Because he was trying his best to give Leah his undivided attention, Lance was eating slower than normal, but still he was almost finished with his meal. Leah had only eaten half a piece of toast. “They can’t possibly think they’re all runaways. That’s asinine.”
Leah took another bite, her toast surely cold by now. “Do you read a lot?”
“What?”
“Asinine. That’s what I was talking about last night. Who says that in daily conversation?”
Lance finished his coffee, thought about the shelves and shelves of books he’d left behind at his and his mother’s home. The tattered paperbacks from yard sales, the hardbacks from library sales and used bookstores. He’d been making his way through all the titles, even going so far as to make a list in a notebook he kept in his nightstand. His mother had read them all. She was the most well read person he’d ever known. His stomach tightened at the thought that he’d never get to finish his list. “Does my vocabulary really bother you that much?”
She smiled. Shook her head. “No. I just think it’s fun to give you a hard time about it. Honestly, I kinda love it.”
The tightness in Lance’s stomach was replaced by a warmth and fluttering.
“Anyway,” Leah continued, “yes, the other two boys were also assumed to be runaways. Actually, that’s the only thing that seems to make sense out of any of this.”
“How so?”
“All the boys, Samuel included, had reasons enough to make the sheriff’s office believe that their wanting to fly the coop was acceptable. On top of that, they were all eighteen. No longer juveniles.”
Sarah stopped by the table to refill their cups, and Lance ordered a slice of pie. He asked her to make sure Margie knew he was ordering it, and to tell her that it was the best pie he’d had since his mother’s. He figured a little damage control couldn’t hurt. Maybe if he was polite enough and sucked up enough, Margie wouldn’t label him suspicious as most other folks seemed eager to do.
“You know Samuel’s story,” Leah said. “Chuck Goodman’s family had owned the hardware store for like a billion years, but the new Walmart fifteen miles up Route 19 finally put them out of business. Chuck’s father took it pretty hard, and there were rumors they were going to move during Christmas break to be closer to Chuck’s mother’s family.”
“And the police thought Chuck was unhappy with the arrangement and lashing out by running away?”
“Pretty much.” Leah finished her last piece of toast. “Martin Brownlee’s brother was in the Marines, got killed overseas somewhere. His father shot himself a month after they got the news. Martin’s mother seemed to be handling things as well as she could, but when Martin vanished, nobody asked a lot of questions about him. Why would he want to stick around in that sort of situation, a lot of people asked.”
“To take care of his mother?”
Leah shrugged. “I’m just telling you what people were saying.”
Sarah brought Lance his pie, and he started to eat. Then he asked, “So what does the town think? What do they think happened to those boys?”
Leah’s face was calm, but her words carried a tremor of anger that was only barely being suppressed. “You grew up in a small town?” she asked.
“Not as small as this, but yeah, pretty much.”
“Well, around here, football is the only goddam thing that matters to these stupid people. It’s like … like … like they’ve got nothing else to live for, like there isn’t a whole vast world out there with other things to see and explore and people to meet. Football. And now that we’ve been winning, it’s only gotten worse.” She took a sip of coffee, as if trying to let herself settle down. “People around here accept the idea of those boys being runaways because that’s the easy way out. It means that nothing’s wrong except those boys’ heads, and as long as Westhaven keeps winning games, people can keep on smiling and everything will be all right.”
Lance was quiet, thinking about all Leah had told him. He finished his pie, and when he looked up, she was staring out the window. He thought he saw a tear in her eye, but it might have just been a glare. “And you think it’s going to happen again?” he asked.
She turned her head and looked at him. “Don’t you?”
Lance closed his eyes and took in a deep breath, letting his mind reach out through the town, sending out the sensors that he didn’t understand how he could sometimes control. It was out there, that permeating sense of dread that seemed to hang throughout Westhaven like invisible fog. He’d felt it when he’d gotten off the bus, and he felt it now. And it could feel him. “Yes. I do.”
Leah’s face looked thankful. “So what do we do now?”
Lance pulled out his flip phone. “I don’t want to sound too forward here, but may I please have your phone number?”
Leah looked at his phone as though it were something recovered from a time capsule. “As long as you promise not to wait three days before calling.”
Lance opened his phone and went through the laborious process of typing out Leah’s name to add a new contact. “Does your thumb get cramps working that thing?” she asked.
Lance smiled, keeping his eyes on the screen. “Number, please?”
Leah laughed and recited the digits, adding, “Man, I just got a wicked chill. Must be a draft somewhere.”
Lance’s thumb froze over the keypad, one last digit stored away in his memory that needed to be typed. He pressed the button slowly, the cold chill Leah had brought to his attention enveloping him, the booth, everything around him. He hit the SAVE button and then shut his phone.
“You going to give me yours now?” Leah asked.
Lance lifted his eyes from the scratched tabletop. Used all his willpower not to show how startled he was.
The young man standing directly next to their booth had been burned badly. He was muscular and well built, just as the boy in Leah’s mirror had been. Only that boy’s swollen face and blackened eyes were nothing compared to the charred and disfigured body Lance was looking at now.
The boy was naked, every inch of his skin marred and melted, a hideous orange and red and black swirl of blood and blisters and bone showing through splotches of missing skin. The boy’s eye sockets were empty, traces of white and yellow and green fluids caked and dried to the remaining caverns where eyeballs should have been. Half the boy’s left cheek was gone, slightly yellowed teeth winking out at Lance from a blackened and drooping gum line.
Lance felt his food shift in his stomach.
“Hey,” Leah said. “You holding out on me?”
Lance’s vision blurred for a moment. He shook his head and looked at Leah, the dark figure next to their booth still looming in his peripheral vision. “I’m sorry, what?” he asked, doing his best to sound cheerful.
“That antique phone you have—it does receive incoming calls, yes?”
There was a slow movement out of the corner of Lance’s right eye.
“Oh, yeah, sorry. Let me know when you’re ready.”
The boy was reaching his right arm toward Leah, skeleton-like fingers, more bone than skin and tendons, outstretched in a menacing claw.
Leah held up her iPhone. “Been ready.”
Lance recited the beginning of his number. It can’t hurt her. It can’t hurt her. It can’t—
“Okay. Next.”
He finished rattling off the remaining digits just as the tip of one of the blackened fingers touched a few wisps of Leah’s golden hair. Lance wanted to jump up, wanted to grab her and pull her away and get the heck out of there. But that would mean he’d have to tell her the truth. All of it.
“Hey.” She was looking at him, concerned. “You okay over there?” She laughed. “Did you eat too much?”
The door to the diner exploded open, slamming against the wall and rattling the windows. All eyes in Annabelle’s Apron locked onto the source of the noise.
A short man, maybe five-five but built like a refrigerator, his width nearly filling the entire
doorway, stormed into the diner and looked around, eyes wild. “Leah!” he called out.
Uh-oh.
“Daddy?”
Lance looked to his right. The burned boy was gone.
12
Annabelle’s Apron was overcome with a hush. It was like a scene from an old-time Western, the eyes of spectators flicking back and forth between two opposing foes and waiting to see what would play out before them. Waiting to see who would make the first move.
Leah’s daddy’s eyes locked onto his daughter, and he quickly made his way down the walkway between the rows of booths and tables, his girth causing him to bump a few chairs along the way. Some of those chairs had people sitting in them, but nobody seemed to mind. Especially not Leah’s daddy.
And then he was there, standing in the exact spot the burned boy had been just seconds ago.
Lance preferred the burned boy.
Up close, Leah’s daddy was even wider. His forearms and biceps looked ready to rip phone books in half, and his chest and shoulders stretched the white undershirt the man was wearing to the point that it seemed ready to explode off his body. The legs of his blue jeans looked more likely to be covering tree trunks than human thighs. The heavy, steel-toed work boots seemed primed and ready to kick a man’s teeth in or stomp a rib cage until the bones inside rattled around like castanets.
And the man was completely bald. Not a single hair on his egg-shaped head. Whether this was by choice or by genetics, Lance didn’t have time to ponder, nor ask. The man’s bloodshot eyes squinted, the blood vessels road mapping his nose squished together as his face grew into a snarl. “Who the hell are you?”
Lance wished he had been standing. At least then he’d have a significant height advantage. And could run away. But there was no running now. If he tried to make a move out of the booth, the walking cinder block of a man before him would surely snatch him up and slam him down. Lance liked his clavicle in one piece. So, he did the only thing he knew to do. He played dumb, and he hoped he was as charming as he thought he was.
Lance stuck out his hand. “I’m Lance, sir. Pleasure to meet you. Would you like to join us?”
Leah’s daddy’s snarl intensified. “Don’t give a fuck what your name is. I asked who you were.”
“Daddy!” Leah said. “What’s gotten into you. We’re just—”
“Shut your mouth. Now!”
Leah’s face reddened, and Lance felt his anger begin to rise. But he had to keep it cool, otherwise this definitely wasn’t going to end well.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “I don’t know how else to answer you. You asked who I am, and my name is Lance. If you want to know more, I’m afraid you’re going to have to be more specific. Otherwise, I fear we may be here awhile, and well… I’ve already eaten.”
Leah couldn’t stifle her laugh, a noise that seemed to catch everybody off guard. Her daddy shot her a look that could have knocked over bowling pins. Then he turned back to Lance, the muscles in his arms practically twitching, the veins pulsing.
“You want specifics? Here they are. Why in the fuck are you in this booth with my daughter?”
A number of answers filled Lance’s mind, the truth being one that he thought would get the biggest reaction out of the man, but might also cause the most damage. Leah, fortunately, had the golden answer.
“Daddy! If you’d shut your mouth for a minute, you’d know that I’m interviewing him for a job.”
Lance and Daddy both looked at her and said, “What?”
“Yes,” she said. “Travis is going to start taking classes at the community college at night, and he’s looking for another job to work in the daytime. So Lance here is interested in taking his spot at the motel. He stayed with us last night and asked if I knew of any place that was hiring, so I mentioned he could maybe work for us.”
Lance marveled at Leah’s quick thinking. “That’s correct, sir. I’ve always had a bit of an interest in the hospitality industry, and your establishment seems like just the right type of environment to—”
Leah’s daddy held up a scarred and calloused hand. Lance stopped talking. The man’s features softened, his stance shifting to one less intimidating. He eyed Lance for a hard fifteen seconds, and Lance felt an absurd urge to smile big, as if for the school picture. Then the man’s gaze switched to Leah. He took a breath and said, “That’s really all this is? You’re tellin’ your daddy the truth?”
“Yes, Daddy. I know the rules.”
The rest of the diner patrons slowly began to turn their attention back to their own tables, the sound of forks on plates and coffee mugs refilled by waitresses helped to bring the place back alive. The idle chitchat began to start up again.
Leah’s daddy took one more glance at Lance before saying to his daughter, “Come by the house sometime soon. I’ll make dinner. It’s been a while.”
Leah smiled, but Lance already knew it to be artificial. “Yeah, sure. That sounds nice.”
Her daddy nodded once, then turned and went to the counter, saying, “Margie, I’d love some coffee.”
Lance watched as the woman gave the man a mug and filled it, then she leaned over and the two of them started talking quietly, Margie’s eyes flicking in Lance’s direction every so often.
“Don’t take it personally,” Leah said. “Gossip is gossip is gossip.”
“I guess,” Lance said. “But word sure did travel fast.”
Leah turned and looked across the diner, scanned the few remaining customers. “And the worst part? It could have been any one of them.”
Lance stared at the wide back of Leah’s daddy, imagined all the hours spent at the paper mill, building those muscles to the shape they now were. “What’s his name?” Lance asked.
“Who? Daddy?”
“Yes.”
Leah glanced toward her father. “Samuel. My brother was a junior.”
And in that moment, after feeling as though he’d narrowly averted a beatdown of the greatest magnitude, Lance felt pity for the man at the counter. He’d lost his wife, and then he’d lost his son. The only thing that mattered at all anymore was currently seated directly across from Lance. Lance’s mother had told him that alcohol poisoned the mind and the body. But it sure as heck didn’t dampen a father’s urge to protect his only daughter.
“That was some quick thinking,” Lance said.
Leah shrugged. “Thank God it worked. But now I have to tell Travis he has to lie to Daddy if the topic ever comes up. Shouldn’t be that big a deal, though. Daddy doesn’t come around that often. He leaves most things up to me.”
Lance nodded, took a sip of coffee that had begun to grow cold, bitter.
“So what do we do now?” Leah asked. “What’s the first step?”
Lance had considered this during his walk from the motel to the CVS, and after listening to Leah tell him the stories of the rest of the boys who’d gone missing, he was certain of one question he wanted asked. “I want you to go do your best and see if any of the other two boys had girlfriends at the time they disappeared. Ask around, talk to people. You’ll know much better than I would who to go see.”
Leah nodded, but Lance could tell something was disappointing her. “And what are you going to do?”
Lance looked out the window to the mostly empty parking lot. “I’m not sure yet. But I’ll figure it out. Times like this, I usually do.”
“You know that makes, like, no sense at all.”
Lance nodded. “Yeah, I know.” He pulled some cash from his pocket and tossed it on the table. “I’m going to get out of here. That should cover yours too, so now we’re even from the pizza.” He stood from the booth. “Call me if you find out anything, and I’ll do the same.”
He made a show of waving to Margie as he left. “The pie was delicious!” he called to her. And then he wondered if Annabelle Winters had heard him, and was shaking her head.
If she was there, he wondered if she’d seen the burned boy.
13
Lance walked back to the CVS and then navigated a few more blocks until he found Sportsman’s, a large storefront nestled between a dry cleaner and a martial arts studio that was advertising free first lessons to kids ages six to twelve. Lance looked through the glass front of the dry cleaner and saw a small woman with gray hair perched on a stool behind the counter, the eraser of her pencil bouncing against her bottom lip as she studied the crossword puzzle book she held. The rack behind her held only a few garments waiting to be picked up.
Lance pulled open the door to Sportsman’s and was greeted by modern pop music playing through overhead speakers—something by one of those trendy new boy bands who liked to wear skinny jeans and slick their hair up and sing about love and sex at the ripe old age of seventeen. Lance didn’t care for the music, but the décor was refreshing, like finally finding a person who speaks your native tongue after traveling abroad. The store was large and separated by category: hunting and fishing, camping, baseball and softball, basketball, football, golf, you name it. The entire back wall displayed athletic shoes of every make and model. Large cutouts and posters of the likes of Kevin Durant and Cam Newton and Rickie Fowler were bright and flashy and surely convinced folks they needed the same shoes these insanely gifted athletes wore.
The air smelled of leather and rubber and new shoes and competition.
There didn’t appear to be any other shoppers in the store. Lance figured this was because it was still early. A store like this wasn’t going to survive long in this town without some revenue. And if Leah’s words were true, which Lance figured them to be, athletics really did appear to be more and more the lifeblood of Westhaven.
Lance’s eyes gravitated to the basketball goal on display in the corner, an expensive model gleaming and beautiful, and he was hit with the urge to find a ball and go dunk it as hard as he could. Just to feel normal for a bit, to relax. But there was no time for that. He wasn’t here to have fun.
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