From A Dead Sleep Page 14

“Did your friend write this?”

  Toby squinted and leaned forward with his eyes quickly tracing the text. “I actually don’t know, sir,” he said before managing a breath. “I . . . I was recently led to believe that handwriting that was not Sean’s was his, but I was wrong. It belonged to someone Sean doesn’t know. But he said that he would let me know once he found out who it belonged to.”

  Though Toby could not see the man’s eyes, he could read a mixture of fog and irritation in his face. The boy pointed to the open notepad and continued. “That handwriting does not belong to the person who wrote on the newspaper and on the envelope, so it may indeed belong to Sean.”

  The man said nothing for a few seconds, seemingly digesting the unintelligible babble. He just stood there like a statue. Seconds later, his mouth slowly formed what appeared to Toby to be a smirk. Toby smiled in return.

  The man suddenly took a step forward, startling Toby, causing him to conk the back of his head against the cabinet door behind him. With the gun still in his hand, the man walked to the center of the living room only a few feet from the boy and sat down on a dinged-up, wooden coffee table nested at the front of the recliner. He leaned forward toward the boy, keeping his gun trained. His face was well lit now. He had completely gray hair that looked nearly silver in the way it was illuminated, though he didn’t look old enough for the color to be natural. His eyebrows were darker and thick. The shade of his skin suggested that he was either Hispanic or Arabic.

  “How old are you, Toby?” he asked.

  The boy’s eyes lifted and he glanced through the lenses of the man’s glasses before reacting with a crippling wince. The intruder’s eyes were dark gray, like charcoal. Toby quickly looked away, as he did with most people, but those eyes stuck with him.

  “How old are you?” the man pressed.

  “Th–thirteen, sir.”

  The man nodded. The smirk slowly transformed into a large grin. His large teeth were divergent; some angled sharply in their outright crookedness. “It’s a fun age, isn’t it?”

  Toby timidly nodded. A tear streamed down his cheek and he couldn’t make himself take a second glance at those dead eyes.

  The stranger continued. “Here’s the problem I have, Toby. I’m used to having these little, uncomfortable chats with people who are, let’s just say, a little spooked. So I know they’re not necessarily going to react to me with the same dignity and composure they would when chatting with a friend or someone . . . let’s say, in their comfort zone. I get that. It makes sense.”

  The boy’s eyes were glazed, unfocused.

  “But here I am with a gun in my hand, asking you over and over again to look at me, and you can’t bring yourself to do it. That’s something more than fear. That makes me think you’re hiding something from me.”

  The man couldn’t have known was that Toby was autistic. Asking him to look in his eyes would be like asking him to stop his body from shaking. For Toby, it was an instinctive response to avoid eye contact, especially under his current circumstances.

  Toby’s head shook back and forth like that of a bobble-head toy. He’d heard the man loud and clear, but he was so overwhelmed and out of breath that he knew, in his exhausted mind, that he couldn’t deliver what was being asked of him. He thought of his mother, then of Sean. Random, insignificant memories of them both. He heard a gust of wind press against the outside of the building, then the clanking of a wind chime. Then he felt something moist along the outside of his right hand. It was a sensation that he’d felt a minute earlier but hadn’t immediately processed. He lifted up his arm slowly and rotated his hand. Blood.

  The man flicked his wrist to open up a page in the notebook that had been dog-ear marked.

  “There’s an address here . . . Traverse City, Michigan. Do you know who lives there?” He turned his sights back to the boy.

  Toby was preoccupied with the blood smeared along his hand.

  The man watched the boy, saying nothing and seemingly curious in the child’s assessment of his discovery.

  Toby skimmed the trail of blood up the side of his forearm to determine the source of the cut he assumed he’d given himself when he’d fallen to the floor. He didn’t find it. His eyes lowered to the wooden floor beside him where he caught a shimmer of something reflective in the light. More blood. The boy’s heart sank. An explanation of why he hadn’t heard a thing from the dog suddenly hit him like a Mack truck. Toby let out a howling, tormented scream that brought the shocked intruder to his feet.

  Toby’s eyes bulged wide and his pupils jerked from side to side. “He’s dead! He’s dead!” In reaction to this realization, his body flopped along the floor like a fish out of water. “No!”

  He sprang to his knees momentarily before falling to the floor again. His arms pounded the floor planks and his legs kicked wildly along the side of the wooden cabinet in a tantrum that the intruder clearly had not predicted.

  “Shut up!” yelled the man in his first tone of unrestrained anger. He drove the bottom of his boot into Toby’s chest, pinning the flailing boy’s body between the floor and cabinet.

  Toby’s limbs continued to pummel everything around him in a manner so savage that the large man nearly lost his balance. The raw, terrorized screams of panic kept erupting from between the boy’s lips as the man continued to yell at him to shut up. In the panic, the man’s foot slid from the boy’s chest.

  He snarled, then shoved his pistol somewhere under his jacket, dropped to a knee beside Toby, and grabbed the front of the boy’s shirt with both hands. He yanked him away from the cabinet in one vicious movement and pulled him across the floor before whipping a leg around the boy and straddling him. A trail of the dog’s blood was painted along the wooden floor where Toby had been dragged. The man yanked both of Toby’s hands together above his head before pinning his wrists together with one hand. He clamped a hand down hard over Toby’s mouth. The boy’s eyes were still ballooned and his sweaty face was the color of a tomato.

  The man leaned forward and edged his face to just an inch above Toby’s. “Calm down! Calm down right now!”

  Suddenly, the distinct sound of a car door slamming was heard from outside. Keeping Toby pinned to the floor, the man’s attention whipped to the front door.

  Chapter 19

  Zed Hansen couldn’t believe his eyes that morning when he observed a portly brown figure stumble out of the dense, wet woods and onto the dirt road about eighty yards in front of him. He half wondered if he’d just discovered the famous creature his nephew had once attempted to hunt down over thirty years ago. He chuckled over the memory. But as he drove closer, it quickly became apparent that it was just Hank Bailey, Sean’s landlord. Clad in brown camouflage garb, black military boots, and some sort of headgear, Bailey’s curious appearance compelled Zed to stop for a little back and forth.

  With a twelve gauge shotgun hanging from his shoulder and a canvas bag heavy with rabbit carcasses grasped in his gloved hand, Bailey explained that he’d gotten up before sunrise to try out some night-time hunting with his new goggles.

  “Works like a charm!” he said. “Yah just gotta close your eyes before you shoot or you’ll get a wicked flash in the peepers!”

  Zed was curious when Bailey mentioned where he’d gotten the night-visions. Sean hadn’t said a thing about them to his uncle, who wondered where his admittedly broke nephew would have found the money to buy them in the first place. Zed took the opportunity to probe Bailey and discovered out how much money Sean still owed him for rent. The always compassionate uncle traced his finger along the dangling chain to his aged, leather wallet in his back pocket. He retrieved some bills and shoved them into the damp front pocket of Bailey’s coat.

  “He’ll work it off,” Zed pledged to Bailey, who couldn’t have cared less about the detail but was happy to get paid.

  Zed offered him a ride, but Bailey turned it down. It was no secret the former Marine liked returning from missions on his own. Zed tipped his hat and
let the smooth roar of the truck engine and the smell of wet dirt flutter their way in through the open windows as he wound his way on up the road. He dug into his front shirt pocket and pulled a fresh toothpick from an open, plastic prescription bottle nested there. He quickly slid it between two teeth along his upper jaw. The founding owner of Hansen Security had been addicted to toothpicks since giving up a decades-long smoking habit a few years earlier. It felt naked not to have something dangling from his mouth, and he liked the natural taste of wood.

  Sean’s car wasn’t parked out front at his house, which surprised Zed as he pulled up to the front steps. His nephew wasn’t known to be an early riser or even a mid-morning riser. He was equally surprised to see Toby Parker’s bike out front. He killed the engine. It rumbled for a few extra seconds before winding down. Stepping out and shutting the door, he raised his arms above his head, clasped his fingers together, and arched his back. A muffled, satisfying pop could be heard from just above his hips. His joints often got tight from the weather.

  He happened to glance farther up the road where the path dead-ended into the forest. There was a dark gray, late ’90s Buick sedan parked just behind a cluster of trees. He nearly didn’t notice it, but the reflective chrome on the front bumper stuck out a few inches. He didn’t recognize the car. It wasn’t the kind one would typically see in Winston. It was then that he noticed the out-of-state license plate. The car was too far away to tell from where, but the colors didn’t match any of the Colorado state–sanctioned ones—of that he was sure.

  He raised his hat just long enough to wipe some stray beads of rain off his forehead with the arm of his long-sleeved, collared shirt. He proceeded on up the porch steps.

  No one answered after the first set of knocks, so Zed tried again. He was sure he could hear movement from inside. “Sean? Toby?”

  He walked down off the steps and over to the living room window to try peeking in through the curtains. Before he got there, however, he heard the creak of the front door and the cry of dry hinges. His head snapped back and he saw the door slowly opening. It stopped about a foot open and Toby’s large head popped through.

  “Toby!” Zed shouted in greeting with a large grin on his face. “How the hell are you?”

  “Good,” the boy replied almost before Zed had even finished his question. “Sean isn’t here.”

  The boy didn’t look well. His face was red and wet with perspiration. When Zed walked up the front steps and back onto the small porch, he thought it odd that Toby didn’t open the door any wider, as if he was concealing something. He also noticed that the boy was out of breath.

  “What’s that ornery nephew of mine up to this morning?”

  Toby quietly explained that Sean had left town for a few days and that he’d been asked to look after Rocco. This was news to Zed.

  “He didn’t tell you where he went?” Zed asked with narrowed eyes.

  “No, sir.”

  Zed crossed his arms in front of him and nodded. He couldn’t imagine where his nephew would have headed. Sean didn’t take trips and had few if any friends outside of Winston to visit. “Well, I’ve got a job for him in a couple of days,” he said. “He knows about it. I suspect that he’ll be back before then. He’s going to need this.”

  He dug into the front pocket of his jeans and pulled out a silver badge—a brand new one that read “Hansen Security.” He held it up for Toby, who surprisingly seemed to take no interest in it. The boy didn’t even glance down. His eyes stayed on Zed’s like a hawk, nearly staring right through them.

  “Are you feeling all right, bud?” asked Zed, lifting a brow.

  Toby nodded and forced an awkward smile.

  “Well, can you leave this for Sean?” Zed asked, holding out the badge for the boy to take.

  Toby nodded again, his eyes still glued in place. He opened his hand and took the badge, but didn’t look at it.

  Zed knew something was wrong. Toby had never acted like this. He was typically a fountain of cordiality who could spew out a conversation on practically any topic for minutes on end, all while wearing a smile on his face. With the boy’s head craned through the doorway and his suspicious behavior, it crossed Zed’s mind that the boy might have just broken something in Sean’s apartment and was too embarrassed or scared to let him find out about it. A plausible scenario for a boy his age, but it seemed unlikely. He’d always known Toby to be a straight shooter, even when the truth he told was inappropriate in the given setting. If he’d broken something, he’d speak up about it.

  The boy cracked another dry smile and said nothing. He had something shiny and new in his hand—his hero’s badge of honor— and he wasn’t even looking at it. Zed had been in security for years. He had a trained eye and a deep instinct for things that were out of place and didn’t add up. A talent he hoped he had passed on to his nephew. Something was very wrong—he knew it.

  The old floorboards inside Sean’s living room often creaked. They probably should have been replaced years ago. Any movement or shift of weight typically generated an audible groan. When those sounds echoed out at a moment Zed was sure Toby hadn’t moved a muscle, it grabbed his attention.

  “What have you got planned for the day?” he asked calmly as his eyes traced the narrow gaps between the door’s hinges, suspecting that Toby wasn’t alone inside.

  He saw nothing along the inner side of the door. Too dark. With Sean’s car gone and the display of genuine fear in Toby’s eyes, Zed was certain his nephew wasn’t the puppet-master. He subtly glanced back at the Buick. It was too well concealed by the trees to tell if anyone was sitting inside it, but his instincts told him there wasn’t.

  Had Toby walked in on a burglary? he wondered. Someone who Sean owed money to, now coming to collect? Where’s Rocco? Why didn’t he bark when I knocked on the door?

  He turned back to Toby when the boy didn’t answer his question. There was now pure, unmistakable panic in the boy’s face, as if his brain had already been overloaded and Zed’s last query finally froze it. The lack of response would surely not go unnoticed by whoever was on the other side of that door. Zed couldn’t recall a time when Toby had ever looked him straight in the eye, but he’d been doing just that from the moment he’d opened the door. Those eyes were pleading for help. No doubt about it now. There was someone standing on the other side of that door—someone dangerous. Zed sometimes carried a pistol in a holster along his hip, but not this day. He had the .45 caliber in his glove box, but at that moment it felt a mile away.

  He almost mouthed the boy a message, but felt whoever was inside might see him through the darkened crack along the edge of the door. He kept his head level but his eyes dropped to the keyhole at the center of the doorknob. Scratch marks as if someone had jimmied it. Zed maintained a composed facial expression, even forming a grin as he nodded his head. One more glance back at the Buick before it was time to escalate things. His mouth formed a pucker before he shot the toothpick out of his mouth as if he was discharging a blowgun.

  “Well, I’m going to take on off, Toby,” he said in the friendliest valediction he could muster.

  He didn’t wait to observe the boy’s reaction. Instead, he planted his feet as firmly as he could along the damp porch, left foot spread out in front of the right. He launched forward, latching onto the front of the boy’s jacket along his chest line with clenched fists. In one fluid movement, he violently yanked the boy toward him while sending a sharp kick into the dead center of the wooden door. The door swung open to about a forty-five degree angle before it cracked into something solid, bringing its momentum to an abrupt halt. Zed twisted his hips and let Toby’s off-balanced body fly passed him, crashing down along the porch steps before rolling to the ground in a heap.

  “Run, Toby!” he yelled. “Don’t turn back!”

  He saw a large set of fingers latch onto the outside edge of the door, preparing to swing it open. The door whipped inside and so did Zed, driving forward and lowering his shoulder into
the chest of the tall figure he’d barely gotten a glimpse of.

  Toby scrambled along the ground, breathless to get to his feet. His head spun to the door. His wide eyes captured a brief view of two men wrestling violently along the floor inside. A stray boot swung into the door and it slammed shut. Loud, angry obscenities and the sound of raw, barbaric battle poured out from inside—breaking glass, splintering wood, and objects crashing down to the floor.

  The sight of Zed’s red face with a large vein protruding at the center of his forehead as he shouted commands was etched in Toby’s vision like the lingering blast from a flashbulb. It transposed everything else. The moment Toby sprung to an upright position, the ear-splitting rage of a gunshot brought the calamity inside to an immediate end. His mouth hung open. He nearly fell back to the ground but heard Zed’s last order echo through his skull a second time.

  He could feel his heart pounding as he lumbered toward the side of the building. He looked back to see the intruder step out onto the porch and hurriedly scan the scene outside. His head pivoted toward Toby and their eyes met. The man’s arm swung up, parallel to the ground with his hand firmly latched onto his firearm.

  Toby’s shins collided with a foot-high, rotted wooden planter. He cried in pain as he toppled over it, landing chin and chest first in an aggregation of wet, wild flowers and weeds stemming out from the other side of the planter.

  “Hold it, fucker!” a sharp command echoed out from the opposite side of the building.

  The voice didn’t belong to the intruder, but Toby wasn’t going to stick around to find out who issued it. He crawled to his feet and glanced back as he scurried down the short hill that led around toward the basement entrance of the building.

  Toby noticed blood soaked along both of his pant legs in front of his shins. He was missing a shoe now, but he kept his legs moving.

  The man who’d held the boy captive inside looked frozen except for his neck, which slowly rotated in the direction of the commanding voice.