Last to Know (27 page)

“Which means?” Rossetti leaned against the white brick wall of Tweedies Coffee Shop, throwing longing glances through its plate-glass window, where tired searchers were being treated to coffee or tea or hot chocolate, take your pick. Everyone was mucking in, showing support for one of their own. This was a small town, scarcely more than a village, perched on the edge of the lake where right now every house showed a light, and where a helicopter still hovered, its searchlight close to the steely water’s surface.

Harry said, “Which means Len might know where to hide someone.”

Rossetti unraveled himself from the wall. “You mean a body.”

Harry thought of Rose, distraught, waiting at her house, looked after by Roman and her girls while everybody else was looking for her young son. He said, “I still want to believe the kid could simply have gotten lost, fallen somewhere in the woods.” He glanced at the birch trees crowning the hill, silvery in the moonlight. He knew what he was saying was unlikely; this had all the earmarks of an abduction. He didn’t have to spell it out to Rossetti, who knew what he was thinking. “The question is why?” Harry said.

“Why is that always the question in abduction cases, and we know what the usual answer is.”

Harry didn’t need it spelled out either. He glanced round the lake with its necklace of lights, its small jetties where boats were returning and being moored. The search would restart at dawn. He wondered how Rose and Wally and the family were going to make it through the long night.

“I can’t give up now,” he said. “There’s something out there, some clue we missed. See those clouds?” The two men turned their eyes to where the sky seemed suddenly to have lowered itself over the treetops. “When that rain comes it will wash away any sign of what happened, we’ll be clueless and that kid might be dead. We can’t allow that.”

“No, sir.” Rossetti pulled himself upright.

He looked down at his brand-new now dust-covered white sneakers, bought especially for this job. They didn’t matter anymore. This was a life they were talking about. “So,” he said. “Let’s go find Len Doutzer.”

Half an hour later they were at the A-frame atop the hill. It was in darkness and both it and the shed were padlocked.

*   *   *

Back at her house, Rose did not get up from her bed to answer when the doorbell rang; one of her children would get it. She heard voices, wondered who it might be, but so many people had called round with small offerings; a fresh-baked pie, a jug of sweet iced tea, donuts from Tweedies, hot soup, her own specialty. Even now the pot was still sitting on the stove. Cold, though. As was she.

She thought she might never get warm again, huddled under the blue mohair throw, worried that she should not be here, that she should be out with the others, searching for her son.

Madison popped her head round the door and Rose sat up. “Yes.”

Her daughter caught what she was thinking and said, hastily, “Oh, no … it’s not … it’s well, it’s Bea Havnel. She wants to see you.”

Rose shook her head, puzzled. “Bea? Of all people!”

“She says she needs to talk to you. I don’t know why, after all we’ve been through with her, but somehow she’s just so … desperate maybe you should.”

“You think she knows something about Diz?”

Madison’s young face contorted with sudden tears. “Oh, Mom, I don’t know. Why don’t you just ask her.”

Rose went to her vanity and took a long look at her ravaged face; she brushed back her hair, straightened her old blue sweater—her comfort sweater, so old and soft it was like wearing nothing—collected the box of Kleenex, and went and stood by the window. She hadn’t really thought why she needed to stand, but somehow she didn’t want to be the one sitting down while Bea towered over her. “Bring her in,” she told Madison.

Seconds later, Bea Havnel was at the door. Skinny as the snake Diz had called her; no makeup; eyes swollen into slits from crying, yet still managing to look beautiful. Standing there, at the door to Rose’s room, Bea personified innocence.

“Rose,” Bea said, but Rose said nothing. “I’m not here to ask forgiveness,” Bea went on quickly. “I already did that and I know it’s not possible. I’ve asked people, asked therapists what I should do to make amends.” Bea took a hesitant step into the room. “They told me don’t ask for forgiveness, what you must ask is for events to be forgotten. To put it behind us, leave it in the past where it belongs. I’m not a good person, Rose, that’s obvious, and if you knew my true background you might understand why. But Rose, I do care. I care so much about you. You are everything I aspire to be, and fear I never will. You are hurting so badly and there is nothing I can do, except maybe … well, if only you would let me help search for Diz. I’m used to being alone here, I’m like Diz really, roaming the hills by myself. I know places where he might go. I can’t tell you I’ll find him, Rose, but please, I’m begging you, pleading with you, let me try.”

Desperate, Rose saw the girl’s pain, her need to belong, to be counted in. She saw her true desire to help.

“My dear,” she said, stepping toward Bea and wrapping her in her arms, the way she had when they first met. “Of course you must help us.”

53

It was dark. Diz had something tied over his eyes. Something rough, and he could smell whatever it was. It reminded him vaguely of a dog. Or could it be a horse? He thought idly about that, as though his mind was on a go-slow, almost as if it didn’t really matter. No, he decided, it was definitely dog.

He suddenly had the most awful need to pee. Urinate. That was the proper word. His father had told him he had to say that when he had to go when they were out together. Never sounded right to Diz, though. When you had to pee, that’s what you had to do and now he was almost beside himself with the need. Bursting, in fact. But he could not move. He could not walk. He could not even unzip because his hands were tied together. Not behind his back the way the cops did it. They stuck out in front of him, bandaged it felt, almost up to his elbows. It was very uncomfortable. As was his bladder. Oh God, what was he to do? He couldn’t just go. He moaned in an agony of need, wiggling his bandaged arms to get them nearer to the target area, without success.

He thought about where he might be. He was in a sitting position, his back resting against a wall. A smooth wall. There were no sticking-out bits, and it was cool. His knees were pulled up, there were ties around his thighs and also his ankles. Alert now, because of his urgent need, fear suddenly swept through his body like a gust of wind sucking the heartbeat out of him, pausing life’s machinery, sending unbidden tremors the length of his spine. The spine that was propped against a cool wall. In the darkness of he knew not where.

And then he heard footsteps. Almost silent, but in his blinded state his hearing seemed sharper. No shoes, he thought. Naked feet. They stopped next to him. His skin crawled with terror. His skin sweated. His eyes under the blindfold were tight shut. He was going to die.

For a long moment there was only silence, not even the sound of his own breathing. Then someone knelt beside him and unbound his feet. Hauled him up with a hand on the back of his collar. Diz felt the sweat spring up beneath the touch, slippery as a fish on the hook. He stood for a few moments, muscles burning as the blood flowed back, then he was hauled forward. By the neck.

Oh, Jesus, oh Jesus … there was a rope around his neck. Somebody was dragging him, jerking that rope cruelly until it bit into his skin, dragging him forward into a blackness that seemed tangible because his eyes no longer functioned. His only senses were hearing and touch. He hurtled blindly on with his executioner. He was a boy on his way to the scaffold. Only he wasn’t. He was pushed into another, smaller blackness, his hands unbound, his shorts unzipped, pushed again.

Diz sank thankfully onto the bucket. Urine gushed out of him loud as Niagara Falls. The relief was so intense he wondered why he wasn’t more concerned about being stabbed or bludgeoned to death, then realized if that was about to happen they would not have bothered about his need to pee. Urinate.

So. What next. Finished, he was hauled to his feet. Zipped. Dragged again. Back into the cell from which he had hoped he was to be freed.

He leaned his spine against the wall. He thought about blind people, about how sad it was not to see, not to know about color, about the way sunshine looked as well as felt, about the river’s silvery-brown sparkle as well as its rushing and gurgling; about enjoying the green of the leaves on his fig tree along the branch from where he spied. The blind could not spy. Diz wanted to cry.

In fact, now he was crying. He stopped though, when he felt something against his leg. He thought about rats. He held his breath. But this was no rat; it was not furry, it made no sound, it simply oozed along his bare calf, slowly, rhythmically. It couldn’t be a snake, snakes lived above the earth, hiding in leaves and rustling grasses, creatures of light and shade. He was underground. This could only be a worm.

Nerves throbbing, he monitored its progress up his calf. Every inch of his being longed to sweep it off him. He could not. He had to accept it. He thought about his mother, how she might have laughed at him wanting to sweep a worm off his leg. Worms were good for the environment, she had told him that. But he was not a part of the environment, he was just a scared kid who wanted to get out of here and live. Be alive again. With no worms creeping up his leg.

Think of a story, his mother would have told him. Amuse yourself. Okay, so the worm was called Petronella. He would write, in his mind of course, the story of Petronella the worm, who was sharing the warmth of his leg, to keep away the overpowering chill of always being a worm. He began to cry again. Small tears. No sound. The very air around him was silent.

Oh God, he was being left here, abandoned, to die alone. No one would ever find him. Him and Petronella, who might be only the first of the worms coming to take advantage of his bare leg. Oh God, oh God, he so wanted to scream, the terror wanted to yell out of his throat, to proclaim to someone, anyone, out there, that he was here. Alone.

The darkness seemed so thick he could touch it, taste it even, like earth on his tongue. How long had he been in here? He had no way of knowing, no sense of time … he had no way of measuring it. Time had morphed into more of a cloudy texture, a feeling not a look, because after all he could see nothing. Then how did he know it was a cloudy darkness?

He must try to remember everything so he could tell them when they came to get him. Rescue him. Roman, his big brother, would be there. And of course, his mother would be first. And his dad. Logically, though, it would be the detective. Harry Jordan. His idol. Wait, though, now he remembered, Jordan had gone to Paris.

Diz knew for sure then, he was a dead kid.

But who would want to kill him? He meant nothing, except to his family and friends. By “nothing” Diz meant he didn’t count enough in this world for anyone to need to kill him.

He sat, thinking about it, remembering the touch on his arm, the hand at his neck, the tug of the rope.

Just as with Petronella the worm, every fiber of his being remembered; every raised hair, every bead of his sweat, every sense in his thin young body had listened, heard, reacted. Suddenly he knew it was a female. The hairs on his arms bristled like a hedgehog.

“I know who you are,” he yelled into the darkness, suddenly finding his voice. “I know it’s you, Bea.”

54

The sharp little fucker had just signed his own death warrant, calling my name, recognizing me the way an animal would sense a predator. Signed, sealed, and delivered, he was mine. I had meant to be the one that “found” him, rescued him, gave him back to Rose, then I’d become the darling of the Osborne family, move into their lives and take over. I would be the “Rose.” I would become “the mother.” Rose would be my devoted slave and I would own her entire world.

Sounds crazy now, huh? Trust me, it would have worked, such is the human psychology, the makeup of “decent” people. By “finding” the lost boy, Diz, I would have become a celebrity, famous, a heroine. Thereafter I could do no wrong. Now, it would have to be different, or I would be the one to die.

I was always an outsider. All my life, I never counted. I never even had a friend. What about school, you are no doubt asking? Well, what about it? Surely I must have made friends there? Hah. My mother would never have allowed me to ask anyone back to our apartment in one of the lower-end, riskier areas of Miami, where, with my blond hair and pale skin, I stood out, a freak among the golden Cubans with their big families, whole generations of them living so happily together it never ceased to amaze me. I hated my white skin that never turned sweet-girl gold like theirs. I hated their mothers who always met them at school and covered their happy faces with warm kisses. I hated the girls because I was not like them and they felt it and were afraid of me. I was, you might say, an unknown quantity, though I knew from an early age perfectly well of what I was capable.

This was my first mother we’re talking about, the real one, I guess.

The only activities she allowed outside the house were to go to school, because she had no choice; and to swim in the local public pool, for which I allowed her no choice. I simply went. And I swam my bitter heart out every morning at six when the pool opened, and later, after school, until it closed.

My mother was always a drug addict. At first she’d dealt, small-time, in pills, faking multiple prescriptions, and also cocaine, small-time too, until she got too confident, too big for her boots you might say, and usually ended up in jail.

In effect, I had no mother. I certainly had no father, at least not then. I had no family. I looked after myself. I stole, a few dollars at a time, to buy packets of ham or baloney and white bread wrapped in plastic that lasted forever without going moldy, as well as ice cream and Cokes. My mother never displayed any curiosity about what I might be eating, or whether in fact I had eaten. It did not take long for me to realize she did not care whether I lived or died. In fact she told me frequently she would be better off without me. I did not doubt that she was right. And that’s when I decided to get me a new mother.