1.

August

5:00 PM

Clifton Heights, New York

It’s Poker Tuesday. My daughter Meg is at the sitter’s and my friends and I are relaxing on my front porch, enjoying a few quiet drinks after we wind down from our respective afternoons. Father Ward stands beside me, Fitzy leans against the railing at the porch’s end and Gavin sits on the railing across from me. I’m sitting in my favorite Adirondack lounge chair.

The warm summer air is quiet and still, save for the distant buzz of cars easing their way down Henry Street. Usually, this is my favorite night of the week; an evening of carefree leisure, when the world’s troubles are held at bay by camaraderie and friendship, and beer and pizza, too.

But tonight is different. Tonight, everything may fall apart because the things I’ve ignored for so long can no longer be dismissed and I must speak, risking at the very least our friendships, at the very worst this place I’ve come to call home.

And the others sense it too, I think. At least Father Ward seems to, as his gentle hand squeezes my shoulder. “I don’t mean to pry, Chris . . . but how are you tonight? You look tired.”

Fitzy sips from his beer and says with a grin, “What the good Padre means is, you look like shit, Chris.”

I shrug but say nothing, while Gavin says, “Y’know Fitzy, most the time you manage a passable imitation of compassion, but every now and then? You’re an ass.”

He offers a jaunty salute with his root beer. “Just sayin.”

Fitzy waves. “Oh, bullshit. I say what everyone is thinking and you know it.”

He takes a long pull on his beer.

“It’s your tone, Fitzy,” Father Ward offers. “You don’t realize it, but sometimes you sound . . . flippant. Insensitive.”

Fitzy scowls. “The hell you say. Insensitive? I have a goddamn loving soul; I’ll have you know. Ask any of my patients.”

Gavin’s smirk widens. “Maybe the coma patients. Anyone else, though . . . ”

Everyone laughs and we relax some. But I still wonder if by the night’s end we’ll be able to recapture this levity, or if things will be changed forever.

Fitzy shrugs and grins at me. “Okay, we’ll play things their way, even though I figure you can handle yourself, being a big bad cop and all. BUT, to make the touchy-feelies happy . . . Chris, you look sad. What’s up? Women troubles? Too many of them, or not enough?” He winks. “Tell Dr. Fitzy the truth, now.”

I laugh, not unkindly . . . but not happily, either.

Truth.

It’s a precious commodity.

Especially between friends. It’s essential in building trust and dependability. The problem, however, lies in how much truth do we share? How honest can friends be with each other, really?

I’ve come to believe that layers of truth exist. How far we peel them back depends on an infinite combination of variables: time, place, audience, mood, and intent. All factors are weighed multiple times a day and often in a heartbeat when considering how much we want to share with those closest to us.

For example, when my wife Liz was still alive, it went something like this: “Chris, please be honest. Did you find your partner attractive?”

One layer of truth: “Honey, she could never be you, could never raise our children and take care of me like you have.”

Which of course isn’t the same as saying “no.” It’s a truth that subtly replaces a deeper truth: “Yes, I am attracted to her. Because she’s young, and she’s a cop like me, and she likes the same things I do, and that’s why I requested a new partner, because the more I looked into her bright green eyes the less I thought about you and Meg and that scared the hell out of me.”

Or it went like this:

“Liz . . . you okay? Look a little pale this morning.”

“I’m fine. Tired from working those late shifts. Just a little headache, is all.”

Which had been a lie. Working in the oncology unit at Binghamton General, having seen dozens of patients with the same symptoms: dizziness, blurred vision, headaches, nausea, chronic fatigue, she knew too well her probable diagnosis.

Brain cancer.

A truth she shared with us much too late, because she’d understood a deeper truth: in the end, it wouldn’t make a difference when we found out.

She was still going to die.

I think all this and then say, “Fitzy, you’re right. I don’t want to play poker, tonight. What I want is the truth, for once.”

His jovial manner fades, his eyes taking on an odd, somber cast. I glance at Gavin. His face hardens also. “The truth about what, Chris?”

I’ve only lived in Clifton Heights for little over a year; have only known Fitzy and Gavin and Father Ward for about the same time. We all met around a tragedy last fall involving one of Gavin’s students. I was first officer on the scene. Fitzy was the ER doctor who’d treated the shooter afterwards. Father Ward visited her in jail regularly until she was moved downstate to the Riverdale Psychiatric Institution for further treatment.

And out of that awful incident, our friendship slowly bloomed. We hung around each other for several weeks and somehow Poker Tuesdays developed and we became friends. Good friends, even.

But a wall has grown between us since then, a wall built from a subtle evasiveness preventing us from becoming close friends.

That wall?

The truth.

About this town and the strange things that happen here. Last September’s shooting was tragic and heart wrenching but in some ways ordinary. Turn on the television and you’ll see the same thing happening all over the country: bigotry, persecution and cruelty everywhere. Eventually, people are pushed past their limits and they lash out.

Other things have happened here, however.

Strange things. Unexplainable things. Like average people quitting their jobs mid-shift for no reason and vanishing into thin air. Mothers removing their children from school with no warning and taking off for parts unknown, entire families sneaking away into the night, clergy and veteran teachers resigning their posts unannounced, experienced hunters disappearing into the forests never to be seen again.

Of course, some of these things have been more . . . memorable. Grotesque, even. Like cannibalism. Maybe. Hard to tell, when the town coroner says bite marks “might’ve been made by human teeth” but all his tests come back “inconclusive,” which has happened more than once around here.

And that’s not all, by a long shot. There have been suicides. A LOT of them. Missing kids, more than you’d expect in a small Adirondack town. Also, patients in our small hospital are often mysteriously “transferred” to special recovery facilities “downstate.”

What it all comes down to?

The truth.

What really happened in those cases? What’s hiding in the dark corners of this town? This whole past year, I’ve tried unsuccessfully to wrest answers from my friends with probing questions like . . .

Has it always been like this? Did you ever imagine that he or she’d be capable of doing this? How’d you guys not see this coming? You’ve known this or that person all your life. How’d you miss the signs?

And as the year has passed their answers have grown increasingly evasive, offering shades of half-truths, nothing more.

And I’m tired of it.

Especially after this last one.

“The truth?” Fitzy mutters, face oddly blank. “About what?”

I reach under my chair, pull out a stuffed manila folder held shut with several rubber bands and toss it at Fitzy. It hits him square in the gut, and he somehow manages to trap it there with one hand without spilling his drink.

I point at the folder. “That’s our most recent case. Ellen Danvers and her missing son. Happened two weeks ago. You’ve all heard about it by now, I imagine.”

A knowing silence.

One I’ve heard too much of this year.

Finally Gavin says, “Sure we’ve heard. Everyone has, and it’s terrible, thinking her boyfriend did something like that.”

“Right,” Fitzy adds too quickly, nodding sharply. “Danny Tremont. Grew up with him. He’s a sonnuvabitch. Always has been. Not surprised he–”

“Bullshit.”

I look at every one of them in turn. If I weren’t so annoyed, I’d find their shocked expressions at my rare use of profanity amusing. “That’s not what she says, not now. At first she was hysterical, claiming something took her son Timmy. Of course, everyone just figured she was distraught and a little out of her head, especially the state police department’s grief counselor. But then three days later she calls me at the station, asking me to end the search, saying we don’t need to look for Timmy anymore because he’s gone on to a better place.”

Father Ward pats my shoulder again and says softly, “Shock and denial, Chris. Surely you’ve seen similar reactions in cases like these.”

I shake my head. I’ve been put off by Father Ward’s affable, man-of-the-cloth routine before. Not tonight. “But the physical evidence also doesn’t match up. There was no time in the incident’s chronology for anyone to have abducted Timmy Danvers, least of all Danny Tremont.”

I look at each and every one of them again, then say, “Two weeks ago, Timmy Danvers effectively disappeared off the face of the earth and his mother doesn’t seem too upset by this, now. And neither does anyone else in this town, with the exception of my guys and the state troopers.”

I nod at the folder. “There have been other disappearances this past year, a recent one very similar to this. A month ago, seven-year-old Anne Marie Hauer from Utica vanished from her bedroom. No forced entry, no forensic evidence. She’s just GONE, like Timmy Danvers.

“And you know what, fellas? I’m tired of this. I really am. All the time, you act as if you don’t know anything, that you’re just as mystified as me, like everyone else in this town. But I call, fellas. I call BULLSHIT.”

And now a deep silence grows between us. I let it fester for several minutes before saying, “Here’s the deal. We’ve reached a crucial juncture. If you want to continue as friends, you’re going to tell me what the hell’s going on in this town, or at least tell me what you know. We’ll order some pizza, go inside, pour over the whole thing together, so I can do my job the way I’m supposed to.”

“And if we don’t?” Father Ward asks gently, but firmly. “Some things aren’t meant to be known, Chris.”

My answer is just as firm. “Then we cancel Poker Tuesday. I start looking for a new job somewhere far away from here, take my daughter and get the hell outta Dodge.”

More silence.

And I see it in their eyes.

They’re debating it. Weighing the pros and cons of telling me what they know or letting me walk away. And to be quite honest? A part of me, the part that never grew up, that little boy inside who’s still afraid of shadows and wind rustling through leaves wishes they would let me walk away.

Because maybe that would be better.

But Gavin takes the folder from Fitzy, then nods down the street. “The Skylark Diner is open twenty-four hours. And its owner is very . . . discrete.”

“In other words,” I whisper, “he knows how to keep his mouth shut.”

Fitzy nods sharply, dispensing with all pretenses. “Damn straight he does.”

Gavin tucks the folder under his arm and gives me an odd, penetrating look. “I need to grab something from home first. Meet you there?”

I wave toward my long, winding drive. “After, you folks.”

And as we thump off my porch, I wonder.

How much truth do we tell ourselves? What layers are we willing to face? And is there a place to stop?

A safe place where we can say: “Enough.

“I know enough.”