Four Live Rounds (4 page)

Too dark to tell if the man was watching.

Mitchell stepped into the alcove as the boy
pressed his selection on the drink machine.

The can banged into the open compartment, and
the boy reached down and claimed the Sprite.

“Hi, Joel.”

The boy looked up at him, then lowered his
head like a scolded dog, as though he’d been caught vandalizing the
drink machine.

“No, it’s all right. You haven’t done
anything wrong.”

Mitchell squatted down on the concrete.

“Look at me, son. Who’s that man you’re
with?”

The voice so soft and high: “Daddy.”

A voice boomed across the parking lot. “Joel?
It don’t take this long to buy a can of pop! Make a decision and
get back here.”

The door slammed.

“Joel, do you want to come with me?”

“You’re a stranger.”

“No, my name’s Mitch. I’m a police officer
actually. Why don’t you come with me.”

“No.”

“I think you probably should.” Mitchell
figuring he had maybe thirty seconds before the father stormed
out.

“Where’s your badge?”

“I’m undercover right now. Come on, we don’t
have much time. You need to come with me.”

“I’ll get in trouble.”

“No, only way you’ll get in trouble is by not
obeying a police officer when he tells you to do something.”
Mitchell noticed the boy’s hands trembling. His were, too. “Come
on, son.”

He put his hand on the boy’s small shoulder
and guided him out of the alcove toward his car, where he opened
the front passenger door and motioned for Joel to get in.

Mitchell brushed the snow off the windows and
the windshield, and as he climbed in and started the engine, he saw
the door to 113 swing open in the rearview mirror.

“You eaten yet?”

“No.”

Main Street empty and the newly-scraped
pavement already frosting again, the reflection of the high beams
blinding against the wall of pouring snow.

“Are you hungry?”

“I don’t know.”

He turned right off Main, drove slow down a
snow-packed side street that sloped past little Victorians, inns,
and motels, Joel buckled into the passenger seat, the can of Sprite
still unopened between his legs, tears rolling down his cheeks.

Mitchell unlocked the door and opened it.

“Go on in, Joel.”

The boy entered and Mitchell hit the light,
closing and locking the door after them, wondering if Joel could
reach the brass chain near the top.

It wasn’t much of a room—single bed, table,
cabinet housing a refrigerator on one side, hangers on the other.
He’d lived out of it for the last month and it smelled like stale
pizza crust and cardboard and clothes soured with sweat.

Mitchell closed the blinds.

“You wanna watch TV?”

The boy shrugged.

Mitchell picked the remote control off the
bedside table and turned it on.

“Come sit on the bed, Joel.”

As the boy climbed onto the bed, Mitchell
started flipping.

“You tell me to stop when you see something
you wanna watch.”

Mitchell surfed through all thirty stations
twice and the boy said nothing.

He settled on the Discovery Channel, set the
remote control down.

“I want my Dad,” the boy said, trying not to
cry.

“Calm down, Joel.”

Mitchell sat on the bed and unlaced his
sneakers. His socks were damp and cold. He balled them up and
tossed them into the open bathroom, staring now at his pale feet,
toes shriveled with moisture.

Joel had settled back into one of the
pillows, momentarily entranced by the television program where a
man caked in mud wrestled with a crocodile.

Mitchell turned up the volume.

“You like crocodiles?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“You aren’t scared of them?”

The boy shook his head. “I got a snake.”

“Nuh uh.”

The boy looked up. “Uh huh.”

“What kind?”

“It’s black and scaly and it lives in a glass
box.”

“A terrarium?”

“Yeah. Daddy catches mice for it.”

“It eats them?”

“Uh huh. Slinky’s belly gets real big.”

Mitchell smiled. “I bet that’s something to
see.”

They sat watching the Discovery Channel for
twenty minutes, Joel engrossed now, Mitchell with his head tilted
back against the headboard, eyes closed, a half grin where none had
been for twelve months.

At 8:24 p.m., the cell vibrated against
Mitchell’s hip. He opened the case and pulled out the phone.

“Hi, Lisa.”

“Mitch.”

“Listen, I want you to call me back in five
minutes and do exactly what I say.”

“Okay.”

Mitchell closed the phone and slid off the
bed.

The boy looked up, still half-watching the
program on the world’s deadliest spiders.

He said, “I’m hungry.”

“I know, sport. I know. Give me just a minute
here and I’ll order a pizza.”

Mitchell crossed the carpet, tracking through
dirty clothes he should’ve taken to the laundry a week ago.

His suitcase lay open in the space between
the dresser and the baseboard heater. He knelt down, searching
through wrinkled oxfords and blue jeans, khakis that had long since
lost their creases.

It was a tiny, wool sweater—ice-blue with a
magnified snowflake stitched across the front.

“Hey, Joel,” he said, “it’s getting cold in
here. I want you to put this on.” He tossed the sweater onto the
bed.

“I’m not cold.”

“You do like I tell you now.”

As the boy reached for the sweater, Mitchell
undid the buttons on his plaid shirt and worked his arms out of the
sleeves. He dropped the shirt on the carpet and rifled his suitcase
again until he found the badly faded T-shirt he’d bought fifteen
years ago at a U2 concert.

On the way back to the bed, he stopped at the
television and lifted the videotape from the top of the VCR, pushed
it in.

“No, I wanna watch the—”

“We’ll turn it back on in a minute.”

He climbed under the covers beside the boy
and stared at the bedside table, waiting for the phone to buzz.

“Joel, I’m gonna answer the phone. I want you
to sit here beside me and watch the television and don’t say a word
until I tell you.”

“I’m hungry.”

The phone vibrated itself toward the edge of
the bedside table.

“I’ll buy you anything you want if you do
this right for me.”

Mitchell picked up the phone.

Lisa calling.

He closed his eyes, gave himself a moment to
engage. He’d written it all down months ago, the script in the
bedside table drawer under the Gideon bible he’d taken to reading
every night before bed, but he didn’t need it.

“Hi, Honey.”

“Mitch, I’m so glad you—”

“Stop. Don’t say anything. Just hang on a
minute.” He reached for the remote control and pressed play. The
screen lit up, halfway through the episode of Seinfeld. He lowered
the volume, said, “Lisa, I want you to say, ‘I’m almost
asleep.’”

“What are you—”

“Just do it.”

A pause, then: “I’m almost asleep.”

“Say it like you really are.”

Mitchell closed his eyes.

“I’m almost asleep.”

“We’re sitting here watching Seinfeld.” He
looked down at the top of Joel’s head, his hair brown with gold
highlights, just the right shade and length. He kissed the boy’s
head. “Our little guy’s just about asleep.”

“Mitch, are you drunk—”

“Lisa, I will close this fucking phone. Ask
how our day was. Do it.”

“How was your day?”

“You weren’t crying that night.” He could
hear her trying to gather herself.

“How was your day, Mitch?”

He closed his eyes again. “One of those
perfect ones. We’re in Ouray, Colorado now. This little town
surrounded by huge mountains. It started snowing around midday as
we were driving down from Montrose. If they don’t plow the roads we
may not be able to get out tomorrow.”

“Mitch—”

“We had a snowball fight after dinner, and
our motel has these Japanese soaking tubs out back, full of hot
mineral water from the springs under the town. Say you wish you
were here.”

“That’s not what I said that night,
Mitch.”

“What did you say?”

“I wish I could be there with you, but part
of me’s so glad you two have this time together.”

“There aren’t many days like this, are
there?”

“No.”

“Now, I just want to hear you breathing over
the phone.”

He listened. He looked at the television,
then the boy’s head, then the ice-blue sweater.

Mitchell held the phone to Joel’s mouth.

“Say goodnight to Mom, Alex.”

“Goodnight.”

Mitchell brought the phone to his ear. “Thank
you, Lisa.”

“Mitch, who was that? What have you—”

He powered off the phone and set it on the
bedside table.

When the boy was finally asleep, Mitchell
turned off the television. He pulled the covers over the both of
them and scooted forward until he could feel the hard ridge of the
boy’s little spine press against his chest.

In the back window, through a crack in the
closed blinds, he watched the snow falling through the orange
illumination of a streetlamp, and his lips moved in prayer.

The knock finally came a few minutes after
3:00 a.m., and nothing timid about it—the forceful pounding of a
fist against the door.

“Mitchell Griggs?”

Mitchell sat up in bed, eyes struggling to
adjust in the darkness.

“Mr. Griggs?”

More pounding as his feet touched the
carpet.

“Griggs!”

Mitchell made his way across dirty clothes
and pizza boxes to the door, which he spoke through.

“Who is it?”

“Dennis James, Ouray County sheriff. Need to
speak with you right now.”

“Little late, isn’t it?” He tried to make his
voice sound light and unperturbed. “Maybe I could come by your
office in the—”

“What part of right now went past you?”

Mitchell glanced up, saw the chain still
locked. “What’s this about?” he asked.

“I think you know.”

“I’m sorry I don’t.”

“Six-year-old boy named Joel McIntosh went
missing from the Antlers Motel this evening. Clerk saw him getting
into a burgundy Jetta just like the one you drive.”

“Well, I’m sorry. He’s not here.”

“Then why don’t you open the door, let me
confirm that so you can get back to sleep and we can quit wasting
precious minutes trying to find this little boy.”

Mitchell glanced through the peephole,
glimpsed the sheriff standing within a foot of the door under one
of the globe lights that lit the second-floor walkway, his black
parka dusted with snow, his wide-brimmed cowboy hat capped with a
half-inch of powder.

Mitchell couldn’t nail down the sheriff’s age
in the poor light—late sixties perhaps, seventy at most. He held
the forend stock of a pump-action shotgun in his right hand.

“I’ve got two deputies out back on the hill
behind your room if you’re thinking of—”

“I’m not.”

“Just tell me if you have the boy—”

A radio squeaked outside.

The sheriff spoke in low tones, then Mitchell
heard the dissipation of footsteps.

A minute limped by before the sheriff’s voice
passed faintly through the door again.

“You still there, Mitch?”

“Yeah.”

“If it’s all right with you, I’m gonna sit
down. I been walking all over town since seven o’clock.”

The sheriff lowered out of sight, and through
the peephole, Mitchell could only see torrents of snow dumping on
the trees and houses and parked cars.

He eased down on the carpet and leaned
against the door.

“I was just speaking with your wife. Lisa’s
concerned for you, Mitch. Knows why you’re here.”

“She doesn’t know any—”

“And so do I. You may not know this, but I
helped pull you and your son out of the car. Never forget it. Been
what, about a year?”

“To the day.”

Drafts of frigid air swept under the door,
Mitchell shivering, wishing he’d brought a blanket with him from
the bed.

“Mitch, Lisa’s been trying to call you. You
have your cell with you?”

“It’s turned off, on the bedside table.”

“Would you talk to her for me?”

“I don’t need to talk to her.”

“I think it might not be a bad—”

“I had a meeting the next morning in Durango.
Had brought him along, ‘cause he’d never seen the Rockies. That
storm came in overnight, and you know, I just…I almost waited.
Almost decided to stay the day in Ouray, give the plows a chance to
scrape the pass.”

“I got a boy of my own. He’s grown now, but I
remember when he was your Alex’s age, can’t say I’d have survived
if something like what happened to your son happened to him. You
got a gun in there, Mitch?”

In the back of Mitchell’s throat welled a
sharp, acidic tang, like tasting the connectors of a nine-volt
battery, but all he said was, “Yeah.”

“Is the boy all right?”

Mitchell said nothing.

“Look, I know you’re hurting, but Joel
McIntosh ain’t done a thing to deserve getting dragged into this.
Boy’s probably terrified. You thought about that, or can you not
see past your own—”

“Of course I’ve thought about it.”

“Then why don’t you send him on out, and you
and me can keep talking.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“I just…I can’t.”

Mitchell heard footsteps outside the door. He
got up quickly, glanced through the peephole just in time to see
the battering ram swing back.

He stumbled toward the bed as the door
exploded off its hinges and slammed to the floor, two men standing
in the threshold—the sheriff with the shotgun trained on him, a
deputy with a flashlight and a handgun.