FIVE - Ticker (Part 2)
Josie left the interrogation room. The belly of the police station was bustling, but everything stopped dead as soon as he walked in. No voices. Just whispers. The clacking of keyboard keys. The slight moving of chairs. The whirr of fans. All eyes following him.
They hated him.
He felt their loathing pelt his skin like little lead balls. He kept his head low, but he could see, out of the corner of his eye, Miss Hanes sat at a police desk, signing a piece of paper. She talked in a whispered voice to two women sitting next to her, Gerty and Frida.
That's how they knew about the nightmares. Miss Hanes had told them.
He walked by them, trying not to look, but still wanting to see their eyes, so he could gauge how much they hated him, how far this all had gone. Miss Hanes looked at him as if he were a slug in the dirt, no better.
Gerty, her eyes rimmed with red and sorrow, watched every step he took, carefully sized him up, and stared him down. He was her undoing and she wanted him to see it and feel her pain. She lunged at him, and a police officer grabbed her and held her back. The tears poured out of her. Her voice unable to form words, simply shrieked. And then, she collapsed into a puddle of her own loose parts.
Frida was stone, pure stone, unable to cry or even look his way. She couldn't admit that he even existed. She could barely imagine that Trinket was gone at all and half expected her to be playing in the front yard when they got home.
Josie kept walking. He heard only his own steps on the tile floor. Then, just as his hand hit the door handle, just as he was almost out of the station, he heard Miss Hanes talking, her voice quivering and fast.
"He told me he had dreams about hurting her....Oh, why didn't I take him seriously...I could've stopped him..." Then, her voice went muffled, and Josie suspected she had buried her head in her hands.
He pictured Miss Hane's bush of hair shaking like Jello.
&&&&
They didn't have enough evidence to charge Josie, but The Barrel and most of the neighbors on Tamarama Street had made up their minds, of this he was sure - they believed he had either killed or abducted Trinket.. He was released to his parents custody and only allowed to be at home or at school.
Not that leaving was a possibility anyway. News vans lined the street, watching for any glimpse of him, ready to pounce with questions like: "Why did you do it?" and "Where did you bury the body, Josie?"
Trinket's disappearance was the biggest news story of the year, photos of the girl hung on every lamp post, teams of volunteers worked the neighborhoods and beaches, looking for signs of her.
The old ladies gathered inside the Organic Food Store comparing the days apples and new developments in the case.
"I heard they found a body floating in the tide pools at Bondi," Mrs. Fockerson said, smelling the rock melon.
"Really?!..." gasped Mrs. Kippelibby. "I heard the Browns had Josie admitted to a mental institution when he was three."
And then, she whispered conspiratorially over the rutabagas, "Heard he's quiet because they gave him all kinds of electro-shock treatments...made him loopy in the head."
Mrs. Kippelibby made the crazy sign next to her head with her index finger.
"I saw him looking at me once..." said Agnes Heddlemonkey, butting in, while fingering the parsnips.
"Scariest day of me whole life," she said without even noticing, she said in her thick Scottish brogue.
A mob formed outside Josie's house, carrying signs with Trinket's photo, the sweet ruby-haired, fat-cheeked baby with the pink pacifier in her mouth. They shouted for Josie to turn himself in. They carried signs with his photo, with the words "Jail time for Baby Killer" scrawled in blood red ink across his face.
Rhonda Blathers, camped outside his lawn, could be heard interviewing the neighbors, asking if they ever suspected that Josie was capable.
"He was a quiet boy," Mrs. Kippelibby could be heard saying, her dog tucked up under her ample upper arms. "The way serial killers are quiet..."
Josie had no idea how school would be tomorrow, but he guessed it would be pure hell.
He was no longer invisible. He couldn't simply put his ear buds in his ears and tune out the world. He was hated and loathed. Even his own parents had been barely able to utter a single word to him since he got home.
He was alone in this. Completely.
&&&&
Josie opened the door to his room. It was the first time he had been there since Trinket disappeared. It was dark, and the new crews had settled into their sleep. He was tired, walking dead.
He wanted to put on some Hayden Calnin and face plant into bed. But something drew him to the window.
He opened it, and stood there, just looking out to the Organic Food Store. The breeze felt good on his face, his skin. But he had this crazy urge. At first it was a niggling tickle, something small, but then it grew, larger and larger until he just couldn't ignore it anymore.
And then, he had no control over it.
He reached his arm out through the opening, and stretched his body through the open window and reached across the little alley to the wall of the store.
He expected it to be cold, like last time. So he braced himself. He pressed his hand into the wall, felt it sear his skin. So cold it burned. And when he did it, he felt her. Trinket, the baby, somewhere near, probably close, inside the Organic Food Store.
Yes, she was in the store.
She was alive.
And Bangkok...he was gone, moving farther away, out at sea gorging on sardines and shrimp, mouthfuls of plankton, his hunger was satiated for now. He was saving her for later, like he was saving the best cookie to eat last. Bangkok wanted to savor Trinket.
But most importantly, Josie could barely feel him. His brain was his own. And Trinket was still alive.
And the only thing between him and Trinket was whatever was keeping her inside the Organic Food Store.
&&&&
So, great. The kid was in the store next to his house.
"Awesome," he said out loud.
"I'll just run over there and get her, and save her from the amphibious giant squid that's going to eat her."
This was a joke. He was no hero. And even if he wanted to be the hero, he didn't have a clue what to do next. He wanted to just sleep and listen to music, until this all went away. And that's what he decided to do.
He turned up The Pogues loud in his ears, and gathered his quilts and pillows.
He decided to sleep in the laundry room, on top of the dryer. As far away from the Organic Food Store as he could.
He had his arms full of bedding, when he saw out of the corner of his eye, a folded piece of paper, flying through the cracked open window. It fell with a plunk on the floor. He stared at it for a moment, half-expecting it to morph into an evil dragon.
He decided to ignore the paper. He ignored it really hard.
It was probably Rhonda Blathers scamming him for an exclusive interview.
He stared at the paper some more, then walked out of the room.
"Crap" he said to himself, mad at his own lack of will power, and he walked back into the room.
He dropped the sheets and quilts and grabbed the note. He unfolded it, slowly, as if a small frog might jump out of it.
It was a stark white paper. Someone had written on it with a black Sharpie.
It said:
Josie -
Meet at my house, midnight. 26 Tamarama. The news crews will be asleep by then. I'll leave the side door open. Find me two rooms on the right..
I know it was Bangkok. I believe you.
Emerald (the new girl)
"I believe you."
He read the note again. "Bangkok." She mentioned the monster by name.
"How does she know?" he wondered.
Was it a trick? A reporter trying to get him alone?
He folded up the note. If he left the house and got caught, they would throw him in juvie. The Barrel had been clear about that.
At ll:52pm, he pulled on his jeans, his sneakers, his black hoodie, pulled the hood over his head so that his face was deep inside. He checked to make sure his parents were sleeping, heard them snoring, their lap tops propped onto their slowly moving chests, as if they grew out of their bodies. He saw that the news vans were dark and silent.
Josie slipped out the window, into the black night, keeping only to the shadows, nervous, but hopeful for the first time, since Trinket went missing.