Chapter Eight
Li’l Ron cracked open the door to his father’s room. The man lay buried beneath the covers, out cold. At least he’d made it inside. Ron closed the door, careful not to disturb him, though after last night he was sure his father could challenge the dead for heaviest sleeper.
Nan was already gone, probably hitting up Packard’s Flea Market; it was her Saturday morning ritual, though now it was almost noon.
He decided to ride his bike into town. The library might have some old newspapers. Maybe there was something on Sweet Kate’s disappearance. During her retelling of the story, she failed to mention the boy’s name. He could go ask her, but decided to leave her be. If she’d wanted to tell him, she would have. Besides, he could use some time alone.
He grabbed a package of Pop-Tarts and a Pepsi—breakfast of Olympians—and headed out the door.
Flying down Aikman Street, heading away from Abram’s Bridge and toward Main Street, the coolness of midday was refreshing. He leaned with the curve at the top of the hill and, letting go of the handlebars, spread his wings, soaring into town.
He passed by a few antique shops, Del’s Bar, a True Value hardware store, Greg’s Italians, Jenner’s Grocery and a bunch of other little shops before reaching the library at the end of the world.
The public library was an old, two-story brick building off the very end of Main Street and at the start of Hempel Road. Coasting his bike to the rusting and chipped forest-green bike rack, he rolled his front tire in the slot, two spaces over from the expensive-looking mountain bike on the end.
The other bike belonged to Heath Barnes—rich kid, school genius and all-around asshole.
Great,
he thought.
Hope he minds his own friggin’ business and leaves me the hell alone.
Li’l Ron climbed the stone steps and pulled on the large red door. The smell of old books, and pound upon pound of dust and buried literature, made itself at home within his nose hairs. He sneezed, officially announcing his arrival to both the white-bearded librarian and, much to his chagrin, Heath Barnes.
Dammit.
A second sneeze followed (he was able to catch this one in the sleeve of his sweatshirt). He made his way to the desk and the large man behind it.
“Bless you,” said the older gentleman behind the desk. The placard before him read
Mr. Schultz
. “What can I help you with, son?”
“Ah, I’m not sure.”
“Okay, I’m going to need a little more to go on,” he said, sitting back and folding his hands over his big belly. He thought the guy kind of looked like Colonel Sanders.
“I’m doing some research on the town.”
“Okay, that’s good, a little more,” Colonel Sanders said.
“It’s on…” Li’l Ron dropped his eyes to the placard, “…on a girl who went missing.”
This caught Mr. Fried Chicken’s attention. He sat up, his chair moaning at the shift in weight, and pushed his glasses up on his nose.
“A missing girl, you say? Now, son, what is this for? A school paper?”
“Yes,” Li’l Ron lied. A lie was always so much easier to pull off when they filled in the blanks for you.
“Hmmm. You look familiar, son; haven’t seen you in here before, have I?”
“Yeah, me and my dad just moved back into town.”
“Your dad?” Mr. Schultz seemed to ponder this. “That wouldn’t happen to be Gregory Sawyer, now would it?”
“Yeah, how’d ya know?”
“Thought I saw him heading into Del’s a few weeks back. Wasn’t sure though, hadn’t seen him in ages. But looking at you, I can see him, and your mother. How is Jennifer these days?”
“She left us,” Li’l Ron said. The last word hung in the air between them, mixing with the dust and the silence.
After a moment, Mr. Schultz stood up, the chair sighing in relief.
“Awful sorry to hear that. Your father used to be good friends with my boy, ah…”
“Oh, Ron, but you can call me Li’l Ron. Everyone else does.”
“Named after your grandpappy, huh? I used to bowl with Ronny back in our younger years, our livin’ years, I guess you could say.”
Li’l Ron watched him come around the desk. His white pants and white button-up shirt bowing around his midsection made him want to laugh. The all-white getup only enhanced the Colonel comparison.
“Now, we’ve had two big missing persons happen here over the last thirty years. Do you know what year yours is?” he asked.
Mine,
Ron thought. He guessed he was sort of taking ownership of this one.
He didn’t know the year of the incident. He’d never thought to ask. Hell, he didn’t even know Sweet Kate’s full name.
“No, sir. I just have a first name.”
“That’ll do just fine. Is it Mary Mur—”
“Katharine. Her name’s Katharine.”
“Ah…yes. Katharine Bell. Sweetest little thing. She didn’t seem to have many friends, which is why a lot of people thought she just ran away.”
“No one thought she was murdered?”
Mr. Schultz stopped midstep—Li’l Ron almost walked into the white wall of his backside, thoughts of crashing into snow piles back home in Bethel Park crossing his mind.
Mr. Schultz turned, brows furrowed, head tilted, and looked over his lenses. “Murdered? Goodness no. Why in heavens would someone think such a thing?”
“I don’t know, I was just thinking—”
“Too many monster movies and zombie books—you kids these days are more warped than the old Kenny Rogers LP I have on my turntable,” he said, turning around and moving on.
“Her mother passed away a couple years ago…cancer, I believe.”
Li’l Ron followed. He saw Heath Barnes watching them as they disappeared down an aisle of boxes.
“Now, I think Katharine went missing in 2000…yes. I believe she disappeared in 2000, shortly after that whole Y2K mumbo jumbo. And it’s…right…” he squinted, holding the corners of his glasses, “…here,” he said.
Pulling down the box, Mr. Schultz nodded for Li’l Ron to head back the way they’d come.
They reappeared two tables from Heath, Mr. Schultz dropping the box on top of the table with a loud
thud
. More dust danced up into the ray of sunlight bursting through the large window on the other side of the genius with the curly, blond locks.
Heath couldn’t stop looking up from his book every other second.
“This is our collection of the
Coral County Sentinel
. Circa 2000, January to April. You’ll find what you’re looking for in mid-to-late April, if memory serves me, which, even at my age, I think it still does.”
Li’l Ron watched him tap the table with one of his fat, sausage-like fingers before waddling back toward the desk.
“I’ll be right over here if you should need anything else.”
“Okay, thanks, Mr. Schultz.”
He pulled off the box cover layered with a sheet of inch-thick dust. The
Coral County Sentinel
wasn’t very big. He pulled out the entire month behind the little green label reading “April”, sitting it on the tabletop.
He found what he was looking for on Sunday, April 23.
MISSING: 14-Year-Old Marsden Resident Katharine Bell
Parents say Katharine left their home on Jefferson Hill Road Friday afternoon after school and never returned. Local police conducted a search for the missing girl Saturday from sunup to sundown. The search turned up empty. A larger search party is scheduled for today, featuring members of the community and members of the four Coral County Sheriff’s Departments.
Two thousand,
Li’l Ron thought. His dad must have heard about this. Maybe he and Big Ron even helped look for her.
There was a follow-up in the Monday edition, stating much of the same.
He carried the papers over to the desk.
“Mr. Schultz, can I get you to photocopy these for me?”
“Sure, son. I think there may have been another follow-up in one of the July editions from that year, as well. Would you like that too?”
There was, and he did.
The third article followed up, saying that there was no evidence of foul play, and no body was ever recovered. To the town, she was a runaway.
No wonder she’s still here. Nobody knows she was killed. Ron remembered reading about ghosts who were trapped on earth. Some supposedly thought they were still alive; some were victims of improper burials. The one standing out in his mind at the moment was about ghosts who were trapped until their murder was solved or the culprit was brought to justice.
A truck pulled over across the road; Li’l Ron ceased his ascent of Aikman Street. He’d seen the look before. His father’s sad eyes begged for forgiveness.
Chapter Nine
Greg Sawyer watched his son staring back at him.
“Need a lift?” he said, sitting on the shoulder.
“Hey, Dad, sure.”
The boy looked okay. Greg was happy to see his drunken night hadn’t spoiled him in the eyes of his kid. Li’l Ron was resilient. After all the bullshit he’d been put through in the last couple months, it was a wonder he hadn’t flipped out. The bloodline was spoiled with that possibility.
He watched his son throw the Huffy in the bed of the truck, walk around the back and get in the passenger door.
Greg put the truck in Drive and the old pickup lurched forward.
“Sorry about last night,” he said. “I got no excuses. I hope I wasn’t too much of an asshole.”
Li’l Ron laughed, bringing a smile to Greg’s lips.
“Nah, Dad, you were a bit of a mess, but you weren’t mean to me.”
He saw the smile drop from the boy’s face.
Mom,
Greg thought.
The old bat had pestered him about his drinking again. They’d been watching
Dr. Phil
when she made some comment about how he should go on the show, and that Dr. Phil would set him straight with some hard talk.
It escalated so fast. They were yelling in each other’s faces when she told him Jennifer was better off. That’s when he slugged her. Punched her right in the mouth. His stomach sank at the thought.
Some man.
She came right back with one of those goddamn knitting needles, catching right next to his eye. It had bled like a bitch.
“I hope you don’t…” Greg started, but then faltered.
“Did you hit Nan?” The boy asked. Blunt, straightforward.
“Li’l Ron, I… Yes. It wasn’t…I didn’t…”
“Did you ever hit Mom?”
“No…no, I never…” But he could see the boy didn’t believe him. Li’l Ron saw right through him.
“It’s not going to happen again, okay? I swear,” he said.
Li’l Ron wouldn’t look at him.
Greg pulled the truck in front of Jenner’s Grocery, killing the engine.
“Li’l Ron…”
The boy got out, stomped around the truck, pulling his bike out of the bed.
“Li’l Ron, wait,” he said, stepping out into the lot.
But the boy wouldn’t listen, and he didn’t blame him. What he had done last night was a shit move. One in a long line of shitty moves. But he was trying, dammit.
“Li’l Ron,” he called. The boy was gone, heading back up the hill.
“Unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable,” Li’l Ron ranted aloud as he huffed his way back up the hill.
“You think you know somebody…” Tears fell, pouring from his eyes. Had he been wrong? Had he chosen the wrong side to stand on between his parents? He couldn’t recall ever seeing his dad act violently toward his mom, ever. But maybe he had on rose-colored glasses. Maybe he had blocked things out. He tried to reach back, but came up empty.
His head was a jigsaw puzzle of blurred pieces. He needed music, needed something else to block out the confusing voices.
Nan’s house came into sight, and then passed by. Her car was in the drive, his Walkman upstairs, but he needed to talk to Sweet Kate. He needed to see her.
Lucille Sawyer had passed the puffy lip off at brunch with her knitting group as an old woman’s trip over her grandkid’s video-game controller. The look that crossed her friend June’s eyes was one of disbelief and pity. Dammit, she hated that look. She would not become that woman again.
June Betts had been with her through all of it: Through Greg’s teen pregnancy with Jennifer, through Big Ron’s sporadic verbal beatdowns. June had been the one to take her to the hospital three towns away after Big Ron’s use of the butt of his rifle. She thought of the gun, sitting dormant in the basement, and absently reached for the scars, catching herself and cursing at the resonance of her husband’s ugliest moment.
Still, June looked at her this morning with the same look from all those years ago. Lucille promised herself she would not put up with another episode from her boy. If worst came to worst, she would throw his boozing ass to the street and keep Li’l Ron with her.
She stared out the window, watching the breeze playing with the dried-up, dying blades of grass in her front yard. The sun that had burned so brilliantly this morning gave way to the dull fade of autumn cold. Grey was the color of the day; fall was no longer just relative to the season.
Li’l Ron went streaming past the house on his bicycle.
Chapter Ten
Orson Schultz watched Heath Barnes head out the door.
Damn boy left his books piled on the table again. Lucky I don’t give him hell.
Mr. Schultz locked the big red door to the library and gathered up the articles the Sawyer kid had him copy.
Should have burned these long ago,
he thought.
He gathered up the April folder of
Coral County Sentinel
s from the year 2000, moving to the wooden door at the back of the building.
The basement, stuffed to capacity with cobwebs, old magazines, books with torn covers and missing pages, and a plethora of retired library furniture, featured one thing in particular—the furnace.
The furnace stood in the edge of the basement and was as tall as his six-two frame. The grey grate, chest high on the old machine, featured a lever with which to open the flaked and brittle-looking door.
Mr. Schultz grabbed the warm handle and opened the door to the hungry flames within. Scrunching the articles featuring the missing girl, Katharine Bell, he tossed them in one by one, feeding the flame. As he watched the black-and-white pages catch fire, and the orange blaze curl and devour the old news, he wondered why the little Sawyer kid was digging around with long-forgotten town gossip. Had his father said something about the missing girl? He couldn’t see why he would. Better send Stefan to find out for sure.
He shoved the rest of the papers in, and then went upstairs to call his son.