by James Renner
It started with a spark thrown off from that hinge. The river caught fire. Again. I felt a warm rush of air and then everything was enveloped in flame. The driver, lying immobile at my feet, began to cook. And scream.
I dashed to the open door of the tow truck. It smelled like the den of a malnourished bear, the sort that is slowly dying of cancer of the anus. I nudged the truck into gear and began to move it off the bridge, away from the river of fire, that cursed river. Maggie, finally noticing her master was no longer in charge, simply opened the door and stepped into the air. I watched her wasted body fall into the river. It is an image that haunts me to this day.
Miraculously, the truck’s tank was full of diesel. Plenty to deliver me to Vermilion, to Tanmay, if the uniks didn’t catch up first. My best chance of stopping them had been that stunner, which was melting into the man’s neck on the road behind me. What could I do but go on?
As I started down the road, I looked back to the inferno raging behind. I watched a man jumping up and down inside the operator’s nest, screaming for help. I looked forward and pretended he didn’t exist.
Then I opened the window and listened for the approaching screams of the uniks.
* * *
“You look like ass,” said Jason.
They sat at a table in a dark corner of the Nervous Dog coffee shop, a hipster hideaway tucked in a forgotten West Akron shopping plaza. It was early morning the day after Erin McKnight’s kidnapping. Another layer to compound the mystery. David wanted to clean house a bit. Be a good Boy Scout, be prepared for anything that came next. And that meant drawing in some loose threads before he became further entangled.
“I’ve had better days.”
“They treat you okay in the pokey? Nobody tried to, you know, get gay with you or nothing?”
“No, Jason. Nobody tried to get gay with me.”
“I spent a week in juvie once. Joyride in my sister’s car. I was thirteen. Some creepy shit goes on in there.”
David rubbed at the pain behind his temples. “What do you have for me, Jason?”
“On the redhead’s old man?” Jason handed him a small notebook stuffed with a couple photos of a rough-looking man with a high forehead and white-white hair walking to his pickup. The years since David had seen him at the Kent State vigil had been unkind. “He’s a piece of work. Contractor. Nasty divorce about ten years ago. Ran his ex-wife over the coals. Had a private eye take pictures of her fucking another dude in the Metro Parks. Got custody of Katy—she was fourteen. Started drinking. Beat up a guy pretty bad at Nighttown in 2008. Apparently the dude mouthed off about his daughter, how smoking hot she grew up to be or something. Put him in the hospital. Served three weeks downtown, on work-release. He’s in AA now. Man has a short fuse. But if you ask me, I don’t like him for it.”
“Why not?”
“Uh. Guys like this. You got to know the type. He’s all fists. Pow. He doesn’t think. He reacts. With your guy on Primrose Lane … that took some planning. Some thought. Too much time for a guy like this. He’d have cooled off before it was over. And besides, no way could I see him killing a woman.”
“You’ve heard Elizabeth was murdered, then?”
“I’m sorry, David. Really.”
“Thanks.” David reached into his satchel. He brought out a thin gray metal box, about the size of a notebook.
“What’s that?” asked Jason.
“Everything. Everything you’ll need if something bad happens to me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Jason, I’ve made you the executor of my estate, if I happen to die unexpectedly.”
“Jesus. Are you expecting to die unexpectedly?”
“I’m being careful. My will is in here. A living will, too. Some paperwork regarding Tanner’s trusts as well as instructions for what to do with my body and the house. Houses. Stuff I don’t want to bother my dad with. And compensation for your time, of course.”
For the first time since he’d met him at that Beachland concert long ago, Jason was speechless.
“You okay?” asked David.
“Yeah, man. It’s just … I’m not, you know, responsible.”
“You’re the only guy I completely trust, actually. You’re a good guy, Jason. I’ve always known that. You know that, too. You’re all sound and fury out here, but in here,” David said, patting Jason lightly on the chest, “you’re the most loyal guy I’ve ever met. And I know you’d do anything to help my boy.”
Jason nodded, his jaw set tightly, trying not to show emotion. He coughed away a tear. “Still. Don’t die, okay?”
* * *
Paul, his publisher, called as David drove to his father’s place to visit Tanner.
“How’s the book coming?” he asked.
“I’m going to need an extension on that deadline,” said David.
“So much for an easy story. I’ve been watching the news. Your indictment was covered on CNN.”
“Great.”
“On the up side, they’re going back to print on Serial Killer’s Protégé. It’s back on the bestseller list.”
“Wonderful.”
“Seriously, David, anything I can do?”
“No. But thanks.”
“I’ll release a statement later. Something about how we support our writer and how I’m sure you’re innocent and being railroaded. Something short and punchy.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I do, actually. I should be doing more.”
“No worries, Paul. It’ll work out. I’ll call in a couple days.”
* * *
“Dad!” Tanner. His arms open, his little body running toward David. He felt guilty for ever wanting to do anything but stay home with him and play. Play until he was eighteen. He hoped, after all this was through, that there would be time for that. Time enough at last, as Rod Serling once said.
He took his son in his arms and brought him back toward his father’s house. David’s father waited on the porch, drawing down a bottle of tomato juice.
“Morning,” said his father, clapping him on the back with a big hand.
“Hey,” he said.
They sat on a bench that David’s father had constructed out of driftwood, Tanner on David’s lap, holding tight to his shirt.
“Dad,” said Tanner. “Papa took me fishing. I put all the worms on the hooks. And I caught a catfish but it ate the line but it was hu-uge!”
“Cool.”
“Yeah, and we ate the fishes when we came home. We cooked them out here on the grill. I like fish. Real fish. Not fish sticks.”
“I like real fish, too. We should go fishing more when I get back.”
The boy’s eyes grew wider and his grip tightened. “You’re not done yet?”
“Almost,” he said.
“But I want to go home,” said Tanner.
“Real soon. Promise. I’m staying for a little bit today, so what do you want to do?”
“A book,” he said. “Can you read Moonbeam?”
“Sure.”
“All three?”
“Sure.”
Tanner rested his head on David’s shoulder. And for a short while they sat in silence.
* * *
When Tanner finally went down for his nap, David found himself back in the kitchen across the table from his father, who looked as tired as he felt. Tanner was a good kid, but he was also a highly active kid; they had spent the day constructing an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine made mostly of PVC pipe and garden tools that caused a plastic army guy to parachute off the top of a ladder in the back yard.
“He started wetting the bed again.”
“Ah, man.”
“Woke up at four this morning. Nightmare, I think. He wouldn’t say. I stayed up with him, watching Blue’s Clues. I got him back to sleep around five-thirty.”
David looked at the table. “I can’t begin to explain to you what’s going on,” he said. “I need a couple more days to figure thin
gs out. Then I can bring him home. Right now it’s not safe.”
“What’s happening?” his father asked. “You don’t have to keep secrets from me. Christ, David, I know you didn’t do this. What you need to be doing is circling the wagons, talking with your lawyer, staying home with Tanner. You’re under a microscope right now. They’re just waiting for you to make some stupid mistake. You shouldn’t be running around out there.”
“I just need a couple days.”
“For what?”
“I promise I’ll tell you when it’s over. I just honestly don’t know how right now. You have to trust me, all right?”
He had not had a real fight with his father since he’d been a senior in high school, when they had—as many American father/son teams will at some point—come to blows. He could tell, by the way his father’s chin quivered when he spoke, that they were reaching a tipping point. Soon there would be raised voices. And, in all likelihood, that would give way to physicality. Neither of them needed that.
So he left. Without another word.
It was the last time David saw his father.
* * *
“What the hell took you so long?” I asked when David walked through my front door shortly before two p.m. I have always been ashamed at my incessant tardiness.
“Nothing,” he said.
“That girl, Erin, is still out there somewhere. Every minute is like an eternity for her.”
“She’s dead,” he said. “You know that. This guy doesn’t keep his victims alive. She was probably murdered before the Amber Alert even went out.”
“What if she’s not?”
“What do you want to do about it?” He was shouting now. “I’m charged with murder and you can’t go anywhere because you look like a dead man.”
“Fuck it.”
“What?”
“I said, fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it all.” I grabbed my cane and opened the door for him. “Let whatever happens, happen. But we need information on this girl. And by the time the reporters get at anything important, it will be too late. Let’s go. You’re driving.”
* * *
Erin McKnight’s family lived on the west side of Cleveland, in the hipster gentrified suburb of Tremont. The trip took less than an hour. I used the time to interview David about the particulars of his life. We started in 1999, the year Katy was abducted, and worked chronologically forward toward the present. (Since Katy’s murder had directed that portion of my life beyond 1999, I could safely assume that everything that had happened to David before that was pretty much the same in my timeline.) He told me about meeting Elizabeth, about how he came to be involved in the Brune adventure, and about raising a boy alone. I captured it all on tape, one of those mini-recorders. Listening to those tapes again, as I write this book, is quite painful. It is like reliving a moment in time—our voices take me back to that hour in the car and I can smell the leather seats and feel the cool breeze of the AC. It’s like being there, but I’m unable to warn him about the events that are about to unfold. When you’re lost in the middle of a set of dominoes, you can’t see the pattern that’s forming in the falling blocks around you.
The McNight home was swarming with media and law enforcement. Cuyahoga County sheriff’s deputies had set up barriers around the house, a warm Cape Cod not far from Lincoln Park. Television personalities stood outside the perimeter, speaking into cameras wired to expensive trucks with fifty-foot antennas. Pohlman, the reporter who’d captured Trimble’s confession on tape, was there, David saw. The Action News helicopter hovered high above. A three-man squad of FBI agents walked out of the house and into a black sedan that sped off west.
“What are you doing?” asked David.
“Putting on my disguise,” I told him, checking the placement of the bushy white mustache in the mirror; Aaron had picked it up for me weeks ago, one of my special requests. I completed the ruse with a tweed hat. I thought I looked rather grandfatherly.
He parked the car around the corner and we walked together toward the house, keeping our heads down, looking like we were supposed to be there. No one recognized us and when we crossed the barriers no one told us to stop.
I knocked the handle of my wooden cane against the McNights’ front door. After a few seconds it opened a sliver and a woman’s face appeared in the space between. “Yes?” she asked curtly.
“Ma’am,” I said, “we’re not reporters.”
“At least not anymore,” David corrected.
“We’ve spent the last fifty years—”
“Five years.”
“The last five years researching a series of abductions we believe may be connected to your daughter’s kidnapping.”
“She’s not my daughter. Erin’s my niece. Family’s inside.” The woman, a rough-featured young thing with bad hair, sized up David. Obviously, she hadn’t seen the reports of his arrest on TV—the family had been too busy talking to detectives. “I know you,” she said. “You’re David Neff. The Trimble writer.”
“That’s me.”
“You think this is Trimble?”
“No. Not at all.”
“Then who do you think it is?”
“Could we please come in and speak to the parents?” asked David. “We really do want to help.”
She told us to wait a minute. She closed the door. There was a muffled conversation inside. Then the door opened again and a tall man stood there. He had a long forehead and a voice not quite as deep as James Earl Jones, but close. “Mr. Neff,” he said, shaking David’s hand. “I’m Casey McNight. Please, come in.”
Erin’s mother sat in the living room, rummaging through a box of family photographs. She was a thin woman with shoulder-length fire-red hair. Her face was splotchy and red, puffy from a night of crying. “I know it’s in here, Casey,” she said. “I just saw it the other day.”
“Hon, these men want to help. This is David Neff, the writer guy.”
She looked up briefly, then went back to digging in the box. “I’m Jo.”
Casey directed us to a couch. “She’s looking for a full-length picture of Erin’s body. For perspective. Height and such. FBI want it.”
“It was a soccer picture,” said Jo. “The one where she’s kicking the penalty shot. I just … here it is!” She held the picture aloft as if it were a talisman that might bring her girl home. She picked up the phone and dialed a number as she stepped into the kitchen. Casey sat down in a chair across from us.
David pulled a notepad from his satchel. “Mr. McNight, can you start by telling us what, exactly, happened yesterday? How did you realize your daughter was missing?”
“She was at the park with her friend Meghan. Meghan Hill. Meghan says a white van pulled up next to the swings where they were talking. Guy leans out, asks Erin if she has seen his dog. She wants to know what kind of dog, right? Well, this guy tells her he has a picture of it, so she goes to the van and before Meghan even realizes what happened, Erin’s thrown in the back and the van is racing onto I-90. Boom. Zoom. Gone.”
“What did the guy look like?”
Casey handed David a copy of a police-artist composite sketch. The paper was still warm from the printer’s. The sketch was that of a white male, forty to fifty years old, weird hair, thick glasses. Sort of looked like John Denver. The resemblance to the composite sketch of Katy’s would-be abductor, a sketch that did not exist in this universe outside the one I still had in my possession, was spot-on.
“Plates?”
Casey shook his head. “Meghan’s only ten. She didn’t look for it. She was scared out of her mind.”
Jo returned from the kitchen and hung up the phone. “They’re coming back for the photo,” she said. She sat next to her husband and snatched up his hand.
“Mrs. McNight, what was your daughter like?” asked David. “Did she have a lot of hobbies? What was her daily routine during the week?”
She looked hesitantly at Casey. “I don’t know if we’re even allowed to be talking to y
ou. The police said not to talk to reporters.”
“What can it hurt?” asked her sister, from the doorway.
“Let me be honest with you, dear,” I said. “As a journalist who’s been doing this for most of his life, I’ve seen a lot of cases like this. I study them, actually. It’s my speciality. There’s a very short window of opportunity for us to find your daughter alive.”
Jo sobbed loudly, but there were no tears and she didn’t turn away.
“The police are going to do their thing and that’s fine. But they’re limited by the law. They need search warrants. They need probable cause. They can only lie in certain situations. We are not bound by those codes. I’m willing to play dirty if it means getting Erin back to you.”
Jo nodded.
“She didn’t change her routine or anything like that,” said Casey.
“She played soccer,” said Jo. “Lately, she’d go to the park with Meghan after school. There’s a small group of kids that hang out there. Erin had a little crush on a boy named Martin who is in the sixth grade. He sometimes goes there, too.”
“Have you, as a family, done anything different in the last week?” asked David. “Did you go to the movies, a particular restaurant, any strangers in the house, anything like that?”
A flash of recognition lit up Jo’s face. “The handyman,” she said. “We called a guy to come in and patch up a leak in our roof. About two weeks ago, right?”
Casey nodded.
“Do you remember his name?”
“Harold something,” said Casey.
“Harold Schulte?” David and I asked in unison.
“That’s it,” said Jo. “How did you know?”
David was already packing up his notepad and standing up. He wanted to get to the car.
“He was already a suspect in another murder. Another red-haired girl,” I said.
“Oh, my God!” said Jo. She let go of her husband’s hand and dug her nails into his arm.