Lost Boy Lost Girl

Kalendar. Like I said before, maybe the Sherman Park Killer woke him up, and the only person he’s visible to is me.”

“Well, maybe the Dark Man is the Sherman Park Killer,” Jimbo said, with the air of one throwing out a random speculation.

“I think it’s the other way around, that the Sherman Park Killer is the Dark Man.”

“What’s the difference?”

“There’s a real killer out there, that’s the difference. The Dark Man can’t take people—he doesn’t even have a face. The Sherman Park guy can kill you.”

They strolled across Sherman Boulevard, as usual paying no attention to the traffic lights.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if other people saw the Dark Man here and there, you know, in little flashes. Things are getting a little weird in this part of town.”

“You’re getting a little weird,” Jimbo said. “It’s like finding out about this Kalendar, this psycho, cheered you up!” He glanced at Mark’s face. “It did, didn’t it? You’re all, like, electrified about something.”

“Well,” Mark said.

“A trunk full of hair and a couple of secret passages wouldn’t do this to you.”

“Well,” Mark said again, and told Jimbo about finding the paper bag in the downstairs closet after leaving it upstairs. “Don’t you see what happened?”

Jimbo honestly had no idea.

“Somebody moved my bag.” Now Mark’s mirth shone from his eyes.

“Kalendar? The Dark Man?”

Mark shook his head. “This person is playing with me, Jimbo. She’s saying, I’m here, why can’t you see me? ”

“It’s a she?”

“I think it’s that girl, the one I sorta saw through the window that morning. Even back then, I had the feeling she was deliberately showing herself. And this morning, I thought I saw—”

Jimbo stopped moving, then shook his head and resumed walking along the west side of Sherman Boulevard toward West Burleigh Street.

“You just remembered something,” Mark said.

“No, it wasn’t anything.”

Mark continued to stare at him.

“When we were in the house together? I thought something moved. I saw this movement, this blur.”

“No kidding,” Mark said. “There you are. See?”

“Not really.”

“Everything’s different in there now. Everything feels different.”

Jimbo sighed. “What do you want me to do tomorrow?”

“See if Old Man Hillyard knows anything about a girl or a young woman.”

“A lot of women died there, did you forget that?”

“Ask anyhow.”

“Kalendar didn’t have any daughters.”

“Just ask, okay?”

“If you promise to tell me what happens if she’s really there and you meet her.”

“Let’s go to your house.”

“Now what do you want to do?”

“Now,” Mark said, “we are going to Google Joseph Kalendar.”

Patrolman Quentin Jester moved to the far side of an immense clump of dying azaleas growing a few feet from the right side of the walkway. He had already walked once around the periphery of the azaleas, and he felt both discouraged and irritated with himself. It was too hot for a man to spend his working day standing out in the full glare of the sun, waiting for a villain who was never going to show his face. In all that heat and glare, even a trained officer could lose his bearings. Patrolman Jester had let his senses persuade him that he had seen that very same massive, black-haired character dressed in the heavy coat and boots following along behind the red-haired kid and his friend. His professional instincts had come into play, and he’d set off down the big flagstones in pursuit of the mystery man; whereupon the said mystery man peeled off the walkway and stepped behind the long bunch of azaleas. Whereupon, for the second time that day, said mystery man upped and vanished from human view, “like,” as Patrolman Jester’s grandfather used to say, “the unclean spirit at sparrow fart and cockerel’s cry.” Quentin Jester might speak of this enigma to his friend Louis Easley after a couple of beers at the House of Ko-Reck-Shun, but he was never going to put it in a report.

“Yo, ever see one like that before?”

“One what?

“One of those.” Jimbo pointed back across Sherman Boulevard, where eight or nine cars lined up at parking meters stood baking in the sun. Near the center of the row was a red Chevrolet pickup truck, which Mark supposed was the subject of Jimbo’s question.

“Yes, odd as it may seem, I have seen a red pickup before.”

Jimbo was shaking his head vehemently and grinning. He was in a good mood, Mark thought, because he had been let off the hook in regard to Joseph Kalendar’s house.

“Okay, it’s shiny,” he said. “In fact, it’s really shiny. It’s the cleanest, brightest pickup I’ve ever seen. I’d eat a fried egg off its hood.”

“Can’t you see?” Jimbo asked. “It’s the only pickup in the world with . . . with . . .”

“Oh,” Mark said, having seen. “Smoked windows.”

“Pimpwindows, man. With windows like that, I bet you can hardly see a thing.”

“What kind of guy owns that truck?”

“A rich guy,” Jimbo said. “That thing never leaves the garage. It’s like a toy to the guy who owns it.”

The boys were walking slowly along Sherman Boulevard, watching the truck across the street as they drew parallel to it. “It’s some rich kid,” Mark said. “Some twenty-year-old guy who lives in his parents’ gigantic house on Eastern Shore Drive and who will never, for as long as he lives, ever have to get his hands dirty or work outside and get sweaty.”

“Unlike us,” Jimbo said. “The sons of the soil.”

Both of them burst into laughter. When they had gone past the pickup truck, what had been a pleasant diversion ceased to exist, and they forgot all about it.

They reached the front of the Sherman Diner, and Jimbo stopped walking and looked in through its long window.

“I’ll catch up with you later, okay? I kind of arranged to meet someone here for a Coke or something.”

“I don’t believe you,” Mark said, then remembered Jimbo suggesting that they drop in at the diner the day before. “Who is it?”

“Lee Arlington,” Jimbo said, too quickly.

Lee Arlington was an extremely pretty girl in their class. She was reported to be prone to moods, and she wrote poetry in a big journal she carried everywhere with her in her backpack.

“Come on in, too,” Jimbo said. “She’s with Chloe Manners, and Chloe always liked you.”

Mark wavered. He wanted to go into the diner and see what the girls were talking about and what was on their minds, but he also wanted to see if he could find a full-frontal picture of Joseph Kalendar’s face, as well as the details of his crimes.

“You go, have a good time,” he said. “I want to get some info on this psycho cousin of mine. Come over when you’re through here.”

“Half an hour,” Jimbo said. “I’ll be there.”

At the end of the block, Mark remembered the red pickup and glanced back to get another look at it. Jimbo was right: guys who rode around in pickups generally didn’t go for tinted windows. Back down the street, a little sky-blue Datsun was reversing into the empty space where the pickup had been. Too bad, he thought, but no major