House of Blues

getting no answer, dialed the Heberts. A young
man answered and said everything was fine and he hadn't heard a
thing. Reassured, she'd given up.
    "When you peeked out," Skip said, "did
you notice any cars parked in front of the Heberts' house?"
    " Not really," said Mrs. Gandolfo. "No
more than usual, anyway. Maybe a beige one, I guess, or white. And
there might have been another one, but I really can't remember
anything about it. You know how your mind registers something, but
you don't necessarily know what?"
    " Can you say anything else about the beige one?"
    "No. No, I can't. Except it might have been kind
of small."
    A Mercedes sedan was at least middle-sized, in Skip's
view.
 
 
    3
    Pulses pounding a wild tattoo in her ears, the wheel
slick from her sweat, Reed drove the Mercedes like a sports car,
finding it clumsy on the turns.
    My fault, she thought. Dennis could do this better.
Oh fuck, oh fuck, anybody could.
    Blind with her own tears, she tried not to think,
just drive.
    Oddly, the streets were nearly deserted, or the
Tercel might have hit another car. She might have as well; a cop
might have stopped either one.
    But it was a lazy night in the Big Easy—everyone
was home from work and staying in, it looked like.
    She thought she could remember these words: "If
anybody follows me, I'll shoot them through the head, I swear to God
I will."
    But she wasn't sure. At the time, the words hadn't
even registered. Nothing had. Thought had taken a holiday. Reed
simply acted on automatic pilot.
    Her feet had worked. It was that simple.
    She had given chase, seen Sally thrown roughly into
the Tercel, as if car seats hadn't been invented, and gotten there
too late. The car door was locked.
    Reed was getting flashbacks of the scene, as if they
were part of a dream. In her mind she saw herself as she couldn't
have in real life: tearing out the door, nearly falling down on the
front steps and pausing to right herself, losing precious
milliseconds, tugging at the car door, through the window seeing
Sally's small blond head hit the door on the other side, calling out
her name—Sally!—before hearing the Tercel's ignition. The key had
been left in it, ready to go.
    Reed had had to grapple for her own extra key from
under the right fender, a tiny delay that had made the difference.
Then began the chase, Reed still on automatic, just doing what she
had to do to get her child back. She paid no attention at all to
where she was being led, what neighborhoods she went through, where
she got on the expressway—she just drove; and now these scenes had
started flashing, perhaps the first sign of sanity returning. Could
this really be she, Reed Hebert? What did she think she was doing?
    She thought she should stop and call the police, but
she knew she wasn't about to. She might not be able to find a phone
booth. If she did, 911 might be busy; might not answer right away.
She'd lose the Tercel.
    What if she had stayed at her parents' and called the
police from there? That was the only sane thing to do, but she hadn't
thought of it; hadn't thought anything at the time, had simply been
the burden her feet were carrying. But it now occurred to her that
she wouldn't have known anything about the car if she had, not its
color or model or license number, all of which she knew now.
    So I must be doing the right thing.
    She neither believed that nor disbelieved it. It was
just something to think while she drove.
    They were near Bayou St. John, she noticed.
    She thought: This isn't right. What the hell are we
doing here? She realized that she thought she understood why Sally
had been taken, but a place like this didn't begin to enter into it.
Gentilly. The posh, nouveau part, about two blocks from near-slums.
    The Tercel stopped in front of an enormous house, an
absurdly huge house, as big as any on St. Charles Avenue, built of
gray stone and surrounded by a fence of iron bars standing dignified
as deacons. A group of men walked out of the gate and turned left on
the sidewalk.
    The Tercel driver got out of the car and, clutching
Sally, raced to the gate, now being closed by a man in a suit who
still managed somehow to look like a servant. Sally was screaming:
"Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!"
    Reed certainly wasn't going to bother to park. She
simply abandoned her car in the street. As she rounded it, she found
herself staring straight into the eyes of one of the men in the
little group, who had all turned toward the screams.
    It was Bruce