Billy (14 page)

He looked at the bent steering wheel, then at the man's tense face. He recalled how slow he'd been taking off the strap, how he'd hesitated with his hand on the buckle and his face red. With a guy this nuts it was best to do what you were told to do and wait for your chance. After all, the more Billy cooperated the more the man would relax. Plus the police were coming. They had to come, he'd
told
that operator!

No hamburger had ever smelled as good as this one did. This Roy Rogers must be special. He could smell every separate thing, the salad dressing, the tomatoes, the lettuce, the meat. It just seemed automatic to lift it to his mouth and take a big bite.

"Not too much at once, honey. It's been a long time since you ate and it'll all come up again."

Honey ? Screw you.

As he chewed Billy stared across the hood of the van, watching the oncoming traffic. People were beginning to turn their lights on. The sky ahead was glowing pale orange and green, the land was dark. Ahead of them he saw a truck with about a dozen license plates, he couldn't even tell all the states. California. North Carolina. Arkansas.

A car passed with California plates, then another.

"How's the burger?"

"It's OK."

"That's my boy! You looking forward to the shake? You like a chocolate shake?"

Billy would not give him that. "Not much."

The man played with the steering wheel. "What's your name?" Billy asked. A smile came over the man's face, big and ugly and kind of sad, like when he'd had that hangdog look.

"Well, well, well, I think we're warming up a little at last! I am Barton. And please do not call me Bart. Barton."

"How old are you?"

"Thirty."

"What happened to you?"

"Pardon me?"

"You look a lot older than my dad, and he's over forty."

"Well, never mind. Eat your supper." He began to hum along with the opera he had put on. "You know," the man said, settling back in his seat, "I remember when I was your age, you know what we did? When I was twelve." Billy wondered how he knew so much. His name, now his age. Had the man been studying him, watching him, maybe for weeks? The thought was sickening.

The man was looking at him now, a look that at first seemed warm and friendly. But his eyes were not right. They stared for so long that Billy got worried the van would run off the road.

Of course that would be great, if he survived. The police would come and then it would be all over. Maybe he could try grabbing the steering wheel when the man wasn't looking, and pull it and reach his foot over and jam down the gas.

"Do you know what we did?" the man asked again. Billy knew he had to answer.

"No," he said. He took his last mouthful of hamburger and started on the shake, which was so delicious that he felt a stab of literally physical pleasure when he tasted it.

"Well, we had a great time! There was this lady in our neighborhood who was very old. She used to sit beside her window and listen to the radio. One day we climbed in when she wasn't in the living room and attached wires to the microphone. She came in to listen to the news, and we hid outside and announced the end of the world. It was quite a newscast! And you know what she was doing when we went to see how she had reacted? She was sound asleep." He chuckled. "I guess there's something to be said for getting old."

"You couldn't have attached wires to the microphone because regular radios don't have a microphone."

"Well, I meant the speaker. It's a detail. Do you haVe any funny stories?"

"Not really."

"You've never done anything funny?"

"I guess not."

"But you've laughed. Tell me something that made you laugh."

The mere thought of laughter brought tears to Billy's eyes. He could hardly talk. But he had to say something, he didn't want to make Barton mad again. "We don't laugh, we aren't allowed to."

"Aren't allowed to? Why not?"

"Religion." He thought fast. "We're Charismatics. We don't laugh, we only speak in the tongues."

There was a period of silence. Billy knew he had been at least partly accurate. He'd heard the Charismatics bellowing away in the basement at St. Stephen's. "Lamma lamma sammi," they would yell, or, "Globbalubbyboof!" They would make long sentences of these words and scream,''Praise God, praise Him!"

That was speaking in the tongues. After the hollering died down they would all say "Amen" and sing a hymn. Any kid who heard this would have to be carried off on a stretcher from laughing so hard. The Charismatics themselves did not laugh at all.

"You're very religious," Barton said. The wariness in his voice delighted Billy, and he thought it wise to expand on the theme.

"We go to Mass and Communion every morning. I confess every Thursday. We all have statues of Jesus and Mary in our rooms, and when I'm not eating or sleeping or doing homework, I pray."

"You must have very few sins, and yet you go to confession every week."

"No, I have plenty of sins. The more strict your religion, the more sins you have. That's why probably all the holiest people are in hell, my dad says."

Barton nodded. "They have the strictest religions and therefore the most sins. Makes sense. But you haven't told me your sins."

Should he say something stupid like he did the once or twice a year he went to real confession, or should he—dared he—try another tack? He wanted to seem tough and dangerous to this man. But would anything be believable? Being near Barton made Billy feel helpless. If he didn't try, though, if he didn't try everything he was going to be near Barton forever.

"Well," he said, "you aren't supposed to tell." He glanced at Barton. How would he take this? "But I killed a man."

Barton burst out laughing and Billy hated himself at once for being so stupid. "You shouldn't laugh," he yelled. "I tied him to a bed just like you did me and I connected him to an extension cord. And I plugged it in."

"Who was this? Who did you kill, little boy?"

"A man who tried to kiss me."

Barton sighed. Billy, who had been sucking his shake between sentences, came to the bottom and rattled the straw.

"That isn't nice!"

He did it again, rattling it long and hard.

"Oh, please," Barton sang out, "don't make me punish you. 
I find it so embarrassing." But he sounded like he found it fun. Billy stopped.

As night fell and the desert became flecked with the lights of distant towns, Billy felt a loneliness so overwhelming that it seemed almost sacred.

He watched the gathering dark.

 
16.

Sally lay motionless, staring into the dark. She listened. The silence told her nobody else was awake.

So what had waked her up?

She heard a creak close to her bed. She turned her head, but all she saw was total blackness.

It felt like she was awake and dreaming at the same time. Another creak came, and suddenly there was a hand over her mouth, a slick hand that stank of rubber. She twisted away, intaking breath, trying to scream. The rubber of the glove pulled her skin.

Then her mouth was free and she heard herself bellow. As the scream died into its own reverberations she could hear his brutal grunting. His other arm came under the covers, sought her waist, started dragging her.

"Daddy! Daddy, oh, God, he's back, he's taking me! Daddy!"

The lights came on. Her heart was thrashing, sweat was pouring down her cheeks, she was crouched against the wall behind the bed. Her mother and father were two ghosts bobbing in the warm glow of the overhead light. Daddy rushed up to her and scooped her up in real arms that were warm and strong.

She let herself go like a rag in his hug and the strength of him filled her. "He was here," she moaned.

"No," Mother said, "no, baby."

Air whistled into her lungs, her heart's motion became stronger and slower, the night wind began to dry the sweat that was soaking her.

She heard herself moaning, "He was here, he was here," and it was like another kid was doing it. Then she was being shaken back and forth, her head lolling, the ceiling fixture swinging before her eyes.

She caught her breath. There was Mom, her face white, her eyes puffy, and Dad with his glasses crooked and that haggard look she wished she could wash off his face.

"No, baby," Dad said. "Nobody was here. You were dreaming.

It seemed unbelievable. "Really?"

He held her tight and she smelled him, a waxy old smell like a grandfather. But she put her arms around him, and Mom held her hands behind his back. "You had a nightmare," Mom said.

"I'm scared at night."

"Why didn't you tell us, Sally?"

She looked into her father's eyes. "Because I didn't want to." She pulled away. "I want coffee."

"I think we could all use coffee," Dad said.

"At four a.m.?" Mom asked. Then she made it a statement: "At four a.m." They wouldn't be getting back to sleep, none of them. Sally put on her robe and followed her parents downstairs. As they moved through the house she turned on every light.

Walter Toddcaster was dragged out of his sleep by the ringing of the telephone. He wasn't surprised; it was part of thejob. His wife didn't even stir.

"Yeah?"

"We got a lead in the kid case. He called in."

"Tell me about it."

"An operator took the call from a pay phone at a Mobil station near Estes, Nevada. He's in a white Ford Aerostar, traveling west on IH 15. That's all we got."

"License number? Anything?"

"As a matter of fact there is a little more. The call came in at eight-fifty-one their time last night. The phone company reported it to the state police. They got to the booth at nine-twelve. No Aerostar. But the attendant remembered the van."

"And its driver?"

"A white male aged about forty-five to fifty. Five foot ten, somewhat overweight, wearing a pale blue Izod shirt and black slacks."

"This is good news."

"Not entirely."

"Hit me."

"The attendant also
thinks
he saw a boy—get this—climbing into the window of the van. The boy was wearing a white T-shirt with a photo on it and shorts. He thinks the kid might have had a big red spot on his shirt."

"What are you telling me?"

"He thought it looked like blood."

Toddcaster sighed, thanked the duty officer and hung up the phone. The question was now a personal one: did he clam up on this family, or stay emotionally involved? A man has to protect himself. You can break, you get too involved.

To a cop blood usually means death. This particular abductor, at some point, will kill this child.

Taking places around the red Formica table in the kitchen was another of the unspoken family rituals that had given Sally quiet pleasure, and now created distress. Dad set the coffeepot to perking, and it was soon rattling away, a painfully merry sound.

Mom sat with her arms folded before her and her head down, like you used to at naptime in grade school. Sally reached over and touched her hair. So suddenly that there seemed anger in the movement, her mother raised her head. "Did you see him?"

"You said—"

"It was a nightmare, Mary."

"No, Mark—I mean when he took Billy. Did you see him?"

Sally was confused by the question. She hadn't seen him . . . had she?

"The dream, Sally. Maybe it's a buried memory."

"No, I—I don't think so."

Her mother's face changed, the eyes growing narrow, the lips curling into an expression that Sally had never seen before. "If you remember anything, you tell us!"

"Mom, I don't!"

"I think you do!"

"Mary, hey!"

"She doesn't realize how serious this is! She's a child. It's a game." Abruptly she stopped talking.

Sally thought in a dull, helpless way, 'She's angry at me because I'm the one who was left behind.' Slowly, Mom's hands went to her face. "Mom?"

"I'm sorry, honey. I love you, you know I do. I just want Billy back so darned bad!"

The pot rattled and chattered, and the room filled with the smell of fresh-brewed coffee. Sally knew that something was being destroyed in this family, something that was fragile and necessary. Was it a kind of family sentiment, a sort of shared lie—or was it a truth crushed by the savage reality of a world that sees children as objects to be consumed?

She said all she could think to say, "I'm sorry it wasn't me, Mom. I know he was the baby." Mary gave a loud, tragic wail and reached toward her daughter. They twined hands across the table. "I don't think I ever saw him or heard him, but I'm so afraid he'll come back I almost can't stand it. I don't want to die like—"

"He's not dead!
He is not dead!"

"I know—I'm sorry, Mom, I—"

Sally watched as her mother seized the coffeepot and filled the mugs. Her hands, which had been clenched and trembling, became deft and efficient when she performed the familiar chore. Sally saw something about her mother that she had never seen before, and knew that it was the bravery of continuing on even when you wanted to roll up into a little ball and die.

Mary's voice rang clear and suddenly very strong. "We cannot have a defeatist attitude, because this family is all he has. If we don't get out there and do our own investigation and find our boy, he's gone."

"Mary, the police—"

"What did they do? They came here, they ruined my house with their filthy tests and then they went back to their other damned cases, the ones they have some chance of solving.

Nobody's looking for Billy. Canvassing every known pederast in the state! That's their idea of working this case. Billy's not in Iowa. He probably hasn't been in Iowa since Sunday morning. He could be anywhere! And we are going to have to find him. Nobody else will. Nobody else gives a tinker's damn." Noisily she sipped her scalding coffee. Sally watched her, full of admiration.

"It's one thing to do publicity, but we can't possibly mount an investigation on our own. Where would we start?"

"Somewhere!"

As Toddcaster dressed he thought of the next steps to be taken. They had to put out a request for incident reports on white Aerostars up and down IH 15. They had to follow up anything they might get. And the family had to participate. They needed to take their poster to every truck stop and filling station on the west side of that highway. It was a big job, but not impossible. He could find out the approximate range of the Aerostar, and they could concentrate their postering in areas where it was most likely to have stopped for gas.

He was going to tell them that Billy was alive, and they were going to emote all over him.

The part about the blood he would leave out. And he wouldn't explain why the boy had gone back to the van, although he understood. The blood told him: Billy Neary was being tortured. Kidnappers did it to brainwash their victims, literally to intimidate them into obedience. They did it out of fear, out of anger. Mostly, though, they did it for fun.

Maybe there would come a time when Billy wouldn't make a phone call even if he could. That happened, he'd seen that. There was an unholy love that entered these relationships. Sometimes they kissed the hand that would, in the end, kill them.

Sally considered how many crannies there were in the world, and how small her brother was.

The familiar, dull hopelessness began to reassert itself. Noble sentiments aside, they were just like the other families 
of the Searchers group with their pictures and their desperate strategies.

Mother had become a woman possessed. "We'll get him back. We'll find a way."

"We could canvass the neighborhood," Mark ventured.

"Do you know that the police
did not do that!
Did you notice? They didn't so much as knock on a single door in this neighborhood! If we get our picture into the right hands and somebody says, 'Hey, I've seen this kid,' then they'll have something to go on. Otherwise, it's just basically waiting for something to turn up."

"That's not exactly a fair characterization, Mary. They're doing a lot more than that."

"I don't want to be fair! I want Billy!" With a glare like the enraged Medusa in Sally's ancient-history book, her mother reared back and hurled her mug against the wall. Coffee went everywhere and the little framed cross-stitch she had made, "Bless my kitchen, Lord, and all that come herein," was shattered and fell to the floor amid the showering bits of the mug.

Silence followed the outburst. Dad seemed frozen in his chair, like Sally too astonished to make a sound.

Scuttling like a coolie, Mother hurried to pick up the pieces. "Don't anybody else move, you'll get glass in your feet!"

"What about your feet, Mom," Sally said. She went down to help. Together they picked up the larger pieces of glass while Mark sopped up coffee and slivers with paper towels.

Sally watched as her father finished, then came over and enfolded his wife in his arms right there in the kitchen. They seemed so small, and so much older than Sally had ever before noticed. She got up, slowly backing away from them. She wished they wouldn't keep revealing themselves as little and helpless—but they were, just look at them.

"We can work as a team," she said, trying to interject a hopefulness she did not feel. Her parents seemed hardly to hear her. They were on their feet now, Mom sobbing, Dad holding her in painful silence. "We can work as a team," Sally repeated, this time a bit more loudly.

Dad was so haggard; right now he looked like a total stranger.

To cover her disquiet Sally kept talking, her voice fast and thin. "We can, if we organize. We'll buy a book, learn how to be detectives. We'll become a family of detectives."

Mom blinked, and suddenly her face softened. Sally and Mom had many long talks. At the best moments, they were sisters. But usually Mom was on her case. "This isn't one of those young adult mystery novels."

"I don't read that junk anymore, as you well know. I just think we can accomplish something—realistically. I do."

"Maybe I don't! Maybe that's why I threw the mug! I'm so damn frustrated, I could just tear my hair out!"

"We can try your idea, Mary," Dad said. Sally watched her father as he continued to awkwardly caress her mother. Then they went together in a kiss. Usually they were casually affectionate but never extremely intimate in front of her and Billy. She didn't know what to do, lower her eyes or what. She was delighted.

Just then they all heard a sound outside the open kitchen window. All looked. The moon had set, and the window was black. Instinctively they drew closer together. Sally's eyes went to the rack of knives.

There was a knock at the door. It was more as if a branch was tapping against the frame. There was none of the firmness of the human hand.

Dad went to the door. "Who is it?" Sally stepped closer to the knives—and as she did it, she discovered a truth about herself. Neither of her parents had so much as thought about getting a weapon. And why should they? Neither of them would dream of using one.

Sally could do it.

Then Dad swung the door open and there stood Detective Toddcaster blinking in the sudden light. Sally must have gasped, because he turned toward her, his expression full of apology. "I saw the lights on," he said. He stepped heavily into the kitchen, dominating it with his large, clumsy body, his stale-cigar reek and his wrinkled, intense face.

"You've been here—how long?"

"I just came over. I drove by. I guess maybe I'm glad I saw lights. I have news. Billy is alive. He called the operator from 
a pay phone in Estes, Nevada, at eight-fifty-one their time last night."

Sally felt a shock go through her body as if somebody had slapped her across the face. Mother cried out. Dad went to the detective and grabbed his shoulders. "Is he OK?"

"He's alive."

Her mother was shaking, twisting her hands together, moaning, "He's alive, he's alive."

Sally saw that all along she hadn't believed it. Hidden behind her brave words had been a secret certainty: Billy was dead. And Sally knew that she had thought so, too. She had thought her brother was dead. But he wasn't, he was somewhere, he was alive right now, breathing and hoping and wanting to be home. Sally just could not bear that thought, it hurt so terribly, it was like fire raging in every soft place of her soul. She went the two steps to her mother, her arms out, seeking embrace. They fell together and then Dad was on them both.

Not until Toddcaster cleared his throat did Sally remember that he was there. He stood squinting at them, as if their bodies gave off light. "We have a description of the vehicle he was in and the man driving it."