Steven James - Opening Moves

You think these things.

You cannot help but think them.

The sky is crisscrossed by the stark Vs of Canada geese heading south, or in some cases, settling for a few hours to rest on the brackish waters of the marsh. Even with the rain picking up, even above the sound of your wheels whisking across the damp leaves on the trail, you hear the geese honking.

The police checked the neighborhood carefully but didn’t find anything. They brought one of the neighbors in for questioning but nothing came of that and they let him go almost immediately.

Someone could have just driven up and forced the girl into a car and then taken off, that’s what people said. It could have been that easy. It could have been anything.

But it wasn’t just anything that happened, it was something very specific that happened at that time on that street to that girl. To Mindy Wells. Something that had never happened before, not in that place, not in that way.

The family is new to the area. She wouldn’t have gotten into the car with just anyone.

She’s an eleven-year-old girl.

You duck to avoid a branch. The tires of your mountain bike skid across a smear of mud, almost sending you off the trail. It rained yesterday afternoon, leaving the ground soggy. Most of the water has drained into the marsh, but it’ll take a few days for the ground to dry out completely. Now, however, with the rain picking up, it didn’t look like that was going to happen.

You picture the street that leads from the school to Mindy’s house. You know it well, you’ve been on it any number of times, and as you think about it, you realize there’s one spot where a thick row of hedges would have hidden the view of the street from all of the neighbors’ homes.

One spot. Four blocks from the school.

A blind spot, and that term makes you think of football, of throwing downfield to your receivers. You have to know how to read the defense, how to pick your way past the cornerbacks, linebackers, and safeties, find their blind spots. It’s all about location and timing. Getting the ball to the right place on the field at exactly the right time to catch the defense off guard.

The trail evens out, bending toward the dirt road you’ll use to take the shortcut home. It’s not far.

Is that where it happened? Where she was abducted? By those hedges four blocks from school?

If the person who took her had parked right there he could have forced her into his car and no one would have seen, overpowered her quickly, and no one would have known. There isn’t anywhere else on that street that’s hidden enough from view to do it without taking a big chance at being discovered. Nowhere else made sense.

But that would mean the kidnapper knew the area well, knew that street well, knew exactly where to do it.

A local.

Maybe.

Or someone who’d lived here.

And if he knew the area he would know where to take a girl. A place he could be alone with her.

You feel a chill.

The kids from your high school use the dirt road up ahead to get to an old tree house to party and hook up on the weekends. It overlooks the road as well as the marsh, so if you’re up there, you’re able to see anyone coming either by car or by jon boat.

It’s a place where they know they can be alone. A place they know they won’t be interrupted by adults, or if someone does show up, they can get away before getting caught. You’ve biked past it. You know where it is.

But unless a person knows where to look, it’s not easy to find.

You arrive at the road. Pull your bike to a stop.

The storm has arrived and the wind drives cold pellets of rain against your face. If it were ten degrees colder out, the rain would be snow.

Besides the rutted older tracks, pressed into the mud of the road in front of you are two sets of fresher tire tracks from a vehicle with a wide wheelbase, a pickup or maybe an SUV. One set is shallower, and the orientation of the tread marks tells you that’s from the return trip south, back to town. The other set is deeper, made when the mud was fresh.

You think about what you know, about the timing of the rain. It stopped in the middle of the afternoon yesterday, so that would mean someone drove out here during the rainstorm or shortly after it stopped, spent time here, and returned to town only after a substantial amount of the water had drained into the marsh.

That would have taken several hours.

Or maybe all night.

A chill ripples through you. You stare at those tracks, thinking about the time frame, and after a short moment of deliberation, rather than take the road south toward home, you aim your bike north, toward the trail that leads to the tree house.

It isn’t anything, it’s something-something specific that happened only once in only one way.

If the driver knew the area, he might know about the tree house.

Most people don’t know where that trail is.

A local would, though.

Yes, or someone who’d lived nearby.

You pedal along the side of the road, paralleling the tire tracks, but even from a distance, even in the dreary day, you can see where they stop.

Beside the trailhead to the tree house.

You feel your heart beating faster, not just from the exertion of pedaling, but from apprehension of what you fear might be waiting at the end of that trail.

You arrive, park your bike. Lean it against a tree.

After a moment you start walking along the path, into the woods.

A rush of adrenaline courses through you and your imagination plays out what might have happened.

One moment you’re seeing things through the eyes of the kidnapper and the next through the eyes of the girl. It’s startling how detailed you see everything. Not in bursts and blurs like some sort of psychic might, but in full color because you know the area and can imagine how things might have gone down.

Clarity.

Just like when you’re on the football field, when everything slows down and you see it all without seeing, when you know where your receiver is going to be without consciously thinking about it. Time slows and you seem to slip through its seams, respond between the moments, pausing between the beats of your heart. Then you thread the needle. Move the ball down the field. Timing and location.

Clarity.

You’re a girl, new to the area, walking home from school…There’s a man grabbing you…forcing you into his blue van…driving you out here…where no one will disturb him…

No, you don’t know if what you see in your mind really happened, but if it did, if-

You pass an old fire pit that’s been here for years, one that’s always littered with discarded beer cans and charred logs. Today glass shards from several broken Jack Daniel’s bottles lie strewn across the leaves at the base of a log the kids sit on by the fire.

Nearby, you notice that the leaves are matted down from yesterday’s rain, but the ones on the trail are kicked up. Maybe from someone walking through here-

Or from the girl, from being dragged through the woods, struggling, kicking, trying to get free…

Your heart somehow both tenses and races at the same time.

Through the bare forest you see the tree house ahead of you. It’s perched on the muscular branches of an aging oak and you think of “The Monkey’s Paw,” the short story by W. W. Jacobs that you had to read for English lit. last year. The branches of the oak curl around the tree house like a gnarled hand clutching a talisman.

“Hello?” you call.

Silence.

The tree house is forty feet away.

“Mindy?”

Nothing. No reply.

You gaze around again at the empty, lonely forest, then use your hand to shield your eyes from the slanting rain, and walk to the base of the tree.