by Ed Markham
As he said this, his cell phone began to ring. He saw who it was.
“Omar, good. I was about to call—” he began. But Omar Ghafari cut him off.
“I’ve got some bad news, David,” he said. “It looks like another boy’s gone missing.”
Chapter 19
AFTER EATING THE food the man had left for him—Fruit Loops, a banana, and a small glass of water—Carson returned to his mattress in the corner of the basement.
He didn’t really like cold cereal; his mom typically made him oatmeal or waffles or eggs for breakfast. Still, the Fruit Loops had tasted good to him. He’d been very hungry; worry and anxiousness had kindled his appetite.
The night before, after his fear had subsided, Carson had thought about refusing the food just to show the man he wasn’t going to play along with whatever it was he had in mind. The idea that his meals could be poisoned or drugged had also occurred to him, but when his stomach growled at the sight of the baloney sandwich, he’d decided poison was unlikely, and he’d eaten. He had never missed a meal in his life, or even thought of what it would be like to go hungry and not have something to eat at his disposal. And so he had no willpower to resist the food.
Now, as he sat cross-legged on the mattress and felt the cold of the concrete floor creep up at him, Carson thought of his mother and his bedroom at home. Being stuck in the basement reminded him of being sent to his room without his cell phone. That didn’t happen often, but when it did happen it was excruciating.
Like most boys his age, Carson felt naked and isolated without his phone. He found himself reaching for it every minute or two, only to be reminded again that it wasn’t there.
He leaned his head back against the paneled wall and thought about what his friends might be up to. He looked at the stacks of video games and DVDs, and at the television set. He’d put on True Lies, with Arnold Schwarzenegger. He wasn’t really paying attention to the movie, but the basement felt a lot less empty when a DVD was playing.
Now he heard faint noises overhead. He also heard the telltale footsteps, and then the sound of the door locks sliding in their tracks. The air in the basement moved as the door at the top of the stairs opened.
He pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. It was too early for another meal, he thought. This is something else. He waited for the command to “Turn away,” but it never came.
There were footsteps on the stairs, and Carson could see gray sneakers and baggy khaki pants. He heard the door close, and then the person wearing the khakis and gray sneakers descended the rest of the staircase.
It was a boy. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked across the room to where Carson was sitting with his arms around his knees.
Along with his khaki cargo pants and gray sneakers, the boy wore a large blue sweater over several layers of t-shirts. The sweater hung past his waist and wrists, and the boy fingered the sweater’s cuffs nervously with the tips of his fingers. His hair poked out from the sides and back of his red Phillies baseball cap, which he wore pulled well down on his forehead. His eyes darted nervously from side to side.
Carson and the boy stared at each other in silence for a few seconds before the new kid finally asked, “Who are you?” His voice cracked on the you, and he shuffled his feet, embarrassed. His shoulders were drawn up as though he were frightened.
“Who are you?” Carson repeated back, unsure of how to answer. He felt uncomfortable stating his own name in the basement, as though saying it would trap a part of him that was still free, and would make everything that was happening more real.
The boy was quiet for a beat, and then he sniffled and wiped his nose with the too-long cuff of his sweater. “My name’s Josh,” he said.
“What are you doing here?” Carson asked.
Josh sniffled again. “I don’t know.”
For a second, Carson assumed the new boy was another of the man’s kidnapped victims. But then he remembered his own abduction, and how he’d come-to on the basement mattress. This kid had simply walked down the basement stairs without a word of protest, as though there were nothing strange about it.
As he considered this, Carson asked him, “Were you kidnapped, too?”
Josh nodded. “A while ago.”
“Do you know the guy upstairs?”
“Not really,” Josh said. “I mean, he brings me food and watches a movie with me once in a while, but I don’t know him. I don’t even know what he looks like really. He’s always wearing a creepy white mask, but I can see his beard poking out of the bottom of it. I just think of him as the bearded guy.” His voice cracked again on the word “guy,” and he paused to wipe at the end of his nose with his sweater sleeve.
Carson looked at Josh silently for a few seconds, thinking. Finally he asked, “How long have you been here?”
Josh thought for a moment. “It’s kinda hard to remember exactly, but a couple weeks I think. He kidnapped me when I was walking home from soccer practice.”
He said this very matter-of-factly, as though to be kidnapped wasn’t all that significant. Or maybe it was just something you got used to, Carson thought.
Josh went on, “I kinda remember him in a car, stopping next to me and asking me stuff. But it seems blurry, like I dreamed it. I try to remember what he looked like in the car, but all I see is that mask face with a beard.”
Carson let go of his knees and stood up on the mattress. He looked across the room at Josh, and then both boys looked at the television set for a few seconds, not knowing what to say next.
“He kidnapped me, too,” Carson said finally. “In the woods near my school. I think that was yesterday.”
The boy nodded. “I know.”
“How do you know?”
Just looked nervous now. “He’s kidnapped other kids, too. Three other kids since me. He keeps them down here, and he sends me down to play with them. I don’t know why he does it, but I know when he’s kidnapped someone new because he always starts sending me down here the day after. They’re here for a while, and then they’re gone.”
Carson felt the cold basement air rush up his back and neck. “What do you mean, they’re gone?”
Josh shrugged. “I don’t know. They’re just not here anymore.” He sniffled, and again wiped at his nose with his cuff. “I’m jealous of them. I think he lets them go, but he keeps me because he likes me. At first he kept me down here, too. But now he keeps me in a bedroom upstairs that has wood nailed to the windows so I can’t see anything. It feels a little like the basement, but it’s warmer and there isn’t much to do apart from play video games and read the books he leaves me. There’s a couch and a TV, and sometimes he comes in and sits with me and watches a movie. But he doesn’t say anything.”
“That’s fucking crazy,” Carson said.
Hearing himself say the F-word, he smiled and saw Josh smile too.
“Yeah,” Josh said, nodding. “It’s totally fucking crazy.”
Both boys laughed, and Carson felt himself relax. It was a relief to be able to talk to someone about all this—someone who was going through the same thing.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Fourteen,” Josh said. “How old are you?”
“Fourteen. But I’ll be fifteen in April. I’m old for my grade.”
“April what?”
“Third.”
“Oh. My birthday’s on the twenty-sixth. I’ll be fifteen too. Obviously.”
The boys were quiet for a second, and they both glanced nervously at the television.
“Have you seen this?” Carson asked.
Josh nodded. “Yeah, like twenty times. It’s awesome.”
Carson nodded in agreement. He stepped off his mattress and walked to the couch. “My name’s Carson,” he said. “You want to watch this, or something else?”
“This,” Josh said. He smiled a little and walked toward Carson, his hands still playing nervously with the cuffs of his oversized sweater. He said
, “I have a cousin named Carson, but he’s like six.”
The two boys looked at each other. Now that they were closer together, Carson could see that Josh was definitely taller than he was. “You’re bigger than me,” he said.
“I’m bigger than everyone,” Josh said. “Well, almost everyone. There’s one kid in my grade who’s already, like, six feet tall. Anthony Badalucci. But he’s a freak.”
Both boys laughed again.
“Where do you go to school?” Carson asked.
“I go to Perry. It’s in Rosemont. Where do you go?”
“Simon Cameron,” Carson said. “In Germantown.”
Josh shrugged like he didn’t know where that was, and the two sat down together on the couch. They watched as Arnold Schwarzenegger shot a rocket through a building and into a helicopter. For a while, Carson forgot about being scared.
Chapter 20
TO DAVID’S EYES, everything in Pleasant Ridge, Pennsylvania looked worn out, from the yellow stripe running down the middle of main street, to the rust-eaten signs outside the gas stations and diners, to the porches on the boxy two-story houses that seemed to sag inward with fatigue.
He and his father drove past American Legion buildings and True Value hardware stores—places you could find almost anywhere in America but somehow still seemed like vestiges of a country that didn’t really exist anymore except on the fringes, away from the highways and big box stores and mini-malls of the present.
Before leaving for James Ganther’s small town, David and Martin had spent some time coordinating interviews with Carson Affeldt’s parents, his friends, and officials at the boy’s middle school. David had hoped Carson would turn up at a friend’s house, though the boy fit the profile a little too neatly for him to hold out much hope.
“Turn left up here,” Martin said, looking from the map on David’s phone to the crumbling road ahead. They turned onto Old Oak, then Miller Street, then County Road 86, which was unlined. And then, two winding, hilly miles from the center of town, they turned off the county road when they spotted the black mailbox that had the numbers 67234 painted on its side in faded yellow. They were on dirt and grass now, headed into the woods of Pennsylvania.
The grass that grew between the tire ruts was high enough to dust off the Lincoln emblem on David’s grille. Martin was quiet as he peered through the trees, trying to spot James Ganther’s house.
David had suggested to his father that they let one of the FBI’s apprehension teams accompany them to Ganther’s house. But Martin had scoffed. “You young guns are lazy,” he’d said. “Always sending in this team or that team to do your dirty work. When I was your age we just tapped a few other agents on the shoulder and packed into a van.”
“Keystone Cops, huh?” David had said.
His father had continued as though he hadn’t heard this comment. “Besides, we don’t have much tying Ganther to our investigation, apart from mask artwork and one old fart’s memories. You want to spend a few days selling that to Carl, or you want to get a move on?”
A few days? David had thought. Carl Wainbridge probably wouldn’t have asked two questions about the request, but David had decided to let his father have this one. Ganther had come quietly back in 1978, and that was when he was thirty-five years younger and almost certainly guilty of heinous crimes. David also didn’t feel like handling the dozens of pages of paperwork he’d have to fill out to organize an apprehension out here in Middle-of-Nowhere, Pennsylvania at a house they weren’t even sure Ganther still occupied.
As they turned a bend in the woods, Martin said, “There it is.”
David looked and could just make out a decrepit, peeling shack of a place flickering between the trees trunks. When they emerged into a small clearing, his eyes went to the green SUV parked alongside the shack. The truck looked dirty, but not old-dirt dirty. Someone had driven it recently.
David stopped at the mouth of the clearing, blocking the only path out, and put his car into PARK.
The woods wrapped around the house on all sides—bare oaks and maples and poplars swaying gently against a gray sky. A cinder-block front step led to a white door wedged between two shutter-less windows. The place wasn’t more than thirty years old; David could see the outlines of the original, larger home’s foundations discoloring the earth for yards on every side of the current structure. The place had no chimney, but hot air was escaping from a mushroom-shaped ventilator on the roof.
“Someone’s home,” Martin said, nodding to the ventilator.
“Are you carrying?” David asked him as they got out of the car.
His father was usually pretty good about packing the old Bureau-issued Smith & Wesson semi-auto that he refused to trade in, but there were times when Martin decided to leave the gun-toting to his son.
David was relieved when his father patted his belt beneath his navy jacket, his eyes never leaving the house.
“You or me?” David asked him.
“Me.”
He nodded and stayed ten yards back from his father as Martin approached the front door. David stared at the windows and kept far enough to one side of the house to observe any activity near the dirty SUV. He felt his own Sig Sauer P226 against his side.
He watched his father raise a fist and knock four times on the white door.
“FBI,” Martin barked loudly. “Just here for a friendly chat.”
Waiting, David could hear the trees all around him creaking as they swayed. He watched the windows for any signs of movement, but saw none.
Martin paused for almost a full minute and then knocked again. When there was still no answer, he lifted one side of his jacket and rested a hand on the grip of his Smith & Wesson. With his other hand, he reached forward to try the knob on the front door.
At that moment, a loud BANG cracked in the silence behind the house. David saw his father crouch down, his firearm out of its holster now and clutched between both of his hands.
“Out back,” David said as he stepped quickly to his left, drawing his P226. He moved laterally, his weapon held in both hands and pointed at the ground, until he spotted the figure slip into the woods behind the house.
He shouted to his father, “FLEEING ON FOOT, STAY WITH THE HOUSE.”
A moment later he was sprinting around the green SUV and toward the place where the man had disappeared into the trees.
Chapter 21
AS HE RAN through the forest, David could hear branches snap beneath his shoes.
It took him a few seconds to locate the flashes of movement among the tree trunks, but once he’d spotted the figure he quickly closed the distance between them. The man was running frantically, tripping and falling on the wet leaves and slamming into half the obstacles he passed.
Even thirty yards away, David could hear his desperate breathing. As he drew closer, he could see the white of the man’s neck and hands poking from the wrists and collar of his denim shirt. His hair was light and curly, and flopped on top of his head as he ran.
“FBI,” David yelled. “STOP OR I’M GOING TO SHOOT YOU.”
He heard the man cry out wildly, as though he were being pursued by a pack of ravenous animals.
A few seconds later, when he’d dipped his shoulder around a tree and could see the man clearly just ten yards ahead, David stopped just long enough to fire a shot into the ground. The sound of the gun exploded in the woods, and the man flopped forward onto his stomach, covering his head and neck with his arms.
When David reached him a second later, he realized the man was sobbing.
“Don’t shoot me oh Jesus Christ please god don’t shoot me please Jesus!” the man wailed. His words came out wet and slurred as he buried his face in the forest floor.
“Take it easy,” David said, still holding his weapon in both of his hands. “I want you to lace your fingers at the back of your head. Do it slowly, and do it right now.”
He watched as the crying man did as he was told.
Pointing his weapon
just to the left of the man’s back, David lifted a foot and pushed the man’s denim away from his jeans, exposing his waistband. When he saw the man didn’t have a gun tucked back there, he told him to bring his hands down behind his back.
“Slowly,” he repeated.
When the man had done as he was told, David pulled out his handcuffs with one hand and snapped them around the man’s wrists.
“All right, now roll over,” he said. He returned his weapon to its holster.
The man’s face was tear streaked and flecked with dirt, but David could see right away that he wasn’t James Ganther. The man looked to be in his mid-thirties, though his skin was sallow and deep creases branched out from the corners of his eyes.
“Who are you?” David asked.
“Steve Dermitt, Steve Dermitt.” The man repeated his name quickly, his chest still heaving from the run and from his distress. He blinked hard, and his mouth opened and closed soundlessly like a hooked trout pulled from a stream.
David could see Dermitt was on the verge of hyperventilating. “Okay, calm down,” he said. “I’m not going to shoot you. I’m looking for James Ganther. Do you know James Ganther?”
Dermitt nodded rapidly. “Ye-yeah that was his place I run from,” he said.
“What were you doing there?” David asked.
“Co-co-cooking. Cooking,” Dermitt said.
“Cooking,” David repeated. “Cooking what?”
Dermitt blinked hard.
“Cooking meth,” David said, to which Steve Dermitt nodded. “Is James Ganther back there?”
“No,” Dermitt stammered. “Long gone. Been gone a long time. Long gone.” His words came out in clustered bursts, like handfuls of pebbles hitting the surface of a lake.
“Gone where?”
“Shoot I don’t know. Just said he was going and he went.”
David reached down and took Dermitt by the elbow. He helped him to his feet and walked him in the direction of the house.