THE LAST BOY (6 page)

Wading obliviously through the maze of occupied tables, Molly took a deep breath as she approached them.

“Hi,” she called out as she neared their table.

The whole family looked up blankly.

“I’m Molly Driscoll. You know, Danny Driscoll's mother?” She shifted her attention from mother to father and finally to the little boy. None of them seemed to register this. It was as if everything were moving in slow motion.“My boy goes to Kute Kids.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Bonnie Ruzicka finally. She was a big-hipped woman with a round face and oversized glasses. “Kevin goes there, too, don’t you?”

“Huh?” said the little kid.

“My boy's missing.”

“
Missing?
” echoed Bonnie.

“Might have been kidnapped,” said Molly, finally getting their attention.

“No shit!” said the husband.

“
George!
” said the woman, admonishing him.

“Sorry about the French,” George apologized.

“I’m trying to find out if anybody has any ideas about where Danny might be, who he went with, or who took him or…” she pulled out one of the pictures from her open purse.

“That's Danny,” piped the boy, pointing with his bony little finger.

“Yes, that's right, Honey,” said Molly eagerly. She remembered what Mrs. Oltz had said about their playing together after lunch. Molly moved closer to him and stooped down, bringing herself to
eye level with him.“Is Danny your friend?”

He picked up his Coke, drew on the straw, and nodded, his cheeks still sucking.

“Did you play with him today?”

The boy nodded again, his mouth still on the straw. Now he was alternately drinking and blowing bubbles into his soda.

“And what did you play?”

The boy, still attached to the straw, shrugged.

“Talk to the lady, Kevin,” warned George. He took the boy's soda away and yanked the straw from his lips.

“I dunno,” mumbled Kevin, looking like a whipped puppy. He kept his eyes lowered, his legs rhythmically swinging against the table supports.

“Mrs. Driscoll is worried about her little boy,” said Bonnie. “Howdya think I’d feel if you was disappeared?”

“I dunno,” said Kevin, his knees still striking the table.

“Stop whacking the table and look at the lady when she talks to you!”

“Let me,” urged Molly. “Kevin,” Molly addressed him, gently placing her hand on his leg in an effort to quiet the agitated banging. He felt thin and his knees were all sharp angles. His jeans were frayed and torn and his shirt was two sizes too big.“You were playing with Danny on the floor today, weren’t you? And you were having a good time, right?” Molly smiled and held his eye.

“Yup,” he answered and grinned tentatively back at her, his glance then shifting towards his parents as if checking for approval. He stopped wiggling his legs.

“And were you playing war?”

“Nope. Fire and amulance.”

“I’ll bet it was real exciting. I know Danny loves to make accidents and have the police and fire trucks come—”

“And amulances, too.”

“And ambulances.”

The whole family was smiling now.

“But Cheryl, she made us clean up.”

“Because it was story time?”

“A dumb baby story about some stupid, fat elephant.”

“And Danny was there?”

“Yes. And Stevie. And them two kept laughing. And then Cheryl sent Danny to stand in the kitchen by hisself. But he wasn’t bad. He was just having fun. It was really Stevie was the bad one.”

“In the kitchen,” reiterated Molly as much for her own benefit.

“Kitchen,” Kevin repeated and then turned his attention to his chow mein which had congealed into a gelatinous gob. With his plastic fork he played with it, mounding it high and watching the glop ooze down the slopes of the hill.

“And then?”

“He kept sticking his head out. And making these faces. And doing funny things. Like this,” Kevin put his index fingers into his mouth and spread the corners of his lips while extending his tongue. “And everybody was laughing!” Kevin giggled.

“And what did Cheryl do?”

“She told him to stop.”

“And?”

“He did. But then he started being silly again.”

“So?”

“She put him in the basement.”

“
The basement?
” gasped Bonny.

“What the fuck kind of place is that?” demanded George.

“Daddy,” said the girl, speaking for the first time.“You’re not—”

Molly tried to stay calm, though her immediate urge was to find Cheryl and wrap her fingers around the girl's throat. No wonder she hadn’t given straight answers.“Kevin,” Molly went on, struggling to keep her voice level.“Did she let him up? Out of the basement?”

He looked at her. Shrugged.

“Did he come up? Try and remember, it's important.”

The boy wrinkled his forehead.“I dunno.”

“Come on Kevin,” said his father gruffly. “Out with it. Did he come up or didn’t he?”

“I dunno. I dunno,” the boy looked as if he was going to cry.

“That's okay,” said Molly getting to her feet and ruffling the boy's hair. Even his head was bony. “You’ve been a big help.” She turned to the rest of the family.“Who picked Kevin up today?”

“Me and Amy,” said Bonnie Ruzicka motioning to her taciturn daughter with the stringy hair. “It was ’bout five. George waited in the truck.”

“I was listening to the news,” George chimed in.

“Was Danny there then?”

“I didn’t see him. No…I’m sure of that. I’ve got a good memory. I did see him in the morning, though. There were maybe six or seven other kids there when I dropped Kevin off. He had on this red shirt.” She turned to her daughter.“You see her little boy when we picked up Kevin?”

The girl shrugged.“I dunno,” she said, sounding remarkably like her brother.

By nine o’clock, Detective Lou Tripoli had taken on the case. He had been monitoring the radio since the call about the Driscoll kid had first come in at dinnertime. Richie Pellegrino was in the State Diner on a coffee break and Tripoli swung over across town to meet him.

Shaking the snow off his coat, he headed for the grill where Pellegrino sat hunched over the counter.

“What a weird night,” said Lois Cassaniti, one of the regulars, as Tripoli passed her stool. Lois took a puff of her cigarette and let the smoke trail skyward.

“Yeah, I’m not ready for this.”

“We’ve had early snows, but never like this. This early.”

“Hey,” said Tripoli with a lopsided grin as he slid into the vacant seat next to Pellegrino. “I don’t believe this. You’re actually eating doughnuts?”

“They’re good, Trip. Fresh,” Pellegrino talked with a full mouth. “Hey, Kesh, another coffee here,” he called over to Sam Keshishoglou, who was busy working the grill.“And a couple more of these things,” he held up a doughnut powdered with sugar. The front of his uniform was coated with a fine layer of its dust.

“What's going on?” asked Lou.

“I’m not sure,” said Pellegrino.“You never know in these things. But it's getting to be a long time now. That's not a good sign. Mother's freaking out. Calling the switchboard every ten minutes.”

“What would you do?”

“Same, probably,” agreed Pellegrino.“Probably more.”

“The mother?”

“Driscoll. Molly Driscoll.”

“Driscoll?” Tripoli scratched his head. Then he made the connection.“That's the girl who…?”

“Hell-raiser when she was younger. I knew her ever since she was that high,” Pellegrino held his hand out to the level of his stool. “She’d be out on the streets at all hours of the night. Her old lady never gave a shit. I got called to Andrew's candy store a couple of times—you remember that old place?” Pellegrino smiled to himself. “Somehow she had snaked her hand around the counter and into one of the cases. She must have swiped a full pound of these chocolate-covered walnuts. But by the time I got there she had already consumed all the evidence. Couldn’t see taking her in just because she had chocolate on her breath.” He laughed. “Probably was just plain hungry. So I punished her for stealing.”

“Huh?” said Tripoli, turning.

“Yeah, I bought her a hamburger and a Coke.” The corners of Pellegrino's eyes wrinkled when he smiled. “She was a hell of a smart little girl as I recall. Kind of cute. Maybe a bit of a wiseass, too. Used to throw stuff and then duck behind a tree every time she spotted my car—though I don’t know if she remembered me today.”

Tripoli tried to conjure up her image. He had seen her around town as a teenager, then as a young woman.“I thought she got married or something?”

“Did. The guy took off on her and she took back her old name, I guess.”

“Molly Driscoll. Sure. Yeah, yeah. I remember her.” Long dark hair and dark eyes. Bright looking woman with an interesting sort of edge to her. She was petite, but well proportioned; a bit shorter than he was, which didn’t exactly make her tall. As he recalled, she
was a touch on the muscular side, but just enough to make her shapely. A bit of a firecracker, she was. “Molly went to high school with my little brother, Freddy. Real good looking. And sharp, you’re right. Hell, if she had been born up on the hill to one of those professors she’d be a lawyer or something.”

“I remember when the father took off—a real number one scumbag. Mother was a drinker. Remember how we used to have to pick the old lady up at the Chanticleer Bar and cart her home?”

Tripoli laughed.“Christ, that woman had a mouth on her. Good looker, too. Until the sauce caught up with her.”

Kesh brought the coffee and more doughnuts.

Tripoli picked up a jelly doughnut and held it up. “You make these?”

“You kidding?” Kesh wiped his hands on his apron.

“That explains why they’re so good,” said Pellegrino with a wide grin.

Kesh laughed and went on to another customer.

“Molly Driscoll. Molly,”Tripoli searched his memory.“Used to hide out in the gorge near the Ithaca Falls with that wild bunch. Joel English. Buddy Saul. Junior Elmo. Used to cut school to drink six packs and smoke joints.”

“She was probably sleeping with all those guys.”

“I doubt it,” he said.“Anyway, now they’re all sleeping in Attica.”

“Auburn and Attica,” Pellegrino corrected.“Buddy Saul just got out.”

“So what's the story on her little boy?”

“I’m still hoping that he’ll turn up okay. You know how these things go. I figure he's not out there wandering around and having a good time in this weather.”

“Colder than a witch's tit,” said Tripoli, taking careful sips of his hot coffee.

Pellegrino opened his pad.“We’re still trying to get ahold of two
sets of the parents who also had kids there at the daycare. And we’re still trying to get a line on that Ford pickup.”

“What's the story?”

“Sonny Makarainen who runs the bar across the street saw this skinny guy, about forty, with a ponytail, sitting in a pickup right at the side of the daycare, smoking and staring at everyone coming and going with their kids. Guy's there somewhere between four and five. An ’86 or ’87 F-150, four-wheel drive. Rusty wheel wells.”

“Shitload of those in town.”

“Got a big ding right in the middle of the driver's door. It was covered with white primer.”

“That's better,” said Tripoli.

“Sonny's pretty reliable.” He took a last bite of doughnut and wiped his hands together, shaking loose the powdered sugar. “And some guy who works the pump at Chuck's Texaco station and has a scanner called in. Said he saw a little blond kid riding in an old Chevy that came in for gas.”

“And? The kid struggling?”

“Naw. And the description doesn’t really match.”

“Molly,” muttered Tripoli thoughtfully. “Molly Driscoll. That poor girl didn’t exactly have a lot of breaks in life. Kind of rough around the edges, but I always liked her. Damn! I hope this turns out okay.”Tripoli was thinking about those two teenage girls in Dryden who had been abducted from their home and then hacked into pieces. The State Troopers had to gather up remains that were scattered over a five-acre area of woods. And that mother up in Lansing who had reported her two-year-old missing. It took her a month to finally confess that the little girl was dead and she had buried her in a Hefty bag. She kept claiming right until she went to jail that the kid had stopped breathing and that she had panicked. Tripoli didn’t know what to believe about that one, though the coroner seemed pretty certain.

“You thinking about that Lansing girl, huh?” asked Pellegrino, reading Tripoli's mind.

“Always a possibility.”

“You remember, Trip, that woman out near Richford? Five of her little kids die. One after another. Period of eight years. Sudden crib death—or whatever the hell they call it. Then, last year, fifteen years later, they nail her for suffocating her babies.”

“‘Munchausen's syndrome by proxy,’” intoned Tripoli, still lost in thought.

“Huh?”

“That's what they called it.”

“Never had these kind of bizarre cases when I joined the force. Gets you to wondering what's happening to this place.”

Kesh came over and refilled their cups.“Or what's happening to the human race,” he added. Kesh put the pot back on the burner and, wiping his hands on his greasy apron went back to turn the liver and onions that were starting to smoke. “Hey, you guys want anything else?” he called out.

They shook their heads.

“Molly Driscoll,” mumbled Tripoli.

“Yeah,” said Pellegrino.

Both their radios squawked in unison. Somebody on Third Street was waving a gun under his wife's nose.

“Gotta go,” said Pellegrino, getting up in a hurry and leaving Tripoli to cover the check.

Though there are still hints of daylight in the fields, the sun has long been hidden by thickening, billowy clouds. As the boy enters the woods, the darkness closes in around him. Gusts of wind shake the branches high above his head, and the towering trees, casting off their last leaves, sway back and forth in anticipation of the coming storm.

There are no trails, the vegetation is dense, and the child's progress is slow as he gropes his way through the ever denser undergrowth. A pair of deer, startled by his presence, leap up and flee, crashing loudly through the brush. Numbed by the penetrating cold, the child is slow to react. He mutely turns to watch the white tails disappearing into the darkness, then pushes on once more.