The Orphan (21 page)

Adam ran past him, heading for the back door.

‘Wait!’

‘Forget it,’ Adam said over his shoulder. ‘I don’t want your help!’

The boy pushed through the back door and Darren chased after him.

‘Darren? Are you all right?’ He could hear Beth speaking. He put the phone to his ear as he caught the rebounding screen door and stepped out onto the porch. ‘Who’s there with you?’

‘Hold on, honey.’

He ran into grass at the back of the yard, glimpsing a flash of the kid’s blue shirt and the backpack slipping around the corner. Darren darted right, rounding the shop.

Adam was sprinting across the yard, into the neighbor’s grass, faster than Darren would have imagined an eleven-year-old boy capable of moving.

‘Adam! Wait! I’m trying to help you!’ he shouted across the yard. ‘Come back here!’

The boy did not look back before disappearing behind the Nehrer residence.

‘Beth, I have to call you back,’ Darren panted into the phone.

‘Did you say Adam? Is he there?’

‘I gotta go,’ Darren said, clicking his phone off.

He shoved it into his pocket and took off running in search of the lost kid.

Beth arrived home twenty minutes later, but Darren didn’t join her until almost 6 p.m. He drove around the neighborhood, returning to Palo Park in search of Adam. There was no sign of the boy, and the ruined BMX bike was nowhere to be found in the weeds. The kid must have taken it with him, in hopes of repairing it. Either that, or someone else had found it and taken it for scrap parts.

Beth kept ringing his phone and he knew she was freaking out, so finally he returned home. He told her about the accident and bringing Adam home, his reaction to the Cinelli. He told her that the boy was convinced that ‘monsters’ were chasing him, and that the person responsible for taking his bike away was also the person responsible for his ‘murder’.

He could see that she was finding all of this difficult to digest, so he walked her into the garage and showed her the car.

Beth stared at the Acura’s milky-webbed windshield for a moment, then moved around the front, he supposed to look for blood. He joined her. They did not find any.

Beth turned and looked at him. ‘We need to call the police, right now.’

Darren felt himself reaching for an excuse not to, recalling Adam’s repeated warnings not to contact any authorities. ‘I promised him I wouldn’t,’ he said.

‘Do you think you have a choice?’ Beth said. ‘You hit a little boy with your car!’

‘But he wasn’t hurt. Someone is after him. He’s a runaway, from what or who I don’t know. What if the police find him and return him to his parents and they wind up hurting him?’

‘Then the police will sort it out and social services will get involved. But if you don’t report it now, you’re putting us all in a bad situation. He could be injured in ways you don’t know.’

‘But how do you explain the rest?’ he said. He had not eaten all day and felt exhausted beyond the capacity of rational thought. ‘The warnings we got about his arrival. I mean, it was him, Beth. It was Adam Burkett.’

‘How can it be?’ Beth nearly shouted. ‘You met a boy. You hit him with your car. He was sweating, breathing, he broke your windshield. He was eleven years old. Whoever he is, he’s not the same boy, Darren. For God’s sake, listen to yourself!’

Darren stomped back into the house. In the kitchen he ripped open a loaf of bread and took a handful of lunch meat from the refrigerator, a slice of Raya’s Velveeta, slapping it all together and wolfing it as if the food would ease his anger. He was pissed at Beth, at himself, at Adam. The whole mess made him want to break something.

Beth came in a moment later. She picked her cellphone up from inside her purse and set it on the counter where his crumbs were falling.

‘If you won’t call them, I will.’

‘Fine,’ Darren said through a mouthful of dough and bologna. ‘Let me finish my lunch first.’

He washed down the last bite with a slug of milk direct from the bottle, then picked up her phone.

‘Wait,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Don’t tell them you brought him here.’

‘Oh, now you want me to lie?’

‘No, maybe. I don’t know. I’m just thinking there’s no need to tell them all the rest just yet. We want to avoid liability if possible and what difference does it make if he ran away right after the accident or – how long was he with you before he ran off?’

Darren thought it over. ‘No more than an hour.’

Beth flexed her hands at her sides. ‘Okay, tell them about the accident, and that he ran away before you could get him to a doctor. We live close by, and you had to get him out of the road. He tried to run at first – isn’t that what you said anyway?’

Darren nodded.

‘Right. So you had to calm him down first. Once he was here, you went to call 9-1-1, and that’s when he ran off.’

‘But now three hours have passed and we’re finally calling now because…?’

Beth frowned. ‘Because you went looking for him and… shit, maybe you should just tell them the truth.’

‘But not all of it. Not the part about the bike, the dreams, Raya’s texts. Or else they’ll think we’re out of our minds, yes?’

‘Right,’ Beth said. She was breathing hard.

‘It’s going to be okay,’ he said. ‘One step at a time.’

He dialed information to get the non-emergency number, and was patched through to the police.

It must have been a slow evening for crime in Boulder. Less than an hour later, Officer Sewell was handing over his business card, reminding Darren and Beth to call if the boy turned up again or if they had anything else to add to the report. Sewell was a polite cop, one who spoke little and listened carefully as Darren took him through it, showed him the car, and gave a description of Adam Burkett, who might also be using the name Patrick Robinson.

The officer was tall, in his late thirties or early forties, and obviously a body builder, his thighs, shoulders and arms all but ripping his uniform apart at the seams. Above all this sculpting was an oddly small head, short brown hair, pink ears and lips. He drove them the six blocks to Palo Park and Darren showed him where it had happened, but there was no new evidence to be found.

On the way home, Darren and Beth sitting behind the plexiglas partition like a couple of criminals, Darren asked Sewell what this was going to be filed as.

‘What do you mean?’ the officer said.

‘Is it like a hit and run, a missing persons thing, or what?’ Darren said, sitting forward to speak through the ventilation holes.

Beth pinched his leg, warning him not invite charges pressed against them.

‘Well, it’s not strictly a hit and run, seeing as how you called us,’ Officer Sewell said after a moment. ‘We’ll run a search for his parents, any family, and see if there have been any other inquiries. My guess is he’s a runaway, so it will go down as missing persons, most likely.’

‘Oh, right, that makes sense.’ Darren experienced mild relief.

Officer Sewell cleared his throat. ‘But if we locate him and it turns out he’s injured, and there are parents, they might file charges. You should be prepared for that. Sounds like a lawsuit any asshole lawyer would love to take.’

Darren could only nod. He sat back in the cruiser’s bench seat until they turned onto Linden. He was thinking how glad he was that he had not told Beth about the boy claiming to have been in the Kavanaugh house when the murders happened. It seemed too far-fetched even now, and as long as he had reported Adam out there somewhere on the run, what did it matter?

Because there’s a difference between searching for a runaway kid and searching for a suspect in a multiple homicide, you idiot. If you tell them about that little piece of the puzzle, they’ll tear the town apart looking for the kid with the butterfly knife with, oh yes, let’s not forget, dried blood on the blade.
 

Looking at it this way, Darren thought he really had to tell the cop about that now. But the next question would be, why didn’t you provide this information sooner? And any link between Darren’s report and the town’s most famous recent murder case would be bad for them, no matter how well-intentioned. Things would turn serious in a hurry. He would have to explain things he could not explain, and their lives would be under a microscope.

Even so
…
we’re talking about murder. Can you live with that?
 

And then the cruiser was halting in the driveway and there was Raya, standing on the porch with Chad. They must have just come home. The door was open and they were about to step inside, but paused to watch as her parents emerged from the back of a police car. Officer Sewell got out with them.

‘Do you need me for anything else?’ Beth said.

Sewell handed her a copy of the report. ‘No, we’re pretty much done here. For now.’

She hurried up the walk to usher the kids inside.

Darren waved to Raya. ‘Be there in a minute, honey.’

Seeing the concern in his daughter’s eyes, he knew he would not mention the Kavanaugh link, if such a thing existed. Adam Burkett was not a killer, Darren was certain of that. But what about the others? The ones chasing him? At least give him that much. What could be the harm in that?

‘One more thing I forgot to mention,’ he said to the officer.

‘Yeah, what’s that?’

‘Adam said he was being chased by someone. Right after the accident, we saw something, and he seemed pretty afraid of it.’

‘You saw something, or he did?’

‘Both of us,’ Darren said, and gave a description of the brown Ford with the camper shell on top. The broken-up front end.

‘Did you get a license plate?’

‘No,’ Darren said. ‘It was too far away.’

‘Any idea who was in it? Who owns a truck like that?’

MP-3515.
 

The tag popped into Darren’s mind. He could see the plate now.

‘MP-3515,’ he said to Officer Sewell.

‘That’s the plate?’

‘I just remembered it. The kid must have told me. He’d seen it before.’

‘Well, this could help us. This is good.’ Officer Sewell made a few more notes and closed his notepad.

‘What happens next?’ Darren said.

‘I’ll be in touch soon,’ Sewell said, betraying no emotion. Then, with just the right amount of strained politeness, ‘Please continue to make yourself available as we investigate. We would appreciate any updates on your summer travel plans.’

Something isn’t sitting right with him, Darren thought. He smells something rotten in this situation.

‘Thank you for coming out,’ he said.

‘It’s what we do.’

‘Appreciated.’

Sewell walked around the open driver’s side door. He looked over the top of his sunglasses. ‘Drive carefully, Mr Lynwood. You’re lucky that boy isn’t dead.’

‘Yes, sir. I will.’

Darren went inside and tried to hold a conversation with the kids, reassuring them everything was all right, but Beth waved him off and he knew she wanted to handle it. She would decide what to tell Raya, how much and when.

He could barely keep his eyes open. He told them he wasn’t feeling well and needed to lie down for a while. He took off his shoes and leaned back on the bed, where he slept for twelve hours without interruption.

Officer Sewell called early the next afternoon to report that he had no real breaks in the case. They had not found a boy fitting Adam Burkett’s description, and their databases had not turned up any missing boys by either name. The license plate had been stolen off another vehicle months ago and was of no use. Local families with the matching surnames had been contacted; none had reported a lost son. The police would expand their search state- and nationwide, Sewell said, to see if any connections turned up.

‘One interesting thing,’ Sewell added, in a tone more convivial than any he had displayed previously. ‘A woman who lives in the area, Palo Park, reported a truck like the one you described fleeing the scene earlier that day, after she discovered her Nissan plowed into her garage door. Sounds like they were chasing him, your runaway kid. So we have an APB on the Ford, but so far no hits.’

Darren felt vindicated in some way. The truck was real. Everything that had happened was real. And yet he knew they would find no trace of the boy.

They spent the next forty-eight hours in a state of high anxiety, puttering around the house, pretending everything was all right.

Adam stayed away for two days and two nights, returning on the third morning, a Tuesday, June 12th.

The day all the bad things happened.

The large Ford truck with its yellowing eggshell topper rolled east on Highway 7 out of Lafayette, to Interstate 25, where it turned north, carrying three occupants who in their silence agreed that north felt true, the best bet. Not quite five miles later the driver decided to exit, onto Highway 52 east for another twelve minutes into Fort Lupton, a small town with no action but enough amenities for them to do what needed to be done before they resumed the hunt for Adam.

The town offered plenty of other, more upscale choices for the required facilities, but Sheila chose La Paloma Motel, located on the northern edge of town. The short single-story building was white with green trim, and only two of the dozen parking spaces in front of the rooms were occupied by a vehicle. She parked one block ahead, on the street, to make sure the check-in process went smoothly.

The desk clerk, a young Hispanic woman named Griselda, wearing a button-down white blouse with a puffy collar and a beaded necklace featuring Jesus on the cross, accepted cash payment. She did not linger over Sheila’s fake Minnesota driver’s license, which showed an eleven-year-old photo of her (back when she was a blonde) and the name Lisa Campbell. When Griselda asked for the make of her vehicle and license plate number to note on the guest form, Sheila told her it was a white Honda Civic, plate number TFL-644, from a car she knew from the parking lot where she had worked, before the emanation storm hit and their collective Adam doppler had begun to spin.

Once she had the room key and Griselda finished explaining where the soda and ice machines were located, and that she recommended Wholly Stromboli for dinner if they liked Italian, Sheila walked to room 7, a corner unit, as she had requested. It was not far from the front office, but the best she could hope for here. She inspected the room, the views, the bathroom, and then returned to the front desk.

‘Yes?’ Griselda braced herself for a complaint or request for a different room.

‘I forgot to mention I’ve been traveling for business,’ Shelia told her. ‘On the road for two days without a break. Do you think you could spare me some extra soap and towels, maybe some shampoo and conditioner if you have it?’

‘Absolutely.’ Griselda dipped into a storage closet at one end of the counter and returned with a stack of clean white towels, two miniature bars of soap, and two bottles each of a miniature shampoo and conditioner called Outer Beauty. Sheila was tempted to ask for ten more, but she did not want to arouse suspicion.

‘Will that do it for you?’ Griselda said.

‘Perfect, thank you.’

Sheila walked all the way around the building, to the truck parked up the street. Her passengers mumbled from inside the camper, something about being hot and hungry and tired of being left in the dark, and Sheila told them to shut the fuck up, they had one more stop. The reunion had been a little bumpy, notably when Ethan suggested taking the cats with them. For dinner. Teddy and Alanis would have been a step up from their usual roadkill, but Sheila drew the line at pets. She’d been forced to beat him back with a broomstick. Only a few hours together and already she wanted to sap them both.

In town she found a grocery store and parked in the far corner of the lot.

‘Do not exit the vehicle. If you set one foot outside, we’re in big trouble,’ she called through the cab’s porthole. ‘I’m amazed you aren’t in jail already. You disgust me.’

They grunted and mumbled some more and Sheila thought she heard the phrase ‘spoiled bitch’ somewhere in there.

‘You want me to use the mace again?’

They quieted.

She found the toiletries aisle and loaded a handcart with a large bottle of Head & Shoulders, three bars of Dial anti-bacterial soap, a family-size tube of Colgate with Professional Whitening (because every little bit helped), four toothbrushes, a liter of Listerine, nail clippers, two loofa exfoliating sponges mounted to wooden hand-paddles, a box of Q-Tips, a pair of grooming scissors, a pack of men’s Gillette triple-blade razors, a can of aloe shaving gel, a stick of Arm & Hammer anti-perspirant, and since she was feeling generous and might want some herself, a bottle of Lubriderm moisturizer.

On her way out, she paused in the dish-soap and kitchen-cleaning section and threw a box of Brillo pads and a pair of rubber dishwashing gloves in the basket.

She paid cash.

Crossing the parking lot the thought hit her, they’ll be clean, but then what?

Fort Lupton did not have a mall with department stores or any boutiques, but it did have an Everything 5, which Sheila was given to understand meant nothing in the store cost over $5. Perfect. Thirty bucks later she emerged with clean socks, underwear, a big brown bra, two pairs of green polyester sweatpants, two black sweatshirts, a six-pack of colored bandannas, and two pairs of squared-off Total Blocker sunglasses of the style favored by Florida retirees with damaged retinas. In the checkout aisle she couldn’t resist the 3-for-1 special on Miracle-Lips Lip Balm.

Back at the motel, she parked on the street and waited another hour for dusk to settle in, when the street was as clear as it was likely to get without her waiting till ten at night. She masked them in bandannas and the Blockers as best she could, then helped them down from the camper’s loft bunk, out the back door, around the motel and into the room. They were severely weakened from their last hunt and she had to walk them in one at a time. Dehydrated, malnourished, bacterial infections of one sort or another, bruises, sprains, and possibly coming down with summer colds, on top of the generally feeble mental state they lived with except during those precious moments when the target was near and their powers were at their apogee.

Sheila did not like to look them in the eyes, which were the lizard-flat slits of coldblooded killers. Some things had not changed.

Before she even finished getting them locked inside the room, curtains drawn, Sheila wanted to scour herself with bleach. She did not have to ask how long it had been. She knew from experience they would not have bathed in three to six months, and then only in a lake.

‘Miriam goes first, so come with me, honey,’ she said. The old bastard tried to heave himself from the bed anyway. ‘Ethan, no, you stay here till we’re through. Have a rest – on top of the covers – until we get this doll all spiced up for ya. There, thank you.’

For someone’s decency, she couldn’t imagine whose, Sheila shut the bathroom door. She donned the rubber gloves. She helped the woman undress, turning the fan on before the first shirt came off. The socks had to be peeled from the feet blackened with grime. Sheila tried not to look or breathe, but it was impossible. Miriam had lesions on her thighs, buttocks, and under her arms. She had not shaved in years. The flesh of her belly and breasts was mottled like the face, in some places the skin appearing to run in long rivers, pucker into membrane-like spirals in others, and the long mark across her back reminded Sheila nothing so much as the zipper to an actual monster suit. The bones were in no better condition; Miriam’s humpback had doubled in size since Sheila had last seen it. Oh, but if only they could remove these hideous costumes.

Miriam whined and mewled through the inspection, and screeched when Sheila turned the shower head on and set the water to full hot. That’s right, almost forgot. They hate the spray. Feels like needles on their delicate skin. They only like calm bodies of water, warm and still. Well, tough cookies. She let the old woman tenderize in there for a good five minutes while she undressed herself, folded her clothes neatly, and set the stack outside the bathroom door.

Carrying the bag of toiletries, she stepped into the shower and went to work. It took forty minutes. There was no hair on top, of course, but she needed the shampoo to soften everything else, and to loosen the dirt, which streamed down in gray tides. There was a terrible smell for the first fifteen minutes, one whose source Sheila would never have identified as a human being if she were not witnessing it, but it got better with each head-to-toe scrub with the soap and loofa. When she got to the part where she had to wash between the cheeks and under the remnants of the sex organs, she averted her eyes and told herself it was no different than when she was a girl, feeding the billy goats at the petting zoo. Sheila used the rough wooden paddles to scour the skin, the nails, between the toes. Two times Miriam urinated uncontrollably, then cackled at her ability to serve some measure of revenge, and Sheila berated her for it.

Once the dirt was mostly gone, she tilted the spray to one side and lathered Miriam’s legs and ‘bikini area’ and armpits. Two razors later she had to unclog the drain. She used one of the motel-provided wash rags to scrub the face, behind the ears, and pretty much everywhere else once more for good measure, then allowed the woman to rinse. Miriam rejected the toothbrush at first, biting the top and jerking her head from side to side, but Sheila continued the campaign until the old woman gave up and allowed her to pass the bristles around the clamped teeth, which eventually slackened. The gums drained in loops of pink foam.

By the time it was over, Miriam was shuddering, crying helplessly, her legs weak from standing, her head resting against the tile wall. Sheila took some pity and massaged the poor creature’s shoulders, arms, legs, and lower back, until the sobbing turned into a gentle cooing of pleasure.

She turned off the water and helped Miriam step out of the tub.

She toweled her down gently, like brushing an old stable nag, and then applied two layers of the Lubriderm to the legs, feet, back, breasts, especially around the chapped and peeling nipples, the shellfish hands. She massaged more lotion into the sensitive scalp and added a third layer to the worst of the scars.

She filled a cup of cold water and allowed Miriam to drink while she clipped the toenails, fingernails, and groomed the wild eyebrows and ear tufts.

She wrapped the woman in two towels and sent her back to the room.

‘Lay down and have a nap, old gal. And send the bugger in.’

Ethan would be worse in some ways, better in others. Worse because he would get excited, couldn’t help himself. Better because once he shot his sap he would not resist her ministrations toward the hygienic.

This was Sheila’s burden, the price of so many years of neglect. But she did what she had to do. To get them into shape for the coming fight, and because it was the right thing to do. Someone had to look after them, despite what they had become.

They were her parents, after all.