Charlie's Favorite Friends

My name is Leroy Liston, and I’m a retired cop of some 32 years on the job. Not many months after I left the force, they approached me to return as a consultant when a rash of child disappearances hit the city. Given my experience with these kinds of things, I seemed like the perfect guy to bring back in.

It looked containable from the onset, when it was just one kid who'd gone missing. One or two disappearances is certainly cause for concern, but when the third kid went missing in a month, and then the fourth and the fifth kid, it was all hands on deck along with anyone else they could rope in to help things along.

I'd like to start from there, but to tell this the way it ought to be told, we're going to have to go way back. All the way back to one of my first meaningful cases. That's where the story really begins.

In those days when I was first gunning to be a detective, you could say I had a bit of a troubled marriage. We did our best not to fight in front of the kid, but we had some absolute knockdown, brawl-athon bouts in our kitchen. No fists were thrown, and although she got her hands on a plate-turned-frisbee a couple of times, it mostly never got physical. This woman who I once thought would be the love of my life had grown sick of me, and by then I wasn't so sweet on her either.

Then, one afternoon I came home from the precinct to find Charlie all by himself. I sensed it the moment I walked in. Ruth was out, and Charlie was there unattended with his toys, playing contentedly as boys his age are wont to do with little to engage them.

“Hey, Dad,” he said, looking up from his hot wheels cars as I entered.

“Say, where’s your mother, son?” I asked him, standing in the dining room.

He just shrugged and kept on with his toys.

“She take off? What’s going on, kid? Talk to me.”

He looked up with his moppish sandy-blonde hair falling out of his eyes. “She just barely left like a few minutes go. I got a big hug and she had this big bag with her and she just went.”

“Huh. Well, shit. Big bag as in like a suitcase?”

He shrugged again.

I thought about that for a second as my son’s attention returned to his little metal cars. Then, I peeled back the frayed lace curtain for a glance outside. Her car had been gone all along. As a matter of fact, I was pretty sure I’d crossed between two parked cars and the empty space she’d left on my way to the front door, but my head was so full of crushing concerns from work that I'd failed to notice.

A couple weeks later I got the divorce papers in the mail. With a smile on my face, I signed them right then and there at the kitchen table. Not my problem anymore. And not Charlie’s either.

So it was just me and the kid. After a while there I did have a live-in girlfriend, though. She was a frail thing who I’d begun to suspect had a drug problem when some of my stuff started to go missing. The first clue being that it always seemed to be some of the more costly ticket items. Not the best situation for my kid to be in, and as a cop, I should have known better, seen the signs. We had a rough altercation her last night in my home, and while I never raised my hand to her, I was in no way gentle in booting her ass out the door.

Finding Charlie shivering under his blankets that night was what really got me seeing that it was time to turn over a new leaf. I’d thought maybe with a new woman in his life he’d be happier. I couldn’t always be the nurturing, affectionate parent he needed. I could discipline him, show him things he needed to learn, but that was only one half of the equation as far as I was concerned. No, he needed more from me, and I came to realize this with hard-hitting clarity. The kind that just about knocks you to the floor. That night I did my best to console him, letting him know we needed to keep it just him and me going forward. No women to betray us or run out on us. From now on it was going to be him and me against the world. And he’d see what a good dad I could be. The kind of dad he deserved.

The following morning, after making him French toast and eggs, I sat down with him and probed him on a few things I felt a dad should know about his son, but I maybe hadn’t discovered the answers to. It was weird being there with my kid and finding that in many ways we were strangers to each other.

When we got to talking, he told me what he wanted to do when he grew up. Thought he might want to be a cop like his old man someday, but that wasn't it. No, it turned out he wanted to be an actor of all things. It’s a tough field to break into, but I could see how badly he wanted it. The problem was I didn’t think he had the chops. It was going to take a boatload of practice if he were to stand any real chance of making it. So what did I do? I bought a camcorder, a bunch of supplies and began working on a project to help the little guy out. He was still pretty broken up about his mom. I had to give him something.

It was a pretty cheesy setup at first. We hung blankets over the windows to keep the evening sun from gleaming through. Charlie dug out his toys and set them out over the couch’s back rest, and I set up the camcorder in front of the TV on a tripod. I’d done some research watching kids shows and had Charlie interact as I bounced a toy or two back and forth, quizzing Charlie on anything from how to be a friend to what to do if a stranger talks to you.

Well, that was the start of it, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I looked forward to getting home every night, cooking the kid a proper meal and finally getting the living room ready for Charlie's show. You could assume I’m biased, and maybe I am a little, but the kid really developed a knack for it, I had to hand it to him. Sometimes I had trouble keeping up, but we always had fun, and I was starting to think maybe one day we could use the footage to convince a TV producer to land him a spot on a show.

We made hours of videos together. Eventually I made the backdrops a little better, actually painting scenery over discarded sheets of sanded-down plywood. I had a little shop in the backyard, and each night I’d pull out the backdrop and set it all up. We even sung our own song as fanfare for when our little show got started, recorded beforehand and played from a Sanyo cassette player behind the couch.

Charlie’s Favorite Friends. It had the potential to be a big hit. I really believed that. Only I never planned for those tapes to see the light of day. Maybe a TV producer might watch one or two of them one day, but I couldn't imagine anyone else viewing what we'd made.

Well, life’s full of surprises. But we’ll circle back to that a little later.

It was in the midst of filming our fun little show that I made detective and got assigned to missing persons. We had the occasional disappearances, often woman running from an abusive husband or a husband looking to break away from a soured relationship by skipping town, that sort of thing. Occasionally my partner Joel and I had some good ones to work as well. Weeding out the time wasters and the ones that weren’t really any big deal wasn’t so hard, and we both ached for the kinds of cases that gave us the chance to do some real good.

And then I got my first missing child case. Having a kid of my own, this meant something to me, and I was achingly determined right from the get go. We’d gotten missing children before, but mostly that had been from matters embroiled in custody battles, that sort of thing, or runaway children who’d fled our jurisdiction. Nothing like this one.

The kid’s parents by all accounts were in a solid, healthy relationship, not that I was any expert in sussing that sort of thing out, but my partner Joel agreed. Of course there was no custody battle between a married couple, and from all we could gather, no signs of abuse at home, and the kid was far too young to have run away. Seven years old. About Charlie’s age.

The two parents were both working professionals, it was at the start of spring, and the kid waited up for them most nights after coming home from school. He was sort of a latchkey kid, it turns out. Michael. I still think about that guy to this day.

Over the next couple days we interviewed potential witnesses, knocked doors in the neighborhood, talked to the kid’s friends to see if they knew anything. The folks were clean, and there was nothing that really suggested any foulplay on their part, no clear enemies, just feeble rivalries from work, and for all our efforts, we were dried up on leads. Simply put, someone had busted in and snatched up the kid without anyone being any more the wiser. As far as we knew, it could have been anyone. How does something like that happen in an active neighborhood? Hard to wrap your head around. Well, I actually had one theory, but it was laughable, and following it up could be awkward if I didn’t have solid enough reasons. But it was there, gnawing at me from the back of my skull.

The question: what if a neighbor did see something happen and decided not to report it? That was my first thought. But it eventually formed into something far more malevolent. What if it wasn’t just that? What if the kidnapper was one of the neighbors?

The parents lived among a set of rowhouses, and grabbing the kid at the right time could have been accomplished without being noticed if the kidnapper lived beside him, for instance. But not in broad daylight. Not likely. So I checked my notes and the time the child was reported missing. It was after 7 pm. Being that it was springtime, it was still a little darker at that hour. Conceivably, a neighbor might have been able to pull it off.

I left Joel out of it, but I considered the neighbors. One day, looking up the rap sheets on the occupants in the buildings on either side, I had a funny feeling as I was peering into the home of a guy who had no official priors, but who’d reportedly attracted attention from the police for strange behavior, strange sounds coming from his place, staring out at passersby, but nothing worthy of arrest or concern. On the sidewalk, I stood there smoking up the last of my cigarette. I noticed that the window pane to one of the bedrooms facing the street had been tinted black. Something you might do if you wanted to have a clear view without anyone knowing about it. Impossible to see through, but I stared at it, trying to unpeal the layer that separated me from what I imagined was a set of beady eyes leering back from the other side. I looked long and hard, letting most of my cigarette fizzle out on its own. I considered approaching the door, knocking, but thought better of it. Instead I discarded my smoke, smudged it into the sidewalk under my shoe and set off for my car. It was time to call it a night.

By then, the kid had been missing for 72 hours and still no leads. I woke up the next mornng with a headache from stressing too much over the case and the six pack I’d laid to waste the night before. Might have been feeling dragged under a bit, but I wasn’t going to let it put a damper on Charlie’s morning too, so I got to making him breakfast like usual. With the eggs sizzling in the pan, the phone began to ring, and I signaled Charlie to answer it. Normally I don’t like him taking calls.

“Hello?” he said into the receiver. His eyes shifted to me. “It’s for you, Dad.”

I slid the pan across the stove and reached for the phone, winking at Charlie. “Who’s this?” I asked.

“It's Warner. I've got news for you. You in a place to hear it?”

“Whatever you’ve got, lay it on me, Chief.”

“The kid’s back.”

“The kid? Michael? You’re kidding me with this. What happened?”

“I’m afraid there’s not much to tell. The little guy just showed up last night at his parents house. Didn’t even go inside. He just stood there on the porch. You believe that?”

“Well, what do we know?”

“Not much. It turns out the parents weren’t thrilled by our lack of success in getting their son back, but I realize everything you two put into that case and you have my full backing, never doubt it. As for now the family is asking that we give them some space and respect their privacy. They’re not letting on about anything, Leroy. Let’s hope we can get some answers out of all of this, but I have a feeling that if we do, it won’t be from the kid.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Ah, well, he’s completely catatonic. Standing there, not saying a word to anyone. Or he’ll sit if prompted, I’ve been told. But he doesn’t do much else. Doesn’t respond to anything, just stares and drools. Some of our guys on duty went to check up on him, but they were shooed away right off the bat. I phoned over and suggested he may need medical attention, and that the responsible thing to do would be to have him looked at by a professional, but they weren't having any of it. They just want to be with their son and not deal with any fuss from the boys in blue.”

The chief went on to explain that there was nothing more we could do. The case was officially over with. We’d want some closure on the situation, of course, but when? There was far too much speculation and not enough solid truth over a matter that greatly concerned the general public. We needed firm answers.

It turned out I never got the chance to speak with Michael. But then again, no one else ever did either. Michael currently lives with his parents who continue to care for him, and the last I heard, his condition hasn’t shown any signs of improvement. While there is only so much to assume about what he went through, I was certain about at least two things: the boy was taken, and whatever was done to him didn’t leave a scratch on his body.

After that, things settled down for a bit. Charlie wanted to keep making his show, but I had sort of grown out of it. Something about the case had shaken me, made me aloof in my own home.

I got in late one night and Charlie wasn’t watching TV like he normally was. The TV was on, but Charlie was out of the room. I called out his name, figuring he had to make a pit stop for the bathroom. He didn’t answer when I called out, and that wasn’t unusual. The kid was shy about talking through the bathroom door when he was up to his business.

So I waited, seating myself down on the couch, finding a warm impression from where his butt must have been parked moments before. Our entertainment center which housed the TV had a special little nook where we kept all of our home videos of Charlie’s show. They weren’t there. I stood up to look at the empty cabinet. Nothing there at all but an outline of dust silhouetting the space the tapes had taken up. Strange.

Out of instinct I wheeled about, as if I expected someone to be there. What I found instead was the housing to the door latch lying on the wood grain, bent and broken.

“Charlie?!” I called out again. I yelled louder than ever. “Charlie!”

No answer. I checked the bathroom. I checked his room, my room, the backyard, the garage, searched the entire perimeter. There was no sign. I spent the rest of the night searching the neighborhood.

Joel was put on the case without me. During this period, I was put on smaller cases. With my own son missing, I wasn’t allowed to get involved, but Joel kept me updated as things went along. At least as much as he could. To say the least, a rift began to form between us.

I’ve never felt so helpless and useless and anxious in all of my years.

The grief, the anxiety, it made me a wreck. I couldn’t concentrate on my work. I had a run in with Joel in the break room one day, the culmination of all of my pent up rage and frustration, getting in his face over my son’s disappearance. It came to blows, and we were separated.

A month-long probationary period, unpaid. Sent home. Good, I thought. I’d be able to find my son without anything holding me back now. No duties to perform, nothing but finding my boy.

I took that entire month to do just that. There aren’t a lot of details worth sharing. Suffice it to say that I came up emptyhanded, followed a lot of red herrings if you will, and wound up with nothing to show for it.

Years later I landed myself in the Alcoholics Anonymous program, and this was the time in my life where I’d really dug myself into the kind of hole where the support was needed.

I just about drank away my savings.

It was Joel who first helped snap me out of it. The addiction had a hold of me and I was a mess, and despite our bad blood from our last face-to-face, Joel had no qualms about helping me through it.

By then it was time to accept I’d never see my son again. If there was one thing I could do, it was to make sure no else had to experience that same, life-destroying feeling. At least not under my watch.

Back to work and ready to take on the world, I ran into my first big case since my return. It was another missing kid. Forced entry, another latchkey kid gone missing. Nothing else connected it with my son’s case other than broad details, so I got to stay on. I wasn’t gonna let them squeeze me out of this one. As things went along, Joel and I did everything we could, considered every possible angle, reviewed and re-examined every possible detail until our eyes bled.

Just like with Charlie, we came up with nothing.

I wasn’t good enough, I told myself. And that was costing someone else because of my incompetence. It wasn’t fair. No one deserved to know what it was like to lose a child like that. To be burdened every day with the grief of knowing you let your son down and that he . . .

I went with Joel for a drink on the night we decided to call it off, the night before the entire case file went under review.

A taxi got me home, the fare covered by Joel, and as I stumbled in, I noticed right away that something was different. The entertainment center. There was a tape there, right in the same place where the others had gone missing on the same night Charlie had disappeared.

Sobriety hit me like a ten-ton mallet to the face, and I ripped the thing open, staring at the label. It wasn’t in my writing like the others had been. It was in my son’s.

Charlie’s Favorite Friends.

I don’t even remember putting it in the VCR or hitting play. I only remember what I saw on screen.

There was Charlie, happy as can be, seated on a couch similar to the one I sat on, but different enough that I knew right away it wasn’t the same. There was a backdrop not unlike what I'd created as well. He started playing with his toys after singing the fanfare himself, talking to a rubber Brontosaurus, bounding it across the cushions.

I was enraptured, tears filling my eyes. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I never thought I’d see Charlie again, but there he was. I played it more times than I could count, watching for any clues, but the tape gave nothing away. It was just Charlie. Happy little Charlie.

There were other cases, similar ones, and with disappearances we just couldn’t crack. Seven in all. Seven children gone missing. And like clockwork, on the day we hung it up on each case, a VHS tape with Charlie found its way to me. Once in the backseat of my car, once in the mailbox, another time in the pocket of my jacket when I picked it up from the dry cleaners.

On the last video before the disappearances stopped, the label, still in Charlie’s hand, said something different.

“It’s good you haven’t caught me”

I didn’t know what that meant at first, but one day it became clear to me.

32 years later, I retired from the force. I had a number of successful cases, but that first hard one had always stuck with me. Had it all been connected? If I’d gone about all this according to the letter of the law, I would have given up the tapes, recused myself from the investigation, and that would have been the end of it for me. Instead, I’d kept it to myself to this day.

Since I returned to the force, just some minor consulting, the new cases had begun to look just a bit too familiar. Too much lined up with what had happened from my first case.

I woke up most nights in a cold sweat, panting, sometimes hollering Charlie’s name, but rarely remembering the dream I had. Other nights I do remember the dream, and I hear the song.

Join us, my friends, you’re here with Charlie’s Favorite Friends

I was convinced that one day it would have my heart. But before that ever happened, I remembered Michael. The one that got away, I liked to think. Although what was left of him? He was little better than a vegetable, but he had gotten away unlike Charlie and the others.

But why Michael? I thought back to what had happened, and that’s when I remembered my fleeting suspicion.

With my limited access to the precinct’s database, I was able to find out that a certain someone still occupied the same address as they had those 32 years prior.

The house looked just as before. Even in the dark, I could tell the window was blotted out black like it had been the first time I’d seen it, darker than any of the others. I approached and examined the doorway. For a man of my build and age, forced entry is hardly an easy feat, but I had adrenaline pumping through my veins and pure, unchecked rage.

From a swift kick, the door flew open, pieces of the casing smacking down and tumbling against the floor inside. A figure in the dark came to its feet, froze, and took off. I went after, hands outstretched and laid hold of him by the shoulders, ripping him into the wall, wailing.

He hit hard, going halfway through the drywall before I yanked him to the floor.

“Ed Winstrom.” I could see his face clearly through the light from the doorway, a street lamp buzzing so loudly as to be heard even then. I grabbed him by the scruff and pulled him in closer. He cringed and his eyes clenched shut, hands raised to block his face.

“What do you want from me?”

I stared into the fearful, wizened face of a murder. A killer of children, and without any real doubt the man who had taken the life of my own son.

“You killed him,” I said.

The wrinkles around his eyes and forehead slackened as he opened his eyes and peered up at me. “Oh,” he said. “It’s just you.”

I was old, younger than this guy by a good decade, but still plenty old. The strain to pull him up was a callback to the suffering I endured when the low back pain first began, but I got him to his feet and shoved him into the wall. Plaster cracked, and I pulled him toward me just to do it again, harder. I heard the sound of my own teeth creaking from the pressure of them grinding together.

For a moment all I saw was red. I’d hid things from my fellow policeman before. What was to stop me now? What reason was there not to deliver justice with my own two hands? Eventually cooler heads prevailed, and as I stood over Ed’s beaten form, I uttered through pants the words I’d waited years to say. “You’re under arrest.”

Ed, laying on his side, lolled over to his back and looked up at me. An eyebrow cocked high in amusement while a trail of blood showed from the corner of his mouth, coursing down his neck. “Oh, you don’t want to do that, friend. You never cared about arresting me.” He coughed and started to sit up. I considered landing a kick to his chest. He continued, “Well, maybe at the beginning that’s what you wanted. But not after Charlie left. All you wanted,” he said, smiling widely. “All you wanted . . . C’mon, Leroy. Say it yourself. All you wanted was to see . . .”

I shook my head, for some reason going along with it. “Was to see Charlie again.”

He tsked, scooting closer on his hind end like a dog wiping shit off on grass. “Well, I’m sorry, but that won’t happen if you take me in.”

“I’ll never see him again all the same. Now get up and turn around.”

Ed didn’t move. His mouth went open in surprise. Slowly he raised his pointer finger. “Ah, but what if that weren’t true. What if you hadn’t seen the last tape?”

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s plenty more. Loads more. And they’re yours if you want them. But you’ll never find them if you take me in. Think about it. You couldn’t find any of the children.” He said in a sing-song voice. “What makes you think you can find those? You want to see Charlie again. More than anything. All you have to do, Leroy, is leave me be and you’ll see him tomorrow. That’s a promise.”

"We'll get it out of you."

"You've done your worst. You think interrogating me with the cameras on is going to go any better. No, Leroy. You have one chance."

I had tears clouding my vision and my lip was trembling. “Tomorrow?” I asked.

“That’s right,” Ed said, groaning as he stood, patting dust from his shirt.

“But what about what you’re going to . . .”

“You want to see Charlie and that's all that really matters. Remember that. It's all about Charlie. Charlie’s Favorite Friends."

****

I took myself off of the investigation. It just didn’t make sense to fake it.

It’s been a while since then, almost 12 months, and Ed has sent me six more tapes in total. Today, I came home to find another VHS in my mailbox. I’ve just put it into my old VCR. I hadn’t read the label, but as the tape slid into the VCR, I caught the words scrawled across the white strip and smiled.

Charlie’s Favorite Friends - The Finale