The Edge of Sleep

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 camp? 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 removed 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.

“If he’s been snatched…”

Becker slid a hand to the back of her neck. The cords there felt as if they were about to snap from the strain of holding her head on her shoulders.

“Better the lake,” she said.

Becker rubbed her and murmured.

“I mean it. I prefer him drowning to being tortured by that fucking maniac.”

“There’s no reason to think that…”

“I feel it,” she said.

“Just because the case is on your mind…”

“I feel it. So do you, don’t you? Jack wouldn’t wander off, he wouldn’t go into the lake by himself. He’s too good a boy, too well behaved, too concerned about…” She pulled herself away from Becker and put her hands on his face. Her fingers felt icy cold and her eyes looked to Becker as if they were peering toward him from hell itself.

“Our people in Pennsylvania are trying to dig up a photograph, or at least a detailed physical description, of this guy Ashford so we’ll know what he looks like. When I find the fucking son of a bitch, Ashford or Lamont or whoever he is, I am going to kill him myself.”

“No…” Her fingers pressed into his cheeks, closing off whatever he would have said.

“Understand me, John. I am not discussing this; I am telling you. When we find him, I will kill him. I want you to just get out of the way and let me do it.”

“You can’t do that.”

“You do,” she spat.

Becker stepped back as if slapped across the face with the words. Karen was paying no attention to him, showed no sign that she had hurt him.

“Because he’s mine,” she said. “He’s mine.” Becker was not certain if she meant her son or Lamont.

Freed from Becker’s arms, she began to pace, speaking to herself in a tone too low and garbled for him to understand. Becker let her go, watched her spin around the office, as out of control as a child’s toy top running out of speed and wobbling, careening off of anything in its path. And I was just in her path. Becker thought.

Suddenly Karen stopped and teetered back and forth, all of the strain breaking through the mask and now revealing itself in her face as well as her eyes. She looked abruptly twenty years older and horribly weary.

But she had been stopped not by fatigue but by a thought. Her shoulders slumped, her head dropped, and her eyes stared blankly in a kind of silent horror. Becker took a step toward her and she turned to look at him, as if seeing him for the first time. As their eyes met, her face suddenly crumpled.

“I abused him,” she said, but her voice caught on the word “abused” as if it were a live coal on her tongue, parching her mouth on contact.

Becker started to protest, but she shook her head and repeated herself.

“I abused him,” she said, clearly this time. “I hit him. I beat him.”

“Who?”

“Jack. My Jack,” and she began to weep, the tears flowing almost immediately as if they had been dammed up so long that finally they had to spill over whatever barrier was holding them back.

“Right after his father left us, right there in the middle of the mess, at the worst part. He did something, Jackie did something, I don’t know what. It wasn’t bad, he wasn’t that naughty, just something, and I started to spank him and I couldn’t stop, I just couldn’t stop. I kept doing it and doing it. I don’t know what happened to me. I just lost control, it seemed right… I did it three different times. The last time I hit him so much he was bleeding. I made my Jack bleed. John!”

This time she sought his arms, pressing against him until the gun in her shoulder holster bit into his ribs.

She spoke into his shirt, her voice muffled by the cloth, distorted by sobs.

“Have I done this? Have I made him too passive? Is that why it happened?”

“No, no… ”

“That’s your theory, isn’t it? Lamont snatches the passive ones, the ones who don’t shout or fight or…”

“No, it isn’t your…”

“Isn’t that what you wanted me to agree to? Didn’t you keep banging at me about how I understood it all but wouldn’t admit it? Didn’t you say I shaped him this way, so he’d follow anybody?”

“For God’s sake, Karen, you can’t blame yourself for this. In the first place, we don’t even know what’s happened…”

She tore away from him again.

“I know.”

She sank to the floor, wrapping her arms around herself as if to hold in the anguish, and began a high, wordless keen of grief and pain.

Becker watched her helplessly for a moment as she rocked back and forth, emitting a sound that sent chills through him. He knelt beside her, his arm around her, and she turned to him abruptly, clutching his shirt and pulling his face toward hers. She pressed her lips against his with such force that she pushed him off balance.

“God damn it, help me, Becker! I can’t make it till morning, I can’t take it. I’m dying here. I’m dying.”

She scrabbled at his belt buckle, then stood and turned off the only light in the room. Becker rose to his feet and she was back at him, clawing at his belt. She still wore her blouse and the shoulder holster, but somehow between the light switch and Becker she had managed to remove her skirt and pantyhose.

“Help me. Christ, John, help me,” she muttered. With his belt and zipper undone she pressed her lips against his again, then, frantically, attacked his mouth with her tongue. It was not a kiss. Becker knew, but another way of crying out in pain.

He tried to calm her, pulling away from her ravenous mouth and kissing her neck, running his hands down her arms, under the back of her blouse, and pulling her body into his with gradually increasing pressure. She writhed against him, impatient, struggling, and the sour smell of her fear-sweat rose up strongly.

His hand moved up to cup her breast, teasingly soft and slow, but she mashed into him, rubbing wildly.

“Don’t be gentle,” she cried. “Not now!”

Becker tried to lower her to the floor, but she shrugged him off and turned her back to him, pushing her hips back until her half-naked body pressed against his groin.

He took her from the rear, standing up, his pants at his knees, while she braced her arms against the edge of the desk. She thrust harder than he did, growling low in her throat and grunting with every effort as they hammered at each other. He could not be too hard for her, or fast enough. Becker felt as if she were punishing herself, and using him as the instrument. It was the closest thing to being raped he would ever experience, he thought. When he had shuddered to a climax she simply straightened up and walked away, discarding him as if he were a tool that had served its purpose.

Half an hour later she took him again and then a third time an hour before sunrise with Becker half asleep and lying on his back. When she had finished her urgent actions and left him supine on the cot, she returned to the window where she had spent most of the night. Becker watched her staring into the night, looking first toward the lake, then at the woods, then back toward the lake, her heart being ripped apart by the two horrifyingly unacceptable possibilities.