Jaxon With an X

by D. K. Wall

  “But the science is better today, right?”

  “True, but if a kid was never reported missing, we wouldn’t have any dental records or DNA to match to. No matter how good the science gets, it’s tough to find something without data.”

  David gripped the coffee cup in his hands and studied the rippling surface. “The new one is the same as the general pattern among the others?”

  “Yes. He disappeared while riding his bike alone in a vacant field. It was just down from his house, so his mom felt safe. She was working two jobs and took a nap on the couch. When she woke up, he was gone. A canvass of the area didn’t turn up anything suspicious. No unusual cars, a man they had never seen before, or anything else like that.”

  Lieutenant Gilman spoke up. “Knowing the connection now, we asked the investigators to go back through the notes. During a search of buildings in the area, they discovered one neighbor had what appeared to be fresh moonshine—several cases of it—though no evidence of a still. They destroyed it and let the owner off with a warning.”

  David sighed. “Let me guess. A delivery from Matt?”

  “A local investigator went back out to ask. The man who’d had it in a storage building is now deceased, but his son owns the farm today. Says he didn’t know anything specific about it, but he also said his dad and grandfather both swore McGregor Lightning was the best around.”

  David settled the coffee cup on the table and folded his hands. “So we think he delivered the ’shine and then spotted the kid?”

  “Best we can tell, he didn’t target the boy in advance, but he fit the target profile.”

  “Another clue, though.”

  “No reason for their detective to make a connection. The farmer clammed up when they found the ’shine, so they assumed he had a still hidden somewhere. They had bigger issues so didn’t search too hard for it. And they never suspected a delivery.”

  “If only Matt’s name had come up. If only I had questioned him harder the first time around. If only I had known about the other boy Buck knew about… I’ll always wonder.”

  Roxanne nodded. “Won’t we all, but ‘if onlies’ will kill you.”

  David had given the same lecture to dozens of cops over the years. Don’t sweat every little mistake, because we all make them. But he didn’t think he would ever be able to go to sleep without wondering what he could have done differently.

  He focused on the test results in front of him. “These are the DNA results for Theo.”

  Roxanne replied. “Just as you thought, Bethany is the boy’s mother.

  Gilman chimed in. “I’ve searched for surviving relatives. Bethany’s mother is dead—cancer. We did find her natural father, not that it will do any good. He is serving two consecutive life sentences in Arkansas. He robbed a convenience store, and the clerk decided to fight back. The clerk and a customer were killed. No other relatives on that side. A smattering of cousins, Bethany’s stepfather, who didn’t sound like a winner in the first place, and not much else. We don’t have much hope to find him a home on that side.”

  “And certainly not on the McGregor side, either.” David drummed his fingers on the table. “This whole case. I get close, but I never quite get it right.”

  Roxanne leaned forward. “Your idea to test Rick for paternity got us there, though.”

  “Yeah, but grandfather? Damn it. I have to tell that kid his father is his worst nightmare.”

  They sat in silence as a mover rolled a hand truck of boxes past them.

  Gilman said, “I don’t get why Matt McGregor would have gotten her pregnant.”

  David grimaced. “Just a theory, but I called the profilers with Roxanne, and they think it’s as good a guess as any. Buck gave us the clue.”

  “What clue?”

  “Nobody needed to worry, because Rick was gonna cure Matt good. Fix him once and for all. So in Rick’s screwed-up parenting, he kidnapped a prostitute for his son. Not just kidnapped her, but forced his son to have sex with her. Probably watched him to make sure he really did it. Otherwise, how would he know?”

  “That is really twisted.” The paper clip Gilman was twisting snapped in his fingers. “And Rick really thought that would cure him?”

  “If you have a better theory, we’re all ears. But we know Rick kidnapped her, and we know Matt impregnated her.”

  Roxanne looked out the window. “Can you imagine how the dynamics of that house changed dramatically when Bethany found herself pregnant?”

  David grimaced. “And even more so when Theo was born.”

  Gilman piped up. “Because it’d been a long time since the McGregor house had a crying baby?”

  “Not just the fact they had a baby.” David’s eyes grew sad. “A male baby. Rick may have realized that rather than curing his son, he had brought temptation right inside the house. We’ll never know for sure, but we could certainly see Rick and Matt fighting over what to do with the kid. Best guess is Rick was murdered over it. It’s as good a theory as we have. It would have taken a fairly strong trigger to both commit your first murder and for the victim to be your own father.”

  “But he let Bethany live?”

  “He didn’t hate her for any reason and was probably ambivalent about her. He needed her to care for and raise the boy. And remember, he didn’t directly murder her, not in the same sense as his father, but rather she died of malnutrition. Depraved indifference may qualify for murder in a courtroom, but he didn’t physically kill her in the way he killed the others.”

  Gilman leaned back as if in shock. “So Bethany dies, and Matt is now all alone with his son, a little boy no one even knows about. Why go get other boys, risk getting caught, when he had what he needed at home?”

  David pushed his chair back and stood up. He slammed his hands into his pockets and walked over to the window, staring down at the nearly empty street below. “Because this monster, this despicable, disgusting monster, had the slightest conscience. The kidnappings didn’t start until Theo was three or four. With Matt’s age preference, the temptation must have been powerful, but he couldn’t bring himself to touch his own son.”

  Gilman shook his head. “You’re saying he beat the kid, but he wouldn’t stoop to molesting him?”

  “In this monster’s mind, beatings were normal. He was beaten as a kid, right? But desires were different. He needed other outlets for that, but he knew bad things would happen if he got caught again, so he targeted boys who were all alone, defenseless, and kept them.”

  “And he made Theo live with them, down in that basement.”

  “Think of Matt’s life as a child. He was raised to do his father’s bidding and haul moonshine up and down cellar steps. When he was old enough to drive, he delivered the liquor and drugs and did chores around the house. Probably maintained the still, because he was making and delivering it after his father died. So now, he has his own son and raises him to take care of the new family business—the ones he brings home. He can teach them the rules. To do that, he has to live with them, but he’s also let out of the basement for other ‘chores’ like digging a grave or chopping wood.”

  “Holy crap.” Gilman rested his face in his hands. “And Jaxon?”

  “Just a kid like all of the others, except he and Theo were the same age. They hit it off, becoming friends, and Matt, in his own demented way, wanted his son to have a friend.”

  “What a sick son of a bitch.”

  “No arguments from me.” David leaned his head against the window, the cool glass calming his fraying nerves. “And now, I get to go sit down with this kid and his psychiatrist and help him understand that his tormentor was also his father.”

  Roxanne walked up beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. “All you can do is tell him the truth.”

  David turned to her. “The truth is that the day I talked to Matt McGregor, I didn’t just miss that he had kidnapped Jaxon Lathan. I missed that he had his own son locked in a dungeon. How do I live with that?”

&
nbsp; 58

  My name is Ted McGregor.

  After all these years of not knowing my real name, I know who I am.

  I don’t like it.

  My father is a serial killer. I dug their graves.

  Am I like him?

  Heredity—the transmission of the sum of the characteristics and potentialities genetically derived from one’s ancestors to descendant through the genes.

  Dr. Sorenson said not to worry. We could discuss it in our sessions. Besides, she said, I don’t think like him.

  But I do.

  Patricide—one who murders his own father.

  My father killed his father, and I would kill mine if I weren’t too late. He murdered my best friend. Jaxon deserved to go home. And they deserved to have him home. Instead, they are burying him tomorrow.

  And then they will go home and rebuild their lives.

  But where do I go? Do I crawl back into that basement? Back to my family home? To my only home?

  I’m Ted McGregor.

  Please forgive me.

  59

  “I don’t know, Connor.” Heather stood in their small den, looking out the front window.

  “But he was Jaxon’s friend. He deserves to be at his funeral.”

  She gestured out the window at the crowd of reporters in the street. “But they’ll be all over him. It’s bad enough for us, but he’s so fragile.”

  Connor slumped in the chair. “Broken, maybe, but fragile? That kid ain’t fragile at all.”

  Heather turned away from the window and sighed. She had to bury her youngest son in a day. She had been preparing herself for the funeral for a decade, but it had always been an abstract thought, not a looming event. A week before, she’d had the brief luxury of thinking her youngest was alive, but reality had come crashing down.

  Most of the town wanted to turn out to support them. People, total strangers, followed the news stories and were expected to travel from far away. The church service would be small, an event where they could control who entered, but the burial itself would be at the cemetery where anyone could visit. The police expected hundreds, maybe thousands of mourners to line the curb to show their respects.

  The intense media pressure had faded for a while but came back with a fierceness when they discovered Jaxon was in fact dead, not alive. And with the revelation of the mysterious boy’s true identity, the coverage had taken on a frenzied pitch. Security officers at the hospital had already caught three reporters trying to sneak up to his room, including a photographer for a tabloid, who was trying for exclusive pictures.

  Out in the open of the cemetery, he would be targeted by their long-range lenses. Their presence was too much for her, and she was already trying to protect Connor from it. She had no idea how Theo would handle the pressure. The media would focus on it—The boy who lied—film at eleven—and the gawkers would post their morbid videos of him on YouTube and Facebook.

  And wouldn’t they just love to have photos of him sitting with the family?

  She had sat in Theo’s room last night, talking about it. He hadn’t argued with her and had accepted her suggestion that he shouldn’t be there, but that bothered her more. He accepted her decision simply because he had never in his life had the permission to say no. He didn’t understand that it was an option to stand up for what he wanted.

  She sat down opposite Connor. “The truth is… I don’t have a clue what the right thing to do is. If it was just us and not all of that media horde—”

  “Then he would be there with us.”

  She folded her hands and stared at them. “Yes.”

  “And let’s say that all along he had told us he was Theo. We would still want him to be there to say goodbye, right? Because he was Jaxon’s friend.”

  “Yes.”

  He leaned forward. “Then that’s the right thing.”

  “But don’t we owe it to him to protect him from them?” She waved her hand toward the mob outside.

  Connor replied quietly. “For the few nights he was here, I lay in bed at night and listened to him snore. I mean, that kid can really snore like a freaking freight train. I even asked one of the docs about it, and he said it’s probably ’cause that monster broke his nose so many times.”

  “I know. I could hear it in my room.”

  “For the last two nights, I haven’t had to put up with that snore. You would think I could sleep, but I don’t. It’s too quiet. And it made me wonder how many nights Jaxon fell asleep comforted by that crazy snore, knowing his friend was close.”

  Heather wiped away a tear.

  Connor sniffled and continued. “The thing is, Jaxon was in Theo’s life for more years than he was in ours. I think it’s only fair he gets to say goodbye like we do. I don’t know how, but I’m going to make sure he can be there.”

  Heather stood and glared out the window. “Then let’s figure it out.”

  60

  Connor rapped his knuckles on the door and pushed it open. The hospital room was dark, the lights off, and the window shades drawn. He could see Theo lying in the bed, motionless under the covers.

  It’s like he’s crept back down those stairs into the basement and given up.

  He waited for an acknowledgment, a hello, a “go the hell away,” but nothing was coming. Fine, he thought as he hung the bag of clothes he carried on the hook on the back of the door. I’ll show him how annoying big brothers can be.

  He took two steps across the small room and whipped open the blinds, letting a burst of sunshine flood the room. The boy on the bed flopped his arm over his face and scrunched it up against the blast of light with a groan. Connor turned and grinned. With a singsong voice, he chanted, “Come on, sleepyhead, we’ve got to get you ready.”

  He said nothing for seconds and then mumbled a reply. “For what?”

  “Jaxon’s funeral. You’ve got to dress up and go be miserable with the rest of us. It’s what adults do.”

  “I’m not going.”

  “Oh yes, you are. And don’t tell me you don’t have clothes because I even went by the Goodwill and bought you some.” He slipped the plastic cover off the hanging clothes. “A pair of slacks, a white shirt, a sport coat that isn’t hideous—well, not totally—and a tie. And, yeah, you’ve gotta wear a tie, but you’re gonna look slick, dude.”

  The boy peeked from under his arm at the clothes before squeezing his eyes shut again. “I told you, I can’t go.”

  “Yeah, okay, the sport coat probably is a reject from a TV weatherman, but it’s what you get for leaving the shopping to me. Every girlfriend I’ve ever had told me I dress like crap, and some of them wore hiking boots more than I do.”

  “The coat’s fine, but I can’t go.”

  “And why not?”

  “Didn’t they tell you who I am?”

  “Yeah, sure, you’re Theo. Now get out of bed.” He clapped his hands for emphasis.

  “McGregor. Ted McGregor. How can I go to Jaxon’s funeral when the filthy scum who killed him is my father?” He turned his back toward Connor. “You must hate me.”

  “Hate you?” Connor sat on the bed and rested his hand on the boy’s shoulder, feeling him flinch at the touch. “I hate Matt McGregor. ‘Filthy scum’ doesn’t come close to describing what I think of him. I can teach you a whole list of vocabulary words to describe him that probably weren’t in your dictionary. But here’s the thing—you aren’t him.”

  The mumbled reply sounded resigned. “How do you know? I mean, it’s genetics, right? I might turn out like him.”

  “Sit up. Look at me.”

  Theo refused to roll over, so Connor stood and grabbed the controls dangling off the rails. He pressed a button, and the mechanical whir filled the air as the head of the bed began elevating. When it became impossible to continue lying down, the younger boy sat up and faced his visitor. The covers dropped off his shoulders and to his waist, revealing the patchwork of scars and fading bruises on his chest. Connor pointed at them. “You think y
ou’re going to turn into a monster who can do that?”

  Theo pulled the sheet up to his chest, hiding the marks as best he could. “It’s possible.”

  “Yeah, it’s possible, genetics or not. It’s also possible you could take all the crap that happened to you and use it to help others who’ve been through things like it.”

  “But…”

  “You know my father, right?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “A recovering alcoholic and drug addict. Never showed up for anything on time, and that was when he got there at all. When my little brother disappeared, that man was so high he didn’t come down for days. He didn’t even know Jax was missing. Do you think I’m like that?”

  The answer was quiet. “No.”

  “It’s not like half my friends at school weren’t smoking weed or going to keggers on the weekend. They gave me tons of grief for not joining in. I went to the parties and had fun, but I wouldn’t touch that stuff. You know why? Because I decided the one thing I never wanted to be in life was my father, some guy too high to show up when his kids needed him. Some idiot who would rather hang out with other druggies than his own wife and family.”

  Theo’s eyes grew wide. “I thought you liked him.”

  “I do. Now. Sober. Showing up when he tells me he’s going to. He made mistakes—tons of ’em—but he’s different now. I’m not going to screw up like he did.” Connor gripped Theo’s wrist in his hand and beamed his prankster smile. “I’m going screw up in totally new ways.”

  Theo couldn’t help a slight grin at Connor’s patter, but he shook his head in resistance. “You’re stronger than me.”

  “Are you freaking kidding me? You’re way stronger than me. You survived all those years in that place. I never would’ve made it.” He sat down on the side of the bed and draped his arm over Theo’s shoulder. “Besides, if it’s genetics, maybe you’ll be more like your mom.”