Scarecrow

by Robin Hathaway

  Tom told him about Jo’s attacker.

  “Jesus!” He leaned forward. “Why didn’t she report it at the time? These reports long after the fact are almost impossible to follow up.”

  Tom nodded. Why hadn’t she reported it? Why hadn’t he insisted on it? He thought about insisting on anything with Jo. You would probably end up in a fistfight. Or a wrestling match. (Not an unpleasant prospect.)

  There was the sound of footsteps in the corridor. The door opened and Paul Nelson walked in with a stranger in tow.

  “Any news, Charlie?” Paul didn’t even notice Tom.

  The officer shook his head and looked at the stranger.

  Paul turned. “This is Mr. Banks, the missing girl’s father.”

  “What are you doing to find her, Officer?” Banks went up to the desk.

  He did not resemble Jo in stature, Tom noted, but his voice had the same cadence, only deeper.

  In response to Banks, the policeman sat up straighter and placed his cigar in the ashtray. “I have an officer cruising the area. We only have two cars, and one has to be on call in case of emergencies.”

  “What else?”

  “We’ve called all the hospi—”

  “And?”

  “Nelson here said he and his wife called all her friends … .”

  “I don’t think the people she’s with are—friends.” Tom stepped forward.

  “What do you know about her?” Banks’s voice had a sharp edge.

  “Nothing, sir.” He met his gaze. “I wish I did.”

  The urgency in Tom’s voice caught Banks’s attention. He addressed his next question to him. “What do we do now?”

  “Sit by the phone and wait,” drawled the policeman.

  “That’s not enough,” Banks snapped back.

  “What about her old friends in New York?” the policeman asked, suddenly happy at the possibility of shoving the whole business on someone else. “Any old boyfriends?” He leaned on the word.

  Banks was caught up short.

  Tom looked at him sharply.

  “She did have a beau,” said Banks slowly. “Ken Lawrence.”

  “Address?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That should be easy, then.” The policeman had regained the upper hand. “There can’t be more than a couple of hundred Ken Lawrences in Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs. Any other friends who might know the whereabouts of this guy?”

  Tediously, they followed the Ken trail to its logical conclusion. A series of phone calls eventually established that Ken had been in Denver on a business trip during the time of Jo’s disappearance, with plenty of witnesses to testify to the fact. When they finally reached Ken himself, he offered to come down to Bayfield. But Banks heard the reluctant tone of his offer and stalled him. “No, thanks. I’ll let you know the minute we find her.” As he replaced the receiver he looked around the room helplessly.

  Tom, who had fidgeted throughout the old beau quest, touched his arm. “Come on,” he said, “I’ve got my pickup. Let’s cruise around.”

  “I’ll cover the phone back at the motel,” Paul said, inadequately.

  Retrieving his cold cigar, the police officer went back to his card game.

  “Where are we going?” Banks sat forward as Tom started the motor.

  “There’s this place I’ve been watching.”

  “Why? Does it have something to do with Jo?”

  “She was attacked there.” Jo’s father was clearly not the kind of person you lied to. Tom felt the older man’s eyes on him in the dark. “Last week, she stopped at this place to ask directions. She was on her bike and someone jumped her. He tried to wrestle her to the ground, but she managed to stay on the bike, throw him off, and get away.”

  Banks’s sigh was a mixture of relief and exasperation. Tom had a sudden vision of a ten-year-old Jo arriving home late from an extended bike ride, pigtails flapping, knees and elbows skinned and bleeding, to face a father sick with worry. He liked Banks.

  CHAPTER 49

  The thing that bothered me most wasn’t the solitary confinement, or the lumpy cot, or the glaring lights, or the meager rations, or even the primitive bathroom facilities.

  It was the feeling that I was being watched.

  I didn’t know if I could pick my nose or scratch my crotch without being seen. As a result, I did neither. Not because I was afraid of offending my captors’ sensibilities; I knew they had none. If they were watching, though, it would demean me in my own eyes and cause me to lose my self-respect—an important commodity to a prisoner.

  The intercom had remained silent for what seemed forever. I was beginning to lose my sense of time again. They had removed my watch, of course, as well as my other few personal possessions. (Since I had come to Bayfield, I had begun carrying a small penknife and a hemostat in a pocket of my jeans.

  There were no windows. I had no way of telling if it was day or night. I guessed I was well into my second day as a prisoner, but I wasn’t sure. There was a period when I had been unconscious that I couldn’t account for. I had no idea how long I’d been out.

  I had eaten two meals, if you could call them that—the first a bowl of soup that may have passed in the vicinity of a chicken once, and the second a sandwich made of two soggy slices of white bread decorated with a microscopic layer of peanut butter, and a cup of tepid tea.

  For some reason I wasn’t hungry.

  Most of the time I lay on the cot, facedown, eyes closed, trying to blot out the bright lights. In retrospect, the darkness had been more friendly. At least in the dark I could pretend I was hidden from their prying eyes.

  I was still dressed in the clothes I had worn when I left home: T-shirt, jeans, socks, and sneakers. I felt filthy. One more discomfort to add to the list. Two days without a shower really bothered me. And my teeth were furry.

  Next, I assessed my physical condition. Tired, weak, lethargic.

  Ohmygod! I sat up. What’s the matter with me? Didn’t I tell all my patients after surgery—or after any illness “Get moving!” The old days of enforced bed rest had proved to be disastrous for the human body. I jumped off the cot, stretched, and began to do situps and pushups. Then, like all prisoners before me, I paced my cell.

  Counting my steps, I discovered the dimensions of my prison. Ten by fifteen feet—a little bigger than my office waiting room, a little smaller than my motel room. I was examining the hairline crack in the cinder-block wall when a familiar voice startled me. “Did you enjoy your nap?”

  I twitched like an eel on a hot griddle, and cursed myself. But it wasn’t my fault; it was a reflex that I had no control over.

  “Perhaps your rest has cleared your head and you will be more reasonable.”

  Don’t count on it. I had hoped the rat would greet me with the time of day, as he had once before. The reference to a “nap” might mean it was afternoon. I didn’t answer.

  “You’re being very foolish.”

  Oh, cut out the Hollywood crap. I’ve seen all those old movies. You can’t hold a candle to Claude Rains or Sydney Greenstreet. I stared at the ceiling, willing his round doughy face to appear there so I could spit in one of his black-currant eyes.

  As the silence lengthened, I thought of my friends. Where were they? Had they missed me yet? Paul, Maggie, Jack, Mike? Marie, Polly … Ken? Shit. I hadn’t thought of him in weeks. What would he do in this situation? Quote some stupid poet or philosopher? Dad? Had they notified him yet? I couldn’t think about him. Then there was Tom. He would know what to do. He’d probably have me out of here, if he knew where to find me. Or if he cared. I hadn’t done much to make him care. In fact, I’d pushed him away. Why? Because—flash of insight—after Sophie, I’d anesthetized myself, and it hadn’t worn off yet.

  “I’m still waiting.”

  “What?” I came back to the cell with a jolt.

  “Why were you spying on us from that boat?” His voice had lost its coy playfulness.

  �
��Spying? I wasn’t spying. I was exploring the river.”

  “At night? In December?”

  Chacun à son goût. “That’s right.”

  “You force me to apply different methods.”

  Oh, spare me the grade-C stuff, I thought. At least stick to high-class films, like Notorious and Casablanca.

  Click.

  When he left, my bravado left with him. I began thinking about the “methods” they had used in those old Saturday matinees. Toothpicks under the fingernails. Cigarette burns. Electric shocks to obscure parts of the body. Stop it! I forced my brain to make a ninety-degree turn. The power of positive thinking. How had other prisoners kept up their courage, retained their sanity in solitary confinement? I ranged through my meager reading. The Count of Monte Cristo, The Arabian Nights … . (The thought of sitting up ’til dawn spinning tales for Doughboy—made me nauseous. Luckily, it wasn’t an option.) Then there was The Birdman of Alcatraz. But this hole had no window. That ruled out bird nurturing á la Burt Lancaster. Once I had read a story in Reader’s Digest about a prisoner from World War II. He had occupied his mind by playing chess with an imaginary partner—using bread pellets for the pieces and a checkered bedspread for the board. Unfortunately, I had eaten my sandwiches down to the last crumb, there wasn’t a bedspread in sight, and Dad never could get me to sit still long enough to learn chess.

  CHAPTER 50

  It was midnight when Tom pulled into the Blue Arrow Diner with Banks. They had explored Bayfield, to no avail. The house where Jo had been attacked was as silent as the grave. Visits to her usual haunts—Harry’s Bar and Grill and now The Blue Arrow—had also proved fruitless. Wearily, they took a booth and ordered bacon, eggs, toast, and coffee. They ate in silence. Not an awkward silence; the silence of two comrades bound by a common cause who felt no need to talk.

  Banks paid and Tom didn’t argue. When he dropped Banks at the motel, he said, “I’ll pick you up at seven. We’ll make the rounds again—in daylight.”

  Banks nodded and climbed down from the cab. Tom waited until he disappeared inside before turning his truck toward home.

  Paul was restless. He didn’t understand how Maggie could sleep so peacefully beside him. He kept racking his brain for some hint Jo might have dropped, some clue that would help them find her.

  “The boat!” He sat up.

  “Paul?” Maggie’s voice was groggy.

  “The boat, Maggie.” He shook her shoulder.

  “What boat?”

  “She asked me where she could rent one.”

  “When?”

  “About a week ago.” He switched on the light and fumbled for the phonebook.

  Maggie sat up and squinted at the clock: 1:30. “Fred won’t be there now.”

  “I’m calling his home.” He began to dial.

  CHAPTER 51

  I had developed a routine. I would walk around my cell twenty times. Then I would sit down on my cot (not lie) and try to name all the muscles of the body. Then I would take another walk and try to remember all the bones. Another walk—the nerves. Sometimes I would give a lecture to a class of first-year med students on the cardiovascular system. The endocrine system. The nervous system. At least when I got out of here I could apply for a teaching job. Finally, I would invent an imaginary patient with a set of symptoms and diagnose them. I had just diagnosed a middle-aged woman with severe hypertension when the cinder-block wall groaned and separated. In walked the gruesome twosome. Hubby in the lead, wearing a white coat that was an exact replica of my own. Wifey in the rear, bearing a tray covered with a towel—once white, now soiled around the edges. Wifey removed the towel, revealing an assortment of surgical instruments that, under other circumstances, could perform miracles. Hubby began to pull on a pair of plastic gloves. It was a laborious process, pulling the plastic down over each pudgy finger. He would never have made a surgeon; the patient would have died before he got his gloves on. When they were finally in place, he looked at me the way a cat looks at a mouse.

  I jerked my knee up under the tray, scattering the instruments across the floor. They made a loud clatter on the cement.

  CHAPTER 52

  Tom slept poorly. As soon as the first light filtered into his room, he was up, showered, dressed, and in his pickup. A low mist hovered above the fields and road. He flicked on his headlights. The single caw of a crow was the only sound that disturbed the stillness.

  He parked at the far end of the Sheffield farm, away from the house, near the riverbank, and stepped into the field. He wasn’t sure what had drawn him here. Nothing rational. Just a hunch. If anyone stopped him, he would say he was looking for that lost arrow. He was familiar with the fields and felt at home in them. When he was younger he had been known as a “walker of the fields” by the locals—the name the Indians gave to the men and boys who searched the fields for artifacts. After much practice, the walker acquired a knack for spying arrowheads, shards of pottery, broken bits of clay pipe that worked their way to the surface of a newly plowed field—especially after a rain storm. Tom had quite a collection.

  It had rained last night and the ground was soft. If he had been looking for artifacts, he would have found them. But this morning he had something else on his mind. He stopped when he saw footprints. Two deep sets, made by man-size workboots, each pair spaced about six feet apart, as if their owners had been carrying some burden between them. A heavy burden, judging from the depth of the prints. They came from the direction of the river. He followed them, careful to keep to one side and not damage them. They led him across the field to the barn. He entered. After the open field and sky, the darkness closed around him. He felt his way past the stalls, the ladder to the loft, the broad stone trough that had once held grain, and tripped over a bump on the floor. Turning on his flashlight, he saw a metal ring. He reached down and pulled on it, hard. Nothing happened. Then it dawned on him. If the ring was attached to a trap door, he was standing on it. Duh. He moved to the left and pulled again. This time a square section of the barn floor rose. Dimly, he made out steps leading down into darkness, an even deeper darkness than the barn. Holding his light in front of him, he started down. The steps bottomed out on the rough dirt floor of a passage—not much wider than his body, and not as tall. Head bent, he edged forward until the passage dead-ended at a wall. Or a door? He played the light over its surface, searching for a knob, a lock, a keyhole. Nothing. He looked again, this time running his hand around the edge. There. This time he felt a bump. Something round and hard, like the plastic button at the back of his laptop—the one that turned it on. He pressed it.

  With a groaning sound, the door, wall, whatever, began to turn inward. A thread of light no wider than a fishing line, appeared to his right. He watched it grow wider.

  Under the blazing lights stood an empty cot. On the cot lay a tray. Scattered on the tray were some surgical instruments—and on the floor, a bloodstained towel.

  CHAPTER 53

  Tom burrowed his way back through the narrow passage, climbed the ladder, and ran to his pickup. His mind racing, he had no memory of driving to the motel. A lone figure stood in the parking lot, looking up and down the road. Banks. Tom glanced at the dashboard clock: 7:15. The older man was waiting for him. Christ, what was he going to tell him? He screeched to a halt and turned in.

  “I thought you forgot,” Banks said.

  “I had an emergency.”

  “Oh?”

  “Get in. I’ve got to make a phone call. I’ll be right back.” Tom left him and went inside. The lobby was empty—the office was closed. He called 911.

  Banks had barely settled himself when Tom hitched himself into the truck.

  “What’s up?” Banks stared at him.

  “I have an idea.” He drove fast, without speaking. At a sign reading “LOBSTER TRAP—ONE MILE,” he turned left and followed a dirt road, toward the river. Through a screen of tall, shimmering reeds, the ramshackle wooden building that housed the restaurant came into view.
Behind the restaurant rose a cluster of sailboat masts, the hulking bows of a few cabin cruisers, and the water. With a spray of gravel, Tom parked in front of a small weather-beaten outbuilding with a sign—LIVE BAIT—hanging in the window. Inside, two men were conferring over the counter. As Tom and Banks came through the forest of fishing rods, gas cans, and life preservers, one man looked up.

  “Fred’s lost a boat,” Paul said.

  “The doctor rented it,” Fred added, “and didn’t return it.”

  CHAPTER 54

  In a borrowed boat, Tom and Banks started upriver. The mist had evaporated but the sky was heavy with dull clouds, reflected in the water. Tom had the motor at top speed, now that he knew his destination: the Wistar house, where Jo had been attacked. Of course, that’s where she would have headed. On some mission of her own, she had planned a sneak attack, a rearguard action. And, of course, she had to go alone. Some macho woman’s code? Sitting quietly in the stern, Banks demanded no explanation, and Tom offered none.

  They passed an abandoned rowboat. Jo’s? Tom didn’t stop to investigate. They reached the house in fifteen minutes (as opposed to Jo’s forty-five.)

  The dock was deserted. No one was in sight outside the house. Tom moored the boat and sprinted up the slope, with Banks following more slowly. The boarded windows of the house stared blankly at them. No smoke rose from the chimneys this morning.

  Tom pounded on the backdoor. The time for pussyfooting was over. No answer. They went around to the front and did the same. If he had come in his pickup instead of a boat, he would have had his tools with him to pry open the door. Frustrated, he kicked it.

  Banks bent to examine the doorknob. He withdrew a contraption from his pocket that contained all the common tools necessary for daily living, from penknife to corkscrew. Applying a screwdriver, he had the doorknob off in seconds. Tom was impressed. They pulled open the door and gasped as the odor of human filth—garbage, urine, and feces—swept over them.