THE LAST BOY (24 page)

“And this hermit had a name, right?” asked Tripoli.

Danny turned to look at him. Paused.“He had many names.”

“Oh?”

“He just never told me what they were.”

Tripoli traded looks with Molly. Was this kid playing games? If nothing else, the boy was systematically driving a wedge between him and Molly—and she was letting him get away with it.

“But what did you call him?” Molly prompted.

“Father,” he said finally.

“
Father?
” she repeated.

“And sometimes John.”

Silence.

Tripoli waited. John. John? He looked at Molly and she shook her head.

The engine kept idling. When you came down to it, the boy was right, thought Tripoli. It did stink in the car. Probably needed a new tailpipe. Tripoli rolled down his window and waited.

“You want to know where I went, right?” Danny said, finally breaking the silence.

“Well, of course!”Tripoli gestured.

“I went out.”

“Okay. Out where?”

“Up there.” Danny motioned vaguely up Green Street.

“Ah, now we’re getting somewhere.” Tripoli put the car into gear and started rolling.

Molly remained silent in the back seat. My God, he was finally talking. In a way, she was afraid of what Danny might reveal.

They crept slowly up Green Street, traffic eddying around them.

“Okay?”Tripoli asked as they passed the Minimart.

Danny nodded. He again seemed self-possessed.

“Did you cross Cayuga Street?”

“Yes,” he answered. “This street.”

They drove through the intersection. Coasted right past the front of Woolworth's.

“Here, too?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And you saw this old lady,”Tripoli said more than asked.

Danny looked startled, and Tripoli knew he had him slightly off balance. So, the old woman really had seen him in front of Woolworth's.

“And she talked to you, didn’t she? Asked you what you were doing out alone on the street?”

The question caught Molly by surprise, too. So Tripoli had really questioned Edna Poyer after all.

“Okay, then what?” persisted Tripoli.

“Then up there.” Danny motioned to the overpass that was Aurora Street.

Tripoli had to drive under the bridge and make a complete circle through the “tuning fork” until he came up on Aurora Street. He took a left and started up the steep incline. A tanker truck loaded with milk was in front, partially blocking the view. Tripoli let it creep ahead, black diesel smoke puffing out of it's exhaust pipe as traffic began jamming up behind him.

“And then where’d you go?”

“Hmmm,” Danny wagged his head. “I went somewhere through,” he said motioning to a yard.

So, he did it on his own, thought Molly. Snuck out somehow. Cheryl was so spacey and Danny was such a quick little guy that he could easily have slipped past her while a parent was entering or leaving Kute Kids.

But where was he headed? Did he know? Had he been lured out or did the man just stumble upon him and take him? Keep him.
Months and months?

“You cut through this side or that?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t remember.”

“Where’d you come out?” They were still moving up the hill, passing where the old Southside Coal Company used to sit. Then the Italian restaurant with its umbrella-topped tables on the deck overlooking the highway and the gas station.

Silence.

“Do you remember anything. A building? A house? Something.”

“The school.” Danny smiled at the reminiscence. “Yes. I passed the school with lots of children outside. They had this real big ball. I watched them playing.”

“South Hill School!” exclaimed Molly from the back seat, and Tripoli quickly turned around, went down a few blocks and cut a right onto Hudson Street.

“This look familiar?” he kept asking.“Or this?”

They started again up South Hill, now parallel to the main route.

When they came abreast of a big white house, Danny pointed, “Yes. I remember this one with the funny tower.” Then he recognized the school yard. Oak Hill Manor, where old Edna resided, was just above it.

“And then which way?”

Danny motioned vaguely further up South Hill. “I kept going up,” he said.

They continued climbing until they came to the edge of the Ithaca College campus.“And then what?”

“I just kept going,” said Danny.“Up and up and up…”

“Where? Which way?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must remember more. Come on. Think.”

Molly could see Danny was becoming progressively more
agitated. Tripoli was again losing his patience, trying to back Danny into a corner.“Come on, Trip, he's just a little boy,” she implored.

“Forget it,” said Tripoli. “I’ve got to get to the bottom of this. Don’t you see? We’re close. So close.”

The boy had tears again in his eyes. “I can’t breathe. Can you open the windows? All of them. There's not enough air in here.”

“Where, Danny?
Where
did you go?”

“I need more fresh air.”

“Where?
Where?
”

“To the woods,” he said.

“Which woods?”

“The forest.”

“Which forest?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know and I can’t tell you. Now take me home! Or else.”

“Or else what?”

Molly became frightened. She began to speak, but Tripoli cut her short with a withering stare. She could see the lines on his jaw turning sharply defined as he clenched his teeth. He was like a man possessed.

Danny turned stone silent. An ominous silence filled the car, and when Tripoli turned to look, he saw that the boy's skin had suddenly blanched a deathly white. His breathing had turned rapid but shallow, fluttering, like a wounded deer going into shock.

“I’m going to die if you don’t get me some air,” the boy gasped.

“This has got to stop!” shouted Molly in alarm. Reaching over the seat, she unsnapped the belt and hoisted Danny over the seat. “My poor baby,” she said cradling him in her arms and stroking his pale face. His eyes were blank and unblinking. “Just hang on. We’re going home. Right this instant!”

“Okay, okay,” Tripoli relented, frightened by the boy's appearance. He flipped on his red lights, swerved the car around, and
hurried back down the hill, windows opened wide. Aside from the wind rushing through the car all he could hear was the boy gulping for air like a fish out of water.

The investigation was now picking up steam. So, too, was the media hype. It was being treated as a kidnapping, and the Feds, their interest rekindled, were suddenly back on the case. Tripoli spent over an hour with two FBI agents, briefing them. They wanted to question the boy. So did investigators from the sheriff 's department, and, of course, the State Police BCI. It was big news, and everybody felt they had to be in on it.

“I kept this investigation running for the whole fucking winter when nobody else gave a shit!”Tripoli said, standing in front of the chief's desk with his hands on his hips.“And now, suddenly—”

“You’ve got more than enough on your plate, Trip. Why not step aside and let the State Police or Feds take over? They’ve got the resources. The manpower. You could continue to work with them. Just let them manage the case, take the heat off the department.”

“Fuck the heat. Either I’m the lead on this or I’m not. And if I’m not, I’m not walking into that press conference.” He pointed a thumb upstairs.“You can answer all the questions. Bullshit them like you’re bullshitting me.”

“Now just calm down. Don’t get your balls in such an uproar.” Chief Harry Matlin got up. A regal-looking man with wavy white hair and year-round tan, he always struck Tripoli as more the politician than a cop. He rested his hand on Tripoli's shoulder, but Tripoli shrugged it off.

“This is our jurisdiction and you’re rolling over for—”

“Nobody's rolling over for anybody.”

“So I’m in charge then, right?”

“If you feel that passionate about it…Okay. It's yours.”

“In that case, I want hands off the kid, too. Nobody grills the boy without my say-so.”

The Chief thought about it. “Alright. As long as you make progress.”

“I’m close. I’m sure of it. Don’t worry about my end.”

“Right now I’m worried about this press conference. I don’t want us coming off as a bunch of small-town hicks,” he said, checking his watch. “Damn it! We’re late. Come on. Let's get a move on it.” He strode out of the office, Tripoli on his heels. “You know they’re all waiting to eat us alive.”The Chief repeatedly punched the elevator button, waited an impatient second, then took to the stairs. “The kid's home now, and if we don’t crack this nut we’re going to look pretty stupid. You’d better bring me up to speed.”

“The kid walked,” said Tripoli, as they hurried up the two flights, their footsteps echoing on the steel stairs. “I’m pretty sure. Though how he got out is a mystery.”Tripoli was talking fast now. “I’ve got a gut feeling that he ended up somewhere south of town. He keeps talking about the woods. The forest. My best guess is the Danby State Forest. I’m ordering the State Police to do a flyover. Also, I’ve got the kid's clothes up in Albany. Something's gotta give. Somewhere. Somehow.”

“No abuse, no kiddy diddling.”

“Nothing far as they could see. He was in good shape. A little dirty around the edges, a little skinny, but no.”

“The father?” asked the chief as he moved down the corridor, Tripoli at his side.

“Nah. I doubt it. But we’re still following that, too.”

The chief stopped at the double doors leading to the conference
room, his hand resting on the handle. “Are you sure you can separate your job and your personal feelings?”

“Huh?”Tripoli avoided his eyes. Through the wooden doors, he could hear the din of competing voices, the shuffling of dozens of feet.

Tilting his head, the chief stared at him knowingly.

“Christ,” muttered Tripoli.

“Well, it's a small town. You know that. Just be—”

“What?”

“Careful. Discreet. You know the drill. I just don’t want any gossip circulating. Come on,” he said, yanking open the door and motioning for Tripoli to move ahead,“let's get this show over with.”

All eyes in the crowded room snapped to attention as Tripoli and the chief entered, and the room lit up in a blazing array of lights as cameras started rolling and reporters and cameramen jockeyed for position. Tripoli followed Matlin as he mounted the elevated platform and approached the jumbled bank of microphones that had been hastily mounted on the lectern. The air in the room was thick with noise and sweat. Gazing out over the sea of people, Tripoli did a quick head count. There were twenty-five people, maybe thirty. In addition to the usual locals from Syracuse and Elmira, lots of out-of-towners. The big name networks, too; even a camera crew from Japanese television. Nothing like this since that family out in Ellis Hollow got butchered and burned ten years ago.

The chief moved close to the microphone and cleared his throat. The room quickly quieted.

“First of all, I want to thank you for the stories you carried in the past…”

Tripoli watched Matlin as he spoke. Though he was masterful at stroking the press, Tripoli could see that the muscles in his face were taut. It didn’t take much imagination to comprehend what he was going through. What he said earlier was true. They had plenty of
cases to handle. Besides the usual run of robberies and drug busts and assaults, they had those leaky barrels of low-level radioactive waste just discovered in a lot off Cherry Street. A witness claimed to have seen a truck from a Buffalo company unloading something just the night before. Up on Gun Hill Road, the residents had been complaining about a strange smell coming from storm drains. It turned out to be pure TCE, trichloroethylene, a potent carcinogen. It was not clear if it was leaking from the old Ithaca Gun Plant or if someone was actually dumping the stuff. Of course, none of the reporters really gave a crap about that. The kid was what they were after. Danny. Human interest.

“…And since that day in October, this department has dedicated exhaustive resources…”

Before coming to Ithaca, Matlin had been a lieutenant on the force in Hoboken. He moved the family here after his daughter fell chronically ill with lung and blood problems, here to what he had thought was pristine Ithaca, hoping to escape the poisons of New Jersey. This was getting to look more and more like Hoboken, thought Tripoli as he watched the Chief serenading the press.

“So let me introduce you to Louis Tripoli, our senior investigator, who's been heading up this case since its inception. I’ll turn this over to him. Lou?”

Tripoli stepped up to the bank of mikes. Swallowed.“Because of the nature of this ongoing investigation, I’m not at liberty to answer all of your questions,” he said, sensing the weight of cameras and stares.“But I can tell you that the boy is in good health. He doesn’t appear to have been physically harmed in any way.”

“
Physically?
” A woman reporter in the rear picked up immediately on it.

“I’m not a psychiatrist. And we really haven’t had a comprehensive evaluation yet. Though we will. We wanted to give the boy and his—”

“So where was he all these months?” was the next question shot out from the crowd.

“Well, that's the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” admitted Tripoli.“We suspect that he was living somewhere in the countryside. We think it might have been in a forested region, in all likelihood somewhere south of Ithaca, possibly in the Danby area. Indications are that the boy may have been living in a rather primitive type of housing. Perhaps a hut or a shack. We think the boy may have been kept by an older or elderly man who had a full beard and mustache.”

“What does the boy say?”

“Errr…” Tripoli turned to Matlin, who looked back at him deadpan.“He's reluctant to talk.”

“Why?”

“You’re asking questions I can’t answer right now. But we’re going to need the public's help to resolve some of the issues. We’re asking anybody who has any information regarding the whereabouts of this site or such a person to contact us immediately. We still have the same hotline number here at headquarters. Or people can contact their local State Police barracks. Or the FBI—who are also investigating.”