“I’m going to look for him.”
“You don’t have a car,” she says.
“I have Jen’s.”
“Good.”
Rachel hangs up and I look out the window at the throng of people surrounding me. I can’t take it anymore. I no longer care what anyone thinks. My back straight and my chest out, I get out of the car. About a dozen reporters see me and converge like turkey vultures on a roadside carcass. This carcass, however, still has teeth.
Microphones thrust at my face as questions cut through the air, more damaging than any bullet.
“What would you say to the families of the victims?”
“How did you not see your son’s violent side?”
“What do you say to the people who think you should be held accountable?”
I let the questions peter out without a response. When the opening presents itself, I strike.
“Let me ask you all a question,” I say, hoping my voice sounds as confident as I feel. “Why haven’t the police found my son?”
Incredibly, silence answers my plea, so much so that I can hear the rumble of the news vans’ engines in the background. One cable reporter (according to his microphone) pushes forward. He is a man with a clear opinion behind his squinted eyes and red-cheeked face.
“He’s on the run. We hope they find him soon before more children are hurt,” the reporter says.
“Where would a seventeen-year-old run to? Has there ever been a mass shooting where the shooter got away? The answer is no. The reason the police haven’t found my son is that they are looking for the suspect, not the boy.”
At least half of the reporters appear to understand what they have, a new angle, something unexpected to report. I see the hunger in their eyes and know they will let me speak.
“When children go missing, there are community searches, there are hotlines . . . and empathy. Why hasn’t anyone asked about Jake? Asked if he was okay? No, he has been condemned, and with what evidence?”
My phone rings from deep in my front pocket. It might be Rachel, but I have an idea it is Jonathan. If my comments are playing live, he is likely having an aneurism. I do not answer.
“There is no security footage, to my knowledge, showing my son even at the school during the shooting. Where’s the smoking gun? A Facebook post? Some teenage e-mail. Check the digital footprint of your own children. You might find it eerily similar.
“Instead of picketing my yard, go out and look for Jake. Help me find him, please.”
I drive out, leaving the masses behind me. I am going to the Martin-Kleins’ house. This time, I don’t care what anyone thinks. I am going to find Jake.
CHAPTER 24
DAY TWO
On the drive over, I call their number. Someone answers but the line remains quiet for a moment.
“Hello,” a female voice says.
That disarms me. At first, I felt ready to lash out, tear into Dr. Martin-Klein, although I had no idea what that would have sounded like. To hear Doug’s mother’s voice unnerves me. I’d never spoken to her before.
“Is this . . .”
Somehow I know she was about to say Jake’s dad. My throat tightens and I close my eyes.
“Hello,” I finally mutter.
“Oh. This is Mary . . . Martin-Klein. I’m sorry, Mr. Connolly. You have no idea how sorry.
“Your son was a good boy. So good and nice. He was always nice to . . . nice. I hope you know. I don’t understand how this happened.”
I am broken inside and those rips allow vitriol to ooze out like puss from a festering wound. I am not proud of myself, nor am I in control.
“How could you not know? Didn’t you watch your kid? What, did you just let him run around free, doing whatever he wanted? I don’t get it! How could you not know? How could you be that ignorant?”
That last word hangs there. It is enough to awaken humanity. I shake from my toes to my throat. Could I honestly admit, even to myself, that I know everything about my own son?
“I’m sorry,” I mutter.
Mary Martin-Klein weeps. She does not hang up or cover the phone. The sound cuts almost as deeply as my words. At least that is what I tell myself.
“I’m sorry,” I repeat. “I . . .”
What is there to say, though? I am as bad as the rest. To my amazement, the weeping stops. Her voice returns, strong, shockingly resilient.
“I think Jake,” she begins. The sound of my son’s name startles me, but I try to concentrate on what she says next, “came to the house the . . . yesterday morning. He came here.”
I feel suddenly sick to my stomach. “What are you saying?”
“He was here. The police told me. They found blood, traces of his blood in . . . in . . . our kitchen.”
“At your house?! Have you seen him?”
Her voice sounds so distant. “He hasn’t come around for such a long time. I . . . No. I . . . I don’t think Jake hurt those children.”
“I’m almost to your house. Will you let me in this time? No cops?”
“Yes,” she whispers.
I can tell there is more to her answer but I hang up. Her words storm through my mind, freezing everything. The overstimulation causes me to shut down. I turn inward, not about Jake, but about what I just did, that I spoke so harshly to this mother who has suffered as much, if not more, than me. Am I evil?
Pulling up to the house, my first thought surprises me. I expect to feel violent hatred or overwhelming sadness. They both tie for second.
During my moments of weakness, those hours that I allowed the world to tell me my son was a murderer, I failed to remember just how small a role Doug played in Jake’s life over the years. All in all, they spent maybe a year and a half as playdate-type friends. After that, Doug morphed into an acquaintance, one I am now learning my son looked out for at school.
I jump out of the car and rush up the walk, trying to breathe normally but panting like an overheated dog. My chest feels tight and my finger hovers over the doorbell. I need to get inside, to find Jake, but the thought of facing Doug Martin-Klein’s parents is that overwhelming.
Before I ring, the door opens. Flashbulbs fire behind me as Mary Martin-Klein appears behind the screen door. Maybe they had been going off before, I don’t know.
“Come in,” she says.
I try to subdue the rage I feel but fail. “You were here earlier when I knocked on the door. I know it.”
She nods. “My husband left. I was scared. I . . .”
I look past her. Expecting to see the doctor, I realize my anger is now solely directed at him. She tells me he is not there.
“He left. I don’t know where. He just disappeared,” she says. “I can’t go. The lawyer told me to leave. But I can’t go.”
“Where’s Jake? Have you seen him? You said he came here the morning of the shooting?”
She does not answer. I feel like I am waiting for a blank sheet of paper to speak to me. I understand. Looking into her eyes, I see she punishes herself. This torment acts as a penance. Mary Martin-Klein deems herself a murderer.
This is a moment in time where my very person, the character that acts as my foundation, is tested. I know this, even now. I step closer to Doug’s mom and take her in my arms. I hug her and the world behind me erupts in madness. I hear shouts. Lights flash like an electrical storm. I drown it all out with a whisper into a mother’s ear.
“It’s not your fault.”
I have never been more certain of a sentence in my life. I feel her body slacken, as if her bones turn to dust. I hold her up, support her weight as if supporting a bag of feathers. She shakes and I imagine her demons alighting into the air, off to haunt someone else.
It is not true, though. My words cannot heal her. The demons come back, as they always do. When she pulls away, deep circles ring her eyes, like the edges of two sinkholes threatening to expand and devour her whole.
“They found the . . . he was in here,” she says.
I follow her into the kitchen. A yellow evidence marker remains on the linoleum floor. I kneel next to it and know my son once stood at this very spot, alive, but I know not for how long. I want more than anything to turn back time, to kneel here in the seconds before his blood spilt. I could protect him then, stand in front of him and force back a known threat, not one lingering in the shadows, stalking my son for so many years.
“The police knew,” I whisper.
I reach out and touch my son’s dried blood. My fingertip simply brushes the surface and I pull away. There is nothing for me. I feel no closer or farther from Jake. The spot remains nothing but a spot. I will not find my son here.
When I look up, Mary is gone. I do not know where she’s gone. I am alone in the kitchen of a school shooter. Yet I still cannot find my Jake.
CHAPTER 25
ONE WEEK BEFORE THE SHOOTING
Maybe life is just a series of banal moments punctuated by tragedy. On Tuesday evening, I was hungry. Jake and I returned from his cross-country meet and I hustled into the house to check on the pork loins I had thrown in the slow cooker that morning with a bottle of barbecue sauce. Taking two forks, I pulled the meat into long strings. If I had taken the time to cube the pork, dinner might have been more presentable, but I worked all afternoon on a speech for a nonprofit executive. The pay sucked compared to the medical writing I did, but the topics usually interested me.
Rachel and Laney sat in the living room, both reading. Laney flipped through a People magazine while my wife read a brief on her iPad. A familiar yet diaphanous annoyance colored my vision of what could have been a nice family moment. Instead, I blamed my wife for being a workaholic and at the same time wondered why Laney wasn’t reading her assignment from school instead of a glossy periodical. I thought about saying something like: “Did you pull the pork?” but I let it lie. I had gotten pretty good at that over the years.
Instead, I turned my attention back to dinner. I tossed a bag of potato rolls onto the counter and pulled open the refrigerator, hunting for a bag of baby carrots.
“Damn,” I muttered.
“What?” Rachel called back.
“Nothing. I forgot to make the coleslaw.”
“No biggie,” she said. “It’s good without it.”
I did not agree. Annoyed, now at myself, I banged plates and silverware around until my wife came into the kitchen.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“No, really.”
“I’m fine, just disappointed I didn’t make the coleslaw.”
Her phone dinged, announcing a new text. I watched as she read it. When done, Rachel turned and walked out of the room. I shook my head.
I plated up dinner. For Laney I made a small pile of pork, some carrots, and a handful of Tostitos, not much different than what I’d served her a decade before. For Jake and me, I slopped together two pulled-pork sandwiches apiece. I called everyone in and sat down. It was not until Rachel arrived that I realized I hadn’t made her a plate. For her part, she did not seem to notice. She fixed her meal and joined us.
“How was cross-country?”
“Great,” Jake said. “Max shaved thirteen seconds off his best.”
I nodded. “He’s got some endurance, huh?”
Jake told us about how they practice. I listened but could not recall the conversation afterward, probably because I was watching Laney. She looked at her brother as he spoke, her eyes wide and unblinking. I marveled at how much she looked like her mother. Their blond hair both pulled back in a ponytail with wisps falling along their temples. Her blue eyes shined in the light from the fixture above the table. I glanced up at that and realized I needed to replace one of the bulbs.
“How was your day, sweetie?” I asked.
“Great.”
“Didn’t you have tryouts today?”
She laughed at me. “Dad, they’re called auditions.”
“Yeah, right. Weren’t they today?”
She nodded.
“Well, how’d it go?”
“Good, I think. You never know.”
I asked her what they made her do and she told me. I forgot her answer, too, because as she spoke, I glanced at Rachel. She listened to Laney with a soft smile lifting the corners of her mouth. I felt a jolt of guilt for what I’d thought when I got home. Without Rachel, my life could never have ended up the way it did. I really did owe her everything. I vowed to show that to her, to treat her better.
Dinner ended and the kids went upstairs to “do homework.” I noticed Jake grabbed his phone on the way up. I had begun to detect hints of a possible girlfriend, but I wasn’t sure yet. He’d slip soon enough and tell me, so I didn’t worry about that too much. It wasn’t like the thought of Laney having a boyfriend. That was going to be too much for me to handle.
I did the dishes as Rachel finished up some more work. At nine o’clock, we both moved toward the den without mentioning it to each other. I sat down on the couch and turned on the television. We watched Top Chef. Neither of us spoke during it. Not in an uncomfortable way. The silence felt more apathetic than that. I checked my phone a few times for e-mails, although I didn’t expect anything. Halfway through the show, Rachel turned on her iPad.
I must have dozed off because the next time I saw my wife, she stood over me, looking down.
“Hey, I’m going up.”
I grunted something but followed her upstairs. Rachel and I climbed into bed. She turned her iPad back on, I think to read her book club book. I rolled away from the glow, too tired to sleep. I vaguely remember the light from the screen going off and Rachel turning away from me. Then we slept, awaking the next day prepared to relive the one before it.
So many moments taken for granted. What I wouldn’t give to return to that time.
CHAPTER 26
DAY TWO
Once again, my phone rings. This time, I know who it is before even a glance.
“I’m at the Martin-Kleins’. Did you get anything from the police?” I say.
Rachel has no time for greetings either. “A detective is coming out to talk to us. Jonathan is . . . here. He’s helped. The police found blood, Jake’s . . . blood in their house.”
Although I’ve already learned this, hearing it again devastates me. “Why didn’t they tell us?”
“Because they thought he’d killed those children. They thought he was a murderer.”
I feel angry. Everyone stopped seeing Doug and Jake as people. Rachel’s words could not be truer. The only thing anyone wanted to know about them was why.
Anger turns to guilt. I thought Jake a murderer, too. Jonathan told us to get out in front of the story. I doubted. I never stopped seeing Jake as a person, but he’s my son, not some stranger I see through the television or Internet, introduced via some awful picture chosen from a Facebook site for its shock value rather than any likeness.
Did Rachel doubt? I never saw her waver. Maybe it is a mom thing. Maybe dads are pragmatic, impatient, and ill-equipped, just like they all claim to be. I do not know.
“The detective is coming,” she says over the line.
“What?”
I hear muffled voices, Rachel sobbing. Jonathan speaks next.
“The police just handed Rachel some of Jake’s things. Evidence they took from his room, his phone, some other things. She’s . . . it’s a lot to take. I’ll take care of her. But I have to tell you first. They took prints off that doll. They match the Martin-Klein kid. None of Jake’s prints are on it. The detective also just told us that the Martin-Klein boy allegedly threatened the Raines kid with a gun two weeks ago. When the police went to the house, though, they didn’t find anything. There wasn’t enough to press charges, just the word of two boys.”
I have no words as Jonathan excuses himself to care for my wife. In any other circumstance, the irony of that fact would amuse me. Not now. Instead, I begin to understand.
Doug threatens Alex with a gun. The gun
isn’t found when Alex’s dad calls the police. Jake wrote a note telling someone, probably Doug, to get rid of something. Jake’s blood is in Doug’s kitchen. Jake’s blood is on the door to the school. That doesn’t mean Jake was ever at the school. He never made it back.
The gun. Gun. Guns. Suddenly, I know why the police did not find anything. I know where Doug hid the gun. And I know, as only a parent can know, exactly where I will find my Jake.
CHAPTER 27
FOUND
My mind tears through the millions of memories, trying to find any detail that may guide my step. At the same time, I run, faster than I ever have before, racing through the side yard, leaving everything and everyone behind.
“Jake!” I shout.
At full stride, I break through the tree line behind the Martin-Klein house. Dry, late-fall brush shatters as I crash into the forest.
“Jake!”
I don’t know why I am calling out. I just want Jake back. I need to find my son. And I am so angry. Why had I not looked there before? I had almost forgotten that’s what the boys did all those years back. What started as such an enormous worry had petered out over time, replaced by the day-to-day stresses of two teenagers. But how could I have forgotten?
I have no idea how to find the fort, the setting for Jake’s pretend battles as a child. I consider turning back, going to ask Mary Martin-Klein, but I don’t even slow my pace. I also realize that I no longer have my phone. I must have dropped it in front of the house. Everything is happening so quickly now that I can’t know for sure.
The brittle leaves snap under my shoes as I weave among the tall, straight oaks. The occasional evergreen breaks the stark grays of the forest’s annual death. My voice echoes through the emptiness, stirring a blood red cardinal from a bush. It darts amid the trunks, quickly disappearing from my view.
“Jake! Where are you?”
I hear footsteps. The sound jumbles my mind. For a second I imagine my son will appear, smiling, laughing, racing toward me through the woods, a green hoodie tied around his waist. I grab him. Hold him. Press him so tightly that he cannot breathe. Torrents of relief and amazement storm out in streaming tears.
Finding Jake Page 19