“Okay. How’d he get out here?”
Ian Wright removed his notepad from his suit pocket and flipped through several pages before he found what he was looking for. “They found his car a few klicks from here. The front passenger’s side tire was tampered with, looks like the wheel was rigged to come off.”
“Right,” Sarah said quietly. “Let’s have a look.”
Sarah steadied herself while Tristan Cutler stood nearby, taking pictures of the scene with his I-phone. Sarah enlisted Darcy to help her gently remove the blanket from the body and every member of the team had to avert their eyes for a moment when they saw him.
The boy was naked, bent backwards over the fallen tree with his wrists tied to his ankles with wire, a rubber ball gag was jammed into his mouth and secured around his head with a leather strap. Vapors of some kind were wafting up from the body, giving off a strong chemical smell. The worst of the damage appeared to be to the groin area where nothing remained but a crater in his flesh like somebody had scooped out his insides.
“Damn,” Darcy muttered. “What the hell is that all over him?”
“Looks like some kind of acid,” Cutler said, moving in closer with his camera phone. “Got to be something industrial strength too. The body has been here less than a day and it’s almost burned right through him.”
“Not something you can get at the corner hardware store?” Sarah asked, hopeful.
“Maybe, but I doubt it,” Tristan said, shaking his head. “I don’t think the generic stuff wouldn’t go all the way down to the bone like that.”
“Good, that ought to make it easier to trace.” Sarah moved around the body, making mental notes of the position of the body and the way the victim had been arched backwards over the fallen tree. She cringed at the three letters cruelly carved into the boy’s chest: FAG. His face was still locked into a mask of agony, revealing what his last moments of life must have been like.
“Lewinski,” she said, waving him over. “What do you make of this ball gag?”
He let out a long sigh and took his time getting to her. “What about it?”
“That’s what I’m asking you,” she replied evenly. “If anyone here knows about this stuff it’s you.”
Darcy let out a snicker and his face flushed red in embarrassment.
“What’s that supposed to mean, what am I, some kind of pervert?”
Sarah stifled a giggle of her own realizing she’d inadvertently learned something new about him. “Actually,” she said earnestly, “I was thinking that of everyone here, you’re the only one who’s worked sex crimes. But it’s nice to know that you’ve got a hobby.”
That did it. The rest of the team erupted in laughter, Cutler, normally professional and reserved, laughed so hard he broke into a teary-eyed coughing fit. It was nervous laughter, but it helped break the tension of the situation. After a moment, they returned to the seriousness of the business at hand.
“This looks personal to me,” Sarah said to the group. “He’s wearing eye liner and both ears are pierced. If he’s a homosexual, we could be looking at a hate crime. You said he worked at a local factory, might be someone he worked with. First thing we do is lock the scene down until coroner gets here.”
Sarah’s mind raced with all the possibilities of what she might be forgetting. One look at that poor dead boy was all it took to get her firing on all cylinders. “Alright, Tom is on the gag, I want Ian on the wires and the method used to tie him up. Tristan, I want photos from every angle, especially the cutting on the chest. Darcy and I will talk to our witness until the crime-scene techs get here. When that’s done, we’ll all go work the car. Any questions?”
Wright, the cut up of the group, couldn’t resist raising his hand. “Did that broad with the little dog give anyone else a hard on?”
Darcy raised her hand first. “Big time.”
Twelve
Mark dreamt that he was back in the woods, only this time, he was running toward the abandoned high school instead of away from it. Randy and his goon squad were chasing him through the field in the pickup truck and the old black Cutlass he had seen yesterday. In the dream, the area surrounding the school had been an open field yet in reality it had been thick woods and a creek which Kyle had told him would lead back into town. In reality, the creek had only taken him farther and farther into the woods. Kyle was supposed to keep them all distracted while Mark got away. In reality, Mark hadn’t even made it half way across the parking lot before they came running at him from nowhere and everywhere, almost like someone had told them where he was.
In the dream, as Mark ran toward the school he saw the Boy perched up on the roof, looking down the scope of his rifle at the people pursuing him with his finger curled around the trigger. So far, though the Boy was never without his rifle, Mark had never seen or heard him fire it. It was strange, but then the whole thing was strange. He himself had never fired a rifle before so he thought maybe that was why the Boy didn’t or couldn’t. Maybe Mark’s mind had no frame of reference to draw from and therefore couldn’t create the sensation of doing something that, in reality, he had never done.
Whatever the reason, he just wished that the dream had gone on a little longer. He would have tried to will himself up onto the roof with the Boy and when Randy, his idiot friends, and that (BITCH WHORE SLUT) girlfriend of his drove up, if the Boy didn’t start shooting, Mark would have.
While the dream had ended relatively quickly, the actual event had dragged on for hours. Along the way he’d been forced to deviate around a big bunch of bushes armed with sharp thorns that seemed to jab at him from every direction, and lost his way. He continued on in what he thought was the right direction only to find himself at some kind pond or something. He tripped over the exposed root of a tree and took a spill, striking the ground so hard his glasses flew off his face, which he searched for fruitlessly for half an hour before finally giving up.
He followed the path around the pond, only to find himself walking in circles. Finally, he’d heard the sound of a passing car and veered off the path, finding civilization at last. He remembered wishing that the Boy would come to his aid and show him the way home. A few times, he thought he caught a glimpse of his red sweater through the thickening branches but it turned out to be nothing. He was never there when he needed him.
When he awoke the next morning safe in his bed, a cold breeze was blowing in through the partially open bedroom window. Wrapping himself with his blanket, Mark threw his legs over the side of the bed and tried to focus his eyes. He searched clumsily for his glasses on the nightstand before remembering he’d lost them during the previous night’s excursion. That meant he’d have to go back to his old pair of big round lenses set in a wire frame that he hadn’t worn since grade school. That ought to make him real popular at school, he thought. Strapping on his watch he saw that it was half past ten. His dad mustn’t have been able to wake him that morning or maybe he was letting him rest after last night’s ordeal. Either way, he was glad not to go.
Isn’t a little early in the school year to be skipping class?
Mark got up off the bed, still wrapped in the blanket and began pulling clean clothes out of his suitcases, still packed since their arrival. It occurred to him that his dad was too sharp not to notice something as glaring as that. He had better unpack his clothes at least, he thought, before his dad started wondering if Mark was planning on going somewhere. After pulling out a pair of Khakis and a V necked T-shirt, he went to his duffel bag to get a pair of wool socks. The house was cold as hell and he was going to need them. He was just about to leave the bedroom to take a blessedly hot shower when the Boy spoke.
“You really showed em what you’re made of, didn’t you?”
Mark closed his bedroom door and stood there for a moment, resting his head against the jamb, absorbing what he’d just heard and from where. Although the voice seemed to come from someone standing right behind him, close enough to whisper in his ear, he knew that if he
turned around he’d find himself alone.
“You let that redneck slap you around like a bitch in front of the whole school, then you ran like a yellow dog when they showed up at the high-school.”
“I’m not talking to you,” Mark said, squeezing his eyes shut. “You’re not even real.”
“I’m as real as you are. I saw the whole thing. You turned straight BITCH yesterday, you know that, right?”
“I don’t see you doing anything about it either,” Mark pointed out defiantly. “But then, you never do.”
Mark was growing tired of these episodes. The Boy seemed to pop in out of nowhere, vanishing until the next time he had something to say be it hours or days later. It was frustrating. The rest of the time, like last night when the Boy was silent, Mark still felt as though he was right there, almost like he was inside his head. But if he was then it was Mark’s head, not his.
“Why don’t you shut the fuck up already?” Mark said, twisting the doorknob and heading for the bathroom.
The bathtub faucet spit out half a gallon of brown splatter before the stream cleared enough to resemble water. Mark’s body ached from every direction and as he stripped he observed that he was sporting a number of bruises as well as shallow scratches which coursed up and down his neck and arms. He remembered Randy telling the others not to mark his face but a few of the kicks had been to the head. They had knocked him to the ground and kicked him until he threw up. After, they stood around him laughing. Randy, Lisa, Mike and Bob . . . four names he would never forget as long as he lived.
After Mark was showered and dressed, he returned to his bedroom, tossing the wet towel in the corner on top of the clothes he had been wearing the night before. Mud covered and torn, they’d all have to be thrown out. He fumbled with his backup pair of glasses and he wished he didn’t have them to fall back on. The big round lenses made him look like a card carrying, Harry Potter loving, dyed in the wool nerd, as if he didn’t attract enough attention as it was.
His stomach growled to remind him that he hadn’t eaten since lunchtime yesterday, and he decided to see if the dinner his father had made for them the night before was still in the fridge. Just as he was about to descend the stairs when he saw a string with a small washer tied to the end of it attached to a hatch in the hallway ceiling. After standing there looking at it for a minute, wondering how it was he had missed it before, he dragged a box down the hallway and positioned it so he could reach the string. He eased his weight onto the box, the contents inside buckling under his weight, and was able to grab the string with his fingertips. The springs groaned and popped as he pulled down the collapsible ladder that led to the attic, dumping a large clump of dust in his face. He carefully unfolded the ladder until its feet were resting on the floor of the hallway.
The attic was just like rest of the house had been when they arrived, full of junk. The air was musty and thick up there and the ceiling was just barely high enough in the center for him to stand upright. The space ran the full length of the house, at the far end an oval vent overlooked the front yard that he could barely see through the slats. A small window framed the opposite wall but the view was partially obscured by the same antennae he could see from his bedroom below.
More boxes were piled from end to end and a few remnants of antique bed frames and table inserts were stacked in a pile. There was a thick coat of dust on everything and it was obvious that no one had been up here in a very long time. Aside from all the junk, it was actually kind of cool. It would need some fixing up and a good cleaning, but it had potential.
Mark climbed down the steps and folded up the ladder and shoved it closed into the ceiling. Looking at it again, he didn’t know how he could have missed it before. The ladder left footprints stamped in dust on the hallway floor that he brushed away with a socked foot. With that morning’s discovery under his belt, he found he was hungrier than ever. He headed down the stairs and saw the outline of a figure standing outside their front door. Peering out the filth covered living room window he was surprised to see Kyle his hands cupped around his eyes as he tried to see inside. Mark moved to the front door and pulled it open, startling him. Kyle’s lip was split and his left eye was swollen and purple.
“What are you doing here?” Mark asked, perplexed.
“Geez, you look about as bad as I feel!” Kyle exclaimed.
“How did you know where to find me?” Mark demanded suspiciously.
“Yesterday you said you lived on Elm Street. Everybody else on this block has been here for ever so I just looked for the house with the SOLD sign out front.” He tried to smile, proud of his ingenuity, but ended up splitting his lip and held the back of his hand to it as it began to bleed.
“What happened to you?” Mark said gently, already knowing the answer.
Kyle made a shrugging gesture, examining the blood on the back of his hand. “Guess.”
Mark invited Kyle inside and for the next hour they sat in the kitchen comparing stories from the previous afternoon’s ordeal. As he suspected, Kyle had gotten the worst of it. After Randy and his friends had finished beating on Mark, they had returned to the abandoned high school and thrown Kyle a beating of his own. His brother (foster brother, dude), had promptly taken the opportunity to beat on him for his friend’s amusement. Still angry over their encounter in the hallway that morning, Randy had held a lit cigarette under one of Kyle’s eyes and told him to tell Mark that he had better not show his face again.
“I feel bad,” Kyle admitted. “Maybe if you hadn’t stuck up for me yesterday, none of this would have happened.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Mark said, trying to make him feel better. “Hey, I was just about to eat, are you hungry?”
Kyle’s eyes lit up like fireworks. “Does a bear shit in the woods?”
Mark tossed a couple of Hungry Man dinners in the oven and the two of them sat in the living room watching a rerun of the Walking Dead on cable. Kyle ate as if he was starving, he may well have been, it had probably been a long time since someone had said the words ‘have as much as you like’ to him.
When they finished eating, they were taking their plastic trays back to the kitchen when Kyle said, “You have a really nice house, Your dad must be rich!”
Mark was so struck by the remark he hadn’t known what to say. The idea that Kyle thought that this dump, this dirty, dusty, disgusting, HELLHOLE . . . was ‘nice’ (really nice, actually), made Mark’s head spin. Trying to diffuse the tension he felt, or maybe to change the conversation, he settled for, “Actually, he’s a cop.”
Kyle froze, looking as if he’d seen a ghost. He managed to gulp, “He’s a cop?”
“Yeah,” Mark said reluctantly. “He used to be a detective downtown Toronto, now he’s just a whatever you call it, a beat cop?”
Kyle nodded slowly, waiting for Mark to go on.
“No big deal. Not like I’m a NARC or anything!” Mark laughed uncomfortably, trying to brush the whole thing off. “Just the same, I’d rather you didn’t tell anyone about that part.”
“No problem,” Kyle said, nodding thoughtfully. “Randy acts like he wants to kill you for crying out loud. Imagine if he knew you were a cop’s kid! He hates cops, so does his dad and his uncle, all three of them have been arrested a bunch of times. ”
“Hey Kyle,” Mark said, an idea occurring to him. “Do you have any plans for today?”
“Nah,” he replied, “I called Mrs. Dodd from a payphone after my foster parents left and said I was sick so she won’t call the house and get me in trouble. As long as I’m waiting on the porch when they get home at five, they’ll never know. Why?”
“How do you feel about boxes?”
The two boys spent the rest of the morning up in Mark’s newly discovered attic. They systematically sorted through the contents, organizing the boxes from what was valuable from what was too damaged by the elements to be anything but garbage. With Mark’s little stereo playing Kyle’s favorite music (Classic rock, broadcast fro
m Barrie), it was no wonder why they didn’t hear the wail of the sirens or the thumping of helicopters coming from outside. It wouldn’t be until several hours later, when he and Kyle were hauling a few boxes out to the garage behind the house that Kyle stopped suddenly, looking off into the distance over the neighboring yards.
“Something must have happened,” Kyle reflected.
Mark joined him, listening and looking around carefully for any signs of activity, but to him, the town seemed dead quiet, like a cemetery in comparison to what he was used to. Kyle though, seemed convinced that he was hearing something significant, even unprecedented, going on nearby.
“Something must have happened.”
Thirteen
The rest of John’s day proved to be an exercise in bureaucracy and waste. By noon, the area surrounding the reservoir had become a circus and half the town’s population came out in droves to see what the fuss was all about. All that activity had caught the interest of a few local media conglomerates but, in the end, only one chose to send out a crew to actually see what was going on out there first hand. The single news crew wasn’t the real worry, it was the four hundred residents packing cell phones that really put the story out there, they were the ones who really put Ratcliff in the spotlight.
John had done his part, going door to door around the reservoir looking for witnesses, but all the residents had either gone to work for the day or were currently standing outside the barricades. After six hours of knocking on doors, all the Ratcliff PD managed to accomplish was to go through half a case of business cards bearing their phone number which almost every household in town already had in the form of a magnet attached to their refrigerators or emblazoned inside the front cover of their phone books. Not a single person they talked to had any information, only questions.
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