Billy's Bones (28 page)

T
HE
Groveton Police Department served Stark as well as Groveton, but even at that, it was small—much smaller than the one in Berlin. The building looked more like a storefront to Tom than a police headquarters, and there was only one young woman in uniform at the front desk when he and Kevin entered a couple of days after the therapy session.

She asked what she could do to help them, and Kevin replied, “I have some information about a missing person.”

“Who would that be?”

“His name was Billy Sherrell.”

She looked puzzled and went to the computer behind the desk to type in the name. Apparently, her first attempt didn’t find anything because she asked, “How do you spell the name?”

“S-H-E-R-R-E-L-L.”

She tried again. “I’m not coming up with anything under that name.”

“It was a really long time ago.”

The officer looked at him curiously. “You say you know something about him?”

“I know how he died.”

The young woman had them wait while she called Chief Burbank. He was out on patrol, but apparently she considered twenty-five-year-old murders to be
his
problem. He must have agreed to come in, because the officer instructed Kevin and Tom to have a seat in two of the cheap plastic chairs near the front door.

Kevin fidgeted while they waited, pumping his leg as if he were operating an old-style sewing machine in double time. But otherwise he seemed okay. He’d taken some of the meds Mark had prescribed, and they seemed to help a bit. Tom couldn’t help watching him out of the corner of his eye for signs of a panic attack or another flashback, but he didn’t want to embarrass Kevin by hovering over him. As it was, Kevin was irritated that he’d put his foot down about taking a day to rest before coming in to the police station.

After a while, the front door opened and Chief Burbank entered. His eyes fixed upon Kevin right away, and he wore a quizzical expression on his handsome, ruddy face. Tom and Kevin stood, and the chief came forward to shake their hands.

“Gentlemen.”

“Hey,” Tom said. Kevin was watching Burbank as if he expected the man to slap handcuffs on him at any moment.

“I’ve been puzzling over that name,” Burbank said, turning his sharp gray eyes upon Kevin, “ever since Sandy called me. It sounded so familiar—‘Billy Sherrell’.” He paused. “We’re talking about someone who disappeared over twenty-five years ago, aren’t we?”

Kevin nodded, clearly uncomfortable. “Yeah.”

He hadn’t given them any details yet, but Burbank was regarding him as if he might be about to confess to killing Billy himself—which was a reasonable assumption, under the circumstances.

“There was nothing in the database on a Billy Sherrell,” the officer at the desk volunteered.

“There wouldn’t be,” Burbank replied. “That case must’ve been closed before I graduated high school. I doubt the department even had a computer then.”

He walked over to the coffee machine and poured himself a cup. “Would you guys like some coffee?”

Judging by the burnt smell, Tom estimated it had been sitting on the burner for a few hours. The thought of drinking it made his stomach turn. “No thanks.”

Kevin just shook his head.

“Why don’t we go into the office, and you can tell me what you know?” Burbank asked. Then he turned to the officer and asked her, “Sandy, can you take a look in the file cabinets downstairs and try to locate that case? I want to see what info we had at the time.”

“Oh, that’ll be fun,” she grumbled. But she moved off to do as he asked.

Burbank gestured to a door behind the desk. “Gentlemen?”

T
OM
was worried that retelling the story would trigger another flashback, but Kevin seemed to be distancing himself from it, as if he were recounting something that had happened in a dream. All of the details were there, but he didn’t appear to be upset about any of it. Which was probably why Burbank looked so skeptical.

“That’s quite a tale,” he commented when Kevin had finished.

“It’s not a ‘tale’,” Kevin said, showing the first hint of emotion since he’d begun—irritation. “It all really happened.”

“And after twenty-five years, you just suddenly remembered it?”

“No, I didn’t ‘just suddenly remember it’,” Kevin snapped. “Tom and this shrink from Berlin have been dredging all this shit out of my head over the past few months. I had it all—” He made a gesture with both hands around his head, as if he were shampooing his hair. “—blocked. I didn’t remember anything about Billy until Dr. Cross played a song for me the day before yesterday.”

Chief Burbank looked confused for a moment, but then the light dawned in his eyes, and he turned to Tom. “Repressed memories?” He sounded even more skeptical than before.

Tom nodded. “Yes. He’s been working through it with the help of my coworker, Dr. Susan Cross.”

“Jesus.” Burbank groaned. “I’ve read about that. Wasn’t there a wave of people back in the nineties, remembering so-called repressed memories of satanic sexual abuse from their childhoods? And it turned out that they were just ‘remembering’ what the therapist
wanted
them to remember? None of it actually happened. And people went to jail for it!”

“Oh, fuck this shit! I don’t need you telling me none of this is
real
!” Kevin made a move to get up, but Tom put a hand on his arm to calm him.

Tom was angered by the chief’s attitude, but when he spoke, he kept his voice calm and reasonable. “I’m familiar with those cases, Chief Burbank. And yes, contamination of the recalled memories is a real danger. I don’t believe that’s the case here. Sue knows what she’s doing. But the true test will be that well. If we can find it, and there
is
a body at the bottom of it… well, then we’ll know.”

Burbank frowned, but they were interrupted by a knock on the door. “Yes?”

“I found the case file,” Sandy said through the door.

“Let’s see it.”

She let herself in and set a weathered manila folder on Burbank’s desk. Then she let herself out while he flipped through it.

He withdrew a faded Polaroid picture—the kind that had been popular when they were all kids, where the picture developed after it fed out of the front of the camera. He placed it on the desk in front of Kevin. “Are you absolutely sure this is the kid?”

Kevin only had to glance at it before he nodded his head and looked away. “Yeah, that’s him.” His voice was strained.

The kid in the picture was about ten or eleven. Tom could see at once what Mrs. Derocher had meant when she described Billy as “almost pretty.” He’d been a beautiful boy, with jet-black hair, large brown eyes, and a charming smile.

“The file says that was taken about a year before he disappeared,” Chief Burbank commented, looking through the papers in the folder.

“I’ve seen it. Billy kept it on his dresser. I think his mother snapped it before she ran off. He told me it bugged him that she didn’t take it or anything else to remember him by.”

Kevin seemed to be remembering everything now, Tom observed. Or at least big chunks of it.

“The kid had a rough life,” Burbank said sympathetically. “And if what you’re saying is true, a very short one.”

Kevin nodded.

Burbank sighed. “All right. You remember your dad throwing Billy’s body into a well.” He spread his hands out questioningly. “So where’s the well?”

“I don’t know,” Kevin replied. But when the chief rolled his eyes, he added, “I’d never been there. But my father obviously knew the place. So I’ve been thinking… maybe it belonged to someone he knew.”

“Your mother’s still alive, isn’t she?”

“Yeah. She’s over at Riverview.”

“Have you asked her about it? I mean, I get that she probably doesn’t know about a lot of this—”

Kevin snorted. “Fuck, no.”

“But she’d know if any of your father’s friends had a place out in the woods, right?”

Kevin looked uncomfortable. “I suppose.”

“But….” The chief waved his hand, encouraging him to complete the sentence.

“My mom and I don’t really talk much.”

“Are you concerned about her finding out what happened?” Tom asked him.

Kevin looked at him sharply, a frown creasing his brow. “She lives in her own little world, where Jack Derocher never did anything but dote on his wife and son and occasionally fart out some heavenly angel song. I don’t know how the hell I’m gonna ask her anything about this without getting into a fight.”

Burbank drummed his fingers on the desk, eyeing Kevin shrewdly. After a minute, he raised an eyebrow and asked, “Do you want
me
to talk to your mom for you?”

Tom expected Kevin to get annoyed again, but to his surprise Kevin just chuckled and grinned back at the policeman. “Be my guest.”

C
HIEF
B
URBANK
left them alone in his office for a few minutes while he went out to talk to the officer at the desk, and Kevin muttered, “You’re not here as my doctor.”

“I never said I was your doctor,” Tom said. Kevin had refused to have Sue come along.

“You acted like it. Just remember, you’re my boyfriend—not my psychologist.” The slight quirk of his mouth took some of the sting out of the reprimand, but it still made Tom feel defensive.

Tom leaned forward and lowered his voice, uncertain what might be overheard outside the door. “If you want to know the truth, I
am
a little concerned for your mental health. I mean, Jesus, Kevin! You had a total breakdown two days ago when these memories came through. Don’t you think it’s a little soon to be diving in headfirst? Are you really ready to go digging in a dried-up well for a corpse? I’m just saying, all of this could have waited a few more days.”

Kevin took his hand and kissed it gently. “I’d be lying if I said my stomach isn’t tied up in knots. But I can’t just fart around the house for a few days now that I know Billy is rotting away at the bottom of a well somewhere.”

“Kevin… after all this time….”

“Yeah, I know,” Kevin said grimly. “There’s probably nothing left of him. If it was damp down there, even the bones might’ve disintegrated. But… whatever’s there, we have to find him. He deserves a decent burial. And if his father’s still alive, he needs to know what happened to his son, even if he was a mean son of a bitch.”

Tom sighed and asked, “Have you taken one of the Valium yet?” Kevin had promised to bring the prescription with him and take one before getting into all of this with the police. Tom hadn’t seen him do that.

“I don’t like that shit,” Kevin complained. “It makes me groggy.”

“I know. I don’t like it either—I was given some a few years ago when I had an MRI. But I really think you should.”

Kevin rolled his eyes, but he drew the bottle out of his pocket and took one of the tablets out. Then he held it up dramatically in front of Tom’s face before popping it into his mouth.

Tom ignored the mocking gesture. “Aren’t you supposed to take that with water?”

“I was hoping you’d lift your shirt so I could suckle off your tit for a few minutes.”

Tom gave him a sour look, though he knew Kevin was right—he was being overprotective. Truthfully, he wondered if maybe
he
was the one who needed the Valium. He was a nervous wreck about all this. But he was the designated driver for now.

The conversation was cut short by Chief Burbank coming back into the room. “Okay, guys, let’s go for a ride. I assume you’ll want to take your own car so everyone in town doesn’t see you riding in the back of my cruiser.”

T
HE
same staff person—Sarah—was manning the front desk at Riverview when they arrived, and she seemed even less enthused over Kevin and Tom’s arrival than she had been the last time. But the presence of Chief Burbank forced her to at least pretend to be cordial.

“Is there something I can do for you, officer?”

“He’s here to arrest my mom,” Kevin stated flatly.

She looked alarmed, but Burbank rolled his eyes at Kevin. “No, I’m not going to arrest her. I’d just like to talk to her.”

Somewhat relieved, but still clearly suspicious, Sarah escorted them to a small sitting room. She shooed out a couple of elderly men who’d been playing cards and explained, “This room is private. Make yourselves comfortable while I get Ellen.”

Mrs. Derocher did not look pleased to see them when she entered the sitting room a short time later. “What’s this about?” she asked Chief Burbank with only a brief glance at her son.

“Please sit down, Mrs. Derocher. I just have a couple questions for you.”

“About what?”

Sarah entered with a tray of tea and coffee, and Mrs. Derocher curbed her obvious annoyance long enough to perch on the edge of one of the Victorian-style stuffed chairs while Sarah laid things out on the coffee table. After the receptionist left, Burbank took a seat on the sofa and said, “Kevin has been recalling some things that happened when we were in junior high school—some things that might give us some clues to the disappearance of a boy who lived near your house.”

“Are you referring to Billy Sherrell?”

“Yes,” the chief replied. “You remember him?”

Mrs. Derocher poured herself some coffee and spooned some artificial sweetener into it. “I’ve been wondering why Kevin and his friend—Tom, was it?” Tom smiled and nodded. “Why they were so interested in the boy. It was a very long time ago.”

Burbank brought out the worn Polaroid of Billy and passed it to her. “Is this him?”

“Yes, of course.” She glanced suspiciously at Kevin but continued to address the policeman. “What could Kevin possibly have remembered after all this time that could make any difference now?”

Tom was already familiar with the dysfunctional relationship between mother and son, but it was clearly beginning to make Burbank uncomfortable. He looked to Kevin for help, but Kevin simply gestured for him to go on. “Mrs. Derocher… did you and your husband know anybody at that time who owned a cabin out in the woods?”