He pointed down at it and said, “We’ve already trampled who knows how much evidence. Just leaving the blanket like that so the cops don’t lose anything more.”
“Right.”
"Or," he said, "maybe I just made it worse for the cops. Shoot. What do you think?"
I shrugged.
“You ok?”
I nodded.
“I wasn’t thinking Dina would call you guys in.”
I stared at the dead man. Somehow it seemed worse now that he had some measure of anonymity. Like we’d abandoned him. He was so still. It was like he was a statue or a mannequin being moved someplace and it’d gone for a tumble to the floor. All he needed was for us to pick him up, make him right.
I could hear myself ask Rocco, “You guys didn’t do this, right?”
He took a deep breath. Let it out.
“No, no we didn’t, Miss McCall.”
I think I nodded.
“It, um,” he looked up the stairs and then snuck over to me. Like he wanted to make sure teacher didn’t catch him whispering in class. Just to make sure Dina didn’t come down and catch him he angled himself so he could see the stairs.
“It’s odd is what it is. To have the two guys killed like this. It’d make more sense for the one upstairs and the one down here to be done the same way.”
“Does that mean it was two people?”
“Not necessarily.”
“And none of the blood…None of it was Maddy’s?”
“I don’t think so. It’s all too contained down here. You saw the stuff…on the railing, on the steps, but it ends upstairs. Before you get upstairs. It’s like whoever did it, and went back up, they had something to wipe the blood off onto. I don’t know. I don’t watch enough of those crime investigation shows.” He smiled a low wattage smile, dimpled. “We’ll know more later.”
A vehicle pulled into the driveway. Tires on gravel. A car door shutting, muffled, but definitive.
Head tilted like he had x-ray vision and was checking it all up top while it happened, Rocco said, “Stay here.”
Gun unholstered, he ran upstairs.
Moments later, muffled, from upstairs, I heard someone say, “Jesus.”
Jack came out of the tiny bedroom and stood beside me as Dad walked down the stairs.
He’d put on clothes. The same things he’d worn earlier Sunday.
He clutched the handrail. His descent paused at sight of the two of us, then he continued down, eyes locked on the blanket, the dead man beneath.
Rocco came down the stairs behind Dad. He stopped about midway down. The gun was still in his hand.
Dad made a face. The smell. He made a move like he wanted to brace himself against the wall, then he saw the blood on the wall. He held off from leaning. He looked towards the bedroom.
“She’s not there,” said Jack.
Dad opened his mouth like he was going to snap at Jack, but he thought better of it. He rubbed the back of his neck. Looked at the mangled glasses, looked at the dead man. After a sigh and chuck of his chin at the body he said, “Name was Lloyd Passman.”
“You know him?” asked Jack.
Looking at me Dad said, “Carla. Carla knew of him. He’s not from here. Think he lives in the Midwest, if I’m remembering right. He specializes in cults. Deprogramming people that have been, well, programmed by cults.”
“Carla?” I said. “Does she know that you took Maddy? That you had them take me?”
He shook his head. Saying “No” before I could ask him all of it.
Behind him, Rocco disappeared and Dina appeared on the stairs.
Dad said, “No. Not at all. All she knew was that I needed someone I thought could sit down with Maddy and talk her out of…”
He moved his hand around, the generic roundabout way of indicating, you know, this thing we’re talking about.
“And he was ok with someone being kidnapped?”
“So many times, he told me, he said, so many times families had to kidnap a loved one, drag them kicking and screaming back home, or someplace they couldn’t be gotten to, in order for Lloyd to start working on them. Get them in working order once more.”
Dina ask, “Who else knew?”
Dad turned and looked at her. He shrugged. “Pat. Lucy’s uncle. That’s it.”
“You’re sure.” I asked.
“Yes.” Dad scratched his chin. “And he isn’t the type – wasn’t – the type to want too many people knowing his business. He told me he could handle all this on his own.”
Dina’s phone rang.
She answered, started walking upstairs, talking low so we couldn’t hear her.
The three of us didn’t seem to want to look at each other. We’d rather look towards the blanket-draped body of Lloyd Passman instead.
Dina’s phone call was from Rocco.
He’d gone outside, just to make sure no one else was coming to crash the party.
The doors on the car parked at the Winks place were unlocked. The trunk had been looked into.
Moving his goggles back down over his eyes, night vision bringing things to light in a weird green glow, he’d looked into Dad’s car. Looked up towards West Jennings and then walked towards the driveway’s eastern edge, where it quickly dropped off towards that trench the glacier had cut out the earth all those years ago.
He looked down the slope.
A pair of boots greeted him.
The soles of a pair of boots.
The owner of the boots was unresponsive to Rocco’s calls.
Gun held out, peering down at the figure, Rocco saw the remnants of a somewhat beefy figure. A gunshot had blown through the dead man’s chest, shutting down his circuitry and allowing the lifeless body to tumble off the driveway lip and onto the incline. Out of reach of the still and cold hand was his firearm, a semi-automatic rifle whose trusty performance had earned its owner 2nd place at last fall’s PeaShooter Xtreme shoot.
Had she been there, Kitty could’ve taken a look at the body and confirmed it as none other than Arlo, Pat “Grizzly” Corley’s friend.
Chapter 46
Dina drove me home. She held back and didn’t drive at light speed this time.
The police were on their way to the Winks place. Dad would tell them everything. He no longer had control. There weren’t “kidnappers” to concern ourselves with anymore. Now there was a separate entity at play. People had been murdered. Maddy had been kidnapped from the kidnappers. Something Dad and Pat could never have conceived.
Everyone wanted me outside of the situation as much as possible. Leaving the Winks house I didn’t say bye to Dad. Didn’t hug him.
It was like I didn’t know him. Like he was a stranger to me.
Dina pulled into our driveway and parked, the motor still running.
Uncle Bob and Mojo were nowhere in sight. I thought it possible he’d just taken the shortcut back to his place, Mojo scooting on out before him and then running back, circling, unaware of how messed up things were for the people she knew. I wondered how long it’d take him to get home. If he would or if he might not wander, be found days from now, Mojo still with him. She had that kind of loyalty. Unquestioning. The kind that Uncle Bob had towards Dad.
“Get some rest,” Dina said.
It must’ve been the sleep exhaustion. Something. Boldness I didn’t ordinarily possess surfaced. I looked at her and asked, “Did you guys kill Nick Verney?”
Dina turned the engine off.
Instant nighttime quiet. Just the ticking of heat from the hood.
She turned the keys in the ignition far enough the dashboard lit back up. She pressed a control and the driver side window rolled all the way down. She turned the light show back off.
“No,” she said.
“I just,” I said, “I told you. I told you about what he was saying. And t
hen the very next day…”
I sighed. The adrenaline was steadily leaking from out me. The way it was going I didn’t know if I’d even make it from the SUV to the house before deciding to lay down on the lawn and sleep there.
“My friend Kitty saw someone. At Nick’s. She was there for part of it, part of...And the way she described the person she saw at Nick’s, it made me think of Trent.”
“When was this?”
“Friday.”
“This was Friday?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“During the…I think during the premiere. Or I mean after. After.”
“After the premiere was cancelled?”
“Yes.”
She sighed like the cool air was permeating her skin.
“From that moment on, the bomb threat at the theater, Trent has been with Horace Walton. Ever since the bomb threat, he’s gone back to being Horace Walton’s shadow. He’s with him now.”
“I didn’t see him at the premiere party.”
What of her face I could make out in the dark retracted and rose in what must’ve been a smile.
“Trick of the trade. You ever look at news footage of Jack or your sister at some event, you shouldn’t see me either.”
I nodded. I didn’t point out I did, but most people wouldn’t be looking for the security detail.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m having trouble…I’m having trouble believing anything anyone tells me all of a sudden.”
She let me cry without patting me or shushing me or telling me it’d be all right.
Eventually I trusted my voice enough.
“Is my dad going to get arrested?”
“What do you think?” Not like it was a dumb question. But what did I think even in the best of all possible worlds would happen? I knew. I already knew.
“Fuck,” I said.
I opened my door. Before shutting it I thanked Dina for the lift.
Inside the house I moved around in the dark.
My eyes had gotten used to it at this point. In my bedroom I realized I hadn’t heard the SUV engine turn over. I hadn’t asked if she was going back to the Winks place or what she was doing. I looked out my bedroom window down to the front of the house. The SUV remained down there. Dina was outside the rig, walking slowly, her head down. She’d stop. Look towards East Jennings. The fields. Take a few more steps.
Walking back to my bedroom I could hear Aster, still snoring from Dad’s room. I wished I could be so blissfully oblivious as the universe sustaining me took direct hits and began to bleed.
I left my door open.
I fell asleep.
I woke to a changed world changed even more.
Chapter 47
The sheriff was a portly older man. Up to his late fifties Will Younger kept in shape, then his knees went bad, his tinnitus started acting up and the medicine he took for it – a natural remedy – had the unfortunate side effect of increasing his appetite. But it worked. The ringing in his ears subsided mightily and kept him sane. Sheriff Younger always had enjoyed his wife’s cooking. She liked making the food for him. A little weight on his frame wasn’t the worst side effect a man could suffer.
“Balance,” said Sheriff Younger, chuckling, flopping his snap-brim hat off his knee while sitting in our living room.
He’d told me his recent history. Warming up, I bet, to what he was really going to say.
First thing Monday I’d called school and told the office helper I wasn’t coming in. There was always some student volunteer helping Mrs. Collar at various points during the school day. Thankfully. I wouldn’t want to speak to Mrs. Collar if I could avoid it.
The girl sounded surprised that I was calling. She told me to have a good day, though the way she said it made me feel for sure that I’d been through a war and somehow survived although all that was left of me at this point was just a head and feet and hands, a sort of Mr. Potato Head Lucy McCall.
The lord never gives more than we can shoulder. I remembered Carla saying that at one point. I couldn’t remember if that was before or after my mom passed away.
And today, I’d been given headlines. Headlines to shoulder courtesy the Internet and on TV. I was mentioned in one of them.
“Her Dad Did It!”
“Maddy Missing.”
“Hollywood Star Kidnapped…By Father!”
“Small Town Girl, Big Time Trouble.”
“Maddy’s Sister’s Shattered Life!”
When I woke up several news trucks were parked along the road. Dandelions, I thought, they’re like dandelions. Then I shuddered, realizing there was no one at the house with whom to share the joke.
Dad had never come home. Dina wasn’t outside.
Aster was gone. All the items in the guest room that belonged to anyone from Hollywood were gone, snuck out while I slept.
I felt like going down to the news people and telling them there was no story here. I didn’t know where Jack or Horace or Maddy or Dad were, but they weren’t here. There was nothing here but me, boring 16 going on 17-year-old Lucille Catherine McCall.
This time though, Sheriff Younger promised me, if the news vans didn’t disperse, they’d be fined and told to move on. If they didn’t abide by the vagrancy law, they’d be arrested. First thing he told me at the door, pointing back at Jennings, even before he’d asked if he could come inside, wanting me to know I didn’t have to put up with being harassed if I didn’t want to.
Sheriff Younger looked around the living room. The ceiling. The walls. He kept messing with his hat. He’d accepted a glass of water from me. Set it on a coaster on the coffee table and promptly forgotten it.
“This used to be Ed and Eileen MacKay’s if I’m right. That sound right to you, Lucy?”
“I’m not sure. Dad would know.”
“Oh I see, I see,” he said so quiet-like I didn’t even hear all of it. Read his lips to get more of the message than hearing would allow.
“Did you come to tell me my dad is in jail, sir?”
He plucked at some invisible blotch upon his hat, and the smile flickered and died on his lips.
“Your uncle, too, Lucy.”
I nodded.
“This is-“ Sheriff Younger cleared his throat. “It isn’t though. It isn’t like anything we’ve ever had here long as I’ve been the sheriff. To be frank, I’m glad the FBI is on the way.”
“Are they?”
“Bound here. Should be here before late afternoon I was told.”
“And I’m guessing you don’t know more about Maddy then what we knew last night.”
He gave me a look. I thought ‘oops’. He might’ve been told I’d not been over to the Winks place. I didn’t want to get anyone in more trouble than they already were.
“No sign of her. We’re looking everywhere we can think. Part of the reason I’m here.”
He took a spiral bound notebook from his breast pocket. Withdrew a pen from the center of the spiral and clicked the nose of the pen out.
“You mind if I take some notes?”
The image of Lloyd Passman’s spiral bound notebook hovered in my head. His mashed in face.
“Lucy?”
I shook my head. “Fine. Sorry.”
He asked me the last time I saw Maddy. If I could think of anyone who she might go to – in case she got free of whoever had her. After a few questions he said he hoped would “loosen up my brain”, he asked for and I gave him the chronology of what had happened since I’d been found outside the football field and track.
I laughed at one point. Told him how I couldn’t believe that had all just been a day ago.
He didn’t waggle his finger at me. Tell me to come to the cops the next time something wholly unsuspected fell into my lap. He quietly collected his notes. Thanked me for my time.
Stand
ing he said, “You’re still a minor?”
“I’ll be 17 in July.”
“I see.”
He rubbed his chin.
“Any family in the area?”
“Other than my uncle? Nope.”
He nodded.
“When I get back to the office, I’m gonna have my secretary check into social services. Child – sorry for that, you’re obviously not a child, but a young woman, but they don’t call it Young Woman Protective Services. Child Protective Services, though. Might need to check in with them. Just to make sure we’re dotting I’s and crossing T’s, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m not making a powerful fast move on that. This is…We’ll move about fast as you want, all right, Lucy? You seem a fine capable young woman. You let me know. And that’s how we’ll play it.”
“Thank you.”
Out on the porch he paused before taking the steps down to the lawn. Pointed at the news vans.
“I’m gonna call one of my deputies from my unit. He will be here in 5 minutes,” he said. “Now on my way out, I’m going to tell them news folks same thing I told them on the way in. They gotta disperse. I know them. I know their type. They think an old man like me is all bark no bite. Wellll…They have until Deputy Llewellyn gets here. And then the arresting will begin.”
He smiled. He looked pleased at the prospect. Tipping his cap, he told me to have a good day and wobbled on down the steps towards his unit.
Once he started driving up towards East Jennings I walked off the porch. Looked skyward. Clouds had come. Not enough to make me think it’d rain anytime soon. I watched Sheriff Younger pull up alongside the news vans and get out. Point at the house. Used his hands a lot. I liked him. The kind of man Mom would call a hoot.
When I turned to start inside I saw Mojo.
She sat on our lawn, looking at me, her tongue hanging out.
I called her. She trotted over to me. I got down on my knees and hugged her. Working over her ears I asked her how she’d managed to get here. I wondered if she’d ever left.
For a moment I felt creeped out like Uncle Bob might show up, more zombie than even before, but if Sheriff Younger said he was under arrest, that seemed like the best bet as to his current circumstances.
Still, to calm my nerves, we toured the back of the house and the decrepit barn.
Convinced we were on our own I let Mojo inside the house. Filled a bowl with water and set it on the floor. She drank from it then looked up at me, wanting some kind of acknowledgment for how good a dog she was, drinking water like she’d done everyday for half a dozen years now.