conspiracy. The woman was a reflexive flirt, Karen thought, turning on her overwrought charm for everyone she encountered, man or woman. It was heavy-handed as a club with women, but it seemed to work with men. She was annoyed to see Becker smiling as broadly as the woman.
“Well then, come on in and help me out,” Dee said to Becker, and again she was on the move, skipping up the steps and into the office before Becker or Karen could react.
“She seems to have her own agenda,” Becker said, still smiling.
“You find her funny, too?”
“I think she likes me, what do you think?” Becker said.
“I think she needs a Valium.”
“She’s more fun than a midget, though.”
Becker and Karen followed Dee toward the office and heard her already engaged in a shouting match with the woman owner before they reached the door.
“Is it too late to just turn and run?” Karen whispered. Becker grinned sardonically and with a low, sweeping bow, ushered Karen into the office before him.
Ash washed the boy meticulously, wearing the plastic gloves as Dee had taught him. He sat in the tub with the boy, holding his body with one arm and soaping and scrubbing with the other. Using one of Dee’s nail files, he cleaned under Bobby’s fingernails. He scoured the boy’s ears, laved away the last of the tears, the scent of fear. When he had finished. Ash left the boy in the tub to let the water soak away the last traces of his earthly ordeal.
Ash dressed himself and waited impatiently for Dee to come home in response to his phone call. He was unable to lose himself in the television stories, his mind wandering again and again to the boy in the bathtub. He held Bobby’s good luck charm in his hand, squeezing it for luck, hoping that somehow it could change things. The boy had insisted that it had always worked for him; perhaps now it would work for Ash. He rubbed the coin between his thumb and finger, looking at the face of the man embossed on the metal, wondering who he was that he could bring such good fortune.
Ash was at the door when Dee arrived. She took in the situation in a glance and her voice was crisp and authoritarian. Ash had known she would be certain of exactly what to do.
“Put your gloves on and put him in the bag,” Dee said. She peered through the drawn blinds at the small convocation outside the motel office. Reggie was talking and pointing at Dee’s cabin.
“When I get everyone inside the office, you get that bag out of here, understand?”
“Yes, Dee.”
“Get it to the edge of the highway, but out of sight. We don’t want anyone finding it now. We’ll pick it up tonight when we leave.”
“Are we leaving for good?”
She gave him a harsh look. “Stop sniveling now, Ash. We have to act quickly. Put your gloves on and hurry up. When I get them all into the office, you get out the door and into the woods as fast as you can with the bag. Got it?”
“Yes, Dee.”
She looked at him again, holding him with her fiery eyes.
“Who do you love?” she asked.
Ash smiled. “I love you. Dee.”
Dee slipped out the door. Ash pulled on another pair of plastic gloves and picked up the trash bag from the floor and entered the bathroom. When he came out, holding the bag gently in both arms, he saw the good luck charm lying where he had dropped it on the bed.
It did not seem right to keep it. Bobby had loved it so much. And maybe it would continue to bring him luck, Ash did not know. But it belonged to Bobby, no matter how much Ash wanted to keep it.
Ash undid the tie of the trash bag and gently placed the Kennedy half dollar and its chain inside. He tied the bag once more, then peeked through the blinds to watch the people outside the office. Dee was leaning into a car, then she was talking to a man and a woman whom Ash had never seen before, then she was moving rapidly into the office.
The man and woman talked to each other and Ash willed them to follow Dee. It worked, they went into the office, too, and Ash wondered if it had been Bobby’s charm that made it happen. One last favor of good luck.
Ash picked up the bag in both arms and slipped out the door and into the woods that waited for him only a few steps away.
From the backseat of the car Jack saw the hulking man come out of the cabin and glance anxiously toward the office before hurrying into the thin stand of trees. The man was carrying a trash bag, but not as if it contained trash. He cradled it in his arms as if it were a treasure. Or a baby, Jack thought. A baby in a bag. Jack liked the sound of the phrase, the silliness of it. It was the kind of nonsensical notion that Becker liked to joke about with Jack. Poo on your shoe, baby in a bag. Jack vowed to remember and tell Becker, but by the time he and his mother returned to the car. Jack had forgotten.
He watched the big man hurry through the trees, heading in the direction of the highway, the bag held delicately in front of him. The man disappeared for a minute behind a squat building that adjoined the motel property. When he came back, he no longer carried the bag.
The big man glanced furtively at the office again, and then rushed back into his room. To Jack, he looked exactly like someone playing hide-and-seek, except that he was an adult and, in Jack’s experience, adults did not play games. The man never looked at the car, never noticed Jack, which did not surprise the boy at all. So many people never noticed kids. Jack thought. Like they didn’t exist, or something. Like they were invisible. Or else they did notice and made a huge fuss, like the nurse who had come from the same cabin. Jack hoped she wouldn’t make another pass at befriending him when she came out of the office. Given the choice, he would rather be ignored than made too much of, but, being a kid, he was never given the choice. When accosted by a gusher like the nurse. Jack tried to be polite and not withdraw because that made his mother proud, but inside he tried to make himself as small as possible, to pull his spirit into the tiniest ball and disappear.
Dee led them all out of the office, irrepressible and determined. Karen had given up trying to take control of the situation between Dee and Reggie. It was a mare’s nest of charge and countercharge and of interest only to the participants. What surprised her was the continuing high spirits that Dee showed even after the shouting match with the motel owner. She marched along the drive toward her cabin with an impatient stride, looking back at the others to see why they were lagging behind.
Only a sense of duty forced Karen to play out the farce to its conclusion, a duty held not to the Bureau because this was clearly a tenant-owner dispute and of no concern to the FBI, but duty to herself not to appear a fool in public. She would look less foolish seeing this business to the end, going through the proper motions, than she would if she did what she wanted, which was to throw her hands in the air, declare it all a mistake, and drive away. How much time did she waste in her life, she wondered, trying not to appear foolish? Becker did not seem to care; he freely acted the fool for Jack, and won Jack’s affection in the process. If he were in charge of this operation, he would have cut and run already, she thought. He would flirt with the woman as much as amused him and then just leave, not caring about anyone else’s opinion but his own. He would make a very poor woman, Karen thought.
Ash sat upon the edge of the bed, his eyes cast down toward the floor, his hands folded neatly in his lap. Like a pair of bear paws, thought Becker. The man’s size was remarkable, but he was not in any way intimidating; he seemed as docile as a cow, and just about as bright. He was breathing heavily, as if he had just been running, or exercising. Becker tried to imagine spending all day, every day, in a room the size of the motel cabin. It was better than a prison cell, but not a great deal better. The battle against cabin fever must be a difficult one, and the man’s arms appeared pumped by regular, strenuous exercise. Becker imagined the man doing pushups before the surprise visit by two FBI agents. A lifetime spent in a darkened room, hiding from the painful light, then two intrusions in the same day, the first from the landlady, contentious, aggressive, seeing kidnapped boys under the
