The Boy in the Woods

by Carter Wilson

  ‘Tommy, I don’t know what you’re talking about. She wanted me to convince you to come out here. I did that. Now it seems the rest is up to you. Do what she says so we can all move on.’

  ‘And you think she’ll just disappear? Just like that? Thank you very much, I’ll never bother you again?’

  ‘She said she would.’

  Tommy laughed, but it felt hollow. ‘Mark, I think there’s a possibility none of us will make it through this. Literally and figuratively. I don’t know if her involvement with you is the same as mine, but don’t underestimate her. I’ve spent my profession studying people like her.’

  Mark’s voice was a whisper. ‘There is no one like her.’

  Tommy stepped forward. ‘Mark, don’t get close to her. She’ll destroy you.’

  Mark held his gaze steady. ‘She destroyed me a long time ago, Tommy.’ He reached out and touched Tommy’s arm, and the touch soon become a grab. It wasn’t the grab of a threat, but the grab of a man seeking help. ‘You have to do what she says, Tommy. For both of us. My faith is … tested … when she’s around. I don’t want to be like that. I can’t be like that. Please.’

  ‘What’s happening, Mark? What did she do to you?’

  For once the veneer faded and Tommy saw the face of his old friend. The face of frustration. ‘I’m a weak man, Tommy. I always have been. I’m the man who will end up crushed by a horse. But not you. You have the chance to control the situation here. Just … just do what she says so she goes away. Please.’

  Then Mark’s face returned to its plastic self and he straightened his shoulders and smoothed his coat. ‘I need to go, Tommy. And so do you. Set things right.’

  ‘And when does it end, Mark?’

  Mark studied his friend with detached curiosity. Tommy remembered a similar expression on Elizabeth’s face.

  ‘You could kill her.’

  ‘Jesus, Mark.’

  ‘It’s not like you haven’t thought it, Tommy.’

  ‘Clearly you have. Why don’t you kill her?’

  ‘I’m too high profile. Way too risky.’

  ‘And I’m not?’

  Mark shook his head. ‘Truthfully? I don’t think either of us is capable.’

  Tommy wanted to argue but couldn’t. Mark put a hand on Tommy’s shoulder, and Tommy was suddenly a little boy all over again, being lectured by his father.

  ‘Then it ends when she says it ends,’ Mark said.

  Then Mark turned and walked away, out the front door and to the double-parked black Escalade, where its driver tore off down the street as if the State Senator from South Carolina had sustained a gunshot wound and needed immediate medical attention.

  It would be the last time Tommy would ever see him.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Tommy stared out the window from his first-class seat, through the scratches on the Plexiglas and out to the sky, its vastness consumed by layer on layer of blue, folding on to itself like the forged steel of a Samurai sword.

  In moments of silence like these when the open sky was his only vista, Tommy’s mind often pulled toward thoughts of guilt, like it did now. Guilt for Rade, whose cold, lonely bones remained a mystery to those who desperately wanted nothing more than to find them. Tommy might not have killed Rade, but he had killed the hope of anyone who wanted to know the truth. This guilt filled him when it could, spilling into the fissures in his soul, slowly eroding him as the years disappeared behind him.

  And now there was another body, an anonymous man, homeless but human, who had bled out next to Tommy’s feet. Once again, Tommy hadn’t killed him, yet once again Tommy scrambled to hide the truth.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and reminded himself once more why he allowed these secrets to remain buried. He saw the faces of Evie and Chance, and he tried to imagine what kind of emotion they would possibly feel knowing their daddy had done something very wrong. Wrong enough to be punished. Wrong enough to go to prison. The possibility of going to prison was more than a self-pitying fantasy. It was real.

  After years of researching killers for his book, Tommy knew one thing for sure: the legal system was not to be fucked with. Sure, justice was often served. But Tommy also knew the system pulled innocent men and women deep into its vortex, sucking them down until they simply disappeared beneath all of its noise and weight.

  If Tommy were arrested, his only chance would come from his money. He would have to hire the best lawyers in the country just to attempt to fight the charges of murder (homeless man) and accessory to murder (Rade Baristow). Somehow he’d have to convince a jury he buried a murder weapon solely out of fear and that he had nothing to do with killing the man in Charleston. He’d also have to convince them that, even though he was present at the killing of Rade Baristow, he’d no idea it was going to happen, and only agreed to help bury the body because he was threatened at gunpoint. He would have to plead for mercy. Mark, certainly, would face a similar fate, and the implication of an outspoken Republican politician in the sordid drama would assuredly be masturbation material for the watching eyes of every media outlet imaginable.

  Tommy took a sip of the beer the flight attendant had just handed him. It was warm and bitter.

  The trial would be a media sensation. The rich thriller writer caught up in a story so twisted he was actually making it the subject of one of his own books, certain to become a bestseller. He was planning to get even wealthier on his own crimes, the DA would shout at the jury. Don’t let him escape punishment because of his fame. Instead, send a statement to the world. No one is above justice.

  Best-case scenario was probably five years in minimum security, probation after a couple of years perhaps. And even in the best-case scenario, his children would forever know him as a killer, no matter how much he would try to convince them otherwise. Becky would divorce him. He would lose the only woman he ever loved and the children he loved more than all else. Not to mention his money would be gone, though at that point that hardly seemed to matter. She’d marry someone else – some nice fucking guy who everyone thought was just the kind of man she truly deserved – who would move into his house, and raise his kids.

  Tommy Devereaux would become a shell of the man he was, and he couldn’t let that happen. Despite all the mistakes he had made in his forty-four years, he was a good man, goddamnit, and he would not lose everything he stood for because a crazy woman wanted immortality through his words.

  Which is why Tommy was not flying home. He was flying to Oregon. Back to his hometown. Back to the woods.

  He was going to dig up that body. He was going to dig it up and bury it somewhere else, so at least she didn’t have that evidence. It was the only thing he could do to assume some kind of control. Funny thing was, it didn’t seem like a particularly crazy or horrific idea, though he knew the minute he was standing over the patch of dirt in the woods his whole body would be shaking.

  Don’t think about that now, he told himself. Just try to stay calm.

  He felt his forehead beading with sweat and he wished he’d ordered something stronger.

  Tommy glanced over at the woman sitting next to him. She was about his age, dressed in a business suit, working feverishly on her laptop. A PowerPoint presentation. Lots of bullet points and colors. For all Tommy knew, the woman was insane. Maybe she spent her day climbing the corporate ladder and her nights hacking off the limbs of kittens. Point is, you never knew who anyone really was. Everyone has secrets. Some are just a lot more interesting than others.

  Just focus, he told himself. Don’t try to figure out all the potentially awful outcomes of this next part of your life. Focus on what you can do in the immediate moment, and look out to the future only far enough to avoid the most calamitous of foreseeable events.

  He glanced again at the screen of the woman’s laptop as she was making some kind of fancy pie chart, which was both impressive-looking and achingly dull at the same time. Tommy’s attention shifted to the title she had just typed.

  Most Pro
lific Female Serial Killers

  He read the words before they registered any meaning to him, and just as they did the woman deleted the title and re-typed:

  Most Prolific E-mail Resellers

  Tommy blinked. Had she really just written what he had thought he read?

  He spoke without thinking.

  ‘Did she send you?’ he asked.

  She stopped typing and looked over, a long strand of coffee-brown hair crossing her furrowed brow.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  He pointed at the screen. ‘You just typed in something about female serial killers, knowing I would be watching. Then you changed it.’

  She pushed herself noticeably away from him, exactly what anyone would do if they thought the person on the plane next to them was more than a little bit off. ‘You’re watching me as I work? What the hell is wrong with you?’

  In that instant, from the look in the woman’s eyes, Tommy knew he had miscalculated. This woman had nothing to do with Elizabeth, and what Tommy thought he saw was nothing more than the confluence of stress and lack of sleep pushing his sanity to the brink. In his research into insane people, he had often wondered what it felt like to go crazy. Not be crazy, but the process of becoming so, when there were still fleeting glints of light before fully entering the dark tunnel. He wondered, in fact, if it felt a lot like what he was experiencing now.

  ‘I’m … God. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’

  The consolation was too late. The woman pressed the flight attendant call button on her armrest. Within seconds the first-class attendant came over.

  ‘This man is bothering me,’ the woman said, ‘and I don’t feel comfortable sitting here. You can re-seat either him or myself, but one of us needs to move.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else.’

  The woman refused to look at him, keeping her attention on the flight attendant.

  ‘Now,’ she commanded.

  The attendant kept her lips pursed and her eyes just wide enough to register alarm.

  ‘Mr Devereaux, we have three C available. Maybe it would be best if you moved over, just to … keep everyone happy.’

  She used his name. If the woman picked up on who he was, she’d be telling all her friends what a lunatic the famous author was.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘That’s fine.’ He grabbed his laptop and messenger bag and walked around his row mate. He considered apologizing one last time as he passed by her, but decided against it.

  Tommy settled into his new seat, not bothering to look at his new neighbor for more than a second.

  Jesus, Tommy, get a hold of yourself. Going crazy isn’t going to help you, especially when you need to be more prepared than ever.

  He ran his fingers along the outline of the folded cash in his front pants’ pocket. There were so many things that could go wrong with his plan it seemed almost pointless to be prepared at all, but he had to do what he could. He had taken out enough money back in Charleston to pay for a hotel room and the supplies he would need, but his anonymity would only go so far. He had to fly under his name, and he certainly needed to show ID to rent a car once he got to Oregon. Any detective who wanted to trace Tommy’s general route would easily discover he had gone back to Lind Falls, or at least the vicinity. But Tommy had at least to make sure no one could pinpoint his steps directly to the grave in the woods.

  Moving the body was a desperate move. Only bones were likely left of Rade, and Tommy considered the fact that he wouldn’t even remember exactly where these bones were buried. It was possible that Elizabeth herself had moved the remains years ago, just to be safe. But Tommy had to do something to be in control, because the only other thing he could do was what she told him to do, and Tommy doubted she would ever stop.

  Elizabeth wanted to keep playing the game.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Elizabeth stands still, quiet. She is a perfect statue, her eyes unblinking. In fact, they aren’t human eyes at all. They are the eyes of a doll, plastic brightness and hand-painted happiness. Lifeless.

  She holds a serrated kitchen knife in her right hand. Shiny. New.

  Tommy walks around her, inspecting her as if she were a car he just might want to buy. She does not move, though Tommy knows at any moment the knife could flash.

  But it won’t. Not yet.

  There’s a reason for what you’re doing, he says. He lifts a strand of her hair and feels its natural smoothness, stroking it between his thumb and forefinger. Here, in this place, she is beautiful.

  He looks around at the walls of the empty room. They are all the same, about fifteen feet wide and about infinity high. The floor seems only a surfaceless light that somehow the two of them are able to stand on, as if balanced on pure energy and nothing more.

  There’s a Van Halen song playing, but he doesn’t remember the name. Something about shoes.

  You think I don’t understand, he says. And maybe I don’t. But I know more than you think I do.

  He notices something that was not there on first inspection. On her left rib cage, on the outside of her pristine white blazer, there is a bill feeder, the type you would see in the self check-out line at the grocery store.

  Tommy reaches into his front pocket and finds a single dollar bill, folded once, crisp and sharp. He takes it out and unfolds it.

  It’s not that simple, he tells her. You’re not doing this for money. If you were, you would have already told me.

  He feeds the bill into her. It whizzes and whirrs, sucking the money in greedily.

  She comes alive, but only her mouth moves.

  Money isn’t everything, she says, her voice as plastic as her eyes.

  He looks down at the knife.

  I’ve spent years researching the mind of the female killer, he tells her. She does not shift her lifeless gaze toward him.

  What have you discovered? she asks.

  I think something is wrong with you.

  That’s an understatement.

  No, he says. Something wrong. Something different. You’re being bold. You’re coming out into the open, taking chances. You’re taking greater risks to get your fill. In nature, only wounded animals do that.

  What does that tell you? she asks.

  He considers. It tells me time is important to you.

  Before she answers, the homeless man appears, walking through the wall and into the middle of the room. He is partially flesh and mostly filth, yet Tommy smells nothing. The man drinks from a plain brown bottle, and when he is done a trail of viscous liquid snakes down his chin. He smiles.

  Elizabeth bares her teeth, and with the speed of a car crash, the hand holding the knife lashes out. The man’s throat rips open with video-game violence. Blood floats in the air for a few suspended seconds until showering on to the floor-light, covering it. The room now glows pink.

  The man does not fall. In fact, he is no longer a man.

  He is a boy.

  He is Rade.

  Rade is whole. He is perfect. He is as he should have been.

  Why? Rade asks. Why did you do it?

  I did nothing, Tommy says. She did it. She did it all. She killed you.

  Rade does not listen.

  You were my friend, he says. You said you would take me home.

  It wasn’t me.

  You won’t get away with it, don’t you see? The boy’s eyes are real, glistening with tears. You will have to pay, one way or another.

  The boy disappears, sucked through the walls.

  Elizabeth laughs, but she won’t say why.

  Tommy woke, a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead and the taste of stale tequila in his mouth. The stiletto shaft of a tiny feather poked though the thin, faded fabric of the cheap pillow, scratching his cheek.

  He sat up in bed, trying to remember where he was. It took him nearly ten seconds, and then it all came back.

  Oregon. I’m in Oregon.

  Tommy turned his head and squinted at the ou
tline of the forming day along the edges of the stiff, brown curtains of the motel. Dust motes danced lazily in thin beams of light.

  He pushed the sheets off his body and wondered how long he would have to stay at the Fireside Motel. He had decided to stay a few towns away from Lind Falls and the Fireside Motel was the kind of place that wouldn’t ask to see an ID. He had paid cash for two nights but hoped he would only need to stay one. Tommy opened the curtains and squinted at the parking lot. His rental was the only car in sight. The clouds seemed to have settled in for the day already, which was par for this time of year. The air would be heavy, but it wouldn’t rain. He didn’t even need to check the forecast. Tommy knew every type of Oregon sky there was. It wouldn’t rain.

  His phone rang. Becky.

  ‘Hey, baby,’ he said. He hadn’t told her he was coming to Oregon; for all she knew he was in Charleston until Thursday, and here it was, only Monday, and his plans had completely changed. He couldn’t tell her the truth. He didn’t even want to imagine that conversation, so he chose to say nothing, which in and of itself was just another lie.

  ‘Three more days?’ she asked. No hi or hello or go fuck yourself.

  ‘Yes, Becky. Three more days.’ Unless I get caught moving the remains of a body, in which case it might be a little longer.

  ‘Good. Do you want to talk to the kids?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Evie’s voice bounced through the phone.

  ‘Hi, Dada!’

  And that was all it took. That little voice through the phone, and the world, which had somehow been held back by some massive dam, broke free and slammed into Tommy.

  Tommy reeled and grabbed his chest, certain he was having a heart attack. He started wheezing and choking, trying to suck air in but failing miserably.

  ‘Dada?’

  Tommy disconnected the call, not wanting his daughter to hear anything. If he was dying, he’d be goddamned if his kid hearing it happen would be the last memory of him she ever had.

  He collapsed to his knees and closed his eyes, trying to control his lungs.

  Don’t panic.

  It was the number one rule in the world. The one thing he told his kids to remember no matter the situation. Don’t panic.