Scott Free (9 page)

Then again, not everyone saw his baby boy in the same light as he did. Among his fellow classmates at Robinson High School, Scott was apparently quite the babe. A hottie. Brandon had learned this little detail during back-to-school night when some girl's mother—herself single and clearly on the prowl—sought him out to share with the father the depth of the son's babehood. His hottiness. Brandon had received the news with pride and grace, and wasted no time in passing it on to the babe himself, who responded with a shade of red that one rarely saw in nature.

“Please don't say anything like that in front of my friends,” he'd begged.

“I think they already know. Apparently everyone does.”

“Oh, God,” Scott had groaned. “You're going to, aren't you? I know you. You're going to be sitting with some parent who's bragging about their kid's SAT scores, and you're going to say, ‘Yeah, but my son's a babe.'”

“But I'm proud to be the father of a babe. You should be proud to be one.”

“Oh, God.”

And so it had gone for a good five minutes until Scott had taken offense and left the kitchen in a huff. Leave it to teenagers to be offended by compliments.

As “Enter Sandman” ended and “Sad But True” began, Brandon found himself petting a T-shirt that Scott had left crumpled on the bed. He recognized it as one he'd bought last summer in Hilton Head, featuring a peg-legged pirate with a bandanna and an eye patch riding a shark skeleton bareback, by way of advertising a brand of surfboard wax. Scott had bought it for the picture and it had been one of his favorites ever since.

The rush of anguish came as a stab as Brandon fondled the shirt, feeling the limp softness of it between his fingers. It was a connection—a link to his son, and as he handled it, the lingering odor of Mennen anti-perspirant and Brut aftershave wafted past, sharpening the pain and driving it deeper. As the music grew louder and Kirk pounded his guitar strings, Brandon buried his face in the dirty shirt and inhaled the aroma.

He closed his eyes and squinted hard, trying to force the pain away, but it only grew sharper. How could they have put their son in the middle of all this? How could he, Brandon, have forced Scott to feel bad about a trip he had every right to treasure?

How am I going to live without him?

The tears arrived in a rush, flooding out as a wracking sob. Jesus, what had he done? What was he going to do? The desperate sadness was a knife blade—a bayonet thrust through his soul. The agony of it took Brandon's breath away, and with it, his sense of hope. Scott Christopher O'Toole lay dead or dying out there somewhere, and the last thought he'd take with him was the guilt of having disappointed the man who was in fact his single greatest fan.

Brandon buried his face deeper into the T-shirt and tried to imagine what it would have been like to have one final embrace.

“Brandon?” Sherry's voice stirred something ugly in his gut.

“Brandon, where are you?” She was in the living room, and without even looking, he could see her with her hands on her hips.

Settling himself with a deep breath, Brandon wiped his eyes and stepped out of the bedroom into the hallway. Sure enough, there she was, with just the posture he'd imagined.

“Where the hell were you?” Brandon said, walking toward her.

“I was upstairs sleeping.” Clearly, she'd made an effort to fix her hair, but the back still showed signs of bed head.

“I meant last night,” Brandon said.

Sherry held her hands up astride her face, her fingers splayed—her ultimate sign of frustration. “I was just tired and scared, all right? I didn't want to have to deal with you. That's why I didn't answer the phone, and that's why I didn't return your calls. I'm sorry, okay?”

“Earlier,
Sherry. Where were you earlier? When Scott was deciding to go to some concert?”

“Oh, like this is
my
fault?”

“For one week out of your busy life, you were supposed to be a
parent!
Now, where the hell were you?”

Sherry shook her head and headed back for the stairs. “I don't have to listen to this. You're delusional.”

Brandon grabbed her arm and pulled her back around. “No, actually, you do have to listen to this. I want an answer.”

“Get your hands off me, before I call the police.”

“I've spent all day with the police,” Brandon sneered. “Want me to tell you which one to talk to? How did this happen?”

Sherry yanked her arm away. “How dare you!”

“Answer the goddamn question! How does a sixteen-year-old boy manage to climb onto an airplane and fly into a snowstorm when you're here watching him?”

Her hands went back to her hips, her head cocked. “Do you really think that I'm with him every single minute of the day? Scotty's a teenager, for God's sake. In case you haven't noticed.”

“His name is
Scott,
Sherry! He hates being called Scotty. And it's
because
he's a teenager that I do keep an eye on him.”

“Oh, that's right, I keep forgetting that I'm dealing with the perfect father. Excuse me for not calling you for an instruction book before I left.”

“Jesus, Sherry, it's not about being perfect! It's about being reasonable! Now, where the hell were you?”

“I was at breakfast, Brandon. And then I did some work. And then I had lunch and then I wrote a little more, and then, wouldn't you know it? It was time for dinner. That's where I was. Now, I suppose by your yardstick of reasonable parenting, I should have had Scotty in a playpen at arm's reach all day, but somehow, that seemed wasteful. You know, inasmuch as we're at a ski resort!”

“Where you have no business being in the first place!” Brandon boomed.

Sherry laughed that derisive little chuckle that always pushed him over the edge. “Oh, so now we get down to what's really bugging you. You're afraid of losing the parent olympics.”

“I'm afraid of losing my son! To hell with you and me, Sherry. Has it dawned on you yet that our son has been in a plane crash?”

“Has it dawned on you that it's not my fault?”

Brandon swatted a lamp off its end table, and then launched the table itself with a kick. “Goddammit, Sherry, it's not even
about
you! Like most of the things that go on in the world every goddamn day, this one is not even remotely about
you!
Why can't you see that?”

“Because you keep blaming me for it! And you're paying for that lamp!”

He swatted another one just for good measure. And in that moment, he realized that he was out of control. He realized that coming to the chalet had been exactly the wrong idea, and that if he didn't walk away right this moment, he was going to hurt her. He took a step closer, and while he could see the fear in her eyes, she refused to step back.

“The depths of what you don't comprehend are truly frightening, Sherry,” he said. His voice was a whisper now, and his forefinger hovered an inch from her nose. “But you listen to me very carefully. If they don't find Scott, or if they find him and he's anything but one hundred percent healthy, you're going to pay.”

A
T TEN MINUTES TO THREE
, Isaac DeHaven thumbed the switch on the shortwave radio, pleased to hear the
thump
that demonstrated there was life in the speakers. Living like this in the middle of nowhere, he always enjoyed a sense of satisfaction when the equipment still worked. Repairs in the wintertime could pose a hell of a problem.

Isaac called his little piece of heaven a “cabin,” but by anyone else's standards it was much more than that. Built originally as a hunting lodge back in the 1920s—and then modified a decade later to minister to the needs of the bootlegging crowd—the Flintlock Ranch was constructed entirely of logs harvested from the surrounding forests and sported close to four thousand square feet of living space. He had all the comforts he needed, with the exception of a truly efficient heating system. On days like this, even with the wood stoves stoked and the heat set on high, it was hard to bring the temperature much past sixty-five. A hell of a lot warmer than outside, to be sure, but never quite warm enough to shed his sweater and socks.

Returning last night after five days, it seemed as if the frigid weather had settled into the very foundation of the place. He threw another log onto the fire and opened the stove's damper a little more, then settled into his plush leather chair, his feet crossed on the ottoman, just inches from the blaze in the firebox.

As necessary as it was to leave the ranch from time to time, he always dreaded it, and always savored the days that followed his return. It was the solitude, as much as anything else, he thought. And in the winter, the solitude was sweeter than at any other time of the year. The grass didn't grow; it was too cold to repair fences. Winter was Isaac's time for music and books and maybe a little writing. For days on end, he might never exercise his vocal cords at all, and that was just fine with him. Life was too short to spend it talking to others.

Not when there were books to read, music to listen to. The walls of Flintlock Ranch were papered with books, thousands of volumes, stretching from floor to ceiling, wrapping the entire perimeter. Isaac read everything, from memoirs to classics to junk fiction. He knew the law as well or better than any new associate in any law firm in the nation, just as he knew disease as intimately as any fourth-year medical student. When he listened to a Mozart symphony or a Beatles album, he knew not only the music, but where it fit in the composer's total body of work. Isaac didn't actively seek out to learn these things, he just did. And with little else to clutter his mind, he retained more detail than he lost. He supposed it was just the way he was wired as a human being.

What he could not absorb in sufficient quantity to slake his interest was current news, and that, as much as anything else, was the function of his shortwave radio. On it, he could listen not only to the news of the United States, but also to that of France or Germany or Spain, or any of the other nations whose languages he spoke fluently. Inevitably, though, after just an hour or so of announcer-speak, he would feel his temper heating, his mood darkening. Then it would be time to restore the gentle silence, interrupted only by music.

Isaac DeHaven's nightmares were all noisy, filled with people he didn't know, invading his space and his mind with random commotion that accomplished nothing. The nightmares relived his days in prison: five years wasted in the company of humans who were barely more than animals, guarded by men who believed that a piece of metal pinned to a shirt somehow gave them power over others; that it relieved them of responsibility for the suffering that they inflicted on the men placed in their care.

Isaac didn't waste his time on hatred, but if he did, it was the prison guards who would feel the heat of his emotion. The nightmares were all that separated Isaac from a truly utopian existence out here in the wilderness. If they would leave him alone, then his contentment would be complete.

Isaac's brain fired a shiver before he fully comprehended why. It was the song on the radio—Andy Williams crooning “Moon River.” His heart racing, Isaac checked his watch and verified the time: it was precisely 3:00. “Well, I'll be damned,” he muttered.

The signal had been set up years ago. Isaac would listen to the obscure radio band every afternoon. If there was a problem, then straight-up at three o'clock, he'd hear “Moon River.” So, this was a first. “Moon River” meant that Isaac had somehow screwed up, and the very thought of it baffled him. Isaac
never
made mistakes.

Then he remembered the man in the truck stop. The one who kept looking at him and then looking away. He'd sensed that something was wrong even then, but was distracted by Maurice before he could act on his suspicions.

“I
will
be damned.” He said it again, because it was the only thing he could think of to say.

Isaac checked his watch again, this time to verify the date: February 25; 2/25. It would be 2:25 tomorrow morning before he would be able to pick up the coded message, and in the meantime, he'd just have to wonder. Surely it was a mistake.

Just to be on the safe side, Isaac wandered into the little study hidden behind the panel in the kitchen wall, and over to the vault. He dialed in the combination, pulled the door open and scanned the collection of weaponry. Until he had some notion of what was going on, he traded in the little .38 snub-nose that always graced his waist for an H&K 9 mm. Then, just to be sure, he slipped a full magazine into an MP5 assault rifle before closing and locking the door again.

With a deep sigh, Isaac turned off the radio, selected a Rimsky-Korsakov CD for the player and settled back into his chair.

Try as he might, mental peace would be hard to come by on this night.

•  •  •

S
COTT AWOKE THINKING
somebody had hit him. Out of nowhere, a cramp seized his stomach, pulling his knees up to his chest. It was a deep, grinding pain that started low and spread quickly, like a kick in the balls, leaving him wondering if he might puke. He clenched his jaws against the bile that flooded up behind his tongue, willing the contents of his stomach to remain where they were. A minute later, the pain was gone, but it left him feeling weak, shaky. He needed food. Water, too, probably. He scraped a glove full of snow away from the inside wall and shoved it into his mouth. To hell with Sven and his warnings. He had to chew to make it melt, and as he swallowed, he could feel every inch of its progress down his gullet.

He closed his eyes.

Work to stay awake,
Sven told him.
Sleep is a very dangerous thing.

As he drifted off again, Scott dreamed of dying.

 

A
IRPLANES.

Scott bolted upright, fully aware before he was fully awake. Propelled by adrenaline, he scrambled for the shelter door, pushing it open and crawling out into the snow.

The thick canopy overhead distorted the sound of the aircraft engines just enough that Scott couldn't tell where they were coming from. They could be overhead, or they could be two miles away, propellers churning the air relentlessly. As he listened, Scott's spirits soared.

“They're looking for me,” he announced to the forest.

That had to be it. A passing airliner or a military plane would have jet engines; the sound of people in a hurry to get where they're going. But propellers were for cruising. For rescuing. He let out the war whoop of all war whoops.

This was it. The best moment of all. Wrap a lifetime of Christmases and birthdays into one package, throw in seventh grade, when he made straight A's all year long, and even the day he got his driver's license, and you wouldn't come close to the jubilation of this moment. His war whoop rattled the trees, and he found tears tracking down his face—hot trails on cold-numbed flesh.

Truly, they were here.

But did they know? Could they know? The trees were too thick! He needed to make it easier for them somehow. He needed to send a signal so they'd know how close he was.

So, how close was he?

He had no idea, and with only one flare in the gun, he couldn't afford to make a mistake. The sound came from everywhere. Well, everywhere but directly overhead.

Scott closed his eyes and executed a painfully slow pirouette, hoping to pinpoint the direction where the sound of engines was strongest. After two rotations, he wrote off the half of the world that lay beyond the wreckage, and concentrated instead on the half that lay beyond the new shelter. According to the compass on the zipper fob on his coat, that put it on the western half of the globe. But where? Before he started chasing after a noise, he'd better know where the hell he was going. He shuddered to remember how disoriented he'd become the night before. Never again.

He could do this. If he paid careful attention to the compass as he walked, and used the knife from the survival kit to blaze a trail, he should be able to go wherever the sound took him, and still be able to find his way back. Hell, he'd done it a thousand times on Scout trips. So what if the penalty for a mistake was a little higher? Okay, a lot higher.

He even had a map to follow: that ratty, overfolded USGS map he'd found in the cockpit. He hadn't really looked at it yet, so for all Scott knew, it was a map of Poughkeepsie, but maybe not. If he took it along, maybe he'd see some landmark that would tell him exactly where he was. Who knows? Maybe he'd break into a clearing and discover that they were right at the foot of Mount Rushmore. Okay, that would put them way off course, but still. Certainly, it couldn't hurt to take it along.

It all came back to him quickly, once he started walking. Use your compass to sight in on an object, then lock onto the object with your eyes and walk to it. When you get there, use the knife to mark it with a blaze for the return trip and take another sighting. The process was tedious as hell, but this was no time for shortcuts.

He gave himself an hour—forty minutes out and twenty minutes back; the return trip shorter because he didn't have to stop to mark blazes. Progress was slow. What looked smooth as white icing in fact hid countless rocks and dead falls. Thank God his ankle was feeling better—not perfect by a long shot, but a heck of a lot better. According to the rules for orienteering, success depended on never letting your eyes wander from the selected target, but he had to look down every now and then, just to see where he was putting his feet. If, when he looked up again, he couldn't decide whether his original target had been the tree on the right or the left, he'd have to shoot another azimuth.

He quickly learned to choose landmarks with character—something to distinguish them from all other features. A dangling branch, maybe, or an odd growth pattern. For the blaze itself, he preferred to strip a section of bark, leaving a white stripe against the dark wood of the trunk, but he was flexible. For one blaze, he'd actually tied a knot in the top of a four-foot hemlock sapling. It took more time than he could afford, but it was kind of fun.

An hour into it, he realized that his forty-minute goal had been foolhardy. His arms ached from all the cutting and hacking, and as sweat dripped down the crease between his nose and his cheek, he had to chuckle at the irony. Cold as witches' titties, and here he was breaking a sweat by walking.

The ticking clock was a problem. Not only was darkness moving closer, but he worried how long the planes would continue to buzz the air before they just gave up and went home. They'd come this far; the rest was up to him, and he still didn't know where he was going.

But the noise was closer. Maybe it was just the thinning trees, but honest to God, he swore that the sound of the engines had grown louder by half. He could almost
feel
the sound in his chest.

Breaking through a wall of spruces, the gentle slope he'd been climbing for so long grew sharply steeper. But of course. What better time to encounter a huge hill than when your legs are screaming for you to sit down? The growl of the engines drew him closer still.

Leaning into the slope, his boots started to slip. Steeper still, and now he used his hands. Soon, the terrain was more vertical than horizontal. Every muscle screamed for him to stop, but he wouldn't listen. He couldn't. After this much effort, there had to be a reward, even if it was just a level patch of ground where he could rest for a few minutes.

Finally, the crest. Blood pounded in his ears as he scaled the last twenty feet.

But the crest wasn't a crest at all; merely a high spot before a gentle downward slope through thick trees, beyond which Scott could just barely see a cliff that looked like the edge of the world. He ran toward it, and slid to a halt, inches from the edge of a vertical rock face that dropped hundreds of feet into a fog that concealed whatever lay below. The bitter wind lashed his face as he looked out into a steel gray sky, still obesely pregnant with snow. Out here, beyond the windbreak of the forest, the air seemed twenty degrees colder.

The propeller buzz seemed farther away now, completely concealed by clouds. Then the engine grew loud again. This made no sense. Maybe it was just an acoustical trick on a cloudy day; clouds did that sometimes. How many times had he heard a jet engine right overhead, only to find that it belonged to a spec way up in the sky?