John Case - The Murder Artist

It takes me a while to find the Jeep and when I finally locate it, the boys are not there. I didn’t expect them to be, not really, but I’m still disappointed. I hit the button on the key to open the door – and grab my cell phone – with a brief surge of hope that I’ll find a message.

But there’s nothing. I shove the phone into my pocket, then pull it out again and call the machine at home. Nothing there either, only a message from Kathy at the station, “Is there a chyron for the opening shot?”

I trot back toward the gate and reenter the fairgrounds – flashing the pink rose at the attendant, who clicks me through a turnstile. I grab a map of the fair, and with this in hand, begin my search.

I plan to be methodical, to check every stall and concession, every amphitheater, large and small, the phalanx of Porta-Johns, every single shop. As I go around, I call out the boys’ names. I’m doing my best not to panic, but every once in a while my voice gets away from me, and the tone of desperation startles those around me. I can see it in their eyes; they look wary and alarmed.

“Kevin! Sean!”

After a while, I start to stop people at random: “I’m looking for twins?!”… “Twin boys, have you seen them? Six-year-old boys, blond hair.”… “Have you seen two boys? Twins.”

The layout of the fairgrounds is complex, set up in the manner of big retail stores to encourage meandering. Searching for someone in the chaotic, people-jammed sprawl is not easy. Several times I realize I’m in familiar territory, that I’ve doubled back over an area already visited. Every few minutes I run over to the jousting arena, just in case the boys returned there. Then I check in with Gary Prebble in case someone’s brought the boys to Faire Headquarters.

After about forty-five minutes, I’ve covered most of the fairgrounds. Some people remember seeing the boys, but when pressed, many of these recollections are from much earlier in the day and others are so vague as to be useless. Some people seem to produce memories of the boys for my benefit. My impression is that I look so distraught they want to help. (“I think I saw a pair of twins during the falconry exhibition.”)

Then comes the P.A. announcement informing the crowd that the fair is scheduled to close in thirty minutes, that visitors should make their purchases and leave enough time to return any rented costumes. Almost immediately, people begin streaming toward the exits. I head for the fair’s headquarters.

What I want is for Gary Prebble to throw a wall around the place.

“We can’t do that,” Prebble says.

“Why not?”

“Can you imagine the panic if we try to pen all these people in? I can’t do that! Besides, the fair is enclosed, except to staff. Everybody has to go in and out through the one entrance – that’s how we make sure everybody pays on the way in, you understand? In fact, why don’t you and I go on over to the exit? Maybe the boys will head for your car.”

“I already checked.”

“Still, now the fair is closing. They will have heard the announcement. Everybody heads for their cars.” Prebble disappears into his office for a moment, and I hear him call out to his assistant: “Jackie, you touch base with the crew. Tell them don’t anybody go home, a’right?”

The two of us stand on the bridge that crosses the moat, scanning the exiting crowd. “One way in, one way out,” Prebble tells me. “On the way in everybody pays, and on the way out, visitors are funneled straight to the parking lot so they can’t intrude on the privacy of the performers and artisans who live on the premises.”

“They live here?”

“Oh, some of ’em, sure. Out back, behind the mud-wrestlin’ pit. They got Winnies and campers and the like. There’s fairs like this all around the country, all round the world, matter of fact. Some of these folk, they just travel from one to the other. And that’s their life, you know, just like the circus.”

I focus on the approaching crowd, my heart picking up a hopeful beat every time my eyes catch on a couple of blond kids – or even one. But each time, the hope lasts only a few seconds, fading as the fair-haired children approach, their features clarified by proximity.

Not Kevin. Not Sean.

Some fairgoers stop at the costume shop before exiting, exchanging their Elizabethan finery for blue jeans and T-shirts, tank tops and shorts. Weary parents shepherd tired children with rainbows painted on their cheeks. Toddlers scream to be picked up and carried. Two giggling teenagers in Goth makeup walk past, leading a little girl with a garland of flowers in her hair.

The crowd is noticeably thinner when Prebble’s walkie-talkie crackles. As the gray-haired man steps a few paces aside, a torrent of hope floods through me. It doesn’t last. I can see from Prebble’s face that it isn’t news about the boys. “Before we left headquarters,” he tells me with a somewhat pained look, “I had Mike call Anne Arundel County to alert them we might have a situation here. They’ll be here any time now.”

Five minutes later, the exodus is down to just a few stragglers. Inside the fairgrounds, cleanup crews begin to collect trash and litter, lifting off the crenelated trash can covers and extracting big clear plastic bags of junk. A gangly youth in a jester’s hat drives by in a fat-wheeled John Deere Gator and tosses the bags into its small bed. People in shops near the entrance stow wares for the night – pewter mugs, hammock chairs, candles, framed woodcuts of knights. At the costume shop, a woman totes up earnings on a calculator. Behind me, at a shop selling candles, a man slides a painted plywood panel into place over his storefront.

Prebble checks in with the security crew by walkie-talkie, but no one has seen the boys. “Well,” he says, “maybe they fell asleep somewhere. The fairground is full of nooks and crannies.” His voice isn’t so reassuring anymore.

In the vast parking lot, hundreds of engines rumble and rev, drowning out the occasional wails of tired children. Handlers in Day-Glo orange vests, wielding orange flags, direct the streams of departing traffic.

A brown-and-beige squad car, blue and red lights flashing, threads its way through the streams of exiting cars and pulls up outside the entrance gate.

Detective Shoffler is a big guy, ruddy-faced, with dirty blond hair. He’s fifty or maybe a little older and forty pounds overweight. Despite his rumpled khakis and a blue blazer that’s seen better days, he gives the immediate impression of authority. And heavy or not, he carries himself like an athlete.

Officer Christiansen is a skinny guy with a buzz-cut, buckteeth, and a high-pitched voice. He wears a brown uniform that’s more or less the same color as the squad car.

Shoffler’s hand is big, the skin rough, and he does not release my hand immediately, covering it instead with his other one. “Mr. Callahan,” he says, and fixes me with a gaze so piercing that it feels to me as if I’m being scanned by a biometric device.

Then Shoffler releases the hand, and points an accusing finger at Prebble. “Gary, you shoulda called me sooner. Damn it, you know better.” He shakes his head in a disapproving way.

Prebble shrugs. “I figured-”

“How long these boys been missing? More than two hours now?” Shoffler heaves a sigh. “All right. What you got in the way of a crew today?”

“Me plus four,” Prebble says, and then, when it seems clear Shoffler is waiting for more, lists them by name. “Apart from Jack here” – he nods toward the pale man seated at the desk – “there’s Gomez, Arrington, and, oh yeah, Abigail Dixon.”

Shoffler makes a face. “Get ’em down here.”

Prebble nods, then lifts the phone away from his ear as if he’s going to say something, but Shoffler stops him, holding up his hand like a traffic cop. “I’m gonna get K- 9,” he says, snapping a cell phone off his belt. He turns to Christiansen. “In the meantime,” he says, “we’re gonna seal this place up.”