Running from the Dead

by Mike Knowles

  “How—how can that be? The police never contacted me.”

  Jones shook his head. “They wouldn’t have. They don’t know that they found Adam.”

  “How could they not know? Why didn’t you tell them?”

  Jones struggled to hold Ruth’s gaze. “I wasn’t there when they found his body.”

  “You didn’t stay with him? How could you not stay with him?” Ruth’s face was equal parts rage and disgust. “How could you leave him there with that monster?”

  “I didn’t leave Adam there with him.”

  “But you said the police found his body in his basement.”

  “They found two bodies,” Jones said.

  31

  “You killed him?” Ruth bit her cheek and stared at Jones. Tears welled in her eyes and she pushed them off her cheeks with her fingers in two swipes. “I want to know what happened. Everything.”

  “I had spent years going over police reports and articles in the newspaper—all of it went nowhere. So I started from the beginning and went looking for what the police and the papers missed. I found everyone interviewed by a cop, or a reporter, and I talked to them myself. That was how I eventually found out about the building inspector. It was just something one of the contractors happened to mention. The guy who did the electrical in the pool house said he remembered the job well because the building inspector was such a fucking hard-ass. I hadn’t come across any mention of a building inspector in the police records, so I followed up on it. On paper, Kevin McGregor was clean. There was nothing there that raised any alarms, not even a parking ticket. I wondered how many other people had missed this guy because he flew under everyone’s radar. The first time I showed up, he wasn’t home, so I talked to the neighbours. The people I met described Kevin McGregor as a quiet, pleasant man who kept to himself and did the occasional neighbourly favour. When I showed up the next day, McGregor wasn’t there. I saw a couple kids playing street hockey and I brought up McGregor. They said he was quiet, but they didn’t think he was pleasant and they sure as hell weren’t interested in any of his favours. The kids stayed away from that house. It was an unwritten rule that everyone understood, even if they didn’t exactly know how they all came to know it.”

  “They never told their parents about him?”

  “I asked that. One kid told me that his parents said McGregor was harmless and only interested in them because he didn’t have a family of his own.”

  “What happened to his family?”

  “They moved away years ago. The divorce was quick and McGregor’s ex-wife got full custody of their son. As far as I can tell, Kevin didn’t fight her and in exchange she didn’t come after him for alimony or child support.”

  “He had a son?”

  “Brian McGregor was eight years old the last time he saw his father.”

  Ruth put a hand to her mouth. “Adam was eight.”

  “I tracked Brian down,” Jones said. “I told him that I was a lawyer writing up a will for his father and I needed to send him some forms to sign. McGregor’s son told me to never call him again and then he hung up.”

  “Did he—” Ruth didn’t want to say the words.

  “I don’t know,” Jones said.

  Ruth wiped away a stream of tears with her thumb.

  Jones sighed. “I had run out of ways to play it sly, so I broke in while McGregor was at work.”

  “And?”

  “I found things.” The memory turned his stomach and Jones swallowed hard. “He lived alone. There was no one to hide his true self from, and it made him lazy. There was probably more there, but I stopped searching. I couldn’t look at it anymore.” Jones shook his head. “I should have called the cops right there, but I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I hadn’t found Adam.”

  Ruth stared at Jones and waited for what was coming.

  “I waited for him to come home. In that house, surrounded by everything that I had found and the things I was afraid to look for. I waited for hours for him to open the door.”

  “What happened?”

  “He came home just after five. He walked in and took off his coat and boots. He didn’t notice me sitting at the kitchen table when he walked into the kitchen with his lunch box. He was humming, “Walk Like an Egyptian,” He put the lunch box under the sink just as he started doing the whistling part of the song when he turned and saw me. The whistle trailed off and he just stood there with his lips puckered.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing. I spoke first.”

  “What did you say to him?”

  “I said his name.”

  “Adam?”

  Jones nodded.

  “And what did he do?”

  “For a second he just stood there with his mouth like that while he tried to process the strange man sitting in his kitchen and the name no one had ever said to him. Then, panic set in and he started looking around frantically for cops he imagined were going to jump out and arrest him. When they didn’t materialize and he realized it was just me, that confused him more. It took him a beat to get his head around the situation. He had two choices, fight or flight.”

  “What did he choose?”

  “Flight. At least, that was what I thought it was at first. He ran for the hallway and I figured he was trying to get out the back door, but he passed the door and went into the bedroom. He was fast for an old guy and he got the door shut and locked behind him. I thought it was strange until I hit the door with my shoulder and it didn’t give an inch. He had put in something custom and he had put a serious lock on the door. He wanted to make sure nothing could get in—or out.”

  “My God,” Ruth said.

  “I hit the door again and bounced right off it.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I went through the wall,” Jones said.

  Ruth stared at him.

  “He had fortified the door. He didn’t do anything to the walls. I had thought he was going for a phone or maybe out a window.” Jones shook his head. “He was going for a gun. I didn’t know he had one. It wasn’t registered and I hadn’t found it because I stopped looking after I found—what I found. I should have known better.”

  Jones shook his head at the memory.

  “The gun was in his nightstand. A small-calibre revolver that hadn’t seen any love but would still do as it was told. Revolvers are good at that. He was faster with the gun than I was with the wall. He could have killed me; he probably considered it, but he needed answers. After all, I had said his name.”

  Ruth whispered. “Adam.”

  “The upper hand gave him a chance to show his teeth. I was bigger than what he was used to hunting, but the role came natural to him and he figured it out as he went along. The problem with a gun is you might have to use it. He realized that it would be too loud in the bedroom, so he took me down into the basement. The gun made him confident, but Adam’s name made him desperate. He wanted to know how I found him and who else I had told about him. I told him what he wanted to know and waited for him to get sloppy. When I said that no one else knew about him, he believed me. I think it was easy to accept because he wanted so badly for it to be true. He thought he had gotten away with it again. The relief was euphoric, and right then, he started looking at me differently. I had been a threat at first, then I had been a puzzle that he had to solve. All of a sudden, I was something to be disposed of—but not right away. McGregor had ideas, a gun, and no one to stop him. He slipped into a familiar role. He was used to using people to get what he wanted. He knew what I was after, and so he asked what the story was worth. What would I do to find out what happened to Adam?”

  “Jesus,” Ruth said.

  “McGregor told me that he would tell me where Adam died if I undid his pants.”

  Tears ran down a face as still as a s
tatue. She closed her eyes tightly and inhaled sharply. When she was able to look at Jones again, she said, “Please, tell me the rest. I need to know.”

  “McGregor was feeling his way along, but he was finding his rhythm fast.”

  “He was talking about Adam and the first time they had met. At first, I thought he was taunting me, but then I realized he was enjoying himself. He was getting off on the memory.”

  Ruth closed her eyes again.

  “He pointed the gun at my head and told me to get on my knees.”

  Ruth turned her head and began to cry again. When Jones paused to let her, she shook her head. “What did you do?”

  “I did what he asked. He was used to making people scared, and he knew that scared people do as they’re told. I wasn’t scared, I was just waiting.”

  “For what?”

  “For him to get close. When he did, I took the gun away from him, and after a few minutes of—persuading, he was ready to have a conversation. Now he was terrified, so he did as he was told and he told me everything. I thought I had been ready for it, but then he told me where he had buried Adam.”

  “Don’t use that word,” Ruth said. “That man didn’t bury my son. He locked him away to rot. I will bury my son.”

  Jones nodded. “When he told me what he had done, I made him take down the wall with his bare hands.”

  This got Ruth’s attention.

  “It took him half an hour to get through. I don’t know for sure, but I think he broke his shoulder trying.”

  “Good.”

  Jones nodded again. “McGregor had wrapped Adam in a plastic sheet and wound duct tape around his neck, waist, and ankles.”

  Ruth began to sob.

  “I wouldn’t let him touch Adam again,” Jones felt his eyes well up. “The Adam inside my head, the one I had been chasing, died right there in that basement, when I reached into that hole and picked up your son.” Tears soaked Jones’ cheeks at the memory. “I knew everything about your son. I knew his favourite Blue Jay. I knew every scar on his body and how he got it. I knew the names of everyone in his class. I knew everything about him, but none of that made me ready for how he felt in my arms. I didn’t expect him to feel so light. I stared down at him. This boy wrapped in a sheet. After everything I had learned about him, after all those years of searching for him—I wasn’t ready for how he would feel in my arms.”

  “What happened next?”

  “I made a mistake.”

  Ruth had rested her jaw on top of her laced fingers. The knuckles were white and her eyes were red. “What was your mistake?”

  “I took my eyes off Adam, and I looked at McGregor. He saw me looking at him and he knew. He knew what I was thinking. He started to cry and then he began to beg. First to me, then God.” Jones, still mystified at what he had heard, shook his head. “That basement was closer to hell than it was to heaven. He should have known that God wasn’t listening, not in that place. I pulled the trigger until the gun was empty.”

  “And then you left my son in that basement. In a place that was closer to hell than to heaven.”

  32

  “Hearing the shots sobered me up. I knew a loud bang that sounded like a gunshot could have been written off for one reason or another by anyone who had heard, but not six. I couldn’t stay there.”

  Jones felt Ruth’s anger on his face like a sunburn. “You should have come straight to me,” she said.

  “I couldn’t. I was too hot. I went into the city and found a place where I could be invisible until things died down.”

  “And when things did die down—” Ruth’s lips curled as though the phrase left a bad taste in her mouth, “you called. You called my home and told Peter you needed to speak with me. You said you needed me, but when I called, you didn’t pick up. Why, Samuel?”

  “It’s complicated,” Jones said.

  Ruth clicked her tongue. “It is anything but. You should have talked to me.”

  “I was trying to find a way to work things out.”

  “By keeping me in the dark and my son in the morgue. Don’t lie to me. All of this was about saving your own skin.”

  Jones shook his head. “No, I climbed those basement steps knowing there was no way I was walking away from this. I just thought I had more time before it all fell apart. At first, I told myself that I was giving you a little more time to live with the hope of seeing Adam again before I had to snuff it out. I thought it was a mercy to live a little longer with the idea that your son was alive after burying your mother. But I was lying to myself. Part of me, a bigger part than I had ever realized, had thought I could bring him home. Finding him there. Finding out that I had been too late, that I never could have saved him from that man, hurt me. I had failed Adam. I wasn’t ready to fail you too.”

  Jones and Ruth stared at each other until their tears got in the way; then, they cried together about some of the same things.

  “I’m sorry.” Jones dragged his sleeve across his face. “I used the cops as an excuse. I used your mother as an excuse. I used Lauren as an excuse.”

  “Who is Lauren?”

  Jones thought about the kid who had run from a home hundreds of kilometres away and wound up confessing to bathroom walls. “A kid I thought I could help. At first, she was a distraction. Then she became something else.”

  “What?”

  “Someone told me that hope is the worst kind of torture because hope goes on forever and it won’t let you die.”

  Something in Ruth’s eyes told Jones that she understood exactly what Norah had been saying.

  “Do you know what I told her?”

  Jones saw the awful truth that Ruth had learned minutes ago roll across her face. “There’s something worse than hope,” Ruth said.

  “Knowing,” Jones said. “Knowing is worse than hope. I learned that when I found Adam. When the hope I was carrying was taken from me.” Jones sniffed and ran his knuckles across his face. “The girl, Lauren, gave me some of it back. The idea that I could save her—I—I needed that. I chased it. Away from you. Away from the cops. Away from Adam and what I knew.” Jones shook his head. “It was stupid.”

  “And did you save her?” Ruth couldn’t hide the emotion in her voice.

  “Some people don’t want to be saved,” Jones said. “Not until they’re ready.”

  “No. I don’t believe that,” Ruth said. “Tell me about her.”

  “Ruth—”

  “Shut up. Just shut up,” she snapped. “After what you did, you owe me. I want to know about the girl.”

  Jones opened his mouth to speak and Ruth cut him off with a raised palm. “Wait.” She raised her voice and Jones heard it crack a little. “Peter, bring me a real drink, and don’t argue with me about it. I don’t care what time it is.” She looked back at Jones and said, “Tell me.”

  Jones told her about the girl who had left the note in eyeliner on the back of a bathroom door. He told her about Norah and finally talking to Lauren. He even told her about Irene and William. Ruth didn’t interrupt him again. She listened and she drank. The rum softened her face and weakened her defences. While Jones spoke of a young girl determined to run away, Ruth began to cry. Her sobs began as strained jerks that slowly birthed sounds that eventually became wails. Jones sat quietly until Ruth was able to quell her misery with the help of more rum. Thirty minutes later, Ruth knew everything.

  Jones pointed to the glass. “I could use a drink.”

  Ruth lifted the glass and drained what was left in one gulp. “No.”

  Jones understood. He had no right to ask her for anything. He had taken too much from her. He stood and felt his back complain after sitting for so long in the uncompromising chair.

  “You have too much to do.”

  Jones forgot about his back. “What?”

  “You don’t have time to be d
rinking.” Ruth’s heavy tongue had trouble with the suffix on the last word. She either didn’t know her speech was slurred or didn’t care because she filled her glass again. “I won’t let my son’s bones spend another night in a morgue. He will not be away from me for another minute.” Ruth had more of the drink. “That should give you a day, or two at best.”

  “To do what?”

  “To find Lauren. When that detective finds out that I have taken my son home, he is going to have some questions for me. I won’t make it easy for him to find me, but he will get to me eventually. If the detective has half a brain, and I hear many of them do, it won’t take him long to learn that you have been working for me for quite some time. When he learns that last piece of the puzzle, he will come after you with everything he has.” Ruth drank again. “So, that gives you a day, maybe two. That’s not much, but it’s something. Enough to give you a chance to do for her what you couldn’t do for my son.”

  Ruth put down her glass and got to her feet. Jones followed. She took an unsteady step forward and used two fistfuls of Jones’ shirt to steady herself. “Find her. Find her and bring her home.”

  Jones wrapped his hands around the fists holding onto him. Ruth lowered her head to his chest and Jones held her close while she cried. Minutes passed, then Ruth shook her head and broke away from the embrace. “Go.”

  Jones turned his back on Ruth and started down the hallway to the door. Behind him, he heard Ruth calling to Peter.

  “Peter, bring the car around. We are going to bring Adam home.”

  33

  Jones didn’t have to wait long for his coffee. Sheena saw him come in and immediately started working faster to dispatch with everyone who was already in line. When Jones stepped to the register, Sheena passed a hastily made macchiato to a woman who clearly took her caffeine seriously. The customer shifted on expensive suede heels and made a face that telegraphed the complaint that was on its way. Sheena didn’t notice the face; she was already turning to look at Jones. “Where the hell have you been?”