THE LAST BOY (40 page)

“What kind of stories did you tell him?”

“About things.”

“Like?”

“Oh,” Danny lowered his head to rub his nose against the cat's, “he wanted to know what life was like. Things we did. You know, here. In town.”

“So what did you tell him about?”

“Oh, television. He wanted to know about the things I could see on it. And video games. What my mother had learned in her school and about her computer and stuff.”

The boy was suddenly opening up in a way he never had before, and Tripoli decided it was safe to gently prod him.“And what else?”

“He wanted to know about phones that didn’t use wires. He had seen someone using one, but I didn’t know anything about them— not then. You know, like that little black phone you always have in your pocket.”

“He didn’t like those things—computers and television and such—did he?”

“Oh, no, he did!” said Danny looking up. “He was very interested in them. He wanted to know
all
about them. How they worked. But I didn’t know. Not yet.”

“So why didn’t he just come and look for himself?”

“He just didn’t like being in the city with the noise and machines and stuff.”

“Like you?”

“It doesn’t bother me as much.”

“And the stories he told you? What were they about?”

“Oh, just everything.”The cat leaped off the porch and crawled underneath it. Danny jumped down and crept along the ground, peering into the darkness under the porch.

He was now out of Tripoli's vision.“Like for instance?”

“He would make up these stories. Like once he told me about a lady who lost her way. She was nice and everything, but she was at this place where there were all these roads and she was all mixed up and…and…and didn’t know which one to take. She couldn’t read the signs.”

“You mean they were not in English?”

“No! Not like that!” his head popped into view above the edge of the porch.“The signs. The signs!”

“Oh?”

“The kind you have to look for carefully. Or listen for. They’re always there. It's just that the lady didn’t see them. Now where's that crazy kitty?”

When Tripoli went in to get another beer from the fridge, the phone was ringing. He hesitated, debated, then, figuring it might be Molly, picked it up.

“I’ve been trying to get ahold of you all day,” said Sisler. Your answering machine isn’t picking up. Your cell's off…Where the hell have you been?”

“Out.”

“Out where?”

He sat down, leaned back in his chair far enough to reach the fridge door. The beer was sitting on the top shelf. He popped the
top and took a long, thirsty drink.“Oh, just out wandering…walking and ruminating,” he said with a laugh.

“Hey, are you okay?” asked Sisler.

“Sure. I’m fine. What's up?” He lifted a hand to wipe his face and noticed that it smelled pleasantly of fresh grass.

“
What's up?
Haven’t you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“The body's missing.”

“What body?” It took him a moment.“You mean the
Hermit?
”

“Yeah!”

“What the hell do you mean
missing?
”

“Just that. The old guy's body is gone. Disappeared.”

It took all of Tripoli's effort to pull his mind out of the barnyard and back into focus. He sat up on the edge of his chair and leaned into the phone as if to cover it. Danny was on the other side of the screen door, lying on the porch, his head over the edge. He was dangling a piece of string, laughing excitedly every time the cat lunged for it.

“So when did all this happen?”

“No one knows. Yerka went to begin the autopsy and the locker was empty.”

“You’re kidding!” said Tripoli.

“Hey, I don’t make jokes like that. And the chief is going ballistic.”

“Jesus H. Christ!” uttered Tripoli.

“Yeah, exactly,” said Sisler with a snort.

Tripoli was perplexed.“I don’t get it. I mean, Jimmy Teeter was there from the beginning. And Paolangeli was supposed to—”

“Yup, he took over. And then Pellegrino. There was a man there right up until Yerka opened the locker.”

“So somebody swiped the body?”

“You tell me how.”

Tripoli didn’t know what to tell him.

“Oh, and the prints!” He could almost hear Sisler slapping his forehead.

“They came back?”Tripoli was now on his feet.

“Yeah. That's another reason I called.”

“Go on, go on,”Tripoli urged impatiently.

“They came up as a missing person.”

“And?”Tripoli knew there was more.

“They came up in the FBI registry. They’re the prints of a
kid.
Missing from Watertown.”

Tripoli listened expectantly. He knew there was still more. A great deal more.

“Now this is the weird part. The kid disappeared in
1938
.”

“How old?”

“Six. I think a little over six.”

“Yes!” trumpeted Tripoli, snapping his fingers triumphantly. “That's what I thought!”

Danny glanced up from where he lay on the porch.

“What are you talking about?” asked Sisler.

“I don’t really know—but I think I’m starting to get it. Does this guy have a name?”

“Of course. Matthew Roland.”

“Matthew? Huh?
Matthew?
”

“Yeah. Yeah. Matthew.”

“Did he have a middle name?”

“Like what?”

“You know, a middle name.” Like John, he thought.

Tripoli could hear papers rattling on the other end. “Errr…Wait. Here. I got it. Matthew Peter Roland.”

“What else have you got?” Tripoli noticed that Danny had stopped playing with the cat and was looking his way. Although the boy couldn’t hear Sisler's end of the conversation, Tripoli had the
uncanny sensation that he somehow knew what they were talking about.

“Nothing else. That's it. Period. I mean you’re talking here ancient history. More than sixty years ago. That's before the invention of the typewriter, isn’t it?”

“Some swell babysitter you are,”muttered Molly when Tripoli appeared at her office. Danny was with Ben in the kitchen getting an ice cream. It was 4:30, her desk was awash in paper: she still had hours of work left.“I thought you were keeping him until dinner so I could get stuff done,” she shuffled through a lower drawer looking for a file. “I was hoping…” She glanced up from her desk as Danny stepped into the office, a chocolate-covered popsicle in his hand and a big smile encircled by chocolate. He looked happier than she had seen him in days.

“I wanted to stay, too,” piped Danny.“Trip's got all our animals!”

“I really
was
planning on keeping him. But—look, something urgent just came up.” Tripoli was clean-shaven and dressed in a freshly pressed shirt and slacks.

“Swell, I’ve got two great au pairs, you and Rosie…” She said in mock complaint, realizing that whatever it was that Tripoli had done it had broken the spell that had plagued Danny since the old man's death.

“Look, I gotta run.” He reached for the door, then turned. “Daniel and I had a swell time, didn’t we?”

Danny nodded. “Can’t I come with you?
Please?
” He wrapped his arms around Tripoli's waist.

It was hard to pull away from the boy.“Not now. But I’ll make it up to you. You’ll come out again. And real soon. We’ll do more stuff together. You’ll see.”Tripoli ruffled his hair, gave Molly a quick kiss, and then was back on the street.

Tripoli drove over the inlet bridge and went straight up to the hospital, cutting across the line where the tornado had ripped
through a section of dense woods. Stately oaks and towering maples lay deposited in heaps as if they were matchsticks.

“Not you, too,” said a disheveled Yerka when he stepped into the M. E.'s office. “I’ve already had visits from the D. A., your beloved chief, the State BCI people, and the governor's office is even sending in an emissary. And now you!”

“Well, it's not every day you lose a body,” said Tripoli.

“Please,”Yerka held up his hands in surrender, “do me a favor. No jokes this afternoon. It's brutally hot. I’m bone tired. My sailboat was wrecked in that storm. I’ve had just about—”

“Look, Phil, the body had to get out of here some way, right?”

“Okay. But why is everybody talking to
me?
”Yerka poked himself in the chest.“It was
your
fucking guys who were here continuously—or were supposed to be. It's not my job to guard a corpse. I’m a physician, not a cop. And the door to the morgue was locked. With God as my witness, I locked it when I left last night.” As he described the scene, Yerka's long arms were waving comically in all directions. “The body was there. I know that for a fact. And Paolangeli was sitting right here in the front office playing solitaire when I took off at seven. No one could go into the morgue without running smack into him—or whoever the hell was on duty.”

“Hmmm, I suppose not,” muttered Tripoli.

“Come on, I’ll show you,” said Yerka grabbing his arm and starting to lead him into the morgue.

“Okay, but just hold your horses.”

Tripoli kneeled to examine the entry lock to the morgue door. It didn’t appear to have been tampered with, but then the place wasn’t exactly Fort Knox. It could easily have been picked by somebody with a modicum of skill.

He joined Yerka who stood waiting in the morgue room.

“See?” said the pathologist, pulling the lever and opening the refrigerated locker. He slid out the tray. The sheet that had been
covering the old Hermit's corpse lay crumpled to one side of the stainless steel drawer, just as Yerka had found it.

Tripoli examined the door to the locker. The latching mechanism was controlled from the outside. Then, to Yerka's surprise, he stooped down and carefully examined the inside of the door.

“What are you thinking? Listen, Trip, they don’t put handles on the inside of these things.”

“Okay, okay. I’m just looking at everything.”

“Let me slide you in and see if
you
can get out,” said Yerka angrily.

Tripoli actually contemplated it for a moment, then smiled.“No thanks, Phil. I don’t want to catch cold. Besides, I can see enough like this.”

“Trip, the guy was dead as a doorknob. Believe me. They don’t come any deader. And unless you’re Houdini, there's only one way to open this locker—and that's from the outside. It's very simple. Some idiot came in here and helped himself to a dead body. The old guy didn’t rise from the dead. He didn’t pass through walls. Somebody picked him up and schlepped him out of here. Period.”

“Yeah, okay. I’ll buy that. But then the question is who? And
why?
”

“What are you doing asking
me?
” Yerka raised his voice and was almost shouting.“I’m a doctor, not a fucking detective! You want to know who? I’ll tell you who. It was probably one of those religious nuts. This town is crawling with borderline crazies. And with this spiritual hermit nonsense, the whole fucking city is rapidly going off the deep end.”

“We’ll get this thing figured out,” said Tripoli calmly.

“I don’t even care if you figure it out. Far as I’m concerned, just get me my corpse back and I’ll be happy.”

“We can’t have this,” said Ozmun, the landlord of the trailer park. Molly had just returned home and was getting ready to prepare a
stir fry for dinner when Ozmun opened the door to her trailer without so much as a knock. Nobody ever saw him unless there was trouble.

A former bouncer at the Wooden Nickel, Ozmun was huge, hairy, and not particularly bright.

Danny was out in the garden tying up the vines that had been torn away by the storm, and when the door handle turned, she was sure it was him. The man's menacing presence frightened her.

“Hey, don’t you believe in knocking?” she said, trying not to appear cowed.

He simply glared at her.

“Okay, what do you want?”

“This has gotta stop. I’m getting all kinds of complaints. People comin’ and goin’ at all hours. You’ve got the cops here all the time.”

“They’re here protecting my boy. And I certainly didn’t invite these other people. They—”

“I don’t want to hear no more bullshit about the boy.” He swiveled in the doorway so he could face Danny.“And he's dug up the lawn. You don’t have permission!” He leveled an accusing finger at Danny, who hunkered down amidst his tomatoes.“I want all this crap ripped out and reseeded.”

“It's my garden,” the boy said quietly, slowly standing up. Molly felt a brief flash of pride at his fearlessness. She pushed right past Ozmun and stood defiantly beside Danny.

“You call this pile of rock a lawn?” She spat back.

“This keeps up, I’m gonna have you evicted.”

“Hey, don’t worry. I’m going to move out of this overpriced rathole, all right. But I’m going to do it when
I’m
good and ready.”

“I’m talking to my lawyer.”

“Go ahead. Be my guest. But right now this is
my place. I
pay the rent. So get the hell off my ‘lawn’ before I have you arrested for trespassing.”

Her hands on Danny's shoulders kept shaking long after Ozmun had left.

“Is he going to rip out my garden?” asked Danny, looking up at her.

“Don’t be silly, Honey. He's just a stupid man who makes a lot of noise and doesn’t scare anybody.”

But Molly knew she was worried.

“Well, what have we got?”Tripoli asked Sisler when he found him downstairs in the supply room. They were just issuing new pistols and Sisler was signing out a sleek Glock with nightsights. It was issued with three clips and a half-dozen boxes of ammo.

“Hey, I thought you were taking a vacation?”

“I am and I’m not.”

They walked up from the basement level.

“We’re not supposed to touch this case anymore, you know,” said Sisler, hefting the new weapon admiringly in his hand. “The Attorney General's office has got an independent counsel coming in to investigate…”

“So, who's touching it?”Taking the stairs again instead of waiting for an elevator, he held the steel door for Sisler.“I’m just asking a few questions.”

“There's all kinds of shit already hitting the fan, and if we’re not careful, we’re going to get splattered. That dumb-assed raid. The old man dropping dead. Now this body crap. This is all going to a grand jury. You can count on that. And Matlin's already shitting a brick.”