The hole fills up quicker than it emptied. Of course. And when you are finished you step away from it. The wound in your side feels torn open again. You cough up blood, the cough forces your swollen throat open, and you keep swallowing so it stays open, your face on fire with pain. You turn around to look at Crisium Lovejoy’s grave. And it is all too much. You pass out again.
* * *
You wake up after what is probably only a minute or two. You still have to swallow to keep your throat open.
Hunched over the filled-in grave, Chandler cries. He rubs at his face and what little of the mascara that is left smears like ash and charcoal. He is sitting there next to the garden hose air tube jutting up out of the earth, crying, and Frank goes to him and puts his hand on his shoulder.
“I didn’t used to be like this, Frank. You know that. I never hurt anybody. Not my children. My mind is like that tree over there. It’s split in half. From a lightning bolt sent down out of the sky by God. Frank, what did they do to my mind in that Frankenstein castle? I didn’t used to be this way. I was bad, but I was good inside. Inside my head, I was good.”
“I know.”
You look at Chandler and imagine what it would be like to crush him like a bug under the heel of your shoe.
You close your eyes and swallow.
You pull the sedan into the parking lot and see Sheriff Anderson coming out the front door. You park and run through the rain to catch him before he gets in his car. He sees you, gestures, and you both get inside his vehicle out of the rain.
“Lucky you caught me. Going home for dinner, bath, and bed. In that order.”
“Anything on your abduction?”
“Just that it’s fucked. GBI’ll be here in the morning. No note. Wish there was a note. That’d make me feel better.”
“Any chance the child’s father is involved? Divorce looming? Custody issues?”
“Doubtful. He’s in China.”
“Well, we just wanted to let you know that we’re going to pick up Chandler Norris. Manufacture and distribution of child abuse images.”
You hand Anderson the packet of Polaroids.
“From Uday Rajaguru. He’s in your registry. Caretaker at some kind of golf course. Smells like maybe he’s been cooking meth up there.”
You notice that Anderson’s face drains of color as he flips through the photos, but most people react that way.
“We want to take Norris with us, but your men can pick up Rajaguru. If nothing else, be aware and—”
“It’s her,” Anderson says. “This is her.”
You keep getting up and pulling back the curtains to look out the window. Frank and Chandler think you’re checking for police, but you’re not. You’re looking for the moon. The storm is winding down and the clouds are breaking up, so the moon should be out there. The moon would calm you. Because out in the woods, in a box buried in the ground, there is a little girl who has no hope of seeing the moon tonight. The moon has forsaken her as well.
You sit on the couch with Chandler. He just finished watching New Zoo Review, and now he’s watching The Wiggles. Your face throbs, throat hurts. Frank sits at the kitchen table racking up lines. You lost your Bic and are trying to figure out a way to sneak either Frank’s or Chandler’s lighter, so you can start a fire in the bathroom. Chandler lights one of his More 120s, but he puts the lighter and cigarette pack back in the folds of his muumuu.
Outside, a dog barks. Just a single yelp. You look at Frank and Frank looks at Chandler. There should not be a dog out there. Everything is quiet, frozen in time. You hear a tiny creaking sound at the front door. Maybe it is the sound of the aluminum contracting. And then the glass in the front window shatters like someone threw a brick through it. But what lands on the floor is not a brick. It is an oblong black metal canister. The three of you stare at it. And you can actually read what it is, because in little white stenciled letters across the top it says stun grenade. And then the world goes white. You are blind. And you are deaf. The world has evaporated. You exist in a vacuum, wrapped in cotton, hermetically sealed. And then there are hands on you. Shoving you. Hitting you. You are facedown on the floor, a heavy knee on your back, pinning you there like a bug. You feel plastic cable ties slipped around your wrists and pulled brutally tight.
You are caught.
Through the broken-out window, you can see Frank and Chandler lined up outside the trailer, standing in the rain, their hands bound behind their backs with police zip ties. Frank looks scared. He looks guilty. But Chandler looks serene, at peace. Two sheriff’s deputies stand guard.
You are sitting on the couch. Your hands, too, are bound behind your back. The police immediately identified you as the weakest link and separated you from Frank and Chandler. Sheriff Anderson and two detectives are talking to you, trying to reason with you. They keep mentioning “the right thing to do” and how this can all still turn out okay and you don’t want this on your record or on your soul.
One of the deputies, his name is Belk, uses some kind of metal rod to pop the deadbolt on Chandler’s bedroom door and then disappears inside.
A detective, you think his name is Jernigan, talks about how you are just as much a victim here as Crisium Lovejoy and how if you save her, you can save yourself.
And then Deputy Belk is standing there and he says, “Sheriff, I think you should look at this.”
Sheriff Anderson pulls you along with him, and you enter Chandler’s bedroom. You have never been in here before. And like Deputy Belk and Sheriff Anderson, and the two detectives who peer in from the door frame—you are silent. Nobody quite knows what to say.
Balloon-print curtains in bright primary colors. A Power Rangers bedspread with matching sheets and pillowcase. Legos. Hot Wheels. An Easy Bake Oven. Polaroids of smiling children tacked to a bulletin board. A blackboard with the word CAT written in chalk. Finger paintings, one of which reads: I LOVE YOU CHANDLER.
It’s a child’s room. With no child.
“Oh my dear God,” the sheriff says and walks over to the bulletin board and stops himself from pulling down a Polaroid of Crisium Lovejoy. “He has her. He sure as shit has her. Make no mistake.”
The detective, Jernigan, steps in and gently grabs your arm at the elbow. “Let me talk to the boy,” he says to Sheriff Anderson, and pulls you backward, out of the room.
“You better talk to him, Detective.” The sheriff says. “You just better. Cause I’m done with it. I served in motherfuckin’ Iraq.”
The detective pulls you into the living room, and through the open front door you can see Mrs. Lovejoy push her way through the deputies stationed out front. She is loud and violent and the deputies don’t have the heart to physically restrain her. And then she is inside and you are face to face with her. And you can tell that she is about to embrace you because she thinks you have been saved and if you have been saved then maybe Cris has been saved. But then she sees how the detective has you by the arm, pulling you. And she sees the curlicue strips of plastic that curl from your plasticuffs. And then she understands. You have not been saved. No, you have not been saved. You are what the world needs saving from. She slaps you. You are glad of it. You are glad for the throbbing pain her blow has reawakened in your jaw and throat. And then she is past you heading for the sheriff. The detective pulls you out the door and down the steps and from inside the trailer you hear Mrs. Lovejoy scream. And you realize that she has seen Chandler’s bedroom.
The detective pulls you past Frank and Chandler standing in the rain. Past a patrol car through the window of which you can see your old boss, Uday, handcuffed in the backseat.
“I’m watching you, Billy-Boy.” Chandler sings out, mocking. Then, loud enough to penetrate the patrol unit, “You too, Uday, you lying bastard!”
* * *
Inside, the detective’s sedan is warm and dry. He uses a blade to cut off the plasticuffs. A police radio crackles, and there is a black shotgun locked muzzle-up into a rack between the seats. The da
ncing green LEDs from the scanner light up Detective Jernigan’s face in a way that comforts you. It reminds you of the green radium glow of the instrument panel in your father’s—your real father’s—Chevelle SS, and how that green glow bathed his face on the ride home from Gatlinburg when you were still little. How your mother’s hand rested in his lap. That was before everything changed. Coming home from the Great Smoky Mountains was the night you first realized that the moon followed you. You remember watching it through the tinted rear window. You look out the window now, hoping to draw comfort from it, but there is no moon tonight.
“Listen to me, son. Listen close. This can all still turn out all right. Just give me the story straight. Just tell me the truth. Do you know where the girl is?”
You shake your head. You can see Frank out there standing in the rain, and you are torn between what you want and what is right.
“I want you to look at this.”
The detective pulls out an envelope. A little packet. He opens it and extracts what you already know is a photograph. You can tell just by looking at the back of it that it’s a Polaroid picture. Wetpopwhirr.
The detective holds it out to you, face down. You make no move to reach for it.
“Take it,” he says. “You have to take it.”
And that’s true. You do have to take it. So you do, and it is in your hand. Oilywetslick alive.
“Look at it.”
It burns your eyes Wetpopwhirr because of course Wetpopwhirr it is a Wetpopwhirr picture of Cris.
You hand it back to the detective, but he won’t take it from you. It’s like he’s making you hold it as punishment. You drop it on the seat.
“You know it’s not mine.”
“We know that, son. We found these in the possession of the Lovejoy’s gardener, Uday Rajaguru.” He scatters all of the Polaroids across the seat. He wants to hurt you with them. The corner of one rests against your thigh, and you draw yourself in so that it doesn’t touch you. “He says he purchased them in trade from Chandler Norris. Norris says it’s the other way around. You have to tell us what you know.”
You look outside and still there is no moon. The moon has deserted you. You have offended it. Shamed it.
You take a deep breath and say, “In any sufficiently complex environment, any action, even a simple one, will create a series of chain reactions that are unforeseen and unpredictable.”
“What was that?”
“I’m not responsible. It’s chaos. One single action can set off a series of events we have no control over.”
“You have control. We’re all responsible for our own actions.”
You look at the pictures spread out in front of you and you say, “No. We have no control. It’s chaos.”
“I want to show you something,” he says and takes out his wallet. He pulls a photograph from it. Not a Polaroid. A photograph. A portrait. A school picture. Wallet size. This photo he does not offer up for you to hold. This one he shows to you but keeps to himself.
“She was nine in this picture. Nine forever. For me. Alive. Dead. I don’t know. Maybe she was molested. I don’t know.”
He puts the picture back in his wallet. Away from you.
“This is the most pain I’ll ever have.”
Outside there is Chandler and there is Frank and there is no moon.
“Don’t be a part of this much pain. You have control.”
The beams of their flashlights are like lasers cutting through the ground-fog that rises from the saturated forest floor. You lead the sheriff and a line of his deputies deeper into the woods. To Cris.
What you have not yet told them, what you are afraid to tell them, is that you are lost. Hopelessly, utterly lost. Chandler was right about Hansel and Gretel. Just as the birds went behind Hansel and Gretel and ate their trail of breadcrumbs, the rain has come behind you and washed away the chalk marks.
You tell Anderson this, but all he says is, “You better look harder, boy.” And when he senses that you truly are lost, that you are backtracking and wandering, he takes you aside and says, “If you don’t find her, you will not come out of these woods alive. I personally will put a bullet in the back of your brain as you try to escape. I am an expert rifleman. I can do it. And I’ve killed before.”
What you don’t say is that you would welcome the bullet, but you want to find Cris as badly as he does. You want to save her.
There are two tracking hounds, Mojo and Harley, that have been given Cris’s scent from some of her clothes. But you carried her through the woods, her feet never touched the earth, and if there was some residual scent for the dogs to track, that scent, like the chalk marks, has been washed away.
A deputy that Anderson calls Sewell keeps pushing you. Jabbing his finger in your back. He is bully-faced and you can feel his hatred for you.
The dogs are whining and the men are tired and angry. You can feel that they all want an end to this. The dogs want to rend your flesh. The men want to offer you up to their god as a sacrifice. They crave some kind of resolution. Something needs to happen here tonight. Something needs to mark this night for them. And if that thing is your death, then they will just have to settle for that.
The sheriff wanted as many of his deputies in the woods as possible. He had already sent one deputy to the hospital with the missing child’s mother, who went into shock after seeing Norris’s bedroom. So you volunteered yourself and Burdick to guard the three prisoners—Norris, Dobbs, and the Iranian.
You and Burdick lean against the hood of a sheriff’s deputy’s cruiser, your backs to Rajaguru who is restrained in the backseat. Your phone rings and you recognize the unique ringtone you’ve assigned to Mary so that you never miss her calls.
“Hey, how are you?” you say in a low voice. You push off from the car and take your call a few paces away from Burdick. “Did you get any rest? I’m glad for that. I know. We got involved in a local case. Emergency. We should be on our way back within an hour. Two at the most. They needed . . . The sheriff here . . . No, I understand. You should call . . .”
When you glance over to Burdick, to see if he is watching you or trying to listen in, you see that he is over with the prisoners, Norris and Dobbs. Their hands are cuffed behind their backs. He is talking to Norris. You sidle towards them to see what’s going on, to hear what’s going on. You try to pay attention to Mary and listen to Norris and Burdick at the same time.
“All I want is a cigarette.”
“No.”
“I appreciate your disposition. The way you feel about me.”
“Shut up.”
“I would feel the same way. If I were you. If I had committed the crimes you think I did. But I didn’t. Truly—”
“Hold on for just a second,” you say to Mary. Then to Burdick, “Mike, I wouldn’t engage him in conversation. The percussion grenade and everything.” You are referencing a recent hostage situation in which the abductor was taken out with a flashbang. As happened here today. The wrinkle was that everything the perpetrator admitted to police was later deemed inadmissible in court because the guy claimed he was suffering from hearing loss when his rights were read to him.
Despite your little heart-to-heart earlier, it looks like Burdick doesn’t appreciate you telling him how to do his job. Especially in front of the suspects. Which really was a bad move on your part. To save face, Burdick shows you the back of his hand and continues to engage Norris. If you hadn’t been distracted with Mary, you would have pulled your partner aside for the little reminder. Now it’s too late. And you have to get back to Mary.
“I don’t ask you to believe,” Norris says. “Just to . . . give me the benefit of the doubt until I have—”
“I saw your bedroom,” you hear Burdick say.
“Officer, I plead the blood of Jesus. Do you hear me? Those are my children!” Norris gushes like a proud mama. You don’t remember him being quite this odd in the past.
“Right. Your children. Do tell.” Burdick is delibera
tely drawing him out now, to goad you.
“You won’t be alone tonight,” you say to Mary. “I promise.” You want to intervene between Norris and Burdick before he takes it too far in making his point, but there is no way you can disengage Mary. She is too emotional. She is in crisis. “I give you my word on that, okay?”
“I don’t ask you to believe. Just to consider the possibility. And with that slim possibility firmly in mind, consider that I am only asking for a cigarette. That’s all. They’re right there in the front seat of that police car where the officer put my belongings.”
“If it’ll shut you up,” Burdick says and turns to retrieve the cigarettes.
“They’re Mores. The long ones.”
Burdick sticks the smoke in Norris’s mouth, and Norris speaks around it, “My lighter is in my pocket here. The other officer missed it when he searched me. This thing has so many little pockets and hidey-holes. Just reach—”
“I’ve got one. I’m not sticking my hand in your pocket, big boy.”
“Indeed not.”
You can’t believe Burdick is giving Norris a cigarette. That’s just stupid. You need to put a stop to it, but Mary is openly weeping, and you can’t just say “Gotta go” and hang up. You have to let her finish. In fact, her emotion is so raw that you turn your back on Burdick. It is too personal, too open and real.
Since your back was turned, you do not actually know what happened next, but you can make an educated guess. You imagine that as Burdick cupped the flame and lit the cigarette, Norris brought his knee up into Burdick’s groin. There would have been a lot of weight, a lot of force behind that knee. It probably knocked the air out of Burdick, and the pain likely caused him to black out. You don’t know if Burdick was stupid enough to have not engaged the thumb break or the safety strap of his holster; nor do you know if the fat man could have possibly been agile enough to squat down and pluck the weapon from Burdick’s waist—but both of those things must be true, because what caused you to turn back around was the ear-splitting report of your partner’s service weapon discharging.
Abnormal Man: A Novel Page 12
