The Boys of Summer

by Richard Cox

  “I watched you guys earlier. When you were drinking alcohol. You burned the house down to hide the damage you did.”

  “So you were spying on us.”

  “I was trying to do what you guys asked. I was trying to be part of your club.”

  The voice in Adam’s head was growing louder. It was explaining in crude language how the selfish little brat wanted something from them. The voice was saying things like the little fucker is trying to EXTORT you, force you into making him a member of the club, the little COCKSUCKER.

  “I won’t tell anyone,” Joe said. “If you make me part of the club, I won’t be able to tell, because then I would get in trouble, too. Since I was there and all.”

  On the surface this sounded like a great plan, but Adam feared it would never work. The only way to keep something secret was to never tell anyone. Joe was asking for club membership now, but what would stop him from asking for more favors later? He will keep asking and in the end he will TELL ON YOU, ANYWAY. He has NOTHING to lose while you have EVERYTHING.

  The problem was there was no good way to stop Joe from telling whoever he felt like telling. There were only ugly ways.

  “All right,” Adam said. “Let me talk to the other guys. I’m sure they’ll agree. So what you should do is meet us here, at the fort, at two o’clock tonight. That way we can initiate you.”

  Joe beamed like the sun. “Initiation! Cool. I can’t wait!”

  Adam went home and all evening his mom and dad talked about the fire, and all evening he heard the voice reaffirming his plan. The voice became so loud that he could barely hear his parents when they got into a fight about who was spending more money and whose fault it was they couldn’t pay the mortgage and how unlucky it had been that it wasn’t their house that burned down.

  Finally, two in the morning arrived, and the stars were so pure and bright that Adam felt he could almost touch them. Crickets screeched and owls hooted and the voice in his head explained how to silence Joe Henreid. The idea was so horrific and described in such intricate detail that it could not possibly have come from Adam’s own mind, so it seemed there really was a voice offstage somewhere, directing him. All Adam had to do was follow instructions and the story could go on.

  After a time, Joe crept into the trees, and Adam snuck up behind him with a rope.

  He wrapped this rope around Joe’s neck. Pulled it tight and held it firmly.

  Joe kicked. Choked. Clawed at Adam’s face.

  But eventually he stopped moving.

  Per instructions, Adam dumped Joe into a wheelbarrow and pushed him through the woods until they emerged by the west end of Shady Lane. The street was new and only a few houses had been built, so no one saw him. He wheeled Joe to a lot that had just been graded, that was waiting for the concrete foundation to be poured. The dirt was easy to dig up. He made a hole three or four feet deep and dropped Joe into it. Adam also threw in the rope so it couldn’t be used later to obtain forensic evidence. Then he shoveled dirt on top of Joe, made the grade smooth again, and any leftover dirt he tossed into the wheelbarrow. He dumped this extra soil near some other piles of moved dirt. Later, of course, he would wash out the wheelbarrow.

  The stars overhead were brighter than Adam had ever seen. He imagined each star was a person in another world watching him. Judging him.

  Any day now, concrete would be poured over the burial site. Soon after that a house would be built on this foundation, and probably no one would ever think to look for Joe there. With no body, the police would be unable to say for sure that the kid was even dead. It would be the perfect crime, the fire would remain their secret, and Adam’s life would proceed as it had been written.

  Except for one little problem.

  When he was done burying the body, when he was ready to walk away, Adam heard something in the dirt.

  A voice calling to him. Yelling for him. Screaming for him.

  He had no idea what to do. What if Joe clawed his way out of the hole?

  Adam stood there, uncertain. Finally he walked away, through the woods, all the way back home.

  But he could still hear Joe’s voice.

  The next day Adam returned to the graded lot. Construction workers were already there and he was mortified: What if they had found the body?

  But the men were already pouring concrete, which should have made everything okay, but it didn’t. Because Adam could still hear Joe screaming. He didn’t understand why the workers couldn’t hear it, because Adam could, loud and clear. He thought of the tornado and how it had stripped his house to the foundation, and there seemed to be a kind of symmetry involved, it couldn’t be a coincidence, all these slabs of concrete. The only answer he could think of was the director had arranged things this way because it made for a better story.

  That night, as Adam lay in bed, unable to sleep, he wondered what it was like offstage, where the director lived. He wondered what made that world different than his.

  What about the director himself? Was he being directed by some more distant director even further offstage?

  And if so, who was directing him?

  PART EIGHT

  June 2, 2008

  ZONE FORECAST PRODUCT

  NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NORMAN OK

  TXZ086-022200-

  WICHITA-

  INCLUDING THE CITIES OF ... WICHITA FALLS

  814 AM CDT MON JUNE 2 2008

  ... TORNADO WATCH IN EFFECT FROM 930 AM UNTIL 300 PM CDT ...

  .TODAY ... MOSTLY CLOUDY WITH WIDESPREAD THUNDERSTORMS. STORMS LIKELY SEVERE, WITH DAMAGING WINDS, LARGE HAIL, AND STRONG TORNADOES POSSIBLE. HIGH IN THE MID 80S WITH TEMPERATURES FALLING THROUGHOUT THE AFTERNOON. WINDS SW 25-35 MPH EXCEPT HIGHER IN THUNDERSTORMS. CHANCE OF RAIN 90 PERCENT.

  .TONIGHT ... CLOUDY AND TURNING COOLER. LOW AROUND 45. WINDS NW 25-35 MPH. CHANCE OF RAIN 20 PERCENT.

  .TUESDAY ... PARTLY CLOUDY. HIGH IN THE UPPER 60S. NW WINDS 10-15 MPH.

  .WEDNESDAY ... MOSTLY SUNNY AND WARMER. HIGH IN THE UPPER 70S. WINDS LIGHT AND VARIABLE.

  .THURSDAY ... SUNNY AND MILD. HIGH IN THE LOWER 80S.

  ... TORNADO WATCH IN EFFECT MONDAY FROM 930 AM UNTIL 300 PM CDT ...

  ... THIS IS A PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION ...

  A CLASSIC TORNADO OUTBREAK SETUP IS DEVELOPING ACROSS NORTHWEST TX AND SOUTHWESTERN OK AS DISCRETE TORNADIC SUPERCELLS APPEAR LIKELY THIS MORNING AND EARLY AFTERNOON. STRONG LOW LEVEL AND DEEP LAYER VERTICAL SHEAR ... COMBINED WITH A MOIST AND UNSTABLE AIR MASS ... WILL POSE A DANGEROUS RISK OF STRONG/ VIOLENT AND POTENTIALLY LONG-TRACK TORNADOES.

  HAIL TO 5 INCHES IN DIAMETER ... THUNDERSTORM WIND GUSTS TO 100 MPH ... AND DANGEROUS LIGHTNING ARE ALSO POSSIBLE IN THE WATCH AREA.

  80

  Gholson was at his desk, waiting for his visitors to arrive. He’d called Crane about an hour ago, who promised to show up at the station this morning with Clark and Ms. Ulbrecht in tow. Adam Altman was in custody after having been caught at the site of last night’s house fire.

  Altman refused to answer questions, and in fact the only time he spoke was when he asked to talk to Crane. He did not specify what he planned to say, but at this point Gholson would take any steps necessary to understand the mystery of what was happening in this town. He was no longer directing a law enforcement investigation. He was looking for a way, if such a thing was possible, to recover his wife.

  The words Sally had spoken yesterday, the fires and crimes of the past week—Gholson was sure it was all related somehow. But was he looking for patterns that weren’t really there? Maybe his wife was wrong and nothing special would happen today. Perhaps weeks or months from now he would wonder if she had really spoken at all. But who could examine the strange circumstances surrounding this case—the song lyrics, the sudden onset of arson events, the bizarre behavior of Altman at the scene of last night’s fire—and not expect something extraordinary to happen?

  Crane and Ms. Ulbrecht arrived together a little before ten. Clark was not with them.

>   “Thanks for coming on such short notice,” Gholson said to them. “Is Mr. Clark not coming?”

  “He didn’t answer his phone or the door of his hotel room,” Crane said. “He had a few drinks last night so he might be sleeping it off.”

  “A few hundred,” Ms. Ulbrecht joked.

  “Well, it’s too bad he couldn’t make it,” Gholson said. “Your friend Mr. Altman threw us a curve ball this morning.”

  “What exactly happened?” Crane asked. “Has he said anything since you brought him in?”

  “Nothing except when he asked to speak to you. And as I said on the phone, we believe he burned down a residence in Tanglewood last night. We found him there later, after the fire crews had left, apparently trying to dig something out of the foundation. He was using an electric breaking hammer.”

  “Why would he do that?” Crane asked.

  “I’m hoping we’ll find out when you talk to him. Why don’t we go do that now?”

  He led them down a long hallway and into a room with no window. Altman’s hair was pushed back from his head and speckled with black flakes of soot. He was wearing a T-shirt that may have once been white but was now streaked with stains of gray. His eyes appeared to be looking at something that wasn’t in the room with them, and they barely moved. They could have been glass.

  “Adam,” Crane said. “What happened, man?”

  No response.

  “Adam?” Crane asked again.

  “He was there to help us,” Altman said.

  “Who was where?”

  “You know. You saw him. Joe Henreid.”

  “What?” said Crane. “What does any of this have to do with Joe?”

  “Don’t play dumb. We all know that kid was in the house with us. He showed up out of nowhere and we freaked.”

  Crane seemed to consider his response. He glanced at Ms. Ulbrecht and then at Gholson.

  “Okay,” Crane finally said. “So Joe was there. But his parents still found his clothes the next day. The ones that smelled of gasoline. He didn’t die in the house.”

  “Yeah, but he would eventually have told someone what we did.”

  “So you boys have been lying to me,” Gholson said. “Joe Henreid didn’t set any fire when you were kids.”

  “Yes,” Crane admitted. “We burned down the house. Joe showed up in the middle of it and we had no idea why he was there.”

  “He wanted to be in our club,” Altman explained. “He followed us around and saw us destroy the inside of that house. When we decided to come back that night and burn it down, he showed up with gasoline to help us.”

  Gholson looked separately at both of his visitors. Crane appeared stricken. Ms. Ulbrecht looked confused. Altman was still staring into space, his expression no different than when he had first arrived at the station hours ago.

  Crane said, “Adam, please tell me you didn’t hurt Joe because you thought he would tell on us. All that poor kid did was show up at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Altman’s voice was rote, almost robotic, as if someone had programmed him to paint the story by numbers. He turned his head in Crane’s general direction but still didn’t make eye contact.

  “I saw him in the trees the next day. He promised not to tell anyone what we did if we let him into the club. So I agreed.”

  In less than a minute, Altman described how he lured Joe into the forest that night, strangled him, and buried him on a graded residential lot. Halfway through the story, Crane put his hand over his mouth. Ms. Ulbrecht wouldn’t even look at him.

  It should have been startling for a case that bothered Gholson for so many years to be solved in seconds, that his working hypothesis on what happened to Joe Henreid was almost exactly what had transpired. But by now nothing surprised him. Every related event that had occurred since the moment Gholson received the first arson call on Monday had simply been a step in the direction of a final outcome that felt moments away. Like scenes in a movie, each event had pushed the plot forward toward an inevitable conclusion. The only questions left were to determine what the ending was, when it would come, and if he could find a way to get back to Sally.

  Altman said, “You think I regret killing him? I don’t. Because there is no point to anything. For twenty years I’ve tried to deny it. I’ve pretended like there was a god out there watching over me, over everything, that my actions on earth would grant me access to Heaven or banish me to Hell. But I’m thirty-eight years old and I’ve barely lived any life at all. The only actions that could be used to judge me are terrible ones. And now that we’ve reached the end, the only thing left is for me to explain things you should already know.”

  “Adam,” Crane said. “Just shut up already. You’re not making sense. You shouldn’t say another word until you call an attorney.”

  “I can still get the death penalty, right? I can be tried as an adult? I strangled an eleven-year-old kid.”

  “Adam!”

  In any other interrogation, Gholson would have assumed a far more directive role than this. But in this case he was content to sit back and consume information until he knew, hopefully, what to do about his wife.

  “There’s a storm coming,” Altman said. “You all know this. Even the detective knows.”

  “Like a tornado?” Ms. Ulbrecht asked.

  “Not just a tornado,” Altman answered. “The end of the world.”

  Gholson wasn’t sure how to proceed. He required more information to act on Sally’s behalf and yet didn’t know what questions to ask. Or to whom. But his mind was fixated on something Altman had just said, something that seemed to capture how he felt now, how he had perhaps always felt.

  I’m thirty-eight years old and I’ve barely lived any life at all.

  He could sense the reality behind this statement and it was terrible. Unspeakable.

  “Mr. Altman,” he said. “We know you burned down the house in Tanglewood last night. But what about the other fires last week? Did you set those, too? Did you have an accomplice?”

  “I had nothing to do with those events. But I think those two know who did.”

  He gestured in the direction of Crane and Ms. Ulbrecht.

  “You guys found Todd’s son, isn’t that right?” Altman said. “You think he’s the one who burned up your houses?”

  Gholson looked at Crane.

  “We called you about this yesterday,” said Crane.

  “Who called me?”

  “David, Alicia, and I. After we left Windthorst. You didn’t answer so we left a voicemail.”

  “Are you sure you left it with me?” Gholson said.

  Crane looked at Ms. Ulbrecht and then back at Gholson.

  “Actually,” he said, “David placed the call. So you didn’t receive any message?”

  Sally had mentioned a kid. She’d warned Gholson not to let someone take him away from Wichita Falls. Who might do that? Someone who didn’t live here in the first place? Someone with the resources to extract him without leaving a trace?

  “Where did you say Mr. Clark was?” he asked Crane.

  “We assume he’s back at the hotel.”

  Gholson approached Crane and lowered his voice.

  “Let’s talk outside,” he said. “I need to understand exactly what happened when you talked to this kid. I have a feeling Mr. Clark might—”

  “You don’t have to be so covert,” Altman said.

  Gholson turned around and saw the suspect was finally looking directly at him.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Altman said. “What if you could see stock prices instead of hear music lyrics? How do you think that would turn out for David? And for the rest of us?”

  81

  The midmorning sky was a hot, hazy blue, and the air was so humid it had taken on a physical quality you could almost reach out and touch. David, who years ago had become accustomed to the temperate climate of the California coast, was suffering in a way he wouldn’t have believed possible for a conscious human being. The a
mount of alcohol he had consumed over the past couple of days, combined with a gross deficiency of sleep, had reduced him to a state barely above pure survival, and this was timing of the worst kind. If there was any day when he required full access to his mental and physical resources, today was it.

  It was a huge risk, what he was planning to do with Thomas. Despite the kid’s assertion that he would be waiting for David, there was still a chance the mother would complicate matters. But the potential reward for a successful extraction was almost without measure, and even Thomas himself seemed to understand this. So they had to try.

  Once David took possession of the kid, even if the mother was unaware of this or neutralized somehow, David knew law enforcement could eventually become involved. If anyone saw or suspected foul play, an AMBER alert might be issued, and there was also the problem of Jonathan and Alicia deducing his intentions. Right now they were both with the detective, and if any or all of them suspected where he was and what he was doing, David might find the whole police force waiting for him at the airport. That was why he had called his Gulfstream pilot first thing and ordered him to depart Wichita Falls immediately. Hopefully they would all believe David had been on that plane. The plan now was to drive to a smaller airport near Thomas’ house, where David’s friend, Jim Thain, promised to deliver a jet before noon. Apparently someone in Houston owed the guy a favor.

  Once David was in the air, and specifically once he was back in California, he could hide Thomas somewhere. As long as the mother wasn’t home when he picked up her son, there would be no proof of what had happened. David had no prior criminal history of any kind, and he had always generously supported California law enforcement. The only possible reason Gholson or anyone could give for David taking the child was based on an idea no sane person would take seriously. If he could just get out of Wichita Falls safely, he would probably be in the clear for good.

  There was a part of him, hidden somewhere in the blinding haze of his hangover, that was asking the pesky question of why he was bothering with all this. Yes, he might make more money, a lot more, but what, exactly, would he do with it? Like Meredith had been happy to point out, David had fathered no children who could inherit his fortune, and he couldn’t spend the money he’d already earned without catastrophically wasting it. He supposed the answer was encoded in his character. All life on Earth was programmed to survive, and humans in particular had learned to maximize this instinct in different and intelligent ways, but David and men like him had learned to leverage their incredible achievements to generate runaway success. It was not in his nature to earn only the amount needed to survive and share the rest. He was a doer, a decider, a creator. He was a king.