Dismember

The CD had just restarted itself. Libby walked to the stereo and shut it off before plucking the phone from its base and dialing Mike’s number.

The phone rang five times before someone picked up.

“Pullman residence,” said an unfamiliar voice.

Libby frowned. If the stranger on the other end had answered with only hello, she might have thought she’d dialed the wrong number. But he’d said Pullman.

What’s going on?

“Who is this?” she asked, not able to keep a certain amount of sharpness out of her voice.

The man who responded sounded something like John Wayne, or the way Libby thought John Wayne was supposed to sound—she’d never actually seen one of his movies. “May I ask who’s calling?”

“Where’s my son?” Libby said loudly, ignoring the question. “And my husband? What’s going on there?”

The word husband only barely registered. She hadn’t meant to say it.

“Miss,” the voice said, “please identify yourself.”

“Why don’t you identify yourself?” Libby said, not in the mood for another strange man trying to take control of the situation.

“Ma’am,” the stranger said, “I’m afraid—”

Libby cut him off. “Give me Mike right now.” Her first thought was that both Mike and Trevor had been in a car accident. She’d hated that pickup of Mike’s since the day he bought it. It was untrustworthy, dangerous. If her website business had been any more lucrative, she’d have bought Mike a new vehicle herself and torched that truck until there was nothing left but a foul stench in the air and a mound of ashes on the ground.

Although she hadn’t actually expected it, Mike’s voice came onto the line. “Lib?”

“Mike. What’s going on?”

“I was about to call you. You need to come up here,” he said.

“Why? What’s happening?” A tear splashed against her wrist, and she realized she’d been crying.

“It’s Trevor,” he said, and before he could go on, Libby dropped the phone and began pawing through her closet. She loosened the towel and let it drop to the floor, then stepped into a pair of panties and some jeans. She pulled on the first blouse she found.

Trevor, she thought, wondering how much anguish a parent could possibly endure in any given day. She slipped on a pair of running shoes, skipped the socks. From the bed, she heard a squeaky voice. She hurried over and picked up the receiver.

“I’ll be there in thirty minutes,” she said, knowing it was a forty-five minute drive. She hung up without waiting for a response and then ran.

TWENTY-FOUR

A deputy stood in the kitchen, peering at the broken glass like a mystic studying tea leaves, as if he thought he might divine some clue from the shape of the mess alone.

A man in jeans and a t-shirt, who might have been a cop or a doctor or a lumberjack for all Mike knew, swabbed the knife wound in Mike’s hip. “You’re very lucky, Mr. Pullman,” he said in an almost nonexistent accent that might have been British or Irish. “Something like this could have been much more serious.”

It’s just a booboo, Mike expected him to say, No big deal. Let’s get you a Big Bird band-aid.

Mike sat on the couch with his pants around his ankles, his underwear pulled just beneath his thatch of pubic hair but still covering his penis and testicles. Barely. He looked at the third man across the room, the quiet, bearded deputy with the inch-long scar just beneath his eye who had answered the phone when Libby called. “Listen,” he said, “isn’t there something else we can be doing? I mean, that asshole’s got my son. We’re not gonna find him sitting around my living room playing doctor.”

The man hovering over Mike’s lap huffed.

Rather than answer Mike’s question, the bearded deputy, Willis, asked one of his own. “This man you say took your son, did he have a dog with him?”

Mike shook his head, though not in answer to the question. “First of all, I don’t say he took my son, he did take him. They’re gone, and getting farther away every second. Did he have a dog? How the hell should I know? What kind of question is that? He had a knife and he had a foot the size of Texas. How’s that? Maybe if you get a sketch artist up here we can figure out what kind of sneakers he was wearing.”

The bearded man stared through the living room window and never turned to Mike. “We think he might have had a dog,” he said to the window, “and if you would answer my questions, we’d be that much closer to finding your boy.” He seemed focused on something outside.

Mike sighed and rubbed his face while the man on his knees before him continued his ministrations.

“Okay,” he said after a minute. “I think I might have heard some barking, but I never saw a dog. I’m not even a hundred percent sure about the barking. With all the stabbing and kicks to the head, I might have been out of it a little.” Mike saw the deputy’s face reflected in the window, looking transparent, ghostly. The lawman smiled.

“Of course, Mr. Pullman.”

“What’s the deal with the dog?” Mike asked. “How does that help us?”

Willis finally turned away from the window and came across the room. “Do you know a Bethany Winston?”

“Beth—” Mike started and then nodded. “Yeah, I guess. She lives just down that way.” He gestured with his head. “Why? Did something happen?”

Willis sat down on the edge of the coffee table, his holstered gun tapping against the tabletop and the leather of his utility belt creaking. “Bethany Winston was attacked earlier tonight,” he said simply and crossed his arms over his chest. “Guy stole her dog and cut her up a little.”

“Cut…my God,” Mike said. “Is she okay?”

“Will be,” Willis said. “She said the guy had a boy with him; little boy about her age.”

The second deputy came in from the kitchen, looking unsatisfied, thumbs tucked into his belt and chewing at his bottom lip.

Mike said, “Yes, that’s what I’m telling you. Skinny kid, maybe eleven years old. He attacked the guy in my bedroom. I don’t think he was exactly here voluntarily.”

“No,” said the deputy.

The doctor, if he was one, poked at Mike, who hissed. “Easy,” he said. He turned back to Willis. “So what? You’re saying there’s two kidnapped kids?”

The lip-chewing deputy, whose name Mike had already forgotten, opened his mouth to say something, but Willis held up a hand to him. “I’m not saying anything,” Willis said to Mike, “but that’s one possibility.”

Mike didn’t want to ask about the other possibilities—he could figure those out for himself—but he did say, “Isn’t there something else we could be doing right now? If he’s out there, if my son is with that lunatic and there’s another boy with him, shouldn’t we be doing something?”

“Trust me,” the deputy said, “we’re doing everything we can.”

TWENTY-FIVE

Libby raced the Honda down Mike’s driveway; it kicked up gravel and slid across the loose rocks for almost two feet after she finally applied the brakes. The car skidded to a stop beside and slightly behind a Ford Explorer emblazoned with the county name and the sheriff’s department’s emblem. Just one cruiser, no ambulances or fire trucks or any of that, but one was enough to mean something had happened.

Libby slipped the car into park, pulled the keys from the ignition, and threw open her door so quickly she felt