“Slow down, Paul. I’ll see what I can do. No, it’s fine to ask a favor, and anyway, this is an emergency. That business: it’s not relevant. Let me call my guy at the station and I’ll see what I can do. But it’s only been four hours, you say?” Ben heard Mr. Cillo scratching around, for a notepad, perhaps. “Five feet, eleven inches? One hundred fifty pounds? He’s not seventeen yet, right? Sixteen you say? That’s good. Last seen walking alone from the indoor turf field complex place toward the Neck, around 6:35 p.m. Any idea why he might’ve left practice? Sick, okay. Listen, Paul. I’ve got to ask you this, because they’re gonna ask me. Is there any chance your boy may have run away? Because if there’s any chance, you’ve got to tell me now. Number one, this is sooner—way sooner—than they usually do these kinds of things. Number two, if they find out the kid is a runaway, and they posted an alert, there’ll be hell to pay. Not tonight or tomorrow, but later, if you ever have any problem at all: crickets. You got me? It becomes a boy-crying-wolf kind of thing…”
Ben’s knees went weak. His parents thought he’d been abducted? Suddenly it wasn’t sappy respect he imagined in his father’s voice, but terror. His chest caved in shame. He’d been so single-minded in his mission to extract the truth from Mr. Cillo that he hadn’t considered the full-on terror his parents lived in: that he was losing his marbles. They thought he’d run away, and the only way, the most efficient way they thought they would get him back was by using this man they hated.
Ben smiled.
Downstairs, thunderous steps moved across the living room into the room off the den. Exposed in the hall, Ben felt sure Mr. Cillo could hear his ragged breaths. If he ran across the living room, past the den and out the front door, Mr. Cillo would see him, plain as day. But there was no other way. He couldn’t be certain the back door off the kitchen wasn’t locked, and a struggle with a locked door wasn’t something he had time for. Ben’s heart sped as Mr. Cillo read aloud from the scrap of paper, the Facts of Ben: his height, his weight, the circumstances of his disappearance. “Color of his hair? Heck, I’m not sure. Light, blondish, like my Mira.”
(Chokes here. Faker, Ben thought)
“Parents said brown eyes. Skinny build”—
(When was the last time he even looked at me? Ben thought)
—“kind of kid a pedophile might like.”
(Takes one to know one, Ben nearly spat)
“Computer-savvy, supposedly. Could have been led by some guy online. He was one of those list kids—forget it, I’m muddling matters. Listen, the boy’s my next-door neighbor, and I know the parents. St. Theresa’s people. Good people. I know it’s early and doesn’t follow protocol, but do it, okay? As a favor for me.”
Ben’s face burned. “Good people.” That was rich. What a phony. Suddenly, Ben’s reason for being there came to him, clear and true. He would surprise the monster, confront him with his accusation, make him sweat. Because now that he was missing, he was like a ghost himself. Mr. Cillo would have no time to adopt his big-man persona, his nice-guy posing. Ben would get clear, unadulterated shock and guilt: that flicker of recognition he’d been imagining and savoring for weeks. Ben let the drug do its job, and his muscles relaxed. He walked down the stairs, slowly, staring into the den. Mr. Cillo was turned to the wall, a sweat stain pressed into his back, a bald spiral mashed into the back of his hair by the chair. He was silent, on hold while his crony on the other end did his bureaucratic missing-child thing to get the AMBER Alert started. Ben opened his mouth to speak—the phrase I know what you did on the edge of his tongue—yet Mr. Cillo remained unmoving, his back to Ben, face inches from the wall. It was an unnatural pose, and Ben cocked his head, wondering, briefly, if he’d had some sort of standing stroke, if those kinds of things existed. Then he saw the barely perceptible shake of his shoulders glued to his inelegant hump of back, made of old manly injuries. The phone stood upright in its charger. Ben placed his hand on the cold doorknob, easing it to the right with a soft click. As he stepped into the night, the note held aloft between two fingers, he was followed by a wracking sob.
Ben watched the action in his house from the Cillos’ rhododendron. Downstairs, window lights flickered as his parents paced past. He imagined the scene when he walked through the front door. He would have to face their panic, and lie that he had tried to run away. It had consequences, but it was the only excuse that was credible. There would be lecturing and berating. His mother would cry. It would be hours before he felt his pillow beneath his head.
The night air smelled crisp and cold, and he drank it in as an antidote to whatever the Zoloft was doing in his system. He thought he might like to stay outside all night, and he knew it was wrong and possibly evil that he should be happy at this moment. He ought to be feeling dread, for the punishment that awaited him, and disappointment, for his failure to confront Mr. Cillo. But the air was invigorating, and Ben was heading for a relic that he alone could interpret, contextualize, catalog.
It would be days before his parents would let him out of their sight, if they allowed it at all. His future in Bismuth was tantamount to a prison conviction. He would need a plan, but not now. Ben slid the note into his shorts and jogged through his side yard to the corner of the cement patio. He was relieved to see the long vertical blinds to the kitchen slider drawn tight. Flashes of red and blue light backlit the house; the cops had arrived, and parked at the front curb. He wondered if the cops were the same ones that had arrived seven years before, after dinner, on another crisp November night when the police came to personally deliver the news that Ben was on Coach Freck’s special list, and to prepare his parents with their own list, names of experts trained to talk to children who had been victimized. Ben’s breathing went trippy. He slipped from his backpack and flattened himself against the house, the vinyl siding cold against his back, and tried to steady his breath. He listened to the robotic bleats of walkie-talkies, and the doorbell chime, then sprinted across the backyard to the play set, taking its stairs in one step and tucking his long body into the lookout. He collapsed to the floor and studied the blinds for movement. Certain they were still, he pulled the note from his pants pocket.
End at the end. Only one place left to go.
Ben ran his eyes over the note once, then twice. He squinted and read it a third time. From the front door came the grateful voices of his mom, then his dad, followed by the formal voices of policemen. Ben folded the note in half, stashed it low in his pocket, and set his jaw. He swung his legs over the stairs and eased down, slipping through the backyard and into the shed. He felt for his father’s heavy plaid work shirt hanging on a long nail until his hand brushed its satisfying heft. He needed warmth for where he was going.