Roadrunner

by Michael Lilly

  The walk from the municipal building to the school, though only lasting about two minutes, has me working into a sweat and drinking half my water bottle. I will never be fully ready for this heat.

  Before leaving the municipal building, I was assured that my key works for the school, and now I intend to test that. I let myself in, greeted by a rush of relatively cool air. It’s an old, brick building, with all the smells that I associate with grade school: paper, bulletin boards, well-aged desks and books, and that sweet, unidentifiable smell that all old schools wear as their unifying badge of honor.

  I’d imagine that the walls are normally pegged with paintings, posters, and projects, but in the weeks preceding the new school year, they’re barren save for the odd PTA meeting reminder or last call for such-and-such tryouts.

  The emptiness of the school gives it an eerie, surreal quality, like the voices of past students are congregated, alight with gossip about Firenze, as though one of them saw it happen and thirsts for justice. I amuse myself with the thought, then hear a muffled but distinct slam echo through the hallway.

  The whispers cease, their owners’ ethereal ears perked for the source as mine are.

  “Hello?” I say. I’m answered neither by voice nor by footfall. Surely there’s someone here, unless the supernatural, fictional beings with which I amused myself only seconds ago are less fictional than I thought.

  The silence persists, still unencumbered by ghost gossip.

  I make my way through the dim, unfamiliar hallway, shadows eddying about, crosshatched rectangles on the wall where sunlight shines through the window of a classroom door.

  I’m searching for some kind of security room, but thus far, it eludes me.

  According to the locals, the school’s budget was granted a rare increase. To the dismay of most parents, it went toward installing and maintaining a security system. One of the better models with a round-the-clock camera feed that retains up to two weeks’ worth of footage from any given camera. I spotted a couple of them on the way in, perched atop the light poles in the parking lot. With luck, perhaps the abduction took place far enough north for the cameras to have picked it up.

  Of course, I’ll most likely need assistance to access the video, but I prefer to familiarize myself with the territory first. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get the footage before school lets in and I have to swim up a stream of eager school-goers still basking in the novelty of the new school year.

  I follow where (I think) the noise came from earlier, but it’s shrouded in ambiguity, as the echo-y halls had twisted and distorted the noise.

  Still, I hear nothing, as though the school itself is mocking my endeavor.

  I reach the end of what seems to be the main hallway, and arrive at a T. One direction contains a pair of doors on the left side and one on the right, with a set of double doors at the end, featuring big square windows ablaze with midmorning sunlight. The other direction contains much of the same, but instead of the double doors leading outside, they open to yet another hallway.

  The doors are unlocked, allowing me passage to an equally dim corridor, which houses a sturdy, unmarked door, a door marked ‘Custodial,’ and the entrance to the gym.

  The gym has a single light fixture casting its glow from the far corner, but is otherwise dark. The partial darkness lends the massive room an unsettling gloom, an impure mix between shadow and light that takes on the good qualities of neither.

  A gust of wind rattles the gym’s exterior doors violently, summoning a tremendous crashing noise from the opposite side of the room, unimpeded by wall, carpet, person, or furniture. The gym doubles as the school’s cafeteria, equipped with folding tables and benches, currently collapsed and tucked into a corner.

  I step inside and my footsteps echo with the low thump of hard rubber meeting hardwood, rhythmic and far louder than I like.

  Though I have permission and authority to be here, a sense of foreboding melancholy fills my lungs with every breath, as though the air I’m sucking in is insubstantial, from another plane.

  Just as muffled as the first time, a door’s slam as it shuts echoes through the halls. This one seems to stir the hollow entities of the past more than before.

  I pause and listen for additional noise once again, but still, the noise offers no encore.

  I decide to leave the school and return only when I have a guard or some other helpful being to accompany me. I’ve scouted the school to my satisfaction, anyway.

  The gym doors have barely swung shut by the time I reach the second set of doors, which I open with less grace than I might otherwise manage. I hasten back into the main hallway, which had a modicum of innocence, nakedness, about it earlier, but on the return trip, it seems more threatening than anything. I avert my eyes from the classroom windows, lest a monster lie in wait.

  Two

  Never have I been more relieved to plunge into the stifling heat. It hugs and presses in a way that makes me more a part of this world than a hypothetical one in which monsters reign and pick their teeth with the bones of their meal that day.

  It felt like hours that I spent submerged in the school, so I’m surprised that the sun has hardly moved since I went in. I check my phone and see that I spent hardly more than ten minutes exploring the building. I want to go home, to tell Todd about this strange, frightening dream, and remind myself of two things: First, that Todd isn’t technically allowed to know any of this. Second, and more disappointing, that this is most definitely not a dream.

  I pinch myself in the side to make sure. It hurts.

  I decide to visit the boys, Firenze’s friends, for a little while. One at a time, if the parents are on board. I decide against visiting the one with the stingy mom, though. Probably nothing useful there, anyway.

  Walking along Redtail Road, the school looks so innocent. In an environment with more plentiful rainfall, it might have charming trees swaying about, casting playful shadows on soft, green grass.

  The rest of Redtail, to the west at least, is boring. The south side of it contains more of the same New Mexican landscape, the school yard tapering off into dusty sage. The north side is almost identical, but slopes upward, a small hill sandwiched between Redtail Road and Market Plaza. A small dirt path creeps up over the hill to give residents on this side of the rise easier access to Market Plaza, without having to go around east by the municipal building.

  Suddenly, I’m walking up the front steps to Anthony Koster’s house, a shabby but well-kept detached home with nothing in the front yard to indicate that it was actually occupied. My knocks seem too loud, and the contrasting calm too quiet, if there is such a thing.

  I’ve been thinking about the most prominent differences between Wometzia and Riverdell; there’s a foreign quality about the place that I can’t quite shake. Sure, this place is dry, humid, and impossibly hot. The neighbors are more neighborly, the community more communal. The list of disparities goes on for miles. But is that what makes it feel so foreign? Or is it perhaps a change in me, one elicited by the events of the past year?

  I used to be a beast of the night, slinking and creeping through the shadows, claiming them as my own domain. But there, there was something to hide from and something to hunt. I was both predator and prey. Now my own predators and prey have been removed, so where does that leave me? What’s a hunter without the hunt?

  I try to reign in my mind; perhaps I’ll acquire some new prey soon, affording me some purpose and direction, at least until that hunt is over.

  After some shuffling and muffled shouts, the door before me swings open, tended by a girl maybe fourteen years old.

  “May I help you?” she asks. So polite.

  “Yes, could I speak with Anthony? It’s about Firenze.”

  “Who are you?” she asks. Not so polite.

  “My name is Detective Thorn. You can call me Remy if you want.”

  “Mr. Thorn,” she says. “My mom would probably want to be here for that.”

  “
Any idea when I could catch her home?”

  “Could be any minute, but I’m not sure,” she says. This is a girl learned both in the arts of cop deflection and stranger danger. Perhaps even recently. Nothing like a child abduction to throw a whole town into paranoid hysterics. Not that I blame them.

  “I’ll come back later,” I say. Stanley Romero is a more promising candidate anyway, if the report is anything to go by. “Thank you, Miss Koster,” I say. She hides it well, but a flash of pride betrays her, the swelling result of not only handling the cop but also earning enough respect that I address her so formally.

  She straightens up, smiles, nods, and closes the door. I hear a dead bolt engage before the door’s vibrations calm.

  Rolling my eyes, more out of comedic appreciation than out of exasperation, I retreat across the lawn and head to the Romero residence, three houses over.

  I ring the doorbell and Stanley answers. He looks like he’s about to call for his mother, but then he sees the badge. His expression turns solemn.

  “Is this about Firenze?” he asks. His tone has the seasoned resolve of one who’s seen too much too soon. Devoid of innocence and appreciation of life. I know it all too well.

  Death is a tricky bitch, and when a child encounters it, you can’t help but hope that it’s at a distance; a seldom-seen grandmother who sends a dollar every birthday, or the mail man, or a neighbor’s dog. You want the child to become acquainted with death, sure—that’s part of growing up—but not too intimately. You want him to be able to test the waters without being plunged into black, icy depths. But this is not distant. This is intimate, personal, close enough for death to whisper sweet nothings into his ear.

  Stanley steps onto the porch without hesitation or the awkward clumsiness that plagues other ten-year-olds. The porch is equipped with a swinging bench and a couple of lawn chairs, all mismatched and shoddy, but sturdy looking nonetheless. He sits on a lawn chair that used to be white.

  “I already told the other guy everything he wanted to know,” he says. His eyes are on the floor, above which his bare feet dangle, and he only mumbles at first.

  “I figured,” I say. His walls are up already. I need to build trust, make him believe in me, give him a reason to think it’s worth talking to me.

  I decide on, “What was the other guy like?”

  Stanley shrugs. “Polite. To the point. He smiled too much, though.” Oddly, I know what he means.

  I laugh, and a faint flicker of a smile flits across his face.

  “I’ll try not to smile too much,” I say. I put on an exaggeratedly grumpy face, complete with hands on my hips. This time he full-on giggles. Now that we have a sturdier vessel, I can steer the conversation to more morose waters.

  “How long did you know him?” I don’t use his name. At least, not yet—now is not the time to trigger that emotional reaction.

  The kid’s eyes do an arc as he half-smiles.

  “Shit,” he says. This surprises me. “We were in diapers together.” I wonder how many times he heard that phrase before he adopted it as his identifier for his late best friend.

  “That long?” I say.

  “Longer,” he says. “We were friends in the sky, before we came here. And we’ll still be friends on the other side. I sure wish he didn’t go on up so damn early, though.”

  By the end, his voice is little more than a high-pitched whine. He wipes tears away with his right sleeve, then uses the left to wipe his nose. How anyone could bear long sleeves in this weather is beyond me, but perhaps having grown up in the sweltering heat imbues one with a tolerance for it that I would envy tremendously.

  “That’s quite a friendship,” I say. Truly, his abilities to understand and to grieve are remarkable for his age. “Are you that close with the other? Anthony?”

  “No,” he says. “Me and Firenze, we had a connection, you know? Like, one time, I was steamin’ mad at my teacher, Ms. Lucas. She gave me a bullshit grade because she thought I cheated. I didn’t tell anyone about it, right? Anyway, I was hanging out with Firenze later, and out of the blue, he goes, ‘Man, Ms. Lucas is a bitch, isn’t she?’ Straight up calls her a bitch! Firenze doesn—didn’t even swear.” His voices catches and quiets when he stumbles over the tense. One of the harshest and most consistent reminders of death is that which lies in language—that one’s friend, relative, coworker, whoever—that person exists only in the past tense now.

  “That’s incredible,” I say.

  “Yeah,” he says.

  “So, you obviously knew him way better than anyone else.”

  “Damn right,” he says.

  “So you could probably tell me best: is there any reason that he might have gone somewhere other than straight home? Maybe somewhere only you two know about, where he might have gone instead of right to his house?”

  “There … is one place. I didn’t tell the other guy about it.”

  “That’s okay. I’m way cooler anyway.” I wink. Another advantage to a follow-up interview is that witnesses have had time to mull it over, and come up with things they wish they’d said the first time around.

  Stanley laughs again, returning to his comfort zone.

  “You know that forest across the street from The Park?”

  I nod.

  “If you take a little path a bit to the right of Old Larry’s house, you walk a few minutes and there’s this big kind of grove place, where the trees grow in a circle and kinda lean toward each other, so it sorta makes a ceiling. If you go down in there, it’s like your own little room.”

  “Is there any reason he might have gone there that night?” I ask.

  “Not that I can think of,” he says. “It was almost ten o’clock, and that was his curfew on weekends. And he never ever missed curfew.”

  “Did he get into trouble if he did miss curfew?”

  “Not really. Just a little talking-to from Marlene.”

  “Marlene?”

  “Firenze’s mom. Marlene Pacheco.”

  “That sounds exhausting,” I say, hoping for another chuckle. I don’t get one.

  Stanley shrugs. “Not as bad as getting hit,” he says, in a tone that suggests that this is a regular and appropriate topic of discussion. Ah. That’s why he wears the long sleeves.

  “Oh, buddy,” I say. I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but out loud it came. He shoots me an inquisitive look.

  “The secret spot is kinda hard to find,” he says. “Want me to show you how to get there?”

  The idea entices me, no doubt. The curious, inquisitive mind of a child packaged in the maturity and restraint of an adult showing me the personal hideout of my murder victim. Not to mention, he’s a local; he certainly knows the place at least as well as I know Riverdell. But, with some eyebrows already raised toward Todd and me, I feel I should probably give the town more time to get acquainted with me before I adventure into the woods alone with a young boy, investigation or no investigation.

  “I appreciate it,” I say, “but I’d better not.”

  “Aww, okay.” No argument, not even a But whyyyyy?

  “Do you think there’s a chance he went out that way?” I ask.

  “Well, there’s always a chance,” he says. I raise an eyebrow, pressing the question.

  “No,” he says. “He doesn’t miss curfew, like I said. He was going to be early to get home, but he wouldn’t’ve had enough time to go to the secret spot.”

  “Well, I’ll go look out that way, just in case. Who knows? Something may turn up.”

  Stanley nods.

  “What about his family? What are they like?” I ask.

  “It’s just him and his mom, really. His big sister is at college right now, but even when she’s home, she’s never there. Usually with boys or something.”

  “Did she ever bring any of them home?”

  Stanley shrugs: Hell if I know. “I doubt it. She spent the least amount of time at home possible. Just her personality, I guess. Not that she was rude or anyth
ing. Just she had other people she wanted to spend time with.”

  “I get that. What about his dad?” I read in the file that Firenze’s dad passed away two years ago, a heart attack that the doctors kept warning him about. But the warnings went unheeded, resulting in the inevitable. Despite this knowledge, I want to hear Stanley’s take on it, if only to make him feel as useful as possible.

  “He died a couple of years back. It was a heart thing, I think. He ate tons of sweets and junk food and never really got off the couch, so it makes sense. It’s still sad, though. He was fun. He taught Firenze and me how to play poker, and this one time, I went over there, and we gambled using Skittles. But I’m diabetic, so when we were done, I traded mine for veggie chips.”

  The look on his face indicates that he didn’t start the spiel with the intention of including that story, but now that it’s out there, he’s looking for my reaction.

  I do my best warm smile. “Thank you, Stanley. Is there anything else you can think of that I should know? Anything that seemed odd or out of place that night?”

  Stanley thinks for a moment (or pretends to, at least), then shakes his head no.

  “Well, you can go ahead and call over to the station if you think of anything, okay? Or come stop by. Thank you, Stanley.”

  “Stan,” he says.

  “Thank you, Stan.”

  Three

  Stanley opens the door and steps inside as I step away from his porch, briefly allowing the escape of some laugh track-riddled sitcom playing at maximum volume. My sympathy for the child deepens.

  Just as I reach the street, my phone starts to ring. It’s Husk.

  “So get this,” he says, clearly holding professionalism in the highest regard. “Fingerprints.”

  “Fingerprints?”

  “Fingerprints. Fingerprints everywhere.”

  “On the Pacheco case?”

  “No, on a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Yes on the Pacheco case.”

  “Oh shit!”

  “Language, son.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “I’m fucking with you. But yeah. They picked up a bunch of prints all over the murder weapon … s, some on the corpse himself, his clothes, everything.”