In the last month he had guaranteed that his wife would leave him, he had blackmailed his boss, and this morning, he had lost his job - all for this belief that somehow, he was doing what Alex wanted.
Now even the boy had disappeared.
What was left?
Maybe the question wasn't, "Is there really a good reason to kill Tim Kelton?"
Maybe it was, "Is there really a good reason
not
to?"
He went downstairs and turned on his computer.
For the first time since that morning, his hands had stopped shaking.
Despite not having slept in nearly 36 hours, his mind felt clear.
Compared to the hours of painstaking research he had done on "Kelly", finding Tim Kelton was laughably easy.
His mother, Martha Kelton, had died on November 26th, 2004.
Her home had been located at
1541 W. Hill Road
in
Shakopee
,
MN
.
On the Shakopee city website, he was able to confirm the current owner as Kelton, Timothy S.
He stared at this information for maybe two minutes - waiting for the phone to ring, or Alex to appear, or a mysterious window to pop up that said, "Don't do it."
Then he printed out directions, grabbed his gun and his stuffed cat, and got back in the car.
The clock in the dashboard read
4:17 PM.
It wasn't dark yet, but it was drawing close; by twenty to six it would probably be pitch black outside.
He could wait an hour, head to Kelton's house under cover of darkness, but he didn't want to.
He wanted it to still be light out.
He wanted Kelton to see his face.
A gentle snowfall began as he eased on to 169.
He drove in silence for nearly ten minutes, then turned on the radio.
It was set to the Current, and they were playing Dessa again: some haunting,
a cappella
piece he had heard before but didn't know the name of.
It matched his mood perfectly, so he listened to it until it ended, and then he was almost there.
West Hill Road
was at the southwest edge of town, past the main drag and the more newly developed areas, surrounded by broad fields and slowly freezing creeks, and not far, he noted distantly, from O'Dowd lake.
The street sign hung from its pole at an angle, faded with age, at the base of an aptly noted hill dotted with snow-shrouded trees.
He flipped on his signal and angled up the street toward the hill's crest.
There were no driveways on the incline, but ahead he saw a battered minivan turning out of a cross street and heading down the hill.
As it passed him, he caught a glimpse of the driver.
He was short and gaunt.
His black baseball cap blended into the gathering murk of the vehicle's cabin, and Ian wouldn't have even noticed it if it hadn't sported a stitching of a pair of glaring, bloodshot eyes just above the brim.
For a split second, the driver met his gaze; then he was gone, disappearing into the distance of Ian's rearview mirror.
Daddy, I don't like that black hat.
His calm evaporated, boiling away like dew from morning grass.
The eyes are scary on that black hat.
"Jesus Christ."
He slammed on the brakes, his feet moving faster than his brain, and cranked the emergency brake into place before jumping out of the car, craning his head down the hill.
At the bottom, he saw the rear bumper of the minivan turning out of sight.
It was going right, into town.
Every instinct screamed to follow him: to jump back in the car and tear down the hill, maybe ram him off the road.
But the guy might see Ian coming, he might have a weapon - or even worse, someone else might see the vehicles collide and try to get involved, maybe even keep Ian off him.
No.
He couldn't chase him.
But he knew where the man had come from.
He'd probably come back.
Ian got back in the car, groping for some sliver of his previous calm, but the sight of the man's hat had completely undone him.
He released the emergency brake and rolled up the hill, his eyes locked on the outlet the van had rolled out from.
The mailbox came in to view, shrouded by the surrounding trees, but his lights caught the number.
1541.
The man with the black hat was Tim Kelton.
He started to turn into the driveway, but stopped and backed out.
He wanted to catch Kelton by surprise.
If the man came home and saw a strange car in his driveway, that wouldn't happen.
So he rolled past maybe a quarter mile, and parked in a shallow shoulder, brimming with dead leaves.
He still hadn't seen another driveway.
He stuffed the .22 in his waistband again, and hesitated for only a bare instant before grabbing Mowsalot.
It was like clutching a chunk of dry ice.
"Fuck!" He snatched his fingers back and shook them, stunned, then hunted for some gloves.
He found an old, unmated one in the trunk, put it on, and used it to stuff the toy under his arm.
Then he hiked back up the road to the house, his heart hammering in his ears.
1541 West Hill Road
had a long, dirt driveway, winding through a wooded lot; it ended in a wide loop in front of an old rambler.
All the windows were shaded and dark.
A rusted metal swing set sat decaying in the front yard, like the bleached skeletal remains of some old dinosaur.
It made Ian's stomach turn, but it wasn't the last thing to catch his eye.
A utility pole stood just before the tree line, and near the top of it jutted a tornado siren.
The black hat.
The tornado siren.
Ian's stomach did lazy pirouettes.
Alex must have been here.
He must have heard the siren.
His references to it had been attempts to explain where he had been - where Kelton still was.
They had to have been.
He darted to the front porch, tried the front door.
He wanted to wait in ambush for Kelton from within the house, but the door was locked.
He stole around to the side and found a window, but it was barred.
The next was the same.
But in the rear corner of the home was a third window.
On the other side, within the house, it was covered by some kind of wooden plank; Ian couldn't see through it to the interior.
He broke the glass anyway, then reached through and tried to pry the plank aside.
It wasn't a plank nailed across the window.
It was something like a bookcase.
It started rocking as he jostled it, until finally it tipped, spilling into the house with a crash.
He froze, Mowsalot burning with cold beneath his arm, his breath whistling in his lungs as he listened for a shout of surprise from inside.
After thirty seconds he heard nothing but the dull whine of an engine on the road beyond the trees, its headlights flickering between the boughs as it passed.
The ghostly light was a reminder.
He'll be coming back.
Hurry.
Ian used his gloved hand to brush the broken glass from the threshold, then climbed inside, being careful not to drop Mowsalot.
He wished he had brought a flashlight.
He didn't want to turn the lights on, to alert Kelton to his presence should he happen to return.
But even with all the windows covered as they were, there was still enough light to make out the little dining area he was standing in, the galley kitchen ahead of him that exited in a circle back to the front door, the tattered couch and old T.V. sitting in the living space to his right.
There was still enough light to make out the rolled-back rug, and the trapdoor set into the floor of the dining room.
"Jesus," Ian breathed.
He remembered Alex in the basement at home, whimpering and sobbing inside the cellar pantry.
"God."
I should put the bookcase back, try to make it look normal, hide in the kitchen and jump him when he comes in.
There's no time to check the door.
I don't want to be down there when he comes back.
And that was true, all of it, of course it was, but he was heading into the kitchen anyway, hunting for something that would let him get the padlock off that trapdoor since he didn't have the key.
He was sure that Alex had been here, now, and he had to see it - he couldn't come so close to the place where Alex had felt such pain and not do what he could to share that burden.
He had to see it.
In the kitchen he found two boxes of breakfast cereal - the sugary kind with the cartoon characters on the front - and a carton of fruit snacks.
Each of these turned his stomach, made him want to scream or vomit, but he kept rummaging through until he found what he needed: a claw hammer, hanging from two hooks beneath the sink, and a flashlight.
He snatched them up, set Mowsalot down, and went to work against the trapdoor's padlock.
But he was a nerd who worked in a tech support phone bank, for Christ's sake, and he didn't have the strength to break the lock.
"Dammit," he hissed.
He resettled himself on the floor, threw his shoulder into it - and his hands slipped, cracking into the floor and bouncing the hammer out of the lock with a clatter.
"Fuck!"
The lock was marred, though.
Starting to bend.
So he grabbed the hammer again, jammed it into place, and stood up to lean into it with his foot, with all his weight.
He imagined his foot slipping just like his hands had, the hammer leaping upward and smashing into his face, and stole a glance at Mowsalot to reassure himself.
Don't worry,
the cat's brazen grin seemed to say.
Eston's here, but I won't let him try anything.
In the end, the whole plate came off the trapdoor, tearing loose with a squeal.
He kicked it aside, the padlock still hanging off it, and yanked the door open.
Inside was a cement staircase - so steep it was nearly a ladder - plunging into blackness.
Again, he noted that going down those stairs would be a terrible idea while Kelton was still gone.
The basement wasn't going anywhere; he could check it out later, after his business with Kelton was finished.
But this warning was never more than a passing curiosity.
He felt closer to Alex than he had since the boy died, and it suddenly occurred to him that maybe
this
was what the boy wanted, what he had been trying to show him for weeks.
He had died alone.
Maybe he just wanted someone to share what he had gone through.
If that would buy him peace, then it was important - more important than anything else.
"I'm coming, Alex," he muttered, and began to lower himself down the steps.
He was swallowed by darkness immediately, alone with it save for the erratic beam from his bouncing flashlight.
The steps were cold cement, old and uneven.
He counted sixteen of them as the walls seemed to close in around him and the silence grew total.
At the bottom he saw a hanging pull chain, and when he clicked it, a naked bulb flared.
He was standing at the end of a long, narrow passage made of bare cement.
A heavy door stood in the wall on the right, this one locked with a deadbolt.
He approached it slowly, his enthusiasm dying now that he was so close, curdling into dread.
The bolt didn't fit well, and took several attempts to crank open, but finally it gave way.
When he opened the door the stench of stale shit and piss assailed him.
A nearly unrecognizable stock pot sat in one corner of a squalid, little room, overflowing with human waste.
The walls were festooned with posters of SpongeBob and Mickey Mouse.
A smattering of naked or headless Barbie dolls lay scattered across the cement floor, and there was a bare mattress crammed against one wall.