The Snake and the Spider Read online

  “Hey,” Daryl responded.

  The young man was wiry with thin, scraggly brown hair and he was dressed in a rumpled pair of shorts and a T-shirt. He looked dirty, as if he hadn’t taken a shower in days.

  “Mind if I sit down?” The young man did not wait for an answer but slid onto the sand near the boys’ towel. Looking both ways, he quickly took out a marijuana cigarette and lit it, inhaling deeply.

  He looked at Jim and Daryl and saw that they seemed nervous.

  “Hey, relax, man,” he said. “Listen, you wanna’ go to this great party up the beach?”

  Instantly he had Jim’s and Daryl’s undivided attention.

  “Sure!” Daryl replied. “Where’s it at?”

  CHAPTER 4

  Although they had no instructions to call home on a daily basis, both the Bouchers and the Barbers expected to hear from their sons several times during their vacation. So, when Sunday came and went and then Monday and Tuesday without word from either boy, their parents became somewhat concerned.

  “Do you think they’re in some kind of trouble,” Faye asked Daryl’s mother on Tuesday afternoon?

  “Come on,” came the reply. “They’re boys, Faye. They’re probably out having too much fun to call home.”

  Faye agreed with this logic, but still she was troubled. Besides, Daryl was the youngest of five children and Marian no longer got worried as easily as she once had. Jim, though, was her oldest and it was the first time he’d ever been away from home by himself.

  Somehow Faye survived the rest of Tuesday. But when Wednesday passed and then Thursday and Friday, the Bouchers were no longer merely concerned. They were terrified.

  Saturday finally came. The boys were supposed to be home by 8 o’clock that evening and now it was 10 o’clock, and the boys were two hours late. Faye stood up from the kitchen table where she’d been doing very little besides staring at her hands for the past hour and walked outside. She moved to the end of the driveway and gazed down Baldwin Road toward the spot where she had last seen Jim and Daryl. The boys had been so happy, so excited about their vacation.

  She stood there now, the night air still and dark, a dense humidity shrouding the neighborhood in a suffocating way. She crossed her arms tightly around her body and strained to hear the sound of Daryl’s car. Surely it was coming; it would be rounding the corner any minute.

  But several minutes passed and there was only the sound of the frogs from the local ponds. Faye closed her eyes and prayed. Still, there was nothing she could do to shut out her fears. What if something had happened to the boys? It must have. Daytona Beach was a terrible place. Hadn’t the city newspaper done a story on the crime in that area. And how come she hadn’t remembered about any of that before the boys left? Who knew what kind of people were traipsing about the beach. And then there was Orlando. Wasn’t that a tourist trap and weren’t tourists oftentimes the victims of crimes?

  Faye stood perfectly still in the same spot where she had kissed Jim good-bye just one week earlier and softly, soundlessly, she began to cry. A few moments later Roy walked outside and came up behind her. He took her shoulders in his hands and leaned close to her.

  “They’ll be home any time,” he whispered. But his words sounded hollow even to him.

  “They would have called.”

  Roy was silent a moment, helpless to say anything that might make his wife less afraid. Worse, he was trying desperately to deny his own feelings of fear.

  “Maybe we could call someone,” he suggested softly. “One of his friends, someone who might know something about where they are, why they’re late.”

  Although the tears continued to stream down Faye’s face, there was a strange, unnatural numbness to her voice. She did not sob or scream or cry out. Roy thought she acted almost as if she was paralyzed with fright.

  “Jim is with his best friend in the whole world,” she said, her words measured. “Who would we call?”

  Roy considered her response and agreed. No one knew Jim better than Daryl. They had always looked out for each other, always come home safely whenever they’d gone out together. Besides, had the boys called anyone, they would have called home. If there was one thing he and Faye had taught their children it was to be responsible. At least have the respect to call home. Don’t make mom and dad worry. He sighed out loud and bent closer to his wife, kissing her hair. Then, silently and a little more slowly, Roy went back into the house.

  AT THAT SAME TIME, A FEW HOUSES DOWN BALDWIN Road, the Barbers were dealing with their own fears. Daryl was not the kind of boy to ignore his parents’ feelings. And neither of them could think of a single reason why the boys hadn’t called during the week and why now they were late coming home.

  “Maybe we should call the police,” Daryl’s mother was saying to her husband.

  “We’ve been through this, Marian. We call the police and they’ll tell us they can’t possibly know what happened to our son. They don’t have jurisdiction over Ohio or Kentucky or Tennessee or any of the other states between here and Florida. They’ll tell us to wait twenty-four hours, until they’re at least one day late, and then they’ll tell us to file a missing persons report. There’s nothing they can do.”

  “Okay,” Marian said quickly, brushing off her husband’s response. “Then let’s call the auto club.” Marian was moving about her kitchen and dining room rearranging piles of cookbooks and magazines, scrubbing spots on walls, and straightening items that had already been straightened ten times. It was as if she had to keep busy so that she wouldn’t have time to think about any of the terrible things that might have happened to her son.

  “The auto club won’t know anything at this hour, Marian. It’s Saturday night after ten o’clock. They’ll only have emergency dispatchers. And even if they had taken a call from Daryl, they would only know about the immediate area. He could have broken down two hundred miles or twelve hundred miles away from here and they wouldn’t know a thing about it.”

  “Well, then?” Marian stopped suddenly in her tracks. For a moment she was unable to speak, searching frantically for options. “What do we do now? Who can we call?”

  Ron stared at his wife, trying not to get sucked into the anxiety that was beginning to consume her. “We call no one. They’re okay, Marian. Really. Just relax.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said, still staring at him.

  “What?”

  “We need to do something now!”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, forget it.” Marian shook her head and left the kitchen, moving into living room and taking a seat beside the telephone. She picked it up and dialed.

  “Hello?” The voice on the other end sounded tired.

  “Roy, it’s Marian,” she said quickly. “Are they home yet?”

  “Uh, no.” Roy’s voice was steady but his tension was audible and it only made Marian feel more frightened.

  “Well, where in the world could they be?” she asked.

  There was no logical reason to ask such a question. But in those hours, when belief that the boys would come home was so real they could almost hear the Chevy Nova turning onto Baldwin Road, logic was not necessary. The Barbers and Bouchers were clinging to past experience, hoping that this time, like every other time in the boys’ lives, they would come home safely. Or, if they didn’t come home, there would be a reasonable explanation and one they would hear via telephone any moment.

  Roy paused a moment. “I don’t know, Marian. I’m sorry. I’ll have Daryl call as soon as they get here.”

  “Where’s Faye?”

  “Outside.”

  There was another pause. “Is she worried, Roy?”

  “Worried sick.”

  Marian sighed. “Well, tell her to pray. We’ve got to pray that they’ll get home safely or that we’ll hear something from them. Something. Okay, Roy?”

  “Marian,” Roy said kindly. “She’s been praying for those boys sin
ce the moment they left.”

  Just then Roy heard Faye open the door and walk back inside the house toward the kitchen. Her eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot and she was about to move past Roy when she saw him talking on the telephone. She paused and for an instant, a surge of hope shone in her eyes as she looked questioningly at her husband. Was it the boys? Had someone called to say where they were, why they were late? He could read her eyes and he shook his head sadly, pointing down the street toward where Daryl lived.

  Normally, Faye would have gotten on the phone and said a few words to her neighbor. Instead, she turned down the hallway and walked away without saying a word. Her oldest child was missing and Faye could feel an emptiness growing inside her. It was as if only Jim could fill that place and without him she was nothing more than a barely functioning shell of her former self. Roy watched her disappear.

  “I’ve got to go, Marian.”

  He hung up the phone and walked down the hallway looking for his wife. He glanced into each of the bedrooms until he found her in the last room on the right. It was the nursery where seven-month-old Kristi slept. Faye had taken the sleeping infant, bundled her in soft flannel blankets, and was now sitting in the rocking chair, holding her close and humming. She stared straight ahead, the fear painfully evident on her tearstained face as she turned and looked up at her husband. Then deliberately, Faye closed her eyes and bent her head toward her tiny daughter’s, nuzzling her face into the child’s fine hair.

  As Roy watched, he thought he understood. Faye wanted nothing more than to hold Jim, to take him in her arms where she would know for sure that he was all right and had not come to harm. But Jim was gone; she hadn’t heard from him all week and there was no way to know where he was or what had happened to him. But Kristi was right here. She was alive and real and warm. By holding her, Faye could remember a time when Jim had been that infant—a time when he had been completely safe. She could believe, with that tiny life living and breathing up against her chest, that everything really was going to be okay.

  The sight of Faye clinging so desperately to little Kristi brought tears to Roy’s eyes and he turned away so she wouldn’t see them. He was not yet ready to admit that her fears were well founded. Jim would come home and when he did, he would find his father waiting.

  Roy walked into the living room and sat in a chair that faced the driveway. The questions came in a torrent. What could possibly be keeping the boys from calling? Where were they? Had their car broken down or had they been having so much fun that they’d gotten a late start driving home?

  Suddenly, at that moment Roy heard the sound of a car turning onto Baldwin Road.

  “Thank God,” Roy muttered, walking outside and into the driveway. He was filled with relief as he watched the headlights draw closer until finally the car was nearly at their house. But it wasn’t slowing down and then, in a blur, it passed by. The car hadn’t even resembled a Chevy Nova. Roy watched the car’s red taillights and waited a moment until its engine could no longer be heard.

  He looked back down the street toward the corner where he expected the boys to appear. Certainly they would be home any minute. He waited for what must have been half an hour and then turned and walked back inside the house.

  Roy stationed himself in the same chair, his eyes riveted on the driveway, his thoughts began to drift back in time. Suddenly he could see Jim as an infant and then as an energetic toddler. Hundreds of snapshots flashed through Roy’s mind. Afternoons of playing catch and hours of Little League practice. Countless man-to-man talks about serious matters—everything from riding bikes to dating girls. Jim was his firstborn son, the child in whom he had seen himself as a young boy.

  He remembered how proud he had been when Jim won the bowling tournament last January. Then Jim had grown that scraggly mustache. Roy chuckled out loud at the memory. His son was growing up and trying so hard to be a man. Even now, with all the questions that plagued him, Roy was nearly bursting with pride at the kind of man his oldest son was becoming.

  Finally, after mulling over these thoughts for nearly an hour, Roy sat straighter in his chair and convinced himself that everything was okay. Perhaps the boys hadn’t planned to return until Sunday. Yes, that had to be it. He considered going to bed but decided against it. If they were coming tonight, someone should be up to greet them.

  Roy sat perfectly still, his eyes fixed on the driveway, willing Daryl’s Nova to appear.

  “Come home, son,” he whispered into the night. “Please come home.”

  Then he waited.

  And that was how the Barbers and Bouchers passed the night, calling each other every few hours, taking turns sitting outside and then moving back inside. Watching, hoping, crying. But most of all waiting, almost as if it was a physical exertion to do so. Praying that the boys would return home, and doing everything in their power to shut out the images of what might have happened and the haunting questions for which they had no answers.

  DAYS PASSED, THEN WEEKS. THE BOUCHERS AND BARbers contacted local police, state patrolmen, and even the governor’s office. They devoted every waking moment to locating their sons and in turn were provided only with a terrifying lack of information. No one had seen the boys, no one knew where the boys had gone after telephoning their parents their first day in Daytona Beach, and no one knew where they might be now.

  The same day Faye Boucher filled out missing persons reports on Jim and Daryl the families thought of another way to trace the boys’ whereabouts. The traveler’s checks. Roy went to the local bank in Metamora where he and Jim had purchased them and was given a telephone number for the central Michigan clearing house.

  “If your son has used the checks, they should be at the clearing house,” the bank manager told him as Faye sat anxiously beside him holding little Kristi. “Usually they’re sent there within four or five days.”

  Roy thanked her for the information and squeezed his wife’s hand. This was the first real lead they’d had and perhaps now they would find out where the boys were. The past forty-eight hours had been torture on both families and they had reached a point where they were driven to find out something about the boys’ disappearance.

  Roy dialed the number and waited several minutes before a researcher came on the line with the information.

  “It looks like we have some of those checks, Mr. Boucher,” the researcher said. “They cleared late last week.”

  “Can you tell us where they were cashed?” Roy was hopeful.

  “Yes, I’ll go over them one at a time. Are you ready?”

  “Go ahead.” Roy reached for a pencil and pad of paper.

  “The first one was cashed at Majik Market in Daytona Beach, Florida, on Sunday, August thirteenth,” she said as Roy scribbled the information for Faye to see. “Then, let’s see, looks like the next one was cashed Thursday, the seventeenth, at Road Runner Pit Stop and Grill in De Funiak Springs, Florida.”

  As Roy wrote down this latest detail Faye looked doubtful. “De Funiak Springs?” she whispered. “Where’s that?”

  Roy shrugged and continued to listen.

  “Next there was a check cashed that same day at the North Beach Street Trailer Park.”

  Again Faye looked concerned. The boys had said they were going to stay in motels the entire time. Why would Jim have used one of his traveler’s checks at a trailer park? The researcher was continuing the list.

  “Then it looks like one on Friday, the eighteenth, cashed at Dobbs House, a diner in Pascagoula, Mississippi,” she said pleasantly, “and another at the Ocean Springs Kustom Cycle Shop in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.”

  Roy’s hand was beginning to shake as the woman relayed the information. Mississippi? Cycle shops? What did this mean? Had the boys decided to take a side trip and head over to Mississippi?

  Faye meanwhile had grown quite pale. The boys had never intended to visit Mississippi. It would have been hundreds of miles out of their way. Suddenly she tho
ught of something. Perhaps the checks had been stolen and signed by someone else.

  “Ask her who signed the checks,” she whispered, “Tell her to check the signatures.”

  “Uh,” Roy interrupted. “Before you go any further could you tell me who signed the checks please.”

  “Certainly. They were originally signed by a James Boucher. And, let’s see. Yes, they were all countersigned by James Boucher as well.”

  Roy glanced at his wife and nodded.

  “So they were signed by James Boucher,” he repeated for Faye’s benefit. “Can you tell if it’s the same signature. Maybe it was forged.”

  The researcher was silent. “I’m trained to identify forgeries,” she said. “These look like the real thing to me, but I’ll have them checked out by my supervisor.”

  “Fine. Thank you,” Roy said. “Are you sure those few checks were cashed in Mississippi?”

  “Yes, sir. The establishment uses a stamp with its address and bank information. Several checks were cashed in Mississippi.”

  Roy nodded, releasing a heavy sigh as he did. “Okay. Were there any others?”

  “No. Looks like some are still outstanding.”

  “All right. Thanks for your time.” Roy hung up the phone and turned to his wife. “Well, time to start digging.”

  First, they contacted the Michigan State Police and passed along the information about the traveler’s checks.

  “Look, we’d like you to follow up on this information right away,” Roy said urgently. “We know the boys weren’t planning to go to Mississippi. Something’s definitely wrong.”

  Jim remembered another detail that might help the officers in their investigation. He whispered to Faye to get their recent phone bill which had come in the mail on Saturday. Faye quickly brought the bill to Roy. There near the end of the bill was the phone call Jim had made from a place called Ormond Beach. Since he had reversed the charges midway through the phone call, the telephone number of the phone booth was on the printed statement.

  “Here’s one more thing,” he said. “The number of the phone booth Jim used when they first got to Daytona Beach.” Roy gave the number. “The strange thing is that it says here, on the bill, that Jim called from Ormond Beach. I don’t know where that is. The boys said they were in Daytona Beach.”