The Boy

by Tami Hoag

  Fair to whom? Annie wanted to ask, but she didn’t.

  “Does Cameron have a cell phone?”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “Does he have it with him?”

  “No.”

  “It’s here? May I see it?”

  “No,” Sharon said, bringing a dainty pitcher of cream to the table. “Kelvin has it. He took it away from Cameron last night—his phone and his iPad, as well—in punishment for telling a lie.”

  Her cheeks flushed with color, and tears rose in her eyes.

  “And now he doesn’t have his cell phone, and he can’t call home. I-if he n-needs m-me, he c-can’t call home!”

  “Sharon, come sit down,” Annie said, going to her, trying to steer her toward the kitchen table.

  “But the coffee—”

  “It’s fine. It can wait. Come sit down.”

  “It wasn’t Cameron’s fault,” she said. “He got punished, but it was my fault. I told him he could quit football. I just hadn’t found a way to tell Kelvin. It was my fault!”

  She began to cry as she melted down onto the chair and bent over the table, her face contorted as if she were in pain. Annie rubbed a hand against her back, trying to offer comfort.

  “Did Kelvin hurt him, Sharon?” she asked quietly.

  Her answer was sobs.

  “He tries so hard!” Sharon cried. “He tries so hard to be a good boy! He never wants to make a mistake. He never wants to disappoint me. He tries so hard, and I let that happen to him! What kind of mother am I?”

  “Hush now,” Annie said, patting her back, her heart breaking for this woman. Everything she said about her child was just as true of her. She tried so hard. She never wanted to make a mistake. She didn’t want to disappoint.

  “I should have tried harder to protect him!”

  “You’re a good mother,” Annie murmured. “You do the best you can.

  “I’d like to have a look around Cameron’s room,” she said. “Would that be all right? Could you show me his room?”

  Sharon dabbed at her tears with a napkin from a clever little decorative holder on the table, trying to pull herself together. “Yes, of course.”

  The boy’s room was down a hall and off the patio, on the opposite end of the house from where the master suite must have been. A little sanctuary to shuttle the awkward child to. Out of Kelvin’s way so he didn’t have to be reminded he had taken on the burden of his fiancée’s offspring from another marriage.

  “I apologize if the room has an odor,” Sharon said. “Cameron has an irritable bowel. It’s been quite bad recently. He’s under so much stress, you know, with his studies and all. It’s important that he be on the honor roll. He wants to make honors in all his math and science classes. And then the tensions of trying to bond with Kelvin . . . He’s even tried to take up fishing. He tries so hard to do everything right.”

  The room was far too neat and tidy to belong to a teenager, Annie thought, recalling her investigation of Dean Florette’s bedroom earlier that day, where she had wished she’d worn a hazmat suit and a gas mask to pick through the rubble. The only thing Cameron’s room had in common with Dean’s was the swampy smell of sweaty clothes and hormones, though Cameron’s room had added layers of fading diarrhea and sickly sweet air freshener.

  There were no posters of sports stars or rock bands. Of course, there wouldn’t be, lest the posters clashed with the décor. The bed was made. Everything was in place. Only a few toys left over from childhood that had been set at careful intervals on the bookshelves spoke to the fact that the young man living here had been a boy not long ago.

  Annie stood in front of the dresser and stared at the message printed on the mirror.

  I DON’T WANT TO BE HERE!!!

  I don’t blame you, Cameron, she thought to herself.

  “He keeps his room himself,” Sharon said. “I’m so proud of him. You don’t see many boys so neat and tidy.”

  She fussed around the bed, smoothing the coverlet, fluffing the pillows, tsking to herself as she reached down to pull a dirty sock out from under the bed.

  “Boys and their laundry!” she exclaimed, forcing another smile as Annie glanced over.

  The expression went from fake smile to puzzlement as she tugged on the sock.

  No, Annie thought, not a sock. A strap. A padded strap, like from a backpack.

  A strange sense of foreboding washed over her as she dropped to her knees beside the bed. She pulled on the strap as Sharon backed away, dragging a backpack into view inch by inch.

  A purple-and-pink backpack.

  Nora Florette’s backpack.

  “What is it?” Sharon asked.

  Her voice sounded miles away. Annie’s heart was pounding like a war hammer in her chest.

  Why would Cameron Spicer have Nora’s backpack?

  They had walked home together the day she went missing. He had said he didn’t know what happened to her. He had said that she was stupid and weird, and he didn’t even like her.

  But Nora had gotten into trouble for coming to this house once before.

  “I won’t tell! I won’t tell! I won’t tell!” KJ Gauthier had chanted those words that evening over and over, driving his mother crazy.

  “Whose is that?” Sharon asked, kneeling down to touch the bag. “That’s not Cameron’s.”

  Her pulse roaring in her ears, Annie pulled the backpack all the way out, and with it followed the hand of a girl with pink sparkle nail polish.

  Sharon’s screams split the air and reverberated in the bedroom.

  Annie leaned down, raised the plaid bed skirt, and looked under Cameron Spicer’s bed and into the glazed brown eyes of Nora Florette.

  FIFTY

  Go call nine-one-one!” Annie snapped.

  Sharon had run backward into the wall, instinctively trying to escape the horror, screaming, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

  “GO!!” Annie shouted. “GO NOW!! We need an ambulance!”

  Please let that be true, she thought as Sharon scrambled to get out of the room and ran down the hall.

  Frantic, Annie pushed the tangle of friendship bracelets out of the way and tried to feel for a pulse in the girl’s wrist. Her own heart was racing wildly. Her fingers were trembling. She couldn’t tell if she felt a faint pulse or just wanted it to be so.

  She flattened herself on the floor, eye to eye with Nora Florette, and tried to find a pulse in her neck.

  Maybe. Weak and thready, but maybe it was there.

  The girl looked dead. She had been gone two full days. Had she been under Cameron Spicer’s bed the whole time? Could she have survived that?

  “Nora! Nora!” she shouted, hoping for some kind of response. A blink, a nod, a spark of life in her eyes. Something. Anything. Please.

  If she was alive, she was hanging by a thread. Her body was cool to the touch, but not cold, not stiff, but then, rigor mortis could have come and gone by now.

  “You gotta stay with me, Nora!” Annie said. “Help is on the way.”

  She wanted to pull the girl out from under the bed, but she had no idea what the extent of her injuries might be. She had a head injury, for certain. Blood had run down across her cheek and jaw like a macabre handprint. She might have had a neck injury or a back injury. Moving her might cause more harm than good. Better to let the EMTs move the bed than for her to try to move the girl. They would be here any minute. The fire station wasn’t that far away.

  “Nora, stay with me!” she said again. “I’ll stay right here with you until help arrives. You have to hang on for us!”

  She thought she saw an eyelid move a fraction of an inch. It might have been wishful thinking, but she decided to believe it. The Florettes were overdue for a miracle.

  Reaching out, she found the girl’s other hand and hung on, wondering how t
he hell this had ever happened.

  * * *

  * * *

  “HOW’D IT HAPPEN, Keith?” Stokes asked. “Did you go there thinking to rape that girl? Did the boy just get in your way?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  They sat in a small, cramped room in the back of the Pizza Hut that was normally used for storage. Kemp sat behind the beat-up rectangular table, a thin film of vomit clinging to his beard stubble. He had pissed himself at some point during his altercation with Nick. The mix of body fluids and bourbon gave him the pungent scent of a billy goat.

  Nick paced back and forth along the opposite wall like a caged tiger, his face twisted in disgust at the smell of Keith Kemp—literally and figuratively. They had yet to Mirandize him. There was nothing official or proper about this interview. But he knew the minute they booked Kemp for assault, the first word out of his mouth would be lawyer and they would get nothing from him. Anything they gleaned now would likely not be admissible in court but could serve them as a tool to use for leverage to get them something better later on.

  “Or did you go there to kill the boy, and the chance to rape the mother was part of the deal?” Nick asked. “Transactional opportunist and misogynist that he is, I have no doubt Dutrow would be fine with that.”

  “I never raped that woman,” Kemp pointed out.

  “So the point was to get rid of the boy.”

  “And I never touched that boy,” he said. Grimacing, he jammed his thumb into his mouth and tested a tooth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Fourcade. I want a lawyer.”

  Stokes arched a thick brow. “I don’t recall asking did you want a lawyer.” He glanced back at Nick. “Did you hear me ask him that?”

  Nick shook his head. “Non. We’re just having a conversation here, Keith.”

  “Arrest me and charge me, or let me go. You can’t use anything I tell you here,” Kemp said. “Fruit of the poisoned tree, and all that.”

  “Now he’s a stickler for procedure,” Nick said to Stokes. “Funny how that abuse-of-power thing just isn’t so much fun when the shoe is on the other foot. You liked it fine when you were fucking girls in your squad car in exchange for lesser charges, didn’t you, Keith?”

  “I never raped anybody,” Kemp said. “I negotiated a couple of trades, is all.”

  “So you lost your badge because one of the women you coerced into having sex with you had buyer’s remorse, is that it?”

  “Well, who could blame her?” Stokes interjected. “Trading something for nothing is a shit deal.”

  “They got what they wanted,” Kemp sneered.

  Stokes laughed. “Yeah, right! The last time you had something a woman wanted, you must have been a shoe salesman!”

  “Fuck you, Stokes.”

  “No thanks, Keith!” Stokes continued laughing. “I can put my own finger up my ass.”

  “You’re a laugh riot, you are,” Kemp grumbled.

  “Genevieve Gauthier did not want to give you a blow job on the side of the road,” Nick said, his dark scowl never leaving Kemp.

  “Well, she sure hit her knees quick enough,” Kemp taunted him.

  Nick lunged toward him. Stokes was out of his chair and blocking his path with a move as smooth as a longtime dance partner.

  “She’s got you eating out of her hand,” Kemp said. “What’d she do for that? Enough to make you look the other way when she killed her own child? That must be some magic pussy she’s got. First Dutrow, now you.”

  Nick went very still. “First Dutrow what?”

  Kemp shut his mouth and narrowed his eyes.

  A slow, predatory smile turned the corners of Nick’s mouth. He nodded to Stokes. “See Mr. Kemp to his accommodations, Chaz. The charge is aggravated assault. Be sure to read him those rights he’s so fond of.”

  Stokes went around behind the table and hauled Kemp to his feet.

  “Mind that wet pavement on the walk over, Keith,” Nick said, following them down the hall to the back door. “Wouldn’t want you to trip and fall with your hands cuffed behind your back that way . . . repeatedly.”

  He watched them disappear around the corner then pulled his phone off his belt and checked for messages. There was nothing new from Annie. He glanced at the time, frowned, typed:

  Hey, ’Toinette. Where y’at?

  * * *

  * * *

  SHARON REACHED FOR the telephone handset on the kitchen counter, stopping just short of touching it. Her heart was beating like a trip hammer. Her pulse was roaring in her ears. She felt like she might explode from the fear and the panic.

  There was a body under Cameron’s bed.

  There was a dead girl under Cameron’s bed.

  That Florette girl.

  What was she doing here?

  She wasn’t supposed to be in this house.

  She had been warned not to come here ever again.

  She was a thief and a troublemaker, that girl.

  Now Cameron would be in trouble because of her.

  What a nightmare. They had moved here to have the perfect life. Now that life was crumbling before her eyes by the minute. She had lost Kelvin, lost her home, lost her future. Now she would lose her son as well. She could have taken him somewhere far away from here and started over. Now he would be taken from her because of Nora Florette. That stupid, useless girl, lying dead under his bed.

  And now she was supposed to call the ambulance. She was supposed to call for people to come and try to save Nora Florette when she should have been saving her own child.

  I should have done more to protect him, she thought as she backed away from the telephone.

  * * *

  * * *

  WHERE THE HELL was the ambulance?

  Annie held her breath and waited for the sound of sirens. They should have been screaming by now. This house wasn’t five minutes from a fire station.

  Where the hell was the ambulance?

  Where the hell was Sharon?

  Had she just panicked and left? Was she in the kitchen making tea?

  A few of Nick’s favorite French curses rolled through Annie’s mind. She didn’t want to let go of Nora. She didn’t want to leave the girl alone. But she needed an ambulance, and she needed it now.

  Annie had left her phone on the kitchen table. Careless. Stupid. She had to put it off to being exhausted, but still . . . Cameron’s phone had been taken by Dutrow as punishment for telling a lie, Sharon had said. There was no phone in this room.

  Loath to let go of Nora Florette’s hand, she forced herself to pull away and get to her feet. She had to get help.

  “Sharon?” she called as she hurried down the hallway toward the kitchen. “Sharon, did you call for the ambulance?”

  Sharon spun around and looked at her as if she was surprised to see her—or had been caught doing something she shouldn’t have been doing. The look registered in the back of Annie’s mind, but she dismissed it as unimportant.

  “Did you call nine-one-one?” she asked.

  “No,” Sharon murmured, shaking her head. “I can’t.”

  “What? What do you mean, you can’t?” Annie asked, annoyed and impatient. “Sharon, we need an ambulance! Now!”

  “No!” she said. “She’s dead! That girl is dead! It won’t matter now!”

  Annie moved toward her aggressively. “Are you out of your mind? That girl could still be alive! Give me the phone.”

  “No! Please! Don’t! Cameron—”

  “It’s gonna be way worse for Cameron if this girl dies than if she doesn’t,” Annie said, trying to step around her. “Let me have the phone.”

  “No!” Sharon shouted.

  She hit Annie from the side, knocking her off balance, surprising her and irritating her more than anything. A girl was dying in the r
oom down the hall. There was no time for foolishness.

  “I can’t let you!” Sharon cried. “He’s my son! He’s all I have! I have to protect him! Don’t you understand?”

  No, Annie thought. She understood that a girl had come to this house and that someone had hurt her, that she had been stuffed beneath a bed and left to die, but that she might yet have a chance, if only help could arrive as soon as possible. Those were the things Annie understood in that moment as she turned toward the table to retrieve her cell phone.

  In the next moment, she understood something else entirely. In the next moment, she understood that Sharon Spicer was past the end of her rope, that she loved her son more than anything in the world, and that there was nothing she wouldn’t do to protect him.

  In the next moment, Sharon Spicer hit her hard from behind, with what felt like a hammer to her upper back, knocking her forward. Surprised, she stumbled and fell, crashing into the table. Flinging out a hand, she tried to grab for her phone but knocked it out of reach instead.

  “NO! NOOOOOOO!” Sharon screamed behind her, as if she were the one in pain as she struck Annie again and again, hitting her in the back and in the back of the head.

  Annie tried to turn but couldn’t. Her feet slipped and went out from under her as she scrambled. As she fell, she tried once more to lunge for the phone, knocking it off the table. Her forehead struck the table’s edge as she went down, stunning her. She hit the tile floor with jarring force, banging her head again.

  Her vision blurred and dimmed and swam. Fighting to remain conscious, she tried to focus on her cell phone and on her need to get her hand on it.

  Nine-one-one. Nine-one-one. Punch three numbers. That was all she needed to do.

  The phone was on the floor, just a few inches away. In Annie’s mind, she was trying her hardest to stretch her fingers out to it, but her body didn’t move, and the only help available to her remained just out of reach.