MAY
We’ll pass the billboards in another mile.
They’ll smear by.
The five of them.
Last September they sprouted in the field along I-65. Their font coal black and Apple Store white; huge block letters that demanded attention from motorists. The quintet is weatherworn now, and as far as advertisements go, can’t compete with Bojangles’s new spicy chicken sandwich or TriStar’s four-minute ER wait.
I’m staring out the passenger window of Nick’s Civic, watching the landscape pass, wide-eyed and afraid to blink. “They’re just ahead. After the water tower.” I tap the glass, leaving my fingerprint smudges for him to wipe away later. To appease me, he slows to a honk-worthy speed and we squint against the rising sun.
The Gemini Thief could be anyone.
Your father, your mother, your best friend’s crazy uncle.
Some country music star’s deranged sister. Anyone.
Someone is stealing Tennessee’s boys.
Report suspicious behavior.
A tip line number follows. The byline explains the Check Your Neighbor Campaign is funded by Families of Gemini Victims. These days the billboards are ants in the rush-hour parade. Another bit of empathy fatigue for the daily commute.
Unless your whole life is on those signs.
Aulus McClaghen’s my cousin.
Maybe you know the name. Maybe you don’t. In the media, he’s nobody yet. To Nick, he’s the Kentucky boy among the current three missing from Tennessee. To me, he’s the million-piece puzzle I’ve been working since childhood. It’s not just me fascinated either. Nearly everyone in Wildwood could reel off four or five Aulus facts without blinking. That’s the kind of person he is. Was? Is.
Like:
He worked the cash register at Quik Mart.
He once raised seven hundred dollars for St. Jude’s reselling Hershey’s Kisses.
Dude loved his car—an Audi Quattro that he tipped the Wildwood High shop class to handsomely accessorize.
He wrote letters to famous people and for some reason they always wrote back. His favorite, and mine: J. K. Rowling. (The letters are framed in the Wildwood Library, near the family bathroom.)
A person isn’t a grouping of stats or a list of strange accomplishments; that’s reductive and insulting. But take a snapshot of Aul’s life on any day, and you’d love him instantly.
Nick returns the Civic to an above-normal speed. “I hate what those signs do to you.”
“I like them,” I whisper. It’s nice to count on something in this case that doesn’t change.
He runs his index finger inside the looping Western Kentucky University lanyard attached to his keys. We reach for the radio at the same time and scan through the stations twice before giving up. He says, “We can always wait. Find out on the evening news.” Nick makes another loop on the lanyard.
The FBI found a body in Baxter, Tennessee, this morning.
Juvenile. Male.
Dumped on the side of the highway and phoned in by a motorist who had to pee and couldn’t wait.
Dana, Nick’s sister and one of the lead agents on the Gemini case, wouldn’t confirm the body was a Gemini victim—she’s not allowed—but the implication . . . clear. She called Nick. Nick called me. Thirty minutes later he arrived with breakfast and a full tank of gas.
I toss the pastry bag in the back seat and sigh.
“Didn’t think I’d get any calories into you,” Nick says.
“I can’t eat if he’s dead.”
In nine years the Thief has never killed. Never been violent with the boys, as far as the reports indicate.
I clear my throat. “Dana tell you where in Baxter?”
Nick shrugs but doesn’t look worried. I piggyback on his confidence even though we’re on a fishing expedition for flashing blue lights and federal vehicles in some remote county east of Nashville. “You want to talk? You don’t have to if you’re tired.”
I am tired. I went to bed at eleven, fell asleep around two, and answered Nick’s call at five a.m. “I don’t know what I want. For that body not to be Aulus’s.” Except, is that wishing for Zared or Rufus or Chris to be dead? Tension squeezes every muscle in my neck and shoulders. “Sorry,” I say.
Nick pumps my leg twice like my knee needs CPR. “Don’t be sorry.” He sips his coffee to the dregs and rattles ice against the plastic cup.
It could be Aul, his eyes say when he looks sideways.
I know, mine answer.
The Civic eats miles like candy.
We reach Nashville. We pass Nashville. I can’t bear forty more miles of silence so I say, “Uncle Warren” (who is not really my uncle, but might as well be) “says calls dribble in occasionally.”
“Huh?” Nick asks. Then, “Oh, on the tip line?”
“People ask if there’s a cash reward. They find out there isn’t and hang up. Did I tell you that already?”
“Thee.” My name empties the air. “Has this gone unsolved for so long because people never consider that someone they know might be guilty?” He nibbles skin on the side of his thumb. “Like . . . you and I have discussed every bizarre fact of this case and not one time did I—” He stops midsentence.
I intend to wait him out but can’t. “Not one time, what?”
His sigh, both deep and long, feels shaped by shame instead of fear. “I never asked myself if my mom or dad or a neighbor or Dana or anyone I know . . . could be responsible for taking Aul.” Nick’s eyes aren’t so much a specific color, but you’d call them blue if you had to call them something. They don’t pierce; they lean at your calf like a dog. “I mean . . . Have you?”
I can’t think of anything worse. “Everyone I know is pretty great. They don’t seem the kidnapping type.”
“But you’d report him?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Twelve kidnappings are attributed to the Thief. They’re all boys. Most were abducted from homes: bedrooms, backyards, driveways. One was riding a neon green bike with black racing stripes. Another was last seen begging his mother for strawberry ice cream. That kid was in a grocery store alley near Jackson.
The crimes started as early as 2001; the FBI acknowledged the pattern to the public in 2007. The pattern is this: On June 1st three boys disappear; no ransom is requested. The kidnappees are harbored in an underground bunker through June 30th of the following year. Thirteen months. Thirteen. Then they’re released, dropped somewhere along I-40.
A fallow season follows.
A dormant year. Sometimes two.
But he always steals again.
Three boys. Tennessee. June 1st.
And he’s gotten away with kidnapping twelve times. Thirteen, if you count Aulus. In 2009, Aulus’s year, he took Chris Jenkins (five years old) from Oak Ridge, Rufus Cohen (fourteen years old) from Portland, and Zared Parker (fifteen years old) from White House.
One is dead on the side of the road in Baxter, Tennessee. Russian roulette. So, back to Nick’s question, would I tell? Yeah, if I had the faintest suspicion of the Thief’s identity, I’d scream his name from a mountaintop.
Nick taps the steering wheel. “I’m only asking what happens if we consider the possibility that the Thief is a dude from Wildwood who gets up in the morning, pushes tomato soup through a crack in his cellar wall, and goes off to . . . drive his school bus or, I don’t know . . . provide legal aid or plumb toilets? He could have kids or a wife or a chinchilla named Biscuit.”
“That’s not exactly the profile, and I doubt the Thief’s from Wildwood.”
“You’re probably right . . .” Nick’s hand’s in mine and I’m not even sure who made that happen. I let him lift our fingers to his lips and kiss our laced knuckles.
“Love ya,” I say.
“You too,” he says from a long way away.
Locating Dana’s slew of federal agents happens without much fuss. They’re blocking the shoulder of I-40, clogging the Baxter exit. Vehicles dog-paddle along, their drivers rubbernecking the scene. Nick angles the Civic over the rumble strip. An uncomfortable assumption roils my stomach that if we crack the windows, we’ll smell who died. Nick swallows hard, rests his forehead against the wheel. “It’s not him,” he says, fingers paused on the door handle.
I crane toward the winking reds and blues. There’s a cop bent over in the bushes, hurling.
“It’s not him,” I repeat, but it probably is.
“That’s Dana’s.” Nick points at one of the dozen SUVs. “Remember, she won’t look happy to see us.”
We leave the car and pick our way toward Nick’s sister, me still attached to his hand. Cigarette butts and gravel litter the ground. Grass quickly creeps over the edge of my flip-flops and swats my toes. The May heat bats against our faces as semis whoosh by. I hold my breath until it hurts. This shoulder’s a ravine, dropping swiftly into a fenced-off wooded area that doesn’t garner much love from the highway department. It’s amazing anyone noticed a body; you could hide a circus in a grove this thick. An officer spots us and yells that the area is closed and if we’re media we can move along. We keep walking and he makes a fuss that stops the scene.
“Tommy,” Dana snaps at her coworker. “That’s my brother and his girlfriend. Let ’em through.”
After thinking long and hard about whether he should, Tommy steps aside. His partners follow suit and an aisle opens.
The crime scene raises its ugly head.
On the ground there’s a box. No, a suitcase. A multicolored tweed holdover from the Kennedy administration. It has burgundy handles, water marks, and grass stains. The zipper . . . the silver teeth have eaten hair and skin.
Bloated blue-gray skin.
Blondish-red hair.
Nick stops like someone suddenly nailed him to the earth. “I . . .” He starts to say can’t. The word cowers behind his clenched teeth.
I don’t know which of us is more ashamed. Him for the inability to move closer. Me for charging robotically forward.
Four to five yards away from the scene, Dana squats. Her eyes rove the disturbed space around the boy and suitcase. She’s brave to stare. I try to be brave.
The body’s small.
I look away.
Dana keeps staring.
I check again.
Too small to be Aulus. Far too small.
Another agent drops to Dana’s level and swaps her clipboard for an evidence bag as they discuss body identification and keeping the press out of the loop until the family is notified. Good luck with that. The press skulks toward the woods with cameras and microphones. If I had to guess, the connection to the Gemini Thief is already playing on every major network.
Dana adeptly wipes her cheek with her shoulder before jockeying the plastic bag from one hand to the other. Then she stands, walks to me, and angles our backs to the body. “Nick?” A crevice appears between her brows.
I point to the Civic.
“I shouldn’t have called.” She lowers her voice. “It’s not Aul . . .”
“Chris Jenkins,” I say.
She nods, then I find myself swallowed by Dana’s arms. She has been up most of the night. She’s wrung around the edges and red in the eyes. Still, the Jones warmth devours me. I hope I give her half what she gives me. She’s going to need it.
We break apart. The plastic evidence bag that was banging my ribs dangles there for viewing.
Inside, a silver key chain.
I bend closer.
Dana tightens the plastic around the object so the features are visible.
A castle.
Two turrets. Three arches. One dangling camo key.
I’m telling myself it can’t be and asking, “Where did this come from?” at the same time.
Dana leans toward me, whispers, “From the body. In his mouth,” and then makes a show of saying, “Tell my brother to drive the speed limit home. You know you can’t hang around a crime scene.”
Dana gives away nothing to her team, but she’s seen that key chain before.