Offspring

by Jack Ketchum

  She was not the hunter the Woman wished her to be.

  At the end she had drifted to the house where the infant was, thinking dimly of her own child, who was hardly any older. But it was early and the infant had not appeared yet. Only the man, who had seen her.

  She wondered if it mattered that the man had seen her.

  There was only one way to cool the Woman’s anger, and that was to anticipate it. As she walked she watched for the proper instrument.

  It needed to be thin and strong and supple.

  There.

  The branch was green, tough, but her hands were calloused hard and she twisted it to the right, down and then up, splitting through the filaments of sapwood. She peeled away the needles. The wood bled in her hand.

  She walked to the clearing, squinting at the sun.

  Fat black bumblebees drifted through the hawk-weed, daisies, and clover. She stood among them, knowing the bees were harmless unless you hit or stepped on one. The bees flew low around her, gathering pollen on their long black legs.

  Apart from the bees she was alone.

  Across the clearing the surf pounded.

  She brought the branch down across her back, striking hard, knowing that each blow must mark her or else there was no sense to it. She used it across her buttocks and thighs but did not dare to strike lower than that. She did not wish to stir the bees.

  Sensation entered her more deeply than it did the others.

  When she was finished her hand was black with bark and sap.

  Beyond the field the woods grew thick again. The path twisted up and then down through a long shaded canopy of gnarled scrubby pitch pine and spruces, beaten low by the offshore winds.

  She walked through them to the cliffs, found the path again and started down.

  Halfway down she saw them, all six of them below her scrambling over the rocks at the shoreline. The Girl carried a bag. The others did not go empty handed either though it was too far away to see what they had gathered.

  It was dawn and they were moving quickly, silently.

  They would be there long before her.

  The Woman would be angry.

  She could call to them. Make them wait. The Woman might not question her, might think she had found them after all. Though it had taken her nearly all night and into the morning.

  Except that she was marked already.

  She was naked, and the Woman would read the marks and know.

  On the trail before her lay a fox scat. She used the stick to pick it apart and saw the matted hair and bone—the fox’s meal of mouse or rabbit.

  Its prey had known pain before it died. Had struggled against it.

  She sighed at what could not be helped and continued on alone.

  7:20 A.M.

  The map was out.

  It wasn’t the same map they’d used eleven years ago but it might as well have been—it was that crinkled up and beat to hell—and it hung against the same old smoke-stained slate gray station-house wall.

  The last time Peters had seen the place was at his retirement party.

  Mary had been there, looking pretty and openly relieved that he was finally getting out. A few of the other wives were there, those who knew him well and still cared to know him, and when they presented him with the pair of welded, four-inch-thick solid brass balls, some of the wives had blushed.

  The time before that was the time he’d made his last arrest.

  He was clearing out his desk when this skinny little weasel of a kid walks in to post his buddy’s bail. The buddy’d been picked up for drunken driving and reckless endangerment and he’d been there two, three days or so. They’d set bail at $1,200.

  So this kid is fishing through his pockets for the money, sort of fumbling around in there. He’s nervous and Peters is watching him, wondering why. And then he sees why, because when the kid pulls out the cash, out pops a plastic baggie. The kid makes a grab for it but it falls to the floor.

  Peters walks over and picks it up.

  What’s this? he says to the kid.

  There’s about a half an ounce of Thai stick there.

  Aw hell, says the kid. Ah dammit. Ah shit.

  Peters read him his rights right then and there. And as soon as they had him in the holding cell Peters accepted the bail money for his friend. Gave him a receipt for the amount. Unfortunately $1,200 was all the kid had on him. So that once that was gone he couldn’t make the measly $150 for his own bail. Peters had often wondered how long the buddy’d let him stew there.

  He’d meant to ask Manetti but he kept forgetting.

  Manetti and Miles Harrison were listening now. Peters was pointing at the map.

  “We didn’t know what we had eleven years ago,” he said. “Or where to find it. This time I think you can assume we do. Let’s say they roam afield a bit, which means they could be anywhere along the coast from here to Lubec and maybe down to Cutler. There’s plenty of forest all through this area and we can’t afford to rule that out but I’d bet on the actual shoreline, on one of the caves in here. That’s where we found them last time.

  “It’s still a hell of a job. This whole damn area’s honeycombed with caves. But last time it was night already when we got started. One in the morning. We couldn’t help that. But here we got some daylight hours to use so I suggest you move as fast as you can. Call in everybody you’ve got including the State Highway boys and do it yesterday.”

  Manetti looked at Harrison. The younger man didn’t need to be told.

  “I’ll handle it,” he said. He walked over to the next cubicle and they could hear him on the phone in there.

  Manetti was looking at the map. Worried. Running his hand over his face and through his curly hair.

  “You know what I don’t get?” he said. “Where the hell could they have been so long? How come nobody’s seen them? I mean, you do this kind of thing, you get noticed. So where’ve they been hiding?”

  It was seven in the morning but Peters could still have used a drink. Time was as fluid as the booze was. It all depended on what was going on inside.

  “I’ll tell you, Vic,” he said, “I thought about that. I don’t think they were hiding. I think that what they were doing was moving.”

  “Moving?”

  “Look. We’re a spit in the eye from Canada here. Plenty of coastline all along the gulf, all the way up to Newfoundland. Maybe even up into Hudson Bay. Plenty of places to wander. Some of it practically deserted. We don’t tend to coordinate missing persons stats too terrifically with Canada, at least I know we didn’t in my day. And I assume that hasn’t changed. But I bet if we asked they’ve had some funny ones over the years along that coast.”

  “We’ll check it out,” Manetti said.

  “When we’re finished here,” said Peters. “When we’ve got ’em. When it’s just mop-up.”

  He reflected that he’d been saying we again all morning. He hoped it wasn’t getting in Manetti’s way that he seemed to be finding himself playing top cop again.

  Then again, if it was, there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it except try to watch his language. They’d asked him in. So there he was.

  “You know what?” he said. “I bet they don’t even know they crossed a border. I bet it never even occurred to them. I bet they just kept moving.”

  Unless you were looking at maps, he thought, borders were fluid too.

  Manetti nodded.

  “So where do you want to start?” he said.

  And for a moment Peters saw Caggiano again—his neck torn open, trying to scream. Manetti looked a little like him, actually. Wiry.

  He dumped the memory.

  “We find that cave,” he said. “We find the cave and hope they’re calling it home again.”

  PART II

  AFTERNOON

  11:00 A.M.

  Amy was just getting around to the breakfast dishes when she heard him turn on the shower in the bathroom. She wondered how much sleep he’d gotten and felt a
familiar envy. David could get by on five or six hours a night, no problem. Whereas she needed eight and suffered when she didn’t get them.

  Which had been most of the time, since Melissa was born.

  This third month, though, was easier. Melissa’s patterns of sleeping, eating and alertness were becoming much more regular. She was sleeping as much as nine or ten hours a night now, waking only once or twice.

  Her own sleeping patterns were the problem now. She hadn’t yet adjusted. Last night had been her first really sound night’s sleep in weeks.

  It felt good. But it was hardly enough.

  Whereas David liked to quote Warren Zevon—”I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

  She didn’t know where he got his energy. Not from his parents, that was for sure. His parents’ idea of an evening had been three or four sitcoms, news at eleven, and bed.

  It was one of the few things she didn’t understand about him and it didn’t amount to much. Otherwise, their minds worked similarly in most of the ways that counted. And they talked.

  It was pretty much all you needed.

  She stacked the last of the dishes in the dishwasher and dried her hands. Her skin was getting dry again and she made a mental note to cream them. Having no fingernails that were longer than a sixteenth of an inch was bad enough—Keyboard Nails Syndrome practically came with the territory—but she didn’t need flaky skin as well.

  Hormonally speaking there’d been a few changes since the delivery. On the upside, it had finally stabilized her wildly irregular period. On the downside, she couldn’t even drink so much as a single glass of white wine anymore without risking losing her supper—though vodka sat fine for some reason.

  That, and her hands got dry.

  It wasn’t too bad as trade-offs went.

  Especially when you factored in Melissa.

  She was napping and Amy was loath to wake her. But now that David was up she needed to get to the vacuuming. Claire and Luke were expected around two and she wanted to get in at least an hour’s work on the design before they arrived.

  So she supposed she’d have to risk it.

  Nah, she thought. Get to work now. Let David do the vacuuming after he’s had breakfast.

  He won’t mind. He never did.

  Her PC was directly across the big oak desk from his. Sitting there together facing one another on those—nowadays—rare times that their schedules coincided they’d kid about feeling like the Fabulous Baker Boys, sans Michelle Pfeiffer. David sans hairpiece.

  She poured a cup of coffee, dosed it with milk from the Coolerator, went to the desk and sat down.

  She used her toe to switch on the power tap and pushed her disks into the disk drive. Then sat back ready to look at yesterday’s work.

  While it booted up she thought of Claire.

  She should have been happy thinking about Claire, but the way things were these days the first feeling that came was anger. Not at her—she and Claire had been best friends since college, and nothing had changed about that.

  But at Steven, her husband.

  She’d seen it from the first, almost ten years ago.

  Unfortunately, Claire hadn’t.

  Something vaguely sneaky about him. A kind of spinelessness behind all the good humor and courtesy and all his supposed caring for Claire. He had the habit of indirection, of never quite looking at you when he was talking to you. Then you’d catch him staring at you when you’d been looking elsewhere.

  The men all liked him. Even David. Mister Regular Guy. Always ready with a drink or a laugh.

  Amy hadn’t trusted him for a minute.

  She’d told Claire as much, as gently but firmly as she could, as soon as she realized that they were heading for marriage.

  But he’d been smart. The way these low-level sociopath types were often smart, she guessed. He’d played it perfectly. He’d come on like a friend and nothing more for months before declaring himself a potential lover. Got her into the habit of being around him—after a while, pretty much constantly. Edging into her circle of friends. Nice and easy.

  Claire was on the rebound at the time. She’d finally found the strength to dump the guy she’d been living with since college, a guy so jealous and possessive and so inappropriate in his jealousy it would have been comical had it not led to a series of raging arguments, which culminated in a drunken scene one night outside her apartment with the boy proclaiming loudly that she was no goddamn better than his mother. By then Claire was vulnerable to the soft approach. And Steven had it down pat.

  We’ll be friends first and foremost, he always seemed to say. I respect you.

  Amy remembered it well, cloying and phony.

  But coming off this other maniac it was perfect. The sex was good. And it was easy for Claire to mistake attentiveness for caring. To assume he actually liked her. Loved her.

  Amy doubted that Steven had ever liked or loved anybody.

  She often wondered when, and why, Steven had decided he wanted her. Claire was uncommonly pretty and maybe that was it, because Steven was headed for some high-powered New York law firm, everybody who knew him was aware of that, and Claire would look good on his arm, good to the partners and to the clients, and because she was modest and graceful, even good to their wives.

  She’d warned her. Probably too often. But Claire hadn’t bought her arguments—either then, about the marriage, or later, about the advisability of having children by him.

  Luke.

  Poor Luke.

  With a forger for a father.

  When she thought about that and thought about Claire these days she felt angry and sad and wished to god she had the power to hurt the bastard.

  And lucky. She also felt lucky.

  She could hear David running water in the sink. He always wasted water when he shaved but if that was all the trouble you had with a guy—that and the fact that he could never remember to put the toilet seat down and dropped his goddamn ashes all over the place because he could never seem to find an ashtray when he needed one—you didn’t have trouble at all. And you damn well knew it.

  Her father, bless him, had told her she would meet a man like this one day and she had never believed him, perhaps because part of her thought her father was that man and she’d come across nobody even vaguely like him. Yet one day there he was. Sexy, thoughtful, a good partner and by now, a proven good companion. He shared the chores, the responsibilities with Melissa, diapered her, fed her, got up nights those first two difficult months . . . and clearly saw in Amy an equal both at work and in their marriage.

  She had come to recognize a certain distance in him since his father had died of cancer three years ago. He had loved the lazy, sweet old man and he’d taken it hard. She knew he brooded on it occasionally. When she questioned him he’d only say he missed him. The words rang true. But she wondered if, without him knowing it, his feelings also ran deeper.

  He worked so long, so late and hard. As though racing some internal clock. Lately he’d talked about quitting smoking.

  She wondered if he was starting to become afraid of death. If his father’s dying had added some ambiguous, questionable rider to the document of his own mortality.

  I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

  If so, he didn’t seem aware of it.

  And he certainly didn’t look aware of anything remotely like that now, walking into the study in his washed-out red terry bathrobe and unlaced tennis sneakers. He looked alive and fresh and just a little ridiculous.

  “Got a start on the third board last night,” he said. He leaned over and kissed the top of her head, nuzzled her long curly red hair. She smelled soap and papaya shampoo.

  She was grateful that he was a man who had no truck with aftershave.

  “I know. I looked it over first thing this morning. You got a lot done. Looks good.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re very welcome.”

  “Coffee?”

  “On the stove.”

 
; “Terrific.”

  From the kitchen he said, “What time’s Claire coming?”

  “Twoish.”

  “Good. Gives me time to fix the cord on the table lamp. Shorted out on me last night, around two in the morning. I’ve got to reinsulate the wire. We’ve got electrician’s tape floating around here somewhere, don’t we?”

  “There’s some in the basement, I think.”

  He walked back into the study and looked over her shoulder at the monitor. Then he looked down at her breasts where the robe had fallen away.

  “How are you making out?”

  “I haven’t really started. I got to thinking about Claire.”

  He nodded, sipped his coffee. They’d discussed it all before. She didn’t need to explain. She knew he felt pretty much the same. He was Claire’s friend too.

  “Listen,” she said. “How’d you like to run the vacuum in about an hour? Let Melissa sleep till then. So that I can do some work here.”

  “No problem.”

  He walked to the glass double doors. The sun was bright outside. He opened them and a breeze ruffled the papers beside her.

  “Jesus!” he said. “I almost forgot. An amazing thing this morning! Are we aware of some retro-hip latter-day commune out this way? Something on that order?”

  She looked up from the monitor.

  “Excuse me?”

  “There was a girl out here this morning, way on out in the field. A little after dawn. Real long hair and naked as my mother bore me.”

  “A girl?”

  “Yeah. Sixteen, seventeen maybe. She was pretty far away.”

  “Naked?”

  “From the waist up, anyway. I couldn’t see the rest.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Unh-unh.”

  “Nice breasts?”

  “As I said, she was pretty far away.”

  “Hmmm.”

  She got up from the monitor and walked over to him. She put her arms around his waist.

  “You didn’t invite her in?”

  “Why should I? Who wants the wood nymph when you got the goddess?”

  She laughed. “Pretty saggy goddess.”

  “Goddesses don’t sag. They ripen. As do the wheat and the corn.”