The Fort (25 page)

Once they were out of the trailer, Van Endel shoved the woman into the backseat with the man, for lack of a better spot to keep her, then slammed the door closed. The two girls from the couch were standing together just a step or two away on the front stoop, smoking cigarettes. They were younger than Van Endel had initially figured, twelve or thirteen, most likely. “Dispatch, I need CPS and backup now.” He looked back at the girls. “Send some EMTs too. And tell them to hurry.” He set the walkie-talkie down, shaking his head at just how fucked up the world could be, as the twins smoked and stared through him.

The first squad car was there about three minutes later. He would have been there sooner, the cop driving it explained, but he’d been getting gas about a mile away when the call came through. They loaded the male into the squad car after the uniform
had Mirandized the pair, and then Van Endel and the cop, a guy named Mike whom he had seen around before, leaned against the hood of the Caprice.

“Kind of fucked,” said Mike, then nodded at the two girls. The smoke had stopped spilling from the house, but not from the twins’ mouths.

“Agreed,” said Van Endel. “Very much agreed.”

“I mean, they’re what, like, fourteen, tops?” Mike asked incredulously, and Van Endel just nodded. The whole thing made him sick. “How did you even know to check this place?” Mike asked, and the question made the hackles on the back of Van Endel’s neck rise up.
Luke.
Mike was rambling on: “There is a shitload of filth in there. It’s a hell of a bust.”

“I was here looking for a kid,” said Van Endel. Goddammit, he’d forgotten. “Whole separate case, believe it or not. Speaking of which, I need to go ask Mama Bear back there a couple questions. I’ll be back.”

“Sounds good, but that’s crazy that this is just dumb luck,” called Mike, as Van Endel walked to the rear door of the Caprice and opened it. The woman wasn’t snuffling anymore. She was staring at him with an evil look in her eyes, and he buried the urge to punch her in the face.

“I need to know about your son, Luke,” said Van Endel. “Did he stay the night at a friend’s house?”

“How the fuck should I know?” said the woman. “He ran off a few days ago. I figured you were coming by to tell me he did something wrong, stole food or some shit.”

“He hasn’t been home at all?” Van Endel asked with disbelief in his voice. “Why didn’t you call the police?”

“Not my problem,” said the woman. “He run off, that’s the state’s problem. He’s yours to deal with, and you’re welcome to him.”

Van Endel considered explaining to her exactly how and why that opinion was incorrect, deciding instead that one of the
masochists who worked for CPS might do a better job of explaining it all to her.

“Any idea where he might be?”

“I figure he’s probably staying in the tree fort he and his friends built off in those woods,” she said, flailing her arm at the visible line of trees.

Van Endel closed the door and walked back to Mike.

“I’m going to follow upon the hunch that brought me out here in the first place and go for a little sightseeing. You mind holding things down for a few minutes?”

“Not at all,” said Mike. Van Endel took his walkie-talkie from its place on the hood, shook his head, and headed off to the forest. He was under the canopy in just a few minutes and, not sure of where to walk, started trying to recall some of the tracking skills his dad had taught him on mostly forgettable hunting trips up north. Seeing a path worn by tennis shoes, Van Endel began to follow it, trying to watch up as much as he did down. After about ten minutes walking, Van Endel was at the fort.

“Anybody up there?” Van Endel called, and when there was no response, he walked to one of three ladders built into the trees the platform was supported by. After testing the first rung, Van Endel began to climb, questioning his sanity internally with every rung. Finally at the top, Van Endel was happy to find that there was no injured boy—or, worse—boys waiting for him. There were a few bits of gas-station-food trash, and then he saw something that did catch his eye.
Huh. Bet nobody’s folks knew they were shooting a .22 off up here.
He pocketed the brass casing, kicked at the trash, and went back to the ladder to descend it.
Pretty good carpentry work.

Van Endel made his way back to the trailer quickly. CPS, an ambulance, and two other marked vehicles had been added to the scene since he’d left. He needed to go talk to the other kids now, find Luke, and figure out what they knew.

He found Mike leaning against the car where he’d been before, but the man and woman were gone from the back of the Caprice.
“I had them move them,” Mike said when he saw Van Endel looking. “Find your missing kid?”

“Nope,” said Van Endel. “You want to do me a solid?”

“Of course, Detective. How can I help?”

“Get this scene buttoned down, call in more help if you need it. I’ll help pick up the mess back at the station. That OK with you?”

“Of course,” said Mike. “Still looking for your missing boy?”

“It seems that I am.”

52

Tim was helping his dad with the patio. Neither had spoken of the night before. Tim’s mom and Becca had gone to Kalamazoo for some reason that Tim didn’t care about, most likely shopping. As far as he could tell, his additional troublemaking had gotten his sister off the hook almost completely. Somehow, that knowledge was worse than actually being in trouble in the first place, though Tim didn’t quite understand how it could be.

Tim was working as a tamper, pounding down the gravel as his dad walked around measuring everything. Lost in this work, his mind focused solely on the compression of pea gravel, Tim didn’t see that they had a visitor until his dad said, “Can I help you?” Tim let his arms relax as the tamper slid to the ground and he turned. It was no regular visitor, it was that detective who had decided they were lying, Van Endel.

“You can, assuming I can talk to Tim,” said Van Endel, walking up to Tim’s dad and shaking hands with him. “I’m not sure if you recall, but we talked briefly at the station downtown. My name is Detective Van Endel. If I remember right, you’re Stan Benchley, is that correct?”

“It is,” said Stan. “What did he do now—knock off a convenience store? I don’t think anything would surprise me at this point. Lay it on me.”

The detective looked surprised at Stan’s words and tone, and then seemed as if he might be biting back a smile. “Actually,” he said, “I’m here to apologize to your boy. I’ve got a pretty good feeling that your son and his friends have been telling the truth all along, and I need to hear what else he has to say. Would you mind if we went inside?”

Tim’s dad had been wrong, as it turned out: the detective had been able to surprise him. In fact, Stan looked as though he’d had the wind knocked out of him.

The three of them sat at the dining room table. Van Endel went over their rights, especially Stan’s. Stan said it was perfectly fine for them to talk.

“I would have preferred we do this at the station,” Van Endel said, “but time is fleeting, and as I’ve squandered a few days, I’d like to hear exactly what’s going on.” Van Endel reached in one of his pockets and set a .22 casing on the table. “And please, Tim. Tell me everything.”

Staring at the bullet for a few minutes, Tim knew there was no point in lying, not now. Van Endel would know if he did, and this was his chance to come clean, finally, on everything that had transpired over the last few days.

“When we saw that man and Molly, we were playing sniper with a rifle that Scott borrowed from his stepda—”

“Tim!” his dad exclaimed loudly. “What in the hell—”

For the second time that day, Van Endel came to Tim’s rescue. “Mr. Benchley, please,” he said. “Let me ask your son these questions. You can figure out an appropriate punishment later, but right now Tim needs to help me.” Stan sat back in his chair, red in
the face, and Van Endel continued. “All right, Tim. Go ahead. You were playing sniper with a rifle. I assume a .22, is that correct?”

“Yes,” said Tim. “A .22 that came apart with just a few twists. It was pretty cool. Anyways, we were trying to hit this target, and our air rifles weren’t even coming close, so Scott borrowed the rifle. We were each going to get one shot, and that was going to be it. Then we saw the guy with Molly. And…”

“And what, Tim?”

Tim swallowed, or tried to. But there was nothing there to swallow. “We shot him.”

Both Van Endel and Tim’s dad rocked back against the backs of their chairs. Van Endel’s eyebrows had shot up, and Stan’s mouth hung open in horror.

“Say again?” Van Endel said softly. “Who shot him?”

“Luke did,” said Tim, feeling like the worst traitor in the world for telling the cop exactly what they’d told each other they’d never share with anyone. “He shot him in the right leg.”

“Jesus wept,” said Stan.

It came out like a river after that, Tim telling Van Endel and Stan every little detail. The midnight meetings, the detective work. It was only when he got to the part about Becca that Tim said, “Dad, I need you to leave the room for a few minutes, OK?”

“No,” said Stan flatly. “If there’s something that you did that’s so awful that you don’t want me to hear it, then I feel like I need to more than ever.”

Tim understood his dad probably felt like the floor had been yanked out from underneath him, and just wanted to reestablish some parental authority. But it was not to be. “Dad, it’s about Becca and Molly,” he said. “I’ll tell you later, but not now.”

There was a long, silent moment between them, and then his dad sighed and stood. Tim could tell he wanted to say something, but that he didn’t know quite what. Finally Stan settled on “Just yell if you need me,” his voice dull and hollow, before retreating down the hallway.

“They weren’t at the drive-in,” said Tim.

“I know,” said Van Endel. “Downtown, right?”

“Yeah,” said Tim, shocked. “But how did you know?”

“I didn’t for sure, not until right now. What I don’t know is what they were up to.”

“They were playing a game, I think,” said Tim, and then he told Van Endel exactly what Becca and her friends had been up to, as best he understood it, anyway. He told him about the outfits, the luring of men to the hotel to be robbed, and about Molly getting in a car and disappearing. Tim stared at the table during the telling, his face blazing the entire time, as though somehow it was his fault that everything had happened. When he was finished, though, he felt as though an enormous weight had been lifted off of his shoulders. Then he fell silent, exhausted, and almost unable to believe that he was being trusted by an adult again.

“So what happened after that?” Van Endel asked. “You knew Molly had been taken, you knew how it had been done, and you knew that the man who had done it lived nearby.” Van Endel sighed. “You also knew that you couldn’t go to the police or to your parents. So you started sneaking out at night.”

“Scott and I did. Luke was already out there, living in the fort. He just left his mom a note and took off.”

Tim saw a dark shadow pass over the detective’s face and then disappear. “So you started gathering clues. What’d you come up with?”

“Well, I already told you. You know, what Becca told me—oh, yeah, and the guy who picked up Molly drove a green car. I should’ve told you that first!”

“How sure was she about that?”

“Pretty sure, I guess,” said Tim. “She seemed pretty sure of it, or at least was sure of what she’d been told.” Tim was scared to tell the next part but kept going anyway. “Scott’s job was to borrow another gun from his stepdad, a pistol this time. Luke went around looking for houses that seemed suspicious, and it turned
out that one that he thought looked creepy was owned by a friend of Scott’s stepdad, and the guy, his name is Hooper, drives a green car.”

“Where’s the house?”

Tim told him, then said, “That’s all of it, I guess. I should go over to the tree fort and tell Luke the cops are involved now. He was supposed to go to Hooper’s house and, like, fake that he was going door-to-door about lawn mowing, to see if there were any clues.”

Van Endel shook his head. “I was just in the fort. Luke wasn’t—” Van Endel stood quickly, upsetting his chair and bouncing the table slightly.

“What’s wrong?” Tim asked, standing now himself. His dad was running down the hallway, yelling and asking something, but Van Endel was already out the door.

“What happened?” Tim’s dad asked as the door banged closed. There was a shriek of tires on pavement, and all Tim could do was stare at his hands. He felt smaller and weaker than he ever had in his life, and if he could have just disappeared at that moment—not died, just never existed at all—he would have chosen to do so, gladly.

53

Van Endel was driving and on the walkie-talkie at the same, pleading with Dispatch for backup at the address Tim had given him, as well as asking for any available information on one Matt Hooper. He was driving the Caprice at speeds on suburban streets that he would have happily seen another officer fined over, if not outright suspended, and he couldn’t have cared less. He figured there was a small window he could land in. It was still early in the day. There was always the possibility that Luke had been out getting breakfast, or running around some other part of the woods, or even that Hooper wasn’t the man he’d been looking for. Van Endel found that last part impossible to convince himself of, however. He wished there was some way to get his partner, Phil, in the car with him, or if not, a couple of veteran unis with shotguns.