Orson Card - Lost Boys

"But maybe he . ... No, Stevie would have told us."

"We could ask him. If anybody has ever talked to him."

"No," said DeAnne. "He's going to school tomorrow. There's going to be talk about this serial killer everywhere. They're going to be warning all the children about talking to strangers. He'll connect that with us asking him if somebody already talked to him. He's got trouble enough already without his own parents connecting him so personally to this."

"But he's already connected," said Step.

"Might be connected. This might just be a coincidence."

"Van and Sandy aren't such common names," said Step.

"Well, Sandy isn't Alexander and Jack isn't Jonathan."

"So what else do we do? Call the police? Oh, yes, Officer, we have a real lead for you in this serial killer thing. Our son, you see, has been hallucinating these imaginary friends, and they happen to have the same names as those lost boys. What? Oh, don't you have time to talk to us?"

"You're right," said DeAnne. "They'd think we were crazy." She fretted with the list, something she did when she was nervous, folding and tearing at paper until it was reduced to confetti. Step reached out his hand and put it over hers.

"Don't tear up that list," he said. "You wrote that before this article came out."

"Yes, but I don't have any witnesses of that."

"You sent a copy of it to Dr. Weeks, didn't you?"

. "Yes," she said. "Yes, that would prove that we had at least some of the names before. And we did get that record."

"I think you're saying that we should call the police."

"We should call somebody," said DeAnne. "We should do something. You don't find out that there's some weird kind of link between your son and a serial killer and then just fold your hands and say, How interesting."

Step looked again at the newspaper. "So, how accessible do you think this Doug Douglas is?"

They soon found out. DeAnne looked up the number of the police department and Step called. He asked the switchboard operator to connect him with Detective Douglas. "He isn't in on Sundays, but I'll try his line."

It rang once and a man picked it up. "Is this Mr. Douglas?" asked Step.

"No," said the man.

"Is he there? Can I speak to him?"

"Can I tell him what it's about?"

Step covered the receiver and whispered to DeAnne: "I think he's there." Then, into the receiver, he said,

"It's probably about nothing. It's something that doesn't even make any sense to us. But maybe it'll mean something to him."

"Can you be more specific?" asked the man.

"About the story in the paper this morning."

"The serial killer story" said the man.

"Yes," said Step.

"I'm the one designated to take down all reports and informa tion, so you've already reached the right place."

"But we don't have any report to make," said Step. "And what we have might not be information. And- look, can't I just talk to Mr. Douglas? It'll only take two minutes and then I'll be out of his hair."

"You've got to understand, sir, we've already received more than two hundred calls today about this story, and if Detective Douglas took all those calls personally..."

"Fine, then," said Step. "We don't want to bother him. Let me just leave you my name and number and he can call me back when he has time."

"Wouldn't it be easier just to tell me your information?"

Yes, it would, thought Step. But you're the guy whose job it is to take down all the crank calls and the sincere but irrelevant calls and filter them out, and you would think our call was one or the other of those and so you'd never mention us to anybody in a serious way and then we'd never know whether we were even right that the names matched-or, more important, we'd never know if we were wrong, so we could breathe more easily.

"No," said Step. "Here's my number. Take it down if you want."

The man took it down and read it back. Step said good-bye and hung up.

"Dead end, huh?" said DeAnne.

"I don't know," said Step. "The guy wanted me to tell him, but I didn't want to get put on their list of cranks.

So I'm betting that the fact that I wouldn't talk to anybody but Douglas either puts me on their serious crank list or it gets Douglas to call me back. Either way, maybe somebody talks to us."

The phone rang.

DeAnne laughed nervously.

Step picked up the receiver.

"This Stephen Fletcher?" asked a man with a soft tidewater accent.

"Yes," said Step.

"This is Doug Douglas, Steuben Police Department. What's on your mind?"

Step mouthed to DeAnne: It's him. Then, to Douglas, he said, "Mr. Douglas, this is probably crazy and we're probably going to end up on your crank-call list, but we've got something he re that if we don't tell you about it we're probably going to go out of our minds worrying about it, so if you've got two minutes I'll give it a try and then you can tell me I'm nuts and I'll go away."

"I got two minutes, son," said Douglas. "Go ahead."

"We've got a list here that has four names on it. Jack, Scotty David, and Roddy."

"Mm-hm."

"That list was written early in June. Since then, and before we saw this article in the paper, we added three more names to it. Peter, Van, and Sandy."

"So you telling me you're a psychic?" asked Douglas. The weariness in his voice told Step what he thought of psychics.

"No," said Step. "Far from it. We got these names from some body else, for a completely unrelated purpose.

But you don't have to take just our word for it. That same list is also in the possession of a doctor here in town, who also collected it for a completely unrelated reason."

"Mm-hm."

"So then back in June we also got a forty- five rpm record in the mail, anonymously, but it was postmarked Steuben. And the record was that one by the rock group The Police, the song called 'Every Breath You Take.' It has a part about how the singer of the song will be watching. We figured it was just somebody who wanted to scare us or punish us for something, and we didn't think the police would be interested or even if you were, what could you do? So we didn't report it. But now this article comes out, and we think-maybe the reason we had these names is somehow connected with the person who sent us that record. And maybe that person is somehow connected with the serial killer. And so maybe..."

"You're being a little cute with me, Mr. Fletcher. You keep not telling me why you have that list of names."

"I'm not trying to be cute, I'm just trying to tell you the parts that matter before I tell you the part that makes it all so hard for anybody to believe, including us. I mean, we want you to take this seriously"

"So far I'm listening serious, and I'm waiting for you to talk serious."

"Yes. Can you- first can you just tell me if our list really does correspond? I mean, was Jonathan Lee, was he ever called 'Jack.' Did Alexander Booth go by the nickname 'Sandy'?"

"Mr. Fletcher, I'm still on the phone with you. Doesn't that answer your question?"

"Yes, I guess so." Step took a deep breath. "Mr. Douglas, that list was written by my wife."

"She's the psychic?"

"No, she's the mother. I'm the father. The other person who assembled the same list is a psychiatrist. Our son's former psychiatrist. It's our son who came up with these names."

Douglas let out a stream of air into the phone. It occurred to Step that he was probably smoking. "Well now, that's interesting," he said. There was a pause on the line, as if Douglas was thinking. Then he spoke again.

"Does your son live with you?"

"Of course," said Step.

"Does he have a job? I mean, is he working today, or is he home?"

"Mr. Douglas, our son doesn't have a job and of course he lives at home. For heaven's sake."

"Mr. Fletcher, how old is your son?"