Boy Still Missing

by John Searles

  Who would ever believe me over him?

  That’s what I was asking myself the moment I saw a white van slow down in front of the motel and turn into the parking lot.

  Channel 6 Eyewitness News.

  Jeanny seemed brought to life by the sight of it. Even from the window, we could see Roget watching that big blue eye painted on the passenger door. It seemed to be staring at him, taking in the whole scene, actually witnessing everything that had happened here, everything that was about to happen, too. I wasn’t as confident as Jeanny that the TV news spelled victory, but something told me Roget realized he might lose control of this situation if he wasn’t careful. And when five minutes later a Channel 9 Action News van pulled up, followed by a station wagon from Channel 3, I actually started to believe he was scared.

  “Did you call all of those stations?” I asked Jeanny.

  “No,” she said, not turning her gaze from the window. “But word must be out about what’s happening here.”

  I watched Roget rush to the back of his car and pop open the trunk. He pulled out a roll of DO NOT CROSS—POLICE INVESTIGATION yellow tape. Barked orders at his men to block off the area. But the three reporters and their cameramen were already dispersing. Two of them headed toward the state troopers. A silver-haired reporter scrutinized the lot before approaching anyone. He was a man I had seen my whole life when I flicked channels on the tube or ate at the TV tables with my parents as they watched the local news. It felt weird to see him down there, looking too tall and artificial with his beige trench coat and square face. Like he belonged more in the box in my living room than in real life. He squinted his eyes toward Roget and seemed to size up his gold sheriff’s badge, different from the rest, then walked toward him. A cameraman followed, weighed down by a snaky tangle of wires and a bulging black knapsack. A white spotlight clicked on, casting a sharp glow on Roget’s saggy face. I couldn’t hear the reporter’s question, but whatever he said must have pissed Roget off. He shouted, “Step away, sir! We are in the middle of a police action, and your presence is a direct interference. Now, step away!”

  The reporter didn’t move. He held a microphone extended in his outstretched arm, the light burning behind him, the square black eye of the camera watching Roget. He repeated his question, again not loud enough for us to hear. And Roget shouted one more time, “I am ordering you to step away!” His men rolled out more of that yellow tape, corralling the reporters as best they could.

  But that didn’t stop them.

  The man from Channel 9—who I had never seen on TV but who looked a bit like Joshua Fuller only without the birthmark—positioned himself and his cameraman so that the motel was directly behind him. The reporter from Channel 6 did the same. And in an instant two lights shone on them as they spoke into their microphones.

  “This must be live,” Jeanny said, jumping up to turn on the TV.

  I followed her, and she was right. On Channel 9 there was the Joshua Fuller look-alike. The words “Special Report” flashed beneath him at the bottom of the screen. His voice came out at a steady volume, because the TV in this room worked right. Still, it took me a few seconds to focus on what he was saying. My brain was busy adjusting to the idea that the man outside was the man I was watching from inside—that so many people were watching as he talked about me, my mother.

  “. . . In a strange twist, this kidnapper is not asking for money. His demands? He wants the town’s sheriff—Officer Russell Roget—investigated for an alleged connection to his mother’s death from a criminal abortion. The fifteen-year-old boy has accused Officer Roget of leaving Theresa Pindle to die in the motel you see behind me on January twenty-third of this year. . . ”

  He kept talking, but something made me reach up and switch the station. Sure enough, on Channel 6 another one of the reporters from outside stared back at us. Only this guy had already begun talking about my mother’s past. “. . . The late Theresa Pindle made headlines years ago, then under the name Theresa Tierney, when she sued a Manhattan doctor on the grounds that he coerced her into giving up her child in a private adoption for his financial gain. . . ”

  Again my hand seemed to reach up on its own and turn the dial. On Channel 3 Edie’s face filled the screen. “I want my baby,” she sobbed into the hard, black nub of a microphone. “I just want my baby. That’s all.”

  As I watched her cry, I found myself imagining all the other people tuning in to this newscast. A man who had just returned home from his job. A woman who had cooked him dinner. The two of them—and a thousand others—sitting down to eat their Hamburger Helper in front of the TV, only to find this beautiful, shell-shocked woman crying about her baby who was locked in a motel room with a fifteen-year-old boy. What were those people thinking as they stared at Edie, at this whole mess of a life?

  The poor woman. . .

  The poor child. . .

  Maybe they felt a fleeting pang of pity. But more than that, I bet they thanked God it wasn’t them on the screen, that their world was safe, secure. Tomorrow they could get up and go to work. Come home again to watch somebody else’s life fall apart on the television or in the newspaper. Little did any of those people know, I thought as I gazed at Edie’s grief-twisted face, how close they were all the time. That one day you could make a choice that seemed like a good one in the moment, only to end up careening down a dark road you never intended to take. Like me when I kissed Edie that first night. Like my mother when she rolled down her window and stared up at Roget’s badge.

  Fate.

  Chance.

  “So what happens next?” the silver-haired reporter was asking. “Will the police agree to this boy’s unusual demands? For now we can only wait and see. And pray that this terrified mother gets her child back unharmed. We will continue with live updates as this story unfolds. In Holedo, this is Jonathan Market. Channel Three News.”

  All three stations returned to regular programming, and Jeanny and I walked to the window again. We had more company out there: Marnie’s car, my father’s truck. I scanned the lot, and my eyes landed on my father first. I pointed him out to Jeanny. He was standing away from Edie, flanked by three officers. Snow dusted his shoulders and melted on top of his hatless head. His face puzzled itself up in confusion, more lost than I had ever seen him look. It was impossible to hear what the police were saying, but I guessed that they were asking him questions.

  Who gave your son the gun?

  Has he ever shown signs of violence before?

  Is your son a drug user?

  When was the last time the two of you had contact?

  I imagined those words dumped on him like snow from a plow, leaving him buried in a cold, white silence with his lack of answers. He didn’t have any explanation for them as to how this had happened. How could he? And I found myself wondering for the first time what he had been doing since the night I left home. Drinking? Bawling on a barstool night after night to Mac Maloney? Telling anyone who would listen that he had lost his beloved wife?

  I turned my eyes away from him and spotted Marnie standing behind the yellow tape. Gazing up at the motel, hands clasped tight, praying as if this were Mecca. Joshua Fuller was out there, too, and when I saw him, I decided that the TV reporter didn’t look so much like him after all. Joshua seemed taller, skinnier to me. I thought back to him asking Roget for a lift to Marnie’s place. And I wondered if he and Marnie had seen the news together and raced over here. Or if maybe they had simply driven by on their way to the bus station after their interview had been completed.

  Look at all those police, I imagined Joshua saying. Stop the car.

  I pictured Marnie’s face full of alarm as she stepped on the brakes. Oh, my goodness, she might have said. Oh, my God.

  I wondered, too, about Joshua’s visit with Roget earlier. As cool as Roget had played it when they paced the room next door, that must have been when he realized I was hiding out in the motel. The unlocked door. Leon’s car. The messy bed. The blankets over the windows
. Those clues had told him all he needed to know. And as soon as he ditched Joshua, he must have begun to gather his men, maybe he contacted Edie and waited until she arrived before surrounding the place.

  All that—or something pretty close to it—had been going on while Jeanny and I were having sex. Knowing that, I probably should have regretted that I’d agreed to sleep here one more night. But I didn’t feel that way. Instead I felt grateful for the chance to be with Jeanny. No matter the cost. I pulled my eyes away from the commotion outside the window and slipped my arms around her waist. Kissed her cheek.

  “How could you be kissing me when all this is going on?” she said. “I mean, shouldn’t we be doing something more?”

  I sighed and let go of her, searched for a way to explain everything I felt. My life seemed to have taken on an unstoppable energy all its own. And something told me there wasn’t much else we could do right then. We had to just wait and hope that someone out there listened to me about Roget. In the meantime I wanted to be as close to Jeanny as I could. Because I knew this was it for us. But instead of telling her any of that, I simply tried to kiss her again. Just to have her a little longer. But she pushed me away so she could look out the window. “Not now, Dominick.”

  I gave up after that and watched outside with her some more. We were quiet until Jeanny pressed her finger to the glass. “There’s my mother,” she said, her voice sounding shocked and happy at the same time.

  I scanned the parking lot but didn’t see her. “Where?”

  “Right there,” Jeanny said. “Getting out of the Volkswagen. She’s all by herself. I wonder who’s watching my brothers.”

  Jeanny’s mother was a frenzied-looking woman with a spray of stringy hair, dressed in a ratty nightgown with a winter coat slung over it. My mind filled with an image of her in bed when the phone rang, jolting her from a long, drugged sleep like a scream in the night. The police, or a TV station, waking her with bad news. Her daughter, her only daughter, who hadn’t come home in three days, was in danger. I imagined her throwing on that coat and hurrying over here. The tires of her little car slipping and sliding along the slick roads the whole way. I watched her as she left the door to her Volkswagen open and rushed toward the swarm of policemen. One of the officers lifted the yellow tape so she could duck beneath. He led her to his car and fumbled around inside for a bit before holding the radio receiver to her mouth.

  When Mrs. Garvey spoke, the sound of her trembling voice seeped into the winter air and halted the buzz of activity down in the lot. “Jeanny, baby,” she said over the speaker. “Are you all right in there? Did he hurt you? Please tell me you’re okay.”

  “What do you know,” Jeanny said, holding her hand to her chin, that barely noticeable scar. She bit her lip like she might cry. “She’s actually worried about me.”

  Jeanny took a deep breath and put her mouth to the cracked-open window, called out, “I’m okay! Just tell the police to give him what he wants and this will all be over!”

  When Jeanny leaned back, we watched her mother collapse into an officer’s burly arms crying. He helped her take a seat in the squad car, gave her something to drink. Meanwhile Roget kept busy. Talking into his radio. Ordering his men around. Acting as if his name hadn’t been called out in connection with my mother’s death once again. He walked toward my father, and I saw the two of them talking. Figuring out what to do next, I supposed. In that moment I knew my father believed Roget over me despite all the shitty things he always said about cops. And it made the anger I felt toward both of them rattle my insides. They stepped away from each other, and my father moved toward the police car where Mrs. Garvey was sitting. He gave her a sort of nod, then took the radio from the officer.

  “Dominick,” he said over the speaker, “it’s your father.” He stopped. Maybe struggling to find what he could say to me. The right words to talk me down. Make up for all he had or hadn’t done to lead me here. This was all he could come up with: “I shouldn’t have gotten so angry at you that night you left. And I’m sorry. I know you miss your mom. So do I. But come on now, son. What are you doing in there? Let’s cut this out. Come out so we can all go home.”

  He made it sound like I was hiding too long in a game of hide-and-seek. Come out, come out, wherever you are. Did he honestly think we’d all have a laugh and head home? He had to be stupid to believe that. I leaned toward the window and screamed, “Do what I want! And then I will give up!”

  My father looked back toward Roget as if for sympathy or advice. Then he turned toward the motel again and said, “We called your uncle the way you wanted.”

  “Did you tell him to bring me my brother?” I shouted.

  “It’s not that easy—” my father started to say, but I cut him off.

  “Well, find a fucking way! And I’m telling you one last time: Roget was the one who got Mom pregnant! He was with her the night she died!”

  With that I closed the window. No more talking. I wanted them to start doing something. Getting me what I wanted.

  On the television a somber voice was saying, “We interrupt this program to bring you another special news update.” Jeanny and I walked to the set again to find Marnie on the screen. A reporter introduced her as a close friend of the Pindle family. She didn’t look weepy and worried the way she had when I first saw her in the lot. Instead she had an eager expression, sort of the way she looked on the hospital TV when she announced bingo. For a second I almost expected her to start calling letters and numbers. B seven. N thirty-five. O seventy-three. Who’s got the hot card today? Then she said into the microphone, “I know that sheriff was with Terry Pindle the night she died. Dominick is an innocent, good-natured boy who has been driven to this horrible circumstance because of the lies that crooked police officer told. And someone needs to do what he’s asking and investigate him. It’s a shame Dominick had to go to these lengths for his mother’s sake. But what else was he to do when the entire police force in this town is conspiring against him?”

  I wanted to kiss her face on the screen. Stupid, old annoying Marnie, who I hadn’t been nice enough to the last few years, was speaking up for me. She was the only one out there on my side. I remembered her voice the day of my mother’s service. I want to find a way to get Roget. Now she had found her way. And she must have realized, too, that this was our only chance.

  After Marnie’s interview the newscast didn’t return to regular programming. Instead the reporter kept speaking. Only with a different tone than he had used in his first report. I went from being a kidnapper to a victim. And Roget went from being the Holedo sheriff to a suspect. Jeanny and I listened as a newswoman talked about my “tragic plight” and my attempt to avenge my mother’s death by bringing justice to a “crooked small-town police officer. . . ” On another channel there was a discussion of a case in Texas. A woman who needed an abortion was suing because she had been refused one. The people on the news were making connections between that story and my mother’s.

  Jeanny and I were caught up in all that talking, feeling like we might win at this thing, the way Steve McGarrett must feel on Hawaii Five-O right before he says, “Book ’em, Danno.” Justice served. Case closed. A giant wave curling toward the beach as the credits roll.

  But then the TV went dead.

  The lights, too.

  The room was completely dark.

  Neither of us said anything at first. And without all those voices on TV, a ghostly silence took hold. All we could hear was the sound of Sophie softly breathing in her case. Something about that quiet made me whisper when I spoke next. “They cut the power,” I said to Jeanny, who was a shadow next to me.

  She walked to the telephone, picked up the receiver. “The phone line is dead, too.”

  We stood there in the dark, letting our eyes and our minds adjust to the lack of light. Those balloons hung like apparitions around us, as if they were waiting for something more to happen now that we were surrounded by blackness. I walked to the window and peeke
d outside. The officers had clicked off all their red car lights. The glow was gone. Even the parking-lot light was off, too. All I could see was their silhouettes out there in the falling snow. Like those demon spots that had danced in front of my eyes when my head hit the dresser.

  “They’re trying to drive us out,” Jeanny said, joining me at the window. Her breath made a misty white spot on the glass, which then disappeared. “And I’m scared now.”

  “It won’t work,” I told her, trying to sound brave despite the fear creeping through me as well. “We’ll just keep waiting. That’s all.”

  “But for all the talk on TV, no one’s doing anything about Roget,” she said. “He’s still out there. Why don’t they take him in for questioning?”

  “I don’t know,” I told her. “But something’s got to give sooner or later.”

  I could hear the storm above us now like an army of fists pounding the roof of the motel. Wind gusted and spat rain against the window. Even though the heat register was still working, the air seemed colder by the second.

  “What if it’s us that gives?” Jeanny asked finally.

  I didn’t answer her, because I was asking the same question myself. That Hawaii Five-O wave had been blown back into the ocean before it even hit the sand. Cutting the power seemed to have put them in control again, and I wasn’t sure how to handle it. Jeanny and I stood side by side watching the nothingness out the window, until she said, “As much as I hate that gun, you could fire another shot. Tell them you want the power back on.”

  Something told me to hold off on that. We could get by without electricity for the time being. And I didn’t want to keep bluffing with the pistol. Because the truth was, I didn’t have the guts to hurt anyone—even Roget. So without any other options, we just sat on those thin pillows in front of the window. Watched their shadows out there for hours.