John said, “All right, I want to get my dog in the room with him, then. He can sniff out weird stuff. It’s hard to explain, but if he is what you’re suggesting he is, the dog will go nuts at the sight of him.”
Chastity said, “And then what?”
And then, I thought, things will get awkward.
* * *
NON wasn’t staking out Chastity’s trailer or John’s place, and neither were the cops. Still, we decided it wasn’t wise to linger at either location. We wound up following Chastity to a motel, the rear window of the Jeep open a few inches so Diogee could stick his face out into the wind. We had gotten a break from the rain, which had turned into the kind of delicate drizzle that feels like a ghost is silently sneezing in your face.
At 9 P.M. we were pulling in to what was without a doubt one of the five shadiest places in town—a sprawling, beat-up motel that never had any vacancies. This was the Roach Motel. It was owned by a local biker/cult leader named Lemmy Roach, and half of the rooms were meet-up spots for local prostitutes and drug dealers. The rest served as a headquarters/compound for Roach’s motorcycle gang, Christ’s Rebellion. In a town full of groups competing to see who could live the furthest off the grid, I’d say Christ’s Rebellion probably did it with the most style.
The name wasn’t intended to be ironic or sacrilegious—Roach was a true believer. Once, while recovering from a traumatic brain injury, he had received a revelation from God charging him with a singular mission: to do exactly what he would have done anyway, only more of it. Thus, his faction of Christianity was based around the concept that the only law was God’s and that government prohibitions on victimless crimes were mere annoyances to be circumvented. Roach figured, if a person wanted to smoke methamphetamine or get a blowjob from a hooker, that was a choice that person was free to make. Harsh legal consequences were just adding suffering to sin, so humanity’s duty was only to ensure that all was done under the umbrella of safety and consent. Otherwise, he said, each of us is responsible for our own soul.
I only know all of this because John bought shit from Roach and once had dragged me along to a big festival CR throws every November in which they gave out frozen turkeys and winter coats to needy families. Lemmy had spent an hour bending my ear with his whole convoluted Christian Libertarian worldview before I was able to escape clutching several typo-riddled pamphlets.
We waited in the parking lot while Chastity talked to a fat dude at the front desk. It seemed like not only did they know each other, but that he wasn’t charging her for the room.
John said, “That’s weird.”
I said, “What?”
“Maggie’s mom, I think she said Ted used to take Maggie to Sunday school here. That can’t be coincidence, right? Maybe Ted’s part of Lemmy’s, uh, what’s a more polite word for ‘cult’? I think Lemmy’s right over there.”
There was a group of about six bikers across the parking lot standing around a fifty-five-gallon drum with a fire raging inside it. I spotted Lemmy among them, a gangly ginger guy. They were all shouting at a tearful woman, one of the men occasionally hugging her. It looked like an intervention of some kind. I noticed each of the men had a shotgun slung over his back. I’d recommend the same if anyone ever tried to spring an intervention on me.
Amy said, “We should talk to him.”
I said, “Later. That whole situation looks super awkward.”
Chastity came back out and got Mikey from the Range Rover—a perfectly normal-looking boy, about seven or eight years old—and led him to a room. The goal obviously was to figure out if Mikey was some kind of carnivorous doppelganger without traumatizing him for life if it turned out he wasn’t. The plan was for me and John to stay out in the Jeep, while Chastity and Amy would go inside and talk with the kid (or “kid”). They’d chat a bit, explain to him what we were doing (or, you know, give him a version of the story that wouldn’t terrify him) then bring in the dog.
Before going in, Amy spotted the local hot dog guy a block away, pushing his cart with the orange-and-yellow umbrella, the cart itself plastered with bumper stickers warning about the dangers of jihadists and Obamacare. A minute later, she walked into the room where Chastity was sitting on the bed with Mikey, armed with a hot dog and a soda. She closed the curtains, blocking our view from the parking lot while also blocking Mikey’s ability to see that his alleged kidnapper was sitting creepily in a vehicle outside his room. We’d still be able to observe, thanks to the magic of technology; Amy set up a video call and propped up her phone on a dresser, so we’d be able to watch the conversation unfold from the Jeep via John’s phone.
On the video feed, we watched as Amy held up the hot dog and soda to Mikey and said, “You hungry?”
Mikey looked at his mother, silently asking permission. She said, “Go ahead. You can trust her.”
Mikey took the food and said, “Thank you” without having to be reminded to do it by his mother. He pulled the hot dog out of its wax paper wrapper and set it in front of him.
Chastity said, “This here is a friend of mine, her name is Amy. She’s not with the police, you can relax. She’s not just a lot prettier than them, but I think you can tell just by lookin’ at her that she’s got a good heart. Just tell her what she wants to know. She wants to help us.”
Mikey nodded but said nothing. He pulled the hot dog from its bun, then reached down with a pair of fingers and pinched off a piece of the hot dog’s skin and ate it.
Amy said, “How are you feeling?”
“Okay.”
In the car, John said, “Ask him if he’s a walking pile of fuckroach.” Amy couldn’t hear him, fortunately. We were muted on our end.
Amy asked, “What do you like to do for fun?”
Shrug.
“Do you like to play video games?”
“Sometimes.”
“What’s your favorite game?”
“Worst Day of Your Life.”
“That’s the name of the game? It doesn’t sound very fun.”
“I like the level where you make the old man poop his pants at the mall. I can make him cry every time. You have to make his grandkids laugh at him, that’s how you do it.”
He peeled another strip of skin off the hot dog, revealing innards that looked like pre-chewed meat.
“Your mom homeschools you, isn’t that right? What’s your favorite subject?”
He shrugged. “I like smellin’ the bad memories. Mom says I’m the best at dream carving. We did metahistory this week. It’s hard. Do you know why girls make more noise than men during sex?”
“I … what?”
I expected Chastity to be mortified, but instead she looked up at the camera as if to say, “See what I mean?”
“It was to attract other males in the tribe,” said Mikey, sounding bored. “So that when one was finished, the next could jump right in. That’s why a man’s wiener has that mushroom shape at the end, it’s to scoop out the cum from the last guy so his own can get in. I saw a video, where it was one woman and twenty men, one after another, she was tied down but you could tell she liked it. And that’s how it was, for all of history, the whole tribe would share. That’s what girls are built for. A guy shoots his wad and he’s done, but a girl is good to go for the next guy, and the next, and the next—”
“Hey,” said Amy. “Do you like dogs?”
Amy excused herself from the room, and came out to the Jeep to get Diogee.
I said, “If the dog goes nuts, you get out of there, right? Don’t try to talk to Mikey, don’t try to Taser him, just get out.”
Amy didn’t reply. She wrapped Diogee’s leash around her hand and led him inside the room, ready to restrain him if he went wild. In the parking lot behind us, there was a commotion as the woman the bikers had been counseling went running off down the sidewalk. Lemmy gave chase, shouting, “You’re making a mistake, Eva! This is your family! Right here!”