by Chaz McGee
Mrs. D’Amato began to cry. Morty arrived with a cup of hot tea for her. He had remembered she took two sugars with her tea, and when he set the packets next to her cup, Mrs. D’Amato cried even more. I understood then that the hardest thing in the world was to depend on the kindness of strangers when that was all you had.
“That poor woman whose son was taken this morning?” Mrs. D’Amato said through her tears. “She doesn’t know what it’s going to be like. What each day will bring.”
As if on cue, the doors to the parking lot slid open and the missing boy’s mother entered, supported by a friend on each side. She had aged fifteen years in six hours. Her face was splotchy from crying, her hands shook, and her eyes had the glazed look of the sedated. I didn’t think she was fit to be at the station, but my guess was Gonzales wanted a first go at her before the feds took over. Either that or she was here of her own accord, desperate for news of her son.
Rosemary D’Amato stared at Callie Matthews as she shuffled across the lobby, supported by her friends. She had to look away. “I can’t bear to,” she whispered. “That poor, poor woman.”
Anxiousness radiated off Maggie, and I knew why. She wanted to help Rosemary D’Amato, but she wanted to head off Callie Matthews even more, especially since the only thing that protected her from Calvano’s ineptitude was a short elevator ride.
“Go,” Morty told her, reading her face.
“Yes, please go,” Mrs. D’Amato echoed. “I know you can help that woman more. I’ll be okay. I just had to come by and check. I know it doesn’t do any good, but I have to.”
Maggie gave her a business card. “Call me personally, anytime. And make sure Morty knows how to get in touch with you. Will you do that?”
Mrs. D’Amato nodded and wrapped her hands around her tea, finding a new anchor.
“I’ll see she gets home,” Morty promised.
As Maggie hurried after the trio of women struggling toward the elevator, Morty pried off the top of Mrs. D’Amato’s tea for her and poured both sugars into it. “You’ll feel better after a cup of tea,” he said. “I know I always do.”
“Are you sure you’re not an Irish cop?” Rosemary D’Amato asked him through her tears and, just like that, they were laughing. It was amazing to me how a spark of laughter could heal the human heart.
“I’m sure,” Morty told her. “My mother was even more sure.”
They smiled at each other. Their banter was a ritual for both of them. “How are you?” Morty asked. “Still at the construction company?”
She nodded. “They couldn’t find a crane without me to tell them where it is.”
“And your husband?”
She smiled ruefully. “Still in Scranton. His job is going quite well.”
Morty waited for the rest.
“He wants me to join him, but I still can’t bring myself to move,” she finally said. “I just can’t. What if Bobby were to come home one day and I wasn’t there?”
“I’m sure your husband understands.”
Mrs. D’Amato wiped her eyes. “That’s enough for one day,” she decided. “I know you must get tired of me.”
“Never,” Morty said firmly. “I don’t expect you to give up until I give up—and that’s just not going to happen.”
She smiled at him. “You’re a good man.”
Morty colored. “Don’t forget your tea. Take it with you. I’ll walk you to your car.”
“I walked.” She laughed at Morty’s expression. “You think you’re the only one who can walk a beat? It’s for my health. The doctor says I need more exercise.”
“Don’t we all?” Morty joked. But I could tell he was pleased that Mrs. D’Amato was starting to take an interest in her own well-being again, however small. “In fact, I will walk you home.” He took her arm, making small talk as they headed for the door.
That was when I saw the little boy for the first time. He was so small and frail that he nearly disappeared in a sunbeam that cascaded across the lobby and fell like a spotlight on a corner of the waiting area. Mrs. D’Amato and Morty walked right past him without a glance, but the little boy hopped up from his chair and followed them out the door. Curious, I followed the boy.
He was about four years old, dressed in a black and green striped shirt and wearing khaki shorts. He had brown hair buzzed short, and his ears stuck out from his head. The back of his tennis shoes lit up, a style first made popular years ago.
Who was he?
The little boy walked within inches of a tattooed biker screaming obscenities as he fought off three officers, and then the boy passed between a weary patrolman and an overweight drunk being herded through the front door. No one gave the little boy a single glance.
I didn’t think anyone could see him but me.
We made an odd parade, marching down the sidewalk in a raggle-taggle formation through the bright spring afternoon: Morty and Mrs. D’Amato, who had started slowly but picked up steam as the sunshine lifted her spirits; the boy with his spindly knees resolutely following them, his little body shimmering in the afternoon light; and yours truly, bringing up the rear.
We passed by the park where Tyler Matthews had been taken. Uniformed officers belatedly guarded its borders, and a few crime scene technicians still searched along its edges. We passed the cottage where the nurse had been killed. The officer guarding the door waved at Morty. We reached the thoroughfare that led to a small business district and passed right by the Italian restaurant where Robert Michael Martin worked as a chef. The smells of tomato sauce and garlic were truly heavenly but, alas, while my sense of smell has returned and I can enjoy the anticipation, there’s no satisfaction for me these days.
Morty and Mrs. D’Amato paused at a corner for a traffic light. The little boy had no such qualms. He stepped right out into the traffic and was across the street before I could follow. Oblivious drivers zoomed past me, and some drove right through me as I hurried to keep pace.
The little boy knew where he was going and was in the lead now, with Morty and Mrs. D’Amato a quarter block behind. We kept marching in our odd parade of the dead and the living through the neighborhood on the other side of the business district. The little boy turned down a side street about three blocks farther on.
By the time I reached the corner, he was sitting in the branches of a tree overlooking a small brick bungalow, the kind with walls that bulge slightly, as if the house was holding its breath. The yard was neatly kept with tidy flower beds blooming on each side of the front stoop. The house looked familiar to me.
The little boy was already nestled in the crook of the tree and had his spindly legs and jaunty sneakers propped up on the trunk above his body. I got the feeling that, just like me, he had his favorite watching spots.
Morty and Mrs. D’Amato had reached the corner. They turned down the block and Morty gallantly took her arm again as they approached her walkway. He even tipped his hat as she stopped on her front stoop to wave good-bye. Norman Rockwell could not have imagined a more perfect scene of your friendly neighborhood officer in action. Except for the dead kid in the tree and the dead cop lurking in the yard, of course.
I thought the little boy would surely follow Mrs. D’Amato inside. She unlocked her door and stepped into her solitary fortress. I wondered what the house would feel like after sixteen years of sorrow had eroded its comforting air, but before I could follow her inside, I felt the oddest of sensations.
Someone was holding my hand.
I looked down and the little boy was standing beside me, gazing upward expectantly, his hand occupying the same space as mine. It was not a tangible feeling. It was not quite that solid. It was more as if I held a heavy fog in my hand. It tickled a little, and I wanted to laugh, but the boy’s solemn expression invited no merriment. I have occupied the same space as the living before, and it is not pleasant. It tears at my insides, whatever those insides may be made of. But this mingling of the dead was not bad at all; it tingled as if the lowest level o
f electric current were pulsing through me and had found an exit point where our two hands crossed.
In fact, it filled my heart with life. I wondered if he really was like me, or different in some way.
The boy’s steady gaze told me that he wanted something. I did not know what. When he stepped forward, I followed, and we walked hand in hand past the busy blocks of the living, across streets, retracing our steps and heading back in the exact same direction we had come from. When we reached the park, he turned and led me across the lawn toward the playground area. Unseen by any of the living, we drifted past the crime scene tape that had been stretched across the spot where Tyler Matthews had last been seen, then past the sandbox and monkey bars. But as we approached the swings, the little boy took his hand away. I felt the loss of his energy acutely.
He hopped on a swing and stared up at me, expectantly.
The kid was dreaming if he thought I could push him. It ripped me apart to tear the veil between my world and the physical. But that was not what the little boy wanted. What he wanted was to pretend.
So pretend we did, like a father and son lingering in the park on a fading spring afternoon. As the birds sang behind us and traffic hummed a few blocks away, as the sun descended lower in the sky and the clouds above turned from bright white to a faint pink, I stood behind the swing and moved my arms while the little boy caused the swing to move, first slowly and then faster, picking up speed until it swung back and forth as vigorously as any living four-year-old might like. He unnecessarily wrapped his hands around the metal chains on each side, as I am certain he had no corporeal presence. But he wanted to be a little boy again, and he needed me to be his father. I pretended to push him higher and higher, smiling when he glanced at me over his shoulder. The sun spiraled behind the boy, setting his whole silhouette awash in fire; he was a burning bush soaring through the skies.
His laughter rang through the afternoon, high and pure, unheard, I was certain, by anyone but me. What joy it gave the little boy to swing on a fine spring afternoon, with someone there to watch over him.
I thought then of all the days I had missed with my own boys, of all the afternoons I could have been home with them but sat, instead, in some lousy dive bar, drinking in bitterness and inhaling the boozy stench of everyone else’s disappointments as a way to mask my own. How many hours had I squandered that I could have spent listening to the high, pure joy of my sons and seeing them fiercely alive on a sunny day?
I felt a flash of regret so acute, my mind reeled with longing. I had had so much and experienced so little. But the pealing laughter of the little boy on the swing rescued me from my memories and brought me back to where I was. I couldn’t undo the past and I could do very little to affect the future. But the present? At least I was here, enjoying the end of a sunshine-soaked afternoon. I looked around, making the most of it, and noticed the uniformed officer on guard in the doorway of the cottage where the nurse had died. He was staring across the street at us, a puzzled look on his face. I realized what he was seeing: a deserted playground, a windless afternoon—yet there it was, an empty swing distinctly soaring first one way and then the other, without a trace of anyone in sight.
I began to laugh at what he must be thinking, and my laughter mingled with that of the boy’s. We made a fine pair, he and I, and for just a moment I felt the exultation of feeling that I belonged.
Chapter 13
I left my young friend hanging by the tips of his toes from the monkey bars, out-tricking even the most agile of living children. He did not see me go, nor did he care. He was done with me. He, too, lived in a solitary world and I was but a visitor to it.
The air smelled of twilight. Another day had passed. Lives had been shattered, fortunes made, and love found, all on one ordinary day. I don’t know how people can ever find life boring. It’s one big soap opera that never ends. And I knew exactly where the next episode would take place. I headed to department headquarters, where Robert Michael Martin was being polygraphed and hypnotized. It was my first chance to experience the human mind as it was probed by other humans, and I did not want to miss it.
I was not the only one. Martin had been seated in the largest interrogation room, one adjoined by a spacious observation room concealed behind an entire wall of one-way glass. In all my years on the force, I had never rated the use of this room. But despite its size, I felt eerily as if I were part of a crowd witnessing an execution. It did not help that Martin was connected to various wires leading to a polygraph machine.
Because he was undergoing the test voluntarily, his lawyer had negotiated the right to sit beside him; he was the only other person allowed in the room besides the dark-haired polygraph specialist with intense energy, who was asking Martin control questions about his name, age, and address. Innocuous as these questions were, Martin had already started to sweat. The white dress shirt he had so carefully donned was soaked, and perspiration covered his doughy face. When the operator asked him to confirm his occupation, I thought the poor bastard was going to pass out. This was not a man used to being around other people, I decided. His worry over what others thought of him created a level of anxiousness that was sending his baselines through the roof.
Noni Bates looked concerned. She had been allowed to observe and had worn a straw hat for the occasion. She had also, I noticed, sat directly in front of Calvano and completely blocked his view, forcing him to move to a seat in the corner. The chairs in the observation room had been set up in front of the one-way mirror as if we were watching a special preview of a new movie. I thought popcorn would have enhanced the mood, but everyone looked way too businesslike for that. Maggie was staring intently though the glass, while Gonzales sat, immobile and taut, as Martin was led through a series of innocuous questions and, finally, queries about the man in the park.
“That dude sweats like a pig,” Calvano observed.
“What astute powers of observation you have,” Noni Bates said sweetly. “You must be a detective.”
Sarcasm, from that lovely old lady? Oh, I liked that. So did Maggie, who clamped her lips shut tightly and avoided Calvano’s eyes. Gonzales had not even heard.
Calvano stared at Noni and once again failed to recognize her. In this case, it worked in her favor. He had made a few comments to Gonzales about “people going over his head” but had not yet figured out it was Noni who had sent the patrolmen to let Gonzales know what Martin had originally tried to tell Calvano about the man in the park. Calvano seemed under the impression that Noni was Martin’s mother and, I suppose, in a way he was right. She was there to watch over him, and we all need that at times like this, no matter our age.
Despite his anxiousness, in the end, Martin passed the polygraph handily, as the operator explained to Gonzales after the session was over.
I did not need this news to know Martin had passed. I had discovered that no mere polygraph machine could hold a candle to me. I had followed the changes in Martin’s heart rate and blood pressure through every question, and then had gone a step beyond, absorbing the flood of memories each question triggered in Martin’s mind. I knew with certainty now that he was who he said he was, and that he might be of real help if he could only remember more.
A rare feeling overtook me when I realized Martin could help, one I had seldom experienced when I was alive: the hunt was on, there was hope, we were on the trail and moving forward—and I was in the lead.
Gonzales took the news of Martin’s test results calmly, listening politely while the polygraph operator explained what he had already figured out for himself. “He shows a high level of concern over the missing boy,” the operator said. “But he knows nothing about where the boy is or who took him, in my opinion. The man he says he saw in the park is absolutely real, at least to the subject, and I see no signs of deception on the subject’s part. There was some reaction when I asked him control questions about his name, address, residency, and living situation, but I attribute that to the recent death of his mother,
who apparently shared his living arrangements. Otherwise, this is a truthful subject. However, he is compliant and very eager to please. I would be wary of disinformation caused primarily by his overwhelming desire to be of help.”
“I want a drug test,” Calvano said loudly.
We all stared at him.
“It’s easy to beat the test,” Calvano explained defensively. “I want the guy tested to see if he took anything to help him beat the test.”
Before anyone else could speak—and they all looked like they wanted to—Gonzales nipped that thought in the bud. “We’re the ones who suggested a polygraph and put it forth as an acceptable screen. We’re not changing our minds now.”
“I would have detected the signs of drug use,” the operator said coldly. “It’s part of what I am trained to do.”
Calvano looked like he was about to say something else, but a look from Gonzales inspired him to sit back and shut up instead. Few people got that look from Gonzales. Those who did remembered it.
“Thank you,” Gonzales told the polygraph operator. “We can stop here. This was background only.”
The man nodded and returned to the interrogation room to collect his equipment. His job was over, and he was happy to turn the more complicated task of sorting out which truths mattered to others. Martin had been waiting anxiously, as if he had just endured a particularly grueling job interview and now wanted to know if he had gotten the job. But the polygraph operator evaded his questions and left so quickly that it was all his lawyer could do to inquire after him, “What were the results?”
When the operator answered by leaving the room, the lawyer stared at the wall of one-way glass and announced, “My client will not agree to the hypnosis session until we are informed of the results of the polygraph test.”