NOS4A2(105)

At some point she had to move, couldn’t stay on the couch anymore.

“If anyone is hungry, I can make something to eat,” she said. It was almost nine-thirty in the evening by then. “I’ve got a full fridge.”

“We’ll send out for something,” Daltry said. “Don’t trouble yourself.”

They had the TV on, turned to NECN, New England Cable News. They had gone up with the alert about Wayne an hour before. Vic had seen it twice and knew she couldn’t watch it again.

First they would show the photo she had given them of Wayne in an Aerosmith T-shirt and an Avalanche wool cap, squinting into bright spring sunlight. She already regretted it, didn’t like how the cap hid his black hair and made his ears stick out.

This would be followed by a photograph of Vic herself, the one from the Search Engine website. She assumed they were showing that one to get a pretty girl on the screen—she was wearing makeup and a black skirt and cowboy boots and had her head tipped back to laugh, a jarring image, considering the situation.

They didn’t show Manx. They didn’t even say his name. They described the kidnappers only as two white males in an antique black Rolls-Royce.

“Why don’t they tell people who they’re looking for?” Vic asked the first time she saw the report.

Daltry shrugged, said he would find out, got off the couch and wandered into the yard to talk to some other men. When he came back in, though, he didn’t offer any new information, and when the report ran the second time, they were still looking for two white males, out of the approximately 14 million white males to be found in New England.

If she saw the report a third time and there wasn’t a picture of Charlie Manx—if they didn’t say his name—she thought she might put a chair through the TV.

“Please,” Vic said now. “I’ve got some slaw and cold ham. A whole loaf of bread. I could lay out sandwiches.”

Daltry shifted in his seat and looked uncertainly at some of the other policemen in the room, torn between hunger and decency.

Officer Chitra said, “I think you should. Of course. I’ll come with you.”

It was a relief to get out of the living room, which was too crowded with bodies, cops coming and going, walkie-talkies squawking continuously. She stopped to take in the view of the lawn through the open front door. In the glare of the spotlights, it was brighter in the yard at night than it had been in the midday fog. She saw the toppled fence rails and a man in rubber gloves measuring the tire treads imprinted in the soft loam.

The cop cars were flashing their strobes as if at the scene of an emergency, and never mind that the emergency had driven away hours before. Wayne strobed in her mind just like that, and for a moment she felt dangerously light-headed.

Chitra saw her sag and took her elbow, helped her the rest of the way into the kitchen. It was better in there. They had the room to themselves.

The kitchen windows looked out on the dock and the lake. The dock was lit up by more of those big tripod-mounted spotlights. A cop with a flashlight had waded into the water up to his thighs, but she couldn’t tell to what purpose. A plainclothesman watched from the end of the dock, pointing and giving directions.

A boat floated forty feet offshore. A boy stood in the front end, next to a dog, staring at the cops, the lights, the house. When Vic saw the dog, she remembered Hooper. She had not thought of him once since seeing the headlights of the Wraith in the mist.

“Someone needs to . . . go look for the dog,” Vic said. “He must be . . . outside somewhere.” She had to stop every few words to catch her breath.

Chitra looked at her with great sensitivity. “Do not worry about the dog now, Ms. McQueen. Have you had any water? It is important to hydrate yourself.”

“I’m surprised he isn’t . . . isn’t barking his . . . his head off,” Vic said. “With all this commotion.”

Chitra ran a hand down Vic’s arm, once, and again, then squeezed Vic’s elbow. Vic looked at the policewoman in sudden understanding.

“You had so much else to worry about,” Chitra said.

“Oh, God,” Vic said, and began to cry again, her whole body shaking.

“No one wanted to upset you even more.”

She rocked, holding herself, crying in a way she hadn’t since those first days after her father left her and her mother. Vic had to lean on the counter for a while, wasn’t sure her legs had the strength to continue to support her. Chitra reached over and, tentatively, rubbed her back.

“Shhh,” said Vic’s mother, dead for two months. “Just breathe, Vicki. Just breathe for me.” She said it in a light Indian accent, but Vic recognized her mother’s voice all the same. Recognized the feel of her mother’s hand on her back. Everyone you lost was still there with you, and so maybe no one was ever lost at all.

Unless they went with Charlie Manx.

In a while Vic sat down and drank a glass of water. She drained the whole thing in five swallows, without stopping for air, was desperate for it. It was lukewarm and sweet and good and tasted of the lake.

Chitra opened cupboards, looking for paper plates. Vic got up and over the other woman’s objections began to help with sandwiches. She made a row of paper plates and put two pieces of white bread on each, tears dripping off her nose and falling on the bread.

She hoped Wayne didn’t know that Hooper was dead. She thought sometimes that Wayne was closer to Hooper than he was to either her or Lou.