by Chaz McGee
I shook off the regret and kept going.
On and on, down every street, exploring every garage, nook, or alley that might conceal a car. I searched and willed myself to pick up on every nuance of fear or evil or innocence I could possibly detect. By morning I was exhausted. I was filled with the details of thousands of lives, and burdened by hundreds of dreams plus far too many secrets for one man, in any incarnation, to bear by himself. I had not understood that sampling so many lives would prove so draining. I had not found the boy, nor found the car, and I needed to rest.
I ended up on a familiar block east of the town center just as the morning rush trickled into the hush of a weekday morning in a residential neighborhood. Tidy brick bungalows and small clapboard houses lined each side of the street, their yards barely big enough to require mowing.
Of course. This was the street where Rosemary D’Amato, the mother of the boy who had been taken sixteen years ago, lived, unable to move for fear her son might return one day and find no one at home. This was where I had discovered my little otherworldly friend, sitting in the crook of a tree.
I was lonely. Perhaps he was there.
As I moved up the sidewalk, I passed a young mother pushing her newborn in a stroller and looking anxiously over her shoulder. No one would feel safe until Tyler Matthews was found. The morning held a familiar air—the fear and the street intertwined—until, through a memory fogged by bourbon and infidelity and one endless hangover, I recalled my role in the D’Amato abduction case more clearly. How could I possibly have forgotten the taking of a small boy? Could I really have been so callous? My old partner Danny and I had been one of the teams assigned to the case, I remembered, but it had been taken from us before the day was over. I guess word had gotten out by then that you didn’t give Fahey and Bonaventura a priority case, not if you wanted the department to solve it or look good in the media. After a day of floundering through fruitless interviews with other patrons of the rest stop where the boy had been taken, I remembered clearly that we had been walking up this very sidewalk to question the parents further when a department sedan had pulled up to the curb and a pair of younger detectives had jumped out to let us know that we had orders to stand down, that they were taking over. I remember looking at Danny and shrugging with appalling apathy before we wandered off to find a bar where we could drink away the bruising of our egos. No one at the department had even noticed we were gone when we returned to the squad room, hours later, reeking of whiskey and cigarettes.
I cringed, remembering who I had been.
I had not followed the D’Amato case much after that. It was a reminder of what a loser I had been, so I had willed myself to forget it. All I really knew was that the boy had never been found, nor had his body ever been found, and that I may have spent a happy hour pushing him on a swing in the park yesterday.
I was now hoping to find him in the tree.
Alas, with the exception of a mother robin that was guarding her nest and gave no notice of me, the tree was empty. I sat at its base and looked up at the house beside it, wondering how Bobby D’Amato’s mother had ever found the strength to go on living after her son had simply evaporated from her life. How had she survived what Callie Matthews was going through now? As I was thinking of this, the door opened and Mrs. D’Amato stepped out onto her front porch, carrying a bouquet of white roses and baby’s breath as if she were a bride in search of a groom. Curious, I hitched a ride when she hopped into her car. Why not? I needed a break and, wherever she was headed, I’d keep my eye out for a blue Toyota station wagon, license plate number RPK6992.
I made myself comfortable in the back, where a child’s booster seat was still strapped into place by a shoulder harness, cracker crumbs embedded in its seams, having waited sixteen years for its occupant to return.
Rosemary D’Amato pressed a button on the CD player, startling me with the blare of Beatles music. When I glanced at the booster seat again, there he was: my little friend, happily ensconced in his harness straps, bobbing his head along to “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” a grin on his face as he and his mom headed out for a ride. He gave no notice that he even saw me. Certainly, he did not care that I was there, too.
He was a fickle little bastard. I would not have minded another session in the park, but he had no use for me today. He was content to sit and watch the town rush by.
I think he knew where we were going. He had taken this trip before. Me? It was not until Mrs. D’Amato pulled through the iron gate of the cemetery that I understood. She was there to visit her son’s grave, not knowing he had tagged along for the ride.
I remembered then how parenthood had been a terrifying mixture of joy, hope, and fear. Rosemary D’Amato was the embodiment of the inherent conflicts between them. She had consented to a grave for her missing child—but she had never given up hope that he might one day return. Had the grave been a compromise forged between her and her husband? Was it acknowledgment that he was right in urging her to accept the unthinkable? Or did she simply need a temple to his memory, a place where she could go and talk to him without the world telling her she had to move on?
The sun was climbing in the morning sky. The trees that lined the lanes of the cemetery were in full bloom, and their white blossoms floated on the breeze like a spring snow shower. It was an exquisite day to visit the dead; it was even an exquisite day to be among the dead. But as we pulled up to the section that bordered the far fence of the cemetery, my little otherworldly friend grew agitated. His eyes narrowed and I could feel him grow wary. Sorrow and something else, perhaps even anger, rose in him. He stared out the car window as if seeing something I did not see. Did he feel betrayed that his mother had moved on, even if she was just going through the motions?
I followed Rosemary D’Amato from the car, ready for a walk through what I like to call the Library of Souls. I loved the cemetery. I loved the neat categorization of the dead, the finality of the names and dates carved on the granite, and the intricate relationships marked by their designations: mother, father, beloved daughter, son, generation after generation flowering before moving on, family made eternal because life will always find a way.
I felt a flash of unexpectedly strong emotions from an unseen source: panic, remorse, longing, sorrow. Where did that come from? Was I picking up on the lingering emotions of the dead who lay beneath me, or was there someone hidden in the hardwood trees clustered to the right of the cemetery section before us? Mrs. D’Amato did not appear to notice anything but the lawn in front of her. She picked her way across the grass, carefully stepping around granite markers as she walked toward her son’s grave. I felt a shadow cross my heart even as I saw a shadow kiss the outer edges of the lawn.
A man hid in the trees.
He was deep in the darkness of the grove’s overhanging canopy and concealed from outside eyes—but he was there. I stood very still. After a moment of probing, I could feel his heart beating even from a distance. It was a rapid but steady beat, one fueled by an odd mixture of regret and yearning and fear.
The little boy—he might know what it was all about. But when I looked around, my otherworldly friend was gone. He had not stayed to meet the man in the trees.
As Mrs. D’Amato knelt in front of her son’s grave and laid the white roses before his headstone, I saw the man in the grove start to dart through the trees, away from her, the panic in him rising. I followed. He kept to the shadows, winding his way through the perimeter of undeveloped growth that rimmed the cemetery. He reached a section divided by the end of the asphalt drive and dashed across it, then took to the open ground, running across the graves in his haste to escape. I picked up speed, flowing past the names and years of those who had gone before me. I could sense anger in the man now, and resentment. Something had been taken from him. He reached a small stone house where the caretaker stored his tools. He ducked behind it. I heard a car door slam—he had parked his car behind the structure where no one could see it. I picked up speed, hopin
g to catch him. But he was already in the car and on his way out by the time I reached the road in front of the stone house. I could do nothing but stand there as the car swept through me, filling me with the tornado of conflicting emotions that coiled inside the man. He was there and then he was gone.
I could do nothing but stare after the car winding its way toward the cemetery entrance: it was a blue Toyota Matrix station wagon, license plate number RPK6992.
Chapter 16
When I was alive, I had loved car chases. They were an excuse to unleash my recklessness. My old partner, Danny, would brace himself against the dashboard, whooping in drunken glee as I floored the car, sped through red lights, passed other cars inches before oncoming traffic hit us, rocketed around curves at insane speeds, and transformed my ever-present death wish into a series of terrifying yet exhilarating experiences.
It’s different when you’re on foot.
I reached the front gate of the cemetery just in time to see the blue station wagon pull through it and turn right, driving swiftly down a neighborhood street toward a nearby boulevard. I had a chance of keeping up if he kept to the side streets. He reached the intersection and, mercifully, a red light stalled him while I made up ground. The light changed when I was still a quarter block away, but the man did not turn onto the boulevard. He zoomed across the intersection and entered a neighborhood on the far side of it, one of the ubiquitous newer developments with wide, flat yards that had mushroomed all over town starting a few decades ago. I followed and saw the car turn left down a winding road that led me back deep into streets that all looked alike with names that all sounded alike and with homes that featured identical plans distinguished only by minor façade variations like the front stoop design or window placement. If I’d been human, I’d never have been able to find my way out again. But the driver knew where he was going. He made a quick right onto a paved road that took him nearly to the edge of a central lake. Although once our town’s reservoir, it had been converted into a boating and fishing paradise that doubled the value of the homes surrounding it. The blue Toyota followed the road around the lake’s shoreline for a half mile, then turned left and disappeared. If he’d turned onto a road with a lot of turns leading off it, I was in trouble.
The road had only a few turns. The first right turn was a cul-de-sac with five houses arranged around it in a horseshoe pattern. Each yard was landscaped with such a profusion of bushes, trees, and flowers that you could barely see the houses beyond.
The Toyota was parked in the driveway of a small cedar-shingled house nestled in an explosion of greenery at the top of the cul-de-sac. The curtains were closed, the lights were off, and a rotating security camera scanned the area near the front door in increments. Home-monitoring-service signs dotted the yard, but they meant nothing to me. Death has its perks. Invisibility is one of them.
The man I had seen running from the cemetery, the same one Martin had seen in the park the morning Tyler Matthews was abducted, was standing on the front stoop, unlocking dead bolt after dead bolt, a bulging plastic bag from Wal-Mart looped over one arm. When he stepped inside, I followed.
Little Tyler Matthews was sitting with his back to a large television set, ignoring the cartoons that raced and blasted behind him in favor of a set of plastic barnyard animals that he had carefully arranged in a tidy tableau of barn, fence, cows, pigs, chickens, and ducks. Plastic horses had been lined up on the carpet nearby so that they appeared to be grazing. The boy looked unharmed and, indeed, untouched. He was wearing the same T-shirt and shorts he’d had on when he’d been taken. On the couch, I saw a pillow and rumpled blanket and guessed that he had fallen asleep there the night before.
I felt no one else in the house. The boy seemed unperturbed at having been left alone and greeted the return of the man who had taken him with an innocent, trusting look. He also seemed completely unaware that the living room where he sat was rigged with four different cameras so that his every move was captured in detail. I did not know if the cameras were broadcasting live over the Internet or were in place for a future day. I did not want to think about it either.
“What did you bring me?” the boy asked in a high, piping voice. He was holding a pig in each hand, snout to snout, as if they had been having an imaginary conversation.
The man dropped to one knee, and his voice was friendly. “I brought you some mac and cheese—the kind you said you liked, with the little wagon wheels—and some chocolate milk and a bag of doughnuts as a treat.” He spoke very carefully to the boy, as if he wanted to show his innocence the respect it deserved.
“My mommy doesn’t let me eat doughnuts,” the boy explained matter-of-factly. “They aren’t very good for you.”
“I think one or two would be okay,” the man assured him. “We don’t have to tell your mommy.”
“Is she coming to get me soon?” The boy sounded hopeful.
“I’m not sure,” the man said. He folded his gangly arms and legs in on himself and sat in front of the boy, then pulled some new toys from his shopping bag. “In the meantime, I thought you might like some soldiers. I liked soldiers when I was your age.” He freed a set of a dozen plastic toy soldiers from their see-through prison and arranged them on the carpet for the boy. Unlike the crudely molded army men of my own childhood, these were carefully designed fighting men of the modern era, immaculately painted with bright daubs of yellow and red and blue for accents. Many of them carried the weapons of their specialty: bazookas, missiles, rifles, radios. They were irresistible to any young boy.
The boy smiled at the soldiers and that smile took my breath away. He was exquisitely beautiful, with large, dark eyes rimmed with thick, black eyelashes. His curly brown hair fell into his face in cherubic loops. His skin was a perfect, creamy pink and his tiny mouth pursed in concentration as he examined his new army. “My daddy was a solider,” he said, excited, as he gazed up at the man.
“You mean he is a soldier?” the man asked.
“No,” the little boy said, again matter-of-factly. “A bad man killed him and now he got dead.” He knocked over one of the plastic soldiers with another one and then dragged the toy to a place by the barn. “Me and Mommy buried him and some real soldiers shot off their guns. It was very loud. Mommy said not to cry, so I didn’t. She said I was very brave afterward and gave me an extrabig piece of cake.”
The man was startled at this information. I felt a flicker of shame in him, which told me that he had not known the boy personally and that he’d had no idea the boy’s father had been killed in Iraq last year.
“Are you hungry?” he asked the boy, who nodded solemnly. “Would you like some mac and cheese now?” Tyler nodded again.
As the man rose from the carpet, a voice came out of nowhere, echoing through the room, deep and disembodied. “Do not feed the boy too much. I prefer them thin.” It was an order, uttered by a man who expected to be obeyed. Short and to the point, leaving no room for argument.
The boy looked up, unconcerned at this intrusion, and returned to his toys. The man who had taken him did not react so casually. I felt the agitation in him rise and give way to a tumble of emotions triggered by the voice. Where first I had felt nothing in him but sympathy toward the little boy, I now felt anger in the man, accompanied by a desire to hurt, a need to exert power, and something much darker, something very much like lust. Whoever the disembodied voice belonged to, he had complete power over the man who had taken Tyler Matthews.
The man walked toward the kitchen and spoke into a camera affixed to the edge of the door, speaking low so the boy would not notice. “He has to eat.”
“I do not want you to spoil him.” The deep voice had a dark quality hidden beneath it, as if the real danger lay in all the things he was not saying out loud.
“How can I possibly spoil him in a few days?” the man who had taken Tyler argued. The fear in him rose, though, as if he knew he was daring to push his boundaries.
“You misunderstand me,” the v
oice said, then repeated more precisely: “I do not want you to spoil him.”
The man in the house froze. “I would never do that,” he said in a flat voice.
The laughter that answered him was so rife with evil it turned my heart to ice. It started out low, then grew in volume, as if it were alive and had fattened itself on cynicism and carnal desire and was now filled with a satisfied certainty that no man could resist taking the fruit from the tree. “We shall see,” the voice said as the laughter tapered off. “We shall see.”
There was a moment of silence as the man in the apartment looked at the floor, stifling the hatred and fear and, yes, desire that flickered in him. He looked up, startled, as the voice boomed suddenly from the webcam’s speakers: “Turn him!”
“What?” The man still held the groceries in his hands.
“Turn the boy around so I can see him better.”
The man in the house put the chocolate milk and frozen dinners down on the counter without a word and returned to the living room. “Hey, little buddy,” he said in his most soothing voice. “Why don’t we rearrange the farm and soldiers so you can watch TV at the same time?”
Before the boy could react, the man moved the toys and then gently turned the boy so his face was visible to a camera mounted on the far wall. The man gauged the distance between the boy and the camera, then carefully inched him back a bit. Satisfied, he stepped out of camera range and returned to the kitchen.
He was met with soft laughter from the unseen man on the way, laughter that told me the man was utterly confident in his ability to control what happened to Tyler Matthews next.