Tall Oaks: A gripping missing child thriller with a devastating twist

by Chris Whitaker

  Jerry stood at the back of the hall. He tried to blend in, though rarely could. His mother had told him about Lisa, about how Lisa had left the forms in his file cabinet. He’d run straight into his dark room and frantically opened the drawer, then seen the photographs of Max and the naked girl, splayed out on top.

  He hadn’t seen her since then. He hadn’t slept, and he hadn’t eaten either.

  He could see her now though, in the corner, standing beside Max’s parents. Her arm was in a cast. She’d been lucky—that’s what it said in the newspapers. He looked at her face, at the sadness. She didn’t look lucky.

  She glanced up then. She met his eye and the busy hall around fell silent to his ears. He held his breath. His collar felt tighter, the paisley tie choking him.

  And then she smiled.

  And he breathed again.

  She nodded toward the door.

  He found her outside, standing beside the gravestones.

  He walked over. The grass he waded through was long.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She cried. Then stepped toward him and leaned into his chest. He patted her back lightly, looking around as he did. The church stood tall behind her, leaning on them, pressing them down into the earth. He didn’t understand religion—he wondered how anyone could. His mother did, that’s why he’d joined the choir. He hadn’t liked wearing the white robe.

  “I’ve thrown the photographs away.”

  She stepped back, wiped her eyes. Dark lines streaked her face.

  “Max gave them to me, for my birthday. I didn’t ask him to. I should’ve given them back. I shouldn’t have kept them.”

  “It’s okay,” she said, quietly.

  She looked thin, gaunt.

  Jerry had read all about the accident in the newspaper. He wondered who wrote the stories, if they had even known Max. They made him sound so different from the Max that he knew. They showed photographs of him at school, wearing his football jersey.

  The others had survived. A miracle, apparently. But then Max had been hanging out of the roof.

  “Will you be okay?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He wondered if she would.

  He followed her over to a bench in the center of the small cemetery.

  She sat. He sat beside her, careful not to touch her leg with his.

  “I can’t sleep, Jerry. I just keep seeing it. I crawled out my car. I looked over the edge. I heard screams. I still hear them.”

  He swallowed.

  Jerry heard the church bell sound behind them. He turned to look up at it.

  He heard voices, then saw a man with a camera emerge from the side of the building. Lisa stood quickly, then walked back inside. Jerry waited a moment, then followed her.

  “Can you feel the burn? Come on, Roger. Can you feel that burn?”

  Roger was breathless, his hair damp with perspiration. But he felt good.

  “I can fell the burn, Aleks. And I like it.”

  The barbell was light, the dumbbells coated in neon foam. Lady weights.

  “If you can feel it then own it. Own it, pansy. OWN IT.”

  So terrifying was Aleks that had Roger any inkling what the big man wanted him to own he would have purchased it in a second.

  He lifted the barbell up and then lowered it quickly, while Aleks loomed over him.

  Roger marveled at what $100 an hour could buy you. He had never seen a man as large as Aleks. Muscles bulged from every part of him, veins threatened to explode. His hair was military short, his manner terse.

  Roger stood. Aleks handed him a bottle of water.

  They walked together over to the mirrored wall of the gymnasium.

  “Flex,” Aleks said.

  Roger flexed, pleased with what he saw. Gone was his pot belly and sagging breasts, breasts that had taken on a kind of teardrop shape over the years. And if all it took was a little degradation by a mentally unstable Russian then so be it.

  “Looking good,” Aleks said.

  Roger nodded.

  “For your wife?”

  “No.”

  “Younger woman?”

  Roger shook his head, tried not to smile.

  Aleks caught the smile and laughed.

  “What next?” Roger said.

  “Next we turn the chrysalis into a butterfly.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Squat, my pansy. SQUAT.”

  Jared was sitting out front in the sun when he saw Elena turn into the lot in the canary-yellow Fiesta. She pulled into the drop-off bay and made her away over to him.

  He thought her quite beautiful in her simple, white summer dress and sandals. Her skin was tan and smooth and Jared couldn’t help but notice that one of her shoulder straps had fallen and he could see the lace of her bra beneath.

  She smiled at him. It was a smile that warmed him.

  And then he thought about the cop. Jim. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him. It was probably nothing, but it didn’t feel like nothing. He was ready to leave now, packed up and ready to go again. He wasn’t sure which way. Maybe south. He was getting used to the warm weather. He’d paid his rent up front, settled all his bills and closed his bank account. His cell phone was prepay—he’d dump it. He always did. He’d call his mother when he got settled somewhere else, feeding her a romantic notion of him traveling, seeing the world.

  He looked up at Elena, and smiled back. And it was in that moment that he knew he was in real trouble, because she made him not want to leave. She made him not want to run anymore.

  “I can’t believe this weather,” she said, taking off her sunglasses and fixing her gaze on him.

  He stood and kissed her cheek, softly. He could smell her perfume, and that, coupled with the feel of her skin, made him dizzy. She was something special, something to be admired from a distance, and, if by some small miracle, you were allowed close to her, to make her smile and kiss her lips, you’d do all you could to stay there. And yet here he was trying to think of a way to move back into the shadows again.

  “I know. I have to wear sunscreen to work every day.”

  He swallowed. Sunscreen made him sound like one of those metrosexual guys. He felt his face redden. He tried to slow his breathing down and relax.

  It was exhausting, the act, and it was getting harder and harder to maintain when it should have been getting easier.

  “Yeah, I try and get Manny to wear it but he says his Latino skin is a friend to the sun so why would he fight it. He’s an idiot.”

  Jared laughed, relaxing a little.

  “I try and spend as much of my day as I can out here. I sit in the shade but it’s just so nice to be outside.”

  “We used to live in New York and I could never cope with the winters, and all that pollution too. But the thing that used to get me most was the noise. It was so constant that when we first arrived in Tall Oaks I couldn’t get used to the silence. It was like someone had flipped a switch and suddenly there was peace again. And I love it, I really love the peace and quiet, especially at night, when I read a book and I don’t have to shake off the sounds of the city. It’s heaven.”

  He smiled, thinking back to his home town. He knew what she meant about the peace. And he had loved it too. Loved it until he’d shattered it.

  “I’ve never lived in a big city. I can’t imagine I’d like it. Even when I go to the mall I don’t like the crowds. I feel like I can’t breathe, and then I relax again when I jump back into my car and put some miles between me and all the madness.”

  She fiddled with her sunglasses, opening and closing the arms again and again.

  She wouldn’t look up at him.

  He knew that he had said something wrong. He tried to remember what—something about not liking the crowds. No, it couldn’t have been that. It was the breathing thing. Just because he went to a busy shopping mall it shouldn’t mean that he had trouble breathing. He sounded like a freak; a big, ugly freak with a na
sty secret. He started to scratch his head, his eyes darting from her to the car lot and then up at the sky. He was about to turn and walk away, make an excuse, run to the bathroom and splash some water on his face. But then, finally, when he was nearing the edge, she looked up at him and smiled.

  “Listen, Jared. I’ve been invited to a wedding. I helped make the cake, with French John. And Louise—that’s the bride—Louise McDermott. You might have heard of her family—they own the big house at the top of Cedar Hill. It’s hidden but you can just make out the pool house when they get the birch trees cut. I went there with French John to discuss the cake with Louise a few months ago; the place was as big as a hotel. They had a water fountain in the middle of the carriage driveway.” She was rambling. “So my invitation says plus guest, and I was just going to go with French John, but I think he’s been seeing his old beau Richard, but Richard’s shy, so I don’t think he’ll show up. But anyway, even if he doesn’t, even if French John goes on his own, I’d still like to ask you.”

  He smiled. “Ask me what?”

  She bit her bottom lip and took a breath.

  “I’d like you to be my date for the wedding, if you want to. And I know that sometimes men think it’s a big deal, being a date to a wedding—like you’re trying to announce that it’s serious to all of your friends—but I don’t want you to worry. I’m happy with the way things are going between us. You’re exactly what I need, you know, after Danny. You’re a cool guy. I don’t feel any pressure when I’m with you. So that’s why I want you to be my date.”

  “Because I’m a cool guy?”

  She put a hand over her eyes. “I’m sorry, I thought I was a cool girl, but now I’m painfully aware that I’m actually an embarrassing single mom.”

  He laughed, then reached up and took her hand away from her face. Her beautiful brown eyes stared back at him. He knew what he should say. That he thought they should just be friends; that he didn’t want to get into anything serious.

  He knew that he should walk away, ignore the way she made him feel.

  “I would love to.”

  Though he felt sure that it was reckless, and stupid, and completely unfair, he leaned forward, held her face in his hands and kissed her.

  And in that moment, the past forgotten and the future, for once, worth striving for, he knew that he was falling in love with her. And he hoped to God that she didn’t feel the same way about him.

  Jess lay on the grass and stared up at the tall oak trees that loomed above her. She had set off in the direction of the forest and its acres of trails. She’d passed Burford Street, passed all of the pretty cottages that the rich downsized to after their brood left home. The cottages had stone plaques with engraved names; Summer Cottage. Meadow View Cottage. Names that made her imagine the life she and Michael might have had.

  It was her fault he’d left. She’d been the one that changed.

  Her mother had said that she was too good for him, that she was better off without him. It was all carefully contrived bullshit. Things that Alison thought she wanted to hear when she would have been better off had her mother just told her the truth: that he was too good for her; too handsome; too smart; too charming. And Jess was just pretty. That was all. She used to be fun, but lots of girls were fun. That’s why she should’ve moved on when he walked out. She should’ve just accepted it. It was a fact of life. As they grew older his eye would wander, because he would get better looking, more successful, and she would just get older. Nothing more. Just older.

  The kind of love she felt for Michael consumed her in a way that would have been just about bearable had he felt the same way about her. But she knew that he didn’t. Even on their wedding day she’d felt it deep in the pit of her stomach. That he would one day leave her, and she wouldn’t be able to recover from it. So she’d worked hard at being a good wife, at being a good mother, to delay the inevitable.

  Harry had been her link to him. A constant link to a man that would’ve otherwise disappeared from her life completely. Wherever Michael went, whoever he ended up with, he would always see her when he looked at Harry. And that thought had kept her from going mad in those early days when he first left. Those first few weeks when she hadn’t slept, not even for an hour. She just lay awake thinking of him. And it did funny things to her mind, the lack of sleep. It convinced her that he was seeing somebody else, which she now knew to be true. And it convinced her that he would never come back. A thought which drove her to reach for the handgun that he kept locked away in his desk drawer and place the barrel in her mouth.

  The metal had been cooler than she had thought, the gun heavier.

  Had Harry not appeared in the doorway she might have pulled the trigger. Might have. She had it in her. She knew that.

  The tight coil of tension that knotted her muscles, and her mind, always eased when she lay beneath the tall oak trees. Here, she came as close to a relaxed state as she could anywhere else. The Clown left her mind. The horrible things she had done, once alive and vivid, turned gray in her mind and raced further and further from the forefront. She could breathe.

  That’s why she had come here on that day. After she had called Jim and said that she could see Harry through the window of the old clapboard house. She had broken the glass with her bare hands, slicing them to pieces, not noticing the blood dripping as she climbed through the window. The stress had been almost unbearable as she turned him over.

  It wasn’t Harry.

  It wasn’t even a boy. It was a man. A very old man. Long since dead, his face drained but his eyes frozen wide.

  She walked back to the clearing, checking her phone until she could get a signal. Then she called him.

  “It’s your birthday today. You don’t need me to tell you that. I got you a gift. I’ll keep hold of it until you’re ready to see me again. When will that be? I was thinking about your last birthday. Harry was sick but you still wanted to go out. I got my mother to come over and look after him. Remember that? He was burning up. I put you first. I’m not doing well. I’m not coping. I need you, Michael. I need you.”

  21

  Carnival

  Jerry had watched them setting up all day through the window of the PhotoMax. They came every year, for one night only: one night full of noise, and color, and candy floss. And he loved it. He loved the rides, the ones that he wasn’t too big to go on. And he loved the games, even though he could never manage to throw the horseshoe and land it on the post, despite the man that ran the game saying he was a natural.

  Though excited, he was also exhausted. Lisa had told him that Max’s parents wanted him to run the PhotoMax until they decided what to do with it. So he hadn’t had a lunch break, because there was nobody to cover for him. He still wasn’t sleeping either. His mother had told him, in a roundabout way, that it was his fault that Max had died, because he was disgusting, because he had kept the photographs. So that was why he couldn’t sleep. Because he knew she was right. Though Lisa had forgiven him, and though she didn’t cry as much when he saw her, she looked so desperately sad that he wondered if she’d ever really smile again.

  He turned the key and opened the door.

  “Mom, I’m home.”

  He walked into the living room.

  “Mom, do you want to come to the carnival with me?”

  He walked into the kitchen.

  “Mom?”

  He climbed the stairs slowly, gripping the rail tightly. He glanced at the photographs on the wall. He’d taken them—one of a deer, one of a red squirrel. He reached out and ran his finger along the glass frame. It was thick with dust. He blew it, coughing lightly.

  He passed his mom’s bedroom—the drapes were closed. It was dark inside. He pulled the door to, not wanting to wake her. He was starting to enjoy the moments when she was asleep. He felt guilty about that. He felt guilty about lots of things. He thought it a funny thing, guilt. He supposed it was what made us human. It could torture the mind, stop you living a life. It had be
en eating away at him for months now. He’d thought it might ease—“Time is a great healer,” his father used to say—but it hadn’t. And now the guilt was mounting up. He felt it in his shoulders, in his stomach and even in his toes.

  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

  His mother had told him that when he was a boy. She’d also told him about heaven and hell. Life was easier when you had clarity of thought. He’d had that as a child. That was why he’d never lied to her. He wondered if withholding the truth was the same as telling an outright lie. He guessed that it was. Otherwise you could hold onto any number of sins and never confess them so long as nobody asked.

  He stopped in his dark room before he left the house. He opened his file cabinet and took out the forms, and the envelope, and finally the photograph. The bird was beautiful, every bit as beautiful as Lisa’s father had said it was. He was looking at it more and more now; worrying more and more too. He placed it all into the envelope, then back into the drawer.

  He’d do the right thing eventually. He’d decided that. Because he couldn’t cope with the guilt much longer. He just needed to make sure his mother was okay, that she wouldn’t be alone, and then he’d do the right thing. He just needed a little more time.

  Main Street had been transformed. There were stalls in the street, rides that took over the grassy sidewalks and the heavy bass line of a hundred different songs all competing for attention.