Alex (32 page)
Suddenly, he longed to go to sleep.
"Fuck," he whimpered.
"God damn it."
Last night, he had been attacked by his dead son's dead murderer.
The event should have changed his life, illuminated everything, made him certain what to do next.
Instead, it had left him feeling even more powerless.
He could go to Shakopee on Saturday maybe, try to see if anyone had seen Kelly.
But that was a thin thread at best, and he still wasn't sure he even wanted to do it.
It seemed like a great way to end up getting committed.
He turned toward the shower, fighting back a yawn, and started getting ready for work.
Mowsalot sat on the sink; Ian sat in the shower.
The water pummeled him like hot rain.
He wanted to disappear in it.
Every few minutes he peered around the curtain, to make sure the stuffed cat was still there.
One time, steam curled from its fur like a hot coal thrust into a puddle.
He could have stayed in the shower all day, but he forced himself out and brushed his teeth, went through the motions.
He didn't hear Alex playing in his room.
He didn't see Alex at all until he threw on his coat at the front door.
"Goodbye, Daddy."
Ian looked at him, yearning to reach out, desperate to understand.
"This weekend, Alex.
We'll drive down there, okay?
I don't know what else to try.
If there's anything else you can tell me -"
"I love you."
Usually, Ian said it first.
He nodded, tightly, several times.
"I love you, too."
Then, because it was so important, he said it again.
"I love you too."
It had snowed again, lightly, during the night.
He scraped off his car as the engine warmed, the voices from MPR mumbling behind the windows like bodies moving beneath a blanket.
Inside, he stripped off his gloves and rubbed his hands in front of the vent, relishing the heat.
From the passenger seat, Mowsalot stared out the front window, its mouth caught in a familiar and perpetual grin.
He pulled away slowly, double-checking for someone slipping out of control on the ice behind him, and rolled around the corner, angling gradually toward 494.
The street was quiet.
The taut vigilance he had struggled to maintain since the trip to Alina's father's house last night began to relax, dulled by fatigue.
He blinked, long and slow, then slammed on his brakes, his eyes riveted to his rearview mirror and his heart screaming in his chest.
Leroy Eston's van was parked at the curb behind him.
The van's rusting sides were the molding white of an old basement wall.
Its lights were off, and
the cabin was dark.
It crouched at the street's edge like a gorged, pale maggot, waiting.
Ian slipped the car into reverse and rolled carefully backward, watching the van's cabin.
There was someone inside, but he couldn't make out a face.
Then Alex was on the sidewalk, his red turtleneck brilliant as a blood spot against the empty snow.
Ian heard his thoughts gibbering.
He had seen too many horrible things happen to his son, but this....
This!
The boy was singing, or talking to himself; Ian could see his lips moving.
He trailed his backpack along the ground behind him by one long, broken strap.
He stopped just as he passed the van's front bumper and looked up, as if someone had greeted him.
Ian's heart wrenched.
Run, Alex!
he screamed in silence.
Run!
And he did.
He
did
run.
Just like Dad had told him to.
He pounded up the sidewalk, his song forgotten, his backpack capering after him, and then his arms were yanked back.
He opened his mouth to scream, and his eyes widened.
Ian couldn't see his attacker - it was like the night he'd seen him being raped in the cellar pantry - but Alex was fighting for breath, kicking, and then his eyes rolled into his head and he sagged downward.
He hung like that for a few seconds, limp in his kidnapper's invisible grip.
Then he was lifted into the air, carried like a baby behind the nauseating grub-like wall of the van and out of sight.
The backpack went with.
Alex hadn't been tricked.
He was too smart for that.
He had run.
He had tried to cry for help.
They hadn't fooled him.
Ian was screaming.
The van's back door swung into sight as it gaped open to swallow his son.
Just as quickly, it slammed back shut and the passenger door spasmed.
It opened, then closed, and the van sidled casually forward, the maggot bloated and slow from its meal.
As it rolled past, Ian saw Leroy Eston in the driver's seat.
He shuddered and whimpered, at the mercy of his visions.
He had always been powerless while watching Alex replay his life, but to be powerless
then
, at the one instant when his involvement could have changed everything, broke him.
He heard a guttural wail gurgling from his own throat.
His stomach, his heart, were ash.
Maybe Alex would re-live these moments again and again, forever.
Maybe Ian's failure to figure out what the boy needed was damning him.
I should have
been there.
His shoulders shook as if some giant beast had grabbed him in its jaws and was toying with him.
Heaving sobs wracked his chest.
His arm bumped the car horn, which protested absurdly on the silent street.
He fumbled for something to cling to.
His wife loathed him.
His son had died.
But he craved their touch, was desperate with longing to hold them.
His fingers closed on Mowsalot, and he pulled it to him with a ragged wail, clutching it like his son must have clutched it in the blackness of his room.
There was a place in his mind that was ashamed to cling to a stuffed animal like a child, but he was far beyond it.
For him there was nothing but raw, blistering pain, and the screaming need for comfort.
But the cat felt as if it had just been pulled from the fridge.
It wasn't caustically frigid, as it had nearly been last night; but it could have been, recently.
When the van had still been near, maybe.
Something analytical began to speak in Ian's mind, wondering if the toy's sudden turns of cold were a sign that Eston was near, or that it was holding him at bay.
Slowly, the thought dragged him back to himself.
As he fought to correct his breathing, wipe his face, find a tissue, he realized he had seen Eston driving.
If Eston had been driving -
Kelly
had snatched Alex from the sidewalk.
Kelly had smothered him.
Kelly had lifted him into her arms, bore him into the van while he was helpless.
Kelly
had.
Right then, at that very instant, she was out there, somewhere, alive.
His hands tightened until his nails dug into the meat of his palm.
Slowly, carefully, he put the car into gear and turned toward home.
He printed his document, in case he needed to check his notes, and while it rattled out of his old bubblejet he pulled up and saved a map of each of the places on his list where Eston had probably worked.
Once he had them all he printed those too, and threw them in a folder.
Then he went into the bedroom and carefully loaded a clip before pulling the .22 from its shelf in the closet.
He flicked the safety, refamiliarizing himself with how it worked.
Off, then on; off, then on.
How quickly could he do it?
Could he remember?
Could he do it
too
quickly, or might this miniscule obstacle prevent him from doing something stupid, like shooting the wrong person?
It was only a .22, but it weighed as much as a corpse.
His hands shivered with cold sweat.
He shook his head once, tightly, and set the gun back on the shelf.
He stalked out of the room.
He was passing under the threshold when he remembered Alex's eyes rolling back, his body drooping in the invisible grip of his attacker before he was scooped into her arms and carried like a baby.
Ian had carried him that way: swaddled him to make him feel secure, anchored him against the crook of his arm, and paced with him in a circuit from the kitchen, through the dining room, into the living room, and back again - over, and over, and over.
He had gazed into his fathomless eyes, waiting for them to close, wondering what they were seeing, falling in love with them.
When the boy had grown older, too old to be carried that way, Ian had sometimes done it anyway.
"I used to carry you this way when you were a baby,”
he'd say, and Alex would close his eyes with a silly but deeply contented grin, and play along, and Ian's heart would sing.
He halted in the doorway, fingers curling and uncurling, lips and eyes twitching.
Then he went back and grabbed the gun.
It went in the glove box.
The folder, he tossed on the passenger seat.
Mowsalot followed suit, grinning vacantly at the front window.
Ian glanced into the backseat, expecting to find Alex there, but it was empty.
The first place on the list was Todd's Gas, just off 169.
He stared at the words, at the address, imagining that Kelly was working there right now.
If you find her, what then?
It was an old question, and it didn't matter.
He pulled out.
It was 9:27.
The morning traffic on 169 had cleared, and the highway flew past.
He missed his exit, unsure of where the place was, but turned off at the next one and angled back.
The path took him to
Main Street
, a quaint through-way that reminded him of growing up in
Monticello
: little, single-owner shops and restaurants with names like Corner Cafe and Peterston Antiques.
The street was quiet and uncrowded.
He crept along at five miles under the 30 mile-per-hour limit, combing the buildings for a sign of his destination and watching the street names roll past.
At the next corner he saw it.
It was a little place, like the other shops around here, and even still had a full-service lane.
The garage was just big enough for three cars at once.
A sign in the front promised
$19.95 Oil Changes - 30 minutes or less.
He parked across the street and double-checked his notes.
When he finished, he saw that Mowsalot had tumbled to the floor in front of the passenger seat.
"Shit," he muttered.
He hadn't thought about what to do with the toy.
Eston might attack him if he left it in the car.
But there was no way anyone would talk to him if he brought it with.
He picked it up, set it back on the seat, and swore again.
Screw it.
He couldn't risk another of Eston's attacks, so he snatched the cat up and opened the door.
But as he set his foot on the blacktop, he felt like an absolute idiot.
He turned back and froze, paralyzed with indecision.
