One-Eyed Jack (18 page)

And sure enough, here was a phone call
that pretty much had to be about Jack, and it wasn’t coming from
Jack himself, or a family member, or a teacher or counselor; it was
coming from a police detective.

Not a good sign.

“
I was wondering whether
you might have heard anything from Jack Wilson recently,” Skees
said. “Or from Jenny.”

“
No,” I said. “Not a word.
What’s happened?”

“
It seems our boy Jack
didn’t come home from school yesterday,” Skees said. “Didn’t come
home at all last night. His classmates swear he got on the bus same
as always, and got off at his own stop, but no one’s seen him
since. I’d hoped, since you two seemed to hit it off so well this
summer, that he might have contacted you.”

I felt slightly ill. It had taken a
month, but I was pretty sure what must have happened. He’d gone
back to Jenny, and this time she might not settle for just a little
piece.

“
No,” I said. “I haven’t
seen or heard a thing from Jack since that day at the
hospital.”

“
I was afraid of that. Mr.
Kraft, I realize this isn’t really your problem, but if you have
any suggestions I’d sure like to hear them.”

I was completely at a loss. “He was
out all night? Then he’s probably already dead,” I said.

“
I sure hope
not.”

“
Well, if he isn’t, then
maybe he can take care of himself. He’s twelve years old,
Detective, he’s not a baby.”

“
Yeah, but he’s not alone
this time.”

“
What, you mean Jenny? I
don’t follow you.”

“
I mean Katie. Jack’s
little sister. She’s gone missing, too.”

Suddenly I felt ill, remembering the
frightened little girl in my dreams, the girl no one seemed to pay
much attention to. “Katie?”

“
She’s seven, Mr. Kraft.
We’ve got men out looking for the two of them, but so far we
haven’t found a thing, so I figured I’d give you a call and see if
you had any ideas.”

I had an idea, all right, but it
wasn’t a helpful one; my idea was that Jack had found another child
to feed to the monster he thought he loved.

If I understood it right,
and if Jenny hadn’t lied about this, Jenny couldn’t eat Katie
unless Katie offered herself, but Katie was
seven
, and her big brother was
probably there trying to convince her to help the nice
lady...

“
I’ll get the earliest
flight I can,” I said. “I don’t know what I can do, and it may be
too late, but I’m coming to help you look.”

For a moment he didn’t respond; then
he said, “You don’t have to do that.”

“
I want to help. Maybe I
can see something you can’t.”

“
What might that
be?”

“
I
don’t
know
. Maybe something.”

“
Well, maybe you can. If
you really think it’s worth the trip, I can’t stop you, but I’m not
advising you to come.”

“
I’ll see you soon, then.”
I ended the call, shoved the rest of my lunch in the trash, and
headed out. I told Mr. Sanchez I was leaving, family emergency, but
didn’t stop to give him a chance to argue, just ran past and out
the door.

I barely made a 3:40 flight out of
Reagan. It stopped in Charlotte, so it was about eight and I’d
missed dinner by the time I reached the rental car desk at Blue
Grass Airport, and close to nine by the time I got to the Wilsons’
street. The sun was long gone, the streetlights were lit, and there
were a couple of police cars pulled up at the curb. Four policemen
were standing on the sidewalk, three of them in uniform; the fourth
was Detective Ben Skees. That thing that looked like a bent old
woman in a brown robe was crouched a few yards away, watching the
cops, and a few other phantoms were in sight, but there was no sign
of Jenny, and none of them looked threatening.

It didn’t look as if much was
happening, which puzzled me – shouldn’t everyone be out looking for
the missing kids, rather than just standing there
calmly?

I had a little Chevy this time, not a
Cruiser, not that it made much difference, but it meant Skees
didn’t recognize me until I leaned out the window and called his
name.

He was talking casually to a couple of
the other cops; the Wilsons were nowhere in sight. At the sound of
my voice the detective turned and spotted me.

“
Kraft,” he said. “You
came all the way from Maryland?”

“
Of course. I got here as
quickly as I could,” I said.

He gestured to the other cops, then
walked over to my car. “You’ve wasted your time,” he said. “We
found the kids hours ago.”

I felt like an idiot. It had never
occurred to me that they might turn up before I got there. “Oh,” I
said. “Are they okay?”

“
They’re both fine,
physically – I mean, other than what Jack was already missing.
Katie was pretty upset, and Jack’s mad as hell but won’t say
why.”

“
How’d you find them?
Where were they?”

He grinned at me. “McDonald’s,” he
said. “Katie got hungry, so Jack went to get her a Happy Meal, and
the clerk got suspicious at the sight of kids with no adults, and
called the cops. We found them sitting there eating french
fries.”

“
You could have called and
saved me the trip.”

“
I was kinda busy at
first, and by the time I had a moment, my call went straight to
voice mail. You must have already been on the plane with your phone
turned off.”

“
Oh.” In fact, I realized
when he said it that not only had I not checked my voice mail, I
hadn’t even turned the phone back on. It had slipped my mind. I
fished it out and remedied that little oversight.

As I put the phone back in my pocket I
asked, “If it was all over hours ago, why are you still here?” I
gestured at the cop cars.

“
Just keeping an eye on
things.”

“
Making sure Jack doesn’t
take off again?”

He shrugged.

“
Slow night, huh?” I
asked.

“
I like slow nights,” he
said, smiling.

“
I do when I’m
home.”

“
I
did
tell you that you didn’t need to come here.”

“
Yeah, you did,” I
admitted. “But I’m here now, so can you tell me anything more about
what happened?”

Skees glanced at the other cops, then
leaned down into the window. “I did not call you,” he said, as he
set his crossed arms on the bottom of the car’s open window. “You
understand that?”

“
Sure,” I said,
startled.

“
I do not believe in
ghosts or ghouls or things that go bump in the night. The
Lexington-Fayette police department does not consult psychics or
pay attention to visions.”

“
Of course
not.”

“
This whole thing is the
Wilsons’ business, and not yours.”

“
Got it.”

He glanced back at the others again,
then turned back to me. “So long as we understand that, and that
I’m not talking to you – it looks like they spent the night out
under the trees somewhere. Jack’s not talking, but Katie says they
went to see the hungry lady, the one in the white dress who’s hard
to see, and Jack said they had to feed her, but Katie wouldn’t,
because the hungry lady was scary. She and Jack argued all night,
she says, and when the sun came up the hungry lady went away, and
they went to sleep for awhile, and then when they woke up Katie was
hungry, almost as hungry as the hungry lady, so they went to Mickey
D’s for lunch, and then the policemen came and got them. So that’s
her story.”

“
Jack tried to feed his
sister to the ghost,” I said.

“
That’s what it sounds
like to me, all right.”

“
Can I talk to the
kids?”

Skees hesitated. “I don’t see as how I
can explain that,” he said. “Mr. And Mrs. Wilson are pretty upset,
as you can imagine.”

“
I’m sure they are,” I
said. I looked out through the windshield, peering into the gloom
at the end of the street; I wasn’t sure whether I saw something
white down there under the tulip poplar, or not.

The imitation Jenny was probably
pretty upset, too – she didn’t get her meal.

“
Could you ask?” I said.
“Because I don’t think Jack and Jenny are going to give up. If
Katie won’t cooperate, maybe they’ll find someone who
will.”

The detective considered that for a
moment, looking back over his shoulder at the Wilson house, then he
turned back to me and said, “We can do that. We can
ask.”

Then he turned and headed for the
house.

He didn’t say whether I should follow
or wait where I was, so I followed, about three steps behind him,
as he marched up to the door and rang the bell.

Bill Wilson answered the bell; he
spoke quietly, and I was still hanging back, on the path below the
stoop, so I didn’t catch his words.

“
Mr. Wilson, we’re about
done here. I’m going to leave one car here, with Officers Fahey and
de Witt, but the rest of us are heading out soon.”

“
Thank you, Detective,”
Wilson said.

“
There’s one thing – do
you remember Mr. Kraft, who found Jack after he lost his eye last
month?” He gestured in my direction. Wilson looked at me, but
didn’t answer. Skees continued, “He heard about what happened and
wanted to lend a hand, but we’d found the kids before he got here.
Since he came all this way, he was hoping he could talk to them,
just to see how Jack’s doing. He’s been worried. Of course, it’s
entirely up to you, but if they aren’t in bed yet it’d be a nice
gesture.”

“
Katie’s asleep,” Wilson
said, staring at me. He hesitated, then said, “Let me see what
Emily thinks.”

That didn’t sound like the household
tyrant I remembered from my dreams. I guessed that Jack’s
adventures had gotten to him. He went back inside, but left the
door cracked.

“
You do
understand you can’t talk to Jack
alone
, right?” Skees said over his
shoulder. “I’ll be there.”

“
That’s fine.” I hadn’t
expected anything else.

Then the door opened again, and Jack
stepped out. He was wearing a black eye-patch and looked tired and
angry, and had that eerie, out-of-step look. I wasn’t sure whether
it was a little more intense than it had been in August, or whether
I’d just forgotten how strong the effect was in him.

Skees backed down the steps to make
room; the boy stood on the top step and closed the door behind
him.

He wasn’t looking at Skees; he was
looking at me. He obviously intended to talk to me whether his
parents liked the idea or not.

“
You didn’t give her my
message,” he said. “You told her to leave me alone.”

“
That’s right, I did,” I
said.

“
What gives you the right
to do that?” he demanded. “What business is it of
yours?”

“
The same right any
responsible adult has, to keep a kid from getting himself killed,”
I answered.

“
Did you tell Katie about
her?”

“
I’ve never met Katie.
I’ve never spoken to her at all.”

“
So it wasn’t you that
convinced her not to help Jenny?”

“
Convinced
her? Jack, don’t be
stupid. No one needs to be
convinced
not to be
eaten.”

“
But someone needs to help
her!”

“
Jack,
she’s a
monster
. She wants to
kill
you.”

“
She’s not a
monster!”

“
Oh, sure, every nice lady
tries to eat children.”

“
She
has
to, so she can be human again!”

“
She
never
was
human, Jack. I did some research. The
real
Jenny Derdiarian is alive and
well; your friend is just pretending to be her.”

That clearly caught him off-guard, but
he recovered quickly. “You’re lying!” he said.

“
No, I’m not.”

“
It’s a different
person!”

“
I don’t
think so. Same name, three kids with the same names – how many
people named Derdiarian do you think there
are
?”

“
Then you’re wrong!” He
looked like he wanted to hit me, or to burst into tears, or both,
but he didn’t do either one.

“
She’s lying to you,
Jack,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. “She doesn’t love you.
She just wants someone to eat.”

“
She
does
love me!”

“
Did she tell you to bring
Katie to her?”