Sno sat on the tarp along the bank of the river, listening to the water rush. There was a line in the water, but she wasn't eager for a fish to bite it. The guys were in their sweat lodge out in the woods, but she could hear the drums thumping across the clearing. They were comforting, like the bass vibrating from the rehearsal room at Raydir's, giving the house a heartbeat. This wasn't frenetic or fast, though, just a steady throb that was soothing, lulling her to sleep late at night. Well, that and something from Raydir's liquor cabinet.
She had been sitting there most of the day, watching the silver of the water's sparkle, listening to the ripple and the thump, smelling smoke rising from the sweat lodge, thinking about things.
"Hi there. Didn't know anybody else was out this far," a woman's voice said behind her.
She turned to see a washed-out-looking hippie woman with a backpack standing behind her, appearing like a ghost in the clearing where no one had been before.
"Sorry, didn't mean to startle you," the woman said. "My old man and me live up the river a ways. I'm just going to town to bring in supplies. Can I bring you anything?"
"Oh, no. No, thank you," Sno said.
"I didn't know anybody was staying around here now."
"We're only here for a while," Sno said. "Or rather, the guys are. I'm their guest."
"Oh, yeah?" the woman asked and raised an eyebrow.
"Nah, nothing like that. It's kind of a spiritual retreat for all of us."
"Cool. I don't suppose you'd need anything to help you stay, like, mellow?"
"Maybe," Sno said, with guilty pleasure. This would be a great time to get stoned. She didn't think the guys would get too bent out of shape if she did a little something, especially if she scored enough for all of them. "Whatcha got?"
"Whidbey Gold," the woman said, grinning. "Primo stuff. Grown by independent botanists under optimum conditions of light, soil and temperature. It's cheap too.""Damn," Sno said. "I just forgot. I came from school and I don't have any money on me."
"How about your friends?"
"They're all occupied elsewhere."
"Bummer," the woman said. "But I'll tell you what, since we're neighbors and like that, I'll give you a sample joint, okay? When I come back, if you like it, maybe you can borrow some cash from one of your pals and I'll lay enough on you to keep you all in touch with the cosmos."
"That'd be really cool," Sno said, but she was starting to feel jumpy. There was something a little weirded-out about the woman, despite the fact that she seemed like a very cool and groovy person, as Grandma Hilda would have said. Something oddly familiar too. And distasteful. But hey, she was being nice. Free pot.
"Here you go. Don't bogart it. Save some for your buds, okay?"
"Sure," Sno said. "Thanks."
"No problem," the woman said.
"Have a good shopping trip," Sno said. "See you later."
She didn't see the woman's cruel smile as she turned away, or she would have recognized it.
* * *
Exhausted from her long night and day, Rose left the office after work and walked down to the ferry terminal, paid her fare, glad to see a ferry in dock so she wouldn't have to wait, and followed the crowd of commuters aboard. She ached in every bone, her head felt filled with glue and feathers and light from sleeplessness, and she congratulated herself for finding a boat, even though something seemed vaguely strange about it. She was just thrilled to get out on the Sound, away from the city and, she hoped, far from the influence of fairy godmothers with designs on her time and energy.
As commuters often did, though usually later at night, she commandeered one of the long, padded benches for herself and stretched out on it with her coat under her head for a pillow.
She didn't notice who sat on the benches on either side of her, and the tops were too high to see over while she was lying down.
She drifted off quickly but she didn't sleep as soundly as she expected to. She kept seeing faces, Felicity's, Sno's, Fred's, Paula Reece's. She had, she knew, an overly developed sense of responsibility. Even Felicity accused her of that, though it didn't make the godmother any less willing to exploit it.
"So when can I see the pictures?" A man's voice carried to her ears, from the next bench.
"I haven't taken any yet but I'll get some tonight. You'll like them, they're beautiful. And I was lucky to get a boy and a girl." There was a sort of drooling, lascivious tone to his voice that made Rose slide slowly up in her seat and listen a little more closely.
"There are possibilities there. How receptive do you think they'll be?"
"Oh, they'll be receptive," the other man said smoothly. "And they'll do what they're told."
Rose did not like this conversation. It was not so much what was said as the way it was said. Maybe it was just her profession that made her look at things this way, she told herself. Maybe she'd been seeing too many pederasts on a day-to-day basis. Probably this was just some father and a photographer getting ready to take the kids' pictures for the yearly Christmas card. But she didn't think so. And she wasn't sure what to do about it.
She listened a while longer but the conversation didn't get more or less incriminating. In fact, the men changed topics entirely to talk about politics—the school tax bill, from the sound of it. It was too dull. She tried to stay awake, but the night before had thoroughly done her in, and she drifted off again, only to be awakened by the announcement, "Now docking at Bainbridge Island. All drivers will please return to their cars now."
Bainbridge Island? Shit! Her car was in Bremerton. She had been so sleepy and confused she'd taken the wrong ferry. That was the thought that awakened her, but movement from the pederasts in the seat next door kept her alert. They must be getting off here. She peeked over the top of the seat to see the two men were leaving. Ducking back down for a moment so that they wouldn't spot her, she then rose and followed them to the stairs leading to the car deck. If she got their license numbers, the police could check them out, at least.
That was easier said than done, however, especially for someone in her blurry state of mind. The ferry was awash with commuters this time of the day, and she lost the two men in the crowd. She stepped aside and stood on the cement platform that separated the stairs from the main car deck and tried to look over the heads of the other passengers to spot her quarry. The two men looked much like the other business commuters—suits, haircuts, and she only saw their backs. One was white-haired and, she thought, bearded, medium size, relatively fit, the other brown-haired and of a similar size. Just when she thought it was hopeless, she saw the white-haired one climbing into a car, then spotted his companion in the driver's seat. Pushing her way through other commuters, she threaded through the other cars, now being started, to write down the license number. She had to fumble in her purse, standing in the river of thrumming cars, for a pen and something to write on and ended up scribbling the number on the flyleaf of her copy of Grimms'.
She finished getting it just as the first car began leaving. As she started scurrying out of the way of the cars, she glanced up to see the brown-haired man staring back at her in his rearview mirror.
She ducked back up the stairs and onto the ferry. What to do now? Her soul cried out for sleep, and there was often a commuter bus between Bainbridge and Bremerton. She debated for a moment and decided reluctantly against it. The bus would take her to Bremerton but not to either her house or her car, which was still at the ferry dock. No, the only thing left to do was to ride back to Seattle and get on the proper ferry the next time.Who were those men? How urgent was this? Ought she to try to contact Fred's office from the boat? Well, no, because all she had really was a license number and a rather vague conversation, plus a feeling about the conversation that in her present state could just as easily be a delusion. Not that she thought it was. You just couldn't go to the police with your womanly intuition and some citizen's license number.
She supposed she'd been thinking too much lately of the missing kids—Sno and the Bjornsen children, Hank and Gigi. The man had said he was lucky to have a boy and a girl, and that fit the Bjornsens. So did jillions of other kids all over the country.
* * *
"She was taking down my number!" Throckmorton bellowed. "That stupid bitch was taking down my number." He watched the rearview mirror intently, but the girl had gone. He almost missed the crewman's signal to drive off the ferry and ashore.
"So what?" Hopkins said, as they drove up the hill to the parking light at the intersection for the former City of Winslow, now called Bainbridge, like the rest of the island. "She can't do anything with it."
"She heard us talking," Throckmorton said. "She must have been sitting near us . . ."
"Well, I did suggest we have our little talk in the car belowdecks," Hopkins told him. "But no, you had to have your—er—cupcakes and eat them too. Besides, unless she had a tape recorder with her, which I very much doubt, she has absolutely nothing on either of us."
"That's easy for you to say. You've got your own little secret hideaway. I'll be the one who's harassed. It's my license plate number she took. And I'm a prominent man, I have my career to think of." Panic rose in Throckmorton's voice.
Hopkins bitterly regretted at that moment having someone who knew his public life as well as Throckmorton did also privy to his secret. Always before, the graphic films he had of Throckmorton and various young subjects, as well as still photographs, had provided sufficient insurance of the man's silence about those of Hopkins's amusements he shared with fellow enthusiasts.
Of course, they knew nothing about the basement—the little game with the lock was suspended on those rare occasions when other adults were present. The door was only left unlocked as a variation of Russian roulette he liked to play with the children—naturally, he never risked it with the older, more sophisticated ones. Any of those who might be a threat went straight to the cage in the basement after they had been useful. But with the younger ones, it was interesting to see how long it would take them to disobey, how long their fear would keep them from trying to contact the authorities (he did have a special code on his phone required to get an outside line, just in case, but the children didn't know it), how frightened of him they would be when he came home. A little hide-and-seek added a certain fillip to the other activities.
This could be something rather more serious, however, and they would be involved together. Hopkins didn't much like that but since he had pleasanter pressing matters awaiting him in his very private residence, he decided to await further developments before making a decision on this situation.
"You think I'm not concerned about the implications for my own career?" Hopkins asked, but his mind was working much faster than his calm and soothing speech indicated. "Tell you what. Turn here."
"What? I thought you were coming back to my place to give me the particulars."
"I was, but since you're so concerned about this, I thought we should try to cruise the parking lot and look for the woman coming off the ferry. Obviously, she wasn't driving or she would have gone to her car instead of back upstairs."
"Makes sense." Throckmorton pulled back into the parking lot.
"What did she look like? I didn't see her."
"Curly brown hair and dressed in gray," Throckmorton answered. "That was all I could make out in the mirror."
The description reminded Hopkins of someone he had seen that day enough for him to be even more uneasy than he had been before. "She doesn't seem to be getting off."
"You don't think she's going to make a report in Seattle, do you?"
"Why would she do that? But I'll tell you what. You have a car phone, don't you?"
"Of course."
"I'll go back to Seattle and look for her on the ferry. If I see her, I'll find out where she lives, where she's going, and deal with it. If you see her, you take care of it here. Either way, I'll call your car phone in forty-five minutes and find out if you've learned anything or tell you what I've learned."
"Fine, but we'll have to be discreet. You know how easily monitored car phones are. As a matter of fact, it's better if you call me at home. My wife's on business in Portland."
"How clever of you to think about being overheard at this late hour," Hopkins said sarcastically, then added, "Try not to get too paranoid over this. It's probably nothing. Perhaps license plates are a hobby of hers."
"Norman?"
"Yes?" Hopkins asked.
"What did you mean when you said deal with it?"
Hopkins smiled politely, as if telling a clerical worker how to handle paperwork. "Use your own judgment."
* * *
On the trip back, Rose thought, she could at least get some rest. There were very few people on the return trip, and once more she stretched out on a black padded bench, this one with a table and a shoulder-high privacy wall between it and the bench on the opposite side.
She was too sleepy to pay proper attention to where her purse was, and too fast asleep to notice when it was moved, searched and replaced.
She did notice, however, when the ferry docked in Seattle, that one of the few other passengers on board looked very much like the elder of the two men she had followed to the car deck. Furthermore, she had the distinct impression that he was aware of her behind him, though she couldn't say why. And there was something familiar about the stiffness of his shoulders and the way he carried his head.
Never mind. She would call Fred, by which time she could get on the Bremerton ferry and go home.
However, the phone at the ferry terminal was out of order, so unless she wanted to use the ship-to-shore, she'd have to wait until she got home.
By that time the Bremerton passenger ferry was docking, and she boarded and slept sitting up, since the benches were all occupied.
* * *
Hopkins had found the girl easily enough—he hadn't even needed the description once he saw her sleeping at the table benches in the stern of the boat, but she fit it well enough. He had noticed earlier in the day that the gray pants suit looked far too expensive for someone on her salary. So, Ms.—Rose something—was going to cause him trouble personally as well as being a thorn in his side professionally. He had taken care of the professional end earlier that day, and he could take care of this as well, if need be. Better if he delegated that little task though.
Her purse was within reach. He rifled it as quickly as possible, but it was rather large, and made heavy by a book of fairy tales. He lifted this and it dropped open. The license number was written on the flyleaf. While pretending to read the book, he quietly tore out the page and slipped it in his pocket.
Searching her wallet was somewhat trickier, even though the stern was almost deserted. Just when he had found her driver's license and was getting ready to note the number and her address, a crewman came in with a vacuum cleaner and began vacuuming the floors a couple of yards away.
Hopkins pocketed the license along with the page of the book, and, making a face as if the noise was bothering him, moved to the bow of the boat and stayed in the crowded cafeteria until the ferry returned to its Seattle terminal berth and he saw the girl disembark with the meager straggle of other passengers.
Waiting to board were hordes of commuters returning to Bainbridge, but the girl marched past these. Hopkins expected her to go down the steps to the street level or cross the overpass tunnel to First and Marion, but she did neither. Instead, she reentered the terminal and promptly disappeared through the ticket gate to the Bremerton area. Why had she taken two boats? It must mean she'd deliberately been spying on them! He checked the driver's license in her pocket. At least there was a good reason for her to go to Bremerton. She lived there.
Not wanting her to spot him again, he left the terminal and walked over to the Federal Building at First and Marion to make his call from one of the phone booths. He got Throckmorton's answering machine, which fortunately had a very businesslike message instead of something cute and prolonged, with music.
"Hi there, yer honor," he said in a breezy, folksy voice not easily recognized as his own. "This is Samson's Nursery in Bremerton calling you about that rosebush you wanted. It's in but it's going to take a lot of pruning." He checked the address on the girl's license: 1249 Beach Drive. He couldn't give too many clues and he assumed she was listed in the book. "It'll be $12.49 with tax. Call me if you have any trouble finding us again. Just drive along the beach till you see our sign." As an afterthought he added the ubiquitous, "Have a nice day."
* * *
Hank poked into the upstairs rooms. Besides his bedroom and Gigi's, there was what looked like a nursery for little babies and a master bedroom with a mirror on the ceiling and bathrooms for every bedroom.
He had to go while he was in the master bedroom and just because it was close, he decided to use the john there. The door was tightly closed and there was a red light beside it. Was that how you knew if somebody was already in there? Hank wondered. Couldn't they just say so?
He cracked the door open. It wasn't shiny and tiled and mirrored as he expected, but black inside, dark, and it smelled funny, like chemicals, and had clotheslines strung with hanging things. There was the sound of dripping. His fingers automatically found a light switch in the usual place beside the door and he flipped it.
The flapping things were pictures! Oh, so that was it. The guy was a photographer and this was the darkroom. Oops. Maybe he shouldn't have turned on the light, Hank thought. He knew enough about darkrooms from TV that you weren't supposed to go in them because pictures were developed in there and the light could hurt them. He peered into the trays in the bathtub, but it didn't look to him like there was anything in there. How about the hanging ones, could they be hurt?
He stared up at the clotheslines over his head and tried to make out if the pictures were okay—they all looked like naked baby pictures at first, and then he saw that some of the naked kids weren't infants and then that there were men with the kids. Doing stuff. Weird stuff. Some of the kids in the pictures were crying and some were tied up.He knew right then that he and Gigi had to get away, had to go find a cop even if they couldn't find Mom.
He tried to remember if they had driven past a mall or a shopping strip or a town of any kind on the way to the man's house. He thought there might be a 7-Eleven down the street.
"C'mon, Gigi, we gotta go," he said. And just then, they heard the car drive up.
"Why?" she asked. "I wanna make cookies."
"No, you don't," he said. "The man's a slime bag. He's going to do bad things to us."
"Is he a pedalist?" she asked, nodding at the television. "Susan Buchanan says pedalists do sexy things to kids. I guess like Mama does at the dance place except it's not just dancing. Pedalists hurt you and maybe even kill you. And, brother, you know last night when I hurt?"
"Tell me later, Gig. We gotta hurry now," Hank urged. He grabbed her hand and dragged her through the kitchen to the garage door as he heard the front door open, and pushed the garage door carefully behind them. They could hide behind the gingerbread cutouts, but he'd be sure to find them then, as soon as he turned on the lights.
There was the basement door, nothing between them and a place to hide except that little key in the lock. The one place the man had said not to go. Why not? Then he heard the phone ringing and thought he knew. He didn't want them to go down there and use the phone to call the police. Let people know who they were. Hank thought Gigi was right and the man who had seemed so nice was actually one of those creepy pedalists. A dirty old man who did nasty things to kids. He might already have gotten to Gigi.
Dragging his sister with him, Hank crossed to the basement door and turned the key in the lock. It opened easily.
He tugged Gigi after him with a "shhh" and closed the door behind them quietly. He started to go back and take the key, but he was afraid the man would see it missing and know immediately where they were. He didn't feel any lock hole on the inside of the door so he could lock them in either, so the key wouldn't have helped. It was very dark in there, and it smelled worse than the sewer, worse than a dead rabbit lying on the road, worse than the beach at low tide. The phone had stopped ringing.
"Peeyew," Gigi whispered but just then the man's voice called out.
"Hank? Gigi? Where are you? I have a surprise for you. Where are you? Taking naps, maybe?" The voice faded.
"Quick," Hank said. "He's going upstairs. Let's go downstairs while he's going upstairs and he won't hear us."
"It's dark," Gigi whimpered.
"The phone is down there," Hank said. He had to hand it to his little sister. She shut up immediately.
But by the time they felt their way carefully to the bottom of the stairs, Hank heard the door from the kitchen to the garage open.
"Hey, kids! I like hide-and-seek as much as anybody, but I need you to come out now."
He was trying not to sound mad but Hank could tell that he was. There was a shuffling of boards, crashes, curses and then silence.
Hank and Gigi scooted over behind the stairs. They could hear the hum of a freezer and felt its outlines and its coolness. They ducked behind it and hid, waiting, beneath the stairs. They could hardly breathe, it stank so bad down there.
The door opened.
"Oh, no," the man said. "Oh, no. I bet I know where you are. You've done it now. You went the one place I told you not to in my whole house. You rotten kids! I told you not to come down here. I told you that key was in the lock for a reason. I could have taken it out, but I trusted you and you let me down. I only wanted you to stay upstairs for your own good. There are things down here that could hurt you. But I'll tell you what, if you come on out now, come back up the stairs in the dark, all by yourselves, I'll forget all about this. We'll make cookies, we'll talk, maybe we'll even have a party. Wouldn't that be fun? But you've got to come out first."
Gigi shifted beside Hank, and he tried to put his hand over her mouth and instead hit her in the face.
"Ouch!" she said.
"Oh, kids. I've been working all day. I'm too tired to play hide-and-seek with you. Come on up the stairs now and be good. I hear you. I know you're down there. You disobeyed me. I told you this room was locked."
His foot fell on the first step. "Come on, now. Don't make me come down after you."
Hank thought fast. He was scared of the man, but coming down here had been a mistake. There was no door down here, and he couldn't find the phone in the dark. They'd have a better chance later. Down here nobody could even hear them if they screamed.
"We were playing," Hank called up. "We're sorry, mister, but we were playing hide-and-seek and my stupid little sister came down here to hide. I guess she sort of turned the key by accident and didn't know it was the door you said not to open. Turn on the light so we can come upstairs without hurting ourselves. We're real hungry."
"Me too," the man said. "But I'd rather not turn on the light. You got down there in the dark, didn't you?"
"Oh, no," Hank said. "We turned on the light, then turned it off again."
"Liar, liar, pants on fire," the man chanted. "You didn't turn on the light. Don't lie to me, Hank. I don't like little boys who lie."
Gigi began to whimper again, then to cry, then to howl. "Please, mister, turn on the light. My sister's really scared. We'll come up the stairs, but we can't see." Hank didn't want to face the man on the stairs in the dark. He stood up and told Gigi to shut up and pulled her around the corner of the freezer.
"Too bad. I told you and told you not to come down here."
"It was an accident. We're sorry. But the room wasn't locked. Really. Please, turn on the light."
"Have it your way," the man said. "We were going to play nice games that feel good, but the games are going to be rougher now because you disobeyed me. I just wanted to see if you were good children who deserved presents or more lying, sneaking little brats who need to be taught a lesson." The light flipped on, and as soon as their eyes adjusted to it, both kids began screaming. Above them, floating down over the terrible sights they saw all around them, like something out of a horror movie, the man's voice said calmly, "Meet my former pupils. They wouldn't stay out of the basement either."
* * *
Robbed
Rose dragged herself into her house, and was halfway to bed before she remembered that she needed to call Fred's office to give him the license number. She was actually relieved to be able to leave a message, since she didn't have to explain the whole thing that way. She could simply leave her name and number and tell him that she thought he should check out the number she had written down. But when she dipped into her purse for the Grimms' to leave the number, she found that the flyleaf had been torn out. She also noticed that all of her ID cards had been dumped out of her wallet and were scattered over the bottom of her somewhat oversize handbag.
She supposed in her present sleepy state she could have done that herself, but she had a large, chilly doubt about that. Instead of leaving the number she said, "I—Fred, this is Rose. I think I've been robbed. On the ferry. I had a license number I wanted you to check out, only it's missing now. I'll call you back later or you call me." She pawed through the cards and found all of her credit cards. No money was missing from her purse. Her driver's license was gone, though.
She had done all she could for the moment, and she was still too tired to be able to function. Wearily, she threw her purse on the floor and flopped onto the bed, where she was promptly pounced on by three very vocal and active cats. For once she ignored them.