Beyond Recognition Read Free Page B

him leave under any circumstances—and how he would come looking if he lost Ben to a bunch of social workers. “You don’t know him,” Ben repeated with a dry throat. She hadn’t brought this up in a long time; he wondered why she bothered to try again. She knew perfectly well how he felt.
    He was saved from further discussion by the sound of a car in the gravel drive. They both heard it.
    â€œI told you,” Emily said with loving eyes.
    Ben smiled at her. They were a team again. They had work to do.
    Ben grabbed the hand-held device. Emily tucked the clear plastic earpiece under her dark hair and into her ear. “Check,” he said, into the device, and Emily nodded. He slipped out the back door as Emily went off to answer the doorbell. Midday on a Saturday could mean either a man or a woman. The same time of day during the week would have meant a woman for sure. He moved down the concrete steps and over to the corner of the house, where he edged his eye out just far enough to see down the driveway to the beater yellow Ford Pinto wagon.
    â€œThey’re paying me to tell them what they want to hear,” Emily had explained to him a long time ago. “The more we learn, the more we know about them, the closer we come to telling them what they want to hear, the happier they are, the more they keep coming back.” It made sense to Ben. He had no problem with spying on them. To him it was a game. It was fun. And he knew he was good at it, and it pleased him to be good—really good—at something. Emily said that someday he would make one hell of a cop.
    He heard the front door thump shut and went right to work. He walked briskly to the car, glanced once at the front door to make sure the driver was indeed inside for a reading, and began his assessment. The sticker on the windshield was an employee parking permit for the U. There were three of them, all different colors, different years. Looking through the passenger’s side window he spotted a Victoria’s Secret catalog addressed to a Wendy Davis at a street address that placed her about a mile north of Green Lake. On the floor were two mashed candy boxes for SourBoys. In the back seat, a baby’s safety seat was strapped in facing backward, looking at a rusted dog guard wire wall that sequestered the empty rear area from the front of the car.
    He glanced again at the house, lifted the walkie-talkie, carefully checking the volume knob, and, bringing his lips close, spoke the woman’s name clearly—“Wendy Davis”—followed by a description of the cluttered condition of the car’s interior, the fact that it was an old beat-up Ford, the presence of a child’s seat, and the existence of candy boxes indicating the likelihood of an older child as well. “Hold it,” he said, noticing the newspaper wedged between the plastic median and the driver’s seat. He came around the vehicle quickly. The paper was folded open to the want ads. A number of apartment rentals were circled. He reported this important find. “She’s house hunting. It’s yesterday’s paper.” He wouldn’t open the car door, no matter how tempted; that was against the law and could get Emily into serious trouble, which would ruin everything. He wondered if some of the employment want ads were circled as well, but he would never know.
    Bingo! he thought, as he caught sight of the two passport-size color photos stuck into the plastic by the car’s speedometer. One was of a baby boy, the other of an older boy, perhaps five years old. He reported this, as well as the fact that the woman smoked Marlboro Lights and drank cans of decaffeinated Diet Coke. “Maybe religious,” he added, noticing the small black cross that hung from the rearview mirror. He chastised himself for not noticing this right away. Sometimes he missed the obvious stuff in his determination to see absolutely everything. The