He shrugged in return and sat back again. “Sometimes that’s all you’ve got.”
“I wonder what it takes to get into Heaven,” said Michael.
“Another poser!” said the old man. “Well, it’s always been my philosophy—and I’m just speaking for myself now, you understand, ’cause you can’t tell nobody nothin about religion or politics—that there’s a great big book up there. God keeps track of how many times you made other people smile and how many times you made ’em sad, like a pros-and-cons list. And if the pros outweigh the cons, you’re in.”
Elizabeth turned her head to the side. “You really think it’s that simple?”
He nodded. “Most things are simpler than people try to make ’em, once you strip away all the fooferall.”
“So God judges you by how many people liked you when you died?”
“Not quite, Michael. For me, it’s kinda like a tug of war, and your soul is tied in the middle of the rope. All those lives you touched in a positive way come together and pull one way, making a light that leads you to Heaven. And if you were just awful to more people than that, well, they pull you the other way. The light gets blotted out by the blackness. Kinda like an eclipse.” He leaned forward again as he said the last few words and blinked his eyes at them, as if bringing himself out of a trance. “Sorry, kids. Didn’t mean to preach.” He chuckled at that. “No sir, not for a minute. That’s just what I think.”
“That’s what I said, Sheriff. She ran away this morning, came back, and now she’s gone again.” David Jackson’s voice was tired. He was tired.
Sheriff Larry Applewhite put another check next to the comment he’d written in his notebook and nodded. He saw this kind of thing all the time. A child, spouse, or relative runs away from home only to turn up a few hours later. Unless it was a child, he usually waited for twenty four hours before beginning a search, and then only after an official report had been filed. As it was, Jackson had called him at home and asked him to come out because his daughter was missing. Since she was a child, he’d come right over. Preliminary questioning had determined that Elizabeth had been dismissed from school earlier in the day and taken a walking tour around town, probably to wear off her own anxiety over the school thing. After that had come to a head, she’d run away again.
“I understand you’re worried, Mr. Jackson,” he said in the most soothing voice he could muster after being pulled out of bed. “But statistics show she’ll be back by morning. She came back this evening, didn’t she? And she even knew she was in for it after being dismissed from school.”
“Yes, but now she’s gone again. Again.” David paced the living room as he talked to Applewhite. The sheriff appraised his nervousness and, had he been interrogating Jackson for, say, a bank robbery, his lawman’s instincts would tell him that the man was guilty as hell. “And I saw on the news tonight,” said David, “that a prisoner from Huntsville escaped. A child molester! I mean, the streets aren’t safe anymore, no matter where you fucking live!”
Applewhite sat down on the couch in hopes that by doing so, Jackson would calm down a bit. “That’s under control, Mr. Jackson. It’s nearly a hundred and fifty miles away. And Wayne Alan Kitts is damned near seventy years old. I doubt he’s made it this far this quickly.”
“Yes, but you don’t know that, do you?” The question came from Susan, who was sitting on the far end of the couch. She’d been pretty quiet until now, but she’d obviously been crying. Her fear at the mention of the escaped prisoner was too much to keep bottled up inside.
“No, ma’am, I can’t say that for sure, that’s true.”
“Can’t you at least look for her?” asked David, sitting down. His face seemed to have aged several years in the last few minutes.
Applewhite sighed. So much for finishing out at least six hours’ sleep before tomorrow’s shift started. Sometimes he really hated being on call all the time. Then he pushed the thought aside. “I know y’all are worried.” He sighed again. Make a commitment, he heard his wife’s voice say. “I’ll tour around the neighborhood, see what I can find.”
“Thank you, Sheriff!” The relief from Susan was like water on a fire. Someone was handling it, everything would be fine now was what her voice said.
“Do you mind if I ride along?” asked David.
Applewhite paused. Technically, he should say no. But he put himself in Jackson’s place for half a second and said, instead, “No, I suppose not. You can look out one window and I’ll look out t’other.”
“I’m coming too,” announced Susan.
“No,” said David, and the fire in her eyes pulled him up short for contradicting her, particularly in front of company. “She might come back here. You should be here in case she does.”
Susan swallowed her argument and waved him out the front door.
The two men got into the front seat of the sheriff’s car.
“You’re not supposed to be sitting up here,” Applewhite observed as he started the car.
“You want me to move to the back?”
The sheriff considered the question. “No, stay where you are. It’s all right.” He backed the car out of the driveway and turned east down Elm Street. “We’ll make the block and slowly widen our search area to cover more streets. If we don’t find her by morning, I’ll call my deputies and we’ll go by foot.”
He kept the car below five miles an hour, occasionally swinging his spotlight around to find a cat or a bush catching the wind.
“Elizabeth!” David yelled out the passenger window. His eyes scoured the dark patches where bushes and grass disappeared around neighbors’ houses. “Elizabeth!”
With his spotlight and eyes scanning, Applewhite said, “She’s not a dog to come a’runnin when you call, y’know. You’re more liable to scare her off than anything by doing that.”
Though reluctant to take his eyes away from the search, David glanced at him and said, “How do you figure that?”
“If she ran away, Mr. Jackson, she’s not likely to come to the sound of your voice.”
“We don’t know she ran away. Her window was open. Maybe somebody took her. Maybe that child molester took her! Ever think of that?”
Applewhite decided the conversation might detract from the search after all, so he pulled his car over to the side of the street and stopped. “Yes,” he said quite rationally, “I thought of that. But you said yourself that she ran away earlier today. Then you disciplined her and—by all appearances—she’s run away again. We’re a long way from Huntsville, Mr. Jackson, and Kitts is an old man. Odds are he didn’t make a beeline for your house or anyone else’s in Hampshire. Odds are he’s lying at the bottom of the Trinity River, hounded there by the prison dogs.” Applewhite realized his voice had gotten harsh. He didn’t like people second-guessing his work, as if he were an uneducated hick who didn’t know his own job. But then he put himself in the other man’s shoes again and realized David was just a worried father. He said a bit more softly, “I don’t think anyone took her.”
“You don’t think.”
“Mr. Jackson, do you know when the last child abduction was in this county? Twelve years ago. Little Shelly Meyer over in Sweeny. Mother snatched her out of the community park, the one across from the cemetery. The parents were estranged and the mother wanted the daughter, simple as that. Things like that just don’t happen around here. Much.”
David turned his eyes to scan out the passenger window. “That’s what I used to think, Sheriff. It’s why I moved us here.” He paused, and Applewhite recognized the sign of a man trying to stifle tears in front of another man. Jackson cleared his throat after a long pause. “I just want Elizabeth to be safe.”
Out of respect for Jackson, Applewhite made a show of turning his spotlight on the trees outside his own window. He counted the leaves on a branch just across the road before saying, “I know, Mr. Jackson. But let me do my job my way. Odds are, we’ll find her and she’ll be fine. No promises, but I have a feeling about this one.”
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David looked at him, despite his misting eyes. “How do you know that?”
Applewhite turned to him, let him see the conviction in his eyes. “Half my job is following my gut,” the sheriff said. “My gut’s telling me she’s fine.”
It was a sixth sense all lawmen—the good ones, anyway—developed over time. Good lawmen could form a likely theory, more often right than not, with limited evidence and a lifetime’s experience with human nature. This situation told Applewhite that they’d find Jackson’s daughter safe and sound, and then the real trouble would pick up again. And if it wasn’t taken care of inside their family, in about two years or so, an estranged Susan Jackson might decide to pick up her daughter one afternoon from the community park without informing her ex-husband. And then it would be Applewhite’s problem again.
“Now, if we’re done talkin,” he said, “let’s find your daughter.”
David relaxed a bit. “Yeah, okay. I’ll shut up. And do whatever you need to do. I know you know your job.”
Applewhite nodded, putting the car in gear again. “Good. Look out that window. Tell me if you see anything.”
Chapter 20
It was a rare thing for anyone to be prowling the streets of Hampshire after midnight. This late, the town was covered in a quiet calm that had once convinced David Jackson of its safety. And despite what he’d said, despite his sense of dread for Elizabeth’s well-being, somehow driving these empty streets now with Applewhite helped reassure him that the town itself hadn’t let him down.
They made a perfect square around the block but found no sign of Elizabeth. Then Applewhite pulled his patrol car into an overgrown driveway and parked, stretching over David to look out the passenger window.
“What is it?” David asked, then saw what was attracting the sheriff’s attention.
Old Suzie’s house.
Something inside David wasn’t surprised to find them here. Since yesterday, he’d been thinking off and on about that Halloween thirty years earlier, and Theron’s dare and having to hide his smelly Batman costume.
Old Suzie’s house made it hard not to remember. There was firelight burning inside the house, and that teased the old fears of childhood. They climbed up his spine on spindly legs to stroke the back of his neck. “I, uh, I thought no one lived there anymore,” he said.
“No one does,” deadpanned the sheriff.
“Well then—kids? Someone set a fire?”
The sheriff unfastened his safety belt. David wasn’t so sure he was glad to be along for the ride after all. Then his fear for Elizabeth—his need to find her—took over, and the little boy so preoccupied with Old Suzie and her Halloween cauldron was pushed aside by the worried father he’d become.
“I don’t think so,” said Applewhite as he opened his car door and stepped out. “Why don’t you stay here until I get back?”
A voice in the back of his head, a little boy’s voice that had once chanted “Regina, Regina, she’s such a va-jeena,” thought maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea.
“No, I’m coming with you. Elizabeth might be in there.”
Applewhite nodded wearily. “Suit yourself.” It was just too damned late to argue about it.
They walked up to the porch, and the sheriff motioned David to hold up a second. Applewhite looked the boards over, assessing the decayed state of the wood, and decided there was only one way to find out if they would hold his weight. He placed his hand on the rail and stepped up. At first he had the palpable sensation the house was falling over on him, crushing him beneath its dead weight. During that moment he wanted nothing to do with Old Suzie’s house. Though he’d known her when she was alive, he hadn’t approved when folks began to turn their children away from her at the grocery store. So he didn’t see as how the house might have it in for him. But for that brief moment filled with vertigo and fear, he thought they might just be right and the house was cursed, as Frank McFreod, the last-of-his-kind real estate agent in town, claimed. But then the moment passed and after a few steps he found himself standing at the front door.
Applewhite could hear voices inside. Children, he thought, and before he could stop it, the other voice in his head—the same one that berated him for being a pussy when he didn’t go all-in playing poker—wondered if they weren’t the ghosts of the children she’d cooked and eaten all those years ago. He shrugged it off like he’d shrugged off the gossip about Suzie when she was still alive and opened the front door.
creeeeeak
The sheriff winced.
“Why are we going so slow?” asked David.
“Shhhh,” said Applewhite, waving his hand. He hadn’t even heard Jackson come up behind him. Too late and too old, said his poker voice. Fuck you, he shot back. “Go my speed or go back to the car.” His tone was simple, direct.
They walked through the entryway, passing a closet on either side, and stepped into the parlor proper.
“Hello, Sheriff.”
The voice startled Applewhite, and he thought with a sudden bitterness that he didn’t have his gun in his hand. Didn’t even have the flap unsnapped from his holster.
I ain’t sayin nuthin, the poker voice poked at him.
He moved his hand to unsnap the holster but stopped when he recognized the voice. It was coming from the other side of the armchair, its dusty upholstery flickering with the light from the fireplace. Then he noticed the two children sitting cross-legged on the floor, one of them a girl petting a dog lying beside her. Her face matched the picture he’d been given.
See? Told you it’d work out.
“Elizabeth!”
Applewhite noted the quality in her father’s voice. He’d heard it many times before. At first, the near disbelief that she’d actually been found, unharmed. Then the relief in knowing that she was all right. Then the love that losing her had recalled. All spoken instantly when he’d said her name.
“Daddy?”
David ran to her and, though she shied away at first, he picked her up anyway. He hugged her close and, after a moment, she returned his embrace. Reluctantly, Applewhite noted.
“I’m so glad you’re safe,” he said into her hair. “We were so worried.”
“I’m okay, Daddy,” she said. His emotion made her want to cry. She had never seen him like this. Had never imagined in her fertile imagination that he could be like this.
There, once again the old gut is right on target, thought Applewhite. “Well, Rocky, how you been?”
The old man shifted in his armchair to watch the sheriff as Applewhite walked into the parlor. “Pretty good, Sheriff. You?”
“Fair,” Applewhite said, his breathy tone adding, for being up at one A.M. and wondering if my foot’s going to go through the next floorboard I step on.
David put his daughter down with a smile and turned his eyes on the old man. He’d known what he was looking at when he’d walked in here but had been so anxious to ensure Elizabeth’s safety, he’d ignored it till now. “Who the hell are you?” he asked, losing the smile.
“Nobody you know,” replied the old man. Someone else might’ve gotten up, a defensive move against the challenge in the younger man’s voice. But the old man was old and so he stayed in the chair.
David’s eyes narrowed. “I know you.”
The old man leaned forward into the firelight. “Somehow I doubt it.”
David shook his finger loosely. “No, I’ve seen you before. I’m sure of it.”
Rocky shrugged.
“You probably have,” said Applewhite. “He works the roads for me. I struck a deal with him. I let him kick around town, he scrapes up the roadkill for the county.”
“That’s it!” said David through his epiphany. “You’re the Walking Man.”
The old man grinned through wasted teeth. “I do walk a lot.”
With that curiosity satisfied, David advanced, asking, “What’ve you been doing with my little girl?” The old man drew away from him, pressing back into the armchair.
“Daddy, he’s been nice to me!” Elizabeth said, coming up behind David and placing her hand on his arm.
The dog lifted her head from the floor and watched the scene unfold in front of her. Her ears were up, her eyes focused. She seemed to sniff at David to scent his intent.
“Nice how?”
“Mr. Jackson—”
“Hey,” said David, throwing his arms up and away, freeing himself from both Applewhite and Elizabeth, “I just asked a question. Nice how, Elizabeth?”
“He . . .” She knew by hesitating she made it look bad for Rocky, but she wasn’t sure how to answer the question.
“Nice how?” prompted her 3V voice.
“He talked to me,” she said finally. “That’s all. He just talked to me.”
“Uh-huh,” said her father, “and what did he say?”
“Now son,” said Rocky, “I’d never hurt your daughter.”
“I wasn’t asking you,” said David. He had it all now, the whole picture. Just the details were missing. What had the old man been saying to her and the boy she was with? Had he been trying to make them do things? Together? So he could watch?
“Ghosts, Mr. Jackson,” said Michael. “We talked about ghosts and stuff. You know, for Halloween.” The boy sounded scared.
“Ghosts?” exploded David, incredulous. The boy might as well have suggested they’d been talking about Web Report.
“Am I gonna have to knock you upside the head?” asked Applewhite. David’s gaze met the sheriff’s, and though Applewhite’s tone had been playful, his eyes weren’t. “Now, we ain’t seen any evidence of any harm to your daughter, or to this boy neither, if anyone’s keepin score.” He knelt next to Elizabeth and put his hand on her arm. You can tell things by touching people. Whether they like to be touched or whether they’re afraid of it. Though Elizabeth shied at first, she seemed to sense the protection in his hand. In turn, Applewhite sensed her need for it. A family portrait of the Jackson clan formed in his mind, the sketch he’d drawn earlier now filled in with some color by the brush of his intuition. “Did he hurt you, Elizabeth?” asked the sheriff. “Rocky, I mean.”
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