PETER REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS AS THEY lifted him onto a stretcher. Ironically, it was Lisa Black’s voice he heard trying to reassure him, her cool hand tight around his forearm. “It’s okay, Peter,” she was saying. “You fainted and bumped your head. It doesn’t look like you broke the skin, but I think we should do a CAT scan and get some blood work done, look at your sugar and maybe your hemoglobin. You’re white as a sheet.”
Now he heard her say, “Take him down to the ER,” and felt the stretcher move, angling out of the waiting area toward the orange exit doors. He waited until they were in the main hall and sat up, shaking his head against a swirl of dizziness. The porter said, “Maybe you should lie down,” and Peter slid himself off the end of the stretcher, telling the porter he was fine.
He made his way down the hall without looking back, using a patient handrail for support. By the time he reached the locker room, he felt better and changed quickly into his street clothes. Lisa intercepted him on his way out and followed him down to the lobby, doing her best to talk him into staying. Peter said he was fine, assured her that if he dropped dead in the parking lot he’d accept full responsibility, then hurried out the door. He called Roger on his way to the car, asking him if he’d gotten the entire newscast on tape.
“You bet I did,” Roger said. “The son of a bitch is at it again. I can’t believe they let him get away. Are you coming over?”
Peter said, “I’m on my way.” The sun was bothering his eyes, the goose egg on his head beginning to throb. He wanted to ask Roger if he’d seen David on the monkey bars, but he knew how crazy that would sound and decided to wait, show it to him on the tape. He said, “See you soon.”
“Make it quick. I’m going down there.”
Peter said, “I’m coming with you,” and signed off, climbing into the car. For a moment the muggy heat inside threatened to turn his stomach, but the feeling quickly passed. He sped out of the lot onto Paris Street, cranking the air conditioner to its highest setting, the image of his son’s eyes, black in the sunlight, indelibly etched in his mind.
* * *
Sergeant Vickie Taylor, the lead investigator in the attempted kidnapping case, leaned against a picnic table in Warner Park with her cell phone pressed to her ear, waiting for the boy’s father to come on the line. A curt-sounding woman had told her Mr. Cade was out on a job site today and that it might take her a while to track him down. The woman offered to have Mr. Cade call Vickie back once she’d located him, but Vickie said thanks, she’d wait. That had been ten minutes ago. She was hoping to catch the man before he saw it all on TV.
According to Cade’s daughter, Risa, Christopher Cade was a foreman for a Toronto-based construction company. Risa had given Vickie the mother’s number, too—Angela Cade worked as a teller in a Mississauga branch of the Royal Bank—but from experience Vickie knew that if there was a dad in the picture, it was generally better to start with him. It lessened the hysteria factor. Where their children were concerned, even if the kid was fine, mothers tended to go off the deep end early, becoming liabilities to themselves and to the investigation. And in spite of what Vickie did for a living, she knew that if something like this ever happened to her daughter, Samantha—the world’s most precocious three-year-old—she’d react in exactly the same way.
Cade came on the line now, his voice shaky with apprehension, saying, “This is Christopher Cade. What’s this about?”
In calm, measured tones Vickie introduced herself and said, “I don’t mean to alarm you, Mr. Cade, but there’s been an incident involving your son. He’s fine, he hasn’t been injured, but he was the victim of an attempted kidnapping in the park near your home today.”
“Oh my God. When did this happen?”
“About an hour ago.”
“An hour ago. Why wasn’t I notified sooner?”
“I’ve been having some trouble reaching you, sir.”
“Has anyone spoken to my wife about this yet?”
“No, not yet. We were hoping you could handle that.”
“Of course. I’ll call her right away. And Graham is fine?”
“A little shaken up, but completely unharmed.”
“My daughter...?”
“She’s fine, too.”
“Who was it? Did you catch the guy?”
“Unfortunately not, but we’re in the process of accumulating evidence.”
“What do you mean, ‘evidence’?”
“I’ll explain it all to you when we meet, Mr. Cade. In the meantime I’d like you to contact your wife and have both of you meet me at the Oakville Regional Hospital. We’re taking your son there now.”
“I thought you said he was fine.”
“He is, sir. It’s just procedure. We’ll get him cleared, then go to the station and take everyone’s statements.”
“Alright, Sergeant Taylor. And thanks, thanks very much. What about Risa?”
“Risa will come with us.”
“Okay,” Cade said. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
* * *
Roger opened the front door and said, “Peter, I—”
Peter said, “I know,” and brushed past him into the house. He said, “I need to see that video,” and sat on the couch in the family room.
Roger had the tape already cued up, paused at the beginning of the newscast. He got it rolling with the remote and sat next to Peter on the couch, reeking of stale booze and bitter sweat, his strappy undershirt and blue work pants rumpled and stained. Peter was sure he’d been sleeping in them. The man looked like shit.
Peter watched the parts he’d missed, teaser clips that included a shot of the boy crying, then a bunch of commercials Roger fast-forwarded through. When it got to the Angela Ling segment Peter took the remote and fast-forwarded through the bulk of the story, thumbing the PLAY button just as Graham Cade turned in his sister’s arms to face the camera.
When the boy pointed at the monkey bars and said, “Tommy Boy told me to,” Peter paused the tape and said, “Watch this.” Then he hit PLAY and the camera made its subtle shift to include the top of the monkey bars in the shot.
David wasn’t there.
The tape rolled on, Angela Ling doing a brisk wrap-up before the broadcast returned to the studio and the anchor moved on to the next story.
Roger said, “What?”
Peter said “Hang on,” rewound the tape and played it again, getting the same result. He said, “God damn it,” and his hand tightened around the remote, his sudden, furious disappointment making him want to pitch the thing through the screen. The pressure of his hand activated the PAUSE function and the video froze on Graham’s teary face.
With a stifled roar, Peter buried his face in his hands and wept, huge, wrenching sobs that convulsed his body. At this moment more than any other, he felt critically unhinged, his connections with the world perilously frayed. He was so sure he’d seen David, and that kid had pointed right at him, calling him Tommy Boy...
Now he felt Roger’s hand on his back, Roger saying, “Hey, hey, what’s up? They’re going to get this guy now, no matter how far he runs. And I want to be there when they take him down. They aired an update after you called, saying about a dozen people saw him, and they expect to get good DNA evidence off his mask. And somebody saw a white van they think he took off in. They’re going after him, chum, big time, a huge dragnet. If Jason’s still alive, this is the only way we’re going to find out. So I need you to snap out of it, right now. We’ve got to get going—”
Peter stood up, sprang up, his wet eyes huge now, swallowing his face. He looked at Graham’s image on the screen, then at Roger, an expression of sheer revelation on his face, the face of a man who has just seen God. He said, “He’s not going to run. He’s going to try for this kid again.”
“How do you know that?”
Peter pointed at the Cade boy’s image on the screen. “Look at him,” he said. “He’s perfect.”
Roger stood now, too, his own eyes widening, his body seeming to harden and swell. He said, “Jesus Christ, you’re right,” and headed for the staircase, saying, “Just let me grab a few things.” Then he stopped and said, “My truck’s in the shop.”
“No problem,” Peter said. “We’ll take the Corolla.”
“What about work? Can you get some time off? I’ll be staying down there till they nail this guy.”
Peter said, “I’m retired.”
“Are you serious?”
“That’s what I was doing when you called. What about you?”
Roger said, “Suspended, without pay,” and shrugged. “Got into it with an asshole in an elevator.”
Peter blew air through his nose, the closest he could come to a laugh.
Roger put his hand on the newel post and gave Peter a huge, dimpled grin, the grin of a blue-eyed boy about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime, a treasure hunt for a prize whose value defied estimation. And though the chances of actually finding that prize were incalculably small—and this knowledge was there, too, in those smiling eyes—it was the hope that fueled Roger Mullen, the hope which, in this moment, made anything seem possible.
“Be right back,” Roger said. Then he was gone, tramping barefoot up the stairs, and Peter rewound the tape, knowing it was pointless, but powerless to prevent himself. And this time, when he got to the correct spot, he paused the tape and moved through the sequence one frame at a time, searching for even a glimpse of him.
But David just wasn’t there.
He turned the TV off and set the remote on the coffee table. Roger came down a few minutes later in a blue T-shirt and a pair of faded jeans, a brown overnight bag in one hand.
On the way out the front door, Peter said he wanted to drop by his place to grab a few things, then they’d get underway. Roger said that was fine and locked the door behind them.
In the car, Peter said, “Shouldn’t we call the police?”
“And tell them what?”
“That we think he’s going to try for this boy again. Have them beef up security around the kid until they either catch the guy or he makes his move again. You could call your friend Bernie, work it through him.”
“I didn’t want to tell you about this,” Roger said, “but I talked to Bernie a few days after we met with him. He called me at the house.”
“What did he say?”
“He asked if I was feeling better. Said I looked like shit that day in his office. Dazed, like a cult member or something. He wanted to know if I’d ‘cut that nutcase loose’, meaning you. Said he knew what I was going through was tough, but that I had to be careful, there was always some freak out there ready to take advantage of someone like me, the walking wounded. He reminded me of all the wingnuts that phoned or emailed me after Jason was taken.” Roger sighed now, the sound impossibly weary. “That whole thing with the mug shots and the sketch artist? Bernie was just humoring me, because we’re friends. He ran a check on you, you know. Called the chief of staff at the hospital.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because he thought you might be the one.”
“Jesus, why?”
“Cop logic. Everyone’s a suspect. And when you think about it, it’s not that far-fetched. Maybe this guy, this kidnapper, maybe half his gig is outsmarting the cops. Showing his superiority. So when the heat dies down, maybe he feels neglected. Or just wants to put it in their face. So he studies me, finds out about the bereavement group and just shows up there one night with his own sad story. Nobody checks, you know, to see if group members are on the level. I mean, why would anyone lie about a thing like that? So for fun, he joins the group and starts spinning this weird tale about seeing the perp in his dreams. If he knows I’ve got a friend who’s a cop, the rest is easy to figure out.”
Peter said, “A bit of a stretch, don’t you think?”
“Is it? Think about it for a minute. If you get off on showing people how smart you are, how cool would it be to walk right into the cop shop and start flipping through mug shots? When you’re the guy.”
As they turned into the Moonglow subdivision, Peter said, “You don’t think I had anything to do with it, do you?”
Roger smiled. “You think we’d be having this cozy little chat if I did? But I’ve got to tell you, after Bern brought up the possibility, I was glad to hear he’d cleared you.”
Peter didn’t reply. The information made him feel violated, betrayed, as if someone he trusted had rifled through his belongings without his permission.
They made the balance of the drive in silence. When they reached the house, Peter parked in the laneway, told Roger he’d be just a minute and hurried inside.
The tomb-like silence of the house played on Peter’s nerves as he stuffed fresh clothes into a carry-on bag, grabbing things at random, socks and shorts and T-shirts and jeans, stopping only when the bag was too full to hold anything more. Then he thought of toiletries and had to take a few things out, replacing them with a zippered, see-through sack that held his toothbrush, toothpaste, shaver, and deodorant. On his way out of the bedroom, he saw Jason Mullen’s toy boxcar on the dresser and tucked it into his pocket, thinking that if an appropriate moment presented itself, he’d give it back to Roger. If not, he’d just leave it at the house the next time he was over. He stuck the files he’d compiled on Jason and the Dolan boy into a black computer bag and stashed it all in the trunk of the car.
He paused for a moment after closing the trunk, looking up at the house Dana had been so in love with, thinking of all the wonderful times they’d shared here as a family, the love that had transformed this artful collection of bricks and boards into a home. Then he climbed in next to Roger and backed the car into the street.
* * *
Graham Cade held on to his sister’s arm in the back seat of the police car. His two older brothers didn’t like it when he touched them or tried to hug them, but they were away at music camp this week and Risa didn’t mind. Sometimes she just grabbed him and hugged him like his mom did, giving him a big wet kiss on the neck. Mom said that was because girls were more affectionate than boys. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but he was glad they were. Everyone was always telling him he was a real huggy-bear.
Risa was still very upset. She had her arm around his shoulders and her head resting against the police car window. She was looking outside, but Graham could tell she was crying. He’d been pretty afraid, too, when that man grabbed him and started running away with him, but he didn’t cry until after, when he saw how scared his sister was. He wondered if he was going to get in trouble for biting the man, because he bit him really hard. Then Risa told him the man was bad and that biting him had been a smart thing to do. It was how he got away.
After the man dropped him and ran into the trees, Risa kept saying she was sorry, crying harder than he’d ever seen anyone cry, hugging him so tight he could hardly breathe. But he told her he was okay, just a little scrape on his elbow from when he landed on the ground. He looked at the scrape now and sucked air through his teeth. It was really starting to sting, and there was blood and some kind of juice leaking out of it, little drops that looked like the apple juice he had with his cereal this morning. Maybe it was apple juice. Curious, he rubbed off a bit with his finger and tasted it.
Nope. Too sour.
Now Graham patted his sister’s arm, trying to make her feel better, but it just made her cry harder and squeeze him too tight again.
The mask, that was the scary part. Dark blue—like the sweater his Grandma made him for Christmas—with red stripes around the eyes and mouth. And the man was so strong. Graham had felt like an empty lunch bag flopping around under his arm. Graham even bit his own tongue once, when the man stopped too fast and Graham’s teeth clicked together. While the man was running with him he kept saying, “Don’t be afraid, baby, I got you now, I got you now,” like he was saving Graham instead of taking him away. His clothes smelled bad, too, like the blankets at the summer camp Graham went to last August. Musty, that was what his mom called it. That was a cool word. Musty. Graham liked new words and tried to remember them, mostly to please his mom, who read a lot and called him her little genius.
Graham sighed and looked into the front seat. This was cool, too, riding in a police car. He sat inside one once when he was little and his JK class visited the police station on a field trip, but that one was parked and there were no guns in it. This one had a huge shotgun up there. He could see the driver’s gun, too, sticking out of a brown holster. Graham liked the driver, a big guy with a bent nose, because when they were leaving the park he said, “Hey, little man, wanna hear the siren?” and Graham said sure. That was wicked cool, racing down the street with the siren going, everybody looking at them and getting out of their way.
Now they were turning into the hospital. Graham had been here once before, when he got stitches in his head. Risa was watching him that day, too. She made him go into a boring music store and started looking at CDs. He got mad because he wanted to go to Wal-Mart and Risa wouldn’t let him, so he sat on the floor to wait for her. When she was finally done, he stood up too fast and bumped his head on a shelf. It didn’t hurt that much—not until later—but it bled a lot and Risa got all weak and fainted. That part was funny, and they both got a ride to the hospital in an ambulance, which was cool, but not as cool as riding in a police car.
Graham hoped they didn’t use any of that sting-y stuff on his elbow. He really didn’t like hospitals.
The police car parked behind an ambulance, and now Graham saw his mom and dad running toward them. His mom’s face was all red and she was crying really hard, even his dad’s eyes were wet, and when his mom opened the door and scooped him into her arms, Graham started crying again, too.
On his way into the emergency department, Graham saw the police lady who'd talked to him at the park. She said her name was Vickie, and Graham thought she was too pretty to be a policeman. She smiled at him, then followed them through the automatic doors, saying something to his dad Graham couldn’t hear.
* * *
They made a bathroom stop in Parry Sound, about a hundred and fifty miles north of Oakville, just before six that evening. Peter suggested they top up the tank, but Roger insisted they keep moving. The gas bar was lined up six cars deep at every bay, and Roger said that half a tank in a car like this was more than enough to get them where they were going.
When they were back on the road, Peter asked Roger what the plan was.
“Scope the place out,” he said. “Who knows, maybe I can nab the son of a whore myself.”
Peter glanced at Roger now, not liking what he saw in the man’s face, the deadly intent. He said, “We don’t even know where the Cade family lives. And even if we did, we can’t just camp out on their doorstep. Shouldn’t we just find a place to stay and let the police do their jobs?”
Roger said, “That news update I told you about? They showed an interview with one of the Cade’s neighbors, an old guy mowing his lawn. He pointed across the street at their house. They blotted out the street number, but the front door’s bright yellow and there’s a fire hydrant at the curb. And I’m sure I heard one of the reporters say something about the park being just a couple of blocks from their home.”
“What about letting the cops do their job?”
“Look at the wonderful job they did with Jason.”
Peter had no reply.
They drove in silence for a while after that, until Roger found a rock station on the radio and started drumming on his legs. The man was a vat of raw adrenalin, exuding a caged, manic energy, and he was making Peter nervous.
Peter had never been involved with such a volatile individual. He and Roger were completely different personalities, Roger a man of action, the kind of guy who threw the first punch in situations Peter had always done his best to avoid. And while that made them an unlikely team, Peter could understand how Roger felt. No matter how much an injustice affected an individual or his family, in many cases there was only so much the police could do. Only so many man-hours they could devote, only so much emotional investment they could provide. In many ways it paralleled the situation in medicine, even where the families of colleagues were concerned. How many late nights keeping vigil with David had he secretly cursed the nurses for taking so long to bring his son’s pain medication or change his bed when he soiled it? And how thin had he judged their excuses about short staffing and impossible patient loads? But it was all true. In the majority of these situations, for physicians as well as the police, a point inevitably arrived at which priorities had to be shifted, hope tempered or even abandoned.
But there was no way he could talk to Roger about any of this now. The man was amped, three years’ worth of dread, guilt, and bottled fury suddenly given focus, however elusive the object of that focus might be. But the kidnapper—the faceless predator who had come into Roger’s home and stolen the most precious thing in it—had just hours ago struck again in a place Roger could not only see, but could physically place himself in.
“The thing I can’t understand,” Roger said now, shouting over the music and giving Peter a start, “is why the guy keeps going after these look-alikes. And why such huge gaps of time in between? The first one, what was his name?”
Peter turned the music down and said, “Clayton Dolan.”
“That was six years ago, right? Then Jase, almost three years now. If it’s some weird kink he’s got and he, you know...kills them after, why wait so long in between?” Roger’s face was brick red now, saying these things out loud clearly tearing him apart. “If it’s a sexual thing, wouldn’t he want it all the time?”
Peter didn’t like the way the conversation was going. Over the summer he’d watched a documentary on a serial killer from Wichita or someplace like that, a man who had evaded capture for thirty years and left a string of corpses in his wake. What had struck Peter about this guy was the uneven periodicity of his crimes, the man going on savage binges for a while, then stopping all of a sudden, slipping into a period of dormancy that on one occasion lasted thirteen years. Watching the program, Peter had decided that in situations of extreme deviancy, the familiar parameters of reason simply could not be applied. These people just did what they did when they did it. And once they were captured, if they were willing to discuss their crimes at all, often seemed as baffled by their behavior as the rest of the world.
Cringing inside, Peter said the only thing he could think of: “It can’t be easy finding kids who look so much alike.”
“That’s exactly my point, though. What’s with that? If you’re into blond, blue-eyed and dimpled, you could probably find three or four like that in every grade school in the country. An endless supply. I remember picking Jase up at school a few times and seeing these three little girls all about the same age who I thought must be sisters, but they were always picked up by different people. Why be so specific?”
Peter had no answer. He said, “Roger, I really don’t know,” and leaned a little harder on the accelerator, keeping his eyes aimed straight ahead now, the man beside him a coiled cobra, ready to strike.
* * *
The nurse at the hospital did use the sting-y stuff, but she said it would only hurt for a minute and it would keep his scrape from getting infected. His brother Greg got an infection once from a bug bite, and Graham remembered how nasty-looking the pus was that Greg squeezed out of it. It looked like yellow mayonnaise, and Graham knew he didn’t want any of that in him. So he let the nurse use the sting-y stuff, and it wasn’t that bad. She put ointment on it after that, then a weird bandage that looked like an octopus with four legs. The doctor who checked him over said he was a hundred percent and he could go. The fun part was, he got to drive in the police car again, this time to the police station.
When they got there, the police lady sent Risa away with another policeman, then took Graham and his parents into a special room called an interview room, though Graham couldn’t see anything special about it. It was just a room, with a couch and a coffee table and a lamp and a big mirror on the wall. It reminded him of the family room at his friend Scott’s place, except smaller and with no TV. There was a box of toys in the corner the police lady said he could check out while she went to her office to get a few things, but they were mostly just baby toys, big clunky trucks made of plastic and a few silly dolls.
The police lady asked Graham to sit on the couch between his parents, then sat in the big comfy chair across from him. Graham had kind of wanted that chair, but it was nice to sit with his mom and dad, except his mom kept squeezing his hand too hard. The police lady put something on the coffee table that looked like a radio, then pressed a button on it. A little red light came on and Graham saw that it was a tape recorder, like the one his uncle Brian used when he played his guitar, except smaller.
“So, Graham,” the police lady said, looking right at him now. “My name’s Vickie Taylor—remember?—and I was hoping you and I could have a little chat. My memory’s not that great, so if it’s all right with you I’m going to use this tape recorder. Would that be okay?”
Graham shrugged and said, “Can I hear it after?”
Vickie smiled. “Sure, if you’d like.”
Graham said, “You want to talk about what happened in the park?”
“Yes, but not right away. I thought maybe you could tell me a bit about yourself first.”
“Like what?”
“Like, how old are you?”
“Six, but I’m small for my age. Everybody always thinks I’m five or even four.”
“What grade are you in?”
“Going into one.”
“That’s awesome. And what about your day today? What did you do before you went to the park? Did you sleep in late?”
Graham’s mother, Angela, smiled nervously and said, “Not this guy. Gray’s a real early bird—”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Cade,” Vickie said, “but I’d prefer if Graham answered my questions for now. I’ll be talking to you and your husband individually later on.”
Christopher Cade was rubbing Angela’s back now, trying to help stave off a fresh wave of tears. When it came anyway, he grabbed the Kleenex box off the coffee table and handed it to his wife. Angela plucked out a handful and wiped her eyes with it, apologizing to Vickie for the lapse.
“Perfectly understandable,” Vickie said. “It’s been a trying day for all of you. But it’s almost over.”
Graham felt like crying again now, too, his bottom lip quivering, but he held it in, trying to be brave for his mom.
“Graham?” Vickie said. “Can you tell me about your morning? You got up early and then what?”
“Got a bowl of Cheerios and watched TV.”
“What’d you watch?”
“My Dad the Rock Star, then The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show.”
“Yeah? My daughter Samantha loves Bugs Bunny. Then what did you do?”
Graham shot a quick look at his dad. “Played on my brother’s X-Box.”
“Would he thump you if he found out?”
Graham grinned and said, “Yup.”
“Let’s not tell him, then. When did you go to the park?”
“After lunch. Risa didn’t want to because she broke her foot when she dropped her computer screen on it, but Mom said she had to because she’s supposed to babysit me this summer. For money. Her cast is green. I signed it. No way she can catch me now.”
“Are you a fast runner?”
Graham nodded proudly. “My dad calls me ‘The Flash.’”
“Do you go to the park a lot?”
“Every day. I like the monkey bars.”
“How do you get there?”
“Walk. It’s only two blocks. Risa’s got a walking cast. It’s got a rubber thingy on the bottom.”
“And when you were walking today, did you notice anybody watching you or following you?”
“No.”
“How about at the park?”
“Nope. If you mean the man who grabbed me, I’ve never seen him before. He had smelly winter clothes on and a blue ski mask. I didn’t like that mask.”
“His clothes were smelly?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What did they smell like?”
Graham looked at his mom and said, “Musty.”
“Good for you, Graham,” Vickie said. “Did you notice anything else about him?”
“He was strong.”
“Did he say anything to you?” “Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“He told me not to be afraid. He kept saying, ‘I got you, I got you.’”
“Did he use your name?”
“No.”
“Did he have an accent?”
Graham thought he knew what that meant, but he wasn’t sure. “You mean, like the Crocodile Hunter?”
“Yeah, but not just Australian. Any accent.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay. Did he say anything else?”
Graham looked down at his feet. He didn’t want to say the rest. He heard his dad say, “Graham?” and mumbled, “He called me a baby,” without looking up.
Vickie said, “A baby? How did he say it?”
“I’m six. I’m not a baby.”
“I know that, Graham, but maybe that’s not what he meant. Do you remember how he said it?”
Graham looked at Vickie now. “He said, ‘Don’t be afraid, baby.’”
Vickie looked at Graham’s mom and dad, then said, “And that was it?”
“Yes.”
“Did you notice anything else about him?”
“His shoes were dirty. They had yellow laces.”
“What about after the other man pulled his mask off? Did you see his face?”
“No. When he was carrying me I could only see the ground.”
“What about after he dropped you?”
“The sun was burning my eyes, but I saw he had no hair.”
“Did he have a moustache or anything?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay, kiddo. Do you remember all the people with cameras and microphones in the park?”
“The reporters?”
Vickie smiled. “That’s right. Do you remember talking to them about how you got away?”
“Yes. I bit him.”
“And you told them someone told you to bite the man?”
Graham looked at his dad and said, “Yeah. Tommy Boy.”
Vickie said, “Tommy Boy?”
Graham didn’t feel like talking anymore. He said, “Can I go to the bathroom?”
“Sure, sweetie,” Vickie said. “I just need to know this one last thing.”
Graham folded his arms and clenched his teeth. He didn’t like talking about Tommy Boy because nobody believed him, especially his dad.
Now his dad said, “Tommy Boy’s his imaginary friend.”
The police lady looked at his dad and Graham could tell she was annoyed. She said, “Why don’t we let Graham tell it?”
Graham said, “Just because you can’t see him doesn’t mean he’s not there,” and felt bad right away for getting angry at his dad. More quietly, he said, “His real name is David.” Then he looked at Vickie and said, “Are we finished now? I really need to go to the bathroom.”
“Okay, Graham,” Vickie said. “That’s enough for now.” She stood and held out her hand. “Come on, I’ll take you to the boy’s room.”
Graham stood up and took her hand, but it made him feel funny. He said, “Can my dad come, too?” and felt better when the police lady said of course.
Dad held his other hand and they went out to find the bathroom.
* * *
By six o’clock that evening, lead investigator Vickie Taylor felt she had a complete enough picture of the case to present it to her boss, Staff Sergeant Rob Laking, who headed up the Criminal Investigations Division. Laking was a firm but approachable guy in his mid-forties who had played professional hockey in his early twenties, until a nasty knee injury cut that career path short. Laking had two kids of his own, teenage girls upon whom the sun rose and set—his office was cluttered with pictures of the two of them, filling every space that wasn’t already occupied by hockey memorabilia or mug shots—and he took cases of this nature very personally.
Laking was on the phone with one of his daughters when Vickie came into his office. After giving her an acknowledging nod, he pointed at the phone, winced, and whispered, “Sit.” Then, into the phone, said, “Kel, this’ll have to wait till I get home,” and shook his head. Then, “But—”
Amused by the spectacle of this tough, ex-hockey-star cop being cowed by a teenage girl, Vickie sat in the chair facing his desk and waited.
A few seconds later, Laking said, “Kelly, I have to go,” and hung up the phone. Grinning, he looked at Vickie and said, “Car Wars.” He saw the case folder in Vickie’s lap and said, “What’ve you got for me?”
Vickie flipped the folder open and started peeling out documents, giving Laking a synopsis of each as she handed it over. “Thirteen eye-witness interviews, freshly transcribed. They all tell pretty much the same story as far as events are concerned. We’ve got the videotape anyway, so most of it’s moot. Four composites, taken from the four guys who got close enough to get a look at him after the mask came off—the two bikers and a couple of park employees who were there weeding flower beds.”
Laking arranged the computer-generated sketches on the desk in front of him and shook his head, saying, “Great. The guy’s bald. That much I got from the news.” He picked up the third sketch in the group and showed it to Vickie. “This one looks like my mother-in-law, only cuter.”
“You know what it’s like, “ Vickie said. “Heat of the moment, nobody ever really gets a good look. And the guy was waving a knife. We got great descriptions of it. Two of the witnesses thought the guy’s head was shaved, though, as opposed to naturally bald. One of them said it was a real neat job, tight to the skull.”
Laking said, “Interesting,” and glanced again at the composites. “Which one are you going to run with?”
She pointed at the middle two sketches. “The artist said these two had the most points in common. Said she’d do a blend and let us go with that.”
“Okay, what else you got?”
“Interviews with the kid, the older sister who was with him at the park, and the parents. Nothing much there, either. The guy was carrying the kid face down, and when he dropped him, the sun was in the boy’s eyes. The kidnapper called him ‘Baby’, though, as in, ‘Don’t be afraid, Baby.’
“Like he knows the kid?”
“That’s what I thought, but the parents couldn’t think of anybody, family or otherwise, who’d be capable of an act like this. Ditto for the sister. No weird friends who might’ve fixated on the brother, no jilted boyfriends. They’re a pretty normal bunch. And as far as motive goes—outside of the obvious deviant stuff—ransom seems highly unlikely. Both parents work, but they’ve got four kids they’re trying to build college funds for, two cars, and a mortgage. I haven’t seen the house yet, but it sounds like they live fairly modestly.”
Laking glanced at one of the reports and said, “The kid’s got two older brothers.”
“Yeah, nine and eleven, both away for the week at a music camp near Parry Sound.”
“What about forensics? You talk to Smitty yet?”
“Yeah, just before I came up here. He says the mask’s a DNA gold mine. Sweat, saliva, skin cells. He said he’d put a rush on it, but even then it’s going to take a couple of days.”
“Alright. Let’s hope our boy’s in the data base. Anything from the neighborhood yet?”
“Nada.”
“And the white van?”
“No plates, thousands to choose from in the Greater Toronto area.”
Laking pushed back in his chair and said, “So what now?”
“I’m going to escort the Cades home, have a look around the premises.”
“You think it was a random snatch?”
“Looks that way.”
“That what you told the parents?”
Vickie nodded. “I said the guy’s probably in another province by now.”
“They happy with that?”
“Not really. The father wants extra protection until the perp is caught.”
“And?”
“I told him we could probably have a squad car make hourly passes overnight. Maybe stick a surveillance camera on the pole across the street, if we can find a spare.”
“Tell you what,” Laking said. “Why don’t you tell him we’ll park a couple of plainclothes officers across the street from the house. See if that does it. With any luck, we’ll have the prick in lockup by morning anyway.”
Vickie said, “Shall do,” and gathered up her files.
* * *
There was an accident on the 400 just north of Barrie that tied them up for almost an hour, traffic grinding to a standstill in the August heat. While they were waiting, Roger found another news update on a Toronto FM station that said essentially nothing had changed. Police were still looking for a white van, a composite of the kidnapper was due for media release later today, and the six-year-old victim had been discharged from hospital with a clean bill of health.
When traffic finally started moving again, around eight-thirty, Roger said, “Back at the house, what were you looking for in that video?”
Peter looked at him and said, “You don’t want to know.”
“I’m asking.”
He decided to just say it. “When I watched the newscast the first time, at the hospital, I saw David on the monkey bars.”
“Could it have been a kid who looked like David?”
“When I watched it again at your place there was no kid on the monkey bars. I would’ve been prepared to believe I’d only imagined it if the Cade boy hadn’t pointed right at him and called him Tommy Boy.”
“Tommy Boy?” Roger said. “Like the movie?”
“Exactly. David loved that movie, and his mom used to call him Tommy Boy sometimes.”
Surprising Peter, Roger said, “Makes sense. I read someplace that kids are more sensitive to things like that, seeing ghosts.”
Peter said, “So suddenly you’re a believer?”
“I’m not sure I’d go that far, chum. But everything you’ve told me so far has pretty much panned out, so either you’re some weird kind of Sherlock Holmes or there’s at least an element of truth to all of this.”
Peter felt oddly comforted by this. Validated, less alone.
In a calm voice Roger said, “That’s the real reason you figured the kidnapper’d go after this boy again, right? Because of the video?”
Peter nodded. “Even if I imagined seeing David in the newscast, the kid calling him Tommy Boy...I can’t believe it’s just a coincidence.”
Roger nodded now, too.
They were coming up on a Barrie exit and Peter said, “We’re down to less than a quarter tank and I’m starving. How about a pit stop?”
Roger agreed and they pulled into the next service center. While Peter gassed up, Roger ran into the Wendy’s for burgers and drinks. Peter’s cell phone rang while he was paying for the gas and he answered with a brusque hello.
It was Erika Meechum.
“Peter, hi.”
Her voice was somber, tentative somehow, and though Peter felt a vague guilt for not responding to her messages earlier in the summer, he said, “Erika, listen, I really can’t talk to you right now. I’m sorry I haven’t returned your calls. That was rude of me, since it was me who came to you in the first place, but—”
“Did you see the news?”
A chill surfaced at the back of Peter’s neck and rippled down his spine. He said, “Yes. We’re on our way there now.”
“You and Roger?”
“Yes.”
Silence. Then: “Tommy Boy. Is it David?”
“Yes.”
“I saw something, Peter. On the monkey bars.”
That chill again, coursing through him in quickening cycles. “You saw him too?”
“Not him. Just...energy. An aura, like a smudge of light.”
Peter thought, So maybe I’m not crazy and said, “Roger wants to be close by when they catch him,” because he had no idea what else to say.
“I’m sorry you were upset by what happened that night,” Erika said. “With the toy train. But I stand by what I said.”
Through the booth window, Peter saw Roger coming out of Wendy’s with a paper bag in one hand and a molded tray of drinks in the other. He said, “I hope you’re right, Erika, I really do, but I’ve got to let you go.”
“I understand.”
“Thanks for calling.”
“Peter?”
“Yes?”
“Be careful.”
Peter said, “I will,” and signed off.
In the car, Roger handed him a burger wrapped in yellow paper, then dug one out for himself. Peter stuck his meal on the dash and got them rolling again, his appetite gone.