He moved slowly toward me, his eyes wide, his lips slightly parted.
I felt the earth turning, the sky moving above me, the stars streaking through the night like fireballs. Everything welled within me, a burning taste at the back of my throat. Anger, frustration, confusion. My hands went out and took Buster by the lapels of his jacket. I gathered fistfuls of the material until I felt my fingernails bend back with the pressure.
“What are you doing here? What the fuck are you doing to me?”
“Calm down, Tom. Calm down-”
He grimaced as I shook him, his lips peeling back in a crazed-looking grin. But it was fear. He saw something in me. My own lack of control. My rage. I shook until he managed to get his own hands up. He gripped my biceps, slowing me down.
“Tom. Stop. It’s me. It’s Buster.”
“Paul-”
“It’s Buster.”
“You took Caitlin. You took her-”
“No, no. Listen. Listen to me.”
I don’t think I would have stopped, except the girl, the child who’d appeared outside my window, came up and grabbed ahold of me. She tugged on my belt loop and strained to be heard above our grunts and scuffling.
“Stop it!” she said. “Stop doing that to him. Stop it! Stop it!”
Her voice reached me through the fog of my anger. I turned to look down at her, and when I did, I loosened my grip on Buster.
She was about twelve. This close, I finally saw her features. The greasy hair, the pale, almost translucent skin. Her clothes hung loose on her body, like she possessed next to no body fat. There were dark circles around her eyes. Malnutrition. The child hadn’t been eating enough.
“Who are you?” I asked.
She looked scared of me, but held her ground. “He wants her back,” she said again. “The girl. Your girl.”
“John Colter sent you?”
She didn’t answer.
“Tell me!” I shouted.
My voice echoed through the night. The girl swallowed, her throat bobbing. But still she didn’t answer.
“Tom?”
I spun around. Buster stood about ten feet away, his right hand rubbing his throat.
“He did send her,” Buster said. “Colter.”
“And you? What are you-?”
He held his hands out again, asking for calm and patience. “Let me explain, Tom. Just listen.”
I stayed rooted in place. My brain spun as fast as the planet.
Buster went on. “I found the girl, Tom. This girl. She was outside your house tonight. You mentioned her in the papers that time, so when I saw her there, standing underneath your window, I knew who it was.”
“What were you doing outside the house in the middle of the night?” I asked Buster. “Were you there to take Caitlin?”
“No, Tom. I came here to see you. To help you. I saw in the paper that Colter was being let out, that they were only going to charge him with arson or some bullshit like that.” He brought his hands together and rubbed them against each other, steadily increasing the pressure. “I tell you, Tom, I was angry when I saw that. I can’t imagine how you felt. But I wanted to do something. I needed to do something about it.”
“What were you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” He punched one fist into the palm of his other hand. “I found something. I looked in the phone book. Do you know Colter’s number was in there the whole time? All this time he held Caitlin, his phone number was right there in the book. There he was, getting calls from telemarketers, people asking him to give money to charity, to switch his long-distance service, and he was keeping Caitlin locked away in some room in the basement.” He dug into his pants pocket and brought out a small, wrinkled piece of paper. “His mom bailed him out of jail, you know? She put up her house. Did you see that?”
“Yes.”
“Her number’s in the book, too.” He waved the paper in the air. “I called it. The old bitch answered, and I asked for John. She said, ‘Why can’t you reporters leave him alone? He doesn’t know nothing about that girl.’ I told the old bitch to fuck off. But you know what? That means we know where he’s staying. He’s staying there, at this address.” He waved the paper again.
“What are you suggesting?”
He shrugged. What do you think?
I pointed at the girl. “What were you going to do with her?”
“I saw her outside the house when I came up,” Buster said. “So I tried to grab her, to find out what she wanted. For you. But she ran this way, so I went after her. I caught up with her over here and asked her what she was doing outside my brother’s house. I probably scared the hell out of her. I didn’t mean to. But she told me something, Tom. Something really fucking freaky.”
“What?”
Buster looked at the girl. “Tell him.”
“I already did,” she said.
“Tell him everything you told me.”
“Tell me what?” I asked.
The girl’s eyes ticked between the two of us.
“Tell him,” Buster said again.
The girl nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.” She started to bite her nail again but stopped. She curled her hand into a fist and let it fall to her side. “He sent me to your house to get the girl back. He wanted me to tell her that he shouldn’t have let her go. He thinks it was a mistake. He didn’t mean it.”
“Let her go?” I said.
The girl nodded. “He said he got scared, so he let her go. The story was in the paper, that drawing. He let her go during the night.” She crinkled her nose. “She was too old, he said. And he had me. .”
Buster made a disgusted gasping sound.
“Where are your parents?” I asked.
“He loves her. He says he misses her and he wants her back. He sent me to your house to get her back, but I didn’t know what to do. I stood in the yard and tried to figure out which room was hers. I couldn’t see. And then you ran after me that one night. And he ran after me tonight.” She pointed at Buster.
“Did he leave a note here telling her to stay away?”
The girl shrugged. “He changed his mind, I guess.”
I took a step forward and bent down, trying to get closer to the girl’s eye level. Buster came up beside me. “Who are you, honey?” I asked. “Who are your parents?”
“I go back to them sometimes. They don’t care.” She ran the back of her hand across her nostrils. “He said he doesn’t need me anymore when he gets your girl back.”
“It’s not right for you to stay with him like that,” I said.
“We should call the cops-” Buster cut in.
“No,” she said and took two big steps back. Her voice was full of fear, like a child waking from a nightmare. “No. You can’t call the police.”
“We have to,” Buster said.
“He’ll run away,” she said. “He wants to run away. He doesn’t want to stay here. The police will take him. They’ll lock him up.”
“That’s what should happen,” Buster said. He reached in his jacket pocket and brought out a cell phone.
“No,” she said again.
“Hold it,” I said to both of them. “Just hold it.”
Buster held the phone in his hand, but stopped. He didn’t flip it open or dial. The girl stood still, staring at me, her eyes still wide.
“What does he want?” I asked. “Colter. What does he want from Caitlin?”
“Tom-”
“Quiet. Listen.”
Again her eyes moved between the two us. She looked like she could run at any moment. She finally settled her gaze on me. “He just wants to see her again,” she said.
“You said he’s leaving.”
She nodded. “He wants to. He wants to go away.”
“So he wants to take Caitlin with him?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Buster’s hand landed on my arm. “Tom, you need to stop this.”
I shook free. “Does he want to take her?”
The girl fixed her eyes on Buster. I looked. He held his phone and used his thumb to dial a number. “I’m calling the cops,” he said. “This is bullshit.”
“Goddamn it!”
I swung and knocked the phone out of his hand. Then I heard the scurrying.
I looked back. The girl was gone. She ran off into the darkness. I watched her disappear into the night, a faint blur moving jackrabbit quick. I took three steps in the same direction, then stopped. She was gone. Long gone.
When I came back, Buster was picking up his phone.
“Don’t,” I said.
“It’s dead. I never got through.”
“Good.”
“Good? That little girl is under the control of that creep. She must be the same age as Caitlin-”
“I get it.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I don’t know.” I paced back and forth in the dark, moving between the headstones, my shoes kicking the leaves around. I started to sweat, and when the wind picked up and cooled the sweat, a chill came over me. “He’s going to get away with this, Buster. All of it.”
“You’ve got this girl right here. He took her.”
“She’s gone. We’ll never see her again. You scared her off.”
“They’ve got the other witnesses. They can put it all together.”
“And prove what exactly? That my daughter likes to date older men?”
“Don’t joke about this, Tom. Don’t fucking joke around. This is serious. This is your daughter you’re talking about here.”
“Is she?” I asked.
“What are you saying?”
“Is she my daughter after four years?”
“Yes. Some animal came along and took your daughter, and he did do those awful things to her. Unspeakable things. But you can’t just let that go. You’ve got to fight for this. You’re in a fight, Tom.”
“Unspeakable things?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the key right there, isn’t it? Caitlin refuses to speak of them. Not to me or Abby or the police. But we all know what we mean when we say unspeakable. Right? Just because it’s unspeakable doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about it. It doesn’t mean I don’t visualize it. Every night I see it.” My words came in a rush, so I paused to collect myself. “I see them in a bed. Or on the floor. I see that pig grunting and breathing over her. Mounting her. Kissing her. Everything. And worst of all, she’s doing it back and enjoying it.”
I couldn’t look at him. My rear molars ground against other.
“Do you think the truth is going to be worse than what you’ve imagined?” he asked.
“It can’t be.”
He put the phone away and crossed his arms. He looked like he understood.
He reached into his pants pocket again and brought out the slip of paper. “My car’s over by your house,” he said. “We can leave right now.”
I started to leave, then noticed Buster wasn’t by my side. I looked back into the darkness and saw his shape leaning over Caitlin’s headstone. He started grunting and huffing. I went back.
“Help me,” he said. “I’m tired of this fucking abortion standing here.”
He started pushing against the stone again, trying with all his might to tip it over. I moved in beside him. It was tough, resistant, but after a few minutes it rocked loose and fell into the soft grass with a heavy thud.
Buster straightened, wiped his hands on his pant legs.
“Now I’m ready to go,” he said.