Darkness peering (7 page)

"Am I being recorded?"

"No, ma'am."

"I don't wanna give you my name ..."

"You can remain anonymous if you'd like. Just say what's on your
mind."

"Okay." She hesitated. "This guy ... he's a good person underneath,
but sometimes he does stupid things ..."

"I'm listening."

"He picked her up ..."

"Melissa D'Agostino?"

"Yeah, he picked her up after school and we ... he drove her over to
Commerce City ..."

"He who?"

"Excuse me?"

"Who picked her up and drove her to Commerce City?"

"This guy I know."

"What's his name?"

"All he did was buy her an ice cream cone. That's all. He wouldn't
kill anybody. A few other guys came along for the ride ..."

"Could you give me some names?"

"We ... they were just goofing on her, that's all. Just goofing. They
bought her an ice cream cone. You know how people are. They didn't do
anything bad to her, I swear to God."

"What's the name of this boy who drove her to Commerce City?"

There was a long pause.

"If you know something, miss, I sure as heck wish you'd share it with
me. You'd be doing the right thing."

Her voice was barely audible now. "Ozzie Rudd."

Goose bumps rose on his body like a sudden sprinkling of rain. "Ozzie
Rudd?"

"I think," she said, "this was a mistake."

"Wait--"

The line went dead.

NALEN SPED TOWARD ROOSEVELT HIGH, WHERE GILLIAN

Dumont's mother said that Billy and Gillian had gone. It was nine
o'clock, the sky was overcast and the school seemed deserted. He
circled the parking lot, then got out and crossed the athletic field
toward the bleachers. Resting his palm against a diseased maple tree,
he scanned the back of the school building. A couple of second-floor
windows were decorated with construction-paper flowers, and he wondered
if that was Special Ed or the art department. The athletic field was
well lit, bleachers casting spidery shadows.

Nalen's ears pricked as he heard distant melodic laughter. He cocked
his head. A girl was laughing. Breaking into a run, he charged around
the side of the building, beaming his flashlight. As he rounded the
corner, a girl screamed.

Nalen bolted after the two figures. Two kids were running up the block
ahead of him. "Police, freeze!" He was nearly

out of breath when he hooked the boy by the back of his T-shirt and
flung him to the ground, then jumped on top of him.

Billy stared up at his father, terrified.

The girl stopped running and stood about ten yards away. Her face was
small and pale, her eyes stoned-looking. "Don't hurt him!" She kept
brushing her long hair off her face.

"What'd you run for?" Nalen screamed in Billy's face, yanking him to
his feet.

"I'm sorry, Dad." Billy cowered.

"Why the hell did you run away?" he demanded to know. Billy's eyes
were red-rimmed.

"Dad, we didn't know it was you."

Nalen grabbed him by the T-shirt and shook him hard. "Don't you ever
run from the police again, you hear me? You know better than that,
Billy!"

"Ouch, you're hurting me!"

Nalen released the boy, who stumbled backward.

Gillian stood shivering in the damp night air. "We were smoking.
Cigarettes." She looked at Billy. "That's why we ran."

"I don't think so." Patting Billy down, Nalen found a joint and a Bic
lighter in his pants pockets. "What the hell is this?"

"Pot," Billy answered matter-of factly

"That's mine." Gillian stepped forward. She was playing with a
necklace made of painted wooden beads. Her hair was almost white, the
kind of blond that wasn't ashamed to show off its roots. She bit her
lips sensually, as if she'd seen too many perfume ads on TV. "I asked
Billy to hold it for me. If you're gonna arrest someone arrest me."

Nalen looked at her, then at his son. Tears welled in Billy's eyes and
his shoulders sagged beneath his too-big T-shirt. Nalen pocketed the
joint and grabbed Billy's arm, practically tearing it out of its socket
as he pulled him away from his overprotective girlfriend.

"All right now," Nalen hissed, "I know you know more than you're
letting on."

"Huh?"

"About Melissa D'Agostino. Ozzie Rudd picked her up after school last
Tuesday and drove her over to Commerce City, didn't he? Tell me the
truth, Billy. Were you involved?"

"Noway, Dad..."

"Billy." He resisted a terrible urge to hit him. "Cut the crap.
Either you tell me the truth right now, or I'm arresting you for
possession. Simple as that."

Billy stared at him with wounded eyes.

"Billy?" Gillian cried, and Nalen turned to her.

"Stay back, young lady."

She did as she was told.

"Dad ..."

"Tell me."

"Dad ... I don't--"

"Tell me!"

Billy's mouth contorted and blinding tears spilled from his eyes as he
confessed, "All right, all right... I was there ..."

Nalen felt the words like an electric shock and almost lost his
balance, horror cinching up his gut. He stared hopelessly at his
tormented son. "What d'you mean, you were there?"

"You wanted the truth, right? So I'm telling you the truth!" Billy
cried. "Ozzie picked her up on Bellamy Road and a bunch of us drove to
Commerce City together. It was no big deal. We got some ice cream and
cruised around for a while, that's all. We were just goofing on her,
Dad."

Just goofing on her. Nalen could barely fathom the cruelty contained
within those four little words. Nothing on God's green earth was less
merciful than a child. "Who else was involved?"

"This junior named Michelle. She rode in the Grey Ghost with

me, and Neal and Boomer took Boomer's dad's car, and Ozzie and Dolly
took Melissa in the Green Hornet. Nothing happened."

"Is that why you kept it from me? Because nothing happened?"

"I knew you wouldn't believe me. I can tell you still think I
decapitated those cats."

"I never said as much, did I?"

"We were just having a little fun. I kept telling them not to. I told
them we should let her go, and finally we drove back and Ozzie let her
out."

"Let her out where?"

"You know ... Black Hill Road."

"Let her out on Black Hill Road?"

"Yeah, and then we took off. So we're innocent."

"You let her out all alone on some deserted street?" Nalen slapped his
son across the face, and Billy screamed.

"Billy!" Gillian ran to him.

"I didn't kill her!" Billy shrieked, and Nalen hated him just then.
Tasting his own sour breath, he loosened his tie. He could see stars
swimming in his field of vision ... red stars. The boy's face was pale
and blank, Billy's patented emotionless expression, and Nalen hated him
for being a constant reminder of his former self... of his lack of
control. Physical, flesh-and-blood evidence of his buried, abusive
past.

"I didn't!" Billy protested from somewhere far away. A nasty
desperation clawed at Nalen's insides, and he spun around and vomited
in the grass. He vomited until he got the dry heaves. The beatings
would often come after the vomiting, beatings accompanied by the smell
of bile and alcohol. Nalen almost blacked out, and then a pair of cool
hands were propping him up against a tree. He caught himself on the
damp bark. Gillian was tapping his face, whispering, "Yoo hoo, Chief
Storrow?"

He groaned.

"Hey. Hello. You okay?" She put her hands on his face.

"Stop." He shoved her away and she stumbled backward, then righted
herself. She regarded him with skeptical eyes. He glanced around for
his son. "Where's Billy?"

She stared at him. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Gillian," he said, straining for the most normal tone of voice he
could muster, "you'll only get yourselves into worse trouble. Come
down to the station and we'll straighten things out."

"You never believed him," she said with an adolescent's obstinate
contempt, her eyes sparking with candor. "He didn't hurt Melissa
D'Agostino. He came over to my house. He was with me from five-thirty
to six-thirty that night, so he couldn't have done anything, right?
How could you even think such a thing? Billy wouldn't hurt a living
soul!"

Nalen drew himself upright, then saw stars and collapsed back against
the tree. He felt helpless. Ridiculous.

"You're sweating all over the place," she called from across the road.
She was moving swiftly away, under cover of darkness. "I hope you're
okay and everything!" Then she was gone.

It took Nalen several aching minutes to drag his carcass back to his
car. He sagged in his seat, breathing laboriously and wondering how he
was going to tell Faye. His hands trembled as if he'd been squeezing
oranges. This was awful. He wanted to go home and cower under the
covers like a little boy, but there would be no cowering. He knew what
had to be done.

Head pounding, he keyed the ignition, and a squirrel, caught in his
high beams, danced around a small circle of space.

NALEN STOOD IN THE KITCHEN AND LISTENED TO THE WIND

howling through the scrub pines. Half past nine, nobody was home.
Faye had taken Rachel to her first piano recital, yet another event in
his children's lives he had missed. Another reason for Faye's anger to
fester. Billy was off somewhere conspiring with Gillian. His son, now
permanently lost to him.

Nalen's chest muscles constricted around his rib cage and an acid taste
burned the back of his throat. The kitchen's overhead fluorescent bulb
cast sickly shadows down the green walls and across the dingy linoleum.
He'd just come in from outdoors where he'd inspected Billy's car--the
Grey Ghost, a '76 Chevy Impala--and found nothing. Now, knowing what
had to be done, he headed up the stairs.

Billy's room smelled of soiled socks. Nalen stood for a moment on the
threshold, gut seizing. Surely it couldn't be true. Billy was
innocent. He hadn't hurt Melissa D'Agostino, he'd simply gone along
for the ride. He'd been morally wrong, ethically wrong, but legally
innocent. He hadn't decapitated those cats. Billy wasn't capable of
such depravity. Was he?

Nalen stepped cautiously into the room, booby-trapped with comic books
and eight-track tapes and a tangle of clothes. If Billy was innocent,
then why had he repeatedly lied? And why had Gillian insisted they'd
spent Tuesday evening together from 5:30 to 6:30? Her little speech
sounded forced. Almost coached.

Taking a deep breath, he began to methodically search the room for
clues. A warrantless search. Illegal. His stomach clenched. He
could barely admit to himself what it was he was looking for--Melissa's
friendship bracelet. After stirring through

the detritus of this teenage wasteland, Nalen discovered in the far
reaches of the closet a pair of muddy sneakers, their treads worn down
to nonexistence, size nine and a half. Jesus. It took a moment for
this to register. He examined the sneakers carefully, turning them
over in his hands. Not that it proved anything. What teenage boy
didn't have a pair of muddy sneakers in his closet?

Nalen set the sneakers aside and continued poking and prodding around
his son's bedroom. Parental betrayal, professional betrayal. He
couldn't find the bracelet anywhere--bureau drawers, bedside table,
bookshelves, foot locker. His heart momentarily lightened. The boy's
desk was a disaster area of textbooks, crumpled papers, empty milk
cartons, leaky pens and nubby pencils. He flipped through an algebra
book, then noticed a yellow lined pad covered with doodles. The top
page was torn, a small piece missing. The missing piece was in the
shape of Italy. The boot.

Nalen froze as if he'd caught a gang of bullets in his heart. He
picked up the pad and studied it, as if by staring at it he might make
it go away. He'd lost touch with Billy a long time ago. Lost touch
with his concerns, his preoccupations. Billy was like a little mystery
he kept stubbornly trying to find the keys to. Occasionally he caught
the boy staring at him with a mixture of resentment and longing, and he
would try to think of something fatherly to say, something wise or
profound, but the words eluded him. How did you explain to a
sixteen-year-old that it hurt to look into his eyes because he reminded
you of your own shameful past?

Nalen examined the notepad, its top page ripped across the midsection,
the small, torn-away portion located in the lower right-hand corner.
Had Melissa been inside Billy's car? Had this notepad been on the
floor of the car? Had Billy startled or scared her, compelling her to
break away and run into the field? Had Billy pursued her there?

Now the house shook with wind and his breath quickened as he tore the
top page out of the yellow lined pad, balled it up and

took it downstairs with him. Holding the paper over the kitchen sink,
he lit it on fire, then ran the cold water, watching ashes swirl down
the drain. Everything hurt. His brain felt broken. He thought of his
father, pinned beneath the wreckage of his police cruiser after a
high-speed chase gone bad. Had his father in his dying moments
realized he'd let his son down? Did he admit to himself he'd caused
damage? Did he think of death, in those last few precious moments, as
a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands'?

Nalen went outside and crossed the darkened backyard into the alfalfa
field, sweet and legume-smelling. He scaled the rusty barbed wire
fence and sat on a low stone wall facing the swamp, where gentian and
wood sorrel grew on the spongy bog surface. Every once in a while, he
brought Billy down here with him, and they'd count the stars in the
great big sky and try in vain to hold a conversation. In the distance,
beneath a brilliant cheese-colored moon, he could make out the
windswept fir-clad ridges of the surrounding mountains, and closer and
all around these fields and jumbled boulders, the black dense woods.