NOS4A2(116)

“Is that in my file?” Vic asked. “How I take my coffee?”

“The cream was in the fridge. You must use it for something. And a coffee spoon was sitting in the sugar jar.”

“Elementary, my dear Watson,” Vic said.

“I used to go dressed as Holmes for Halloween,” Hutter said. “Had the pipe and the deerstalker cap and all the rest. What about you? What did you wear for trick-or-treat?”

“A straitjacket,” Vic said. “I’d go as an escaped mental patient. It was good practice for the rest of my life.”

Hutter’s smile flattened and went away.

She sat at the table with Vic and handed her the iPad. She explained how to swipe through the gallery to look at the different pictures of hammers.

“Why does it matter what he hit me with?” Vic asked.

“You don’t know what matters until after you’ve seen it. So you try to see everything.”

Vic swiped past sledgehammers, hardware-store hammers, croquet mallets.

“What the hell is this? A database dedicated to hammer murderers?”

“Yes.”

Vic glanced at her. Hutter’s face had returned to its usual bland state of impassivity.

Vic swiped through some more pictures, then paused. “This. It was this one.”

Hutter looked at the screen. On it was a picture of a foot-long hammer with a rectangular stainless-steel head, a crosshatched handle, and a sharp hook curving from the end.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Because of the hook. That’s the one. What the hell kind of hammer is that?”

Hutter pulled her lower lip into her mouth, then pushed back her chair and stood up. “Not one you buy at the hardware store. I have to make a call.”

She hesitated, one hand on the back of Vic’s chair.

“Do you think you’d be up for making a statement to the press this afternoon? We’ve had good play on the cable news channels. It has a lot of angles. Everyone knows the Search Engine stories, so there’s that. I’m sorry to say that a lot of them are talking about this as a real life-and-death game of Search Engine. A personal appeal for help will keep the story active. And awareness is our best weapon.”

“Has the press figured out that Manx also kidnapped me when I was a teenager?” Vic asked.

Hutter’s brow furrowed, as in thought. “Mm. No, they haven’t worked that out yet. And I don’t think you should mention it in your statement. It’s important to keep the media focused on the information that matters. We need people on the lookout for your son and the car. That’s what we talk about. Everything else is insignificant at best, a distraction at worst.”

“The car, my son, and Manx,” Vic said. “We want everyone on the lookout for Manx.”

“Yes. Of course.” She took two steps toward the door, then turned back and said, “You’ve been wonderful, Victoria. You’ve been very strong in a scary time. You’ve done so much I hate to ask for more. But when you’re ready, we’ll need to sit down today and I have to get the whole story in your words. I need to know more about what Manx did to you. It could greatly enhance our chances of finding your son.”

“I already told you what he did to me. I gave you the whole story yesterday. Bashed me with a hammer, chased me to the lake, drove off with the kid.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not making myself clear. I’m not talking about what Manx did to you yesterday. I’m talking about 1996. I’m talking about when he kidnapped you.”


HUTTER, VIC FELT, WAS A THOROUGH WOMAN. PATIENT AND SENSIBLE. She was, in her patient, sensible, thorough way, working toward the conclusion that Vic was deluded about Charlie Manx. But if she didn’t believe that Wayne had been taken by Manx, then what did she think had happened?

Vic had an awareness of threat she couldn’t quite isolate. It was like driving and suddenly knowing there was black ice under the tires and that any sudden movement might send the car spinning out of control.

I don’t doubt someone fought you, Hutter had said. I don’t think anyone doubts that.

And: You spent a month in a Colorado mental hospital, where you were diagnosed with severe PTSD and schizophrenia.

Sitting at the table with her coffee, in a state of relative quiet and stillness, Vic put it together at last. When it came to her, she felt a cool, dry sensation on the nape of her neck, a prickling across her scalp, the physical indicators of both wonder and horror; she was conscious of feeling both in equal measure. She swallowed some warm coffee to drive away the sick chill and its corresponding sensation of alarm. She made an effort to remain perfectly composed, going over it in her mind.

So. Hutter thought Vic had killed Wayne herself, in a psychotic fit. Killed the dog and then drowned Wayne in the lake. They only had her word that someone had fired a gun; no one had found so much as a single bullet, not a single casing. The lead had gone into the water, and the brass had stayed in the gun. The fence was smashed and the yard torn up, the only part of her story they couldn’t figure out yet. Sooner or later, though, they’d come up with an explanation for that, too. They’d invent something and force it to fit with the other facts.

They had her pegged as a Susan Smith, the woman from South Carolina who drowned her children, then told a whopping lie about how they’d been kidnapped by a black man, kept the nation whipped up in a frenzy of racial hysteria for about a week. That was why the networks weren’t talking about Manx. The police didn’t believe in him. They didn’t even believe that a kidnapping had occurred at all but were going along with that part of it for now, probably to cover themselves legally.