Hidden Prey

And Roger?”
    “Burt. I don’t know about Burt. But Roger—you’ve met Roger. That wasn’t a disguise. You think he was a mastermind?”
    Parks laughed. “If it was a disguise, he was a mastermind. Well, tell you what, honey, it’s gonna be interesting. You need anything, give me a call.”
    Three more old friends called, and all of them offered support. She was a little amazed, because if this had been a TV story, the whole town would have turned on her; the yard would have been full of people with ropes and pitchforks.
    Then the TV people arrived, trucks parking in the street, and people began banging on her door and taking pictures of her when she answered, so she stopped answering and called Maisler.
    “I’ll be right there,” he said. He arrived ten minutes later, talked to all the media people, then knocked, and Jan let him in. “I’ve told them to stay off the lawn, and I called Roy Hopper direct and asked him to send a car over here. He said he would.”
    “Thanks.” She was grateful, but wondered if his clock was running; he seemed to be enjoying himself too much to charge for it.
    “If you want, I can make a statement to these people, unless you want to. They won’t go away until they have something.”
    “If you could do it . . .”
    He was happy to.
     
    S HE WAS TRYING so hard to stay on top of the problem that she didn’t notice how quiet Carl had been. When she did notice, she went back to his bedroom and knocked. No answer. “Carl?” She turned the knob and peeked in. He was sprawled on his bed, faceup, forearm over his eyes. “Are you okay? Honey?”
    “Go away.”
    “Are you okay? You’ve got to come out and talk.”
    “Later. I just want to lie here for a while.”
    “You’ve been lying there for an hour. You should come out and eat something. I’ll make some soup and sandwiches . . .”
    “I’ll be out in a while,” he snapped.
    “I’ll call you when the soup’s ready.”
     
    H ER HORROR OF the moment, and her astonishment, were real, for the most part. But there was a part of her, a small kernel at the edge of her mind, that had known that Burt was a spy, that there were other spies connected to him, and that Roger had, when he was young, done some spy things. Had been involved.
    She hadn’t known when she married him—hadn’t known for a few years, after Carl was born, but small parts and pieces of it started to come out when Roger began drinking. He would talk to relieve stress—and then say he couldn’t talk about why he was stressed. He began hinting of bigger forces, of untellable but important issues.
    She thought of it simply as self-aggrandizement in the face of a life that had started sloping downhill after his junior year in college, when it became obvious that he wouldn’t be the big hockey star at UMD.
    But more pieces kept coming out, and then one night, thoroughly in the bag, he simply told her: we’re a family of spies. She hadn’t really believed him, and had gone to Burt, and Burt had simply sat in his chair,smiling at her, and Melodie had twinkled, and they’d said, “That was all a long time ago. Best not to think about it anymore.”
    She’d bought that—even when it turned out that it probably hadn’t been so long ago . . .
     
    R OGER HAD CONTINUED to drink, the divorce had followed, and Burt and Melodie had come to her rescue. The previous owner of the frame shop was about to give it up and suggested that Jan, who was working the counter and enjoyed it, might want to buy the place. “It makes just about enough to support a family of two,” he said. “If you work your butt off.”
    Burt helped with a down payment, and for the next ten years, all through elementary and junior high school, Burt and Melodie provided Carl’s day care. She’d get him off in the morning, and they’d pick him up in the afternoon, be ready with snacks and dinners on nights when she had to work late. They’d take him to after-school activities, keep him busy.
    They were, she thought, as much Carl’s parents as she was; and that was why, she realized, Carl was lying on his bed like a log. The boy was in serious shock, the kind of shock you experience when a parent dies . . .
    She hurried with the soup and sandwich.
     
    T HE NEXT FEW hours were a jumble.
    The television never left. Maisler was all over the place, and not just local television, but on Fox, CNN, the major networks. She was afraid to leave the house, and instead, parked