The Absence of Mercy (33 page)

“I've already had to replace that door once,” someone commented from the driveway behind him, and Sam spun around quickly, beginning to pull the weapon from its holster.

“
Hey, take it easy,
” Ben exclaimed, dropping the long-handled shovel he was holding and showing Sam the palms of his hands.

Sam reseated the weapon. “Don't sneak up on me, Ben.”

“I wasn't trying to,” Ben assured him. “I mean,”—he looked around—“this is
my
property. I may not be welcome anywhere else in this town, but I do believe I have a right to be
here
.”

Sam descended the steps and joined him in the front yard. He nodded at the shovel. “Doing some planting, are you? A little yard work?”

“The thought occurred to me recently that I ought to dig a moat.” Ben stooped to pick up the shovel, then leaned it against the house.

“You still having trouble with the neighborhood kids? I told you before I can go talk to their parents.”

“No, it's fine,” he said. “It's mostly harmless pranks. I've had to replace two broken windows from rock-throwing, but that's really been the worst of it. It's probably best to ignore them.”

“Well, I don't tolerate vandalism in this town. You let me know if you want me to put a stop to it, and I will.”

Ben nodded.

“How you holdin' up otherwise?”

“Fine.”

“I heard you quit the CO.”

“Yeah,” Ben said. “I couldn't do it anymore. Too many bad memories there.”

“Nat's gonna miss you. That kid really looks up to you.”

“He comes by the house every once in a while.” Ben smiled.

Sam looked out at the quiet suburban street. A young boy on a bicycle pedaled past. “You ever hear from Susan?” the chief asked, unable to help himself. “She ever try to contact you?”

“Nothing,” the other replied, and Sam, who'd based a large portion of his career on the ability to separate truth from dishonesty, knew that Ben wasn't telling him everything.

“You know, the best thing for all of them would be to turn themselves in,” he said. “We know they crossed the border into Mexico, and we have people tracking them down even now. It's only a matter of time. This won't play out for long.”

Ben looked as if he was about to respond to that, but chose instead to change the subject. “How's the ticker?”

Sam smiled confidently. The five days he'd spent in the hospital following a heart attack on the day Ben's family had disappeared were already receding in his memory. “Good as new,” he declared, and tapped his chest with his right hand as if to demonstrate.

Ben nodded. “I guess one way or the other we're all on borrowed time,” he observed as they made the short walk together to the parked police car in the driveway.

Sam considered this for a moment, then opened the door of his cruiser and lowered his large frame inside. “I'll let you get back to enjoying your weekend. You give me a call if you want to talk.” He offered Ben a discerning look. “I'm sure you'll contact me if you hear anything from them, won't you, Ben? You don't want to allow yourself to become an accomplice in all of this.”

“I already am,” the man in front of him replied, turning his back on the chief and heading for the front door of the only refuge he still had left. “I already am.”

Ben stood looking down at the wooden crate submerged in the earth, the sweat rolling freely down his flushed face. It had taken him thirty minutes this time to dig his way down to it. He was getting better at it, his arms becoming accustomed to the stony soil and the way it resisted his efforts.

The long-handled shovel lay at his feet. He wondered why he had carried it with him to the front of the house to answer Sam's visit. It had been an instinctual move, but he wasn't sure it had been the right one. The big man had a curious nature, his eyes missing nothing. Perhaps, on some level, Ben wanted to be caught—although he didn't think so. More likely, he had brought the tool with him because the best way to hide something is not to hide it at all. People never look carefully at what's directly in front of them. He had learned that lesson over the past year. He had learned it well.

He got down on his hands and knees, reaching his arms into the hole. The tips of his fingers dug for purchase at the corners of the lid, and then he was lifting it upward, casting it aside on the grass next to him. Inside the crate was a blue duffel bag wrapped in plastic, and he brought it to the surface. He got to his feet, removing the bag from the plastic and carrying it—almost gingerly—into the house.

In the kitchen, he placed his possession on the table and unzipped it. Inside was his passport, a map of Mexico, ten thousand dollars in small bills, and a series of postcards he'd received sporadically in the mail over the past two months. On the kitchen table was another postcard, one that had arrived in his mailbox three days ago. The front displayed a photograph of an old church rising up from amid a lush tapestry of variegated gardens.
Villahermosa,
it said.
La Esmeralda del Sureste
. Beautiful village. The emerald of the southeast. On the back was Ben's name and mailing address—nothing more. No brief personal note or return address. But the message had been clear enough:
We are here. We are safe. Come if you want
.

The first card, he remembered, had come from the town of Tampico. It had arrived in his mailbox two and a half months after they'd disappeared. He had been sitting right here at the kitchen table sorting through mail when the thing had slid out from between two larger envelopes onto the flat wooden surface in front of him. He'd turned it over in his hands, curious but not yet realizing its significance. Then his body froze when he saw the soft slopes and curves of the handwritten letters—unmistakably Susan's writing. He'd stared at those letters for a long time, as if he were an astonished biologist encountering a novel species of animal for the first time. Eventually, he'd turned the card over again to study the front.
Tampico,
it said in pink cursive writing overlying a picture of a white sand beach, the shimmer of the setting sun reflecting off the water's surface. “
Tampico,
” he'd repeated to himself, the word sounding surreal and otherworldly in his own ears. The urge had fallen upon him to leave at that very moment, to purchase a plane ticket and to just go—to leave everything behind, bolting in the direction of the only contact he'd received from his family in more than two months.

Several considerations, however, had prevented him from doing just that. The most significant concern being,
What if they're just passing through?
What if he got there to find that his wife and children had already moved on? And how would he go about finding them in the first place? Would he wander the streets asking people in English—the only language he spoke—whether they'd seen an American mother with two boys fitting Joel's and Thomas's descriptions? Tampico was a tourist destination. How many families vacationing there fit that exact picture? No, it wouldn't work. He'd needed something more to go on.

For the time being, therefore, he had decided to wait, imagining that since Susan had sent him one postcard advising him of their whereabouts, more were sure to follow. Six weeks passed without further contact. Each day he'd stalk the mailbox, certain that
this
would be the day, and each day his heart would sicken with despair when he rummaged through the bills, catalogs, and assorted junk mail to find . . . nothing.

Then one day it came. A second postcard. On the front was a picture of a large pyramidal relic, above it the name
El Tajín
. Entering the name into an electronic search engine on his desktop computer identified it as a famous archeological site to the north of Veracruz, Mexico, along the Gulf of Mexico some 250 miles south of Tampico. They had moved on. This time, he decided, he would go after them.

Another concern had worried him, though.
Would he be followed?
Both the Sheriff's Department and the FBI had been keeping tabs on him since Susan had taken the boys and run. If he suddenly purchased a ticket to Mexico, it was likely that someone in law enforcement would know about it. Traveling by car would be better, he decided one evening, a large map of the United States and Mexico sprawled on the kitchen table in front of him. He sat back to ponder the details, absently running his hand across the top of Alex's broad head. Suddenly, he realized something else he hadn't considered. What would he do about the dog? On the one hand, Alex was the only family he had left, the only one who hadn't deserted him. On the other hand, traveling with a 180-pound Great Dane was not exactly the best way to keep a low profile. Finding accommodating hotels would be a persistent problem, and he doubted whether he'd even be allowed to bring the dog across the border. Eventually, he'd turned to the only person he felt he could trust with the responsibility.

“No problem, Dr. S. You leave that glandular freak to me.”

“I may be gone for a while, Nat. I'm not sure when I'll be coming back. Are you sure you can handle—”

“You leave me a good supply of beer and keep payin' the electric bills, and you can take a six-month trip to China, as far as I'm concerned.”

There was something else to discuss. The postcard from
Villahermosa
had come only a week after the last one, as if Susan and the boys had to leave their prior location unexpectedly. Ben could think of several possible reasons for their hurried relocation, but the one that kept surfacing in his mind involved his oldest son, a long sharp object, and the remains of yet another mutilated body discovered in his wake. In his mind, he could see the gaping holes left behind—flesh torn away by human teeth—and he wondered to himself once more:
What sort of creature am I chasing? And what will I do when I find it?
Then Nat's voice was pulling him back to the moment.

“Yo, Dr. S. You still with me?” Nat searched his face with eyes that did not yet seem to understand that the world is full of predators, and that they are often much closer than we allow ourselves to believe.

Ben pulled the first postcard from his back pocket, the one from Tampico. “I need to ask you another favor,” he said.

“What's that?”

“I'm expecting some additional correspondence from the same friend who sent me this.” He handed Nat the postcard. “If any more of these show up in the mail”—he tapped the card with his index finger—“I need to know about it. I'll call you periodically to check in with you.”

Nat looked up at him skeptically. “A
friend
is sending you these.”

Ben nodded slowly. He felt stupid for taking this chance—he was making himself incredibly vulnerable—but it was the only way he would know if they moved on again. He
had
to trust someone, and strangely, that someone turned out to be this lanky twenty-two-year-old standing in front of him.

“And I imagine you wouldn't want me to mention anything about this friend to, say . . . Chief Garston, for example.”

Ben's face remained flat, devoid of expression—or so he hoped. “Chief Garston would not be interested in this friend, Nat. I wouldn't bother him with it.”

“No,” Nat agreed. “I can't imagine bothering him with stuff like that.”

“Thank you,” Ben said, unable to recall a time when he'd uttered those words with greater sincerity. He had begun to leave, but what Nat said next made him pause in mid-stride.

“'Bout time you went looking for them.”

Ben turned and looked back at his assistant. “Is it?”

Nat's face was still, his eyes clear and earnest. “I would,” he responded.

“And when you found them?” Ben asked. “What then?”

Nat shrugged. “Don't know. I guess I'd try to bring them home.”

“I don't think he's salvageable,” Ben said. “He won't stop. More innocent people will die because of him.”

“Maybe there's nothing you can do about him then,” Nat mused, “and maybe there is. But there's more to this situation than just Thomas. This is about what's best for all of you. Isn't it?”

She opened her eyes in the dark, the fragments of a dream she could not quite remember slipping from her shoulders like a tattered shawl. Something had awakened her—a dog in the street, perhaps, yapping incessantly into the predawn hours. She listened. There was scratching to her right near the large dresser she shared with Ben. Alex must have entered their room last night, pushing the door open with the top of his head, curling up on the floor beside them. She should get up and let him out. She should—

A chair shifted near the corner of the room, and she froze, her eyes straining to penetrate the darkness.
Someone is in here with us
. Someone had broken into the house and . . . no . . . that wasn't quite right. Where was she? She forced herself to wake up more completely, to push herself the last few inches to the surface, and as she did the reality of her situation came tumbling back in on her—a nightmare that was not a nightmare at all, but rather the nightmarish truth of her existence. A phone call from a neighbor (“
There're a bunch of cop cars sitting in your driveway
”) . . . a hasty stop at the bank to withdraw as much cash as possible . . . a frantic car ride across the desert . . . the tense, heart-pounding moments at the border crossing . . . and now . . . a motel room, in a city she could barely recall. And how many others before this? How many days spent etching out the terms of their survival in the thin veil of anonymity, how many nights spent lying on a dilapidated mattress in a run-down motel room as the paint peeled imperceptibly from the walls of their lives and she wondered how much more of this she could stand?

The soft scratching noise began again, and this time she tried to focus more concretely on where it was coming from. Through the slightly parted curtains, a vague hint of light illuminated the room in amorphous, ghostly detail. Someone was sitting in the chair by the small table near the foot of her bed. That was where the sound was coming from—a steady, methodical scratching of a pen across some flattened medium. As her vision adjusted to the light and the shadows coalesced into more discernible detail, she realized it was Thomas. He had been sitting there and watching them with his dispassionate eyes while they slept.
What is he doing?
she wondered. The sound of the pen's scratching went on and on.