GRAY MATTER (7 page)

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Authors: Gary Braver

BOOK: GRAY MATTER
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“And how the hell did they end up at the bottom of the ocean?”
“You’re the cop.”
“Do the parents know about the holes?”
“We notified the DA’s office and the CO in Gloucester, who, by the way, has pretty much given up on the case. I guess they hit a dead end and deferred to Tennessee since it’s where the kidnapping took place.”
“And the remains?”
“Sent them back to the parents. We had no further use for them, and they were anxious for a burial. In fact, they threatened the DA with a court order.”
“They could still be evidence.”
“We’ve got plenty of photos and bone samples. And if something unexpected develops, they can always be exhumed.” He coughed a couple times and stubbed out the second cigarette although it was still long. “From what I hear, they’ve hit a brick wall down there, too.”
Greg picked up the card with the child’s name on it. “Coldwater, Tennessee. Never been there.”
“You and six billion other people.”
“First time for everything.”
Joe nodded at the Sagamore Boy shots. “Got anything here?”
“No, but we’re trying to ID with photo superimposition.”
“That’s a good idea,” Joe said. “I’ve seen the software and it’s pretty sophisticated.”
Greg was hoping to match the Sagamore skull to known missing persons registered in the National Missing Children Network. “As backup, we’ve submitted a reconstruction we got made by a forensic artist.”
“
We means you,”
Joe said.
Greg made a dismissive shrug. He picked up the folder with copies of the photos and ME’s report on the Dixon boy and tucked it under his arm.
Joe nodded at the shot of the Sagamore Boy drawing. “You’ve really got a thing about this kid.”
“He’s some child who ended up a skull on a beach. I can’t sleep with that.”
“When the day is done, my friend, we’re all skulls on a beach.”
“Uh-huh, but before that happens, this one’s going home, too.”
B
illy had done custody snatches before. But this was the first time he’d used the camo suit, and the first time any of the parents had included with the advance hypodermic needles full of sedatives and instructions on usage. That was fine by him, since it beat all the kicking and screaming. This was also the first time he’d been offered ten grand for a delivery—more than three times the usual fee. The old man must really want his kid back.
Billy didn’t know who the guy was. In fact, rarely did he know his contact. Nor did he give a rat’s ass. That’s how these things got set up. A guy knows a guy who knows a guy who needs a job and has the cash. Billy’s guess was that the old man had lost the custody case and had gone off with another woman and earned the dough to get his kid back—screw the mom. And if he had ten big ones to lay out, then the kid’s probably better off where he’s going, since the old lady lives in a goddamn bug-infested aluminum box in the woods.
About two miles out of Callahan, down service road 108 past the junction of 301, A1A, and U.S. 1 North, Billy spotted the red-white-and-blue Amoco sign.
He had no idea what the kid’s father looked like or what his name was—Something Valentine. (Sounded like a Delbert McClinton song.) And all he’d been told was to bring the kid to the blue shack in a lot about twotenths of a mile past the station on SR 108—which was where the transfer would be made.
He also didn’t know what the guy was driving. But the guy knew what
Billy was driving because they had supplied the van, dropping it off in a mall parking lot with the key and an advance of three thousand dollars cash and promise of the balance on delivery.
(It had crossed Billy’s mind to take the money and run, but he was told the guy was good people and true to his word. And ten grand to bag a kid was a piece of cake. Besides, Billy had his professional code. Not good for business.)
He pulled slowly past the Amoco lot, which was one of those gas station /minimart setups that were open twenty-four hours and manned by a couple of kids. He drove on, checking his rearview mirror. Nothing—just black road as far back as he could see.
Around the bend, he saw the lot, and set back under some trees a dark locked shack with a big sign reading BOILED PEANUTS—SALTED AND CAJUN STYLE. They were big in Central Florida with stands dotting the roadsides. But Billy could never understand the attraction. They looked like cat turds and tasted worse.
There were no other cars in the lot, so he backed in, facing the road, and turned off his headlights, keeping the motor running. He was early. He reached under his seat and pulled out his Python. It was fully loaded. He always had it on these jobs—standard operating procedure, whether he knew his clients or not. It made him feel more comfortable about driving off into the night with seven thousand dollars.
He kept the CD playing, but very softly so he could hear the outside sounds. There were none but cicadas and frogs.
After ten minutes, he began to get nervous. He turned off the CD.
After ten more minutes, he began to wonder if this was the right place. He looked back at the kid, who had stirred, but didn’t wake up. He wished the guy would arrive, because he didn’t want to have to go back there and shoot up the kid again if he awoke. Let the old man take care of that. He had done his part.
Twelve minutes later, Billy was still waiting, the kid still asleep. The dashboard clock said 10:04. He was over half-an-hour late.
Just as Billy began to think he had the wrong place, a big black Mercedes pulled alongside. Startled, Billy gripped his gun, his heart thumping like a kettle drum in his chest.
The driver gave a little wave and got out. He was alone. He was about six feet and slender, dressed in dark pants and a pullover. His hands were empty
and there was no gun in his pants or holster across his torso. But around his neck he wore a stethoscope.
“Sorry I’m late,” said the man.
Billy nodded. Already he was feeling better, especially with the big M500. Billy imagined he was a wealthy millionaire who would take his kid off to a foreign country to beat an extradition rap. What didn’t make sense was how he had ended up with a trailer-trash wife. Unless he had met her in a bar on some business trip down here and one drink led to the next and that led to some hotel bed where he knocked her up. Billy had glimpsed the mother during stakeout. She was a looker.
The man peered into the windows of the van. “You have Travis?”
“Yup.”
“Good.”
“You the father?”
“Uncle,” the man said. “Can I see him?”
“First things first,” Billy said. He got out of the van, holding the Python at arm’s length.
“You don’t need that,” the man said. Then he turned around with his arms raised to show that he was carrying no weapons. But there was an envelope sticking out of his rear pocket. The man pulled it out and handed it to Billy.
Billy backed up a safe distance behind the van and with a penlight inspected the contents. Hundreds. A stack of hundred-dollar bills. He pulled a few randomly out of the pack and held them over his light to make sure they weren’t counterfeit or photocopies. They weren’t. When he was satisfied, he stuffed the envelope into his jacket and led the man to the rear of the Caravan.
They looked around and waited for a car to pass. Then Billy opened the rear door.
Travis was lying on a mattress with a blanket over him. He was still asleep from the shot two hours ago. Billy’s instructions had been to avoid restraining the kid in any way—no cords or handcuffs. Just to put him to sleep. The stuff was good for a minimum of six hours—and they had supplied three backup needles. He was also told to drive under the speed limit and not to get caught, no matter what. There was no worry of that. Billy had been doing small heists for years and knew how to keep his ass off radar screens.
As Billy waited, the man pulled out a small penlight from his pocket and raised the kid’s eyelids. With the stethoscope he listened to the kid’s heart. Billy watched, thinking that the uncle was the family doctor, which explained the big German wheels. No doubt he was footing the bill for his po’boy country bubba.
When the guy was satisfied, he carefully lifted the kid out and hustled him to the Mercedes where he laid him across the rear seat, strapped him in, then covered him with a blanket. He thanked Billy and shook his hand. “This is going to make some people very happy. Thank you.” With that he got in his car and left.
Billy watched the car turn east onto 108, which would take the guy back to A1A and onto U.S. 1 North—the big red taillights disappearing into the black.
Man, that was
easy,
he thought, and got into his van and pulled into the southbound lane. In his mirror, the road was an empty black as far as he could see. He would take the service road to the next junction, reconnecting him with A1A South.
About a mile down the road, no cars in either direction, Billy flicked on the overhead light and opened the envelope. “Oh, yeah!” he said, riffling through the wad of Benjies with his thumb. Seventy big ones. He flicked off the light and stuffed the envelope into his inside jacket pocket and turned up the CD—Delbert McClinton’s
Nothing Personal.
At about three miles down the road, Billy flicked on the light and once again inspected the money, his mind tripping over ways to spend it. First he’d get himself one of those fifty-inch TVs and a DVD player and a bunch of DV discs
—Predator, Terminator 2, The Score:
the good shit.
At about five miles down the road, Billy replaced McClinton with
When It All Goes South
by Alabama and began to sing along.
About six miles down the road, it crossed his mind that maybe he’d have a multidisc CD player installed so he wouldn’t have to keep changing albums by hand.
About seven miles down the road, Billy’s heart nearly stopped.
In his rearview mirror he noticed an unmarked cruiser with its dashboard cherry.
“SHIT!”
He had tried to keep under the speed limit. Maybe it was a busted taillight,
but he pulled over, thinking that it could have been much worse had he gotten stopped an hour ago with a kid tied up in the back seat. Or maybe the van matched the description of a stolen vehicle.
“SHIT!”
He stuffed the package of money under the seat.
The cruiser pulled behind him, and in the mirrors Billy watched the lone cop get out of his car. He was out of uniform, which was unusual. Unmarked car okay, but with an unmarked officer? Probably off duty. Just Billy’s luck. He could get three years in the slammer for driving a stolen vehicle. Then he’d have to explain the camo suit and bag covered with bloodstains from the dog.
“SHIT!”
He rolled the window down. “Hey!” he said, real friendly.
“Would you step out of your car, please, sir?” The officer was a guy about fifty, short and stocky.
“Pretty sure I was under the limit, Officer,” Billy said, getting out.
The road was dark, and no other cars came by.
“Around this way,” the officer said. He had black driving gloves on.
“Aren’t you going to ask me for my license?” Billy said, reaching for his wallet.
“Not yet,” the officer said, and led Billy around the front of the car which was nosed into thick brush under trees just off the shoulder of the road. The officer made him place his hands on the van’s hood and spread his legs.
Shit!
Billy thought.
The man patted him down. When he felt the inner pocket of his jacket, the man’s hand went inside. Billy grabbed the man’s arm to stop him when he heard
snick snick.
Billy’s hands went free. He looked over his shoulder and saw the long barrel of the man’s pistol.
Just as he realized the extension was a silencer, Billy saw a flash of light go off in his face.
It was the last light he would ever see.
“
D
addy, will you read to me?”
Wearing pajamas with big cartoon spaceships all over them, Dylan opened the door to Martin’s office, a converted bedroom on the second floor.
Martin was at his laptop looking over the dossiers of recruits, most of them senior-level information technology experts. “Hey, you little monkey,” he said with a glance.
“I’m not a monkey,” Dylan protested.
“Just kidding,” Martin said. “I’ll be right with you.” He finished what he was doing and followed Dylan to his room where he climbed into bed with a book called
Elmo the Christmas Cat.
It was part of a series of books about the adventures of an inimitable black-and-white cat.
“That’s a Christmas story,” Martin said, stretching himself beside his son. “Isn’t it a little early?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, it’s only June, and Christmas is in December, which is six months from now.”
“But I want
Elmo the Christmas
Cat.”
Martin wasn’t sure Dylan got what he meant. He had a little trouble with time abstractions. “Okay, but do you remember the months of the year?”
“Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Threesday, Foursday, Fivesday …”
“Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,” Martin corrected. “No, those are days of the week. I mean months of the year.” Feeling a little frustrated, Martin
pointed to the large kid’s calendar on the wall. “You know, ‘January, February, March …’” Martin began to sing.
They had been trying to get him to learn the days of the weeks and months of the year for a while. The odd thing was Dylan could memorize things if they were set to music, which was how he could sing the alphabet correctly and why he knew the lyrics of a couple of dozen show tunes. Yet he could not recite things straight. So they had made up little jingles for the days of the week and months of the year, but at the moment he was more interested in Elmo.
Martin opened up the book and began to read, wondering when the boy would be able to do this himself.
After a couple pages, Dylan noticed the small dark blood scab on Martin’s cheek. “You cut yourself. How come?”
“Just from shaving.”
Dylan touched it gently with his finger. “Does it hurt?”
“Nah.”
“Want a kiss to make it feel better?”
“Sure.”
“Maybe I’ll be a doctor someday.” Dylan kissed the scratch. Then he lay back on his bolster.
“Maybe.” Martin read to him, thinking about his work. When he was finished, he turned out the light. “You know, hon, I’m not going to be home tomorrow night.”
“How come?”
“Well, I’ve got to be in Boston tomorrow.” He had a late conference in town and it made sense to stay over at a hotel.
“I hate Boston. You always go there.”
“I promise I won’t go back for a long time. But tomorrow you’ll have to take care of Mom, okay?”
“Tomorrow we go to the zoo.”
“You are?” Martin had forgotten that Rachel and Sheila MacPhearson were chaperoning Dells kids on a field trip to Franklin Park.
“Uh-huh. But you know what?”
“What?”
“Mom’s sad.”
“She is? Why do you say that?”
“Because I saw her crying.”
Jesus, it was getting worse,
he thought. When he came home a little after seven, she said that dinner was on the stove, then announced that she wanted to lie down because she had a headache. In fact, she had been lying down for nearly two hours now. The light was out in their bedroom and the door was closed, which meant that she was probably asleep.
“Well, I’ll check in on her. I bet she was just tired.”
“Dad, do you like me?”
“Of course I like you. I love you. Why do you ask that?”
Dylan shrugged. “Lucinda doesn’t like me.”
“Sure she does. And if she doesn’t, something’s definitely wrong with her.”
“Something’s definitely wrong with her,” he repeated, and closed his eyes.
Martin had read someplace that it takes the average adult about eight minutes to fall asleep. Dylan was out in less than a minute, no doubt dreaming of some outsized cat in a Santa outfit coming down the chimney.
Martin got up and crossed the hall to their bedroom. The interior was dark, and Rachel was asleep on her side of the huge king-sized bed. Her sweatshirt was still on, but she had taken her slacks off and draped them over the footboard. The thought of her lying there in her panties produced a giddy sensation in his genitals.
He sat on the edge of the bed and she opened her eyes a slit.
“Are you in there?”
She nodded.
“How’s the head?”
She nodded to say that it was okay.
“Well, I hate to wake you but it’s nine o’clock. I thought you might want to change into your PJs.”
She nodded, and closed her eyes again.
“You know what you could use? A few pages of
Elmo the Christmas Cat.
”
She did not smile, or even open her eyes. She just shook her head ever so slightly.
“Swann’s
Way might be more your style.”
Still nothing.
“I know,” he said and stretched himself alongside of her and put his leg across hers. “How about Mighty Marty’s Happy Beef Injection? Been known to cure PMS just like that.” He gave her a little pelvic grind.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
It was as if she had turned to wood. But in the scant light he could see tears pooling in her eyes. Martin pulled back. “Hey, girl, what’s the problem?”
She shook her head slightly.
“Rachel, I’ve known you for nearly ten years. I know when something is eating away at you. And something is, and it’s beginning to scare me. Really. I’m beginning to wonder if you have some awful disease you’re not telling me about.” Martin rubbed her shoulder. “Come on, Rache, what’s going on?”
She took his hand and muttered something he couldn’t get.
“What?” he said, and gently coaxed her face out of the pillow.
“I’m scared.”
Martin felt a cold shock pass through him.
She has cancer. “About what?”
He snapped on the light.
“Dylan.”
“What about Dylan?”
“His problems.”
“What problems? What are you talking about?”
Suddenly she was sharply alert. “What do you mean,
what problems?
” she snapped. “His learning problems. His disabilities. His dyslexia. His … impairment.”
Impairment.
She had rummaged for the right word and came up with
impairment. Such a clinical term,
he thought. According to specialists Dylan had a language-processing problem. But that didn’t make him
impaired.
“Rachel, we’ve been through all this. He hasn’t got polio, for God’s sake. He’s dyslexic, like millions of other kids in this country. We’ll get learning specialists, whatever it takes.”
“But they can’t perform miracles.”
“No, but they can help reverse the problem.”
“It’s not like having his feet straightened.”
Martin wasn’t sure what she meant. “It will take time. But we’ll do the best we can and get beyond this. It’s not the end of the world. Dyslexia can be dealt with.”
“I’m thinking of taking him out of DellKids.”
“How come? What happened?” They had waited a long time and pulled strings to get him into the program, applying months before they actually had moved to town. If it weren’t for Sheila MacPhearson, they wouldn’t have succeeded.
“It’s more than dyslexia. He’s just not in the same league as the other kids, and they’re beginning to make fun of him.”
“Make fun of him?” Rachel was like a mother bear. One of the kids must have mouthed off, Martin decided.
“Maybe if you spent a little more time with him you’d notice.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that you’re so damn absorbed with your work,” she said. Then she added, “And so damn self-congratulatory.”
He felt as if he’d been slapped. “Self-congratulatory?”
“You know what the hell I mean. Working in Cambridge in ‘the brainiest mail zone on the planet.’” Her voice had shifted to a mocking singsong.
Why the hell was she throwing his words back in his face? Of course he loved being in Cambridge and out of that garret behind the Hanover Mall. He now had a five-room suite on the seventh floor of an office building near the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Memorial Drive and a view of Boston that would make a hermit ache. In addition to the extra floor space and easier commute, he was thrilled to spend most of his day surrounded by MIT, and not just because it was his alma mater. With Harvard at one end and MIT at the other end, Mass Ave was like a giant filament blazing with the greatest concentration of mind power in the world. In those other buildings were people who prepared manned missions to Mars, spliced genes, designed robotic intelligence and nanomachines, and searched for quarks, quasars, and extraterrestrial life. Yes, 02141 glowed with the greatest cerebral wattage anywhere, and SageSearch sat at ground zero. Martin felt smarter just being here. “So, what’s your point?”
“That you’re never around long enough to realize your son’s got serious language problems.”
“But he’s younger than the others, and young for his age,” Martin protested. “Besides, wasn’t the idea to put him in there where he can learn from other kids—something about a
mentoring theory?”
“Maybe you should take a few hours off some afternoon and observe them. If that’s mentoring, it’s not working.”
Martin saw that coming, but let it go. “Well, if you think it’s not working, then maybe we should find another day-care place.”
Rachel didn’t respond. She seemed too preoccupied, too on the fringes. He watched her open her night table drawer, pull out the vial of sleeping tablets, and toss a couple into her mouth, washing them down with a glass of
water. “There are things we can do for him, tutors, special ed teachers,” he said, trying to make her feel better. “Even special schools if need be. We can deal with it.”
Still Rachel didn’t respond. Instead she slipped her pajamas on and got back into bed. “I wish we were back in Rockville.”
“Are you kidding? We’re living in one of the best towns on the North Shore. You should be counting your blessings. Our blessings.”
Without a word, she flicked off the light.
So that was it!
he thought.
Christ!
He hated when she clammed up like this. “Guess it’s good night.” He hated another night going by without sex. It had been three weeks.
“G’night.” Her voice was barely audible. Then he heard her mutter something else. In a few minutes the sleeping pills would kick in and she’d be out.
As Martin went to the bathroom, he realized what she had said:
I’m sorry.
But by the time he returned to ask what she meant, she was asleep.
For a long moment, he stood there watching her slip deeper into her Xanax oblivion. While her breathing became more peaceful, it occurred to him that no matter how much you think you know the person you love, even after ten years, there are always those damn little black holes in their makeup from where no light ever escapes. And yet, like the ubiquitous X-ray presence around collapsed stars that astronomers talk about, what Martin detected were the subtle signatures—those microsigns in Rachel’s expression that told him she was holding something back. While she could control her wording and body language, she could not disguise that slightly askew cast of her eyes. It was there again tonight while they spoke. That look that said something was festering just beneath the skin of things.

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