Allison: “Josh? Are you okay? Talk to me, please.”
Josh: “You promise there’re police at our houses, right, to protect our parents in case Arnold comes for them? Tommy’s house too? You have to promise. Are they there now? He could already be there. He—”
Allison: “Josh, yes. Yes. Like I said earlier, your homes are under surveillance.”
“Okay. Okay.” Josh bends in half, his head in his hands. “Oh my God, this is the place.”
While waiting for backup (they don’t have to wait long), they run the building address and car’s plate through databases. Two men are listed as residing in the third-floor apartment: Martin Weeks, age sixty-eight, a retiree; Rooney Faherty, age twenty-three, no known employer, and he has an extensive criminal record with a list of breaking and entering and burglary arrests and six months served this most recent fall and winter. He’s currently on parole. The car is registered under Weeks’s name.
Two Brockton police officers are at the front door; their ringing of the third-floor apartment doorbell is going unanswered. Allison leads Sergeant Kimball and another officer down the driveway and they climb up the skeletal, zigzagging back stairs. There is more exposed wood than there is paint on the creaky stairs and railing. The deck is warped and sun bleached. A black, egg-shaped charcoal grill missing its cover and one of its legs leans against the railing and is propped up on a cinderblock. Full, untied garbage bags line the rear wall. Two of the three apartment windows are missing screens. All three have their shades pulled down.
The hinges groan and complain as Allison opens the back screen door. She knocks hard on the interior wooden door. Four, small, rectangular windows rattle and buzz in the frame.
“Hello, Mr. Weeks? Mr. Weeks, I’m Detective Allison Murtagh of the Ames Police Department, and we’re here to make sure you’re okay. We’d also like to ask you a few questions.”
Inside, a thin, dingy lace curtain covers the door’s windows like a cloud. Allison bends, cups her hands around her eyes, and hovers centimeters from the glass. She’s looking into a kitchen. It’s dark but there’s light coming from another, unseen room to the left. On the floor there are empty boxes and more full untied garbage bags. Up against the far wall, a round table drips with newspapers, cereal boxes, and milk or orange juice cartons. The table is surrounded by three chairs, with the fourth having spun out of orbit, adrift in the kitchen.
She asks the officers behind her, “Can you hear that? A TV maybe?”
Kimball stays with Allison, but the other officer walks next to one of the apartment windows and says, “Yeah, I hear a TV.”
“Hello, Mr. Weeks?” Allison pounds on the door again, this time with an open hand, and the door quakes and she’s suddenly and absurdly aware of how high above the ground they are but continues hitting the door hard enough to send everyone and everything crashing down.
A male figure shuffles into the kitchen, medium height and build, walking with a slight limp. He has something in his left hand, dangling down by his hip. As he gets closer to the door she recognizes it; a beer bottle. He places the bottle on the counter to his left and then unlocks the deadbolt.
Allison steps back, the door opens, only enough for the width of the young man’s face.
“Hey. Sorry, I was, um, watching a movie.” He swallows a half hiccup, half burp. His face is gaunt, as though he lost a lot of weight in a short time span. Cheeks are covered in thick stubble, and there are smudges of dirt on the bridge of his nose. Hair cut short, tight to his head, recently buzzed. The tide of his hairline is beginning to go out to sea, and his high forehead is dotted with acne and beads of sweat. He squints and his eyes are red, like he’s been crying or drinking or both.
Allison shows her badge, introduces herself and her fellow policemen, and asks, “Are you Mr. Rooney Faherty?”
“Yeah. That’s me.”
“We’ve had officers ringing the front doorbell. How come you didn’t answer?”
He shrugs. “Watching my movie.” He scratches his face slowly, as though unsure of the need to scratch that itch. “We get a lot of ding-dong-ditch here. It’s kind of funny, actually. It’s not the best neighborhood in the world. Obviously, right? I mean, I know there are better, lots better places, just over in your town, right. Ames. Lots of nice houses in Ames. You probably live in a beautiful one. Right? I can see these things.” He taps the fingers of his left hand against his temple.
Allison plays along, to keep him talking. She says, “Sure. It’s nice, but it’s seen better days.”
“Most people who live in a nice house don’t even get how nice it is. This place isn’t so terrible, though. People aren’t so bad here. They are who they are. I’ve been in worse, places that don’t look worse but are, you know.” He opens the door a little wider and peers around a corner, like he can see past Allison and the officers. His jeans and black T-shirt are baggy, two sizes too big, and filthy, like his face, colored with dirt, as though he came in from working a garden. “Tons of kids here, usually out running around in the street, which is great. Gotta let kids be kids. Can’t worry about them all the time.” Every few words a slurred one slips out. He’s been drinking, but he doesn’t break eye contact, doesn’t seem uncomfortable or not in control. If anything, the more he talks, the more he animates and is energized, like he wants to keep on talking until someone makes him stop. This is a smart young man, one used to showing off with his mouth, talking his way both out of and into trouble. Allison unexpectedly feels bad for him, and is a little afraid of him, too.
He’s still talking through the barely opened door, but leaning forward, out of the house, toward Allison, totally engaged, and with no end in sight. “My uncle complains about the kids, yells at them through the windows. I tell him to leave them alone but he doesn’t listen. I tell him he’s that old guy in the neighborhood now, yelling at kids to get off his lawn. Every neighborhood has one of those, right? He’s a hard guy, had a hard life, I guess, lost everything, but tries his best, like we all do, that’s all we can ask, but the kids drive him nuts. I tell him they’re just kids doing what they do—”
Allison interrupts. “Is Mr. Martin Weeks your uncle?”
“Yes. Um, yes, he is.” Hint of a smile. Wistful, drunk, cruel, secretive, remorseful? There are infinite smiles. A smiling face is often the hardest to read.
“Is your uncle home, Mr. Faherty? I’d like to talk to him. See how he’s doing.”
Rooney keeps to the long, tight rectangle between the door and the frame. “No,” he says, then coughs. He opens the door a little more to snake out an arm and cover his mouth. His right forearm has a thick gauze pad taped around it. There’s a hint of pink to it at the lower edges. “I think he went out with a friend or something, probably be back later this afternoon.”
“Are you sure?”
Rooney nods. “Yeah, I’m sure. I’d call him but, you know, he doesn’t do cell phones. Hates them. A real Luddite’s Luddite. Love that word. Isn’t that a cool word?”
“Your uncle’s car is still here.”
He waves his injured arm, dismissing the comment. “His buddy picked him up. No idea when they’ll be back.”
“Is his name Arnold?”
“What?” He closes the door a little so that half of his face is visible, like a reflex, and opens it back up.
Allison can feel the officers behind her growing impatient. Maybe she’s projecting her own impatience. She knows who she’s talking to and the find-Tommy-clock continues to tick away, but she needs to slow-play this somewhat, get him to keep talking and not suddenly clam up. She asks, “Is your uncle’s friend named Arnold?”
His face crinkles up like she asked the dumbest question in the world. “No. Joey G. picked him up. They like to go to Hooters or Doyle’s. Look at the waitresses. Two dirty old men, you know.”
“Is it all right if we come in and talk a little more, then?”
“I don’t know.” He smiles again and then looks back into the apartment
and remains turned away from her.
“Rooney?”
“Hey, yeah, sorry.”
“I’d really like to come in.”
“I was just thinking I forgot to pause my movie. It’s a zombie movie. Classic. Dawn of the Dead, ever see it?”
“I don’t think so. Rooney—”
“It’s one my friends’ favorite movies. They totally dig it.” He sways in the doorway, his eyelids droop, and he pitches forward, then catches himself, pulls upright. He might be drunker than she thinks, or strung out, or maybe he’s ill. The longer she looks at him, the more skinny and malnourished he’s beginning to appear.
“Have you been drinking, Rooney?”
He says, “Hey, you guys are kind of like vampires, you know. I mean, I’m not trying to insult you, not at all, that’s not what I’m saying. Really I know, shit, this doesn’t sound right. Let me start over. Did you know a vampire can’t come into a house unless you invite them in? That’s why I said it. You’re sort of like that. You can’t come in unless I invite you in. It’s kind of weird but makes sense, too. But I’m just messing with you.”
“We’re coming in now, Rooney, okay? I’d like you to back up, away from the door.”
He scratches his face again, deflates a little, and for the first time during their conversation, looks at his feet. “Yeah, sure. Sorry. You can come in. Place is a total mess. It didn’t used to be like this. Now it’s kind of embarrassing and why I don’t like to stay here. I didn’t even stay here most of this week.” He looks up at Allison and says, “I know you understand not wanting to stay in someone else’s place, right, Detective?”
He says it like he knows she’s temporarily living at her parents’ house. Or he says it like he’s a con man fishing for information. Allison is momentarily rattled but she settles on the latter and says, “It must be difficult.”
“My uncle doesn’t let me throw anything away, you know. He’s like one of those hoarders or something. Should be on TV.”
Rooney backs away from the slightly ajar door. Allison pushes it the rest of the way open and is overpowered by the stench of garbage, the sour tang of curdled milk, and the stuffy, humid air of the apartment. Sergeant Kimball and the other officer follow her in. One of them turns on a light and the other says, “Christ.”
Rooney says, “Sorry. I know. It’s not good in here. Not good. I’ll get rid of all this as soon as you guys leave. I promise. I know, this is totally ridiculous.” Rooney fusses with the garbage, slides one bag up against the wall, ties another bag closed, and goes on to the next one, pauses to wipe sweat off his forehead with his gauze-wrapped forearm. There’s moaning and screaming coming from the TV in the other room.
Sergeant Kimball says, “You don’t need to worry about that now, Rooney.”
“I know, but it’s disgusting. How can we live like this, right? You guys must live in such nice houses and this place is shit, total shit, you know. And it’s our fault. I mean, we’ve had our share of bad luck too, not saying that we haven’t, but this is, is unacceptable. This is bullshit. This is—”
Sergeant Kimball asks, “What happened to your arm?”
“Playing with some kids outside.” He waves his arm again, rubs his face, his hands fluttering like dirty, injured pigeons. “I was chasing them and I tripped and took a digger into the rusty fence along the side out there. You saw that, yeah? Cut myself pretty good.” He goes back to closing up the garbage bags and mutters to himself. He’s breathing heavier, his voice going into a higher register.
Allison asks, “How much is left in your movie, Rooney?”
“It’s almost at the end, I think. The zombies finally got in. So the heroes, or whoever—I guess they’re not really heroes, just regular people. They’re not going to survive, or make it. It’s how all those movies end. I like them, but people need to be smarter, need to make better plans about that kind of stuff.”
Allison: “Your friends who like that movie, did you invite them over to watch it with you?”
“No. I—I can’t do that. Can’t let them see the place like this.”
“But you’ve had your friends over before, though. Right?”
He says, “Yeah,” then shakes his head. “I guess. But it wasn’t this bad. It wasn’t like this.” His eyes are big and he’s clearly upset, on the verge of tears. He full-body slumps.
“Rooney, do you know anyone named Arnold? Who is Arnold?”
He looks around. Opens his mouth to speak then stops, wipes his face with both hands. The dirt and sweat mix and color his skin. He twice breathes out heavy.
“Rooney?”
“It’s weird, but Arnold was my dad’s name. I never met the fucker, but I found out that’s what his name was.”
Allison asks, “Do people call you Arnold?”
Rooney nods and stares past Allison and past the walls of the apartment. “Yeah. Some of my friends do.” His voice goes baby-brother little and he sounds to be on the verge of tears.
“Is Tommy Sanderson your friend?”
He smiles, shakes his head, reanimates, or regroups. “Hey, I knew you were going to ask me that. I knew you were going to be here today, too. I see things before they happen sometimes. It’s weird, I know. I even freak myself out. It’s a talent that runs in the family. My uncle, the good ol’ Rev, used to get all kinds of money from the true believers with his talent.” He laughs. His hands open and close into tight fists.
Allison: “Is Tommy your friend, Rooney?”
“Yeah, he is. A real good one. I like Tommy a lot. Even if he’s kind of a fuck-up and doing stuff to get me in trouble. You’ll see. It was all him and the other guys. And all I ever wanted to do was help him out.”
“Is Tommy here now?”
“He’s not here.”
“Where is he?”
Rooney doesn’t say anything and looks into the other room, where everyone is screaming and running from zombies. Sergeant Kimball has a hand on his holster and walks into the TV room.
“Rooney, where is Tommy?”
“He’s, uh, still at the park. He’s still there at Borderland. He stays there now and won’t leave.” Rooney’s affect goes cold, expressionless. “I haven’t heard from him. He stopped talking to me.” Rooney shuffles across the room, toward them or toward the kitchen door, she doesn’t know.
Allison and the officer both pull their weapons from their holsters but keep them pointed at the floor. Allison says, “Stay away from the door, please, Rooney.”
“Hey, I’m just going to finish my beer. That’s all I want to do. I really want to finish it. I didn’t think you’re going let me finish it and I want to. I really want to, okay?” His voice is a whine, and there’s a growl under there, too. He reaches for the bottle and watches Allison.
The police officer: “Leave it, sir. Step away from the counter. Slowly. Now.”
For a moment Allison is convinced Rooney is going to try to grab the bottle anyway, or something else, anything. He’s got that look she’s seen hundreds of times before, the one that’s so present in the present but at the same time running through the alternate universes of possibilities.
Allison says, “Please move away from the counter, Rooney.”
Rooney backs away with his hands up. “Fine. I’m being helpful. I am. Right? You need to say it for me.”
“You are being helpful, Rooney.”
“I am. I know I am. And I’m going to tell you something because I want to help some more and I’m only trying to help—”
Sergeant Kimball storms back into the kitchen, talking into the radio strapped to his shoulder, then says, “Bedrooms are empty. But there’s a door that’s all sealed up with duct tape.”
Rooney: “I told you I haven’t been home all week. I only came back here late last night, and after I stopped by Tommy’s place to look for the coin I gave him. I thought, I don’t know, I could give it back to him or something. A peace offering, you know. Hey, the coin is his now and I wanted to make sure
he had it, so I looked in his bedroom. But I couldn’t find it.”
Allison and Sergeant Kimball ask questions over each other and the radios on both officers are spewing static charged commands.
Allison: “You were in Tommy’s house last night?”
Sergeant Kimball: “Why is the door taped? Is that the bathroom?”
Rooney steps forward, ignoring the other offices and goes to Allison, head turned, talking out of the side of his mouth, like he’s telling a street-corner secret. He says, “My uncle’s in the bathroom. Okay? He’s not feeling too good, you know? But it wasn’t my fault. My friends were here and things got so weird and out of hand, and then I didn’t know what to do. I’ll admit that my head got all messed up this week. I mean, all this crazy shit happened, and so, I left. I was outta here.”
The duct tape covering the frame of the apartment’s bathroom door is as thick as alligator skin. The forensic team has to use X-Acto knives to hack away at some of the tape before it finally gives in and peels off in tethered, serpent-like strips. The smell of rot and waste is the lumbering monster being kept inside, and it instantly rampages through the TV room. Allison can’t help but think in monstrous terms. That smell: sulphur and methane and something else that can’t be catalogued or accurately described but is ancient and sickly (and even sweetly) familiar. And how something so large and terrible can fit through the cracks between the door and the frame is the first horror.
Then they open the door. It swings inward about halfway, getting stuck or hitting up against something. Amorphous clouds of blowflies billow into the rest of the apartment. That monster smell goes atomic and they are all caught in the blast, the fallout. And there are groans and mouth breathing through their teeth and wet coughs. They turn away and cover their noses and mouths (and even the investigators wearing masks, they cover those, too), and they shoo flies and yell commands very few seem to follow or listen to.
Allison doesn’t throw up but wishes she did. It would give her an excuse to look away. Inside the bathroom is pitch-dark. For a moment, Allison re-experiences her childlike fear of the dark, of the idea that there can be anything or anyone hiding inside. And there is a darker shape sitting on the floor, and in that initial snapshot, Allison thinks the shape is Tommy, the awkward teen she met once at a graduation party, the one with the moppy hair, pipe-cleaner arms and legs, skittish and friendly with an aw-shucks smile that would turn heads once he hit high school, and until now she’s been able to separate the real Tommy from the one she’s been searching for. Allison takes a step toward the dark bathroom, flies buzzing, people shouting, and Tommy is crouched on the floor, and then the slightest head-tilt up to look at her.
Disappearance at Devil's Rock Page 24