Corkscrew (2 page)

"You're saying you don't know where he was headed?"

The wife said, "No, Officer. Usually if he's going anywhere, he tells me. That's why I called you. I mean, he's such a dependable boy." With Sam and me standing there, she was beginning to feel foolish, I guess, as if she'd gone to the dentist and then found that her tooth had stopped aching.

"Could he be visiting a friend? I'm not trying to downplay the concern you're feeling, but four hours isn't very long for a teenager to be away on his own."

"We're telling you it's not normal. All right?" the father barked. "If we thought it was normal, we wouldn't have called you." He set his drink down, making a slow, purposeful motion of it—some scene he must have remembered from his film course, proving how sensible he was, how sober.

"Tell me what he was wearing, what he looks like, and I'll start looking," I said.

It took them five minutes to remember that he had been wearing a white "Camp Sunrise" T-shirt, blue jeans, and running shoes, and to find a photograph. He was an ordinary sandy-haired kid, around five feet, ninety pounds, and he would be carrying his camera.

"A Nikon," his father said smugly.

"Is he a keen photographer?" I started, but he cut me off.

"What would you think? I told you, he's carrying a Nikon. You've heard of Nikon, have you?" The father sneered, and his wife made a shushing sound and frowned at him.

"Ken, really," she muttered.

I turned to her. "Does he go off on photography expeditions a lot, Mrs. Spenser? And if so, does he have a favorite subject, boats, flowers, what?"

"Anything at all," she said, rushing to head off her husband before he could say something else snotty. "He's really quite talented."

That was my last chance of detective work shot to hell. I now had to search the whole photogenic world for him. "Okay, then. I suggest the pair of you split up and go opposite ways down the road behind the cottage, calling out for him. Meantime, I'll check places where kids gather around town. If you find him, don't forget to give me a call. If I find him or don't hear from you in a couple of hours, I'll come back and check with you."

The father finished his drink and stood up. "Great," he said. "We call for help, and he tells us to do it ourselves. Just great."

I didn't bother arguing with him. Drunks are part of the job. These days you can't get a conviction even if they're reeling around the center of town. You just send them home to sober up. But any policeman knows it's a waste of time arguing with them. I got back in the cruiser and drove down the narrow road behind all the cottages, keeping an eye out for his son. As I drove, I called the OPP and gave them the report. The kid was probably still in my bailiwick, but it's policy to alert them. If he'd gotten tired of his family, he could be out on the highway hitching a ride someplace. The guy at the dispatcher's desk took the call without comment. Missing boys generally come home when they're hungry.

He wasn't on the road or at the lock, where a crowd of youngsters usually hang around, golden little teenyboppers with cans of pop and squeals of laughter, and gruff, shy boys trying out their newly breaking voices. They were doing all the standard thirteen-year-old things, shoving one another, giggling and joking. It restored your faith in kids. I lingered a minute or two, talking to the lockkeeper. He's an older man, a World War II veteran with one leg gone, who used to be the mister at the police station until he stepped on the wrong side of the law. I couldn't talk him out of the mess he was in, so he was put on probation and lost his job. I managed to get the township to give him this one. It keeps him busy all summer and supplements his pension. I guess he's grateful for it, but he's always a bit shamefaced around me.

"Okay, I'll watch for him," he promised, then reached down to pat Sam, who still remembers him from the old days.

"Thanks, Murph. I'll take a run through town, check around. Call if you see him." I nodded and hissed at Sam, who sprang to my heel and followed me back to the car. I let him in, and he sat tall on the passenger side, looking out of the window as I drove off, over the narrow bridge and into the center of Murphy's Harbour. You have to brake fairly smartly or you could drive right through it. There's a marina and the Lakeside Tavern on one side, a small string of stores on the other.

There were more kids here, older this time, one of them even with a car. They were sipping Cokes that were probably laced, or at least flavored with rum from the mickey I'd seen the oldest one buy that morning when I checked the liquor store. They were listening to rock music and trying out the tentative mating patterns they'd progressed to after a few summers of squealing and shoving down by the locks. The town is small enough that I knew most of them by sight.

None of them had seen the missing boy. The boys were elaborately casual about telling me, showing how grown-up they were, but the girls, as usual, were more sensible. They studied the photograph and promised to watch for him. One of them was the daughter of Nick Vanderheyden, the man who runs the Lakeside Tavern. He'd been there since spring, after the previous owner had been murdered and the place was bought by another man with a string of hotels and taverns.

She was fifteen, and I figured she had a kind of crush on me. If she was waiting table in the Tavern when I dropped by, she always shuffled positions so that she served me. And I got my meal faster than anybody else in the place, even the big spenders from the cruisers tied up outside. She's young enough that her comments usually choke themselves on giggles, but she's a nice kid, dark-haired and pretty in an intense way. She'll be a looker when she grows up.

"That's the Spenser boy," she told me, and giggled. "He's always around here. He usually tries to take my picture." She blushed at the thought and amended it. "Our picture, any girl's picture."

That was interesting, and I followed it. "Is he a pint-sized ladies' man, Beckie, would you say?"

That convulsed her, and her friends. I waited until the laughter had petered out. "He thinks he is," she said. "He always acts, oh, you know, King Cool."

"Has he made friends with anybody, boys or girls, that you've noticed?"

She looked at me, shading her eyes with one hand. "Not really. Oh, he tries an' that, tags along, but generally one of the guys tells him to get lost and he goes away."

"Thanks. If he shows up, call me, please, would you, and tell him his folks are worried about him."

"Sure will." She beamed. I left, listening to the chorus of laughter behind me. Maybe her crush wasn't as secret as she thought. I checked the restaurant. He wasn't there, either, hadn't been in, Lee Chong said. That left the grocery and the bait store. I struck oil in the grocery.

"Yeah, he was in here around noon, bought some film," Dorothy told me. "I know for sure it was him. He's been in three times this week for film. Lord knows what he's takin' pictures of; he's only a kid." She threw her hands up. "Four fifty plus tax an' he doesn't turn a hair. His old man has to be loaded."

"He says the kid's a camera buff," I told her. "He's carrying about five hundred bucks' worth of camera round his neck. Did you talk with him?"

She frowned. Some vacationer was behind me, carrying a case of pop and a bag of ice cubes, as tense as a combat medic waiting to dress somebody's wound. I figured he had an emergency situation back in the cottage with his lady. I beamed and nodded at him to let him know this was official and waited while Dorothy scratched her rusty-looking head of gray hair.

"No, I didn't. But now you say it, Carl Simmonds was in—you know, the photographer." I nodded, and she went on, more thoughtfully. "Yeah, he made some comment about the camera the kid had on. Him and the kid went out together."

"Thanks." I smiled at her. "I'll talk to Carl."

She turned away to ring up the refreshments for the other guy. "Yeah, good idea," she said matter-of-factly. "Makes a lot of sense."

The tourist was anxious to show what a good citizen he was, how he didn't mind delaying his tryst while the law sought the truth. "Why's that, then?" he asked brightly.

Dorothy, who is a generously built farm-wife type, gestured casually with one hand. "Oh, you know," she said disarmingly. "What with Carl bein' queer an' all."

I didn't wait to see the guy do his double take. I've known Carl for a couple of years now. He's gay, but I've never heard of his doing anything about it in town. He's a nice guy, kind of lonely, like a spinster aunt. But if he was the last one to see the missing boy, it was worth a call. Maybe he and the kid were talking photography.

Carl's place is small, a winterized cottage, really. He keeps the front neat, a couple of flowerbeds and well-trimmed grass behind a picket fence. His Toyota was in the driveway, so I parked behind it and walked up to the front door with Sam at my heel. Carl must have seen us coming. He was at the door before me. "Hi, Reid," he said. "Got time for a cold one?"

"Yeah, please, Carl." He waved me in, and I sat down in one of the cane chairs he'd installed since a militant feminist group had smashed his place up one busy night last winter. Sam flopped down beside the chair, and we waited. Carl came back quickly with a couple of light beers and a glass for me, which I waved away. "By the throat's fine; save washing up."

He gave me the beer and sat down. He had an empty glass on the coffee table in front of him and a pile of wedding shots he'd taken. "I'm trying to find one where the best man's squint doesn't show," he said. "I hate to confront people with their faults."

I sipped my beer a moment, then told him, "The Spenser boy is missing. Have you seen him at all?"

He looked up, holding a photograph in each hand. Suddenly serious. "Missing?"

"Yes. His folks are worried. He's been away since ten or so. He's usually home for meals, like most kids."

He set his pictures on the table and looked at me anxiously. "And you think I had something to do with the fact that he's missing?"

"No." I shook my head. "Of course not. But you were the last person to see him that I've traced so far. I wondered if you got any idea where he was going."

"He didn't say. I assumed he was going home." Carl crossed his knees, then uncrossed them again and stood up. He was tense, but he didn't seem guilty of anything. There's a difference. "He said he was interested in shooting some boats. He'd seen some shots in a book. It's hard to say, but I feel he's got a good eye for composition. He mentioned trying to get the curve of the bow into it." Carl's voice ran away on him, going nervously higher until he stopped and cleared his throat. "He could be anywhere is what I'm saying."

I nodded and sipped again. "Was he here, in this house?"

He flushed and bit his lip, then spoke in a rush. "You don't think I'm interested in children, do you?"

I shook my head. "No, I'd be asking anyone the same question if they were the last person to see him. Was he here?"

"Yes." He nodded and blushed, then sat down angrily. "Dammit. Why would I feel embarrassed about that? Yes, he was here. I showed him my darkroom equipment. We chatted for half an hour. He had a Coke and left. That was all there was to it."

In the moment before I could answer him, he rushed on. "I would have done the same for any enthusiast regardless of how old they were or what sex."

"Look, I don't suspect you of anything, Carl. I'm just trying to track the kid's movements. I'd ask anybody the same questions."

He held up one hand apologetically. "I should know better. I'm sorry, Chief," he said formally. "But we have some very square people in town, and they get strange ideas about anybody who's gay."

"They're mostly kind," I said. "Murphy's Harbour isn't a really redneck town."

He picked up his glass, then set it down and looked at me levelly. "I've always kept my private life away from town," he said. "I have friends who wonder why I live here, away from the action. They wonder why I don't have them up here to visit. I just don't. This is my home. When I'm home, I'm just another guy, the one who isn't interested in peering down the waitress's front at the Tavern."

I put the beer bottle down. "I know. Don't get upset; I'm just following procedure. I'll finish my beer and go look around some more. I only have one more question for you. Did you see which way he went when he left here?"

"No. I started processing a roll of film, and in the middle of it he said he should be going and let himself out. I was in the darkroom a couple of minutes more, and when I came out, I looked up and down the street, but there was no sign of him."

"Them's the breaks," I said. I swallowed the last of my beer. "Thanks for the drink. I'll go earn my pittance."

He followed me to the door, looking anxious but not speaking. I waved to him and got into the car, with Sam beside me. He didn't wave back, just stood there, looking worried. It seemed like overreaction, and I put it into my memory and wondered what past experience this was bringing back to him.

The radio in the car called me, and I picked up the receiver. It was Wales at the motel. "Been trying to reach you, Chief," he said. "No need to come back up. Two o' the bikers came back with a spare wheel. They changed it and left, no problems; never even came in here."

"Fine, that's one worry over," I told him. "Don't lose any sleep about them. I think they were just moving through."

I hung up the receiver and drove to the marina. Walter Puckrin was working at the engine of a big inboard. He stopped when I got there and swore at Chrysler for a while, then offered me a beer, which I turned down, and told me he hadn't noticed the kid around.

"Maybe he went down the dock in front of the Tavern—there's boats there if he wanted pictures—maybe to the lock, maybe anywhere. Not here, though," he said.

"Fine, Walt, keep on cussing. I'll look around." I still wasn't worried too badly. The boy could be anywhere. It was coincidence that Carl had seen him last, nothing more. Right now he was out somewhere around boats, taking pictures.

I walked over to the Lakeside Tavern and strolled out onto the docks behind it. The usual crowd of pleasure boaters was standing around, comparing routes up and down the waterway and trying not to be too obvious about ogling one another's girlfriends. None of them had seen the kid.