Except if Dave had built himself such a getaway, he never would have made the same mistake the maker of this particular one had: he wouldn’t have made it adult accessible.
Standing with one foot on the ground and the other on an exposed root, he gripped the rung closest in height to his chest in both hands and yanked at it with all his might. It didn’t budge. Holding on to the next highest one, he did a partial pull-up, not quite enough to get his chin over the board but enough to test whether it would hold his weight. Solid. He stepped onto the first rung and climbed.
The ladder didn’t lead straight up the trunk but spiraled around it instead. Knots and branches occasionally provided natural, supplemental footholds. Dave eased his way up, eyes on the hatch in the fort’s floor, constantly expecting one of the rungs to break off in his hands or splinter beneath his scrambling feet despite their apparent sturdiness. He winked his scratched eye every ten or fifteen seconds, trying to keep it moist and fend off the worst of the pain. By the time he got his head through the access hole, he was sweating. The wounds on his face throbbed in time with his heartbeat, and a series of tears dripped from his injured eye down the side of his nose and across his pressed lips.
If Dave hadn’t slipped a little at the last second, the rock would have hit him square in the teeth. Fortunately for him, he did and it didn’t. His head dropped just beneath the platform’s surface not half a second before the stone went sailing by, and he listened while it crashed through tree limbs and into the underbrush below. Rather than wait for another rock, he lunged up and into the tree house. The boy sat in the corner with his arm flopped out in front of him.
“Trying to bean me?” Dave said, pushing himself into a sitting position, not wanting to advance any farther until the boy seemed ready for him to do so.
“I—”
Dave waved a hand unconcernedly and forced out a little laugh. “Forget it. Georgie would have done the same thing.”
The kid said nothing. He looked away from Dave and over the edge of the platform. Thinking about a jump, Dave figured. The fall might leave him with a broken leg or a fractured skull, but it was a reasonable consideration. Dave wouldn’t have blamed him a bit. He remembered the way the kid had looked coming down from this tree earlier, like a bird gliding to earth. After such a display, it wouldn’t have surprised him much if the boy hit the ground running or flew off through the trees like a whooping crane.
He pulled another toothpick from his breast pocket and flipped it into his mouth. He wasn’t sure where he’d lost the first one, but it didn’t especially matter. He had plenty. He looked for a replacement twig while he waited to see what the kid would do.
After what must have been a full minute, the boy looked back up at Dave and slumped. It was perhaps the most physical and obvious act of surrender Dave had ever seen, and done without a single spoken word—but Dave wasn’t about to let down his guard. He’d seen plenty of opossum, had played it once or twice himself.
“You know,” Dave said after plucking the pick from his mouth, “that rock near knocked my head off. You ever play much ball?” He closed his good eye, saw the world momentarily through a watery haze.
The kid looked at the weathered boards between his legs.
“Georgie never played except for a year of tee-ball. Would it be all right if I called you Georgie?”
No response, but the boy did take another quick peek over the edge. Dave had to admire his pluck.
He started to reinsert the toothpick, then jammed it into the crease of his ear instead and folded his hands in his lap. “There’s something I guess you ought to know.” He waited for the boy to look at him but finally continued when he didn’t. “That woman inside there.” He nodded his head toward the house, though the boy still wouldn’t look. “I guess she’s dead.”
Finally, some life from the boy. His head jerked up, and the muscles in his body flexed and jumped. His eyes bore into Dave, showing first anger, then fear, and finally misery, the transitions between each lasting for only a blink apiece. The kid had gone from slack into an almost immediate hunch and now resembled a field cat ready to pounce. Dave didn’t move or react. He knew better than to show any fear.
“You—” The boy was almost shaking. “You lie.”
“Nope.” Dave shook his head once, slowly, to the left and then back to center. “I stuck her with a knife.” Dave pulled out the front of his shirt and looked from it back to the boy, saying here’s the evidence without saying anything. “But there’s something else.”
“No.” He shook his head, twitched a little, and shook his head again.
“There’s something else,” Dave repeated. “She wasn’t your mommy any more than she was my missus.” He took the toothpick from his ear. “She was a liar, Georgie, and she was all wrong.” He popped in the unchewed end and chomped down.
The boy changed position a little, got his feet behind him. No longer a hunched cat; now a sprinter waiting for the flat crack of the starting gun. “You’re lying,” he said in a voice much deeper and manlier than the one he’d used in the kitchen.
“Nope. Daddies shouldn’t ever lie to their boys. But I promise you this: we’ll find you your rightful mommy. I will make things right.”
On some level, he’d expected what happened next all along. The boy charged. Dave scooted sideways at the last second and reached out a hand. If he hadn’t moved quickly enough, the kid would undoubtedly have toppled over the railing and onto the forest floor below. Might even have brained himself on the very rock he’d tried throwing at Dave. Instead, Dave wrapped his hand around one of the boy’s flailing ankles and held on tight.
The boy flew forward, not getting his hands out in front of him in time, hitting the two-by-four guardrail forehead first before dropping with a groan to the platform beside Dave. The crack of wood came at some point during the commotion, but Dave couldn’t pick out exactly when it happened or where the sound originated. It could have been the rail or one of the floorboards beneath them, or even one of the supporting tree limbs. Regardless, Dave wanted to get them down from there as soon as possible. He flipped the boy onto his back and pushed his hair away to examine the damage.
The abrasion just above the left eye looked bad but not dangerously so. The kid (Georgie, Dave thought, he’s Georgie now) had his eyes closed and wasn’t moving, but Dave felt his heartbeat and saw the rise and fall of his chest. Just stunned, more than likely. Dave got onto his hands and knees, moved to the hole, dropped down to the first rung and dragged the child after him. Gritting his teeth, he wiped a fresh bout of tears from his tortured eye. He climbed down far enough to give himself some room and pulled Georgie onto his shoulder, crumpling a little at the added weight but able, just barely, to manage the load and keep hold of the tree at the same time. He spit his toothpick past the trunk, took a deep breath, and began the arduous descent.
SIX
“First thing is I need you to relax, okay?” The guard uncrossed his arms, and one hand dangled by his utility belt as if preparing for a quick draw, though the item positioned where a normal policeman carried a holstered gun was, in this man’s case, only a two-way radio. He reached his other hand out to Libby’s shoulder in a comforting gesture but made no actual contact. “Now tell me again. Slowly.”