by Jon Land
His final words were drowned out by applause that grew louder as plenty of the shareholders in attendance at the annual meeting leaped to their feet. In that moment, Calum Dane forgot all about Brandon McCabe and the prosthetic leg he was holding like some trumpet of truth. The kid was gone, and the ballroom was his to own again.
Until the kid wasn’t gone anymore. Dane glimpsed him reaching into his hollow limb and coming out with handfuls of tiny pieces of plastic that looked like the remains of a child’s toy.
For good reason. Because the pieces were the sliced-off legs of toy soldiers. Dane could see the little foot poking out from painted-on army pants on one that landed on the stage and skittered close to him.
“Now everybody can have a severed leg of their own,” Brandon McCabe called out, hurling a final handful of the things out into the audience which gobbled them up, hooting and hollering all over again. “Difference being you didn’t have to have yours amputated.”
And then the kid went hopping up the center aisle of the ballroom, propelling himself along from chair back to chair back. He stopped at the very back of the hall, close to a set of open double doors, and shot Calum Dane the finger.
“Good thing you didn’t take my hands, too!” he shouted to the delight of the crowd, and then hopped out the door.
But Dane wasn’t watching anymore. His attention was claimed by a big, rough-hewn man not unlike the man he’d been maybe twenty-five years before, when he’d had no debt, responsibility, or cripples stalking him. The man stood rigid, stiff and board straight just offstage, entirely out of view of the audience. He’d stopped just short of the light radiating down onto the stage floor, as if its brightness might burn him and he preferred the shadows instead.
Dane joined him in those shadows, suddenly glad to be out of the light and all it revealed.
“Talk to me, S.,” he said to the man, using the man’s first initial, as had long been his custom, trying to beat back the hammering in his chest.
“The situation in Texas has been contained, sir,” reported Sev Pulsipher. “The operation was a success.”
“Thank God,” Dane said, feeling his breathing steady itself. Then he noticed the big man’s taut expression. “What else you got to tell me?”
“There’s been a complication.”
“I don’t understand, if you got all the kids.”
“Turns out we didn’t, sir. That’s the complication.”
14
ARMAND BAYOU, TEXAS
Houston PD was holding two boys from the Village School at the visitors’ center located just off the entrance to the grounds. That’s all Caitlin knew as she approached: two boys, no further information provided.
Law enforcement officials had already begun to cluster around the one-story building, a majestic A-frame structure built out of trees cut from these very grounds. Those officials found themselves battling for space with all manner of television and print reporters, who’d turned the parking lot into a staging ground for camera trucks and prep areas for the on-air personalities to grab whoever they could for an interview.
“Man oh man,” Tepper groused. “I miss the days when we had three channels and UHF was the new big thing.”
“Long gone and forgotten by nearly everybody else, Captain,” said Caitlin.
“That’s the problem with this world. People take progress for improvement, when I’m of the opinion we’re going backwards in more ways than forwards.”
They eased their way through the growing swarm, avoiding the microphones, cell phones, and recording devices thrust in their faces when reporters spotted their Texas Ranger badges. For his part, Tepper bummed a pair of filterless cigarettes off a newsman Caitlin recognized as an on-air reporter since she’d been a little girl. She thought she remembered him interviewing her grandfather at a Fourth of July celebration, when his hair had been black instead of silver.
Her and Tepper’s badges were enough to get them into the visitors’ center without having to flash their IDs. They were directed toward a back office, where she glimpsed a pair of youthful figures beyond a half-wall of glass, her angle precluding view of their faces.
Caitlin felt her heart hammering against her ribs, her mind working fast, calculating the odds that one of the found boys was Luke.
Please let it be, just please.…
She couldn’t remember praying a single time in her life, a little girl who slept with her grandfather’s empty Colt Peacemaker instead of a doll. All of a sudden, though, she found herself hoping against hope that some higher power would hear her words and grant her that much. A long time ago she’d witnessed her mother gunned down by Mexican druggers, and not all that long ago had watched her father die a slow death from heart failure. But this, she thought to herself, was the worst moment of life, all of it filled with a dread fear that if one of these boys wasn’t Luke Torres, son of Cort Wesley Masters, she might never see him again. That he’d been swept away into the ether that defined the violence of the world, which had so long defined both her and his father.
The figure of a Houston detective she recognized moved in front of the window, blocking her view. He bent over, to tie his shoe maybe, and she got her look at both boys, their faces turned away and still indistinguishable.
Her stomach was fluttering and her knees had gone weak when one of the boys turned and peered through the glass, meeting her gaze with a face coated with grime, streaked with tears.
Luke Torres.
15
ARMAND BAYOU, TEXAS
Caitlin burst through the door, no thought given to protocol or to disturbing any evidence the boy’s clothes may have shed. Luke had already bounded off the office couch by then, practically leaping into her arms, his hair smelling of tree bark, wood smoke, and the outdoors when she hugged him. She felt his tears soaking into her shirt before his sobs even became audible.
In her mind she said lots of things, comforting words meant to ease his plight, his confusion, make all this right. But in reality she said nothing at all, just hugged the boy tighter and didn’t let go until he did first, sniffling as he backed off slightly.
“Is it true?” he just managed to utter, swallowing hard. “What they’re saying about the other kids?”
Caitlin looked toward the Houston detective she recognized. “I suspect it is.”
She turned her gaze toward the couch and the second boy, who was shivering beneath a blanket wrapped over his shoulders. He had ice-blue eyes, big and full, his hair hanging in wavy ringlets past his shoulders. Looked like some kind of model or something, except she also seemed to recall him starting on the school soccer team, for which Luke casually described himself as a “scrub.”
“You okay, son?” Caitlin asked the boy on the couch, knowing it sounded lame, because of course he wasn’t.
The boy’s eyes quickly turned from fearful and longing to furtive, turning away from hers as if she’d spotted something in them he didn’t want her to see. She let it go, cursing herself for feeling the Texas Ranger in her creeping back in to wonder exactly how this boy and Luke had gotten separated from the rest.
What were you doing in those woods, son?
She posed that question only in her mind, knowing there’d be plenty of time for answers later.
“My dad know?” Luke asked, swabbing a long-sleeve shirt over his eyes and nose.
“Got a message from him saying he’s on his way.”
The office’s overly bright fluorescent lighting made his face look shiny through the stitches of grime streaking it. Compared to his older brother, Dylan, just short of his twentieth birthday now, Luke had always been a little kid to her. Except he wasn’t anymore. He looked older and more mature than Dylan had at this age and was just as good looking, even more so. Both boys had inherited their mother’s beauty—a curse as much as a blessing, in her mind.
Something made Caitlin glance back at the boy still seated on the couch, trying to remember his name, until Luke repeated his question.
“He should be here shortly,” Caitlin resumed.
“Ranger,” the Houston detective whose name continued to slip her mind started, “we need to talk to these boys now, if you don’t mind.”
“Well, I do mind, sir, after all they’ve been through. And they’re both minors to boot.”
“I said ‘talk,’” the detective said gently, “not question or interrogate.”
“Is there a difference?”
She could see the detective start to stiffen, everyone else crammed in the office seeming to freeze solid.
“Tell you what,” she said to the detective, before whatever she felt building inside her spilled out, “why don’t we ‘talk’ to them together?”
16
ARMAND BAYOU, TEXAS
“Frank Pepper,” the detective said, extending his hand as everyone else filed out of the office, leaving her and Pepper alone with the boys.
“That’s right,” Caitlin remembered, finally. “They call you ‘Doctor.’”
Pepper shrugged. “Ever since junior high.”
“I apologize for forgetting, and for my tone earlier.”
“That’s all right. And, for what it’s worth, I’m a big admirer of yours.”
“It’s worth a lot, Doctor.”
“Frank, please.”
Caitlin nodded, that one word having sucked up whatever tension remained between them. Pepper dragged one chair over in front of the couch, where Luke was again seated next to the other boy, and positioned another next to it. Neither boy was looking at the other. Luke’s arms were folded tight against his chest, as if he’d tucked something beneath them.
Pepper waited behind his chair for Caitlin to take hers. She remained silent, deferring to him out of protocol, since this was technically Houston’s case until the FBI or Rangers assumed jurisdiction, which would surely be the case.
“I want you to know,” he started, leaning forward to bring himself closer to the boys, “that we’re doing everything we can to find your friends. But we need your help, anything you can tell us.” He paused, resuming when the other boy finally looked up. “Luke, Zach…”
Zach, Caitlin thought, remembering.
“I’m not gonna lie to you, boys. Right now, we don’t have a lot go on, so anything you’ve got to say, anything at all, is sure to help us.”
The boys shrugged in unison, their expressions slipping into twin frowns.
“Well then,” Pepper picked up, sitting more upright in his chair, “is it okay if I ask you boys a few questions, see if that might spur something?”
Both of them nodded.
“Let’s start with how the two of you got separated from the group. I’m guessing somebody would’ve done a count, once you were all settled in that field, am I right?”
Luke nodded slightly. Zach just shrugged again, his big eyes looking darker, as if somebody had taken a color stick to them.
“Okay, so you were all together at that point. Do you remember what time that would’ve been?”
“Eleven thirty,” Zach said first.
“When they told us to turn off our phones and flashlights,” Luke added, “and did—what’d you call it?—a count.”
“One of them, the adults, was supposed to stay up all night.”
“Like in shifts,” Luke added, again. “I had to go to the bathroom. Zach said he’d come with me, so I wouldn’t get lost.”
“Then we both got lost,” Zach filled in.
But Caitlin was focusing on Luke. His eyes were locked on Pepper, as if trying to paint her out of the scene.
“Luke?”
He looked toward her. Reluctantly.
“I thought you had permission to use the bathrooms in the farmhouse,” Caitlin resumed.
“They’re not bathrooms; they’re outhouses out in the back. I wasn’t going in there, not the way they smelled. I just had to, you know, piss. It seemed easier to just use the woods.”
“And what time would this have been?” Pepper asked both of them.
Luke turned to look at Zach for the first time since he’d reclaimed his place on the couch. “Midnight?”
“I think so,” Zach said.
“You ask permission, at least tell whatever adult was awake you needed to use the bathroom?”
Zach shrugged.
“They were all asleep,” Luke said, “even the one who was supposed to stay awake.”
“That your recollection too, Zach?”
Zach took a deep breath. “I forget now. I’ve got ADD. I forget lots of things.”
“Well, son, you won’t be tested on any of this.” Pepper smiled, trying to sound comforting. “Let’s go back a bit further, to earlier last night. Do either of you recall seeing or noticing anything that didn’t appear right, that stood out for any reason, like something or someone that didn’t seem like they belonged?”
Caitlin watched Zach shake his head and then look down again, sighing.
Luke nodded. “There was one thing,” he said, looking at Caitlin.
“Go ahead, Luke,” she coaxed.
“I saw lights.”
“Lights?” Pepper asked.
“More like flickers. Out in the woods to the right of the field where we were sleeping—to the west, I think. They were there and then they were gone. Then they came back again.”
“You mean like flashlights?” Caitlin asked him.
The boy shrugged, then shook his head. “I don’t know what they were, but they weren’t flashlights. I don’t know. I remember thinking maybe it was fireflies.”
Caitlin took her penlight from her pocket and ran its thin beam about a bare wall. “Like this?”
“Yeah,” Luke said, leaning forward, “something like that.”
“So it was after midnight when you had to take a leak,” Pepper started, taking the discussion back a bit, “and Zach came with you.”
“After midnight, for sure.”
“And when did you see those lights, those flickers?”
“A while before that.”
“You were awake the whole time?”
“Well…”
Caitlin could see Zach stiffen as Luke groped for words, working his boots back and forth on the floor.
“I don’t like sleeping outside,” he said, leaving it there.
Another detective, carrying what looked like Luke’s backpack, entered and whispered something to Pepper as he pressed a small ziplock bag into Pepper’s hand. Caitlin watched something change in the detective’s expression, gleaming like a predator’s with prey suddenly in his sights.
“You boys want to tell me whose backpack this is?” he asked, ignoring her.
“Mine,” said Luke.
“And this?” Pepper continued, opening his hand to reveal a joint inside the ziplock bag.
Luke swallowed hard. Zach looked away.
Pepper rose from his chair and stepped closer to the couch. “Did you hear what I just asked you, son?”
“I did,” Caitlin interrupted, rising too. “And I’m going to assume you had a warrant to search that backpack.”
“Do I need one?”
“According to the law you do, Detective.”
“What happened to Doctor?” Pepper asked, behind a frown.
“I’m still waiting for an answer.”
“I thought I told you I don’t need one, since the search involved imminent danger in the commission of a crime.”
Caitlin almost said, “Bullshit,” but kept her tone professional, as her blood began to boil. “Even if that were true, Detective, you have no evidence of any such crime.”
“Hey, maybe thirty-four missing kids doesn’t qualify as a crime to the Texas Rangers, but it does in these parts.”
“Not if these parts are located in the state of Texas and United States of America, it doesn’t, and you know it. Please give the boy back his backpack, sir. You can keep the joint. What we have here is two kids doing their best to help us out in a very trying situation. Why don’t we
keep things there and avoid the distractions?”
“You call possession of drugs on a school field trip a distraction, Ranger?” Pepper challenged, flashing the ziplock bag before her.
Caitlin pretended not to see it. “What drugs? All I see is something obtained illegally that you might as well throw out before the court does. We on the same page here yet?”
Pepper closed his fist around the ziplock bag and returned his attention to the boys. “You say you went into the woods after midnight, which makes it more than twelve hours before you walked out again.”
“I told you,” Luke said, “we got lost.”
Pepper turned his gaze on Zach, who glanced at him with hooded eyes. “Is that true, kid. You got lost?”
Zach shrugged again, stopping just short of a nod this time.
“Long time to be lost in these kind of woods. You finish up something else you hid in your backpacks? Bottle of mouthwash, or Gatorade mixed with vodka maybe, something like that?”
Caitlin stood up and stepped out right in front of Pepper, planting herself between him and the boys. “I believe we’ve gone as far as we can right now, Detective.”
Pepper rose and looked slightly down at Caitlin, the two of them so close they could feel each other’s breath. “And I believe that’s my call. Stand aside, please.”
“I can’t do that, sir.” Caitlin felt the distinctly familiar flush of heat building inside her, an early warning signal that she needed to reel her emotions in. “If these boys knew anything that could help us, we’d know it now, too. If you can’t see that, what you need is a pair of glasses to go with a class in etiquette and compassion.”
Pepper’s face was turning red, his eyes gone jittery, as if he were trapped between intentions. “I believe I should continue the interview alone. You have a problem with that?”
“I have a problem with bullies. That’s why you won’t be continuing the interview at all.”