by Lisa Bullard
Until somewhere in the back of the crowd, on the other side of the square, a man’s voice called out, “That’s my kid. My kid’s the winner! Hold up there, kiddo—here comes Daddy!”
CHAPTER 14
For just a second I think I really believed that the crowd was going to part and my father was going to come rushing out to help me claim my prize. That some guy dressed in a military uniform like the one I’d seen in the newspaper—somebody with the same eyes as mine—was going to come over to me and—
I didn’t know what I thought. What exactly would back-from-the-dead Daddy do the first time he met me? I didn’t have a clue.
I stood there frozen in place, watching as people got knocked to one side or another because the Daddy Voice was barreling his way forward through the crowd, still yelling out things like, “Hold on, kiddo, I’m coming.”
Except, when the Daddy Voice finally reached the front, I could tell right away that it wasn’t my family reunion that was busting up the bingo fun. The party pooper in this case was a drunk guy who didn’t match up with my pappy’s photo in any way. I heaved in a big breath.
The Daddy Voice staggered into the row of chicken-poop cheerleaders, knocking Hannah Montana sideways so she tripped over the girl beside her, and next thing we knew, there was this tangle of little girls and pompoms thrashing around on the ground, and mothers were running forward and people were hollering and everybody was generally getting in the way of Deputy Dude, who was clearly trying to catch up to the Daddy Voice before he caused any more multi-tween accidents.
Even though it was clear he wasn’t my daddy dearest, the Daddy Voice was still headed straight for me. Or as straight as somebody in his condition could head. And he didn’t look like he was planning to give me a welcome-to-the-village hug when he reached me. Maybe this guy was one of Crazy Carl’s friends? The town loons generally seemed to have it in for me around here.
I suddenly took in the fact that Linnea was as frozen in place as I was, and she was standing directly in front of me. A few more seconds and the Daddy Voice was going to roll right over her on his way to me.
I leaped forward. Somehow I scooped up Linnea and hauled us out of there. I didn’t stop until we were back behind the church building with nobody else in sight.
I set Linnea down and leaned over at the waist, letting my head hang and resting my palms on my knees while I sucked in air. Python Girl wasn’t as light as she looked.
Linnea made this little hiccupping sound, and I turned my head to check her out. Snot streamed down her chin as big round tears rolled out of her eyes.
“Is Daddy gone?” she said.
“Daddy?” I repeated. “You mean—you mean that guy back there was your dad?”
Linnea nodded and wiped her nose on her bare arm.
Great. I’d just rescued the kid from a reunion with her own father.
But that waste case was Linnea’s dad? And Iz’s dad too?
And I thought I had father problems.
I really had no clue what to do next. I wanted to just start walking until I fell off the world, like those explorers used to think would happen if they sailed too close to the edge of the map. But I knew I couldn’t leave Linnea there all alone and dripping snot.
Fortunately, just then Kenny loped around the church and pulled to a stop in front of us. He didn’t look like his usual jolly self. Linnea flung her arms around him and wiped her face on his shirt.
“Bro, touché,” he said to me.
“You know, dude, I’m not sure you really understand what that word means.”
He shrugged and kind of hoisted Linnea up. She swung around to hang on his back like a spider monkey and buried her face in his neck. “Whatever. Gotta get Squid here back to my folks. They’re kinda worried about her.”
“Is everything okay now?” I asked. “Is Iz okay?”
He looked at me but didn’t answer. I guess that was his answer.
He finally said, “Deputy Anderson is taking care of . . . you know, the mess in the parking lot. Everybody else is heading home. Your grandma said to tell you she’d meet you at the truck in a few minutes. She went downstairs to finish cleaning up the food.”
I nodded and he fist-bumped me. “Coach wants to meet you. Said you hauled Linnea out of there like some all-star running back carrying a pigskin on fire.”
“Yeah, I’m an all-star something, all right.”
Kenny turned and started walking away, but Linnea suddenly shimmied down his back and ran over to me.
She held out the winning ticket for purple fourteen. It was all bent-up and crumpled from being clutched in her fist. I was pretty sure it was snotted up, too. “You want your ticket back now?”
“Nah, kid, I already got a new bike. I want you to have it.”
She nodded. “Thank you, Bank-Robber Boy.” And she walked away holding Kenny’s hand.
I hung back awhile after they left, figuring maybe by the time I hit the parking lot, most everybody would have cleared out. But I didn’t want Gram to have to come looking for me, so I finally headed to the truck at a fast trot. The parking lot was almost empty, but Gram wasn’t there yet.
I still hadn’t gotten over how people in the boonies never bothered to lock their car doors. I mean, if they were anything like Gram, they left the doors to their houses standing wide-open too. I guess to make it easier for the ax murderers to get inside. But this time that lack of safety first was working to my advantage; the truck wasn’t locked. I slid into the passenger seat and closed the door.
Something crinkled as I settled onto the seat. I reached under my butt and pulled out a wrinkled-up piece of paper. The first side I saw had this weird drawing. It took me a minute, but I finally figured out it was a map—of the island! That jagged-topped stump, Fingers-to-Heaven or whatever goofy name Iz had given it, jumped right off the page at me. Not far away was a big X. Was this somebody’s idea of a joke?
But then I turned the map over. It was covered with words made from cut-out newspaper letters, like a project I had made for Mother’s Day in first grade.
Or like ransom notes in those old movies.
I read it through once, straining to make out the words in the falling darkness. Then I reached over and locked the doors, one at a time because the truck was the old-school type without automatic locks.
I read the note again:
I know you have the $$$. Bury it on the island within 24 hours. Location marked on map. Do it or you’ll be sorry!
CHAPTER 15
It grew steadily darker as I sat there with the note in my hand. I shivered despite the fact that the windows were all rolled up and it had just turned July. The note had to be a joke, right?
Although the photo of a hunting rifle glued below the words made it hard not to take the whole thing seriously. Somebody was after me.
Suddenly the door handle rattled. I about jumped through the ceiling of the truck. When I could breathe again, I looked over and saw Gram gesturing at the lock. I stuffed the note into my back pocket and then leaned over and unlocked her door.
I could see Gram’s puzzled look when the overhead light turned on. “Is something wrong, Travis? Why were the doors locked?”
“Just habit, you know, coming from a big city and all.”
Gram started up the truck, but then we just sat there for a moment. She seemed to be thinking hard about something. I suppose it was my perfect chance to tell her about the note. But I knew the first thing she’d do would be to call up Deputy Dude. And I wasn’t ready for another one of his friendly little chats.
Finally Gram turned to me. “That was impressive, the way you took care of Linnea. Did you get her back to her family okay?”
I nodded.
“She and Isabella have certainly had to grapple with more than any child should.” Gram shook her head. “And the ticket Linnea had—was that really your winning ticket?”
I shrugged. “You already bought me that bike, so, you know, I thought . . .” I
let my voice trail off. I hoped she wasn’t upset that I had handed off my prize.
Gram suddenly grinned. “The look on Milo’s face—oh, my heavens—when he realized you of all people had won his precious bike. That look alone was worth ten times the ticket price!”
And then she started to laugh. And once she got going, she couldn’t seem to stop. She just kept laughing, harder and harder. I swear, if she’d been in the school cafeteria drinking milk, cow juice would have been squirting out of her nose at that point.
After a while I looked around. Was I being Punk’d? But nobody jumped out of the bushes with a camera or anything.
Finally Gram took off her glasses and pulled a Kleenex out of her sleeve to wipe her eyes. “Oh, I’m so glad you decided to come see me this summer. I haven’t laughed like that in years.” Then she drove home in complete silence, except for an occasional laughing snort.
When we got home, I told Gram I was tired and headed straight for my bedroom. I knew I needed to come up with a plan to deal with the note, but everything that had happened in the past couple of days was starting to crash in on me. I decided to just drop into a coma and figure it all out in the morning. But I bumped my toe on something as I was pulling off my T-shirt. I looked down and there it was: the Father Box.
I hauled it up onto the bedspread and sat down on the middle of the bed. I was still feeling pretty crappy about snooping through Gram’s house; there was a part of me that thought I should just put it back under her bed without looking at it any further.
But if all of this junk was about my father, didn’t I have the right to look at it? It was part of who I was, whether anybody wanted me to know about it or not.
I piled everything from the box into little stacks around me, half sorting it based on what the stuff seemed to be. I ended up with an ancient photo album, a couple of yearbooks, the yellowed newspaper clippings, and a bunch of other loose papers.
I looked through the loose papers first, to see if I could find a recent address or anything similar. But it was clear everything was pretty old; the only addresses were on some letters from various army bases, which were definitely pre-robbery.
I opened the top letter and read the first several lines:
Dear Mom,
I’ve only been here for two weeks, but I can already tell you that all the terrible things they say about boot camp are true. But I’m not complaining (and please don’t take it personally)—it’s great to be anywhere but there! I miss you and I worry about Carl, but the building where I bunk holds probably twice as many people as the whole population back home. I’m finally starting to meet the world!
Farther down in the stack was a report card for John Stoiska, fifth grade. He had gotten an A in arithmetic; guess his math-genius genes hadn’t made it to me.
I cracked open a yearbook and randomly flipped through it, finally turning to the index at the back. Stoiska, John, followed by a long list of pages. I opened to page sixty-two; there was this photo of two guys with big cheesy grins, both in football jerseys, hamming it up for the camera—and right away I knew which one was him. It was weird; it was like looking in one of those fun-house mirrors. I could see myself in him, but everything was just a little bit off. Especially the dorky hair.
The long-ago dad was holding up his fingers behind the head of the guy next to him, doing those devil horns. And I did a double take when my eyes skimmed down to read the caption: “Seniors John Stoiska and Kyle Anderson.”
Kyle Anderson? Had Deputy Dude been friends with my father? You’d think maybe the big bad arm of the law could have cut me some slack for old times’ sake, right? But I guess that isn’t how it works: cops and robbers are sworn enemies, just like jocks and skaters or the Celtics and the Lakers.
Finally I turned to the newspaper articles. First in the stack was the front page of an old October issue of the Prairie Press, which I recognized as the local paper. Staring at me was the photo of my dad in his military getup and the headline “Local Link to Northern Bank Heist” plastered in big letters across the top. I started reading:
FBI Special Agent Mark Tosch confirmed this morning that 23-year-old John Stoiska, a local resident who has been missing since his boat was found washed up the morning of September 2, is wanted for questioning in a burglary of the Community Trust Bank located in Crookston, Minnesota. The burglary likely happened sometime in the late-night hours between 9:00 P.M. on August 31, when a nearby storeowner locked up, and 8:00 A.M. on September 1, when the break-in was discovered by bank manager Vernon Coop.
“This is the first time the bank has been burglarized in its seventy-five-year history,” stated Coop.
Authorities won’t reveal what evidence they have linking Stoiska to the crime but have asked citizens to step forward with any information they have about him. Several local witnesses saw Stoiska here in town on the day after the burglary, but he was reported missing and possibly drowned the next morning after his boat was discovered adrift. An extensive search of the lake at that time revealed no sign of Stoiska’s body.
“He was a wild one, but I never figured him for a crook,” said Florence Halvorsen, a waitress who served Stoiska his lunch on September 1. “Always a good tipper, too.”
Authorities searched Stoiska’s residence and questioned his mother, Lois Stoiska, along with several other local residents.
It appears the burglary required electrical skills and explosives. Stoiska’s military service records reveal he had specialized training in those areas. In the weeks prior to the burglary, Stoiska had also spent time at a construction job near Crookston.
Authorities have stated that Stoiska was not working alone.
“The time frame and the skill level required to break into the bank and then into the vault make it highly likely that this crime required more than one perpetrator,” stated Tosch. “We believe John Stoiska had at least one accomplice, and we are proceeding accordingly.”
Neither authorities nor Coop would reveal the amount of money stolen, but bank sources confirmed that the timing of the heist seemed carefully planned for a maximum potential take.
A $15,000 reward has been offered for information that leads to an arrest.
There were more newspapers, but I figured it was going to take me a couple of months just to wrap my head around everything in this one article. An accomplice? Iz and Kenny and I had talked about that, but this made it seem real—there actually might be someone out there besides my father who knew what had happened that long-ago night. What exactly did all this mean? Just what evidence did the FBI have against my dad, and how come it took longer than a month for them to link him to the robbery if they had something solid?
And I had other questions too. Like, was some bank-robbing bad guy growing inside him that whole time he was getting As in fifth-grade math? Was it just waiting for its chance to leap out, like when the creature in that movie Alien suddenly burst out of the guy’s chest?
Was it waiting there somewhere inside me, too?
Something crinkled as I shifted on the bed. I pulled the anonymous note out of my pocket and set it between the newspapers and the yearbook. Were there any real clues buried in these little piles of stuff? I couldn’t see how anything here was going to lead me to the whereabouts of the person Gram had lost and I was trying to find. Maybe these pieces of junk were just the last reminders anyone would ever have of my dad.
I tried to keep my eyes open long enough to read more, but suddenly I was way too tired to resist giving in to sleep. I curled up on top of all the mess and just let myself sink into the deep waters. But right before drowning, I had one of those strange, random thoughts that sometimes happen as you go under for the last time. By showing up in town, I had become a constant reminder of my dad. All I had to do was figure out who didn’t like being reminded.
CHAPTER 16
When I woke up, the wind was howling outside and rain was hammering onto the roof. I had all these questions popcorning around in my brain, heated
up by my looking through the Father Box the night before. I started searching for some answers on my phone, but pretty quickly the smell of real bacon won out. The new health-conscious Ma tried to pass off some fried tofu crap called “fakon” on me, but, I mean, really? Really, Ma? So once again I threw the box back together and pushed it under my bed, stuffing the cut-and-paste note back into my pocket.
“Kenny called. He said you should come over if you want to play some kind of video game. He seemed fairly excited about it. I think it’s nice you’ve made a friend so quickly. Kenny’s a good boy.” Gram plopped some slices of bacon next to some eggs and set them in front of me at the table.
“Thanks.” I had lots of questions for Gram, too. I was determined to finally make her give me some answers, but I decided to test the waters first.
“Uh, Gram, that deputy guy who was here—he seemed to kind of feel at home.”
Gram gave me a surprised look, but then her eyes did that thing people’s eyes do when they go all vague and unfocused and you know they’re seeing something nobody else in the room can see. “He and your father grew up together. They were best friends, really, in high school. Kyle Anderson was over here more times than I can count when he was a teenager.”
She took a sip from her coffee mug. “The two of them were unlikely friends. You couldn’t overlook John, but people never took much notice of Kyle. Until John took him under his wing. I was proud of John for that, for going out of his way to befriend somebody who so clearly needed a friend. Kyle was so serious—I think things were hard for him at home, although he wouldn’t talk about it—and John got him to lighten up. I always hoped that it might work the other way too, that he might be a steadying influence for John.”