by David Wiltse
“Can’t get it out of your mind, right?”
“Right, I’m afraid.”
“Don’t apologize. We’re all obsessive/compulsive or we wouldn’t be with the Bureau. What about it?”
“What have you turned up on the search for a nurse’s uniform?”
“Well,” Hemmings said, and Becker could detect in the single word the enthusiasm rising. A technician happy to complain about his problems. “I’m working only with a map and the yellow pages, you know. I started with the Amell Wicker case because I figured since the Reynolds snatch is only three weeks old, any uniform might not even have come to the attention of the cleaners as unclaimed yet. The Wicker case is two years old. They would have noticed an unclaimed uniform by now if they are ever going to. So I started there and I’m working my way forward in time. I began with a ten-mile radius around the point of seizure, which was the Upper Saddle River mall, and called every cleaner listed in the yellow pages in the towns within that circle. That’s a little better than 314 square miles, you understand. A lot of cleaners. When that didn’t produce anything, I increased the radius to twenty miles and started over. I don’t know how quick your math is, Becker, but that increases the area to cover by another 942 square miles. You go to a thirty-mile radius and that’s another 1,884 square miles and so forth out to the fifty-mile radius we figure is the maximum. That’s a lot of phone calls.”
“Good thing you got a WATS line,” Becker said. Then, in response to the silence, he added. “Must be a bitch.” Hemmings was not noted for his sense of humor.
“It’s time-consuming, what with one thing and another.”
“Have you turned up anything yet?”
“One unclaimed uniform at a Royal Cleaners in Ramsey belonging to one Mrs. Howard Elston, R.N. Unfortunately, Mrs. Elston died three weeks before the Wicker snatch, so I don’t think she’s the one we’re after.”
“Are you still at it?”
“I haven’t been told to stop.” Hemmings said. “Yet.”
“You know, it might be instructive to check the local hospitals and doctors’ offices to see if any nurse turned up missing all of a sudden.”
The phone was silent again. Becker thought at first that he had proposed a job of work huge enough to daunt even Hemmings.
“I think not,” Hemmings said at last.
“Too much?”
“Wrong direction,” Hemmings said. “I believe you are backing the wrong horse.”
“Why?”
“I take it you haven’t heard?”
“Hairy, I’m off the case. I haven’t heard anything. What is it?”
“They found the Reynolds boy.”
“Shit! God damn it!.. Where?”
“Off Route 84 in Connecticut between Bickford and Sandy Hook.”
“Same m.o.?”
“No autopsy yet, they just found him this morning, but I gather it’s the same. Beatings, trash bag, naked, so forth. But with a difference this time.”
“What?”
“A print.”
Becker caught his breath. “You said he was naked.”
“Indeed. But there was a half dollar in the bag this time. It had a hole in it, somebody was apparently wearing it as a medal. And on the half dollar, so I am told, were a thumbprint and an index finger as clean and neat as you could ask for.”
“Not the boy’s, tell me it’s not the boy’s prints.”
“I will do that. It is not the boy’s.”
“Have they traced it yet?”
“Oh, indeed. It popped up as fast as you please. There’s an outstanding warrant on the man in Pennsylvania.”
“Who is it?”
Hemmings paused.
“Don’t tell me if you don’t feel comfortable doing so,” Becker said. “Don’t jeopardize your job.”
“You’re on medical extension,” Hemmings said. “That’s right.”
“But still in the Bureau.”
“Don’t tell me if you’re afraid to.”
“Be good enough not to use reverse psychology on me, Becker. I may be in research, but I’m not a cretin.”
“Sorry, Hairy. But don’t make me beg, for Christ’s sake.”
“His name is Taylor Ashford, Jr. The warrant is for unlawful flight from the Pennsylvania State Correctional Facility, where he was undergoing psychiatric treatment.”
“A mental case.”
“I think you could say that.”
“What was he in for?”
“Apart from being crazy?”
“That’s not a crime in itself. Do you know what he was in for?”
“You can’t help yourself, can you, Becker? You know I pride myself on knowing things, so now you’re challenging me to prove it.”
“I asked you outright first.”
“So you did. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity of murdering his father, his mother, and his two siblings and was committed to an indefinite term in the bug house.”
It was Becker’s turn to be silent.
“So you see, it’s likely that I’ll be taken off the uniform chase as soon as Deputy Assistant Director Crist has the time to remember me at all.”
Chapter 20
Jack was already all the way down the hill and standing in line for the mess hall when he remembered he had promised to give the girl from the Algonquin cabin his copy of Old Yeller. He left the queue for dinner and started back up toward his cabin, running at first until he hit the steeper grade, then settling into a fast walk. Dinner was one of his favorite times at camp. The counselors told stories and sang songs and put on skits and there was a feeling of camaraderie all around, even when the counselors urged them to shout out the superiority of their own cabin over all the others. Jack didn’t want to miss any of it, but he had promised he would let the girl from the Algonquin cabin borrow his copy of the book. He wasn’t sure why he felt so obliged to fulfill his promise to a girl, except that she had said she would really like to read it. It seemed an easy enough way to make her happy-except for the climb up the hill.
The path was wide enough for a truck to get up and down with the food supplies, but somehow when Jack walked it alone it seemed to narrow into nothing more than a rutted slice through the woods. When his whole cabin teemed down it together in the morning it was like a boulevard, pulsing with people and sounding with shouts and laughter. At those times he didn’t feel any more in the woods than he would on a playground with too many trees. Traversing the path alone, however, made Jack aware of the primitive nature of the surrounding forest. There probably weren’t any dangerous wild animals lurking among the trees: they had been told that often enough. There probably weren’t bad men with axes and knives, either. One of the counselors had assured them that bad men were restricted to the big cities and would be totally out of their element in the forest. Jack believed all of this because he had it directly from authority, and yet-there had been plenty of bad men in Sherwood Forest, just for an example. And madmen who lived in the woods and preyed on children, not witches exactly, but… Jack was vague on the details, but his sense of anxiety was real enough. And there were all those ghost stories the older kids liked to tell at night. But here he was, making his way to the cabin alone and the pride he felt in his courage more than outweighed his fears.
The nurse stepped in front of him as he reached the lop of the hill. She appeared so suddenly that Jack wasn’t sure where she had come from unless she had been standing behind a tree. He did not remember having seen a nurse in a uniform at the camp before. Her’starched white dress and stockings and gleaming shoes seemed an intrusion into the rustic world of the camp.
“Your mother has been in an accident. I’ll take you to her,” the nurse said sternly. She turned immediately and walked toward the parking lot, which was just visible past Jack’s cabin.
Jack hesitated. He thought he knew the nurse, felt he had seen her somewhere before, but he didn’t know where. He looked around for a counselor to ask guidance. Was he allowed to leave the c
amp? Where was his mother? How hurt was she? It must be very serious for a nurse to come for him.
The nurse was well in front of him, walking quickly as if in a hurry. She turned once, looked at him, her face grim. It must be very, very serious.
“Come along now,” she said sharply before turning once more on her heel and striding determinedly toward the parking lot.
Jack looked once more for someone to tell where he was going, but there was no one so he hurried after the nurse. She walked as if she was going to leave without him if he fell behind, as if there was no time whatsoever to lose. She did not look back at him again.
At first Dee didn’t know if Tommy was following her or not, but she could not allow herself to worry about it. If they came, they came, and if not then she could always try again another time. Sometimes they wouldn’t follow because they didn’t understand, but she could not risk stopping to explain. She would usually sweep past the tail end of a group, brushing them at a tangent, already on her path out of the mall and into the safety of the car. If she knocked her boy away from the group with her message and into the gravity of her own orbit, then she succeeded, but if she did not, she did not loiter to be noticed. She did not argue or discuss with them, and she did not stay close to them. Let them follow her. She would not walk with them, she would not hold their hands. She would not delay so they could seek advice or tell their teachers or siblings or guardians. They would come because they responded to crisis and command-or they would not. Often enough, they did. Because they were the right age to understand the summons of authority, because they were the right age to dare to trust their own judgment in following her without further approval, because they were the right age to love their mothers enough to be foolish for them. But most of all. Dee was convinced, they came because she wanted them. Because she needed them. Because, after all, they really belonged to her and in their hearts they knew it. They longed to be with her as she longed to be with them. If they followed, then they were meant for each other. By the time she reached the parking lot. Dee knew that Jack was meant for her, too. She opened the back door of the car for him, still without looking back, and slid herself behind the wheel. There was no one else in the parking lot. No one else in sight anywhere. She could hear singing rising up from farther down the mountain.
The engine was started before Jack reached the car. When Dee heard the back door slam shut, she set the car in motion. In her rearview mirror she saw the blanket rise suddenly and then descend, like the wing of a giant bird.
Becker was washing his solitary dinner dish when the phone rang. He had fried a chicken sausage and given some thought to adding a green pepper to the skillet and making a sauce. The plan had been to create a sausage and pepper submarine sandwich of the type he could buy at a pizza restaurant. In the end, however, it had seemed like entirely too much trouble to go to for only himself and he had ended up by eating the sausage by itself and calling it a meal. The dish wasn’t even dirty since he had nibbled at the sausage while holding it over the skillet, but he washed it reflexively anyway. The idea of returning it unused to the cabinet was too depressing.
“It’s Malva,” said the voice on the phone and for a moment Becker thought excitedly that Karen was calling him. “Karen’s son has disappeared.”
Becker was still waiting for her to say that Deputy Assistant Director Crist wished to speak to him and at first the words made no sense. “What?”
“Director Crist’s son has disappeared from camp,” she said.
“Jack?” he asked stupidly.
“They noticed his absence about two hours ago. So far they’re considering it just a local matter. They think he might have gotten lost in the woods.”
“The lake,” Becker said, voicing his first thought. He remembered Jack battling the water so bravely. So ineptly. “Well… He probably just wandered off.”
“Of course.”
“Children do that,” Malva said.
“That’s probably it,” Becker agreed, trying to convince himself. He thought of Jack, his fear of the dark, his ambivalence about adventure. Just wandered off? Into the woods? “I don’t know that much about kids,” he said.
“They do it all the time, I believe,” Malva said. Becker could not remember if Malva had children of her own. Jack, wandering off by himself, gone for two hours so far? He could not make the connection with the act and the boy he knew.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“On her way to the camp.”
“Did they think it was necessary for her to go to the camp?”
“I believe she thought it was necessary,” Malva said. “Of course. How can I help?”
“I think she needs somebody,” Malva said.
“The closest task forces are in Albany and Boston,” Becker said. “It would take at least a day…”
“I don’t mean help in finding him,” Malva interrupted. “I don’t know exactly what the status of your relationship is, but… I think she could use someone now.”
“I’m on my way right now,” he said. “And Malva-thank you.”
“She’s a very special lady,” Malva said.
“I know.”
“… But not always as brave as she pretends to be. She’s still a woman.”
“Malva,” Becker said, “none of us are as brave as we pretend to be.”
He reached Wasaknee after the search had been halted because of darkness. Karen was installed in the camp office where a cot had been placed in a corner to serve as her bed for the night. When Becker stepped into the room she was conferring with the camp administrator, a middle-aged man who looked mildly ridiculous in his ragged jean shorts and camp T-shirt, and two local policemen who looked like brothers although they wore different name tags, both of them rail thin with faces that seemed to come to a point. All four of them listened attentively to Karen, who was issuing orders. Becker noticed that she was wearing her FBI insignia on the outside of her jacket. He wondered at what point she had changed from worried mother to search coordinator. She glanced at Becker when he entered but did not miss a beat in her instructions. Her eyes showed no recognition of him; he was as routinely observed as if he were another counselor stepping in to listen.
The two cops checked him out more thoroughly, but they were clearly taking their lead from Karen now, and if his presence didn’t bother her, it didn’t bother them, either.
Speaking calmly but with authority, Karen laid out the morning’s search procedures for the three men. She explained the principles of grid exploration, defined the methods of communication, established the manners of coordination. The administrator nervously nodded agreement with every sentence she uttered and the cops appeared awed by the lovely young woman with the commanding presence and the impressive badge.
Becker had to admire the performance himself. To an uninformed observer there would be no indication that this detached executive was the mother of the missing boy. Except for the eyes, he thought. They looked as if they had sunk deep within her face, as if she had not slept for weeks. They were haggard eyes, and frantic, and revealed the price she was paying for her outward calm. Becker wanted to take her in his arms and kiss the eyes until he healed them, but instead he sat on the edge of one of the three desks in the office and watched.
She had a way of ending a meeting by simply changing her posture, signifying a dismissal by a move of her shoulders, the inclination of her head. The men filed out gratefully, the two cops again sliding their eyes over Becker as they left. In a community this small without a panoply of elected officials or a hierarchy more than one or two deep, Becker did not imagine that the police had to defer very often to anyone, but they left the office now like school children lucky to get away from the principal’s office with nothing more severe than a good talking to. Karen had a way of not only taking command of men, but an even rarer trait of making them like it. Becker wondered that she was so plagued by self-doubts about her abilities.
Alone with Becker, Karen remo
ved her suit jacket for the first time. He imagined her trekking through the woods that way, in a feminine twist on the popular stereotype of the FBI agent permanently encased in his suit and button-down collar. Of course she had come straight from the office, he realized, and had not had time to change clothes, but at the same time the straight skirt and dark blue jacket made it easier for her to command respect than would have jean shorts and a T-shirt.
Her blouse was blotched with dark stains under both arms and across her stomach where it tucked into the skirt. She had been sweating profusely, he saw, and keeping it to herself. It was a warm day, but not that hot. It was nervous sweat, and when she stood next to him he could smell it, the sour odor of anxiety. Perspiration caused by physical exertion never smelled if it was fresh, but no deodorant made could mask the scent of fear.
He tried to hold her in his arms. She didn’t resist, but she folded her arms in front of her so they rested on his chest, keeping her at a distance. Her body felt as tense as acutely twisted steel.
“I hope he’s got a broken leg,” she hissed. “I swear to God I do. I pray that he’s lying beside a rock with a broken leg.”
“No… shhh… ”
“Because if that isn’t it, if it isn’t just that he’s not able to get back to us…”
Becker tilted his chin so that her head fit more closely to him. He rubbed her back and continued to shush her.
“If he’s been snatched…” She stopped, too filled with emotion to speak.
“He hasn’t been snatched, he’s just lost.”
“How in hell did he get lost?”
“Kids do that,” Becker said unconvincingly. “They wander off sometimes.”
“Not Jack.” She shook her head violently. “Not my Jack. He’s too smart to do that. He’d blaze a trail, he’d take his bearings. He just wouldn’t do it in the first place; you know what he’s like. He wouldn’t do it.”
She was so tense her body was vibrating. Becker was surprised that she let him continue to hold her, but she did not pull away. She seemed to need his presence even if she wouldn’t give in to it. If it was all he could give her. Becker decided that that was enough.