by David Dean
“I’ll be truthful, I don’t really know, but can you tell me if he was home with you night before last?”
“Yes,” she answered, “he came home that night.”
“Came home around what time?” Nick asked.
“A little after seven, I think,” Fanny answered uneasily. “What is this all about?”
He answered her with another question, “Did you know that he came in to see me today?”
He could see by her expression that she did not.
“To see you?” she managed.
Nick nodded. “He said he had information regarding the missing child we’ve been searching for.”
He watched as Fanny’s face grew pale, her mind racing through the implications that could be hidden within such a statement.
Nick went on, “He said he believes that a strange boy took her.”
Fanny almost sighed aloud with relief. “Well, sometimes he can get things very mixed up in his mind. He drinks like a fish, you know. Thank God, he didn’t leave you with the impression that he was involved in Megan’s disappearance. The way he wanders around here looking like a scarecrow, I worry sometime what people might think of him… that he might frighten folks. He’s really harmless though, Nick…”
Nick cut her off, “Has your dad ever mentioned Seth Busby to you, Fanny?” He saw the look of confusion spread across her lean, pale face, and thought for the briefest of moments what it might be like to kiss her. “He’s the boy that went missing seven years ago and was never found. Do you recall that?”
Nodding, Fanny answered, “Of course… of course I do. How could any of us forget?” She twisted her thin hands together on the desktop and Nick noticed how tight the flesh was across her knuckles, how hollowed her cheeks. “But, no, Nick, I don’t think Dad has ever spoken of the Busby boy at all. The sad thing is he was probably drunk through the whole event. He’s pretty much the center of his own little universe.”
“Fanny,” he said softly, “I’m sure that it means nothing at all… that I’m just overly sensitive on the subject of the Busby case, but your dad told me that he met this boy in the schoolyard… just around dusk.” He stopped to let the words sink in.
Fanny stared at him uncomprehendingly. “I don’t understand…”
“He described the boy as wearing the same clothes as Seth did the day he went missing.” He watched as her face grew whiter still as the implications of what he was saying took root. “The night Megan Guthrie went missing was also the anniversary of Seth Busby’s disappearance.”
She stared at him for several long moments and he wondered if she might faint. Then she seemed to recover herself with a sudden intake of breath, a look of determination, of certainty, coming into her eyes, color flooding into her pale cheeks. “No,” she began, sitting up straighter, “he’s not like that, Nick. He’s not a very pleasant person, not a very likable man, and I think that that’s the way he wants it really. But, no, he has no interest in children. As I told you before, Chief, he takes little or no interest in anyone, or anything, other than the bottle.
“I don’t have an explanation for this ‘boy’ he supposedly met in the schoolyard, but I can tell you this, if it is true and not a hallucination, then it was just as he said it was and nothing more.”
She took a breath and Nick found himself sitting up straight in his chair like a school boy receiving a lecture on classroom behavior. Holding her head high on her long, slender neck, Fanny swung her gaze across her small dominion. Her visage drove the few interested patrons that had eased out of the stacks to take cover within them once more. That same gaze returned now to Nick, softening only a little. “He would never touch a child. He would have no interest in them. He’s not made that way. I don’t think he’s interested in anything other than his own company, and whiskey.”
Nick regarded her for several moments, sorry for what he had had to ask, and equally sorry at the result he had earned insofar as Fanny went. He had not been sure until that moment that what he felt about her was anything but loneliness seeking company. Now, to his regret, he knew better. Still, he was a policeman, first and foremost, and questions had to be asked, every possible line of inquiry pursued when it came to children gone missing.
“I’m sorry,” he began. “I’ve upset you, I can see that. But his showing up at my office with this story, I had to follow it up. If it makes you feel any better, the identikit drawing based on his description looked nothing like Seth. In fact… it looked more like a nightmare than a boy—that may be the drink, of course.
“But I can’t rule him out as a suspect at this point, Fanny, and at the very least he may be an important witness. Like you said, he wanders around out there at all hours and he may have seen something. He may even know something he doesn’t understand the significance of. I’ll have to hold him, Fanny. Do you understand?”
“No, Chief,” she stated firmly once more, her eyes locked on his, “you’re not to send him over to that jail—he’s too fragile, and being who he is, he wouldn’t last long in that environment; especially if the other prisoners think he’s done something to a child; you know that. You let him come home—I’ll see to it he’s made available for you; that he doesn’t leave town.” She faced him squarely across her desk, her face set like flint.
“I shouldn’t, Fanny, I really shouldn’t… though there may be some truth to what you say.” Nick couldn’t believe what he was about to do, “But if you vouch for him, I guess I’ll take a chance.” Then added quickly, “But I’ll have to question him again, Fanny, and soon.”
The starch seemed to go out of her with Nick’s answer and looking down at her tightly clutched hands, replied, “Yes, of course. Thank you, Chief.”
“Good,” he said, rising. “Well, I’ve certainly taken up enough of your time. I hope I haven’t gotten you into trouble with your boss. Would you like for me to stop off and say something to her on my way out?”
“No,” Fanny answered too loudly. Then more softly, “Thank you, no.”
Nick caught the glint of tears in her eyes, and before he could stop himself he reached out and placed a hand on her arm. Fanny went stock still and it was several moments before Nick remembered himself, taking his hand away and murmuring, “Well, then, I’ll…” he couldn’t think of what he’d been about to say. “I’ll be going,” he announced, turning for the stairwell.
He brushed past Becky returning from her first floor exile. “I had hopes I was going to be interrupting something,” she exclaimed, but when she crossed the landing to her desk it was to find Fanny quietly weeping.
?
When Fanny arrived home that evening it was to a dark house. She could see even as she hurried up the short walkway to their peeling, white, 1930s bungalow that her father was out. On those rare occasions when Preston would decide to remain sober for more than a few hours, the reading lamp in the sunroom would be illuminated as he pored over some oft-read classic.
Sometimes, he might remain sober for two days or more, and it was easy to pretend during such essentially tranquil periods that he was just an aging, retired father, no different than anyone else’s dad—smarter, maybe, certainly better educated than most. But he would never allow this cozy illusion to last, and tonight, she thought, he was at it and gone once more.
Discovering that he had left the front door unlocked, she threw it open, tossing her ring of unnecessary keys onto the side table. Out of the darkness of the hallway came the light skitter of claws, her cat hurrying as eagerly as any dog to greet her. From a frantic streak of black and white fur, and desperate yellow eyes, Loki resolved himself into the very picture of feline domesticity and welcome, rubbing his soft flanks against his mistress’s bare legs while purring loudly at the pleasure of her company.
“Where’s Preston?” Fanny asked, as she knelt, stroking his small, delicate skull until he began to nip impatiently at her fingertips. Standing again, she announced, “You’re no different from all the other males I’ve known… all lovey-dovey when
you want something.”
She marched toward the kitchen, trying not to trip on the hungry cat as he wove his way between her feet, breaking off every few seconds to make a mad dash ahead, as if to show her the way. His purring had been replaced by the mewling of a spoilt child.
Switching on the light that hung over the table, she threw open a cabinet to retrieve a can of Loki’s food. This had the effect of turning his complaints into the cries of the damned. Dumping the food into his dish, she was rewarded with instant silence as he began to eat. Wearily, she removed her jacket and took it back down the hall to a closet by the entrance.
As a matter of rote, she pulled down an old beaded change bag she had hidden under some gloves and hats on the top shelf. She routinely changed the locations within the house where she might hide money, as their secrecy never eluded her father for very long. Stretching open the mouth of the little bag, she began to count the small roll of bills it contained, finding that it had only taken her father two weeks to discover the new location. He had removed a single twenty dollar bill from within the roll of tens, twenties, and fives that had previously accounted for seventy dollars mad money. She found herself grateful for his frugality—he knew better than to kill the golden goose, she reckoned.
She had so hoped her father might be at home, and that she could gently question him about his visit with the police, his inexplicable interest in a missing child. Switching on the front porch light, she tried not to think any more about the implications of Chief Catesby’s interview with her (and that’s what it really was, she told herself—a police interview), she headed back toward the kitchen to open a can of soup for her own supper.
She did not see the great, glittering eyes that watched her movements from the other side of the opaque window; the goblinesque head tilting to capture the lilt of her voice, her few spoken words.
CHAPTER FOUR
Preston felt extremely fortunate to have been allowed to leave the clutches of the police, and stopped for a moment to take a long draw from his bottle. Deeply regretting having offered them any assistance, he had wandered the town looking for the boy he had dubbed Gabriel, but to no avail. Now he found himself back where his nightmare had begun.
The schoolyard and its playground were deserted, the parents of Wessex Township having taken alarm and keeping their young ones close to the nest. There would be no children playing beneath the emerging stars for a long time to come, Preston thought.
On the other side of the fence, the swings hung still in the cooling air, while the jungle gym made for an odd geometry whose purpose appeared inexplicable without children. Crickets sawed away in the quiet of the dusk, their hopeful chirping made lonely within the overarching silence. In the near distance, the windows of ranch-style homes glowed warmly as night dropped gauze-like over the deliberately emptied landscape.
From far away, Preston heard the sound of a door being slammed, followed by the laughter of a child or woman, he couldn’t distinguish which, floating across the empty schoolyard like the tinkling of chimes. Turning his collar up, he took another pull on his brandy, made suddenly lonely and uneasy by the vacant tableau.
Turning right onto Ocean Street, he made his way west toward the rail-road tracks. There, he clambered over the low berm that formed the end of the street, skidding down the other side on the loose dirt and gravel. Almost losing his balance, he managed to stay on his feet, and keep a grip on the bottle all at once. He stopped to compose himself and have yet another swig of liquor.
Newly fortified against the clinging night chill he began plodding in the direction he had chosen. Though they had been out of use for many years now, he preferred to stay off the tracks themselves due to the ease of walking the well-worn paths on either side of them. These had been made by countless quads and dirt bikes used by the local kids to travel from town to various abandoned gravel and sand mining pits. These sites, all remotely located throughout the county, had provided generations of teenagers trysting and drinking spots.
That these lonely places had also been the scenes of assaults, rapes, and even the rare murder, only served to add to their cachet and provide fodder for local myth and lore.
For Preston, the tracks also provided a surreptitious short-cut leading through the heart of town. It skirted the edge of the old Baptist Cemetery, whose original stone markers dated back to 1767, and took him within a block of his home. He felt his bed calling.
Immediately ahead of Preston lay a small switching yard grown over with wheat grass. This waved like faded yellow seaweed in the dusk. Two silver passenger cars overlooked the main track like forgotten, discarded toys and had done so for many years, resting amongst the weeds awaiting an engine that would never again return.
In the near darkness they appeared without blemish, but Preston knew that by the light of day their silvered corrugated hides were festooned with spray-painted obscenities. Their windows were blackened by fires set by tramps to keep warm, as well as those resulting from vandals setting alight the cracked, cushioned seats. Within, he heard the almost delicate sound of glass being broken and made to hurry by—he had met enough of his fellow travelers over the years to be leery of night-time encounters.
Though most of the hoboes and vagabonds that stumbled unknowingly down the dead tracks into Wessex Township were harmless, there were those that were keenly predatory. These were men that would never again be a part of any society; men so isolated and depraved that there was nothing they would not do, or stoop to, in order to continue their lifelong binges. Unlike the happy tramps that would sometimes accost Preston as a brother, offering to share their cheap wine, the others shambled along like starving beasts, their eyes bright red with rage and thirst.
More than once, Preston had had to surrender one of his pints to escape the company of such men (It was apparently unthinkable to such creatures, that he might have two pints hidden on him). Shuddering at the memory, he promptly stumbled over something that lay unseen in his path.
Falling headlong into the dirt and crushed gravel, he threw out his hands to break his fall, flinging the near empty pint bottle into the weeds. His hands skidded out before him, the palms being painfully grated through the small, sharp stones and other debris. He grunted aloud as his chest impacted with the uneven earth and he came to rest. From somewhere to his left, and somewhat above him, he heard a quiet chuckle followed by a whisper.
Kicking away what he thought to be a bicycle that had tangled his feet; he scrambled up; reflexively clutching the remaining pint that rested in his inner coat pocket to ensure it was still intact. The familiar tactile outline gave him reassurance and he shuffled hurriedly away without looking back.
“You broke my bike, you old bastard,” the chuckling voice informed him, the humor gone from it now. Preston slowed, knowing that he had no hope of outrunning the speaker. As if reading his thoughts, the voice continued, “You’d better not try to run away.” Preston halted altogether. He turned to face his accuser, dread creeping along his spine like a caterpillar. The new moon had only just risen and now the clearing and its train cars, glistening with early dew, lay revealed in the pale white glow.
Connor Lacey leaned within the doorway of the closest car, his arms folded across his broad chest, his face a disapproving mask in the ghastly radiance, his eyes burnt holes. He was tall for a fourteen-year-old, athletically built, his blond curls giving him the appearance of a Roman bust, both beautiful and cruel. He was immensely popular at school, though mostly feared outside of it due to a casual recklessness that sometimes took a sinister, and even vicious, turn.
His creature, as Preston liked to term him, waited restlessly at his feet, a wiry boy of about the same age, but noticeably less physically developed than Connor. He wore spiky black hair and, even in the moonlight, the spots on his narrow crooked face appeared as purplish eruptions. Glaring at Preston as if he had hated him his whole short life, he flung a shiny piece of metal at the old man, catching him on the ankle with it. Preston
yelped like a dog, bending down to grasp his injury as the boys laughed softly together.
“You know that had to hurt,” Jared Case remarked good-naturedly to his friend. Preston moaned, his hand coming away with something moist and sticky on it. In the moonlight his blood appeared black.
Raising himself painfully to his full height, Preston managed to say, “I know who you two are.” He hated himself for the quaver in his voice, the trembling of his legs. “Don’t think for a moment I don’t. Last time, I didn’t say anything to the police. I let bygones be bygones. I’d hoped you’d learn your lessons without having to do time.” He was referring to an incident some months before when the two of them had beaten him nearly unconscious in the deserted 4-H grounds, robbing him of his money and whiskey. They had gotten both his bottles.
“I’d hate to do it,” he continued weakly, feeling cold and afraid, “but naturally I have to think of the community, too. We can’t have this kind of hooliganism in Wessex you know… it’s just not right.” As these words died on his lips, silence reigned.
Both boys watched him, their expressions unreadable. They reminded him of dogs on point, immobile yet vibrating with menace.
Connor broke the spell, dropping down to stand next to his smaller friend. Placing a hand on Jared’s sharp shoulder, he said equably enough to Preston, “I’ll kill you if you if do that… try it and see.” It was as if he was assuring Preston of the reliable delivery of his morning paper. Preston took a small step back. “I’m also going to cave your fucking skull in if you run from us, old man,” he added flatly. Reaching down, he selected a good-sized chunk of broken concrete, weighing it in his hand.
Preston halted and stilled himself. He could hear his own ragged breathing; feel the warm trickle of blood down his ankle. “What…” he began hoarsely, “what can I do?” He hated himself for pleading.
“You can start by sucking my giant cock,” Jared snorted.