No mommy. He waited a second and said, “Mommy?” one last time before pulling the phone from his face and stabbing the End button with the tip of his finger.
Where could she be? Sleeping? Going potty? He guessed she might be doing either thing. Maybe if he waited ten minutes and tried again, she’d be there. But what if she was gone? Or what if she was watching a late movie on TV the way she and Daddy used to do, with a big bowl of popcorn on the sofa beside her and the ringer turned off so nobody could interrupt the show?
It didn’t matter. He couldn’t wait ten minutes. Zach was still inside, and the bad man was wandering around somewhere, maybe hunting after Trevor at that very moment.
Something moved in the bushes.
Trevor squatted down a little, as if the something might come flying at his head. Another rustling followed, and a small and furry creature waddled out into the open. A raccoon. Trevor shook his head and straightened.
The raccoon moved along, not looking at Trevor, not seeming to notice him at all, and Trevor returned his attention to the cell phone.
He knew only one other number. He tried it. The phone rang again but then beeped at him. Trevor peeked at the screen. The battery icon flashed.
Oh no. He chewed on the inside of his cheek like it was bubble gum. Please please please please, he thought, please answer please please please answer please.
“Yes?” said a voice that sounded like a scared-little-boy version of his daddy, “Hello.”
When Trevor talked, he did so as fast as he could. If the phone’s battery died before he gave his daddy the directions he’d memorized, he would never have another chance.
The phone beeped mid-sentence, and Trevor somehow managed to talk a little bit faster.
From his place in the bushes, Hank watched the raccoon cross the bare patch of land and re-enter the undergrowth on the other side. He wanted to jump out and stomp it to the ground. A raccoon was a troublesome, dirty little thing.
And so was the boy.
No, wait. That wasn’t right. Davy was a good boy. Davy was a perfectly fine little boy.
The child worried over the phone and then pressed it to his ear. Upon hearing Davy’s awkward progress through the woods, Hank had originally intended to move directly to him, snatch him up and drag him back into the house, but now he thought he’d wait. He wasn’t sure how the kid had gotten loose in the first place. He knew he’d locked the door—the key was in his pocket. Davy was clever, he guessed. Davy couldn’t be chained. He wanted to see what Davy did next.
The boy talked, and Hank extracted a new toothpick from his pocket. The tip slid between his lips and poked him in the gums, but he didn’t care.
His plan had not been perfect, especially the part involving Georgie’s mother, but now, listening, he thought maybe things hadn’t gone as badly as he’d first thought, that his scheme might still be falling into place in an unexpected but wonderful way.
The kid was giving directions, leading somebody here. Good directions, easily followed, though he seemed to babble like a brook. Hank would have been worried, would have thought maybe the kid was yakking to the cops, except for one word the boy had let slip, a word that was so gaspingly magnificent.
The word was Mommy.
THIRTY-FOUR
Libby wanted to rip the phone from Mike’s hand, talk to her son and make sure he was okay, but Mike seemed to be listening very intently, and she didn’t want to interrupt something important, something that might save her boy.
She stood at the end of the couch, shifting uncomfortably.
“—with a shotgun,” Mike said. “I remember.” He sat there and listened for a long time and then said, “Yeah.”
Libby moved closer, her ear pointed at the phone but still unable to hear more than the occasional word, things like road and tree and over, bits and pieces that were all but meaningless out of context.
“I know where that is,” Mike said and then listened again.
Libby watched, wouldn’t let herself blink. Trevor was alive. She wasn’t sure what was happening, how he’d gotten to a phone, but he was alive, and that was enough for now.
Escaped, she thought. Maybe Trevor had gotten free. She didn’t want to let herself believe that, didn’t want to get her hopes up, but she couldn’t help it. Escaped.
“Mommy’s here with me,” Mike said. He turned to face Libby, looked her in the eyes. He said, “Okay.”
Libby mouthed, what?
Mike ran a hand through his hair and turned away. “Just hold on, okay, bud. We both love you so…Trevor?” He turned the phone to look at it, then stuck it back against his ear. “Hello? Trev?”
Libby waited for what felt like a very long time before saying, “What is it? What happened?”
Mike looked at the phone’s indicator light, which was green. “I don’t…I guess his phone died.”
“What did he say? Where is he?”
Mike shut off the phone, tossed it onto the couch, and said, “He said he loves you. I’m supposed to tell you that.”
Libby didn’t move, didn’t speak. Tears she didn’t remember shedding flowed down her cheeks. Mike was pulling something off the table beside the couch, a small white rectangle, but Libby’s vision was too blurred to make any sense of it. Mike retrieved the phone and dialed a number, referring back to the blurry white thing after every two or three numbers. He crossed his free arm over his chest, squeezed it into his armpit, and paced. Libby wiped at her cheeks, rubbed her eyes with the backs of her hands, tried to say something and only sobbed.
“Hello,” Mike said, “Deputy Willis?”
Still crying, Libby moved to the couch and plopped down on the edge.
“I just got a call from my son,” Mike said, “gave me about the best directions you ever heard. I can lead you right to him.” He turned around, walked past Libby, and then turned again. “Do you have a pen?” Turn. Walk. Turn. Walk. “What do you mean?” He stopped pacing.
Libby watched him, the tears finished now, the front of her shirt damp but not soaked.
“Well, when will that be? My son needs help now.” Mike was getting red, the way he always did in those rare instances when his temper got the better of him. “That’s bullshit,” he said. He dropped onto the couch beside Libby, his leg not quite touching hers. Libby wondered why Mike hadn’t called 911 instead of the deputy and realized that wouldn’t have done any good. As small as the sheriff’s department up here probably was, Willis might have been the only deputy on duty anyway, and this way Mike hadn’t needed to re-explain the entire situation.
“No, I won’t calm down,” he said. “I’ve got a fucking map to the bad guy for you and you’re telling me there’s nothing you can do?”
He had gone beyond red. Libby heard his teeth grinding. Not knowing what was going on, she didn’t know whether to try to calm him down or join him in his fury.
She settled for waiting.
In the blood-spattered kitchen of one Ms. Harriet Anne Thompson, Deputy Sheriff Lester Willis listened to the cursing and the screaming without flinching. He’d heard worse.
“Listen,” he said during a break in Pullman’s tirade. “I can’t just leave a crime scene. I’ve got a dead body here and a partner already gone home for the night. Can you understand that?” He looked at the woman’s corpse again and shook his head. “But if you’ll give me those directions, I’ll get on the phone to the dispatcher and get every available deputy and emergency responder out to your boy as soon as possible.” He walked alongside the trail of maroon footprints, staying far enough away that he wouldn’t contaminate them. He pulled a pad of paper and a pen from his pocket and wrote, holding the cell phone to his ear with his shoulder.