Disappearance at Devil's Rock (21 page)

Allison is not quite sure how to proceed. She wants to hug them and shake them both violently while demanding to know what the hell is going on in this house. She says, “Kate, can I ask you something?”

“Yeah.”

“There are more pages missing from Tommy's diary. Five of them by my count.” She holds up the diary opened to the second section of the spine where there are missing pages. “Did you tear them out?”

“No way. I swear. When I found the diary, it was like that. Those pages were already torn out.” Kate is calm and her expression doesn't change, her eyes are hard and unwavering. Unreadable. If she's lying, it's a righteous lie in which she fully believes.

“Do you know where those missing pages are? I know you found the diary in his room, did you find anything else with Tommy's writing like this?”

“No. Just his drawings and stuff. I haven't found anything else like the diary and I haven't found any missing pages anywhere. I'm going to my friend's house soon, and you can feel free to check my room while I'm gone if you want.”

Allison: “If it's okay with your mom, I think I'll take you up on that offer, and I think we should go through Tommy's room as well.”

Elizabeth nods. Kate remains motionless, a picture of a teen's assured defiance.

Allison continues. “I'm sure you realize this already, Kate, but based on the pages we've received so far, especially ones that mention Arnold, assuming there are more pages, it's possible they contain critical information.” Allison hopes she doesn't sound condescending. She wants Kate's trust. Allison also doesn't want to sound too desperate or too impersonal. “Information that could help us locate Tommy.”

Kate says, “I know and that's why I'm totally telling the truth now.
And I do have something else for you, Detective.” She brings a hand out from behind her back and she holds something small, and what appears to be the top of a plastic sandwich bag sticks out from her closed fist. “I found these two coins on top of Tommy's bureau.” She opens her hand, holds up the bag, and shakes it. The two coins inside jingle. Kate readjusts her backpack straps, then reaches over the couch and hands the bag to Allison.

Allison opens it and looks inside but does not shake the coins out onto her palm.

Elizabeth says, “I'd forgotten about these.”

Allison: “You've seen these coins before?”

Elizabeth: “Kate showed them to me a few days ago. Tommy used to collect coins like crazy when he was younger. Fourth and fifth grade, mostly.”

Kate: “One coin looks like a nickel, but it has this weird empty face and then a big eye hanging above it. I think maybe it's the seer coin that Tommy talks about in his diary. When he said Arnold showed him pictures of the coins he worked on, and then on the page with the picture, Tommy said something about wanting to put the seer coin over his eyes, yeah.”

Elizabeth: “Oh, Jesus Christ . . .”

Kate keeps talking, “And, you know, Tommy says Arnold called himself a seer, right?, so who knows, I started thinking that maybe Arnold gave Tommy the coins or something.”

Allison carefully manipulates the coins in the bag.

Kate, looking over Allison's shoulder, says, “That one is just a penny. But the Lincoln head has like a big crack in it.”

Allison: “Have you taken out the coins? Touched them with your hands?”

Kate: “Yeah.”

Allison: “That's fine. We'll still try to get some prints off these if
we can.” Allison inspects the coin with the tails side of a nickel and the heads side with a silhouetted face in profile and a large, roughly etched eye hovering above. Allison opens her notebook. “Can you show me where you found these?”

Kate: “Uh-huh. Like, now?”

“Yes, please.”

The three of them go to Tommy's room. Kate walks in without hesitating, her thumbs hooked in the backpack straps. Elizabeth hangs back and allows Allison to go next.

It's brighter in this room than it is in the hallway with natural light pouring through the windows and reflecting off the light blue walls. Tommy's bed is made. His room is clean, tidy, staged. Tommy's books and comics are stacked neatly in the bookcase along the wall and the bedframe bookcase. His desk is huge, a peninsula jutting out into the middle of the room, and made of thick, serious wood. Its top is well organized, with pens and notebooks in their spots and a dormant laptop, graffitied with stickers and a Sharpie. Next to the desk is a milk crate filled with more notebooks.

Kate says, “I found the bag up here, and it was inside the metal tin, near at the top.”

Tommy's bureau isn't as neat as his desk and is cluttered with hats, superhero action figures, and loose change. The metal tin sits in the back middle, a raincatch for pocket-sized trinkets.

Allison asks, “Do you know where the bulk of his coin collection is?”

Kate shrugs. “No idea.”

Elizabeth: “It's gotta be in here somewhere.”

Allison pulls out a pair of latex gloves from a jacket pocket and puts them on. She feels the Sanderson women watching her. “I may come across something that we might want to pull prints from.”

Allison brings the tin to the front of the bureau and sifts through it.

Kate: “Mom, do you guys need me anymore? Can I ride my bike to Sam's house now?”

Elizabeth: “Bike? I thought I was going to drop you off.”

Kate: “I want to bike over.”

Elizabeth groans and runs both hands through her hair. “I really wanted to give you a ride over. I don't like you out by yourself right now.”

“It's fine, Mom. I've been doing it all summer. It's not even that far and I haven't done anything in days and I feel like a slug.”

Elizabeth looks at Allison for some sign of approval, or maybe disapproval. Allison doesn't give either. Elizabeth says, “I guess so, as long as your leaving now is okay with Detective Murtagh.”

Allison: “Yes, of course. But is there anything else you need to tell me before you leave?”

Kate's “Nope” is instantaneous to the end of the query. She rises on her toes and falls back to the floor, itching to be gone.

Elizabeth: “You can stay for a few hours. Be back before dinner. And make sure you have your phone on. Is it charged?”

Kate is already walking out of the room. Her blue pack bounces with each step. “Full charge, Sarg.”

“Be careful.”

Allison calls out. “Kate?”

Kate is in the hallway, but turns around and stands in the doorway. “Yeah?”

“You said we could check your room, and thank for you that. Do you mind if we see what's in your pack?”

Kate shrugs, walks into the room, shimmies out of her pack, and holds it out to Elizabeth. “Sure. Take a look. Just my phone, headphones, our picture flip book we've been working on all summer, granola bar, and . . . two lemonade juice boxes.”

Allison stands next to Elizabeth and watches as she goes through
it. The contents that Kate catalogued are all there, along with a few stray pens and pencils, and a brown book.

Elizabeth: “What's this?”

“I, um, started a new diary.”

Elizabeth takes it out. The book is small, secret-sized, definitely not big enough to be the book from which Tommy's pages have been coming. She turns and flips it in her hand, as though confirming its small dimensions. She inspects the front and back covers, both decorated in a neat but loopy scrawl, different from Tommy's handwriting.

Kate: “You're not gonna read it, now, with me standing here, are you? It's just, you know, my diary. I don't want you reading it. Not now. It's my stuff. Maybe later.” She reaches for the book hesitantly, and Elizabeth turns away.

Allison would very much like to read it but won't press her on it if she balks. She's confident that she'll be able to find the missing pages (if they're in the house) in either of the Sanderson kids' bedrooms.

Elizabeth flips through the pages slowly.

“Mom! I said don't. There's nothing there for you.”

Elizabeth hands the diary to Allison. “Can she flip through and not really read it, to make sure that it's all your handwriting and no one else's?”

Allison verifies the pages have Kate's and only Kate's handwriting, and color of the ink is purple and blue and sometimes green. It's about a quarter full. She hands it back to Kate.

Kate stuffs it back in her pack.

Elizabeth says with a voice that's supposed to be soothing, but has an obvious edge to it, “I know, I'm sorry. Just making sure, right? We'll talk about this when you get back.”

Kate gives her mom a hard stare and zips up her pack, loudly. Allison can't help but think of what she would've said to her own parents at that age:
No we're not
.

Kate: “I'm going now. Bye.”

Elizabeth talks to the back of Kate as she walks out of the room. “I'm going to call you in half an hour to make sure you got there and that your phone is on.”

Elizabeth and Allison listen to Kate go out the back door. Elizabeth says, “She hasn't been out of the house, really, since Tommy went missing. She needs to get out, see her best friend.”

Allison: “It'll be good for her.”

Elizabeth nods but her stare is aimed outside the room, and the house, and following her daughter.

Allison says, “You're welcome to stay and watch me, but you don't have to be here in the room, either. I'll call you in if I have any questions.”

“I'd prefer to watch, if that's okay.”

Allison starts with the built-in bookcase and then the bookcase along the wall, methodically removing each book, occasionally asking Elizabeth if she recognizes the titles. She checks behind and under the bed. Next she goes through his desk and then the milk crate of notebooks. She sits at Tommy's desk and reads every page of every book, looking for more entries, mentions of Arnold, and signs of pages having been removed. Elizabeth reads over her shoulder, and Allison hears her reacting emotionally to what she reads. She laughs at some of the cartoons and clicks her tongue or swallows heavily at the more teen angsty pictures and proclamations, and she sighs at the “school is like drowning” title page.

Elizabeth says, “Oh jeeze,” and mumbles apologies as Allison flips through pages of lurid nudes and sex scenes.

Allison says, “He's a teen boy. I don't think there's one who hasn't drawn a penis.”

After the milk crate, Allison moves on to the bureau. She goes through his drawers first. Elizabeth is no longer hanging over Allison's
shoulder. She sits at Tommy's desk, and she goes through some of his notebooks and sketch pads again. Allison doesn't blame her for not wanting to see what's inside her son's bureau drawers. There isn't anything there, no signs of a diary nor any drug/alcohol paraphernalia. From the bureau she moves on to the closet, which smells like a locker room. There's a half-full laundry hamper on the floor. Elizabeth mumbles something about getting around to washing his clothes. Allison goes through the pockets in the dirty shorts and jeans. Nothing.

From Tommy's closet they move on to Kate's room, which is a disaster and smells of dust, wet sneakers, and unlit, too-sweet scented candles. Allison tries not to step on anything but there're clothes, hangers, books, and assorted preteen debris all over the floor.

Allison has to say something. Against her better judgment, she tries to be lighthearted in the face of what was the result of a traumatic experience in this room. “Whoa. I thought my room was a mess when I was a kid.”

Elizabeth says, “This isn't Kate's fault. I went a little nuts last night looking for the diary. I threw everything out of her closet. I didn't find it. Kate gave it to me.”

Allison won't find the missing pages, either.

Kate's bike is fire engine red, with tires thick enough to belong on a monster truck. It was Tommy's first gear bike, which he outgrew over the course of two summers. Mom was crazed, given how much she'd spent on it, and tried to sell the bike, but never got a serious offer. Last summer Kate wanted a new bike and not Tommy's old one, but Mom shrewdly struck a deal with her; Kate could paint it any color she wanted (it was originally silver). Kate getting to paint the bike sealed the deal and she got to put new tires on the bike, too. It wasn't that she was so into off-roading or trail riding; Kate reasoned the wider
the tire, the less likely it became for her to ever wobble and fall. Kate ended up loving the souped-up bike. Tommy was totally jealous of the tires and often rode her bike without asking, which was both a source of fury and pride. That Tommy thought her bike was cool meant she'd never relinquish it.

She plows through the backyard, the overgrown grass grabbing at her tires. She eventually picks up enough speed to weave between two thick fir trees (a neat trick, one she hasn't always been able to pull off without crashing or scraping an arm or leg against coarse bark) onto a small path that Tommy wore out through the brush that leads to the edge of their neighbor's property. The path is also a shortcut to their street. Kate navigates the snakey path and rides smoothly over a little lip and onto the blacktop. She doesn't look back at the news vans parked behind her, confident that they won't follow as long as she doesn't turn to look at them. At the end of her street Kate takes a left. She's not going to Sam's house.