Here After

by Sean Costello

  Without looking at Peter, Roger hit the mute button and said, “I can’t believe he got away.”

  “Me neither,” Peter said, sitting on the edge of his bed. “We were so close.”

  Roger looked at him now, his eyes darker somehow, discs of blue steel. “I wanted to beat it out of him, you know? Make him tell me what he did to Jason. Then I wanted to kill him.”

  Peter had to look away from the savage intensity of that gaze. At different times in his life, he’d wondered about people who killed; wondered what it took and whether he would have it should a situation demand it of him: wartime, protecting his family, defending himself. When it came to protecting his family, he’d always believed he could. But in Roger’s eyes he saw no trace of doubt. If Roger got his hands on this man, he would kill him if he could, without qualm or hesitation.

  Peter glanced at the silent television and saw a composite of the kidnapper, obviously computer-generated, the lines smoother than those created by the sketch artist in Sudbury. The sight of it startled him, that rigid, emotionless face, and for an instant he flashed on the face in his dream.

  Now he heard Roger get to his feet. Heard him say, “Guess I’ll grab that shower,” then heard his undershirt coming off over the chain that was always around his neck. There was a jingling sound and Peter turned to see a pair of dog tags tumble out of Roger’s undershirt as he pulled it over his head, one of them silver, the other gold. Lamplight flared off the thin metal wafers and Peter felt a click in his throat—for a moment, he couldn’t breathe—then he gasped and wobbled to his feet, his heart beating so fast he could feel its frantic bound in his skull. Startling Roger, he plucked the dog tags off his chest, almost breaking the heavy ball-chain. He saw Jason’s name engraved on one of the tags and said, “Where did you get these?”

  Roger frowned. “Summerfest, five years ago. It was Jason’s idea. He got a pair exactly the same, except his say ‘Dad’.” He tugged the tags out of Peter’s hand, letting them fall back to his chest. “Why?”

  Peter’s gaze rose to meet Roger’s. His mouth was as dry as dirt. “I know who took Jason,” he said. “I know where she lives.”

  * * *

  Just before dawn—around the time Peter and Roger were leaving the police station in Oakville to retrieve Peter’s car—Graham Cade awoke in a strange bed with a terrible, aching fog in his head. He said, “Oh,” and lifted his head off the pillow, surprised at its leaden weight. The light on the ceiling was off, but Graham could see pretty well in the pale morning glow that shone through the window beside the bed.

  He was in a child’s room, faded Batman wallpaper and a bunch of old toys on wooden shelves, some of them spooky-looking in the purple shadows. His memory was fuzzy, and for a moment he had no idea where he was or how he came to be here.

  Then he remembered and his eyes filled with tears.

  A familiar voice said, “Don’t cry,” and Graham saw his kidnapper sitting on a chair at the foot of the bed. She was a woman now, wearing a dress and her long black hair but with no lipstick, her dark eyes soft and moist-looking as she rose from the chair to sit next to him on the bed. She reached out to touch his face and Graham stiffened, the woman saying, “That’s okay, sweetheart, the scary part’s over now. You’re safe. Safe here with me.” Now she did touch his face, her big hand warm and soft against his cheek, and Graham let her, the feeling somehow comforting in this creepy room. She said, “I’ve got some clean clothes laid out for you on the dresser over there.” She pointed and Graham saw a brown shirt folded neatly on top of a brand new pair of jeans, the paper tags still on them. He didn’t like blue jeans when they were new, that stiff feeling against his skin, but he didn’t complain.

  Now she tousled his hair and rose to her feet beside the bed. She said, “Do you remember where the bathroom is?” and Graham shrugged. Wherever he was, he didn’t remember ever going to the bathroom here. The woman said, “That’s okay, it’ll all come back to you soon,” and walked to the door, turning to face him as she pushed the door open. “Why don’t you get dressed,” she said, smiling now, tilting her head to look at him with her wet eyes. “The bathroom’s right at the end of the hall if you need it. When you’re ready, come ahead downstairs and I’ll make your favorite breakfast. Then I’ll explain everything.” Wiggling her fingers at him, she said, “It’s so nice to have you home, honey.”

  Then she was gone.

  Graham pulled the covers over his head and wept, hoping his mommy and daddy were okay, praying they would come for him soon.

  * * *

  Peter unzipped his computer bag and dug out the material he’d compiled on the Dolan boy. With trembling hands he spread the various printouts on the thin bedspread, Roger watching in stony silence over his shoulder. Peter found a still he’d copied from the video of Margaret Dolan’s media appeal and held it up for Roger to see.

  Roger said, “Yeah, so?”

  “It’s her,” Peter said, the truth of it buzzing through his bloodstream like an amphetamine. “I didn’t tell you about this, but I went to see her over the summer, thinking—I don’t know—I just got this idea it might help, you know, find Jason. And she’s different now, Roger, much heavier, built like a man.” He glanced at the TV but the composite was gone, the anchor detailing another story on the muted set. Peter said, “With her head shaved, heavy like she is now...”

  Roger gave him a skeptical look. “Listen,” he said, “calm down, okay? The last thing I want to do right now is go running off on a wild goose chase.”

  Peter said, “I’m calm,” and handed him the grainy still. “Her name is Margaret Dolan. She has another son named Aaron. He’s around eighteen, mentally challenged. I saw him when I was there.” Now he pointed at the dog tags on Roger’s chest, saying, “May I?” Roger nodded and Peter scooped the tags into his palm, raising them up for Roger to see. “Aaron had a pair of these around his neck, one silver, one gold. The same kind of chain.”

  Roger slipped the tags out of Peter’s hand into his own. “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life. It’s her, Roger. It’s her.”

  “But why?”

  And even as Roger posed the question, it all came together in Peter’s mind, the sad, twisted logic of it. “The loss of her son shattered her mind. I saw it in her eyes the day I talked to her.” He told Roger about her attempt on her husband’s life and her prolonged incarceration, saying that at the end of it, she came out permanently scarred. “By the time she got back home, the desire to find her son had already become an obsession.”

  Roger was nodding and Peter could see that he understood. “Then, somehow,” Peter said, “probably just dumb luck—she sees Jason.”

  “And thinks he’s her son.”

  “Exactly. So she grabs him and disappears.”

  “Jesus Christ. But why not stop after Jason?”

  “Remember what you told me about the times you thought you’d seen Jason? Like that day in the mall. He’s still only six when you see him, right? Even though he’d be almost ten now?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So this woman, all she’s got left is a mental image of the kid at six—or a photograph she carries with her everywhere—and she becomes fixated on that. She sees Jason and grabs him, believing she’s found her son. But time goes by and Jason starts growing up. After three years he looks almost nothing like the kid in the photograph anymore.” He found the age-enhanced shot of Clayton Dolan and showed it to Roger. “See? Even her own son looks different after a few years. So she wakes up one day, looks at Jason and thinks, ‘This isn’t my kid,’ and starts looking for the next six-year-old.

  Pale as a ghost now, Roger said, “So what does she do with Jason?”

  Peter just shook his head. He had no answer.

  Roger’s hands closed into fists. “Where does she live?”

  “On a farm about thirty minutes west of Ottawa,” Peter said. Then he was reaching for the phone sayin
g, “We’ve got to tell Sergeant Taylor—” and Roger caught him by the wrist, squeezing so hard Peter’s fingers sprang apart and the handset clattered to the floor. He tried to pull away and couldn’t.

  Roger glanced at the fallen handset and released Peter’s wrist. The veins in his neck were fiercely engorged and Peter realized the man wasn’t breathing, his skin an unhealthy plum color, the capillaries in his eyes magnified behind a film of raging tears. Then he let out the breath he’d been holding and sank to the edge of the bed gasping for air, his body shuddering, the tears falling freely now. He looked at Peter and said, “I’m sorry, man, I’m sorry,” and Peter sat next to him on the bed, slinging an awkward arm around his shoulders, saying, “Jesus, Roger, what’s wrong?”

  Roger buried his face in his hands, scrubbing away the tears. So many tears. He said, “The night Jason was taken...” but he shook his head, the words refusing to come. Now he cursed bitterly and said, “The night Jason was taken...I was drunk. I was mad at Ellen, that stupid argument we had over the phone, and after I tucked Jase in, I sat in front of the tube and got plastered. Fucking idiot.” He faced Peter now, the tears getting away on him again. “Usually I’m a light sleeper, you know? The neighbor’s dog farts and I’m awake. But that night I was full of booze, and I slept through my son’s abduction. The fucker came right into my house and I slept through the whole thing. When I think of what must have been going through Jason’s mind that night—some stranger taking him out of his bed with a smelly hand pressed over his mouth to keep him from screaming—I want to put a bullet in my brain so I can’t hear his voice anymore. Peter, they had to go right past my bedroom door to get out of the house. The damn thing was open. I could have seen them go by...”

  Peter felt the weight of this confession slam into his chest like a drop kick. Self loathing was coming off Roger now in waves as he cursed and damned himself to hell, the heat of his anguish palpable in the room, a thrumming turbine eating the air.

  Then he was on his feet, replacing the handset in its cradle, fixing Peter with an expression that was at once beseeching and coolly menacing. He said, “I need you to tell me exactly where this woman lives. Then I need you to make a decision. Either you’re coming with me—because I’m going there, right now—or you’re not, in which case I’m going to have to borrow your car. If you decide not to come, I need you to give me enough lead time to get there and find out about my son before you call the police. This is my last chance, Peter. I don’t want a bunch of cops busting in with their guns blazing before I get a chance to talk to that woman.”

  “Talk to her?”

  “That’s all I want to do. Just find out what she did to Jason.”

  “A while ago you wanted to kill her.”

  “That was before I understood.”

  “And what if you find out she, you know, did something bad to Jason?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t say.”

  “What about the Cade boy?”

  “I don’t think she’d hurt him.”

  “What about back there on the highway? If you hadn’t taken the ditch, we’d probably all be dead.”

  “Nobody wants to harm a child, Peter. No sane person, anyway. I believe she was counting on that. And she was right.”

  Peter turned away from him and sat on the foot of the bed, trying to clear his mind. His first instinct was to call the police; it was the obvious—and sane—thing to do. Let them handle it. There was more at stake here than Roger’s son, who, as much as Peter hated to admit it, was probably already dead. There was also Graham Cade, another innocent child who was almost certainly still alive. And Peter’s take on the stunt Maggie Dolan had pulled with the boy on the highway was very different from Roger’s. It was his belief that in that moment, the woman’s feelings had been much like his own on the day David died, the woman thinking, If we can’t live together then we’ll die together, her love for her son that deep. And he was far more worried about Roger going in there hotheaded than he was about the police. If Graham Cade ended up hurt or dead because of any action Peter was responsible for or condoned, he would never forgive himself.

  He looked at Roger and said, “Can you give me a few minutes?” Roger was actually vibrating, his knuckles bone white, his nostrils flaring like those of a race horse. He looked at his watch. “What for?”

  “To decide,” Peter said, standing. “I’m going to go outside, sit somewhere quiet for a few minutes and think this all through, okay? I want to do what’s best for everyone. Maybe it’s the nature of the work I do, but I can’t rush into things, Roger, not when they matter this much.”

  The man looked ready to explode; but he said, “Alright,” and his shoulders sagged a little, some of the tension leaking out of him. He said, “I’ll wait for you here.” But something had changed in his eyes: the beseeching in them had vanished; now there was only menace. He said, “But I’m asking you, Peter—as a friend—don’t call the cops without talking to me first.”

  Peter said, “I won’t,” and opened the door. As he closed it behind him, he saw Roger pick up the map off the bed, the one he’d used to find the Dolan farm.

  * * *

  Graham smelled bacon cooking and his tummy groaned under the covers, that empty feeling squirming around inside him. He sat up in bed and swung his legs over the side, sliding off the edge to the cool linoleum floor. He took a step toward the dresser, but he felt dizzy and had to lean against the bed until the sensation passed. He had a headache now and his ribs hurt from throwing up.

  When his head stopped spinning, he slipped out of his jammies and put on the clothes the woman had left for him, the stiff new jeans hurting as he slid them over the needle hole in his leg. There were no socks or shoes, so he folded his jammies on the pillow and pulled the covers up, making the bed the way his mother had taught him.

  Then he went into the hall in his bare feet, following that sweet smell of bacon. The floor out here was made of wood, smooth gray boards that squeaked when he stepped on them, and the raw plaster walls were painted yellow. The sun was coming up now, its warm light spilling into the room next to Graham’s, making the big wooden dresser in there seem to glow.

  Graham thought, Her room, and hurried past.

  He had to pee really bad, but there was a third room, beside the bathroom at the end of the hall. The door to that room was closed and Graham heard a sound in there, a cough, maybe...or a growl. The sound frightened him and he kept on walking until he got to the top of the stairs. Then he paused, gazing down the steep gray steps to another linoleum floor and a door beyond that, thinking about something he’d half-seen on the dresser in the woman’s room. He froze there a moment, torn between his curiosity and his desire to get away from whatever was behind that closed door, whatever had made that sound.

  Then, very quietly, he tip-toed back along the hall, past the bathroom and that scary closed door—no sound from in there now—to the woman’s room.

  Standing in the doorway with the staircase railing behind him, he thought he could hear the bacon sizzling in its pan down there, and the woman softly singing, a happy sound, a harmless sound.

  He took a breath and scooted into the room, his feet all sweaty, leaving shiny footprints on the floor. There was an oval-shaped mat beside the bed and he stopped for a moment to stand on it, rubbing the soles of his feet on its nubby surface. His eyes found the thing on the dresser he’d noticed before—a picture in a wooden frame the same brown color as the dresser—and what really confused him about the picture was that he was in it, smiling in the arms of the woman downstairs, his curly blond hair lit up by the sun, a Band-Aid on one bare knee. The woman was thin in the picture and her dark hair was short, almost like a man’s...but it was her. Those were her eyes.

  Graham felt dizzy again, his heart thumping hard in his chest. Going on tip-toes, he moved closer to the picture and picked it up, looking closely at it now, wondering why he couldn’t remember. He knew about twins, knew he didn’t have one, so th
e boy in the picture must be him.

  So why couldn’t he remember?

  A raised voice behind him said, “Ma?” and Graham spun to face its source, the picture slipping through his fingers to the floor, the glass shattering at his feet.

  There was a tall, skinny boy standing in the doorway, nearly naked in a pair of baggy underwear that looked dirty, a grubby fist screwed into one sleepy eye. He had a chain around his neck with two shiny pieces of metal on it Graham knew were dog tags, like the ones on the soldiers in his brother’s X-Box games.

  Now the boy hollered, “Ma, Clayton busted your pitcher,” and Graham heard the woman coming up the stairs, her feet making loud booms against the risers, and Graham felt something warm squirt out of him. He heard the woman say, “For God’s sake, Aaron, go put some clothes on,” then she was staring in at Graham, her eyes as round as saucers, and now she turned on the boy and slapped him hard on the back of the head. “See what you did?” she said, slapping him again. “You scared your baby brother and he wet himself. Now go on, get yourself dressed and stay in your room till I tell you otherwise, hear?”

  The boy said, “Yes, Ma,” and thumped off down the hall.

  Graham looked down at himself and saw that he really had peed his pants. His eyes filled with tears and now the woman was coming toward him. Afraid she was going to slap him too, he cringed and said he was sorry; but then she lifted him up and hugged him, not minding that his new jeans were all wet. “Thank God you didn’t cut your precious little feet,” she said, carrying him into the bathroom now, saying, “Let’s get you cleaned up.” Saying, “You saw the picture, huh,” then sitting him on the toilet seat and turning on the water in the tub, testing it with her fingers the way his mommy did. “I wanted to wait till later to talk to you about this,” she said, “but I guess now’s as good a time as any.” She knelt in front of him on the bathroom floor and unbuttoned his shirt. “You go ahead and get yourself in the tub like a good big boy,” she said. Then she was standing, telling him she’d be right back.