Ridley Pearson - Beyond Recognition

“He killed her,” Ben said to Daphne, between his sobs. She squeezed him all the tighter. “He killed my mom and put her down there.” Daphne didn’t tell him to be quiet; she didn’t tell him everything would be all right. That had been what he had feared the most, being told to shut up or that things would work out. Because they weren’t going to work out, and Ben knew it.

Daphne said, “You can tell me anything that comes to mind. It doesn’t have to make sense. I want to hear it, if you want to share it.” These words seemed to come from the voice of an angel to him. He cried all the harder. She said, “You’re safe here, Ben. Emily, me, Susan-we’re not going anywhere. We’re here for you. We’re your friends. You can talk to us. You can share with us. It’s safe.” She squeezed him again.

“I’m afraid,” he said, admitting aloud for the first time something he had lived with for what felt like forever.

“Me too,” said Daphne. “And you know what? It’s okay to be afraid.”

He looked up at her then, and for a moment he forgot everything. There was only this woman and the feeling that whatever was wrong was suddenly okay. That he was safe.

He shut his eyes and tried to hold it there forever.

The big man was Boldt, he knew that much. He wasn’t so much tall as big, and yet his hands belonged to a different person, with their long fingers. They looked like he kept them in his pockets all day or something. Hiding them. Protecting them. Ben had never seen hands quite like that.

The other guy to visit the houseboat was some sort of artist. He had a gentle face and kinky hair and went by the name of Andrew or Andrews; Ben couldn’t tell if it was a last name or a first name. He set up his pad of white drawing paper under a lamp on the small countertop bar that separated Daphne’s galley from the tiny sitting room that housed Ben’s fold-out couch. There were three tall stools at the counter where Ben usually sat while Daphne cooked.

The one called Boldt brought a videocassette with him that Daphne put into the machine and set up for Ben to view. Boldt explained, “You’ll see five men, all standing alongside one another-”

“I know what a lineup is,” Ben interrupted. He wanted these guys gone. He wanted Daphne to himself. He wanted that meeting with Emily she had promised. For the first time in a very long time he felt as if things weren’t as bad, as scary, as they had seemed, and he didn’t want to lose that feeling.

Boldt glanced over at Daphne, who asked Ben politely not to interrupt, saying that Boldt and this other guy had a job to do and it had to be done in a certain way, and even if all of them knew exactly what was supposed to happen, the sergeant still had to explain everything to Ben-which he then did, without interruption. Boldt thanked him at the end of the explanation, and it made Ben feel better about the whole thing. He wasn’t used to a guy thanking him for anything, only ordering him around.

They played the video for him then, and it looked just as it did on TV, with a line of five guys shoulder to shoulder standing in front of a white board that had lines for different heights drawn onto it. They kept their arms and hands behind their backs. There was a short guy with a beard, and next to him a taller blond guy with a tattoo showing at his chest, and then Nick, and then another tall guy with a messed-up ear, withered and small, and then a guy who looked pretty much like Nick but not really. They all turned right, then left. They spoke the same line, one right after another, so Ben could hear their voices. But he didn’t need to hear the guy’s voice.

“The guy in the middle,” Ben said. “The duffel bag had drugs in it.”

“You’re absolutely sure?” Boldt asked. “If this is the man at the airport, the one in the truck, that’s important to us. We need to confirm that. We don’t want to mix things up. But if not-”

“His name is Nick. He was a customer of Emily’s. He has his name on the back of his belt. He drives a light blue pickup with a white camper shell. There’s a Good Sam’s Club sticker on the back bumper, and there was a gun inside the camper shell: a pistol like the cops use on TV.”

“You saw the gun in the camper?” Boldt asked.

“I was in there,” Ben said.

“Drugs?”

“Stuff to make them, I think. Milky stuff. I saw a TV show about a drug lab one time. Like that.”

Boldt said, “And the duffel bag had this stuff in it.”

“In plastic things. Like for leftovers. Must have been a dozen of them.”

“Tupperware.”

“Taped shut with silver tape. And they had chemistry stuff written on them. You know? Letters and numbers.”

“What else did you find in the camper?” Boldt asked. Eye to eye with Ben, who remained on the stool, Boldt told him, “You know what immunity is, Ben? You have immunity. Nothing you tell us can get you in trouble. We didn’t read you your rights, did we? Because you’re not a suspect, you’re a witness. Whatever you did is behind you. You can’t get in trouble for any of it. And Emily’s not going to get in trouble either. Okay? You don’t have to worry about it.”

“I didn’t take any money,” Ben stated.

Daphne said, “Ben, Sergeant Boldt didn’t mention money. If you lie to us, even once, then we can’t trust anything you tell us. Does that make sense to you? Do you see the importance of not lying?”

“Let’s forget about the money,” Boldt said, as much to Daphne as to Ben. “Let’s talk about who was there at the airport. When you called nine-one-one you said it was a drug deal , didn’t you, son?”

“I’m not your son.”

“How many people were there, Ben,” Daphne encouraged.

He didn’t think he should tell. Emily had warned him to never so much as touch one of the cars. It was illegal. But Daphne’s asking made it different.

“Two,” Ben answered. “Nick and this other guy.”

“The other guy,” Daphne said.

Ben felt himself nod. The thing about Daphne was that she could get him to do things he didn’t plan on doing. It was almost as if she played tricks on him. The guys scared him, but not Daphne. He wanted her to hold him again; he wanted the others to leave so he could be alone with her. “What?” he asked her, seeing a strange look on her face.

“Sergeant Boldt needs a description of the other guy.”

“I didn’t see his face. He was over by some cars. It was dark. I couldn’t see him so good.”

The artist, on a stool alongside Ben, started sketching. Ben watched in amazement as the inside of the parking garage came to life on the page. “You were looking toward the inside or the outside?” the man asked.

“Inside,” Ben answered.

Boldt considered his words. “What’s amazing about when you see something is that there is stuff you see that you don’t even know you saw. You say you didn’t see his face because it was dark. That’s okay. Was he standing between some of the cars?”

Ben could recall the image clearly in his mind’s eye: a dark shape looking toward the truck. He felt the fear he had experienced, not knowing what to do. He nodded at Boldt. “Yeah, between some cars.”

“And was he taller or shorter than the cars?”

“Taller.” Ben understood then. “Yeah, taller,” he said proudly.

“My size? Danny’s size?” Boldt asked, pointing to the artist, who was shading the cars and making the page look even more realistic.

“Not as tall as you,” he told the sergeant. “Skinnier.”

Daphne smiled, and Boldt looked at her disapprovingly.

Boldt said, “Smaller all around, then? Shoulders, waist-a smaller frame?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s right.”