by Ronald Malfi
“Hey, Ben.”
“Hey, Shirl. You got the chief’s personal cell number handy?”
Both of Shirley’s eyebrows arched. “His personal cell?”
“I want to bring him up to speed. I’m not…I’m a little overwhelmed here, hon. Know what I mean?”
She leaned forward and lowered the volume on her portable TV. Sliding her bifocals down her stubby nose, she stared hard at Ben. “People are saying we got some wild animal killing off livestock around town,” she said. It was not a question. “People are saying it could be a bear or a cougar or something. Other people, they’re saying it might even be something else.”
“Something else?” Ben said.
She gave him a look that suggested she knew more than she was willing to let on. “Did something eat all of Porter Conroy’s cows this past weekend? Be honest with me.”
“Something got at them,” he acknowledged. “Ted Minksy’s goats, too.”
“People are starting to worry, Ben.”
So am I, he felt like adding.
Shirley scribbled Chief Harris’s personal cell phone number down on a Post-it and handed it over to Ben. He looked at it then folded it up and stuck it in his pocket. He knew Harris would be annoyed at the interruption in his vacation with his wife, but things were getting out of hand.
One of the phones lit up and started ringing. Shirley’s sharp eyes lingered on him for a moment longer before she turned to address the telephone, picking it up and pressing it to her ear. Into the receiver, she said, “Stillwater Police Department,” then went silent as she listened to the caller on the other end of the line.
Ben went out into the hall and stared for a time at the shafts of daylight that angled in through the wire-meshed windows. He thought he heard someone moving around at the far end of the hall. He went down there and peered into the chief’s empty office, one of the supply closets, and eventually into lockup. Three jail cells lined the far wall, and the first two were unoccupied. A slovenly dressed figure sat hunched over on the bench in the third cell, a mane of iron-colored hair draped down over the man’s face.
Ben walked up to the cell, taking in the familiar, unwashed scent of the lockup’s most frequent visitor. “Hello, Pete.”
Pete Poole, more infamously known as Poorhouse Pete to the guys at the station, looked up at Ben. The man’s face was blotchy and haggard, his eyes red-rimmed and moist. Whitish beard stubble looked like it had been hastily applied with a paintbrush.
Pete shook like a tuning fork. “Hi, Ben.”
“How come you’re still here? You haven’t sobered up yet, bud?”
“Ain’t come in drunk,” Pete advised him. “Not this time.”
“Then what are you doing in here?”
“Knocking over trash cans on Hamilton.”
“Why would you do that, Pete?”
“Wanted to get arrested.”
Ben dragged over a wooden chair from behind one of the desks and sat before the cell. “And why would you want to do that? It’s not that cold out yet.” Once the weather grew cold and winter came, Ben could always count on Pete Poole to act up and cause a scene with hopes of getting locked up and thus be given a warm place to sleep and some hot meals. Everyone knew the routine and, last year, Shirley had even bought Pete a Christmas present—a knitted cap and some gloves—which she’d placed in the cell while awaiting the man’s inevitable Yuletide arrival.
“Don’t wanna be out there on them streets tonight,” Pete said. His long hands shook fiercely in his lap. “Things are fallin’ apart out there, Ben, and I’m gettin’ a little scared.”
Ben leaned closer to the bars of the cell. “What’s falling apart, Pete? Tell me what’s going on out there.”
“It’s not something I can see,” Pete said, also leaning toward Ben. “I can feel it, though. I feel it the way some animals feel it when a storm’s coming. It’s in my bones.”
“What is?”
“Uneasiness.” Pete placed one hand against his abdomen. “Makes me sick to my stomach.”
I know the feeling, old friend, Ben thought.
“Can I tell you something…without you thinking I’m crazy?” Pete asked.
“Sure. Go ahead.”
Pete shuffled his feet beneath the bench. He was wearing scuffed boots with high laces, the cuffs of his pants tucked into them. “First off,” the man began, “I wasn’t always this guy sittin’ here. You know what I mean? I came from someplace else and had things in my life, Ben. You’ve known me as old Poorhouse Pete—”
“Now, Pete—” Ben began.
“—and that’s just fine, but that ain’t who I always been.” Pete cleared his throat and Ben could see his eyes welling up. When he opened his mouth again to speak, his lower lip quivered. “I once was married, did you know it? Way out in a different part of the country. I was much younger and damn if some ladies didn’t think I was a fine-looking fellow.”
Ben smiled sadly at the man.
“We had a daughter and she lived to be five years old,” Pete said. “She was a beautiful child and the light of my life.”
Ben felt his body go numb. “Oh, Pete. I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
“Was struck and killed by a drunk driver right out in the street where she was playing,” Pete said. “Right in front of our house.” Pete looked at him, his colorless eyes like chunks of granite, his complexion as ruined and asymmetrical as a topographical map of the Sahara Desert. “Well, as you can see, a tragedy like that breaks a man down. People say men are stronger than women, and maybe in some regards that’s even true, but not when it comes to the people we love being taken away. My Holly. My little girl, Holly.” He made a quavering, paper-thin sound. “Maybe I’m weak because I wound up here, all the way at the opposite end of the country, covered in filthy clothing and drinking too much whenever I have enough money to do so. Maybe that makes me weak, Ben. I don’t know.” He held up one crooked finger. The fingernail was black. “But what I do know…”
“What?” It came out in a reverent whisper.
“What I know is my Holly came back last night. She was down by the Narrows, standing right there on the water, Ben, looking up at me. It was going on dusk so it was hard to tell for certain, but I didn’t need to be able to see with perfect clarity to know it was her and that, after all these years of being dead, my little girl Holly had come back.”
Ben felt instantly cold. He opened his mouth to speak but could find no words. He’s drunk, that’s all, he thought, though wondering if he actually believed it. Old Poorhouse Pete’s off the wagon again. Nothing unusual about that.
“But I ain’t crazy,” Pete continued, “and I know nothing good is gonna come from seeing my poor sweet girl down by the Narrows. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I don’t wanna go back out there, Ben.”
Ben stood up. He dragged the chair back behind the desk. “You can’t stay in here forever, Pete. It’s not a motel.”
“I know it ain’t. Just for tonight though, Ben, okay? Please?”
Rubbing the back of his head, Ben said, “Yeah, okay. Sure. Have you eaten?”
“Shirley brought me a sandwich earlier.”
Slowly, as if in a dream, Ben nodded. He went to the door and paused in the doorway. “You want me to turn out the lights so you can get some sleep?”
“No.” Across the room, Pete’s eyes were like twin headlights. “Leave the lights on, for God’s sake, Ben.”
“All right.”
Ben walked back down the hall, suddenly feeling the weariness of the past two weeks pressing firmly down on his shoulders. The goddamn storm, the unidentified boy washed up at the mouth of the river, the slaughtered cattle, and now the missing Crawly boy…
In truth, it was almost comical. But Ben didn’t feel like laughing.
He returned to the Batter’s Box to find Eddie La Pointe settling in his cubicle with some cartons of Chinese takeout. “Hey, Ben. Hungry?”
“Not really.”
&n
bsp; Eddie switched on the small black-and-white TV that sat at the corner of his desk and turned it to one of his beloved horror-movie channels. He cracked open the lid of one of the cartons of Chinese food and the smell was instantly overwhelming.
Ben sat at his own cubicle and looked forlornly at the massive amount of paperwork stacked on his desk. His head hurt and his eyes burned from lack of sleep. Absently, he rummaged around the top of his desk for the bottle of Advil he knew was there, somewhere, among the madness.
“Second storm front moving in later this week,” Eddie said around a mouthful of noodles. “Cumberland Public Works already put out their flood warning.”
“Fantastic,” Ben bemoaned. He located the plastic bottle of Advil behind his Rolodex, popped the cap off the bottle, and shook two into the palm of one hand. After brief consideration, he shook out a third tablet. He dry swallowed them, one at a time.
“I just dried out my goddamn cellar from the last flood,” Eddie went on. “Lousy sump pump is fine as long as the power stays on. Well, we both know the score on that.”
Ben leaned forward in his chair. “What are you watching?”
“Huh?” Eddie glanced up from his container of Chinese noodles at the black-and white-TV. On the screen, a disfigured humanoid creature was vomiting acid onto another actor’s arm. “Oh! Man, this is a classic! Well, a remake of a classic, anyway, but it’s a classic remake, too. The Fly, with Jeff Goldblum. Ever see it?”
“Once,” Ben said, his eyes locked on the television. On the screen, the actor’s arm sizzled and withered beneath the gout of acid. “That’s what happened to the animals.”
“What’s that?” Eddie said, stuffing more noodles into his mouth.
Ben jabbed a finger at the screen. “That. That’s what it looked like happened to them. Porter Conroy’s cows and Ted Minsky’s goats.”
Eddie turned around and leered at Ben from over one shoulder. Around a mouthful of food, he said, “Are you serious or just screwing with me?”
“The way the flesh was eaten away…the melted look of the bones and the goat’s horns at Minsky’s place…” Ben leaned back in his chair, one set of fingers rubbing circles into his left temple. His head continued to bang like a drum.
“Come on, Ben. Who would do something like that?” Eddie coughed into one fist and swallowed the rest of his food. “How would someone do that?” he added.
Ben just shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong, but…”
They both turned back to the television. Goldblum was in full insect mode now, his face having split down the middle to reveal the bulbous hammerhead eyes of a giant fly.
The telephone at Eddie’s desk rang. Eddie set his carton of Chinese food down and scooped up the receiver. “La Pointe,” he said into the phone.
Still watching the TV, Ben reached over and snatched one of the cartons off Eddie’s desk, along with a pair of chopsticks. He had just gotten the chopsticks out of the cellophane when Eddie hung up the phone and looked at him. The blood had drained from Eddie’s face.
“What?” Ben said. “What is it?”
“That was Platt,” Eddie said, switching off the television set. “He and Haggis are over at Bob Leary’s place. Bob’s kid, Billy, is missing.”
4
Bob Leary and his son, Billy, lived out on Town Road 5, a perilous twist of unpaved roadway that wound with the discipline of a jumbled garden hose up into the foothills of the mountains. Their home was a run-down ranch house with a stone façade and chimney that looked about one good storm away from falling down. When Ben and Eddie approached, they found Haggis and Platt’s cruiser already parked in front of the house, its bar lights casting intermittent red and blue light into the neighboring trees.
Inside, Bob Leary sat forward in a tattered La-Z-Boy recliner, a can of Coors Light on one knee. There was a look of hollowed desperation on his face. Across the room, Officers Haggis and Platt sat like matching bookends in their uniforms at either side of a cramped little sofa. Melvin Haggis had a notepad flipped open on one thigh and a look of consternation on his face.
“Where’s the chief?” Bob Leary said the second Ben and Eddie came into the house. “Where’s Harris?”
“Out of town.” Ben took his hat off. Beside him, Eddie swayed from foot to foot like a player waiting his turn to take the football field. “Your son’s gone missing, Mr. Leary?”
“I was just telling the guys here.” He jerked a pointy chin at Haggis and Platt, who looked like they were being punished and had been told not to move. “The boy’s been gone two days now and I’m fixing to worry.”
Ben said, “Two days?”
“It ain’t unusual for him to stay out late or sometimes at some friend’s house. But even then he usually comes home the next day. And see, I been out of work, so’s I been home more. I catch his comings and goings. He ain’t been around and I don’t like it.”
“He says the last time he saw him was Saturday afternoon, Ben,” Haggis said, consulting his notepad.
“He was out in the front yard patching up a tire on his bike,” Leary said. “I went out to Crossroads and when I come back, he was gone.”
“His bike was gone, too?” Ben asked.
“Yeah,” Leary said.
Melvin Haggis scribbled something in his notepad.
“Have you tried contacting any of his friends?”
“Made a few calls.” Leary sounded irritated having to answer the questions. “Nobody’s seen him.”
“Okay. You want to give a list of these friends to one of my guys, Mr. Leary?”
“So you can double-check on me?”
Ben ignored the comment. To Platt and Haggis, he said, “Why don’t you guys check around the area, see if you can find anything.” He knew the foothills could be dangerous, and that danger had little to do with blood-starved carnivores; the sudden drops and unsteady footing were the real dangers. Though nothing of the sort had ever happened in Stillwater, Ben had assisted on a few occasions over in Garrett County when some careless hikers had gotten lost or hurt—and sometimes killed—in the mountains.
“You got it, Ben,” Platt said, rising quickly from the sofa. Haggis struggled to get up and join him.
“I’d like to take a look at your son’s room, Mr. Leary,” Ben said.
Leary set his can of beer on the carpet then peeled himself out of his La-Z-Boy. “Follow me,” he said.
Leary led Ben and Eddie down the hall to the last door on the right. It opened up to a tiny room with one window facing a stand of elm trees. There was an unmade bed wedged in one corner and there were toys and clothes all over the place. Posters of horror movie monsters hung on the walls and some classic Aurora monster models had been carefully arranged on a desktop, bookshelves, and the solitary windowsill.
“Don’t know what you expect to find,” Leary said. “Room’s a goddamn pigsty.”
Ben went to the closet, opened it. He dug through a heap of unwashed clothing, board games, and random toys until he found an empty backpack. He held it up so the missing boy’s father could see it. “Is this the one he uses for school?”
Leary lifted one pointed shoulder. “Beats me.”
“School one’s over here, Ben,” Eddie said. He was peering over the small desk that was pushed beneath the single window at another backpack that was unzipped and loaded with textbooks.
“What’s it matter?” Leary asked.
“When kids run away they sometimes pack some stuff in a backpack. It seems Billy’s are accounted for.”
Leary grunted.
“Is something wrong, Mr. Leary?” Ben asked him.
“Why would Billy run away?”
“I’m not saying he did. I’m just looking around.”
“I got a good relationship with my boy, Journell.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Ben said, tossing the backpack back into the closet. “You mind if I check the papers in your son’s schoolbag?”
Leary made a face that suggeste
d he didn’t care one way or another.
Ben emptied the contents of Billy Leary’s schoolbag onto the desk as Eddie came up beside him. Pencils, erasers, a broken ruler, notebooks, and balled-up wads of lined notebook paper spilled out along with a collection of textbooks. There was also a half-eaten sandwich in a Ziploc bag, so old and festooned with mold that the identity of the lunch meat remained suspect.
“How have your son’s grades been?” Ben asked.
“He does okay,” Leary intoned from the doorway.
Eddie sighed audibly.
Ben knew that sometimes kids ran away instead of having to confront their parents with a bad report card or a failed test paper that needed to be signed and turned back in to the teacher. And while there were plenty of poor test scores among the contents of Billy Leary’s schoolwork, Ben did not think the boy would have worried too much about showing them to his father. Abruptly, he felt like he was wasting time.
“Okay,” he said, dumping the boy’s items back into the schoolbag. “I think we’re done here.”
“You figure anything out?” Leary wanted to know.
Ben offered him a wan smile and said, “Not just yet.”
Back outside, Eddie lit a Marlboro while Ben stood surveying the property with his hands on his hips. Bob Leary remained inside, though he occasionally appeared in one of the windows to stare out at them.
“Explain to me how we got two missing kids in one week,” Eddie said, exhaling a column of smoke.
“I have no idea.”
“And then the livestock mutilations? I mean, how fucking bizarre is all this?”
“Pretty bizarre.”
“It’s all got to be related, right, Ben? It can’t just be a bunch of coincidences, can it? All at once like this?”
Ben had no answer for him. He couldn’t see how they could possibly be connected…though he found the timing of all these seemingly unrelated events more than just troubling.
“And let’s not forget that kid who washed up in Wills Creek,” Eddie added.