Just before sunrise, a tattoo of knocks rained on the RV door. A voice called from outside. “Mama!”
Nell’s head shot up, nostrils flaring. Her body so still it might have been stone. “JJ?” she mouthed, her lips moving soundlessly. “JJ!” she screamed. She shoved Orson and he fell into the passenger seat as she ripped open the door. Nell slipped to her knees on the steps. And lifted JJ into her arms.
Outside, cameras flashed like lightning, catching the moment in vivid flares of exploding light. Reporters and cameramen pushed and shoved, crowding the doorway. A cacophony of raucous questions and demands filled the RV.
“Is that the kid?”
“How did he get away?”
“Looks like his picture.”
“Are you sure?”
“Nell, is that JJ?”
Tears in his eyes, Orson slowly righted himself and stood, watching mother and son. Nell rocked JJ back and forth, holding him so tightly it looked like she wanted to pull him inside her chest. Against her heart. JJ’s arms were tight around his mother’s neck, squeezing off her air, his legs around her waist, gripping. Both were crying.
Something inside him twisted at the sight. Coiled around his heart and constricted. Gently, he pushed the reporters back. “We’ll have a statement for you in a minute,” he said, not knowing if they even heard him over their own clamor. He shut the door.
A steady knocking began as the reporters banged for attention. Nell stood with JJ, rocking, swaying, both of them sobbing. Claire sat, her mouth open, staring, breathing in short gasps, tears rolling down her cheeks.
He wiped his face so he could see them clearly, unable to take his gaze off the pair. When he could speak, when he could force his eyes away, Orson opened his cell phone, punched in Deputy Wales’s number and requested assistance, his voice strained with tears. “Get the sheriff to cancel the call to the FBI,” he said. “Cancel the Amber Alert. Tell the sheriff the kid just came in the door. No. I don’t know anything. I’ll call you in a minute.”
JJ was damp, as if he had recently been in the river; his clothes were filthy. There were scratches on his arms and legs, wounds that looked fresh and others that were half scabbed over. Orson’s body stiffened. His relief burned through with a silent, hot rage. There were ligature marks on JJ’s wrists. The kid had been tied up. And he had bloodied himself getting free.
It was suddenly stifling in the RV, airless and close. Orson fought to control his temper. Fought to find the distant, cool, observant part of himself that had once made him a good investigator.
Orson took Nell by the shoulders, lifted her to her feet, steering her to the seat she had vacated. She sat at an angle, her feet pointing at the door, JJ on her lap, still rocking. Orson was sure she intended to never let JJ go again. But he needed to ask the boy some questions. Fast.
“Nell,” he said softly, prying at JJ’s arms. “JJ, I need to ask you a few questions. Nell, I need to talk to you both. So the kidnappers don’t get away. Understand?”
Outside the RV, blue lights flashed. The knocking on the RV door stopped, the resulting silence seeming as loud as the previous din. Orson could hear Wales’s voice as the deputy cleared a space around the RV. Promising a statement soon. Agreeing that things seemed to be happening. Babying the media. In the distance, a siren sounded. Likely the sheriff, on the way to handle things from wherever he had holed up. There wasn’t much time. “JJ,” he said again, pulling at the boy’s arms. “Nell…”
JJ eased back, still keeping a hammerlock on his mother, but looking at Orson. He was crying, tears and mucus running down his face, his eyes dilated. His mouth was red and abraded in a two-inch strip where tape had sealed him from ear to ear. His lips were torn and bleeding, swollen and parted. He was mouth-breathing like a fish onshore. His expression was as wild as his mother’s.
“Calm down, son,” Orson said. “Take a slow breath”
JJ seemed to gather himself and took the commanded breath, clearing the detritus of terror away. He blinked, his eyes focusing.
“Right. That’s good. Just breathe,” Orson said.
The boy blinked again, his pupils constricting slightly. He was clearly still frightened, yet underneath the panic there was something else. Something sturdy and strong and resilient, a strength of a different sort from his mother’s determination and fortitude. The boy pulled himself together, breathing in deeply, as if he had been underwater, oxygen deprived, and now was safe. He relaxed his fingers around his mother’s neck one finger at a time until his hands rested on her shoulders. As he watched, Orson had the feeling that he would have liked JJ’s father. And whoever had taught the kid Zenlike relaxation techniques. Nell? Mike? It was remarkable to watch in a child so young.
JJ eased back against the power of his mother’s hold. “It’s okay, Mama.” He patted her cheek and wiped her tears. “I’m okay.” He looked at Orson. “Whatchya need to know?”
Orson, not sure why he was so emotional, batted away his own tears. “Did you see who kidnapped you?”
“No. I was playing with my ball and my light saber and then this blanket went over my head. They picked me up and carried me off. And dropped me in a truck.”
“Did they…hurt you?” he said, not knowing how to ask a young boy if an adult had abused him. JJ held out his wrists as evidence the cop could see and further evidence that the question had been stupid, and looked at Orson quizzically.
“He wants to know,” Nell said, understanding, “if the people who took you—” Nell took an anxious breath “—touched your privates, JJ. Like we talked about, when bad people touch little boys wrong.”
“No way,” the boy said, indignant. Orson felt some of his tension dissipate in an unexpected grin, and saw Nell’s shoulders relax a fraction. “They wouldn’t even let me go to the bathroom. And I hada pee like a racehorse.”
Orson chuckled, and touched the boy’s head to reassure himself that he was really here. “How did you get free?” he asked. “Did someone let you go? And where were you?” He stopped himself. One question at a time, he reminded himself. “How did you get free? That question first.”
“I heard ’em coming back. I’d been pulling at the ropes. And I finally got the mask offa me.”
Orson noted the faint abrasions on the boy’s tanned neck. A hood had been tied there. He wanted to rip someone’s head off for that. Outside, a car door slammed, additional blue lights flashed steadily against the RV windows. The press started up with their shouted questions again and Orson heard the sheriff saying, “No comment,” over and over as he tried to make it to the RV.
“I could see lights,” JJ continued, “and I ripped my hands loose.” He looked at his wrists, turning each one over so he could see both sides. The left one was actively bleeding, blood smeared up his arm and all over Nell’s clothes, a rose-colored sweatshirt Orson hadn’t even noticed until now. “And I ran.”
Orson heard a car door shut again and the blue lights went off. The sheriff had retreated to his cruiser. Unobtrusively, Orson turned off the ringer on his phone.
“Do you know who took you?” Orson asked. “Did you recognize any voices?”
“I thoughted I did one time. But I wasn’t sure. One of them shined a light in my eyes and blinded me and another one put a tape on my mouth and then a bag over me and he took me and put me into a truck. And I could hear two of ’em talking, mad kinda. Whisper-yellin’, like Mama used to do when I was little and made noise at church.” He looked at his mother. “It wasn’t Jedi Mike whisper-yellin’, but it was his truck, I think. It smelled like it.”
JJ looked at Orson. “Mama says everything has a smell and that we can smell a lot better than we think we can because we ain’t hunter-gatherers no more and we forget how to use our noses. So I smelled the truck and it smelled like Mike’s. But it wasn’t Mike yelling.”
That would have been a stroke of luck, for the kid to recognize his kidnapper. But if Orson had to chose between JJ recognizing the kidnapper and getting away, he’d take the boy’s freedom in a heartbeat.
“I’m hungry, Mama. I ain’t had nothing to eat.”
Movements jerky, as if she were on automatic pilot but her joints didn’t work properly, Claire stood and removed peanut butter and jelly from the cabinet over the sink and a bag of bread from the microwave where they stored it. Sniffing, she began to make PB&J for the boy.
“I’m starving, Mama Claire. Can I have two? Please?”
“Sure, baby boy. Tonight, you can eat till your belly busts open, iffn you want to.”
“When you got free,” Orson said, “where were you?”
“Inna woods. I could see lights from the tree where they tied me. When I got my hands free, I ran into the woods and stayed quiet for a long time. Pulling off the stuff on my mouth hurt.” He touched his bleeding lips with blood-caked fingers. “And then I started working my way down the hill to the lights.”
“Go on,” Orson said softly, controlling his mounting rage by force of will.
“It was hard ’cause it was so dark and I hada be quiet. So they couldn’t hear me and find me again. And then I reached ’em. The lights.”
“And,” Orson prompted, wanting to shake the story out of JJ, but knowing he had to go slowly, so he could get it all.
“And it was the BP station. And I stayed in the shadows and got to the road under the interstate and then I saw the RV and here I am.” He turned his palms over in a shrug that said, “How about that?”
Orson rose and peered out the RV’s curtains at the green and white lights of the BP station. Behind him, JJ said, “Mama, you ain’t mad at me ’cause I crossed the big road under the interstate all by myself, are you?”
“No, darlin’ boy,” Nell said, ducking her head and touching her cheek to her son’s. “I’m not mad at you for nothing. You got free. Sometimes when you’re in danger, you hafta break rules to save yourself. If you ever need to—” Her voice cut off and her throat worked as she swallowed, unable to continue. “I’m not mad,” she finished in a whisper.
Orson said, “You came out of the woods, where? At the back of the BP, near where the truckers park at night, or at the side near the Dumpster?”
“At the back,” JJ said.
“Someone we know,” Nell whispered. “Not from New York…”
“You came down that hill?” Orson asked. It was a steep hill. From one angle, the hill ended up at the BP, from another, it ended up in the backyard of an old house. And that house overlooked the guides’ garden. And he understood what Nell was saying. It had been river rats who attacked her in the grocery-store parking lot. And Joe had been killed on the bank of a river.
“Yep,” JJ said. He held up a foot, his sole bleeding and muddy. “I hurted my foot on a stick, I think. Or maybe it was a rock.” He pushed away from Nell and looked in his mother’s eyes, his voice firming, “What are all the TV people doing here? Are they making you cry again?”
Nell hiccuped and laughed. “No, baby, the TV people aren’t making me cry. Getting you back is what’s making me cry. It’s a happy cry. And the TV people want to interview us. You most of all.”
JJ perked up. “I’m gonna be on TV? Cool!” Nell laughed, a quaking, breathy sound.
“Nell?” Orson said, drawing her attention to him. “I need you to think back. To seven years ago. I need to know if anyone you know ever had a pink rabbit’s foot. Like a good-luck charm.”
“Harvey carries a pink rabbit’s foot,” JJ said.
Orson went still.
“It’s how he got his river name,” Nell said, her chapped lips barely moving, her voice rough with shouting and crying, colorless. “He’s always carried himself a pink rabbit’s foot. So the guides named him after the invisible rabbit, Harvey, from the old movie. His real name is Dean Anthony Haver Why do you want to know about the pink rabbit’s foot?”
“Because the crime-scene investigators found one.” His eyes added, “In Joe’s grave,” but he didn’t say the words aloud. Not in front of JJ. Nell’s gaze sharpened, understanding. “And Harvey isn’t with us anymore,” he said. Nell’s mouth fell slowly open and Orson nodded. “Up at the powerhouse.”
JJ looked back and forth between them. “So where’d he go? Him and me was gonna run part of Big Creek in the morning, iffn you wanted to let me, Mama,” he added.
“In a minute, baby. Orson?” she asked and stopped, not able to phrase whatever question she needed to ask. She shook her head. “Later,” she said instead.
“I want you to look at something,” Orson said. “But I have to go back outside to get it, and that means dealing with the press, which I don’t want to do. They all saw JJ come home,” he said, and Nell’s smile flashed at the words, her sudden joy warming him. He smiled back. “So there’ll be no getting away from them unless I get someone to make a statement. Okay?”
“Sure,” Nell said. When JJ started to interrupt, she said, “You can be on TV in a little bit. Not just now.”
The boy sighed, a long-suffering sound, and shook his head, “I never get to do nothing.”
Orson opened his phone, saw the sheriff had called him five times in the last five minutes. He punched the send button and the sheriff’s number rang. Orson stood and walked to the back of the RV. There were a few things he wanted the sheriff to say to the press. And he didn’t want JJ to hear any of it. Not yet.
Nell carried JJ to the bathroom to clean his wounds. She had a feeling Orson would have insisted that a crime-scene tech should work him over first, but the cop was busy on the phone and her baby was bleeding. She closed the door behind her and sat JJ on the bathroom sink, on the narrow ledge that most RVs offered. He balanced himself with both hands as Nell dampened a rag. Tenderly, she removed the filth from his face, broken twigs, traces of leaves, fine gravel and mud. Around his mouth, where the tape had kept him quiet, his skin was inflamed. Here she used a bit of baby oil, soothing the adhesive away, rolling it up in little balls as it came loose. She saved all the mess, shaking it onto a clean towel which she spread over the toilet seat, the only other flat surface except the floor or the shower. Her motion banged the cell phone in her pocket against the wall and Nell pulled it out, setting it on the ledge by the sink.
She couldn’t help the tears that fell. There was no way to stop them. Once, JJ hugged her hard, seeming to understand that they were tears of joy. Nell hugged him back, the tears mixing with laughter. “I love you, baby boy,” she whispered. Then, “Thank you,” she whispered to God. He had answered a lot of prayers in her life with a no. But this one was the most important, and this time he had come through. She rested her forehead against JJ’s. “Thank you for bringing my baby back to me.”
JJ hugged her close, not minding her tears, letting her cry all over him, which she had never done before. He kept whispering, “It’s okay, Mama. I’m okay.”
When she had herself under control again, Nell returned to cleaning up her son. Minutes later, as she was applying Band-Aids with cartoon characters on them to his legs, a knock came. Orson opened the door and stuck his head in. “What are you doing?” he said, irritation and dismay in his tone. “I needed to collect trace evidence from him.”
“Tough. I’m bandaging my son,” Nell said. She folded the towel with the trace in it and handed it to him through the crack in the door. “Here’s your evidence.”
“I can’t use this—”
Nell turned her back and shut the door in his face. Frankly, she didn’t give a good flying darn what he could or couldn’t use. She bent over again and tore open another bandage and applied it to JJ’s wrist.
When they emerged later, it was to find the sheriff and Orson sitting in the driver and passenger seats, the chairs swiveled around to face the common area.
“I still say we need to clear out the street and take this down to the department,” the sheriff said.
Ignoring him, Orson said, “Can you look at this?” He extended a thin file folder and Nell took it, curling up with JJ on the only vacant seat, facing the two cops and her mother. She opened the file, finding, not the police report she had somehow been expecting, but an old, faded photo, one she had seen before, not long after Joe had died. Just after she found out that Joe had once been one of New York City’s most eligible, rich bachelors.
The photo was of Joe and her, snapped soon after Joe wandered into Hartford. It had been taken through a telephoto lens, and her own face had ended up slightly blurry, the photographer clearly focusing on Joe and uninterested in her. Joe’s face was crisp, his jaw chiseled, skin taut and deeply tanned, the photo so clear that water droplets glistened on his lashes. His eyes flashed, looking black in the photograph; his dark hair was wet, finger-combed back from his forehead. And he was laughing. Nell shivered, remembering his laugh, so devil-may-care, so alive. JJ sounded like that when he took a drop in his tiny hard boat, the notes ringing off the water.
Nell brushed the photo with the tips of her fingers. She had a copy of this at home, in a photo album where she had collected all the bits of Joe’s life she could find, hoping his son could use it to get to know his father. In it, she looked impossibly young and totally infatuated.
Orson leaned down and tapped the edge of the photo. “Do you recognize this person?” The figure was even more out of focus than Nell.
“It’s RiverAnn,” JJ said.
It was RiverAnn, in one of her weightier times, her curves and stance proclaiming her identity. “Yes,” Nell said. “RiverAnn.”
“Look at her. Tell me what you think,” Orson commanded.
Nell studied the shot, the fisted hands, belligerent position of her feet and the shape of her torso. She looked up surprise. “She’s pregnant!”
Back before Joe disappeared, RiverAnn had been pregnant. And she was pregnant now, only much further along than in this photo. Nell studied the grainy reproduction. RiverAnn was facing forward, her body turned at an angle. She appeared to be watching Joe and Nell. And there was a strange look on her face.
Nell looked at her mother. “Take care ’a JJ.”