Every day he read through the sports news, and even scanned the listings of football injuries. For the editors of Sports Illustrated, he was certain that he could spin an on-the-field injury into some sort of conspiracy or revenge plot hatched by Judge Forak/Dr. Moore. Every day he was disappointed by the relative health of his famous classmate.
Peg suggested they look further into the history of this Dr. Moore, but Ricky was against it. Moore had already sent Phil Canella to silence them, he reasoned. There’s no use getting closer than necessary to such a dangerous man. The detective’s disappearance had sent a clear message. Ricky didn’t trust the sonofabitch and he didn’t want to deal with him anymore.
Ricky had instituted some home-crafted security measures around the trailer. He hung bells on all the doors and lined up flowerpots and tchotchkes along all the windowsills. He bought another gun, giving them four total, including the one he took off Canella, and placed them in evenly dispersed hiding places throughout their home.
Over Ricky’s objections Peg decided to learn as much as she could about their adversary, and found some old articles on Anna Kat’s murder on the computer at the Brixton Public Library. Reading them, she tried to imagine the horror of losing a daughter that way and tried to imagine Jimmy Spears in the act of such a savage crime. She couldn’t. But if he did it, she supposed he deserved to be dead, and said so to Ricky.
“No man gets to be judge, jury, and executioner,” Ricky said, ignoring for the moment that he was the one who put Davis Moore on the trail of Jimmy Spears in the first place. “What I did here, what we did – you know, the thing with the guy? – that there was self-defense. This Dr. Moore is hunting a man down in cold blood, and that’s another thing altogether. If he succeeds, it’s our duty to tell the world what we know.” Peg made copies of the articles and kept them in an envelope under her socks.
A few weeks ago, Peg had revisited the idea of blackmailing Jimmy Spears. “We’ll send him a letter saying we know what he did. Maybe we can get the money even if Jimmy doesn’t get killed.” They wrote the letter, but decided not to send it. “If they trace it back to us and then something really does happen to Jimmy, the whole deal will be blown,” Ricky said. “They’ll come after us and we’ll go to prison instead of Moore.” He didn’t rule it out as a plan B, however.
On the morning of the fishing trip, Peg stood at the door to the trailer and watched Ricky and Tim Pokorny climb into the cab of the truck. She waved good-bye, and Ricky smiled and pointed to her through the open window. As they turned out of the trailer park, Peg studied the door frame. For weeks after the thing with the guy, she had noticed dry brown specks inside the door, which she then cleaned with a paper towel and a bottle of spray bleach. Today she looked hard and even squatted on her knees to look in the least obvious places, but couldn’t find a single one.
Alone, she was almost giddy.
– 38 -
Joan’s examining room was not the spare, antiseptic cell most physicians maintain in deference to their patients’ germ phobias. Kids, Joan reasoned, are more afraid of doctors than they are of germs, and so her room, though no less clean, was painted in bright colors and had laminated (that is, washable) pictures of Disney characters on the wall. The examining table was bright purple, and the sanitary paper she pulled across it had cartoon balloons and Snoopys. The floor was literally dotted with appliques, the purple-polka-dot kind.
“What are you doing here?” Joan said to Davis when she walked in, a leather portfolio held flat against her stomach. Davis was lying on the Snoopy paper, reading a journal article, which he suspended above his face with his left hand. He hopped to his feet and pulled a new sheet of paper off its roll, tearing off the length he had just wrinkled and stuffing it in the garbage.
“Was wondering if I could sit in,” Davis said.
“On Justin’s physical?” Joan’s frown declared it a bad idea. “Why?”
“Just to observe. I read the report from his shrink. I guess the divorce has been tough on him.”
“Tough on any kid,” Joan said.
“Yeah, but especially tough on a kid like that.”
“Like what?” Joan baited.
“You know. Smart. Genetically predisposed to… whatever.”
“Wow,” Joan said with a dry lilt. “Is Davis Moore actually expressing concern for this child, instead of pawning that responsibility off on me?”
“Come on, Joan. You know I care about Justin.”
“Maybe,” she said, closing a drawer she noticed was ajar. “But that’s the first time I’ve heard you admit that Justin might have a genetic disposition to anything. Are you finally admitting to some second thoughts about this?”
“No,” he said. “We’re all predisposed to some vice, some evil. I didn’t create the genetic matter that made him. Nature had already mixed it in that combination.”
“You didn’t create it, Davis, you just doubled the recipe. Instead of one monster, you have one monster on the loose and maybe another in the making.”
“We don’t know that. I just think we need to watch him more closely.”
“Whatever, Dave.”
Davis examined an anatomical drawing on the wall. It was a poor attempt at looking indifferent. “I called you last night to talk about this,” he said. “Where were you?”
“A date. Jazz at the Green Mill.”
“Great,” he said, too quickly.
“I’m not getting younger, Davis. It’s tough to meet single men my age.”
“Why limit it to men your age?” he said. Joan didn’t have to wonder if the question had a flirtatious subtext.
“ Single men any age. In Northwood, anyway,” she said.
Davis nodded. “So it’s okay if I observe? Ask him some questions?”
“You should ask him about Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. Dr. Morrow says the little braniac’s interested in astronomy now. You better hope he doesn’t take up genetics next. If Justin starts reading Mendel, you’ll be busted for sure.” She paused but Davis didn’t laugh. “All right. I’ll tell Mrs. Finn it’s routine. She won’t mind.”
Davis put his hand on the door. “This room is fun. I like the colors. I might do all my reading in here.”
“Get out. I’ll have Ellen buzz you when I’m ready.”
Davis feigned a pout and skulked out of the room with heavy slapstick feet. Back in his office, he had files to review ahead of a four o’clock appointment with a couple scheduled for a conventional in vitro procedure next month. Their history remained on his desk in an unopened folder.
He pulled a drawer past his left knee and lifted out a file, which he spread across his lap. One by one, he removed seven tattered and water-damaged pieces of paper and spread them in two rows across his desk.
He had collected them two nights before, one of the many evenings he drove home past Justin’s house. This particular night, something he had never noticed seemed at first unusual, then startling. He drove to the next block, up and down and across the avenue (which was broad and grand but with little traffic), and through an adjacent neighborhood. Finally, he parked his car and retraced his route, circling Justin’s house as the streets of the subdivision wound and crossed in nongeometric patterns. As he walked, Davis breathed in the lake air, sweetened by magnolia and linden trees and professionally groomed grass. He examined every streetlamp and utility pole, collecting specimens along the way until he at last came back upon his car with these seven pieces of paper in hand: LOST DOG MISSING KITTEN BELOVED FAMILY PET HELP US FIND MIKO WE MISS OUR PUPPY HAVE YOU SEEN COTTON? PLEASE HELP FIND OUR BANDIT!
One was written in a child’s hand; the rest seemed penned by an adult under a child’s direction, or at least with the grief of a child in mind. All of them included a photo of the dog or cat and a phone number to call, should the animal appear. Davis palmed the keyboard of his computer, waking up the monitor, and typed each number into a reverse-lookup engine on the Internet. He wrote down the addresses and opened a map printed by the Northwood Chamber of Commerce for last year’s Garden Walk and placed it on top of the street flyers. With a Magic Marker, he
