Billy (22 page)

This deep strength, which had not been so vividly present in the other children Barton had abducted, enabled Billy to continue his struggle. Although it hurt terribly, he fought his way to his feet.

"Mommy," Billy said. He wanted her so badly, she made it not hurt anymore! "Oh, Mommy!" He was sinking back through the layers of his young personality, back to the days when she carried him on her hip. "Carry me, Mommy, I is tired now." When he moved the pain clutched at him. "I sorry, I sorry . . ."

A part of him reminded himself, 'You aren't a baby, you can make it, you must try to get out of this.' It was just so hard—he had been whipped so terribly. His legs were like two posts, almost impossible to move. When he did, fire raced up and down his back, making him flail his arms and grit his bared teeth.

Like any normal child, Billy's sorrow would have extended to the hand that had hurt him if he felt he was dependent upon it for his survival. He would have accepted help even from the blond woman. When she was gentle to him he would have reacted with gratitude.

This is why children cleave so tenaciously even to hard parents. It takes repeated beatings, long periods of brutal treatment, considered and relentless injustice to break hope. As spectacular as Barton's assault had been, Billy had nevertheless survived like a little coal in the ashes; he was still struggling and 
would not stop. The pity of the abused child is that he does not cease to hope, not until the last beam of his life has faded.

So he wobbled across the floor, raised his arm to the knob on the door and tried. Every movement caused agony; the buttocks relate to so many other important muscles. To shuffle, to stand still, to raise his arm, to tighten his fingers on the silver doorknob—all of it hurt.

Under his breath he was uttering a new litany. Gone was "Jesus," gone was "God." He was down deeper now than those words, which come to have meaning in a child's vocabulary only at the age of four or five. "Ma," he said with each step. "Ma-ma-ma" as he crept along.

He did not exult to find himself in the hall, nor did he even think of where he was going or what he needed to do. He simply kept sliding one foot after the other, and so made it into Barton's bedroom. He had never seen it before, but he did not notice the beautiful canopied bed, the lovely silken sheets, the lace curtains or the perfume in the air.

He did see Barton, a shadowy heap on the bathroom floor. As far as he was concerned, though, this was not Barton. The blond hair told him that it was the woman who had whipped him. He went over, concern for her rising in him. But then he saw she was sleeping, her dress drawn over her like a coverlet. He returned to the task at hand.

He had come to call Mama. When you got hurt and nobody else would help, that was what you did, you called Mama. He looked around him. On a small, ornate desk was a telephone. "Mama," he said. He put his hand on the phone, picked it up, heard the dial tone in his ear.

Although his danger was now extreme, he was beyond caring about whether or not he was caught.

He began to press the numbers on the phone.

26.

The skin was being savagely scourged from her back when the ringing of the telephone woke Mary. For an instant the agony of the whip mingled with the noise of the phone. She came to consciousness in blood and rage, flailing frantically for the receiver, composing herself. Try not to sound sleepy, be calm, it might be the end.

"Ma-ma."

Some baby was up early and playing with the phone. "You put the phone down, honey, you aren't supposed to be calling people at this hour."

"Ma-ma!"

In an instant she couldn't think, couldn't remember even how to speak. Frantically she swallowed, fighting to respond. "Billy!"

"Mommy."

An instinctive impulse to grab him almost made her hurl the phone away from her. But she held it hard to her ear. 'OK, settle down now, take it easy, remember the instructions, get information.' One deep intake of breath was all she allowed herself. Calmly, distinctly, she asked: "Where are you, Billy?"

"Hollywood Hills."

When his voice stopped the silence in the phone was tremendous.

"What street?"

"Near Ridgeway . . ."

"Do you know the name?"

"No. The people next door have a blue Mercedes. Barton has an Aerostar."

"We know about the Aerostar. We know he's called Barton Royal. Anything else?"

"He has a brown Celica. He hid the Aerostar."

"What does the house look like?"

"Garage in front. . . dead-end street—" His voice dropped to a whisper, then she heard weeping like she had never heard before in her life. It burned into the depths of her soul, as if a hot knife was plunging into her. She gritted her teeth.

"Anything else." She managed to sound quite calm.

"We're the last house. Top of the hill—"

"Number on the house?"

"Ma-ma, I got spanked, I got bad, bad—"

She bit her knuckle. The skin crunched in her teeth, she tasted the blood. The pain seemed to belong to a distant, fraudulent life. Think, woman! "Is he nearby?"

"She in the bafroom."

My God, he sounds like he's a toddler! He's regressing, he's hurt, he's being tortured to death, oh God in heaven help me I am not strong —

"Hang up."

"Mama wait!"

"Say goodbye."

"Goodbye Ma-ma."

The silence continued on the line. He was frozen, he couldn't put the phone down!

"Goodbye. Hang up now."

He began weeping, a sound like little rain.

She jerked her head away from that pitiful baby's voice as if it was a bellow of agony. Her beautiful, brilliant child—all the labor and the love—was being ruined! He was suffering, oh, terribly, yes, there was no question that it was terrible, terrible—

At that instant a door opened in her and she came to the part of her that was as strong as stone. Here Mary Neary was objective and effective. When she spoke again her voice radiated sure confidence. "Now put the phone down and get away from it. Don't try to call Mommy again. The police will be there as soon as they can." She stopped, and when she did the big silence assaulted her again.

"Mommy—"

Again she writhed. A huge sob came up into her throat. She 
threw her head back, sucked air into her open mouth, spoke again. "You have to hang up now, honey."

But he didn't hang up. He was unable to break his connection to her. So powerful was her desire to radiate strength, to fill him with her own health and courage and her very blood she literally snapped to attention beside the bed. "Put that phone down," she barked. "I want to hear the dial tone this instant!"

"Mommy help. Mommy help."

"Hang up right this instant."

"Ma-ma, Billy wants—"

"I know, darling, I know. But you have to hang up. Right now. Do it, Billy!" The silence replied. Her free hand was a fist against her chest. She was shaking so hard she could barely see.
"This is an order, young man! Obey me instantly!"

Click. Then at last the dial tone. She sank to her knees, crouched with the phone hugged against her chest. Oh let it be that he was not seen. God, please. Aloud she whispered into the silent room, "I love you, honey, Momma loves you."

With exaggerated care she put the receiver back on its cradle, and then stared at the phone as if it contained a living spirit. Something happened to her that was beyond tears. When she thought of him out there somewhere suffering that much—my God, some vicious thing had beaten him, had reduced him to a gibbering jelly, tortured him—her mind swarmed with images, each one more hideous than the last. She sank to the floor, twisted this way and that. Her hands twined in her hair.

She couldn't help herself, she started pulling and pulling. Her body burned with the agony of her son's voice and she knew then the deepest, truest meaning of motherhood, that it has to do with the very spirit become blood and bone. She had borne him and held his naked body in her arms, and he was of her, and was her own self transformed.

Her hands dug into her hair, her body seemed to sputter flames, she felt rising on her buttocks the welts her son had received, the heartless whipping splashing into flesh that had never been struck, and shattering not only the body of the boy but his little soul's light.

"Momma!"

Sally had come into the room. She wore her summer shorty pajamas. Her face was stricken. Mary realized that the poor thing must think she was dying.

She got to her feet, drew herself up. "I just got a call from Billy and we have work to do."

"Momma, what's wrong with you!"

"I'm upset. But that doesn't matter—"

"You're bleeding, Momma, you're bleeding all over your face!"

Mary withdrew her hands from the tangle of her hair. Her scalp was tender; there was wet all down her forehead. She hurried into the bathroom. She had literally been pulling her hair out at the roots. Sally turned on the water, got a washcloth wet and began daubing her mother's face. "Momma, is he—"

"Oh, Sally, he sounded like hell." To hear herself saying those words made her congeal inside. Again she began to tremble.

"Did he say where he is?"

She all but threw herself out of the bathroom, grabbed the phone again, jabbed in Toddcaster's home number. "Walter, he called—"

With a muttered "I'm coming," he slammed up the phone. Mary took the precious tape out of the recorder, put in a new one.

Five minutes later the phone and the doorbell rang at the same time. The phone was the FBI in Des Moines. Walter had already called them. "He said he's in the Hollywood Hills at the end of a dead-end street near a street called Ridgeway, but it isn't Ridgeway. They're at the top of a hill. The man drives a brown Celica. There's a blue Mercedes parked next door."

Walter joined her and in a moment the tape was being replayed so that he and the FBI officer on the phone could both listen. While it played Sally cradled her mother in her arms, cleaning her face with a damp washcloth.

Walt finished with the tape. "That's a hell of a stress reaction you got going there," he said, touching her bloody face. "It's called sweating blood when you do that, hon."

He stepped into the hall, motioned Sally to follow him. But 
Walter Toddcaster was not a man who could readily whisper. "She's about had it," he said in a low voice. "They start pulling their hair out, they're losing it."

Sally's reply was an inarticulate whisper.

"We gotta help her, keep her going, because this thing will play through real quick."

"Play through?"

"It means we're going to find your brother real soon." Walter went back to Mary, glanced into her watchful eyes. "You heard me, didn't you? Which I guess I wanted. You gotta get some Valium or something, hon. You can't take this pressure. Nobody can."

"The hell I can't, Walter Toddcaster. No way am I going to dull my mind with pills at a time like this."

"Hey. Just trying to assist. I think you did good on that phone call. Real, real good."

Sally suddenly went for the phone. Mary's first impulse was to pull her off it in case there was another call.

"What time is it in Nevada?" Sally said. Mary realized that she was calling Mark. 'Oh, Mark, I forgot you, I called Walter first!'

"Dad, it's me. He called. We know approximately where he is."

Mary grabbed the phone. "I talked to him, Mark. I talked to him!"

"Where?"

"The Hollywood Hills."

"Address?"

She told him what they knew.

"I'm going to fly to L.A. as soon as I can. I'll call the police when I get in."

"The FBI's already done that. Maybe they'll have him by the time you get there."

"Maybe. Look, I love you, and I'm outa here."

Mary put down the phone. Sally grabbed it again. In moments she was talking to American Airlines, ordering tickets for the two of them.

Toddcaster stood in the doorway to the living room, looking as if his presence here had become tentative, uncertain. "Walter?"

"The case is outa my hands. It's up to the FBI and the Los Angeles police now. All we can do from here is offer support as needed."

"I'm going."

"Of course. But be careful, Mary. There are don'ts in this thing, major don'ts. Don't try to find him on your own. When you get to LAX report to the police. They have a missing persons unit. By then they will know your name, they will be on the case. Do not go to Hollywood by yourself."

Sally put down the phone. "If we can make the seven-twenty flight to Albuquerque, we can be in L.A. by nine-thirty their time."

By the time Mary was grabbing her clothes out of the dresser Walter Toddcaster had faded into the background of her life. She didn't even see him leave the room.

By the time she was snapping her bra he was already a memory. In ten minutes she was dressed; she even had an overnight bag with some things stuffed into it. As they ran to the car Sally was still pulling her curlers out, throwing them on the dew-fresh grass. Toddcaster watched from the front porch. "I'll man the phone," he said.

Mary glimpsed him once, a shadow on the porch. She heard a shout, big and powerful, cutting the silence of the morning. "Drive carefully," he yelled.

Mary hardly heard him. In moments she was doing seventy down Lincoln. She had exactly thirty-five minutes to get to the airport. Even given the sparse early morning traffic, the trip would take forty.

"Momma, you'd better let me do the driving."

"You've never driven a car before in your life."

"Momma, I take the car at night when you and Dad are asleep. I've been doing it ever since I was tall enough."

"Sally, you're kidding!"

"I'm a good driver, Mom. And if you don't slow down we're going to get a ticket and miss the plane!"

"With you behind the wheel we'd be worse off—you don't even have a license, you're thirteen."

"I do a lot of things you don't know about."

As much as she could bear, Mary slowed down. They must not miss that plane. Her boy needed his mother desperately.

If he was found, she had to be there. This was probably the single most essential thing she would ever do.

Until they reached the interstate she took Sally's advice and kept to the speed limit. Then she pushed it. Otherwise there was no chance. The old wagon shuddered at ninety, then seemed to get a second wind as it passed through a hundred. At a hundred and ten it felt like it was floating. The engine made a sound like a herd of cattle.

They were still thirty miles from Des Moines when a light bar started flashing behind them. "Fuck," Mary said, causing her daughter to stare in amazement at her. She pulled over. The black-and-white came up beside her. One of the two policemen in the front seat leaned out.

"You're Mary Neary?"

"Yes."

"We're here to give you an escort. Let's go."

They made the plane with three minutes to spare.

It was not until they were in the eventless void of the flight that her mind began to open the doors to the dark. He was badly hurt, he was with a desperate man, he was so darned
out of it!

If he'd turned into a baby again, he was at the end of his strength. When that man asked him, "Billy, did you make a phone call," he'd probably say yes.

She remembered him when he was a toddler, guileless and so absurdly serious that Mark had nicknamed him "the Judge." God help him, he'd
regressed!

Mary felt her daughter's warm, light fingers placing gentle pressure on her own. Since Billy's disappearance she had not had much room inside herself for Sally, and she regretted that. But Billy's plight was so terrible and her own suffering so great that she simply could not invest her daughter's needs with the importance she knew they deserved.

The Good Mother was being broken by the strain of the tragedy. If she lost Billy, then what would be left for the girl? Or worse, if he came back ruined, requiring years of therapy, what then?

"Mother?"

She turned, appalled by the interruption of Sally's voice.

"She wants to know if you want breakfast?"

To Mary's surprise the flight attendant was there with her trolley. "A Coke," she said automatically.

"No, Momma, we need food."

"It's a cheese omelette," said the flight attendant.

Mary ate her omelette and drank coffee, and watched beneath as her familiar world slid slowly away.

She had a question, asked to the sky, to the hazy prairie below: were they really going to get Billy back, or was it too late for that?