Dismember

SIX

“First thing is I need you to relax, okay?” The guard uncrossed his arms, and one hand dangled by his utility belt as if preparing for a quick draw, though the item positioned where a normal policeman carried a holstered gun was, in this man’s case, only a two-way radio. He reached his other hand out to Libby’s shoulder in a comforting gesture but made no actual contact. “Now tell me again. Slowly.”

Libby sighed and rolled her eyes so drastically that her head rolled a little bit with them. This was ridiculous. By now Trevor could be gagged and duct-taped into the trunk of some pervert’s car, the two of them already headed for Wyoming while she stood here flapping and re-flapping her gums.

“His name is Trevor. Pullman. I gave him five dollars to ride the carousel,” she said. “He didn’t want me to wait with him. I stayed at the table.” Short, quick sentences. Just the facts, ma’am. “I got up to refill my soda. I turned around, and he was missing.”

“Uh huh,” the guy (S. Tucker according to his name tag) said, sounding less like a law enforcer than an urging psychiatrist. “And then?” He was massive. Maybe he sprinkled steroids on his breakfast cereal instead of sugar or took a raw egg break while his fellow guards sipped their coffees. If his face hadn’t been so meticulously razored, she’d have sworn she was standing here talking to a grizzly bear.

“I’d seen him talking to a group of girls,” she said, trying to stand still but not able to keep herself from fidgeting. “I asked if they saw where he went.” She shifted her weight from her left foot to her right. “They said no.” She crossed one hand over her abdomen just beneath her breasts and scratched at the elbow of her other arm.

Tucker, who’d been leaning forward a little, returned to his normal standing height, which seemed to Libby no more than a few inches shy of ten feet, and retracted his beefy arm. He stuck his thumbs under his belt and rocked once, almost imperceptibly, from heel to toe. “Well, I’ll tell you what,” he said. His voice was as pumped up as the rest of him, deep but smooth, a little like James Earl Jones’s. “In my experience, nine times out of ten, a parent loses her child and he turns up in the toy store checking out the action figures or the Lego sets. You say you gave him five dollars?”

“Yes, but—”

“And I think that carousel ride is about a buck and a half, am I right?”

Libby shrugged. She had no idea how much the mall charged, which was why she’d given Trevor the five in the first place. “I guess you’d know better than me. But who cares how much the ride costs, I—”

“Hold on, now. If you were…how old did you say your boy is? Six?”

Libby nodded.

“If you were a six-year-old boy with all that cash burning a hole in your pocket and in a place where there was nothing to do but spend it, how long would you wait in line?”

“He never put it in his pocket,” was all she could think to say, though she knew how idiotic it must sound. “Anyway, Trevor wouldn’t do that. Not after he promised to stay where I could see him. He’s…he’s just not like that. He’s a good boy.” Libby wanted to grab hold of the guard by his belt and drag him with her down the hallway. With his Mufasa’s voice, he could have drawn Trevor’s attention from halfway across the complex.

“Oh,” Tucker said, grinning now. “I’m sure he’s as good as any of the rest of them. But, fact is, little boys are ornery. They wander where their noses lead them. Like untrained puppies.”

Libby wasn’t sure she cared much for that particular metaphor. If Trevor was the untrained puppy, that made her the inept master, and she’d be damned if she would stand here and let some khaki-clad mountain criticize her parenting skills.

“Listen,” she said, pointing a finger that was a jointed twig compared to his enormous logs. “If there’s something you can do, do it. Please. After that, if you want to stand here talking to yourself for the rest of the night, that’s fine by me. But I’m going to look for my son now, while there’s still a chance of finding him.”

She spun around and stormed away from the kiosk without waiting for a response. As she moved, arcing around a distracted-looking man pushing a twin stroller with a full load of two wiggling boys, she heard the guard activate his radio and mumble something between bursts of static. Maybe he was calling for help; maybe he was just sharing a laugh with one of his buddies. Who knew? She wanted to believe the former, didn’t want to succumb to cynicism, but she also knew she couldn’t let herself count on any forthcoming help. Not for sure. For now, she could rely only on herself.

She prowled the passageway, two simultaneous thoughts driving her: I will find him and I am not a bad mother. Part of her wondered if she really might catch him in the toy store or the arcade or standing at a shop window drooling over some comic book superhero the way he’d drooled over that box of cereal at the supermarket, but another nightmarish part of her expected to encounter some gangly fiend instead, with a trussed-up Trevor under his arm and a maniacal cackle bubbling out from between his lips.

She found nothing in the candy emporium, nothing in the bookshop or the sports center, where she knew he sometimes liked to look at trading cards. She had nearly made it back to the food court, head over her shoulder, looking at a boy who almost could have been Trevor if his hair had been a shade lighter and his ears about three sizes smaller, when she ran over the stranger and bounced back with a grunt.

“Hey,” the guy said, moving toward her. For a second, she thought about ignoring him, pushing past without saying a word and continuing her search, but then she got a look at his face and stopped. The man was no stranger, and she didn’t think she’d ever been so glad to see him.

“What’s going on?” Mike asked her, frowning. “Where’s Trevor?”