by Gary Braver
Vernon continued for her. “The county police said not to worry, he probably just wandered into the woods. But that was pure bulltiki, because the first thing you teach your kids down here is to respect these woods. The next house on the other side is seventeen miles. I’ve lived in these parts for fortysix years, and I could still get lost a thousand yards in. It all looks the same, and we got that through his head from the day he could walk. You don’t go into the woods.
“Musta had two hundred people search for him—police, volunteer firemen, neighbors, and just about everybody at Mount Ida’s. We looked for a week. But when he didn’t show up by nightfall that first day, I knew we lost him. I knew somebody had taken him. I felt it in my bones. God only knows why.”
12
Brendan was checking out the odd head scars in his bathroom mirror when it crossed his mind to kill his grandfather.
The notion just popped into his head without the slightest shock—like deciding to clip his toenails.
And it would be one-two-three easy. No fuss, no muss. No telltale fingerprints or DNA evidence to sweat. No decision about weapons or modus operandi. No having to bury bloody meat cleavers. No burning or cutting up the remains. No witnesses.
And no motive, unlike going back to the diner and putting a knife in Angie for publicly humiliating him. He had no motive—just curiosity. (Besides, what kid would kill his own grandfather—his last remaining relative?) And it would be the perfect murder: Just hold back on his pills and sit back and watch him gasp to death on his La-Z-Boy. That would be something. Might melt some snow.
“Hey, Brendan! Where the hell are you, boy?”
“Coming,” he shouted. Richard wanted his refill. Grandpa Richard, although he never called him grandpa. Just Richard. Grandpa was a technicality of blood.
And no blood. No red hand.
His face would scrunch up in wincing pain as the realization swelled in his chest that he was going to die from arterial occlusion. Inarticulate sounds would rise from his throat, saliva stringing from his chin onto his shirt, his hands alternately flailing then clutching his breast, his feet kicking, his mouth shuddering, air squealing from a clenched larynx, trying to call for help, blubbering in disbelief that Brendan was sitting there transfixed in fascination just three feet away munching pretzel logs.
Maybe that would do it.
“Brendy?” he shouted from his chair downstairs in the TV room.
“In a minute!” Richard had called him that as long as he could remember, which wasn’t much. It came from Brendy Bear, as in Brendy Bear Hugs because Brendan was always hugging and kissing people, Richard claimed. He didn’t do that anymore. He hadn’t touched his grandfather in years. He hadn’t touched anybody in years. Nor did he understand the impulse. He had been misnamed.
Brendan really had nothing against Richard. In fact, he liked him the way a dog might like a devoted owner. He was a nice old man who treated him well, gave him money and, when he turned seventeen, his old Ford pickup which Richard had used for his plumbing business before retiring. Richard had taken him in when his parents died, raising him as best he could at his age. He was protective, kind, and generous with what little he had. There surely was no reason to kill him. It was purely academic. Brendan simply wondered what he’d feel—if anything. He wondered if he’d cry.
Richard had a bad heart. A couple years ago he had suffered a myocardial infarction and now suffered from ventricular tachycardia arrhythmia—rapid heartbeats. In his condition, Richard had maybe three years at best. His friends were dying off, one last week in fact—maybe his last. Brendan could tell that that bothered Richard.
“Old men know when an old man dies.”
Yeats was right about that.
In the medicine cabinet sat a row of maybe a dozen little amber plastic pill containers. Richard Berryman.
I measure my life in Walgreen vials, he thought.
Lipitor, Enalapril, Demerol, metropolol, Pronestyl.
WARNING: This drug may impair the ability to drive or operate machinery.
WARNING: Do not use this medicine if you are pregnant, plan to become pregnant, or are breast-feeding.
WARNING: This medication may decrease your ability to be human.
Generic name: Wintermind. Take as directed.
One must have a mind of winter …
Not to think of any misery in the sound of the wind …
Brendan closed the medicine cabinet and left the bathroom. At the bottom of the stairs the light of the television made the foyer pulse. Brendan walked down, the lines from Wallace Stevens’s “The Snow Man” drowning out all the other clutter in his head.
He entered the parlor.
The old man was sprawled out in his La-Z-Boy, his wispy white hair barely covering the old pink dome, his T-shirt rumpled, his pajama bottoms half up his pathetic white sticks of legs, his bare feet knobbed on the footrest like claws. According to the old photos, he used to be a big, strapping guy.
Richard looked up, his eyes wet and yellow, like sad clams. Death would be a gift.
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Brendan knew he should feel something for Richard. Anything. He understood the finality of his grandfather’s condition, that he could go any day now. He just wished he could feel something. Anger. Horror. Sadness. Love. He wished he could cry.
“I called it in three hours ago, so it should be ready.” Richard held up a twenty-dollar bill. “And whyn’t you pick up some mint chocolate chip while you’re at it.”
“I thought chocolate was bad for you.”
“What the hell isn’t? Here.” He flapped his hand.
Let the lamp affix its beam.The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Brendan gave his head a shake to snap away the poetry jamming his mind. It was a constant distraction. White rhyming noise in turbo. At the moment it was Wallace Stevens for some reason. In ten minutes it could be Elizabeth Barrett Browning. God! There wasn’t enough room in his head. It was like a flash plague that would strike without warning—his only defense was to build mind quarantines to box them up.
“And get some hot fudge, while you’re at it.”
He could do it with the throw pillow from the couch. Or a quick shot to the throat, snap his trachea. Snap his limbs like carrot sticks.
Not even horror, like Trisha Costello dying the other night.
Can’t even cry.
Brendan slowly crossed over to Richard and pressed his face so close to him he could smell his sourness.
The old man flinched. “What? What the hell you doing?”
“Do you kn-know anything about these scars?” He lowered his head and parted his hair.
“Jeez, I already told you I know nothing about them.”
“Use your magnifying glass.” Brendan handed it to him and bowed his head down again.
Richard peered through the glass at his scalp. “Just a few white spots. Where the hell you get them?”
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
“How would I know? Maybe your mother dropped you on your head. Probably explains things.”
“How b-badly do you want me to get your pills?” Brendan tried to put on a mean face, but he didn’t have anything inside to back it. Brendan never felt mean. He never felt much of anything. Just a flat-line awareness that something was missing.
“Here. Take these so you won’t forget.” Richard waved the empty vial. “What are you staring at me like that for?”
Brendan muttered under his breath.
“Aw jeez, Brendy, please no poetry, okay? I want to watch this show.” Then he added, “I think I liked it better when you couldn’t talk.”
Brendan looked at Richard. “W-what’s that?”
“I said would you please get me my pills.”
“N-no, about how you liked it better w-w-when I couldn’t talk.”
Richard made a sigh of exasperation. “It was just
a joke.”
“Well, I missed it.”
“It’s just that you didn’t start talking until you were four or five. I don’t know. But God knows you’ve made up for it. So will you please get my pills or do I have to call 911?”
Brendan studied Richard for a few seconds then he picked the car key out of the candy bowl on the desk. Beside it sat a double frame with photographs of Brendan’s parents. They had died in a car crash on the Mass Pike outside of Worcester when he was nine. They were returning to their Wellesley home from a Christmas party. It was a night of freezing rain. But it wasn’t the ice that killed them. They were sideswiped by another vehicle on an empty stretch and driven into a concrete barrier. The impact was so great that they died instantly, said the reports. There were no witnesses to the accident, and the truck that hit them never stopped. But weeks later one whose paint matched that on his parents’ car turned up some miles away. It had been stolen. The police had no suspects, and today it remained just another cold case of hit-and-run. That’s when he was moved up here to live with Richard whose wife was still alive—Grandma Betty. She died ten months later. For the last seven years, it’d been he and Richard.
“I’ve got a question for you,” Brendan said, before he left. “Did my parents drink any kind of almond liqueur … cordial? Amaretto?”
Richard shook his head. “Jeez, you ask the damnedest questions.”
“W-when you visited them, what did they drink?”
Richard winced as if trying to squeeze up a memory. “I don’t know. They weren’t boozers, if that’s what you mean. You mother liked white wine, and your dad was a beer man. Why?”
“Did they cook with almond extract—cookies, candies, ice cream—stuff like that?”
“Are you going to get me my pills? I’m not supposed to go more than four hours, and it’s been six.”
If Richard went into cardiac arrest and died, Brendan would become a ward of the state and turned over to some foster home or orphanage. That would not be good. “I’m going,” he said. “What about you? Did you drink a-almond liqueurs or eat anything with a-almond extract?”
“You think I was some kind of boozer?”
“Did you?”
“Jesus Christ. What is it with you?” Richard looked confused and exasperated, maybe even a little frightened. “No. Scotch. I don’t think I ever had any Almaretto or whatever. And I don’t eat nuts because they get stuck in what teeth I got left. Okay? Now get me the damn pills before I croak.”
Brendan put his backpack over his shoulder, feeling the weight of his field glasses inside. “I’ll be back.”
“Christ, and before dawn, please!” Brendan was halfway out the door when Richard called out: “Hey, Brendy, you’re a good kid.”
No, Brendan thought. I’m a snowman.
13
Every Thursday night, Cindy Porter would stop at Morton’s Deli for some pastrami, sauerkraut, potato salad, kosher pickles, fresh sub rolls, and a copy of the Cape Ann Weekly Gazette. Then she’d head home and, weather permitting, she’d settle into the backyard hot tub with her boyfriend, Vinnie, and read the paper and pig out.
As a nurse, she knew better, given how the cholesterol, fat, and salt in one of her Mortons could probably send a hippopotamus into cardiac arrest. But the rest of the week, she did her tofu-wheat-germ-and-broccoli virtues. Besides, she had read about a study by some Harvard nutritionist who concluded that a steady diet of low fat and cholesterol statistically added at best two months to one’s life. Her weekly Mortons were worth a measly eight weeks, especially since her parents were in their seventies and still going strong.
It was a pleasant evening, and, as usual, she changed into her bathing suit. Vinnie was visiting his mother in Connecticut and wouldn’t be back until late. So she made herself a sandwich and settled into the tub with a cold Sam Adams and the Gazette. As the warm water gushed around her, she felt her muscles loosen in place. She took a bite of sandwich and washed it down with some beer.
The headlines were about the ongoing battle to build low-income housing. She was against it, only because she knew that only ten percent of the actual complex would be for poor families, the rest for expensive country condo living that would amount to a bonanza for developers. And that meant more coastal acreage would be jammed with construction, and more traffic clogging town roads. She made note of the town hearing next week.
She turned the paper over. Catching her eye at the bottom of the page was the headline: “Human Remains off Gloucester Identified.”
According to the story, a skull and a leg bone that had been pulled up by professional scallopers two months ago had been positively identified. She vaguely recalled reading about the discovery. Apparently the remains had been DNA-matched to a six-year-old boy from Tennessee.
Maybe he had been up this way on a summer vacation or a visit with relatives. The poor kid. There were boating accidents and disappearances every year, usually because people don’t check the weather reports and then get caught in storms.
The story went on to say how forensics experts from the medical examiner’s office in Boston originally were baffled by the mysterious holes in the boy’s skull.
On an inside page, where the story continued, was a schematic drawing of the skull showing the odd cluster of holes—two sets on the left side of the forehead just behind the hairline, and above the ear.
Experts still aren’t certain if the holes were made by marine organisms or had occurred before death.The cause of death has not yet been determined. However, forensic scientists estimate that the remains could have been in the water for over a year, leading some to conclude that the child had drowned.But according to Gloucester police who worked in conjunction with Tennessee authorities, the child’s disappearance was being treated as a kidnapping and homicide.
The story went on to say that the remains had been returned to the parents for burial.
Cindy stared at the diagram.
That strange boy who came into the ER the other night had scars on his head just like these. The poetry kid. The savant.
Brendan something or other.
“Yes, they’re drill marks,” Joe Steiner insisted. “And you don’t need to get a second opinion. While you were gone, I had Boston look at them. We got both stereoscopic and an electron microscopic analysis. No marine organism in the books made those holes. They also ruled out lasers, knives, ice picks, and every known kind of muzzle projectile—bullet, pellet, BB, buckshot, dart—you name it. They were drilled, Greg, and you can take that to the bank.”
Greg was on the phone the morning after he had returned from Chattanooga. He would have called from the road yesterday, but Joe was out of the office yesterday, car-shopping with his daughter.
“How come the parents weren’t notified about the holes?”
“Because somebody messed up, maybe at the Gloucester end, maybe Tennessee,” Joe said. “It’s possible it was simply overlooked, or somebody didn’t think it was significant. Whatever, the Boston ME made it clear those perforations were the results of a neurological procedure. And that got into the report because I saw it.”
“They didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.”
“If the kid had had an operation, the parents would have remembered. Nobody saw it as a cause of death. These things happen.”
“Joe, you weren’t down there,” Greg said. “You didn’t see the expression on their faces when I told them that their kid’s head had been drilled.”
“I understand. That must have been a bitch. But when you calm down, you might want to give this woman a call.”
“What woman?”
“Write this down: Cynthia Porter, R.N., at the Essex Medical Center.”
“What’s she got?”
“A kid with cluster-scars on his head identical to those of the Sagamore Boy and the Dixon kid,” Joe said.
“What?”
“And he’s alive.”
14
Nicole was naked but
for a tutu and doing peek-a-boo pirouettes while her boyfriend, the older guy from the diner, lay naked and panting on her bed in a state of red alert, his wanger armed and poised like a surface-to-air missile—when suddenly she glided to the window and dropped the blinds, cutting off Brendan’s view.
Brendan lowered the binoculars. Whatever they were doing in there, only the fish in her aquarium could appreciate.
It was a little after midnight that same evening. For nearly half an hour he had watched her through her bathroom window just thirty feet from his perch, taking in every moment of her precoital ritual. She had stripped down to that pink-cream flesh then, with her back to him, she brushed her golden mane, after which, turning slightly toward him, she shaved herself at the sink, her arms raised like swan necks toward the ceiling so he got a full double-barrel shot of those pink-capped breasts, then raising her legs as if practicing a ballet move, running the razor in long strokes, turning this way and that, all the while oblivious to the raised blinds and Brendan in the tree right outside her window.
Even so close, he could not see his mark because she never faced him straight-on long enough—just a quick flash of the dark target area, then she slipped into the shower, which was one of those fancy all-glass-and-chrome enclosures that instantly misted up, rendering her a moving impressionism in pink. And when she was finished, he lost her to a towel.
Brendan slipped the field glasses into its case and slumped against the tree trunk. This was the third time he had staked her out. And another bust. Next time.
