The Edge of Sleep

Chapter 7

As soon as Becker pulled off the Merritt Parkway and onto the road network leading into his home town of Clamden, he was aware of the police car behind him. Driving up the long, steep hill that led into the Clamden city limits, Becker accelerated slowly but steadily to see if the cruiser would keep pace. Convinced that he was being followed, Becker turned left at the crest of the mile-long hill, picking up speed as he crossed the intersection. Just before his view of the police car was blocked by the intervening buildings, Becker saw the flashing lights come on atop the cruiser.

Becker turned right at the first intersection, then left at the next. The police car loomed ever larger in his rearview mirror, closing the gap between them. The lights continued to flash, but there was as yet no siren. Becker turned right and then immediately into a driveway. When the police car raced past, Becker pulled out of the driveway and went back the way he had come, turning the corner and just glimpsing the taillights of the cruiser come on as the driver slammed on his brakes.

Around the corner and temporarily out of sight of the police car, Becker parked and got out. He was leaning on the hood of his car as the cruiser came rapidly around the corner and sped past him. Forty yards away the police car came to a stop and began to back up, very slowly, toward Becker.

When the police car came abreast of Becker, the cop leaned out his window.

“Cute,” he said.

“Thank you,” said Becker.

“Make me run back and forth, spinning my wheels like something in a cartoon. I’m a role model, you know.”

“I hadn’t heard,” said Becker.

“Lots of kids look up to me for clues on how to live their lives.”

“I wasn’t aware.”

“It doesn’t do for them to see me looking like a jerk. I’m the Chief of Police.”

The policeman got out of the car. He was a large man, tall and strongly built, but with muscles now sagging and fat beginning to fill out his face and abdomen.

“How many kids look to you as a role model?” Becker asked. “Just offhand. If you know.”

“Hundreds, maybe dozens. How about you?”

The policeman shifted his gun belt in a movement with which Becker was long familiar. The chief rode in the car with his bolstered automatic nestled between his legs for comfort. Once standing, he twitched it into place again, a motion that looked at times as if he were preparing for a fast draw.

“Kids run screaming when they see me,” said Becker.

“Funny reaction,” said the policeman. “Personally, I find you rather attractive.”

“I’ll try to work on that,” said Becker. “Nice driving, by the way.”

“I took a course in that,” the policeman said. “Taught by some sissy yob in the FBI.” He leaned against the hood next to Becker. “I can go around a corner on two wheels and do a three-sixty just like the guys in the movies. I have all the skills.”

“Which is why they made you chief, I imagine.”

“That and my detective talents.”

“Is that right? Good at sleuthing, too, are you?”

“Fucking A.” The cop placed his hand on the center of Becker’s hood. “This car has been driven recently, just for instance.”

“How can you tell?”

“He’s still sweating. I know something else.”

“Tell me everything you know. Tee. I’ve got five minutes.”

Thomas Terence Terhune, known to everyone as Tee, hitched at his belt again, pulling it up so that it fit tightly across his stomach. It would stay there until he inhaled again and then slip down to accommodate his paunch once more.

“I know that a young woman was in town looking for you a couple days ago. She was a seriously good-looking woman. Had a whole lot of body stuffed under her clothes.”

“Probably trying to hide it from your eagle eye.”

“She forgot my powers of detection. She had breasts and hips and other stuff.”

“Face?”

“Also a face, yes. What a softer guy would call a lovely face. But she was trying real hard not to let on that she was such a looker. Flashed a very heavy badge at me. But I wasn’t fooled.”

“Because you have a badge of your own.”

“I have a badge and a gun. I’ve got a car with lights on the roof. I have a radio on my belt.”

“You are the chief, after all.”

“Fucking A. So I wasn’t fooled by this girl’s badge. I still knew she was a very seriously attractive woman. Now why in hell would a good-looking woman be asking about the whereabouts of a guy like you? I wondered. Especially when she was looking square in the face of a guy like me.”

“Bad eyesight?”

“Or too good. I think she spotted the wedding ring right away.”

“You ought to remove it from your nose at times like that.”

“I’ll tell my wife you said that. Does Cindi know about this handsome babe who’s asking about you?”

“Cindi and I are divorced,” said Becker. “Just to remind you. You were my best man at the ceremony.”

Tee shrugged. “Nothing unusual there. I’m the best man wherever I go.”

“Because you’re the chief.”

“Fucking A… She still asks about you,” Tee said, his tone now more serious.

“Who?”

“Cindi. She asks how you’re doing, like that.”

“You see her?”

“In the course of my appointed rounds… She still cares about you, John.”

“I still care about her… Is she-uh-okay?”

“No, she’s not seeing anybody,” Tee said. “Although I can’t imagine why. I don’t know if you ever noticed it during your marriage, John, but Cindi is one very fine female.”

“I was aware… I was lucky to be with her. I didn’t deserve her.”

“This is true.”

“Unfortunately she finally realized it.”

“That’s not quite the way she tells it.”

“Even eyewitness accounts vary,” Becker said.

“You know why no one’s asking her out, don’t you?”

“They’ve all turned fashionably gay?”,

“I’m serious, John.”

“Why?”

“They don’t ask her out because they’re afraid of you.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s true.”

“Nobody in Clamden has any reason to be afraid of me. I’ve never hurt a soul here.”

“They hear the stories.”

“How do they hear the stories? I don’t tell them. Cindi doesn’t tell them.”

Tee held up his hands in innocence.

“Don’t look at me. Your past is private history as far as I’m concerned.”

“So how do they hear ‘the stories’?”

“I don’t know. Word gets around. Rumors are hard to stop.”

“Does Cindi think I’m trying to scare people off?”

Tee shrugged. “Not intentionally.”

Becker studied his feet. “Jesus Christ, Tee, are people really scared of me?”

“Not those who know you, John.”

“But others. Those who just hear about me? They think I’m-what-dangerous enough? Demented enough? Bloodthirsty enough to hurt them for trying to date my ex-wife? I’ve never hurt a soul except as part of my job.”

“I know that, John. Most people know that.”

“I live here, god damn it! I can’t have people being afraid of me!”

“I’m probably exaggerating it. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“Start another rumor…”

“I didn’t start this one.”

“Tell them I’m harmless. Tell them I’m a pussycat. Tell them I quit the FBI because I was afraid of the work… That’s the truth, anyway.”

“You weren’t afraid of the work in the sense of being afraid of it, John. Give people a little credit; they’re not going to believe that.”

“I don’t want to be a monster in my own home town. Tee. Jesus.”

They were quiet for a moment, both men studying a teenaged boy who was mowing a lawn as if he held real interest for them. The boy glanced at them curiously.

“Do you suppose that youth with the mower is viewing me right this minute as a model and guide to his future?” Tee asked after a time.

“I don’t want anybody to be afraid of me, Tee. Honest to God, that’s terrible.”

“I’ll do what I can, all right?… It’ll pass.”

Becker shook his head sadly. It always surprised Tee that his friend, whose career was a thing of courageous awe to every law enforcement officer who knew about it, was so vulnerable to the opinions of others. Particularly the opinions of people he did not know. The man would flail through a case, stepping on the toes of everyone who got in his way in the pursuit of his prey, but in civilian life he would worry about offending the sensibilities of the local grocer. Tee didn’t pretend to understand him-he just liked him.

“I told the FBI woman you were proving your virility by jerking off on the side of a mountain,” Tee said finally. “Did I do right?”

“You are a police officer, sworn to tell the truth.”

“You didn’t tell me not to tell anyone. You just said you wanted to be alone to jerk off for a while.”

“It’s okay, Tee.”

“I noticed in the course of my sleuthing that this FBI woman did not wear a wedding ring, by the way. Unlike myself. But very much like your good self.”

“A second ago you were pushing Cindi on me. Now you want me to mate with an agent?”

“Somebody ought to. And masturbation is an ugly thing to see in a man your age.”

“You might stop watching.”

“Hey, I’m the chief.”

“And rank has its privileges,” Becker said.

“I know something else you don’t know,” Tee offered. “I suspect I’m about to. What?”

“The same lady is at your house now, waiting for you.”

“You just happened to notice her?”

“In the pursuance of my duties I did notice a car in your driveway and, knowing that you were hanging by a thong around your dong from Mt. Kilimanjaro, I stopped to investigate further.”

“Ever vigilant.”

“She might have been a burglar come to heist your valuables.”

“I have no valuables worth heisting.”

“This I know, but a burglar might not, burglars being what they are. She was sitting on your porch, waiting, pretty as a… as a… what? What’s particularly pretty?”

“A pretty woman?”

“There you go! She was sitting there, pretty as a pretty woman. Clever devil, you are, not having a car phone so she could reach you

… Do you often have gorgeous women paying you house calls?”

“We have a little business together. Just business. She wants to pick my brain.”

“Have her do it through your pecker.”

Becker returned to his car, shaking his head in mock disgust. Tee closed the door and leaned against it.

“You’re a great role model, but one hell of a bad influence.”

“I thought you were out of the business,” Tee said.

“I am. This is special.”

“Because of her? Because of the babe waiting on your porch?”

Becker studied Tee for a moment as if seeking the answer in his friend’s face.

“You know. Tee, you’ve got all the natural instincts of a busybody and a matchmaker. You may have missed your calling.”

“Salaries for busybodies are so low, though. And besides, think what law enforcement would be missing without me.”

“A chief?”

“Fucking A. So, is it because of her? And if not, why not?”

Becker started the engine, then paused.

“I wish it were that simple,” he said.

“Yeah, it’s complicated, sure, that’s how you like to make things. I respect that. But you’re really doing it for her, right?”

Becker sighed. “Right, Tee. Right.”

He pulled away slowly because the big policeman was still holding on to the door.

“You dog,” Tee said in gleeful approval. “Happy hunting.” Tee slapped the side of the car as if it were a horse.

Becker drove away, still shaking his head in amused disdain at his friend’s simpleminded analysis. But when he pulled into his driveway and saw Karen standing on the porch, balancing herself in that distinctive way she had, one foot behind the other like a dancer, he wondered how big a part of it was exactly what Tee suggested. He could not look at her without feeling a stirring of something that had nothing to do with official Bureau business.

Karen Crist stood when she saw Becker’s car approaching. For a quick moment she longed to check her appearance in a mirror, but she repressed the urge. In the first place, her appearance was irrelevant, she told herself. She was second in command of Kidnapping, she had hundreds of men under her command. Becker was a consultant, nothing more. And in the second place, she had been compulsively looking at her image in the porch windowpane ever since she arrived. She looked as good as she was going to on this day… although she wished her jawline were a little firmer. She always put it on in the face first, which was damned unfair. It didn’t allow her the few extra pounds of leeway most women could add to the thighs and ass. Whatever she ate too much of showed up immediately and then went below her waist. And she had been eating too much lately, she knew it. The stress of work and raising a child as a single parent and…

Becker was out of the car. Karen stood by the porch railing, unconsciously arranging her legs in line with each other, which thrust her pelvis forward and straightened her back. It was the pose she had adopted in grammar school and incorporated so completely into her habits that she was unaware of both the unnaturalness of it and its effect on others. To men, she looked like a ship’s figurehead, bracing into the wind, bold and inviting. Neither the sobriety of her expression nor the propriety of her demeanor-nor even the loftiness of her official position or the seriousness of her career field-could ever completely overcome the impression of her body language. However much men might be impressed or even intimidated by her in other ways, they still reacted to Karen Crist as a woman. It was a situation she was aware of, and she used it when she needed to.

Becker was out of sight beyond the angle of the garage for a moment, and when he came into view again he was smiling. Karen loved his smile. He was normally of sober mien so that when he smiled it offered such a happy contrast. If he had been a man who practiced charm, it would be a formidable weapon, Karen thought, for it made him look boyishly winning, shedding years and revealing a sweet and mischievous side to him.

“A pleasant surprise,” Becker said.

Karen resisted her own impulse to smile.

“I couldn’t raise you on your phone,” she said. “I was passing here, so I thought I’d try my luck in getting you at home… And I got lucky.”

“if you consider me good fortune.”

“Your local Chief of Police apparently does. We had a little chat.”

“Tee likes to chat.”

“I noticed. He seems to think rather highly of you.”

“We’ve been friends since high school.”

“I got the impression he was trying to fix us up.”

“Did you tell him we’d already been fixed up?”

“I didn’t think that was for me to say,” Karen said. “He’s your friend; I don’t know how much you want him to know.”

“With Tee, it’s probably better for him to know than to let his imagination go to work. I’m surprised he didn’t try to pick you up himself.”

“He does that, does he? He’s a married man.”

“It’s not that he does it. He just can’t seem to stop thinking about it.”

“Men,” she said.

“You’re right. I can’t argue.”

“No wonder women are losing patience.”

“I don’t know why you’ve put up with us this long.”

“It’s a tribute to our good nature.” Karen tilted her head slightly, hoping to firm her jawline. “But enough is enough.” Becker sat on the railing and grinned at her. The directness of his attention summoned her back to the business that had brought her here.

“Another boy is missing.” she said.

“A snatch?”

“We don’t know yet, it’s too early. We have the state and local police in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts reporting any disappearances that fit our profile immediately. It’s a nine-year-old boy. Physically he matches the others; he was last seen at a mall…” Karen shrugged. “Maybe he’ll show up by the time we get there. Maybe he fell asleep in the movies…”

“Maybe. Where was it?”

“Bickford.”

“That’s about an hour from here.”

“If we go in my car, we’ll be able to talk. But I’ll have to leave no later than five-thirty, so if you think you’ll want to stay longer, maybe we’d better take both cars.”

“Why do you have to go?” he asked.

“I have to be home by seven. That’s when the babysitter leaves.”

Becker blinked.

“I have a child, remember?”

“You do this every day?”

“Do what? Go home? Take care of my son? Act like a parent? Yes, I do it every day. That is what mothers do, isn’t it? Or did I get that part wrong?”

“Sounding a little defensive there, Karen.”

“Why do you people always act surprised when you hear that I’m a mother? I do mother things. I love my son. I make myself available for him.”

“ ‘You people’?”

“I’m acting like a mother. If we could get more men to act like fathers, the world wouldn’t be in the mess it’s in.”

“Why do I feel I have to justify myself?” Becker asked. “I don’t have any children.”

“Then I can’t expect you to understand,” she said. Karen was furious with herself. She had vowed to keep the meeting professional.

“Understand what?”

Karen started abruptly for her car.

“Your car or mine,” she said. “Suit yourself.”

“Are you so sure I’m coming at all?” Becker asked, staying on the porch.

She turned to him angrily.

“I don’t have time for you to be coy,” she said. “Of course you’re coming.”

Becker hesitated.

“Oh, Christ, don’t make me woo you,” she said. “We’ve already done that number. Let’s get on with business.”

She got into her car and buckled up, not looking at him anymore.

Becker thought about telling her to go stuff herself. He thought about it all the way to the car.

They were already on the Merritt Parkway and heading east before he asked, “What made you so sure I was coming?”

“Because the trail is still warm and you know you have a better chance of people remembering something now than you will a day from now. You’re smart enough to know that.”

He looked at her curiously. She was concentrating on her driving, pushing the car to eighty miles per hour, flashing her headlights in annoyance at anyone who slowed her down. Presumably she was saving her siren until she hit ninety. Her jaw was clenched and thrust forward defiantly. Becker realized she was angry as hell about something and he just happened to be available.

It wasn’t until they swept north on Route 8 that she seemed to relax. Traffic had cleared and she sped along in the left lane basically without interference.

“What made you so sure of me?” Becker asked again.

This time she turned from the road long enough to glance at him. The tension eased from her face and was replaced by sympathy.

“I knew you’d have to study the photographs.” she said. Her eyes went back to the highway. “You told me something about your childhood once. John. Do you remember?”

“No.”

She sniffed. “Men don’t. They never remember anything.”

“Women do,” he added.

“Yes, we do. We labor under the delusion that the things you tell us are true.”

“I never lied to you,” he said.

“No.”

After a pause he added, “And I do remember,” although he was not certain that he did.

He briefed her on what he had learned-and not learned-during his visit to the Stamford mall. She spoke into her tape recorder as she drove, taking notes on what he said. When he was finished she telephoned her office in New York and gave orders in a crisp, clipped tone.

“Fax me the results to…” She turned to Becker. “What’s your fax number?”

“I don’t have a fax,” he said.

Karen sighed. “I’ll have the Bureau get you one. It’s time to enter the decade, John.” Into the phone she said, “Malva, fax the results to my house. I want it waiting for me by the time I get home

… Yes, seven o’clock, of course.” She hung up and eased into the right lane as she saw the exit for Bickford approaching.

She was aware that Becker was studying her openly. “What?”

“I’m remembering you ten years ago when you were still in Fingerprinting and looking desperately for a way to get out of there. Now you’re in charge of how many people?”

“And I was nicer then, right? Sweeter, softer, more feminine? Something like that?”

“Younger.”

“Oh, you smooth-talking son of a bitch. How did you know that was exactly what I wanted to hear?”

“I didn’t mean you looked old,” Becker said defensively. “I meant you seem very much in control.”

“Do you ever say anything tactful to anyone?”

“Not if I’m interested in them.”

Karen had started to say something, but stopped abruptly. She glanced at him, trying to read his meaning in his face, but he seemed to be studying the traffic with great curiosity.

“I didn’t mean to be so short with you,” she said. It was not what she wanted to say, but it seemed safer. She knew him well enough to know that she should never ask Becker a question unless she was prepared to deal with the truth.

“I am a bit defensive about some things,” she continued. “You have no idea how hard it is, being a mother as well as an agent.”

“They’re a pretty chauvinist bunch,” Becker said. “I imagine they give you a lot of grief. At least behind your back.”

“Having a woman tell them what to do shrivels their gonads right up,” she said.

“It’s not the gonads that shrivel, but I take your point,” he said.

“I thought they did something like that.”

“They sort of recede into the body cavity,” Becker said. “If it’s cold-or dangerous. It’s the penis that shrivels.”

“That I know about,” she said, trying to keep the ridicule from her voice. It amazed her that her contempt for men had seemed to increase in direct proportion to the amount of time she had lived without one. She had expected it to work the other way around, absence making the heart grow fonder and so forth. Maybe her fellow agents were right in their muttered assessment of her, she thought. Maybe she really did need a good fuck.

“They call me dragon lady. I know that,” she said.

Becker dismissed it. “They call any woman in authority dragon lady. Don’t take it personally. Just think of all the things they call Hatcher.”

“They mean those things personally,” she pointed out.

“Only because Hatcher deserves them. You don’t.”

“You don’t know that. Maybe I do deserve them. Maybe I am a stony bitch. You wouldn’t know. You don’t know me at all anymore.”

“I’m starting to.”

“You’ve got no idea how hard it is. None of you men know. Just try it one time, just try being a hard-assed executive-but not too hard, don’t want to threaten anyone’s masculinity-and then turn into a loving mother every night at seven until you get him off to school the next morning. All those articles about single parents? They’re not kidding; it’s a bitch. Just try it for a month or two and see how sweet you are.”

“You seem to be managing awfully well,” he said dryly.

She laughed. “Yeah. I’m a whiz. I’m acting, acting all the time. I feel like the world’s biggest hypocrite.”

“Which role is the hardest to sustain?” Becker asked. “The hard-assed exec or the loving mother?”

Karen did not answer immediately. She maneuvered the car onto the exit ramp and stopped at the traffic light. When she spoke her voice was deliberately contained. “I am a loving mother.” she said.

Becker nodded.

“I am.”

“Okay,” he said. He held her eyes for a moment, watching her jaw tighten again. A horn honked behind them as the light changed to green.

“You don’t know anything about it at all,” she said. Her eyes glared angrily.

“About what?”

“About parents and children, what that’s all about.”

The car behind them honked again. Karen turned and very slowly lifted her middle finger at the driver.

“I know half of it,” Becker said.

Karen gunned her car through the intersection and followed the sign toward the mall. The driver behind her blared his horn in frustration.

“No you don’t,” Karen said. “You don’t know any of it! Your childhood was not normal. You can’t judge normal people by your experience. You have no frame of reference for me and my son, none. None!”

“Okay!” Becker said softly.

Karen could hear the pain in his voice. It only made her angrier. “Could we just dispense with the personal stuff? I won’t dig into your life if you leave mine alone, all right?”

“All right.”

She glanced at him. He looked so wounded. She wanted to comfort him but did not dare.

She said, “Let’s just do the fucking work, John, okay?”

This time he didn’t answer at all. Karen had not merely read his file, she had studied it. She knew in detail what he had done to other men, and how. How could he be so sensitive and still survive? she wondered. And if she found the combination of strength and vulnerability so dangerously attractive, why weren’t women chasing this man down the street, clutching at his clothes? His ex-wife must have been a moron to let him go, she thought. And then she remembered that she, too, had let him get away once. She had thought at the time that it was for her own good. It seemed instead that very little good had happened to her since, at least when it came to men.

She pulled into the vast parking lot and stopped the car next to a police car, slipping the FBI identification card under the windshield before the nearest cop could tell her to drive on. Flashing her badge, she led Becker past another huddle of cops and into the mall.

Just before they stepped into the elevator that would take them to the security office, Karen touched Becker’s arm lightly.

“John, I’m an asshole,” she said softly.

“I know,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“But you’re probably right about me,” he added.

They rode the elevator in silence.

When they reached the top she said. “Nobody taught me how to be a mother. My mother didn’t know.”

“I know,” he said. “You told me once.”

“And you remembered?”

He grinned at her with the kind of smile that could break hearts. “You told me a lot, one way or the other.”

“It was a very busy few days,” she said.

“Six,” he said. “Six days. And I remember every minute of every one of them.”

Karen found that she had to control her breathing on the short walk to the security office.