by David Bell
“No, Tom. I came here to see you. To help you. I saw in the paper that Colter was being let out, that they were only going to charge him with arson or some bullshit like that.” He brought his hands together and rubbed them against each other, steadily increasing the pressure. “I tell you, Tom, I was angry when I saw that. I can’t imagine how you felt. But I wanted to do something. I needed to do something about it.”
“What were you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” He punched one fist into the palm of his other hand. “I found something. I looked in the phone book. Do you know Colter’s number was in there the whole time? All this time he held Caitlin, his phone number was right there in the book. There he was, getting calls from telemarketers, people asking him to give money to charity, to switch his long-distance service, and he was keeping Caitlin locked away in some room in the basement.” He dug into his pants pocket and brought out a small, wrinkled piece of paper. “His mom bailed him out of jail, you know? She put up her house. Did you see that?”
“Yes.”
“Her number’s in the book, too.” He waved the paper in the air. “I called it. The old bitch answered, and I asked for John. She said, ‘Why can’t you reporters leave him alone? He doesn’t know nothing about that girl.’ I told the old bitch to fuck off. But you know what? That means we know where he’s staying. He’s staying there, at this address.” He waved the paper again.
“What are you suggesting?”
He shrugged. What do you think?
I pointed at the girl. “What were you going to do with her?”
“I saw her outside the house when I came up,” Buster said. “So I tried to grab her, to find out what she wanted. For you. But she ran this way, so I went after her. I caught up with her over here and asked her what she was doing outside my brother’s house. I probably scared the hell out of her. I didn’t mean to. But she told me something, Tom. Something really fucking freaky.”
“What?”
Buster looked at the girl. “Tell him.”
“I already did,” she said.
“Tell him everything you told me.”
“Tell me what?” I asked.
The girl’s eyes ticked between the two of us.
“Tell him,” Buster said again.
The girl nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.” She started to bite her nail again but stopped. She curled her hand into a fist and let it fall to her side. “He sent me to your house to get the girl back. He wanted me to tell her that he shouldn’t have let her go. He thinks it was a mistake. He didn’t mean it.”
“Let her go?” I said.
The girl nodded. “He said he got scared, so he let her go. The story was in the paper, that drawing. He let her go during the night.” She crinkled her nose. “She was too old, he said. And he had me. .”
Buster made a disgusted gasping sound.
“Where are your parents?” I asked.
“He loves her. He says he misses her and he wants her back. He sent me to your house to get her back, but I didn’t know what to do. I stood in the yard and tried to figure out which room was hers. I couldn’t see. And then you ran after me that one night. And he ran after me tonight.” She pointed at Buster.
“Did he leave a note here telling her to stay away?”
The girl shrugged. “He changed his mind, I guess.”
I took a step forward and bent down, trying to get closer to the girl’s eye level. Buster came up beside me. “Who are you, honey?” I asked. “Who are your parents?”
“I go back to them sometimes. They don’t care.” She ran the back of her hand across her nostrils. “He said he doesn’t need me anymore when he gets your girl back.”
“It’s not right for you to stay with him like that,” I said.
“We should call the cops-” Buster cut in.
“No,” she said and took two big steps back. Her voice was full of fear, like a child waking from a nightmare. “No. You can’t call the police.”
“We have to,” Buster said.
“He’ll run away,” she said. “He wants to run away. He doesn’t want to stay here. The police will take him. They’ll lock him up.”
“That’s what should happen,” Buster said. He reached in his jacket pocket and brought out a cell phone.
“No,” she said again.
“Hold it,” I said to both of them. “Just hold it.”
Buster held the phone in his hand, but stopped. He didn’t flip it open or dial. The girl stood still, staring at me, her eyes still wide.
“What does he want?” I asked. “Colter. What does he want from Caitlin?”
“Tom-”
“Quiet. Listen.”
Again her eyes moved between the two us. She looked like she could run at any moment. She finally settled her gaze on me. “He just wants to see her again,” she said.
“You said he’s leaving.”
She nodded. “He wants to. He wants to go away.”
“So he wants to take Caitlin with him?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Buster’s hand landed on my arm. “Tom, you need to stop this.”
I shook free. “Does he want to take her?”
The girl fixed her eyes on Buster. I looked. He held his phone and used his thumb to dial a number. “I’m calling the cops,” he said. “This is bullshit.”
“Goddamn it!”
I swung and knocked the phone out of his hand. Then I heard the scurrying.
I looked back. The girl was gone. She ran off into the darkness. I watched her disappear into the night, a faint blur moving jackrabbit quick. I took three steps in the same direction, then stopped. She was gone. Long gone.
When I came back, Buster was picking up his phone.
“Don’t,” I said.
“It’s dead. I never got through.”
“Good.”
“Good? That little girl is under the control of that creep. She must be the same age as Caitlin-”
“I get it.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I don’t know.” I paced back and forth in the dark, moving between the headstones, my shoes kicking the leaves around. I started to sweat, and when the wind picked up and cooled the sweat, a chill came over me. “He’s going to get away with this, Buster. All of it.”
“You’ve got this girl right here. He took her.”
“She’s gone. We’ll never see her again. You scared her off.”
“They’ve got the other witnesses. They can put it all together.”
“And prove what exactly? That my daughter likes to date older men?”
“Don’t joke about this, Tom. Don’t fucking joke around. This is serious. This is your daughter you’re talking about here.”
“Is she?” I asked.
“What are you saying?”
“Is she my daughter after four years?”
“Yes. Some animal came along and took your daughter, and he did do those awful things to her. Unspeakable things. But you can’t just let that go. You’ve got to fight for this. You’re in a fight, Tom.”
“Unspeakable things?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the key right there, isn’t it? Caitlin refuses to speak of them. Not to me or Abby or the police. But we all know what we mean when we say unspeakable. Right? Just because it’s unspeakable doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about it. It doesn’t mean I don’t visualize it. Every night I see it.” My words came in a rush, so I paused to collect myself. “I see them in a bed. Or on the floor. I see that pig grunting and breathing over her. Mounting her. Kissing her. Everything. And worst of all, she’s doing it back and enjoying it.”
I couldn’t look at him. My rear molars ground against other.
“Do you think the truth is going to be worse than what you’ve imagined?” he asked.
“It can’t be.”
He put the phone away and crossed his arms. He looked like he understood.
He reached into his pants pocket again and brought out the slip of paper. “My car’s over by your house,” he said. “We can leave right now.”
I started to leave, then noticed Buster wasn’t by my side. I looked back into the darkness and saw his shape leaning over Caitlin’s headstone. He started grunting and huffing. I went back.
“Help me,” he said. “I’m tired of this fucking abortion standing here.”
He started pushing against the stone again, trying with all his might to tip it over. I moved in beside him. It was tough, resistant, but after a few minutes it rocked loose and fell into the soft grass with a heavy thud.
Buster straightened, wiped his hands on his pant legs.
“Now I’m ready to go,” he said.
Chapter Forty-five
Colter’s mother lived on the north side of town. I drove by the neighborhood on my way to the interstate, and from the highway I remembered seeing a few factories, some strip malls, and lots and lots of trailers and small homes, the kinds with debris scattered in their yards and blank-eyed occupants sitting on the stoops smoking and drinking soft drinks from plastic bottles.
“Looks like this is a pretty shitty neighborhood,” Buster said.
“That’s fitting.”
“I guess not too many professors live on this side of town.”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
Buster drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. “You know, you called me Paul back there in the cemetery.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You did. You looked me right in the eye back there, when you were holding me by the collar, and you called me Paul. Clear as day.”
We took an exit ramp and came to a stoplight. I opened the glove compartment and took out a map. While we sat at the light, I located the correct street among the red and blue lines and told Buster which way to go. He made the first couple of turns, then started talking again.
“You’ve led a pretty good life,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I pointed to the windshield. “I’m driving in the middle of the night to confront the man who kidnapped and raped my daughter. I’m a lucky man.”
“Your life has turned out better than a lot of people’s. You’ve got a good job, some money. Okay, your personal life is in the dumper now. Your marriage is on the rocks.”
“My daughter. .”
“Your daughter’s back,” he said. “Don’t forget that.”
He made the last turn. We were in a subdivision called Skyline Acres. Every street was named after a heavenly body-Venus, Saturn, Aurora. Colter’s mother lived on Neptune Way. I watched the house numbers and pointed. “There it is. Stop here.”
Buster braked, and we stopped three doors down from the Colter residence.
“Well?” he said.
“You’re telling me to appreciate all I have?” I asked.
“I guess so.”
“Tell me, did you feel like you belonged in our family? Did you believe there was a place for you?”
“I never thought about it,” he said.
“That’s right. You didn’t have to. There were the three of you, and then there was me. But that changed. That changed when Caitlin was born. I had someone like that. For me. I had a family. It was an even greater bond than anything I’d ever felt with Abby.” I fumbled around until I found the door lock.
“What are you doing?” Buster asked.
“I’m going to go look. Wait here.” I worked the door open. My shoes against the sidewalk sounded ridiculously loud in the quiet night. I’d taken two steps when I heard Buster’s door open behind me. I waved him back, but he kept coming. “Wait in the car,” I said.
He shook his head and kept coming. When he came abreast of me, I put my hand on his arm.
“Why won’t you wait?” I asked.
“I can’t let you go alone,” he said. “You don’t know what to do in a situation like this.”
“And you do?”
“More than you.”
We stood at the edge of the glow of a streetlight. Our heads were in the shadows.
“Back there at the cemetery, with the girl, were you telling me the truth?” I asked. “Did you just find her by chance?”
“What else could it have been?”
“Fuck if I know. I just don’t know.”
We moved on. It felt good to have him by my side. He was right. I’d never been in a fight. Never confronted a criminal. The whole endeavor felt crazy, so much so that my hands shook and my knees felt loose and jangly with every step I took.
When we reached the driveway, Buster pointed, so I followed him. Light spilled out the side of the house, casting a large rectangle on the cracked and crumbling blacktop. Buster moved alongside the lighted window. He held his hand out to stop me.
The window sat at eye level, so it didn’t take much effort for him to look in. He craned his neck and turned from side to side, scanning the room.
“What gives?” I asked.
“Nothing. It’s s dump. Just a TV and a bed.” He pulled his head back. “Shit.”
“What?”
“Some guy came in.”
“Did he see you?”
Buster shook his head. I grabbed his arm. Tight.
“Was it him?”
“I don’t know. I got out of the way.”
“Let me.”
I stepped past him and eased next to the window. I risked a look.
The overhead light was on, a bright wash over the entire room. The walls were painted a pale green. A small TV, a thirteen-inch black-and-white that looked to be about thirty years old, broadcast a fuzzy picture despite its rabbit ears. Crumpled clothes covered the floor, and the closet door was open, allowing more clothes to spill out.
Then I saw the man sitting in a sagging chair. He stared at the TV, his head drooping.
I studied his face in profile. The prominent nose, the pockmarked cheeks. The stringy hair was cut but still streaked with gray. He wore a dirty gray sweatshirt and sweatpants. His feet were in house slippers.
It was him. Colter.
He didn’t know he was being watched. His elbows rested on the arms of the beat-up chair, and his hands joined together before his chest, holding a steaming mug. While I watched, he lifted the mug to his face and blew gently on the hot liquid, then took a tentative sip and pursed his lips. I watched, waiting, but that was all he did.
Buster moved in next to me. He nodded toward the window, his face asking the question: Is that the guy?
I nodded, and while my head moved, something welled up within me. Colter looked pathetic, utterly defenseless and harmless, and it still didn’t stop the rage bubbling within me.
Without thinking, I raised my fist and pounded it against the window.
“Colter! Hey, Colter!”
Buster made a grab for my arm, but it was too late.
Colter jumped when I hit the window, spilling the contents of the mug down the front of his shirt. I jerked free of Buster and hit the window again and again. The pane rattled in the frame, and for a moment my fist moved independently of my mind. I kept hitting the glass, wishing I could break it and smash through and grab the man who had taken my daughter.
Finally, Buster grabbed me from behind and stopped me.
“Easy,” he said. “Easy. You’ll cut your hand off.”
“I don’t care.”
“Look, look-”
Colter was on his feet, peering at the window. Because of the interior light, he couldn’t get a good look at the two of us, and from where he stood, we must have been indistinct ghostly shapes. Two pale, oval forms hovering in the night. He reached and flipped the light off, leaving only the glow of the television. He moved closer, his ugly face uncertain.
I expected him to reach for the phone. Or a weapon. Instead, he took two quick steps across the room and slid the window up.
“What is this?” he asked.
He didn’t sound angry or
agitated, just weary and defensive, like a man growing tired of answering questions.
I didn’t answer. I was face-to-face with the man. I grabbed for his neck, but he was too quick. He ducked back out of the way with the skill of a boxer. I stumbled forward and caught myself against the window ledge.
Colter’s eyes were alert now, like a threatened animal. He stared back and spoke in a low voice.
“Get out of here, you assholes. I thought you were reporters. .”
His voice trailed off. He kept his eyes locked on me. Studying me. Examining me.
“Oh,” he said. “I get it.”
“What do you get, shitwipe?” Buster asked.
Colter looked toward him and squinted before turning back to me. He raised his finger in the air as though just remembering something.
“What’s your name?” he asked me.
“You think you know him?” Buster asked. “You know his daughter, don’t you? This is Tom Stuart. Stuart. Caitlin’s father. The father of the little girl you snatched. My niece.”
Colter didn’t look surprised. He didn’t blink or nod, but I saw the recognition on his face.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?” I asked.
“Please. My mother is asleep.”
“Fuck her. I ought to-”
“Be quiet,” Colter said. “Jesus.” He held out his hands. They were surprisingly small, the fingers long and thin. “The cops said they’d be keeping an eye on me, but I haven’t seen a single car since they let me out. For all I know, some nutjob will want to come around and take a shot at me. All those lies in the papers.”
“Boo-hoo for you,” Buster said.
“Come around to the back,” Colter said. “Quietly.”
I started to move, then noticed Buster wasn’t coming with me. I waved at him.
He shook his head. “I think you should go alone.”
“What? You brought me here.”
“I know,” he said. “You have to do this alone. I’ll be right here if you need me.”
I took a step back. “What if he has a gun or something?”
Buster shook his head. “You heard that stuff at the cemetery. You have something he wants. So go.”
I went toward the back of the house, leaving Buster behind.
When I reached the back of the house, no one was there. The wooden door, its paint cracked and blistering, stood closed, the single bulb above it dark. The door led into the kitchen, but the lights were off inside.