Tad's entire body was jerking, as if with epilepsy. His back was bowed. His buttocks came out of the seat, thumped back, rose again, thumped back. His face was taking on a bluish color. The veins in his temples stood out prominently. She had been a candy-striper for three years, her last two in high school and the summer following her freshman year at college, and she knew what was happening here. He had not swallowed his tongue; outside of the more purple mystery novels, that was impossible. But his tongue had slid down his throat and was now blocking his windpipe. He was choking to death in front of her eyes.

She grabbed his chin in her left hand and yanked his mouth open.

Panic made her rough, and she heard the tendons in his jaw creak.

Her probing fingers found the tip of his tongue incredibly far back, almost to where his wisdom teeth would be if they every grew out.

She tried to grip it and couldn't; it was as wet and slippery as a baby eel. She tried to tweeze it between her thumb and forefinger, only faintly aware of the lunatic race of her heart. I think I’m losing him, she thought. Oh my dear God, I think I’m losing my son.

Now his teeth suddenly clashed down, drawing blood from her probing fingers and from his own cracked and blistered lips. Blood ran down his chin. She was hardly aware of the pain. Tad's feet began to rattle a mad tattoo against the floormat of the Pinto. She groped for the tip of his tongue desperately. She had it... and it slipped through her fingers again.

(the dog the goddamned dog it's his fault goddam dog goddamhellhound I'LL KILL YOU I SWEAR TO GOD)

Tad's teeth clamped down on her fingers again, and then she had his tongue again and this time she did not hesitate: she dug her fingernails into its spongy top and underside and pulled it forward like a woman pulling a windowshade down; at the same time she put her other hand under his chin and tipped his head back, creating the maximum airway. Tad began to gasp again - a harsh, rattling sound, like the breathing of an old man with emphysema.

Then he began to whoop.

She slapped him. She didn't know what else to do, so she did that.

Tad uttered one final tearing gasp, and then his breathing waled into a rapid pant. She was panting herself. Waves of dizziness rushed over her. She had twisted her bad leg somehow, and there was the warm wetness of fresh bleeding.

'Tad!' She swallowed harshly. 'Tad, can you hear me?'

His head nodded. A little. His eyes remained closed.

'Take it as easy as you can. I want you to relax.'

... want to go home ... Mommy ... the monster. .

'Shhh, Tadder. Don't talk, and don't think about monsters. Here.'

The Monster Words had fallen to the floor. She picked the yellow paper up and put it in his hand. Tad gripped it with panicky tightness. 'Now concentrate on breathing slowly and regularly, Tad. That's the way to get home. Slow and regular breaths.'

Her eyes wandered past him and once again she saw the splintery bat, its handle wrapped in friction tape, lying in the high weeds at the right side of the driveway.

'Just take it easy, Tadder, can you try to do that?'

Tad nodded a little without opening his eyes.

'Just a little longer, hon. I promise. I promise.'

Outside, the day continued to brighten. Already it was warm. The temperature inside the small car began to climb.

Vic got home at twenty past five. At the time his wife was pulling his son's tongue out of the back of his mouth, he was walking around the living room, putting things slowly and dreamily to rights, while Bannerman, a State Police detective, and a detective from the state Attorney General's office sat on the long sectional sofa drinking instant coffee.

'I've already told you everything I know,' Vic said. 'If she isn't with the people you've contacted already, she's not with anybody.' He had a broom and a dustpan, and he had brought in the box of Hefty bags from the kitchen closet. Now he let a panful of broken glass slide into one of the bags with an atonal jingle. 'Unless it's Kemp.'

There was an uncomfortable silence. Vic couldn't remember ever being as tired as he was now, but he didn't believe he would be able to sleep unless someone gave him a shot. He wasn't thinking very well. Ten minutes after he arrived the telephone had rung and he had sprung at it like an animal, not heeding the A. G.'s man's mild statement that it was probably for him. It hadn't been; it was Roger, wanting to know if Vic had gotten there, and if there was any news.

There was some news, but all of it was maddeningly inconclusive.

There had been fingerprints all over the house, and a fingerprint team, also from Augusta, had taken a number of sets from the living quarters adjacent to the small stripping shop where Steven Kemp had worked until recently. Before long the matching would be done and they would know conclusively if Kemp had been the one who had turned the downstairs floor upside down. To Vic it was so much redundancy; he knew in his guts that it had been Kemp.

The State Police detective had run a make on Kemp's van. It was a 1971 Ford Econoline, Maine license 641-644. The color was light gray, but they knew from Kemp's landlord -they had routed him out of bed at 4 Am. - that the van had desert murals painted on the sides: buttes, mesas, sand dunes. There were two bumper stickers on the rear, one which said SPLIT WOOD, NOT ATOMS and one which said RONALD REAGAN SHOT J.R. A very hinny guy, Steve Kemp, the murals and the bumper stickers would make the van easier to identify, and unless he had ditched it, he would almost certainly he spotted before the day was out. The MV alert had gone out to all the New England states and to upstate New York. In addition, the FBI in Portland and Boston had been alerted to a possible kidnapping, and they were now running Steve Kemp's name through their files in Washington. They would find three minor busts dating back to the Vietnam war protests, one each for the years 1968-1970.

‘There's only one thing about all of this that bothers me,' the A.

G.'s man said. His pad was on his knee, but anything Vic could tell he had already told them. The man from Augusta was only doodling. 'If I may be frank, it bothers the shit out of me.'

'What's that?' Vic asked. He picked up the family portrait, looked down at it, and then tilted it so the shattered glass facing tumbled into the Hefty bag with another evil little jingle.

'The car. Where's your wife's car?'

His name was Masen - Masen with an 'e', he had informed Vic as they shook hands. Now he went to the window, slapping his pad absently against his leg. Vic's battered sports car was in the driveway, parked to one side of Bannerman's cruiser. Vic had picked it up at the Portland jetport and dropped off the Avis car he had driven north from Boston.

'What's that got to do with it?' Vic asked.

Masen shrugged. 'Maybe nothing. Maybe something. Maybe everything. Probably nothing, but I just don't like it. Kemp comes here, right? Grabs your wife and son. Why? He's crazy. That's reason enough. Can't stand to lose. Maybe it's even his twisted idea of a joke.'

These were all things Vic himself had said, repeated back almost verbatim.

'So what does he do? He bundles them into his Ford van with the desert murals on the sides. He's either running with them or he's holed up somewhere. Right?'

'Yes, that's what I'm afraid -'

Masen turned from the window 'to look at him. 'So where's her car?'

'Well -' Vic tried hard to think. It was hard. He was very tired.

'Maybe -'

'Maybe he had a confederate who drove it away,' Masen said. 'That would probably mean a kidnapping for ransom. If he took them on his own, it was probably just a crazy spur-of-the-moment thing. If it was a kidnapping for money, why take the car at all? To switch over to? Ridiculous. That Pinto's every bit as hot as the van, if a little harder to recognize. And I repeat, if there was no confederate, if he was by himself, who drove the car?'

'Maybe he came back for it,' the State Police detective rumbled.

'Stowed the boy and the missus and came back for the car.'

That would present some problems without a confederate,' Masen said, 'but I suppose he could do it. Take them someplace close and walk back for Mrs. Trenton's Pinto, or take them someplace far away and thumb a ride back. But why?'

Bannerman spoke for the first time. 'She could have driven it herself.'

Masen swung to look at him, his eyebrows going up.

'If he took the boy with him -Bannerman looked at Vic and nodded a little. 'I'm sorry, Mr. Trenton, but if Kemp took the boy with him, belted him in, held a gun on him, and told your wife to follow dose, and that something might happen to the boy if she tried anything clever, like turning off or flashing her lights -'

Vic nodded, feeling sick at the picture it made.

Masen seemed irritated with Bannerman, perhaps because he hadn't thought of the possibility himself. 'I repeat: to what purpose?'