Disappearance at Devil's Rock Page 3

Luis: “So where’s your emergency escape route from the rock?”

  Tommy: “Just slide down that tree over there like a fireman’s pole. It’s better than jumping out a window. And the rock would be easy to defend. We could lure them into the split, yeah? Stab them in the head with long spears.”

  Luis: “If there’s a big herd, they’d fill up the split and they’d keep coming right up against the rock, crush into each other, and wash over this thing like a tsunami, man. Just like in World War Z and Walking Dead—”

  Tommy: “That wouldn’t happen in real life. They can’t herd through these thick woods. It’d slow them down big-time.”

  Luis: “Yeah they can. They wouldn’t have to stick to the trails, either. They’d stumble into the easiest way out here.”

  Tommy gingerly probed his scabbing leg wounds. “Nah. We’re high enough that we’d see them coming, hear them coming, too. We’d be all right . . .”

  Josh didn’t like horror movies like Luis did, and he wasn’t newly obsessed with zombies like Tommy. Those two had totally ignored his school suggestion for the apocalypse, and he felt dangerously out of their conversation loop. Which pair of the three friends was best friends and which one was the third wheel was always the unspoken fear, the unspoken competition. Tommy and Luis kept going back and forth, rapid-fire, like they’d rehearsed this zombie give-and-take without Josh. Maybe they had. Josh scrambled to stay relevant, to come up with something clever to add.

  Josh said, “It’d be too cold out here at night.”

  Tommy: “We could keep a fire going—”

  Luis: “Outdoor fire. Might as well ring a bell, send invitations to the zombie barbeque.”

  Josh: “Mmm. McRibs.”

  Luis laughed. Josh exhaled.

  Tommy: “The cold would help, actually. Cold is good.”

  Luis: “Fuck that. Living out here in the cold would blow donkey balls.”

  Josh: “Zombie donkeys?”

  Tommy: “I’m talking about the zombies. They’d totally freeze up. They’re not alive. No body heat, right?”

  Josh: “So you’re saying they’re what—like lizards? Cold-blooded? They need to sun themselves on rocks or something?”

  Luis laughed again. “Zombies getting a tan. Hot.”

  Tommy: “Winter hits and it’d be zomb-cicles everywhere. Wait them out until everything freezes, then you could take them out so easy.”

  Luis frowned and furrowed like he was considering a great wisdom. “They didn’t freeze up in Dead Snow—”

  Josh: “What the fuck is Dead Snow?”

  Luis: “Nazi zombie movie in—Finland. I think. I don’t know. Some icy-ass country. The Nazi zombies didn’t freeze and ran through the snow and everything. But they came back to life because of a shitty curse or something stupid.”

  Tommy: “No supernatural zombies. Those aren’t like real-life zombies that can happen. Real-life zombies would freeze up.”

  Luis: “Yeah, maybe. Seems fucking stupid if they all froze that easy and assholes like us could walk around cutting off their heads.”

  Josh: “We’d need a chisel or something if they were frozen.”

  Luis: “Whatever. You’d still probably have to survive at least a few warm months before the big freeze with the things herding around and eating the shit out of everyone.”

  Tommy: “I’m not afraid of the herd.”

  Josh: “Hardo!”

  Luis: “You can’t even watch Scooby Doo without getting nightmares.”

  Tommy shrugged and had a smaller version of his goofy I-got-nothing-to-say smile on his face, before it snuffed itself out. “I’d be all right, if it happened.”

  Luis: “Yeah, right. What about the one zombie that locks onto you. You afraid of that? It follows you wherever you go, never gives up because it picked you, likes your smell, thinks you’re cute. Probably is someone you know, too—Zombie Josh. He’d follow you everywhere, but he’d be slower than shit—”

  Josh: “Ha ha, go fuck yourself, shorty.” He said it without malice. Normally Luis and Josh were the only ones who could comment on each other’s physical limitations without either getting upset at the other, but Luis looked over at Josh quickly, as though trying to triangulate from where the lobbed stone came.

  Tommy: “Bruh. Herd, rogue zombie; it don’t matter.” Tommy leaped over the split in the rock, triumphantly raised his arms up in the air, and shouted with mock authority and in his best stentorian voice, “It has been decided!”

  Josh and Luis shrugged at him.

  Tommy walked back over between them, pushed on the dead tree’s trunk like he wanted to knock it over and see what was inside, and he said, “When it happens. I’m making my last stand here.”

  Elizabeth at the Park, at Home with Janice, Kate, and a Ghost

  Eight A.M. Although Borderland State Park is officially closed to the public, the main entrance and the visitor’s parking lot is overrun by SUVs, patrol cars (local and state police), and vans. Local news crews are staging their live feeds and reporter-on-the-scene shots.

  Something like this doesn’t happen in the affluent suburb of Ames, this happy little town twenty-five miles southwest of Boston, often listed in money and lifestyle magazines as one of the top places to live in the country. People certainly don’t go missing within the boundaries of their beloved and well-kept state park. And given that Elizabeth Sanderson is a clerk for the town public works and is friendly, if not friends, with every last town employee, it’s all hands on deck.

  The police have taken over the Visitors Center, a one-level cabin, painted forest green, the tar shingles sun-bleached gray and spotted with lichen. Park rangers, Ames Police officers, and State Police pour in and out of the Center, which is situated on the edge of the main parking lot and the surrounding forest, and is adjacent to the beginning curl of the Pond Walk trail.

  To the right of the Visitors Center and main parking lot is a large, open field that leads to the Eastman mansion—built in 1910, made of stone, three levels, twenty rooms, sitting like an ancient tortoise sunning itself on the green. Groups of search volunteers and park rangers are gathered there and begin to splinter and set off on foot with walking sticks, two-way radios, and park maps in tow.

  Elizabeth remains at the mansion to wait for the detective. She paces behind a fold-up table, positioned at the foot of the front stairs, as though it were some invisible barrier. She fusses with the fliers and folders, and she has her cell phone clutched tightly in her left hand.

  Detective Allison Murtagh makes the long walk from the Visitors Center down a dirt-and-gravel path to the mansion. The detective is in her late forties. Her graying, light brown hair is kept in a neat, straight bob cut. She’s tall, angular, all arms and legs, and built like a scarecrow that’s low on straw. Her skin is more Mediterranean than Irish, thanks to her mom. She wears a blue pantsuit, a single button above the waist.

  Elizabeth knows Allison more than well enough to greet her by her first name. They’ve met and exchanged pleasantries on numerous occasions at Town Hall, but it was this past spring when they had their longest conversation. They were at a graduation party of a mutual family friend. Allison talked about how hard it was deciding to move her father to a nursing home. Elizabeth discussed the rigors and challenges of being a single mom. They both talked about dealing with teens in general; Elizabeth as a mom of a new one, and Allison having dealt with teens her whole professional life. All the heavy, personal stuff eventually morphed into a casual conversation about town gossip and politics and then about nothing much at all. They both laughed and drank too-warm glasses of wine, and they made noises about getting together and hanging out later that summer, which never came to pass. That party seemed like it happened yesterday. Elizabeth wonders if Allison remembers meeting or seeing Tommy there.

  Allison says, “Hello, Elizabeth,” and she holds out her hand for the rigid formality of the handshake.

  Elizabeth puts her hand inside of Allison’s. Her fingers ar
e cold and do not react to the handshake. “Hi, um, Allison. Or, sorry, Detective Murtagh?”

  “No, please. Allison is fine.”

  They exchange weak and sad smiles.

  Allison’s dark blue pantsuit looks sticky and clingy in the heat. The local forecast has the temperature lurching into the nineties and to be weighed down with a typical summer-in–New England humidity that’s as oppressive as the Puritans.

  “Okay.” Elizabeth sighs, emptying of all her air as though to build herself up to this conversation she must first deflate herself. Elizabeth wears baggy blue shorts and a billowy, fraying white T-shirt, its once-clever graphic long gone, eroded by years of callous spin cycles and tumble dries. “So what do we know so far?”

  Allison says that according to the statements given by Tommy’s two friends, the three of them were sleeping over at the Griffin house when they snuck out to drink beer and hang out at the Borderland landmark called Split Rock. Luis Fernandez had referred to the landmark as Devil’s Rock, which initially confused the interviewing officers who were familiar with the park and had never heard the rock referred to by that name. The two boys claim Tommy drank half of the six-pack they brought, and then he ran off into the woods by himself. They claim his running off was sudden and without explanation. The boys were adamant that they hadn’t been making fun of Tommy, hadn’t been doing anything that would’ve angered, embarrassed, or dismayed him. They presumed Tommy was playing a prank, hiding somewhere in the woods to jump out and scare them. Tommy didn’t respond to their shouting, and he wouldn’t answer their texts. They claim to have searched the area around Split Rock for almost an hour before deciding to go back to the Griffin residence with the hope that Tommy had doubled back to the house to scare them or laugh at them when they arrived. They didn’t call anyone’s parents while they were on their way out of the park as their phones were dead, having spent the batteries while using the phones as flashlights. Tommy was not at the Griffin residence upon their return at approximately 1:25 A.M.

  Minutes after Elizabeth called the Ames Police department, Tommy’s name and information were entered into the statewide system created for missing children and teens. Officers began their search of the park around 3:30 A.M., including a pair of officers who had Luis and his father accompany them. A State Police helicopter equipped with infrared surveyed the park during the predawn hours but was unable to spot Tommy. The K9 unit thus far has come up empty. Officers from the Metro LEC (Metropolitan Law Enforcement Council; a consortium of over forty local police departments) are due to arrive at 9 A.M. for their own briefing.

  Elizabeth says, “Jesus,” checks her phone for a message that isn’t there, and begins pacing behind the table again. “I don’t understand why or how. Any of it.”

  Allison asks, “How well do you know Josh and Luis?”

  “Very well. They’re over the house all the time. They’ve been Tommy’s best friends for years—the only friends, really, that come over.”

  “Have you known them to be truthful?”

  “Yeah. Always.” Is there something—great or small—that’s off in Luis’s and Josh’s stories of what happened last night? Off either by omission or addition? Despite her answer, Elizabeth knows all teens lie. Even hers. It’s not necessarily that teens are being malicious or devious, but lying is an ingrained part of their makeup, of who they are; it’s how they attempt to survive and navigate their incomprehensible day-to-day. Adults are big, fat liars too, of course, and they’re usually better at it than teens. It’s not because adults know more. It’s because adults have decided that living with themselves is more palatable when they fully believe in their own lies.

  Elizabeth: “Do you think they’re lying?”

  “No, not necessarily. I wanted to hear what you think of them, what kind of kids they are.”

  “They’re the best, as far as I’m concerned.” She feels strangely protective of Luis and Josh, and by proxy, Tommy, as though she’s always believed the three friends would never do wrong, never have wrong befall them. “So, are you going to, I don’t know, close down the park to help find him?”

  Allison tells her that closing the park to the public remains easier said than done given the many paths and trail entrances (both marked and unmarked) along the borders and given the large number of homes in the towns of Ames and Sharon that abut the state park. The police are encouraging local residents to volunteer to be a part of larger search teams to systematically walk the trails. There are over twenty miles of marked and mapped trails, each with varying levels of difficulty. Borderland is almost two thousand acres large. That number doesn’t include the neighboring wooded areas that are not technically within the park’s boundaries, nor does it include the entirety of the Moyles granite quarry toward the treacherous and very much lesser-traveled northern end of the park.

  Elizabeth knows the park and surrounding environs are large enough that someone, a teen, a kid, her kid, could become disoriented, particularly at night, and if he was drinking, too (Jesus, Tommy, drinking? already?) . . . he could get lost, hurt. Worse.

  Allison: “Elizabeth, is it all right if I ask you a few more questions?” She pulls out a small notebook and gives Elizabeth what is supposed to be a commiserative look: a tight-lipped smile that isn’t a smile, slightly arched eyebrows.

  This observed detail is accompanied by what Elizabeth believes is her first glimpse into the truth: nothing good will come of any of this.

  It’s almost 11 P.M. and Elizabeth is in her kitchen, leaning against the sink, a cup of lukewarm tea cradled in her twitchy hands. In the last twenty-four hours she has mainlined a week’s worth of caffeine, and it hums in her blood and gallops her heart. Her mother, Janice, sits at the small kitchen table with her own ignored cup of tea. Since Elizabeth returned home from the state park in the late afternoon, and returned home without any answers (never mind with Tommy), she’s become stuck in silence. She couldn’t say anything to her daughter, Kate, or her mother for fear of saying the wrong thing, something that would inadvertently keep Tommy hidden away from them. Elizabeth needs Mom to say something, anything; otherwise, Elizabeth will remain trapped inside her own head and silently praying to and talking with her dead ex-husband, William.

  Please, William. Help us find Tommy safe. Please, William.

  Her nebbishly handsome ex was indeed a William; never Will, Bill, or Billy. God, she couldn’t imagine anyone ever having called him Billy. When they weren’t getting along, during those inexorable, final days of their marriage, she called him Billy inside her head. She’d rehash all their arguments, and in those replays, he was inconsiderate-distant-selfish-neglectful-stupid-fucking-jackass Billy.

  Elizabeth sighs, then puts her cup of tea in the sink and says, “Mom?” Her throat is scratchy, catching on itself. Speaking is a risk; it means she might start crying again and never stop.

  “Yes, dear?”

  “So Allison thinks Tommy—”

  “I’m sorry, who’s Allison, now?”

  “Detective Allison Murtagh. She interviewed me at the park. She thinks Tommy is a runaway. Just like his dad, right?”

  Janice says, “Did she actually say that? Did she say something about William?” Janice is sixty-six years old, tall, and broad shouldered. Her facial features are more forged than weathered. She still hikes to the top of Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire three times a week as long as there isn’t a foot of snow on the ground. She split with Dad when Elizabeth was a senior in high school. Elizabeth is their only child. Her father has since remarried and moved to Virginia. He’s been calling and texting, asking for updates on Tommy. Mom doesn’t like to text or talk on the phone. She stuffed some clothes into her hiker’s pack and drove down to Ames, arriving before lunchtime.

  Elizabeth says, “She didn’t say William’s name or anything like that. But the questions she was asking, I could tell. She thinks Tommy ran away. Had Tommy been acting strangely? Did he seem sullen or moody? Was there any change in his behavio
r? Did we have any arguments recently? She kept coming back to that one. Asking if we’d all been getting along okay. Like she was blaming me or something. Not that I care what anyone thinks about me.” She stomps her foot on the ground and shakes her head. “Goddamn it, I’m already blaming me, okay, and—all I want is Tommy safe and home.”

  Janice gets up slowly and walks over to Elizabeth and puts an arm around her shoulders. “Honey, this isn’t your fault. She’s not blaming you. No one’s blaming you. She’s trying to help. Like everyone else who was at the park today, trying to help find Tommy, right?”

  Mom is her hero and thank God she’s here, because Elizabeth would be a total puddle without her, but Elizabeth doesn’t want Mom to be so damn reasonable and logical, not right now. Elizabeth wants her to be emotional, irrational, to tear through walls and run the streets like a town crier screaming at everyone to fucking do something to find our Tommy!

  Elizabeth rests her head on Mom’s shoulder. Tears come again and have been as autonomic as blinking since Josh’s late-night call. “I know. But—I don’t understand any of it. Why haven’t they found him yet? Why hasn’t anyone seen him? Where did he go? Why would he run away from—from home? Why is any of this happening?”

  Tell him to come home, William. Tell him he won’t be in trouble. No one will be mad. I won’t be mad.

  She’s so worn out and tired and panicked that her thoughts are like water cupped in her hands and leaking out between her fingers. The fact of the matter is that his being a runaway is statistically likely. And his being a runaway is certainly preferable to many other possible scenarios, the ones that end with his being seriously injured, kidnapped, taken away, dead.

  Janice says, “Elizabeth, listen to me, I want you to stay off the computer and phone and try to get some sleep.”

  “I can’t—”

  “Just a couple of hours.” Janice gently grabs her arm and leads her out of the kitchen and into the hallway.

  “Fine. Stop pulling me. What about—”