"That would be very kind of you," I replied, suddenly feeling like a welcomed guest.
She first made the coffee, then called Sherwood, our police contact, who a.s.sured her that Parsons and I were on the level and could be trusted.
"May I see that photograph again?" she asked when she came in with the coffee. I handed it to her and spent several moments adding cream and sugar to my cup while she examined the picture Parsons had taken not two hours ago.
"I guess it could be him," she whispered, then looked up at me.
"I"m sorry if I don"t seem overjoyed at your news, but I"ve been duped by a lot of people over the years who claim to"ve had news of Jimmy"s whereabouts."
"I understand."
She looked up at the mantel. There were only three framed photographs there: one showed Jimmy as a newborn, still swaddled in his hospital blanket; the next, in the center, was a picture of herself with her late husband that had apparently been taken shortly before his death; and the last, at the far end of the mantel, was of Jimmy, taken on his fifth birthday. I raged at the emptiness up there, for all the photographs that should have been present but hadn"t been and now never would be--Jimmy graduating from grade school, his high school senior picture, college graduation, all the moments in between, silly moments with Mom and Dad, maybe a picture of himself with his prom date, both of them looking embarra.s.sed as Mom stood in tears while Dad recorded the Historic Moment on film ... all the empty s.p.a.ces where precious memories should have been, filled only with a thin layer of dust and a heavy one of regret. Even with the smell of air-freshener and what I suspected was freshly-shampooed carpeting in the air, there was a smell underneath everything that had to be grief.
It had been clogging my nostrils since I"d come into the house.
"He was watching The Searchers," she said.
"You know, that John Wayne movie?"
"Yes, I"ve seen it many times."
"It was his father"s favorite movie, you know. Anyway, he was watching it while I was making some last minute arrangements for his surprise party later that afternoon and ... you have to understand. Jimmy was always the sort of child who liked being kept in suspense.
I guess that way he always had something to look forward to. So, about two-thirds of the way through the movie--and boy, was he immersed in the story--he had to use the bathroom, so he put the tape on "pause"
and did his business, and about the time he was coming out of the bathroom his father was coming in the back door with Jimmy"s birthday present--his own VCR. Well, I didn"t want Jimmy to see it, so I gave him a couple of dollars and told him to walk up to Louie"s Pizza and get himself a couple of slices. Louie"s--it"s been gone for a lot of years now-it was right at the end of our block, so Jimmy didn"t have to cross the street or anything like that, and he loved Louie"s pizza. So he said, "Okay. I"ll have it when I watch the rest of the movie," and he took off.
That"s . - . that"s the last we ever saw of him."
"Mrs. Waggoner, I have to ask this question: in the weeks, days, or hours before Jimmy disappeared, do you remember seeing any--" "Yes."
The immediacy of her answer surprised me.
She saw my surprise and laughed.
"I didn"t mean to stun you, but the police and FBI must have asked me that about a thousand times. Yes, there was a man I saw walking through the neighborhood that I didn"t recognize and, yes. Jimmy once told me about this man trying to talk to him."
"Did you contact the police?"
"You bet your a.s.s we did. My husband had several friends on the force, and for several weeks afterward I noticed more frequent patrols through our area. After Jimmy was taken, my husband started buying all sorts of guns, most of them from his friends on the force-old pieces of evidence, no serial numbers, like that.
At one point, he had two guns in every room in our house. After he died, I got rid of most of them."
"How much time elapsed between Jimmy telling you about this man and his disappearing?"
"About five months."
"Did this man say anything to Jimmy that might--" "I"m way ahead of you." She reached into the breast pocket of her blouse and removed a small, age browned business card, "He gave this to Jimmy."
She handed me the card. It was a sketch of a man meant to resemble Jesus, his face turned heavenward, his arms parted wide, a clock in the center of his chest.
The time on the clock was three minutes until twelve.
The logo for the Church of the One-Hundred-and Eightieth Second.
She stared at me.
"You recognize it, don"t you?"
"Yes." And I did something then that I"d never done before.
I told her everything.
This is not SOP with me, understand. Usually Parsons and I try to feed the information to the families in bits and pieces so as to make the sordid whole a bit easier to swallow, but this woman, this good, graceful, lonely woman had moved something in me, and I felt she deserved nothing more than the whole truth.
She listened stone-faced, the only sign of her grief and rage the way her folded hands balled slowly into white-knuckled fists.
I finished telling her everything, then poured myself some more coffee while the news set in. I still couldn"t get that underneath-things-smell out of my nose.
"The police checked it out, that card, but that church, they denied that any of their "apostles" had given it to Jimmy. I guess they"ve got thousands of those cards floating all around; anyone can get their hands on them."
"Can I keep this?" I asked.
"Don"t see why not." She stared off in the distance for a minute, then shook herself from her reverie, looked at me, and smiled. She looked like someone had stuck a gun in her back and told her to act natural.
"I still have that d.a.m.n VCR we got for him," she said. Her voice was so tight I thought the words might shatter like gla.s.s before they exited her throat.
"Still wrapped up in birthday paper. They don"t even make the d.a.m.n things anymore. Still got that tape of The Searchers, too."
I reached over and took hold of one of her hands.
It was like gripping a piece of granite" At least that"ll give him something to look forward to."
She nodded, and for the first time I saw the tears forming in her eyes.
"I don"t so much mind what they robbed me of," she said.
"Seeing him grow up, mature, riding a bike for the first time ... I don"t mind that so much. But for him ... I very much mind what those f.u.c.kers robbed him of. Childhood ends all too soon anyway, but to be ... to be stripped of it like that, to have it expunged, to never, ever experience it... that"s worse than simply robbing a boy of his childhood. It"s a hideous form of rape in a way, isn"t it?"
"We"ll get them for this, Mrs. Waggoner. I swear it."
She wiped her eyes, looked at me, and tried to smile.
"I don"t doubt it for a minute."
I readied myself to leave and take her back to the safe-house. To my surprise, she didn"t want to come along.
"I, uh .. . I don"t exactly look my best right now," she said, "I want to clean up a bit, put on a good dress, you know."
"Of course. I"ll have someone come for you later this afternoon."
"Around five would be wonderful." She took my hand and kissed me once on the cheek.
"Thank you, Carl. I don"t know what kind of a life my son and I will have from here on, but at least we"ll have one.
Together."
I smiled at her as best I could and nodded, then quickly trotted out to the hover-car and took off.
I didn"t want her to see how badly I was shaking.
Something had clicked into place while she was speaking to me.
And when she"d craned to kiss my cheek, that under-neath-things-smell was on her.
And I recognized it for what it was.
And the implications scared the h.e.l.l out of me.