In the trees, none of us moved or spoke for the rest of the afternoon. We watched them play with the dog and play with each other, build a mini-version of the house out of old numbered building blocks. We watched them sit on the bench set against the porch rails with an afghan pulled over them against the gathering cold and the dog at their feet, as Mrs. Doyle spoke with her chin on Amanda’s head and Amanda lay on her chest and spoke back.
I think we all felt dirty in those woods, petty and sterile. Childless. Proven, as of yet, inept and unable and unwilling to rise to the sacrifice of parenting. Bureaucrats in the wilderness.
They had gone back in the house, hand in hand, dog squirming between their legs, when Jack Doyle pulled into the clearing. He climbed out of his Ford Explorer with a box under his arm, and whatever was in it made both Tricia Doyle and Amanda shriek when he opened it in the house a few minutes later.
The three came back into the kitchen and Amanda perched on the counter again and talked nonstop, her hands pantomiming her brushing of Larry, her fingers gripping her cheeks as she aped Tricia’s description of distant Uncle Larry’s jowls. Jack Doyle threw back his head and laughed, smothered the small girl against his chest. When he raised himself up from the counter, she clung to him and rubbed her cheeks against his five o’clock shadow.
Devin reached into his pocket and removed a cell phone, dialed 411. When the operator answered, he said, “West Beckett Sheriff’s office, please.” He repeated the number under his breath as she gave it to him, then punched the numbers into his cell phone keypad.
Before he could press SEND, Angie put a hand on his wrist. “What are you doing, Devin?”
“What are you doing, Ange?” He looked at her hand.
“You’re going to arrest them?”
He looked up at the house, then back at her and scowled. “Yes, Angie, I’m going to arrest them.”
“You can’t.”
He pulled his hand away from her. “Oh, yes, I can.”
“No. She’s—” Angie pointed through the trees. “Haven’t you been watching? They’re good for her. They’re…Christ, Devin, they love her.”
“They kidnapped her,” he said. “Were you awake for that part?”
“Devin, no. She’s…” Angie lowered her head for a moment. “If we arrest them, they’ll give Amanda back to Helene. She’ll suck the life out of her.”
He stared down at her, peered into her face, a stunned disbelief in his eyes. “Angie, listen to me. That’s a cop in there. I don’t like busting cops. But in case you’ve forgotten, that cop engineered the deaths of Chris Mullen, Pharaoh Gutierrez, and Cheese Olamon, if not implicitly, then tacitly. He ordered Lionel McCready and the two of you probably to be murdered. He’s got Broussard’s blood on his hands. He’s got Pasquale’s blood on his hands. He’s a killer.”
“But…” She looked desperately toward the house.
“But what?” Devin’s features were screwed up into a mask of anger and confusion.
“They love that girl,” Angie said.
Devin followed her gaze to the house, to Jack and Tricia Doyle, each holding one of Amanda’s hands as they swung her back and forth in the kitchen.
Devin’s face softened as he watched, and I could feel an ache invade him as a cloud crossed his face and his eyes grew wide as if opened by a breeze.
“Helene McCready,” Angie said, “will destroy that life in there. She will. You know it. Patrick, you know it.”
I looked away.
Devin took a deep breath, and his head snapped to the side as if he’d taken a punch. Then he shook his head and his eyes grew small and he turned back from the house and pressed SEND on his phone.
“No,” Angie said. “No.”
We watched as Devin held the phone to his ear and the phone on the other end rang and rang. Eventually he lowered it from his ear and pressed END.
“No one there. Sheriff’s probably out delivering the mail, a town this size.”
Angie closed her eyes, sucked in a breath.
A hawk flew over the treetops, cut the cold air with its sharp call, a piercing sound that always makes me think of sudden outrage, reaction to a fresh wound.
Devin shoved the phone in his pocket and removed his badge. “Fuck it. Let’s do it.”
I turned toward the house and Angie grabbed my arm, turned me back. Her face was feral, torn, her hair falling in her eyes.
“Patrick, Patrick, no, no, no. Please, for God’s sake. No. Talk to him. We can’t do this. We can’t.”
“It’s the law, Ange.”
“It’s bullshit! It’s…it’s wrong. They love that child. Doyle’s no danger to anyone anymore.”
“Bullshit,” Oscar said.
“Who?” Angie said. “Who’s he a danger to? With Broussard dead, no one knows he was involved. He has nothing to protect. No one’s a threat to him.”
“We’re a threat!” Devin said. “You on fucking drugs?”
“Only if we do something about it,” Angie said. “If we leave this place now, never tell anyone what we know, it’s over.”
“He’s got someone else’s kid in there,” Devin said, his face an inch from hers.
She spun toward me. “Patrick, listen. Just listen. He…” She pushed at my chest. “Don’t do this. Please. Please!”
There was nothing resembling logic in her face, nothing reasonable. Just desperation and fear and wild longing. And pain. Rivers of it.
“Angie,” I said quietly, “that child does not belong to them. She belongs to Helene.”
“Helene is arsenic, Patrick. I told you that a long time ago. She’ll suck everything bright out of that girl. She’ll imprison her. She…” Tears poured down her cheeks and bubbled in the corners of her mouth, and she didn’t notice. “She’s death. You take that child out of that home, that’s what you’re sentencing her to. A long death.”
Devin looked at Oscar, then at me. “I can’t listen to any more of this.”
“Please!” The word came out of Angie at the pitch of a kettle’s whistle, and her whole face sank around it.
I put my hands on her arms. “Angie,” I said softly, “maybe you’re wrong about Helene. She’s learned. She knows she was a lousy parent. If you could have seen her the night I—”