Disappearance at Devil's Rock (30 page)

The duct tape covering the frame of the apartment's bathroom door is as thick as alligator skin. The forensic team has to use X-Acto knives to hack away at some of the tape before it finally gives in and peels off in tethered, serpent-like strips. The smell of rot and waste is the lumbering monster being kept inside, and it instantly rampages through the TV room. Allison can't help but think in monstrous terms.
That
smell: sulphur and methane and something else that can't be catalogued or accurately described but is ancient and sickly (and even sweetly) familiar. And how something so large and terrible can fit through the cracks between the door and the frame is the first horror.

Then they open the door. It swings inward about halfway, getting stuck or hitting up against something. Amorphous clouds of blowflies billow into the rest of the apartment. That monster smell goes atomic and they are all caught in the blast, the fallout. And there are groans and mouth breathing through their teeth and wet coughs. They turn away and cover their noses and mouths (and even the investigators wearing masks, they cover those, too), and they shoo flies and yell commands very few seem to follow or listen to.

Allison doesn't throw up but wishes she did. It would give her an excuse to look away. Inside the bathroom is pitch-dark. For a moment, Allison re-experiences her childlike fear of the dark, of the idea that
there can be anything or anyone hiding inside. And there is a darker shape sitting on the floor, and in that initial snapshot, Allison thinks the shape is Tommy, the awkward teen she met once at a graduation party, the one with the moppy hair, pipe-cleaner arms and legs, skittish and friendly with an aw-shucks smile that would turn heads once he hit high school, and until now she's been able to separate the real Tommy from the one she's been searching for. Allison takes a step toward the dark bathroom, flies buzzing, people shouting, and Tommy is crouched on the floor, and then the slightest head-tilt up to look at her.

One of the other investigators flicks on the light switch. It's Martin Weeks's body on the bathroom floor (not Tommy's), and his body is the second horror: slumped, propped up against the side of the bathtub, sitting on the tiled floor, sitting in an ink blot, an oil spill of coagulated blood, peppered with spiders of black hair. The forensics team will later determine that Rooney shaved his head while standing over his dead uncle.

Weeks's legs span the width of the closet-small bathroom, feet jammed under the sink. Allison is no forensic expert, but she can tell that Weeks has been dead for more than a week, the putrefaction process well under way. Decomposition at the cellular level is called autolysis. With the cells no longer being active, the cytoplasm and mitochondria swell, the various cellular processes shut down, including the nucleus, and lysosomes release their waste-digesting enzymes that dissolve and break down the individual and surrounding cells, turning muscle and tissue to liquid. Allison tells herself that there is nothing unique about what was happening to Martin Weeks's body. Nothing at all.

Fluids leaks from his ears, eyes, nose, or from those geographies anyway. His face has been bashed beyond recognition. One eye, his right, protrudes grotesquely from the socket and is cloudy and weepy.
The other eye is hidden behind an eyelid swollen to the size of a softball. His yellow fingernails have fallen off, and teeth dot the pool of blood on the floor like bits of confetti. A black tongue balloons out of his mouth. His exposed skin is going purple and black. Giant blood blisters marble his exposed shoulders and the back of his bald head. His skin is loose enough that the top layer will peel or slough off if the forensic team isn't careful.

Weeks's gas-filled, bloated abdomen stretches and strains the sleeveless T-shirt that is indistinguishable from skin in places. The third horror is that even with the amount of decay present, Allison is able to identify small puncture and stab wounds in Weeks's stomach and chest, and the little starbursts of dark black-red that accompany them.

H
ours after the discovery of Martin Weeks's body, there are still investigators in Tommy Sanderson's room, finishing up their search for Rooney's fingerprints and for evidence of the late-night breaking and entering he admitted to earlier that afternoon. Rooney claimed he entered their home to look for the coin he'd given Tommy. It appears he was telling the truth as there are dirty footprints in Tommy's room, on the floor in front of his dresser and closet door.

Kate tells the police that she found dirt and footprints on the kitchen and hallway floors this morning when she got up. She assumed the mess was her fault, that it had come from her muddy sneakers, and so she cleaned it up before Mom woke up.

Elizabeth is sure there is something that Kate is holding back, not telling them, not telling her (again), but the what-and-why will have to wait. Elizabeth is on her way to the Ames police station for a full debriefing on everything they've discovered today, and that includes the opportunity for her to view the transcripts and videos of interviews with Josh, Luis, and this Rooney, or the man the boys called Arnold.

Janice, who arrived at the Sanderson home late morning, wants to go to the station, too, but Elizabeth insists she stay home with Kate. Earlier, Allison offered to send a car or to pick her up. Elizabeth declined, because she wants to be able to come and go from the station as she pleases, or stay as long as she deems necessary. And she wants to be alone. If she is to go to the station and learn how the horrible story of what happened to Tommy is also about how she failed him as a parent, then it will be a lesson she'll learn alone.

During the short ride to the Ames Police station, she keeps the windows cracked open and the radio off. Her phone buzzes with texts. She side-glances at her phone long enough to see they're from Kate. She still hopes to see Tommy's name come up on her screen. She still hopes to receive more messages, of any kind, from Tommy, and maybe see him again, even if it's in shadow, one last time.

She turns onto South Main Street and a flurry of lights and cars and movement are visible from almost a quarter mile away. Even though the investigation has expanded and splintered to state police headquarters and the FBI bureau in Boston, with Rooney himself being held at the Norfolk County Jail in Dedham awaiting arraignment, the tiny Ames Police station is a mob scene. Cars and news vans are parked on both sides of the road. There are cameras with cyclopean lights and well-dressed reporters holding outstretched microphones and fingers to their earpieces. Gawkers and locals mill about, some of them carrying signs she has no interest in reading, narrowing the street to less than one lane, and standing on the station's well-manicured grass and mulch frontage. Sagging yellow tape and impatient Ames officers stand at the amorphous boundaries of the crowd, ignoring shouted questions and recording cameras. Elizabeth's car stops in the middle of the road, people flittering through her headlights, like oblivious giant moths. She recognizes some of them, a lot of them, actually. The ones she knows by name look away, as if caught looking in her medicine cabinet.

The oafish Officer Stanton appears at her driver's-side window and knocks on the glass with his big flashlight. He talks rapidly, tone communicating he is angry with her, like this is all her fault. She looks at him and shouts, “I'm supposed to be here, you dick.” She doesn't know if he hears her or not, and cameras and reporters converge on her car as do the shouted questions she can't possibly answer.

Police eventually herd the crowd far enough away from her car so that Elizabeth can pull into the station's blocked-off driveway. She parks out back, between two mammoth SUVs, shuts off her car, and reads her text messages from Kate; a collection of
let us know
s and
be strong
s and
we love you
s. Alone again and with the car's interior light on, she can't see anything outside her windows. A mosquito buzzes in her ear. She swats and swears at it. She writes back to Kate:
Ok. Going inside now.
She closes her eyes, exhales, and adds,
I love you too.

Allison meets Elizabeth in the middle of the parking lot. They walk in the back entrance together. Elizabeth avoids making eye contact with the other Ames officers, all of whom she knows to varying degrees of well. There's no avoiding Officer Raymond Blanchard as they pass down a narrow hallway. He's a bowling ball of a man with kind, gray eyes and a mustache that takes up the rest of his face. He lives on the other side of Ames with his wife, Helen, who has been a science teacher at the middle school for more than a quarter century. Tommy hasn't had her for class yet. Is Tommy supposed to have her this coming fall? The fall, the school fall, is only a week away.

Allison finally leads Elizabeth inside and into a private, empty room with a flat-screen television on the wall. She gives Elizabeth a quick rundown of everything they learned today. She also tells her that a team of investigators, dogs, and divers are searching targeted areas of Borderland.

Divers. Elizabeth imagines Tommy at the bottom of an impossibly deep pond that is in a secret part of the park, one they'll never find, his
hand outstretched in darkness, in blackness, beyond the light, beyond hope, beyond help, beyond rescuing, beyond finding . . . Elizabeth snaps out of her fugue when Allison presents a folder containing the transcribed statements/interviews conducted with Luis, Josh, and Arnold. That his real name is Rooney and not Arnold makes her not want to hear anymore; she shouldn't be made to hear any of it or believe any of it is real.

Elizabeth sits at a table and dutifully watches the digital video recordings of Josh's and Luis's most recent statements. Each boy was in a room flanked by their newly hired legal representatives; neither lawyer said much during the interviews and were seemingly content to scribble notes onto their yellow pads. The boys were shown in profile via a camera mounted high up on a wall, or perhaps the ceiling. She wants to hug Josh and Luis and she wants to hurt them. It occurs to her that no one has told her where those boys are now. Are they in custody? Are they home, in their own rooms, sleeping in their own beds?

On the video, Josh seems like an imposter, usually so at ease and charming around adults, he is barely audible, speaks carefully in small complete sentences, at times sounding dull witted, and is asked to repeat an answer more than once. Luis was normally such a lovable wiseass, always willing to play that teen vs. adult obfuscation game,
you can ask but you won't get anything out of me
, but still make you smile and shake your head at the same time. In his interview, Luis is painfully polite and (unlike Josh) eloquent, expansive, and detailed in his responses.

At different times during the boys' interviews Elizabeth can no longer watch them speak. She instead itemizes their words within the printed transcripts, as though hoping that if she finds an error, their stories will unravel and the great lie will be exposed and her son will be found somewhere safe.

The third video is the interview with Rooney. Unlike the other videos, it starts with an empty interrogation room, the table in the middle, four chairs pushed in tight, a hiss of silence on the recording, white, digital time stamp inexorably ticking away in the lower right corner of the screen. Elizabeth says, “What—what happened here?” afraid she'll hear or see something within the digital nothingness, afraid the video will switch over to a recording from the camera in her living room, colored in that night vision, and Arnold (she will never think of him as Rooney) standing there, a shadow,
the
shadow, and instead of seeing Tommy in the dark spaces of the house and her head, Arnold will be there instead.

Allison apologizes and mumbles something about an editing time-stamp mistake. She fast-forwards. Allison and a man in a suit enter the room first, their bodies moving and twitching as quickly as insect wings, and then two correctional officers lead Rooney inside. Allison stops the fast-forwarding. Rooney wears handcuffs and a green jumpsuit. He waived the right to an attorney for the interview.

Elizabeth says, “I don't think I can watch. Not yet.”

Allison: “Of course. Do you want to take a break? Do you need some water? We could go outside for fresh air, too.”

Elizabeth sits with her hands over her eyes, but she isn't crying. Trying to quiet everything that is happening in her head, particularly the stubborn voice telling her that if she doesn't ever listen to or read what Arnold/Rooney says, then Tommy still has a chance. That is now the worst voice of them all.

“No. Can you tell me what he's like?”

“Rooney?”

Elizabeth says, “Arnold.”

“I'm no psychologist but he's deeply disturbed. Lived with his uncle after—”

“No, I really don't care about that or him, at all. I'm asking what's he like? When you talked to him, what did you see and feel? Who is he then, when you're with him? I need to know why and how Tommy so desperately wanted to be his friend. How he could've fooled Tommy so easily.”

Allison: “That's tough for me to answer, Elizabeth. I don't think I can answer that. I—I don't know who he is from just talking to him.” Allison exhales and Elizabeth stares at her until she says something else. “He's broken. Badly broken. And I know that doesn't answer your question, but—”

Elizabeth interrupts with “Okay, okay” and sits up.

Allison stands from the table and walks toward the door, looking behind her, presumably expecting that Elizabeth will follow.

Elizabeth's
okay
s doesn't mean she's ready to leave this room, though. Not yet. She spreads out the three interview transcripts in front of her. She reads their first pages. She moves them around, shuffles their position, and reads the first pages again, in a different order. She turns to the second pages, and reads those. Then she turns back to the first pages and starts the process over again.

Elizabeth says, “I'm sorry but I want to spend some times with these. Is it all right if I do this by myself? I want to be alone with these transcripts. I think I need to be alone. I don't know if that makes sense.” She pauses and looks up at Allison, who doesn't say anything, and Elizabeth imagines she probably wants to say that her being alone is a very bad idea. It probably is. But Elizabeth doesn't care.

“I can step out of the room, of course. As long as you're sure.”

“I am. And I'll probably be in here awhile. I'm going to read these more than once. Is that okay?”

“Yes, of course. I'll keep an eye on the room and check in with you
in a little bit. Or if you finish, hit this buzzer by the door and I'll come back in. Okay?”

“Yes. Thank you. For everything, Allison.”

The detective leaves and it's now midnight. As if on cue, Kate barrages her with texts again:
Mom
and
U still there?
and
how long R u staying?

Elizabeth:
don't know and don't wait up.

Kate:
did they find Tommy yet?

Elizabeth:
not yet.

There are more texts. Elizabeth ignores them. Her phone stays facedown on the table, vibrating against the wood.

Elizabeth begins, finally, to read. She reads the statements one at a time. She reads them by pages and by pieces. She wishes she had Tommy's diary to include with these so that she could splice everything together, create a bible of what it was that happened.

Elizabeth rereads pages and passages. She reads them in order and out of order. She reads until she can pretend that the sentences and words are under her control. It's not so much a memorization as it is an anticipation and an ability to move the words to where and when she wants.

Despite the late hour and darkness, there are boats and divers searching the brackish ponds and isolated islands of Borderland State Park. They have not found Tommy yet, but Elizabeth is now sure, for the first time, that they will. Elizabeth refuses to go home and wait for that phone call, the call she's feared and knew would come ever since the night after he disappeared, the night she saw and smelled Tommy's presence in her bedroom.

So Elizabeth reads. And reads. And mixes and matches pages and sections and individual answers. And Tommy is there with her, not in the antiseptically bright, shadowless room, but trapped in the transcript pages, huddled between the lines.

Detective Murtagh: On the night of August 16th, Tommy Sanderson and Luis Fernandez slept over at your house, is that correct?

Josh Griffin: (inaudible)

Murtagh: Sorry, I couldn't hear you. Can you speak a little louder please?

Josh: I said yes. They slept over.

Police: Did you invite Arnold to meet you at Borderland State Park later that night?

Josh: Not me.

Murtagh: Who invited him?

Josh: Tommy.

Murtagh: Did you know that Tommy invited him?