“What the fuck man?” Paul said. “What happened? I was about to bust in there.”
“This is fucked beyond fucked. We need to leave, now.”
“What is it?”
“Now!” Paul got in the car.
The neighbor was still on the porch, the red light of the burning cigarette floating in the dark. Racing over the hills and maneuvering through the parked cars, Paul asked what had happened. Tyler couldn’t tell him yet; it was too confusing. Had it all really happened? Had Sasha been naked before some witch altar? Had her mother really expected him to fuck her right there? Was she really going to hurt Sasha? He should call the police, at the very least.
“Go to the funeral home,” Tyler said.
“I thought you were in trouble. Jesus.”
“Still am.”
When they got back to the funeral home, everyone had left and Dad was still upset. But not about Delaney.
Brendan had been kidnapped.
5
Stephanie had taken Chloe home after the incident. Anthony wanted to apologize to his sons, especially Brendan, who had seen the whole thing, but he couldn’t find them. Neither of the funeral directors knew where he was, either. He figured Brendan was hiding somewhere, scared after his dad’s violence. When he realized Tyler was gone, too, he relaxed. Tyler had taken his little brother home; that’s all. At least someone was acting rationally around here. He didn’t start to worry until Tyler showed up alone.
He was kneeling before Delaney’s coffin, hands clasped in prayer but no prayer actually filling his head when Tyler ran into the room. Anthony had been thinking what a complete fuck-up he was, how he had managed to destroy everything in his life that was perfect. But that was bullshit. He hadn’t destroyed anything. He and Chloe had loved each other more than anything when they agreed to make their arrangement legal and they swarmed their kids with love; they were the best parents they knew how to be. It was bad luck. Nothing but bad fucking luck. It was like a giant, evil troll had stepped into their lives and taken their infant son. But instead of moving on, the troll was still hungry and took Delaney, too. There was nothing either he or Chloe could have done. It was the Bad Luck Troll. When he comes for a visit, sometimes he stays for a long, long time.
“Dad?”
When Anthony turned with blurred vision to see Tyler in the doorway where so many people had tromped through during the day, he thought, Is the troll still hungry, even now?
“Where’s Brendan?”
“What do you mean?”
That’s when worry morphed into panic, and Anthony was up, moving towards his son as rapidly as a running back hits the defensive line. He grabbed Tyler’s shoulders. “You took him home. You left here with him because of what I did. Right? He’s in his bedroom right now playing with his action figures or writing in his damn composition book.”
“I left with Paul. I just got back.”
“Paul? What the fuck for?”
Tyler was shrinking away from his dad, genuine fear in his eyes. “I had to get away.”
“You left your brother here?”
“He’s almost thirteen. What happened?”
“He’s gone!” Anthony shouted. “Someone took him.” He pushed his son away, and Tyler nearly toppled to the floor. Anthony fell instead, collapsing again to his knees, hanging his head.
“Kidnapped?” Tyler said it so softly that the word was almost lost itself.
“I thought he was with you. Ah, shit. Get the funeral director. Call the police. Ah, fuck.”
The police arrived within ten minutes but it seemed like an hour or longer. Anthony stayed on his knees in the doorway of the viewing room. Tyler kept his distance and the funeral directors never appeared. Maybe they had grabbed Brendan and were stowing him away upstairs in one of the tiny rooms that filled this Victorian house. Or worse yet, they had taken Brendan downstairs where the bodies were embalmed. They had put him on one of those shiny metal tables, tied him down, tilted the table, and sliced his throat so his blood would drain into a funnel where they could collect it in gallon jugs and look at it later.
Two cops, one with reflective sunglasses and black hair, the other with a chubby face and his hand stuck to his gun, asked questions as if this was the millionth time today a child had vanished.
“When was the last time you saw your son?” the chubby one asked.
The last time. He didn’t mean it to sound so final, but that’s what it was and could be: the last time. Last time alive, anyway. Anthony was shaking his head. “A few hours ago.”
“And you only just called us now?” the cop with the sunglasses on said. His name tag read: Joseph Toller.
“I thought he was with my other son.”
“I left with my friend,” Tyler said from the other room. “I had been talking to him and then I left.”
“Talking about what?”
“Nothing. Just stuff. Our sister, you know.”
Toller nodded. The chubby cop was staring at Delaney, fingers adjusting their grip on his gun in case the corpse suddenly stood up. Anthony hadn’t caught his name tag. Were they even real names? Anthony had read somewhere that cops never carried their real badges for fear of losing them, so maybe they wore fake names, too.
“Back in the old days, this wouldn’t be much cause for alarm,” Toller said, “we’d tell you to contact friends, relatives, whoever, and wait through the night. Kid probably got spooked by his dead sis and ran somewhere to hide. He’ll come back. But nowadays, we do things differently.”
“What do you mean?”
“Amber Alert, you heard of it?”
“You think he was kidnapped?” Anthony’s reflection was distorted in the man’s shades. Why was he wearing sunglasses inside? Hell, why was he wearing them outside in the dark?
“Do you think he was?”
“I don’t know, I just need to find him.”
“What was the last thing you said to him?”
Anthony had been punching that Jesus freak and screaming, What did you do to my daughter? What the fuck did you do to my Delaney? “I freaked out.”
Toller raised his eyebrows and Chubby Cop turned toward Anthony. His name was, if tags were to be trusted, Craig Fineman. If Anthony suddenly jumped up, Fineman would probably put two in his chest before he realized what he had done. That might not be a bad way to go, if he could get Tyler to leave first.
“I overreacted.”
“You hit him?” Toller asked.
“No, God no.”
“I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for your swollen knuckles. Punching walls? Frustration, perhaps?” Toller had a crewcut of short white hair; perhaps he had kids, even grandkids.
Yet, Anthony’s dead daughter lay only a few feet away and Toller was being a prick. “No, I hit someone, this guy …”
… walked in with his arm around my son and I freaked out. He’s a dangerous guy, trust me. He came to my house Saturday and he told me my daughter was pretty and now she’s dead and his eyes were wrong, uneven or something, don’t you see what I’m saying—that Jesus worshipper STOLE MY SON!
“This guy what?” Toller was waiting.
“I know where he is.”
Fineman backed up a step, expecting a trap, perhaps. Toller leaned in, unafraid. “Oh?”
He told them as calmly as he could about the two nameless Jesus Empowerment guys who had come to his door on Saturday, how bizarre they had been. He explained how the one guy had insisted that Anthony would need the pamphlet, almost as though he knew something was going to happen. He explained the way the other one, the short stocky one, had looked, how something seemed off about him, the loose hairs, the wrinkled suit. He didn’t tell them about the eyes, maybe because he couldn’t see Toller’s eyes and Fineman’s were squinty like those of a hog, but mostly because, though he hated to admit it, he was starting to sound hysterical.