I was so excited to be on the Brazos Queen that I had a hard time standing still. I was in constant danger of falling overboard. Mr. Harris put up with my running back and forth until he caught me by the collar of my newest suit. I was one step away from going head-first into the big wheel that pushed the Queen up river.
“Mikey!” he yelled. “You’re going to drown!”
“Oh no,” I said cheekily. “I can swim.”
“You can? After that thousand-pound wheel pummels your head into mush? You think you can swim after that?”
I paused. Swallowed. Said, “I didn’t think about that.”
“Well, I did so if you fall in, I’ll drown trying to rescue you. I don’t swim.”
“Oh. Sorry. I’m just so excited,” I apologized. “If I have to stand still, I’ll just…explode.”
“Let’s go to the salon, have tea and cookies. Sound like a plan?”
I took his hand and felt the strength in it along with his calluses. He smiled at me as we walked the length of the boat and entered the cabin.
The dining salon was pretty fancy and everyone inside looked rich. No one was dressed in anything but their Sunday best – suits and fancy tea-gowns. Some of the ladies wore hats that made me want to laugh or set out snares to catch the critters they had sitting on their heads.
All the ladies fluttered their eyelashes at Mr. Harris. I asked if they suddenly had something in their eyes, but he laughed and said one day I would cause the same reaction in ladies. I snorted. Some fanned themselves and a few dropped little bitty purses when he waked past them. Being a gentleman, he stopped to pick up each one, handing it back to the lady who’d dropped it.
A man in a black suit brought us to a table in the back near the big windows where I could look out on the water. He placed a huge board in Mr. Harris’ hand. He looked at it in puzzlement.
“Mike, can you read this?”
I looked. It was in French. I read off the different dishes and the prices. I knew that they were very expensive meals.
“You read French,” he stated. “A boy your age. You’ve been well educated, my boy. Someone must miss you a lot. Nothing coming back about your mother or father?”
“No, sir.” I looked at the menu. “What can I order? Dessert or an…entree?”
“Whatever you want, Mike,” he said. “Don’t worry about the price. I can afford it.”
“I’ll have tea and an éclair,” I decided. He decided to have the same thing.
When it came, my eyes grew as big as the plate they came on. I bit into the chocolate covered fancy French donut and inhaled it. Could have eaten two more. I would have licked the plate, but something told that me that such behavior wasn’t mannerly.
I got to sleep in a bunk in the passenger cabins. The second and third-class people had to sleep on the deck. When it rained, it wasn’t much fun for them, but nobody complained. We were on the Queen for three days, steaming our way up the broad Missouri river. After the first two, I was heartily sick of the journey and discovered that I was seasick. I spent most of the three days in the cabin puking my insides out. Mr. Harris and a lady helped take care of me. I didn’t remember much about it; I was feverish, and he worried that it might be a throwback to the grippe that I had nearly died from while in Rain’s care. Those days were becoming more faded from my memories.
The Queen stopped several times, picking up passengers and more cargo while also unloading crates and disembarking passengers. I was lying on the bunk listlessly flipping the pages of a book I’d found in Mr. Harris’ bunk when I heard a voice outside my porthole that made me shrink in terror. It was his voice, the ugly man who had stolen me back in the woods.
My eyes widened. I had remembered something from before. Before Rain had found me. Before I’d forgotten everything.
My name was Crispin. I had a father who loved me. I could feel his arms around me and smell the familiar scent of his aftershave, the smell of wet wool and shiny gold buttons on his uniform. I knew that my mother was dead, that she had died to save me from hostiles. That another man cared for me and my father, he was an important part of my life. Yet, I could not remember their names or my own surname. The only name that I could pull out of these new memories was Ballycor. I thought it belonged to a horse, but not just any horse. He was a stallion, a horse with royalty in his bloodlines.
I shrank back against the wall praying that he could not see me. I prayed that Mr. Harris did not mention me while he was playing cards in the mens’ saloon. I hoped that the bad man got off at the next stop and that I could stay in my bunk until then.
I didn’t look out the small window until I was sure that he was gone. All I could see was a small section of the deck and rails. Not him, I knew that I couldn’t tell Mr. Harris about them. He’d want to confront the bad man and probably get shot. I wanted to warn him, yet I was afraid to leave the stateroom.
We reached St. Louis without incidents and I was happy to see the last of the Queen. I kept my eyes open for the bad man; he teased me by not showing up anywhere on the boat or the docks. Maybe, he had got off before we’d landed at St. Louis.
There were hansom cabs waiting at the dockside and Mr. Harris hailed one. We were the second one in the row and there were fights over who would get the rest. It was a long way up to the seat, he gave me a boost after throwing his bag and my trunk up to the driver. They were tied on the back of the cab with leather straps.
I was afraid to look out the windows, afraid that the bad man would see my face. Mr. Harris noticed that I was unusually quiet and nervous. He laid his hand on my forehead.
“Are you hot? Sick? You feel okay, Mike?” He was worried.
“I’m fine, Mr. Harris. Just a little tired.”
“We’ll be at our hotel in a few minutes. I’ll get you settled and then I have to conduct some business downtown. Will you be able to handle things by yourself?”
“Yes. Sir. I’ll be fine. Probably go to sleep. I’m really tired,” I said listlessly.
The hotel was huge. Six stories high and made all of white limestone, quarried right up the river. It had a circular drive, so you could ride around, unload and drive off. There was a younger man standing in front of the fancy glass doors in a suit of red livery with gold buttons, stripes down his pant legs, golden epaulet and a round hat.
He bowed as we stepped out of the cab and took our boxes. Mr. Harris paid the driver and we went inside to the hotel.
E
achann stepped out of his car, a newer model Crown Vic bought by the hundreds for the FBI, and police agencies all over the US. His driver was a fresh-faced youngster, a rookie just weeks out of the academy, his name Jimmy Jacobs. He had driven the three hours from NYC to the small town of Mt. Upton for the older detective. Eachann was surprised at the heavily wooded area and was not surprised that the boy had not yet been found. Deep in the Catskills, any fugitive with the smallest bit of woodcraft could stay hidden for a long time.
He stared up at the four-story building that he knew had started out its career as a Ward School. It had closed due to budget cuts in the state’s coffers, sold and remodeled as a private school which had closed due to lack of funds. Reopened as a boarding Prep school for underprivileged children, it received state government aid and charitable donations even though it was privately owned.
The building looked cold, forbidding and that impression was cemented by the approach of a tall man in a trench coat. “No reporters allowed,” he snapped. “Off the grounds before I call the police.”
Eachann flipped open his wallet and reached for his cane. He steadied himself.
“Go ahead,” he said softly. “I am the police. Detective Eachann. You are?”
“Jordan Hooper. Head Master at Reacher Hall Prep School. Are you here about the boy? Have you found him? His father is on his way here, any minute.”
“Really? That’s some news. No, we haven’t found young Cris. I came on behalf of the Trustees. Their lawyers called me. Do you have any ideas who his friends are, his interests? Where he might go if he were to run away?”
Hooper flushed, “we’ve only had him for two days. We know only what the doctors told us and notes from the trustees. He came to us as a ‘John Doe’.”
“Where was he last seen?” Eachann asked.
“I sent one of the older students with him to his new room,” Hooper answered. “We’ve been over this already with the Mt. Upton police and the State Troopers. And the FBI.”
“Where’s his room?” he demanded as a protesting Hooper followed him inside.
“Third floor. I’ll take you.”
He did not climb the magnificent staircase but went through a doorway leading to his office. On the frosted glass door was his name, etched into the glass. Jordan Hooper, MS, PhD., Head Master. Beside that was an elevator cage with old-fashioned iron grates.
Eachann followed him into the cage and they creaked slowly up to the third floor.
“This thing is certified. Right?” Eachann asked nervously.
“Every six months, Detective,” the Head Master answered with a smirk. It was as if the detective’s anxiety was something that he felt that he could manipulate.
The grate opened slowly on a long hallway with doors staggered on both sides. These were bedrooms or dorms for the older students and consisted of two of everything. Two beds, nightstands, desks with computers, dressers and twin closets. Some had an extra chair but else-wise were mirror images of the other. There were no TVs.
On the bed in the room Hooper entered, was a suitcase and a trunk, both open and things thrown out on the bed’s duvet.
New clothes and a bundle containing soap, toothbrush, paste, towels and washcloths. There was nothing to indicate what the boy liked or had an interest in. The room itself was no help, it had less personality than a hotel room.
“Why did you put him with an older student?” Eachann asked. He examined the other boy’s side of the room. It had the Spartan neatness of an Army barracks. Too generic. He had the feeling that the boy and the Head Master were hiding something.
“I want to speak to his roommate,” he said.
Hooper returned, “Childs never met the boy. He was gone when he came up to his room after dinner.”
“Who was the last person to see the boy?” Eachann questioned.
“Adam, one of my Senior Counselors and student monitors. He brought the boy to this room, informed him of the rules and left him here. And he had some interaction with a younger boy named Fritz Sandford.”
“I’d like to speak to this Sandford child.” Eachann said and wondered why the Head Master displayed a microsecond of snarky amusement.
“That won’t be possible. Mr. Sandford returned home this morning.”
“Really. I need his address,” the detective said coolly. “And I want to know if you found anything out of place or odd.”
Hooper thought for a moment. “Just the library. The old lady that ran it for centuries said that she found a coat out when she swears it was hanging in the closet. She’s verging on senile, should have been retired ten years ago,” Hooper shrugged.
“Take me to this library,” the detective ordered. Hooper did so, but this time they walked down back stairs to the second floor.
Hooper unlocked the room with a huge skeleton key and Eachann stepped inside with a low whistle. The room was enormous and must have housed over a hundred thousand volumes. He took a deep appreciative sniff of the smell of leather and knowledge.
“Do you usually keep the doors locked?” he asked. The Head Master shook his head, and both heard the annoying buzz of a vibrating phone. It turned out to be Hooper’s and he answered it so quietly that most people couldn’t have heard the conversation but Eachann had exceptional hearing. Hooper apologized and said that he had to go, Deputy Neige was there with his lawyers and causing a scene.
“Go ahead,” Eachann said. “I’m going to look around. I can find my way back downstairs.”
“Just down the hallway to the elevator,” he said and left him alone although it was clear that he did not want to go.
Eachann walked the room, checking down each row of stacks, from floor-to-ceiling. He pulled out volumes that caught his interest, he found many first additions of classics that were worth a fortune. Alongside cheap paperbacks.
Hidden in a corner between two mahogany stacks that formed an ‘ell,’ he found an empty space where books had been moved out-of-the-way to accommodate one of those rolling ladders that ran on tracks. Designed so that the reader could reach the very highest shelves on the back wall, it had been pulled down to the corner where the room made a 90˚ turn.
Eachann climbed the ladder slowly and carefully, his injured leg complaining bitterly at the extra work that he was giving it. Near the top, he found a pile of old blankets and furs arranged as a bed and crumbs scattered from someone’s snack. Just the kind of place a young boy would have sought out to hide in. A place where a candle had been sitting, with the melted wax forming a hollow in the middle and built up around the sides.
Going back down the ladder was harder than up, his leg refusing to bear his weight, so he slid down like a fireman on his pole. He made it back to solid ground and sat at one of the desks, rubbing the offended knee and wishing he had a glass of water to take his pain pill. Instead, he dry-swallowed the Oxycontin, making a face at the bitterness off the drug.
As he swiveled his gaze around the room, he spotted drops of wax making a trail from the nest atop the stacks over to a spot on the wall in between a door to a closet and an unused storage room.
Eachann limped over and stared at the bigger part of the wall and the droplet of wax that went under the paneling. Laying his palm on the wall, he pushed and was not at all surprised when it opened to reveal a dark hallway and a staircase that went up into darkness. He pulled out his cell phone and used the flashlight app to show him the stairs went up higher that he thought possible.
Gritting his teeth, he stepped in and climbed. Part of the way up, he found the dangling light cord and pulled the string. A feeble light bulb ahead of him came on and showed him not much more than he’d already seen. He heard the door slam shut behind him but unlike the boy, he did not rush back down the stairs and try to open it.
He looked down in the light from the bulb, shutting off his cell for the app used up juice at a vampire’s pace. In the dust on the steps, he saw the small shoe prints of a child next to his own and more blobs of melted candle wax.
Fifteen minutes later, he was standing in the trunk room, amazed at the volume of luggage and accumulated years’ worth of unclaimed belongings. He took photos of the disarray made by the boy. Tracking the boy’s passage by the wax droplets, he found the hatch and the spiral stairs. With a soft curse that his colleagues would have been surprised to hear, he descended the stairs into the basements, marveling at the exquisite craftsmanship of the spiral woodwork. He continued through the tunnels, coming out in a series of caves that ended on a ledge overlooking a valley and mountain ridges. Without his light and the trail left by the boy in crumbs of wax, he would not have found the way.
On the edge of the cliff, he surveyed the valley laid out before him and the trail down the side of the cliff. He hesitated, knowing that a fall here for him would mean big trouble, maybe even his death if no one could find him. Still, he thought that if the kid could make it, then he ought to be able to do the same.
He had no idea how far he was from the school but suspected it was at least five miles. From there, the kid hadn’t needed his candle and once at the bottom of the sticky trail, he found the nub of it. Eachann bent over and put the stub in his pocket before he phoned his driver and was equally surprised that the call went through. His battery was fading after the uses he put it through.
“Jimmy, can you hear me?”
“Yes, sir. Where are you? You’ve been gone over three hours. I’ve been getting worried. I had to break up a fight while you were gone. Some big dude claims he’s a Deputy Sheriff got into it with the School Principle and Security.”
“I need you to come and get me,” Eachann said and the young policeman heard the exhaustion in his voice.
“Where? How? I don’t know where you are, sir,” Jimmy said.
Eachann looked at his GPS. “Someplace called Salt Cave. It’s South of the school and the nearest road is a seasonal one called Black Feather.”
“I see it.” He sounded awed. “I can be there in ten minutes. How did you walk that far?”
“On two legs, Jimmy,” he said dryly. “And they need a car to get back.”
“On my way.”
“I’ll be waiting,” Eachann returned. He wandered around, noting the light dusting of snow but no footprints. Nothing to indicate in what direction the child had gone. He suspected that Cris was at home in the woods, wasn’t the normal eleven-year-old when it came to be getting lost in the wilds. Nor was he a stupid child, he had outwitted both the School’s Director and the police. Eachann sighed. His body was ready to quit, his leg was killing him even after the extra dose of Oxy. He wanted a hot steaming shower, a soak and his bed. He had to keep going until he found the road that Jimmy had mentioned, where he was now would not get him home. Walking on the light trail, it brought him out onto a logging road and in the next step, he was out on a graveled road that had no signs but was marked with yellow blazes on the trees.
There wasn’t anywhere for him to sit, unless he wanted to use the ground and once down, he had no illusions about getting back up without someone else help. His cane was still back in the library, leaning against the desk where he had left it.
It took twenty minutes before the rookie found Eachann and when he pulled up and parked, he jumped out to help the weary detective back into the car. Exhausted, Eachann let him and collapsed once he was belted in.
“Follow this road,” he said and closed his eyes. “I tracked the boy this far. What does the GPS say about this area?” Eachann chewed another pain pill.
“It’s called the South Hill State Forest. 250,243 acres. The main road through it is seasonal and open from April 15 to November 15. It is called Bitter-root Road, CR 405. There are trails off Bitter-root, none of them allow motorized vehicles or four wheelers. You think this kid is out here somewhere?
“Yes. We’re going to need SAR and canines. No wonder they couldn’t find any sign of him around the school. He left by underground. I seem to recall that this area is famous for salt mines. I believe that the tunnels under the school are part of the Underground Railway and the salt mining that was done in this area. Hook me up with the local PD and the Albany office of the Feebs.”
“Can do, sir.”
“Jimmy, call me Matt,” he said tiredly. “Take me to the hotel. In Oneonta, the Clarion Suites.”
The young trainee punched it into the car’s GPS and followed the directions to the nearest large town where there was a decent hotel and places to eat that didn’t have ‘Mom’ or ‘Pop’ in the title. Before they arrived, the Oxycontin had kicked in and knocked the detective out, so Jimmy talked to the FBI SAICs and the local PD about Eachann’s find.
At the hotel, it took Jimmy and the manager to lift the unconscious detective into a wheelchair and to the room where they laid him out on the bed. Jimmy threw the second bed’s comforter over the detective and thanked the manager for his help. He didn’t move from the room until the local pizza place knocked on the door with his delivery. Even the smell of a large meat lovers did not rouse Eachann.