Following Christopher Creed

  "What are you doing?" RayAnn asked.

  "Just..." I pushed hard on the cap, turned it, and popped it off. "...making sure he isn't supplementing."

  "Nosy, aren't you?" she asked.

  "I'm a little too emotionally involved," I confessed. "You're supposed to stop me from feeling like..."

  I stared into the container, and instead of fussing at me, she looked, too. I think she heaved a sigh along with me. But there was only one type of pill in it. I put the lid back on top.

  I suddenly sensed bad energy wafting around the back of my neck, what with energy so mysteriously easy to sense in the Lightning Field. Like a psychic, I flashed to my dream last night of Chris Creed and sign language: L-O-O-K O-U-T B-E-H-I-N-D Y-O-U. Lanz whined.

  "Tell me it's not Miss Gulch," I said. But I just knew, as if any meager ESP talents I possessed had gotten supercharged with lightning-tree energy. What in God's Almighty name is she doing here?

  RayAnn's smile crept back, as she watched with intrigue over my shoulder. "There's no picture of her on Adams's site. And you said last night in the rain she looked like the Grim Reaper."

  "Guess I should pick one film character and stick to it," I muttered, but refused to turn around. The Mother Creed came slowly around in front of us. There actually had been a photo of her on Adams's website early on, but it was taken down almost as quickly as it was posted, leading me to think she'd managed to harass Torey and threaten him with libel or something. She'd aged ten years instead of four. My heart melted maybe one ounce before hardening up again when she spoke.

  "What are you doing here?"

  I almost choked on her lack of boundaries, but RayAnn was pretty solid.

  "Ma'am, this is public property," she said. "We're within our rights to be here."

  The woman chuckled down at her shoes and said softly but haughtily, "Okay, let's try this again. I asked you a question. What are you doing here?"

  Jeezus, I thought. My nightmares are materializing.

  RayAnn sensed my phobia exploding out of its shell, I suppose, because she went into attack.

  "Ma'am. This property belongs to the state."

  "You. Didn't. Answer. The question." The Mother Creed stepped within two feet of RayAnn, and I put my hand out, saying, "Whoa. Ladies..."

  But they locked eyes, and RayAnn took it so easily, I was amazed. "I'm not answering your question, lady, until you give me some answers. What were you doing back there? Spying on us? That's a little creepy."

  "I'm waiting for someone." Mrs. Creed broke down first, which made me want to 'five RayAnn.

  "Well, obviously there's nobody here but us," she said evenly.

  "Whom are you waiting for?" The woman wasn't barking or yelling, so her voice alone was not galling. It was her sense of entitlement, as if she had a perfect right to information. "Did I not just hear you calling for someone? Might that person have been my Justin?"

  She hissed and spit a little on the st in Justin. RayAnn blinked as it hit her eyelashes, but she held her ground.

  "Ma'am, we're reporters, not that it's any of your concern." That we were professionals and not high school kids seemed to take her aback a little, and she looked at me, probably to confirm. RayAnn went on, "We'll be here, there, and all over town. If we need to speak to you, we will approach you, though it's not on our schedule for today."

  "And what are you reporting on?" the woman continued to press.

  "You ready to go, Mike?" RayAnn ignored her and turned to me. I wished she hadn't. It turned the woman's attention on me full force.

  "You're blind," she noted.

  You're fucked up. I tried to walk around her, but she stopped me, pointing to the prescription bottle in my hand.

  "I'll take that."

  I could have kicked myself seconds later, but I simply went into domineering-mother-syndrome autopilot. I handed it to her. That caused RayAnn to nudge me hard, and the woman shot her a victorious glance. One pushover out of two would satisfy her.

  "Um ... that's not yours," RayAnn said.

  "It's my son's. I think I can have what belongs to my son," she said.

  RayAnn was in a quandary. If she insisted that the woman leave it where we intended to for Justin, it would also confirm that Justin would be coming back. Instead she made a suggestion, not that the woman seemed open to them. "Fine, take it. I suggest you go home now."

  "Oh, you do, do you? What do you know about my son? Where is he?"

  RayAnn unleashed, leaving me half amused and half petrified. "Mrs. Creed. I know what most people have enough sense to know: Spying is not very endearing. If you spy on your son, he's not going to like you. If he doesn't like you, he's not going to stay around very long. How many sons do you plan on losing?"

  Whoa! The comment would have driven through most any parent like a sword—especially if that parent already had one missing child and one that moved out. The Mother Creed's eyes did flicker, but beyond that, her expression never changed. This time as we stepped around her, she didn't try to stop us. I could feel her eyes all over us as we departed down the trail. I prayed to God she wouldn't follow us.

  "I think her behavior's gotten worse over the years," RayAnn said with a shudder. "Remember in Adams's story the plea she gave in church when Chris first disappeared? She could sound half normal in public. If you weren't listening too closely."

  "She drinks. That would eat brain cells..."

  RayAnn sighed. "You may have seen the last of Justin. If she catches him? How's he supposed to get out of the house?"

  "I don't know. What's worse is that Justin implied last night that she's in denial about his illness," I reminded RayAnn. "What if she keeps his medication from him? I can't believe I just gave his pills to her."

  THIRTEEN

  WE PAID A VISIT to the Adamses' quaint Civil War farmhouse. I wasn't hopeful, figuring it was now noon and that on Saturdays comfy women like Mrs. Adams play tennis, go to the gym, go to club meetings for charities. After knocking twice on the door and not seeing any cars, I was ready to leave.

  Then suddenly there were sounds from inside. It was a light, womanly step, and suddenly the door was open and she was staring at us. Her eyes were dark brown and round, whereas her son's were blue and that sort of a triangular shape, wide on the inside and coming to points on the outside. Even before the door opened I was anticipating this would be quite a switch from the mother we'd just met.

  "Hi. May I help you?" She opened the door wide.

  We gave her our creds, and she remained calm and polite to tell us that her son avoided media, didn't grant interviews without being told to by his agent, and in fact was not here in Steepleton.

  "I know your son's music well, but actually I'm writing a feature on Chris Creed's disappearance. It's you we'd really like to talk to."

  She was an attorney. She could handle it, I wagered, motionless with my polite smile as she checked her watch. She didn't look thrilled.

  "I only have a few minutes. I have to go to Philadelphia," she said.

  Airport? Picking somebody up? I let it go. "That's all we want for the time being."

  She moved aside. "Come in. For a few minutes."

  She sat at the edge of a couch in the living room. Very reserved, this woman, but there was a niceness about her voice. I could not read her energy to save me, except that it didn't want to be read. The inside of the house was stunning, a combination of expensive antiques and modern stuff. The most modern thing was a huge picture on the wall of Adams rifting out some run on a double-necked guitar at some huge concert. A spotlight covered him, but in the background were heads of thousands of people. From up close, I could see traces of a sizable balcony in the background lights. Must have been a good-size concert hall.

  "He still has that ponytail," I couldn't help mentioning. It wasn't long and straggly. Adams had really straight, thick blond hair, and the ponytail was only about six inches long, but he'd had it since he left Steepleton.

  "Yes," Mrs. Adams s
aid with a tight smile. She already said she wouldn't talk about her son.

  "You're an icon of Steepleton," I said, pulling out my recorder and finding a seat across from her. RayAnn sat beside me.

  I heard a warm, appreciative chuckle. "I suppose that depends on whom you speak to. I don't have much involvement with the town. Don't have time."

  I sensed it was a pat answer, one she'd designed for writers who came before me. This might not be easy.

  "But you've lived here your whole life. You were here when Digger Hanes disappeared, your generation's Christopher Creed."

  "Yes, I was." The silence was long, but I could sense that she wasn't looking to stonewall us. She wanted to help, if we could provide the right questions.

  "Your son found the body of Digger's father, Bob Hanes," I started. "For a few weeks, Torey said on his website, he thought it was the body of Chris Creed."

  "I don't know how long it was, but yes, he thought that."

  "Did you ever think it was Chris's body?"

  "No," she said. "The decomposition in that case raised a lot of questions, but I was pretty certain the corpse had been there quite some time. And there were other things."

  "Such as?"

  Her answer pleased me. "Well ... my intuition? I have to work with intuition a lot as a trial attorney, and as a defense attorney for juveniles. Kids and teenagers are not always articulate, so you have to watch faces, watch words, watch actions. I simply had never pegged Chris as the angry type, the violent type. He could get depressed, I'm sure, as he was picked on since I could remember. But it takes a certain degree of fear or violence—my humble opinion—to take a life, even one's own."

  "Do you think Steepleton has changed since all of this came down?" I asked.

  She studied her fingers laid on top of her knees, and finally laughed uneasily. "Well, we're hearing a lot more spooky stories about these woods. And finding another body obviously won't help that. I'm a little concerned for the kids, truthfully. Imagination is great. But if they fixate on all these dark tales, it can make them morbid. I think ... these 182 woods allow people to see what they want to see, what they need to see."

  I smiled, thinking of my chance meeting last night with the ghost chaser et al. "Right now, some of them want to see a certain ghost."

  "Yes, they do." She laughed, even mentioned Kobe Lydee by name, but with affection, not disdain. "If that poor boy doesn't see the ghost of Chris soon, he'll have to succumb like the rest of the student body and actually start studying, preparing for a career. That would be a good thing!"

  The woman exuded peace—with herself, her neighbors, these woods.

  "Do you think he's alive somewhere?"

  "I do," she said, "which sounds pretty naive for an attorney. For this one, I've always relied on my son's intuition, his instincts. They're pretty good. I support him."

  That was obvious. I was at a loss for words, jealous as I was for Torey Adams's good luck. I reminded myself quickly that we create our own luck, but any real questions were in the black hole. I settled on "Do you think Chris will ever show up here?"

  It provided fodder for some great lines.

  "I would imagine so. Sylvia takes care of her father over in Conovertown. At some point, someone will need to take care of her, and I would imagine all three boys will kick in. I don't see Chris's disappearance as the scandal that other people see it as. I think of it as a reckoning—a healing—and I really think Sylvia will come to terms with it, though she's in a rough passage right now."

  She didn't elaborate on that, and we didn't confirm what we'd just encountered. She simply went on, "I think, someday, we'll simply realize that she's been talking to him by phone, and if and when he shows up, it won't be with any big shebang. No parade. People will have forgotten; people won't recognize him..." She laughed. "He'll probably do like we all do—develop some wrinkles, put on a few pounds, lose some hair, gain some vocal cords. Torey used to have one adorable imitation of him, if it's okay to say this ... of when Chris was picked on and would start whining. His voice was just changing. He would go, 'I DID-n't DO anY-thing. It's no-O-t my fau-AU-lt.'"

  I could use that quote. It was the human side of myth. She'd described your average kid, a late bloomer in ways, with the rickety, changing vocal cords.

  "I'd like to think that someday Torey's dad and I will just be going about our business, hopefully before a need for canes and walkers, and someone will say, 'Boy, that Chris is such a great help to his silver-haired mother.' And that's how we'll know he's been back awhile."

  She sure was levelheaded. I could see even more of how she'd have been such a stronghold to Torey in his childhood. Nothing could get too out of hand in a home like this.

  "Was it hard to send your son away? I take it you wanted to protect Torey from some of the gossip flying around town..."

  "...that he was involved in Chris's death." She nodded easily, as if she'd become used to saying it either to press or to close friends. "We didn't send Torey away to ... to avoid Steepleton, as much as to put him on the track he's on. He just needed more scenery, more variations of people, more input to fulfill his dreams. He had a horizon view of the world, as he puts it, and he needed a bird's-eye view. That's all."

  She was a nice person, and given a couple hours, I could probably walk away with enough counter-fodder to write a nice book on Steepleton. She definitely hadn't fallen prey to bad frequency.

  "All I can say about that is that Torey is not the type to find a dead body. He's ... all poet, all insight, all sensitivity. I didn't think he could heal around here, but more than the people, it's the woods." She jerked her head with a polite smile toward another room. When I found it, I could see a kitchen table, the place she probably told Torey and Ali about Digger Hanes disappearing and the possibility of Bob Hanes being dead out in the woods.

  "The woods are dark out those windows at night," I guessed.

  "Yes."

  "And the Indian burial ground, where he found the body, is a stone's throw from back here."

  "Yes."

  "And ... he inherited from somebody feelings of being watched in the dark ... in the basement, but especially from out that window."

  She laughed heartily. "I admit it. I do let my imagination get carried away when I'm alone in this house. Ms. Attorney, who visits jail and juvenile detention twice a week without a flinch. My imagination is nothing compared to my son's, but I was thinking I ought to pass him on to others for the time being, others who might not radiate those phobias."

  "You're a little phobic of the woods," I clarified.

  "A lot of people are." She nodded. "Though it's debatable whether there's anything out there except a lot of imagination run wild. Like I said, these woods allow people to see what they want to see."

  I thought of Elaine and her band of acid droppers. Mrs. Adams looked at her watch and stood up. "I'm really sorry. I have to go now."

  "You going to the airport?" I stood with RayAnn.

  "Yes."

  "Can we come back later?"

  "I'm sorry," she said, politely stonewalling me. "My son doesn't do interviews, as I said. And of course, this is a sad occasion."

  We hadn't talked about Darla Richardson, but she seemed to understand that I knew why Torey would come back here. "Are you involved as an attorney with this crime in some way?"

  She walked us toward the door. "I got a call from Chief Rye last night, saying I might hear from the Burden family about representation for Danny. Then just before you came in ... I heard it wouldn't be necessary."

  "Yeah, we just came from police headquarters," I said. "I know the scoop. Any insight into what's going on?"

  "If you mean how does an alleged suicide get into a grave? Starting with the fact that I wouldn't commit to the Burden boy being a liar, I haven't any idea. That's police business. I'm sure they'll figure it out."

  We shook hands, me trying to look grateful and not totally disappointed that she wouldn't let us back to talk to T
orey. Well, she probably wouldn't keep him under lock and key. Maybe he'd go to the local tap for a beer or something with Bo. I'd work on getting to Torey after we went back to look for Justin one more time.

  FOURTEEN

  WE STOPPED AT POLICE HEADQUARTERS and I went in to find out if the confirmation of the body was complete yet and what the search of the shed had turned up. Officer Hughes was at his desk, eating a turkey sandwich, but Chief Rye was still out investigating, he told us.

  "Are they calling it a suicide?" I asked.

  "They're calling it weird right now," he said. "They don't want to call it a homicide."

  That implied they'd have no choice if they couldn't figure out how the body got into the grave—the skull having two massive bullet holes in it. Calling it a homicide meant finding someone to prosecute. I hoped Mrs. Adams was right in all her optimism that they'd figure it out.

  "You might want to know..." I said before clearing my throat. "Mrs. Creed was out at the Lightning Field today, acting strange and defiant."

  "To you two?"

  "Yes," I confirmed.

  "I'm sorry."

  We laughed uneasily. I knew better than to think that gave him grounds to take a run down there to clear her out. I don't know why exactly I wanted to share that, except my instincts told me to go there.

  Officer Hughes laughed. "She's down there once a day, spying to see if someone will give away Justin's whereabouts. She usually only finds a few of the vo-tech kids. They only do school until twelve-thirty, then smoke cigarettes out there before going to jobs." His chuckles indicated the absurdity.

  "My wife, Maggie, and I bought a house on her street two years ago." He held up a brown lunch bag, which dangled heavily, as if another sandwich was in it. "I've been brown bagging my lunch lately, because if Sylvia sees my squad car out front, she'll come over and tell me what all those kids said. I've told her five or six times now, 'Sylvia, I can't arrest them for discussing the sex lives of their class mates or smoking cigarettes.' She's somehow convinced that if she keeps this up, she'll find Justin out there."