“She found the boy easy enough,” she said. “The killer hadn’t taken him far.”
She swivelled, keeping her back to me, and pointed between two of the tallest blocks. Her voice was thick with emotion.
“Right there – past the Janet J Lansdale building, tucked away like he had been put to bed. I’ll never forget walking with her in that noonday sun. How she picked up the trail, even though it had eluded the dogs. And what we found, Scout, was what made me want to be a cop.”
She turned to face me.
“I can’t let it happen again.”
*
I sat on the swing, contemplating the ground. It’d been a while since I had been on a swing, and I was soothed by the gentle rocking. Every so often, my bare feet kicked the rubber surface, launching me back into the air.
I’d asked Molly to make herself scarce – a police cruiser would only attract attention. But more than that, I wanted the place to myself, to concentrate on what had happened here and to see if I could pick up a trace.
Far off, some men were shooting hoops. They hardly missed a beat as the patrol car slipped past. These were rangy guys, dark tattoos against darker muscle. They weren’t wearing enough clothes for the cold weather. They had seen me talking to Molly and were curious as to what I was doing.
They knew better than to approach themselves, so they sent foot soldiers.
“Yo.”
I looked up, and two kids who should have been in elementary school came to sit on two wooden horses supported by giant springs. If they wanted to appear threatening it was a mistake, for as soon as they sat the horses dipped to one side, and the littlest of the boys drooped to the ground.
I kept a straight face.
“There’s a killer hereabouts,” the older one said.
“You don’t say.”
“It’s a dangerous place, yeah.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Girl might need ‘tection.”
The smallest boy had righted himself, but his legs were not quite long enough to reach the ground, so when he came back to the level he couldn’t stop the horse teetering the other way. He flipped over with a cry.
The older boy rolled his eyes.
“I heard he snatched a little boy,” I said.
“He comes near me, I’m gonna cap him!” said the older boy, stepping off his horse and making a shooting gesture with his fingers. “Marcus was my cuz, so don’t you go saying he was taken by a fag.”
Marcus. I didn’t want to know his name, but there it was. A five-year-old boy, who probably looked something like the youngster struggling with the rocking horse. Checked shirt hanging loose, unlaced Timberlands.
Marcus.
“I’m sorry about your cousin,” I said, treading carefully. All the older kid needed to do was holler and the men would join us from the basketball court.
The boy’s jaw worked as he sucked in the sudden emotion. It wasn’t cool to show how you felt, not around here. He had to hide it the only way he knew how.
He grabbed the youngster from the disobedient rocking horse.
“C’mon!”
And dragged him from the playground.
The older boy had forgotten his mission, and my guess is that he’d have to invent a story about me or risk a slap on the side of the head when he reported back.
I watched them slink back toward the Janet J Lansdale tower, the older brother with his hand around the youngster’s neck, propelling him forward.
Just like Marcus.
The abduction had happened a couple of days before, and any direct traces of the boy had long since been obscured by the feet of cops, the forensics team, the K-9 handlers and curious onlookers. Nothing of Marcus would remain.
Except his anxiety.
A playground is a place of high emotion. It is here that wars are fought. But the children that played on these swings and slides, who climbed the jungle gym and bounced on the horses, were not worried. They had only make-believe concerns.
But here was the trace of a boy who felt anxious. It was as clear as a chalk outline; so different from the other emotional memories that it had to be the one I was looking for. It had to be a trace of Marcus.
He had been told some news, and he had to hurry. Marcus trusted the man who took him.
Was it someone he knew?
His little legs had raced across the rubber matting. The surface held a memory of the boy’s passing. All I had to do was follow it.
Chapter 17
The city was a different place to a town. Our small town sprawled like a lazy cat, as if it had all the room in the world. But the city was hard up against the Great Lakes. Real estate was at a premium, and the buildings were crowded together.
And with buildings, came people.
From the corner of the avenue I could see three outlets of The Bean Counter. It was lunchtime, and the office workers were stretching their legs, heading for a cappuccino and a tuna melt. For an hour they were free to bitch about their bosses and tell all to their girlfriends.
I was overwhelmed by a torrent of emotions. The thoughts and feelings of hundreds – thousands – of people washed over me.
I had to hold on to Marcus!
The thread was very thin, so I got down to my knees and felt the sidewalk. Hands are more sensitive than feet. When my fingers touched the cold paving stones, it was as though I tuned in once again to the boy’s feeling.
He was on an adventure. Sure, it was worrying, but it was kind of exciting too. He wasn’t scared. Children are so trusting.
Two guys in suits walked by, leering at me.
“Hey, pretty girl, you lost something?”
“Nice ass!”
“Screw you!” I said, leaping to my feet. “I’m only fifteen!”
That wiped the smiles off their faces.
I ran the big toe of my right foot around in a circle, like someone testing the water at a swimming pool. I immediately felt the thrum of the trail. It was a solid cord along which I could pull myself.
I started to jog. It helped with the cold.
I ran along a street that Marcus knew well. There were no minimarts or liquor stores, for this was the municipal district. Right on his doorstep was a museum, the public library and an art gallery. I had assumed that city kids led an impoverished life, but apart from the Warhol exhibition at the gallery – which no one could pretend enriched anyone’s life – this area looked pretty awesome.
I trotted across a wide open space, given to pedestrians. A few people threw glances down to my naked toes, but I didn’t care. The trail was drawing me on. I jogged past a Henry Moore, and a fountain.
The boy was happy enough, until he reached the museum.
In my mind’s eye the trail turned blue, and then grey. The boy’s anxiety rose like acidic gorge, propelled by wave upon wave of another feeling.
Marcus was scared.
Even for a young boy, the warning signs were clear. This was what his mom had warned him about – abduction.
If anyone was watching me now they would have noticed not my bare feet but the wretched look on my face. I was reliving the moment when young Marcus realised that something very bad was happening.
I could see scuff marks on the paving. The boy’s trainers squeaked as he tried to backpedal, but a strong arm yanked him off his feet. The kidnapper had him in an iron grip.
Pain.
I had never felt such transference of feeling before – not with Skyler, nor with Brianna. With each step along the invisible trail, I was shot through with flashes of what Marcus had felt.
The stronger the emotion, the stronger the trace.
Eileen had been engulfed in a similar tidal wave back in the summer of ‘85. She had endured a young boy’s final moments and had no preparation for the rawness of the experie
nce. Her nerves would have been engulfed by a despair known only to those about to die.
Perhaps that is why she turned her back on the gift? It was enough to make anyone stop in their tracks.
Not me, though. Marcus was drawing me on.
The traces of other people faded away. Few ventured to this side of the museum. Here was a service road lined with dumpsters smelling of rotting food. The kidnapper could do whatever he liked, and all would be hidden from view.
The boy’s feet scrunched in brown goo. He wanted to retch; but when he stalled, his arm was nearly pulled from its socket.
I ran on, choking in the fetid air.
The stink of putrefaction that filled my nose was a ghost. Somehow it was transmitted over the channel I had opened to young Marcus. Smell – they say – is the most evocative of our senses. The memory of an aroma is what survives longer than anything else.
I rounded a corner and ran into a stench as solid as a concrete wall. I could not see what caused it because there was nothing to see. Just an empty parking lot. But blocking my route was the perfume that rides at the back of a refuse truck, alluring in its power, but so inhuman that it will turn your stomach. It is the stink of death.
What I smelt were the municipal refuse trucks parked up for the weekend. On a weekday they were completing their rounds, but on Saturday when Marcus was dragged from his life they were sitting here like foul-breathed demons.
I ran around the shadows of invisible trucks, tracing the boy’s route.
The vehicles had been parked in a haphazard manner by work crews finishing their shift on the Friday. In this maze, no one would have seen the young boy, or the man who held his wrist like an iron vice. Upwind, the stench died away. That was some relief, but the boy knew that he was now reaching his final destination.
And then the trail stopped.
I thought I had made a mistake, so I backtracked along the path, returning to the miasmic stink. Slowly, slowly, not running, I let my feet slide along the tangent of the boy’s journey. I held the trail, strong and confident.
But it stopped dead at the same point.
In the last few moments of his kidnapping Marcus had made a desperate struggle, and for the first time his kidnapper hit him. I felt a snatch of brain-jarring disorientation as Marcus was lifted from the ground. In that brief moment, I also caught a glimpse of the man who had taken him.
Not an image. But I tasted the pungent tang of a leather glove as it slapped the little boy’s face. The leather was cracked with age and smelt of dead meat.
Marcus’s head rang from the blow, and then –
Nothing.
*
By the time Molly caught up with me, I was sitting on a low wall at the entrance to the yard. I had just slipped on my trainers as the Crown Vic bounced along the service road.
“You took off like fat on hot skillet!” said Molly. “Thought I’d lost you when you cut back here.”
“That was his plan too. It’s an easy place to disappear.”
“So you found the trail?” she asked, trying to keep her excitement in check.
“Uh-huh.”
“And it was a man, you said? That took him?”
“Yeah. A stranger.”
“D’you know how old? Black? White?”
“I don’t see stuff like that, Molly. But he wasn’t young.”
“That’s already more than we’ve had to go on. They’re still questioning the family and neighbours, thinking he’s been taken by someone he knows. But if it’s a stranger, that changes everything.”
Molly looked around the empty lot. There was nothing but a boundary wall, the remnant of a larger building now long gone, and a chain-link fence fringed by weeds.
“Is the boy here?” she asked.
“Not anymore. The trail stops dead, right about there,” I said, pointing into the blankness of the lot. “The only explanation I can think of is that he was put into a car.”
“And you can’t track a car?”
I shook my head.
“No. Not yet.”
Chapter 18
So began my training.
In the ‘Movie-of-the-Week’ version of my life, this would be the cue for a montage of steady progress, interrupted by an occasional setback. Encouragement from a grizzled coach would lead to an inevitable triumph. Laid over the shots would be an upbeat theme, like that from the Rocky films – either Rocky I or Rocky III, I don’t mind. ‘Eye of the Tiger’ is on constant rotation at Flash 105.5 FM, and is one of those rare instances where the music from the threequel is as good as the original.
However, this being the real life of Lauren ‘Scout’ Mann, who possessed a capricious talent which she barely understood, my progress was going to be too unpredictable to compress into a time-lapse. There wasn’t going to be a moment where I would run up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and punch the air.
I hadn’t been aware until recently that I had a unique gift. Now I had to try and work out what it was that I had, and how I could improve it. And that needed a training montage – and rock music.
What I got was Mike and his Toyota.
*
Molly was on shift that afternoon, so she couldn’t take the part of boxing coach (played, admirably, in the first Rocky by Burgess Meredith). There being no time to lose, Mike stood in.
He picked me up after his soccer game. I could tell that he’d made a passing acquaintance with the shower because his hair was wet, but a strong odour of sweat and something musky followed him around. Testosterone, I think. It put me off my stride, because I found it kind of hot, in a pervy way. It was bottled locker room, and I flushed red with the images in my head.
I was all set to be businesslike, because I still felt awkward at having shouted at him on the night of my mom’s abduction. But it was hard to be formal with Mike, as he was such a dude.
Apart from a cursory ‘Hi’, I was silent as Mike drove to the training ground. When it was clear that I wasn’t going to make small talk, he pointed at the glove compartment.
“There’s something in there for you.”
I snapped it open and a small box fell into my lap. It was a brand-new cell phone.
“I can’t afford this,” I said.
“Mom’s paying. She says you need it if you’re going to speak to your lawyer.”
I’d thrown away our last cell phone, after Eileen ran up a bill of $213.45 trying to speak to the German Chancellor. This was a similar make, though it was impossibly thin, and there were no buttons anywhere to be seen.
“It’s not top of the range, I’m afraid. And there’s limited data.”
I hadn’t been given anything so shiny and new for years. To hold the handset was to hold perfection. I barely dared to peel off the plastic protector.
The screen burst into life.
“It’s charged!” I said.
“And Mom’s put a couple of numbers in there already, just so you can get in touch with her.”
I flicked onto the address book – Molly was there, and Bethesda, as well as Shona Macready.
“You’re in here!” I exclaimed.
“I thought you might need my number.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
“‘Because’? That explains everything.”
“I’m your official trainer,” he said.
“Are you now?”
“No one else knows what you can do, Scout, ‘cept Molly and your friend Moyheddin – and he’s left town. I actually know about training, about what it takes to improve a skill.”
“It’s not soccer, Mike. I’m not gonna be practising kicks from the thirty yard line.”
“They don’t have a thirty yard line in soccer.”
“Whatever.”
“I coach the freshman eleven. I
can coach you.”
“So, you’ve put your number in here for professional reasons?”
“Yep.”
That wasn’t the answer I really wanted, but until I apologised for calling him a coward I couldn’t imagine that he would want to text me his erotic longings.
But I had Mike’s number, and that was a start.
*
The closest the town came to a blank canvas was the apron at the old Doughy Doughy factory. It was here that trucks would line up to take the sweet confection to all corners of the country. Now it was a windblown expanse, a place kids came to practise their stunts. Saturday night was drifting night, the air thick with burnt rubber as super-charged Subarus skidded on the pan. I never understood the attraction of driving sideways, but then boys are often a mystery to me.
A huge Doughy Doughy Boy waved down from the side of the mill. He was rotund and jocular, a relic from the days when obesity wasn’t an issue of national concern. His colours were faded, and some joker had spray-painted a massive erection onto the front of his belly.
As the sun sat low on that November afternoon, Mike and I had the place to ourselves.
“It’s somewhere without distraction,” I explained. “Seeing as I have zilch ability to track a car, we might as well start in the easiest possible way.”
“Okay,” agreed Mike. “But let’s be scientific about this.”
‘Scientific’ isn’t a word I expected from the über-jock, but he impressed me further by suggesting how to refine our experiment on extra-sensory pursuit.
“We have to exclude the possibility that you might hear the direction of my travel, or catch a glimpse of me setting off.”
“I can close my eyes,” I suggested.
“And there’s earbuds with the phone to deaden the sound,” he added. “But it’s isolation we need, so that not one piece of evidence can reach you. We need to reproduce the real-world situation of having to pick up a trail hours, or even days, after it’s been laid.”
Towards the edge of the apron was a security booth. The glass in the window had been smashed, like every other pane in the bakery, but inside was a bench on which I could sit. Mike said he’d call when he was hidden.
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