“Unit two to base.” Nolan speaks into the radio as he pulls into the driveway at the Lacey house on Murray Street. The home is a three-bedroom bungalow with a stand-alone garage. He parks behind a GMC minivan with a blue and white Toronto Maple Leafs sticker pasted on the back window. He thinks perhaps this alone could be grounds for arrest. “Just heading in,” he says. “Over.”
“Have fun,” Shirley responds. “It’s a full moon night, sweetie. Over and out.”
Nolan hooks the receiver back on its cradle on the dash. He knows Bob and Margaret Lacey by name and to see them around town, but this is his first interaction with them as the law. They have a son and a daughter, he knows, but he believes they are good students or at least never in trouble. The list of diehard troublemakers, those kids born to the toughest families and seemingly hell-bent on a path to the penitentiary, runs about a dozen in a town this size. He steps out of the cruiser and walks up to the front door. He adjusts the wool toque coiled on his head, fixes his belt that holds the handheld radio, sidearm holster, cuffs and flashlight, and knocks loudly on the door. He hears hollering from inside, muffled voices. Furniture being moved about. A loud crash.
Come on, Eddie, he thinks. Put your game on now.
“Police,” he says in a voice deeper than his own — his cop’s voice.
The front door swings open. Bob Lacey stands there, wild-eyed, his nose bloodied, the blood half-dried and dark around his nostrils, spatters of red across his light blue dress shirt. The buttons have been popped, exposing his grey, hairy chest and white belly paunch. Three large suitcases sit in the hallway. Nolan looks past Bob Lacey’s shoulder and sees a tall teenage boy grappling with a woman in the dining room, hands wrapped around the woman’s throat, bending her backward over the table.
Nolan pushes past the father, crosses the room in a few long strides. He gets behind the boy and locks an arm around his neck, a leg set against the teen’s hip, and he pulls and twists at the same time, getting the boy’s weight off balance. Travis is off his feet, sideways on the carpet, screaming in an otherworldly voice. Nolan can’t make anything out. It’s like squelch cracking across the radio. What he’s got here is an MDP — mentally disturbed person. This is a first in his young career.
“Relax,” he commands, and uses his knee to hold the teen in his place.
The mother is crying and shaking, and Bob Lacey moves to comfort her, an arm around her shoulders.
“Are you all right, ma’am? Do you need medical assistance?” Nolan asks.
She rubs at her throat. Shakes her head. She is in shock, confused.
“Take her in the other room,” Nolan says to Bob Lacey.
“What’s going to happen to Travis?” she says as her husband ushers her toward the hall. “You’re not going to hurt him, are you? We just came home from a vacation down in Florida for the week. Our first vacation in eighteen years.”
“Who else is in the house?” Nolan asks.
“He said he’s got a friend down there in the basement,” Bob Lacey says. “They must be on drugs. Jesus Christ, he’s out of his mind. We just came in the door and he went wild at us.”
“You have a daughter,” Nolan says. “Where is she?”
“She went to stay with my sister,” the mother says. “Travis was supposed to be old enough to stay by himself. He lost our dog, too — my little Jenny.”
Travis Lacey jolts alive as though he has received a current of electricity straight from a transformer. He bucks and twists, and with a strength that belies his lanky hundred-and-thirty-pound frame, manages to throw the officer like a wild bronco bucking its rider. Travis scrambles free, hands clutching and swinging, clawing like a rabid animal. Nolan regains his footing and corners the teen behind the dining-room table.
“You made this happen!” Travis shouts and points a wavering finger. His eyes are bloodshot, huge and blank. He topples a chair in an attempt to form a barricade. “You don’t even know what you’re doing here; you’re a tool for these guys. You’re a spaceman with a laser for an eye. Don’t even touch me with your light, dude!”
“Easy now,” Nolan says, and he thinks for an instant of calling for backup. Pete Younger is sleeping this morning, but he is on call. Shirley would rouse him from his slumber and have him here in, what, fifteen minutes? He decides it’s not worth the effort, and certainly not worth the ribbing he will endure when the Chief hears that he has called for backup to handle a skinny teenager. There is, however, the matter of the unknown equation in the basement.
“Travis,” Nolan says, looking the teen in the eye, attempting here to connect and drive home some sense. Drugs or mental illness, he can’t say which, though he knows for certain the boy is not of right mind. He read an article in Psychology Today just a few weeks back about teenage schizophrenia, how the onset can literally occur overnight as though a switch has been thrown. It can sneak in and destroy a family like an insidious fog. “You need to calm down, buddy. I want you to come and have a talk with me. Okay?”
Travis stops. The machine has ground to a sudden halt. Emptied of gas.
“I’m hungry,” Travis says in a monotone, as though he is reporting on the day’s weather.
“All right,” Nolan says, hoping to capitalize on the opportunity. “We’ll go for a drive and stop and get some doughnuts. But first we need to find out who you have downstairs, Travis.”
Travis nods and smiles, and suddenly the madness seems to be gone from his body as though evils spirits have simply tired and sought alternative hosts. He shrugs and puts his hands through his shaggy brown hair. He is dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt that says NICKELBACK with a silkscreen image of an electric guitar. He looks like any sixteen-year-old.
“What are those ones with the cream inside?” Travis asks, coming around the table. Nolan watches him, ready for sudden movement.
“Boston cream,” Nolan says. “Listen, Travis, who have you got downstairs?”
Travis only laughs. Nolan places a hand on the boy’s shoulder. They walk together to the stairs leading to the basement. Nolan instantly smells the stale smoke, a choking residue that burns his eyes and settles on his tongue like a taste of metal and iodine. This is not the stink of marijuana’s earthy funk; it is the result of chemistry. The stairway is dark. Nolan finds the switch on the wall but it does not work. He pauses at the top.
“Come on up,” Nolan calls down the stairs. “Party’s over.”
“Just starting,” Travis says. “Never ended. Always is.”
Nolan gets his Maglite out and illuminates the stairs in a band of yellow candle-glow. He turns to Travis.
“Don’t move. Stay right here,” he says, and then descends the stairs one at a time.
He feels like an explorer entering a cave, or perhaps this is what it is like to work in the mines. He has always wondered about that. The world revealed in increments by a narrow band of light, your steps tentative, toes searching for purchase or the end of the world. At the bottom of the stairs he turns and shines the light to the top, making sure Travis is still standing there. The spotlight paints Travis in a ghastly glow.
“Don’t