He’d been working in the studio early that morning when Harvey called with the news about Davy and the evidence they’d found on him. Gordon listened to his attorney tell him about the putty knife in the boy’s pocket. A long time ago Gordon had convinced himself that the boy had dropped it or lost it—that the putty knife wouldn’t come back to haunt him.
He’d been wrong about that.
“They’re asking you to come in voluntarily,” Harvey said. “For questioning.” The older man’s sigh was world-weary. “The way I see it, you’ve gotta do it.”
“Ok,” Gordon said.
“I’ll come get you,” Harvey said. “And I’ll be with you every step of the way.”
“Uh-huh,” Gordon agreed. After all this time, he knew the drill.
“So go get a shower and have something to eat. I’ll be there in about an hour.” Harvey paused. “Ok?”
“Yeah,” Gordon said. Though he didn’t think he could eat. He’d lost his appetite the minute he’d heard Harvey’s voice on the phone.
He hung up with Harvey and stood still for a moment, thinking about that knife, about the mistake he’d made that night—all the mistakes he’d made. So much he would’ve done differently, had he known what was going to happen. But wasn’t that what life was—a long, slow dissection of how things could’ve been different, if only?
He replayed the cop coming to his door early that next morning, asking if he’d seen a kid. His lie had been a reflex. And now they had proof that he’d lied.
He shook his head, dispelling what might’ve been as he accepted what was. He put his tools back in place and walked out of the studio, just in time to see a flash of feet running away.
He watched as the kid from next door slowed long enough to look over his shoulder in case Gordon was chasing him. The kid must’ve been spying on him while he worked. He thought about hollering something after him. But he couldn’t find the words.
* * *
Gordon sat very still, pressing his palms onto the cold Formica tabletop in the interview room they’d left him in. Harvey had excused himself to make a call, so Gordon was alone for the first time in hours.
He concentrated on not moving or humming or doing anything else beyond very slowly and deliberately inhaling and exhaling. Above him and to his left he knew the camera’s eye was trained on him, eager to pick up any movement, any utterance that could be used against him later. He’d watched Dateline; he’d seen what happened when a person let down their guard, the recordings later beamed into living rooms as people sat with bowls of ice cream or popcorn on their laps and watched someone else’s downfall as their evening entertainment.
He did not want to end up on Dateline. He did not want to go to prison. And yet here he was, one step closer to that possibility. They’d found Davy. Davy, forever eleven years old, appeared in his mind, his beseeching brown eyes asking Gordon for help on that night that has gone on forever.
He looked around the small room and thought, It is going on even now.
The door opened and the woman who’d been at his house yesterday walked in, the one who had treated him kindly, who hadn’t looked at him like he was a felon. He’d seen humanity in her eyes, and though she was on the side of the enemy, he felt he could trust her, that maybe she hadn’t already decided he was guilty. He hoped he’d see the same thing now.
Their eyes met, and he decided to speak to her, even though Harvey had given him explicit instructions to keep his mouth shut.
“Three of the kids that were playing in the fields that night said they saw a car pull into the drive that led to the farmhouse. Did you know that?” Gordon felt the need to assure her he hadn’t done what he was suspected of. He couldn’t say why it mattered; it just did. He wanted her to believe him, to believe in him.
“I did know that,” she said. Spots of color bloomed on her cheeks.
“So I just wonder why it’s me sitting here and not whoever was in that car?” His words were weary, not combative. Their eyes met again and she opened her mouth to answer just as another man entered the room, the cop who’d told him he was free to go at any time. Though they both knew that wasn’t exactly true. Gordon glanced at his watch, the same watch his parents had given him for his graduation from college the spring before Davy disappeared.
With the cop in the room, the woman’s demeanor changed. She spoke as if their exchange had never happened.
“I just came in here to let you know that the Malcor family is coming in for a press conference. We are going to do our best to keep you separate from them, to make sure they don’t encounter you. They would be, understandably, upset by that, and we’re trying to spare their feelings as much as possible during this difficult time. Which means it’s possible we will have to keep you sequestered back here.” She swallowed and looked down. “It’s a delicate situation.”
The cop chimed in, hitching up the belt where his gun was holstered.
“It’s for your protection as much as theirs. Grieving families can do unpredictable things.” He raised his eyebrows as he looked at Gordon. “Wouldn’t want one of them to shoot ya or something. A little vigilante justice.” He smirked at the woman, who narrowed her eyes at him before sending Gordon an apologetic look.
But the cop, undeterred, crossed his arms, and continued, “So what she’s saying is, we don’t want you anywhere near that family. The last thing they need is to see the man who’s responsible for what happened to their son.”
Gordon lowered his eyes to the table and waited for Harvey to return, thinking all the while that the cop wasn’t entirely wrong.
October 12, 1985
9:03 p.m.
Davy and Anissa talk as they cross the expansive field. Anissa tells Davy about her older sister, Marissa, and Davy tells Anissa about his older brother, TJ. They lament over how mean their older siblings are, how unfair it is that they once played with them and loved them, but now it has all changed and they want nothing to do with them. They trade stories of sibling injustice, which leads to Davy’s coming clean about tonight—how TJ made fun of his jacket, then ditched him to be with his friends over in the woods.
Davy waits to feel shame over being the one left out, the one not even his brother wants around, but confessing this to Anissa doesn’t feel as bad as confessing it to someone else. Because Anissa understands. She’s been left out too.
As they reach the big house where the old lady lives, Anissa reaches over and pats Davy’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry he was so mean to you,” she says, keeping her voice low. “And I think your jacket is cool. You should wear it every day. I would if I had one. I love Back to the Future.”
Davy turns to look at her, surprised. “You do?”
She makes an exaggerated face. “It’s only my favorite movie.”
Davy raises his eyebrows. “It is?” he asks, his voice louder than he’d intended. He claps his hand over his mouth and glances around, then exhales with relief when no one comes running out of either the big house or the little one.
“We don’t want to get caught trespassing,” he whispers. “You don’t want to get arrested, do you?”
Anissa shakes her head vigorously, making her curls bounce. She’ll get in a lot of trouble if she gets arrested. Her mom might even cancel her birthday party.
They’ve come to a stop in front of the big house and stand in a shadowy patch so the widow won’t see them if she happens to look out one of her windows. But that is unlikely because the house is completely dark. She’s probably gone to bed, or maybe she’s not even there. Maybe she moved into one of those homes where they put old people.
Davy stares up at the large, dark house and thinks of the creepy house in Psycho with the dead old lady sitting in the window. A shiver runs through him and Anissa looks over.
“Someone just walked over your grave,” she says.
Davy’s eyes go wide. “What?”
She laughs. “That’s what my mom says whenever someone shivers like that for no reason.”
Davy gives her the side-eye. “Well, it’s creepy.”
Anissa shrugs, her shoulders touching the coils of her hair. “Yeah, I guess it is.” She looks over at him, her face plaintive. “Sorry.”
He grins. “It’s ok.” They stand there a moment longer, looking up at the house.
“So what do we do now?” Anissa asks.
Davy looks backward at the field they crossed in the dark. He’d been frightened walking through the dark like that, but he hadn’t dared admit it to Anissa. He doesn’t want her thinking he’s chicken. Davy wonders if all his jumbled feelings about her mean he likes Anissa the way boys like girls. He thinks maybe it’s too soon to tell. He wishes he could ask TJ about it. He feels certain TJ would know.
“I guess we go back,” he suggests.
“I mean, at some point we’re gonna have to,” Anissa deadpans.
“Well, yeah, but I was just hoping there’d be something . . . interesting here. Like someone we could spy on or something.”
Anissa jabs him with her elbow and points to their right, turning his attention away from the big house to the smaller version beside it, a cottage not much different from the ones where Anissa lives. But this one has been kept up nicely. This one looks like a dollhouse version of the big house. A little yard separates the two houses with a stone walkway connecting them. Inside the smaller house, the lights are on, and Davy can hear noise coming from the open windows—a baseball game playing on TV.
Davy makes the “follow me” motion before creeping toward the house, staying low and moving stealthily like he’s seen people do on TV when they do surveillance. Keeping out of sight, the pair hunkers down below the windows that look into the main living area where, Davy sees as he peers in, a man sits on a couch, furiously drawing on a large sketch pad.
The man isn’t as old as his dad, but he isn’t a teenager like TJ. He’s somewhere between the two. Davy wonders why he’s all the way out here on an abandoned farm living next door to a creepy old house. He doesn’t look like the type of person who would choose such a situation. But to Davy adults do many things that don’t make sense.
Through the window Davy surveys the layout of the place. Off the living area he can make out a galley kitchen to the left and to the right a hallway that likely leads to a bedroom or two and probably a bathroom. Davy turns his attention back to the room where the man is, his eyes tracing the sparse furnishings—couch, chair, lamp, small television on a little stand—then moving to the rest of the room, which is the most interesting part.
A long table is filled with paints, brushes, pencils, erasers, putty, and odd things that look like they came from the hardware store in town. There are even—and Davy all but presses his nose to the screen to confirm this—oddly shaped knives, flat and rounded, almost like the spatulas his mom uses to cook. Some are caked with a substance; some look brand-new. Davy wonders if they are sharp. He wonders if the man would grab one and use it if he caught them spying. Davy drops back to the ground where Anissa sits, waiting for his report.
“Anything good?” she whispers.
He shrugs and whispers back. “Not really. He’s just drawing.”
“Drawing?” she asks. “What’s he drawing?”
That’s a good question. Davy hadn’t tried to see.
“I’ll look,” he says and gestures that he is moving to another window to get a better view. She nods and watches him go.
Pine needles prick his palms as he crawls away, but he doesn’t mind. It’s for a good cause. Davy likes doing surveillance. He thinks maybe when he grows up he’ll be a professional spy, or a private investigator like Magnum, P.I. Private Investigator is what the PI stands for. TJ had to tell him that, which made him feel dumb. But he knows it now.
From another window Davy peers in, focusing on the drawings the man has cast onto the floor. He has drawn hands, lots of hands, a few normal-looking hands holding . . . grapes, maybe? But a few of the hands are old and gnarled, holding shriveled stems with no grapes at all. Davy thinks of the house next door, then of the Psycho house with the old lady dead in the window, her face—and probably her hands too—like a mummy’s.
His eyes dart over to the big house and for just a moment he thinks he sees movement in the upstairs window. Is the old lady there, watching him? Could she come after them? Maybe she isn’t an old lady at all. Maybe she’s the old lady’s ghost. The images—of the hands and the knives and the creepy house and the drawing man—swirl in his mind. He drops back to his hands and knees and crawls, fast, back to Anissa.
“Let’s go,” he says.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, alarm filling her face.
“Nothing,” he says, willing his voice to sound calm. “It’s just him drawing hands.”
“Hands?” she asks, forgetting to whisper this time. Inside, Davy hears the man’s pen fall to the ground, then footsteps crossing the floor.
“Go!” he hollers and begins to run.
Behind him, he hears the screen door creak open, hears the man yell, “Hey, you kids!” But Davy doesn’t hear the rest, the thunder of his feet and Anissa’s drowning out whatever threat the man calls after them.
They run until they are sure the night has hidden them, then stop to catch their breath, listening carefully for any sound of the man chasing them, but it’s hard to hear anything over their ragged panting. As their breathing slows, the only sounds they can hear are the critters in the woods singing their nighttime songs and, away in the distance, the children they left behind, still playing their games.
Without a word, they begin the long march back to where they came from, the darkness ahead of them a gauntlet to cross.