Pieces of her, p.7
Pieces of Her, page 7
He unlocked the liquor cabinet with trembling fingers.
“Sober for a year,” he whispered as he pulled out the whisky bottle. “And I could have gone longer … should have gone longer … but this is the only thing that’ll calm my nerves. This is the only thing that’ll help me sleep, and if I don’t get any sleep, I can’t save Keith. Just a few sips, that’s all … just enough to put me to sleep….”
He popped the cap off the bottle, and in his mind’s eye, he saw Meghan staring at him with a look of sadness and disappointment on her beautiful face.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the darkroom, and then he pressed the bottle to his lips and started drinking. “I just don’t know what else to do.”
It was mid-morning when Jim woke up. His head was pounding with a throbbing headache, and his mouth felt like an old ashtray. His stomach was in knots, and his throat burned. He groaned and coughed, and when he rolled over, he heard the thud of a bottle falling from the edge of his mattress onto the floor.
Grimacing, he reached over to the bottle to see how much he’d drunk.
“Half a bottle,” he muttered as he picked it up, coughing and feeling a wave of nausea rushing up his throat. “Half a fucking bottle…”
It had served its purpose, at least. Jim felt terrible, but he figured the booze had knocked him out and allowed him to sleep through the night, even if he did now feel like he’d been run over by a bus. He heaved himself up and lurched on rubbery legs over to the bathroom.
Once he had showered, drank a bunch of coffee and water, and eaten a good fried breakfast, he felt a little better, but the guilt about giving in to his drink demon continued to gnaw at him with as much painful persistence as nausea in his guts and the headache throbbing steadily in his skull.
He was distracted from his hangover by his phone ringing. Groaning, he picked the device up and saw Christina’s name on the screen.
“Christina, how’s it going?” he said, his voice raspy.
“Are you okay? You sound sick,” she said.
“Uh, it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.” He wondered whether he should tell her that he almost got shot the night before but decided to keep that piece of news to himself for the moment. “What have you got for me?”
“Something big, something really big,” she said.
The sound of fresh hope in her voice was enough to get Jim feeling optimistic again and helped to take the edge off the severity of his hangover. “Go on,” he said.
“Another kid was almost abducted,” she said. “With the keyword here being almost.”
“Holy crap. When, where? Where’s the kid now?”
“The kid and his parents were at the station giving a statement five minutes ago.”
“They’ve left?” Jim asked. “What info did they give?”
“Yeah, they’ve gone home,” she said. “Frey talked to them, and he was a jerk, so the kid clammed up and didn’t wanna talk about it. Frey didn’t seem to give much of a shit about that. But I think if you went and talked to the kid, you know, really friendly and nice, maybe give him some candy, and of course, sweet-talk the parents, too, the kid might talk to you.”
“I’m on it,” Jim said eagerly. “Give me a name and an address, and I’ll head straight there.”
Half an hour later, Jim was outside a small, rundown house in one of the poorer areas of town. The front yard was a mess of long grass and weeds, and two car hulks were rusting away to nothing in the drive, along with one old beater from the 80s, which seemed to be held together with wire and duct tape. This wreck appeared to be the family’s only working transport.
The house wasn’t in much better shape than the cars in front of it. It looked like the last time it had had a fresh coat of paint might have been when Reagan was president, and several windows were broken and had been “repaired” with pieces of cardboard or wood. The roof over the porch was collapsing.
Jim wasn’t surprised that Frey had been rude to these people; the lieutenant was a snob who came from a relatively wealthy family, and he had always looked down on poor people. He walked up to the front door and wasn’t surprised at all to find that the doorbell didn’t work. He knocked and waited.
After a few moments, an obese woman with acne-scarred cheeks, too much makeup, and a messy bird’s nest of sandy-blond hair opened the door. She looked Jim up and down with an expression of intense suspicion on her face. “What do you want?” she demanded.
“Are you Mrs. Lafayette?” he asked, smiling and speaking in a friendly tone.
“Yeah,” she said bluntly. “Now tell me what you want or get off my porch.”
“My name is Jim Irons, and I’m a private investigator, and—”
“Hank paid off his debts!” she said angrily. “It damn near killed us and almost put us out on the street, but he paid ‘em off! I’m so sick of you people hounding us, I’m sick of—”
“I’m not here about your husband, ma’am,” Jim said gently. “I’m here about your son, Roy, and what happened—or almost happened—to him. I heard that the police weren’t very helpful, and I’m really sorry to hear that. Rest assured, Mrs. Lafayette, I take what happened to your boy extremely seriously, and I’m trying to find another boy who was taken by a man who I’m certain is the same one who tried to take Roy.”
The look of suspicion remained on Mrs. Lafayette’s face, but it did soften a little. “So you’re not here for Hank, not at all?” she asked.
“I don’t know anything about your husband, ma’am, and I don’t need to know anything about him. I’m just trying to find a kidnapped child and the man who abducted him, and I believe your son Roy can help me do that. I brought some candy,” he added, taking out a bag of mixed candy he had picked up on the way to the house. “I’m sure he likes candy, right?”
Now Mrs. Lafayette’s scowl melted into a smile. “He loves his candy, Roy does, but uh, we haven’t been able to get him much in recent days because of our, well, our financial situation. He’ll be happy to see that candy. Come on in.”
“Who’s there, Doris?” a gruff male voice called out from somewhere in the house. “Who are you talking to? If it’s another fuckin’ debt collector, you tell ‘em to get fucked; I done paid ‘em all off!”
“It’s someone come to talk to us about Roy!” she yelled. “A private investigator!”
She led Jim to the living room, which was about as messy and rundown as he had expected it to be. Four children, aged from around six to eleven years, were wrestling chaotically on the sofa.
“Hey, quit tanglin’ like that!” a man yelled as he shuffled into the room. “It ain’t the WWE up in here!”
He was a thin, wiry man with close-cropped red hair and deeply tanned skin. Despite the heavy creases and lines on his face making him look like he was in his late forties or early fifties, Jim guessed he was probably much younger than that, and hard life had added many years to his appearance.
“Who are you?” the man asked coolly, looking Jim up and down.
“Jim Irons, PI, at your service, sir,” Jim said, handing the man one of his business cards. “I need to talk to your boy, Roy, if that’s okay. I think he might be able to help me catch the man who tried to abduct him—a man who has already kidnapped another child.”
The man had a smoldering cigarette in his right hand, and he popped the cigarette into his mouth and then offered his hand to Jim. “Hank Lafayette,” he said. “Good to meet you, Jim.”
Jim shook his hand and gave him a respectful nod.
“Kids, get outta here, go on, git!” Hank barked. “Except for you, Roy, you stay here!”
The unruly children scattered out of the room, except for one boy, a rail-thin child around seven years old who had his father’s messy red hair and his mother’s snub nose and large eyes.
“This here is Mr. Irons,” Hank said to Roy. “He’s gonna ask you some questions about what happened with that nasty man, and you’d best answer him, hear?”
“I’ve got some candy for you, Roy,” Jim said, smiling benevolently. “You like candy, don’t you?”
Roy, who seemed to be quite shy, nodded, chewing his lower lip. Jim handed him the bag of candy, and Roy’s eyes grew wide with eager excitement.
“If you can answer all my questions,” Jim said, “you can have all the candy in the bag. How does that sound?”
“Sounds good, mister,” Roy said softly.
“Great,” Jim said. “Let’s all sit down and talk then.”
Jim took a seat on a clapped-out wicker chair while Roy and his parents sat down on the threadbare sofa opposite it. “Let me start with you two,” Jim said to Hank and Doris. “Before I ask Roy any questions, I’d like to get a summary of what happened.”
“Sure,” Hank said, dragging on his cigarette and puffing out a billowing cloud of smoke. “Roy and I were out in the woods late yesterday afternoon. I was teaching him to hunt squirrels.”
“I’ve got a BB gun,” Roy said softly, his eyes locked on the candy; he was mesmerized by it.
“Yeah, I got him a BB gun for his birthday last month,” Hank continued. “So anyway, I had my rifle with me, but ten minutes into the hike, when we spotted a squirrel, I realized I’d left my damn ammo in the car. So, uh, I guess I was kinda stupid, but I told Roy to wait where he was while I went back to the car to get the ammo. I didn’t think it was a big deal; the boy had been in the woods on his own before, and he ain’t no dumbass. He doesn’t do stupid shit like wander off on his own. He’s a good kid, does what I tell him, so if I say, ‘stay put,’ he stays put, don’t you, Roy?”
“Uh-huh,” Roy said, nodding, still staring greedily at the bag of candy.
“Well, I’m sure you can guess what happened next,” Hank said. “I came back, and the boy was gone. I’ll let him tell you what happened to him, though. Go on, Roy, tell Mr. Irons what happened to you.”
Roy frowned, and despite the eager joy the candy brought him, a haunting look of fear came across his face. He took a deep breath as he prepared to recount the terrible experience of almost being kidnapped.
14
“I did like my daddy said,” Roy said softly, “I stayed put. I didn’t go nowhere. But right after my daddy went back to the truck, this man called out to me from somewhere in the woods.”
“I see,” Jim said. “And could you see the man? What did he sound like?”
Roy shook his head. “I couldn’t see him, but he didn’t sound like a bad man or a scary man. He sounded like, um, a grandpa. A friendly grandpa. He said he needed some help; he said he was stuck. I said I’d call my daddy to help him, but he said it was um, what’s the word when you have to do something right away?”
“Urgent?” Jim said.
“Yeah, yeah, he said it was really urgent; he said he was hurt bad. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear where he was. He called me over, said he just needed a little help, and he’d give me a hundred dollars if I could help him. A hundred dollars! I ain’t never seen that much money before. So, uh, I walked through the woods toward his voice. He sounded like a friendly ol’ grandpa, so I wasn’t scared or nothin’.”
“You’re a good kid, Roy,” Jim said, smiling. “It’s good to help people who are in trouble. But you gotta wait for your parents next time something like this happens. Anyway, what happened next?”
“I went deeper into the woods, and I could hear I was getting closer to him, but I just couldn’t see where he was. It felt like I was walking for a long time, a real long time. He sounded closer, and I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t see him. Then he stopped talking and went all quiet … and I started to get scared. I hollered out for him; I hollered, ‘Hey, mister, where are you? I come to help you; where are you?’, but he didn’t say nothin’ after that. Suddenly, I heard this weird sound in the trees. It was like a, almost like when you do up a zipper. Then something big hit me from behind, and I was on the ground, lying on my tummy. There was a man on top of me, and he stuck this thing in my arm like doctors use in the hospital. I don’t know what they’re called, but they’ve got a sharp needle on ‘em and like, medicine inside ‘em…”
“A syringe,” Jim said. “Like a doctor uses to give you a shot, right?”
Roy nodded. “Yeah, that. He stuck it in my arm, but I bit his hand. I bit it real hard, like a dog! And I yelled real loud. He yelled and dropped the s-s-”
“Syringe.”
“Yeah, that, he dropped it. But I think he got a little of the medicine in me because I started feeling really funny, I couldn’t see right, and I felt like going to sleep. But I knew this was a bad man, and I tried to fight him. I tried to bite him again, but it was tough to fight because I was feeling so funny and sleepy.”
“Did you see what he looked like?” Jim asked, leaning forward. “Did you see his face?”
“Nuh-uh,” Roy said, shaking his head. “But I remember his hands.”
“Did they smell funny?” Jim asked, remembering what Jasper had said about the kidnapper smelling like formaldehyde.
“Nuh-uh,” Roy answered, shaking his head again. “He didn’t smell like nothin’. His hands, they were big hands, with long fingers.”
“Did you see any scars or tattoos or anything like that on the man’s hands?” Jim asked.
“Nope. Nothing. I uh, I think he was wearing like hunting clothes,” Roy said.
“Woods camouflage,” Hank interjected, taking a drag on his cigarette.
“So you didn’t really see him then,” Jim said, trying hard to disguise the disappointment in his voice.
“Nuh-uh,” Roy said. “The man picked me up, and I was too sleepy to fight or bite him again. I don’t remember much after that until my daddy saved me.”
“You saved him?” Jim asked Hank. “Did you get a look at the guy?”
“I sure did,” Hank said. “Only saw the son of a bitch from behind, though. I heard Roy scream when I was on the way back from the truck with my ammo. I only ever heard the boy scream like that once before, and that was when a dog from down the street bit him bad when he was four. I knew he was in serious shit when I heard that scream, so I came running.”
“And that’s when you saw the man trying to abduct Roy?”
“Not right away,” Hank said, sucking on his cigarette. “But I heard something big running through the woods. I didn’t know if it was a person or maybe a mountain lion or a bear or something that had got my boy. I saw his BB gun on the ground and saw signs of a struggle, and my damn heart almost stopped. But I knew I wasn’t going to let nothin’ take my boy away from me. I’d dropped all my bullets everywhere, but there was one in the rifle, so I knew I had at least one shot I could take. I could hear someone running through the woods a few hundred yards ahead of me, so I gave chase. The son of a bitch might have been old, but he was fast and fit. I’ll give him that.”
“How do you know he was old?” Jim said.
“Well, you heard my boy say the fella sounded like a grandpa, didn’t you? And I caught a glimpse of white hair sticking out from under his balaclava. Pretty sure he was an old dude. That sick son of a bitch…”
“All right, I was just making sure,” Jim said. “Go on.”
“So I chased the bastard down, but like I said, he was fit and fast, even though he was carrying my boy. And me, well, as you can see, I like my cigarettes, and my lungs ain’t too great, and it didn’t take me too long to be short of breath. But I couldn’t stop, as much as I felt like I was gon’ collapse and die if I kept runnin’. I couldn’t let somethin’ terrible happen to my son. I chased the guy uphill for maybe a mile, maybe more. I saw it was a guy, soon enough, and not some critter. Like I said, I didn’t see his face because he had on a balaclava, but he was tall and skinny. Had my boy over his shoulder like a sack of damn potatoes. I couldn’t take a shot at him because I might have hit my boy; I ain’t such a great shot anything past fifty, maybe seventy-five yards, and he was always over a hundred yards ahead of me, no matter how fast I tried to run.”
“So, how did you save Roy?”
“I knew I had to do something,” Hank said. “So I took a gamble, and I fired a shot into the air. It was my only bullet, but that asshole didn’t know that. And he also didn’t know I just fired up into the air. I hoped that he’d figure I was shooting at him, and that’d scare him enough that he’d give up. It worked. He dropped Roy and carried on running. And that was the last I saw of him.
I felt like I was on death’s door myself, could barely breathe, but I managed to limp over to Roy to make sure he was okay. He was pretty woozy from whatever it is that evil son of a bitch injected into him, but he was okay after a few minutes.”
“You’re lucky, Hank. Brave, of course, but lucky. If that gamble with the warning shot hadn’t paid off…”
“I know, I know, my boy wouldn’t be here right now,” Hank said. “And I feel like a damn idiot for leaving him alone in the woods like that.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” Jim said. “You couldn’t have known. But what you can do, if you really want to help, is to take me to the place where this happened. I’m sorry, I know it’s a lot to ask, but it would really help me and greatly increase the odds of finding the missing boy alive and catching the man who did this.”
“Sure thing, man, I can do that. You wanna go right now?” Hank said.
“If you’re able to.”
“You bet your ass I’m able to. But I ain’t going up there without my rifle and plenty of ammo this time. If that sicko is still up there…”
“I’m armed, Hank. It’ll be safe enough,” Jim said. Then, however, he thought about the fact that the kidnapper had recently done his best to murder him by unloading an entire handgun clip on him and figured it might be good to have two armed men instead of just one. “Actually, yeah, maybe get your rifle, Hank. Just to be safe.”
An hour later, Hank led Jim through the woods to the spot from which Roy had almost been abducted. This section of the woods was a few miles from where Keith had been taken, but that didn’t seem like a significant detail to Jim; the kidnapper probably knew the entirety of the woods very well.
