John Case: The Murder Artist

I’m shouting at the top of my lungs now, and looking wildly around. And I see: other kids. Lots of them. The Green Knight goes down and a disconsolate moan ripples through the section while a roar erupts across the arena. At the bidding of the squires, balloons are released en masse. I push my way to the fence and scan the mob, searching frantically for blond hair, a yellow T-shirt. I can’t see them. Kids begin to disperse, skipping back toward their parents.

After a minute, I return to the approximate hay bale where we were sitting. I fasten my eyes on the dissolving crowd, willing it to reveal my sons, but after a few minutes, except for a woman a few rows down soothing her screaming toddler, I’m alone.

It’s five-twenty-two in the afternoon, and the twins are gone. Gone . I sit there hoping the boys have gone to the restroom and will soon be back, but I have a terrible feeling in my chest. I know they didn’t go to the john. Not without telling me. Not in the middle of the joust.

So where are they?

It’s not entirely rational, but for a few minutes I can’t bring myself to leave the jousting area. It’s where I last saw them, where they would come back to – if they just wandered off. I shake that phrase out of my mind, an expression I associate with news stories about kids who go missing, who are never seen again, who end up with their faces on milk cartons.

I sit on the hay bale for longer than I should because, as I eventually figure out, the moment I leave and walk away from the jousting arena, I’ll be admitting that my sons are really gone, that something terrible is happening, something that requires the police. It’s dumb fear wrapped in desperate hope, but several minutes tick by while I’m paralyzed in this fog of superstition.

What bubbles up through me as I break my inaction and rise to my feet is an electric rush of sheer terror. Within ten seconds, I’m running full out, so recklessly that the meandering crowd parts for me in alarm and voices rise in complaint and irritation.

“What’s his problem.”

“Hey!”

“There’s little kids here, man!”

“Hey, buddy, watch it!”

It takes a while to find someone from the fair’s security staff.

“Prithee, stranger-”

“I can’t find my kids.” The edge in my voice dissolves the centuries. Suddenly, it’s 2003 again.

“Happens all the time,” the guy tells me. “People get distracted. A juggler comes along – we got a dozen jugglers, y’know? So it’s easy to lose track.”

“I didn’t lose track,” I insist. “We were watching the joust…”

Everyone’s sympathetic. Announcements go out over the P.A. system, informing “Prince Kevin and Lord Sean” that their father is lost. Would the lads be good enough to make their presence known at any of the booths?

I wait, telling myself the boys will be along any minute. But even as I try to reassure myself, I don’t really believe it.

Isit marooned on a bench outside the small rustic building that houses Her Majesty’s Headquarters. There’s nothing medieval about the interior. Half a dozen fair employees work in a large modern space. The section devoted to security is crowded with desks, computers, an elaborate communication system. The building also houses First Aid and the Lost and Found.

A gray-haired man pokes his head out the door. “Offer you a beverage?” he asks. “Coffee? Soft drink?”

I shake my head, keep my eyes on the crowd. Any minute, I tell myself, the boys will come around that corner.

“Suit yourself.”

The gray-haired man is Gary Prebble, chief of security for the fair. He wears a basic uniform, pale blue with gold stripes down the legs, badge on the chest pocket, equipment belt with polished billy club, aerosol cylinder of mace, walkie-talkie. A rent-a-cop, in other words, who works weekends at the fair.

The word beverage marks Prebble as a man who’s spent his life in a certain kind of job, a job where generic terms foreign to ordinary life hold sway: beverage, occupation, vehicle, firearm.

When I arrived and told Prebble I couldn’t find my kids, he directed a heavyset woman in braids to read out a plea over the P.A. system. Then he methodically took down the details on what he called an “incident form.”

“When kids go AWOL,” he told me, “which they do all the time, every single day, what we do is basically we put out the word, and then wait for ’em to turn up. They always turn up, sooner or later.” He advised me to “stay put.” “I been at this some time now.” He placed a consoling hand on my shoulder. “When folks get separated, it’s best if one party remains in a fixed location, you know what I mean?”

That was ten minutes ago. Now Prebble joins me on the bench, drinking coffee from a Styrofoam cup. I can’t say a word. My mouth is as dry as sand.

Prebble’s a talker. “I do miss my weapon,” he says, patting the belt. “I was thirty years with the Prince William force – over in Virginia. Retired five years ago. Moved down here to be close to my grandkids.” He gives me a buck-up smile. “Don’t worry too hard about those boys. They’ll turn up. I guarantee it.”

There’s warmth in his eyes, a demeanor of reassurance garnered from a long life of being a man people turn to in a time of trouble. I’m heartened by his anecdotal confidence, but it only goes so far.

Where can the boys be?

People wander in and out of the building. One couple leads a screaming toddler with a gash on his knee. A nervous pair of teenagers escort a hopping girl who’s been stung by a yellow-jacket. A weary man explains that he’s lost his car keys. A woman complains that she was shortchanged ten bucks at one of the food stalls.

I do my best to believe that the boys getting lost is just another one of these pedestrian events, that any second, some helpful adult will come around the corner with Kev and Sean in tow. But after a while, there’s no way I can just sit there any longer.

“Look,” I tell Prebble, “if they show up-”

“They will, Mr. Callahan. You want to go looking for them? You go right ahead. When they show up, we’ll call you over the P.A. system and we’ll keep them here. I can promise you that.”

It’s a relief to be in motion. Doing something, anything, is better than just waiting. First I head out to the Jeep figuring that maybe when we got separated, the boys thought of going to the car. Is this what they’d do? It seems logical to me, but I’ve spent so little time with them in the past half year, I’m not sure how they’d act. Anyway, I can get my cell phone. They know the number. Before the trip down from Maine, Liz made them memorize all my telephone numbers. Maybe they called.

“Thou dost seem in a hurry,” a heavily made-up woman says in a flirtatious voice. She places a restraining hand on my arm. “Prithee, why not tarry-”

I’m not quite rude enough to just brush by her. “I’m looking for my kids.”

She drops the accent. “Let me stamp your hand,” she says. “Otherwise they’ll make you pay to come back in – even if it’s only for ten minutes.”

Before I can answer, she’s stamped the back of my hand with a fluorescent pink rose.

I lope through the acres of gleaming cars – noticing quite a few empty spaces close to the entrance now. The vast parking lot is surrounded by a dense and lush forest, and from it comes the fervid din of cicadas, a rising and falling crush of sound that for a moment almost makes me dizzy. A bright green John Deere Gator rumbles by, its small truck bed full of Day-Glo vests and the bright orange wands used to direct traffic. They’re getting ready for the mass exodus.