by Aric Davis
He drank two quick swallows of the grain alcohol, shivering both times as the shitty-tasting liquid scorched his palate. Hooper didn’t care for strong drink. Life could be difficult enough without going around cutting your wits in half with booze, and it had been years since he’d had so much as a beer. Still, it seemed to be a necessary evil to dull if not completely shut off his senses.
He handed Amy the bottle and said, “Pour some on the wound, then dry it with one of those towels.” She took the bottle, Hooper took a deep breath, and then fire was racing up his leg all over again.
“It’s really swollen,” said Amy. “Are you sure you want to do this? I don’t want you to shoot me just because it hurts.”
She was gingerly wiping off his leg while she spoke, and when she was done, Hooper emptied his lungs and said, “You’ll be fine, girl. Just don’t go getting cute. I figure what you ought to do is open that hole back up with the knife and then go digging for the bullet with those forceps. If you stick to that plan, we’ll be doing just fine.”
“When do you want me to start?”
“There’s no time like the present,” said Hooper, and she began to cut. He added the ball gag to his mouth just a few seconds later. The feeling of her cutting into his wounded skin was just about the worst thing he’d ever experienced.
“There’s like, black blood coming out,” said Amy. “It’s thicker than blood, and it’s really gross. There’s some yellow stuff leaking out too. Are you sure we need to do this?”
“That just means we should have done it yesterday,” said Hooper, after spitting the gag into his hand. He sure didn’t envy Amy’s having to wear it all the time. “Have you cut it enough yet?”
She hesitated, then said, “No, at least I don’t think so. This knife isn’t very sharp—”
Hooper cut her off. “It’s going to have to work. Just put your back into it and get it over with. I can’t do this all day.”
She started cutting in earnest then, and Hooper slid the saliva-slick ball back into his mouth and chomped down on it. And again the pain was somehow worse still than anything he’d ever felt. Worse than getting shot, worse than shrapnel had been, worse than falling off his bike when he was nine and breaking his arm.
“Done,” said Amy, after what felt like an eternity. “At least I think we are. The hole is big enough now that I think the forceps will fit. How will I know when I get to the bullet?”
Hooper had to pant for a while before he could talk. “You’ll feel it,” he said at last. “It’ll be like tapping metal on metal.”
“All right,” said Amy, sounding utterly unconvinced. “Here goes, OK?” When she was done speaking Hooper felt the forceps enter him, and he nearly swooned from the pain. Somehow, it was worse than even the cutting had been. The ball gag fell from his mouth to the cement floor, forgotten, at least for the moment. Looking over his shoulder, Hooper could see her working. The forceps were in his leg, several inches deep at least. The yellow pus, or whatever it was, made it look like a longtime smoker had blown a loogie full of snot and throat stones all over the back of his leg. He was surprised to see that aside from the pus and black coagulate, there was little fluid coming from the wound, and what was coming out was thin and looked diluted to his untrained eyes.
“Do you feel anything yet?” Hooper asked, his voice a wreck.
“No,” said Amy. “But there’s a lot more of that yellow stuff coming out. It’s really gross and it stinks super bad.” Hooper had smelled something foul through the pain but had been trying to ignore it. Now that he was fully aware of that awful odor, he recognized the smell. It was the stench of death. Thank God we’re getting it out now and didn’t wait any longer. The sensation of being stabbed made his eyes water and shocked his vision into black spots. Hooper took a deep breath, then opened his eyes and raised the gun. He was looking down the sights at the top of Amy’s head, expecting to find her jabbing away with the knife, intent on killing him, but she wasn’t. She was crouched in her filthy bra and underwear—something else that would need attention—with blood covering her hands, and she was digging away with the forceps.
Hooper felt his mind starting to clear, and thank goodness—he’d almost just shot her, and all she was doing was what he’d told her to do. He lowered the gun. She hadn’t even noticed how close he’d just come to killing her.
Hooper laid his head back down on the cement floor, trying to establish a rhythm of breathing, hoping that it would help keep him from further swooning or delirium. Suddenly there was a pain worse than anything, worse than being shot or cut. Hooper was scared he was going to break a tooth, when Amy exclaimed, “I got it!”
Hooper felt a warmth rush over his leg, and he began to crawl away from her. He was dizzier than before, but he had the sense to grab a pair of the towels as he crawled, as well as to hang on to the gun. He wrapped the towels around his leg—it hurt to even know that it was attached to him, much worse to touch it. He had moved as far from her as he could when he heard chopper blades in the night, as well as a young girl screaming for help. Hooper fell into the black.
40
“I’m going to lose my shield over this,” said Van Endel. “I know it.”
It was late afternoon, and he was sitting in Dr. Martinez’s office, blowing off steam. The trail following Molly Peterson was only a few days old, but it didn’t matter. Between the body still in the morgue with its lack of clues, and the lack of a dental report, the case was dead in the water. There was no evidence, no witnesses forthcoming. Van Endel had been over the notes so many times that he’d all but memorized exactly what all of the teenagers, boys, and movie theater employees had told him. They’d had the local news affiliates run pieces saying that they were looking for information from anyone who’d been to the drive-in the night Molly disappeared, and it had proven to be a colossal waste of time. There had been plenty of people there, all had seen teens, and none could confirm whether or not Molly and her friends had been there.
“You’re not going to lose your badge over this,” said Dr. Martinez. “And the GRPD is going to keep working with me. This isn’t our fault, not any more than the Riverside murders are. Whoever left that body there meant for the trail to die, and they achieved that goal. The fact of the matter is, that probably was Molly, and we aren’t going to catch the guy who left her there unless he does something very stupid, like trying to grab another victim from the drive-in anytime soon.”
It was true. From talking to the owner of the outdoor movie theater, they’d learned that a dead teenager found just off the premises had not been good for business, nor had the general assumption that she had been taken from the place. A large memorial had bloomed up at the entrance to the drive-in: flowers, crosses, teddy bears, pictures of Molly. The owner had complained about that too. It was an eyesore, but if he took it down he’d be a pariah. Van Endel had told him he was right, he couldn’t take it down, but had to fight back peals of laughter as he’d done it. It wasn’t funny, but had he felt like something in his head was starting to split, and the laughter was a symptom of it.
“OK, the drive-in is over,” said Van Endel. “What do you propose I do next? I’ve already considered reinterviewing the teenagers who were with her, but I don’t see it going anywhere. They had nothing for me the morning after she was taken, they’re not going to do any better now. If they were over eighteen I could try and break one of them, but none of them have committed a crime, not a severe one anyways. If I get tough—”
“Then the parents just lawyer up,” said Dr. Martinez. “I get it. Still, there has to be something out there. Someone has to have seen something.”
“That’s what I would have thought, but think about what we know about Riverside. Drives a green car—maybe. Is a white male who favors a ball cap and glasses. Of course, we were also told by pretty much every hooker on Division Avenue that they’ve been picked up by a guy with that exact description and came back A-OK to get back to business.”
; “And because most of them return just fine, they’ll still get in green cars with white males,” said Dr. Martinez wearily. “And the ones who don’t aren’t noticed until we come around asking questions and showing off pictures.”
“Exactly,” said Van Endel. “There’s not much left on this one for either of us to do.” Van Endel chuckled to himself, and Dr. Martinez gave him a quizzical look. “It’s funny. If those kids—the three boys, not the teens—really had been telling the truth, we’d have tons of people to talk to.”
Dr. Martinez shrugged. “You have to follow the evidence, right? And the available evidence says you need to assume the teens are telling the truth and the boys are lying. That said, you know my feelings on the matter. Body or not, not one of those boys came off to me as a liar.”
“At least you like it as much as I do,” said Van Endel. “This is just infuriating. There’s a young girl missing, dead most likely, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.”
“Well,” said Martinez, “there is the hope that Tracy finally gets a negative on those teeth. If that’s not Molly, those boys might really have seen her.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Van Endel. “I’ve had that thought at least a million times. Not ideal conditions for grabbing a decent night’s sleep. Hey, that reminds me. I didn’t tell you what Tracy found on the body. I don’t think much of it, but he thought it was interesting.” Dr. Martinez tilted her head, as if to say, “Go on.” “She had condoms on her. More than just one too, though Tracy couldn’t tell me exactly how many. Think it means anything other than that she wanted to party?”
“That’s interesting,” said Dr. Martinez. “Did the mother give any indication that Molly was sexually active?”
Van Endel shrugged. “Mothers aren’t necessarily the best source for that info, as you know. But as it happens, this one made it a point to tell me that her daughter was not sexually active. I can’t remember the exact quote, but it was something like, ‘She does stuff with boys, but not that.’ She was almost smug about it. Molly was either telling the truth or lying well enough that her mom believed her.”
“You know,” said Dr. Martinez. “Molly has something in common with those girls who keep showing up at Riverside, other than being missing, of course.” Van Endel raised his eyebrows. “Rubbers, Dick. Every single working girl on Division Avenue has them on her.”
“I have a picture of Molly in my car,” said Van Endel. “Let’s go for a ride.” He looked at his watch. “It’s a little early, but we should be able to catch some day shifters.”
41
Luke was walking through the neighborhood doing something he never had before: actually analyzing what was around him. It had never occurred to him before that he spent so much time whizzing around on a bicycle or fighting imaginary battles that he had never really focused on the people around him, and the myriad differences in the ways they lived. Tim had told them that Becca had said to look for things like an unmowed lawn, and Luke was trying to take that a step further, looking for windowless vans, poorly maintained landscaping, and signs that said KIDNAPPER posted in someone’s front yard. He’d seen lots of yards that needed mowing, several windowless vans, and a great number of homes with poorly kept landscaping, but he was batting zero on KIDNAPPER signs.
This is a total waste of time, thought Luke as he walked on a street perpendicular to the one that Scott lived on, and actually bordered the woods where the fort was. So far he had seen two houses that stuck out: one a couple of blocks from here, also along the forest’s edge, and one that was gray and needed paint. Beside the latter, Luke had seen a man in an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt watering a dying bush with a hose. The man had been on crutches and looked to be of a similar build as the one they’d seen in the woods, though he had a gut Luke didn’t remember seeing.
He wished Scott and Tim were with him, and not for the first time. It would be nice to have someone to talk to, and to ask questions about how they remembered the man looking.
The other house that had stuck out as being a little off had many of the same characteristics as the first one, though there was no injured owner visible to add more weight to the picture it painted. The house was made of red bricks and was small enough that Luke couldn’t imagine anyone other than a single man or woman living in it. The yard was unmowed, and the grass had yellow and dead patches, even with the rainy spring and June that they’d had that year. In addition to the ratty yard, the car in the driveway was an ancient El Camino. It was black but looked like it had been painted with a roller or something, and there were several dried spots of black, too dark to be oil, in the driveway around the car.
What made the house stick out most of all, though, was the impression it gave of having somehow been taken from another neighborhood and just transplanted there. There were no other brick houses on that stretch, and it didn’t fit the mold that all of the houses on the same strip seemed to come from. The rest of the houses were ranch-style, with attached garages and aluminum siding. Families were outside most of the other houses, messing around and lighting off small fireworks, but the little brick house had no one outside.
Luke had forgotten all about the Fourth until he’d been out on his little recon mission, but the signs of it were everywhere: blackened fountains and cakes lined the bases of driveways, sticks from bottle rockets littered the road and yards, little kids ran around with sparklers and snap-pops. It made Luke homesick in a way that he hadn’t been since this had all happened. He wasn’t telling his friends about his trips to the gas station to buy food during the day, or about what it was like not having his crazy mother and sisters around. Frankly, it was sweet as hell, but there was also a sadness lingering over him that he knew wasn’t going away.
He felt like a traitor for thinking it, but Luke had a feeling that this was all going to blow over, and without anything happening. Molly was going to be found dead, or maybe one of his friends would get caught sneaking out, and then that would be it. There would be no clearing their names, just a stigma that was going to follow him through the rest of middle school, and maybe on into high school. It would follow his friends too, but it would be different for them. After all, everything else outside of school was different for them; it was only a matter of time until his school world caught up. He would no longer be just another student. He’d be that trailer-park liar, or some other, equally awful version of that, in the eyes of his fellow students and his teachers. That part almost stung the most: knowing that for the foreseeable future, adults were always going to assume that he could be lying to them. The thought fueled Luke as he pushed on through the suburb, finding clues that didn’t matter and looking for answers that weren’t going to reveal themselves.
The house appeared before him only moments after his self-defeating train of thought had eked away the last of his interest in searching for it. He almost didn’t notice it. It had its back to the forest, and the backyard was fully encompassed by a tall wooden fence. Neither of the houses on either side of it was two stories, so the backyard would be basically impossible to see into. Luke could see that the fence went almost all the way to the trees.
Cutting through the yard of a neighbor a couple of doors down, he looped around into the forest and quickly came upon a cluster of popples that looked quite similar to the one the man and Molly had disappeared into. He spent some time trying to orient himself to where the fort would be in relation to where he was standing. Unless he was mistaken, Luke was pretty sure this house was in exactly the direction they’d seen the man and Molly walking.
He cut back to the street and gave one last look to the mailbox. The address was stenciled on it, and above it the word HOOPER.
Luke headed back to the fort at a dead run.
42
Tim and his dad had finished tamping down about ten square feet of gravel when Stan sat down on the edge of the patio. “Go get Mom,” he said. “I want to see if she’ll be impressed with our progress yet. We’re finally getting place
s, thanks to your early start.”
Tim left his dad and the tamper behind him but brought the water bottle along for the trip. The ache in his arms stayed with him, though, as he slowly walked around and then into the house through the open garage door. “Mom,” he called as he walked inside and kicked off his shoes. “Dad wants you to go outside and look at the ground.”
“Did he finish it?” his mom asked from the kitchen. “It’d be amazing if he did—we haven’t even had the pavers delivered yet!”
“Not yet,” Tim said, walking to the sink and dumping out what was left of the water in his bottle, “but we’re making progress.” He turned the sink to cold and let it run for a minute before refilling the bottle.
His mom was doing some prep work on dinner, or at least that’s how it looked to Tim as he sat at the table. He considered getting himself a snack but decided that a moment to sit trumped the growing hunger pangs in his belly.
Tammy washed her hands, then dried them on a towel before walking out through the garage. She had to go the long way around too, since the slider and the patio were out of service.
Alone in the house, Tim remembered Becca. He stood, then crept to her room, as though on some sort of clandestine mission. When he knocked on her door, Becca made some neutral sound that wasn’t a no, and he walked inside.
Becca was reading again, the same book as before, but when she saw it was him she dropped it in her lap and stared at him. “What do you want?”
“Mom and Dad are both outside. Can you call whoever was with Molly when she was taken?”
Becca narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure I’ll have time? I really don’t need Mom any further up my ass.”