Finding Jake

by Bryan Reardon

  Other factors complicated my decision. Tairyn had, in fact, called earlier inviting Laney over. I really had no excuse, but something itched at the back of my mind. I could not admit to myself, particularly considering the lesson that had led to Doug and Jake being friends, that I simply did not like the kid, or for that matter, his father. I’d run into him a couple of times since the birthday party and we’d shared, at a conservative estimate, three words.

  I set Laney’s plate down in front of her and grabbed the phone. Walking back into the den, I dialed Rachel’s office.

  “Hey there,” she answered.

  “Question. Should I let Jake go over to the Martin-Kleins’?”

  Rachel paused before answering. “Did they invite him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How about you have him over to our house? Then you can get to know him better.”

  “That’s a good idea,” I said, although I thought I knew him pretty well already.

  “Why do you think he shouldn’t go over?”

  “That kid’s crazy.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Karen said he goes to the guidance counselor, like, every day.”

  She laughed. “So now you’re listening to Karen? I seem to remember last month you called her a wolverine trapped in the body of a mime.”

  “I said that?”

  “Yup.”

  I smiled. “That’s a pretty good one.”

  “I didn’t get it,” she said, deadpan.

  “She’s a vicious animal that can only passively act out her insecurities and loathing.”

  “Anyway,” Rachel said. “Do you know the kid?”

  “I know his parents. His dad is a weirdo.”

  “By your own admission, you’ve said a total of seven words to the guy. Maybe he’s just shy.”

  I caught the change in tone on that last word. It cut me. I knew she referred to my reaction after the parent/teacher conference. My lack of response to her opinion chafed Rachel still. A stealth argument had brewed since the day before. I wanted no part of it.

  “I’ll take him over then. No biggie.”

  “You don’t have to.” Her voice reverted to a more genial tone, one I hadn’t heard since the morning before the conference. “You could bring the kids in for lunch.”

  “No, it’s all right.”

  Once I answered, I regretted it. I should have just said yes. I knew she cherished any time she could get with the kids. Plus, I didn’t even want Jake to go to Doug’s. I really don’t know why I didn’t take her up on her offer. Maybe it was the shy comment.

  I picked Jake up early that afternoon. Once again, he waited outside with Doug. I took a good look at the kid this time. He appeared nondescript. Clean, well dressed, but not in an awkward way. I still couldn’t put my finger on my misgivings. He did look up when my car rolled to a stop, watching me. I felt there was something calculating behind his expression, his thin lips, his soft stare through hard eyes. Shaking my head, I thought about what Rachel often said to me, that I assigned adult intentions to children.

  Jake beamed when he saw me. A wide smile on his face, he gave what looked like a hearty thank you and good-bye to Doug and ran to my car. He jumped in and I could see he was excited.

  “You should see our fort. It’s awesome.”

  “Your fort?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “We worked on it all day.”

  “Where is it?” I asked.

  “In his backyard, kinda. There’s woods back there and a pond, so it’s a little past.”

  “Can you see his house from there?”

  “I dunno,” he said.

  He went on to describe in ecstatic detail the building he and Doug worked on. It did sound cool, but I felt uneasy the entire time. When Rachel got home that evening and the kids made it to bed, I brought it up.

  “They couldn’t even see his house,” I said.

  She smiled. “Simon, Jake’s a boy. That’s what boys do. You raised him right. I trust him. You have to let him grow up a little bit. What’s going to happen?”

  I couldn’t answer that. My brain could. It flashed gruesome pictures of dismemberment, debauchery, defilement, every awful de word I could imagine. That’s how I knew she was right. I had to ease up. Not just for the kids’ sakes, but for my own, too.

  CHAPTER 12

  DAY ONE

  When I leave the old church, I drive straight to the Martin-Kleins’ house. When I turn into the neighborhood, I know right away that I will not get close to the house, at least not in the car. Police vehicles block off the street starting at least five houses down the way from the Martin-Kleins’. The cordoned-off area begins just past that and a line three deep of people stretches across the street and up onto people’s yards. A nervous energy permeates the scene.

  I park the car and get out. As I do, I notice the doll conspicuously resting on the backseat. People turn and look at me. Most recognize who I am. They look distraught and angry, and a murmur passes through the crowd. More eyes track me as I take a step toward the yellow police tape.

  Reporters with cameras move toward me. I imagine the shot, me standing outside Rachel’s car, a creepy one-eyed doll in the backseat. Even I have enough sense to back away. As the cameras near, I turn and rush back into the car. They film me driving away.

  I pound the steering wheel, frustrated by being balked. I drive past the neighborhood three times, but nothing changes. So I turn my attention to everywhere I have ever known Jake to be. I pass the football field, his friends’ neighborhoods, Max’s house (which looks empty), even the grocery store for some reason. I find nothing. While I meander through the neighborhoods surrounding the school, my phone rings. It is Rachel.

  “They found the hotel.”

  “Who?”

  “The media.”

  “I figured—”

  “No, Laney is down in the lobby. Alone.”

  My heart sinks. “Why? How?”

  “The elevator’s taking too goddamn long. I’m going to the stairs. We didn’t know. She wanted a water.”

  “I’m coming.”

  I race out of the neighborhood and onto the highway. I enter the city in less than five minutes. From three blocks away, I see the news vans laying siege to our hotel. Like the crenelated parapet of a white watchtower, they line every street bordering the Marriot.

  I swerve over to the right lane and turn, slamming Rachel’s car into the first spot (legal or not) that I see. Once the car stops, I tear the keys from the ignition and bull my way out of the door. At a full run, I cross through an alley and end up across the street from the hotel. I expect a throng of reporters. Instead, an eerie silence greets me, scaring me to the core.

  I pry the lobby doors open to get inside faster. I see the mass of bodies, like hopping vultures vying for carrion. Although I cannot make her out, I somehow know Laney is at the center, Rachel trying to shield her from the frenzy.

  “Hey,” I shout.

  My shoulder barrels into the back of one of the cameramen. Someone curses and I push him (I think it is a male) out of the way. I see my daughter for the first time, her eyes wide and glistening with tears. Rachel is with her, holding her close.

  “Daddy,” she calls out.

  I elbow someone, then sweep my daughter and wife up as if hiding them under a wing.

  “Mr. Connolly! Mr. Connolly!”

  Green lights flash to life, like devilish spider eyes, threatening and surreal. I hold Laney tighter and she presses against me. I feel her shaking.

  “I just wanted a water.”

  “Leave us alone.”

  “Are you surprised by what your son did?”

  “Were there warning signs?”

  “Are you aware of what your son posted on the Internet?”

  “Have any of the victims’ parents tried to contact you?”

  The questions meld into a shrill torture. My head throbs and I push into the mass of reporters, Laney in tow.

  �
�Get the hell out of the way!” I shout.

  More questions lash out at us as I plod toward the elevator.

  “Any comment on the drawings they found at your house?”

  “How long have your son and Doug Martin-Klein been friends?”

  I pound the up arrow just as the city cops arrive. They begin what I expect will be a long process of ushering the reporters out of the lobby. Laney sobs; I hear it over the chaos. A reporter grabs my shoulder.

  Events unfold as if someone else guides my actions; a gremlin usurps control of my nervous system. I swing at the guy. Luckily, he dodges back. There is no contact, but those green lights tell me I have been taped. Closing my eyes, I back up toward the elevator door. It opens and I nearly fall inside, Rachel right behind me. Laney’s crying grows louder as the doors close. I hold her. What else is there to do?

  “It’ll be okay, peanut,” I whisper. “It’ll be okay.”

  Rachel stands staring at the closed doors. My head tilts as I look at her. Laney bolts out of the carriage when the door opens, racing to our rooms. Rachel does not move. She looks lost.

  “What?” I ask.

  Once I say it, I know I should have remained quiet. No matter how I react, this pallor will hold tightly to my family, unable and unwilling to loosen its piercing grip. In this instant, I understand what I saw in Rachel’s eyes. Hopelessness. This is something I have never seen before, not in her.

  Rachel is a rock. She has never faltered, not once. Over the years, our marriage may have, but she never did. It is one of those things that drives me crazy. When we fight, there is no reaction. I cannot get to her. Yet all this has.

  I lead her back to the room she shares with Laney. The hallway is silent. I imagine eyes pressed against peepholes watching us toil down purgatory. When we reach the room, Rachel’s hand trembles as she attempts to insert the key card. I reach forward, but her shoulder shifts, blocking me. Laney cries softly beside her mother.

  When the card finds the slot and she gets the door open, Rachel leads Laney into the room.

  “Can I lie down?” My daughter’s voice is paper thin.

  “Sure, sweetie,” I say.

  Rachel darts a quick look at me and moves to settle Laney in one of the two queen beds.

  “Will you sit here with me?” I hear Laney whisper.

  Rachel responds too softly for me to hear. Once Laney is settled, my wife walks over to me. She passes and nods for me to follow her into the bathroom. My limbs remind me of a zombie as I shuffle toward her. Nothing makes sense anymore.

  “We need a plan,” I say. “I need to do something.”

  “In the morning, I think we should talk to Max. Maybe he knows something,” she says.

  “I left a message.”

  Or did I? I honestly cannot remember. The past hours have lost all clarity. Inexcusably, I think about the movies. Those parents, caught up in some awful tragedy paralleling our own, act the heroes, persevere against all odds, track down the clues and find the answers, gun in hand, nursing a nonfatal wound to the shoulder. For me, it is nothing of the sort. Instead the tsunami of reality pushes me, all of us, along, forcing us down this path of inactivity, bureaucracy, and flashbulbs. It is a wave of staggering weight that holds us captive to the nothingness.

  “I’ll go over now,” I announce, unwilling or unable to stop fighting the storm.

  “It’s almost midnight,” she says.

  “It is? So what?”

  Rachel stares at me for a time. “In the morning.”

  I take a breath. “I went to the Martin-Kleins’ house.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t get close. The police have it closed off.” I leave the doll part out of the story.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she says. “We need to know what’s happening. I think Laney will feel better having you here. That shit downstairs got to her.”

  I nod. I understand this. I need to stay close, protect my family. Although my family, in its entirety, is not here. I rub my eyes, walking into the other room and sitting down on the end of the bed. My wife returns to our daughter. As the door between the rooms slowly closes, I turn on the television. I feel like I have been here before. The moments revolve like I’m trapped on some hellish hamster wheel. Time is on a loop. Before I focus on the television screen, this thought troubles me. A loop implies there is no past and no future, there is only repetition.

  Then, I see and hear the outside world, those not stuck on our awful little wheel. My soul breaks in the minutes that follow. At first, it is an instant collage on the screen, people I know, facts I know, and places I know all folded into an enormous nightmare. Snippets stand out, punctuating the horror:

  Karen appears on the television. She stands outside our house. Her face swoops, a somber and premeditated curve of the mouth and eyebrow in unison. I’ve seen this look before, as if she’s prepared the ultimate backhanded compliment. I can’t remember what she said in the past; I will never forget what she says now.

  “He was a quiet kid,” she says, peering into the camera. “A loner. He never really joined in when my son, Bo, had all his friends over. I tried to reach out to his father, but he was sort of standoffish, I guess. His wife, Rachel, was always more friendly. Although they kept to themselves a lot.”

  A girl I have never seen before speaks to a reporter just outside the cordoned-off area surrounding the school. Her blond hair hangs just above her eyes in perfectly coiffed bangs. The rest bounces behind in a jaunty ponytail. She speaks with an accent reminiscent of the Valley girls of my youth.

  “Doug and Jake hung out all the time. The two of them always had their heads together. It was, like, really weird, you know? They kept to themselves all the time. No one really talked to them that much. I remember this one time, like, forever ago, Doug invited me to this birthday party. My parents wouldn’t let me go. They must have seen something, even then. I guess, you know, I’m just not all that surprised.”

  A local anchor looks seriously into the camera. Even they are now reporting the story throughout the night.

  “It is thought that two seniors at the school, Douglas Martin-Klein and Jake Connolly, planned and executed a horrible massacre this morning, killing thirteen. The body of Martin-Klein has been positively identified after he took his own life, apparently after running out of ammunition for the assault-style rifle he used in the shooting. The whereabouts of Connolly are currently unknown. Let’s go to Lisa Ann, at the scene.”

  The camera cuts to a woman standing outside the school, surprisingly close to the same angle of the girl a minute before. She wears a windbreaker with the logo of the local station. Her appearance hints at the beauty she must have been ten years before, yet the makeup cannot entirely hide the passage of time. Beside her stands another woman, most likely in her seventies, who stares at the camera with unabashed anger.

  “Hi, Kevin. I’m here outside the school where police are still searching for Jake Connolly, a high school senior thought to be one of the shooters. With me I have Donna Jackson, the owner of property adjacent to the school. She claims to have seen someone fleeing through her property at the time of the shooting.”

  “I saw that kid running through my field,” Donna Jackson spits out. “Right as rain, I did. He ran into the woods toward the neighborhood back there.”

  “Was this before or after the shooting?”

  Donna Jackson’s eyes look strangely vacant. “Sure was.”

  Lisa Ann narrows her eyes. “Okay. Well, are you sure it was Jake Connolly?”

  “The police showed me a picture. This kid had the same dark hair, if you know what I mean.”

  Lisa Ann’s eyes widen, as if that was not part of the script. She pulls the microphone away from Donna Jackson. “Back to you, Kevin.”

  Tairyn appears next on another local station. Her gaunt face and lined neck clash with her $200 haircut and her diamond earrings. She wears expensive running clothes. I realize my thoughts are cruel, but all I ca
n do now is protect and in protecting lash out.

  “Jake was raised by his father, really. His mom wasn’t around all that much. My daughter played with his daughter, so I’m one of the few people around here who have been in the house. I always tried to be nice to Simon, to include him in neighborhood activities, but I think he sort of looked down on all of us, the ‘stay-at-home moms’ here. I know he let Jake do things that I always wondered about. Even at a young age, I would see him playing with swords . . . and probably guns, you know, violent stuff like that. I guess . . .” She swallows her apparent emotions. “I guess I should have seen this coming. Those poor kids.”

  Tairyn can no longer talk. She is choked up, waving at the camera, but the shot lingers. She tries to brush it away, her eyes brimming with tears.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

  The camera pans to their front door. There stands her daughter, Laney’s old friend Becca. She happens to be wearing a high school hoodie. Although I expect Tairyn to react poorly, to cut the scene and tell them not to film her daughter, she motions Becca over. Becca wraps around Tairyn, who hugs her daughter close. It reminds me of how I held Laney in the lobby, but something is different. The two cock their heads in the exact same manner and I am reminded of a women’s glamour magazine.

  “It could have been her,” Tairyn says, dabbing at an eye with a tissue. “My daughter was there when the shooting happened.”

  Although it looks as if Tairyn beckons her daughter to speak, Becca does not. She stares vacantly into the camera for a few seconds. She looks like she might be in shock.

  “He was a quiet guy,” another man says, one of the Martin-Kleins’ neighbors. “Kept to himself mostly. Never came to any of the neighborhood parties. I’m sure he was invited, though.”

  The reporter nods. The conversation continues, rehashing much of the same judgment every “eyewitness” has shared since I turned the TV back on at six this morning. Finally, the reporter finishes up with this neighbor and looks thoughtfully into the camera.