“Do you understand what to do. Ash?”
“Yes, Dee,” he said, reluctantly.
“Good. Now when I tell you to run, you take Tommy and run into the woods and then over the mountain. All right?”
“All right.”
“And who do you love?”
“I love you. Dee.”
“I love you, too. Ash,” she said as she left her car and walked back down the line.
Ash whispered to Jack, who lay beneath him, sheltered by Ash’s bulk. “It won’t hurt, I promise,” Ash said. “I’m going to carry you, but it won’t hurt.”
Jack said nothing.
Dee smiled broadly as the driver of the Subaru rolled down his window to speak to her. The refrigerated air from the car feathered across her face like a north wind.
“I can’t stick around for this nonsense, whatever it is,” Dee said. “My kid’s home alone; he’s got a little flu.”
“I’m sorry,” the man said. Dee detected a faint European accent.
“It’s nothing serious, but you know how we mothers are. We worry.”
“Of course you do,” he said sympathetically.
“So I’m going to turn around and go on back.”
“Yes, of course.”
“So if you wouldn’t mind backing up a little so I can just swing around. You be careful, though. Somebody might be coming up behind you and we don’t want anything to happen to you.”
The driver smiled at her. “I’ll be all right.”
“Oh, that’s what you all say,” Dee said. “Then look what happens to you.”
The driver was not quite sure what she meant, but she seemed so amused by him that he laughed.
Dee returned to her car and stood by the open door. When the driver of the Subaru turned to look over his shoulder while driving backwards, she shouted, “Now, Ash!” and the big man burst from the backseat, a large bedspread-covered bundle clutched in his arms. As he charged into the trees, bent over his burden, he looked like a parody of a football fullback running into the line with a football tucked into his belly.
Karen and Becker had set up a temporary headquarters with the State Patrol captain to monitor the radio reports coming in from the roadblocks as well as outside calls to the Bureau. The day started with good news.
“They found an old snapshot of Taylor Ashford,” Karen told Becker. “They faxed it from Pennsylvania to Albany. The bad news is the agents left for here before the fax came in. Albany is faxing it to the Massachusetts State Patrol and to the cop house in Becket. But the nearest State Patrol fax is forty-five minutes from here.”
“And I’m not sure our fax works,” volunteered Blocker. Karen had kept the two local cops, Blocker and Reese, with them to act as envoys or chauffeurs as the case demanded. “We don’t use it that much,” he added sheepishly.
“So we’ll have it in forty-five minutes,” said Becker, sounding more philosophical than he felt. There was nothing to do but wait.
When the initial report from the roadblocks came in, Karen was the first to react.
“He may have been seen,” Karen said matter-of-factly as she slid into Reese’s police cruiser. Becker could tell she was trying not to get excited prematurely. “There’s a call from a woman; the details are a little vague, I’m going to check it out.”
“Keep in touch,” Becker said.
Reese climbed behind the steering wheel, started the car, then waited for Karen’s order. Becker could see she had him trained already.
“No, you keep in touch,” she said. “If you find him, remember, he’s mine.”
Becker grinned. “I’ll remember. I don’t want any part of him. I’m on medical extension, remember?”
“You remember.”
“Good luck,” he said.
“There’s probably nothing to this,” she said grimly. She nodded and the car shot forward.
Becker’s call came a few minutes later. The caller was one of the patrolmen manning the roadblock on Winkler Road on Mt. Jefferson. “We have a motorist here,” he said, “Mr. Odd Ronning, who tells us he saw a man leave the line on Winkler Road and run into the woods. He says the man was carrying something wrapped in a blanket.”
“I know him,” said Blocker.
“Who?”
“Mr. Ronning. Very smart guy. If he says he saw it, he saw it.”
Becker grabbed Blocker and propelled him into the passenger seat of his squad car while Becker took the wheel.
“Tell them to hold him there,” he called back to the captain.
“Uh, technically, I should be driving,” Blocker said. Becker had the siren and lights going and was already taking a curve at a speed that made Blocker uneasy.
“We need you on the radio,” Becker said. “I need two hands on the wheel.”
“I see that,” Blocker said.
“Call the roadblock on Winkler and tell them to hold all cars coming down the mountain.”
“Down the mountain? I thought we were going up.”
“We are. We’re going up in the left-hand lane; the right one is full of cars being stopped by the roadblock.”
“Right.” said Blocker.
Becker waited to a count of three before he said. “Better do it now so we don’t meet anyone coming down when we’re going up.”
“Right!” said Blocker, full understanding coming to him a little late. He reached for the radio as Becker squealed around a curve, into the left lane to pass a truck, then back into the right as an alarmed motorist in the oncoming traffic slammed on his brakes.
The name on the mailbox was “Lynch,” which Karen thought was grimly appropriate to her own frame of mind. An attractive honey blonde was waiting for them on her porch, a girl by her side. A large collie dog lay listlessly at the woman’s feet. It lifted its head at the approach of strangers, then lay back down at a word from the woman.
“She a beauty, or what?” Reese asked under his breath. Karen glanced at him, wondering if his tone bespoke a relationship with the woman named Lynch, wishful thinking, or simple connoisseurship. To Karen’s eye, both mother and daughter were beautiful.
“Hey, Peg,” Reese said shyly, looking at the woman, then quickly away, and Karen realized it was wishful thinking. This woman had far too much natural dignity for a local cop to contend with.
“Astrid saw him,” Peg said, indicating the little girl peeking around from behind her. She spoke directly to Karen, cutting Reese out of the communication loop immediately. “She was playing in the backyard, yesterday. She told me right away, but I’m afraid I didn’t give too much importance to it until I heard about the roadblock. Show them, honey.”
The little girl had been standing behind her mother’s skirt, but stepped forward now as if realizing it was her turn onstage. She possessed her mother’s coloring, the same bright eyes that twinkled with intelligence and barely restrained amusement. She led them directly to the back of the house and pointed toward the ditch that ran next to the railroad tracks.
“He came out of there.” the girl said. “He climbed out, then a hand cotched his leg and pulled him back in.”
Karen shuddered at the image of the hand emerging from the ditch and grabbing… She told herself it was not Jack. A boy playing with friends. Not her son. Someone else being caught and pulled into the ditch. Not Jack.
“Did you know the boy?”
“No.”
“Did you ever see him before?” Karen asked. The little girl shook her head.
“What did he look like? Can you describe him?” She thought she would have to drag a description out of the girl, helping her every step of the way. Children were notoriously bad witnesses. But Astrid had either been rehearsed or she had a good eye for boys.
“He had brown hair and cut-off jeans and a T-shirt,” she said. “He was maybe a year older than me… He was cute.”
“The shirt… ” Peg started, then deferred to her daughter.
“And he was scared,” Astrid continued. “He wasn’t crying, but he was scared.”
“Did you see who grabbed him?” Reese asked.
Astrid answered by speaking to Karen. She, too, seemed to know who was important.
“Just a hand,” she said. “I just saw a hand.”