Take the Bait

by S. W. Hubbard

  “After that, I sat down to wait. Hours went by, and I was convinced that he wasn’t coming. I thought about calling again collect, but I figured he wouldn’t accept the call because he was so mad he didn’t want me anymore. I was hot, and hungry again, and depressed, and I didn’t know what I was going to do, or where I could spend the night. Then I saw our truck pull up.

  “I ran up and opened the door before it had even stopped. It was Tommy driving. The strange thing is, I was so glad to be going home that I didn’t even care. I wasn’t scared—I just figured he wanted to head me off before I talked to my dad. You know, to work out what my story should be. He didn’t say much while we were driving, but he never was much of a talker. I figured anything he had to tell me, he could say right before we pulled in the driveway.”

  She paused, as if to gather strength to tell the last part of her story. When she spoke again, her voice was so soft he had to lean forward to hear her.

  “Even when he pulled off on the side of Route Fifty-one, I wasn’t scared. I, I just didn’t get it.” She shook her head, and the face she turned toward Frank still showed her disbelief. “After all, he’s my cousin. We played together…” Janelle’s voice trailed off.

  Frank tried to help her along. “He tied your hands? He made you walk into the woods with him?”

  “No, nothing like that.” She hesitated. “You see, the woods are like, magical, to Tommy. After his dad died, he’d spend all day there and just come home to sleep. It’s comforting to him. So I just figured he couldn’t talk unless he was there. And I knew we had to talk.

  “Anyway, we climbed and climbed until we finally stopped at that little dried streambed. Tommy started clearing away these leaves and branches, and underneath it was…that box.” Janelle shivered.

  “I was afraid he had some dead animal in it. When he opened it up and it was empty, I was actually relieved.” She let out a bitter laugh.

  “He finally started talking. He told me about Miss Noakes’s cat and the emu. He said you came and talked to him and you knew what was going on. He said now that I was back, everything was going to have to come out, and that he’d be arrested.”

  Janelle’s eyes welled up with tears, whether in sympathy for Tommy or fear of him, Frank wasn’t sure.

  “He told me he couldn’t bear to be shut up in prison, even for a day. He’d go insane if he couldn’t be outdoors. So his plan was that he would run away. He had some money saved and he wanted to go out west and see the Rockies. And I sat there smiling and encouraging him, saying that would be great, thinking that he sounded really normal and happy for the first time in a long while. I still had no idea what the box was for. And then he told me.”

  Janelle and Frank stared at each other for a long minute; she, clearly reliving that awful moment of knowledge; he, imagining her terror.

  “He said I had to stay in the box for three days while he got away. He said he’d call my dad after that and let him know where to find me. He actually showed me the little water bottle and the food he had for me, all proud of himself for having thought of everything.” Janelle stopped abruptly, the look in her eyes a million miles away.

  “You tried to reason with him?”

  Janelle jumped, as if surprised to see that Frank was still there. “I said I could camp out in the woods for three days to give him a head start before I went home. There was no need for that box.” Janelle turned to Frank, amazed even now. “He didn’t trust me. He didn’t believe I would do that for him.

  “I tried to run, but he caught me right away and dragged me back. And then he punched me in the jaw, and it was like one of those cartoons—I actually saw stars. I fell down and hit my head.” Janelle gingerly touched some stitches closing up a nasty-looking cut on her temple. “I guess I passed out. When I came to, I heard the sound of the shovel going into the ground, and the dirt hitting the top of the box.

  “I cried. I begged him, ‘Just kill me and get it over with.’ And he said, ‘You’ll be all right. I kept a dog in there for four days.’ And then I heard him walk away.”

  “Janelle, we haven’t found Tommy yet. Dennis Treve turned up yesterday and said that when he woke up at their campsite, Tommy had packed up and left. Do you have any idea where he might have gone out west?”

  Janelle examined the cuticle of her left thumbnail intently.

  “Janelle, if you know, you must tell me. Tommy is a dangerous person. He needs help. You don’t want him to hurt anyone else.”

  Janelle sighed. “He’s not out west. He would never leave these mountains. When I was lying in that box, I knew I was going to slowly starve to death. Because the more I thought about it, I realized he would never be able to leave here. He never understood why anyone would want to go away from here, even on vacation.

  “He’s probably in his secret hiding place. We discovered it when we were kids, and no one knows about it but me. There’s a trail that leads into the woods at the back of our property. It’s not marked, but it’s pretty easy to follow. About a quarter of a mile in, there’s a big rock with a tree growing on top of it. The trail goes to the right, but if you just work your way through the trees to the left, you come to a ledge where there’s a cave. Tommy always goes there to hide whenever he’s upset.”

  Frank sat quietly, his tape recorder still running. “Anything else?”

  She shook her head vigorously. “That’s the end of the story. You found me. That’s it.”

  Frank smiled. The proverbial two-thousand-pound elephant was in the room with them and Janelle was doing a damn good job of pretending she hadn’t noticed. “What about Mrs. Stevenson’s little dog, Leo—did you know Tommy killed him?”

  Janelle nodded. “I guess that’s when I got really worried.”

  “So why didn’t you tell your father?”

  Janelle’s eyes had the flat, deadened quality of a badly executed portrait. She said nothing.

  “Maybe,” Frank said softly, “Tommy said if you told on him, he’d tell on you.”

  Janelle remained stubbornly silent, her face as impassive as the blank green hospital walls.

  “Did you not want him to tell your father about the person you were slipping out at night to see?” There, the elephant was acknowledged!

  Janelle’s face was now bright red. Breathing rapidly, she struggled for air.

  Frank had seen people hyperventilating before, and knew it was nothing serious. But what if it was more than that? Just then, a nurse entered the room. “What have you been doing to her? She’s still in a very fragile state.”

  “She’s just a little short of breath—she’ll be okay.”

  The nurse did not take kindly to his diagnosis. “You’ll have to leave now.”

  Frank hesitated.

  “Right now, before I call Dr. Ericson.”

  “It’s Bob Rush you’re protecting, isn’t it?” Frank asked Janelle.

  But the nurse pushed him out of the room before he could see the reaction on Janelle’s face.

  Frank insisted that Earl stay at the office while he and Meyerson and two other troopers went to look for Tommy in the hiding place Janelle had described. The path, overgrown with lush, late spring growth, had been hard to locate at first, but once found it was exactly as Janelle had described.

  They came to the large rock with the tree on top and paused to discuss their strategy.

  “The underbrush is awfully thick here,” Meyerson said. “There’s no way he won’t hear us coming.”

  “Do we know if he has a gun?” one of the other troopers asked.

  “Jack says none of his hunting rifles are missing, but a kid like Tommy—who knows? He might have been able to get one from somewhere else,” Meyerson answered.

  “He’s never used a gun on any of the animals he’s killed. Janelle said he only had a knife,” Frank reminded them. “I’ll go in first, Lou can back me up, and you guys stay here. You’ll be able to hear if we need help.”

  Without waiting for Meyerson’s agre
ement, Frank set off through the brush to the left of the rock. The going was steep and rough and he was soon out of breath, but within ten minutes he heard the faint sound of moving water. The plant growth thinned in the sparse soil, and Frank saw a rock ledge with a small stream cascading over it, splashing its way downhill. At first glance, the ledge seemed a solid wall of stone, but then he noticed a small opening, partially concealed by a low bush. Directly in front of it were the remains of a campfire.

  Silently, Frank pointed the cave out to Meyerson. With his gun drawn, he approached the entrance. “Tommy, it’s Frank Bennett. Come on out, son. We’ve found Janelle. You and I need to talk.”

  They waited, but the only sound was the wind stirring the treetops. Frank crept a little closer, listening for some small noise that would tell him Tommy was there. He had no desire to poke his head into that cave.

  “Tommy, you can’t stay in there forever. Your cousin isn’t hurt. We can work all this out.”

  Still nothing. Dropping to his knees, Frank crawled closer to the entrance, curious to see if the campfire remains were still warm. He reached his hand out.

  “Frank!”

  Meyerson’s shout threw Frank into recoil. Immediately, he brought his gun into firing position.

  “No, look over here.”

  Meyerson stood on the edge of the ledge, peering down the sheer drop to the creek below. When Frank joined him he saw a crumpled figure on the rocks, two waffle-soled hiking boots pointing straight up.

  “Christ, I hope he didn’t fall when he heard us coming!” Frank said as they scrambled down the slope.

  But when they reached Tommy, his body was cold and stiff. Dried blood blackened the hair on the crown of his head, which rested on the large, rounded rocks of the creek bed.

  “Do you think he fell, or jumped?” Meyerson asked.

  Frank shook his head, looking up to the ledge twenty-five feet above them. “Who knows? It’s not a sure-fire way to kill yourself, but the kid was panicked.”

  Despite his size, Tommy looked pathetically young in death. He had been sick and dangerous, but he was still just a kid. A kid who’d been abused by his own father, taunted by other children; who’d found power the only way he could—by tormenting creatures that were weaker than he was. Prisons were full of men who’d started out like Tommy and grown more twisted over time. But maybe with help, Tommy could have straightened out. They’d never know now. Tommy’s options were all used up.

  “You take care of this, Lou. I’ll go tell Dorothy.” He looked up at the rocky outcropping he would have to climb to get back to the trail. “I saved one child in the family but lost the other.”

  25

  DORIS GLANCED UP as Frank entered the Town Office, but did not stop typing. “The coroner called while you were out. I gave the call to Earl. And George Fisk just reported that his truck was stolen out of Stevenson’s parking lot.”

  “In broad daylight? I suppose he’s one of those fools who leaves the keys in the vehicle.” Doris merely smiled, so Frank kept going into his office.

  “So what did Doc Hibbert have to say?” he asked Earl, unwrapping a roast beef sandwich for an early dinner at his desk. He had a meeting at six-thirty with the Town Council to plan for security at the July Fourth fireworks display.

  “He says he can’t sign Tommy’s death certificate. He has to get a second opinion from a pathologist. It’ll take two days.”

  “What, he can’t figure out if Tommy’s dead?”

  “He can’t confirm that Tommy died from accidental causes.” Earl picked up a message pad and read what had been dictated to him. “The depth and position of the head contusions are not consistent with a fall from that height.”

  Frank swallowed with difficulty. “What the hell are they consistent with?”

  “Being struck forcefully from behind and above with a heavy object.”

  Earl’s words hung in the air between them.

  “Janelle says she was the only one who knew about that cave,” Frank said.

  “Tommy might have told Dennis. Janelle wouldn’t know if he had. The coroner says Tommy died sometime between noon and midnight, Wednesday. Dennis turned up around two P.M.”

  Frank nodded but didn’t seem to be listening. “I have to go somewhere. If I’m not back by six-thirty, you go to that council meeting. Just agree to do whatever they want.”

  Frank pounded insistently on the door of the Harvey house. When no one answered, he tried the door and found it unlocked. He stepped inside with trepidation—could he be too late?

  Suddenly the hall light flicked on and he found himself face-to-face with an irate Jack Harvey.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Where’s Janelle?” Frank asked.

  “Over at Dorothy’s.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure! Where else would she be?”

  Frank snorted. “You could ask that?”

  “Look, Frank, I appreciate all you’ve done, I really do, but Janelle’s home now and we’re just trying to put all this nightmare behind us. Why do you keep trying to stir things up?”

  “Because the nightmare’s not behind you, Jack. I’m afraid there’s more to come.”

  A large bouquet of roses on the hall table caught Frank’s eye. He read the card: “From all your friends at Stevenson’s lumberyard.”

  “When did those arrive?” Frank asked.

  “Ned brought them over to the hospital. What’s that got to do with anything.”

  “Daddy, what’s all the noise? Who’s here?”

  Janelle stood in the front door, her pink sundress billowing slightly in the breeze.

  Frank heaved a sigh of relief. The girl was still safe.

  “Janelle, did you happen to mention Tommy’s hiding place to anyone who visited you in the hospital?”

  Janelle stared at Frank, her face blank as a stone.

  “Janelle, the coroner thinks Tommy didn’t die from falling off that ledge. He says your cousin was hit over the head several times with a heavy object; he was dead when he went over the edge. No one knew where Tommy was but you, and you were in the hospital.”

  As if in slow motion, Janelle began to sway. Her hand reached out for the door frame but came nowhere close. Frank rushed forward to catch her as she crumpled to the floor.

  A whiff of kitchen ammonia brought her around. As her glazed eyes brought Frank and her father into focus, she turned her head and rested it against the wall. “Daddy, could you leave me alone with Mr. Bennett, please?”

  Jack opened his mouth, as if to protest, but backed silently out of the room.

  When Janelle spoke her voice was surprisingly steady, but she kept her head resolutely turned away. “I’ve known Ned all my life. He always treated me like a kid sister. When I was having so much trouble getting Daddy to let me go away to college, I thought maybe Ned could help. I asked him to talk to my father, but he said the best thing to do would be to apply for scholarships to a few different schools. Then when I got one, my dad couldn’t possibly not let me go. Ned said he’d help me with the applications because he knew what the admissions people looked for. He even said he’d loan me the money for the application fees. We agreed to keep it secret, so Daddy wouldn’t interfere.”

  Frank could see where this story was headed.

  “We had a system. I would stop by the lumberyard every Monday and Thursday, and if Ned had a certain red pen in the cup on his desk, it meant he’d be waiting for me that night in his Jeep. He’d park it behind some trees in the field beside our drive. Daddy always goes to bed early because he starts work at seven, so it was easy to sneak out.

  “At first, we really just worked on the applications. Then, we started talking about other stuff. Ned told me about going to college at Penn…living in Philadelphia…working in California…traveling in Europe. Ned was the only person I really knew who’d ever been places or lived far away from here.”

  Janelle sat on the edge of th
e hall stairs and set to work systematically unraveling the hem of her dress. Her hair fell forward in a curtain before her face. “I know what I did was wrong. Ned is married. But he knew how to…Craig was so…”

  “Never mind. I get the picture.” Yes—finally now, he saw what had been there all along. It was as if he’d been looking at one of those trick pictures, where the same lines make two entirely different images. He had never considered Ned as a candidate for the other man in Janelle’s life. Not because he couldn’t imagine that she would be attracted to him, but because he couldn’t fathom that any man married to a woman as beautiful and vibrant as Penny would be tempted by a few moments of contorted sex with a teenager in a parked car.

  “I didn’t know Tommy had seen me leaving the house at night,” Janelle continued. “He must have followed me, and”—she shivered in revulsion—“and watched us. That day in the backyard, Tommy told me he knew what I was doing with Ned, what a slut I was. And he said if I told my father or anyone else about the raccoon, he would tell about me and Ned. He said everyone in town would care a whole lot more about me breaking up Ned Stevenson’s marriage than they would about some little animal. I knew he was right, so I kept quiet and just tried to push the whole thing out of my mind. But then things started getting really awful.”

  “Tommy killed Mrs. Stevenson’s dog the day before the Lake George game?” Frank asked.

  Janelle nodded. “I went to the lumberyard that day and everything was in an uproar. Leo was missing, and then they found him dead under that stack of boards. Mrs. Stevenson started screaming and crying. We all just thought it was an accident.