Bad Things (19 page)

a fl owing hand, but did not take it.

“Who the hell
are
you?”

The man stood and walked away—placing the envelope on the

table as he left. He strode past the empty front desk (where a young

mother stood waiting to check out an armful of books) and through

the door to the street, where he turned left and disappeared.

124 Michael Marshall

“Um, miss?” said the mother, when she caught sight of Carol.

Carol hesitated, then grabbed the envelope from the table and hur-

ried over to process the woman’s books.

It was only when the young mother had left that Carol opened the

envelope. Inside was a sheet of glossy paper, about six inches by four.

When Carol turned it over she realized it was a photograph.

It had been taken from the opposite side of the street from the

Renton kindergarten, and showed Tyler going into the building.

She arrived at the school twenty minutes later. She’d already called

Ms. Hackett, immediately, and been told that her son was fi ne—but

when she got to the kindergarten to see her son doggedly coloring

by himself in the corner, for a moment she thought she was suffering

an optical illusion, so convinced had she become that her son would

have disappeared.

Ms. Hackett appeared in front of her. “Is everything okay?”

Carol hadn’t explained why she’d called, or why she was here now,

red in the face from running.

“Fine,” she said. “Just fi ne.”

“So . . . why did you want to check if Tyler was here? When you

called?”

Ms. Hackett was fourteen, or so it seemed to Carol, and spoke

with the surety of someone for whom the world could be contained

between the neat, parallel lines of an exercise book. Someone against

whom the universe had not yet turned, biting like a pet turned rabid

dog, shredding to blood and bone.

“My ex-husband’s coming to visit,” Carol lied. “It’s unexpected.

I just wanted to check that Rona hadn’t already picked him up—you

know Rona, right?”

Ms. Hackett nodded. Of course she did. Photos of everyone man-

dated to collect a child—parent and
especially
nonparent—were arrayed in neat lines on the wall in the staff room. As Carol should know.

B A D T H I N G S 125

Carol bulled on regardless. “She’s taking him to a playdate this

afternoon, and I’m not sure what the address is.”

Way
too much information, she knew. Ms. Hackett’s eyes drifted

to the wall clock, which clearly indicated it was some while yet un-

til the time for Tyler’s group to be released back into the wild. The

teacher would also be thinking, Carol knew, that any competent

mother would know
exactly
where her child was going on a playdate,

would have the GPS coordinates logged with the local police.

“I’m glad you’re here, in fact,” the teacher said, turning away and

opening a drawer. “I did want to ask you about something.”

Carol didn’t want to be asked about anything. She wanted to

grab Tyler in her arms and leave. But that wouldn’t look right. “Fire

away.”

The teacher handed Carol a small stack of childish works of art.

“Is this something you’ve taught him?”

Carol leafed quickly through six or seven drawings, at a loss.

What was the teenager in front of her asking? Had Carol taught her

son to scrawl randomly over pieces of paper in a variety of colors?

Surely that was a standard feature of the underfi ves?

She looked more carefully at the last of the sheets and couldn’t

see much except what could possibly be a badly drawn stick fi gure of

a dog, slashed across with red lines.

“I don’t . . . I don’t quite get what you mean.”

“Well, look,” the teacher said earnestly, and started turning some

of the sheets of paper around. “I’m talking about the way that pattern

keeps cropping up on other—”

“I actually don’t have time for this right now,” Carol said, waving

at Tyler—who immediately leaped up and came running over. She

handed the sheets back to the teacher. “Perhaps tomorrow?”

“Sure. Though . . . Tyler’s not with us on Fridays, is he? I can

check, but . . .”

“Of course not. Silly me. Monday, then.”

Carol smiled glacially at the woman, daring her to come out into

126 Michael Marshall

the open and say what she was obviously thinking. That Carol was

unfi t. A crazy person.

The teacher didn’t say anything. Carol took Tyler’s hand and led

him out of the classroom.

“I’m fine, honey,” Carol said. It wasn’t the first time Tyler had asked,

but it was the last time he was going to get a civil answer. “I just

thought it might be fun for us to play at home. Won’t that be fun?”

She slowed as they crossed the playground, scanning her eyes

over the other side of the street. The man from the library wasn’t

there, but she didn’t know for sure that it was him who’d taken the

photograph. When they reached the sidewalk she stopped completely,

carefully looking all around. Everybody looked normal. Except for

her, of course.

She glanced back and saw that Ms. Hackett was standing in the

window of the classroom, arms folded. Carol stood her ground, and

stared right back.

“Don’t you look at me like that,” she said, very quietly.

Ms. Hackett watched a moment longer, then turned away and dis-

appeared into the gloom beyond the clouds refl ected in the school’s

windows.

They played a game all the way home, counting their footsteps in sets

of eight. As soon as she entered the sitting room Carol noticed a light

fl ashing on the answering machine. She erased the message without

listening. When nobody called, nobody listened—and when people

pushed their way into your life and handed over threatening photos,

nobody listened to that, either.

She sanctioned a request for half an hour’s DVD watching, to

give herself time to think. As Tyler settled on the fl oor to watch his

favorite section of the ever-popular classic
The Incredibles
(for about B A D T H I N G S 127

the fi fty-billionth time) she watched the street while she thought it

through.

Option 1: Leave.

Option 2: Stay.

The decision didn’t take long. She was tired of running. She

wasn’t going anywhere.

Sometime later she became aware she was still by the window, and

Tyler was asking if he could watch the DVD again. Which meant

she’d been standing there, what? Twenty-fi ve minutes? More? When

she tried to think back over that period it felt blank.

She blipped the DVD back to the part where the Incredible fam-

ily went superhero (her son was volubly bored by the parts where they

pretended to be normal, having yet to learn that’s what most of life

boiled down to) and went to the bathroom to wash her face.

Feeling better, she headed to the kitchen to make some De-Stress

herbal tea, which she’d taken to buying from a health store a few doors

down from the library. It tasted fairly weird but the nice-looking,

capable woman who owned the shop swore by it, and so Carol now

drank it several times a day. As she measured out a tablespoon into

the strainer she realized she was running low, and so turned to the

little blackboard on the wall to add it to the weekend shopping list.

She’d clamped a hand over her mouth before much sound came

out.

Someone had written something on the blackboard, in big letters,

fi rm and underlined.

COME HOME NOW

P A R T 2

[Faith is] the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Hebrews 11:1

C H A P T E R 1 8

By midafternoon I was in a truly heinous mood. Phone calls had

established I couldn’t get on a fl ight until the next morning. Another

attempt to talk to Carol on her cell had failed, resulting in me

leaving a message on her home answering machine that I already

regretted. I could drive down to Yakima to be early for the airport

tomorrow—or reorganize it
again,
and fl y out of Seattle instead, or drive the car the seven or so hours down to Marion Beach—but I

couldn’t imagine why I’d do any of those things.

So I kept heading along empty roads through the forest, until I

realized that I was going somewhere in particular after all.

When I got back to Black Ridge I drove through town to the eastern

side and parked outside the police station, which stood on the busy

road that cut through that end of town down toward Yakima. Inside

the station, a heavyset guy of around forty was sitting behind the

desk pushing a pen around. His badge said he was Deputy Greene.

“Deputy Corliss around?”

The policeman shook his head without looking up. “Something

I can do for you, sir?”

132 Michael Marshall

“I wanted to talk with him specifi cally,” I said.

“Regarding?”

“Keeping his mouth shut.”

The deputy stopped what he was doing. I realized I was breathing

more deeply than I should, and that my hands were clenched inside

my coat pockets.

“Can I help you?”

A new voice. I turned to see an older man had emerged from an

offi ce in the back. He was tall, broad across the shoulders, with short,

graying hair. I knew who he was.

“Recognize me?” I asked.

He looked calmly back for a moment. “Yes.”

“You okay with your men gossiping about dead kids?”

The sheriff raised both eyebrows slowly. Deputy Greene sat back

and observed us with the air of someone who’d sensed an average day

might be about to become genuinely interesting.

“Was about to go grab a coffee,” the sheriff said. “Come. Let’s

talk.”

We sat outside a diner down the street. During the couple-minute walk

there I had got my hands to relax. I knew I was overreacting, frus-

tration making do with the only outlet it could fi nd. Sheriff Pierce

listened impassively to what I told him. By the time I’d fi nished I’d

realized it didn’t amount to a lot. Nonetheless, the policeman looked

pained.

“Phil Corliss is a good man,” he said. “I’m sure he didn’t mean

anything by it, probably just assumed that—whoever this woman

was—she’d have the sense not to pass it on. Could be his sister. She’s a

talker, but Phil’s too close to realize that. I’ll have a word with him.”

“I’d appreciate it,” I said. “Your deputy was good to us and I don’t

mean him any ill will. This probably seems dumb to you. I don’t even

live here anymore. But . . .”

B A D T H I N G S 133

“Doesn’t seem dumb at all,” he said, shaking his head with fi nal-

ity. “The business of law-abiding people is their concern and no one

else’s. Not even mine, thankfully. So where are you living at now?”

“Oregon,” I said. “My wife is over in Renton.”

“Separated?”

“Divorced.”

He nodded. “Terrible thing happened to you people. I’m not sur-

prised it turned out that way.”

For a moment I suddenly felt very sad. Carol and I had loved each

other. Shouldn’t we have been better than this? Shouldn’t
I
have been, at least? Wasn’t there some other track the train wreck of the last

three years could have rolled down?

This thought knocked the remaining wind out of my sails and I

wished I could just get up and walk away without anything further