by John Burley
Ben shook his head. He hadn’t seen it – hadn’t allowed himself to see it. But what if he had? Would he have been able to intervene somewhere along the way, before it became too late for all of them? And what about Susan? How much had she known, and when? Why had she not come to him with that knowledge? More important, why hadn’t she done anything to stop it? And the question he kept asking himself more than any other: why had she chosen to run?
He wondered if perhaps she’d been trying to tell him all along, and that he simply hadn’t been listening. Bits of conversation stuck out in his mind like thistles, catching him when he wasn’t looking, wounding him with their missed significance.
‘… I don’t think he should be dating that girl. One way or the other, he’ll end up hurting her …
‘… Why don’t you talk to him about it? …
‘… You have no idea about the measures that I am prepared to take – that I have already taken – to safeguard the lives of those children … I would do anything – anything – for them …’
‘… Mom says everyone deserves forgiveness. She says it’s not up to us to judge each other. It’s up to God …’
‘… We have to take care of each other. Just as we always have …
‘… I just don’t want to lose him …’
Ben recalled how, after the first murder, he’d asked his wife – nearly pleaded with her – to take the boys away for a while. Their safety was the most important thing, he had argued.
‘It won’t make any difference,’ Susan had told him, and now he realized why.
The sliding glass doors of the hospital’s front entrance retracted dutifully. He crossed the lobby, turned right at the first intersection and proceeded down the familiar hallway leading to the west stairwell. He passed several people in the corridor but said hello to no one. These days, that was best. He was a well-known presence in this town, but he walked the streets and buildings alone, like the ghost of a soul who has not yet realized that he is dead. People studied him with sideways glances, drew their children close in his company, and gave him wide berths as they passed. His son had decimated this town like a disease, an infection, a plague of one – and at the very least Ben was guilty by association, although there were many within Wintersville who claimed that his culpability ran far deeper than that. As a result, he was not only unwelcome here – he was suspect. And he would have left this place months ago if there were anywhere else for him to go.
But it was here, within this town, that he had lost them. For although Susan and the boys had been on the other side of the country when they disappeared, he had lost them long before that – in the lines of communication that had fallen short, in the clues that had gone unnoticed, in the innumerable opportunities he had had to stop this, if only he had listened carefully to the messages all around him. No, he couldn’t leave – couldn’t abandon the only tangible connection with his family that remained, couldn’t walk away from the things they had once touched, the rooms they had once occupied, the place they had once called home.
Distracted by these thoughts, he almost ran into her as she exited the gift shop.
‘Monica,’ he said, but she grimaced and stepped backward as if he were contagious, as if he might suddenly reach out and try to grab her.
Ben looked at her anyway, trying to see her as his son might have seen her. It was true that Thomas had pursued her through the woods, had torn apart her body, had left her lying there in the rain to die. She would never be the same because of it, would never be truly free of what his boy had done to her. But was it possible that Thomas had also come to care for her, to love her in some perverse way? Was he capable of that? Or had he only been toying with her all along – fascinated with Monica because of her survival, a living display of his handiwork. At the same time, Ben wondered what she might have once seen in him, if there was some shred of goodness and kindness she had discovered hidden within his son, a saving grace within his deep pit of damnation.
‘I …’ He faltered, searching for some means to connect with her, for some way to ask her about the things he was thinking. ‘How are you?’
She stared back at him without answering, her body poised in a defensive position.
‘I heard that your father was in the hospital.’ Ben stumbled onward. ‘Pneumonia, is it? I … I just want you to know that I’ve been thinking about him. I hope he’s feeling bett—’
‘You stay away from my father,’ she responded with such vehemence that for a moment Ben thought she was on the verge of striking him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, stepping past her and continuing down the hallway. ‘I didn’t mean to …’
‘You stay away from both me and my family,’ she called after him.
Ben reached the end of the hall and placed a hand on the doorknob leading to the basement.
‘Do you hear me?’ Her tone was loud and defiant within the tiled passageway.
Ben pushed the door open, stepping into the stairwell. It was quiet in here, but the sound of Monica’s voice carried through the open door as it swung slowly closed on its pneumatic piston. Her words snapped at his heels as he hastened down the concrete steps toward the floor below. ‘You stay away from us. Do you hear? You and the rest of your twisted family. You stay away from us all!’
Chapter 52
Sam Garston drove by the residence for the third time that day, stopping at the entrance to the driveway. Ben’s car was parked in front of the house, and Sam pulled the cruiser in behind him and turned off the engine. He sighed. He had no business here, he knew. Ben was no longer under formal investigation. There was no piece of news they had to discuss, no change in the situation between them. So, why do I keep coming here? Sam asked himself. What am I looking for? What do I expect to find? Perhaps nothing, he thought as he stepped out of the vehicle and approached the front door, the soles of his shoes clicking lightly on the warm pavement. As odd as it sounded, Sam still considered himself Ben’s friend – one of his only friends, he realized. Perhaps he came here more as an ally than an adversary, to see how Ben was holding up under the strain of the last several months. He had seen the way people in this town treated him – their collective judgments raining silently upon him without mercy or reservation – and although Sam had difficulty blaming them, he also couldn’t help but feel empathy for the man. There was no one Ben could talk to now, no one in his corner. And so he had stopped by once again to check up on him, to let him know there was someone in this town who still worried about him, who was available if Ben wanted him to be.
He ascended the steps and rapped three times on the door.
From inside came the heavy rush of a hurried approach down the front hallway. For a brief moment, Sam was struck with the certainty that Thomas had returned. In his mind, he imagined the door swinging open, the boy’s face staring back at him as the long, sharp instrument in his hand fell in practiced and determined swings into the side of Sam’s neck – an arch of pulsing blood jetting upward into the fine spring air.
Something large hit the door with enough force to make it shudder on its hinges, and Sam took a reflexive step backward, his right hand falling instinctively to the grip of his firearm. Then the guttural bellows of the dog erupted from the other side of the thick wooden slab that separated them: ‘WHOOOOOOH!! WHOO! WHOO!! WHOOOHHWHOOH!!’
‘I’ve already had to replace that door once,’ someone commented from the driveway behind him, and Sam spun around quickly, beginning to pull the weapon from its holster.
‘Hey, take it easy,’ Ben exclaimed, dropping the long-handled shovel he was holding and showing Sam the palms of his hands.
Sam reseated the weapon. ‘Don’t sneak up on me, Ben.’
‘I wasn’t trying to,’ Ben assured him. ‘I mean,’ – he looked around – ‘this is my property. I may not be welcome anywhere else in this town, but I do believe I have a right to be here.’
Sam descended the steps and joined him in the front yard. He nodded at t
he shovel. ‘Doing some planting, are you? A little yard work?’
‘The thought occurred to me recently that I ought to dig a moat.’ Ben stooped to pick up the shovel, then leaned it against the house.
‘You still having trouble with the neighborhood kids? I told you before I can go talk to their parents.’
‘No, it’s fine,’ he said. ‘It’s mostly harmless pranks. I’ve had to replace two broken windows from rock-throwing, but that’s really been the worst of it. It’s probably best to ignore them.’
‘Well, I don’t tolerate vandalism in this town. You let me know if you want me to put a stop to it, and I will.’
Ben nodded.
‘How you holdin’ up otherwise?’
‘Fine.’
‘I heard you quit the CO.’
‘Yeah,’ Ben said. ‘I couldn’t do it anymore. Too many bad memories there.’
‘Nat’s gonna miss you. That kid really looks up to you.’
‘He comes by the house every once in a while.’ Ben smiled.
Sam looked out at the quiet suburban street. A young boy on a bicycle pedaled past. ‘You ever hear from Susan?’ the chief asked, unable to help himself. ‘She ever try to contact you?’
‘Nothing,’ the other replied, and Sam, who’d based a large portion of his career on the ability to separate truth from dishonesty, knew that Ben wasn’t telling him everything.
‘You know, the best thing for all of them would be to turn themselves in,’ he said. ‘We know they crossed the border into Mexico, and we have people tracking them down even now. It’s only a matter of time. This won’t play out for long.’
Ben looked as if he was about to respond to that, but chose instead to change the subject. ‘How’s the ticker?’
Sam smiled confidently. The five days he’d spent in the hospital following a heart attack on the day Ben’s family had disappeared were already receding in his memory. ‘Good as new,’ he declared, and tapped his chest with his right hand as if to demonstrate.
Ben nodded. ‘I guess one way or the other we’re all on borrowed time,’ he observed as they made the short walk together to the parked police car in the driveway.
Sam considered this for a moment, then opened the door of his cruiser and lowered his large frame inside. ‘I’ll let you get back to enjoying your weekend. You give me a call if you want to talk.’ He offered Ben a discerning look. ‘I’m sure you’ll contact me if you hear anything from them, won’t you, Ben? You don’t want to allow yourself to become an accomplice in all of this.’
‘I already am,’ the man in front of him replied, turning his back on the chief and heading for the front door of the only refuge he still had left. ‘I already am.’
Chapter 53
Ben stood looking down at the wooden crate submerged in the earth, the sweat rolling freely down his flushed face. It had taken him thirty minutes this time to dig his way down to it. He was getting better at it, his arms becoming accustomed to the stony soil and the way it resisted his efforts.
The long-handled shovel lay at his feet. He wondered why he had carried it with him to the front of the house to answer Sam’s visit. It had been an instinctual move, but he wasn’t sure it had been the right one. The big man had a curious nature, his eyes missing nothing. Perhaps, on some level, Ben wanted to be caught – although he didn’t think so. More likely, he had brought the tool with him because the best way to hide something is not to hide it at all. People never look carefully at what’s directly in front of them. He had learned that lesson over the past year. He had learned it well.
He got down on his hands and knees, reaching his arms into the hole. The tips of his fingers dug for purchase at the corners of the lid, and then he was lifting it upward, casting it aside on the grass next to him. Inside the crate was a blue duffel bag wrapped in plastic, and he brought it to the surface. He got to his feet, removing the bag from the plastic and carrying it – almost gingerly – into the house.
In the kitchen, he placed his possession on the table and unzipped it. Inside was his passport, a map of Mexico, ten thousand dollars in small bills and a series of postcards he’d received sporadically in the mail over the past two months. On the kitchen table was another postcard, one that had arrived in his mailbox three days ago. The front displayed a photograph of an old church rising up from amid a lush tapestry of variegated gardens. Villahermosa, it said. La Esmeralda del Sureste. Beautiful village. The emerald of the southeast. On the back was Ben’s name and mailing address – nothing more. No brief personal note or return address. But the message had been clear enough: We are here. We are safe. Come if you want.
The first card, he remembered, had come from the town of Tampico. It had arrived in his mailbox two and a half months after they’d disappeared. He had been sitting right here at the kitchen table sorting through mail when the thing had slid out from between two larger envelopes onto the flat wooden surface in front of him. He’d turned it over in his hands, curious but not yet realizing its significance. Then his body froze when he saw the soft slopes and curves of the handwritten letters – unmistakably Susan’s writing. He’d stared at those letters for a long time, as if he were an astonished biologist encountering a novel species of animal for the first time. Eventually, he’d turned the card over again to study the front. Tampico, it said in pink cursive writing overlying a picture of a white sand beach, the shimmer of the setting sun reflecting off the water’s surface. ‘Tampico,’ he’d repeated to himself, the word sounding surreal and otherworldly in his own ears. The urge had fallen upon him to leave at that very moment, to purchase a plane ticket and to just go – to leave everything behind, bolting in the direction of the only contact he’d received from his family in more than two months.
Several considerations, however, had prevented him from doing just that. The most significant concern being, What if they’re just passing through? What if he got there to find that his wife and children had already moved on? And how would he go about finding them in the first place? Would he wander the streets asking people in English – the only language he spoke – whether they’d seen an American mother with two boys fitting Joel’s and Thomas’s descriptions? Tampico was a tourist destination. How many families vacationing there fit that exact picture? No, it wouldn’t work. He’d needed something more to go on.
For the time being, therefore, he had decided to wait, imagining that since Susan had sent him one postcard advising him of their whereabouts, more were sure to follow. Six weeks passed without further contact. Each day he’d stalk the mailbox, certain that this would be the day, and each day his heart would sicken with despair when he rummaged through the bills, catalogs, and assorted junk mail to find … nothing.
Then one day it came. A second postcard. On the front was a picture of a large pyramidal relic, above it the name El Tajín. Entering the name into an electronic search engine on his desktop computer identified it as a famous archeological site to the north of Veracruz, Mexico, along the Gulf of Mexico some 250 miles south of Tampico. They had moved on. This time, he decided, he would go after them.
Another concern had worried him, though. Would he be followed? Both the Sheriff’s Department and the FBI had been keeping tabs on him since Susan had taken the boys and run. If he suddenly purchased a ticket to Mexico, it was likely that someone in law enforcement would know about it. Traveling by car would be better, he decided one evening, a large map of the United States and Mexico sprawled on the kitchen table in front of him. He sat back to ponder the details, absently running his hand across the top of Alex’s broad head. Suddenly, he realized something else he hadn’t considered. What would he do about the dog? On the one hand, Alex was the only family he had left, the only one who hadn’t deserted him. On the other hand, traveling with a 180-pound Great Dane was not exactly the best way to keep a low profile. Finding accommodating hotels would be a persistent problem, and he doubted whether he’d even be allowed to bring the dog across the border. Eventually, he’d
turned to the only person he felt he could trust with the responsibility.
‘No problem, Dr S. You leave that glandular freak to me.’
‘I may be gone for a while, Nat. I’m not sure when I’ll be coming back. Are you sure you can handle—’
‘You leave me a good supply of beer and keep payin’ the electric bills, and you can take a six-month trip to China, as far as I’m concerned.’
There was something else to discuss. A postcard from Villahermosa had come only a week after the last one, as if Susan and the boys had to leave their prior location unexpectedly. Ben could think of several possible reasons for their hurried relocation, but the one that kept surfacing in his mind involved his oldest son, a long sharp object and the remains of yet another mutilated body discovered in his wake. In his mind, he could see the gaping holes left behind – flesh torn away by human teeth – and he wondered to himself once more: What sort of creature am I chasing? And what will I do when I find it? Then Nat’s voice was pulling him back to the moment.
‘Yo, Dr S. You still with me?’ Nat searched his face with eyes that did not yet seem to understand that the world is full of predators, and that they are often much closer than we allow ourselves to believe.
Ben pulled the first postcard from his back pocket, the one from Tampico. ‘I need to ask you another favor,’ he said.
‘What’s that?’
‘I’m expecting some additional correspondence from the same friend who sent me this.’ He handed Nat the postcard. ‘If any more of these show up in the mail’ – he tapped the card with his index finger – ‘I need to know about it. I’ll call you periodically to check in with you.’
Nat looked up at him skeptically. ‘A friend is sending you these.’