'Kershaw ain't got her.'
'He might kill her, I can't believe you.
'It ain't Kershaw,' Tommy said. 'I told you, he ain't got her.
'You know where she is then, don't you? You know how worried I was, why didn't you tell me? You made me go to the police and everything and all the time you knew-'
'Hey, I don't know. I don't know nothing.'
'He knows where Aural is,' Rae said to Becker.
'Hey!'
'You might's well arrest him,' Rae said. She looked at Pegeen, nodding vigorously. 'He's as bad as the man who's got her.'
'Rae, Rae, calm down here…'
'Take him to the station and beat him with your nightsticks@r I'll do it myself'
'Hey! Rae. Honey. Sugar, what are you talking about?' He turned to the agents, appealing for sympathy.
'I don't know where the girl is. I didn't snatch her. Kershaw didn't snatch her. It was this little weasel. Kershaw found him and kicked the shit out of him, but Kershaw didn't take Aural, he never got close enough to her, she ran right into this weasel's car, like he was waiting for her. I think she was planning on slipping out on us anyway, Rae, honest to God, she was going away with this little guy, I'm sure of it.'
Pegeen pulled a photograph from her purse.
'Was it this man?'
Tommy tried to square the grim-looking still-life of the mug shot with the face of the little man lying on the sidewalk, bleeding, cowering behind his upraised arm.
'Could be, maybe. Sure.'
Becker slid an arm around Tommy's shoulders and turned him away from the women. Tommy felt a heat, a sudden urgency in the agent that frightened him. It had not been there before, but seemed to burst into combustion with the showing of the photograph. Tommy knew he was no longer being politely questioned-things had changed with the sudden bewildering fright of a nightmare. Becker smiled at him, but a fire was flashing in his eyes. For a second Tommy remembered the desperate need of the man who had grabbed him in the healing meeting, trying to confess his sins, the desire so strong that it read like a barely sheathed fury. Like something huge and hungry spotting its prey, immediately transformed into a carnivorous concentration so strong that it must act like a form of gravitational attraction, pulling the victim towards it.
Tommy realized he would tell this FBI agent everything he wanted to know; he would be afraid not to. He knew that the agent was not after him personally, but he sensed a hunger so great that he might make a mouthful of anything close. Kershaw had frightened him with his potential for violence, but this man, with a single move, terrified him.
'Let's you and me talk, Reverend,' Becker said.
'You bet,' said the Reverend, turning his head to look back longingly at Rae. He realized with a sinking feeling that he would get no help from her.
Pegeen had never seen Becker excited and she realized he had become a different person. Although he always gave the impression of contained strength, he now seemed as if the strength were breaking its bonds and were within seconds of bursting forth. Through no physical change that she could detect, he now seemed to be coiled and ready to strike.
He spread the charts on the hood of the car at the edge of the field where the revival tent now stood, erected and ready for miracles. He cast a nervous eye at the sky, where the sun was slipping quickly below the trees, then jabbed his finger at a mark on Browne's chart.
'Here, it's got to be here,' he said. His finger pointed to a cave called Devil's Den that looked on the map like an old-fashioned handweight, two ball-shaped caverns connected by a long tunnel.
'Why?'
'It's the closest. He could have had her there in twenty minutes. The others are at least forty-five-minute drives from where he took her.
That one is almost an hour away.' His finger danced over the map. Becker was as familiar with its surface as if the marks were dots of Braille and he was blind.
He swept the map off the hood and replaced it with a sheaf of smaller charts, thumbing quickly through them until he found the one he wanted.
'He was waiting for her, right? Maybe he'd even made an arrangement to meet her. The Reverend said she ran right into his car. Maybe that's how he gets them; maybe they go willing at first. I don't know. The point is, he didn't just swoop down and grab her on impulse. He didn't snatch her and run for cover as an afterthought.
He had time to plan it, so he would be heading here.'
The new chart was much smaller in scale and showed the entrance to the cave in relation to the surrounding area. Browne had gone to considerable pains to locate the entrance accurately, which meant that it must be difficult to reach and hard to locate without the map. Becker glanced at the sky once more, angrily, as if the sun were to blame for setting. Pegeen felt as if he were trying to will the sun back up into the sky.
'Son of a bitch,' he said. 'It will be dark by the time we get there.
We'll have to wait till morning.'
'We have flashlights,' Pegeen said.
'Look at the terrain. We'd have to be lucky to find it in the dark, and if we go tromping around flashing lights, and he's in any position to see us, he can slip out undetected. If we go now we're inviting him to get away.'
'I was thinking about the woman,' Pegeen said. 'Can she make it through another night?'
Becker looked at her blankly for a moment. 'She'll have to make it for another eight hours.'
'If we get there tonight, it might save her life.'
'If we fuck it up and he gets away, he's going to take a lot more lives, and he'll be a lot more careful next time.
'This woman, this Aural McKesson, is the only life I'm thinking about now. She's the one in danger. God knows what he's doing to her.'
Becker swept up his maps and returned to the car.
'We'll find out soon enough what he's doing to her,' he said.
'Soon enough for who? How do we know it's going to be soon enough for her?'
Becker tossed the maps into the backseat and grabbed Pegeen's elbow, yanking her around to face him. The muscles in his jaw clenched and unclenched and his eyes were raging.
'Do you think I don't want him right now?'
He gripped her arm until she nodded agreement.
'Yes,' she said. 'I know you do.'
'We'll wait,' he said, releasing her.
Pegeen put her hands on the steering wheel, borrowin time against her agitation. It was the first time she had been afraid of him. Not that she thought he would harm her. But she realized that he was going to harm someone.
'All the stories about me are true,' he had said. they just don't go far enough.' Having looked into his blazing eyes, she began to believe him.
'Where to?' she asked, starting the car.
'Find us a motel,' he said.
'Shall I call Nashville for more agents?'
'What for?'
'For help.'
'You need help, Haddad? What do you need help with, me?'
'No, with Swann, of course.'
'How many men do you plan to send down into that cave? We don't know if there's room for us, yet.'
'In case.'
'In case of what?'
'In case he's not there, in case he went to one of the other caves, in case he didn't go there at all.'
