. From 1986 to 2005, it belonged to Kevin and Trudy Harrison. From 2005 to 2011, it belonged to a Jeffery L. Washington—this was the Toy Man period. Currently, it is owned by New Castle Property Management.

  While normally I would have experienced a eureka moment at discovering the name of the homeowner, I’d already discovered in exploring South Central property records that the name on the deed may not be the real name of the person who purchased the home. There are lots of homes owned by shell companies or people of record who are either fictitious or have no idea their name is on the deed.

  This house was paid for by Jeffery Washington in an all-cash transaction. Trying to find anything about Jeffery L. Washington turned out to be fruitless. I strongly suspect that he does not exist.

  I couldn’t find any example of another Jeffery L. Washington buying a home in the area after that time. Maybe he moved on, but it’s more than likely an alias.

  Still, it’s not a dead end by a long shot. There are all kinds of records, from utility bills to phone calls, that may still be out there for the finding. While I don’t have ready access to them, if I can get something strong to connect Artice and Christopher to the property, I might be able to convince even someone as cynical as Detective Corman. But I won’t hold my breath.

  My next best bet is to talk to the neighbors. The Toy Man had two of them that might have seen something. Of course, this still being South Central, there’s a good chance nobody’s going to tell me a thing.

  After I’ve done my background search into the house, I give William a call. I don’t want him to start kicking in doors, or worse, tell Mathis that we have a suspect, so I just tell him I’ve been running down some leads and will have more to tell him. Soon, I hope.

  “What was that about the Toy Man?” he asks.

  I figure I can at least tell him that much. “It’s an urban legend some of the kids tell. He pops up every few years.”

  “And does he have anything to do with Christopher?”

  “Maybe. I think he might be a real man.” I don’t want to tell William that this guy was a kid fiddler and a killer, but he can fill in the blanks.