The Year We Disappeared (16 page)

The two detectives assigned to my case stopped by the house shortly after I got back from the hospital. Detective Sergeant Curt Reaves and Detective Charles Dimatto. I knew both of these guys, though not that well. They had no luck tracking down Meyer’s missing wife, Brenda. Also didn’t have a lot of luck finding the guy who shot Jeff Flanagan with a shotgun then dumped his body in the bogs across from the Meyer compound. So I wasn’t expecting too much.

“We’ve been questioning owners of registered white VWs; so far nothing,” Reaves told me. The night I was shot, I’d seen a white VW turning into Pinecrest Beach Drive. The white VW must have been a little bit ahead of me on the road that night, and my theory is that the shooters thought that VW Bug was mine. They had probably planned to pull out into the road in front of me, block my car, and then shoot me good while my car was blocked and I couldn’t get away. So when this car comes down the road at just about the right time, looking like mine, they almost pull out in front of that one. But the guy in the white VW goes to turn on Pinecrest Beach instead—they realize it’s the wrong car, so they back down. Then here I come down the street, but my car is now green, thanks to Polly’s and the kids’ paint job that afternoon. They let me drive by—mistaken identity number two—then realize it’s me and follow. They have to
pull up alongside me to shoot, and their aim isn’t as good. By this time, the guy in the white VW is probably long gone, down Pinecrest and on his way to wherever.

The detectives want to talk to this guy in the white VW and see if he remembers anything about the blue car, the people in it. I want to talk to this guy because I want to shake his hand. If they did mistake his car for mine and it bought me some time, then I owed him my life.

The detectives keep asking me over and over again what I remember about the blue car, but my memory of the night is full of holes. “How would you feel about undergoing hypnosis?” Dimatto asks me. “Might help you to remember something—a plate number or something distinctive about the car.” I’m a cop, so I’m pretty good at eyeing someone’s plates and remembering the numbers. If they get the plate numbers out of me under hypnosis, then we’ve got a lead. I’m game, though I figure the whole hypnosis thing is just treading water—to help them look like they’re doing something on my case when really they’re just wasting time. I’m pretty sure I know who wanted me dead, but these two guys aren’t about to go there.

From what I’m told, Meyer’s lawyered up and won’t talk to anybody, and without a motive, the detectives feel like they can’t question him. I was about to go to court to testify against his brother, James Meyer, on a pretty serious charge. Guess that’s not a direct enough motive for them. “But we’re interviewing everyone you’ve arrested in the past few months,” Reaves tells me.

“There are a lot,” Dimatto adds with a grin. “You were a pretty busy guy, Busby.”

I think,
Just doing my job
. But these guys wouldn’t get that. They’re too busy covering their own asses to actually get shit done in this town. When they leave, I’m so angry I start pacing the house. It’s time for the kids to come home from school, and I should be thrilled to see them, but these bastards have got me so worked up I can’t see straight.

Polly tried to calm me down. “Just sit for a minute. It’s time to do a feeding, so let’s get that done before the kids get off the bus.” She knew me and knew just what I was thinking. I knew I was going to have to take care of this myself, but seeing the sorry state of this noninvestigation just pissed me off. While she helped me draw the fluid out through my GI tube, she tried to talk some sense into me. “You just got home, you’re with your family now, please, please, please don’t do anything stupid. Let’s just get you better; that’s your focus right now.”

But watching her mix the formula for my next meal made me seethe.
Look what they’ve done to me. Just look at what they’ve done to me
.

EVEN though I knew I wasn’t supposed to talk to my friends about Dad coming home, I couldn’t help myself. “My dad got home yesterday,” I told Amelia the next morning on the bus.

“I know,” Amelia said. “My mom read it in the newspaper.”

We were both quiet for a second, then Amelia added, “My mom said that it’s really sad that they shot him in the face because he used to be so handsome.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. “What does he look like now?” Amelia asked. When I didn’t say anything back, she quickly added, “I mean, the principal said we’re not supposed to talk to you about your dad at school, but we’re on the bus, so maybe we can talk about it here?” Amelia’s blue eyes were all sparkly and narrow the way they got when she was doing something bad. But I liked her reasoning, and I was happy to have a friend to talk to about what was going on.

“He looks the same. We can’t see his face because the bottom part is mostly covered in bandages. And he already has a beard on the part you can see, so you can’t really tell much,” I explained.

“But he can’t talk, right?” she asked.

I shook my head. “He writes everything down. But he’s going to have an operation to fix that, right after Christmas. Then he’s going to be fine.” I knew this wasn’t exactly true, but I hoped that Amelia would go home and tell her mom so maybe she would still think he was handsome.

As if reading my thoughts, Amelia whispered, “I won’t tell anybody that we talked about your dad, okay?” She slipped her hand into mine and we rode the rest of the way to school holding hands. I was worried that someone on the bus might see us and make fun, but Amelia never really cared about stuff like that anyhow.

Later that day, I saw Meg in line at lunch. She used to always sit with me and Amelia on the bus last year, but now I almost never see her. I grabbed a tray and stood behind her in the long lunch line even though I was just getting a juice and could have cut to the front. I hadn’t talked to her since we’d gotten back from Boston. “Hey, how come you never ride the bus anymore?” I asked her.

“Because you’re on it,” she said. “So my mom drives me now.”

That didn’t make any sense. Meg couldn’t be mad at me; I hadn’t seen her in months. “What do you mean, because I’m on it?” I asked her. She turned to face me and jutted out one hip, the
way she liked to when she was feeling cocky. I thought she was about to remind me, yet again, that she was six months older than me—she liked to do that when she was mad at me and wanted me to feel babyish. “Look, I’m not allowed to talk to you. My mom said.”

“Why aren’t you allowed to talk to me?” I could hear my voice going up high like I was about to cry.

“You know why,” she leaned in and said in a mean whisper. Then she turned and went to the cash register, skipping in front of a couple of kids in front of us.

Had I done something over the summer to make her mad? There was a time last year, in third grade, when Amelia and I had a playdate and didn’t invite her and then she cried about it. But that was a long time ago, and I didn’t remember doing anything like that since then. Did it have something to do with Dad’s shooting? I couldn’t think of why her mom would tell her not to talk to me because of my dad, though.

After school, when my brothers and I got home, Dad was there with a bunch of his cop buddies all sitting at the kitchen table. Everyone was drinking beer except for Dad. Mom was at nursing school, and Kelly was out somewhere. I looked at Dad sitting with his friends. He was thin, really thin. His face was still swollen and distorted but mostly covered; each cheek had a large square of white gauze taped down over it. A couple of months ago, if I had come home and found Dad hanging out with his friends, I probably would have climbed up into his lap for a
minute, just long enough to tell him about my day at school. But now that he had that tube sticking out of his stomach, I didn’t think I could sit on his lap even if I wanted to. I didn’t like getting too close to Dad anymore. But not because of the stomach tube or even how his face looked. It was the hole in his throat that really bothered me. He kept it covered with a big bandage, but you could still tell it was there, and when he had to cough up stuff, it sounded disgusting.

“Here are the Busby men!” Don Price said, and clapped Eric hard on the back. Eric gave him a shy smile, but I could tell he was glad to be called a man. “We’re going to take you boys out and teach you how to shoot, how does that sound?” he asked Eric and Shawn. “Get you some gun training.”

I didn’t wait to hear their response; instead I went to the other side of the house to peek in my parents’ room. I wanted to check out all the medical stuff they had brought home for Dad. The room was dark; they kept the shutters closed all day so that when Dad needed to use his medical equipment, his friends and the guards out in the yard wouldn’t be able to see in. I turned on a light next to the bed and it cast a warm glow over the room. Dad had been sleeping in a special hospital bed that was set up next to their regular bed. It could be moved up and down with a little remote control that was attached with a wire. I sat on the bed and used the little remote to make it move up and down a few times. Maybe when Dad doesn’t need this bed anymore, I can have it, I thought. But I’d have to put in dibs before my
brothers. I made a mental note to tell my mom when she got home that I wanted the bed. Then I noticed a brown stain on the white sheets next to where I was sitting. I scratched at it with my nail, but it stayed. It didn’t look like blood; it was really dark and brown. Then I noticed some other stains on the bed and I jumped up quick. What were they? Maybe I didn’t want the bed after all.

Over on the floor by Mom’s side of the bed was something under an old blue beach towel. It was a red metal box with what looked like a gas gauge on the front. A plastic tube ran out of one side of it, and another tube ran out of the other side. I couldn’t figure out how to turn it on, so I left it alone.

On the bedside table were lots of big syringes and more long rubber tubes. I knew that Dad was using these to eat with, but I didn’t quite understand how. There was a can of something sitting there too. I smelled it, but it was empty and just smelled like wheat bread or something floury. Beside that on the bed stand was a picture of my parents when they got married. My mom looked so young, her dark hair brushed up in a fancy style, her petite figure draped in a fashionable white mini-dress, and a tiny hat perched on her head. Dad was wearing a suit and looked the same way that Shawn looked when he got really nervous—wide-eyed and serious. He was still handsome though, you could tell. I picked up a white plastic bracelet that was sitting on the table. It said “BUSBY, JOHN” and “O+” in black letters. I slipped it over my wrist, but it was so big I could push it all the way up to my shoulder.

“There you are, honey,” Mom said, coming into the room.

“Hey,” I said quietly. I wondered if she was going to be mad at me for looking at Dad’s stuff.

“Want to help me make a salad for dinner? A bunch of the guys are going to stay.”

“Sure.” I took off my dad’s wristband and put it back down where I had found it. “Mom?”

She carefully took off the small leather pouch that she wore as a holster for her gun. “What?” she said, changing out of her school outfit and into more casual jeans.

“Meg doesn’t ride the bus to school anymore.”

“Well, who do you sit with?” Mom asked, pulling a T-shirt over her head.

“Amelia.”

“That’s good, I always liked her,” Mom said. I could tell she wasn’t really listening. She picked up a brush and quickly ran it through her hair, looking in the mirror behind the door.

“Mom, Meg says that she’s not allowed to ride the bus because I’m on it. And she’s not allowed to talk to me, either. Her mom said so.”

Mom stopped what she was doing and put the brush down. “What?”

“That’s what she said. She can’t ride the bus with me or talk to me. Is it because of Dad?”

“Her mother said that?” Mom sounded angry.

She opened the bedroom door to go back out, then closed it
again. “Guess what? You’re not allowed to talk to Meg anymore, and you can tell her that I said that next time you see her.”

“Okay,” I said. But I knew I wasn’t about to tell Meg anything ever again.

“Come on, let’s go make the salad,” Mom said.

I walked around the bed and came over to where she was, and she put her arms around me. “I would fix this if I could, you know that, right?” she said, holding me tightly. “I’m so sorry.”

I looked up at her and felt my throat tighten. I didn’t want to cry, especially with Dad’s friends over. “Don’t tell your dad what Meg’s mom said, okay?” she told me.

“I won’t,” I promised her. As we left the bedroom, I was careful to close the door tightly behind me.

THE kids were becoming targets at school—Eric and Shawn were getting harassed for special treatment, or what the other kids perceived as special treatment. This, at least, is what the principal explained to us when he called us in for a conference. Shawn had gotten into a fight with one kid in his class. Seems that I’d arrested this kid’s father at some point for something, most likely DUI. When the guy was reading about my shooting in the paper, his kid overheard him saying that I had gotten what I deserved. The kid passed this tidbit on to Shawn at school, and next thing he knew, Shawn jumped his sorry ass and started beating the shit out of him. Probably would have killed the kid if they both hadn’t fallen to the floor, Shawn catching his head on a desk as he went down.

“The other students see that Eric and Shawn are treated differently by the teachers and the staff,” the principal explained.

Since when is having a cop take you to school to keep someone from killing you “special treatment”? I didn’t understand that, and wrote him a note telling him so. On the way home, I got an earful from Polly—the cops who were guarding me that day and sitting in the front seat were probably very uncomfortable with the one-sided conversation.