Ben stood at the front of the auditor’s desk—his desk—resenting the old, lecherous Sean Connery look-alike in his chair.
“Well, Reggy,” Ben started. Reg flinched. “I assume it has something to do with the audit and the reviews people have been getting all day.”
“Well, yes.” He shuffled his papers and cleared his throat. “Frankly, I’m surprised this place is still running. I’m certainly going to recommend an overhaul in the filing and tracking procedures.”
Snorting, Ben sat in the chair and leaned back, arms crossed. Privately, he agreed with the man, but he would rather be damned than agree with him on anything at this point. Not after he put Sylvia through the wringer like that. “And I’m certain they won’t go through. To reorg will cost money, and if I’ve learned anything this last month, it’s that the postal service hates spending money. If it works, don’t mess with it.”
The paper shuffling was a bit more erratic now, and when Reg realized it had started to make him look foolish, he put them down. “But it doesn’t work. Things are constantly going missing. There is a whole goddamn safe that is empty that should be full of things putting money in our coffers!”
“Just hold on there.” Uncrossing his arms, Ben leaned forward to lean on the front of his desk. “That was before I even got here. I haven’t lost an item since. We’re pretty sure Mrs. Biun was the one who cleaned out that safe prior to leaving, too. Have you found her to ask yet?”
The auditor wrinkled his nose and looked down. “No, not as such. But we’re looking.”
Leaning back again, Ben muttered, “Try a tropical island off of France.”
Reg frowned. “Say again?”
Ben raised his voice. “I was simply making a suggestion as to where you can put this audit.”
The glare that the auditor directed at Ben was meant to be scathing but simply came off as constipated. “Well, if talking about organization and documentation isn’t going to make any kind of difference, let’s talk about you.”
“Yeah, and what about me?”
“First, your attitude has been deplorable through this entire investigation.” Reg gave a mighty sniff and gestured at Ben’s crossed arms. “Prime example, right here. You’ve completely closed down, you’re treating me like some kind of villain, and you are incapable of taking constructive criticism.”
Ben leaned back in his chair and propped his feet on his desk. “Let’s just call that a personality conflict. Something about you taking over my space, flinging accusations, and making my coworkers cry has just rubbed me the wrong way.”
A flush of red started to work its way up Reg’s face, and he struggled to retain his control. “You were ordered to offer this investigation your every cooperation.”
Ben snorted. “This isn’t the army; you can’t order me to do anything.”
The auditor was almost shouting now, struggling to control himself and leaning forward to brace himself on the desk. “We pay you to do as you’re told.”
Ben shrugged and smiled. “Well, I haven’t hindered you in any way. I’ve given you access to all of my files and even tolerated working from a ten-year-old laptop. What more did you want?”
The grinding of Reg’s teeth was audible from where Ben sat. It was music to Ben’s ears, and if it was a precursor to him losing his job, he almost didn’t care anymore. It was worth it to stick it to this pompous son-of-a-bitch. “A helpful attitude would have been nice. Your behavior has made it difficult to do my job here.”
Ben stopped smiling and checked his watch. “Too bad, you didn’t get it. Let’s move on, because we’re making no headway here, and it’s after six.”
“Fine. To the heart of the matter it is.” The auditor pulled the last sheet of paper off of the stack. It was a claims form, one of the ones that went in the repackaged claims. He turned it over to show Benny’s flyer on the back. The next piece of paper was an auction receipt. Again, it showed Benny’s face on the reverse. The third sheet of paper was a return-to-sender form. And now there were three of Benny’s faces staring up at the two men.
Ben felt himself start to go cold, his heart alternately thundering and whispering in his chest. He couldn’t stand the thought of the slimy bastard having been anywhere near anything having to do with his son.
Reg was more settled now, fingers steepled, and he leveled his accusations one-by-one. “You have been making illicit copies, you have been illegally adding these flyers to government forms, you have been littering this office and the auction with these pleas for help, you have been coming in progressively later and later, and you were even reported drunk at the office one day.”
Ben tried to speak but had to clear his throat and try again. “I have never been drunk on the job.”
“Your coworkers beg to differ. Stop interrupting.” The auditor knew he finally had the advantage, had finally found the weakness he had been searching for to try and take this new employee down a few notches. “You have hassled your coworkers, emotionally blackmailing them into participating in your schemes to defraud the U.S. Postal Service for your own ends. You have abused the databases at your disposal that are for the sole purpose of returning lost and insufficiently addressed mail.”
There was a twitch in Ben’s jaw and his hands were clenched at his sides. Everything the man said was true, but did he honestly think that Ben cared about any of that? That this list of offenses was anything new to him? He had known exactly what he was doing, what he was taking advantage of, and he had no intention of apologizing for it. “Are you finished?”
Reg smiled, satisfied to finally deliver what he considered the knock-out blow. “Almost. To sum it up, you are wasting this department’s resources, and you are a menace in the workplace. My recommendation is that you be replaced as quickly as possible.”
“Is that what you recommended for Sylvia, too?” Ben stood, leaning over his desk. “Replacement?”
The auditor actually leaned back a bit, for once taking into account that his prey outweighed him by a solid 60 pounds. “Her crimes are much smaller. No, I recommended counseling for her kleptomania actually. To stop her before her crimes escalated into stealing items that were actually valuable instead of mail destined for the shredder. She seemed to take it rather hard.” Reg frowned and shuffled his papers.
“Counseling. Of course she took it hard. Do you have any idea of her history?” Ben slammed his hand down on the desk to cut the auditor’s response short, causing the man to roll warily away from the desk. “Of course you don’t. You never bothered to look into any of the people here, why they do what they do, you just came in and started tearing this place apart.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I am also recommending Jillian for counseling. Her habit of talking to that urn of ashes in there is repulsive and a sign of deep imbalance. We can’t have anyone here going, as it were, postal.” Reg tried to give a grim chuckle and started to put his papers hastily into his briefcase.
Ben stepped back from the desk, aware that he was pushing this little man too hard and couldn’t bring himself to care. The only thing holding him back from reaching across the desk to throttle him was the fact that he couldn’t look for his son from jail. “So the question becomes, why replace me? Why not the others you deemed problematic?”
Reg stood, straightening his suit jacket over his beer belly. “Because you wasted governmental money in this pathetic attempt to find your boy, and you have been an active menace to other employees here.”
“Pathetic?” What little thread of control Ben had managed to retain frayed to the snapping point. “The attempts to find my boy are not pathetic. What’s pathetic is you coming in here trying to run everybody’s life, thinking you know so much better. You are a prideful waste of humanity who revels in knifing people in their weaknesses.” Ben’s breath was coming in ragged hisses between his words now.
“Forgive me. What I meant to say is, the attempts to find your boy are not pathetic. Those are simply a waste of time and governmental resources. No,” he grabbed his suitcase and started walking quickly to the door, seemingly desperate to put more space between himself and the now furious Ben. But he couldn’t stop himself from shooting one last rejoinder over his shoulder. “Benny, my boy, it is you who are pathetic for thinking you can make any sort of difference in this slack-jawed fashion. We’re done here. I’ll be turning my recommendations in tomorrow. You will be hearing from us.” The auditor made a hasty retreat as Ben lunged for the door and just missed having it slammed on his fingers.
Ben turned and stood staring blankly at the back of his monitor, left in the puddle of light from the lamp in his office, the warehouse in shadow around him. The desire to chase down Reg and break his face was slowly fading and he felt limp. Pathetic, that’s how people saw him, saw his search. A waste of time and destined for failure. Maybe Reg was right, but what other options were left to him other than to keep going? Reaching over to turn off the light, he stood in the darkness for a couple of minutes before heading to the door.
As Ben stepped out of the stairwell to his apartment, he saw Detective O’Connor leaning against the wall beside the door. He took a short step towards Ben. “They finished today, Ben. They’ve identified all the bodies.”
It took a moment for Ben to register the change in conversation as he was still running the argument with Reg through his head. Then the imagined images of pain and torture resurfaced that had been suppressed by the more immediate pressure of the audit, and he groped his way blindly to his door, fumbling to unlock it before gesturing for O’Connor to follow him in. When the detective opened his mouth, Ben waved harshly and went straight to the kitchen, pulling out two glasses and the bottle of whiskey from over his stove. He poured two measures and stood braced with his hands on the counter, taking a deep breath. This was not something he wanted to hear sober, especially not after the dressing down he’d just gotten.
“You found him.” Ben tossed back one whiskey and placed his hand over the other. “Please, tell me you found him.”
The detective came over and placed a hand on his shoulder. “No. I’m sorry. I know it would be easier on you if we found him, but no. Thankfully, he was not one of the children at the farm.”
Ben stared at the second whiskey and felt his stomach sink. The first shot slopped around unsteadily and the room acquired a counterclockwise rotation. He realized he hadn’t eaten since the previous evening and thought he should probably eat something to balance the alcohol. He forced his gaze back up to the man standing on the opposite side of the peninsula counter. “What do you mean? You’ve identified all ten bodies? And Benny’s not there? How could he not be there?”
O’Connor stepped back and nodded. “All eleven. And before you ask, yes, we’re sure we have them all. It lines up with Leonard Moscovich’s story. None of the boys ever had a broken right arm, either, so we are not mistaken with the identifications. He wasn’t there, Ben. Never was. You can rest easy that your son was never with that man.” O’Connor reached out for the second whiskey, now abandoned on the counter. “Do you mind? It’s been a horrific day, notifying all the parents.”
Ben waved his permission and walked out of the kitchen to sit in his desk chair, staring at the pushpin-laden map, news articles, and notes wallpapering his living room. All his work and he hadn’t found him, all the leads and phone calls. All the sleepless nights, and even then, nothing.
“He’s out there, Ben. There’s still hope of a someday; I’ve seen a few miracles in my time. Blessed few, but they do happen. Don’t give up.” The glass clinked in the sink and O’Connor walked over behind Ben, putting his hand on his shoulder again. Ben hardly felt it. “You know, you’ve done some fine work here. You might someday consider helping others with this sort of thing. Never would have found Moscovich if you hadn’t been so damned determined.” He patted Ben’s shoulder a couple of times and walked to the door. “Keep hoping,” he said as he closed the door.
Please tell me you’ve found him. Ben’s words to Detective O’Connor echoed through his mind, back and forth, over and over, and he tried to figure out why he wasn’t happy. He should be happy to hear his son wasn’t dead. Ben sat back slowly, slouching until his frame fit snugly into the familiar mold of the chair. Please. His hand rubbed absently over his mouth, eyes moving to the picture of his son placed in the center of his desk. He picked it up with his free hand, rubbing his thumb along his son’s cheek. Please tell me. Didn’t he want his son to be alive? How desperately he wanted his son to be alive, but he would be so relieved if he were found. If he were dead.
His eyes ached and he had trouble focusing on Benny’s face. His laugh, that wonderful sound that made his heart leap the first time he had heard it. What did it sound like? He couldn’t bring it to mind, couldn’t make it echo like he once could. He thought he could still remember what his son’s hair smelled like right after Jeannie had given him his bath and he had come to beg Ben for one last story before he closed his eyes. Ben set the picture back on his desk and rested his head in his hands. Please.
He stood up in an abrupt motion, his chair slamming back hard enough to coast across the room, and he strode to his wall, scanning the pictures and notes, the map, and the twine strung between pins and scraps of paper. He reached up to finger the top right hand corner of the map, the small corner that stuck out from the blue tape holding it to the wall. Yanking on it, he tried to rip the map from its moorings. He only managed to tear a strip from the middle of the map, and so he scrabbled at the paper, pins sticking his fingers, twine connected to other papers pulling them along behind the fluttering roads and byways.
None of it had helped; it had only led him to darker places than he’d ever thought he would encounter in his life. None of his work had done anything to find Benny, he was still just as gone as he was on the first day, only more so because now he was being forgotten by the police and the news cycle. And by his father. Ben was silent as he tore paper after paper from the wall, tears just starting to run down his face.
Sweeping his arms across the walls, he started to keen. More and more of the results of his investigation ended up heaped on the carpet until the wall was bare. He knelt slowly, burying his hands in the paper, sorting through until he found the flyer with his son’s face and turned to find the box with the pins in it.
Flipping it open, he sorted through to find a white pin and posted his son’s face back in the middle of the bare wall. He stared at it, the hand holding the box falling to his side and the pins scattering across the floor. The patter of them cascading over the fallen paper drew his attention back down to the box in his hand. Twice broken, twice fixed, with brass hinges and chipped parquetry. He could almost see his son’s fingers trace across the design, mimicking Star Wars sound effects and rocking on the stool in the store. Almost, but it was gone, along with his laugh and his scent, the sticky fingers pulling at his hair during piggy-back rides. All of it, gone.
A sob tore through him and he threw the box at the wall, watching it break once more. He regretted it immediately and scrabbled after the pieces. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Everything he touched, he broke. His marriage, his job, the search for his son, he couldn’t even keep from breaking this box over and over again. He didn’t even know what he was sorry about, but he couldn’t stop saying it, sorry, sorry as he slumped against the wall, half buried in the drifts of paper, cradling the broken box.
It wasn’t as badly damaged as the last time, the lid had held together where it had been glued before, but the bottom portion of the box was broken in two, and he didn’t have any glue, none. He tried vainly to fit the pieces together, wishing he’d thought to pack even one of his travel tool kits for repair work. As it was, he had nothing with which to try and repair anything, let alone a box. But he thought he kn
ew someone who might have glue. If she had paint, she probably had glue. Artsy people kept stuff like that around all the time.
He got up, tripping over the map and stumbled to the door, grabbing his keys, the box cradled to his chest. In ten minutes he was pulling up in front of Sylvia’s house, the box still in his hand. He rested his head on the steering wheel for a long second before getting out of the car and weaving up to the door. He rang the bell and waited. He swayed from foot to foot although he’d only had the one drink, his knuckles white around the box. He couldn’t tell anymore how much was the alcohol and how much was sleep deprivation and the numbness that had started to settle over his heart and head.
Just as he thought she wasn’t going to answer, the door swung open and Sylvia was standing there, her hair straggling out of its pigtails, wiping paint from her hands onto the heavy canvas apron she wore. “Ben?” She reached out one blue-speckled hand and grabbed his arm as he listed in her doorway, pulling him inside. “What is it?” He held out his hand with the cracked box and she took it, uncomprehending. “Ben, I don’t understand, you have to talk to me.”
“Benny, that was the box I was going to give Benny for his next birthday. He thought it looked like something from Star Wars, remember, I told you? Now I can’t, I can’t give it to him, he’s gone.” Ben’s voice broke over the last word and he started crying in earnest.
“Oh my god, he was one of them? One of the boys on the farm?”
He shook his head, the motion unbalancing him further. “No.” He rubbed his hands over his face and whispered into them, “But I wanted him to be. God help me, I wanted for him to be dead.” The numbness started to break apart and all that was left inside of him was pain. Not even any hope left, just a rushing, throbbing pain. A sob contorted his frame and he started to collapse into himself, but Sylvia caught him and guided him to a couch in the front room of the house.
“No, Ben, no. Don’t say that. I’m sure you don’t mean it.” Sylvia hesitantly rubbed his back, her hands catching on the flannel and leaving little streaks of paint. When he didn’t respond, simply sat there with his head in his hands, she moved a bunch of ratty art books off of the coffee table and sat in their place.
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