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
