Scott Free

by John Gilstrap

  The kit was bigger than he’d remembered, maybe eight inches by twelve inches, and about three inches deep. Inside, he found some bandages, and a sheathed survival knife not unlike the one he remembered from his father’s collection of Vietnam stuff. (Scott figured that the knife must have been a personal addition to the kit from Cody; the knife by itself was worth more than everything else combined.)

  Nestled in the bottom of the kit, wrapped in its own little Baggie, was the best discovery of the day: a flare gun. Smaller than the ones he’d seen in movies, the Day-Glo-orange pistol came with its own instruction sheet, which explained that the manufacturer had preloaded it with a single flare. He read through the rest of the instructions, finding nothing beyond the obvious. Huge block letters across the bottom of the sheet warned: KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN.

  He found other flares as well—fusees, they were called, and they looked just like the ones that cops set out at the scene of auto accidents. So, there was his source of fire. His matches. Things were looking up.

  Stuffing the flare gun into his coat pocket, he carried the fusees back to the shelter and placed them on his sleeping shelf, on top of the greenery, on what he hoped would be a dry spot. Then it was back outside to give some thought to making a signal fire.

  SITTING AROUND THE POLICE STATION twiddling body parts was going to drive Brandon over the edge, in all likelihood bringing the chief and his staff tumbling behind him. With the weather this bad, nothing could happen. He couldn’t do anything to change that, and neither could the police. Having him sit there waiting for nothing just made everybody uncomfortable.

  Every hour or so, on the regular news updates, Brandon caught glimpses of rebroadcast segments of Sherry’s appearance on the Today show. She could barely contain herself, she was so upset. She had no idea that Scotty—Scott hated to be called that—had even met this Cody Jamieson person, let alone decided to take a trip with him. For a while, she never even reported him missing, because she’d just figured he was out with the other teenagers, doing whatever it was teenagers did when they got together. From there, the interviewer took Sherry through what little was known about the search efforts, and he left her with his prayers for a speedy and happy resolution to this terribly stressful time, before moving on to a commercial for diapers.

  The time had come for Brandon to confront her face-to-face. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to glean from the meeting, but he knew that it had to happen. Pretty Boy Brock never quite got around to the questions he wanted to ask.

  He snagged the tourist bus for a ride up to SkyTop. By the time he arrived at Sherry’s mansion on the mount, he felt like he’d been for a ride in a clothes dryer. The driver kept the heater set at a constant 300 degrees, and with chains on the back tires, the converted school bus rode like a stagecoach with square wheels.

  As he’d expected, it was Larry Chinn who answered his knock. “Oh, my God,” he breathed, clearly startled. “It’s you.”

  Brandon stepped past him into the foyer without waiting for an invitation. “Hi, Larry.” Inside, the place was a palace, bigger than most wealthy people’s year-round homes. Open stairs rose from his right, climbing the front wall and leading to a bridge spanning the massive two-plus-story vaulted great room. Straight ahead, on the far side of the enormous family room with its walk-in fireplace, the wall was built entirely of glass, offering a breathtaking view of the ski slopes, and beyond them, of the craggy mountain peaks that stretched to the horizon. “You sure there’s enough room in here?”

  “It is lovely, isn’t it?”

  Brandon didn’t give much of a damn where people fell on the sexuality spectrum, but Larry was just effeminate enough to put his teeth on edge. “Is your boss around?”

  “She’s sleeping.” He said it in a half-whisper, as if a hand grenade in the foyer could even be heard in the sleeping wing, wherever that was.

  “Wake her up. We need to talk.”

  Larry seemed very uncomfortable about this. “Brandon…um, Mr. O’Toole…I’m not sure if it’s even appropriate—”

  “Please don’t piss me off, Larry. Okay? Do me that favor. Tell Sherry that I’m here. Better yet, tell her that I’ll be here until she deigns to see me.”

  Larry sort of hugged himself as he gaped, wondering what he should do.

  “Please,” Brandon whispered. “I admire your loyalty, but believe me when I tell you that you don’t want to get into the middle of this one.”

  “I don’t presume to pry where I don’t belong, Mr. O’Toole, but she really has been very tired—”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s exhausting dodging phone calls before having to get up for the networks.”

  Larry saw something in Brandon’s expression that convinced him. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  With that, Larry hurried out of the living room and up the stairs, leaving Brandon alone in the palace. Honestly, he could think of four-star hotel lobbies that were less well-appointed. Sherry-the-bitch had pulled out all the stops to impress Scott this time around. He wondered how well it had worked.

  Why couldn’t she just have left well enough alone?

  “Relax, Dad,” Scott had told him at the front door on his way out. “Team Bachelor is safe. It’s just a ski trip.” In business, Brandon’s friends knew him as the Ice Man—coldly calculating, with a perfect poker face. At home, he was as opaque as window glass. Scott could read him like an eye chart.

  Brandon waited all of ninety seconds before heading off to explore the place.

  He figured the chalet to have six bedrooms, and he found Scott’s on the same level as the living room. If the blue-tinged pillowcase hadn’t given it away, then the explosion of clutter certainly would have. The boy’s room here was twice the size of Brandon’s master bedroom at home, complete with a fireplace, a king-size bed, and a view that rivaled that of the great room. The decor was early great white hunter, with the bust of some animal over the fireplace, and a collection of bows and arrows on the wall, some of them clearly antique, but others of a space-age design. It surprised Brandon that of all the rooms Scott could have chosen as his own, he chose the one with dead animals on the walls. Then he looked next to the bed and he understood perfectly. A built-in stereo system dominated the wall, with speakers that could cause structural damage.

  Sure enough, when Brandon pressed the Play button on the remote he found on the nightstand, a CD changer cued up Metallica’s Black Album. Their first Black Album. The latest was undoubtedly plugged into Scott’s head, courtesy of the portable player that never left his possession. As heavy metal flooded the room, he lost track of time. He sat there on the bed listening to the guitar riffs, all the while seeing Scott’s fingers flying across his Gibson guitar, belting out a serviceable impression of Kirk Hammett. The sound, of course, was perfect, but Brandon had to smile as his mind’s eye watched the boy work on the lead-guitar body language—the roundhouse strum, as Brandon liked to call it, and the jumps and the kneeling riffs. One day the kid would be damn good, he knew, but until he outgrew the adolescent gangliness, the physical elements of his performance would always have that comical edge.

  Then again, not everyone saw his baby boy in the same light as he did. Among his fellow classmates at Robinson High School, Scott was apparently quite the babe. A hottie. Brandon had learned this little detail during back-to-school night when some girl’s mother—herself single and clearly on the prowl—sought him out to share with the father the depth of the son’s babehood. His hottiness. Brandon had received the news with pride and grace, and wasted no time in passing it on to the babe himself, who responded with a shade of red that one rarely saw in nature.

  “Please don’t say anything like that in front of my friends,” he’d begged.

  “I think they already know. Apparently everyone does.”

  “Oh, God,” Scott had groaned. “You’re going to, aren’t you? I know you. You’re going to be sitting with some parent who’s bragging about their kid’s SAT scores, and you’
re going to say, ‘Yeah, but my son’s a babe.’”

  “But I’m proud to be the father of a babe. You should be proud to be one.”

  “Oh, God.”

  And so it had gone for a good five minutes until Scott had taken offense and left the kitchen in a huff. Leave it to teenagers to be offended by compliments.

  As “Enter Sandman” ended and “Sad But True” began, Brandon found himself petting a T-shirt that Scott had left crumpled on the bed. He recognized it as one he’d bought last summer in Hilton Head, featuring a peg-legged pirate with a bandanna and an eye patch riding a shark skeleton bareback, by way of advertising a brand of surfboard wax. Scott had bought it for the picture and it had been one of his favorites ever since.

  The rush of anguish came as a stab as Brandon fondled the shirt, feeling the limp softness of it between his fingers. It was a connection—a link to his son, and as he handled it, the lingering odor of Mennen anti-perspirant and Brut aftershave wafted past, sharpening the pain and driving it deeper. As the music grew louder and Kirk pounded his guitar strings, Brandon buried his face in the dirty shirt and inhaled the aroma.

  He closed his eyes and squinted hard, trying to force the pain away, but it only grew sharper. How could they have put their son in the middle of all this? How could he, Brandon, have forced Scott to feel bad about a trip he had every right to treasure?

  How am I going to live without him?

  The tears arrived in a rush, flooding out as a wracking sob. Jesus, what had he done? What was he going to do? The desperate sadness was a knife blade—a bayonet thrust through his soul. The agony of it took Brandon’s breath away, and with it, his sense of hope. Scott Christopher O’Toole lay dead or dying out there somewhere, and the last thought he’d take with him was the guilt of having disappointed the man who was in fact his single greatest fan.

  Brandon buried his face deeper into the T-shirt and tried to imagine what it would have been like to have one final embrace.

  “Brandon?” Sherry’s voice stirred something ugly in his gut.

  “Brandon, where are you?” She was in the living room, and without even looking, he could see her with her hands on her hips.

  Settling himself with a deep breath, Brandon wiped his eyes and stepped out of the bedroom into the hallway. Sure enough, there she was, with just the posture he’d imagined.

  “Where the hell were you?” Brandon said, walking toward her.

  “I was upstairs sleeping.” Clearly, she’d made an effort to fix her hair, but the back still showed signs of bed head.

  “I meant last night,” Brandon said.

  Sherry held her hands up astride her face, her fingers splayed—her ultimate sign of frustration. “I was just tired and scared, all right? I didn’t want to have to deal with you. That’s why I didn’t answer the phone, and that’s why I didn’t return your calls. I’m sorry, okay?”

  “Earlier, Sherry. Where were you earlier? When Scott was deciding to go to some concert?”

  “Oh, like this is my fault?”

  “For one week out of your busy life, you were supposed to be a parent! Now, where the hell were you?”

  Sherry shook her head and headed back for the stairs. “I don’t have to listen to this. You’re delusional.”

  Brandon grabbed her arm and pulled her back around. “No, actually, you do have to listen to this. I want an answer.”

  “Get your hands off me, before I call the police.”

  “I’ve spent all day with the police,” Brandon sneered. “Want me to tell you which one to talk to? How did this happen?”

  Sherry yanked her arm away. “How dare you!”

  “Answer the goddamn question! How does a sixteen-year-old boy manage to climb onto an airplane and fly into a snowstorm when you’re here watching him?”

  Her hands went back to her hips, her head cocked. “Do you really think that I’m with him every single minute of the day? Scotty’s a teenager, for God’s sake. In case you haven’t noticed.”

  “His name is Scott, Sherry! He hates being called Scotty. And it’s because he’s a teenager that I do keep an eye on him.”

  “Oh, that’s right, I keep forgetting that I’m dealing with the perfect father. Excuse me for not calling you for an instruction book before I left.”

  “Jesus, Sherry, it’s not about being perfect! It’s about being reasonable! Now, where the hell were you?”

  “I was at breakfast, Brandon. And then I did some work. And then I had lunch and then I wrote a little more, and then, wouldn’t you know it? It was time for dinner. That’s where I was. Now, I suppose by your yardstick of reasonable parenting, I should have had Scotty in a playpen at arm’s reach all day, but somehow, that seemed wasteful. You know, inasmuch as we’re at a ski resort!”

  “Where you have no business being in the first place!” Brandon boomed.

  Sherry laughed that derisive little chuckle that always pushed him over the edge. “Oh, so now we get down to what’s really bugging you. You’re afraid of losing the parent olympics.”

  “I’m afraid of losing my son! To hell with you and me, Sherry. Has it dawned on you yet that our son has been in a plane crash?”

  “Has it dawned on you that it’s not my fault?”

  Brandon swatted a lamp off its end table, and then launched the table itself with a kick. “Goddammit, Sherry, it’s not even about you! Like most of the things that go on in the world every goddamn day, this one is not even remotely about you! Why can’t you see that?”

  “Because you keep blaming me for it! And you’re paying for that lamp!”

  He swatted another one just for good measure. And in that moment, he realized that he was out of control. He realized that coming to the chalet had been exactly the wrong idea, and that if he didn’t walk away right this moment, he was going to hurt her. He took a step closer, and while he could see the fear in her eyes, she refused to step back.

  “The depths of what you don’t comprehend are truly frightening, Sherry,” he said. His voice was a whisper now, and his forefinger hovered an inch from her nose. “But you listen to me very carefully. If they don’t find Scott, or if they find him and he’s anything but one hundred percent healthy, you’re going to pay.”

  10

  AT TEN MINUTES TO THREE, Isaac DeHaven thumbed the switch on the shortwave radio, pleased to hear the thump that demonstrated there was life in the speakers. Living like this in the middle of nowhere, he always enjoyed a sense of satisfaction when the equipment still worked. Repairs in the wintertime could pose a hell of a problem.

  Isaac called his little piece of heaven a “cabin,” but by anyone else’s standards it was much more than that. Built originally as a hunting lodge back in the 1920s—and then modified a decade later to minister to the needs of the bootlegging crowd—the Flintlock Ranch was constructed entirely of logs harvested from the surrounding forests and sported close to four thousand square feet of living space. He had all the comforts he needed, with the exception of a truly efficient heating system. On days like this, even with the wood stoves stoked and the heat set on high, it was hard to bring the temperature much past sixty-five. A hell of a lot warmer than outside, to be sure, but never quite warm enough to shed his sweater and socks.

  Returning last night after five days, it seemed as if the frigid weather had settled into the very foundation of the place. He threw another log onto the fire and opened the stove’s damper a little more, then settled into his plush leather chair, his feet crossed on the ottoman, just inches from the blaze in the firebox.

  As necessary as it was to leave the ranch from time to time, he always dreaded it, and always savored the days that followed his return. It was the solitude, as much as anything else, he thought. And in the winter, the solitude was sweeter than at any other time of the year. The grass didn’t grow; it was too cold to repair fences. Winter was Isaac’s time for music and books and maybe a little writing. For days on end, he might never exercise his vocal cords at all, a
nd that was just fine with him. Life was too short to spend it talking to others.

  Not when there were books to read, music to listen to. The walls of Flintlock Ranch were papered with books, thousands of volumes, stretching from floor to ceiling, wrapping the entire perimeter. Isaac read everything, from memoirs to classics to junk fiction. He knew the law as well or better than any new associate in any law firm in the nation, just as he knew disease as intimately as any fourth-year medical student. When he listened to a Mozart symphony or a Beatles album, he knew not only the music, but where it fit in the composer’s total body of work. Isaac didn’t actively seek out to learn these things, he just did. And with little else to clutter his mind, he retained more detail than he lost. He supposed it was just the way he was wired as a human being.

  What he could not absorb in sufficient quantity to slake his interest was current news, and that, as much as anything else, was the function of his shortwave radio. On it, he could listen not only to the news of the United States, but also to that of France or Germany or Spain, or any of the other nations whose languages he spoke fluently. Inevitably, though, after just an hour or so of announcer-speak, he would feel his temper heating, his mood darkening. Then it would be time to restore the gentle silence, interrupted only by music.

  Isaac DeHaven’s nightmares were all noisy, filled with people he didn’t know, invading his space and his mind with random commotion that accomplished nothing. The nightmares relived his days in prison: five years wasted in the company of humans who were barely more than animals, guarded by men who believed that a piece of metal pinned to a shirt somehow gave them power over others; that it relieved them of responsibility for the suffering that they inflicted on the men placed in their care.

  Isaac didn’t waste his time on hatred, but if he did, it was the prison guards who would feel the heat of his emotion. The nightmares were all that separated Isaac from a truly utopian existence out here in the wilderness. If they would leave him alone, then his contentment would be complete.