decided, was a deeply troubled kid, and why shouldn’t he be, an intelligent and imaginative child growing up in a rancid drug den?
“What kind of diary does a twelve-year-old keep? Is it like a record of how many times he jerks off in a day?” Corbett’s tone was light, but I could sense that he wanted to have a look for himself.
I unbuttoned my shirt and tucked the notebook against my ballistic vest. It seemed the only way to carry it securely.
I clicked off the light and went downstairs. Corbett took the hint and followed.
In the entryway, I nearly had a heart attack when the social worker stepped through the front door.
“I take it you haven’t found him yet,” she said.
“I thought you were going to wait outside.”
“I got tired of sitting in the car.”
“It would be better if you did,” said Corbett.
Snow had accumulated atop her hair, as if someone had sprinkled her with powdered sugar. “Do you think the boy is dangerous?”
“If he’s scared, he might be dangerous,” I said.
“Look,” she said. “I can’t keep the engine running, or I’m going to run out of gas. I’m going to take Tammi over to Lubec to that foster home I mentioned. I can’t just wait around all evening for you to find the boy. Why are you looking in the house? I thought the kid ran off into the woods.”
“I want to have a look in the basement,” I said.
“Can’t you just follow his tracks? I thought you game wardens were supposed to be expert trackers.”
“I’m just gathering some information.” I didn’t feel like explaining my search techniques to this woman, or to Corbett, for that matter. “When I find Lucas, what would you like me to do?”
“If he’s been outside this whole time, take him to the hospital. The poor kid could have frostbite or hypothermia. Isn’t a lost kid supposed to be like a super high-level priority?”
“There’s a difference between lost and hiding,” I said.
“Hiding from what?” Corbett asked.
I focused on the social worker. “If you give me your phone number, I’ll call you when I find him. To be on the safe side, I’ll take him to the hospital. Please just take care of Tammi.”
Mueller gave me her cell number. Muttering to herself, she wandered outside.
Standing at the mudroom door, I took a look at the backyard. In the twilight, the snow outside appeared a luminous blue. I could just make out the footprints staggering away into a hedgelike row of small pines that were about the size of Christmas trees. Beyond it were taller evergreens and birches. I would need my snowshoes, I decided.
“I’ve got to agree with the lady,” said Corbett. “You don’t seem like you’re in much of hurry.”
“I know this kid,” I said. “He’s not the type to go running off in a panic. I have a good idea where he is from the map he made in his notebook. What I don’t know is whether he took his grandfather’s rifle with him. Now, if you’ll excuse me for a second, I’m going to look in the basement.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“If you need something to do, call the sheriff and tell her about that pot you found. I’m sure that’ll make her day. You certainly have a nose for the stuff. The psychic connection you have with these drug dealers is uncanny. It defies all belief.”
Corbett tightened his mouth, not quite sure what to make of my veiled accusation. The truth was that I would never be able to prove that the chief deputy had been on the take from Randall Cates. Everyone who could testify to that effect was conveniently deceased.
The cellar was pitch-black, and the light switch didn’t seem to do anything when I gave it a try. Probably there was some sort of naked bulb with a pull cord down there. I trained my flashlight on the steps and carefully descended.
The air felt damp but not as cold somehow. I crouched down and shined the light around the corners of the room. There were boxes everywhere, plus a tool bench, a dusty old television, a girl’s bicycle, a brace of canoe paddles-the usual detritus of a family’s life. An ancient oil tank squatted against the fieldstone wall, an open box of rat poison beside it.
I couldn’t stand up without knocking my head against a pine rafter or getting a faceful of cobwebs. Hunched forward slightly, I picked my way through the junk to have a look at the door that opened onto the bulkhead steps. On the dirt floor there was a small drift of snow that must have tumbled in when Lucas turned the doorknob and took off into the wild.
The next question was whether he had taken his dead grandfather’s. 22 with him. Dusty tools hung from a Peg-Board over a wooden workbench. I saw a hammer, various wrenches, an electric drill-all dusty, and some showing signs of rust-and I had the feeling somehow that none of these tools had been used since the death of the Sewall parents.
I saw an antique advertisement hanging on the mossy fieldstone wall in the corner above the workbench. Someone must have clipped it from an old magazine and stuck it inside a picture frame. It showed an attractive woman in a strange white outfit made of feathers. She wore a sort of cowl that hid her hair from view, and she had her finger extended straight at the viewer, in imitation of the famous recruiting poster
featuring Uncle Sam. Her eyes were heavily made up in 1960s fashion, but there was nothing alluring, or even friendly, about them in the least. Beneath her picture, the poster said I WANT YOU FOR THE DIPLOMAT CORPS.
Below the command, or the threat, or whatever it was, was some explanatory fine print about the corps, along with a picture of an open cigar box.
It was an ad for White Owl cigars.
The scary drawings on the covers of Lucas’s notebook made a certain sense now. He’d been terrified of this poster above his dead grandfather’s tool bench. The image had entered into his nightmares in that inexplicable way that things do when you are a child-or an adult.
“You and Lucas have a lot in common,” Jamie had said. I’d rejected the suggestion as absurd at the time, but now I could begin to understand what she’d meant.
My moment of empathy didn’t last long. It ended the second my flashlight beam picked out the open box of Winchester. 22 long-rifle ammunition on the pallet. Lucas Sewall was armed.
34
When a child disappears in the forest in the winter, especially after dark, you don’t want to waste time, since hypothermia can take hold so quickly. But my sixth sense told me Lucas Sewall was in no immediate danger. As I’d said to the social worker, there is a difference between lost and hiding.
“His mother said he has a tree fort about half a mile from here,” I told Corbett as we returned to our vehicles. I needed a pair of snowshoes if I was going to wade out into that snowy forest. “There’s a map of it in his diary. I think that’s where he went.”
“What else is in that diary?”
“Kid stuff,” I said.
The chief deputy raised the collar on his parka against the chill. “I want to go with you.”
The last thing I needed was a man I didn’t trust trailing after me through snowdrifts and deepening shadows. “Do you have snowshoes in your vehicle?”
“No.”
“Then you’ll just slow me down.”
“The kid doesn’t have them, either.”
“Do me a favor,” I said, “and just wait here until I get back. Call the sheriff for me and ask her if anyone’s questioned Mitch Munro about what he was doing on the Heath the night Cates was murdered.”
Corbett gave me a sad shake of the head. “You won’t let that one go, will you?”
“Call it a character defect,” I said. “Excuse me for a minute. I’ve got to talk to my sergeant.”
