Billy by Whitley Strieber
Billy noticed that the van was going slower. There was no traffic anymore. They were climbing a hill that was steeper and longer than the others. Hill, Los Angeles: didn't they have a place called Beverly Hills? He must be in Beverly Hills, California!
'God,' his heart said, 'give me the strength I need. Please, God.' But, did he really believe in God? He'd had his doubts. But not right now. Right now, he decided, he believed totally. 'And God, if I've been asking too many questions, please don't mind. It wasn't a big deal, I'm just a kid with a lot of questions. Still, the business about the loaves and the fishes—if you calculate the size of the crowd and the amount a single man could eat, you had to create loaves and fishes at the rate of about a hundred and sixty of each per minute, which is amazing. And also, why do you have fishes, God, when we have just plain fish? Were yours something special, like maybe a bunch of minnows?'
No, Billy, shut up! 'God, I believe all the miracles! Really! I love Jesus, and that is really true! I'll put up His statue in my room, pray every day. I'll be an altar boy like Dad was. Oh, God save me!'
It was surprisingly cool for an August day in L.A., sunny and hardly more than seventy. This was the kind of weather that had drawn the millions to this place.
By four the smog would be almost unbearable, but Barton would be safely sealed up where no smog could penetrate. He shuddered deliciously, thinking that he'd be doing it at four. By then they'd be a couple of hours into it. He'd be sweaty and possibly even a tad bored. The fucking thing that was eating his heart right out of his body would at last be getting quiet. Billy would be almost unrecognizable.
Tonight would be a blessed night. Wine, the stars, and Cabaret. Sally Bowles, his love.
When the engine went quiet Billy really started squirming. There was a short silence, then the rumble of a garage door closing. It got dark.
"We're ho-o-me," Barton sang out. "Welcome to my world, Billy boy!"
Barton rolled the side door of the van open. Despite everything Billy was eager to see the mansion. He loved big houses. If he'd been in control of things, Dad would have made more money and they would live in a huge house with columns. Instead of the old wagon they would have something incredible, like maybe a bright red Bentley Turbo, zero to sixty in six and a half seconds, top end a hundred and sixty, the fastest production sedan in the world.
"I'm just going to take in our stuff," Barton said. "Then I'll be back for you."
When the smell of the strange garage came into his nose, Billy's fevered thoughts went quiet. He felt sad. Unexpectedly, he remembered the way he'd dropped his bike on top of Sally's the last time he'd come home.
The last time!
"OK, my boy, now for the big moment." Barton crawled up into the van and unstrapped him. Immediately Billy pulled off the gag. Barton cocked his head, smiled. "Now, did I tell you to do that?"
Billy began at once to carry out his plan of good behavior. "I'm sorry, Barton."
Barton tousled his hair. "No problem. C'mon, let's take a look around."
There was a second car in the garage, but it was no Mercedes. Billy saw an old tan Celica with a taped-up window on the passenger side.
They went into a tiny, filthy kitchen. It stank in here! Barton was whistling. "Here is where I prepare meals fit for royalty. All I have to do is dig down and start cooking!" He chuckled.
This was no mansion. Barton had lied, he was poor. The only new thing he had was that van.
Barton realized that he'd left rather a mess. He'd been eager to get away after doing Timmy. He'd wanted another child so bad he could hardly stand it!
This place did not smell too good. Timmy had taken a lot more out of him than he'd admitted at the time. They'd been together for two months. Jack had lasted even longer, almost half a year.
Billy was going to be a record in the opposite direction. It was really very sad to get a new boy only to do him right away. But God, the black room was thrilling.
Barton bustled around all happy. He kept looking at Billy, though, and his eyes said he was completely and totally crazy. But of course he was crazy, look at what he had done and how he lived! He probably didn't even know this wasn't a mansion.
The kitchen opened onto a small living-dining room. Barton hadn't misled about one thing, the view was pretty neat. They were at the top of a high canyon. Below them there was a long gully full of brush and exposed sewer pipes. Billy could see a glimpse of a road, and beyond that the vast Los Angeles basin.
"Do you know where you are?"
Billy didn't think he ought to admit it, but it was so obvious that they were overlooking L.A. "I—I'm not sure."
"You know damn well, don't you?"
Billy nodded.
"Sure you do. Now you're going to have to get undressed."
Billy didn't like this. Why would he want him naked, except to do something bad?
"Can't I wait until bedtime?"
Barton laughed, deep and rich. When Billy started to laugh too, Barton grabbed his shirt and pulled him almost off the floor. "You'd better learn right now to obey me, Billy. You don't get second chances around here!"
Billy did as he was told, until he was down to his briefs. "That's fine," Barton said. Billy stood waiting, miserable and afraid.
He still had creamy smooth skin, and the chest was healing with surprising speed. Well, never mind, the black room awaited. He would get Billy completely trussed up and then tell him what he was going to do to him.
That part of it was incredible. Timmy hadn't believed. Even when he was in the black room he hadn't believed. Then Barton started, and finally he believed.
Billy would believe right away.
Mom would say it over the dinner table: "I'm going to punish you after supper, Barton." He would have to eat every morsel and laugh if somebody told a joke and speak when he was spoken to, and then Mom would take him by the hand into the living room and his father wouldn't even glance up from the paper while she did it, even when it went on and on.
Then they would play cards, and he would have to play, too, even though it was excruciating to sit down.
He carried them down to the black room after he told them. Billy would believe and he would be as rigid as a child made of wood, his skin cool and dry, and would either be silent or whimpering.
"You know, Barton," Billy said in a shaking voice, "I guess I really am kind of glad to be here."
Barton had not expected this. It was obvious that Billy hated him. This boy was a failure.
"I had a rough time at home," Billy continued. "My dad beat me. You won't, will you, Barton?"
Was this for real?
Billy's mind was rushing from idea to idea. He had a very bad feeling about the way things were developing. There was something Barton was getting ready to do, and must not do.
"Your dad beat you?"
"Yeah. With a real whip."
Barton snorted with obvious disbelief.
"No, he kept it on a shelf in his closet. He beat me if I was late. And my mom drank and Barton, I'm really glad to be here."
Barton folded his arms. "That's not true."
"I'm homesick as hell, I admit that, but I know you want a boy and you're going to be nicer."
Barton went to the big picture window.
Saying what he said made Billy sick inside, but it was probably his only chance. If he didn't betray Mom and Dad he was never going to see them again.
"I hate them," he yelled. His voice sounded flat and insincere. Barton shook his head, said nothing. Billy tried to get some more feeling into it. "I hate them!"
Barton went to a built-in bookcase on the wall beside the couch. He opened it and took out a big, thick rope.
"Come here, Billy."
18.
Father Turpin sat awkwardly in the Nearys' living room. Mark had given him coffee, and now watched him busy himself with cup, sugar and milk. Mark had not expected him. After Toddcaster left they had all gone back to bed. Despite everything Mary and Sally had
Having a priest in the house brought back childhood habits of awkward and excessive courtesy. "Yes, Father, no, Father ..."
Mark's eyes went to the priest's black briefcase, then up to his face. Father Turpin sat on the edge of his chair, his saucer held in his left hand. With his right he raised the cup to his lips. His eyes, looking back at Mark's, seemed at first genial, surrounded as they were by wrinkles that might be laugh lines. When he smiled, though, seeing that Mark was regarding him, something baleful appeared. Mark was struck by how predatory he seemed, and how that appearance must hamper his work.
"I was hoping Mary and Sally would be able to join us."
"I'd wake them—"
"No, no." He leaned forward. "Detective Toddcaster called me." He fell silent, as if this statement had enormous importance. His expression became sly. "You're going hunting."
"This afternoon I fly to Las Vegas. I'll poster westward toward L.A."
The priest put down his cup. All geniality had left his face. "I've come to tell you that there's a little money for folks with major breaks. The Searchers cut a check for five hundred dollars."
Mark stared astonished at the check that was being offered him. "The Searchers are with you. I'm with you. The Lord is with you—at least, nominally."
"Father—"
"Bob. I'm Bob." He cleared his throat, put the check into Mark's hand. He opened his briefcase. "Now, I gather you're at the point of realizing just how little you know about conducting an investigation, and how important self-help is going to be."
"There isn't anybody else!"
"That isn't quite true. The police do a great deal, but you and Mary and Sally represent Billy's best chance of coming home." He glanced around the room. "I presume you can't afford a private detective."
"I'm a high school teacher."
"Well, there's a man in Des Moines. Richard Jones. He's a detective, and a good one."
"I cannot even begin to afford that sort of thing—in spite of this check. I've got a two-thirty flight and I'm exhausted and I have a hell of a lot of work to do before I leave."
Turpin held up his hands, as if defending himself. "Mr. Jones does this for free. No actual searching, mind you. But advice. You need it, especially now, before you hit the road."
Suddenly here was another thread in Mark's hand. "When can I see him?"
"We'd better leave as soon as possible if you're going to make a two-thirty flight." He withdrew a thick green book from the case. "You can borrow it."
Mark took the book. Techniques of Investigation.
"It's a basic text on police science. The chapters on missing persons will be quite useful. You can use them to make certain the police are doing all they can, and that your own investigation is sensibly organized."
An image of Father Turpin's bleak cavern of a church rose in Mark's mind. How did it feel, week after week, to say Mass for twenty or thirty people in a nave meant to accommodate four hundred? That was this man's truth—and yet there was absolutely no sense of despair. None at all.
"I've gotta get packed. Give me ten minutes."
"I'm not the one in a hurry, Mark."
Mark went upstairs and threw some clothes into the ancient Samsonite two-suiter he took to teachers' conventions. Then he topped off the pile with a box of five hundred of their brand-new missing child posters. He woke up Mary and told her he was going with Turpin.
"He's here?"
"He brought this." He handed her the check. Without another word she got up and went downstairs.
"We need this so bad, Bob. We've only got a couple of thousand dollars to our names." There were tears forming in the corners of her eyes.
Turpin stroked her head, a clumsy gesture. In his eyes there was a sort of desperation. Sally came down behind her mother, like her wearing a robe over her nightgown. They stood on the front porch as Mark and the priest left. Sally waved a small wave. "I'll call tonight," Mark said.
Turpin's car was old, an enormous Chrysler from the mid seventies. "I share this tank with the Sacred Heart Convent," he said as he started it. "Five aged nuns who seem to have little to do but clean the damn thing with Q,-tips."
"It looks like it just came off the assembly line."
"Embarrassing, but I live with it. Wheels are wheels."
"It's sweet that they do it for you."
"I'm their confessor."
"Elderly nuns?"
"You'd be surprised. I've been hearing confessions for over forty years, and those sisters are about the only ones left who can still surprise me."
As soon as they were out on the highway, Mark began wondering. Had Billy been taken this way? Did he see these signs, this long, flat view, smell this air while he was in the hands of his abductor?
Mark closed his eyes. He tried to blank his mind, but his mind wouldn't stop. Had he been tied, gagged? Had he been trussed up on the floor of that white Aerostar, or simply sitting there too scared to move? Mark's thoughts left the realm of words, and he began to see his son, a bright shadow in a dark space. When shadow Billy said "Dad!" Mark started awake. They were halfway there; an amazing thirty minutes had passed. "Want some music?" Father Turpin said.
"Yeah." Mark started to look through his cassettes.
"I'm afraid they're all pretty schmaltzy. I'm a sentimental guy."
"Where from?"
"I'm a Mick from Queens. Irish heaven. And I've got the drinking scars to prove it. As well as the Clancy Brothers tapes."
Mark abandoned the cassettes.
"Want to talk?"
"About?"
"Whatever it is that's been making you moan in your sleep like that."
"Billy."
Turpin took an exit and moved through the center of town, stopping at last in front of a small office building. Mark followed the priest into a pink granite lobby.
It was all very modern and bland. There should have been an elevator with a rattling brass accordion door and an elderly operator with the name "Pete" embroidered on the pocket of his threadbare uniform.
As it was, Richard Jones's office was on the street floor. Father Turpin's fist had hit the door of the office once when it was pulled open. A gust of cold air poured out.
Jones was a tall man, heavyset, with a surprised expression on his face. It took Mark a moment to realize that this expression was permanent. He smiled at Father Turpin, then gave Mark a long look. "Sorry about your boy, Mark. Can I call you Mark?"
"Yeah, of course."
"I guess you've been given a lot of advice already." He stepped back into his pin-neat office and indicated a chair. "Make yourself comfortable. I know you have a time problem, so I'll keep this to an hour."
Jones dropped down behind his desk. "So you've talked to Toddcaster, the Searchers. Now me. You're hitting all the stations on the missing children underground. Next you'll be onto the foundations. First off, I will do things for you that you cannot do for yourself. I am a licensed private investigator, which means that I can find out certain things in the pursuit of my trade. Give me a license plate and I can make it for you.
Give me a name and I can get you an address—maybe. If you know the right state.
"Now let's talk brass tacks. You are the victim of a rare and terrible crime. Stranger abduction. Your son's been missing less than a week, yet you already have a major lead. This is very good news. But it might not go anywhere. Most leads peter out. Your genuine stranger abduction is a very hard crime to solve. It is often fatal. Face that." His lips became a hard line. "Be damned careful following up your lead. I'll be frank with you. There are satanist cults out there stealing kids for very nasty reasons. Why? Because they're jerks. Satan does not answer prayers. In this respect he is as bad as God. There are kiddie porn rings and kiddie prostitution rings. Your son could be sold to a pederast. You know what that is?"
"Yes, of course."
"Everybody has their pet theories. Toddcaster tell you about the 'complex a
"He did."
"That's his pet theory. That, plus the fact that motivations can't be understood. Maybe not, except that sex and money and fear are all very understandable motivations, aren't they? Toddcaster thinks they're too complex to understand. I don't agree. People are motivated by the raw emotions—greed, anger, fear. Even love—at times." He smiled a rueful little smile. "I urge you, mister, don't settle on any one theory. Keep your mind open. Toddcaster may be right. But he may also be wrong, remember this. And another thing: the police have limited scope. They can only think locally, statewide. Their impact diminishes the farther you get from Iowa. You have to think nationally, even internationally if the clues lead that way."
"I'm leaving this afternoon."
"You want to make sure you stay behind your man. You don't want him to see the posters coming up ahead of him. This might be your boy's death warrant. Comprende?
"I understand."
"Make sure the police are keeping up their end of the bargain. But you've got to do the work. You get the leads. You take them to the cops. You make sure they are doing their job right because you are on top of them. This is your boy, Mark."
"For the love of God, I know that!" The moment he heard the rage in his own voice Mark regretted his tone. Jones apparently didn't notice. Mark looked at Father Turpin, who was sitting silently, his fingers held in a tent.
Jones had what soon became a torrent of advice, so much that Mark found himself dashing off notes on a yellow legal pad. How to interpret clues, how to generate, follow up and network leads, where to put his posters, which foundations would help spread the word, which were active and which were wastes of time.
At the end of one hour almost to the second the meeting was over. Jones leaned across the desk. "It's a hell of a lot of work, investigating one of these cases. I just have one piece of advice: don't give up hope. And if you do, call Turpin."
Jones and Turpin gave one another a silent look. Mark thought that they must have gone through a great deal together.