THE LAST BOY (12 page)

“Didn’t we—”

“Yeah, we had her a couple of times for drunk and disorderly.”

“Where does she work?” asked Tripoli with a half smile. He had already made the connection and took pleasure in watching Sisler play catch up.

“In that convenience store…Oh!” he said, slapping his forehead. “Up the block from Kute Kids. He's been stalking his old lady?”

“What do you think?

“Sure. That's why he doesn’t want to talk.”

“You’re a little slow,” said Tripoli with exaggerated indulgence, “but eventually you get it.”

Sisler reddened.“Okay, what else?”

Tripoli thought for a moment. “Why don’t you see if you can get us a list of women who had a child die in the last five years— six—no, wait, make it seven. I want it with male children first.

“How do I do that, Trip?”

Tripoli liked Sisler. And he knew he would be a good detective one day. But sometimes he seemed as bright as a small appliance bulb.

“I don’t know,” said Tripoli.“That's your problem. Talk to Lynn Spino.” He motioned in her direction where she stood off to the side talking to a trooper.“Lynn's done it before. And—while you’re at it—I want a list of recent miscarriages. Check with the doctors over at Fifty Fingers on Buffalo Street,” he said, referring to the five gynecologists who handled almost all the obstetrics in town. “And get a list of people who lost custody of their kids—flag those around the Driscoll boy's age. You can probably get that through Social Services. And get ahold of the parole office. I want to know who's out on the street that we need to be worried about.”

Tripoli left Sisler and walked to the wall where the street maps hung. He stared blankly at the big county map, the highways radiating out from the base of the lake where Ithaca sat nestled in the valley; stared at the flat projection of hills and streams as if it contained the secret to Danny Driscoll's whereabouts. And he thought about Molly, the sheer hell she was going through.

The Oak Hill Manor Home was just above town on South Hill. It sat on Hudson street discretely tucked away in a neighborhood of elegant old houses that Molly had always admired.

Molly parked at the side of the building and took the first door she could find, which brought her into the lobby. She stood there for a moment trying to get her bearings. Down one of the corridors she could see old folks sitting in chairs and an ancient man shuffling
down a hallway hunched over a walker. Somewhere a person was persistently coughing, trying to clear his chest of phlegm. Two televisions were running, competing with the piped-in music oozing in from overhead. The air was filled with the powerful scent of disinfectant which failed to mask the odor of age and human decay.

A portly woman in uniform whites approached Molly, her head so massive and doughy that her eyes seemed little more than sunken raisins. She wore a nameplate that identified her as Daphne.

“Oh, you’re the woman on television with the missing boy. I recognize you.”

“They’ve got it on already?”

“Oh, yes. Definitely. They had you on the news at noon. And in the paper, too—which is why Edna called you.”

Daphne seemed to know everything.

“I was the one who took the phone from her. I’m sorry she called you,” she smiled sympathetically. “You certainly don’t need more upset.”

“Then she didn’t see my boy?” asked Molly, the disappointment swelling in her voice.

“Honey, that woman's been seeing a lot of people in the last years—JFK and Elvis included,” she shook her head and laughed. “Mostly it's politicians, though. She was one of those political science professors up at the University, I hear. Smart as a whip in her day. But, well, you get close to ninety and things up here,” she touched her temple,“just go downhill.”

“Could I talk to her?”

“Why of course,” Daphne said. “She's always happy to have company. But I wouldn’t take anything she says too seriously.” And she led the way.

They walked down a long hallway, skirting a man in a wheelchair who was chanting to himself as he rocked back and forth. In one of the rooms, a woman with crumpled features lay in a bed, her
tiny head nestled in a large white pillow, her eyes closed, her mouth gaping wide. In the next room, a man with an oxygen tank feeding a gizmo hooked into his nose sat upright in a chair, staring blankly out a window. It struck Molly as bizarre that she was here, of all places, looking for her little boy.

Edna Poyer had a room to herself. She was a remarkably sprightly little woman who apparently liked makeup, though no longer had quite the knack for applying it. Her lips had been painted with a shaky hand and her face was garishly rouged. She was sitting on the edge of her bed when Molly came in, and she immediately got to her feet.

“Mrs. Poyer, you got yourself a visitor,” said Daphne loudly. “Though what you did was not very nice.”

“Please,” Molly said, silencing Daphne with a hand.

“Well, I’ll leave you two,” Daphne said with raised voice. Turning to Molly, she added sotto voce,“She doesn’t hear none too good, so you gotta talk loud.”

“I heard that,” Edna said when Daphne was out of the door. “That woman's always patronizing me!”

Molly was taken aback. So, she
was
alert.

“Now,” Edna said, “we’ve got to get ready for our meeting.” With a delicately boned hand, she fussed with her hair which was snow white and so sparse you could see the pink of her scalp.

“Meeting?”

“National Security Council, right? That's why you’re here, isn’t it?”

Molly's hopes nosedived.

“They need us to advise them. We want to be primed and ready to go. Did you bring the briefing papers?”

“That's not why I came.”

“Oh?” said Edna, looking askance.

“I came because of my boy. Danny. Danny Driscoll.”

Edna looked thoroughly puzzled.

“Is he one of my grad students?”

“No, he's just a little boy.”

“Well, you certainly look too young to have a son who's a grad student. To me, though, everyone looks so young!” she giggled. Her skin was paper thin; lines of blue veins coursed their way up the sides of her neck and temples.

Molly tried to control her impatience. “You called me about a half an hour ago.”

“Oh, you’re the one working for the Warren Commission?”

“I’m the mother of the missing boy.”

“Oh, the missing boy,” said Edna as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“You saw him?”

“Couldn’t miss the little tyke. Cute little boy.”

“Where’d you see him?”

“Out in front of Woolworth's,” responded Edna immediately.

“What were you doing there?”

“Where?”

“In front of Woolworth's.”

“If I was there, I was probably shopping.”

“So you were standing where?”

“You know…what's your name?”

“Molly.”

“You know, Molly, I knew that McCarthy was going to fall under the weight of his own arrogance. I remember—”

“Mrs. Poyer—”

“Professor Poyer,” Edna corrected.

“You said you saw my little boy.”

“Yes. I saw him. In front of Woolworth's.”

“When?”

“When I was there!” she shook her head. “Heavens, you keep
asking the same questions all the time.”

Molly tried to keep in check her mounting frustration. She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. She was beginning to suspect that Lou Tripoli might have been right.

“What did you see?”

“I saw your little boy. You could hardly help noticing a little guy like that crossing streets on his own. I would
never
have allowed any of my children to be out on their own, what with traffic and all.”

“So?”

“So naturally, I asked him,‘Are you allowed to be out alone?’”

“And?”

“And he said it was okay, and just marched on.”

“To where?”

“Last thing I saw he was heading to those stairs that lead to South Hill.” Edna turned to gaze out the window. A flurry of yellow and brown drifted down from a nearby tree whose base was already encircled with a carpet of leaves matted from the early. In the protected shadows there were still hidden patches of white.

When Edna turned back she said, “I think I’m going to be offered that ambassadorship to Czechoslovakia—and it won’t cost anyone a plugged nickel. How's that?”

“What did the boy look like?” asked Molly, quickly adding, “The one in front of Woolworth's.”

“Of course, this administration owes me a few favors.”

“Professor Poyer—”

“Heavens, call me Edna.”

“Edna. The little boy you saw at Woolworth's? What did he look like?” Molly insisted.

“Him? The little guy?”

“Yes. Yes!”

“Maybe four. Five. Not six. Big head of blond curly hair. That the one?”

“Yes,” said Molly hoarsely.“What was he wearing?”

Edna wrinkled her forehead in thought. “Hmmm,” was all she said.

“Thanks,” said Molly, getting up to go. Edna had obviously studied the picture in the paper.

Molly had reached the doorway when she heard Edna voice. “Had on a little flannel shirt.”

Molly froze.

“One of those red ones with crisscrossing lines. Blue and yellow.”

Molly's breath caught. Her heart started to pound and her thoughts raced.

“I remember he had sneakers on. White sneakers with markings or something?”

Molly slowly turned, afraid to startle Edna. She looked searchingly into the milkiness of Edna's eyes.

“My memory just isn’t what it used to be,” admitted Edna.

“Wait,” said Molly, trying to recall precisely the description she had given Wally Schuman and his reporters, “you read that in the paper, didn’t you?”

“There's been absolutely no mention in the papers yet about my appointment. Everything's still hush-hush,” said Edna, putting a gnarled finger to her painted lips. “And I hope I can rely on your discretion.”

Molly found Daphne in a resident's room nearby. She was hoisting another frail man from his bed to a chair.

“Was Edna out yesterday?”

Daphne nodded.

“About what time?”

“The police brought her back around four in the afternoon.”

Molly's heart was now racing so hard she felt light-headed.

“Do you have today's
Ithaca Journal
here?”

“Sure. One second.” She lifted the emaciated man seemingly without any effort and slipped him into a contraption with wheels that reminded Molly of Danny's old highchair. “There you go, Mr. Cantrell.”

Mr. Cantrell's hands were shaking and he mumbled something inaudible. Daphne slid a tray into the chair, locking the man tightly in place.

In the office, Daphne found the morning's newspaper. Sure enough, on the front page was Danny's picture. And in color. Molly scanned the story feverishly. It gave his age, his height, but nowhere did it mention that the shirt was flannel. Just that it was red. She grabbed the phone in the nurse's office and called the police hotline listed in the paper.

“Let me talk to Lou Tripoli,” she said when an officer answered.

“Who's this?”

“Molly Driscoll.”

“He's in a meeting.”

“Well get him out. It's important.”

She waited.

“Okay, what's up?” asked Tripoli when he finally came on.

“I’m up at Oak Hill Manor.”

“Oh, shit,” he mumbled.

“No you hear me out. That woman may be out of her skull some of the time, but she's not totally bonkers.”

“You can’t rely on anything she says.”

“She was out yesterday on the streets.”

“We know that. We were the ones who brought her back.”

“She says she saw Danny in front of Woolworth's. By himself. Walking.”

“That doesn’t—”

“Hold on. She described what he was wearing. A red flannel shirt. Sneakers.”

“Well, that description was out to every agency in the county. She could have—”

“Not the flannel part. That wasn’t in the papers. And don’t tell me that she has a scanner and monitors the police frequencies.”

“So she got it from the TV.”

“Wait. There's more. She described his shirt as red with blue and yellow crisscrossing lines—which is exactly right except for some black lines—and
no one
knew that. Not even you guys.”

“I’ll send up someone to talk to her—if you insist.”

“I insist.”

“But I just can’t drop everything this instant. I just don’t want to waste precious time checking out red herrings when we could be following better leads. We’ve got tons of possibilities we’ve got to exhaust. Come on, please, Molly, trust me on this a little. Okay?”

It's odd, thought Tripoli the next morning as he stared out his window at the passing traffic. People act like a school of fish. All of a sudden they all turn left. Or right. No telling. Now they were all terrified. They were keeping their little kids home from school, locking doors usually left unlocked, eyeing one another suspiciously. Somewhere in town there was a maniac loose who was abducting little children. Tripoli knew you couldn’t reason with rampant fear, yet he could feel the pressure building. Maybe he was causing some of it, too. They were pulling in and grilling anyone within a fifty-mile radius who had a record that might indicate an abduction or kidnapping—and getting absolutely nowhere. Canvassing the neighborhoods was yielding nothing. They had gotten calls from people who claimed to have seen Danny. He had been spotted in the Pizza Hut out on Route 13, up by the roller rink in the Northeast, down at Cass Park on a baseball field. Every little blond kid seemed to be a sighting, yet they had no choice but to check out every possibility, no matter how improbable.

Richie Pellegrino came by in the early afternoon after his shift. “How's it going, Trip?” he asked, dropping into one of the metal folding chairs next to Tripoli. It creaked under his weight.

“I don’t know,”Tripoli shook his head. The people on his team were still working the phones, but turning up nothing you could really dig your claws into. “This looks worse and worse with time. The troopers are helping us put together a search party. In another hour, they’ll be ready to roll.”

“Yeah, but search where?”