I&#39ll Be There (12 page)

Riddle started to work on an aeronautical drawing of the inside of a cruise missile from the memory of a photograph he’d seen in a magazine. Jared was wide-eyed because of course they
didn’t have a cruise missile anywhere in their backyard.

Debbie took a seat across from Riddle to watch him work.

The dog went deep into the darkness to eat some green grass in hopes of doing something about his incredible stomach-ache.

And Emily stared at the group and decided that they were the human equivalent of a dump cake.

Eleven days later, Bobby Ellis continued his work on his first real detective case. He had run a property check on the crap house on Needle Lane and found that it was not just
in foreclosure, it was also pending litigation in a title dispute.

And if that weren’t enough, when he called the bank to discuss renting the property, he was told that the place had a mould problem and was not considered habitable.

How weird was that?

So why were people living there?

Bobby usually lifted weights after school, but on Thursday he decided to do more recon. And this time he hit the jackpot.

He turned off River Road onto Needle and saw the two boys again heading down the sidewalk. Bobby pulled over to the kerb and watched.

Riddle carried a phone book, but it was his new one. He also carried something that he was quickly becoming even more attached to, an environmentally friendly hydrofluoroalkane
inhaler filled with Proventil.

Debbie Bell had insisted the night she met Riddle that she drive the boys home. Riddle was disappointed that he couldn’t ride the squeaky bus but of course didn’t say anything. They
all piled into the Subaru, and soon it was clear that Debbie Bell had her own ideas about the trip home.

She drove straight to the hospital. Emily, once she realised what was going on, was as alarmed as the two boys.

So it was with some real effort that Debbie managed to get the three of them out of the car and inside the building.

After flashing her employee badge and explaining that she was giving a quick tour of where she worked to the three kids, Debbie entered the emergency room through the back entrance.

Dr Howard was on duty. Goldie Howard was one of Debbie Bell’s favourites. She was a kind doctor and into medicine for all the right reasons. Emily’s mom, in complete violation of all
rules and regulations, had the doctor spend fifteen minutes examining Riddle. A friend-to-friend thing. A worker-to-worker thing. An I’m-asking-for-a-big-favour thing.

No forms, no parental consent, no paperwork, just a doctor examining a kid who (unknown to them) had not seen a doctor since his immunisation shots just after his second birthday.

Riddle, who was silent throughout the entire ordeal, ignored all of Dr Howard’s questions, which Sam answered.

Her diagnosis was the same as Debbie’s: asthma. Possibly complicated by some form of acute allergy. She wanted Riddle to go see a pulmonary specialist named Dr William Wang who was on
Eleventh Street.

Dr Howard wrote it all out on a referral form and then put two Proventil inhalers from the medical dispensary closet into Debbie’s hands, signing the memo that they were taken out by
Deborah Bell for Riddle Smith. Emily, who was friends with Dr Howard’s son, thanked her. Sam, at her side, did the same.

At the Bells’ house, Riddle had been given a piece of the cake (wrapped in tinfoil and then placed on a paper plate as a take-home treat). He’d refused to leave it in the car and had
it with him throughout the entire exam.

They had all said their goodbyes (except for Riddle, who said nothing) and started down the back hallway when Riddle abruptly stopped. He turned around and went back to Dr Howard and wordlessly
handed her the piece of wrapped cake.

Done.

Now, in day eleven of the Proventil therapy, Riddle was feeling as if he could breathe. The thick spit that was always in his mouth, and forever stuck like a liquid hairball
somewhere in the back of his throat and halfway down his chest, had thinned.

It was crazy how strange he now felt.

It was like someone had been sitting on his chest for ten years and then had decided to climb off. Riddle was so used to the tightness, the pressure, the literal squeeze it took to get a gulp of
air, that he almost felt dizzy from the relief of being able to have oxygen flow.

Sam watched his brother and wondered if it were possible that Riddle had never spoken very much because it was literally a strain.

Because now he was really talking.

He could say what was on his mind, not just express himself in times of need or panic. Much of it involved repeating thoughts, sometimes obsessively. But he didn’t seem like a fish out of
water, gulping wide-mouthed in the air. He just seemed like he had opinions and ideas and now he wanted to share them. Sometimes over and over again.

That morning, they’d slept late. After they got up, eaten half a box of stale cereal (with no milk), and each drank a Pepsi, they’d gone to the dump.

Sam spent an hour helping an angry guy unload a U-Haul truck filled with stuff from an eviction. The guy gave Sam three bucks. It was better than nothing, but it wouldn’t get them much of
a meal.

When Sam and Riddle headed down Needle Lane they didn’t know that Bobby Ellis was watching. The dead-end street had flooded frequently in the days before the Army Corps of Engineers put in
the reservoir, and even though years had passed, the street held the memory. The soil was soft, rich from years of river runoff and thick with weeds and long-term neglect.

The houses on Needle were mostly built in the forties.

Some were vacant; none were well-kept. One of the neighbours had been busted for selling drugs back in September. Someone had spray-painted graffiti of a happy face on the side of the drug-bust
house.

Sam and Riddle walked past, and Riddle held up his inhaler, saying, ‘What do I do when it runs out?’

Sam considered. ‘You have a second one.’

That didn’t satisfy Riddle. ‘What do I do when the second one runs out?’

Sam answered, ‘We’ll get you a new one.’

Riddle was troubled. ‘From the sweet-cake lady?’

Sam nodded. ‘Emily’s mom. Her name is Debbie. Debbie Bell. You know that.’

Riddle’s anxiety was not lessened. ‘And what about when he makes us leave? What about when we can’t find Debbie Bell, the sweet-cake lady?’

Now it was Sam’s turn to be quiet. He had no idea what they’d do when Clarence announced, as of course he would, probably any day now, that they were on the run.

Sam looked over at his little brother. And this time he couldn’t answer.

Bobby watched as the two boys slipped inside the house at the end of the road. Only moments later, a truck appeared on the street. Bobby sank a few inches lower in his seat and
grabbed a handful of papers from his backpack. He pretended to be looking them over as the black truck passed by and pulled into the driveway of the last house.

The truck looked like it had been driven hard. Bobby watched as a man emerged. He was in his early forties; tall and thin, all angles.

Bobby quickly dug his phone out of his backpack and, as the man headed towards the back of the house, Bobby took a picture.

His phone was still raised when the man suddenly turned around. Bobby clicked again. The man now stared at him, defiant. Bobby dropped the phone and started his SUV. The man then turned back
towards the house, and Bobby put his foot on the gas, pulling away from the kerb at a speed that he hoped didn’t look panicky.

With one hand on the steering wheel, the other hand wrote on the weekly crime report map,
License number, 7MMS 924
. He next jotted down the make, colour and model of the truck.

And then, because he was taught to do so, he quickly noted that there were two dents on the back of the vehicle and a cracked side-view mirror on the passenger’s side.

It wasn’t until he was three blocks away, waiting at a stoplight, that he looked at the photos he’d taken.

The man was small in the shot, and in shadow, but even from a distance it was clear that he was intimidating.

Sam was interested in the idea of school. For himself. And for his brother.

But he was interested in all kinds of things that seemed completely out of his reach. He’d thought about walking on the moon, but that didn’t mean he’d taken any steps to make
it happen.

Now someone else was taking the steps for him.

Tim Bell was obsessed with Sam.

Debbie Bell was obsessed with Riddle.

Jared Bell was in awe of Sam and sort of frightened by Riddle’s obsessive drawing.

Felix the dog liked Sam and was in love with Riddle. But his obsession was the English setter named Cricket who lived three houses over.

And Emily Bell was finding herself more and more unable to control the situation. She was frightened by the obsessive nature of her own family. What was going on with these people?

After school on Tuesday, Emily came home to an empty house. Jared had basketball practice. Her parents were at work. She’d sent Sam a text message and hadn’t yet heard back.

She let in the dog from the backyard and went into the kitchen to make herself a piece of toast. Debbie Bell’s laptop was in the kitchen, and Emily opened it up. She wanted to go online
without going to her room.

The screen brightened with the page that Debbie Bell had been looking at when she’d closed the computer. Emily found herself staring at it.

Emily closed the laptop. She picked up her cell phone and sent a text to Sam. It read,
I need to talk to you
.

Sam’s mistake was to take a shower.

But he was dusty and sweaty from unloading trash at the city dump, and while that had never bothered him much in the past, now it did.

Clarence came in the back door and he could hear the water running. The pressure in the shower was horrible, a dribble really, so it took some time in there to get any real dirt off.

Clarence saw a stack of clean clothes on top of a box in the hallway. The kid was going to the laundromat an awful lot lately. That wasn’t like him. And he was showering sometimes twice a
day. Maybe he was going to finally start taking after the old man.

That was one of the things about Clarence. He was always incredibly clean.

It was a tactic.

If you look good, most people assume you are good. It was the book-and-the-cover lesson. People knew it, but they couldn’t stop themselves from going along and judging just the same.

So while Clarence didn’t feed his kids, had never let them go to school, and had ripped them from their mother’s mortgaged-for-more-than-it-was-worth home while he had robbed his way
crisscrossing states for ten years – he made sure to shave every morning and keep himself neat and tidy.

He didn’t give a rat’s ass how the boys looked nowadays, although lately they seemed to care. When they were young, and totally under his control, he ran things differently.

Clarence could hear Riddle in the other room.

He was humming something. The kid was making sounds lately. Not the usual wheezing and gasping but real noises. Like this humming.

Clarence didn’t remember that before. Maybe his snotty-nose days were finally over. He knew the kid would outgrow it. Hadn’t he said that for years? Hadn’t he?

Everyone always thought the answer was medicine. That’s what the world was about now. Got a problem? Find a way to let a drug company make money off of it. Hadn’t they told him when
he was in prison that they thought he should take something? What was it again? A blue pill? He couldn’t remember. But he knew better than any of those half-wits in white coats what was right
for his body.

Just let nature take its course. Water seeks its own level. Even dirty water.

What the hell was the little kid doing now in the other room? Was he singing? Had the humming turned into actual words?

If he could just get Riddle to focus.

Or rather, to focus on the things he wanted him to focus on. Throwing away the phone book didn’t help. He’d tried two years ago, and the kid cried for what seemed like six months. He
wouldn’t make that mistake again. Listening to the kid gulp for air while snotty tears soaked the front of his shirt was a nightmare.