Ruckman Road: An Alex Penfield Novel

by Robert W. Stephens

  “There you are,” she said.

  Torres paused a moment when she saw the haggard look on Penfield’s face.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “I’m fine. Where’s Hannah?”

  “Upstairs resting. You don’t look fine.”

  “There’s someone I need to talk to,” Penfield said. “I’ll probably be gone the rest of the day.”

  “Who are you going to see?” Torres asked.

  “I can’t say right now.”

  “You can’t say?”

  “I don’t want you to think…” Penfield’s words trailed off. “I’ll call you when I’m on my way back.”

  Penfield left the house before she could protest anymore and walked toward his car. He knew Torres was upset with him, and he didn’t blame her. They’d both been up all night, and they were tired and ready to go home. He couldn’t reveal to her who he wanted to see, though, even if their moods had been better. He’d thought about this person immediately after listening to the enhanced basement audio recording. Penfield knew he was out of his element, and he needed help. It was a different type of help than another cop could provide, though. He couldn’t believe he was about to do it. He’d never seen or even talked to the man before. He’d thought about him over the years, more often than he was willing to admit to himself. He always wondered if he’d ever get up the courage to see him. Maybe this was just an excuse to finally do so.

  The drive to Richmond took close to two hours due to the heavy traffic. He used the time to call his office and get a DMV search for the home address of the person he was going to see. He’d kept tabs on the man, but he still wanted to confirm that the last address he had for him was correct.

  He punched the man’s address into the GPS, and it took him to a two-story house in the Church Hill section of Richmond. The house looked old and uncared for. The beige paint was chipped and faded in several places, and the flower beds in the front yard were all overgrown and full of weeds.

  Penfield pulled his jacket collar tight around his neck as he got out of his car. The rain had started again, and it was even colder in Richmond. He walked onto the large porch that ran the length of the front of the house. The man answered the door after Penfield knocked a few times. Penfield knew the man was in his early seventies. He was as tall as Penfield, but he was much thinner. He almost appeared emaciated. He had receding gray hair that was unkempt as if he’d just crawled out of bed. The stubble on his face and neck indicated he hadn’t shaved in over a week. The old man wore a pair of worn-looking khaki pants and a gray sweater with a long tear near the collar. He looked at Penfield as if he recognized him.

  “Do I know you?” the old man asked.

  “Are you Henry Atwater?”

  The old man didn’t respond. He just continued to study Penfield.

  “I’m Alex Penfield. I’m a detective with the Hampton Police Division.”

  Penfield wasn’t sure why he’d immediately told the man his profession. He knew the man would recognize his name, at least his last name. Maybe he was subconsciously trying to establish some form of dominance from the start, but he felt absurd for trying to do so. The man was old and fragile. There wasn’t anything he could do to Penfield. Besides, there was no proof this man had ever done anything but help him anyway. Nevertheless, Penfield couldn’t shake a feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach. He knew it was the fear of a child that had never really gone away. He waited for Atwater to respond, but the old man just stared at him.

  “I’m sorry for dropping by unannounced,” Penfield continued.

  “Come in,” Atwater finally said.

  Penfield followed him down a dark, wide hallway that led to the back of the house. The house wasn’t cluttered or messy, but Penfield saw thick layers of dust on a long table in the hallway and a crammed bookshelf in a living room they passed. The house also had a musty odor to it that reminded Penfield of the basement in Talbot’s house. The air somehow felt polluted and thick, and Penfield wondered how long he’d last before coming up with an excuse to go outside to get fresh air.

  Atwater’s den had tall windows that offered a complete view of the backyard. Penfield could see wooden steps that led to a large cement patio. The stone planters that bordered it were all full of weeds like the front flowerbeds. There was a wooden privacy fence that surrounded the entire backyard. The wood looked old and gray, and one section leaned toward the ground. The one item that stood out the most to Penfield was the child’s swing set. The paint was rusty and chipped. Two swings hung from the top post, but one of them had a broken chain, and it swayed haphazardly back and forth with the winter wind.

  Atwater indicated to a faded red chair, and Penfield sat down with his back facing the windows. Atwater sat in an opposite chair. The gray sky outside bathed Atwater in a soft, dull light.

  “Your father…” Atwater started, but his words drifted off as he seemed to get lost in thought.

  Penfield waited a moment and then said, “He passed years ago.”

  “I know,” Atwater said.

  Penfield wondered if Atwater had kept tabs on him and his father as much as they had watched out for him.

  “He was the reason I became a police detective,” Penfield said.

  “Why have you come here?” Atwater asked, almost cutting Penfield off.

  Penfield tried to decipher the tone in the question, but there really wasn’t one, at least not one he could detect. Atwater seemed neither happy nor agitated by his presence.

  “I’m sure you understand why my father felt the way he did.”

  “They found me innocent,” Atwater said, “but your father still came after me.”

  Penfield was tempted to look away, but he held the old man’s gaze.

  “I can’t change what my father did or didn’t do.”

  “I saved you,” Atwater said. “Is that why you’re here? You want to thank me after all of these years? How long has it been?”

  Penfield remembered the day he’d been taken as if it had occurred just last week. That day of the year was a dark anniversary that seemed to paralyze him every year since. He could still hear the footsteps behind him. He could still feel the hands that grabbed his shoulders. He didn’t even need to close his eyes to visualize the man’s face. He could see the long, dirty hair and the dark eyes that stared at him through the bars of his cage. Yes, he knew the answer to Atwater’s question. He knew exactly how many years it had been.

  “I was just a boy,” Penfield said. “What would you have me do?”

  Atwater looked away.

  “Why are you here?” he asked again.

  This time he didn’t look at Penfield.

  “There’s a case I’m working on. There’ve been some things…some things I can’t explain.”

  Atwater didn’t respond. He turned back to Penfield but looked past him toward the large windows behind him. Penfield waited several moments for him to say something, but he remained silent. His eyes seemed glazed over, and Penfield began to wonder if the man was going senile. Penfield remembered his father telling him about his conversations with Atwater. He said the man would seem to zone out as if his body were still in the room, but his mind was a million miles away. Maybe it was a huge miscalculation on his part to come here. Maybe he should have just kept his dark history buried forever.

  Atwater seemed to break his trance, and he turned his gaze back to Penfield.

  “These things you’ve seen, they’ve disturbed you.”

  “A man’s gone missing. He’s presumed dead. We believe he drowned in the Chesapeake Bay. His sister came out from California, and she’s been staying in his rental house. There have been some strange things occurring in the house.”

  Atwater remained silent. Penfield wanted to tell him about the footsteps on the stairs and the hallway. He wanted to play him the audio recording of the little girl’s voice and the man saying the word “Sarah.” He wanted to tell him about the face in the second-floor window
during the storm and the wet, bloody handprint on the inside of the windowpane that no one could figure out how it got there. He wanted to describe his encounter with the girl in the basement, the hideous features of her burnt face, and her pushing him, and the painful handprint on his chest. He said none of these things, though. He thought it best to make Atwater prove he could do the things he said he could. Of course, there was no guarantee Atwater would even want to aid him.

  “I read the transcripts of your trial, as well as my father’s interrogation of you. You said there are things you can see and hear that others can’t,” Penfield said.

  Penfield waited a long moment for Atwater to confirm his statement from years ago, but the man was again looking out the windows into the backyard. Penfield followed Atwater’s gaze and turned toward the window. He thought Atwater might have been looking at the broken swing moving back and forth.

  Penfield thought of his father. He pictured him sitting across the table and staring at a younger version of Henry Atwater during his hours-long interrogation at the police station. His father rarely spoke about Atwater other than to tell his son to stay away from the man. Penfield’s mother later told him that his father had kept close watch on Atwater over the years. He’d followed him on and off for months, but he never caught him breaking the law. Penfield didn’t know if Atwater realized he was being followed all of those years. It was a good bet he suspected, at least at first.

  “After my trial, I never offered to help anyone again,” Atwater said.

  Penfield turned back to Atwater. He thought of his father again. “Stay away from the man,” he heard his father say in the deepest parts of his memory. “Stay away.”

  “It was a mistake to come here. I’m sorry to have bothered you,” Penfield said.

  Penfield stood and walked past Atwater toward the dark hallway that led back to the front door.

  “Leave me the address for the house,” Atwater said.

  Penfield stopped at the edge of the hallway.

  “There are a few things I need to take care of first. I’ll be down there later tonight,” Atwater continued.

  Penfield nodded.

  It took Penfield longer to drive back to Fort Monroe. The traffic had gotten even heavier. The sun had set by the time he pulled into the parking lot behind the house. He got out of the car and felt that the air was still damp and cold from last night’s storm. He saw that Torres had moved her car from the parking lot by the boardwalk to the one he had just parked in.

  He found Torres sitting on the porch when he rounded the corner to the front of the house. She’d taken the small table by the inside of the front door and used it as a stool.

  “Did you find who you were looking for?” Torres asked.

  “He’s coming by later tonight.”

  “Are you going to finally tell me who he is, or do I need to ask him myself?”

  Penfield walked onto the porch and leaned against the house.

  “My father was a homicide detective with the City of Norfolk. I think I told you that before.”

  “A couple of times,” Torres said.

  “He had this case. This boy had been kidnapped, presumed dead, but the parents wouldn’t give up hope. Weeks went by, and they had nothing. One day my father gets this call from a guy named Henry Atwater who says he can help. He says he’s dreamed about the kidnapping, and he thinks he knows where the boy is.”

  “A psychic?” Torres asked.

  “Something like that, I suppose. My father didn’t want anything to do with the guy, but he was desperate. So he says ‘Sure, I’ll meet with you.’ Atwater knows things about the case that only the boy’s family and the cops know. He eventually leads them to the boy who was buried in this makeshift coffin.”

  “Was he still alive?”

  “Barely. My father arrested Atwater on the spot. He was convinced Atwater was the kidnapper. He couldn’t comprehend how he would have known exactly where the boy was. Atwater went to trial but was found not guilty.”

  “Got off on technicality?” Torres asked.

  “No. I assume the evidence wasn’t that compelling, at least by the jury’s standards. The boy didn’t recognize Atwater, and Atwater’s house was completely different than what the boy had described. There were no fingerprints on the box they found the boy in, and Atwater had an airtight alibi for the day the boy was taken. It was a unanimous decision by the jury. My father couldn’t accept it, though. He was utterly convinced of Atwater’s guilt. He spent years trying to prove it, but he never found anything.”

  “And you went to see this guy today?” Torres asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You really think this Atwater can help us explain what’s going on?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. I just don’t know what else to do,” Penfield said.

  He waited for Torres to poke a million holes in his plan, but she didn’t.

  “Can I ask you something?” Torres asked.

  “Sure.”

  “That was you, the boy, wasn’t it? A guy in the department asked me once if I knew about you. He wouldn’t elaborate, and I was too nervous at the time to ask you about it. It was you, though, wasn’t it?”

  “If I said yes, would it change anything?” Penfield asked.

  “Do you think he took you?”

  Penfield hesitated a moment, and then said, “No.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “The eyes. I remember the eyes. This guy I saw today, they weren’t the same.”

  “You were just a kid then. How would you even know all these years later?” Torres asked.

  She waited for his answer, but he didn’t give her one.

  “Why didn’t you tell me what had happened to you?” Torres asked.

  “It’s not something I go around telling everybody.”

  “So now I’m everybody? You can tell me. I want to know.”

  “No, you don’t want to know. You want that shit as far out of your mind as possible. I want it out of my mind. I’d give anything to forget it.”

  Penfield waited for Torres to respond, but she didn’t, much to his relief. They went into the house and waited for Atwater to show. Hannah fell asleep on the sofa in the den around eight o’clock. Penfield and Torres took turns searching the inside of the house and walking the perimeter.

  Atwater arrived close to ten. He approached the house just as Penfield was finishing one of his walks around it. Atwater stopped on the sidewalk and looked at the house. His hair was now neat, and his face was shaved. He’d also changed out of his torn gray sweater into a dark-blue jacket that looked like it was brand new. Penfield went to say something, but he stopped when he saw the intense look on Atwater’s face.

  Atwater turned to Penfield after several long seconds.

  “Has anything else happened tonight?” Atwater asked.

  Penfield shook his head.

  “Nothing. It’s been quiet.”

  Penfield led Atwater into the house. Torres and Hannah were in the den. She had apparently awakened from her nap and was talking to Torres. Hannah was still badly shaken by the previous evening’s events, and Torres was doing her best to reassure her that things were going to work out, even though she wasn’t sure of that herself.

  Torres exited the den when she saw Penfield enter the living room with Atwater. Penfield introduced the two of them. Torres said hello but didn’t extend her hand. Atwater looked at Torres for several long and uncomfortable seconds, but he said nothing to her. Then he turned to Penfield.

  “Where’s the sister?” he asked.

  “She’s in the back,” Torres answered for Penfield.

  Penfield and Torres took Atwater to see Hannah in the den. She had her back to them and was looking out the window. Hannah turned to them when she heard them enter the room. Her eyes immediately went to Atwater, but neither of them said anything. Penfield went to introduce them, but Atwater cut him off.

  “Your brother’s the one who’s missing
?” he asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m sorry,” Atwater said.

  Atwater turned from the group and walked back to the living room. Penfield looked over to Torres and saw her already looking at him. He had no problem interpreting her feelings. It was clear she thought Atwater was strange.

  They decided to give Atwater his space. Penfield expected him to tour the house, but he stayed in the living room. After a few moments of walking around the empty room, Atwater sat on the floor and closed his eyes. He stayed that way for around ten minutes. Hannah stayed in the den, while Penfield and Torres waited in the kitchen doorway so they could keep their eyes on Atwater. None of them said anything. They just waited for Atwater to do something.

  “This is ridiculous,” Torres finally whispered to Penfield.

  He was about to reply when Atwater suddenly looked up at the ceiling. He stood a moment later and walked toward the stairway. He kept his eyes trained toward the second floor the entire time.

  Penfield and Torres followed him up the stairs. Hannah waited a few seconds, then followed at a distance. Atwater paused when he reached the second-floor landing. He seemed to be listening for something. Then he walked into the master bedroom and headed straight to the window where the bloody handprint had been before the crime scene technicians removed the window pane. Penfield and Torres had opened all of the blinds earlier that morning and examined the other windows for potential handprints or marks. Torres had closed them all later in the day, however. Atwater ignored all of the windows except the one in the back corner. He stood in front of the closed window for a long moment. Then he yanked hard at the bottom of the shade, and it flew open. He looked at the missing window pane for another long moment. He turned to Penfield and Torres.

  “He was here. Wasn’t he?”

  “Who was here?” Penfield asked.

  Atwater didn’t answer him, though. He looked past Penfield and Torres toward the bedroom door. They turned and saw Hannah standing in the doorway. Atwater went to say something, but then he stopped and looked up to the ceiling again.