Finding Jake (17 page)

I am trapped, about to be locked up. Even though the logical part of my brain, the part that seems to chug along despite the storming emotions, devises a plan, a series of steps. First, I will get released on bail. Second, I will get one of our cars back. Third, I will find Max and talk to him. Fourth, I will go to the Martin-Kleins’ house. Maybe I will return to the school, or hire a private investigator.

For a brief instant, my mind clears. I ask myself what I am basing this plan on. I wonder what prior knowledge I have of a situation like this. Movies? Television? Fiction? In those stories, it would be all dramatic action, life-or-death moves, stunning discoveries. That is not how it is happening, though. Instead, the situation calls the shots. We are being moved from one point to the other. What I must do is fight it, leap from the grid, call my own shots. That is the only way I can hope to find my son. I will not give in, or give up.

At the same time, I am afraid. I fear any real news, because it is impossible to fathom anything good coming from it. I fear finding my son because my mind can light on only two plausible scenarios: he is dead or he killed. Once everything is known, one of the two becomes real. At a base instinctual level, I cannot let that happen.

My eyes reopen and I see reality. I have been arrested. Through the fogged pictures, I remember the charge—obstruction of justice. It makes little sense to me, but I do not care. When I am set before someone, I will not grovel. I will find out what they are doing to find my son. I will not give in to fear. I owe my son so much more than that.

I do not wait for long. A detective enters the holding cell. The woman, an emaciated fifty-year-old in a red dress and tilted wig, spreads her legs. I look away.

“We’d like to ask you some questions,” he says flatly.

“I want to make a phone call first.”

He leads me to what looks like half of a phone booth attached to the wall. He steps ten feet away. I call Rachel.

“Where are you?” she asks.

“I’ve been arrested.”

“What?”

I try to explain it to her but my actions seem ludicrous. When I am done, she is silent for a moment.

“Is Jonathan there?” she asks.

“No.”

“Is he coming?”

“No,” I say, afraid that if I say yes, she will be even more furious with me.

“Don’t say anything. I’m coming.”

I hear what she tells me to do. It is not, however, what I do. I acquiesce, following the detective without a word. I am not worried about their questions. I want answers.

He leads me to a small, square room with a table and two chairs. I chortle when I see the “mirror” on the wall. Like it fools anyone.

“Have a seat,” the detective says. His voice sounds rehearsed, especially compared to his earlier monotone.

“Okay.” I sit.

“Do you know why you’re here?”

I smile. “Because you charged me with obstruction of justice.”

“Do you know why that is?” His voice inches closer to normal.

“Why don’t you tell me,” I suggest.

The detective reaches down to a box on the ground, one I had not noticed. His hand rises, gripping a large bag. The doll from the woods presses against the clear plastic. It ogles me with its haunted eye. Limbs bend in unnatural angles. I look at it, not away.

“You tracked that down, huh? And what have you done to find my son?”

The detective drops the doll onto the table. “Your son is a suspect in a mass shooting. At this time, the safety of the community is our number one concern. We also understand that you attempted to assault a reporter today.”

I did, but I ignore his comment. “You have no idea where he is, do you? Have you talked to anyone? Have you put any thought into it?”

My body shakes. I feel like I might lunge at the detective. Not a violent person, I had not been in a real fight since the fifth grade, yet I hunger to hit this man.

“Believe me, sir, we’ll find your son before he hurts anyone else.”

I smile. “You shouldn’t have said that.”

The detective blanches. This is funny to see in a man of his stature and temperament. He understands why I said that. The conversation is taped, no doubt. Any kind of bias will be brought up if there is a trial, civil or criminal. When you are married to a lawyer, you pick things up here and there.

“How long did you know your son had plans to hurt people?” the cop asks.

Before I can answer, the door opens. Jonathan, my father’s business partner, saunters into the room as if he is walking into his own office.

“Nice to see you, Simon,” he says. He turns to look at the detective. “May I have a chair, please?”

A uniformed officer appears at the door, motioning the detective out. My father’s lawyer sits in his recently vacated chair. Jonathan’s blasé demeanor changes in a blink. He turns on me.

“How’d you get here?” I ask.

“Car service.”

“No, really. How’d you know I was here?”

“Police scanner.”

“You listen to police scanners?”

He laughed. “I have staff who do. What did you tell the police?”

“Nothing,” I assure him.

“You told them something. What did you say? Tell me everything.”

I try to remember verbatim. He takes particular interest in the doll. He smiles, though, when I tell him what the detective said about Jake and my response.

“Put him on his heels, huh.” Jonathan laughs. “There’s definitely some of your father in you, son.”

I ignore the fact that I am over forty and being called
son
.

“Did you find anything out about Jake?”

I know Jonathan must have just gotten into town, but he is good. Very, very good.

“My office poked around. The police removed some circumstantial evidence from your home. Violent drawings. A story Jake supposedly wrote about a fight after a football game. There’s something in there about a kid getting his skull cracked. They also found his cell phone and are searching that.”

“No,” I whisper.

“What?”

I don’t tell Jonathan. Immediately, I feel a blazing anger fueled by senseless shame. I picture these strangers sitting in an office, hearing the phone ring, and glancing down at my number on the display, over and over again. I imagine them listening to the messages I left for my son, the raw words that poured out of my mouth in utter anguish. I feel murderous.

Just as quickly, however, that emotion blinks out. It is replaced by a numb hopelessness. This news, that my son never had his phone with him, shatters my hope that it had been Jake on the line when I called. I now know it was just a cop. I guess I didn’t realize how important that had been to me because I feel very empty.

I picture Jake that morning, putting his phone on his desk, finding a pair of socks, and walking out without it.

“He was always forgetting it,” I whisper, my eyes burning.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

I ignore the question. I am tired of feeling helpless. “Look, we need to get them out there looking for him. Why are they so sure he did this?”

“Because a kid told the police that he left school looking for
Doug. And a janitor claims he saw two kids with guns coming in through the gym exit just before the shooting. There’s also something about one of the victims, Alex Raines, but the police were not too forthcoming with details.”

I tell Jonathan what I know. I can see it does not paint a good picture. He nods and changes the subject.

“But I agree. We need them to find Jake. Nothing else matters at this point.”

“How?” I ask.

“That’s the hard question. We can’t go on television and make a plea. Right now, the public does not think Jake did this.” Jonathan looks me in the eye. “They know he did.”

“They don’t
know
him!”

Jonathan shakes his head. “They know what they’ve seen on the television.”

The detective reenters the room, halting our conversation. He carries a chair under his arm. Jonathan stands and takes it, placing it beside mine. We are all sitting again, facing off. I am too stunned to speak.

“What are the charges?” Jonathan asks.

“Obstruction of justice,” the detective says.

“So you’ve decided to charge Jake Connolly with a crime?”

The detective blinks. “Not at this time.”

“So what justice, exactly, is being obstructed?”

“The criminal investigation into the school shooting today. The one where thirteen
kids
were murdered.”

“And this doll,” Jonathan pokes it with a well-manicured finger, “had something to do with the shooting?”

“We don’t know yet. That’s what we are trying to find out.”

“Where did you find this doll?” Jonathan asks.

“In Mrs. Connolly’s car,” he says. “Your
client
was driving.”

“Did he give you probable cause to search it? Was he pulled over? How exactly did this happen?”

The detective gets up and walks out again. A minute later, he returns.

“You can go,” he says, handing me my belongings.

“But you pressed charges,” Jonathan says, arching an eyebrow. “You can’t just
let
him go.”

“We never finished the paperwork,” he mutters.

They ushered us from the station, me holding my envelope of personal belongings, him smiling like a cat, the Cheshire or the one that swallowed the canary, I am not sure.

“Did you just try to talk them into keeping me in custody?” I ask.

“Just yanking their chain. What were you thinking, anyway? Where’d you get that doll? The reason you’re out is they have no idea where it came from. You were never going to be officially charged. They just wanted information.”

“I found it—”

“Shhh,” he hisses. “I don’t want to know. Not right now. We need to get to work.”

“Finding Jake?”

He looks me in the eye. I see a glimmer of sadness there. It surprises me. “That . . . and preparing for the worst, Simon.”

That makes me angry. “Worst?! How can it get worse? Are you serious?”

Jonathan touches my shoulder. “We’ll talk about it. Let’s get out of here first.”

I let my eyes close for a second or two, fighting back the teeth-jarring anxiety that courses through my muscles. I can’t breathe or swallow. I feel like someone whose body is both paralyzed and palsying all at once.

When my lids rise, I see her. Rachel walks into the station in front of us, frazzled and out of breath. She sees me first and her eyebrows rise. Then she sees Jonathan.

“What the hell,” she spits out.

Jonathan extends a hand. “Hello, Rachel.”

Her entire attention is on me. She ignores his hand, placing hers on her hips. I know that stance.

“You said he wasn’t here.”

“He wasn’t,” I say. “He just showed up. I had no idea. But he helped me get out.”

She shakes her head. “Oh, he helped you, did he? You know, I left our daughter to get over here. Thanks for letting me know everything was
under control
.”

“Rach, I . . . I just got released.”

She seems to accept this, but turns her back and walks away.

JAKE: AGE ELEVEN

Over a span of ten months, I picked up Jake from Doug’s house way too often. Each time, my irritation grew. I had yet to talk to the kid, or his mother, for that matter, all the time they had been friends. To be frank, his father just annoyed me. I tried to ask Jake about it, subtly trying to coax out bits about Doug and his family, but my son gave me little to nothing. Not in an evasive way. I believe that, as a kid, he just didn’t pick up on what I was trying to get at.

He popped into the car, full of excitement. “Hey, Dad.”

“Hi, buddy.” I looked over my shoulder at him. “How you doing?”

“Great,” he began, then the floodgates opened. “Doug had his Airsoft gun and we shot at one of those turkey vultures out by the pond.”

“Whoa,” I said, my voice rising. “You shot an Airsoft gun. Isn’t that like a BB gun?”

“No, it just shoots these little balls.”

“Yeah, like BBs.”

“No, Dad.”

I accidentally yelled at him. “Yes, son, they are.”

Silence followed my outburst. I glanced in the mirror to see Jake staring out the window. My grip on the wheel tightened. I wanted to bring back the excitement he’d shared but the words disappeared before catching hold in my brain. I floundered for something, anything, to say. Unfortunately, the enigma of a preteen boy is legend and I came up with nothing. The silence expanded, filling the void between us.

When we arrived home, Jake got out of the car and headed inside. I followed him, reading his body language. His confident stride did not change. I listened as he greeted his mother and found his voice sounded normal, as if nothing had happened.

I sat down on the couch. The moment weighed on me, probably more than it should have. I wondered if Jake would even remember it. To me, it turned his path, ruined his chances at a well-adjusted life. He came to me so happy, and I bashed it to pieces just because I didn’t like his friend. I felt like some junior high bully, or the pretty and mean people in the high school lunchroom. As I tended to do, I likened it to my own childhood. I filled out a mental list of my early friends. Frankie, whose parents divorced, ended up holding a kid at knifepoint at the park for his pocket money and was charged with, of all things, kidnapping. One of the others, Greg, cut me with a razor blade on the bus and ended up surviving a debilitating car accident. The Stewart twins set a fire in the woods behind the neighborhood and are now software guys out West making a boatload of cash and living it up in the sun with their attractive wives and inexplicably athletic children.

Rachel caught me stewing. She entered the den and shook her head.

“What’s got you thinking?”

“I don’t like that Doug kid,” is what I came up with, but the truth was far more than that. “I just feel like we should keep Jake away from him. Jake needs other friends . . . more normal friends.”

She sat down beside me. “Look, I don’t like that kid, either, to be
honest. But what you’re forgetting is that Jake is an amazing kid with one of the best heads on his shoulders I’ve ever seen. I trust him.”