The Boy in the Woods

by Carter Wilson

  Why the hell would this man have photos of old stuffed animals on display?

  Tommy straightened just as Stykes returned with two Buds, handing one to Tommy. Tommy sized up the man in front of him, turning him immediately into a character in one of his books. Alan Stykes was the man who never had too many dreams, and when he made it into the police academy at a young age he pretty much realized it was the best he was ever going to do, so he clung to the job like a piece of driftwood in the middle of the open sea. Married young, was a decent husband to a plain-looking woman, grieved hard and long at her death, and made his way about life doing the same thing he’d done for decades: making sure the good folks of Lind Falls slept well at night, all the while committing a slow suicide through nicotine and solitude.

  The beer had already been opened and Tommy took a sip. Warm. Tommy spied an ancient-looking golf club in the corner of the room.

  ‘You a golfer, Alan?’

  ‘Nope.’ Stykes smiled, as if it was a joke.

  Tommy wanted to ask why he had a golf club if he didn’t golf, but instinct told him to let it go.

  ‘So you’ve been a cop all this time?’

  ‘Deputy sheriff, actually. Going on thirty-five years now.’

  ‘I’m sure Lind Falls appreciates your commitment.’

  ‘Oh, I believe so, Tommy. I believe so.’ Stykes walked into a small living room and let his weight collapse into a faded brown recliner with duct tape along the sides. Panzer followed suit, resting at her owner’s feet. Tommy moved a newspaper – dated three weeks earlier – off a loveseat and sat across from his host.

  ‘But you’re the big celebrity around here, Tommy. I always hear your name. You’ve done good for yourself.’ Stykes raised his beer and tipped his head.

  ‘Thanks, Alan. I’d appreciate you keeping my visit to Lind Falls on the down-low, though.’ Jesus, Tommy thought. Did you just say down-low? You’ve never said that in your life. ‘Kind of helps the creative process to keep my research quiet.’

  ‘Well, don’t you worry about me. I’m a private man myself and I haven’t even mentioned you to anyone.’ His face then settled into the placid stillness of a mountain lake and he seemed to look distantly through Tommy. ‘No one knows you’re here tonight, Tommy. No one.’

  Tommy paused. That was an odd thing to say. ‘Thanks, Alan.’

  Stykes leaned forward and cracked a smile. ‘Now tell me, Tommy. What were you really doing out there today? Because I’ll tell you what, I’ve seen a lot of weird shit in this town and that’s right up there with the weirdest. I mean, what was that business with the doll? That is, if you don’t mind me askin’.’

  Tommy studied Stykes’s face and remembered it from all those years ago, asking simple questions that felt loaded with the weight of a mountain. Investigating questions.

  ‘It’s kind of a … treasure hunt,’ Tommy said.

  ‘Treasure hunt?’

  ‘Has to do with my next book.’

  ‘The Blood of the Young,’ Stykes said. ‘I read the first chapter.’

  ‘I’m flattered.’

  ‘That killing. Of that little boy. You set that in Oregon.’

  ‘I did. Right here, in fact.’

  ‘Now why would you do that?’

  Tommy felt his breathing quicken.

  ‘I grew up here. I know those woods. Makes it easier to write about.’

  Stykes absorbed this and leaned back in his chair. ‘Yeah, I suppose it would at that.’ He studied the label of his beer as if it was different than the thousands of identical ones he’d likely seen in his lifetime. ‘I thought maybe your book had to do with Rade Baristow. Or the three other kids.’

  Tommy froze and dropped his gaze to the floor, just as he had done thirty years earlier with this man. Did Stykes know something? Was this whole dinner a fucking setup to get him to confess to the murder?

  Tommy hated that Stykes could probably spot a liar. ‘What makes you say that, Alan?’

  ‘Well, we had four missin’ kids in this tiny town, and you wrote about a boy the same age as Rade Baristow gettin’ cheesecaked with a rock. You set the book at that same time as when he disappeared. The connection just kinda came to me after that.’

  Tommy nodded and tried his best to mix honesty and bullshit in a combination that would pass a taste test. ‘I won’t lie that Rade came to mind a bit. Guess I was always disturbed by his disappearance.’

  ‘Not solving those cases will forever make me feel like I’ve failed in my job as an officer of the peace.’

  Tommy nodded. ‘I never even heard about the other three. How is that possible?’

  ‘Well, because you got the fuck outta Dodge and never looked back.’ Stykes barely raised his beer in a half-hearted salute. ‘Good for you, is what I say. ’Sides, those other three … well, the kids were a bit older, and most folks thought they were all runaways. Delinquents for the most part. Got a lot of press locally but not so much outside, I expect.’

  ‘Boys or girls?’

  ‘All boys. Disappeared in ninety, ninety-two, and ninety-seven. None after that.’

  Pretty big spread in time, Tommy thought. If Elizabeth had killed them all, that was a slow pace given how many she currently claims to have murdered. Or maybe she would just come back to Lind Falls from time to time to get one in? None of it seemed to follow a pattern, but Tommy had so little information finding a pattern would be nearly impossible.

  ‘Well, I hope they were all runaways and not … something else.’

  ‘Amen, Tommy. But hope is for country singers and religious folk, Tommy. And I ain’t either.’

  Tommy wanted the questions to stop, but he figured Stykes might keep drilling at him until Tommy sprung some kind of leak. There was no way he could stay for dinner. It would be hell, if not worse. He needed to tell Stykes he was sick, but he had to go use the bathroom first at least, so his excuse for departure seemed plausible.

  ‘Can you tell me where your bathroom is, Alan?’

  ‘Sure thing, buddy.’ He pointed to the solitary corridor the house seemed to contain. ‘Just down the hall to the right.’

  Tommy rubbed his stomach as he stood, as if signaling to Stykes that all was not right down there.

  He turned into the corridor, leaving Stykes’s gaze. He already felt better just not being in the line of sight of the cop. Stykes was a fucking cop after all, and Tommy felt the guilt draped over him, visible for all to see. He felt like he had walked into some kind of sting operation, and by the time stew was served, Tommy would be confessing.

  Why did I even come here? What was I thinking?

  The voice of reason, a small little fellow with decreasing job responsibilities, answered in a weak voice.

  Because if you had turned down the nice man’s offer of dinner, he might have told the whole town what you were doing. You’re just saving your ass, Tommy, so just play it cool and everything will go fine. You’ll see.

  Tommy wasn’t so sure. He wanted to leave, and leave now. But he also suspected Stykes wasn’t buying the whole upset stomach routine.

  He found the bathroom, which was just before the end of the hallway, where a door stood half-open, revealing a room with an unmade bed and a small pile of clothes on the floor. Master bedroom, Tommy thought, thinking the term more grandiose than the room warranted. The lights were on.

  The art on the wall above the bed caught Tommy’s eye, not because it was particularly stunning or absorbing, but rather because it was the only thing on any wall Tommy had noticed since he’d first walked in.

  He stopped in front of the bathroom and stared at the wall in Stykes’s bedroom. There were four small framed prints there, each stuck in a simple black frame, the kind you’d buy at Target for twelve bucks. Together, the prints formed a loose square on the wall.

  They were photos. Landscapes, Tommy thought. Trees. Lots of trees.

  He began to step into the bathroom but something nagged at him, telling him to take a closer look at what wa
s hanging on Stykes’s bedroom wall. There was something familiar about those photos, wasn’t there? Familiar, but in an unsettling way, like suddenly remembering a piece of a recurring childhood nightmare.

  Tommy looked back down the hall. He could hear Stykes humming in the other room, a low, nostalgic hum of some tune that sounded vaguely like a military march.

  Tommy pushed the door open fully and stepped into the bedroom. It only took one more step toward the wall for him to realize what one of the pictures was. The photo on the upper left. The first photo.

  It was a picture of the woods he’d been in just earlier that day. And it wasn’t just the same woods. The photo showed the exact spot where Tommy had been digging. Elizabeth’s voice whispered in his mind.

  Rade Baristow is buried four feet beneath the dead elm tree, thirty paces west of the clearing in the woods behind the Jackson Creek subdivision in Lind Falls, Oregon.

  Tommy tried to process what he was looking at.

  A photo of Rade Baristow’s grave is hanging on the wall of Alan Stykes’s bedroom, he told himself. At least his grave before the body was moved.

  Tommy took another step closer, so now he was just a few feet away from the wall. The photo was behind dusty glass, but it looked old. It wasn’t some shiny, glossy art print, this was an old 35 mm photo that had been enlarged. Was it thirty years old?

  Tommy’s stomach twisted.

  Get the hell out of there.

  But he couldn’t. He couldn’t move at all. All Tommy could do was stare at the photo and try his best to think of any reason that Alan Stykes wasn’t the Watcher from the day Rade died.

  See anyone strange around here lately?

  Tommy forced his gaze to the other three photos. They were also landscape shots of woods. Tommy didn’t recognize any of the exact locations, but they were similar enough to the first photo that he was fairly certain they were all taken in Lind Falls.

  Three other boys had gone missing.

  Three more photos.

  Elizabeth and Stykes killed them all. And these photos were Stykes’s trophies. He slept beneath their graves every night.

  Fresh cigarette smoke wafted past his nose.

  ‘You like them?’

  Tommy jumped. Stykes was standing just a few feet behind him in the doorway to the bedroom. He held a lit cigarette between the fingers of his meaty right hand, its long ash threatening to plummet to the floor.

  ‘Jesus, Alan, you startled me.’

  ‘Didn’t mean to.’

  No, not at all, Tommy thought.

  Stykes’s hulking frame completely blocked Tommy’s exit from the room.

  ‘Took those myself,’ he said. ‘Right around here.’

  Tommy tried to calm himself, but knew his face must be giving his real emotion away. ‘That so?’

  ‘Yup. That one there is where you were today, matter of fact.’

  Tommy refused to turn and look at the photo. He didn’t want his back to this man. ‘Thought it looked familiar,’ he said.

  ‘Kind of a weird coincidence, don’t ya think?’ Stykes took a drag on his cigarette and the ash finally fell, scattering about the floor. He exhaled his smoke directly at Tommy.

  ‘It certainly is.’ I’m going to die here, Tommy thought. In this bedroom. And no one knows where the hell I am.

  And then Tommy thought of something that hadn’t yet occurred to him. I can take this guy, he thought. I might be smaller, but I’m younger and stronger. I know how to fight. I’m in good shape. He’s just an old cop who probably hasn’t had a real physical challenge in decades. This guy might be a killer, but I’ll bet he’s not expecting me to put up a real defense.

  Tommy subtly shifted his right foot back and assumed a defensive posture. And then he decided to ask a question.

  ‘These photos have some kind of meaning for you, Alan?’

  Tommy saw in Alan Stykes’s face a man calculating, best as someone like Alan Stykes could calculate. Weighing what to do. If Stykes was the Watcher (and how could he not be?), he must have been wondering why Tommy came back to exhume the body. And was he even surprised to see there was only a doll in the ground? No. Of course not. Elizabeth must still be in contact with him. She must have told Stykes what she thought Tommy was coming back to Lind Falls to do. It was probably Stykes who had moved Rade’s remains.

  And if he was truly still working with Elizabeth, he would have to know that she didn’t want Tommy harmed. Yet.

  The calculation became simple at that point, Tommy figured. If he was right, there wasn’t anything Stykes could do, and there wasn’t anything Tommy could do. Stalemate.

  ‘Nope,’ Stykes said. ‘Nothing special. Just kinda liked the look of those places.’

  Stykes remained in the doorway.

  ‘Why did you invite me over here tonight, Alan?’

  Stykes’s face softened, just enough to make him look suddenly very tired. ‘I wanted to see what you turned into,’ he said. ‘To see if … well, ya know.’

  ‘To see if what?’

  Stykes’s large eyes widened, growing sad. ‘To see if you became like me.’

  Tommy said nothing in response, as if even denying he was at all like Stykes would still be some kind of admission of guilt.

  ‘I’m going to go now, Alan. OK?’

  Stykes nodded. After a few seconds, he stepped back from the doorway. Tommy braced himself as he slid past the man in the hallway, but Stykes did not pounce. He didn’t even move. He just stood there, a sad old man who had killed three children, and Tommy had to figure out what to do about that.

  Stykes called out as Tommy reached the front door.

  ‘Careful not to let the dog out. She wouldn’t survive one damn night out there on her own.’

  THIRTY-ONE

  The smell woke him up.

  Tommy stirred. The faint headache that had clung to his brain like a barnacle all night had slipped away. He smelled flowers. Faint. He almost wondered if he imagined it, and then he opened his eyes.

  A light was on in the motel room. At the table, near the door.

  Elizabeth was sitting in the chair at the table, looking at Tommy’s laptop.

  Tommy froze, but it was too late. She knew he was awake.

  ‘Her face was smooth and white,’ she read from the screen, ‘surprisingly wrinkle-free. Her shoulders were wide, accentuating her perfect posture and her breasts, even more full and round than he had remembered.’

  She looked over to Tommy. ‘Somebody thinks I’m hot,’ she said in a sing-song voice.

  Tommy sat up in bed, suddenly aware of his naked upper torso. ‘How’d you get in here?’

  She looked at the cheap motel door, which didn’t even have a deadbolt. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘If you were staying in a Westin, I’d be hanging out in the lobby. But a piece-of-shit place like this? No easier lock in the world to pick.’ She ran her gaze over his body. ‘You’re in pretty good condition yourself, Tommy. Yummy.’

  ‘What the hell do you want?’

  ‘You spend a lot of time asking that.’

  ‘I think I’m entitled.’ Tommy glanced at the clock. Just after four in the morning. After coming back from Stykes’s house, he’d spent some time researching the other child disappearances in Lind Falls before succumbing to a fractured sleep.

  Elizabeth stood, her long hair spilling over the crisp folds of a black leather trench coat. She was well dressed as always, Tommy thought. Just like SS officers always were.

  ‘You’re the expert. What do you think I want?’

  ‘I think you want to fuck with me.’

  She smiled. ‘Drop the “with”.’

  Elizabeth unbuckled the belt of her trench coat and left the coat to open by itself. It didn’t reveal much, but enough to see she was naked underneath.

  He wasn’t tempted by Elizabeth, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t excited. And he didn’t want to feel excitement now, but how do you control that? He couldn’t deny that she was, in truth, beautif
ul. Sexy. The visual definition of woman. But she was a killer, and not an interesting, fictionalized assassin for hire, like a character Angelina Jolie would play in a movie. She was a sick fuck who had actually killed innocent children with her own hands and watched their stunned faces as their life seeped out of them.

  Tommy felt a rush to his loins and hated himself for it.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘You sure?’ She cocked her head. ‘It would help you understand my character.’

  ‘You disgust me.’

  ‘Not according to what I just read.’

  ‘Close your coat.’

  She smiled and did just that. ‘Maybe later,’ she said.

  ‘Is that how you do it?’ he asked.

  ‘Do what, Tommy?’

  ‘Your men. Your Watchers. You use sex to lure them in?’

  ‘Sex is used for everything, Tommy. It’s the currency of the universe.’

  ‘You didn’t answer my question.’

  She took a step toward him, the spikes of her stiletto boots plunging into the decades-old motel carpet.

  ‘So now you want to ask me questions? After all this effort spent running from me, are you finally ready to ask me questions, Tommy?’

  ‘I’m not running from you,’ he said. ‘I’m just trying to live my life and you keep showing up.’

  ‘Well, we both know that’s not true. You’re desperately trying to cover up your past, and you’re just digging your grave deeper.’ She pulled a strand of hair back behind her ear. ‘You think you don’t need me, Tommy. You think you don’t want me. But the truth is I’m your muse and you know it. I inspire you.’

  ‘You revolt me.’

  ‘Those aren’t mutually exclusive sensations, Tommy. Everything you have you owe to me. And we’re more alike than you want to admit. The homeless guy in Charleston? A lot of people would have stayed. Waited for the police. Told them the truth.’

  ‘That wasn’t an option,’ Tommy said. ‘You know that.’

  ‘Of course it was an option. It was another calculated risk, just like the rest of what you’re faced with.’

  ‘If you need me, why would you have called nine-one-one and risked me getting picked up by the police?’