Day of Reckoning

by John Katzenbach

  “What’s that?”

  “I told you earlier. This isn’t a kidnapping. It’s not normal. It’s not like anything in your experience.”

  She laughed.

  “I’ll show you. Watch this. We’ll make something utterly ordinary into something terrifying.”

  He stared at her blankly.

  She clapped her hands sharply.

  “All right, boys, who needs to use the can before bed?”

  Neither the judge nor Tommy responded.

  “Oh, now come on. Here’s your chance to avoid the ignominy of the bucket. Who wants to go?”

  They remained silent.

  “Well, you’re both going. Judge, you first. Get up, go through the attic door. My compatriot is waiting there, with his little machine ­pistol—remarkable weapon, judge. Ever use one? You know, they hardly make any noise at all when they kill someone.”

  Judge Pearson did not know whether this boast was based on reality or supposition.

  She laughed again.

  “I see what you’re thinking, judge. Well, we’ll leave that a little mystery for now, won’t we?”

  She changed her tone abruptly, out of the playful into the harsh: “Now get up on your fucking feet and go to the bathroom. I’ll stay and keep little Tommy company.”

  “Grandfather, please, don’t leave me!”

  Judge Pearson stood and hestitated.

  “Move, judge!”

  “Grandfather!”

  Olivia stood next to the bed and put her hand on Tommy’s shoul­der.

  “Please don’t leave me alone, Grandfather. Please! I don’t want you to go! Grandfather!”

  “See how difficult all our choices are, judge? Are you torn? What will I do behind your back? What will happen? Maybe you’ll go and come back and find the boy gone, down to the basement. Maybe if you don’t go, I’ll just pick him up and do the same. Come on, judge, make up your mind. That’s what judges do, isn’t it? Make decisions. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Come on, judge, guess! What am I going to do? How cruel can I be? What’s the right choice?”

  “Grandfather!”

  “I’ll go. Tommy, stay put. I’ll be right back.”

  “Grandfather! Please!”

  Olivia grasped the boy’s shoulder. She stared at the judge.

  Damn you! he thought. He turned and hurried through the attic door, each footstep seeming to mark another cry or sob from his grandson. The sounds cut through him, and he hesitated, torn be­tween the wails from Tommy and the threats that coursed about in his head. What will she do? Tommy! he wanted to call out to reassure his grandson, whose cries continued unabated. He saw Bill Lewis, grinning, holding the machine pistol, waiting down the hallway for him.

  “In there,” said Lewis, gesturing. “Leave the door open. You probably want to hear.”

  The judge hurried, standing impatiently at the toilet bowl while he urinated.

  “Hurry up, judge.”

  He flushed the toilet and raced back to the attic, where he could hear Tommy crying steadily. He felt a sense of relief: At least she hasn’t moved him.

  “I’m back, I’m back, I’m back, it’s okay, Tommy, it’s okay.”

  He threw his arms around the boy and comforted him. He was filled with rage as he squeezed the boy and rocked him.

  Olivia let them remain like that for a minute or so.

  “Now,” said Olivia, “that wasn’t so hard. But this will be harder. Tommy! Get up! It’s your turn!”

  “He can use the bucket,” the judge said angrily.

  “No, he can’t. Not right now. Not allowed.”

  “Please,” Judge Pearson said. “Let me take him.”

  “No chance.”

  “Grandfather!” Tommy moaned. “She’ll take me to the basement, I know it!”

  Olivia smiled. “Maybe. Always a chance, isn’t there? Life is so . . . changeable.” She grinned. “Let’s go!”

  “No, Grandfather, no. I want to stay here with you. I don’t have to go, I don’t! Please, let me stay here, please, Grandfather, please!”

  Judge Pearson knew the boy’s pleas would have no effect on the woman. “It’s all right, Tommy. Be brave. You can be brave. You can do it, and it will be all right. I know it.”

  He gently helped Tommy to his feet.

  “I’ll be right here. You go, do your business, and come right back. I’ll be right here. Don’t worry.”

  The boy was crying bitterly, shoulders shaking. But his grandfather saw him nod his head. Judge Pearson placed his arms on his grandson and turned him toward the door. He felt a great, sweeping pride come over him. “Hurry. I’ll be waiting.”

  Tommy marched resolutely through the door.

  Olivia watched for a moment, then gestured at Judge Pearson.

  “Sit down!”

  He complied. He expected another bizarre rambling from her. But instead, she turned and walked quickly out.

  “Hey!” the judge said.

  She disappeared, the dead bolt slamming home.

  “Hey, goddammit! Wait! Tommy!”

  He heard the boy crying: “Grandfather! Grandfather!”

  Judge Pearson was on his feet. He leaped across the tiny space and down the stairs. He started slamming his hand against the attic door.

  “Bring him back! Bring him back! Tommy! Tommy! Bring him back, damn you!”

  His mind was a raging froth of anger, fear, surprise, and dismay. He was filled with betrayal and instant rage. He could feel his own eyes filling with tears. “Tommy! Tommy!” he cried out.

  He started to fall forward, leaning against the wall, defeat mocking his heart.

  And just as quickly, the door opened.

  He reached out, without thinking, just filling instantly with joy and relief as soon as he saw the boy’s little figure. Then he stopped. Tommy was being held by Olivia, with her hand clasped over the boy’s mouth. Then she released him, and he threw himself into his grandfather’s arms.

  Judge Pearson enveloped the sobbing boy, his own tears mingling freely with his grandson’s. “I’m here, Tommy, don’t worry, I’m right here. I’m going to take care of you, don’t you worry. I’m here, here, here . . .”

  He whispered the last words into the boy’s ear, calming him slowly yet certainly.

  Judge Pearson raised his eyes. He stroked Tommy’s hair, and held the boy’s head to his chest. But his gaze met Olivia’s.

  “Who’s in charge, old man?” she asked brutally.

  “You.”

  “We’re learning, pig,” she replied. She turned away, locking them into the attic.

  4

  WEDNESDAY

  MORNING:

  KAREN AND LAUREN

  At first, the word seemed electric, charged with an energy that threatened to possess them both: kidnapped. They had not known how to react: Nothing like this had ever happened within their experience—they had never been victims of crime, or known anyone who had; they had never been mugged or their house robbed or their car stolen. A man had followed them home from junior high school once, but when their mother had called the police it turned out that the mysterious person had been the retarded adult son of the school board chairman. He had been lost and harmless and the twins had ended up walking him home after fixing him dinner.

  So, when trying to absorb precisely what it was that had taken place, they both felt a sense of confusion slide over them. Added to it was a sort of guilt, an anger with themselves, because the excitement and fascination threatened to obscure the idea that they should only be scared for their grandfather and brother. The threat to the two Tommys seemed oddly elusive, however, and so the excitement came to dominate them. They huddled in the kitchen, frustrated with the mundane task of preparing cof
fee and food, wondering how anyone could be hungry, how anyone could ask them to leave the room, whether this would change their entire lives, but mostly wondering what would happen next.

  Karen and Lauren boiled water for coffee and set out some leftovers on a platter in the kitchen. They could hear their parents’ voices raised in argument, but they could not really make out what they were saying. They believed that it was wrong to eavesdrop intentionally, but that the seemingly unintentional positioning of themselves adjacent to the open door hardly qualified as intruding.

  “It’s something about telling us the truth,” Karen whispered. “What could it be?”

  “I don’t know. Do you think they’ll tell us?”

  Karen shrugged. “They never want to tell us anything, but they always get around to it eventually.”

  “Do you think they have some terrible secret that they’ve always hidden from us?” Lauren asked breathlessly. She was the romantic one of the pair.

  “Mom and Dad?” Karen answered brusquely. She was the practical one, her voice even carried some of her father’s best banking tones. “Come on. Look at them, for goodness’ sakes. Do they look like the sort that had some secret life?”

  “Well,” Lauren replied, only slightly deflated, unaware how close to reality she had guessed, “anything is possible. We didn’t know them. And they hardly ever talk about the time before we were born.”

  “They were hippies, remember, until Dad went to work in the bank. Peace, love, and flowers. Remember the picture where Dad has the long hair and granny glasses and Mom is wearing the flowered dress . . .”

  “. . . And no bra.”

  They laughed together.

  They were identical twins; willow thin with wiry muscled arms, like their father, with their mother’s red-brown hair and blue eyes and gymnastic ability. They played varsity soccer and basketball, acted in the theater club, and struggled with foreign languages. Karen had a way of turning her mouth down at the corners; Lauren would arch her eyebrows. Karen liked to push her hair back from her face with both hands, then shake it hard. Lauren, when pensive, would stroke her chin like some caricature of an ancient philosopher. Each wore a gold chain around her neck with her name stamped from a piece of silver in the center. This was a concession to people outside the family; their parents had never had any trouble telling them apart. Duncan often thought it was simply a tilt of the head, a slight variation in the tone of voice, that let him know which one had come to him. Megan had never even stopped to consider that their sameness could create a confusion for her. They were her children and she would have been able to pluck them out instantly from a hall of mirrors.

  However, they were imposing to their friends and to potential suitors, who found their similarity daunting. It was something the twins delighted in. Though they had always traveled in the most accepting groups, right through grade school, elementary and high school, ultimately they had relied upon themselves to entertain themselves. Megan had noticed that the few friends that they truly let into their confidences were almost invariably the loneliest; single children for whom the twins had reached out.

  “Do you think Tommy’s okay?” Laren asked.

  In lives filled with routine there had been one constant that transcended the others: their brother.

  They had spoken many times of the moment, years ago, when their mother had come to them and explained that they did not know what was wrong with Tommy, but that he was different.

  Their father had come to them with another message. He had taken them out to dinner and a movie, then brought them back and sat with them in the car until they were quiet and listening carefully: “You must always remember that you have each other, and he’s all alone, and you must always stand up for him, because he’s a part of you as well. All families have challenges, and Tommy will be ours.”

  Lauren and Karen had never forgotten that.

  They also thought that their parents made too much of Tommy’s disabilities and vacancies. They had always seen his specialness as something unique and wonderful, “Like being a child in a book where you get carried away to your own special magical land, like Narnia or ­Middle-Earth,” Lauren once said. “He might love all the times he’s in space. Maybe he’s like the Little Prince and he catches an occasional meteor to take him on a trip.”

  But if Lauren had been slightly jealous, Karen had been more worldly. When Tommy had thrown tantrums, great wailing, screaming, incomprehensible moments when he’d tossed himself onto the floor and dashed himself against the walls, turning red with rage at the warring elements within him, it had always been Karen, with her soothing practicality, who had calmed him almost as well as his mother. She would simply wrap her arms around him and talk nonsensically into his ear, and he would slow and settle and finally look up, smiling. She could quote Ogden Nash and “Jabberwocky,” and tell terrible jokes that always tamed her brother’s explosions.

  Tommy had never had any trouble either telling the girls apart, even when they tried to fool him by changing clothes. It had been a favorite game of theirs, and he’d never failed.

  “Sure. He’s really much too tough for any kidnapper. He’s a little rock, for goodness’ sakes. Remember when he fell from the swing set when he was four and broke his wrist and didn’t tell anyone for two days? It wasn’t until you saw how black and blue and swollen it was that Mom finally took him to Doctor Schwartzman.”

  Lauren smiled. “I remember. It’s just, you know, when he would have one of those vacant spells, where he would withdraw and not say anything, and just sit there staring at nothing, that I always got worried. Anybody could have hurt him then. Suppose he has another and the kidnappers don’t understand? They might hurt him.”

  “Grandfather’s there. He can explain.”

  “If they let him. And anyway, maybe they’ll hurt him, too.”

  “Boy, you don’t know anything about kidnapping. It doesn’t do them any good to hurt the people they take. Then they don’t get paid.”

  “I know that. Anybody knows that. But sometimes people get scared. I bet they’ve got guns. And Grandfather will probably make them angry because he’s such a sour old puss, and won’t let them push him around. I’m worried about that.”

  “Where’s the cream and sugar?”

  “Right under your nose, silly.”

  “Oh. I got it.”

  “And anyway, why would anyone take Tommy and Grandfather?”

  “I know. That’s bothering me, too. Usually it’s rich people who get kidnapped. Like oil billionaires’ sons. Or movie stars.”

  “How could Mom and Dad pay?”

  “Well, they’ve probably got enough money.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, I saw his checkbook, and he had more than seven thousand bucks in it.”

  “Kidnappers usually want millions.”

  “Could he borrow it?”

  “From who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Anyway, what are they arguing about?”

  “Yeah. And why haven’t they called the police? Did you think about that?”

  “Kidnappers always tell you that they’ll kill the people they’ve taken if you call the police.”

  “Yeah, but on television the cops always get called anyway.”

  “Yeah. I know. Or some private detective, like Spenser or Magnum.”

  “Do you think they’ll do that?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think there are any private detectives in Greenfield. There sure aren’t any that look like those guys.”

  “Do you think we’ll have to go to school tomorrow?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Poor Tommy. I bet he’s scared.”

  “Yeah, he probably is. Do you think they’ve tied him up?”

&
nbsp; “No. Well, maybe his feet. They probably don’t know how fast he can run.”

  “Yeah. Faster than you, tubby.”

  “Well, we weigh the same, so speak for yourself.”

  “No, we don’t. I’ve lost five pounds. I just didn’t tell you.”

  “You haven’t.”

  “I have.”

  “I bet it was all that grapefruit you’ve been eating. Yuck.”

  “Well, he’s still faster than both of us.”

  “Suppose they do kill him?”

  Lauren put her hand to her mouth after forming the question. She continued speaking rapidly: “No, no, no, don’t even think about it. I can’t believe I said that.”

  “What if they do?” Karen said.

  They looked at each other and both felt tears form in their eyes. In a moment they had wrapped arms together.

  “I won’t let them,” Lauren cried. “I won’t let them. He’s just a little boy and it’s not fair.”

  “We’ve got to do something,” Karen said. “If something happened to Tommy . . . Dammit, I won’t either. I won’t let them.”

  “But what can we do?”

  “I don’t know. But if they hurt Tommy even a little bit, I’ll just, I’ll just, well, we’ll just kill them.”

  “That’s right. They can’t screw around with us. Do you remember Alex Williams and the way he used to beat up on Tommy? Well, you fixed him good.”

  “He never thought I’d hit him.”

  Karen smiled.

  “They never think you’ll do that because you’re a girl and just a teenager. Well, we’re not so young. We could even be in the army if we wanted to.”

  “You’ve got to be eighteen.”

  “So, nine months isn’t so long. Anyway, they’ll let you join younger if your parents agree. Remember that recruiter who came to the auditorium?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Shhh, notice something?”

  “What?”

  “They’re quiet. They’re not arguing anymore.”

  “Should we go in?”

  “I think so.”

  But before they had a chance to move, they heard their father’s voice summoning them.