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Where Is Matty Shiffman?

June 13, 1998

“Mister Zuikas—Owen—I’m not going to be tricky with you,” the detective said flat out. The fluorescent light above them cast long, strange shadows down her face. It made her look tired—not just regular “didn’t get enough sleep” tired, but tired in the weary way, weary to the bones, to the marrow. Soul-tired was how Owen thought of it, and though it was perhaps a poor moment for it, he mentally checked that term, soul-tired, as one to remember, because it might be good in a story or a poem someday.

The detective continued:

“I’m not looking to trip any of you up, Owen. I’m not looking to play games. Your story matches the story of the other three with minimal variation. Which is okay. Because, you know, memory is a funny thing.” She offered a half shrug, then tossed a casual glance at the open file folder in front of her. With a long, knot-knuckled finger, she poked at a paper and slid it around a little on the desk in front of her before sighing. “Where is Matty Shiffman, Owen?”

“I don’t understand. You said our stories all match—we told you, we told you where he was. Where he went.”

“I know. I know. You all went up to Highchair on Friday. Saturday morning, he was gone—he left the campsite, bailed, and that’s that. You spent a little time looking for him but assumed he went home. The end. Right?”

Owen nodded. He tucked the flats of his hands under his armpits. His nerves felt like sparking wires. He deeply wanted to fidget. But he tried to keep still.

“Then you came back out of the woods, found out he hadn’t come home.”

Another nod. Hesitant.

“Middle of the day, you all touched base with one another, and nobody had heard from him—his parents hadn’t heard from him, either. They called Nick Lobell’s house first to see if he was there—”

Owen had almost missed it. A little slip of the gears, there. She had changed the story. Just slightly. Just a tweak. On purpose? Or an accident?

“Lauren,” Owen said, stammering a correction. “They, ahh, they called Lauren’s house first. I think.”

Then he saw the teeny tiny smirk tugging at the edge of Detective Doore’s mouth. It was on purpose, the slipup. You are playing tricks, he thought, wary.

She knew something.

She’s not tired, he thought. She’s just pretending .

She knew they were lying—or at least damn sure suspected it.

Shit shit shit shit .

“Right, they called Lauren’s house first. Sorry, my eyes are getting old, Owen. You need anything, by the way? Water? Coke? Coffee? I know kids aren’t supposed to drink coffee, all that stunting-your-growth thing, but my grandmother—Depression-era woman, my grammy—fed me coffee and buttered bread every morning starting when I was five. And I topped out at six foot.”

He shook his head stiffly. Owen just wanted this over with. This was the fourth time now he’d had to sit down with Detective Doore. Another detective, Chuck Lundy, stood by the door, flipping through an US magazine with Jennifer Aniston on the cover.

“You’re chewing your fingernails,” she said. “Nervous?”

He hadn’t even realized he was doing it. Shit shit shit. He tucked them back under his armpits. “No.”

“Okay.” Doore kept looking over her files. “So. You all…had a powwow, then realized Matty had not come home like you thought, and then you—”

“We called the police. Right then and there. We called you. We did what we were s’posed to do. We, we—we did the right thing.”

He heard the defensiveness in his voice. It made him cringe inside. She’s going to smell your weakness, like a wolf sniffing out sickness in the herd . Owen knew that if any of them were weak, it was him. He was scared out of his mind. Even Nick had said it— If any one of us is going to break, it’s Owen .

A real vote of confidence there.

But Nick wasn’t wrong, was he?

Owen told himself, I won’t break, I won’t break, I won’t break.

He just had to hold the line.

He just had to tell their story. The story they’d rehearsed again and again and again. The one they’d agreed was the best one to tell.

Matty left the campsite Friday night after we went to bed.

Matty took his stuff.

Matty was gone when we woke up.

The end .

“We found his stuff,” Doore said matter-of-factly.

Owen’s heart did a small lift in his chest. The cops were supposed to find his stuff. It was a part of it—part of the whole plan. Owen had to concentrate real hard not to say anything here that would spoil the fact he knew where they’d found it.

“Oh?” he asked, doing his very best acting. He was never on stage during any of his school’s theatrical productions, but rather on the tech crew with all the other geeks and goths and all-purpose weirdos. But he put on his very best cocky and confident Matty Shiffman impression—Matty, who was in every production, usually in a big role. “Where was it? His, uh, his stuff, I mean.”

Doore sucked air between her teeth. “Bottom of one of the biggest cliffs up at Highchair Rocks—north side, far end of the Oswald Lambert Loop trail, toward the Vista Point there. His backpack and tent were down there, amongst some pretty sharp rocks, let me tell you.”

“Oh, god,” Owen said, feigning horror. Not sure if he was underselling it or overselling it or just sounding super fakey. “He—he must’ve wandered out at night, and I guess he—I guess he fell.”

“You’d think. But there was no body to be found, Owen.”

“Maybe—maybe he was able to crawl somewhere, or even walk—”

“Odd, though, that there’d be no blood, no hair, no torn clothing, nothing. Certainly no footprints, either.”

“I don’t understand—so he just threw his bag and tent over a cliff?”

Doore shrugged. “It is something that someone on drugs might do.”

Owen flinched at that.

She continued her line of thinking:

“You’re teens. Just kids in a boring-ass nowhere town, nowhere state, nowhere part of the country. And I know, I know, you all said there was no drug use up there, but—come on, Owen. We asked around, it’s what we do, you know, as police officers, and it seems your group had at least a bit of a reputation for being drug users—and it didn’t take much to pressure a local dealer, Eddie Vidich—the one who lives in the trailer park off Stump Road?—into giving up the fact you bunch seem to have procured a variety of illicit substances from him before going into the woods that Friday night.” She pulled up the piece of paper and gave it a long look. “Marijuana and LSD.”

“I—I don’t do drugs, just drink sometimes—”

Shit . His middle cinched up. He just did it. He just broke. Not completely, not utterly, no, but—

“So you were drinking up there.”

“I—”

“Who bought, and brought, the alcohol and the drugs?”

“I—we didn’t—”

“Was Matty on drugs? Who got him those drugs?”

“Please—”

She paused. “You sure you don’t need something? I bet a Coke would be good right now. Your mouth is probably dry. It is kind of hot in here, the AC is on the fritz, and—well. You want anything?”

“Do I need a lawyer?”

Detective Doore leaned in. Another smirk teased at the edges of her thin-lipped mouth. Her face no longer looked weary—it looked alive, awake, eyes bright, the lines of her long face deepening with interest.

“Do you think you need a lawyer, Mister Zuikas? Lawyers are for guilty people. Are you guilty of something, Owen?”

“No. N-no! You just seem—”

“I seem aggressive. I’m sorry, I am, I’m just trying to get to the bottom of things, okay? The drug thing, I mean, someone could be held responsible for that. One of you buys drugs, you supply them to Matthew Shiffman, he gets a bad batch and loses his mind in the woods, dies out there somewhere of exposure—that’s, well, I don’t know for sure, the DA handles that. But probably manslaughter.”

“We don’t know that he’s dead!” He was sweating. He wanted to cry. He wanted to die. This is your fault, he screamed at himself inside his head. You stupid baby. You could’ve gone after him. But you didn’t. This is your fault, you weak, scared, stupid piece of shit . “We don’t know that he’s dead,” he said again, in a smaller voice.

She leaned back with a sigh. “It’s been three days, and after forty-eight hours, you have to start making some assumptions, Owen. Past tense is what we’re thinking for poor Matthew Shiffman.”

“Jesus.” His voice almost broke. He tried very hard to hold back tears.

“Matthew—Matty—Shiffman was a good kid, by all reports. Gosh, not just a good kid, but wow, a kid with a future . A go-getter, one of those kinds who does everything. Everything. Star pitcher for the Colonials in the spring, record-setting sprinter in the fall for track and field. The lead in the school musical. On student council. Part of the honor society. Gifted class. And roundly, routinely liked. So for him to just, poof, go missing, that’s a big deal. His parents won’t let this go, nor should they. Somebody’s going to get put on a hook for this, and I don’t want it to be you, Owen.

“You seem like a nice kid. But you’re weird. You dress in all black. The Satanic Panic may be over, but—hey, all that Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, White Zombie stuff, that’s going to have people suspicious, you know? I don’t know what happened up there. I really don’t. Maybe it’s just like you all said. Maybe he was sober as a judge and went out into the woods to go home and—and somehow got lost or got dead. Maybe something worse happened, though. Maybe you all killed him. Jealousy over how good he was. Or as some ritual sacrifice. Or just for kicks—thrill-kill fuckups just trying to feel something.” She smiled stiffly and raised her eyebrows. “So I’m going to ask you again, Mister Zuikas. Where is Matty Shiffman?”

Owen pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes so hard, the darkness behind his lids turned nuclear white. Tears pushed their way out. He felt his sinuses thickening with grief and fear.

And then he told Detective Doore one piece of absolute truth:

“I have no idea where he is or where he went,” Owen said. “None of us do.”