Chapter 2 Warsaw Creek #2
Monica continued. “When did you call for help?”
“When I didn’t find him, I called 911, and then his parents. I thought someone might have taken him.” Her voice hitched.
Not an unreasonable thought. The Sumners were clearly wealthy. Someone could’ve abducted their child for ransom. Maybe someone tried to take him, he kicked up too much of a fuss, and his abductor threw him into the pond.
“How much time passed from when you realized he was missing and when you called 911?” Monica asked.
“Maybe…ten minutes? I don’t…I don’t know.”
“What did you do after you called?”
“I went outside to wait for help.”
“Did you go out the front door, or the back door, or…?”
“Front door. I wanted to be able to flag them down in case they got lost. Then I saw the lady…the police lady coming through the field.”
“Did Mason seem sick? Was he injured?”
“No, no…he was fine. He was playing with his toys.”
I drifted into the living room. A massive leather sectional dominated the area before a stone fireplace.
Family pictures were arranged on the cherrywood mantel.
There were professionally taken pictures of Mason holding dinosaur plushies, candids of him at the zoo, and portraits of him with his family.
His father was in his early forties, in a polo shirt and with an artificially white smile.
Now that I saw him when he wasn’t raging, he did look vaguely familiar, like I might’ve seen his picture on television.
Mason’s mother was fashionably dressed, with a very heavy ring set on her left hand.
There were no siblings, but some extended family appeared in wedding pictures: grandparents and some aunts and uncles, it looked like.
I counted ten groomsmen and ten bridesmaids arranged before an altar with a clergyman.
It must’ve been a winter wedding, since the women all wore high-necked dresses with sleeves, but the bridal bouquet was full of summer flowers: lilies and dahlias.
I scanned the vacuum cleaner marks in the carpet. I imagined the Sumners had a cleaner, as there wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere. I paused before the massive front door, frowning at something on the lintel above the door.
I donned gloves and reached for it. It was heavy, cold, and rough to the touch. I realized it was a rusted railroad spike, the kind used to keep tracks pinned to railroad ties.
In the distance behind the house, toward the pond, I glimpsed photography flashes. Though this was likely a tragic accident, there was still evidence to be recorded.
Just in case things were not as they seemed.
Monica led Leah to the door. “I’m going to take her to the station. I’ve called her father, and we’ll meet him there.”
“I’ve got this,” I assured her.
It was weird that Leah hadn’t called her father. She’d called 911. She’d called the Sumners, to tell them their son was hurt. But she hadn’t called her parents. Hmm.
I watched from the living room window as Monica pulled away. I took pictures of my own…of the alarm-panel fault, toys on the floor, the railroad spike above the door. I directed evidence techs to dust the wet bathroom windowsill, the alarm panels, and the door latches.
I did a quick sweep of the house to make sure Leah hadn’t left behind any evidence of alcohol or drugs, and that there wasn’t an abductor hiding in a walk-in closet.
The Sumners could afford to be minimalist. Their closets were empty of everything but well-chosen designer clothing, and there was no clutter.
Trash cans were empty. The rest of the doors and windows were locked.
I didn’t see any way the boy could’ve exited the house except through the kitchen door.
The garage was locked, and there were no other ways in or out.
With the doors closed, the house smelled odd, like incense in a church.
I found a bit of fragrant ash in a coffee cup in the kitchen sink.
I smelled sandalwood in the cup, and it had a tiny burn mark inside it.
Slowly, law enforcement filtered away until I was left alone with Gibby. Gibby sat on the back patio, his ears twitching, staring at the pond, growling.
“Yeah,” I said, “I felt it, too.”
And I wasn’t sure what to think about that uneasiness. Something wasn’t right. Maybe my imagination had been sparked by the green flash that had opened a memory from my childhood. Maybe.
I walked down to the pond to convince myself that it was just an ordinary pond, the site of a tragic accident. It sure looked like it, full of cattails and algae. The frogs had found their voices again.
I looked past the pond, at the forest, orienting myself.
Beyond, there was marshland, dried out from the drought we’d been having this summer, and there was a little creek, Warsaw Creek, which was a tributary of the Copperhead River.
Evidently it wasn’t picturesque enough on its own, necessitating a pond.
This place was only a half mile down the road from the meth bust. That’s the way it was in rural places: there were strict socioeconomic divisions via property lines.
But the dark forest and the creek connected the upper crust and those who lived in the shadows of society.
I turned back toward the house. Something moved behind the trash cans, barely illuminated by the patio light.
What the hell was that?
I advanced on it. It twisted in the breeze, like a trash bag.
I captured it before it loosened free of the trash cans and skidded across the yard. It was fabric. It was some kind of a costume—a black hooded cape. The material was the kind I’d expect for a Halloween costume: cheap, filmy velvet. As I examined it, I saw a strand of long brunette hair inside.
It was probably nothing, blown in from the road. But I bagged it anyway, because it was weird and it had creeped me the fuck out.
On the way out, I paused at the end of the driveway.
The rural mailbox was embedded in a stone pedestal—certain to keep mailbox smashers at bay.
The mailbox’s door was slightly open, and I squinted at it.
The letter carrier would close it from force of habit.
So would most homeowners—no one wanted rain to seep in and make an electric bill soggy.
With a pen, I opened the box all the way and shone my flashlight inside.
A skull stared back at me.
It wasn’t human. Looked like a white-tailed deer skull. A doe’s—no nubbins of antlers that wouldn’t fit in the mailbox.
On its bleached forehead was the number ten. And a symbol.
I leaned close, peering at the symbol roughly drawn in black paint.
It was round, the outline looking like a snake. The snake’s jaws clutched its tail in a perfect circle.
I wasn’t sure what it was. But it sure looked like a threat.