“Thank you.”
“It’s still early yet. Quite likely they went to sleep somewhere.”
“Where?” Tony said.
The lieutenant thought. Nodded. “Must say it don’t look too good, with nobody calling in. But you know what I’m thinking. Maybe they left them some place like they left you and it take them a while to walk out. Fixing to take your car no doubt.”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking, too,” Tony said, meaning that’s what he was hoping, not saying what he was thinking. The lieutenant was tapping his forehead with his pencil, as if he were thinking other things as well.
“You want to stay at that motel?”
“I guess so.”
“We’ll call you if we get anything.”
Tony Hastings walked across the street to the motel. “No car?” the fat woman said.
“It’s stolen.”
“Well, no kidding! So that’s what you were doing at the police. What can you give me for security?”
“Credit card.”
The motel smelled of plastic and air conditioning, the closed thick brown drapes made an unreal darkness in the room. He lay on the bed in his clothes and instantly the night was back with wind and a swirl of galactic clouds. Ray sitting on the radiator, laughing and saying, Don’t take it so serious, man, we was only kidding. But that was a dream, for now he was awake and crossing the yard to the police station where he saw, newly washed and sparkling in the sun, his car, safely returned. His heart leaped and he went inside. Laura and Helen were on a bench in the hall, there they were, and they jumped up and ran to him, smiling with relief, hugging and kissing and saying, “We’re all right, they only wanted us to meet their friends in the trailer,” and Tony Hastings held them, saying, “It’s not a dream, is it? It can’t be a dream because it’s too real for a dream.”
The horrible loud telephone on the table next to his ear. He grabbed it to stop it, heart crashing.
“Tony Hastings? Lieutenant Graves. Bad news.”
He saw a broad net spread under the trees hung from several treetrunks to catch whatever might fall from the high branches.
“They found your car in the river over at Topping. Looks like they was trying to get rid of it.”
The strands of the net were gathered in white nodes, spots, dots, pulses, at wide intervals all across the field. “What about my wife, my daughter?”
“Still no word.”
Catching fruit, bodies. “They weren’t in the car?”
“The car was empty. They’re pulling it out now.”
He looked at his watch. He had been asleep a half hour, it was only quarter past nine. If that was Lieutenant Graves’s idea of the worst in bad news.
“What do you make of it?” Tony said.
“Don’t know what to make of it.”
A silence while they pulled up the net, rolled it in.
“Sir, we’re turning this case over to Lieutenant Andes. He wants to look around. Can he pick you up in a few minutes?”
Tony Hastings’s body full of sandbags. “I’m ready now,” he said.
NINE
If Susan wants to know what happened, she’ll have to keep reading. She hears the Monopoly game breaking up. Harsh-voiced Mike yanks soft-breasted Dorothy to her feet, while fat Henry struggles up on his own. Through the living room into the hall.
“Good night Mrs. Morrow.” He has a sharp nose and a sharp chin, a white face and grinning mouth. In the hall Dorothy leans her elbow up on Mike’s shoulder and grins sassily at him. Susan Morrow has a prudish streak, wishing whatever happens out of her sight so she won’t have to say anything. Someone slams someone in the ribs. Ouf! you motherfucker. Snuffles and giggles in the hall, hey watch it. Susan Morrow does have a prudish streak: if your friends don’t know what people don’t say where.
From around the corner, nasal and loud, “Good night, Mrs. Morrow, I had a lovely evening.” Hoot, hoo hoo. Susan needs another chapter, it’s going to take a while yet. Tell Edward: you know how to draw things out.
Nocturnal Animals 8
The police car in front of the motel office, a man in police uniform driving, another man on the right, this one in a plain brown suit. The man in the suit said, “Tony Hastings?” He was wearing a hat and twisted his hand out the half-opened window so as to shake Tony’s. Tony got in the back.
“Meetcha,” he said. “I’m Bobby Andes. I look into things.”
“You found my car?”
“They found it,” Andes said.
“In the river?”
“Listen Tony, do you think you can retrace your steps, where you went last night?”
“I got pretty mixed up. I could try.”
“Let me be sure I understand,” Bobby Andes said. He was a fat man short in the front seat, but his hat was big and so was his head, and his round cheeks were shaded with the coarse pepper dots of his clean shaven beard. Referred to as Lieutenant Andes on the phone. “Two of these guys went off in your car with your wife and daughter. And you were supposed to meet in the police station at this place called Bailey, which don’t exist.”
“That’s right.”
“And they called each other Ray and Turk?”
“Yes.”
“And you went with the other man in their car—the one they called Lou.”
“Yes.”
“How did you happen to split up like that?”
“I’ve been trying to figure that out ever since.”
“Did they force their way into your car?”
“In effect, yes.”
“In effect?”
“Well yes, they did. I’d say they forced their way in.”
“Your wife and daughter tried to stop them?”
“I’d say yes, they tried to stop them.”
“And you tried to stop them?”
“There wasn’t much I could do.”
“They had weapons?”
“They had something, I don’t know what it was.”
“You saw it?”
“I felt it.”
“Okay,” Bobby Andes said. “Tell you what. If we took you back to Jack Combs’s house, could you backtrack from there?”
“As I said, I could try.”
“Okay then, you try. Let’s go.”
The man in uniform drove pretty fast, and Tony Hastings could not follow the route. No one spoke. They went through the back section of Grant Center, past gas stations and a used car lot with tanks of bottled gas, and a street of stately white houses and arched shade trees. Out onto an open road, straight in a valley of flat fields, rich shades of green, the sun high now and a pair of house roofs on the hill across the valley reflecting it like mirrors. The loudspeaker chattered with radio police voices, and Tony had no idea where he was.
Bobby Andes turned the sound down. He said, “Let’s get some other things straight. You say this guy named Lou, he drove you into the woods and left you there?”
“He made me drive.”
“But he made you go there and then left you?”
“Yes.”
“And when you walked out, you saw them coming in again?”
“Yes.”
“You sure it was them?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Which car was it?”
“I think it was my car.”
“With Ray and Turk?”
“I think so.”
“How do you know?”
“The look of it, the sound of it. I don’t know.”
“Could you see them in the dark?”
“Not very well. They turned off the lights and stopped and called me.”
“What did they say?”
“They said, Mister, your wife wants you.”
“Why didn’t you go to them?”
Though Tony was glad for the effort of explaining things, he didn’t like how the lieutenant’s questions forced him to cram it all into conventional tracks. He tried to think how to say why he hadn’t gone to them.