“Oh, Ash isn’t at the motel.”
“He isn’t, huh?” -
“No.”
“How do I know that?”
“I just told you. Don’t you believe me?”
“Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“Yes, Lyle, I certainly do.” She smiled so brightly at him that Edgar thought he had misunderstood her because of the noise of the train.
“I promise you Ash isn’t at the motel,” she said.
“Why should I believe that?”
“Because he’s right here,” she said. She took hold of his tie and pulled him toward her. For a second he thought she was going to kiss him, but then he saw the movement in the back of the car. The whole seat seemed to rise up, then an arm flashed out. Edgar jerked away reflexively, but Dee held him within the car by his necktie. He felt the crushing hand on his throat before he saw the face and enormous bulk of Ash emerge from under the blanket.
Jack heard the voices dimly, all sounds being muffled by the blanket and the body of the man on top of him. The motion of the car had stopped, there was a roar and a clanging which he knew to be a train crossing, then the voices of a man and a woman talking above the clamor of the train. The man’s body was not really on him; he felt no weight from it, just the shape of it, like a huge shell holding him down, or, oddly, protecting him.
Suddenly the shell was torn away as the body vaulted upwards. Jack saw light and lifted his head, blinking. He saw the man’s arm stretching over the seat back, heard a man gargling dryly as if something was caught in his throat.
Jack saw the car door, clawed at the handle, then crawled out from under the blanket, out from under the man’s body. The man seemed to have forgotten him. Then Jack was on the road and he began to run without seeing where he was going, just away, as fast as he could, off the road so the man and the nurse couldn’t follow him. For a second he heard the gargling sound grow louder, more desperate, but then Jack had sprinted beyond the sound. He leaped into the shallow dry ditch next to the tracks and ran. The train slammed by him, dangerously close, and Jack recoiled, amazed that he hadn’t noticed it before.
Almost at once he knew he had made a mistake. The ditch grew deeper, trapping him in its recesses. He had no choice but to continue straight ahead; climbing the bank to flatter ground would take him too long and he knew he had to flee as if hotly pursued even though he had not yet looked back to see if he was being chased. He didn’t dare to look back; he knew that he would be paralyzed by fear if he saw someone coming.
He could hear nothing; there was nothing to hear over the roar of the train. The wheels clattered against the steel rails and the cars swayed overhead as if they must surely topple into the ditch and crush him.
The ditch ran parallel to the tracks, around a curve, seeming to sink almost directly under the wheels of the train that never stopped, and then it began to rise again, growing shallower by the step. At the end of it he could see first one, then another house. Within a few steps he could be able to leap out of the ditch, into the adjoining field, then straight to the houses and people and safety.
He made the leap and felt something catch at his T-shirt. He hung on the lip of the ditch, teetering there, flailing his arms to keep his balance as something tried to pull him back down. He saw a girl in the backyard of a house staring at him from her swing set. She raised a hand tentatively, not certain if he was rotating his arms in a greeting.
Jack’s weight was thrown to the side and he spun around, still atop the edge of the ditch. He ducked his head and found himself face to face with the nurse who was panting hard, her lips curled into a snarl. Jack pulled backwards and she peeled the T-shirt off his body like she was skinning a rabbit. Suddenly released, he stumbled and sat down abruptly, still looking straight at the nurse in the ditch. Before he could get up, she had him by the ankle. It occurred to him to yell as he was being dragged back into the ditch, but it seemed he needed all his breath to resist the nurse. Jack saw the girl on the swing watch in amazement as he disappeared, inch by inch, into the ditch. He managed to scream very briefly before he sank out of sight entirely and a hand clapped over his mouth.
The nurse was calling him “precious” and her “darling boy” as she dragged and carried him back to the car, but Jack was too frightened to make any sense of her words. A huge man waited by the car, another man hanging limply from his hand. The big man looked puzzled, still clutching the other by the throat, holding him as if not quite certain what to do with him, like a toy rendered useless now that the game was completed. Jack had seen a cat look like that, baffled and no longer interested, embarrassed to explain how the mouse had gotten in its mouth in the first place.
Chapter 22
They ruled out the lake quickly enough. It was shallow and easily searched for a distance of forty feet out from the dock, and the severity of the hills surrounding the lake elsewhere made entry any place other than the dock difficult. It seemed very unlikely that Jack, with his limited skills, would have, or even could have, swum farther from the shore.
The combined search party of Karen, Becker, Blocker, and Reese-the two local policemen-and two dozen camp volunteers found no trace of Jack in the mountain forest, and by mid-afternoon both Karen and the locals agreed it was time to summon the state police. She also summoned elements of the Bureau forces from both Albany and Boston, who would not be able to reach them before the following morning.
Throughout the day Karen acted like a woman very much in control of herself as well as her circumstances while she ordered and organized the searches, conferred politely with Blocker and Reese, consulted Becker with the same diplomatic inclusion, made her decision and the phone calls. Becker saw no signs of either the frantic mother or the hysterical, guilt-ridden woman of the night before. She did not meet his eye directly all day long, but that was a clue to her inner turmoil that only he would recognize. To the world about her, she was a brisk professional set on accomplishing her task. He marveled at her, at the strength she found in her work. Even her skirt and jacket looked as if they had been freshly pressed. It was only when he stood close to her that he smelled the sour odor of her fear. She had showered first thing in the morning, but the stench had already worked deeply into her clothes.
Following her decision to call in the state police, Karen pulled Becker aside, away from the local cops and the counselors.
“I’m biased, John, so I need your perspective. If this were anybody else’s child who was missing-would I have enough to declare it a snatch?”
“I’m biased, too,” Becker said.
She waved his protest aside with a flick of her hand. No one else’s concern could approach hers.
“Am I justified in thinking Jack has been kidnapped?” She faced him but her eyes roved somewhere over his shoulder.
“Does it matter? Do it anyway. He’s your boy; who cares if it’s technically justified or not?”
She grew very quiet and Becker watched the color slowly drain from her face, then gradually return. Her eyes stayed so steadfastly fixed in the distance that Becker turned to look. A squirrel climbed halfway up the trunk of a tree, then appeared to notice the humans for the first time and skittered around to the other side. Becker studied the squirrel’s antics for a moment, giving Karen time to recover herself. He wondered how many times this day she had gone through the same crisis, battling with all of her inner resources to fight off the powerful surge of despair.
“You are a very experienced agent,” she said at last, her words measured too precisely. “For the record, I am asking if, in your opinion, I am justified in calling the state police into the case on suspicion of kidnapping. This is an official question. I would appreciate an official answer.”