“But you can call them Freddy and Al,” added Ed, his big head leaning in over the crib.
“Can I touch them?” inquired Danny.
“Well of course!” exclaimed Rosie.“They’re your new cousins, aren’t they?”
Danny rested his hand on Freddy's midsection and began moving it in small circles. Almost immediately the baby fell quiet.
Rosie looked awestruck. “I don’t believe this.”
“Holy Christmas,” echoed Ed.
“Can you do the same thing with Fernando?” she asked.
Danny placed his other hand on the second twin. The baby kept crying for a moment, but then he opened his eyes, stared curiously up at Danny and fell equally silent. The washer came to an abrupt stop, and the only sound in the room was a talk show filtering in from the TV.
“Can I hold them, maybe?” ventured Danny.
“You kidding?” laughed Rosie.“We’re keeping you here. At least till they’re in college.”
They seated Danny in the big armchair and brought him the infants. He held them gently, cradling one in each arm and gazing down at them with a blissful smile on his face.
Rosie and Molly wandered out to the kitchen.
“How are you feeling?” asked Molly.
“So, so,” said Rosie.“Seems like I’m just dragging all the time.”
“Twins will do it,” said Molly, commiserating. Rosie really didn’t look too hot. Since the beginning of the pregnancy, she seemed to be deteriorating.
“But I hear you got bigger problems,” she said.
Molly tried to brush it off.
“He's miserable in the office, huh?”
Molly looked surprised.
“Small town. No secrets here. You keep bumping into the same people.” Rosie smiled. “A guy loses his brakes coming down State Street and ends up hitting his ex-wife's new boyfriend.”
Molly laughed.“Okay, I’m getting desperate,” she admitted, her eyes going to the bedroom. She told her about Larry's complaints and all the extra work at the office.
“What an insensitive sonofabitch!”
“Well, it's not that he's so bad,” said Molly, springing to his defense.“He was good to me when I needed help most.”
“Or good to himself.”
“And I suppose you’ve got to see it from his point of view.”
“You need a break,” said Rosie.“Or you’re going to break. Why don’t I—”
“No way!” said Molly.“You’re the one who needs the break.”
“It's purely selfish. It's like hiring the perfect babysitter.” She tossed her head in the direction of the bedroom and laughed.
“I found the hut!” exclaimed the man, breathlessly. “The Hermit's hideout!”
The call had come in to the State Police barracks in Varna in the first hours after dawn on Wednesday. Sgt. Vernon Peters, who was covering the switchboard, took the call.
“It was just like that kid's drawing. You know. In the paper. Made out of branches and—I was out hunting and—I just couldn’t believe it!” the man sounded as though he had hit the jackpot on the state lottery.“Like in the middle of the woods, in this clearing. It's hidden all the way in the brush. A clearing. It's got sheep. Animals. And he's there. The guy with the white beard. I saw him myself!”
To Peters, this had the ring of authenticity.“Where?”
“The State Forest. Danby.”
“Okay. Right, but where?”
“You go beyond Comfort Road. Maybe a mile or so, and then head in. Almost directly east. On the left.”
Sgt. Peters took down the man's number, put him on hold, and immediately put a call through to the Ithaca City Police.
“Is Lou Tripoli there?” he asked Carol Halperin, the civilian dispatcher, who had picked up on the switchboard.
“He's out, but I can try to get him.”
“Yeah. Please.”
Peters hung on as she tried to raise Tripoli on the radio. She made three attempts, but had no luck.
“He must have his radio off,” she said.
“Okay, give him a message.”
She took down the message, then pigeonholed the note in Lou Tripoli's box.
Peters informed his lieutenant, who waited thirty minutes, then tried on his own to contact the City Police's lead investigator.
“He's still not responding.” explained the same dispatcher. “I think he's out on a drug bust.”
When the lieutenant explained about the hut, the dispatcher put Dave Meese on the line. He was one of the batch of new officers who had just joined the city force.
“I’ll leave him a note,” said Meese.
The lieutenant put down the phone and shook his head.“I don’t get it.”
“Yeah,” echoed Peters.“No one over there seems to give a shit.”
And with that, the lieutenant took it upon himself to mobilize his resources.
“Get me a chopper. I want a SWAT team out there on the double. Also get on the horn and notify the Tompkins County Sheriff and State DEC Rangers.”
In a matter of minutes the word was out, crackling over the airwaves and land lines: someone had spotted the Hermit, the man who had imprisoned the Driscoll boy. They had him zeroed in.
Tripoli was so mad he could hardly speak. Mad at himself for forgetting to turn on his mobile radio when he stepped out of the car, pissed at the people on dispatch for failing to make every effort to get him. What the hell were they thinking? Or not thinking!
With the message still crumpled in his fist, he grabbed Jerry Sisler and they ran out to the car. Sirens going and lights flashing, they tore up South Hill. Five minutes later they were passing the Danby market, taking a sharp right onto Bald Hill Road.
“Where the hell are they?” growled Tripoli as they bounced over the hilly roadway that cut through the public forest. They were well beyond the Comfort Road area where the pitchfork had been found.
“They’ve got to be somewhere here,” Sisler said, unnerved by his boss's burgeoning anger.
Tripoli kept his foot heavy on the gas. The paved road ended and turned to gravel. A hail of stones kicked up, pelting the undercarriage of the car as a plume of dust trailed in their wake. He was beginning to suspect that they had somehow overshot the location when he spotted ahead a bevy of official cars lining both sides of the road.
“Holy shit!” muttered Sisler, “Looks like they’ve got a fucking army here.” It seemed like every agency in the tri-county area was on the scene.
Tripoli pulled up and, grabbing his radio, ran across the roadway with Sisler on his heels. It was easy to follow the route that the party had taken. There were fresh tracks on a logging road heading off into the woods on the left, and Tripoli could see where the four-wheel-drives and ATVs had entered.
The two took off at a sprint, following the path that had been churned to mud by tires and feet, speeding up as the road dropped into a deep gully, then forging ahead where the road ascended steeply. Deep into the woods, they finally stopped for a breather. Tripoli arched his head back and looked up into the high canopy. The maples and beeches had long since blossomed out, but he could see hints of sky and sun filtering through.
“Come on, let's go,” he urged Sisler, and they pushed on. Tripoli's radio, tuned to the assault team's frequency, was now barking furiously.
“What the hell's going on?” asked Sisler breathlessly.
The road split, then the branch they took narrowed as the woods became more dense. Sisler started to fall behind, but Tripoli kept moving. Reaching the place where the group had abandoned their jeeps, he could hear the whop-whop-whop of an approaching helicopter. A bullhorn echoed and dogs barked. In front of him, the brush and low-lying vegetation was nearly impenetrable, and it took him a moment to find the spot where the men had hacked their way through.
Scampering up the last rise, Tripoli suddenly caught the reflections of chrome and steel, guns and equipment. There must have been at least two dozen highly armed men formin
g a perimeter, their weapons trained on a small dwelling that stood in the grassy clearing ahead. Behind the hut, a flock of sheep and goats huddled tightly against a rear line of thicket that was as dense as a wall.
“Goddamn,” muttered Tripoli, “You’d think they were fighting the Red fucking Army!”
They were all focused on the hut. Meticulously constructed of small logs and saplings, with small handmade shutters and a roof of woven, dried vegetation, the hut blended right into the landscape. Despite the troopers’ advanced gear—the infrared scopes, the sensing devices, the parabolic mikes—they could easily have walked past the hut without noticing it. The hut, Tripoli realized, was almost precisely as Danny had drawn it.
Tripoli's attention shifted to the police. The troopers’ Dynamic Entry Team, off to his right, was huddled tight, whispering tensely. Three ranking officials stood behind a big tree arguing—a State Police lieutenant, the sheriff, and a Fed out of Elmira.
“Rush him!” voted the trooper.
“I say hit him with gas!” said the sheriff.
“Can you get those guys with the bullhorn to shut up?” the red-faced Fed yelled at the trooper. “And pull that fucking bird back!”
The helicopter was moving in and the roar was deafening.
“My men are ready to go,” announced the SWAT team's leader, trotting up to join the trio.
“Hey! Wait!” cried Tripoli, wading in.
“Who the hell are you?” demanded the Fed, staring hard at Tripoli.
“Tripoli's IPD,” interjected the sheriff.“He's lead investigator.”
“Well, that doesn’t count for shit now,” sneered the trooper as he turned to face Tripoli.“We’re calling the shots here.”
“Like hell,” shouted the Fed.“This is a kidnapping, and—”
“Who have you got in there?” said Tripoli to the sheriff, ignoring the trooper. He was vaguely aware that Sisler had finally caught up and was slumped down on a log, panting.
“It's the kidnapper,” explained the Sheriff. “He's barricaded himself in there.”
“And the perp's armed,” added the SWAT man.
“We’ve already had one man killed this year screwing around— negotiating—with a holed-up psycho,” said the trooper. “No way am I going to risk any of my men—”
“How do you know he's armed?” asked Tripoli.
“Because he's holding a fucking rifle!” snapped the trooper.
Tripoli grabbed the binoculars out of the man's hand. It was dark in the interior of the hut, but Tripoli could make out a shadowy figure moving around. He was holding a long object in his hand.“How do you know it's a weapon?” he asked, turning back to the men.
“When we first got here,” explained the sheriff,“he poked it out the window. One of my guys spotted it. Looked like an old 303. He keeps sneaking around in there. And he won’t talk.”
“That phone's not working,” argued the Fed. “That's why we gotta toss him another.”
“Yeah?” said the trooper.“You go toss it.”
“Well, pull your guys back then! This is totally nuts,” he turned to Tripoli, appealing to him with hands outstretched.“We don’t have a serial killer in there. Just an old geezer. I saw him. He looks harmless.”
“Yeah, harmless with a high-powered rifle,” injected the trooper.
“Look,” said Tripoli steadily, trying to wrest control.“Why don’t we just bring things down a notch.”
“Christ, that's what I’ve been trying to say,” said the Fed. The sheriff looked as if he could be persuaded and Tripoli could feel a more sane coalition beginning to form.
“And just look at this place,” implored the Fed, “Do you think a maniac would build something like this?”
But then, suddenly, it was too late for talk. One of the sheriff 's men on the perimeter had taken it upon himself to blast a tear gas shell through the open window. The cannister went off with a dull whomp and the tiny hut immediately started filling with gas. Tripoli already could see the gray fog beginning to ooze out of the lower edges of the window frames.
Every set of eyes turned to look.
The bullhorn fell silent.
Even the dogs stopped their howling.
Tripoli left the group and moved right up to the front line close to the hut. He squatted down and watched, thinking about his decision to give Wally Schuman that drawing.
Everybody waited.
“Shit,” said a deputy hidden behind the tree. “He's not even coughing.”
Suddenly, from where he crouched, Tripoli caught a glimpse of the old man. His hair and beard were as white as snow, though his face was surprisingly unlined, his skin as smooth and unfurrowed as a child's. His eyes were discs of light gray, tender and wise and remarkably untroubled. For an instant, their eyes met and Tripoli could have sworn that there was a look on the old man's face as if he had recognized him, knew him. Shivers ran down Tripoli's spine.
“Hold it!” pleaded Tripoli, rising to his feet.
“Fire another,” urged a trooper.
“No, don’t!” shouted Tripoli,“It's enough already. You’ve got an old man in there. You’ll kill him.”
The mortar, however, was already launched. It catapulted through the other window, exploding an instant later with a hiss of gas.
Again there was silence.
Tripoli waited. And waited.
“Damn you all!” he finally cried and, tearing through the line of flak-jacketed people, raced toward the hut.
“Hey, come back!” someone shouted from behind.
“You idiot, watch out! He's armed!”
But Tripoli, like a man possessed, kicked in the door. It collapsed with his first blow and the tear gas came billowing out. Holding his breath and closing his eyes, Tripoli bolted in.
Someone was lying on the floor and Tripoli stumbled over him. Groping blindly, he took hold of the still body and started to drag. The man was surprisingly light and Tripoli managed to pull him quickly through the doorway out into the fresh air.
Tripoli's eyes and nose were running copiously as he knelt above the old man who lay inert on the earth. There were shouts all around him, and he could feel the pounding of feet as the cops rushed in from the woods. He kept blinking and wiping his eyes, and when his vision had finally cleared he saw a thin old man lying before him on the ground. His skin was as pale as his beard. Barefoot, he was dressed in loose-fitting, homespun garments. His eyes were closed and his arms were folded in a rigid position, clasped protectively across his chest.
The snipers and deputies and troopers moved out from their hiding places in the woods, converging in a tight circle around Tripoli as he knelt over the old man.
“Jesus,” uttered someone,“the old guy's dead.”
“And he didn’t even cough!” exclaimed another voice.“Hey, did you hear him cough?”
“Oh my God,” whispered Tripoli,“Oh my God. What have we done?”
Molly and Danny had hardly gotten back and settled into the office, when Tasha came bursting in on them.
“Did you hear?” she cried.
“Hear what?” asked Molly.
“The Hermit.”
Danny's head snapped around.“Huh?”
“They got him! He's dead. I just heard on the radio. They’ve even got a special report on TV. Larry's got it on his set.”
Sisler and Tripoli took control of the scene as the rest of the men started to disperse, slinking off into the woods. The helicopter carrying the state coroner came in close and settled down into the opening, blades still beating the air, the animals scurrying away to the far side of the hut. People with television cameras kept emerging from the woods, and the remaining troopers and deputies kept them confined to the far end of the clearing, away from the old man's body just outside the hut.
When the coroner was finished, Tripoli assisted him in slipping the Hermit's corpse into a body bag. They zipped it closed, and then the two of them, with Sisler's help, lugged the plastic pouc
h toward the helicopter. Jimmy Teeter from IPD helped them hoist it into the craft, then climbed in to accompany it back to the morgue. The old man was now merely evidence and the law required that it be continuously guarded right up through the required autopsy.
“I want you to get his prints as soon as you can!”Tripoli shouted to Teeter above the roar of engines as they revved up, beating the grass flat.
“His what?” called Teeter.
“Prints! Prints!”Tripoli wiggled his fingers.
Teeter nodded, giving a thumbs-up as the machine lifted and then whirled above the trees.
Tripoli wandered around the site. The goats and sheep nervously shuffled back and forth against the wall of overgrowth, bleating and baahing, keeping their distance. Within the clearing he found a small fence of interwoven saplings, and within its protective confines a garden. There were neat lines of beans and peas, some nice-sized heads of cabbage. At the north side of the hut, Tripoli found a mounded section of earth with a trap door. Opening it, he discovered a small, rock-lined cellar containing old potatoes and newly picked mushrooms, all neatly arranged. There were other things in there that appeared to be root crops Tripoli couldn’t identify.
When the last remnants of acrid gas had finally dissipated, Tripoli went inside the hut and looked around. It was finely crafted. Every piece of the structure had been painstakingly fitted, giving it a marvelous solidity. The walls, Tripoli noted, had been furred out and loosely packed with grass to form an insulating barrier. In the center of the hut, there was a fireplace made of fieldstone, hand fitted without a hint of mortar. A chimney of similar stone ascended through the roof. It, too, was a work of art. The dwelling reminded Tripoli of pictures he had seen of native huts in Africa, the thatch tight and perfectly aligned.
On the floor, where the old Hermit had let it drop, lay his weapon—nothing more than a gnarled walking stick carved to fit his hand. Lining a side wall were cups and bowls made of fired clay, larger containers holding hickory nuts and shell beans and what appeared to be wheat berries. He found balls of white stuff that had a rubbery consistency and smelt like some kind of cheese.
On a corner shelf that had been made of parallel sticks bound with vines, Tripoli discovered a line of old bound volumes. He picked up the closest and carefully opened it. The paper, which felt like parchment, was like nothing he had ever seen before. The pages were all handwritten, printed in an elaborate and laborious style. Some of it was in English that seemed stilted and old. Much of it was in foreign languages. Among the volumes there were books on plants illustrated with sketches, illuminated drawings of the Earth and solar system, directions for the making of tools and the construction of root cellars, diagrams of dams, methods of food preparation and storage. One book contained intricate drawings of insects and flowers and animals, hand-colored and virtual works of art. Awed, Tripoli could not help but feel as though he and his fellow police officers had clumsily stumbled into a hallowed place, a church in which the high priest had just been senselessly murdered.
THE LAST BOY Page 27
