“I gotta get that light fixed,” he said, traipsing down the unlit stairs until his fingers found the switch at the bottom.
The basement looked the same, and he didn’t spare a glance at the doll lying on the floor. Knowing it was silly but doing it anyway, he took a chair and positioned it at the end of the table, not wanting his back to the clock. He sat and ran his weary eyes over the notes. Tonight, the scrawls looked different, Bob’s incoherent hand not seeming wild or unruly. In fact, the lines actually appeared to be words, although disjointed and hacked into the page. Evan sifted through them, seeing letters strung together one second, and the next they were gone, lost in a jumble of scribbles.
At the bottom of the pile, he found the words pressed into the paper. Closing his eyes, he ran his fingertips over the ridges, imagining he could read them like braille. I CAN SEE THEM.
He shuddered and opened his eyes. What the hell was he doing? Looking through the ramblings of a man who most likely wandered off into the winter night to freeze in some hidden place. Evan rubbed his forehead. God, he was tired. Without thinking about it, he whipped a hand across the sheets of paper in frustration, scattering several to the floor. They landed next to one another like birds alighting to feed.
“I need some sleep, then I can sort this out,” he said. “I also need to quit talking to myself.”
With that, he stood and reached down to pick up the papers, but his hand stopped inches from the floor. The air around him froze, and all sound stopped. The pages lay side-by-side, their edges almost touching, the scribbles and unintelligible drawings finally becoming clear.
“What the fuck?” he said, stooping to the ground.
He slid two sheets together and saw that they formed the word BACK. “No way,” he muttered.
He grasped another paper and moved it close to the first two, flipping it different ways, but it didn’t fit. Grabbing all of the loose notes from the table, he pulled them to the floor, moving back to give himself room. He swung the papers different directions, matching their edges and then pulling them apart. Moving around the growing spread of pages, he looked at it from different angles like an artist studying a half-finished sculpture. His mind became focused on the task, the basement around him receding, the promise of something just out of reach coming together.
After pushing the last page into place, he stood and observed the four-foot by eight rectangle he’d formed, the mosaic finally complete.
HIS NAME WAS BILLY AND I KILLED HIM WITH MY TRUCK. HE WAS SIX. I CAN GO BACK I CAN GO BACKICANGOBACKICANGOBACKICANGOBACK.
Evan staggered away from the papers, his hand coming to his mouth. “Oh my God,” he whispered.
12
The waiting-room Wi-Fi signal looked strong on his laptop screen.
Evan glanced at a passing nurse who gave him a smile, then lowered his face into his palm. He hadn’t slept much the night before. Not that it surprised him. Bob’s message still hung like a macabre painting in the hall of his mind. He may have gotten two hours of broken rest in before Shaun woke.
Sighing, he logged on to the Internet and sat still for a moment. Was he really going down this path? A madman had cut the trail before him, he was sure of it. The urge to shut the computer down overcame him, and he went so far as to put his hand on its lid before setting his fingers back on the keys. He typed Bob Garrison car accident into the search bar and waited. The results came back with nothing of interest. He tried again, Robert Garrison Colorado.
A webpage appeared at the top of the screen, with the title Bob’s Odd Jobs over it. Evan clicked on it and saw a simple and outdated website with a few pictures of landscaped yards, paintbrushes, and a smiling man with sandy-blond hair in cargo shorts and sunglasses. He read through the description of services and studied the man’s photograph. That was him, it had to be. A phone number was at the very bottom of the page, and Evan hesitated only a second before calling it. It didn’t ring; an automated voice picked up and told him the number was either disconnected or no longer in service.
He put his phone away and returned to the search engine, typing Colorado car accidents Billy. A few dozen hits came up, but most were decades old and none involved any information about a child.
He readjusted himself in the chair and glanced down the hospital’s hallway, his brain running too fast for him to examine his thoughts. He saw the arrangement of papers on the basement floor again and pushed the image away, but not before a new idea bloomed in his mind.
With trepidation, he typed Colorado hit-and-run Billy 6 years old. The first website that came up made his stomach coil in on itself. Hit-and-run in downtown Boulder leaves 6-year-old dead. Evan clicked on the article and began to read.
A community mourns the loss of a young child today after a hit-and-run accident late Tuesday evening. William Akely, 6, was playing in his front yard at approximately 9 p.m. when he wandered into the street near his home. An unidentified vehicle struck and killed him without stopping. Police say they are following up each and every lead in the case, and are confident that a suspect will be arrested soon. William’s mother, Janet Akely, was watching him at the time of the accident, but officials say she momentarily stepped into the house to answer a phone call. A memorial service will be held at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church of Boulder on Saturday, June 11. The Boulder Police Department is asking for any and all information in regards to the investigation.
With a shaking hand, Evan closed the webpages, and sat staring at the opposite wall of the waiting room. He let the white paint invade his eyes until it was all he could see.
“Mr. Tormer?”
He snapped out of his trance and saw that a young Asian woman stood a few paces away, holding Shaun’s hands in hers.
“Sorry,” Evan said, putting his computer aside. He stood.