Billy (7 page)

Never!

 
9.

The Nearys had been dropped into hell. Nothing had prepared them for this. Their hell had neither gate nor horizon, and its demons were police officers with sad, suspicious eyes. They tormented not with blows but with questions. And always there was the central question, the one nobody could answer. Hell's characteristic sound was a silent telephone.

Neither Mark nor Mary gave voice to the hope they privately shared, that this awful day would end with Billy's straggling reappearance, home late from some boyhood escapade.

He was such an adventurous little boy!

During the afternoon hope slowly died. It began to fade after the police had left, when they were supposed to be eating lunch.

The ham sandwiches Sally made eventually drew flies. As the afternoon grew old the edges of the bread curled and the lettuce became slack. The day wore through four, then five. The day began to end, and still he did not come.

It was decided to inventory his room once again, to see this time if some clue to his whereabouts could be determined from any toys he might have taken with him. Detective Walter Toddcaster, who had come up from Wilton, insisted on participating in this task. At first they thought his motive was some hidden mistrust. But when they faced the quiet, immensely familiar little room, they understood that it was compassion.

Handling the toys was as hard as it would have been to grab flaring briquettes from a backyard grill. But once picked up, putting something down was even worse, like dropping one's 
wedding ring down the drain, or giving up one's life, or letting go the hand of God.

So thick were the memories, so great the pain, only Toddcaster could manage anything even approaching a coherent inventory.

Mary and Mark sat in the middle of the floor with the drawers under the bed open before them. They fumbled in a haze of stifled tears.

Mark remembered the voice of his son muttering long fantasies of play, his cars in his hands, his Lego, his Brio trains, the decrepit stuffed Garfield the Cat doll gone anorexic from age and cuddling. "Has he been practicing his guitar?" Mark asked automatically.

Mary was in her own pain. "I've been meaning to gift out this Brio," she said quietly. "He doesn't use it anymore."

From Sally's room came the voices of the Beatles: "Give Peace a Chance." Mark's mind shifted suddenly to his college days. He had sung that song before Billy was even a possibility in the world. Gratefully he let it draw him into other times. Other voices seemed to rise around him: "Let it be..." There had been some good times.

When Billy was a newborn Mark had cuddled him inside his robe. He fed him his bottle while reading the morning paper. It was there he had said his first word: "Da."

Mary was clutching a red Brio train engine to her chest. "I remember his first word," she said in a tiny voice. "Ma. Remember that?"

Sally came in. "We're going to find Billy," she said.

Detective Toddcaster added. "This inventory is going to help us."

Suddenly Mark and Mary were clear-eyed again. Mary sat up. "Yes, we are." Then she frowned, looking very like a little girl.

A shadow entered the room. Sally understood first. "The sun just set," she said in a hushed voice.

"I think we're finished here, if nobody can spot any missing toys." The detective got to his feet, a sense of bustle in his movements. "So what we're missing is the street clothes. Shirts, pants, underwear, socks. And his duffel."

"Like he went on an overnight."

"Except for the shoes," Mark said.

Detective Toddcaster glanced around. "The shoes?"

"Look. The black sneakers, the dress loafers. Even his slippers and his flip-flops. They're all here. When he left he was barefoot."

Mary held out her hands as if warding off a blow. She picked up a scuffed shoe. "He's about to go into men's sizes, Mark. Did I tell you that?"

Mark nodded. He could not speak. But he knew as certainly as he knew his own bones that Billy had been taken by that man in the yard. "He wouldn't go out without shoes, especially not on his bike."

"Not even in August, Mr. Neary?"

"My brother never went barefoot. It's not the style anymore," Sally said.

"No, I guess not." Walter Toddcaster was a compact man with a great, bobbing ball of a head. He had come up from Wilton in an olive drab Chevrolet, which was currently parked in the driveway. Now he looked down at Billy's shoes as if they might reveal some secret only a professional could interpret. "My grandson loves British Knights," he said. "Wouldn't be caught dead in anything else." Looking at Billy's tattered sneakers, he blinked as if somebody had just given him a small slap.

Seeing the expression on Mary's face, he reached out a neat hand, startlingly thin in a man so portly, and caressed the air near her shoulder. "I have confidence, Mary. We're gonna find Billy. I'll even tell you where. Walking his bike along some country road, either busted or with a flat tire. And we'll find him soon, because he will have noticed that the sun's going down and he'll have given up waiting or whatever he's been doing and started to walk."

"He wouldn't just take off without telling us. My son is a natural adventurer, but he's also a good boy." She dropped the shoe with a thud. "My son never lies. He is never lied to."

"Momma—" Sally had folded her arms.

She tilted her head as if she was hearing some special music. Her face worked. "My point is that Billy is a smart little boy, but he's also trusting. He could so easily be deceived. That's what worries me!"

Mark was deeply worried by what he saw appearing in her.

Not even in labor had she looked this bad. After fifteen hours trying to have Sally she had grabbed Mark and said, "It's gonna come again and I can't stand it, Markie, I'm gonna scream." "Scream, for God's sake," Dr. Epstein had said. "You're driving me nuts with your strong, silent shtick. Woman, scream!" And again she contracted and her eyes were like glass and she did not scream, could not, she had to be in control and Mark knew that for her it would be a kind of death to scream.

It had taken fifteen hours. She stank, she ran streams of sweat, and finally Sally appeared, her head looking like a little blue banana. She snorted and then wailed like the wind, high and thin.

Billy had been easier, because he was her second. For days afterward he had been placid. Until he was about six months old he had been a docile baby. Since then he had not stopped for a moment.

Toddcaster watched them. He'd seen this stage many times before. They had a runaway but they didn't want to admit it. And why should they? Their child had despised his home so much he'd decided to leave. The fact that he'd done it on a bicycle meant he was almost certain to be found. This case would be closed within twenty-four hours, and that woufd be that.

In the meantime a little handholding was all that was required. He was bored and he wanted a cigar. But he was embarrassed to ask if they minded. Their house was so clean, the air fresh and faintly scented with some potpourri the woman must have made.

It was time to get this show on the road. "Look, he took shirts, pants, things that he'd need if he was going to stay away for a few days. He went on his bike. I think we should assume that Billy ran away."

From the door their daughter said, "No way."

Something in her voice made Walter Toddcaster jerk around to face her. He knew that kind of conviction. "What makes you say that?" If he was wrong, OK. He wanted to find out the truth and, above all, the boy. "What makes you so sure?"

"He was happy. We have a happy family." The girl looked up at him, a pale, heart-shaped face, blond hair, a real heart-breaker.

"Sometimes things build up—a kid just can't see his way, communications fail—"

Mark Neary went to his feet. "For God's sake, our son's been kidnapped. He even saw the kidnapper last night right out in the front yard! We're wasting time debating about it."

His wife looked dully at the floor. "It's easier for you if he's listed as a runaway, isn't it?"

"We want to get your boy back."

Mark wanted to grab his lapels, shake some sense into the man. "Then put out a bulletin!"

"We APB'd his description to every police force in the state this morning. You know that."

"And you haven't heard a word. Not a single cop in the state of Iowa's so much as glimpsed him."

Toddcaster looked at him. Mark looked right back, and was surprised to see in the detective's eyes something that he had not noticed before. It was as unexpected as a cold wind in the middle of the August heat. He did not like it, not in those eyes. If the police felt helpless, where did that leave Billy?

"We have to go on the evidence, and the evidence is that Billy left on his bicycle, taking his clothing with him. That's what I have. That's reality."

"Just to be safe, why not report it as a kidnapping?"

Walt Toddcaster wished that he could do just that. His instinct was always to expect the worst, but the fact was that if he put in a report a lot of police organizations were going to crank themselves up. You cared about abducted kids. Cops had families; they knew how much this hurt. The first thing outside investigators would find was that the bike was missing. And that would be very embarrassing.

"Get me some hard evidence."

"The testimony of his family!" Mary's voice was rough. She thought to herself that she wanted to die but she could not, not and leave Billy.

When he was a baby he'd had blond curls. She had cried silently, her back straight and a smile plastered on her face, when Mr. Terry cut them off. Clip, clip, clip, and there went babyhood down to the floor of the barbershop.

The sound of the doorbell ringing shot through every one 
of them, even Walt Toddcaster, who had been in this same sort of house with this same sort of people too many times.

Three bedraggled young men stood at the door, their faces sheepish. They had cameras and equipment with them. A blue and gray van lettered KKNX  EYEWITNESS  NEWS was parked at the curb.

"You have the missing child?"

Mark opened the door wider. The men came in, looking into the corners of the hallway, glancing at the ceilings. "Set up in the living room," one of them said. His voice was pitched to a funereal hush.

"No," Sally said, "in the basement."

"The basement?"

"Oh, Mark, she's right! His stuff is down there. Our son is a computer nut. You ought to put it on TV."

"That'll be a good visual, ma'am."

As the TV crew followed Sally downstairs, Toddcaster pulled Mark and Mary aside. "Listen," he said, "the voice of experience talking. You're very self-contained. You keep your feelings inside. Nothing against that, I do the same. Ulcers instead of tears, less embarrassing. But the more emotion you show on the tube, the more stations'll pick this up and run it. Take it from me. Voice of experience."

"What will you say, Walt?"

"He's going to say what he thinks, Mark. That Billy ran away."

Walt Toddcaster made another half-gesture toward Mary. "I want Billy to get found. I want a win on this. Guarantee I do."

"A runaway means we're bad parents. That we somehow drove him away. And meanwhile, somebody has our boy. "

A member of the television crew met them on the stairs. "Is there any other entrance to the basement? It's a great location, but we've gotta bring in some lights. We need a straight stairway."

It took Mark a moment to remember. "There's an old storm door, but we haven't used it since we moved in. I don't know if we can even get it open."

When he pushed at it, though, he found that it opened smoothly. Toddcaster began peering at it as if it had somehow hypnotized him. The thought crossed Mark's mind that maybe 
he was a little off. 'How good could the cops in these backwater towns be?' he wondered. God help Billy.

While the men from the TV station brought in their lights Mark sat at the computer, idly going through its inventory of games and projects. Mary went upstairs and got the photo album. There was last year's birthday party, and a couple of recent shots of him sitting at the computer.

The detective hovered like a ghost near the storm door. Now he was touching the hinges with his handkerchief. His face had acquired the appearance of bad sculpture, at once intense and empty. Finally he stopped, rocked back on his heels and returned to the basement.

The TV crew finished their preparations. Mark and Mary and Sally sat together in front of Billy's Amiga. The crew turned on the lights. Their blue glare shocked, the sense of exposure intensifying Mark's pain. His eyes were wet, but the tears there did not come from the part of him that spoke and thought and acted. They were a signal from the dark, and Mark in that moment knew what it meant to experience the unbearable.

Then the camera was rolling and the director was asking Walt a question. "What happened to Billy Neary, Lieutenant Toddcaster?"

"In these cases we always look for a runaway or kidnapping by a parent living out of the home. But the Nearys are a happy family. This is typical Iowa we have here.

"Abduction by strangers does happen, but it's very rare. At first we thought this was a runaway. It looked like a clear case. The boy's bike was missing, clothes had been taken from his room. In fact, if you hadn't wanted to use that storm door, I'd still be wasting my time on the runaway theory. But this boy was kidnapped all right. I'd bet my badge on it. And the kidnapper's a clever one, taking the bike like that."

Mary and Mark gave way together, like two trees knocked down by the wind. She was silent. Trying to disguise his tears, he made peculiar gobbling noises. Sally took both her parents' hands.

"Can you describe your son, Mrs. Neary?"

She struggled for the words. "Four feet tall. Reddish-blond hair. Will you show his picture? Please?"

Then Sally spoke. "Please, whoever you are, my mom and 
dad didn't do anything to hurt you. Please, please give Billy back to us."