Devin’s face collapses into a deep-set frown. “Robby, I am so, so sorry. I feel terrible.” Devin’s eyes glisten and he places a hand on Robby’s shoulder.
I’ve never seen Robby this way—vulnerable. He’s always full of life and ready to tackle the next big challenge. He looks defeated.
As Devin’s face flounders, I feel the weight of everything unsaid pressing upon me, the sharp divide separating Devin from the truth of Robby. The boy in pain behind that carefully constructed mask. The boy who lost his dad but also his mother to the long work hours and two jobs she had to get to support them. How the church turned its back on Robby and his mother after his grandparents paid for a Disney trip following his dad’s death. How small-town grumblings, a secret stash of money, the family better off than they’re pretending to be, became rumor that’s accepted as fact. And how those rumors spread quick as wildfire in a small town like Harper Pass until the spigot of compassion runs dry. But it’s not my place to tell.
Robby lifts his head and wipes away the tears from his weepy eyes. He takes in several deep breaths as he collects himself.
“Dev, it’s fine. I’m fine.” Robby sniffles as he wipes away the last of his tears.
“It’s not fine. I know it’s hard. My dad left me and my mom. Left us for another woman. That’s why we’re here. It’s not like you, but I know how bad it hurts. He hasn’t been to see me in over a year.” Devin frowns and drops his head. “He didn’t even call on my birthday.”
I lift soft eyes to him. “Dev, that’s terrible. Sorry, man.”
“Yeah, that’s awful.” Tee shakes his head.
Robby regains his composure and lifts his hand away from the canteen. “Guess we have to rise above it. Be better because of it.”
“That’s right. I’m going to show that bastard just who he left behind. And you. You, Robby. Your dad would be proud of you. He’ll see the person you become. You keep him here…always.” Devin taps his palm a couple of times over his heart.
Tee places his hand on Robby’s shoulder and ropes his attention with tender eyes. “I believe that too, Robby. He sees you.”
Robby’s glistening eyes drift skyward to where the heavens meet the murky unknown. He lingers there, questions lifting from his longing eyes, rising silent as sky lanterns. After a moment, he draws a deep breath and sighs.
“Look man, I’m sorry I got so worked up. And I’m sorry to hear about your dad, Dev. My mom’s at work. She’s pretty much always at work. We can use the computer at my house. No one’s gonna bother us.”
“No worries, man. I totally get it. And I’m sorry too, about your dad.”
After a moment of silence, Robby hardens his jaw. “Let’s see what we can find out about Wadlow.”
Tee points to the apex of the hill. “Hey, is that Seth and Shane?” Two kids emerge, pedaling their bikes at full speed.
I nod. “I think so.”
Robby squints his eyes to the hill. “Wait. Who’s that behind them?”
Tee shapes his hands against his forehead like the bent bill of a ball cap. “Looks like Cam Givers.”
Robby’s head whips around to us. “Dudes, not a word about Mr. Wadlow. Okay?”
“No way,” Devin utters under his breath as the trio approaches.
Tee and I nod as the three boys come to a rolling stop on the corner. Hair disheveled and clothes torn, Cam continually checks to make sure no one is following them. Tee and Robby are friends with Seth and Shane, twin brothers in our same grade. I know Seth a little better because we shared a math class.
I wince at the sight of Seth’s top lip, which is fat, busted, and oozing blood. My mind works through the possibilities, settling on the most likely, as I gaze at the thin stream of blood trickling out of Shane’s nostril and the large goose egg rising like a dinner roll on his forehead. The number 5 scrawled on Cam’s forehead in dark black ink confirms my suspicion. Robby, Tee and I meet each other’s eyes and share a silent recognition of what that means. Sammy Needles.
“Watch out guys! Sammy and Bo are out there. Sammy’s looking for you, Brooks! Look what he did to my head.” Cam pulls out his asthma inhaler and takes a quick puff.
“Why’d he write that on your head?”
Cam, Shane, and Seth glance at Devin. The three of them study him for a moment, gauging the threat level he poses, if at all.
“Guys, this is Dev. He just moved in next-door to me.”
Cam gives a small wave to Devin, his slight frame trembling, before taking another puff off his inhaler. He stashes the inhaler in his pocket. “Because he’s a jerk. Always calling me 5-head.”
Sammy Needles torments Cam Givers, an easy target for Sammy’s wrath. Sammy coined the term 5-head because of Cam’s large, pronounced forehead, wielding it like a sledgehammer for relentless torture. And much to Cam’s dismay, the name stuck.
Devin draws his lips up, sucking a puff of audible air through his clenched teeth. “Oh, sorry man. Sounds like a real scumbag.”
Shane nods. “He is. Biggest bully in the Tri-County area.”
“His dad’s a mean drunk. Beats him. How’s the saying go? The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Robby explains for Devin’s benefit.
Tee studies their various wounds and addresses Seth. “What happened?”
“Yeah, him and Bo was holdin’ Cam down. Sammy wrote that 5 on his head with a marker. They was twistin’ his arm real good. Wanted to know where you was, Brooks. Me and Shane tried to stop ‘em.”
“God, I hate those guys!” Tee’s eyes seem to spark aflame.
“They was waiting in the woods on the side of Jennings Pike. Ambushed us.” Shane’s voice creaks like a rickety bridge.
Seth swivels toward me. “What’d you do, Brooks? He’s out to kill you.”
Robby grins. “Ole Brooksie Boy kicked him in the nuts yesterday.”
Cam gasps.
“Nut Cracker Brooks!” Tee snickers.
“Are you crazy?” Seth blurts out, impulse conscripting his tongue. His eyes enlarge to the size of golf balls.
“I didn’t mean to. It just happened.” I draw in a deep breath. Shit. I’m in big trouble.
Shane shakes his head at me. “You’re going to have to move or something. He wants to kill you now.”
“That’s not going to happen.” Devin delivers the steely words with force.
Robby nods and hoists a subtle grin. “Yeah, Brooks is Markland X Crew now.”
Devin shoots a glance to Robby. We haven’t told him about the Markland X Crew. He searches Robby’s eyes for meaning. I exhale a deep breath as a wave of tingling warmth inundates my chest. Thank god. They’re planning to stick up for me.
“You guys better watch out.” Cam’s eyes linger on me like an undertaker measuring me for my coffin.
“We’ll be careful.” I swallow past the lump in my throat. We’d better be.
Tee flicks his chin at the trio. “Thanks for the heads up.”
“Did you guys hear about what happened in the search party for Margo?” Shane’s voice carries an ominous undertone.
“Hear about it?” Tee grins wide. “Hell, we were there.”
“Did you see the bear?” Seth’s wide eyes land on Robby.
“What bear? You mean the dogs?”
Shane’s eyebrows draw close, skin contorting around his goose egg. “No…the bear. The one that killed John Watson and his dogs.”
“Whaaat?” My response hangs in the air like a suspended kite.
Cam nods. “Yep, got him right there in Grief Hollow’s what I heard.”
Robby narrows his eyes on Cam. “Are you sure? That can’t be right.”
“Right as rain. Heard it from my cousin. His friend’s dad’s a deputy with the force, you know.”
Devin shakes his head. “That’s crazy sauce.”
Seth dabs a bit of blood from his lip and shifts his eyes to Robby. “We’re going to Cam’s to lie low for a bit. You guys wanna come?”
“Thanks f
or the invite, but we’re going to my house for some lunch.”
Shane winces as he touches the swelling lump on his forehead. “You better go to Brooks’ house. They’ll catch you guys for sure if you go to your house.”
“Well, there’s four of us.”
Cam lifts a brow at Devin. “I guess you haven’t seen Sammy and Bo before, huh?”
“Nope.”
“Well they’re big, real big. And mean.” Seth slides a finger across his bloody lip.
“We gotta go, guys.” Cam’s voice trembles. He continues casting glances at the apex of the hill where they emerged.
Tee gives a small wave. “Catch you guys later.”
“Good luck.” Shane embeds his doubt for our fate in his inflection as the three boys start to pedal away.
We wait until they’re a considerable distance away and can no longer hear our voices. Grief Hollow, again. What’s going on? Too much coincidence. Feels connected. Margo’s disappearance, Mr. Wadlow, John Watson’s death.
“A bear attack? And in Grief Hollow? I’m telling you guys, something’s going on in Grief Hollow.”
“Maybe we should go check it out.”
We all whip our heads in Devin’s direction.
“We can’t go there! You heard him. John Watson just got killed. Brooks almost got killed there.” Tee shakes his head at Devin with eyes wide enough to ward off the devil.
Robby nods. “Yeah, plus the cops will be there. They’re not going to let us anywhere near there.”
“I guess you’re right, but we should think about going there sometime. Maybe after this dies down. Might help us figure this thing out.”
Tee cocks his head and delivers a sideways glance to Devin. I’m not sure what to make of Devin. In the few hours I’ve known him, I’ve already determined he’s one of the bravest kids I’ve ever met. But I wonder what’s behind that bravery. Crazy or just curious? Maybe curious. We talked about it a lot. And he’s never been. Probably just doesn’t know any better.
“Let’s stick to the plan. Find out what we can about Mr. Wadlow,” Robby overrules.
“I agree,” Tee seconds.
I curl and unfurl my fingers several times. “We need to watch out for Sammy and Bo.”
Robby hops on his bike. “Stay close together, guys. If Sammy or Bo try to do anything, we can hightail it away from them.”
“They ain’t catching me!” Tee flashes a grin as he hops onto his bike.
We cluster together on Chambers Road like a herd of antelope ready to evade a predator. Or in this case, two predators.
Chapter 19
Missing Pieces
MARCY PETERMAN PAUSES from her paperwork when Holt walks into the police station. “Holt, that TV reporter, Kasey Norton, keeps calling. I think she got wind of what happened to John Watson.”
“Can’t fart in the wind in this town without everyone knowing about it.”
“She wants to talk to you for comment. What should I tell her?”
“Tell her no comment.”
Detective Holt walks past Marcy and through the row of cubicles. Officer Clancy sits hunched at his computer screen, studying something, toggling between two documents. Detective Holt hovers and fiddles with his mustache.
“What you got, Lance?”
“Labs are back on the blood we found by the backpack in the woods. It’s human blood all right, but it isn’t Margo Combs.”
“How do you know?”
Lance enlarges the lab report on the screen and points at a line on the document. “Says here the blood we found was type AB+.” Officer Clancy opens another document, a medical record. The top corner reads, Combs, Margo. Officer Clancy points on the screen to the middle of the document. “We subpoenaed Margo’s medical records. Says right here she’s O+. So, unless she changed blood types, that’s not her blood we found.”
“Well, if it’s not Margo’s blood, who the hell’s blood is it?”
“I don’t know. But whose ever blood that is, I’d say there were at least several pints there. Hard to believe they just up and walked away.”
“We got any new missing persons reports?”
“No, nothing new. Still just Margo.”
“Has Officer Morrow picked up that Myron Thompson kid yet?”
“No, not yet. Went by there again, but he still wasn’t home.”
“I need to talk to that kid. Have him keep trying.”
Officer Clancy nods. “Hell of a week, ain’t it? A missing girl and now John Watson…”
Detective Holt frowns and nods his head. “We got anything back from Mr. Latrell?”
“Just some prelims. I asked him for a rush like you said. Here you go.” Officer Clancy hands Detective Holt a manila folder.
Detective Holt opens the folder and begins reading the preliminary autopsy report.
“You know, I just can’t get over a bear attack. I mean, here? In Harper Pass? I can’t remember…” Officer Clancy’s voice sinks into the recesses of Holt’s mind, droning on as Holt continues to peruse the report, which reads:
Probable animal attack. Severity of the wounds are consistent with a large Black Bear attack, but the wounds and lacerations themselves do not match the expected patterns consistent with Black Bear teeth or claws. An unidentified substance has been found inside several of the deeper lacerations. The substance is an oily black color and appears to have mucilaginous properties. Further chemical analysis for identification is recommended.
“So, what you think? Weird, right?”
Detective Holt lifts his eyes from the report. “Huh? What’s that?”
“That we get a fatal bear attack and a missing persons investigation all in the same week.”
“Yeah. Sure. It’s unusual.”
Marcy calls out from the reception area. “Detective Holt, line one. It’s Jim Combs.”
“Shhhhit,” Detective Holt exhales. He walks to his desk and grabs the phone handset. He clicks the button on the phone for line one.
“Jim, we—” The agitated voice on the other end of the phone silences Detective Holt. His nerves draw his index finger and middle finger to his lips, a phantom gesture. A smoker for many years, he quit three years prior at the urging of his wife, her prerequisite to them having children. They started trying less than a week later. Holt suspected she made the ultimatum as more of a test of his commitment to her rather than how it concerned the baby, but he complied after a few grumblings of protest.
In nervous situations and without conscious thought, he finds himself pulling his fingers to his lips as if he’s about to take a draw from a cigarette, similar to an amputee scratching at a phantom limb, an impulse triggered by years of conditioning. Cigarettes provided a coping mechanism for the more stressful moments in his chosen field.
“I understand. And I assure you, we’re doing everything we can to find Margo.”
Officer Clancy monitors the call in his peripheral vision and tries to disguise his eavesdropping. Detective Holt’s rigid jawline suggests the phone call isn’t going all that well.
“Yes, we have everyone working on this. We’re not going to stop loo—”
“Find my daughter!” Officer Clancy overhears the frantic voice through the phone before the line goes dead.
Detective Holt takes a deep breath and rubs his palms over his cheeks and eyes, then runs them through his hair. His hands meet at the back of his head, instinct interlocking his fingers, elbows out as he draws a couple of deep breaths.
Detective Holt loves his job. He loves the fact that he’s able to help people in a way most people will never get an opportunity to help. But with the job also comes the people you can’t help. He’s always hopeful initially when assigned a new investigation. But as time passes the likelihood of a happy outcome becomes far less certain, especially in cases like this. The loved ones of those affected become much more frantic and desperate. As the urgency of solving the case crescendos, so does the pressure that comes along with the job. He’s reached
that moment for this investigation, and all he can think about is how badly he wants a cigarette. Line one on his desk flashes again and he answers it.
“Jim, let me explain what we’re—”
“No, this is Kasey Norton with Channel 4 news. Do you mean Jim Combs?”
“How’d you get this number?”
“I’d like to interview you.”
“No, out of the question.”
“But I have questions. Our viewers have questions. The Combs family has questions.”
Dammit! Did Jim Combs give this damn reporter my number?
“Look, lady, I understand you have a job to do, but I’m in the middle of a missing persons investigation. I doubt that the Combs family would appreciate me stopping to do interviews instead of trying to find their daughter.”
“Is it true that you’ve diverted resources from the Margo Combs missing persons investigation to the fatal bear attack today?”
“No, that’s not true. Who told you that?” His pitch jumps a few decibels.
“So, it’s true there was a fatal bear attack then?” Shit! She didn’t know, and I just substantiated the story.
“No, we don’t know what it was.”
“So, you are using resources to investigate the death of John Watson?”
Detective Holt clenches his jaw. “I assure you we’re using all the resources at our disposal to find Margo Combs.”
“So, you don’t have enough resources to handle both investigations. Can you confirm that the Harper Pass Police Office budget was cut by twenty percent earlier this year? And that you let two seasoned officers go?”
“Lady, I’m just a detective. That’s a question for the Chief. And we have all the resources we need.” Letting the lie leave his lips cuts like a katana.
The department does need more resources. The town cut the Police Office’s budget to fund a revitalization project of the town square. It’s the mayor’s pet project, so Detective Holt doesn’t dare wade into the politics of the matter. They actually let three veteran officers go from the police force. Officer Clancy benefited from this move, as a couple of months later, he got hired, but at half the salary of the men who got let go.
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