The Riverman (The Riverman Trilogy) (12 page)

Dorian Loomis is responsible for a bunch of missing children. Fiona knows about it, and I’m afraid of what Dorian will do to keep her quiet,
I’d say.

And your evidence?
they’d ask.

Microfiche, a pillow, a belt sander, and some stories about a magical land made of water,
I’d have to admit.

In books, even the very best boy detectives are dismissed with a laugh. In real life, they’re sent to psychologists. If I was going to be taken seriously, I needed more proof.

So I waited until after dinner, until the sun was down. I was supposed to be at Charlie’s for the sleepover by seven thirty, but I set out at seven and took a detour to Fiona’s, where the windows were still dark. Dorian’s truck was still in the driveway, and that seemed as good a place as any to start my investigation.

As I moved toward it, the first thing I noticed was the mud splattered on the red paint. It had probably been driven off-road somewhere. That didn’t tell me much, so I peered into the truck’s bed. Empty, except for a few leaves and sticks trapped in the waffled grooves.

On the back window of the cab I could see there was a sticker, but I couldn’t decipher what it was. Rather than walk around to the side and strain my neck to see it, I stepped onto the tow hitch, climbed into the bed, and crawled toward the cab. As soon as I reached the window, my curiosity about the sticker was replaced by a desire to know what was inside the cab.

Using my hands as a visor to block out the glare of the streetlights, I leaned into the window. It was hard to see much, but the first thing I noticed was some sort of stuffed animal on the floor.
A squirrel? Maybe a cat?

Also, on the passenger seat, there was a lump underneath a ratty and stained towel. A small wing poked out from the terry cloth.
A toy airplane?

“See anything interesting?” someone said.

The voice was loud and spiny and almost sent me to my back.
Oh please no,
I thought. I knew exactly who it was.

“Good evening … Mrs. Carmine,” I said as I turned around.

Mrs. Carmine stood in the middle of the street, smiling like she’d found a quarter in a jar of buttons. “Not sure Dorian would appreciate you poking around his truck.”

“Ah … no, ma’am, I don’t know if…” In my eagerness to uncover evidence, I had completely forgotten about the most obvious obstacle. I didn’t even have an excuse lined up.

“You don’t trust him, do ya?” she said as she took a few steps closer and stopped at the edge of the driveway.

“Excuse me?” I asked. I had heard her clearly, but I was having trouble believing she would ask such a perceptive question.

“I wasn’t thrilled about him moving back here neither,” she explained.

I crawled my way to the back of the bed and climbed out. “I was looking for a … water rocket,” I told her. “Shot it off and it landed somewhere around here. That’s all I’m doing.”

“Water rockets?” She chuckled, her throat rattly and dry. “At night? That’s rich.”

I couldn’t keep this up. I was a terrible liar. Looking down, I said, “I’m sorry if I bothered you.”

“It’s no bother,” she replied. “I realize that boys are curious beasts. But I’d be careful around men like that. You don’t need to confirm the rumors.”

I looked up. “What rumors?”

Her voice got softer, a ghost story voice. “That the man is a deviant.”

“A deviant?” I asked. “What … what has he done?”

“If you don’t know, then I’m certainly not going to tell someone so young,” she said with a huff. “All I can say is keep your distance. No matter what folks claim, men like that don’t change their stripes so easy.”

Thoughts percolated, questions that I was sure she wouldn’t answer.
Has he hurt kids? Has he done violent things?
She couldn’t possibly be talking about Chua Ling and the others, because if she knew about them, Dorian would be in jail. And yet she knew something. I opted for a less salacious query. “What do the police think of him?”

She waved me off. “I’ve voiced my concerns, but they don’t make out search warrants because of concerns. Lazy lazy, these cops. Don’t worry too much about this guy, though. I’m keeping an eye on him.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” I said, because I believed her. But her eye only saw so far. It didn’t see what Dorian had done in the past, or might do in the future outside of the neighborhood.

“Don’t mention it,” she said as she turned and headed back toward her front steps. “And I won’t be mentioning our talk to your parents. They wouldn’t be happy to know what you’ve been up to, even if your intentions were good. So let’s not get them worried this time, okay?”

It was rare for Mrs. Carmine to practice such compassion, but seeing that she was the neighborhood snoop, perhaps she sympathized with my behavior. “Thank you, ma’am,” I said again.

“You’re welcome,” she replied, and she made a motion with her hand that told me to
run along now
.

As I set off toward Charlie’s house, exhausted and concerned, I still had no concrete evidence, but I was more convinced than ever that I was on the right track.

*   *   *

“Exterminate. Exterminate. Exterminate!” Charlie’s voice stacked on more glee each time I sliced a creature in half with my sword.

It was a tick or two from midnight, and I had been playing the video game for more than four hours. Charlie had granted me a single break, and that was only so I would open some cans of tuna that he served to the clubhouse cats. My hands were starting to cramp, but my gaming had improved. I had defeated eight of ten big bosses, thanks in no small part to Charlie’s amazing ability to spot their weaknesses.

“Back of the knee!”

“Block twice with your shield and wait for him to blink!”

“Shoot an arrow at the stalactite as soon as she’s on the marble tile!”

When we finally paused again to fetch some microwave popcorn, Charlie asked what would seem to be an unusual question for an avid gamer. “Do you think it bothers the swordsman? Killing all those monsters?”

“He’s an eight-bit cartoon,” I said as I opened the ballooned bag and let the corny steam assault my cheeks.

“Seriously,” Charlie said. “If he were a real person, would it scar him? Would he go all crybaby in his bed?”

An image scorched my mind. Red night-light. Blade on a nightstand. Homemade quilt. Fiona’s uncle Dorian bathed in the red, under the quilt, on his back, looking up at the ceiling. “I guess someone who does that much killing has to think it’s the right thing,” I said. “Or else they don’t care. Don’t have any feelings about it either way.”

“Who’s doin’ ‘that much killing’?”

A figure stood on the other side of the kitchen, away from the island of light created by the open microwave.

“Didn’t think you were coming home tonight,” Charlie said.

Stepping forward, Kyle caught his hip on the seat of a counter stool. The stool performed a clumsy pirouette on one leg, which amused Kyle, and he waved his arms like someone coaxing a bowling ball. When the stool found its feet, Kyle turned back to us and mocked us through his grin. “Am I distawbing da widdle gawls’ slumba pawty?”

“Mom and Dad are gonna wake up and get a whiff of you, and you’re gonna be so toast,” Charlie said.

Kyle leaned in and wiggled his fingers like a warlock casting a hex. Now that he was face-to-face with us, I could see his forehead was splotchy and red and I could smell a heavy sweetness on his breath.

“How can this be a sleepover without a game of jack-in-the-box?” Kyle asked, snatching the popcorn bag and helping himself.

“Like the stupid toy with the crank and the clown?” Charlie said. “You don’t make any sense.”

Kyle chewed and shook his head. Mouth full, he mumbled, “Who wanna play a
man’s
jack-in-the-box?”

I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I said it anyway.

“I do.”

S
ATURDAY
, O
CTOBER
28

It was technically the next day, slightly past midnight.

All the Halloween decorations were now up in our neighborhood. Poster board skeletons in the windows, cotton cobwebs on the shrubs, plastic pumpkins at the doors. They were the same ones every year, and most were dirty or fading. They definitely weren’t scary. In the night fog they looked more desperate than anything.

There were three of us standing in knee-high weeds along the side of the road. Me and the Dwyer brothers. Kyle had driven us to the far corner of the neighborhood and had parked his van in a patch of dirt almost out of view. In the center of the road, under the weak glow of streetlights, he had placed a cardboard box, flipped over so its top was down and its flaps were spread like four rectangular wings. All eyes were on that box.

Kyle stood between us and pulled us in with his spindly arms. “And men and boys and mice and men and all that junk. Tonight we settle the question of who is brave and who wears maxi pads.”

“You’re bluffing,” Charlie said.

Kyle cocked his head. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Charlie replied. “You wanna convince us to get under that box and then you’ll get in the van and rev the engine and pretend like you’re gonna run us over so you can see us jump out all scared.”

Kyle turned to me. “Does that sound like something I’d do?”

I shrugged. It did sound like something he would do, but I was wary of any direction this could be headed. I wasn’t about to choose sides.

Kyle laughed, a cackle he reserved for his wildest moments. Or his drunkest moments. I was beginning to suspect they were one and the same. He squeezed our shoulders, then pushed us away. He stumbled toward the box.

“Pioneers. Pioneers. Grab the ladies and pour the beers!” he shouted.

“Should we stop him?” I asked.

Seething, Charlie shook his head.

When Kyle reached the box, he lifted it and wore it like a mascot’s costume. It covered his body down to the elbows, which he bent so he could stick out his forearms and hands. Tottering in place, he spoke like a robot. “I am Charlie. Beep beep. I play video games. Boop boop. I have no fingers. Blop blop.”

“He’s a child,” Charlie whispered to me. “I’m a man. And he’s a child.”

I couldn’t argue with that. There were times when I liked Kyle, but this wasn’t one of them. Especially as he pulled his arms all the way into the box and then crouched down until he was completely hidden. As far as any driver was concerned, it was now just a box. To swerve around. Or to squash.

I looked up the road and said, “This can’t be good.”

“It’s his stupid game,” Charlie shot back. “Let’s see if he wins.”

Betrayal. I wasn’t sure what qualified.
He hates this life! He hates this place! Who knows what he might do to himself. We have to get him out of there!
I could have said any of these things, but was it a betrayal to protect someone by revealing his secrets? I thought it might be. So I kept quiet. And we waited.

First there was a glow up the road at the crest of the hill. For a moment, that crest might have been the edge of the Earth, the bright and shapeless void where everything falls away. Then there were headlights and only headlights. Yellow and ripe and growing wider as a car moved closer. It was really happening. I had to say something.

“We’ve gotta—”

Gauze brushed my shoulder and two fingers jabbed my neck. “Down,” Charlie commanded.

When I didn’t heed, he made me heed by kicking me in the back of the knee and toppling me. Mud splattered the underside of my chin. The weeds revealed their husky browns as the first blush of headlights drenched them and us. I pulled my head up to see the car—a Jeep, actually, with a ripped fabric top—bearing down on the box.

Twenty yards. No brakes yet.

Ten. Blinding light now.

It wasn’t going to …

There wasn’t time.

Kyle was …

It hopped. That’s my best description for what the Jeep did. It didn’t swerve. It seemed to launch itself to the side at the last moment, wheels leaving the ground and landing inches from the box.

Blame it on adrenaline, but that’s how I remember it. I also remember the Jeep didn’t slow down. It whinnied away into the night, its taillights streaking the sky with wisps of red.

Finally, I remember the box flying in the air and Kyle, triumphant in the center of the road, raising a fist and shouting, “Pop goes the weasel!”

It should have been over at that point, but it wasn’t. Kyle did a victory lap around the box and then centered it in the road again. Grinning, he rejoined us. From the weedy mess he plucked a long blade. I could tell he wanted to put it in his mouth and chew it like a toothpick, but it came out with earth still on it. He chucked it to the side.

“That was so scary,” I said. Wonderful too, but I left that part out.

“It was stupid, is what it was,” Charlie said.

“Who’s next?” Kyle asked.

I turned to Charlie. “No chance,” he told me.

“So it’s established,” Kyle said. “Charlie is a woman. How ’bout you, Alistair? Pink undies under those jammies?”

Yes, I was wearing pajamas. There had been no opportunity to change into more suitable clothing, so I was standing there in checkered fleece and a down vest. Not exactly the attire of a daredevil, but perhaps I had the makings of one yet. My exhaustion had morphed into a numbness that enveloped my body. Aroused by the spectacle of Kyle cheating death, my heart fed the numbness and I felt damn near immortal.

“You’ve played this before?” I asked Kyle.

“About a billion times.”

“Gimme a break,” Charlie said. “Let’s go home.”

“And no one’s ever gotten hit?” I asked.

Kyle thumbed his chin, a thinker pose. “That’s a mystery now, ain’t it?”

“I guess it would have been all over the papers and TV if someone had ever been hit while playing this,” I said. The logic seemed flawless.

“Maybe,” Kyle replied. “Or maybe they don’t run those stories because adults don’t wanna fill your baby bwains with gore, gore, gore.” He reached over and scuffed Charlie’s hair, and Charlie ducked away.

“We can deal with stuff like that,” Charlie said. “We’ve seen R-rated movies.”