Leaving the door to the basement open, he went through the dining room into the front hall of the old house, and began to mount the stairs. To reduce the chance of a creak, he took them three at a time, testing each step by slowly rolling his weight forward. Then he was in the upstairs hall. He didn't know who was in which bedroom. He had to guess, which was nerve-wracking.
Two of the bedroom doors were closed, one open. It made sense to look first in the open door, simply because that was the least risky.
He peered into the room. Against the far wall there was a window glowing with the thin last light of the moon. A bird's clear, lonely song pealed through the night. Under the window there was a bed, and on the bed a figure. His heart almost stopped at the sight of Billy sprawled in sleep.
Moving as carefully as a rat he crossed the floor, thinking of it as a dance. He was a good dancer. Mel Powell's Dance Studio, fox trot, rumba, swing, jitterbug, 1955.
He approached the bed. Swiftly he opened his ether, soaked the felt, laid it on the boy's face. The child was still for a moment, then he tried to turn his head. Barton was ready and bore down hard. A rush of movement went through the little body. There came a stifled sound, a cry of surprise. Billy's mouth opened, he tried to bite the cloth. He shook, his arms came out and flailed. His hands grasped and slapped. He made stifled gobbling sounds.
"Good, good," Barton whispered.
The boy shook and drummed his feet. The bed thuttered with a perverse echo of passion's tattoo. Only very gradually did his breathing become heavier, his movements slower.
Barton sang to him, sang in his sweet ear, "Where are you going, Billy boy, Billy boy, where are you going, charming Billy . . ."
Finally the child became unconscious.
Barton resoaked the felt and put it into a plastic sandwich bag, ready for instant use if needed. Then he scoured the room for precious belongings. He found a guitar, but it was too big to bring. The stuffed toy that the child slept with he left behind. Weaning Billy away from that would be hard, but necessary if he was ever to put his present life behind him.
He took clothes, of course. The boy's wardrobe was not stocked with fashionable things like Gotcha and Ocean Pacific and Mexx. His clothes ran to plain jeans, shorts and T-shirts.
If this child was going to live in the Hollywood Hills with Barton Royal he would have to dress more fashionably. Once he was tamed a trip to some of the Melrose boutiques would be in order. But in the meantime, his old clothes would have to do. Barton stuffed the knapsack, then gave Billy another dose of ether and drew down his sheet.
How superb.
Barton pressed his face close to Billy's neck and smelled the natural sweetness of his skin. Why ever did boys turn into men? What a terrible curse! He lifted Billy in his arms and carried him out to the hall.
"Goodbye," he whispered on Billy's behalf, "goodbye to my dear old home." As he went downstairs, stepping because of his burden even more carefully than before, he felt almost like he had the moment Dad died, sad and yet joyous, his soul shot with sorrow even as it leapt free.
He was fully and completely aware that this was the most evil most hurtful crime he could commit. But what about him? He needed somebody, too.
He swept through the basement, a great black bird dragging prey, a fat man in the lost middle of his life, sweating under the weight of his stolen burden. He carried Billy across the front yard to the van. He had left the side door open, and he put Billy inside on the bunk. Then he strapped his wrists and ankles to the frame. Last, he sealed his mouth with gray duct tape.
One final time, he left the van. Returning to the house, he raised the garage door as quietly as he could. It rattled like hell but there was nothing he could do about it except pray.
Quickly he wheeled the boy's bike out and stowed it in the van. He already knew that he would ditch it in the Platte River outside of Lincoln. It was too old to keep and took up too much room in the van. Obviously, he didn't want Billy to have a bike, but its disappearance would make the police think this was a runaway.
He returned to the driver's seat, paused and thought. He inventoried everything. Penlight, felt, plastic cards—he'd left nothing behind.
He pulled off his rubber gloves and put them in the map case between the seats. For a long moment he looked at Billy, who lay very still on the cot behind him. Suddenly nervous, he leaned close to the boy. It was all right; he was breathing fine.
His fingers hesitated over the key. Then he grasped it, turned. The crystal silence of early morning was fractured by the starting of the van.
He drove off down the dark street.
Part Two
CHARMING BILLY
7.
In the silence that followed the alarm clock, Mark Neary became aware that the house was filled with a wonderful aroma.
"My God, it worked."
Mary sat up. "I believe you're right."
They had invested in a two-hundred-dollar automatic bread baker, which promised to deliver a fresh loaf when you got up. Sally and Billy had argued over the cryptic instructions, but apparently they had figured them out.
Sally stuck her head in their door. "The most recent reincarnation of Torquemada is not in his room."
As he shaved, Mark assumed that Billy had gone down early to supervise the bread maker. Mary rubbed her long legs with Jergen's lotion. It made a soft sound that he loved.
All the clocks in the house ticked on, passing through eight-oh-eight, eight-oh-nine, then eight-ten. Deep in Billy's computer a microchip silently marked the seconds, and in the living room the reproduction Regulator slowly retightened its spring after sounding eight chimes.
Eight-fifteen. In Billy's bedroom his digital watch beeped. His sister heard it and entered the room. She picked it up from the floor beside the bed and put it on his table. His ridiculous Garfie, which was in the middle of the floor, she threw onto the unmade bed.
A breeze blew through his open window, billowing the curtains.
Dressed in robe and slippers, Mark Neary hurried downstairs. "Smells like bread heaven," he called as he entered the kitchen. He raised the top of the machine and beheld a magnificent loaf. In a moment it was on the kitchen counter, steaming hot and wonderful. He pulled open the basement door and called Billy. "Come on up and get some absolutely fresh, absolutely hot oatmeal whole-wheat bread, complete with toasty crust."
He cut himself a big piece and spread it with strawberry jam. "It's heaven," he shouted.
Mary came in, her face glowing with the light of morning. Objectively Mark knew that his wife was no special beauty, but his heart did not know that, and it beat harder on behalf of the brightness of her skin, and his sex raised itself a little when she came up and kissed him. "You taste like strawberries," she said. He felt the laughter in her, and realized that he had dreamed again about her. They had gone to New Zealand in his dream. They had sailed a sunny bay. He remembered the water slapping the sides of the boat, the green hull, the white sails. Her dream body had been smooth and cool and her skin had tasted of the sea.
Mary turned away from him, absently tossing her hair, her eyes sparkling. On this day, he thought, we will be happy. "The bread's dynamite," he said as he cut her a slice.
"Let me do that. Those are defined as hunks, not slices."
"We need a bread knife."
"It's all in the wrist."
"Fresh bread! William! Appear!"
"You ought to set more limits, Mark. He's become part of his computer."
"You don't limit bright kids unless you absolutely must."
"Everybody needs boundaries." She went to the basement door. "William Neary, the computing window is now closed. You have thirty seconds to get up here."
When no young voice replied, "Hold on!" she looked down the stairs. "Billy?" She descended a few steps. It was dark. She was confused, perhaps even a trifle concerned. "Billy?" She went quickly down, turning on the basement light as she descended.
Sunday breakfast togethe
r was a rule. His father was just too lenient. Billy had to learn that rules defined a family and made it work. They were the foundation of relationships, and so of love.
She stood in the middle of the basement, struck suddenly by the way its present silence clashed with her usual impression. It was full of boys' things—an abandoned model airplane, the whole elaborate, painfully costly computer system, tape recorders, a Casio keyboard, the splayed open remains of a number of old appliances, things he'd found in people's trash, Mets and Lions Club caps from New Jersey days, toy cars. She picked up one of the cars, a Rolls-Royce with a missing door. So recently it had been a prize, so quickly abandoned for better things. Abandoned, lost, like boyhood itself. Such was the poetry of the matter: this twelfth was the last summer of her son's childhood. From now on there would be that touch of autumn.
In all its simplicity and perfection, the quiet moment among her son's beloved junk captured her heart. 'How rich I am,' she thought.
Then her thoughts went to Mark, her dear failure of a high school history teacher. They'd shared grand ambitions: he was going to be the next Walter Lippmann, a fine author of the left, full of literate fire. Except his sentences were generally too long, his thoughts too complicated, his words too dry.
He was a little heavy about the middle now, and he'd been fired a lot for his flaming love of the social ideal, but many sparks of his youth were yet unquenched.
She loved his body on hers, loved it when he shook with passion, adored the tickle of his lips upon her breasts, adored sweating with him in the night.
"I simply cannot cut it thin enough for the toaster," he shouted. "Help me!" The "help" was long and full of mourning.
Laughing, she returned to the kitchen. The table was only half set and now Sally had disappeared. This just was not a morning for a formal breakfast. The Sunday paper lay on the counter, "Blondie" and "Prince Valiant" huge and colorful on the first page of the comics section. Billy loved the comics.
"The kids are getting through the strainer," Mary said.
"Help me cut this darn bread. It's great but it's got its gluish side."
" 'Gluish' can't be a word."
"Don't Funk & Wagnall me, help me!"
'I'll just plain Funk you if you don't watch out," she whispered.
"Bad girl." He popped her on the bottom.
Sally came in the garage door. "His bike's gone."
"That's odd, Mark."
"Did you do something to him, Sally? Something that made him decide to escape your wrath?"
"Mother, he's twelve years old. He doesn't run away from me anymore. He fights back as best he can with his thin little arms and tiny fists."
They continued making their breakfast, as a ship might sail on even after its belly is sundered. Mary got the bread into the toaster and the water into the ancient percolator. Sally finished laying the table. Mark stood overseeing the bacon, Sunday comics in hand.
Mary did not tell him to be careful. If he wanted to set the newspaper on fire with his cooking, that was his business. She had decided this ten years ago. This time the bacon cooked and the newspaper did not.
They sat around the kitchen table eating bacon and toast and eggs, drinking frozen orange juice because they could not afford the kind that came in cartons. A pot of coffee steamed in the center of the table, beside the pile of Sunday paper.
Wrinkles appeared in the yolks of Billy's eggs. Eventually his sister stole his bacon and his mother put the eggs in the oven with some foil over the plate. Little was said during breakfast; the radio played a series of forgettable tunes, cars passed, one or the other parent looked up whenever a child shouted in the street.
"It isn't like him," his mother said. She was looking out the kitchen window into a yard flooded with sunlight.
They finally decided to make calls to the parents of his friends. One after another, the same answer came back. By ten there was a definite quiver in their voices, but the reason remained unsaid. At eleven the family drove over to the mall, but it was closed. There were a couple of people at Burger King, but no kids.
Knowing that his bike was gone, they drove the streets of Stevensville. It was all useless, and at noon the family returned home.
Sally, deeply upset, withdrew to her room. Outside the grasshoppers sang, lawn mowers clattered, sprinklers whirred. The strains of piano practice floated over from the Harpers' house, and an engine endlessly revved and died as young John O'Hara tried to bring life to the fifty-dollar car he'd bought from a junk dealer.
Mark went to his daughter. She lay on her side reading and listening to the radio. Mark knew nothing about rock and roll, having lost interest when he realized at the age of fourteen that no girl would ever consider him a hep cat, never mind his pink shirt, black pants and Wildroot-soaked fenders. Mozart, Telemann, Bach: this was his music, the music of what the kids called "geese" in his day and time. His friends were boys with crooked horn-rims and sour-smelling white shirts, and pallid, bepimpled girls in harlequins and too few petticoats, who professed themselves to be "sent" by Beethoven's Sixth, "so passionate, Markie!"
Now when Sally's blooming classmates got crushes on their history teacher, he thought, 'You're about thirty years too late,' and laughed within at the irony of time.
It was remarkably poignant to watch a girl become a woman.
He sat down on the bed beside her.
"Was he angry?" Mark asked her. "Was there a fight?"
"No, Dad. No way. He was fine."
"He didn't say anything to you—talk about taking a ride, going somewhere—" Mark stopped. He realized that he'd already asked her at least five versions of this same question. He fell silent.
Sally said it: "I'm scared, Daddy."
Mary came in. "Was there anything he wanted? A new computer program? Something he might have decided to go into Des Moines on his own to get?"
"Billy'd never go to Des Moines by himself without telling. And the computer stores're probably closed Sunday."
Mary bowed her head in acknowledgment. Her son wasn't that indifferent to limits.
Mark realized there was something he had to say. Let Sally hear her father's fear, let Mary hear that he could be victim to his feelings. He had to get this out, and he had to do it now. "Last night, he woke me up." He took a deep breath. "He said he'd seen a man in the front yard. I looked, but there wasn't anybody there. I'm sorry to say, I just—"
It came then, the pain, welling up in him like a ball of red fire, bursting in the center of his heart.
"Oh, Christ—obviously, I—" It wasn't pride that stopped him this time, or the reticence of an inward man, it was the sheer horror of his mistake. "He must have been watching all the time—waiting for his chance."
Mary was absolutely silent and completely still. When she spoke her voice was very soft. "If it happened—and that's a very big 'if—it certainly isn't our fault. We can't think that way." She looked at her husband. "We can't, Mark."
"We have to call the police."
"I agree," Mary said. At once what had been a slow decision became a desperate emergency. Both parents went for the phone in their bedroom, followed by their daughter.
There was a short delay while Mary fumbled through the phone book looking for the number. This was a small town; the police could not be reached by jabbing 911.
Outside the lawn mowers had stopped, and lunch was being eaten in the other houses on the block. Soon baseball would hit the airwaves and the men would disappear into their air-conditioned living rooms and dens.
Mary spoke the numerals. Her voice was loud in the noon hush, the digits enunciated with excessive care.
As Mark punched in the numbers a boy's voice sang out high and gay, and for an instant he thought—but no, it was some other child. A clawing, frantic urgency came over him as the phone rang, and when a voice said "Stevensville Police" he could barely manage to reply.
"My name is Mark Neary. I'm calling to report that my son, William, appears to be missing."
His call had been answered by Patrolman Charles Napier, who was on dispatch this Sunday until four. The call didn't surprise him. They got three or four of these a month. If the children were young the cases were always solved within acouple of hours. Older children might be runaways, and runaways sometimes took longer. But they all came home in the end, all of them. Kids got killed, even kidnapped, but not in this sleepy little town. The parents, of course, were always terrified, and Charlie was always gentle with them. "When did you discover William was missing?"
"When we got up this morning. During the night he woke me up. He said he'd seen a man in the front yard. I investigated, but there was nothing wrong. Then this morning he wasn't here anymore."
Charlie Napier had pulled out a missing persons form. He took the bare details of age and description. There would have to be an immediate investigation of this case, because a minor was involved. In adult missing person cases the department waited twenty-four hours before starting a search. "An officer will be out to see you in about ten minutes."
Mark hung up the phone. "They're coming right over," he said. His voice sounded to him like an echo. He had become his own audience, observing the tragedy even as it spun itself around him.
Distantly, "The Star Spangled Banner" rose from a neighbor's TV. The baseball game was starting, and everybody else was safe, and nobody else's child was threatened.
Mary's hand came into his. "Do you really think that the man—"
"I don't know."
She wanted to lean her head against him, but restrained herself. They needed to be strong for one another, not to display weakness. She squeezed his hand. "He'll be found."
"I guess it's the step we just took. It makes you face how damn scared you really are."
Billy Page 5