Prodigal Son

Chapter 15

It's a clear, crisp winter morning, the kind that seems to demand staying inside, bundling up in sweaters and scarves and drinking hot chocolate by the fire. Driving along Highway 73 out of Harvest, the familiar scenery is shrouded with early morning fog. Everything is grey, as though someone jerked down the saturation knob on a television set.

Detectives Mike Parks and Thomas Zebrowski roll past acres of undeveloped land on their way to Wisconsin Rapids. A thick canopy of snow covers the plains sandwiching the highway. Clumps of powdery white cling to the gnarled branches of the barren trees. A few houses dot the frosted landscape, belonging to farmers harvesting on the land.

In the passenger seat of Mike's police car, Zebrowski chugs coffee and devours donuts. Mike would remind him not to get crumbs on the seats, but it's a moot point by now. "How come we're just now finding this out?" Zebrowski's saying. "Did no one seriously look into this? Did the small-town cops really live up to the stereotype and bungle the investigation?"

They're chasing down a lead that Mike tracked down regarding Isaac's disappearance. Back when Isaac vanished, no one bothered to look for his mode of transportation, but Mike has scrounged around and located a vehicle matching the description of Isaac's truck.

"Well, when Isaac went missing, there wasn't much of a reason to investigate," Mike says, one hand waving off the wheel. "He was legally an adult, and there were no signs of foul play. Eddie told the police he saw Isaac get in his truck and drive off. The truck was never discovered in a ditch or smashed up along the highway or anything like that, so they wrote him off as a runaway. And the town's opinion of Mary didn't help either. See, Harvest despised Mary 'cause of her sanctimonious opinions and her disapproval of most-if not all-the women in town. You can bet the police didn't take too kindly to hearing her badmouth their wives and daughters and sisters. Everybody knew she taught her boys the same ideology, so they figured Isaac got lucky and managed to escape. Nobody wanted to be the guy to drag him back."

"How old were you when he disappeared?" There are glaze crumbs and colorful sprinkles caught in Zebrowski's majestic ginger beard, and Mike wants to reach out and brush them away.

"Oh, I was about the same age as Eddie and Jeremy. So maybe seventeen, eighteen. Somewhere around there. And honestly, I thought he ran away too. I'd run away if I was him. And the idea of someone murdering him was just... We never had anything like that in Harvest before, so it never crossed my mind."

Zebrowski says, "If you had someone like me back then screaming about the extraterrestrial agenda and how aliens helped our government learn to time travel, that investigation would'a been fast-tracked."

"How did you pass the psychological exam to even be on the force?"

"Because I know how to hide the crazy. You don't break that shit out on the first date. You gotta ease into it."

Just outside of Wisconsin Rapids lies a salvage yard operated by a person of interest. They pull into the yard, driving through the open gate. Inside are rows of stacked, wrecked cars. Some are newer, some are so rusted no color is discernable. Further inside lies a medium-size house, grey with cedar accents and a gable roof.

Mike stops the car, dust pluming like the aftermath of a bomb as the tires halt on the dirt. He and Zebrowski head to the front door and knock.