Sue remained still, fighting the impulse to push him out of her face.
“I’m not talking to you anymore. I know my constitution, my God given rights. Don’t think you’ll get me like you did Garr. Now I’m getting the fuck out of here. I just hope you don’t shoot me in the back like you did to Garr.”
Tom pushed himself up and then scampered down the beach in long strides, turning and looking back once just before he disappeared into the dunes.
Sue sat for a long moment, stood, and walked to the lake’s edge. She looked at the point where Tom had entered into the woods, then quickly scanned the beach before reaching for her phone.
“I think we have a problem,” she said when Ray answered. After the conversation, she walked back to the cottage to tell Grubbs and Alice Lea how her conversation with Tom had ended.
33
Ray stood near the empty boat slip with Terry McDaniel. As he listened, he looked down river past the seawall on the left to the open water of Lake Michigan. The wind was calm and the lake flat, with only a gentle swell breaking the mirror-like surface.
“I had just brought the grandkids in, my wife was running them back to the cottage. I was going to get more gas and do a few small maintenance jobs I had been putting off.” McDaniel looked at Ray, “To be honest, Sheriff, I was looking forward to some quiet time. We’ve had the grandkids, four boys from five to ten, for almost two weeks. Don’t get me wrong, they’re great kids and all that, but two weeks. My wife does better at this than I do. But then, she used to be a third grade teacher.”
“So tell me exactly what happened,” pressed Ray.
“Well, Tom comes springing in here all breathless like. I’ve known him since he was a boy. So much promise, smart as a whip. You just never know what’s going to happen. I guess we were lucky with our own kids. You know what I mean.
“So Tom arrives, says someone’s after him. He wants to know if I would take him out on the lake for a while. I explain that I’m almost out of fuel, that we would have to stop at the marina. And I try to stall for a little while, saying there are a couple of things I need to do onshore first. As I climb on the dock, he jumps into the boat. Initially, I didn’t think anything about it. I’ve been taking Tom out for years. It’s very therapeutic for him. Being on the water is enormously healing, and I think it gives his mother a break. Alice, that’s his mom, we go back a lot of years. Knew her when we were at Albion. That poor woman has….”
“Then what happened?”
“Well, I walked back to my car. Like I already told you, my wife had our other car with the grandkids. When I got back here, the slip was empty and my boat was heading down the river with Tom at the wheel. I’ve let him drive a lot. He’s perfectly competent. I yelled at him, but I’m sure he couldn’t hear me over the sound of the engine. This is a no-wake zone, but he wasn’t paying attention to that. Tom was hell bent for open water. I don’t know where he’s going, but he doesn’t have too much fuel.”
“How far can he get?” asked Sue, who had been silent up to this point.
“I don’t know for sure. There was a quarter of a tank, maybe less. If he holds it at full throttle, he’ll burn it real fast.”
“Any idea where he might be headed?”
“He likes the islands up north, but there’s not enough fuel.” He paused and looked out toward the lake. “Good thing its calm out there. He’s not going to get bounced around waiting for a tow after the tank runs dry.”
“When did this happen?” asked Sue.
McDaniel pulled a phone from his pants pocket and looked at the screen. “Musta been about an hour ago.”
“Why did you wait so long to call us?” she asked.
“Tom can be a real joker on his good days. I thought he might turn the boat around, come back, and we’d have a good laugh. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. He’s probably off his meds and in full meltdown. He does that from time to time. If that’s the situation now, who knows what might be going on in that screwed-up noodle of his.”
“Was Tom carrying anything?”
“Like what?”
“A backpack where a gun or other weapon might be hidden.”
“No, it was Tom in his summer uniform, old jeans and a T-shirt, the kind with the pocket for his phone and cigarettes. I never let him smoke on the boat.”
“Have you called his mother? Does she know what’s going on?”
“No, I thought I’d call you first. I didn’t want to worry her. She will be frantic as soon as she hears. The poor woman has dedicated her life to that kid. Where will this all end?” McDaniel looked at Ray. “What are you going to do about this, Sheriff?”
“I’m thinking. What’s the make, model, and color of your boat?”
“It’s a Four Winns Sundowner, mostly white with some blue and tan trim.”
“Do you have the registration number?” asked Ray.
“It’s on the boat in my wallet. Like I said, I was going to get some gas. Is that going to be a problem?”
“No, we can pull it off a database if we need to. Are there any weapons on the boat: firearms, knives, flare gun?”
“No, nothing of that type. Sheriff, I don’t want Tom arrested. I’m not going to press charges or anything. I just want him safely back on shore, and I’d like my boat back. This is all my fault, well at least partially.”
Ray looked over at Sue. “Why don’t you talk to Tom’s mother, explain what happened, and that we are starting a search for the boat. And see if you can get a sense of the best way to talk him down.”
“She may not be there,” said Sue. “She and Grubbs were going to look for him. She tried to reassure me that it was probably nothing I did that set her son off. She said he has these episodes. He usually wanders home on his own, or she goes out and finds him.”
Ray walked Sue to her Jeep. “Did you learn anything from Tom?”
“We just got to a point that sounded interesting. Tom said when it started raining he went down to the picnic shelter. He saw someone near the back of the auditorium.”
“And?”
“Then he took a phone call, a call from Garr. And then he flipped out, accusing me of killing Garr. I really thought he was about to attack me, but he took off down the beach instead.”
Ray just shook his head, “We better get going. There are only a few hours of light left. I’ll establish a rendezvous point when we get a fix on the boat.”
34
“This is Tom’s usual pattern after he’s had a meltdown,” Alice Lea explained to Sue. “He goes into full panic mode. He believes that anyone who comes close to him is trying to kill him. And that’s how he’s gotten in trouble with the law. There have been a number of incidents where people have called the police for assistance in handling him when he’s gone out of control. Tom just thinks he’s going to die, but he’s going to put up a good fight on the way. He sometimes ends up assaulting the police officers…it’s just not pretty.
“I thought you would be okay, that you could question him without incident. He likes the attention of attractive women. Usually he’s quite charming.” She gave Sue a weak smile. “There are parts of his brain that are normal. In terms of threats, he differentiates by gender. Males are bad, women not. The really bad confrontations have always been with men. And most of these have led to his hospitalization.”
“Can you walk me through one of the episodes?” asked Sue. “We need to know what to anticipate when we locate him.”
Alice Lea looked thoughtful. “Simple question, complicated answer. The safest response is that there is no pattern you can depend on. That said, most of the time he crashes after one of these episodes. He falls into a deep sleep, sort of a stupor. When he wakes, he’s usually lethargic the rest of the day. But that’s not always the case. Sometimes he goes through this whole cycle a second time.” She looked at her watch. “He gets his meds twice a day, so he’s long past his afternoon doses. I don’t know if that will make a difference.”