Disappearance at Devil's Rock Page 9

  Between the rugged terrain and her having not jogged in weeks, she gets painful shin splints on the Pond Walk trail. She stops once, leaning on a tree, and tries to stretch them out. It doesn’t help. She’s so tight she can’t grab her toes without having to bend her knees. She jog-walks the rest of the way, the shin splints still barking, and she’s a little light-headed and overheated. She regrets not bringing a bottle of water.

  It takes her more than forty minutes to get to Split Rock. Elizabeth is alone. She expects police tape around the giant boulder, or maybe across the path leading to it, and a reporter or two circling the area—there was one reporting live from the rock on TV yesterday afternoon, or a policeman stationed at the rock to, what, guard it? To keep vigil at the one place they know for sure Tommy isn’t? Elizabeth spent the last half of the walk in her head rehearsing what she might say to that oafish Officer Stanton, because he’d be the one to pull that kind of duty. Whenever he comes to the DPW office (which is way too often), he takes half the chocolate kisses from the bowls on their desks and he flirts with the women in an ugly and obnoxious you’re-so-lucky-I’m-even-looking-at-you way.

  The park’s SPLIT ROCK sign has been vandalized, with Devils gouged roughly into the wood above the slashed and scratched-out SPLIT. She can’t help but notice the improper punctuation, the lack of the possessive apostrophe-s, unless the vandal meant plural or multiple devils. No ownership implied but a place of congregation. The weed-/alcohol-fueled teen likely didn’t think that deeply about devils.

  Did Detective Murtagh tell her about the sign and she forgot or was it mentioned on the news report she watched yesterday? So many of the details of the preceding days are jumbled and mixed, an oral history suffering from too many or two few retellings. Is Devil’s Rock what the kids in the area call the place or something Tommy and the boys called it? She still doesn’t know.

  Elizabeth limps around the rock’s perimeter twice before entering the actual split, which is plenty wide enough to walk into. She runs her hands along the rough granite walls that stretch high above her head. The pine needles beneath her feet are matted into the hard packed dirt. Where the split ends in the middle of the calved boulder is a small collection of notes and trinkets mixed with dead leaves that have somehow managed to survive through the previous winter, spring, and now summer. Elizabeth kneels down (there isn’t room to sit with her legs crossed), and tries to sit back on her feet, but with the shin splints still aching she’s not flexible enough to do so.

  There are two flowers on the top, laid so that their stems cross and make a prohibitive X. There are two small teddy bears. One is black. The other is brown and has a broken heart stitched onto its chest. There’s someone’s beat-up Ames baseball hat, its black sun-bleached into light purple. There are candles with hardened tentacles of wax clinging to notes and cards that read “We miss you, Tommy,” “We believe you’ll come home,” and promises that God and Jesus will look out for him. Elizabeth sifts through the loose notes and a coin slides out, bounces off her thighs. It’s a penny, weathered and stained almost black, making it difficult to read its minting year, but it’s not a wheat back; there doesn’t appear to be anything special about it. Elizabeth flashes to Tommy’s coins Kate had shown her. The thought of bringing the penny home and adding it to Tommy’s collection feels like a false step or a step too far, and hopelessly cabalistic. She drops the penny into her shell’s front pouch pocket anyway. She picks through the rest of the notes, some of which are inside plastic bags. Other notes have gotten wet and then dried, the ink dissolving into clouds. She had a feeling this morning, a hunch, that she’d find another note from Tommy here at the rock. It’s why she came.

  She pulls out two MISSING: HAVE YOU SEEN fliers she and Janice made. Janice suggested using his school picture, which was a retake of an equally awkward photo because Tommy never smiled for real in a posed picture and was always uncomfortable in those staged surroundings, so Why are you looking at me? She chose a picture of him from earlier in the summer. In it, he stands over his bike just back from one of his friends’ houses, the lazy sun going down somewhere behind the trees, and he’s caught in the middle of taking off his helmet, his hair all over the place, a thick-lined and joyous scribble, and his smile is a real one, as uncontrollable as the gasp right after jumping into cold water on a summer day. Janice didn’t think the picture was a clear enough shot of him, but this picture is Tommy and Elizabeth is convinced that anyone would recognize him from this photo. She can’t even look at the picture now, though, with that MISSING headline screaming on the paper below him. She places the fliers on either side of the pile of tokens and trinkets; it’s what the bottom of a dried-up wishing well might look like.

  Elizabeth climbs back to her feet unsteadily and with the help of the boulder. She pauses at the edge of the split, waiting to hear someone walking down the path. If she listens hard enough, maybe she can hear the reverberations of the mysterious steps Tommy took away from Split Rock that night, and she could follow them. She would, too, even if it meant her own disappearance.

  Elizabeth doesn’t come home for lunch. She spends the rest of the afternoon driving through neighboring towns. She moves mainly north and west of Ames, first going into neighboring Stoughton, then Canton, Norwood, Westwood, and Needham. She uses her Facebook page, which is drowning in well-wishes and messages, to check in with a picture of Tommy and update her geographic progress. She tags the local newspapers (if the town has one) or the town’s Patch page. She stops in their downtowns and squares, and if there are people walking by, she hands them a flier. When there are no more people to give fliers to, she staples fliers to walls and telephone poles and posts pictures of the hanging fliers to her and Tommy’s Facebook pages.

  Her last stop is the big-box technology store on Route 1. It’s as cavernous as an airplane hangar, and there couldn’t possibly be enough buyers for all the shiny, hungry-for-electricity gadgets housed inside. She buys a wireless high-definition security camera that she’ll be able to control and monitor with her smartphone. The young woman at the register offers her a 15 percent discount if she signs up for a new credit card with them. Elizabeth gets the card even though she has too many already, never mind spending this money she doesn’t have on the camera.

  When Elizabeth pulls back into her driveway it’s after 5 P.M. She stays in her car to read and answer texts and e-mails. There are a slew of Facebook comment notification e-mails, most of the in-our-prayers / stay-positive variety, but there’s one from some guy with a bald eagle head as his avatar. His message: Maybe you shouldve watched him better then you did then he would’nt have sneaked out drinkin and doing whatever else he should’nt be doing.

  Elizabeth grunts, drops the phone, and yells, “Fuck you!” repeatedly, and pounds on the steering wheel with an open palm. She scrambles to pick up the phone down at her feet and writes responses in her head that threaten this jackass’s life in great and terrible detail, to say in no uncertain terms that he deserves a humiliating, limb-ripping, skin-rending death. Her left palm is red and throbs, and the instant she stops indulging in her righteous wrath fantasy, she deflates. Knowing she can’t risk any public backlash, Elizabeth writes back: I don’t care what you think of me, but please keep your ears and eyes out for Tommy. He’s just a boy and he needs everyone’s help. She types, erases, types, erases, but finally leaves what amounts to a paper cut compared to his assault. Oh, and nice grammar.

  Elizabeth reads the rest of her e-mails. She agrees to participate in a phone interview with a midmorning AM radio talk show, one she’s never listened to before. The exchange with the show’s producer is as matter-of-fact as the confirmation of a dentist appointment. There’s an e-mail from a lawyer who wants to represent her family’s “best interests.” She has been getting those e-mails for days now. She laughed at the first ones. Now she wonders if there’s any way she could afford one, or if she could find one to work pro bono. Lastly, Detective Murtagh has nothing new to report. Eli
zabeth sends Allison a link to the jackass’s Facebook thread/comment and she asks how are the Devil’s Rock and the-boys-were-out-drinking details getting out to the public. Her What’s going on here? Are you telling me all I need to know? at the end of the e-mail nicely summarizes everything.

  Elizabeth turns her almost dead phone off and leaves the car. Once inside the house she announces, “Hi, guys,” aware of the crinkling sound the plastic bag makes as the camera sways and bounces off her leg.

  Janice and Kate are in the kitchen, sitting on opposite sides of the table. Janice cooked one of the premade meals left by well-wishers. Chicken marsala. Kate hates mushrooms. Maybe that’s why she sits before an untouched plate with her head down and arms folded across her chest. Janice looks upset, too, or maybe she’s pissed off. Something happened. Did they see the Facebook comment, too? Kate made herself a coadministrator of Tommy’s page.

  Elizabeth says, “That smells good,” and drops the bag on the counter.

  Janice: “It is good. Delicious.”

  “Great. I’m starvin’ like Marvin.” Elizabeth sits next to Kate and rubs her back and kisses the top of her head. That she has walked into the house like Hey Mom is home and life is good dizzies her head. She’s trying. She’s trying even if none of it is working.

  By the looks of her almost empty plate, Janice is done eating. She says, “What did you buy?”

  “It’s a surveillance camera. I’m going to set it up tonight and monitor the living room and maybe, I don’t know, the front door, too. Just in case.”

  “Yay.” Kate says it like the fuck yous Elizabeth spewed in her car. “Then Nana will finally see that it’s not me leaving the notes.” She gets up and stomps out of the kitchen.

  Elizabeth calls out after her. “Kate, you need to eat something, sweetie. How about I make you some eggs and toast? Breakfast for dinner? Your favorite, right? I’ll make it as soon as I’m done eating, okay?” Elizabeth takes Kate’s untouched plate and gives her mother a good stare.

  Janice says, “Just in case what?”

  “What?”

  “You said you’ll monitor the front door, too, just in case. Just in case what?”

  “You know, on the off chance there’s someone—” Elizabeth pauses, as though to allow both of them to fill the blank with names or faces “—I don’t know who, sneaking in the house at night, leaving the notes, as a message, as a what, an elaborate, cruel fucking prank. I don’t know, Mom. I’m trying—trying to cover the bases.” She doesn’t add that she’s desperate to see what she saw in her room two nights ago. It’s really why she bought the camera.

  Janice shakes her head, as though she hears Elizabeth’s unspoken thoughts, and says, “I guess we’ll see what we see.”

  “If it works.”

  “How much did it cost?”

  “Enough.”

  Janice softens and rubs her face with her hands. “Well, my day was stupid, because, well, I’m stupid. How about yours?”

  Later that night Elizabeth and Kate are on the living room couch, sitting with legs pressed against each other, the camera box open on their laps. Janice with her book and cup of green tea sits ramrod straight on the love seat, her reading glasses sliding to the edge of her nose.

  Elizabeth tells Kate that she didn’t get a demonstration nor did she ask any of the sales associates about the camera. She assumed it would simply record and save everything at the touch of a button.

  Kate, without even having looked at the box, scoffs, “Mom, there’s no way that thing has that kind of memory, unless it’s uploading to some cloud you probably didn’t purchase.”

  Elizabeth says, “Cloud? I definitely did not purchase any fluffy clouds,” trying to be obtuse enough to get a smile. Kate’s grunt of disproval is close enough.

  They read the instructions pamphlet. The camera does have a streaming component. Via the phone app you can watch live what the camera sees, but it doesn’t record the stream. Through the app you’re able to change the camera angle and zoom ratios. It’s supposed to adjust from night vision to daylight settings automatically. There’s also a motion sensor with sensitivity settings, and if triggered, the camera takes and saves snapshots or a five-second video clip and an alert message is sent to the phone.

  Elizabeth: “Snapshots and clips? That’s all? I thought it would record stuff.”

  Kate: “You can return it and get a better one.”

  Elizabeth says, “Nah,” though she does briefly consider repackaging the camera and the twenty-five-plus minute drive back to the box store. “You mean a more expensive one? It’s fine. It’ll work. You can help make it work right. Right?”

  “I guess,” Kate says and then snatches Elizabeth’s phone away from her.

  They upload the app, pick a username and password. Its configuration and connection to the device is tricky and doesn’t work at first. Kate goes to the family computer and calls up a slew of YouTube video tutorials for setting up the device. Kate shouts, “This is way more complicated than it needs to be.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Janice gets up and says, “I’m going to bed early. Good luck with the camera, girls.”

  Elizabeth says, “Aw, we need you to be our test subject, and do that Bigfoot walk of yours.”

  Kate giggles from the computer desk. When the kids were young, Nana told stories about seeing Bigfoot in the woods and wilds of New Hampshire. The kids’ favorite game involved Janice pretending to be Bigfoot and she’d stomp and chase after them in the backyard as they screamed. Even as the kids got older, Janice would occasionally and unexpectedly walk through a room like the arm-swinging Bigfoot in the infamous Patterson film for a laugh.

  Janice says, “Well, maybe she’ll make an appearance later. You never know. Bigfoot usually has to get up in the middle of the night to go pee now.”

  Kate whispers, “’Night, Nana.”

  Janice walks by, gives her a hug and a long kiss on the top of her head.

  Kate says, “Okay,” and pushes the rolling chair away from the desk, and she spins onto her feet. “I think I got it. And hey, looks like you have thirty free days of cloud space to save snapshots and clips, too, if you want.”

  The phone and camera are synced. Elizabeth messes around with the app, but it crashes after trying to switch from the live stream to the camera control screen.

  “Grrr. What a hunk of junk. I guess I am taking it back.”

  Kate says, “Relax. Apps crash. It’s what they do. Try rebooting your phone.”

  Elizabeth turns her phone off and then on. “Oh, okay. Looks—good, I guess. Let’s test the sucker out.”

  Elizabeth places the camera on the TV stand next to the stereo receiver that doesn’t work anymore. The body of the camera is small, rectangular, and white, with a cyclopean lens in the middle. Elizabeth thinks it looks like a mini HAL from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. She adjusts the view so that the entire living room fills her phone’s screen. The edge of the hallway that leads to their bedrooms is a shadow stage left.

  “All right. I’m going in the kitchen. You stay out of sight until I’m ready.”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  Elizabeth shuffles out of the living room while watching the static video. She announces, “Okay.”

  “Okay, what?”

  “Lights out. You get the desk lamp, please.” Elizabeth kills the lights in the hallway, kitchen, and living room. She leans up against the fridge, her hands cupped around the glowing screen of the phone. The night vision is black-and-white, but it’s a crisp, detailed shot. She can see the rug, the couch, the whole room, no problem. She brings the phone closer to her face, as though looking for small-scale flaws or cracks. “Wow. I can see everything fine.”

  “Weird. Your voice came through the camera. I forgot to tell you there’s a speaker and a mic, too.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. You can talk through it and record sound, too. Ready for me to walk in?”

  Elizabeth dro
ps her voice into her lowest register. “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”

  “Um, what was that supposed to be?”

  “Nothing. Quoting an old movie. Go. Go ahead.”

  Kate hesitantly walks into the shot from behind the couch. That far away, she looks so small, like a toddler, and then she grows exponentially as she approaches the camera.

  Elizabeth says, “So weird. Your eyes and teeth are glowing.”

  “Hit the Record button. I want to see it.” A little hesitant wave, exaggerated wide eyes, a big-mouthed smile. Light leaks out of her.

  Kate runs to the kitchen and watches the recording. She says, “This is so cool.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  Mother and daughter share a look that quickly crumbles as they remember the purpose and point of the camera.

  Elizabeth says, “Okay. It works. But I want to test the motion detection part, and then we’ll call it a night.”

  The app is glitchy again. The motion detection only seems to work when Kate makes exaggerated arms movements. If she walks through the room slowly, nothing is triggered. The same happens when Elizabeth tries. Kate turns the motion sensitivity settings lower, to five feet in front of the camera and they get better results, but still not perfect.