Mr. Dacy’s barbershop was just six houses down from our bungalow, just right at the corner on the opposite side of the street. My dad said it used to be a little candy store that his aunt tended, but that was before me, long before me, in fact. Maybe she had stockpiled it, I don’t know. I do remember that any time I went for a haircut, Mr. Dacy made sure that my pockets were full of candy and gum when I left, and it all came out of some vast reservoir in his back room. There was always plenty and then some.
It was a nice place, a typical neighborhood barber shop in the ‘70s. Sometimes when my parents would fight, I’d go down and sit in his shop, re-reading his old comics until things settled down. Everyone was welcome there any time. Sometimes the beat cops would take refuge from the heat, the cold, the rain, or the boredom, chatting away about the war with Mr. Dacy. I wasn’t too sure which war they were talking about. Looking back now, it had to be Korea, but it’s entirely possible that it was just war in general – whatever each of them had been through. Mr. Dacy hadn’t served. He volunteered several times, but none of the doctors were willing to overlook the fact that he was missing two toes on his right foot. Whenever he told the story, his punchline was always "I’m not planning on kicking the enemy" or "I never heard of a man who shot with his feet." Everyone always laughed when he said it, but nobody more than Mr. Dacy himself.
It was actually a childhood accident, I found out. No, not exactly. He called it an accident, but it happened when a shed collapsed. Usually when a shed collapses it’s an accident of some kind. It’s not when it collapsed because your insane grandfather locked you and your two cousins inside, then proceeded to run over it with a tractor. He always said his cousins were lucky because they weren’t seriously injured and got to serve in the war. Their luck cost them more than two toes, though. They both served in Korea, where one was killed by a land mine and the other by a sniper. Still, from Mr. Dacy’s perspective, they were the lucky ones.
Anyway, everyone knew Mr. Dacy, and he knew everyone and their habits. My friends and I would be hanging out at twilight in the winter and he’d turn to me or Richard Kriger and say "Your folks are wondering where you are." Sure enough, within five minutes, he or I would hear one of our parents hollering down the block for us to come home for dinner. Mine would always yell, "Tommy – dinner’s ready and getting cold!"
He knew when the patrol cop or the mail man was about to stop in, or when his regulars were about to stop by. I lost track of the number of times he’d be stepping through the curtains from his back room just as I was opening his front door. Always just walking out of the back room.
I was eleven. I’d just run down the block with my dollar and a quarter to get a haircut. There was trouble – danger in the air – but there was nothing we didn’t know about, and nothing that couldn’t be seen from our front porch. Despite what was going on in the news, my mom knew I’d be safe trotting by myself from our front steps to the safe haven of the barber shop. And she knew that Mr. Dacy, missing toes or not, wouldn’t let some stranger get hold of me. Mr. Dacy saw everything there was to see in our little rectangular world. He was as much a part of our safety net as any of the neighborhood cops.
People were on edge. Four boys had gone missing over the past six months. Three boys on the other side of town, across the river, had disappeared. Nobody knew where they were – probably run away, most people said, "Gone to join the circus." There was one from Bessimer, one from Bojon Town, and one from Mesa Junction. People were still saying that about the latest boy, here on our own side of town. He’d vanished a month ago, in the middle of the summer. Nobody who knew him said it, of course, but the old bastards who thought they knew everything about everyone still said it about all four boys. "Nothing to it – they’re just off on a lark."
Richard Kriger would become number five, rounding out a full house. Three boys from the other side of town and two from this side. I knew Richard. I’d known him every single day since we met in Kindergarten. He was my best friend. I knew he wasn’t going to go running off for an adventure, whether it was the circus or climbing a mountain. He didn’t cross the street without an adult standing by to approve. He was as likely to leap without looking as I was to look and not leap. I wouldn’t join the circus, but I had no problem trying whatever might be in front of me. We balanced each other out, and he trusted me. I trusted him. He could count on me pushing things a little and find us adventures. I could count on him keeping things on an even keel. Between the two of us, we managed to get in just enough trouble, and to stay out of just enough. Together, we could have fun without making our parents go down to the police station.
Well, we did up until he disappeared. His parents then made their trips to the station, and the cops made enough trips to their house or to their street, which was one block over, behind the barber shop, just across the alley. Mr. Dacy had had his share of hushed conversations with the cops about the lay of the land, and what might have happened in the alley that Mr. Dacy’s shop shared with the Krigers’ house. After they left, you could see him fretting and distracted. Richard was a good boy and we spent a lot of time hanging out around the shop. It was natural that Mr. Dacy would be concerned about how things were going. Richard was one of his special young friends, just like me.
So, I ran down to Mr. Dacy's like I'd done dozens of times before, though this time I doubted strongly that I'd run into Richard there. Once again, he was stepping out of his back room, sliding between the two curtains so smoothly, I'm not sure they actually parted around him. Yes, they must have, but there was no tell-tale ripple behind his body. He was behind the drapes and then in front of the drapes. Logic says he passed through them, but he left no evidence.
I think even he was a little surprised at how little they moved, because he turned to them and took their measure, glancing up and down their part.
"Hey, there, buddy." He glanced over my shoulder and out the window, lingering on the shadowed shapes. "No, Richard? That doesn't happen often, does it? Wonder where he's gotten to." He paused, not really waiting for an answer. If I had to guess, I'd say he was waiting for the words to go away, to vanish beneath the ceiling fan, dissipated into vapor and no more. No need to crowd them out. He never crowded anything out, just waited it out in his own canny manner. There was a time, a year or so earlier, when a vicious dog had gotten into the shop. Richard, Whitey and I had leapt onto the counters, and the only grown up customer there, Mr. Jimenez, had retracted his legs up into his body trying to keep them from the dog's jaws. We boys stood atop the counter, wailing at Dacy to chase him, hit him, throw something, look out, run, hit him - any active thing we could think of, we threw out, hoping some panicked solution would avail itself. Mr. Dacy just eyeballed him. He turned calmly as the dog wandered the floor, sniffing and growling, but didn't even try to keep him in his direct line of sight. He waited for the dog to slow and regard him, rolling a growl out to goad him into action, but Dacy just stood there. He put his comb and scissors down and then stepped around the barber chair that held Mr. Jimenez and walked past the dog to the door. He yanked it open, waved his arm through it, and barked at the dog, "Get out! Out!" The dog looked around, like he wasn't sure who was being ordered out, then he trotted out the door with his tail tucked.
Dacy walked back behind the chair and retrieved his scissors and a fresh comb from the sterilizing jar. He gave Mr. Jimenez two pats on the back, said "Let's get back to business" glancing at us as he said it, and waving us down with the comb. He pointed at me and said "Mickey, give the precinct house a call, why don't you." I was still quaking from the tension of keeping my pants dry, but somehow felt that he and I had boldly faced down a killer. Here I was, dropping a dime on a public enemy. In some far-off universe, I could imagine him breaking out of dog jail and coming for me, hell-bent on revenge. I'd be first, of course. I was the squealer and the weak one. He'd knock me off, and then go for Mr. Dacy. At least that would be his plan, but something would go amiss and both Dacy and I would find ourselves in a showdown with him ... and we'd win. Heroes a second time, and that time for sure, I'd have earned my stripes.
Mr Dacy had that kind of effect. You were part of his bravado, his adventure, and his secrets. He was your back door to the world of grown-ups. I knew plenty of older boys who told me about how, as they got older, he'd go from giving them gum and penny candy, and start offering them a sip or two of beer, and later a shot. Some laughed about it; others were secretive, their chuckles dying in their throats, but only the most uptight ever said "Nah, my mom woulda smelled it on my breath in a sec. I just stopped going then, and found another barber." Richard, Whitey and I talked much about it, and we all agreed that, when our time came, we'd step up and partake of some adventure. We weren't little girls after all, right? That's what we figured, anyway.
He was pensive this time, though - like he was waiting, watching, measuring something, weighing things, juggling sorrows. He asked once again, obliquely, about Richard. "I think I might've seen him earlier today, going down the alley, but wasn't sure. I called out to him, but he didn't turn around. Just hit the street and took off at a run. Long gone from here by now, I'd expect. He say anything out of the ordinary to you the past few days?"
He was watching over my shoulder again. I sputtered something out that was as non-committal as it could be and still try to put the whole thing behind me. What did I know from strange behavior? I hadn't seen him, and I couldn't imagine anything strange he'd said or done in the past month, let alone the past few days, and why did I feel like Mr. Darcy was looking right through me when he wasn't even looking at me, and maybe I'd come back another time for my haircut. It was at that moment that I decided - without voicing it - that Richard was out there somewhere, in a place I couldn't imagine ... and more importantly in a place I didn't want to ever imagine, and this little sanctuary of Mr. Dacys was giving me no comfort. The deep panic I was starting to feel pushed out any comfort that I'd usually gotten from being in the barber shop.
I wanted to run home, but dusk had turned from red to purple to black, and the darkness was starting to seep into the lighted barber shop. The corners were darker; the light fixtures hanging from the ceiling were slowly being suffocated by the viscous blackness that was filling the shop. I knew if I stayed there longer, even that island of normalcy would sink under the dark pool of sadness that was rippling about. I made a little gasp and a little shriek which, along with the anguish on my face, was intended to be an admission of panic and of failure. I felt I was betraying Mr. Dacy by not feeling safe in his sanctuary, but I also knew that, if I didn't leave then, the least of my worries might have been crying in front of him. My face made the apology my voice couldn't, and I shot through the door, barely encountering it, in the same way he'd scarcely encountered the curtain to the back room when I'd come in. I coughed on the way home, but I didn't cry. Not then.
He didn't come home that night or the next, and everyone who was willing to leave the house talked about it, mostly in a circle that lapped the block, going from adjoining fence to adjoining fence, back yard to back yard. It was safe enough, though. Richard's family lived across the street from us, so we could do our serial gossiping without causing them direct discomfort. Also, the cops talked to everyone on the block and I'm sure all around, at least once. They talked to me three times to see if there was anything I might possibly remember, even though I hadn't even seen Richard yet that day.
They found Richard a week and a half later - he was the first of the lost boys to no longer be lost. A fisherman up by the Rock Canyon Barrier Dam, fishing the eddies for random, stray rainbow trout, found more than he wanted when he snagged Richard's Cub Scout belt. I was watching Johnny Quest on the couch, at seven in the morning, when my mom came in, then left, then came in, then left, then cried in her bedroom for a while before coming back in. I could hear her, but after Johnny, Captain Kangaroo came on and I was too lazy to change it. Plus, you never knew when Mr. Moose would drop hundreds of ping pong balls on the rabbit, so I was less attentive than I might otherwise have been. I'm pretty sure I've never seen her as sad as she was when she turned the Captain off in the middle of the Ugly Ducking story book drawing skit. After she told me, I watched the dull gray screen for a while.
She'd talk for a little, saying things I immediately decided not to remember, then she sat next to me. She kept touching my shoulder, and I don't know which of us she was trying to make sure was still there. Probably me. Mostly, I just watched the quiet, empty gray screen. I was ten feet away from the TV, sitting back against the couch, but I wobbled, and with each wobble, I thought maybe I would fall into the deep emptiness of the screen and maybe I wouldn't be any more. Not out here, not in there, not anywhere. Maybe I would be where Richard was, wherever he was. Maybe he was with Jesus, like the nuns said. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe Jesus didn't go where nothing but sadness was. Maybe, as nice a guy as he was, he knew better. If I were Jesus, I think I would.
When my dad came home, he and my mom went off to their room for a while, turning the tv back on as they walked out. When they came back out, my dad said "Come on, sport, let's go downtown for Mexican." and we all filed out to the car silently. We really didn't say much of anything until we walked in through the doors at Martinez' and we saw them singing happy birthday to a woman toward the back, surrounded by her family. "Look, someone's having a party!" My dad said it with warmth and flourish, but it wasn't enough to kickstart anything, so we sat and ate in the greyness. The next morning, my mom told me to be sure and let her know if I was going to leave the yard, and I said I would, but I didn't even come close. I sat on the porch for about five minutes, and got tired of hoping nothing moved, so I went back in to the tv. The day after was Sunday, and we went to church, and they both prayed, but I was suddenly too mad to say anything to God. I didn't pray, and didn't join in at the sign of peace, and when it came time for communion, I sat there while my mom tugged on my jacket. She tugged when I wouldn't kneel and then more when I wouldn't stand to go up. I jerked back enough to make her lose her grip on my shoulder and at that point, my dad took her elbow and said "It's okay, Margie. Let him be." I cried until I could see through the waves that they were coming back. I wiped my eyes with my tie, and everything was back to normal by the time they sat back down. She kept watching me. My dad patted me on the shoulder once, but otherwise followed his own advice and let me be.
Monday was Richard's funeral, so at eight thirty that morning, almost the entire neighborhood loaded into their sedans and station wagons and went the mile and a half to the Lutheran Church that Richard's family attended. Everything was just familiar enough to be confusing, though at least they didn't have Latin, which helped. Julie Baker, from school, had told me that they all spoke German there, but like most things Julie told me, it was untrue. Richard's mom hugged me tight and didn't say anything. I hugged her back and said, "I..." before my throat locked up. It was okay, though, because I'd never gotten past "I ... " in the script I'd been working on in my head, anyway. The same thing worked for me when I shook Richard's dad's hand, though he had the will and presence of mind to tell me "You're welcome any time, Bobby." I said "I ... " and nodded my head, and we were done. With more distant relatives, I managed to shake their hands and say "I'm sorry." Sure, it sounded like I was apologizing for stepping on their toe, but it was a step up from "I ..."
I didn't go back to Mr. Dacy's until I was a week overdue for a haircut. My mom stuffed a dollar and a quarter into my hand and pushed me out the door, telling me "It's time." Yes, sort of - I glanced back enough to know that she was watching me all the way. I thought about ducking behind a bush, but fortunately rethought that impulse. I wasn't going to be good at pranks for a while, not around the house, anyway. I was a house away when she hollered, “Don’t shilly-shally – it’s going to be dark soon!” It wasn’t. It was only two o’clock in the afternoon. I knew she was watching me all the way. She was worried, but she didn’t want to keep me locked in the house.
"Bobby, long time, my young friend. I was starting to wonder."
"It's been a busy two weeks."
"Yeah, busy ..."
It wasn't until he agreed on that point that I realized I hadn't noticed him at the service or at the graveside. His busy fortnight had transpired somewhere else, evidently.
Being young and guileless, not to mention unschooled in social niceties, I just asked right out, "Did you go ~." I hadn't gotten further before he was shaking his downturned head.
"I ... well, I got to the church early and sat out in the parking lot until it was time and then when the bells started ringing, I couldn't get myself out of the car, so I just drive off. I came back here and ... well ... just decided I wasn't going to make it to the graveside either."
I fiddled with the arm of my chair while he was telling me this, watching my fingers pry at the seam on the vinyl arm cushion.
I didn't know what to say. I wanted to get angry and yell at him that he should've been there with everybody else. I also wanted to tell him that the only thing I was thinking while I was at the church and graveside was that I wanted to be anywhere but there and if I could've snuck out without my folks nabbing me and dragging me back, I would have. I guess I was just mad because he got to do something I was longing to do.
I picked at the arm of the chair more before I managed to squeeze out of my throat, "He liked coming here. He liked you."
"Yeah, I liked him, too. He was a good ... person. He was special." I was all knotted up and distracted, but I still appreciated him calling Richard a person and not just a kid. "You're both two of the nicest boys I think I've known, you and Richard." As nice as that normally would have been, I shuddered. I could see being tied to my best friend's corpse for the rest of my natural life, everyone mentioning to new people that I had been best friends with "that dead boy, you'd remember his name if you heard it" and telling me endlessly, "So, Bobby, it's still not the same, you know, him not being around - of course I don't have to tell you that." No, you don't you really don't, at least not every day and twice on Sundays. I knew it would happen because already at my age, I'd seen how adults would hook onto one thing to tell you about, and then just keep drilling it into you like they were senile.
I sighed and realized I was already out of things to say, having said nothing so far. "I'll ... I was …I just have time for a haircut today ... but ... I'll come back another time." I appreciated what he said and how he said it, but I was afraid he was going to keep saying it, and I didn’t want to think about Richard, and how he and I were inseparable, any more right then.
Mr. Dacy just stood next to the barber chair. I knew he was watching me as I walked back out into the twilight. I knew he was worried.
I got back to the house and realized I still didn't want to be there in the grey quiet. I offered to run down the block the other direction and get something - anything - from the corner store for her. Anything. It could be heavy, or something girly. Just something to get me through that barrier around the house and back out into what had been the world. She looked horrified and her hand flew up to her mouth before she reached down and squeezed my shoulder. "No, baby, I want you to stay where I know you're safe." She was right. There was a little terror rumbling inside of me as I was making the offer, but I pushed it down.
The next morning, my mom got a call. Then she made a call. The first call, she just kept looking around and giving short answers. The second one, she hauled the extension phone down the hall to the laundry room and closed the door. She came out and eyeballed me, then went about her business.
About an hour later, I told her I was going to run down to the barber shop, and was already half way out the door before she brought me up short.
"Bobby ... no ... just hang around a while. Maybe help me with some things. You can go out this afternoon if you still want to." She came up with some lame tasks for me to handle for her, things that took about a minute apiece, and for which I probably spent more time going back to her for the next thing to do than I did actually doing the things. It didn't dawn on me what was really going on until we heard a knock at the door and she told me to go sit in the living room and wait for her. When she came in it was with two men. One, she introduced as a detective, but he wasn't the one we had talked to when Richard disappeared. This one had a sharp face and looked like a falcon or a hawk. The other was one of the cops that patrolled the neighborhood, Officer Jenkins. If he was in a great mood, he'd occasionally let us call him Officer Bob, but we were scared to just call him by his first name without invitation. He wasn't in a great mood that day, but he was working overtime trying to be reassuring, so he talked slow and gave me lots of tight smiles. He danced around a lot of things before the detective, Lieutenant BirdNose cut him off and jumped in with both feet. "Bobby, you're a smart kid, so we're going to come right to the point. We think you can help us figure out what happened to your friend, and we're sure you want to help us do that, right Bobby? If you knew something, you'd be glad to tell us, right? So nobody else gets hurt?" All of that seemed so obvious that I looked around - to my mom and to Officer Bob - looking for some reassurance that everybody knew I'd want to help and there wasn't any need for all of those question marks he kept throwing at me.
"Bobby? Bobby? I need you to stay focused buddy, so you can help us like I know you want to." Even the statements were questions in disguise.
My mom reached a hand out and placed it on my arm. "Of course, he's going to help if he can. There's no need to ..."
"Then we needn't worry about anything, do we, Mrs. Boerne?" He turned back to me and I felt like a field mouse suddenly on his radar. "Bobby. I'm going to ask you a question and I want you to be completely honest with me. You'll do that, right?" My mom started to object again, and he raised his hand to cut her off. With his falcon eyes boring into me, I just nodded. "Even if it means telling us some things about a friend that he might not want us to know?"
I jumped up from the couch at that point and everyone leaned forward, I suppose wondering if I was about to make an escape. I wasn't even thinking about that, though. "If you're thinking Richard was doing something that got him into trouble with someone, then you're ... he wouldn't; he couldn't, he was always ... he was so careful! We used to call him ... I don't believe ... because ... he was ... he wouldn't ..." The detective was waving me down with both hands already, in the 3 seconds it took for all of that to explode out of me. "Bobby, Bobby, calm down, kid. Sit yourself back down. I'm not accusing Richard of anything."
"Whitey ..."
"No, no, no. Just calm yourself and sit down, then we'll continue." He looked to my mom for reinforcement and she put her hand on my shoulder. "It's okay, Bobby. Let's just hear him out. For now." She eyeballed him when she said the last bit, and I felt like she was back clearly on my side.
So, I sat back down. After fiddling with his keyring, he continued. "Mister Dacy is a good friend of yours, right?"
I had no idea where that had come from, and I was reeling. I had never imagined that anybody I knew might be connected with what happened to Richard. He might as well have asked me about Richard's dad or our principal in Elementary school, who I always thought of as the ultimate authority figure, even after we'd moved on to middle school.
"Huh?" I wasn't stalling. I was trying to make sense of the sentence, and was still failing.
"You heard me alright, didn't you, Bobby?"
"I ... I ... I ..." I started crying and leaned into my mom, who was going to have to hug me whether she wanted to or not. Through the waves in front of my eyes, I saw the beak jerk his head toward the hall. He got up and Officer Bob got up, and they went and stood in the doorway for what seemed like a week talking back and forth, nodding, shaking heads, and occasionally gesturing. After the detective poked Officer Bob in the chest the sixth or seventh or eighth time, and pointed up the block, Officer Bob shook his head, and held up his hand for at least a pause.
They came back in and resumed their original positions, though both more hunkered down than before. Officer Bob stared at the floor and the detective stared directly at me.
“We want you to know … if he touched you, if he did anything to you, if he made you do anything you didn’t want to, we can help you, but to make sure you’re safe and other kids are safe, we need you to help us. If you can tell us anything useful, we can make sure that he doesn’t find out who told us, and, like I said, we can make sure he doesn’t do anything to any other kids.”
After all that, then he paused. I guess he was expecting me to be drawn in by the vacuum he left in the silence and start to spill my guts. Not having anything to say, I still didn’t know what to say. He leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs. He was planning on being there a while, clearly.
I reached over and absent-mindedly riffed the pages in the book that was on the end table.
“Bobby.”
I glanced up.
“Bobby, we’re going to need you to pay attention to what’s going on. It’s serious. Bad things, very bad things have happened, but you and me, we can make them stop. Don’t you want to be the kid who stopped a crazy man from hurting other kids, hurting your friends?”
I looked at my mom in terror. Suddenly everything was on me, and I didn’t know how to begin to tell this man that I didn’t know anything that might help. He seemed certain that I had some magical knowledge, but as far as I could figure, I knew nothing about anything. I didn’t know anything about Richard disappearing; I didn’t know anything about Mr. Dacy doing anything to Richard – or to me – or to any other kids. I clawed through my memories. Was there something in the back of my mind, some little detail that I wouldn’t normally notice or remember, something that would lighten the load I was now struggling with? I replayed random moments in my head, all a-jumble. Not knowing what I was looking for, or when it might have happened, my brain just poured everything into a large hopper. It was like a photographer on a tilt-a-whirl, bouncing and swirling, not knowing what might show up in the viewfinder or what sense it might make when everything was brought together.
"Bobby!? Focus, son. This is very serious, and I don't need you to flake out on me."
"It think it would be better if ~" again he waved down my mom's objections, and again she backed down.
"Let's talk a little about the week before last. Do you remember going there with a new friend, one of your buddies that hadn't gone to the barber shop before?"
I thought and nodded as I tried to swallow. My throat was too dry. The nod worked much better than the swallow.
"Is that something that bothers you, thinking about that?"
I shook my head "No, my throat's really dry."
My mom stood to get me a glass of water. He reached for her arm, then perhaps remembered that this wasn't actually an interrogation, but an interview.
While she was out of the room, he leaned in like a confidante, "Are you a little nervous, buddy?" That threw me, and I nodded, eager for the little bit of understanding. At that, he leaned back in his chair and said, "The sooner you tell us what you know, the sooner you'll feel better. You don't have to hide this anymore. You won't be in trouble. Dacy will take it all."
That chilled me, literally. Goosebumps rose. For a moment, I'd mistaken him for a friend and he'd taken that and punched me in the face with it. Calmer and more wary, I leaned back too, as my mom returned from the kitchen with a tupperware cup full of water. I had a better idea of what I was facing, and as scary as it was, it helped a little just knowing. He really was planning on using me as a battering ram on Mr. Dacy.
Cup in hand, I drank it half down and set it on the end table. He stared and I stared back. We both waited the other out. I learned years later that that's what detectives did - they pushed for a bit, then waited for the pressure of the silence and the stares to make the person they were grilling break down. I wasn't resolute, though. If I thought I actually knew something, I was scared enough that I was sure to have blurted it out. I was silent because I couldn't begin to imagine what I might know. For all I knew, me reciting the alphabet would be no less helpful than anything I might conjure out of my recollections.
"Are you good to go now, sport?" I hated the way he used nicknames. It wasn't a friendly thing. Being twelve, I don't know what it was called back then, but these days it's called "You're my bitch."
I nodded and he dived back in. "So, a couple of weeks ago, you visited the barber shop with a new friend. Do you remember?"
"Whitey?"
He glanced at Officer Bob as though that meant something, "Whitey, yes. Why did you take Whitey to Mr. Dacy?"
My eyebrows scrunched up.
"Did he ask you to bring him boys?"
"Wha ... no ... Whitey was staying over and we just decided to go to the barber shop for a while."
?
"So, Dacy, " he paused as he glanced down at his notepad, "Mr. Dacy never said anything about bringing friends by? Think carefully."
"Well, he sometimes would say 'Come back and bring your friends," but it's not like he ~"
"Ok, so there were actually times when he asked you to bring boys around ~"
"No ..."
"But you just told me, told us all ..." he nodded at my mom, making sure to include her in the “all.”
"But not like that, that's not how he meant it."
"It's pretty simple Bobby. 'You come back.' and 'You bring friends.' Those are the only two pieces and they're pretty clear. Tell me what part of that isn't right."
"But you're making it sound like ..."
"They're just words, Bobby. They sound just like they mean. Sometimes, it’s easy to mix up exactly what they mean when someone you know and trust says them you, I’ll grant you that. "
“So, what … I don’t know what …”
I looked at my mom, but she blinked and looked over at the detective. She was trying to say something to him, but she just kept pulling her hair behind her ear and didn’t get anything out.
He looked around like he was getting frustrated. I don’t know if he was frustrated or just pretending. He threw down his pencil and rubbed the back of his neck. “Bobby, Mrs. Peterson, we’re going to go outside and chat for a few minutes. I want you both to think about what we’ve been discussing. It’s very important that we get helpful answers. It’s important to you, to your friends, to the memory of Richard, to the whole community.”
He waved at Officer Bob and they both went out to the front porch. They kept their heads together. There was a lot of head shaking and head nodding. They’d cross their arms and uncross them and every once in a while, one of them – usually The Beak – would look back through the open door at us. The last thing they did was both turn and face away. They kept nodding. They were still talking but they must’ve been afraid we might hear or try to read their lips.
The Beak came back in and, without even glancing my direction, told my mom "I think we're done for the moment. We're going to check a few things out and might even manage to move things along a little. We'll be in touch."
He still didn't look at me, or even act like I was there. Maybe I wasn’t any more. I could see that I was still sitting on the couch, but I couldn’t feel it under me. I felt light, like I was floating on water. I didn't know what I could have told him in what little I said, but it seemed to have been significant.
I sat on the couch as my mom busied herself in the kitchen. In a few minutes, she brought me out a plate of apple slices and a glass of milk and put them on the coffee table. I started to pick them up and carry them back to the dining room table – she had rules about those things - but she waved me back down. “It’s okay, just stay where you are. I’ll turn the tv back on for you. She turned it on and asked if that was okay. I said yes, but I didn’t even know what was on. I just watched and chewed.
I stayed in the house the rest of the day. When dad came home, he and mom went in their bedroom and talked for a long time while supper got cold on the stove. They came back out and mom started warming it again and dad put his hand on the back of my neck and said, “Come talk with me.”
We sat down on the porch, next to each other on the glider. He sighed a bunch of times, then he put his arm over my shoulder and said, “Bobby, I know I don’t have to tell you this, but I will. You know how important it is that they catch him, catch whoever did this to Richard and the other boys, right?”
I nodded.
“If there’s anything you think you need to tell me and your mother, or want to tell us, or if there’s anything you’re thinking about or worried about, you can tell us, right?” He stopped and looked both ways up and down our street. Slow, like he was watching for something. I didn’t say anything, so he said, “Son?”
I nodded my head but I couldn’t say anything because I was just, because my throat was stuck. I looked down at my jeans that we had just gotten a few weeks ago, before Richard disappeared, and I dripped a tear on them. They were good school pants – school was still weeks away. They were just some cheap summer jeans. Looking at them, and listening to my dad, it scared me that everything now was measured by whether it was before or after Richard. It scared me that they thought Mr. Dacy could be involved. It scared me that they thought I could be involved. It even scared me more that I wondered if Mr. Dacy was involved, and if he was, if I’d helped somehow and not known it.
He kept talking, talking about how important it was that we help stop this, and help catch the killer, that I might know something I didn’t realize at the time, and how important it was to … something. I would nod and I would shake my head when I thought I was hearing him, but I didn’t hear all of it. I was under water. I was sitting at the bottom of the lake and I couldn’t breathe and everything was muffled.
All of a sudden, he shook me by the shoulder. I didn’t say anything – I didn’t know what to say – so he shook me again, tighter. I was looking up toward his face when he grabbed my jaw with his hand. He turned my head and looked right into my eyes, and he was so angry. “For God’s sake, Bobby! You have to talk. You have to tell us, them, someone, whatever you know! Do you want another …”
The screen door slammed and my mom’s voice came out of somewhere and said, “Evan!” That’s all she said, and the arm relaxed. She came over and ran her fingers through my hair. He said, “Come on, son. Let’s go have some dinner.”
That night, when I was lying in bed not being asleep, he came in and stood by the foot of my bed and said, “I know, son. I’m sorry I got upset. I trust you. We’re all just very worried.” He reached down and squeezed my shin, which was all he could reach, and said, “Get some sleep. Your mom and I love you.”
I cried some more and then I got some sleep.
The next morning, I’d already had my cereal and was peeking out the curtains. I didn’t open them and look out – I just put my finger between them and peeked. I looked down at Mr. Darcy’s shop. There was one car in front. Typical morning in the middle of the week. And then a black sedan pulled up. Then another. They just sat there and didn’t get out. Then a police car and another, on each end of the row of cars. They just sat there for another couple of minutes, then a man got out of the first car. He waved a big circle in the air, walking toward the shop door. When he did that, the police car lights came on, and the other cars spit out six or seven men, in uniform and not.
Maybe 30 seconds later, two cops came out with Mr. Dacy in handcuffs and shoved him in their car and drove off. The other cars stayed there. Two cops in uniform stood out front and the three men in plain clothes went inside.
I got the ottoman and set it in front of the window and sat down. I didn’t think to check the time, but they were in there a long time. At the end, they got three boxes out of the trunk of the first car and took them in. Five minutes later, they all walked out with a box. They got in their cars and drove off. The door to the shop was still open, and they were gone. I just sat and watched nothing for a while. I wanted to go close the door and lock it, but I didn't know what might grab me if I got close, so I stayed at our window. I stayed inside the house all day.
