MAY
Nick and I should have gone inside the community center.
Instead, we sentence ourselves to the Civic. I find our choice mildly impressive. Hopeful even. We’ve had our day and we’re still choosing proximity.
At 2:12 p.m., I poke Nick—he’s nose-deep in a John Grisham legal thriller he reads when the world upsets him. He slides the book between the seat and gearshift and gives me a sideways Are we okay? I shrug and open the door, knowing Gladys and Tank will be here any minute. The humid air promises rain, and based on the gathering gray plumes, it’s coming fast.
Wildwood Community Center, or the WCC, is a three-story brick building featuring an adjacent playground roughly the size of Disneyland. They’ve even got an old Frozen Novelties van to complete the attraction. This block’s mostly abandoned, save Tyson’s Furniture Warehouse and my dad’s tax office around the corner.
We ding through the front and Griff Holtz, the director, waves. He hoists a tearful five-year-old atop the counter to select the very best Toy Story Band-Aid in the building, and Ruby, his wife, spackles a hole on the rear wall while yelling for a volunteer to “Bring the quilts in before they’re drenched, please.” When she sees me, she smiles. “There’s my girl.”
“Downstairs?” Nick asks me, though he doesn’t need to.
I point to the basement door for Griff’s approval. “We’re gonna burn off some steam. Send Gladys and Tank down if they don’t come through the alley, will you?”
Griff’s not just one of my many uncles, he’s my former boss. “You’re out of school awfully early, Delacroix.” He tsks my direction.
“She went with a college schedule today,” Nick says, our road trip hidden behind his broad, beaming grin.
“Yeah, yeah.” Griff rolls his eyes and addresses the scurry of children nipping his ankles. “It’s almost story time.” He holds out a picture book. “Can’t tempt you to resume your old post, can I?”
Once, I was the story-time queen. “Not today.”
“Have fun in the piles,” he says, even though he’s wearing that sad-puppy look he gets whenever my job is referenced. I used to think I’d take over this place someday and I hate disappointing him, but I don’t have room for . . . I don’t know what it is I don’t have room for. Sometimes I’m afraid it’s happiness.
Griff kept me on payroll. He’s had me/us on this “basement project” since Aulus disappeared. A leash so we don’t stray too far. Partly because he and Ruby need all the help they can get, partly because he’s smart enough to barter with a commodity we crave: privacy. Nick, Gladys, Tank, and I get keys to the building if we sort donations in the WCC’s basement. Nick came up with the idea to build the investigation cubby among the piles.
Our hangout hides behind warehouse shelving in the high-ceilinged back room.
Camp chairs, TV trays, filing cabinets. Some ancient office equipment.
Records, articles printed from the library, interviews.
Theories scratched on every surface available. Some written in dust.
Griff and Ruby haven’t ventured down since they showed us the light switch a year ago, and it’s doubtful they care if we finish the assigned sorting job Aulus started. There are three stories above the main floor they’d use before the basement. They like that we’re here. I’d go so far as to say they love having us.
Around six, Griff’ll yell down, “Closing time.” He’ll sigh from the top of the steps, not a heavy sigh of disappointment. A sigh that translates, I’d rather you be here and safe than out there. He’ll add something like, “Let me know if I should stock a fridge.”
We already have one. And a ping-pong table. It’s amazing the stuff people toss.
Nick weaves through the basement’s front rooms and shelving hallways, scooting bags to the side with his foot as he goes. “A game?” he asks when we reach the table and tosses a paddle over the net before I agree. We speak in ricochets and grand slams, the ball exhausting itself between us. The only time this happens is when we’re arguing about something. As if a ping-pong ball might determine the winner.
The volley continues until whiffs of cigarette smoke tickle my nose. The alley door smacks the inner wall, and a gust of warm wind and rain come pounding inside. Tank and Gladys are packed together like penguins under the small, torn awning. Gladys is drenched. Tank taps the yellow-and-white Camel against the dark skin of his ear and leans inside. “Say it’s not him.”
“Not him,” Nick and I say together.
Gladys and Tank sag together and the wood of the old doorframe howls. She steps inside, wrings water from her shirt, says, “Case is all over the news,” as Tank pokes her in the ribs. “Told you they’d have called if it was Aul.” He’s neither happy nor hopeful, but he’s certainly glad to be right.
We should have called.
Nick pins the ping-pong ball under his paddle. “Smoke fast,” he tells Tank.
His tone tells me the way this will go. He’s not holding back and this is my warning to walk out now or stay and provide defense. As I am the only one who has ever been able to somewhat rationalize my father’s crazy decisions, I stay.
When Tank finishes his cigarette, Nick and he claim identical plastic chairs in the corner, then in unison scoot them apart an extra foot and throw their legs sideways over the armrests. Gladys doesn’t settle; she approaches the photo wall. Four horizontal lines of Gemini victims, each labeled with the year of their theft: 01–02, 03–04, 06–07, 09–10. She runs her fingers over 09–10 and traces the three images below.
Chris Jenkins.
Rufus Cohen.
Zared Parker.
Her fingertips linger on Zared’s chubby cheeks. “Who’d they find?”
“Chris.” The name limps from my mouth.
Nick draws his knees to his chin and chews a rogue threadbare string on his jeans. Tank bows his head and twirls a cigarette between his fingers. Gladys strokes Chris’s photo, pets him the way she would a kid she knew and loved, and pulls the hem of her neckline over her nose. I watch them all from where I am tucked into a shelf.
I’m so tired of feeling. I’m just so tired.
“Murdered?” That’s Tank asking—cutting straight to the core.
“Don’t know yet.” Nick abandons his seat for the wall opposite the photos where a makeshift panel, made of old windows hammered together, runs nearly floor to ceiling. Among our many notes, we’ve listed facts with each victim. Nick adds a death date. “Thea’s the one who saw.”
Gladys and Tank straighten.
Saw? their eyes ask.
Saw.
They give me the latitude of silence. I give them restlessness and pacing. I check with Nick. He’s watching me. How long before he throws Dad in the mix? Five minutes? Ten? I turn my back to him, hoping to stretch the time.
On the table against the shelves, we have four bulging folders of research that’ll make your eyes cross. In the early 2000s, the story of three kidnapped boys taken on the same day echoes through the news. National coverage grows as the years pass, and ebbs too; the story shrinks from first-page news to seventh-page mentions. Local papers often do the victims better justice. From Gazettes and Lamplighters and Beacons, we’ve traced interviews with mothers and fathers and friends, school photos, and quotes from local police about the ongoing search. The media spreads also cover the jubilation of a community and family when the June Boys are returned a year later. There are theories and profiles on the Thief, but nothing concrete.
From 2001–2002, the articles surround West Tennessee: Union City, Humboldt, and Waynesboro. In 2003–2004, the Gemini Thief stayed west, hitting Jackson, Dickson, and Paris. The media nickname then was the 40-West Kidnapper. After the 2006 thefts moved east of Nashville into Carthage, Defeated, and Lebanon, the media retitled the perpetrator the Gemini Thief. No longer sure of the territory, the timing, June 1st, remained steadfast.
“We’ve never been able to prove Aulus was kidnapped,” I say. Nick’s sister and Uncle Warren are two of the few advocates in the system who recognize there is a chance we’re right. Wildwood, on the whole, agrees, though it’s more like a wild hair of hope. I repeat what we already know. “Aul is in Kentucky, not Tennessee. June 2nd instead of June 1st. Four boys instead of the Thief’s usual three. I can’t rationalize the pattern break any more than I can explain why there were sometimes two-year, sometimes one-year gaps in the timeline.”
No one asks why I stop talking and dig through my satchel until I find my key chain. I trace two turrets, three arches, one castle, leaving prints on the silver. I dangle the trinket so it jingles and Nick gives me the go-ahead nod.
“Dad only made two of these. One for me. One for Aulus. That second one was in Chris’s mouth when they found him today.”
As the knowledge and certainty of this information sinks in, I tape a photo of Aulus alongside Chris, Rufus, and Zared.
Tank’s still sitting crooked, working that cigarette over and back across his knuckles. The grief’s so thick, I smell it. He says, “What did Dana say when you told her?”
“I didn’t yet.”
“Why would you wait?”
I meet Nick’s I told you so with bitterness and return my attention to the photos. Maybe I’m weak, maybe I don’t love Aulus as much as I say I do. Maybe I don’t trust my best friends or my boyfriend if I’m not willing to consider everyone, including my own father, as a suspect.
Whatever I am, I am fast, and I am truthful as I lie to myself. The crime scene was chaotic. I was overwhelmed. Dana didn’t want me to bring it up at the scene. Then I wonder, Like father, like daughter?