The Church of Pike
Angoon, Alaska
The cold Alaskan water pulled at the fishing boats that
lined the dock, the boats straining against their moorings
to run free with the tide. The water here in the small
harbor at Angoon, a fishing village on the eastern shore of
Admiralty Island off southeast Alaska, was steel-black
beneath the clouds and dimpled by rain, but was clear even
with that, a window beneath the weathered pilings to a world
of sunburst starfish as wide as garbage cans, jellyfish the
size of basketballs, and barnacles as heavy as a
longshoreman's fist. Alaska was like that; so vigorous with
life that it could fill a man and lift him and maybe even
bring him back from the dead.
A Tlinglit Indian named Elliot MacArthur watched as Joe
Pike stowed his duffel in a fourteen-foot fiberglass skiff.
Pike had rented the skiff from MacArthur, who now nervously
toed Pike's rifle case.
"You didn't tell me you were goin' after those bears up
there. It ain't so smart goin' in those woods by yourself. I
don't wanna lose my boat."
Pike secured his duffel between the skiff's bench
seats, then took hold of the gun case. Pike's weapon of
choice that day was a stainless steel Remington Model 700
chambered in .375 Holland & Holland Magnum. It was a
powerful gun, built heavy to dampen the .375's hard recoil.
Pike lifted the case with his bad arm, but the arm failed
with a sharp pain that left his shoulder burning. He shifted
its weight to his good arm.
MacArthur didn't like this business with the arm.
"Now you listen. Goin' after that bear with a bad arm
ain't the brightest idea, either. You're gonna have my boat,
and you're gonna be alone, and that's a big bear up there.
Has to be big, what he did to those people."
Pike strapped the rifle case across the duffel, then
checked the fuel. It was going to be a long trip, getting
from Angoon up to Chaik Bay where the killings had taken place.
"You better be thinkin' about this. Don't matter what
kinda bounty the families put up, it ain't worth gettin'
killed for."
"Or losing your boat."
MacArthur wasn't sure if Pike had insulted him or not.
Pike finished with his gear, then stepped back onto the
dock. He took ten one-hundred-dollar bills from his wallet
and held out the money.
"I'll buy the boat. Then you won't have to worry about it."
MacArthur looked embarrassed and put his hands in his
pocket.
"Let's just forget it. You rented it, it's yours.
You're making me feel like a miser and I don't appreciate that."
Pike put the money away and stepped down into the
skiff, keeping his weight low. He cast off the lines.
"You bank the boat when you get up Chaik, use that
orange tape to flag a tree so I can find ya if I have to
come looking."
Pike nodded.
"Anyone you want me to call, you know, if you need me
to call someone?"
"No."
"You sure?"
Pike nosed away from the dock without answering and set
off for deeper water, holding his bad arm close.
The light rain became fat drops, then a low foggy mist.
Pike zipped his parka. A family of seals watched him pass
from their perch on a promontory of rocks. Humpback whales
spouted further out in the channel, one great fluke tipping
into the sky as a whale sounded, Pike's only thought to
wonder at the perfect quiet that waited in the waters below.
Pike rubbed his bad shoulder. He had been shot twice
high in the back almost eight months ago. The bullets
shattered his shoulder blade, spraying bone fragments like
shrapnel through his left lung and the surrounding muscles
and nerves. Pike had almost died, but didn't, and had come
north to heal. He worked king crab boats out of Dutch Harbor
and fishing boats out of Petersburg. He seined for black cod
and long-lined for halibut, and if the crews on the boats he
worked saw the scars that laced his chest and back, no one
asked of their nature. That was Alaska, too.
Pike steered north for four hours at a steady six knots
until he reached a circular bay with two small islands at
its mouth. Pike checked his chart, then double-checked his
position on a handheld GPS. This was the place, all right.
Chaik Bay.
The pounding chop of the channel gave way to water as
flat as glass, undisturbed except for the head of a single
white seal. The bottom rose as Pike eased toward shore, and
soon the first of the carcasses appeared; dead salmon as
long as a man's arm drifted with the current as they washed
out of the creek, their bodies mottled and broken with the
effort to spawn. Hundreds of seagulls picked through the
fish that had washed onto shore; scores of bald eagles
perched in the treetops, a single eagle at the peak of each
tree, watching the gulls with envious eyes. The smell of
rotten fish grew sharp.
Pike shut the engine, let the skiff glide into the
rocky beach, then stepped out into ankle-deep water. He
pulled the boat high above the tide line, then tied it to a
hemlock limb. He flagged the limb with orange tape as Elliot
MacArthur had asked.
Alder, spruce, and hemlock trees lined the shore like
an impenetrable green wall. Pike made camp beneath the soft
boughs, then ate a supper of peanut butter and carrot
sticks. Later, he smoothed a place on the beach where he
stretched until his muscles were warm, then did push-ups and
sit-ups on pebbles that clawed at his flesh. He worked hard.
His spine arched and his legs lifted in the most strenuous
asanas of hatha yoga. He spun through the strict
choreography of a tae kwon do kata, kicking and windmilling
his arms as he blended the Korean form into the Chinese
forms of kung fu and wing chun in a regimen he had practiced
every day since he was a child. Sweat leaked from his short
brown hair. His hands and feet snapped with a violence that
frightened the eagles. Pike pushed himself faster, spinning
and twisting through the air, falling within himself in a
frenzy of effort as he tried to outrace his pain.
It was not good enough. His shoulder was slow. His
movements were awkward. He was less than he had been.
Pike sat at the water's edge with a sense of emptiness.
He told himself that he would work harder, that he would
heal the damage that had been done, and recreate himself as
he had recreated himself when he was a child. Effort was
prayer; commitment was faith; trust in himself his only
creed. Pike had learned these catechisms when he was a
child. He had nothing else.
That night he slept beneath a plastic sheet, listened
to rain leak through the trees as he considered the bear.
The next morning, Pike began.
*
The Alaskan brown bear is the largest predator living
on land. It is larger than the African lion or Bengal tiger.
It is not named Smokey or Pooh, nor does it live a
happy-go-lucky life at Disneyland playing the banjo. The
male bear, called a boar, can weigh a thousand pounds, yet
slip through the wilderness in absolute silence. The bear
appears fat with its barrel-shaped body, but it can
accelerate faster than a thoroughbred racehorse to chase
down a running deer. Its claws reach a length of six inches
and are as sharp as plank spikes; its jaws can crush a
moose's spine or rip a car door from its hinges. When the
brown bear charges, it does not lumber forward on its hind
legs as portrayed in movies; it crouches low to the ground
with its head down, lips pulled high in a snarl as it
scuttles forward with the speed of an attacking lion. It
kills by crushing the neck or biting through the braincase.
If you protect your neck and head, the bear will strip the
flesh from your back and legs even as you scream, swallowing
whole chunks without chewing until it reaches your entrails.
The ancient Romans staged fights in their blood pits between
Ural Mountain grizzly bears and African lions. The Romans
would set two lions against a single bear. The bear usually
won. Like the great white shark that glides without fear
through the depths, the brown bear has no peer on land.
Pike heard what happened up Chaik Creek from a boat
captain he met in Petersburg: Three Department of Fish &
Game biologists had ventured up Chaik Creek to conduct a
population count of spawning salmon. On their first day, the
biologists reported a high number of brown bears, which was
typical for the spawning season and not unexpected. The
biologists were not heard from again until a garbled plea
was received by a passing boat four days later. Officials
from F&G working with local Tlginlit trappers determined
that a mature boar stalked the three biologists for some
distance along the creek, then attacked when the trio
stopped to build a fish trap. Though armed with high-power
rifles, the ferocity of the attack prevented the team from
using their weapons. Two of the team members--Dr. Abigail
Martin, the senior biologist, and Clark Aimes, a wildlife
supervisor--were killed immediately. The third biologist, a
graduate student from Seattle named Jacob Gottman, fled. The
boar--estimated by the depth and breadth of its track at
weighing better than eleven hundred pounds--pursued Gottman
to a gravel bar downstream where it disemboweled the young
man, tore off his right arm at the elbow, and pushed his
body beneath the uprooted base of a fallen alder tree.
Gottman was still alive. When the bear returned to the
original attack site to devour Martin and Aimes, Gottman
made his way downstream to Chaik Bay where he called for
help on a small walkie-talkie. One of his last pleas was
heard by the fifty-foot salmon boat, Emydon. Gottman bled to
death before he was reached.
"It had to be a mercy." The captain stared into his
beer. "Jesus, it had to be a mercy. They said his guts
trailed behind him like a garden hose."
Pike nodded without comment. He had seen worse done to
men by other men, but he did not say that.
The captain explained that tests on their remains
indicated that the bear was rabid. Fish & Game sent two
teams of trackers to hunt it down, but neither team was
successful. Jacob Gottman's parents put up a bounty. A
Tlinglit trapper from Angoon went in to find the bear, but
didn't come back. The Gottmans doubled their bounty. The
trapper's brother and father-in-law spent two weeks along
the creek, but had found only one sign: the single largest
print that either had ever seen, with claw marks the size of
hunting knives. They had felt him in there, they said; felt
the dark deadly weight of him like a shadow in the trees,
but they never saw the bear. It was as if he were hanging
back. Waiting.
Pike said, "Waiting."
"That's what they said, yeah."
That evening Pike phoned a man in Los Angeles. Two days
later Pike's rifle arrived. He set out for Angoon.
*
Wilderness swallowed him. Trees as old as the land
pushed from the earth to vanish into a canopy of green. Rain
leaked through their leaves in an unwavering drizzle that
left Pike wet to the bone. The steep sides of the creek were
so tangled with ferns, saplings, and the clawed stalks of
devilthorn that he slipped into the water and waded. Pike
loved this wild place.
The others had come earlier in the spawning cycle when
the creek was filled with fish. Now, dead salmon littered
the gravel bars and hung from roots like rotten drapes. Easy
meals weren't so easy. Pike reasoned that the mad boar would
have driven away the cubs, sows, and smaller boars to keep
the remaining fish for himself.
Pike hiked for the rest of the day but found nothing.
That night he returned to his camp. Pike hunted like that
for five days, each day working farther upstream. He paused
often to rest. The scars in his lungs made breathing painful.
On the sixth day, he found the blood.
Pike slipped around the uprooted base of a fallen alder
and saw streamers of crimson like spilled paint splashed on
a gravel bar. A dozen dog salmon had been scooped from the
water, their torn flesh bright with fresh blood. Some were
bitten in half, others were absent their braincase. Pike
froze, absolutely still. He searched the devilthorn for eyes
that stared into his own, but found nothing. He took a
butane lighter from his pocket and watched the flame. The
wind blew downstream. Anything upstream could not smell him
coming.
Pike crept to the gravel bar. Tracks as wide as dinner
plates were pressed into the mud showing claw marks as long
as daggers.
Pike hefted his rifle to settle his grip. If the boar
charged, Pike would have to bring up the rifle fast or
eleven hundred pounds of furious insanity would be on him. A
year ago he would have had no doubts about his ability to do
it. Pike released the safety. The world was not certain; the
only certainty was within you.
Pike waded upstream.
The creek turned sharply. Pike's view ahead was blocked
by a fallen hemlock, its great ball of roots spread like a
towering lace fan. Pike heard a heavy splash beyond the
deadfall. The splash came again; not the quick slap of a
jumping fish, but something large pushing through water.
Pike strained to see through breaks in the deadfall,
but the tangle of roots and leaves and limbs was too thick.
More splashes came from only a few feet away. Red flesh
swirled around him and bounced off his legs.
Pike edged around the deadfall with glacial silence,
careful of every step, soundless in the wild water. A dying
salmon flopped on a knobby bank, its entrails exposed, but
the boar was gone. Eleven hundred pounds, and it had slipped
from the water into a thicket of alder and devilthorn
without making a sound. A single huge paw print showed large
at the edge of a trail.
Pike stood motionless in the swirling water for a very
long time. The boar could be lying in wait only ten feet
away or it could be long gone. Pike climbed onto the bank.
The boar's trail was littered with bones and the slime of
rotting fish. Pike looked at the dying salmon again, but now
it was dead.
Pike eased into the thicket. A shroud of ferns,
devilthorn, and saplings closed around him. Something large
but unseeable moved ahead and to his right.
Huff!
Pike raised the gun, but the devilthorn clawed at the
barrel and was stronger than his bad arm.
Huff!
The boar blew air through its mouth to taste Pike's
smell. It knew that something else was in the thicket, but
it didn't know what. Pike wrestled the gun to his shoulder,
but could not see where to aim.
SNAP!
The boar snapped its jaws in warning. It was setting
itself to charge.
SNAPSNAP!
It could split this brush like tissue; its attack might
come from anywhere. Pike braced himself. He would not
retreat; he would not turn away. That was the single
immutable law of Joe Pike's faith--he would always meet the
charge.
SNAPSNAPSNAP!
Pike's strength failed. His shoulder quivered, then
lost feeling. His arm trembled. He willed himself to hold
firm, but the rifle grew heavy and the brush pulled it down.
SNAP!
Pike crept backwards out of the thicket and into the
water. The snapping of steel jaws faded into the patter of rain.
Pike did not stop until he reached the bay. He pressed
his back to a towering spruce and worked to bury his
feelings, but he could not hide from his shame or his pain,
or the certainty that he was lost.
Two days later he returned to Los Angeles.
The Boy
The headstone anchors me in the dream with a weight I
cannot escape. It is a small black rectangle let into the
earth, kissed red by the setting sun. I stare down at the
hard marble, burning with a hunger to know who lies within
the earth, but the headstone is blank. No name marks this
resting place. My only clue is this: The grave is small. I
am standing over a child.
I have the dream often now, almost every night, some
nights more than once. I sleep little on those nights;
instead, I rise to sit in the darkness of my empty home.
Even then, I am a prisoner of the dream.
Here is what happens: The sky darkens as a mist settles
across the cemetery. The twisted limbs of an ancient oak
drip with moss, swaying in the night breeze. I do not know
where this place is, or how I got there. I am alone, and I
am scared. Shadows flicker at the edge of light; voices
whisper, but I cannot understand. One shade might be my
mother, another the father I never knew. I want to ask them
who lies in this grave, but when I turn for their help I
find only darkness. No one remains to ask, no one to help. I
am on my own.
The nameless headstone waits for me.
What lies here?
Who has left this child alone?
I am desperate to escape this place. I want to beat
feet, boogie, truck, book, haul ass, motor, shred, jet, jam,
split, cut out, blow, roll, abandon, get away, get gone,
scram, RUN . . . but in the strange way of dreams a shovel
appears in my hands. My feet will not move, my body will not
obey. A voice in my head tells me to throw the blade aside,
but a power I cannot resist forces my hand: If I dig, I will
find; if I find, I will know. The voice pleads with me to
stop, but I am possessed. The voice warns that I will not
want to see the secrets that lie below, but I dig deep and
true to expose the grave.
The black earth opens.
The casket is revealed.
The voice shrieks for me to stop, to look away, to save
myself, and so I clench my eyes. I have recognized the
voice. It is my own.
I fear what lies at my feet, but I have no choice. I
must see the truth.
My eyes open.
I look.
#
1.
A silence filled the canyon below my house that fall; no
hawks floated overhead, the coyotes did not sing, the owl
that lived in the tall pine outside my door no longer asked
my name. A smarter person would have taken these things as a
warning, but the air was chill and clear in that magnified
way it can be in the winter, letting me see beyond the
houses sprinkled on the hillsides below and out into the
great basin city of Los Angeles. On days like those when you
can see so far, you often forget to look at what is right in
front of you, what is next to you, what is so close that it
is part of you. I should have seen the silence as a warning,
but I did not.
"How many people has she killed?"
Grunts, curses, and the snap of punches came from the
next room.
Ben Chenier shouted, "What?"
"How many people has she killed?"
We were twenty feet apart, me in the kitchen and Ben in
the living room, shouting at the tops of our lungs; Ben
Chenier, also known as my girlfriend's ten-year-old son, and
me, also known as Elvis Cole, the World's Greatest Detective
and Ben's caretaker while his mother, Lucy Chenier, was away
on business. This was our fifth and final day together.
I went to the door.
"Is there a volume control on that thing?"
Ben was so involved with something called a Game Freak
that he did not look up. You held the Game Freak like a
pistol with one hand and worked the controls with the other
while the action unfolded on a built-in computer screen. The
salesman told me that it was a hot seller with boys ages ten
to fourteen. He hadn't told me that it was louder than a
shootout at rush hour.
Ben had been playing the game since I had given it to
him the day before, but I knew he wasn't enjoying himself,
and that bothered me. He had hiked with me in the hills and
let me teach him some of the things I knew about martial
arts and had come with me to my office because he thought
private investigators did more than phone deadbeat clients
and clean pigeon crap off balcony rails. I had brought him
to school in the mornings and home in the afternoons, and
between those times we had cooked Thai food, watched Bruce
Willis movies, and laughed a lot together. But now he used
the game to hide from me with an absolute lack of joy. I
knew why, and seeing him like that left me feeling badly,
not only for him, but for my part in it. Fighting it out
with Yakuza spree killers was easier than talking to boys.
I went over and dropped onto the couch next to him.
"We could go for a hike up on Mulholland."
He ignored me.
"You want to work out? I could show you another tae
kwon do kata before your mom gets home."
"Uh-uh."
I said, "You want to talk about me and your mom?"
I am a private investigator. My work brings me into
contact with dangerous people, and early last summer that
danger rolled over my shores when a murderer named Laurence
Sobek threatened Lucy and Ben. Lucy was having a tough time
with that, and Ben had heard our words. Lucy and Ben's
father had divorced when Ben was six, and now he worried
that it was happening again. We had tried to talk to him,
Lucy and me, but boys--like men--find it hard to open their
hearts.
Instead of answering me, Ben thumbed the game harder
and nodded toward the action on the screen.
"Check it out. This is the Queen of Blame."
Perfect.
A young Asian woman with spiky hair, breasts the size
of casaba melons, and an angry snarl jumped over a dumpster
to face three musclebound steroid-juicers in what appeared
to be a devastated urban landscape. A tiny halter barely
covered her breasts, sprayed-on shorts showed her butt
cheeks, and her voice growled electronically from the Game
Freak's little speaker.
"You're my toilet!"
She let loose with a martial arts sidekick that spun
the first attacker into the air.
I said, "Some woman."
"Uh-huh. A bad guy named Modus sold her sister into
slavery, and now the Queen is going to make him pay the
ultimate price."
The Queen of Blame punched a man three times her size
with left and rights so fast that her hands blurred. Blood
and teeth flew everywhere.
"Eat fist, scum!"
I spotted a pause button on the controls, and stopped
the game. Adults always wonder what to say and how to say it
when they're talking with a child. You want to be wise, but
all you are is a child yourself in a larger body. Nothing is
ever what it seems. The things you think you know are never
certain. I know that, now. I wish I didn't, but I do.
I said, "I know that what's going on between me and
your mom is scary. I just want you to know that we're going
to get through this. Your mom and I love each other. We're
going to be fine."
"I know."
"She loves you. I love you, too."
Ben stared at the frozen screen for a little while
longer, and then he looked up at me. His little-boy face was
smooth and thoughtful. He wasn't stupid; his mom and dad
loved him, too, but that hadn't stopped them from getting
divorced.
"Elvis?"
"What?"
"I had a really good time staying with you. I wish I
didn't have to leave."
"Me, too, pal. I'm glad you were here."
Ben smiled, and I smiled back. Funny, how a moment like
that could fill a man with hope. I patted his leg.
"Here's the plan: Mom's going to get back soon. We
should clean the place so she doesn't think we're pigs, then
we should get the grill ready so we're good to go with
dinner when she gets home. Burgers okay?"
"Can I finish the game first? The Queen of Blame is
about to find Modus."
"Sure. How about you take her out onto the deck? She's
pretty loud."
"Okay."
I went back into the kitchen, and Ben took the Queen
and her breasts outside. Even that far away, I heard her
clearly. "Your face is pizza!" Then her victim shrieked in pain.
I should have heard more. I should have listened even
harder.
Less than three minutes later, Lucy called from her
car. It was twenty-two minutes after four. I had just taken
the hamburger meat from my refrigerator.
I said, "Hey. Where are you?"
"Long Beach. Traffic's good, so I'm making great time.
How are you guys holding up?"
Lucy Chenier was a legal commentator for a local
television station. Before that, she had practiced civil law
in Baton Rouge, which is what she was doing when we met. Her
voice still held the hint of a French-Louisiana accent, but
you had to listen closely to hear it. She had been in San
Diego covering a trial.
"We're good. I'm getting hamburgers together for dinner."
"How's Ben?"
"He was feeling low today, but we talked. He's better
now. He misses you."
We fell into a silence that lasted too long. Lucy had
phoned every night, and we laughed well enough, but our
exchanges felt incomplete though we tried to pretend they
weren't. It wasn't easy being hooked up with the World's
Greatest Detective.
Finally, I said, "I missed you."
"I missed you, too. It's been a long week. Hamburgers
sound really good. Cheeseburgers. With lots of pickles."
She sounded tired. But she also sounded as if she were
smiling.
"I think we can manage that. I got your pickle for ya
right here."
Lucy laughed. I'm the World's Funniest Detective, too.
She said, "How can I pass up an offer like that?"
"You want to speak with Ben? He just went outside."
"That's all right. Tell him that I'm on my way and I
love him, then tell yourself that I love you, too."
We hung up and I went out onto the deck to pass along
the good word, but the deck was empty. I went to the rail.
Ben liked to play on the slope below my house and climb in
the black walnut trees that grow further down the hill. More
houses were nestled beyond the trees on the streets that web
along the hillsides. The deepest cuts in the canyon were
just beginning to purple, but the light was still good. I
didn't see him.
"Ben?"
He didn't answer.
"Hey, buddy! Mom called!"
He still didn't answer.
I checked the side of the house, then went back inside
and called him again, thinking maybe he had gone to the
guest room where he sleeps or the bathroom.
"Yo, Ben! Where are you?"
Nothing.
I looked in the guest room and the downstairs bathroom,
then went out the front door into the street. I live on a
narrow private road that winds along the top of the canyon.
Cars rarely pass except when my neighbors go to and from
work, so it's a safe street, and great for skateboarding.
"Ben?"
I didn't see him. I went back inside the house.
"Ben! That was Mom on the phone!"
I thought that might get an answer. The Mom Threat.
"If you're hiding, this is a problem. It's not funny."
I went upstairs to my loft, but didn't find him. I went
downstairs again to the deck.
"BEN!"
My nearest neighbor had two little boys, but Ben never
went over without first telling me. He never went down the
slope or out into the street or even into the carport
without first letting me know, either. It wasn't his way. It
also wasn't his way to pull a David Copperfield and disappear.
I went back inside and phoned next door. I could see
Grace Gonzales's house from my kitchen window.
"Grace? It's Elvis next door."
Like there might be another Elvis further up the block.
"Hey, bud. How's it going?"
Grace calls me bud. She used to be a stuntwoman until
she married a stuntman she met falling off a twelve-story
building and retired to have two boys.
"Is Ben over there?"
"Nope. Was he supposed to be?"
"He was here a few minutes ago, but now he's not. I
thought he might have gone to see the boys."
Grace hesitated, and her voice lost its easygoing
familiarity for something more concerned.
"Let me ask Andrew. They could have gone downstairs
without me seeing."
Andrew was her oldest, who was eight. His younger
brother, Clark, was six. Ben told me that Clark liked to eat
his own snot.
I checked the time again. Lucy had called at four
twenty-two; it was now four thirty-eight. I brought the
phone out onto my deck, hoping to see Ben trudging up the
hill, but the hill was empty.
Grace came back on the line.
"Elvis?"
"I'm here."
"My guys haven't seen him. Let me look out front. Maybe
he's in the street."
"Thanks, Grace."
Her voice carried clearly across the bend in the canyon
that separated our homes when she called him, and then she
came back on the line.
"I can see pretty far both ways, but I don't see him.
You want me to come over there and help you look?"
"You've got your hands full with Andrew and Clark. If
he shows up, will you keep him there and call me?"
"Right away."
I turned off the phone, and stared down into the
canyon. The slope was not steep, but he could have taken a
tumble or fallen from a tree. I left the phone on the deck
and worked my way down the slope. My feet sank into the
loose soil, and footing was poor.
"Ben! Where in hell are you?"
Walnut trees twisted from the hillside like gnarled
fingers, their trunks gray and rough. A lone yucca tree grew
in a corkscrew among the walnuts with spiky leaves like
green-black starbursts. The rusted remains of a chain-link
fence was partially buried by years of soil movement. The
largest walnut tree pushed out of the ground beyond the
fence with five heavy trunks that spread like an opening
hand. I had twice climbed in the tree with Ben, and we had
talked about building a tree house between the spreading trunks.
"Ben!"
I listened hard. I took a deep breath, exhaled, then
held my breath. I heard a faraway voice.
"BEN!"
I imagined him further down the slope with a broken
leg. Or worse.
"I'm coming."
I hurried.
I followed the voice through the trees and around a
bulge in the finger, certain that I would find him, but as I
went over the hump I heard the voice more clearly and knew
that it wasn't his. The Game Freak was waiting for me in a
nest of stringy autumn grass. Ben was gone.
I called as loudly as I could.
"BEN!!!"
No answer came except for the sound of my own
thundering heart and the Queen's tinny voice. She had
finally found Modus, a great fat giant of a man with a
bullet head and pencil-point eyes. She launched kick after
kick, punch after punch, screaming her vow of vengeance as
the two of them fought in an endless loop through a
blood-drenched room.
"Now you die! Now you die! Now you die!"
I held the Queen of Blame close, and hurried back up
the hill.
time missing: 00 hours, 21 minutes
The sun was dropping. Shadows pooled in the deep cuts
between the ridges as if the canyon was filling with ink. I
left a note in the middle of the kitchen floor: STAY
HERE--I'M LOOKING FOR U, then drove down through the canyon,
trying to find him.
If Ben had sprained an ankle or twisted a knee, he
might have hobbled downhill instead of making the steep
climb back to my house; he might have knocked on someone's
door for help; he might be limping home on his own. I told
myself, sure, that had to be it. Ten year old boys don't
simply vanish.
When I reached the street that follows the drainage
below my house, I parked and got out. The light was fading
faster and the murk made it difficult to see. I called for him.
"Ben?"
If Ben had come downhill, he would have passed beside
one of three houses. No one was home at the first two, but a
housekeeper answered at the third. She let me look in their
backyard, but watched me from the windows as if I might
steal the pool toys. Nothing. I boosted myself to see over a
cinder-block wall into the neighboring yards, but he wasn't
there, either. I called him again.
"Ben!"
I went back to my car. It was all too easy and way too
likely that we would miss each other; as I drove along one
street, Ben might turn down another. By the time I was on
that street, he could reappear behind me, but I didn't know
what else to do.
Twice I waved down passing security patrols to ask if
they had seen a boy matching Ben's description. Neither had,
but they took my name and number, and offered to call if
they found him.
I drove faster, trying to cover as much ground as
possible before the sun set. I crossed and recrossed the
same streets, winding through the canyon as if it was me who
was lost and not Ben. The streets were brighter the higher I
climbed, but a chill haunted the shadows. Ben was wearing a
sweatshirt over jeans. It didn't seem enough.
When I reached home, I called out again as I let myself
in, but still got no answer. The note that I left was
untouched, and the message counter read zero.
I phoned the dispatch offices of the private security
firms that service the canyon, including the company that
owned the two cars I had already spoken to. Their cars
prowled the canyons every day around the clock, and the
companies' signs were posted as a warning to burglars in
front of almost every house. Welcome to life in the city. I
explained that a child was missing in the area and gave them
Ben's description. Even though I wasn't a subscriber, they
were happy to help.
When I put down the phone, I heard the front door open
and felt a spike of relief so sharp that it was painful.
"Ben!"
"It's me."
Lucy came into the living room. She was wearing a black
business suit over a cream top, but she was carrying the
suit jacket; her pants were wrinkled from so long in the
car. She was clearly tired, but she made a weak smile.
"Hey. I don't smell hamburgers."
It was two minutes after six. Ben had been missing for
exactly one hundred minutes. It had taken Lucy exactly one
hundred minutes to get home after we last spoke. It had
taken me one hundred minutes to lose her son.
Lucy saw the fear in my face. Her smile dropped.
"What's wrong?"
"Ben's missing."
She glanced around as if Ben might be hiding behind the
couch, giggling at the joke. She knew it wasn't a joke. She
could see that I was serious.
"What do you mean, missing?"
Explaining felt lame, as if I was making excuses.
"He went outside around the time you called, and now I
can't find him. I called, but he didn't answer. I drove all
over the canyon, looking for him, but I didn't see him. He
isn't next door. I don't know where he is."
She shook her head as if I had made a frustrating
mistake, and was getting the story wrong.
"He just left?"
I showed her the Game Freak as if it was evidence.
"I don't know. He was playing with this when he went
out. I found it on the slope."
Lucy stalked past me and went outside onto the deck.
"Ben! Benjamin, you answer me! Ben!"
"Luce, I've been calling him."
She stalked back into the house and disappeared down
the hall.
"Ben!"
"He's not here. I called the security patrols. I was
just going to call the police."
She came back and went right back onto the deck.
"Damnit, Ben, you'd better answer me!"
I stepped out behind her and took her arms. She was
shaking. She turned into me, and we held each other. Her
voice was small and guilty against my chest.
"Do you think he ran away?"
"No. No, he was fine, Luce. He was okay after we
talked. He was laughing at this stupid game."
I told her that I thought he had probably hurt himself
when he was playing on the slope, then gotten lost trying to
find his way back.
"Those streets are confusing down there, the way they
snake and twist. He probably just got turned around, and now
he's too scared to ask someone for help; he's been warned
about strangers enough. If he got on the wrong street and
kept walking, he probably got farther away, and more lost.
He's probably so scared right now that he hides whenever a
car passes, but we'll find him. We should call the police."
Lucy nodded against me, wanting to believe, and then
she looked at the canyon. Lights from the houses were
beginning to sparkle.
She said, "It's getting dark."
That single word: Dark. It summoned every parent's
greatest dread.
I said, "Let's call. The cops will light up every house
in the canyon until we find him."
As Lucy and I stepped back into the house, the phone
rang. Lucy jumped even more than me.
"That's Ben."
I answered the phone, but the voice on the other end
didn't belong to Ben or Grace Gonzalez or the security patrols.
A man said, "Is this Elvis Cole?"
"Yes. Who's this?"
The voice was cold and low.
He said, "Five-two."
"Who is this?"
"You remember five-two?"
Lucy plucked my arm, hoping that it was about Ben. I
shook my head, telling her I didn't understand, but the
sharp fear of bad memories was already cutting deep.
I gripped the phone with both hands. I needed both to
hang on.
"Who is this? What are you talking about?"
"This is payback, you bastard. This is for what you did."
I held the phone even tighter, and heard myself shout.
"What did I do? What are you talking about?"
"You know what you did. I have the boy."
The line went dead.
Lucy plucked harder.
"Who was it? What did they say?"
I didn't feel her. I barely heard her. I was caught in
a yellowed photo album from my own past, flipping through
bright green pictures of another me, a much different me,
and of young men with painted faces, hollow eyes, and the
damp sour smell of fear.
Lucy pulled harder.
"Stop it! You're scaring me."
"It was a man, I don't know who. He has Ben. He says he
took Ben."
Lucy grabbed my arm with both hands.
"Ben was stolen? He was kidnapped? What did the man
say? What does he want?"
My mouth was dry. My neck cramped with painful knots.
"He wants to punish me. For something that happened a
long time ago."