I moved to the boxes and started opening them, not sure what I was looking for—just any clue at all that could lead us to Jeremy. They were full of more useless items: the stubs of old burned-down white and red candles and other knickknacks. I wondered why he didn’t throw the candles out—he seemed like a fairly neat person based on what I had seen of the rest of the house, and the basement was otherwise well organized.
I reached for another box and opened it. In it I found old pictures of him with a woman I assumed was Wendy’s mom. She also had brown hair and a thin nose and a broad smile like Wendy. One photo in particular caught my eye. It was Combs and his wife—she had her arms around Wendy, who must have been about five or six—and an older boy who looked to be around ten or eleven years old. I didn’t think Wendy had a brother. I wondered if something had happened to the boy in the photo. He had dark hair and brown eyes like his mom and sister.
I kept searching. I opened the next box. Several folded sheets of paper were stacked in the box, and I pulled them out. They were old, poster-size colorful pictures that appeared to be renditions of biblical stories, most of them of a robed, white-bearded older man with a dark-haired boy carrying a load of sticks across his shoulders. Another was a different rendition, but the same theme—a bearded man and a young boy, only in this one, a donkey carried the sticks and the older man carried a scythe.
Suddenly it made sense to me where the quote in Combs’s office came from. The third picture was a smaller photo of the bearded old man standing above the tied-up boy with the scythe poised above his right shoulder, ready to strike. Behind the man, in the corner of the photo, you could see a lamb waiting by a boulder. The old man has turned to look at the animal, his scythe still poised in the air above him. Below, the caption read, “The Binding of Isaac.”
I unfolded a fourth photo, very similar to the third—a boy bound to the pile of wood on the altar, only on this one, a hallowed angel hovers above Abraham and touches his shoulder gently.
I set the box down with a sense that something extremely abnormal was at play, just as Ken called from upstairs. I took the stairs three at a time to get back up to the kitchen. “Ken?”
“In here,” he said, and my hopes faded that he’d found the boy. His voice sounded too calm. “The office.”
I went down the hall, passing walls adorned with framed photos of his wife, of Wendy and Kyle. I didn’t see any photos of the other boy from the family photo I found in the box. I entered the office where Ken stood by a floor-to-ceiling bookcase. Several certificates of pastoral achievement hung framed on the side wall. “Have you found something?”
Ken held up a Bible in his gloved hand. “I was flipping through this and I found these sheets of paper.”
Ken handed the folded pages to me. I opened them carefully and began to read. “What are these, sermons?”
“I think they’re more personal than that. They read like journal entries, but they’re years apart and aren’t very coherent. They’re like religious ramblings.”
I scanned them.
The first piece was dated 1991 and contained two pages of ramblings about Isaac. I told Ken about the artistic depictions I saw in the basement, but the date 1991 flashed like neon in my mind.
I don’t understand. I’ve done everything you’ve asked in your name, Lord, in your service. Isaac did not understand. Isaac was afraid. I told him God himself will provide the burnt offering. I did it for you, because you promised that he would go to a better place and that first and foremost to make things better, I must follow you and only you. That’s what I have done. I have proved my love, my great, never-ending devotion. I waited patiently for three days for the angel of the Lord and for the lamb of God. But they never came. Why did you not send them?
Oh, God, I know I should not question you. I’m sorry to question you. Dear Lord, I know you work in mysterious ways.
I read on. It continued this way, perseverating about why an angel or a lamb of God did not show. Then the date changed to 1999, and again, seeing it sent a chill down my spine as I recalled the dates Gretchen showed me from her research. That was the year Shane Wallace vanished. The ramblings went on for another two pages. I caught mention of Wendy and how she’d recently had a little boy named Kyle, and how he could not be a grandfather alone without God’s help. He described how Kyle was yellow, how his liver wasn’t making enough bilirubin, and he had a fever. He needed to make things better. He asked desperately over and over how he could make God understand that He came first. He asked whether he should give more time, more days for the angel to arrive. He made notes about colors of candles. I thought of the melted candles in the drawer downstairs.
There were paraphrases from the Bible: I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities . . . and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.
Two pages later, my heart sank again. The date changed to 2007, and there were still more ramblings about Isaac and lines from the Bible. I remembered that Samuel Erickson’s body was found in 2007, and he had the same injury to the head as the one from the grave we found in Essex.
“This is some really weird shit, Harris,” Ken said.
My mind hummed with a mixture of astonishment and horror. I looked around the room at the desk drawers Ken had searched and left ajar. “You find anything else? Any paperwork on other properties this guy might own?”
“No, nothing. Just these notes.”
“Damn it.” I ran a hand through my hair. Every part of me ached to find some scrap of information that would tell us where he was keeping Jeremy. “He’s taken this boy to perform some weird ritual, and we don’t know where they are. And if Gretchen is right, it’s going to happen by the end of today.”
“Gretchen?”
“Long story, she’d been looking into past abductions around the area and noticed a similarity in the head traumas of two of the boys. She saw that one of the boys was found in ’07 exactly six days after he was abducted. She hypothesized that if the cases were related, based on the TOD of the ’07 boy, the abductor was keeping them alive for five days.”
“But we don’t know where,” Ken said.
“No, we don’t. There’s interesting stuff in the basement, but nothing pointing to any location other than the church.” I told him about the Bible pictures I’d found.
“All we can do is keep looking,” I said. “No computer?”
“No, I think the only computer he has is at the church in his office there, and our guys took that. I haven’t even made it to the master bedroom yet.”
“Okay,” I said, pulling out my phone. “Check the master and I’ll call Ali to see if they’ve found anything on the guy’s computer.”
29
* * *
Gretchen
I SAT AGAINST THE platform under the vat watching the light fade up in the small rectangular windows of the plant. The candle still burned, its flame flickering every so often in the draft. Combs had quit praying and I didn’t know what he was up to, but I hadn’t heard him leave.
Jeremy had lain down on his sleeping bag and fallen asleep. He looked exhausted, and I wondered how many of the four nights he’d lain awake petrified, listening to the scurrying rodents and the creaking sounds of the plant. I wondered if he’d finally allowed himself to let go into a deep sleep since I was here—because he finally had the company of another human being who wasn’t his captor.
I noticed the rise and fall of his bony rib cage under his discolored, grimy T-shirt, which looked like it was once a nice blue color. I thought to myself that this poor boy had not had enough food. He looked too pale and thin, and he seemed weak. The anger in me began to flare, and I wanted to yell and scream at Combs, to rattle the cage and draw him back over to tell him to release us ri
ght away, that I needed to get the boy food, clean clothes, and his family.
But finally, after forcing myself to take some deep breaths so I could calm down and think, I became transfixed by the dusky rose glow spreading on the metal window frames high above. I felt like I was in an alternate reality. The light looked supernatural, and I knew the fires were raging and the lowered sun had probably turned into a huge glowing ball on the horizon. The smoke infiltrated the air and it had become so hot, even inside the plant. My shirt stuck to my back with sweat. I could tell the fires were claiming more acres and getting closer as we sat captured inside the belly of the abandoned plant.
Slowly it began to dawn on me that there could be benefits to playing Combs’s game. Rationalizing with him clearly would not work, but trying to use his own crazy reasoning might. I considered that if I, who was not very religious, felt the apocalyptic sense of the fires, it must be a million times more disturbing for someone as fanatical as him.
Combs had mentioned that he thought I might be the lamb, but he also entertained the idea that the devil had sent me instead. It took every ounce of determination to try to think through the static of my rising anxiety and contemplate how to get us out of this. Somewhere along the line, as the minutes painfully ticked by, I decided I had to determine my identity before Combs chose on his own. Should I present myself as the devil or the lamb?
If he considered me a lamb, it could mean, in theory, that he’d try to sacrifice me instead of Jeremy. Which also meant that he might let the boy go. I could show Jeremy which way to run once he was out of the plant. But that seemed like a long shot. Combs was delusional, but he was clearly able to plan ahead and avoid being discovered. That must take some level of rational thought.
He’d hidden his actions from his own daughter, and possibly from his grandson—although now I wondered if Kyle’s extreme behavior didn’t have something to do with this madness. In my gut, I couldn’t imagine Wendy knew. On the other hand, how could she not? I thought they were close, but perhaps not as close as I imagined. And you always hear those stories about people having no idea about the secret lives of their spouses and children. You think you know a person, but you never really do—that’s what people used to say about me in Sandefjord.
I changed direction and considered trying to convince him I was the devil. Clearly Combs was not planning to bring the boy food anymore. Our time was up. I was certain that as soon as the candle died, he planned to act. He had no reason to open the cage until then; he had not let Jeremy out even once the entire time. I considered asking him to let me use the bathroom, but I was certain he’d point me to the bucket, whose stench seemed to grow stronger as the temperature rose.
Then I remembered how he had come over to the cage, screaming at me not to touch Jeremy. He thought I was making him cry, that I was somehow harming his precious Isaac—the dark-haired boy of Abraham—who was “special,” so special he practically starved him and made him defecate in a bucket in a cage. The lunacy of it made my anger surge again. I tried to shove it down so I could think clearly, but it kept swelling. I felt nauseated. My head wanted to explode.
The rosy light grew wider on the metal frames, and the shapes before me took on a chiaroscuro effect in the gloaming. My arm throbbed and my head buzzed from my injury, but I felt a strange sensation, as if I was transforming, as if someone had drugged me. I felt as if the blood from that unconscious, murderous zombielike girl of fifteen years ago had been transfused back into my veins.
In spite of the pain, I stood. A primitive rage I’d suppressed for too long coursed through me—anger born not just from my empathy for Jeremy and panic from this bizarre and dangerous situation, but something innate that had been with me my whole life. I wanted to grab the footstool and swing it hard against the cage. I wanted to spit in Combs’s face. I was no stranger to hating myself, but suddenly I felt enraged at my parents too, for letting me leave so easily, and at the injustice of life in general. The rage roared through me. I wanted to howl with indignation and sorrow. I wanted to fight. My hands shook and my stomach somersaulted. I paced around the cage. My do-no-harm motto had flip-flopped. I felt wild-eyed and scrappy, ready to challenge a hungry predator.
I went to the edge of the cage and looked down the dark aisle in the direction where I thought Combs had holed up. Outlines of equipment, scrap metal, and other debris became dark masses. I still couldn’t hear Combs. I wondered what in the world he was doing. I looked at Jeremy, asleep like Per. He lay in a fetal position on the old sleeping bag. How many other boys had slept on that same bag?
I could barely make out his features, but he looked so innocent and frail. It took everything I had not to wrap my fingers through the holes of the cage and shake it violently. Instead, I backed away. I knew what I needed to do. At first, even contemplating it made me think I was going crazy too, that my entire dramatic life had finally tipped the scales and I’d become unmoored, just like Combs.
But as I watched the wax drip down the sides of the candle, I realized it wouldn’t be much longer now. I slowed my breath and let the idea sit with me. I needed to execute the only plan I could come up with, even if it was insane. I needed to meet craziness on its own level. I needed Jeremy to scream with fright, and I needed it to be real. It couldn’t be an acting job. I couldn’t count on him to try to pull off some performance. He was too confused and desperate as it was.
No, as painful and repugnant as it would be for me, Jeremy needed to see me as I saw myself—my own worst nightmare: dangerous. He needed to think I was going to hurt him, and he needed to think that so that Combs would come to see me as the devil.
30
* * *
Monty
SO FAR THEY’D found nothing on Combs’s computer to lead us to Jeremy, just articles about interdisciplinary pastoral studies, challenges facing pastors with multiple vocations, and a series of other random searches. When I told Ali what we found, she had directed us to go to the high school in Columbia Falls to keep checking for Combs among the residents who’d evacuated. So we set off down the canyon, keeping our eyes open for any signs of his car.
All other officers had been ordered to rake the area for Combs’s vehicle as well. On our way I called Gretchen twice but her phone went straight to voicemail. That bothered me, especially since Ray had said she had planned on stopping by. It wasn’t like Gretchen not to follow through.
We got stuck in traffic, a long line of evacuating cars still snaking its way out of the canyon, taillights barely shining through the biting, viscous smoke. I began to sweat, and the slow driving made me twice as anxious and jittery. I gripped, pushed, and pulled on the steering wheel as if the SUV were a horse I needed to control. I wanted to make the line speed up by sheer will. Ken glanced at me. “You okay?”
“Just this traffic.” I motioned to the cars ahead. “It’s getting to me. We don’t have time for this. I’m thinking of hitting the lights, but there’s nowhere for these cars to pull over. I could make everything worse.”
“Yeah,” Ken agreed. “I’d stay the course. We’ll get out of this canyon soon enough. They’re searching for Combs, and without knowing exactly where he is, there’s not a lot we can do anyway. Besides, the road’s too curvy. We go into the oncoming lane, we’re likely to run into a water-supply truck.”
“He could be anywhere,” I said, still annoyed at our creeping pace and our failure to find any more leads at the house, but Ken was right. I just needed to hear him say it out loud.
Still, the thoughts continued to torment me. Combs knew we were onto him now that we’d been to his church. If he hadn’t already hurt or killed Jeremy, I was certain he would soon. And if he had already disposed of the boy, he’d be heading out of town, trying to escape. Or worse, I thought, he’d simply skipped town and left Jeremy alive and locked up somewhere in the woods—someplace no one would ever find him. And finally, thoughts of Gretchen continued to n
eedle me.
Eventually, cars dispersed as we reached Columbia Falls. We pulled into the high school parking lot. I looked out the window at all the people milling around, carrying bags, backpacks, suitcases, and large bottles of water. Ken got out to begin scouring the parking lot for Combs’s car and I told him I’d be with him in a minute. The sense of something awful and dark continued to rush through me and made my hands shake. I pulled out my phone again to see if Gretchen had called back, but she hadn’t and there were no other texts or calls. I felt helpless. I pounded a fist on the steering wheel and thought of my next move. I knew I needed to get out and do the only thing we could do—keep searching for Combs.
I opened the car door, put one foot out, then stopped when my phone rang. It was the public works director, Dan Hittle. He had the dump’s employee’s name and number for me. I wrote it down, thanked him, and called immediately.
A woman answered on the second ring.
I told her who I was and asked her if she recalled a woman from county forensics stopping by the landfill to ask some questions.
“Sure,” she said. “Blond gal. Wanted to know about asbestos and cyanide. If they could be thrown away here.”
“What did you tell her?”
The Weight of Night Page 36