Offspring

by Jack Ketchum

  “Corn is just about right.”

  She kissed him. He smelled of soap and coffee. His mouth was smooth.

  “I’m not going to get much work done, am I?” she said.

  “Not at the moment. And I’m not going to get to insulate the wire.”

  “Let’s not wake Melissa.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not planning on running the Electrolux either.”

  He opened her robe, pushed it off her shoulders and lowered her on top of him to the couch, and the sun was warm on her back as she drew him up inside her.

  She remembered that the monitor was still on, her program running.

  It was the last thought she had for a while that wasn’t strictly for the two of them.

  11:50 A.M.

  Peters stood in the mouth of the cave, sweating. It wasn’t just the climb. It was nerves.

  Behind him Manetti, Harrison, and the four state troopers were jittery too. You could see it in the beams of their flashlights scudding across the fire-blackened walls.

  Even if you didn’t know what happened here the place was unnerving.

  He shouldered the shotgun, knowing already he wasn’t going to be needing it, and stepped inside.

  Remembering what it was like.

  The man, Nicholas something, the name strangely lost to him now, wearing glasses that flew off his face as they opened fire, mistaking him for one of them despite the glasses, they were so damn scared, killing him after all he’d been through, after he and the woman on the floor, naked, bleeding, torn to hell but still alive, had done most of their killing for them. He remembered shooting the one with the knife.

  And then he remembered the boy . . .

  . . . who’d been their captive god only knew how long, walking toward them, his arms held out in front of him, walking in that slow dreamy glide, so filthy and caked with his own dried blood that it was easy to figure he was one of them too, and when Peters told him to stop and he didn’t stop they were taking no chances by then and all six shotguns opened up at once, and whether Peters had killed him or somebody else had killed him Peters would never know.

  That was eleven years ago and he was glad he’d stopped for the pint of Johnny Walker. He was glad he wasn’t a cop anymore, that he could pull the pint out of his pocket and break the seal and unscrew it and tilt it back and drink deep. Like he was doing now.

  The others were watching. Rookie troopers cradling newer shotguns, disapproving.

  Fuck ’em.

  He was glad he wasn’t a cop for lots of reasons.

  But especially the boy.

  He needed not to think about the boy.

  He drank again and pocketed the bottle and looked around.

  It was gone now—the skins, the rags, the clothing. They’d taken it all to the beach, right down to the last broken ax handle, the last gun stock, rake and leather belt, and burned it two days later. What didn’t burn and what they didn’t need to bag for identification they took to the old town dump on Tucker Road where most of it had come from in the first place.

  Now all he saw here were a few bent nails and a tarnished doorknob on the hard dirt floor and that was that.

  They hadn’t been back. Not to this place.

  Who knew? Maybe they had memories too.

  “Shit,” said Manetti.

  They were all, in their way, disappointed. Relieved, sure. But disappointed. It had been so easy for him to find this place again even after eleven years without so much as passing it by in all that time that Peters guessed they figured they were getting lucky. And now they weren’t lucky. They were like dogs who’d lost the scent.

  “There’s a smaller room off to the rear there. Might check it.”

  He leveled the shotgun in front of him again. But it was training, mostly. It was habit. They weren’t here and they hadn’t been. The cave smelled of earth and damp and seawater. If they’d stayed any time at all it would have smelled . . . otherwise.

  Manetti found the broken pitchfork tine way back in a corner.

  Apart from that, nothing.

  Peters felt himself sag, his body go slack. He took a pull on the whiskey.

  They walked out the way they came in.

  Nobody said anything for a while. They started down the mountain.

  The sea breeze felt good blowing through his hair. Good and clean.

  Midway down he asked Manetti about the dogs and Manetti said they’d be in from Bangor by two o’clock along with another twenty troopers.

  As of now they had two more parties of six men each working a narrow range north and south along the coastline. The troopers and the dogs would take the woods when they arrived, spread farther north to Lubec and farther south to Cutler, and some of the dogs would work the scent off the Kaltsas place.

  Two o’clock gave them four more hours of daylight. Four hours.

  He stepped down off the path.

  It was exactly here that he had put the pump to the woman’s eye so there was no possibility of missing and pulled the trigger. It was already too late for Caggiano. Her jaws were still in his neck when they pulled her off him.

  Manetti saw him pause.

  “Everything okay, George?” he said.

  Peters nodded.

  “Look, you found the cave. You told us where else you think they’re likely to be and what you think they’re likely to do. I don’t see that there’s any more reason for me to put you through this. Maybe you should go home and get some sleep and let us go from here.”

  Peters shook his head. “I know ’em,” he said. “I shot them all to hell that day and I saw what they had in there and I questioned the survivor. You need me. I know what you’re thinking and it’s kind of you. But you’d do a whole lot better to ask me nicely to please stick around.”

  Manetti smiled. “Hey. Stick around, will you, George?”

  “Sure. Sure I will.”

  He stopped in the sand a moment and stared up the rock face.

  From where he stood it was almost impossible to see the entrance. They’d chosen it well. He wondered how they’d done choosing the new one.

  And thinking that he must have looked sort of pained because Manetti said, “How was it? Pretty rough walking back in there?”

  “I’ve had better memories,” he said. “Better days.”

  He reached for the pint in his pocket again and unscrewed the cap. He said, “But it’ll get rougher, Vic. You’re going to want to join me before it’s through. Hell, you probably will join me.”

  And drank from the bottle.

  2:20 P.M.

  Amy looked at Claire across the kitchen table and knew she’d done the right thing inviting her.

  “You look tired,” she said. “You getting any sleep at all?”

  “Not enough. Not lately.”

  She reached for Melissa’s tiny hand. The hand immediately gripped her index finger. She never stopped nursing for a second. “She’s so beautiful,” Claire said.

  Amy’s breast was getting sore. She’d need to switch over in a minute or two. But she smiled. Claire was right. Melissa was beautiful. Soft pink skin, a dusting of fine brown hair. And the prettiest big brown eyes. She even smelled beautiful—all sweet breath and warm clean skin.

  Melissa had been sleeping when they arrived. Claire and Luke had tiptoed into the bedroom and Claire said afterward that it was love at first sight. Even Luke was beaming—as if it were his own baby sister he was staring at.

  Claire withdrew her finger. The baby clutched Amy’s breast instead.

  “They’re serving him the papers today,” Claire said.

  “It’s about time.”

  “It took them till Monday just to find him. Turns out he was back with Marion again, back in the office. Working off the books. As legal consultant or something. Not a partner again, god knows, but back.”

  “Marion. That bitch.”

  “I don’t know why, but for some reason she seems to be willing to do just about anything for him.”
r />   “You want to bet she’s screwing him?”

  “I don’t know. I never thought Marion was the type to get involved with a partner. I thought she was just your basic shark. But get this, though. It was Marion’s secretary who notarized the loan.”

  “Ow!” It was Amy’s nipple that hurt, not the information.

  Claire flinched. Amy almost laughed. It was as though it were Claire’s breast and not Amy’s that the tiny jaws had pinched.

  She shifted Melissa to the other breast. Melissa didn’t cry. Miraculously, she almost never cried now.

  Claire smiled, looking relieved, as the baby nuzzled in.

  It struck her as a little strange. She’d nursed Luke, hadn’t she? Of course she had. She remembered it clearly. So why the squeamishness over a little bite?

  She let it pass.

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “I want to get this right. Marion’s secretary notarized the loan to cover his debt to the firm, correct?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So she knew all about the forgery. They both did.”

  “She had to.”

  “Absolutely unbelievable.”

  Unbeknownst to Claire, Steven had taken out a loan nine months ago, about a year into their separation, for well over a half million dollars—Amy couldn’t remember the figure exactly. The loan was to cover half the out-of-court settlement of a former client’s suit against the firm. The firm was absorbing the other half.

  Steven had somehow mismanaged the client’s funds. It wasn’t the first time he’d been accused of that and this time the firm was holding him accountable.

  So he put up their home in Greenwich as collateral. And forged Claire’s signature to the documents.

  Half a million was the entire value of their house, less the mortgage.

  At the time, with Steven’s support as erratic as it was, Claire and Luke were just barely getting by.

  Then he got himself fired, lost his partnership over some new problem. Nobody knew what, and nobody at the firm was telling.

  They just called in his loan.

  First the support dried up. Then Steven disappeared completely.

  He’d given up his lease on the apartment in Manhattan and left no forwarding address. Neither Claire nor Luke had seen or heard from him in over six months. Christmas and Luke’s birthday had come and gone without a word from him.

  Her job as a secretary didn’t even cover the mortgage payments, never mind food and clothing.

  And now his creditors were howling. Howling to Claire.

  Hell, they couldn’t find Steven.

  And the loan wasn’t his only forgery, either. He’d signed her name to their tax return last year so she wouldn’t know they were into the IRS for over a quarter of a million dollars.

  So the IRS was howling too.

  They didn’t care who signed the goddamn papers. It was a joint return and they wanted the money.

  God only knew what else was out there. Waiting to pounce.

  In a few months’ time she’d gone from pretty well off to flat broke, with no credit and in debt to the neck. The half-million-dollar loan, the mortgage, gas and electric, credit cards, car payments—all were with collection agencies by now.

  She didn’t even answer the phone anymore; there were so many dunning calls. She spent cash she didn’t have on a phone machine to screen them.

  Amy and David had loaned her the money for a lawyer. The lawyer was trying to track Steven down to serve him papers for the divorce hearing—he’d done that now, finally—and work out reduction of liability deals with all parties concerned, based upon the forgeries. But even so she was going to lose the house. Pretty much all of it. If she was lucky she’d come out of it with thirty thousand dollars, the lawyer said.

  She was thirty-seven. Luke was eight. They had maybe thirty thousand to build a whole new life for themselves. It wasn’t much.

  Amy could feel her hurt. And her fear.

  It crawled across the table to her like a spider and slid across her spine.

  She hadn’t seen Claire in two months now. Eight weeks. It was not much time. But the effects of strain had articulated themselves rapidly. The fine skin beneath the wide brown eyes looked bruised from lack of sleep. There were strands of silver in the long dark hair. Claire’s body had always been lean and tight, even after Luke. Now it seemed to sag somehow, forced in upon itself. As though holding for too long a time a single, shallow breath.

  She wished she could just hug her, hold her and tell her everything would be all right, that everything would be fine—even though it wasn’t going to be all right, it was going to be a long rough haul and there was no use making believe otherwise.

  She did the next best thing. She handed her Melissa across the table.

  “Here. Hold her for a while. I’ll get us some more coffee.”

  Melissa smiled, swiping with her hands, staring up at Claire delightedly, her eyes getting bigger and bigger.

  Claire smiled too, brightening.

  “Melissa!” she said, and started making the sounds people make when they’re holding a baby. Melissa cooed right back at her.

  There’s nothing like three months’ worth of baby for turning you around, she thought.

  Unless, of course, it’s four in the morning.

  Stop bitching, she thought. Things are so much better now.

  She returned with the coffee.

  “Is Luke going to be all right out there?” Claire asked.

  “Sure. David’ll keep an eye on him. Besides, there’s nothing much to get into except grass and bugs and trees.”

  “You’re by the sea, aren’t you?”

  “Half a mile away. You figure he’ll go that far?”

  “I doubt it. He doesn’t know much about the country.”

  “We’ll take him down later if you want, show you both all the sights. The cliffs down at the point are pretty spectacular.”

  “Those I don’t want him anywhere near.”

  “Once he sees them I think I can guarantee he’ll be careful.”

  The phone rang. Amy got up and answered it.

  Melissa was holding on to Claire’s finger again, cooing happily.

  Amy listened to the voice on the phone, too amazed to say anything, though there were a thousand things to say.

  The voice went on for what seemed like a very long while. “Wait a minute,” she said.

  And when she came back to the table it was hard to keep the fury off her face. For Claire’s sake, she tried.

  How dare he? she thought.

  She reached for her baby.

  “It’s for you,” she said. Claire looked puzzled.

  “It’s him,” she said. “It’s Steven. He says he’s coming up here. He says he’s on his way.”

  2:43 P.M.

  The day was turning hot and slightly humid for this time of year.

  David was with Will Campbell under the deck, the tarps pulled back so that Campbell could inspect the lumber.

  Luke was there. He’d asked David’s permission to go through his toolbox. Most of the tools had once belonged to David’s father—which meant that they were basically unused—but David saw no harm in letting the boy root around in there. Through the open door to the shop he could watch Luke pulling out layers of sandpaper and packages of nails and screws to get at the hammers, rasps and screwdrivers underneath. He knew Luke was listening, interested for some reason in what they had to say, though he doubted the boy could understand very much of it.

  They were standing by a pile of twelve-foot-long two-by-sixes tinted green, southern yellow pine that they’d use for the bottom layer, heavily treated against damp rot and insects. Planning the attack on the addition.

  Will Campbell was a thin rangy man of about fifty, his face so deeply lined and tanned that to David he always seemed to be frowning.

  He stamped out the butt of his Pall Mall. His hand moved gracefully over the board he was sighting.

  “Pretty good,” he
said.

  That coming from Campbell was high praise. David knew next to nothing about lumber but he was glad to hear it.

  “But we gotta get ’em down fast,” Campbell said. “A day in the sun and they’ll warp like swizzle sticks. They’ll do the trick, though. Now these . . .”

  He stepped over to a much larger pile about four and a half feet high by four feet wide, a mix of spruce and balsam. Two-by-tens mostly, ranging from eight to twenty feet long. This was the framing lumber, the underpinnings for what was going to be the firststory flooring.

  “. . . these are fine,” he said.

  “Fine?” He smiled. He’d never heard Campbell use the word.

  “Good local stuff right out of the Big Woods. Hardly any reaction wood at all that I can see. Good and regular.”

  “What’s the Big Woods?” asked Luke. He stood in the door of the shop, a claw hammer in his hand that was much too heavy for him, pounding awkwardly at invisible nails.

  “You’re in it, son, sort of,” said Campbell. “Scrappy little part of it of course, way out here on the coast. But from Bangor on up’s all Big Woods territory. Old growth. Logging country. Red spruce, black spruce, white spruce, cedar. Rivers, lakes, streams. You can pull trout out of the streams and you can flush a bear or a moose if you’re of a mind to.”

  “You can?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “I want to see a bear!” Luke took a wider swing, hammering a bear skull.

  Campbell laughed. “In the wild? No you don’t.”

  “Yes I do.”

  “A bear can move fast as an automobile over short distances and start up even faster. Think you can outrun a car, son?”

  Luke frowned and thought about it. “Well, maybe if I was standing kind of far away I’d like to see one. Like through binoculars.”

  “Maybe then,” said Campbell. “Sure. Why not?”

  “Look over on the first shelf there,” said David. “Right behind you.”

  Luke walked into the shop. The shelf, David knew, was just about reachable for him. He was tall for his age, with long thin arms like his mother’s. They watched him look around and find them. He started to reach up and then caught himself, stopped and turned.

  “Can I?” he asked.