Derek led the way up and out of the rocks, lumbering along so fearfully that, once they were past the trees and in the open grass, Lucas pulled ahead of him quickly and impatiently, plainly not wanting to give the impression that he was hiding behind his large but timid friend. Then, too, it seemed to me that he was also taking a protective stance, in much the way Marcianna had for me: almost as if there was some weakness in the larger boy of which the smaller wanted to make certain I did not try to take advantage. I knew, of course, what was causing the apprehension in their faces; indeed, I knew only too well what kind of rumors about Marcianna and me circulated in the gossip-ridden town of Surrender: the freak and his wild beast from across the seas…Whether on a dare or out of simple boyish curiosity, these two were now seeing what they had almost certainly come to see; it was up to me to play my part, next.
Little did I realize how much more complicated things were about to get…
{ii.}
“Surely you’ve seen a prosthetic leg before,” I called to the two interlopers, reeling in Marcianna’s leash, stroking her back, then feeding her a few more of the dog treats in an attempt to calm her down.
Both boys looked puzzled, but Lucas appeared less utterly overwhelmed by the situation. “What the fu-uh-uh—” he started, apparently not wanting to pepper our first conversation with the kind of language I’d already heard him use liberally. “Maybe,” he said; and there was an air of game defiance in the way he stood up to me that I found immediately appealing. “But what’s the deal with the cheetah?”
“What?” I asked. “You mean my rare African hunting dog?”
Derek became very uneasy. “Listen, mister, we ain’t lookin’ for trouble. We was just fishing in the brook, and kinda wandered up too far—so if you say it’s a dog, then—”
He stopped when he caught sight of his shorter friend angrily scowling back at him. But there was an ingenuousness about Derek’s manner and voice that was as poignant, in its way, as Lucas’ quick, spirited wit was appealing, for it indicated not only a gentleness of manner, but a deliberateness of thinking that went very much beyond the usual plodding mind. He was obviously, as people in Burgoyne County liked to put it, “slow,” although there were no physical signs that would have offered an immediate explanation for it.
“You wanna let me handle this? Derek?” Lucas spoke firmly, but using what must have been, for him, great restraint. “Thank you.” He turned to me once more. “Don’t pay him any mind, mister. Once he starts talking he’ll take your ear clean off—”
“Me?” Derek could not help but say. “You’re the one who’s always runnin’ your—”
“I’m handling it, Derek!” Lucas called without turning, his eyes rolling toward the heavens in frustration. With his friend silenced once more, he continued: “Anyway—”
But their loud exchange had been enough to renew Marcianna’s deepest alarm: she yanked a length of leash loose from its spool as she jumped forward a few feet, raising her hackles again and issuing another of her hissing, barking sounds.
Both of the boys paled. “Whoa!” Lucas noised, although quietly: he’d already learned to mute his outbursts, so that they did not further provoke Marcianna. “Mister, we swear, we ain’t gonna tell nobody about the cheetah—”
Eyeing them once again, and deciding they meant what they said, I nodded and pronounced, “All right, then. Let’s say it is a cheetah. Just for argument’s sake.” I offered no elaboration, although they seemed to want such.
“Pretty—pretty weird to find a cheetah in Death’s Head Hollow,” Lucas went on; and I again had to admire the way he blended nervy curiosity into a harmless comment. “That is…” He quickly turned to his left and right, glimpsing what he could of the surrounding grounds and trees. “If you can really call anything ‘weird,’ up here…”
I rewound the leash, and Marcianna came back to my side. “So you’ve heard stories about ‘up here,’ have you?”
Derek answered, again without thinking: “Well, sure, who ain’t heard stories about up here, people tell ’em all the—” Just the sight of Lucas’ free hand balling into a fist was enough to make him cut his statement short: “All the time,” he finished quickly.
“Do they,” I said, with as little trace of interest or sympathy as I could display.
“Oh, not insulting or anything,” Lucas rushed to say, with transparent insincerity. “It’s just that—you know, people talk.”
“Indeed they do,” I agreed. “Now—would you mind telling me why I shouldn’t have the sheriff’s deputy take you down to your parents? You’re trespassing, after all.”
“But we didn’t know we was!” Derek blurted out.
Lucas didn’t snap at his friend again, but seemed on the verge of laughing, for some reason. “And if the deputy can find any of our parents, he’ll be doing pretty good,” he said.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I studied them both carefully, trying my best to look, for just an instant, like the monster they had expected me to be. “Remember, if I should allow my sister, here, to indulge herself by tearing out your throats, I could bury you deep in the hollow, in a spot where no one would ever find you.”
Derek’s free hand went quickly to his neck, and he looked momentarily terrified. “Aw, shit,” he blurted out, as if he might burst into tears.
“You don’t want to do that!” Lucas said, quickly, urgently, but still quietly. “I didn’t mean any disrespect—it’s just that we don’t live with our parents. Haven’t for a while—and we got no idea where they are.”
“Indeed?” I replied; and for an instant, I thought of the two children whose murders had preceded Shelby Capamagio’s, one of whom, like Shelby, had been abandoned by his family months before his death. “And who do you live with, then?”
“Well, technically, my sister’s our guardian,” Lucas explained, his mind and mouth still moving with commendable speed. “But that’s just technically.”
“ ‘Technically’?” I repeated. “You’re obviously not brothers.”
“No, we ain’t,” the two said as one, in a manner that might have suggested that they were in fact related, had they not been stamped with such different physical attributes. “No more’n that cheetah, there’s, your actual sister,” Lucas continued, in that same manner of his: deftly slipping defiance into a plain statement of fact. “But my sister, she’s our guardian—both of us. See—well, actually, it’s kind of a long story.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I said. “Nor do I doubt that it’s a terribly interesting one. But you see, I’m fairly busy.” I pulled my watch from my vest and popped it open, the archaic nature of the action seeming to further suggest to my two guests that I had indeed walked out of some old horror movie. “So maybe I should just call the deputy, eh? Being as I don’t seem to be able to get a straight answer to any of my questions—” But then a thought—an idea, I should say—shot through me, causing a moment of professional encouragement; and I shifted the direction of my inquiries with a speed to match it: “Shouldn’t you both be in school?” I asked; for most of the public schools in the area operated year-round, in an effort to meet the needs of their burgeoning student bodies. “I’m taking a wild guess, of course, but I assume you’re both in some kind of summer session—we could add truancy to trespassing, I happen to know that it would make the deputy come all the quicker.”
Lucas’ face screwed up in discomfort; but he wasn’t finished with his attempt to talk his own and Derek’s way out of their predicament: “Now, see, you just don’t have to go there, there’s a simple explanation for that, too.”
“Is there?” I questioned.
“Yeah, is there?” Derek echoed, again without thinking.
Lucas’ face winced in irritation once more. “Yes. There is. Derek.” He directed his words my way again. “See, we got out early today, and figured we’d get some fishing in before supper. That’s all. And then, we just lost track of how far we come up the brook. And that rea
lly is the whole story.”
“Somehow I doubt that.” My earlier thought kept me pressing on. “And what school is it that released you early to go trespassing on other people’s property? Especially up a hollow you’ve heard so many apparently unpleasant stories about.”
“Morgan Central,” Lucas answered. “The one that’s up 34, before you hit Route 7. We’re in the tenth grade—you can check.”
But his answer was the one I had been looking for, and I let my tone grow suddenly less stern. “Why in God’s name would I want to take the time to check?” I said. “Morgan Central, eh? Well—for reasons that I cannot immediately disclose, that may be useful to me.”
“Useful?” Lucas said, rightly suspecting that an avenue of escape from their predicament was opening up.
“Yes,” I replied. “Did either of you happen to know a boy who went to your school, but was found dead in an abandoned house this past spring? He was about your age.”
Both of them nodded quickly, as Lucas answered, “Sure—Kyle Howard. He was in our class.”
“Aw, shit,” Derek moaned, studying first Marcianna and then me with even deeper dread. “That wasn’t you and her, was it? You two didn’t kill Kyle?”
“Derek,” Lucas said; but his tone was so even, now, that it approached sympathy: for he seemed to know that this discussion might cause his larger, very sensitive, but clearly confused friend to lose control of his emotions. “Nobody knows what happened to Kyle, remember? They found him over past town, in that old cabin, used to belong to Mr. McNair. Kyle used it all the time during hunting season, you know that.”
Derek faced downward, as if the ground itself might offer him assistance, then at last, his face filled with comprehension. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “But people say it was suspicious.”
“And you’re not supposed to listen to people—I told you, they’re full of shit! They said that”—Lucas pointed at Marcianna—“was a dog, for fuck’s sake!”
“Kyle had a good life until his parents left him,” Derek said, his voice and mind drifting into some kind of escape mode. “It’s their fault…”
“Yeah, it is,” Lucas added calmly; and the next part of his explanation was evidently for my benefit: “Assholes just disappeared—nobody could find ’em, not the law, not nobody. Kid loved school, too, but he had to quit—didn’t have any money, couldn’t buy supplies nor even new clothes. The bank took the house, so he couldn’t stay there—no power, heat, nothing. Had to quit school and make do for himself.”
“But he was getting along okay,” Derek said, still staring at the ground, his voice and eyes lost in a powerful fantasy, one that was, apparently, important to him.
“You think he was getting along okay, Derek,” the shorter boy said, still without rancor. “But for all you know, he was living in a hollow tree, eating squirrels and nuts.”
“And reading,” Derek said, smiling. “Always had his books with him, I know that…”
The moment sent another quiver of inspiration down my somewhat misshapen spine. Everything the two boys were saying was true, right down to the books: Kyle Howard’s body had, indeed, been found next to a satchel full of paperbacks and hardcovers. My sense of encouragement at this wholly random encounter was now easy to explain: the two trespassers before me had known the unfortunate Kyle Howard, perhaps well, and they might therefore represent the first real break in Mike’s and my analysis of the three murders. But I wanted to take the exchange one step further, before I launched the plan that was forming in my head:
“Listen, you two,” I said. “Forget about the deputy, and all that crap. Just answer me this: did either of you know Shelby Capamagio? The girl who was found dead just a couple of days ago? She didn’t go to your school—”
“Didn’t matter,” Lucas answered, suddenly and rather deviously smiling. “What school she went to couldn’ta mattered less—right, Derek?”
Derek finally came out of his apparent waking dream; and, realizing just where he was and what had been said, he chuckled a bit. “Yeah,” he said, his voice at once innocent and slightly conspiratorial. “Didn’t matter at all. Everybody knew Shelby…”
“Did they, Derek?” I said, even more encouraged. “Why did they know her?”
Derek laughed guiltily again and mumbled, “Ah—you know…”
“Well, it ain’t like everybody knew her, exactly,” Lucas said, stepping in to clarify the two boys’ reactions to Shelby’s name. “But they sure as shit knew about her. Rumors, most of it; almost as many rumors as about—” He caught himself, appearing genuinely contrite for the first time. “Well, almost as many as about you—and about what goes on up here.”
I was too committed to the idea I’d formed, however, to waste time taking offense. “Okay. Then listen—” Again pulling the anxious Marcianna close to me, I took a few steps toward the boys, and was pleased to see how they held their ground. “Suppose, in return for my not calling the deputy or your sister—what’s her name, by the way?”
“My sister?” Lucas said, a bit confused. “Her name’s Ambyr. With a y.”
“Ambyr?” I repeated; and my next shot, unkind—even nasty—as it was, would be my last test to see what they were made of, and what their value to our investigation might be: “Ambyr,” I said again, glancing knowingly at Lucas. “With a y. And how old is she?”
“She’s twenty, why?”
“Well, it’s just that—she makes enough money to support you two, her name’s Ambyr, with a y, she’s only twenty…She doesn’t happen to work in the adult entertainment industry, does she?”
The reactions I got were about what I’d hoped for: Derek stepped up beside his friend, with an indignant look on his face and his hands forming fists. Lucas, meanwhile, shot me a bitter glance and spat out: “Hey, fuck you, you one-legged mutant! Don’t be talking smack about my sister! She can’t help how her name’s spelled!”
“Yeah, mister,” Derek said in support. “That’s a shitty thought, and a shittier thing to say—Ambyr’s blind, for God’s sake!”
This was an utterly unexpected factor. “She’s—blind?” I murmured, completely nonplussed and genuinely sorry for my supposedly utilitarian crack. “But—I mean to say, your blind sister is your guardian? Both of you?”
“That’s right,” Lucas answered. “You got a problem with it?”
I slowly took it all in: but even in the midst of my shock, I was encouraged by the fact that, in addition to having character, these boys must have become quite used to being on their own, much of the time: any absences would likely not arouse suspicion. “I guess it’s legal,” I went on. “But blind? It must have been hard to convince the state.”
“There’s ways around that,” Lucas said. “And trust me, our parents found all of ’em. They wrote her application, and made her think she was signing something else—look, like I told you, it’s a long story, and none of it’s your business. We’re trespassing on your property, fine, call the deputy. But get off the subject of my sister.” And then he looked at Marcianna, while pointing at me bravely. “Your friend can be a fuckin’ jerk, you know that, cheetah?”
Once again, I had to stifle a laugh; but I also had to put things right: “Listen, that crack about your sister, I apologize. Truly. It was intended to get a reaction, and it did.”
“Fuck yeah it did,” Lucas said.
“Yeah,” Derek repeated. “Fuck yeah it—”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “But pay attention—I’m going to tell you something important and confidential, because I get the feeling I can trust you. Am I kidding myself?”
The two boys exchanged suddenly bewildered looks. “Well,” Lucas said, “I—I guess you can. As long as you’re apologizing. And if you’re really not gonna call the cops on us.”
“I’m really not—although it wouldn’t be hard. You see, I work with the cops in this county, from time to time.”
“You?” Lucas puzzled with it. “So, what, you, like, cut dead criminals’ brains up?
”
“What? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Word in town is,” the boy went on, “you’re some kind of brain doctor, and that’s what you do—cut up dead people’s brains. And you got run out of New York City”—Lucas used the same disdainful enunciation of the name that Steve Spinetti and so many others employed—“because you cut some live person’s head open. By mistake—or…”
I finally had to laugh, at that; and the laughter made me lean more heavily on my cane. “My God…Gentlemen, that would be murder; manslaughter, at the very least. And you go to a whole different part of ‘upstate New York’ if you commit it. I certainly wouldn’t be standing in front of you two right now, if that story were true.”
I could see already that they liked being called “gentlemen,” and that it was defusing things: the pair looked to each other again, Derek shrugging in confusion, and Lucas finally nodding once. “Yeah—I guess so,” he said. “Just one more piece of bullshit floating around Surrender. Jee-sus, those people need to get themselves some lives.”
“A statement of rare insight,” I agreed. Marcianna was beginning to bump her head and shoulders hard and then harder up against my right (or real) leg, in an expression of her growing restlessness: since these boys evidently presented no threat, she wanted to get back to the business of pretending to go after my little dog decoy and getting her praise and dog treats in return. Looking down at her, I tugged on her leash, trying to keep her from knocking me over. “I am busy, young lady, and you need to wait. Here.” I put a couple of the treats into my hand and let her swiftly take them into her mouth. “And that’s the last of them, so now you really have to wait. All right, then—” Looking up at the pair before me again, I tried to become all business; but Lucas cut me off in the attempt.
“Say, how come you have a cheetah, anyway?” he said. “Ain’t that illegal?”