Gone, Baby, Gone - Dennis Lehane [158]
Amanda rolled with the dog, shrieked as he got on top of her and a gob of drool dripped toward her cheek. She escaped him, and he followed her and jumped at her legs.
Tricia Doyle held him down and showed Amanda how to brush his coat, and she did so on her knees, gently, as if brushing her own hair.
“He doesn’t like it,” I heard her say.
It was the first time I’d heard her voice. It was curious, intelligent, clear.
“He likes when you do it better than me,” Tricia Doyle said. “You’re gentler than I am.”
“I am?” She looked up into Tricia Doyle’s face and continued brushing the dog’s coat with slow, even strokes.
“Oh, yes. Much gentler. My old woman’s hands, Amanda? I have to grip the brush so hard, I sometimes take it out on old Larry here.”
“How come you call him Larry?” Amanda’s voice turned musical on the name, riding up on the second syllable.
“I told you that story,” Tricia said.
“Again,” Amanda said. “Please?”
Tricia Doyle chuckled. “Mr. Doyle had an uncle when we were first married who looked like a bulldog. He had big, droopy jowls.”
Tricia Doyle used her free hand to grip her own cheeks and pull the skin down toward her chin.
Amanda laughed. “He looked like a dog?”
“He did, young lady. He even barked sometimes.”
Amanda laughed again. “No suh.”
“Oh, yes. Ruff!”
“Ruff!” Amanda said.
Then the dog got into it as Amanda placed the brush aside and Mrs. Doyle let Larry go and the three of them faced one another on their haunches and barked at each other.
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