Jake looked at him. “Shut up.”
“Seriously.”
“What?” Jake stared at Alec.
“He’s kidding. I mean, we were hanging out with a couple of girls. Sorta freaky too. Goth chicks into The Cure. We should’ve had this CD last night.”
“You should’ve invited me,” Mike said.
“No thanks,” Carnie said. “I spent $7.89 on beer and a burrito.”
“We were celebrating,” Alec said, hitting a bull’s-eye and making the board sound off.
“Celebrating what?”
“Freedom.”
“This guy really hates himself, doesn’t he?” Carnie said about the album.
“He’s taking grunge and industrial and combining them,” Mike said, hitting the wall next to the dartboard.
“Stick to music, my young friend,” Carnie said, hitting a triple twenty and hearing the board celebrate his shot.
Alec began discussing where they needed to go. It was seven in the evening but it felt much earlier—like they had just gone out and just woken up.
“What day is it?” Jake asked, suddenly and completely forgetting.
“Saturday,” Carnie said.
“Does it matter?” Alec said.
And as Jake delicately sipped his first beer of the day, his mouth still raw from the previous night, he listened to angry, fierce vocals of the music as they wailed, I do not want this.
“Tell me about your parents,” Bruce said to Jake as they sat in the forest preserve on the sunny day, the mercury pushing seventy.
“What do you want to know?”
“I don’t know. You just never talk about them.”
“What’s there to talk about?”
Bruce shrugged.
“My older brother is the hero and my older sister is the brains and I’m the youngest they don’t know what to do with.”
“They made you go to Providence?”
“Sure. They wanted someone else to try and save my soul. They’ve sorta given up.”
“Do you like them?”
Jake took a sip from his beer. “It’s not like I don’t. It’s just—I don’t know. They don’t get it, and I feel like they’re so old, you know.”
“My dad is nonexistent and my mom overprotective,” Bruce said.
“They’re divorced, right?”
“Yep. That does wonders for a family.”
“You know—we go to college when the divorce rate is higher than ever and AIDS is rampant and the world might be coming to an end, and they wonder why we listen to this music and do the things we do.”
“Gen X, man.”
“I wonder if it’s going to keep getting worse,” Jake said. “Like if the next generation of kids are going to be even more jaded. And imagine the music—how angry that’s going to be.”
“It’s all circular. They were enraged in the sixties, right? And the seventies too. But look at the eighties.”
“Sometimes I wonder what I’m going to do once I graduate. I don’t even want to graduate … but I don’t want to stay around here.”
“If you could do one thing in your life, only one thing for sure, what would that be?”
For a second, Jake thought of Alyssa. It was a fleeting, foolish thought, but she came to his mind.
“Climb Mount Everest,” he said.
That’s actually attainable.
“Really?”
“Sometimes I’ve stood on the edge of a mountain and thought, it can’t get any better than this. The view, the height, the intensity of the moment. You know?”
“Yeah,” Bruce said, taking a drag from his cigarette.
“What about you?”
His longhaired friend thought for a moment and pushed the hair out of his eyes. “I’d get my father to admit he loves me. Or that he even knows I’m alive.”
“That’s cool,” Jake said.
“It’s pathetic, but it’s a goal.”
“I wonder,” Jake said. “If and when I get older … if I’ll do any better. If I’ll be a better man. A better person.”
“I will,” Bruce promised. “I swear to God I’ll do better.”
It was Tuesday, April 5, a little after lunch. Jake lay out on a blanket watching the clouds and waiting for Alec. This would be the third day in a row they had come to the forest preserve. The weather was unusually warm for this time of year, and they were making good use of it. In a way Jake felt like he could put the winter’s woes behind him, even for the moment.
The door to his CRX was open, playing Pearl Jam. This early in the day, and in the year, they wouldn’t be bothered by cops or strangers.
Alec arrived and came out of his car holding a case of Bush Light Draft.
“I don’t think you have enough beer,” Jake said.
“I’ve got another case in the car.”
“Nice.”
“We’re going through both of them today.”
“A case apiece?” Jake asked, laughing, his stomach turning.
“You bet.”
“I think at this rate I’m going to be dead by Friday.”
“We can arrange that.” Alec laughed.
“Don’t you get tired of drinking?”
Alec cracked open a beer and handed it to Jake. “My man, when will you ever learn? Life is only manageable when you’re out of hand.” He opened his own beer and raised it.
“What are we toasting?”
“The grand scheme. The master plan.”
“We’re not still going through with it,” Jake said.
“You bet we are. I’ve got it all planned out.”
“Alec. The stuff with Brian is over.”
“Oh, it’s not over. It’s far from over.”
“Alec.”
“What, Dad?”
Jake swore.
“That’s the spirit,” Alec answered. “You don’t worry about anything. Just drink up.”
“I thought we were going camping this weekend.”
“Oh, really?” Alec laughed. “That’s all part of the plan. Part of the alibi.”
“And Brian?”
“He doesn’t have a clue.”
“About what?”
“About what’s going to hit him.”
Alec grinned one of his uncontrollable, unbridled grins. Suddenly, drinking sounded like a really good idea to Jake.
THIRTY-SIX
June 2005
I SAT UP ON THE COUCH in Alyssa’s living room, unable to sleep anymore. It was around seven, and the morning looked overcast and gloomy. Seemed appropriate. I felt wired and restless, and my dreams had been like paddling a canoe in an ocean storm.
Alyssa had apologized for not having a spare bedroom, since it was being used for storage. Now I stood and looked around the bare house. Nobody could have guessed that Alyssa had been living in this town for the last decade. It still felt like she had just moved in.
I knew what it was like to live on your own. You got used to it, sure. But you also got lonely. And even with a family in the area, those nights of coming back to silence were sometimes hard to take. No amount of volume on the television or surfing the Internet or talking on the phone could erase the fact that you were alone. And for Alyssa, who had tried to make a go with having a family and sharing another’s life, this loneliness probably felt extra painful.
I thought of this last night when I hugged Alyssa before going to bed. There had been no thought of something happening between us, not with the mood both of us were in. I’ve always thought it was crazy in movies when characters are being chased and almost killed and then they suddenly stop everything to get together for a good ole romp in bed. It’s Hollywood, sure, but it’s also ridiculous.
I looked around the living room, the only halfway-decorated room in the house, at a shelf on the wall with photos of Alyssa and her parents, her sister, other relatives. She looked so beautiful, so innocent and pure. There was a shot of her on her graduation day from Providence; I held it for a moment, examinin
g it carefully.
You never put on a robe, a voice whispered to me. You never got a chance to walk to get your diploma.
I decided to head out and find some breakfast.
The phone rang, and a woman picked up.
“Yeah, I’d like to talk with Mr. Jelen.”
“May I ask who’s calling?”
“This is Jake Rivers. This is about his daughter, and it’s urgent.”
The woman put me on hold, but seconds later a no-nonsense voice picked up and got right to the point. “What is it?”
“I’m done. I’ve had enough. You can find someone else to track down your daughter.”
“What are you talking about? What happened?”
I was standing in the parking lot of Dunkin’ Donuts, a hot cup of coffee on the hood of my rental car, talking on my cell as I watched morning work traffic pass on the street in front of me.
“Someone doesn’t want Alec found,” I said. “Maybe it’s Alec, I don’t know. Last night one of my friends got shot.”
There was silence on the other end.
“Yeah, that’s what I think,” I continued. “Look—whatever is going on with Alec—I’m not a part of it. My friends aren’t a part of it. And whatever happened years ago rests with Alec. He’s the responsible one.”
“Jake, you agreed to—”
“I know what I agreed to. Your threats helped.”
“Do you know anything?”
“I know that he had a lot more to do with our college exploits than I realized. And maybe—maybe he doesn’t want me finding him. Maybe he doesn’t want you intruding in his life.”
“It’s not his life I’m concerned about,” Mr. Jelen said.
“Your daughter is an adult. She can make her own decisions. Right or wrong, you can’t do much about it.”
“I could at least make a plea—if I knew where she was.”
“You gotta get someone else. None of my friends know anything. And the longer I keep looking, the worse it gets. And there are people—people I’m worried about getting hurt.”
“Like your young lady friend?”
I paused for a moment. “You spying on me?” I asked angrily.
“Let’s say I’m keeping track of you, Mr. Rivers.”
“My father is Mr. Rivers, so don’t call me that again. And secondly, I don’t need to be kept track of.”
“She might be interested in knowing what happened back in your wild college days.”
I gripped the cell phone, wishing it were Mr. Jelen’s neck.
“You got something to say, say it. Tell her. Tell me while you’re doing it. Everything I knew I told the authorities. There was nothing else I could say. About any of it.”
There was only silence on the other line.
“You’re quiet because, you know what? You don’t know jack either. I thought maybe you did, maybe you had learned something I didn’t know. But that’s impossible. So go ahead. You tell anybody anything you want. The answers lie in the man you’re looking for. You find him, you let me know. I gotta few questions I want to ask him myself.”
“Jake—please, hold on.”
“What?” I yelled into the phone.
“You don’t have a daughter—a family. You can’t understand.”
I thought of the woman I’d left back at her house, probably still sleeping comfortably in her king-sized bed.
“I understand well enough.”
“I just want her back.” Mr. Jelen sounded desperate and weak, two adjectives that probably weren’t usually associated with him.
“Sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it. Claire’s not your little girl anymore. She’s going to make decisions, even if they’re bad ones. You just got to hope and pray that she’ll wise up.”
Again there was a silence, as if Mr. Jelen had been surprised and didn’t know what to say.
“I have to go.”
“Jake? If there’s anything—anything else that comes up—please, can you at least let me know?”
“Yeah.”
“You can still use the credit card I gave you for any additional expenses on your way home.”
… your way home.
The thought felt odd. For the moment I didn’t want to think about it.
“I’ll be fine, thanks.”
But there was nothing fine about any of this. The only fine thing was back in a house five minutes from here. Maybe I would prepare breakfast in bed for her.
Any such romantic notions were shot the moment I returned.
Alyssa was carrying a cup of tea across the living room when I opened the front door. She let out a high-pitched shriek and jerked the cup, letting the liquid swoop in an arc over the carpet.
“It’s just me,” I blurted out, too late.
Alyssa held her hand on her chest. I put the box of donuts down on a table and told her I’d help clean up.
She exhaled. “I thought you’d left.”
“I’m sorry—I was hoping I’d get back before you woke up.”
“I woke up when I heard your car start.”
“I didn’t want to freak you out and wake you up,” I said. Then I looked at her colorless face. “I guess that plan didn’t work.”
“I look awful—I didn’t think you were coming back.”
“What? I’m going to just leave without saying good-bye?”
She didn’t say anything.
I took the cup from her hand and laughed. “This just proves what I’ve thought all along.”
“What?”
“That you truly are beautiful.”
Alyssa held up a hand to her face, embarrassed. She wore white pajamas that looked comfortable and appeared almost too nice to sleep in.
I went to the kitchen and grabbed a wet rag and towel and spent the next few minutes trying to clean up the stains. We eventually ended up on her couch, eating donuts.
“I didn’t know what kind you liked,” I said as she looked through the box.
“So you got a dozen?”
“Actually, just eight. One for you and seven for me.”
“Chocolate glazed are my favorite.”
“Strange. I guessed that.”
“Did you hear anything from Mike?”
I shook my head, taking a bite of a maple donut. “I’m going to call later.”
“That’s nice, to see what you’re eating.”
I swallowed before saying, “Excuse me.”
I wanted to try and figure out a way to tell Alyssa that I had called Mr. Jelen and given up my quest. Or whatever this was called. It was as if I had been called for some magnificent journey but had never really gotten started. I knew as much about the whereabouts of Alec now as I knew several weeks ago.
THIRTY-SEVEN
April 1994
OH GOD NO PLEASE GOD NO
Jake looked up at the heavens and then back at his bloody shirt.
This is a bad joke it’s gotta be
His watch said eleven, but he didn’t trust that. Then he looked at his right fist and saw the cuts and the bloody knuckles and the purple color and he wondered if he had broken the hand again.
How’d I do this?
He didn’t know the day. Friday? Saturday? His head hurt to think about it. All he knew was that he was alone.
Trying the ignition didn’t work. Someone must have run out of gas the night before. Probably Bruce. But then where did he go? To find gas?
And what’s that gun doing in the backseat?
It looked like Carnie’s handgun, the one he had bought not long ago. New Year’s Eve. Remember that?
Jake shoved the gun under the front car seat in case someone came by and looked inside. Then he locked up the car and began walking, in which direction he wasn’t sure. Maybe his friends were playing a prank on him. A really bad prank. Was he horrified? Oh, yeah.
Jake kept walking for what might have been a mile, his head foggy and eyes squinting at the sun. Then he turned and went another direction, trying to find
a main road. Trying to find anything.
He searched his thoughts and tried to come up with something from the night before. Anything at all.
Three of them drove out here with him: Alec, Bruce, and Carnie. They’d arrived on Thursday night and had brought enough booze for half the state of Illinois.
Jake could remember sitting by a fire with the guys, their tents behind them. Laughing and eating and drinking. And that was it. It was late, how late he didn’t know. He tried to remember if anyone else was there.
Where am I?
And more importantly, what happened?
Finally the dirt road ended at an intersection with a two-lane road. Jake stepped onto it and looked in both directions.
Nothing. No campground, no farm, nothing around. No oncoming traffic or noise.
He felt the back of his pants. He still had his wallet. He looked inside. No money. At least he had an ID on him.
The sun was warm, so he took off the bloody shirt and crumpled it up. He began to stuff it into his pocket when he noticed the bulge. Jake reached inside and found a folded pocketknife. The blade was bloody and the blood still felt wet.
No no no no no
The blade itself when opened was about six or eight inches long.
This is not happening
Jake once again examined the blood covering his pants and his Doc Martens.
What the—
He looked around. What if a car came?
Yeah, they’ll pick me up looking like this.
Without hesitating he headed into a cornfield and ran for several minutes until he was deep inside. Then he kneeled and began to dig like a madman. When he’d made a hole several feet deep, he dropped the knife down and covered it over.
God please help me please God
But something told him he was alone on this. He’d been alone and wasn’t getting any help from anybody. Except maybe his friends, wherever they were.
Jake had walked for an hour along the side of the road and seen only two cars. One was a truck that flew past and the other a station wagon that he didn’t look at. Then the sound of an oncoming car made him slow down. It began to honk when it got within sight of him.
Jake recognized Alec’s Jeep. He stopped and just watched as the Jeep skidded to a stop and the passenger door was flung open. Alec rained curses down on him.
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