THE LAST BOY (33 page)

“If you ask me,” said Nadine Warren, who worked in the law office next to the courthouse (she had bumped into Tripoli as he was going up the front steps to make an appearance),“this was punishment, pure and simple. Retribution. God doesn’t fuck around.”

“That Driscoll boy,” said Barry Hollenbeck, the paunched old guard recognizing Tripoli and waving him around the metal detector in the courthouse lobby. “I hear he can hold his breath under water for an hour. And he talks to the animals. And they talk to—”

“Give me a break, Barry, willya.”

“No. No. This is serious shit,” he said, pulling his bulldog face so close that Tripoli could smell the garlic on his breath. “And that crash with the Oltzes.” He dropped his voice.“That didn’t just happen by chance.”

“No, it didn’t,” answered Tripoli, raising his voice so loud in the marbled halls it caused heads to turn. “Both idiot drivers went out and first got falling down, stinking drunk. Then they arranged to meet on Route 13. In a head-on. Just as Venus and Mars were
aligning. Come on, Barry, get real,” he shouted, storming off down the corridor, “I wish everybody in town would stop gossiping and get a life!”

As coincidence would have it, though, the crash did occur at precisely the same moment that Rosie Lopez Green was giving birth to the first of her twin sons. By the time Mrs. Oltz's mangled body was slid into a morgue locker in the hospital basement, Rosie was already settled into the maternity ward, a squawking boy tucked under each arm. According to old Dr. Wozniak, the infants were healthy and well.

“Are you sure?” pleaded Rosie, shedding tears of relief and exhaustion. Ed kept stroking her arm, blinking his own misty eyes.

“I’ve been doing this for forty years,” said Dr. Wozniak, “And they’re perfectly healthy. Believe me. What do you want, that I should guarantee they’re going to win a Nobel Prize?”

“Will you look at who's here!” exclaimed Ed, opening the door to his house on Spencer Street to discover Molly and Danny. “Our local TV star!” Danny flew into Ed's arms, and Ed swung him up into the air.

“Uncle Ed!” cried Danny, gripping him with both arms and legs.

“So, you missed old Uncle Eddie, huh?”

“Of course!” Danny giggled and waggled his head.

Ed leaned to one side to give Molly a kiss. “We were wondering when you guys were gonna come by.”

“I’m just on a lunch break and we thought we’d say a quick hello. Maybe take a peek at the twins?”

He showed them in and Molly could hear the babies wailing above the rattle of Rosie's old washer dancing on the kitchen floor.

The Greens’ house on the south side of town was a clapboard affair that sat squeezed against the road. The foundation was sagging, causing the floors to slant in all directions, and there was still plastic on the windows left over from the winter. An old refrigerator and a broken sofa stood on the front porch as they had for as long as Molly could remember.

“Rosie!” called Ed, as he moved down the hallway, Danny still in his arms.“We’ve got company!”

Rosie came out of the bedroom, dark circles under her eyes, the
top of her dress soaked with milk. “Danny, sweetheart!” she exclaimed with a big smile.

Danny reached out from his perch on Ed's hip and grabbed Rosie around the neck, pulling her close. She smothered him with wet kisses.

“Yuck!” he laughed, wiping his face.

Molly gave her a hug. “Hey, how are things?”The babies were still crying.

“They’re a couple of handfuls,” she heaved a long sigh, “but we’re happy.”

“How about something to eat?” asked Ed. “I just made this great, big, scrumptious chocolate cake.”

Molly shook her head.“We really can’t stay that long—just wanted to take a look at the little guys. Sounds to me like they’re awake.”

“They’re always awake!” Rosie laughed. “I think they’re on speed. Come on,” she led the way, shuffling slowly in her bedroom slippers.“Follow me to the menagerie.”

The twins were lying in the same crib, loudly protesting, their faces scrunched up and red with fury.

Danny went to the crib and bent over to take a closer look. “Ooooh, they’re so tiny.”

“They’re only two weeks old. You were little like that once, too,” said Rosie, resting her hand on his shoulder.

“Before you became an adult,” added Molly with a laugh. The babies kept going full blast, and Molly noticed that Danny didn’t seem in the least bothered by it. “Oh, they’re lovely. Perfect,” she said, cooing over them. Their skin was a smooth, dark olive, and Molly could see in them Rosie's even features and Ed's long lashes.

“Yeah, but I just don’t know what it is with them. Since I got back from the hospital it's been solid crying.” Rosie checked their diapers. “They’re both perfectly dry, see? And I just fed them. I just don’t know what gives.” She picked up an infant in each arm and
rocked them, but the twins kept crying. Danny watched, intrigued, as Rosie placed them back down on their stomachs and patted their backs. Finally, she turned them over. “This is Fernando,” said Rosie above the racket,“and this other troublemaker here, this is Alonso.”

“But you can call them Freddy and Al,” added Ed, his big head leaning in over the crib.

“Can I touch them?” inquired Danny.

“Well of course!” exclaimed Rosie.“They’re your new cousins, aren’t they?”

Danny rested his hand on Freddy's midsection and began moving it in small circles. Almost immediately the baby fell quiet.

Rosie looked awestruck. “I don’t believe this.”

“Holy Christmas,” echoed Ed.

“Can you do the same thing with Fernando?” she asked.

Danny placed his other hand on the second twin. The baby kept crying for a moment, but then he opened his eyes, stared curiously up at Danny and fell equally silent. The washer came to an abrupt stop, and the only sound in the room was a talk show filtering in from the TV.

“Can I hold them, maybe?” ventured Danny.

“You kidding?” laughed Rosie.“We’re keeping you here. At least till they’re in college.”

They seated Danny in the big armchair and brought him the infants. He held them gently, cradling one in each arm and gazing down at them with a blissful smile on his face.

Rosie and Molly wandered out to the kitchen.

“How are you feeling?” asked Molly.

“So, so,” said Rosie.“Seems like I’m just dragging all the time.”

“Twins will do it,” said Molly, commiserating. Rosie really didn’t look too hot. Since the beginning of the pregnancy, she seemed to be deteriorating.

“But I hear you got bigger problems,” she said.

Molly tried to brush it off.

“He's miserable in the office, huh?”

Molly looked surprised.

“Small town. No secrets here. You keep bumping into the same people.” Rosie smiled. “A guy loses his brakes coming down State Street and ends up hitting his ex-wife's new boyfriend.”

Molly laughed.“Okay, I’m getting desperate,” she admitted, her eyes going to the bedroom. She told her about Larry's complaints and all the extra work at the office.

“What an insensitive sonofabitch!”

“Well, it's not that he's so bad,” said Molly, springing to his defense.“He was good to me when I needed help most.”

“Or good to himself.”

“And I suppose you’ve got to see it from his point of view.”

“You need a break,” said Rosie.“Or you’re going to break. Why don’t I—”

“No way!” said Molly.“You’re the one who needs the break.”

“It's purely selfish. It's like hiring the perfect babysitter.” She tossed her head in the direction of the bedroom and laughed.

“I found the hut!” exclaimed the man, breathlessly. “The Hermit's hideout!”

The call had come in to the State Police barracks in Varna in the first hours after dawn on Wednesday. Sgt. Vernon Peters, who was covering the switchboard, took the call.

“It was just like that kid's drawing. You know. In the paper. Made out of branches and—I was out hunting and—I just couldn’t believe it!” the man sounded as though he had hit the jackpot on the state lottery.“Like in the middle of the woods, in this clearing. It's hidden all the way in the brush. A clearing. It's got sheep. Animals. And he's there. The guy with the white beard. I saw him myself!”

To Peters, this had the ring of authenticity.“Where?”

“The State Forest. Danby.”

“Okay. Right, but where?”

“You go beyond Comfort Road. Maybe a mile or so, and then head in. Almost directly east. On the left.”

Sgt. Peters took down the man's number, put him on hold, and immediately put a call through to the Ithaca City Police.

“Is Lou Tripoli there?” he asked Carol Halperin, the civilian dispatcher, who had picked up on the switchboard.

“He's out, but I can try to get him.”

“Yeah. Please.”

Peters hung on as she tried to raise Tripoli on the radio. She made three attempts, but had no luck.

“He must have his radio off,” she said.

“Okay, give him a message.”

She took down the message, then pigeonholed the note in Lou Tripoli's box.

Peters informed his lieutenant, who waited thirty minutes, then tried on his own to contact the City Police's lead investigator.

“He's still not responding.” explained the same dispatcher. “I think he's out on a drug bust.”

When the lieutenant explained about the hut, the dispatcher put Dave Meese on the line. He was one of the batch of new officers who had just joined the city force.

“I’ll leave him a note,” said Meese.

The lieutenant put down the phone and shook his head.“I don’t get it.”

“Yeah,” echoed Peters.“No one over there seems to give a shit.”

And with that, the lieutenant took it upon himself to mobilize his resources.

“Get me a chopper. I want a SWAT team out there on the double. Also get on the horn and notify the Tompkins County Sheriff and State DEC Rangers.”

In a matter of minutes the word was out, crackling over the airwaves and land lines: someone had spotted the Hermit, the man who had imprisoned the Driscoll boy. They had him zeroed in.

Tripoli was so mad he could hardly speak. Mad at himself for forgetting to turn on his mobile radio when he stepped out of the car, pissed at the people on dispatch for failing to make every effort to get him. What the hell were they thinking? Or not thinking!

With the message still crumpled in his fist, he grabbed Jerry Sisler and they ran out to the car. Sirens going and lights flashing, they tore up South Hill. Five minutes later they were passing the Danby market, taking a sharp right onto Bald Hill Road.

“Where the hell are they?” growled Tripoli as they bounced over the hilly roadway that cut through the public forest. They were well beyond the Comfort Road area where the pitchfork had been found.

“They’ve got to be somewhere here,” Sisler said, unnerved by his boss's burgeoning anger.

Tripoli kept his foot heavy on the gas. The paved road ended and turned to gravel. A hail of stones kicked up, pelting the undercarriage of the car as a plume of dust trailed in their wake. He was beginning to suspect that they had somehow overshot the location when he spotted ahead a bevy of official cars lining both sides of the road.

“Holy shit!” muttered Sisler, “Looks like they’ve got a fucking army here.” It seemed like every agency in the tri-county area was on the scene.

Tripoli pulled up and, grabbing his radio, ran across the roadway with Sisler on his heels. It was easy to follow the route that the party had taken. There were fresh tracks on a logging road heading off into the woods on the left, and Tripoli could see where the four-wheel-drives and ATVs had entered.

The two took off at a sprint, following the path that had been churned to mud by tires and feet, speeding up as the road dropped into a deep gully, then forging ahead where the road ascended steeply. Deep into the woods, they finally stopped for a breather. Tripoli arched his head back and looked up into the high canopy. The maples and beeches had long since blossomed out, but he could see hints of sky and sun filtering through.

“Come on, let's go,” he urged Sisler, and they pushed on. Tripoli's radio, tuned to the assault team's frequency, was now barking furiously.

“What the hell's going on?” asked Sisler breathlessly.

The road split, then the branch they took narrowed as the woods became more dense. Sisler started to fall behind, but Tripoli kept moving. Reaching the place where the group had abandoned their jeeps, he could hear the whop-whop-whop of an approaching helicopter. A bullhorn echoed and dogs barked. In front of him, the brush and low-lying vegetation was nearly impenetrable, and it took him a moment to find the spot where the men had hacked their way through.

Scampering up the last rise, Tripoli suddenly caught the reflections of chrome and steel, guns and equipment. There must have been at least two dozen highly armed men forming a perimeter, their weapons trained on a small dwelling that stood in the grassy clearing ahead. Behind the hut, a flock of sheep and goats huddled tightly against a rear line of thicket that was as dense as a wall.

“Goddamn,” muttered Tripoli, “You’d think they were fighting the Red fucking Army!”

They were all focused on the hut. Meticulously constructed of small logs and saplings, with small handmade shutters and a roof of woven, dried vegetation, the hut blended right into the landscape. Despite the troopers’ advanced gear—the infrared scopes, the sensing devices, the parabolic mikes—they could easily have walked past
the hut without noticing it. The hut, Tripoli realized, was almost precisely as Danny had drawn it.

Tripoli's attention shifted to the police. The troopers’ Dynamic Entry Team, off to his right, was huddled tight, whispering tensely. Three ranking officials stood behind a big tree arguing—a State Police lieutenant, the sheriff, and a Fed out of Elmira.

“Rush him!” voted the trooper.

“I say hit him with gas!” said the sheriff.

“Can you get those guys with the bullhorn to shut up?” the red-faced Fed yelled at the trooper. “And pull that fucking bird back!”

The helicopter was moving in and the roar was deafening.