Valerie Malmont - Death, Snow, and Mistletoe

He recognized me immediately. “Hi, Tori. I've been looking forward to meeting you. My name's Afton Finkey.” He extended his hand, which I shook.

I thought I'd grown accustomed to the odd names Lickin Creekers gave to their defenseless children, but Afton was a new one. I couldn't resist commenting, “I don't think I've ever met an Afton before.”

“Thank you,” he said, with a smile that revealed braces. “My mother heard the song ‘Flow Gently, Sweet Afton’ while she was carrying me and thought it would make a nice name. I really am glad you're here to help us, Tori. Luscious says he wouldn't know what to do without you.”

All I could think was: Now I've got two Lickin Creek policemen to play nursemaid to. However, after talking to Afton for a few minutes, I realized Luscious had left a competent person in charge.

Unfortunately, there was still no sign of the missing child. More volunteers had arrived from all over the tri-state area, and Afton told me he was expanding the search area.

“Trouble is,” Afton said as he showed me the enlarged area on the map, “a little kid like that could be easy to miss. If he fell into a cave, and there's lots of them out there, or got knocked out, he wouldn't hear us calling for him.”

“What do you think his chances of survival are?” I asked.

“Pretty good, if he's conscious. The temperature's stayed above freezing. And he's a mountain boy; he should know how to take care of himself-for awhile anyway.”

A cellular phone rang, and Afton picked it up. His boyish face turned grim as he listened. After a few moments, he disconnected, snatched up his coat, and jammed his arms into the sleeves.

“Gotta get up to the Poffenbergers',” he said.

“What's wrong?” I asked, trailing him outside.

“The kids-seems they've changed their story.” His long legs had already carried him halfway across the field.

“Wait for me,” I said, trying to keep up with him.

I drove behind the cruiser, as fast as I dared, to the Iron Ore Mansions Trailer Park. At the entrance to the park, I groaned, “Oh, no.” Just inside the gate, media vans lined both sides of the narrow street. I saw television crews from as far away as Baltimore and the District of Columbia, as well as many from the tristate area of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia. What had happened? I parked and leaped from the truck, fearing the worst.

Mr. Poffenberger, dressed in an ill-fitting blue suit, was standing in front of his trailer, talking to a female reporter who looked vaguely familiar to me.

Several people stared at me as I approached, as if trying to decide whether or not I was worthy of being interviewed. Most decided, correctly, I was not worth bothering with, but one young reporter, who must have been desperate, thrust a microphone in my face. “Would you care to make a statement?”

I brushed him aside with practiced scorn-I hadn't been in the news business for ten years for nothing-and he backed away.

Through the open door, I saw Afton standing in the living room with his back to me, so I squeezed past Kevin's father and went inside. Mrs. Poffenberger sat on the sofa, nursing her yellow-bundled baby. Her hair hadn't been combed today, and her puffy nose was nearly as red as the drooping Christmas poinsettia on the coffee table.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

Her eyes opened wide, as though she were surprised someone would care how she felt. “Uh-huh. They told me in the emergency room it weren't Kevin in the quarry.” She wiped her nose with the milk-stained diaper that was draped over her shoulder.

“You should have stayed in the hospital,” I said.

“Yeah, sure. You going to pay the bill? 'Scuse me. The baby needs changed.” She left the room with the baby.

“What did the kids say?” I asked Afton.

“Now they're saying a man in a black sports utility vehicle took him.”

My jaw dropped. “Kevin was kidnapped? Why the hell didn't they tell us that before?”

“Let's ask them,” Afton said, his face grim. He reached through the open front door and tapped Mr. Poffenberger on the shoulder, interrupting his interview with an anchorman from NBC. “Get the kids in here. Now!” he ordered with surprising authority.

Within a few minutes, an assortment of Poffenberger children had been rounded up and sat in a semicircle on the orange shag carpet before us. Kevin's parents sat side by side on the couch. Another couple, parents of Kevin's cousins Pearl and Peter, took the recliner-he, seated, she, perched on an arm.

“Now,” the young policeman said sternly, “let's hear what happened. And I want the truth!”

As one, the little towheads turned to Pearl. With her eyes downcast, she began her tale. “It was a guy in a big black boxy kind of car,” she said. “We was walking along the road, and he stopped and said he needed some directions. Kevin went over to him, even though I told him not to, and the guy grabbed him and pulled him into the car and drove off.”

“Which way?” Afton asked.

“Down the mountain. Toward town.”

“This man-what did he look like?”

Pearl appeared to be thinking. “We couldn't see his face very good, because he was wearing a ball cap pulled down real low. But he had a beard. Didn't he, Peter?”

Her brother Peter nodded. “Yeah, a beard and a ball cap.”

“What team?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“You said he was wearing a ball cap. I wondered what team?”

“It wasn't a real ball cap,” Pearl answered. “Just one of them hats that look like ball caps. It advertised tractors or something.”

“Yeah,” Peter said. “Tractors.”

“Did you notice anything else? How old do you think he was? How tall was he? What kind of clothes he was wearing?” Afton had his notebook out.

Pearl scrunched her forehead as if she were working really hard at remembering something. “He wasn't a real young guy. Maybe as old as her,” she said, jerking a thumb in my direction. “He never got out of the car, so I don't know how tall he was. Wait! I remember he was wearing a red-plaid flannel shirt.”

A bearded man, about thirty years old, wearing a cap advertising tractors and a plaid flannel shirt. Pearl had just described half the men in Lickin Creek!

“Why didn't you tell your parents right away about this man?” Afton asked. “Why did you let us believe Kevin had wandered off by himself?”

The little faces all looked at Pearl, waiting for her to answer. “The guy told us he'd come back and get us if we told,” Pearl said.

“You were afraid, is that right?”

The heads nodded in unison.

“How about the vehicle? Did you catch a glimpse of the license plate?”

The forehead scrunched again. “Texas,” Pearl said. “I think it was a Texas plate.”

Afton asked a few more questions, with unsatisfying results, and finally told the children they could leave.

“Can we sleep over?” Pearl asked her mother.

The woman looked at Kevin's mother, who gave a slight nod. But one of her children began to whine. “I don't want to sleep with Peter. He always pees the bed.”

The scathing look Pearl directed at her brother should have immediately cured his enuresis problem.

“I'll call Luscious and the state police,” Afton said to me as he pulled on his coat. “We need to put out an APB for that sports utility vehicle.”

“You're not going to call off the search on the mountain, are you?” I asked him.

He shook his head and glanced into the kitchen, where the adult Poffenbergers had all adjourned. I could hear them popping the tabs off beer cans. The children had turned on the TV and were enthralled by an incredibly violent cartoon. He lowered his voice so only I could hear. “I don't really believe anything that Pearl says. This abduction story doesn't ring true.”