The Fort

by Aric Davis

  29

  When Luke’s mom finally came home, it was dark out and she was wasted. Luke had to help carry her to the couch. She fell asleep almost instantly, rolling over and then snoring. Ashley and Alisha had just watched him help her, moving off the couch only when it became obvious that was where Luke meant to put her. There was something depressing about having a mom who was too much of a wreck to even punish him, and Luke left her there to walk back to his room.

  When Van Endel had come back to the room to tell him he was leaving with the Benchleys, Luke had been confused. Van Endel and that doctor lady had never even come back to talk to him. By the time he saw Mrs. Benchley and how furious she was, Luke had figured out most of it, all but the part about their finding Molly. That’s where they were wrong, though. The body they found couldn’t have been Molly. Mrs. Benchley had said that Molly had been dead for days, but that wasn’t true, they had all seen her, and not one of them had questioned whether or not it was her. Why would they lie about something so terrible? A kidnapped kid, even a kidnapped teenager, was no laughing matter, and for Tim’s and Scott’s parents to think their kids capable of such a thing was almost as terrible as his own mother’s condition.

  Reviewing everything in his head, Luke figured it was likely that both Tim and Scott were going to be grounded for lengthy periods of time. Which left a whole separate issue: Molly. Mrs. Benchley had said that the body they found had been burned days earlier. How long would it take to check her fingerprints, or her teeth, if she was too badly burned, and realize they had the wrong girl? Too long. And really, any amount of time was too long. They knew three things. Molly wasn’t dead, or at least she hadn’t been this morning; the person who took her likely lived in the same area as they did, probably in Tim and Scott’s neighborhood; and, most importantly, he had a gunshot wound in his right leg.

  School was going to be a mess. They were headed for seventh grade and were likely to be branded as liars, a tag that would stick through the end of high school. After all, who would forget something like this? It was clear what needed to happen. They needed to find out where she’d been taken and see if she was still there. And either way, at that point, get the cops involved again, to save Molly, along with their reputations.

  But how am I going to be able to do that on my own?

  That was a tougher problem, tougher by a lot. It would be hard enough to find Molly and the man who took her with all three of them out and free, but with his friends on what he could only assume was lockdown, it seemed like it was going to be up to him.

  The thought made Luke slump on his bed. He was just a regular kid, not some twelve-year-old genius detective. This would be hard with all three of us, really hard, but I know I’m not smart enough to do it on my own. Luke didn’t even know where to start an investigation like that. Molly had just disappeared into the trees, and if the wounded man had left any sort of blood trail, the cops hadn’t been able to find it. Why did it have to rain?

  Then an idea began to form in his head. Not a brilliant one, but a small one, that could perhaps be added to with a little bit of luck. Luke figured they were due for some good luck—all three of them were, but especially him. He packed a bag with clothes, a small amount of food, and three Sprite caps. He left a note on the counter saying he would be back in a day or two, tops, and then waved at his zombified sisters as he left. They didn’t even blink.

  Scott had never felt so shell-shocked in his life. He had been ready to try to explain away some part of the story that got muddled because of Luke’s shooting that guy, and maybe to get called out on it, but this was much worse than anything he could have anticipated. Carl had said that he was never going to be able to hang out with Luke or Tim ever again, and his mom had agreed with him—that was the ultimate betrayal. It would have been one thing for Carl to say something like that, and to then have his mom tell him that he was out of bounds, but she went right along with it. Why should Carl get to decide who he was friends with? It’s not like he’s my real dad. Just because he married my mom doesn’t give him the right to ruin my life. It was all just so unfair, and no one was even willing to listen to them.

  Scott couldn’t even feel good about having seen Molly. The police and her parents thought she was dead, and soon she would be, if she wasn’t already, he was sure of it. They had been given a chance to save her, and it had been taken away by adults who didn’t listen when they needed to the most.

  But what am I going to do about it? Nothing, that’s what. He was going to sit in his room for the rest of the ruined summer, and that would be that. Unless, when they do find the body, they realize that it must mean we were telling the truth!

  The realization of what that would mean sank in heavily. Molly would still be dead, and the best that could happen to him was that he might have some rights restored.

  If he wasn’t grounded, he could go look for the guy. They’d all seen him, and Scott knew he’d recognize him from what he’d seen of his face, as well as from what he felt sure would be a serious limp.

  None of it mattered. He wasn’t going anywhere. His mom had quit her job early so that she could be home with him—her choice, but his fault, according to her—and there was going to be no sneaking off to figure out what had happened. One thing did keep coming back to him, though it seemed almost impossible. What if he broke the house arrest but he and his friends figured out who had taken Molly? Could he get in trouble for that? Sure, they’d be mad at first, but they’d get over it, especially since they would have been wrong to ground him in the first place.

  After imagining himself as the returning hero whose criminal past had been redeemed, Scott let the doubts fall out of his head like sand through his fingers: He was just one kid, Tim and Luke were grounded too, and they were the only people who knew that Molly was still in trouble. There was nothing that any of them could do about it, and there was nothing that was going to change that. He’d only just learned the phrase “catch-22,” but that’s what this was, and he was stuck in the middle of it. Scott lay in bed with his hands laced behind his head, wishing for the first time in his life that school would hurry up and get here already.

  Tim walked to Becca’s room after getting out of the shower and getting dressed. His dad had worked him like a dog in the baking sun, making him carry load after load of pea gravel into the backyard. Tim carried so much of it that he could actually see a difference from when they had started. When he tried to point that out to his dad, he was just told that he didn’t need to talk to work. Tim discovered that his dad was right: after hearing that, he didn’t want to talk either.

  He needed to talk now, though. Now he needed to ask his sister some questions.

  Tim knocked on her door, and a voice answered the knocking. “What?” said Becca.

  “It’s Tim. Can I come in?”

  “Why? Want to lie to me or something?”

  “No,” said Tim. “I just wanted to talk to you. We’re both grounded. It’s not like you have anything better to do.”

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just bored. Mom and Dad are super pissed, and I don’t have anyone to talk to.”

  “Go away,” said Becca from behind the door.

  Tim opened his mouth to speak and then let it go. He walked back to his room and turned on the fan, then opened the window. It had cooled off, at least. Something on the windowsill caught his eye, and Tim slid the screen open. It was a Sprite cap, and a small piece of paper had been taped to it. The note said, “In the fort, next two nights.”

  Tim balled up the paper and stuffed it in the trash can by his desk, and put the Sprite cap in his pocket. Luke had a plan, and Tim didn’t care what it was, he just wanted in. Anything will be better than being stuck inside all summer, and it’s not like I can get in any more trouble than I’m already in.

  Tim had been tired before the shower, and even more so after talking to Becca. Now, he still felt weary but was energized as well. He
checked the clock radio: it was nine thirty. Tim set the alarm for 1:30, well past the time that his parents were normally asleep, and slid the clock under his pillow to muffle the sound. He shut off his lights and lay in bed, sure that he wouldn’t sleep, but he was out in seconds.

  30

  Van Endel sat alone at the Shipwreck. It wasn’t a cop bar, and that was what Van Endel liked about it. Most cop bars were full of bravado, with Irish and ancient police artifacts on the walls and cops drinking too hard for men who carried a gun as part of their day job. Van Endel had no use for shoptalk, especially not after a day like today. He was going to drink a beer or two, maybe have a scotch, then call it a night.

  He’d been taking it pretty easy since waking up basically drunk the night that he’d first gotten the call about Molly. He felt guilty getting too out of sorts, had even considered the shame of getting called with a major lead and being too tight to act on it. To keep himself in check, that meant bar drinking. He could cut himself off a lot easier there, for some reason, and it was nice to be out of the house and not on the job at the same time.

  The first few months since Lex had left him had been tough, but Van Endel was more worried about where he was headed these days. Lex was too far in the past to be an excuse for anything anymore, yet she still really was affecting his life. He didn’t date, he didn’t do anything. It felt like all he was doing was playing the miserable-cop cliché, always just managing his drinking and finances, never being anything more than the job.

  She came into his life like a storm and left like one as well. They’d started dating in college, at Michigan State University, his plan for law enforcement, hers for veterinary medicine. Van Endel had graduated, but Lex hadn’t, dropping out instead with what was to be the first of three failed pregnancies. They never talked about it later, but Van Endel knew in his soul that being a vet was something she had wanted to do, and was no longer something she still wanted for herself. Quitting for the baby that was never to be, and staying away from it for the babies that were never to be. Van Endel knew his long-suffering wife had given up on her dreams. What he didn’t know until much later was that she blamed him.

  Van Endel had worn a detective’s shield for just six months when she left. It was the death knell to what Van Endel would have described as the best time of his life, had someone asked. They were doing good financially for once, even though Lex still wasn’t working, and his goal had come to fruition. Being a detective was why he had started college, it was something he’d known he wanted to be since he’d first seen reruns of 87th Precinct on TV, and later when reading books by the show’s creator, Ed McBain. The show, and mostly the books, had made him see being a cop as something that some people were just built for, and he felt sure that he was one of them. Lex’s leaving crippled that part of him.

  Had she just left, that would have been one thing. He would have been bruised, but not broken. When she left, though, rage in her eyes and mouth, she’d told him how she really felt about her cop husband. She hated him for what he was. He was a pig, a phony, he was worthless to her. Van Endel hadn’t known for sure that she was using cocaine behind his back until that moment, hadn’t known that she was cheating on him. “You’re such a shitty detective,” she’d said, “that you didn’t even know.” The first of many confessions. She’d left that night, picked up by a sheepish man ten years her junior. Van Endel had left, and when he returned, the house was empty. He never even filed a police report for the stolen goods, just slowly and cheaply rebuilt his home, and who he was. Neither had turned out too well.

  Van Endel finished the beer and stood, not feeling better, but feeling grounded. Molly Peterson was dead, and that was that. Now it was his job to find out who, and maybe even why, though usually the latter was nothing worth knowing. Van Endel slapped a ten-dollar bill on the bar, waved to the barkeep, and walked out.

  31

  The sound of the alarm woke Tim slowly, but once he realized what it was, he turned it off quickly. His heart was thumping in his chest as he slid out of bed. He was trying to be as quiet as possible, but every noise felt like the gunshot in the fort all over again. Thank God I sleep with the door closed. He got dressed in the clothes he’d helped his dad with the patio in—the last thing he needed was for one of his parents to notice extra laundry—walked to the window, and slid it the rest of the way open. He pushed in the buttons to raise the screen up, and it squeaked slightly as he moved it out of the way. Wincing at the squeak, Tim slid himself out of the window, then dropped silently into the bark around the landscaping. He gave a last look at the house, still not sure if this was a good decision, and took off running, headed straight for the path to the forest.

  The grass made his feet wet through his sneakers, but Tim didn’t care. The lights from some of the other houses gave off threatening beams of illumination that he avoided, and within just a few minutes he was in the darkness of the forest. Fumbling with the flashlight he’d stuck in his pocket and then turning it on, he began to run to the fort, no longer worried about noise or anything else. He just wanted to see his friends. Most of all, he was anxious to hear if Luke had come up with any other plans.

  By the time he got to the ladder he was panting, but a glint from the forest floor made him smile. When he ran the flashlight over the spot, he saw two caps, Coke and Sprite. Tim dropped the Budweiser cap next to them, stuck the flashlight in his mouth, and began to climb.

  When he got to the top and pulled himself into the fort, he felt his friends’ hands pull him over the hole in the floor. He brushed himself off and then sat heavily by the window they’d been shooting from. It sure didn’t feel like it had been less than a day since they’d been here, but that was the reality of it.

  When he looked at his friends he saw smiles, and he didn’t know if he’d ever been happier to see anyone in his whole life. “Think you’re going to get caught?” Scott asked, and Tim smiled even wider. “No, but you probably are.” All three of them erupted into tired giggles at that, and, not for the first time, Tim wondered at the logic in banning a kid from his best friends in the world.

  “All right, all right,” said Luke. “That’s enough screwing around. We need to figure out a plan.”

  “To catch the guy?” Tim asked. “That’s sort of what I figured we have to do to clear our names.”

  Luke and Scott exchanged a glance. “That’s what we think too,” said Scott. “It’s our only option.”

  “So we all agree,” said Luke, a touch of annoyance in his voice. “Great. But how are we going to do it?”

  Tim thought about that. He hadn’t really considered the middle step, he had just figured they’d find the guy who had kidnapped Molly, thus saving both her and the currently doomed summer. Nothing in his life had ever prepared him for how to find a kidnapper, not even a wounded one.

  “Since neither of you is saying anything,” said Luke, “I guess it will come down to me to figure this out. We were the last people to see Molly, right?” Tim and Scott nodded, and Luke continued. “Here’s the question, though. Besides us and the guy who took her, who else has seen her recently?” Tim and Scott just stared at Luke, waiting for an answer. Luke scowled and said, “Fine, I’ll just figure the whole thing out for you guys. Becca saw her, Becca and all of her friends. And they all saw who she was with when she disappeared.”

  “That won’t help,” said Tim, a little forlornly. “Becca already told the cops everything, and they still can’t find the guy.”

  Luke shook his head, and Tim wondered what else he’d missed. “Becca was with your folks when she talked to the cops, right?” Tim nodded, and Luke continued. “While she was already in trouble for how she was dressed—you told us that too. So here’s the thing: What else were she and her friends doing that would have gotten her in even more trouble?”

  “You mean like drugs or something, right?” Scott asked. “Because if it was something like that, no way was Becca going to rat herself out, especially if she’d alread
y decided in her mind that Molly was perfectly safe.”

  Tim nodded. “It’s true. Becca would lie about just about anything to keep from getting in trouble. It’s just how she is. There’s still a problem, though. How am I supposed to get her to tell me the truth?”

  “You’ll have to figure that part out on your own,” said Luke. “You know your sister way better than we do. Plus we’re not allowed in your house. What you need to find out, though, is who they were with, not just at the end, but all night. Who they were with, everywhere they went, everything. For all we know, one of them got some older guy to buy them cigarettes and he just followed them until he got the chance to get to Molly. The possibilities are pretty much endless. It’s possible they never even went to the movies at all.”

  Tim was flabbergasted. Was Becca really capable of lying that well, to be able to fool both her parents and the police? He thought it was possible, but not very likely. Besides, what would be her motivation for lying in the first place? She knew one of her friends was in trouble; why try and hide information that could help the investigation from the police? There was only one explanation for any of that, and it could be only if they were doing something that would get her into huge trouble. Tim didn’t know what that could be, or how to extract the information from her, but he knew he better come up with something fast.

  “So here’s the plan,” said Luke. “Tim, you’re going to talk to Becca and get the truth out of her. Do whatever it takes to get her to level with you, and make sure she tells you everything.”

  “Are we going to tell the cops?” Scott asked.