What Follows After: A Novel (21 page)

It was Thursday morning. Colt sat in his bedroom, missing Timmy. Somehow over the last couple of days, he’d been able to stay busy enough to block any really bad thoughts. It was like Timmy was just away on a trip or something.

His father had let him stay up again last night an hour past his bedtime. That’s because, once again, they had agreed to let him stay home from school. So Colt got to stay up and watch both
The Beverly
Hillbillies
and
The Dick Van Dyke Show
with the adults. He wished those shows came on an hour earlier so he could see them every week. Normally, he had to go to bed by nine on school nights, Timmy at eight. Poor Timmy, there wasn’t anything good for him to watch on Wednesday nights, just
Wagon Train
.

What was he saying? Timmy would’ve loved to be in his own home last night, even if
Wagon Train
was the only show on. If Colt could have Timmy back, he would’ve even been willing to go to bed at eight and miss out on
The Beverly
Hillbillies
and
Dick Van Dyke
.

Of course, most of the time Timmy bugged him. Not in a big way, just little brother stuff. Always wanting to follow him around. Always wanting to borrow his things. Always wanting to play with his friends. Another thing that bugged him . . . Timmy would al
ways stick his grimy fingers in the cereal box, digging for the prize. Even if it was way at the bottom. And his mom never stopped him. It also seemed to Colt that Timmy got away with a lot more things than he did at the same age. All he had to do was whine long enough, and Mom would give in.

Take these bunk beds, for example. When Mom and Dad bought them two years ago, Colt wanted the bottom bunk. He was the older brother. He should get to pick. But Timmy said he was too afraid to be up that high. Afraid he might roll over during the night and fall out. So what did they do? They made Colt take the top bunk, but only for two years. When Timmy turned six, they could switch places.

Is that what happened? No.

Timmy turned six, and he just whined some more. He was still too afraid of falling out. So what did they do then? Colt was looking at their solution across the room. They took the top bunk off and set it on the floor, so that now they had two twin beds instead. Their room was already so small. That was part of the reason his parents had bought the bunk beds in the first place, to give them more room to play on the floor, like on rainy days. Now all they had was a tiny aisle between their beds and a few feet between their beds and the door.

Not enough room to do anything on the floor.

Colt stared at the empty bed, perfectly made by his father that morning before he’d left the room. It was too perfect. That wasn’t how Timmy made it. He never got how to tuck the pillow in right, so that it creased all the way across the bed.

Colt got up and quickly fixed the bed the way Timmy would leave it. He stood back to see if anything else was out of place. Bullwinkle. Timmy never put his big stuffed Bullwinkle doll in the center of his pillow like that. He always rested it in the corner
against the wall. He said that way Bullwinkle could see the whole room, not just the ceiling. That’s right, Colt wasn’t supposed to call him a doll. He was a stuffed animal, but a big one. Eighteen inches tall. Colt found it odd that Bullwinkle’s size made Timmy feel safer when he went to bed alone every night an hour before Colt.

What difference did it make if he was two feet or ten feet tall? He was a stuffed animal. He couldn’t do anything. Even on TV, Bullwinkle was always messing up and Rocky would have to come in and straighten everything out. But Colt never told Timmy that. Why make him upset?

Then Colt remembered.

Timmy couldn’t sleep without Bullwinkle, ever since he got him last Christmas. He was the reason Timmy couldn’t bring all his comic books to Savannah. Bullwinkle had taken up so much room in the backpack.

Timmy had spent the last three nights in a row now without Bullwinkle.

Colt sighed. “God, if you’ll bring Timmy back, we’ll set up the bunk beds again. And he can have the bottom bunk as long as he wants.”

“What do you mean, you’ve never swept floors before?” August stared down at the boy in disbelief. “Ain’t nothing to it, Bobby. Just do it like I showed you.”

“But . . . you never showed me before. My mom always sweeps the floors. Sometimes my brother.”

August grabbed the broom out of his hand. “I told you to never talk about that woman in this house, didn’t I? And you don’t have no brother, Bobby. Quit making up stories. We never had but one kid, and that was you. Here, I’ll show you one more time. But this
is the last time, you hear? You don’t get this right, and I’ll have to punish you.”

“Not the dark place again.”

“Of course the dark place. Either that or I have to beat you. It’s one or the other. And I’m trying to do better for you than my pa did for me.”

“I’ll get it right,” Bobby said. “Show me again, please.”

“All right then.” August walked the broom down to the end of the hall and started sweeping the corners. “First you get all the dirt out from the edges and corners, like this. After you do that, you start sweeping it from one end to the other, like this. I’m only going to do a few feet here to show you. When you get down to the end, you make a nice little pile. Then you sweep the pile into the dustpan over there. Like I said, ain’t nothing to it.”

Bobby came down the hallway toward him, his face like a scared rabbit.

“I’m gonna be outside splittin’ firewood. You sweep every part of the house that don’t have carpet, got that?”

Bobby nodded. “Every part of the house that doesn’t have carpet,” he repeated.

“Shouldn’t take you but fifteen or twenty minutes, if you keep working and don’t dillydally. You run into any problems, you come get me. I don’t expect you will. Any fool can handle a broom. But if you do, don’t come all the way out where I’m swinging that axe. Get your head chopped off. Just yell for me from the back door. I should hear you fine from there. You got all that?”

Bobby nodded, reached for the broom. August gave it to him and started to walk away.

“Umm . . .”

He stopped at the end of the hall and turned. “What is it, boy? Speak up.”

“Aren’t I supposed to be going to school? Isn’t this a school day?”

“You’ll go to school when I say you’re ready. Now get back to work.”

August walked through the back of the house, out through the back porch, and over to the pile of limbs he’d made a few weeks ago. He grabbed his axe and began chopping away. Felt good to be doing something meaningful with his time instead of babysitting that boy.

He split wood straight through for about ten minutes, then stopped to listen for the boy. He didn’t hear him, so he set the axe down and quietly walked back through the porch. When he got to the screen door, he listened in. Okay, he could hear him in there still sweeping. So he returned to his oak pile.

Ten minutes later, he stopped again. Didn’t hear the boy this time, either. But he should be done by now. He set the axe down again and headed back for the house. This time, he went inside. Didn’t hear the sound of sweeping. He quickly ran from room to room but couldn’t find Bobby anywhere. He started to panic. He ran out the front door and almost knocked the boy over.

“What in the world? What are you doing out here?” he yelled. He nodded his head toward his neighbors’ properties. “What if somebody saw you?” He grabbed the broom with one hand and a handful of the boy’s shirt with the other. “Get in this house,” he said through gritted teeth, dragging the boy through the front door.

“But you said sweep everywhere that didn’t have carpet.”

August slammed the front door and turned to face the boy. “I didn’t raise you to be no dummy. The porch gets sweeped every now and then, but it’s not the inside of the house. Can’t you tell the difference between the inside and the outside of a house? I was talking about the inside of the house, dummy. What if one of the neighbors saw you out there?”

The boy started to cry.

“You want to cry? I’ll give you something to cry about.” August grabbed him under the arm and started dragging him toward the back of the house.

“No, please. I won’t do it again. Please, I didn’t know what you meant.”

“I ain’t raising no dummy,” August said. “A boy’s gotta be taught to mind.”

About noon on Thursday, Vic and Nate were just about to get in their car and drive almost four hours south to LaBelle, Florida. The woman who worked in the sheriff’s department down there had just called them back about thirty minutes ago. She was a day late and very apologetic about it. The deputy she’d called yesterday had agreed to follow up on that lead about the missing boy, but something had come up and he didn’t get to it until after she had gone home.

The deputy had filled her in this morning about his visit with the man in question. He couldn’t say for certain whether it was or wasn’t the man in the sketch, but it definitely looked like the man to him. He didn’t get a chance to see the boy. The man claimed it was his son, and he had no intention of bringing him out for the deputy’s inspection. He demanded the deputy get off his property since he didn’t have a warrant. The deputy couldn’t really do anything. Besides the lack of a warrant, his property was slightly out of their jurisdiction.

She ended the call by saying the deputy felt the man was acting pretty nervous for someone with nothing to hide. And that maybe, since they were the FBI, they could get a little further since they wouldn’t have any jurisdiction issues.

It was the first solid bite they’d had since this ordeal began. All of their follow-ups on the other calls so far had proven to be dead ends. Vic was just about to open the car door. “Before we leave, I think I’m going to call Timmy’s parents, let them know what we’re up to.”

“Don’t you think we should wait till we see how this pans out?” Nate said. “Could be getting their hopes up over nothing.”

“Maybe. But I know from other kidnapping cases we’ve dealt with, the parents are usually hanging on by a thread. They’re not living day to day but hour to hour. Any amount of hope for any amount of time is a plus. I’ll emphasize we don’t know anything for sure right now, and we won’t until we get down there.”

“Okay, Vic, your call.”

“While I’m doing that, why don’t you go make sure this car is all gassed up?”

Nate got in the car, and Vic headed back to the office.

Other than being flatter than a pancake, the landscape during the long drive south to LaBelle was fairly scenic. A slice of Florida neither man had seen before. Vic had noticed at some point it was like they had crossed some invisible line. He was beginning to see all kinds of more tropical-looking palms and vegetation. Even the sun seemed brighter down here.

“I’m surprised we haven’t seen more of a military presence,” Nate said. “Aren’t we getting close to Miami? It’s thicker back in Orlando.”

“Actually, we’re still two hours away from Miami. But it’s over there on the East Coast.” Vic pointed out the window toward the left. “We’re more than an hour inland. All the action’s on the coast. This is no-man’s-land out here.”

“Guess we’re pretty safe then,” Nate said. “If old Khrushchev decides to start World War III, he probably won’t consider alligators and cypress swamps high-value targets.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t. But to be honest, I’m not sure I’d want to be one of the survivors if things go that way. I read a classified report about it. Sort of the real-life scenario of what survivors of a nuclear war would face.” He looked at Nate. “Seriously, I’ll take instant vaporization over that any day.” He noticed an intersection up ahead. “I think this is our stop up here, better slow down.”

“There’s his car over there.” Nate glanced at his watch. “We’re ten minutes early. Mr. Hoover would be proud.”

They turned right and pulled off the road in the grass behind the deputy’s car. As they got out, Vic looked at the deputy still in the car. He had an odd look on his face and was staring straight ahead at the steering wheel. Didn’t even seem to notice them. A young guy, maybe late twenties.

Nate walked up and tapped on his window. “Hey, fella, are you okay?”

The deputy looked up, startled, and quickly rolled the window down. “Sorry, guess I was in a daze. I was just listening to the radio about this Cuban missile situation. Have you guys been listening to the news on your way down?” Nate backed up as the young man got out.

“No,” Vic said. “Why, something new going on?”

“I’ll say. Our ambassador at the UN—what’s his name, Stevenson?—was just having it out with the Soviet ambassador. Pretty much called him a liar in front of the whole world. Of course, he is a liar. All those commies are. Apparently, Stevenson was showing everyone these big pictures our spy planes took of all these missile sites in Cuba.”

“Really?” Vic said.

“Yes, sir,” the deputy said. “It’s not looking good. I don’t know what the Soviets are gonna do, but it’s really starting to look like we’re headed for a fight.”

“Hope not,” Nate said. “Cause nobody’s gonna win that one.”

“Listen,” Vic interrupted, “we don’t have much daylight left. Can we focus a bit here?”

“I’m sorry. Sure.” The deputy held out his hand. “Obviously, you’re the two agents from the FBI. I’m Deputy Harlan Mason.”

Nate shook his hand first. “I’m Special Agent Nate Winters. This is my partner, Vic Hammond.”

Deputy Mason pulled a slip of paper out of his back pocket. “I had some time, so I drew you guys a pretty detailed map to this man’s house. It’s built right on the edge of a cypress swamp. Kind of tricky getting back to it. But at this point, you’re really only about ten minutes away. I started the map from where we’re standing.” He laid it out on the hood of the car. “Does it make sense to you?”

“Looks pretty cut and dry to me,” Nate said. He pointed to a spot. “That’s this road here, right? The road we’re on.”

“Yes.”

“I think we’ll be all right,” Vic said.

The deputy walked back to his front door. “I hope so. The guy that lives there seems nuttier than a hoot owl. He had a shotgun on the porch, right next to him while we talked. I stayed by my car. Had a feeling if I didn’t leave when I did, he’d have reached for it.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Nate said. “We’ll be ready for him.”