Here After

by Sean Costello

  As he came around the desk, Peter glanced at Roger, hoping to give him an encouraging nod; but Roger was looking out the window now, his gaze directed at the park on the other side of Minto, at the kids playing on the swings.

  * * *

  After making brisk introductions, Eklund left Peter with the sketch artist, Sara MacKay, in Sara’s second-floor office, saying he’d check back in a half hour or so. Sara was an attractive woman of perhaps thirty with an odd quirk Peter noticed right away: when she blinked, one eyelid came down a fraction of a second ahead of the other. At first he found it disconcerting, like looking at someone with a lazy eye, but he quickly got used to it. On this cheerful, freckled woman it actually seemed to belong.

  Sara was a chatty gal, and as she led him to a long table cluttered with sketches and photographs, she apologized for rushing him, then outlined her tour of duty, saying it took her from as far west as Thunder Bay to as far south as Barrie.

  “I’m on the road a lot,” she told him. “Occasionally I consult with the Toronto police, but less so as time goes by. The bigger centers are moving to computer-generated composites now. Damn things are going to put people like me out of business. Forensic artists are a dying breed.”

  She sat at the table with her back to the window and Peter sat across from her in the only other chair, watching as she squared a piece of paper on the angled tablet in front of her, then picked up a stick of charcoal with delicate fingers.

  “So,” she said, “tell me about this man you saw.”

  And Peter did, responding to her prompts to the best of his ability, encouraged by the steady hiss and scratch of charcoal against paper.

  When she was done, Sara held the page up in front of him and Peter felt spicules of ice sprout through the flesh of his thighs and up the middle of his back. What she’d drawn was exactly what he’d seen: a negative, a ragged sculpture in two dimensions, dark against dark.

  “I’m sorry, Peter,” she said, misreading his reaction.

  “No,” Peter said. “That’s it. That’s exactly what I saw.”

  * * *

  Roger didn’t say a word on the way out to the truck, wouldn’t even look at him, and Peter felt as if he’d failed his new friend. Though the sketch had unnerved him in its eerie likeness to what he’d seen, he hadn’t been able to recall enough detail—wasn’t even sure he’d seen any—for the artist to render anything more than an indistinct hulk, mere shape and shadow. As a means of identifying a real person, it was next to useless. Why else would Eklund allow them to take it with them? The whole thing had been a waste of time.

  Roger unlocked the Suburban with his remote and climbed in, starting the engine as Peter walked around the hood, startling him. Peter got in and sat stock still, the sketch in its brown envelope resting on his knees. Barely breathing, he stared out the windshield, the tension in the vehicle thinning the air.

  He heard Roger put the Suburban in gear, then heard him sigh. He glanced over and saw him shift back into PARK, then touch the envelope on Peter’s knees.

  “May I?”

  Peter said, “Of course,” and handed him the envelope.

  Roger pulled out the single sheet of white bond and rested it on the steering wheel. “Looks like the bogeyman,” he said.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t remember any more.”

  Roger smiled, the expression joyless, defeated. His shoulders slumped, seeming to deflate him. “Let’s not kid ourselves,” he said, tilting the sketch toward Peter. “This is evidence, alright, of how desperate I’ve become.”

  “Roger—”

  “You dreamed this guy,” Roger said, staring at the sketch now, his shattered demeanor changing as he swelled with rage. “Can’t you see the trap I’m in, man?” He wadded the sketch in his fist. “My son is dead and I know it. God Himself could appear and tell me Jason is dead and I’d know He was right...but I still wouldn’t believe it. Couldn’t.” He gazed at Peter with the most fathomless torment in his eyes. “Now can you see how dead is better? I can never let go.”

  He opened and smoothed the ball of paper and glared at the wrinkled image. Peter was becoming intensely uncomfortable.

  “This motherfucker. What gives him the right? What gives him the right?”

  Roger lost it then, and it occurred to Peter as he looked helplessly on that he had never seen a man this big, this tough, cry so hard. Feeling both powerless and responsible, he put his hand on Roger’s shoulder, waiting for the storm to pass.

  Outside on the sunny street, a few passers-by glanced in, then quickly looked away.

  * * *

  Staff Sergeant Eklund sat at his computer and typed Peter Croft’s name into the DMV database. A page came up with Peter’s photo on it and all the information pertinent to his driver’s license, including his home address. It showed the make and model of his vehicle, its plate number, and listed his wife, Dana Croft, as next of kin.

  Eklund printed out a copy on a color LaserJet and returned to the DMV home page, typing in Dana Croft’s name now. The page that came up showed her as deceased. Eklund printed this one out, too. Then he called the hospital and punched in the extension for Dr. Russell Paul, Chief of Staff. After two rings Russell picked up and said a gruff hello.

  Eklund said, “Russ, you grumpy bastard, what are you doing there on a Saturday?”

  “Sickness never sleeps. Shit, Bernie, are we golfing today?”

  “No, this is more of an official call. And confidential.”

  “Sounds ominous. What’s going on?”

  “How well do you know Doctor Peter Croft?”

  * * *

  Once Roger had collected himself, he put the Suburban in gear, refusing Peter’s offer to drive. He handed Peter the crumpled drawing, then merged responsibly into traffic. He didn’t apologize for his loss of control and Peter was grateful for that. It gave him permission to do the same should the need arise...and he was almost certain it would.

  They made the ten-minute trip to Roger’s place in silence, sitting for a moment in the driveway after Roger turned the engine off. Peter had been sure Roger would take him home. Instead, he glanced at his watch and said, “That Clouseau movie’s still in the VCR. Wanna order a pizza and check it out?”

  Peter grinned. “I’d like nothing better.”

  They ordered a deep-dish pie from Pizza Hut, half double-cheese and pepperoni for Peter, the other half with the works. Without asking, Roger poured beers for them both and Peter thought, What the hell. It was a delicious combination and both men ate ravenously. The movie was The Pink Panther Strikes Again, one of Peter’s all-time favorites, Sellers prancing around as the bumbling Clouseau, avoiding through sheer dumb luck the attempts of twenty-six different assassins—hired by his archenemy, former Chief Inspector Dreyfuss—to end his witless life. Sitting in a reclining chair by a crammed wall unit, Peter had pizza juice running down his chin and a pretty good buzz on when he noticed a framed photograph of a boy who could only be Jason Mullen, smiling for the camera, a boy with thick blond curls, sky blue eyes and huge dimples, just like his dad’s.

  Peter wiped the juice off his chin and came out of the chair like a bullet, snatching the photo off the wall unit. Behind him, Roger said, “What the hell?” and paused the movie with the remote.

  Peter turned to face him, his reflection ghost pale in the decorative mirror on the wall behind Roger’s chair. Staring at Roger with unblinking eyes, he pointed mutely at the boy’s picture.

  Roger stood. “What is it, man?”

  “Do you have Internet access?”

  “Of course. What—?”

  “In the office upstairs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “May I?”

  “Sure, if you tell me what’s up first.”

  Peter said, “It’s better if I show you,” and headed for the staircase, still holding Jason’s picture.

  Roger followed him into the office, watching as he Googled the Child Find site, then scrolled through rows of sna
pshots to the one of Clayton Dolan. When Roger saw the boy he leaned in closer, shock closing his windpipe for a beat, Peter lining up Jason’s picture next to Clayton’s now to drive his point home.

  Peter said, “They could almost be twins.”

  Roger took a slow breath, the startle Clayton’s picture had given him beginning to fade, replaced by irritation. He said, “This your idea of a party trick?”

  Peter turned in the chair to face him. He’d have to handle this carefully. Their experience at the police station had shattered Roger’s already tentative belief that David was trying to reach out to Peter, direct him somehow. Truth be told, it had shaken his own faith, too. But this reaffirmed it beyond any shadow of a doubt. He said, “When I talked to Erika, she told me to keep my mind open, avoid dismissing any odd coincidences or feelings.”

  “I thought we agreed Erika was a bird.”

  “Why did you call her, then?”

  “So what’s your point? They look alike.”

  “They don’t just look alike, Roger. They’re practically identical.” Roger took a step back from the chair, glancing over his shoulder at the doorway.

  Peter said, “Okay, listen. Before I even met you, my first day back at work, I noticed a display on the wall outside the cafeteria. Posters, this Child Find stuff. This little boy, Clayton Dolan, he was one of them and he caught my eye. No, it was more than that. Once I’d seen him, I couldn’t put him out of my mind. When I got home that night, I went on the website and found him again, and I was gripped by this bizarre desire to find him, just get up out of my chair and start looking. It was the craziest thing. In the end I passed it off to David, you know. Missing him.” He turned back to the screen and lined up the pictures again, Jason and Clayton, the stark light of the monitor casting his face in haggard shadow. “But look at them, Roger.”

  Roger remained that extra step away from the screen. “Coincidence,” he said. “I don’t see your point.”

  “My point is, they’re connected. Don’t you see? David wanted me to see him. He tried to show me the kidnapper and couldn’t, not in enough detail, anyway. So he showed me this little boy, Clayton Dolan...and he led me to you.” He turned again to look at Roger, standing with his arms folded now, staring at the floor. “David loved your son, Roger. They weren’t together very long, but that’s how David was. He got attached. He would have made a great husband and father. My point is, I think these kids were taken by the same man.”

  “The faceless guy in your dream.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know how fucking whacked that sounds?” Roger reached past him to push the power button on the monitor. Then he took the picture of his son. “I’m sorry, Peter. I’m not angry, just disappointed. If you don’t mind, I think we should call it a night.” On his way out the door, into the hallway that led to his son’s empty room, he said, “I hope you don’t mind letting yourself out.”

  Peter heard the door to the master bedroom latch shut. He sat for a moment in the hum of the computer tower, then turned the screen back on.

  Clayton Dolan was there, smiling out at him.

  Peter thought, David, sweetheart, what are you trying to tell me?

  He got no answer.

  He left the room without clearing the screen and let himself out of the house. It didn’t occur to him until he was on the porch that he didn’t have his car. He thought about going back inside to call a cab, then decided the walk would do him good.

  * * *

  Roger lay on his bed staring with parched eyes at Jason’s picture, his body braced against a fresh assault of fury. He was caught in a place from which there was no escape, a fly lying helpless on its back, its wings mired in glue, denied even death’s blessed release. He owned a shotgun, knew the feel of that cold steel pressed to his throat; but a dead man couldn’t search, and above all that was his mission, to search a world that had forgotten him and his boy. The enormity of it, this demoralizing task, made him feel microscopic, without consequence.

  Looking into his son’s shining eyes, he imagined him locked away somewhere, suffering unspeakable terror and abuse, wondering why his dad hadn’t come for him yet, losing hope where Roger could not. And as horrible as this thought was, it was better than imagining him dead...yet at times, God forgive him, he’d been guilty of far worse. At times, in the cellars of his anguish, he had wished his son dead, prayed that the next time the phone rang it would be the police telling him they’d found Jason’s body and it was over at last. He could grieve now or he could get his gun and pull the trigger, his son’s remains at least giving him the choice.

  And now, this demented shit with Peter Croft, stuff he would've scoffed at when Jason was around...he couldn’t let it go. Having a child brought you face to face with thoughts and fears you might never have considered otherwise; but losing one, having him stolen not by death but by some faceless savage visible only through the fever dreams of a grieving stranger, that was crossing over into territory from which there might be no safe return. Yet, where else did he have to go? Three years had gone by and conventional means had yielded nothing. What choice did he have? The truth was, he’d go down any road, no matter how narrow or perilous, in pursuit of even the most tenuous hope. The trick was knowing when to turn back.

  Roger returned to his office, to the face Peter had left smiling on the screen, a face which, at first glance, could have been Jason’s. He sat in the chair and held his son’s picture next to Clayton Dolan’s, thinking, Uncanny. Now he stood the picture on the desk and rolled his chair closer to the monitor, clicking on the Home Page button. The Child Find site was laid out in alphabetical order, and he started with the A’s, going through them one by one, struck as Peter had been by the beaming smiles nearly all of them wore. He knew the majority of them were either parental abductions or runaways, most of those turning up eventually, but many more had simply vanished off the face of the earth.

  When he got to the M’s he found Jason, the picture identical to the one on the desk, and wondered why Peter hadn’t come across it while searching the site. Probably never looked further than the D’s, his weird obsession with this kid preventing it.

  And wasn’t that all this was? A grieving man’s obsession? A well-intentioned but ultimately hopeless deflection of the pain he was feeling? Busy-work for the heart, twisted into something ‘mystical’ by the depth of his grief? He must have seen Jason at least once in the past—at the daycare, probably—and just forgotten about it, the picture of this other kid jogging his memory, all these wild connections he was making products of nothing more than fatigue, confusion, and a broken heart.

  And I let him suck me into it.

  He liked Peter, liked him a lot. Under saner circumstances he could see the two of them becoming close friends. But all this...it was too much. It could only lead to more heartache. He’d been doing fine until Peter came along, going to his meetings, getting by. There was really only one solution: it was time to cut the man loose. He’d call him in the morning and ask him to find a new group, no hard feelings.

  Roger closed the Child Find site and turned the computer off. He picked up Jason’s picture and took it downstairs, replacing it on the wall unit. Then he poured a half bottle of vodka into a third-carton of orange juice and returned to the movie, sipping the sweet mix until his thoughts ceased and the credits scrolled out of a peaceful sea of blue, and the blue disintegrated in a rasp of gray static.

  * * *

  When Peter got home he shook a sleeping pill out of the bottle his family doctor had slipped into his pocket at the funeral. “Use these if you need them,” he’d said, then added, “One at a time,” fearful Peter might use them for darker purposes.

  He needed one tonight. Needed to shut down, fade to black. To ponder things any further tonight was to court a breakdown. He could feel something bending in his mind, on the verge of snapping like a green stick.

  The pill was tiny, bitter on his tongue as he washed it down. He thought of
sitting at the computer until the drug kicked in, but forbade himself, turning instead to the tube and his comfortable bed. He caught Leno doing an interview with Alec Baldwin, Baldwin doing an hilarious impersonation of Robert de Niro, and he fell asleep giggling, still half drunk from the beer, the tiny blue pill finishing him off.

  He awoke in gray dawn light with a sensation like butterflies on his hand from a dream in which Jason Mullen was drowning.

  Drowning in shallow water.

  8

  Sunday, June 17

  PETER STOOD HUNCHED IN THE shower and tried to erase from his memory the image of Roger’s son drowning, staring up at him from two feet under, round face fish belly white and those vacant eyes, sky blue gone to black. It had been so vivid, so starkly real, the dark water green with algae, an arc of sunlight finding the boy’s lips, deathly purple against the pale of his skin.

  And that lingering touch on his hand...

  The steam. The steam was filling his lungs, making his head spin, and now he shut off the faucet and stepped out of the tub, popping a couple of curtain rings as he lurched for the door and swung it open, stumbling naked into the hallway to gasp for air. Standing in a puddle on the cold tiles, he leaned against the wall and pressed an open hand to his chest, trying not to hyperventilate, the swarming specks in his vision signaling a black out.

  He put his head down and slowed his breathing. And when his vision cleared and his racing heart settled, he went into the bedroom and got dressed. Then he dialed Erika’s number on the kitchen phone. He didn’t know what else to do.

  Erika picked up on the third ring and said hello.

  “Erika, it’s Peter Croft.”

  “Peter, hi. You sound out of breath.”

  “I had another dream...it’s difficult to explain over the phone. Can we meet?”

  “Of course. Why don’t you drop by here? Say, half an hour?”

  “Okay, thanks. I’ll see you then.”