The Fort (5 page)

Hooper parked the car in the garage. He had never planned to bring one of them here, and wasn’t exactly sure what to do. He got out of the car and walked around it, then opened her door, grabbed the girl by the arm, and yanked her out. She opened her mouth to scream, he knew she was going to, and he dropped the hand holding the pistol on top of her head. He caught her body before she could fall to the floor, and was surprised at how little she weighed. Hooper kicked the car door shut, then carried her into the house.

He walked through the kitchen with her and laid her down on the couch. He tucked the pistol into his pants and ran back to the garage. There was some nautical rope in his toolbox, he was almost positive. The rope was in the third drawer he checked, and
Hooper grabbed it, along with a box cutter, and raced back in through the kitchen to the living room. He let out a deep breath. She was still on the couch. He sat down next to her and began using the rope to bind her hands and feet.

When he was done, she was stripped to her underwear, her ankles were bound, and her wrists were tied behind her back. Hooper had used additional rope to attach her ankles to her wrists to create a higher level of security. He checked his watch. It was only 11:00 p.m., so if he hurried, he had enough time to make everything else happen. He hoisted up the now-bound Amy and carried her down to the cellar, along with the rope and box cutter. Once there, he laid her back against a steel beam wrapped in cement, then tied her restraints to the pole using the rest of the rope. He gave it a good yank, and when he was sure that she wouldn’t be getting loose, he grabbed the box cutter and stood, giving her one long last look before climbing the steps and locking the basement door.

He needed to hurry to Meijer to get supplies, and then he needed to go back to Division Street to get another girl, someone who at the very least was a size similar to Amy. Everything was happening so fast, but Hooper knew it was as it was supposed to be. Amy was finally home. Now he just had to do everything right so she could stay there for a very long time.

10

Scott and Luke were already in the fort when Tim got there. He could tell even before he began to ascend the ladder, before he could hear them talking or try to see through the windows. That was because when the boys had first built the fort, they’d installed a security system, so that they would know if a stranger was up there waiting for them. The idea had been Scott’s stepdad’s on his lone trip to see the thing, and it was simple: All three boys were to keep a bottle cap in their pants pocket at all times. Scott had Coke, Tim had Budweiser, and Luke had Sprite. If they came alone, they were always to check at the base of the ladder that was farthest north, or closest to Tim’s house. No caps placed on the ground under the bottom rung, but noise coming from upstairs? That meant run home and get an adult.

Today, Tim saw the Coke and Sprite caps right where they were supposed to be, and he flipped his Budweiser cap next to them out of habit, just as Scott’s stepdad had told them to. “You have to do it every time,” he’d said, “or it’ll be pointless and you could end up getting killed by some drifter anyway.” The boys had nodded at this passing of valuable knowledge, and all of them loved the ritual that felt almost like something James Bond would do.

His cap in place, Tim slowly began to ascend the ladder. All three of them could do it quickly—Scott the fastest by far—but it was still pretty cool to go slowly and look at how the forest changed as you climbed. There was nothing out of the ordinary to see—the boys’ near-constant presence in the woods would’ve sent most local wildlife in search of a quieter locale—but there was still a lot to take in. Even the trees looked cooler the higher up Tim got, and no matter how many times he did it, the trip to the top never seemed to get boring.

Tim arose from the hole in the floor, then transitioned from the last rungs of the ladder to the waiting safety of the fort. Luke grabbed his forearm as he came over the gap in the wood, and then Tim felt the faint sense of vertigo fade. Feet planted on semisolid ground, Tim thanked Luke for the hand and asked the other boys what they were doing.

“Nothing,” said Luke. “Just trying to hit that target again, or at least we were.”

“Yeah,” said Scott dejectedly. “Either our guns suck, or we suck. Probably both.”

“Well, we’re not going to get better guns,” said Tim. “I had to bug my mom forever just to let me get this one. There’s no way she’s going to let me get a better one, not even if I got a paper route and saved my own money.”

“Good luck getting a paper route around here,” said Luke. “The Bennetts have that locked up until they die.” This was an endlessly sore point for any cash-strapped neighborhood child old enough to have a bicycle. The Bennett brothers, a pair of alcoholics who lived in Luke’s trailer park, had miles’ and miles’ worth of paper routes, and had used them as a sole source of income for as long as anyone could remember. The worst part was that the Bennett brothers, drunks or not, did a great job with their thousands of deliveries and there was no way they were going to get fired anytime soon.

“Yeah,” said Tim. “I know. It just sucks, is all. I know my dad would let me get a better gun, maybe even a .22 like I fired one time up north, but my mom won’t have a real gun in the house.”

“Hey, did you guys hear about Molly Peterson?” Scott said, changing the subject. “Her mom and my mom are friends at work, and I guess Molly never came home last night. My mom said that, knowing Molly, she wouldn’t be surprised if she was shacked up with a sailor or something for a few days, but I guess her mom is totally freaking out.”

“I heard about that,” said Tim. “Her mom called my mom this morning. Molly was out to the movies last night with my sister and…” Tim trailed off.

“And what?” Luke asked him. “What happened at the movies?”

“Well,” said Tim, “the thing is, I don’t know exactly. Also, my mom told me not to tell anyone about it. She said it was private family stuff, and that it was supposed to stay that way.”

“Hey,” said Scott, “we’re not just friends, we’re blood brothers, remember?”

Tim did. The three had sealed a pact in blood coaxed from their pinkies three years prior. Scott had a point, but Tim’s mother’s words still rang in his head. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “But my mom was super serious about not telling anyone about what happened to Becca. She said it could be bad for her reputation, which made no sense. Like, how is some girl going missing bad for my sister’s reputation?”

“You just don’t understand how reputations work for girls,” said Luke. “My sister Ashley has all kinds of rumors going around about her at school. You guys know exactly what I’m talking about.” They did. Rumor had it that Luke’s fifth-grade sister Ashley had been caught giving a classmate a hand job in the boys’ bathroom right before spring break earlier in the year. No one could confirm it, but the fact that both she and Todd had been suspended at the same time was fairly telling that something, even if no one knew exactly what, had happened. “Still,” Luke continued, “you can tell us. Besides, it’s summer. Even if we wanted to be jerks and blab to the whole school about what happened, there’s no one to tell.”

“Not to mention,” said Scott, “if Molly really is gone, everyone is going to know exactly what happened anyways. If she’s really gone for more than a few days, it’ll be on the news, like last summer, when that kid from Kentwood wound up dead in that refrigerator.”

“I still don’t get why anyone would hide in an old fridge,” said Tim, trying to deflect the thought of Becca being anything like Luke’s sisters. “You know it had to have smelled super bad in there. And you guys have a point. But you have to promise that you won’t tell anyone. If the whole town finds out my sister was frenching some dude at the drive-in, that’s fine, as long as they didn’t find out from me, or from you. Got it?”

Scott and Luke did, both of their heads bobbling as Tim started to tell them what happened. “My sister wanted to go see a couple of movies at the drive-in, and—”

“What movies?”

“
The Untouchables
and
Full Met
—”

“Wait,” said Scott. “Did she say if
Full Metal Jacket
was good? Carl and my mom saw it on Friday when it came out, and he said it was awesome. Seriously, you guys, my stepdad told me that movie would put hair on my balls. He said it was just like Nam, no Hollywood fucking around like
Apocalypse Now
or
Platoon
. I totally want to go, but Carl asked at the movie theater and they said no minors. I could tell it was good, ’cause my mom was freaking out, but—”

“Let Tim tell us what happened,” said Luke. “Just give it a rest in general.”

Scott sat down, looking pissed. Tim thought Luke was pretty harsh, calling him out like that—what about the blood-brothers business?—but went on with the story.

“So my sister and some friends went to the drive-in, most likely to drink beer and hit on older guys. The usual stuff.”

“Stupid stuff,” added Scott.

“Yes, exactly, super-stupid stuff. Anyways, something happened, I’m pretty sure between my sister and one of the guys.
Which is weird, because I know she is, like, in love with Tyler Cranston, but she says it wasn’t him, and even sounded sort of PO’d that someone would even think it was. So my theory is this: My sister and her dumb buddies go to the drive-in. Something happens that makes Becca pissed at Tyler, probably saw him kissing another girl or something, and she decides to try and make him jealous. Only the older guy that she hooks up with wants to do more than just kiss.”

“Like have sex or something?” Luke asked.

“Yeah, something like that. Maybe he was trying to go all the way. Who knows? Anyways, my sister made it clear she didn’t want to do that, and something bad happened. When she came home her shirt was torn, and I could tell she was really upset. And not like how she gets upset when I call her Bacon and she’s feeling fat, but really upset, and really scared too.”

“Did any of the other girls hook up with some of the older guys too?” Scott asked. “’Cause maybe they did, and one of them took Molly. Maybe he’s some psycho killer or something, like that guy dumping bodies in the park, and her saying no wouldn’t have mattered at all.”

“Yeah, right,” said Luke. “A psychopath kidnapping some high school chick from a drive-in movie theater? That might happen downtown, but not here. You need to lose the late-night horror flicks, Scotty.”

“I don’t know, maybe Scott’s on to something,” said Tim. “After all, stuff like that always happens in places that seem pretty normal. That’s how dudes like that get away with it for so long, because nobody wants to suspect their neighbor.”

“Jesus,” said Luke. “Both of you? You two need to soak your heads. Next thing you’ll be telling me you think the Russkies are really going to nuke us, and we need to dig bomb shelters. If you guys want to go play private eye, you can be my guest. Just so you know, though, I’ll be doing rad shit while you’re gone, and when you come back, I’ll be the one laughing. That girl is going to come
home in a day or two with a broken heart and maybe a baby in her belly, and that’s going to be the end of it. Trust me, give it a couple days, she’ll come crawling back, and everyone except the high school kids will forget this ever happened.”

Eager to change the subject, and feeling terrible for having shared the information in the first place, Tim said, “Anyways, the guns. You guys really want to give up on the target? I think it’s fun to at least try.”

“Tim,” said Luke. “Let me level with you: Molly Peterson is a lot more likely to be really kidnapped than we are to hit that target with these shitty guns. I’ve got an hour left before I have to go home and make sure my idiot sisters remember to have lunch. You guys actually want to do anything, or just keep on yapping like old ladies?”

11

The three friends broke up the party fifteen minutes before Luke needed to be home to make lunch. If Luke was late, his sisters would tell on him. If he just skipped it, they wouldn’t eat, and they’d tell on him. It was ridiculous, they were just a year younger than he was, but it was what his mom wanted, so he tolerated it with a skin that was growing thicker by the day.

Scott had invited Tim to come over to his house and eat—no one was home, Carl was working, and his mom had a week of doubles—but Tim declined. There was never anything exciting happening at home, and as bad as he felt for Becca, he did want to see if there were any new developments. Tim was smiling as he walked past the patio and into the front yard, but the sight of the unfamiliar car in the driveway changed that, mostly because the one behind it was a marked police car.

With a lump in his throat, along with a powerfully burning curiosity, Tim walked through his yard and bounded up the driveway to the front door. When he walked in, he stopped dead in his tracks.

Becca and his parents were sitting at the kitchen table with a man in a black suit, along with a uniformed police officer. Five
sets of eyes turned to him as the door swung open, and Tim closed it behind him quietly. “Tim,” said his mom. “Go to your room and read a book. No one is in trouble, and we’ll explain in a little bit.”

“OK, Mom,” he said, before gliding as silently as he was able through the dining room, the kitchen, and the hallway that led to his room, as though it were possible to offend the police officers by being noisy. The one in the uniform had looked just like any cop Tim had ever seen: he was tall, with a broad chest, and had a really cool-looking pistol on his right hip. The detective, though, if that’s what he was, had been different. Tim had been able to feel the man’s eyes on him as soon as he’d entered the room, and he’d known he was being analyzed, judged. He was as sure of it as he was of anything, as if the detective had used some sort of impossible brain scan on him to see if there were any useful information trapped in his mind.
God, maybe Luke’s right. Too many scary movies.
That wasn’t how it felt, though. The detective had been sizing him up, chewing on Tim as if he were a fatty piece of steak, and it was not a comfortable feeling.