Chalk Man Read online

  “Okay, Ms. Thomas. Thanks for letting us disturb you twice in one night. We’ll head out now, but we may be back in touch in the morning if we have any more questions, okay?”

  She nodded at them, sadly. And that’s when Parker realized that you could be the prettiest girl in the world and still feel ugly, somehow. He imagined, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she had a smile that could light up an entire room. But something in her had snuffed it out. The same something that didn’t like to see herself in pictures and kept her living space in line with her mood: vacant and mostly empty.

  When they got to the door, he shook her hand—it was small and cold—and thanked her. She was not a girl that needed rescuing but also, he could feel it, not a girl out of the woods, either. “You have our cards,” Parker said. “Call us if you think of anything else or need help or anything.”

  She took a long draw on her vape and smiled. “Help?”

  Parker nodded and just said it. “You seem down, Ms. Thomas. Real down. That’s all I meant. If you need—”

  “Need is for the weak, Detective,” she said curtly. “And the last help I want is from some damn cop.” Then, she closed the door.

  A cat did gymnastics from the roof to the top of a wooden fence and down onto a trash bin, its paws making light thumps along the way in the quiet night air.

  After they made their way to their car, Klink murmured softly, “Did you see her hand?”

  Parker nodded. “Got it on video.”

  “Thought that’s what you were doing. Good job. Think it’s anything important, or just some bizarre-ass nervous tick?”

  “We’re about to find out.”

  “It won’t be admissible, you know that, right?”

  “I know. Without her knowledge that she was being recorded, it’s way out of line. But I don’t see her as a suspect, anyway, Klink.”

  He nodded. “Neither do I.”

  “And after we watch it, I’m deleting it.”

  “Fair enough.”

  As soon as they got in the car, Parker played the video as Klink pulled out his small notebook and wrote down what they saw. It was, indeed, letters.

  “C . . .” Parker said. “H . . . A . . .”

  “Okay.”

  “Hold on, her hand tilted. Gotta wait until she does it again.”

  A few seconds passed.

  “L . . . K.”

  They kept going until they were done. It didn’t take long. Only three more letters. But when it was over, they glanced at each other.

  “C-H-A-L-K-M-A-N.”

  “Chalk Man?” Klink said, looking perplexed.

  “Chalk Man,” Parker confirmed.

  There it is, Napoleon said from the backseat with no warning. Parker didn’t even jump this time, though he still marveled at how no one else ever heard him. Klink just kept right on staring at the phone video as Nap finished. The demon had been named. And so now he can be researched.

  Chapter 10

  They were on the drive back to the station house, to see if the tech guys could dig up any more info on WillowWalker10 based on their newfound information, when Parker’s cell phone rang. It was the cap.

  “Hey, Cap. What’s up?”

  “We got something new.”

  Klink was driving down Boylston and slowing for a homeless person who was laboriously pushing a shopping cart across the street, against a red light, his head and shoulders hunched against the night air. Parker cleared his throat. “Yeah?”

  “Seems like the bully-kid, Joey De La Cruz, couldn’t sleep after you left. Mom says he puked, got a fever, then had a meltdown.”

  “A meltdown?”

  “Yeah. Had a crisis of conscience, I guess. He says there’s a notebook in Charlie’s desk at school. Red,” the cap said, his voice studious, as if he were reviewing notes on his end. “Has the word ‘History’ written on the front of it.”

  “What’s so special about it?”

  The cap sighed into the phone. “Evidently, it’s the kid’s diary or something. He dropped it on the floor one day and one of the kids saw that it wasn’t filled with notes on the Vietnam War or anything. Word spread. So? Naturally, Joey and his friends raided Charlie’s desk.”

  “Of course they did. And?”

  “There was a bunch of personal stuff in it, I guess. They tried reading some of it aloud, but Charlie wrested it back from them.”

  “Any idea what was in it?”

  “Girl stuff. Life stuff. Joey’s short on details. Said he only saw a few pages before he and Charlie made a deal with the devil.”

  A chill ran down Parker’s spine. His days of that being just a metaphor were long gone. “Deal? What deal?”

  “Normally the teacher would’ve gotten involved. But she didn’t hear or see any of this because she’d stepped out of the room to speak with the principal about some classroom review bullshit. But Joey says Charlie came completely unglued. Cried. Panicked. It freaked Joey out. And our boy Joey knows he’s on, like, strike fifty-five at school and a whisker away from full suspension. So? Charlie told Joey he wouldn’t say anything to the teacher if Joey wouldn’t tell anybody about the other stuff that was in the notebook.”

  “What stuff?”

  “We don’t know. Joey can’t say.”

  “What do you mean, he can’t say?”

  “Mom says he’s so feverish he’s not making sense anymore. She pumped him with Tylenol and thinks he’ll be better in the morning. Says she’ll call us back first thing.”

  “Yeah. But we can’t—”

  “—wait that long. No shit, Parker. Way ahead of you. I called the school district. The school’s completely shut down now, but they’re sending an overnight janitor from another school to open up for you. Ms. Beckett’s class. Room 141. Get to that class and that notebook.”

  “Got it,” Parker said. Then he hung up.

  Klink winced against the headlights of a passing car. “What’s going on?”

  “There’s a notebook in Charlie’s desk at school. May have some information. I’ve got the address here in my notes. Head to Figueroa and make a left. Someone will be there to let us in when we arrive.”

  Fifteen minutes later, they pulled up in front of Eucalyptus Elementary School. The lawn out front was neat and manicured, with the front of the school painted in separate shades of either beige or gray (it was hard to tell under the fading single light over the main office door). Seeing no one around, they sat in the car with the heater on for another twenty minutes before a white truck emblazoned with the LA Unified School District insignia pulled up in front of them and parked. A large black man with puffy eyes who was wearing too many layers of clothes hopped out and gave them a wave.

  Parker and Klink got out of their car.

  “Howdy-do,” the man said, shuffling up to them and shaking their hands. “My name’s Timothy. They sent me down here to let you guys into a classroom?”

  “Yeah. Room 141.”

  Timothy rubbed his hand over his head, which was covered with a blue Los Angeles Rams beanie. “Got it. Okay. Well, this ain’t my normal school. I went by the central office and got the spare key ring, but they’re not numbered all that well so this may take a while.”

  Parker nodded but his frustration was growing. Time. Time was everything on this case. He could feel it in his bones.

  At first he was encouraged, as they were able to get through the main gate of the school with little problem. But after that, “a while” turned into another ten minutes as Timothy, cursing under his breath, fumbled with one key after another to get through an interior gate, and then fumbled again as the three of them stood around the door of Room 141. Klink looked like he was just about to snap and kick the door in when, finally, Timothy turned the right key in the lock and it disengaged.

  When the door swung open, oddly, Parker had the same swimming sense of sadness come over him as he had when he was in Charlie’s bedroom earlier. He was looking at another part of a little boy’s life t
hat should have been filled with comic books and carefree games of over-the-line after school. Instead, it seemed that Charlie’s daily existence consisted of that lonely bedroom and this hollow, cold classroom. That classroom was destined to have one empty desk the next school day . . . or longer.

  Don’t think that way, he thought. Screw that. We’ll get to him in time. We will.

  The space before them was a classic-looking sort of school room, as if they xeroxed them from place to place and state to state. There were five rows of desks, five deep, that filled the center of the room. A section of rectangular windows stretched along the far wall, with glossy posters taped up in bare sections to proclaim “LEARNING IS FUN” and “SEIZE THE DAY.” At the front of the room was the teacher’s desk and behind that were two large rectangular chalkboards. John Adams was evidently the current topic. The chalkboard on the left had notes on his life, the one on the right had basic information about his presidency.

  Klink began by asking the question they were all thinking. “Which desk is his?”

  “Good question,” Parker replied. “I guess we’re going to have to dig through twenty-five desks until we find the one with his name on stuff.

  Timothy spoke up. “Nah. At my school the teachers usually have a seating chart on their desk somewhere.”

  Parker walked over to Ms. Beckett’s desk with Timothy. Sure enough, there beneath a sheet of thick glass was a diagram of the classroom desks with names written over each one in pencil. Charlie Henson’s desk was in the aisle along the wall with windows. He looked to Klink, who was mulling around in the middle of the room, and pointed. “This aisle here. Fourth one from the front.”

  Klink wasted no time walking over to the small desk and lifting the wooden lid. In the storage area below, he rummaged around and produced a notebook with a red cover. “Got it,” he said.

  They both looked at Timothy, who cleared his throat and nodded. “I’ll wait outside.”

  As Parker walked up to Klink, he didn’t like the look on his face. While flipping through a few pages, creases of concern had formed on his forehead. He pivoted towards Parker so they could both flip through the notebook together.

  The contents were part lesson notes, part drawings and part scribblings. Two things were troubling. First, the neat writing of the lesson notes, about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, did not at all match the incoherent writing of the scribbled words—it was as if two separate people had drawn in the notebook. Or two different minds, Parker thought. Could it be that Charlie has a split personality? Second, the drawings, though basic, were horrifying. On one page there was a stick figure with a large mouth filled with jagged teeth. On the next, drawn in black and white, there was some sort of Mayan or Aztec mask of what looked to be an owl face. Except this one had a mouth with fangs that protruded outwards instead of a beak. The owl’s eyes were colored in red, and the coloring had been done so hard that there was a gouge through to the next page. On that page, there was a drawing of a pig with spears stuck through it. Beneath the pig was more scribbled writing: THIS LITTLE PIGGY DIDN’T MAKE IT TO THE MARKET. The letters were off center.

  They flipped another page and found another drawing. Three stick figures this time. One said MOM, the other DAD and the last and smallest one said ME. And the ME figure had been crossed out. Repeatedly.

  Klink let out a long sigh. “Poor kid.”

  “Yep,” Parker said with a nod.

  As they made their way through the notebook it just got worse. “Rosie is pretty,” written in Charlie’s normal hand. ROSEY THINKS YOU’RE UGLY in scribbled writing just below. One line parroted the motivational poster on the wall by the windows. “Seize the day!” it said. And beneath it? I’LL SEIZE YOUR THROAT.

  “Gonna have to get this kid some help from the school psychologist,” Klink said, his voice sounding flat.

  Parker nodded. “Yeah, and I’m guessing child services, too.” He was numb and beginning to feel more so by the second. The kid was only ten. It was almost beyond comprehension. And there was something else about the scribbled writings. They were too . . . adult. Too adult for this to be a split personality situation.

  The rest of the contents of the desk were what you’d expect: a glue stick, random colored pens, a yellow highlighter, two pencils and a tiny rectangular pencil sharpener that reminded Parker of his own school days. It was good to know that at least some things didn’t change.

  He shuffled the pens around with his fingers and even looked under the desk, for taped notes or the like. “Nothing. Not even bubble gum under here. I guess that’s it.”

  “Then let’s get out of here,” Klink said, “and back to the station ASAP.”

  Parker nodded. It was when they walked out of the classroom door that Parker heard the same wicked little whispers he’d heard earlier in front of Joey’s house. They spilled like a chorus across the classroom. He froze. The voices were coming from everywhere and talking over each other until they coalesced into one.

  “Where ya goin’, Mr. Man?” a man’s voice said, the words suffused with malice.

  Parker looked around but there was no one else in sight, his head on a swivel as he looked up at the ceiling tiles and across the heater vents.

  The voice spoke again. “Or should we be asking . . . where is it ya been?” A snigger followed that seemed to slither across the floor and curl up at his feet.

  Again, Parker looked around. Knowing it was futile. Knowing it was stupid. He was just responding to what his logical mind wanted him to do in the face of something it could not compute, because the voices, all of them—and the man’s in particular—were not of this world and Parker knew it.

  It was as he reached back into the classroom to flip off the light switch that all the writing on the chalkboard about John Adams had been wiped away in wide, powdery chalk smears. In their place now was only four words: DOING MY HASTY SEARCH.

  “Hey, Parker?” said Klink. “You okay?”

  Parker jumped before blinking and wincing in disbelief at the chalkboard. He stepped aside to give Klink a clear view and asked, “Hey, man. Did you see this on the chalkboard before?”

  There was a pause before Klink answered. “You mean the stuff about John Adams and shit?”

  He didn’t see it. Parker should’ve known he wouldn’t. But still, he had to ask, and now he had to push his shock down inside himself and play things off as best he could. “Yeah. Yeah, that.”

  Klink sounded concerned. “What about it?”

  “Nothing. Just might be important for later, if we find anything in the notebook about this stuff.”

  He’d done a very poor job of playing it off. Klink was not only a fellow detective, but a good one at that. He knew when someone’s voice was telling half-truths. “Uh-huh. Okay, Parker. Sure.” Parker knew Klink would circle back around about this, at some point, but he’d deal with that later.

  Right now, he just wanted to get out of there, so Parker backed up and looked at the classroom again.

  As he did, without any doubt, he could tell that something was looking back at him.

  It took all his strength to flip off the light switch and close the door.

  Timothy locked up the room, the cold jangle of his key ring echoing in the air. He led them back out of the school, his broad shoulders heavy with the night shift work he’d probably been doing for years, with Klink behind him and Parker pulling up the rear. As they walked, he and Klink made small talk.

  Parker, however, simply could not get out of his own head. He kept mulling those words, over and over.

  DOING MY HASTY SEARCH.

  It was probably good that Klink hadn’t seen the words because even if he had, as a civilian it was unlikely he’d even know what they meant.

  But Parker knew.

  It was the term a sniper used when doing his initial assessment of a target area.

  The very first steps in getting ready for the kill.

  Chapter 11

  When it came to de
tective work it was true that sometimes the action took place in the field. But contrary to Hollywood-driven public perceptions, most of the time it took place in sterile labs, cold office cubicles and tension-filled interrogation rooms. It was the horrendously dry work of phone calls, voicemail messages, paperwork and countless hours staring at a computer screen. You searched addresses or cell phone logs, or used Google Maps to get the lay of the land of the area around a crime scene, one eerie arrow click at a time.

  In this case, already a ton of fieldwork had been done. The neighborhood had been canvassed, twice by patrol officers and once by Murillo. Of the five possible suspects, they had interviewed three: Ava Thomas, Joey de la Cruz and Charlie’s mother. That left two: the mysterious WillowWalker10 and Charlie’s father. Parker didn’t like to think about parents killing their kids, but it happened frequently enough to be the initial focus of almost every case where a child disappeared or was reported as kidnapped. The truth was you played the odds. Yes, pedophiles were out there and abductions were always a risk, but on the whole they were very rare. Roughly three hundred and fifty children per year were reported as abducted by strangers, according to the FBI. That was still three hundred and fifty terror-filled moments or outright tragedies, but just as when one spouse is murdered and the other spouse is immediately the prime suspect? The sad truth of the matter was that, in this world, if someone was going to hurt you? It was much likelier that it would be someone you knew . . . or someone you loved.

  Parker was tired, and the fluorescent lights over his desk were contrasting with the light from his computer monitor and hurting his eyes. He and Klink were in a holding pattern. There was nothing going on to keep them busy, but things were still too fluid to even contemplate going home. Klink was reclined in his chair, his feet up on his desk, trying to get a few winks, but Parker was still stuck on those words on that chalkboard. Were they real? If not, had all this talk about WillowWalker10—and sniping and camping—brought out some latent memories that he and his therapist had yet to flush out as part of his ongoing PTSD therapy? And what if the words were real and visible only to him? What could they possibly mean? And what about those other words, the ones Ava Thomas had drawn over and over and over on her leg in some sort of subconscious fit of OCD when they’d gone back to her apartment?