by Pete Hautman
“I don’t know much about cars.”
“Did you see the driver?”
“Just the man’s arm resting on the window. It was quite hairy. But that’s about all I remember. I don’t even know what color the car was. SUV, I mean. I mean, I know it wasn’t some odd color like pink or purple or chartreuse, because I would have noticed that. It happened very fast. The girl was waiting over there by the curb, the car pulled up, and she got in. I thought nothing of it at the time. Does that help?”
“I think so,” said Brian. “Thanks.”
“Any time.” The nurse picked up her book and continued to read.
“It was one of those Ford Explorers,” said the construction worker with the mustache.
“You’re either blind or crazy,” said the younger, redheaded worker. “It was a GMC Yukon. Either that or a Chevy Tahoe, they look pretty much the same.” He pointed his cigarette at Roni. “Don’t listen to Brad. He don’t know crap.”
“Did either of you see the man who was driving?” Roni asked.
Brad said, “I know it was a Ford Explorer on account of my brother drives one just like it.”
The redhead dropped his cigarette butt and ground it out with the heel of his steel-toed boot. “You are so full of it, Brad, I don’t know how I stand it.”
“You can’t stand it, you oughta quit bugging me.”
“Like I got a choice.”
“So neither of you saw the driver?” Roni asked.
Brad said, “No. I saw a green Ford Explorer, and that was it, no matter what this lunkhead tells you.”
“It was a white Chevy, you moron. Or a GMC. That’s what I told the cops.”
The two men glared at each other.
Roni backed away.
Brian was much more comfortable approaching the kid in the wheelchair than he had been talking to the nurse. But he feared Roni was right about this kid. He looked pretty out of it. His head hung off to the side and his eyes were unfocused. One thin hand rested on a small joystick, the other quivered and jerked in midair. He was wearing a Minnesota Twins baseball cap.
Brian said, “Hey.”
The kid’s head bobbed on his thin neck, then turned toward Brian. His eyes rolled in his head, then seemed to catch on Brian’s face.
“Annyong haseyo,” the kid said in a creaky voice.
At first Brian thought the kid was talking gibberish. Then he reconfigured the voice and recognized the words from last summer’s language camp. A little embarrassed, he had to confess, “Sorry, I don’t really speak Korean.”
27
chess
Different people see things differently, Roni reminded herself as she left the two hard hats shouting at each other. But this was ridiculous. You would think they could at least agree on the color of the vehicle. She looked around for other potential witnesses and spotted Brian talking to the kid in the wheelchair. Might as well check in with him, she thought.
Brian saw her coming and pointed her out to the wheelchair kid.
“That’s my friend Roni, the reporter.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said the kid in a slow, wavering voice. Roni had to concentrate to make out what he was saying. “My name is Chess.”
“As in Chester,” Brian explained. “But he plays chess, too.”
“Hi, Chess,” said Roni. She was surprised the kid could talk.
“I like your coat,” said Chess.
“Thanks!” Roni performed a little spin. “Got it at the Goodwill.”
“Chess was here yesterday,” said Brian.
“I have cerebral palsy,” Chess said, head bobbing, left hand hovering and quivering. “Don’t worry, it’s not contagious.”
“He saw the whole thing,” Brian said.
“I’ve been here every day for the past two weeks. My therapy is from eleven to twelve-thirty, so I wait here for my ride.”
“You saw Alicia get into the SUV?”
Chess nodded. Or at least she thought it was a nod.
“What kind was it?”
“It was a Jeep Cherokee.”
“Oh.” Roni frowned. Great. Now she had three witnesses, and every one of them saw something completely different.
“It was dark green,” said Chess.
At least two of them agreed on the color. Roni said, “I heard it was a Ford Explorer.” See how sure this kid was about what he saw.
“There was a green Ford Explorer here, too. And a Chevy Tahoe. But the girl got into the Jeep.”
Roni’s jaw dropped. “Are you sure?”
“Just because I’m weird looking doesn’t mean I can’t tell a Jeep from an Explorer.”
“Did you see the driver?”
“No.”
“Tell her what you told me,” said Brian.
Chess looked at Brian and a smile lit up his face. “You mean about the police?”
“Yeah.”
“They didn’t even bother to talk to me,” Chess said.
“Really?”
“Nobody talks to the lump in a wheelchair. Except you guys.”
Roni felt herself blush. If it hadn’t been for Brian, she might have ignored the kid, too. “Well . . . thanks. This is really good information.”
“Any time,” said Chess.
They were walking away when Chess called after them. “Hey!”
Roni and Brian stopped and looked back.
Chess said, “Don’t you want the license number?”
“Where are you going?” Brian asked.
“Where do you think? We have to report this,” Roni said, speeding up. They were walking into the wind. The tails of Roni’s trenchcoat flew straight out behind her, flapping in Brian’s face.
“I thought you wanted us to be the ones to find her,” he said.
“The cops know how to look up license numbers,” she said. “They’ll find out right away who grabbed Alicia.”
“What if we could find her ourselves?”
“How?” She stopped and put her hands on her hips in a stance she must have learned from her mom. “There must be dozens of green Jeeps in Bloodwater.”
“But only one with the license number BFLYGUY.”
“You know whose Jeep it was?”
“It belongs to Mr. Nestor.”
“Who is Mr. Nestor?”
“Mr. Nestor,” Brian explained, “is the Butterfly Guy.”
28
carnivorous butterflies
Mr. Nestor was a tall, bony man with hairy arms, a bulging forehead, and even bulgier eyes. He answered his door with the perplexed look that most people save for working advanced algebra problems.
“Hi, Mr. Nestor,” said Brian. “It’s me.”
Mr. Nestor stood in the doorway and stared down at the two of them. Brian always had to reintroduce himself. Mr. Nestor knew everything there was to know about insects, but human beings all looked the same to him.
“Who is me?” he asked.
“Brian Bain.”
Mr. Nestor fluttered his hands together as if they were wings. “Oh, yes. Oh, my. I remember you. It was swallow-tails, wasn’t it? Your project?” Brian had met Mr. Nestor for the first time when he had done a seventh-grade science project on swallowtail butterflies.
“That’s right. This is my friend Roni,” Brian said. “Mind if we come in?”
Mr. Nestor backed into his living room as if they were holding him at gunpoint. “Yes, yes of course.”
Brian looked at Roni as they stepped inside. He wanted to see what her face looked like when she saw Mr. Nestor’s house. Books were stacked from floor to ceiling. And where there were no books, there were display cases full of dead butterflies. It was a library and a bug museum all squashed into one room.
Roni didn’t blink at Mr. Nestor’s strange nest. She looked around with open curiosity. “Did you catch all these butterflies?” she asked.
“I’ve collected from all over the world,” said Mr. Nestor. “I captured this particular specimen in Tanzania back in 1994.
. . .”
Once Mr. Nestor started talking about his butterflies he could go on for hours, so Brian interrupted him. “Were you at the hospital yesterday?”
“At the hospital?” Mr. Nestor blinked and flapped his hands. “No, I don’t believe so. I’ve been feeling fine.”
“Were you anywhere near the hospital?” Brian asked.
Mr. Nestor’s head swiveled from Roni to Brian. “Let’s see. I did drive by the hospital. Yes, indeed. I thought I had seen a Painted American Lady, but it turned out to be a Red Admiral.”
Roni gave Brian a puzzled look.
“Those are kinds of butterflies,” Brian explained.
Roni said, “Did you pick up a passenger?”
“I believe I did. There was a young lady standing there waiting. She was wearing a scarf that reminded me of a certain Brazilian specimen I once studied, so I asked her if she wanted a lift.”
“Where did you take her?”
Mr. Nestor looked blank. He rolled his eyes around in his head and muttered names of butterflies as if he were chanting.
Finally he said, “I lost her.”
“How could you lose a girl?” Brian asked.
“We were driving along when I noticed a Great Spangled Fritillary by the roadside, so I pulled over. Would you like to see it? Very unusual specimen. This has been a good year.”
Mr. Nestor would not tell them any more until he showed them his latest butterfly, so they followed him to his specimen room. The Great Spangled Fritillary was an orange and black butterfly about three inches across.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” said Mr. Nestor. “Look at how much black is in the wings of this particular specimen. Highly unusual. Remarkable, actually.”
“How do you kill them?” Brian asked.
“Formaldehyde. They don’t feel a thing. In my hands they achieve immortality. Their beauty will be preserved forever.”
“What does this Great Spaniel Literary have to do with Alicia?” Roni asked.
“Who’s Alicia?” Mr. Nestor asked.
“The girl you picked up at the hospital!”
“Oh, yes. It took me several minutes to capture this specimen, and when I returned to my vehicle, she was gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yes, as if she’d sprouted wings and flown off.”
“Where was this?”
“Let’s see . . . I’m so bad at directions . . . would you like me to show you?”
“He gives me the creeps,” Roni whispered. Mr. Nestor had gone upstairs to search for his car keys.
“He’s totally harmless. I think.”
“Totally weird, you mean. Maybe he killed Alicia and fed her to a pack of carnivorous butterflies.”
Brian laughed. “There are no carnivorous butterflies.”
“Maybe he stuck a pin in her and put her in a glass case. Have you ever noticed how many incredibly weird people live in Bloodwater?”
Brian looked pointedly at Roni’s green trenchcoat. He looked at the ring in her right nostril.
“I’ve noticed—” he said, “speaking of weird—that your nose ring used to be in your other nostril.”
“It migrated,” Roni said.
“I didn’t know nose rings could do that.”
Roni pulled the fake nose ring from her nostril and put it in her pocket. “There. Is that better?”
Brian cocked his head. “I don’t know. I kind of liked it.” Mr. Nestor came clomping down the stairs carrying his car keys in one hand and a butterfly net in the other.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
29
back again
“Look! A Spicebush Swallowtail!” The Jeep swerved over the centerline as Mr. Nestor pointed out the window.
Roni, sitting in the backseat, checked her seat belt.
“Better keep your eye on the road,” Brian said.
“Sorry! Sorry!” said Mr. Nestor, bringing the Jeep back under control. They were on the highway just south of Bloodwater. Mr. Nestor kept speeding up and slowing down, his head swiveling back and forth. More than one car had passed them, the drivers leaning angrily on their horns.
“How far is this place?” Roni asked.
“Not far! Not far!”
“I thought you were just giving Alicia a ride home.”
“Yes, well, um . . . I don’t actually remember where we were going. I only know where we ended up!”
Roni had images of this crazed butterfly hunter driving them to some desolate laboratory and gassing them with formaldehyde. The only thing that kept her from jumping out of the car was the fact that Brian didn’t seem to be worried. And the fact that they were going sixty miles per hour. She was thinking about opening the door and bailing out anyway when Mr. Nestor brought the Jeep to an abrupt halt right in the middle of the highway.
“This is the place,” he announced.
“This is where you dropped Alicia off?” Roni asked.
“Precisely.”
“Why here?”
“This was where I spotted the Great Spangled Fritillary.”
“So you just left her here in the middle of nowhere? What did she do?”
“I don’t know. I was in pursuit of the Great Spangled! When I returned, the girl was gone.”
A semi roared by, horn blaring.
“Maybe you should pull off to the side of the road,” Brian suggested.
Mr. Nestor pulled over onto the shoulder and Roni and Brian hopped out. Mr. Nestor grabbed his butterfly net.
“A Hackberry Emperor!” He took off running, swinging his net wildly at a grayish butterfly.
“Look where we are,” Brian said. To their left, a grassy field sloped down toward the woods at the edge of the river. He pointed at a narrow dirt track leading across the field. “That’s the road to Wolf Spider Island.”
“I don’t like this,” Brian said. “What makes you think she went to the island?”
“She might have gone looking for a phone,” Roni said over her shoulder. They were back on the island, following the path that led to Driftwood Doug’s houseboat. “Or maybe she just wanted to get away from Mr. Spooky Butterfly Killer back there. And maybe she ran into Driftwood Doug.”
“That’s a lot of maybes. Maybe she caught a ride back into town.”
“Then why is she still missing? It won’t hurt to take another look, as long as we’re here,” Roni said. “Besides, last time we got interrupted.”
“Yeah, by a giant hairless troll who wanted to toss me in the river.”
“Hoot wouldn’t really have dropped you.”
“Another maybe.”
“Look, we don’t know that Driftwood Doug had anything to do with Alicia disappearing, but there has to be some connection. Too many coincidences. Now shut up for a while. We’re getting close.”
Driftwood Doug’s boat came into view a minute later. It looked exactly as they had left it, except that the river had risen a few inches since the storm, and the houseboat now floated level and free. A small fire was burning in the fire pit on shore. Roni walked up to the fire pit and looked into it.
“What are you looking for?” Brian whispered as he walked up next to her and stared into what appeared to be a normal campfire.
“Evidence. He might be burning Alicia’s clothes.”
Brian shuddered. Sometimes Roni completely creeped him out.
“Don’t worry, it’s just wood,” Roni said. She started toward the boat.
Brian said, “I got a bad feeling about this.”
Ignoring him, Roni hopped onto the deck and peered through one of the portholes.
“See anything?” Brian asked.
Roni shook her head and rapped on the glass. “Anybody home?” she called out.
No answer.
“Come on,” Brian said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Just a minute,” Roni said.
“What if Hoot shows up again?” Brian did not like this situation at all. He looked down at the fire. Why would Driftwood
Doug leave a fire burning unattended?
“There’s nobody in here,” Roni said. She sounded disappointed. Brian was relieved.
“Then let’s go!” he said. Just then he heard a twig snap. For a second he froze. Then he turned around slowly and looked up.
Brian’s first impression was that an enormous bundle of sticks was walking toward him. Just as he realized that he was looking at a man carrying a load of firewood, the man dropped his load of branches and twigs with a crash, and Brian got his first close-up look at Driftwood Doug.
30
driftwood doug
Driftwood Doug up close looked a lot like Driftwood Doug from far away, only hairier. His reddish-brown beard covered about two-thirds of his face and hung down over his throat. Dark brown hair exploded from his skull in a riot of coils and spikes. His blue eyes stood out like radioactive sapphires.
“Well, well,” said Driftwood Doug, crossing his arms.
“Are you the burglars Hoot told me about?” He was wearing his usual denim bib overalls over a red-checked flannel shirt.
“No,” said Brian.
“Yes,” said Roni.
Driftwood Doug looked from Brian to Roni, and back again. “Well? Are you or aren’t you?”
“We’re not burglars,” Brian said quickly.
“It was a misunderstanding,” Roni added. “We just wanted to talk to you.”
“Is that so,” said Driftwood Doug. He bent over and threw a few pieces of wood into the fire, sending a spray of sparks into the air. “Why would you want to talk to me?”
“We’re investigating the disappearance of Alicia Camden,” Roni said. “She was last seen in this area.”
Brian was impressed. He knew Roni must be as scared as he was, but she sounded fearless. He watched Driftwood Doug carefully, but the man didn’t seem surprised by Roni’s question.
“Alicia Camden?” He picked up a limb the size of a baseball bat and used it to stir the fire. “The girl who lives at Bloodwater House?”
“Yes,” Roni said, hopping down from the pontoon. “Have you seen her?”