The Edge of Sleep (13 page)

And he could smell the boys. Their young bodies, their fresh skins. Their fear.

On one of the nature shows Ash had seen a wolf spider that built itself a den, complete with a camouflaged opening. When the spider’s prey approached too closely to the mouth of the den, the spider popped out and grabbed it, sucking it back into the lair in an instant. Ash had watched the show with fascination, wondering how the spider knew how to do what it did, how it knew that something edible would ever come by, how it knew the method to construct its elaborate web and den. He knew that he could never do anything that intricate himself.

“It just does it by instinct,” Dee had said. “It doesn’t know what it’s doing.”

But that was no explanation for Ash. He would not have known what he was doing, either, and he was certain he had no instinct to guide him through anything so elaborate.

And why was it called a wolf spider? Ash had seen wolves on other shows and they didn’t act at all like the spider. They hunted in packs and ran for miles and miles to catch their prey and only lived in holes when they had babies. There were always so many puzzles on the animal shows. Dee seemed to understand them all, even when she was attending only peripherally, dropping her comments in passing as she paced the room, but her explanations never helped Ash.

“They call it a wolf spider because of all that hair. It looks like fur,” she had explained. “Didn’t you hear him say that? I heard it and I wasn’t even listening.”

Ash hadn’t heard because he was so busy watching, but even if he had he would not have understood. Rabbits had fur, too. So did mice. Why didn’t they call it a rabbit spider? He loved to watch the shows, anyway.

Now, as he lay under the blanket in the back of the car, he thought of the wolf spider. Was this what it felt like as it waited for something to walk by close enough to grab? Was it a little bit scared, as Ash was? And excited, but sad, too, about what it would have to do? Did it get nervous?

Ash wanted to go to the bathroom, it seemed to be taking Dee so long. It always seemed to take her too long, but she said that was just because he was anxious. He knew he didn’t dare to leave the car to find a toilet. He didn’t even dare to sit up and look to see if Dee was coming.

“That’s all we need,” Dee had told him. “You lifting up from the backseat like a periscope. That wouldn’t look funny, would it?”

He knew she didn’t mean funny to laugh at, although Ash thought the vision of himself as a periscope was very comical.

There was to be no going to the bathroom, no peeking above the seat, no moving at all just in case someone happened to wander by and glance into the car.

Ash told himself he was the wolf spider. It wasn’t twitching around in its den while it waited. He had seen it. It stood like a statue, all its legs bent and ready to spring, its huge eyes peering straight ahead. The camera must have been right on top of it, but it didn’t twitch a muscle, not a hair on its body moved. If it had to go to the bathroom, it just didn’t, that’s all.

He heard footsteps approaching and opened his hands under the blanket to be ready to grab. His fingers were just like all of those spider’s legs, he thought, taut and poised.

He heard the door open, felt the weight of a body on the seat. Ash sprang like the wolf spider, engulfing the boy immediately, covering his body with the blanket as he shed it from himself. Ash’s arms locked around the boy’s body and his hand clamped over the boy’s face, pressing the cloth onto his mouth.

The car was already in motion but Ash stayed below the windows, knowing he was not to be seen by anyone until they were safely away. He lay atop the boy, pinning him to the floor with the weight of his body but careful not to crush him.

After the first moment of attack Ash adjusted his hand, making sure it covered only the boy’s mouth and not his nose, too. That was the only time when they really struggled, when he was inadvertently smothering them. Otherwise they lay very still. Ash thought of the insects captured by the wolf spider. They hardly seemed to struggle at all as the spider wrapped them in silk. He thought of the inflated frog being swallowed by the snake, only its enormous eyes registering protest.

Ash understood that the spider turned its victim into a mummy with the silk, not only immobilizing it but preserving it for consumption at a later time. In a way that was what he was doing with the blanket. He wasn’t just preventing the boy from struggling. He was wrapping him up for storage.

Not that they were going to eat him, exactly. Ash thought. But Dee would drain the juices from him, in time. She would leave him dry and hollow.

“Don’t you hurt my beautiful boy,” Dee said. She sounded excited, merry, almost, as if it were Christmas and the package Ash held in his arms was the best one of all and just for her. And it was for her, of course. For her and Ash, too, but mostly for her.

The car was gathering speed, which meant they were away from the town center and heading toward the highway. Soon, with the roar and speed of the thruway to mask all sounds. Ash would be able to get up and unwrap the package. It wouldn’t matter if the boy yelled then; no one would hear him above the noise of traffic.

Then they would drive and drive; it didn’t matter where as long as it was on the thruway. They would drive the twenty miles to home and past it, just keep going, then turn and come back the other way, killing time until it was dark and safe to return to the motel under cover of darkness. Ash would wrap the boy in the blanket once more and rush him into the privacy of their room in a matter of seconds, too quick for anyone to see, too fast for the boy to scream or kick his way free.

In the meantime Dee would explain to the boy what his duties and responsibilities were and what she expected of him. He wouldn’t understand at first; they never did. He would complain and tell them to take him home. If he was very foolish, or very frightened, he would threaten to call the police. Dee would forgive him today. She always forgave everything at first. She was so happy about her new present that she didn’t care if it had little imperfections. It was only with time that the imperfections would become apparent to her, and then they would seem to grow and grow until that was all she could see. The image of her beautiful boy would fade and she would see only ingratitude and disappointment.

But that would be a few weeks from now. In the meantime. Dee was his beautiful eagle again, soaring so gracefully above him. And the boy was her unfledged chick, confined by necessity and the surrounding dangers of hunters and lofty heights to the nest where she would care for him. And when she flew away to find food for her new hatchling. Ash would keep it company in the nest, like a big flightless bird himself, no more able to leave the aerie than was the boy, but stronger, protective. Even instructive. Ash could teach the young bird things it must know to please its mother. He could never teach it quite enough, it seemed, for eventually it would fail to please. No matter how hard Ash tried, no matter how manfully the boy attempted to win her approval, ultimately he would fail.

And then the bits of flesh that the mother eagle carried back to the nest to feed her chick would change. They would turn into pieces torn from the chick itself. She would feed the chick itself to eat. And the young bird, so carefully schooled by then in gratitude and submission, would dine upon itself without complaint until it was all gone.

Chapter 9

T
HERE WERE OVER TWO DOZEN
witnesses to nothing. The police had gathered that many employees and shoppers who were, or might have been, present at a nonevent.

Interest dulled by repetition, the local police dutifully took down the stories of people who had seen everything except the one thing that mattered. Karen and Becker moved among them. FBI identification displayed, eavesdropping and sometimes adding a question themselves.

It was like interviewing the neighbors after a Mafia murder, Karen whispered to Becker. Nobody knew nothing. In this case, however, they were not being uncooperative. They were like witnesses at a magic show who had seen but not seen, and did not know what the conjurer had done.

“What you got to realize is this place has always got crowds,” said the manager of a doughnut stand whose open-fronted shop gave him a large view of the main floor of the mall. “I’m not saying business is all that great. I’m not saying people are buying much—but they’re here is what I’m saying.” The man sucked on a toothpick, waggling it up and down when he paused.

Becker stood just behind the interviewing officer, watching the man whose name plate identified him as Fred.

“They come in groups, they come in pairs, they come alone. Who can keep track, you know what I mean? This morning they brought people from the nursing homes. You never saw so many walkers and canes and wheelchairs. They bring them every two weeks as an outing. Just coming here is a treat for them, I guess. They certainly don’t buy any big ticket items, you know. At that age, why bother?”

The man called Fred spoke with his teeth clamped together to hold the toothpick in place, giving him the look of a man with lockjaw, Becker thought.

“This afternoon there were the kids from the school. I saw them, sure, they trooped right by here on their way to the scientific toy shop, I guess. I didn’t see where they went. Sometimes it’s the pet store. They look at the tropical fish as part of their science projects, something like that, I don’t know. I know they don’t stop here.”

“Kids don’t like doughnuts?” Becker asked.

The police officer in charge shot Becker an annoyed glance until he noticed the FBI medallion on Becker’s chest. The officer still looked annoyed but said nothing.

“Who doesn’t like a doughnut? But these kids were supervised, you know what I mean? You got a teacher in front of the pack, another one alongside, a school nurse bringing up the rear to get the stragglers. It’s like a cattle drive or something. They’re not about to get loose to come over for a quick doughnut.”

“Did you see any of the kids alone at any time?” the officer asked.

“How’m I supposed to know that? You see individual kids alone all the time. How do I know if they’re from that group or with their friends or with their parents or just here to ride the escalators. They don’t wear signs saying ‘I am alone.’ ”

“Do you pass your shop to get to the men’s room?” Becker asked.

The manager thought for a moment, striking the toothpick with his tongue so that it danced up and down.

“You can, sure, but I’m not that close to the john, if that’s what you mean. You can pass down the whole corridor to get to the john. Or you can get there from the other direction.”

“Did you see any boys in the company of an adult during that time?” the officer asked.

“That time? What time?”

“The time we’re talking about,” the officer said wearily. This was his fifth interview in less than an hour. It was like asking people sitting on their lawn if they’d seen any grass. “Between three-thirty and four o’clock.”

Fred snorted rudely as if the cop were an idiot. “Did I see any boys with adults between three-thirty and four o’clock? When do you think parents take their kids shopping?”

The cop tried to ignore the sarcasm by controlling his breathing. It made him sound more impatient than ever.

“Did you see anything unusual? Any sign that any of these adults was forcing the children in any way?”

“Forcing them? You got kids? You got to force them half the time.”

“What do you mean?” Becker asked.

“Well, they’re like wild animals, ain’t they? You got to control them. So you give them a yank on the arm, a swat on the butt, you know what I mean.”

“Yes,” said Becker.

“Sometimes you grab them by the scruff of the neck and march them along. Is that what you mean by forcing them?” Fred was now addressing himself to Becker, attracted to the FBI initials like a moth to a brighter light than the ordinary policeman.

“Did you see any of that?”

“I see it all the time. Did I see it between three-thirty and four? How do I know? Probably. You see parents with kids, you’re going to see some forcing. Nothing wrong with that, I do it myself. If I didn’t give my kids a yank by the ear every now and then, we’d never get anywhere. Frankly, they need a swift kick every so often.”

“Thank you for being so frank,” said Becker. “Did you notice any men with boys? That’s not as common, is it?”

“No, it’s not. Except on the weekends. Then you see plenty of it, guys pushing strollers, guys with Cub Scouts, you name it.”

“How about today? Between three-thirty and four.”

“Look, I don’t really keep that close track of what I’m seeing when, you know? It all just kind of passes in front of you, people, just lots of people. You notice the real strange ones, or the real good-looking ones, but otherwise ...” He shrugged. “I get paid to sell doughnuts, is what it is. I’m a people watcher, yeah, but I ain’t a student, if you see what I’m saying. Now you, you guys in the FBI are trained observers, right?”

“How about weight lifters?”

“I mean, you’re trained to look at a crowd and pick out the one guy you’re after by the way he’s walking, or something, right? Is it true you can look at a guy and see if he’s carrying a gun?”

Becker looked directly at the policeman, his eyes holding on the holstered pistol on the man’s belt.

“He’s carrying one, for instance,” Becker said.

Fred laughed. “No, I mean ...”

“Did you see any weight lifters, any body builders, any men who were particularly pumped up?”

“That’s not uncommon these days.”

“Did you see anyone who looked particularly strong with a nine-year-old boy? That ought to be something a little different that you’d notice, wouldn’t it?”

Fred paused for a moment, his eyes falling from Becker to a point in the middle distance. He even took the toothpick from his mouth.

“No,” he said at last. “I don’t think I saw that combination.”

“Did you see any men who looked like that at all, with or without a kid? Did you see any men out of the ordinary, period?”

The manager shrugged again. “What’s ordinary? We get all kinds in here. We get the whole world through here, eventually. But no, I know what you mean, and no. I didn’t see anybody like that. I didn’t see anybody I’d call suspicious at all.”