Текст книги "Twisted Fate"

Автор книги: Norah Olson

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

He came in at about seven thirty in the morning, looking restless and unwashed, but dressed like some kind of movie star. Like he could buy the whole town. And he didn’t act like any kid his age. He was distant and confident. Someone used to telling people what to do—or at least getting what he asked for.

He had a laptop computer with him and he said he had something to show me. Something that might help people find Brian Phillips.

I knew about this kid. I got a buddy in Virginia sent me a juvenile file on him. And I know he had been in some serious trouble. I guess you’d call it serious trouble. It was either trouble or tragedy—so I was ready for something screwy the minute he opened his mouth.

I had him come into the interrogation room, fully expecting him to confess to something I did not want to hear. In a case like a missing child you have no time to spare. You get answers as fast as you can and you make sure you get the details. He wasn’t with his parents or a lawyer, so I was pretty sure we could get him talking. We’d had two days of dead ends and hell looking for Brian, and his mother’s worry was weighing on everyone. Heartbreaking.

He opened the little computer and then clicked on a file and a movie of Brian came up.

“What the hell is this?” I asked.

“I’m making a documentary about the town and I have footage of Brian talking. I posted this online and I think someone may have seen it and used it to kidnap him.”

The words were like a punch to the gut. I was infuriated with this rich little prick, and at the same time I knew this was the strongest lead we had on the case.

“Do you know who’s seen it?” I asked.

“A lot of people,” he said. “I have these names, but I don’t know if they’re the people’s real names or not.” He handed me a piece of paper with a list of names on them.

And I straightaway handed it to Evans. “Check these names against the sex offender registry,” I told him. And I could see the kid cringe even as I said it.

“I didn’t mean any harm,” he said. I looked at him. I don’t know if I believed him or not. I’d read his file and I knew what he’d said to the judge back in Virginia and I saw how his parents’ money and connections made that case just disappear quietly. But he was still a kid. He thought like a kid—no sense of any consequences.

I said, “Graham, I’m going to need to see the website where you’ve got this stuff posted.”

“Of course,” he said. He called it up on his computer and he also wrote down the web address.

Just as I was bending down to look at it, Evans yelled, “We got a hit!”

Everyone in the office stood as if they were shocked into motion.

I told Evans, “Get me a location on that right away.” And I told Graham, “You sit tight for a minute, you might be able to help us out. Was there a credit card used to buy the movie? Or a phone number? If there is, we can track him.”

“Not that I could see,” he said. “He got the movie in exchange for buying me something on my Amazon wish list as a gift—so I couldn’t see any of his information except the name. He wrote his name and then just the word thanks. Once the Amazon sale is shipped the movie uploads. I set it all up automatically and I almost never see a name or real information.”

I shook my head, disgusted at the way kids lived today. What ever happened to playing ball in the park or getting a job after school?

“What did he buy you?” I asked, assuming it would be some books or music.

When he told me, my jaw dropped. It was a six-hundred-dollar camera with an optical zoom lens. I don’t need to tell you how much trouble a kid could be in for selling a movie to a registered pedophile, who in turn bought him a sophisticated surveillance camera.

“Graham,” I said. “I think you should wait right here and we’ll call your parents.” As I was picking up the phone to call them, Evans shouted, “We got a location!”

We didn’t have enough men on staff to babysit rich boy while we tried to take down the scumbag that kidnapped Brian Phillips. The fact that he’d bought the movie and that he was on the registry was enough for a search warrant. Talking to Graham would have to wait. Rockland was a small force and we had no excuse to hold a kid who had just brought us this information voluntarily.

“Go!” I shouted. “Get moving.” I grabbed my jacket and headed out to the lot with the unmarked cars. “Graham, you go home and stay home. We’ll contact you later to ask you some questions.”

He looked astonished. “Did you find him? You found him already?” He laughed a little to himself.

I ushered him out the door. And ducked into the car. “We don’t know if we’ve found him or not. We’ll call you,” I said. We sped out and left him standing there.

I was, of course, terrified that we would be too late. It had been two days and the name we had was of a man who had already served time for taking a little girl down in Portland on a ten-day drive. Usually people like this feel they got nothing to lose if they’re going to do it again.

The house was way out by Chickawaukie Pond, near Achorn Cemetery, and I had to stop myself from thinking the worst. From thinking that little boy was already in the pond or dumped in Glen Cove.

We surrounded the house with the full force and backup from Waldoboro. I could feel him standing on the other side of the door when we rang the bell. I could feel him waiting, thinking we’d go away if he waited. He was trapped.

We pounded again and he opened the door. The place was neat and orderly—too orderly, like a hotel room.

I said, “We’d like to ask you a few questions about Brian Phillips, the boy who disappeared in Rockland last week. We understand you bought a movie that was made of him.”

His eyes darted just briefly toward a door off the kitchen when I said Brian’s name, and I motioned to Evans to check it out.

He took two uniforms with him, tramping down a flight of stairs while I questioned the scumbag about where he’d been the last four days. And soon I heard them calling up to us, telling us to call in an ambulance. Then they came rushing upstairs, Evans carrying Brian. He was unconscious and his hands and feet were tied.

I had the uniforms handcuff the scumbag and take him out to the car. I wanted to kick the living shit out of him right there but I knew he’d be getting plenty of that in prison.

Evans sat in a chair at the kitchen table and I cut away the ropes that tied Brian. From the way he was breathing, I was certain that he had been drugged. His pulse was slow and steady, and apart from some bruises and chapped lips, he looked okay. He must have been terrified and dehydrated, and clearly other things had happened to him or were about to happen to him before we arrived.

It was one of the quickest recoveries of an abducted child in the history of the state. We called Brian’s mother right there from the house and told her that her boy was found and seemed fine but needed to go to the hospital. And I’ll never forget the way she exhaled and started crying and laughing on the phone. As if she’d been holding her breath for days.

Evans held the boy close to his chest and we all felt like we had won the lottery.

On the way back to the car one of the uniforms said, “If that kid Graham hadn’t come in we might not have found him.”

I shook my head. “If that kid Graham wasn’t out making his movies, Brian would have been home with his mom and baby sister this whole time.”

But what he said was true. It took guts for a teenager with his history to come in and turn that information over to us. And thank God he did.

At least one tragedy was averted that year. At least one.

So Graham was officially a hero. Story in the paper and the whole thing.

“Art Dullard might have been too stupid to even know that what he did was connected to Brian’s kidnapping,” Declan said on the way to school. “If you hadn’t made us go over there and convince him, God knows what would have happened.”

“Yeah, well, it was Becky who said we should get him to help, and he did.”

“I don’t understand,” Declan said. “He was dead set against anyone finding out, and then he went there himself.”

I shrugged. But I knew exactly why he turned over the movies to the cops. Ally had convinced him in her gentle way. He wanted her to think of him as a hero and she could be very convincing sometimes. I don’t think he would have done it if he wasn’t afraid we’d do it ourselves and if he didn’t have Ally persuading him. It was a one-two punch from the Tate sisters.

“He still doesn’t think he did anything wrong,” I said. “You can tell he just doesn’t understand these things.”

“Yeah,” he said. “But you can also tell he’s kind of our friend now too. We didn’t rat him out that night. We went to bed and in the morning he did it himself. We ate pad thai at his house and talked to him like he was our friend. I think he’s our friend, Tate.”

I sighed. The mystery of Graham wasn’t that he had stupidly sold information to pedophiles. There was something more going on. Maybe I could sense these things because my own life was not exactly what it seemed all the time. Maybe I knew because he seemed like two different people to Ally and me when we talked to him.

But no matter how you cut it I knew. And it didn’t help things that people now thought he was a hero. Or the newspaper did at any rate. The creep who took Brian had I guess manipulated Graham too somehow. I don’t think he’d have given that information to someone doing bad things. But then again maybe he would. When we asked him about it the night we watched the movies, he didn’t seem to care why these people were paying so much for the movies. According to the newspaper, he didn’t tell the cops the same story he told us. Just that the guy had bought him a camera—not paid him money. Unless there were more people who bought the movies that we didn’t know about.

Everything seemed to be getting more complicated, not less. What did it mean that even Declan thought he was our friend?

“C’mon, Tate,” Declan said. “Don’t you think you’re being a little hard on him because you have a crush on him?”

“Why does everyone keep saying that?” I asked.

“Well . . . because it looks that way. The way you were hanging out with him after school and stuff.”

“What the hell are you talking about? It sounds like you’re the one who’s jealous.”

He laughed. “Of Art Dullard? No. But he is there—right next door and always around—and I could see how you might be interested in him.”

“Becky’s the one with the crush.”

“Right,” he said. “Becky and everyone else. I’m just a dope-smoking brainiac with long black hair.”

“Me too,” I said.

He laughed and then he stopped walking and stood in front of me.

“I love you, Earthling,” he said.

I was surprised he said it. We were close and I knew we loved each other but we didn’t talk like this. First Ally telling me she loves me and now this. Everyone was getting soft on me.

“Declan, what the hell?”

“I mean it. The way you took charge of this situation and made us go over there. The way you convinced him. You’re really changing. You get cooler and more badass and more responsible every day.” He laughed. “How can you be such a bad girl and such a good girl at the same time?”

“Good role models, I guess.”

Then he bent down and kissed me and I held him tight and for some reason I felt like I might cry.

Dear Lined Piece of Paper,

What a week. No sooner had I figured out a way to finance my fantastic project than it has been taken away. At least temporarily. Brian—the X-Man kid who I had hoped to do a long-term film project about—was found. I guess I should say he was kidnapped. Yes. He was kidnapped and then found in some guy’s basement. The guy had bought the movie I made about Brian, and so he knew some things that made it easier to take him.

Man. People do some fucked-up things. I’m glad he’s back, but I doubt his parents will let me make any more movies of him. The police called after he was found, and they wanted to talk to me about my website and the movies, but Dad and Kim said I don’t have to talk to anyone, and they got our lawyer to explain things to them. Brian’s family is happy he’s home, and they think the movies I made saved his life! So no one is there to press any charges at all.

And you know what? It did save his life, just like Tate said it would.

Oh God, Tate. I can hardly think about her now without feeling butterflies in my stomach. I keep remembering her out on the lawn by the fountain holding me in her arms and whispering so sweetly and making everything better. She’s the most interesting person I have ever known. I’ve been watching the movie I took of it all week. There’s no sound, which makes it even better. I used the little camera and attached it to the edge of the fountain. So you can’t see all of us, mostly just our faces and chests. She’s so beautiful. I need to have her over to make more movies of her in my room. I like it when she talks about her life. I like how she changes and how her expressions are so free floating. I like everything about her.

I want her to be the star of the best movie I have ever made. Something better than what Eric and I made. Something that really will reveal all the beauty in the world.

I had to talk to Dr. Adams again about Brian. He asked me how I felt and I told him I felt like I had corrected something that went wrong before and also afraid that it might mean my camera would be taken away.

He said, “What would it mean if your camera was taken away?” And before I even realized what I was saying I said, “It would mean that I was blind.”

“Can’t you see without your camera?” he asked.

I said yes I can but I was really thinking no. I totally can’t. Of course not. Not the way I want to. Not the way I need to, so I can study things and understand what’s going on. No, actually not at all! I would rather look at a movie I’ve made of myself than look in the mirror, because it’s more interesting. If I have a movie of Tate, I can rewatch it and understand what’s going on. It doesn’t slip away through time into nowhere.

But of course I said yes. Sure, I would still be able to see blah blah blah. And I didn’t tell him about correcting my own dosages. I didn’t tell him that actually I was mad at Brian for getting kidnapped because he almost got my camera taken away from me. He almost made me blind.

If it wasn’t for Tate figuring out it would be better for me to go to the police myself I’d be completely screwed.

We should have known something was wrong. We should have known he was struggling. I do blame myself for this. The fact was we had a lot of time at home with him and we spent a lot of time together, the three of us.

David essentially left his job so he could be a better father and be there for Graham, and I know I was the one who constantly reassured him that there was no problem.

When the police called and said a film Graham had made was probably the reason Brian Phillips was kidnapped, I told them the one sure thing was that a film Graham made was the reason Brian Phillips was saved. Then they told me about the wish list and the camera. A known pedophile had bought Graham a camera. And Graham had provided this person with our home address, where the camera was shipped. That startled me. So many strangers having our address. I know kids think differently about privacy than we did when we were young. But this was a serious lack of judgment.

“Why would you do that?” we asked him. “If you wanted a different lens or a different camera, why wouldn’t you ask us?”

He said he wanted his movie to be a surprise. He wanted to be independent. He thought no one would trust him after what happened in Virginia. And all those things seemed reasonable. Heartbreakingly reasonable conclusions for a young boy to come to.

Dr. Adams said it was important to have consequences, but at this point I still believed it was wrong, completely wrong, to take the camera away. I thought it would only make him do something more desperate in order to have it. I understood how important it was to him to have it—to be able to control his environment more, to frame what he saw and what he looked at again. I felt I understood him.

The consequences we gave him had to do with the car. No more driving the Austin to school, and David was putting the new car—the one they were planning to work on together next—on hold. He wouldn’t have it shipped until things settled down.

“What do you mean by settled down?” Graham shouted at us. “You take everything from me. First I can’t see Eric, then I can’t watch my own movies, now I can’t put things on my wish list or drive my own car. And you won’t let me work on the new one you promised me. What am I supposed to do?”

David remained calm and loving, as he always does in these situations. “Well,” he said, “it seems like you’ve got a nice group of friends here, and you’re lucky to have folks right next door. Maybe you could spend more time with them. You know, when I was your age, I didn’t have a car.”

Graham groaned and rolled his eyes. “I know. I know. You’ve told me. I know. But I thought that’s one of the reasons you wanted me to have one.”

David told him he was sorry, but it wasn’t negotiable.

I remember thinking this would all blow over. I remember thinking this was just a stage he was going through and that eventually he would realize we were right. I remember thinking that once he became more a part of high school and his friends, he’d be more reasonable about these things. I remember thinking a lot of things that fall, and looking back now, none of our ideas would have made any goddamn difference.

I was meditating in my backyard. A lot had happened that week, and I was trying to practice having a blank mind so later I could use my powers of concentration to get some work done. Tate and I had been skipping school a lot before all that stuff with Brian happened, and I realized once things had settled down that I was probably not going to be valedictorian. She was. Which was fine and all, but I thought maybe we could get our GPAs so that they were identical. Maybe it could be both of us. Anyway. I was out there relaxing by the fishpond, sitting on a stone slab and trying to naturally expand my consciousness, and when I opened my eyes, Graham Copeland was standing right in front of me with a camera.

I blinked a few times to make sure he wasn’t an apparition of some kind. Then I laughed and said, “What’s up, G?”

He said, “I’m just out roaming the neighborhood.”

“Dude,” I said. “How are things going? How does it feel to be a hero?”

“Good,” he said. “It feels good to be a hero. I think it’s good publicity for my career as a filmmaker.”

“Well, there you go,” I said. “Hey, can you turn that camera off? We’re just having a conversation. I don’t think it needs to be documented.”

“Oh,” he said, looking startled. “Yeah, sure.” He turned it off and slid it into his pocket.

“So, how are things?” I asked again. He looked a little weird, and I wanted him to relax.

“I was wondering about Tate,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Are you in love with her?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Is she your girlfriend?”

“Are you asking if I own Tate?”

“No, it’s just when you guys came over the other night, she seemed so caught up in everything about you and impressed with you.”

“Huh. I dunno, man. Tate gets caught up in a lot of things.”

He nodded. “How long have you guys been together?”

“Been friends?” I asked. “Since elementary school.”

“What about Becky?”

“What about her?”

“Are you the same kind of friend with Becky?”

“No. Dude, are you interested in dating Tate?”

“I . . . yeah, well, we . . .”

“Look, man, I don’t care what extracurricular things Tate might do. She’s her own person, got it? And you’re my friend. Okay? Everything is cool.”

He looked really embarrassed. “Okay, but don’t you think she’s . . . I mean, that family is kinda . . .”

“Interesting? Very. That’s why I’m not about to get all freaked-out by teen romance nonsense. Okay? Tate and I are going to go to college together. We have some plans. I know you have your own plans, and that’s cool. We all have our own plans. We’re all alone when you get right down to it, right?”

“Yeah.”

“C’mon, dude, let’s go inside, I want to show you this website that’s all about fractals.”

I got up and stretched and we walked toward the house. It was okay spending time with him. He was still Art Dullard, but he was kind of okay. And I knew that Tate loved me and that we were getting the hell out of Rockland and that someday we’d talk about knowing Graham Copeland, someday he’d probably be famous. You could kinda see it just by looking at him.