Relentless

swabbed the injection site with alcohol.
    For the first time, Waxx showed a trace of anxiety. “Where are you taking me?”
    From the open tailgate, I said, “Home.”
    “Before you do anything that goes … a step too far,” Waxx said, “there’s time to reach an understanding.”
    “We understand enough about you already,” I said. “And you’ll never understand us.”
    “But this isn’t right.”
    “It’s not a fair world.”
    “You’ve committed numerous felonies,” Waxx said.
    My laugh had a bitter quality that didn’t sound like me. I said, “Freak.”
    His face flushed, and he said, “Hack.”
    Penny put him to sleep less permanently than she might have liked.

   We spent the long day driving south, Milo and Lassie in the backseat, Penny and I up front, spelling each other at the wheel. The Hummer rode well, and we made good time.
    Waxx remained supine in the cargo space, covered in a blanket except for his face. When you couldn’t see the chains, he looked as if he were having, by choice, a pleasant snooze.
    When we got hungry, we stopped for take-out and ate while on the road.
    Each time that Waxx came around enough to tell us how totally dead we were, Penny administered additional sedative.
    Among the items taken from his pockets were a set of what most likely were house keys. From the key ring hung a remote-control fob much like the one that we had used to open the garage doors at the peninsula house.
    In his wallet, Penny found a card with the house alarm-system codes and the phone number to call in the event of a false alarm.
    More interesting were the four photos of the woman, portraits. In one, she appeared to be in her forties; another two might have been taken about a decade later; and in the fourth, she most likely had been sixty-something.
    She was a handsome woman but not pretty. At first her face seemed severe, but after studying her long enough, you realized that her features were generous enough and that the impression of severity came from the way she presented herself.
    Pulled back from her face, her hair was worn in a chignon, a tight roll that lay at the nape of her neck. It had been dark in her forties and fifties, later gray.
    In all four photos, her lips were pressed together as though someone were trying to force a spoonful of bitter medicine upon her. The corners of her mouth puckered with tension. She appeared to be incapable of a smile.
    Her wide-set eyes were blue but not warm like Penny’s, tempered by striations of gray. In every instance, she glared at the camera as if she loathed posing for photographs, and I suspected that in her presence you could almost feel the iciness of that stare.
    In the wallet, Penny also found a folded index card with a typed bit of commemorative verse titled “To Mother on Her 60th Birthday.”
    While I drove, she read it aloud with the lack of feeling that it merited: “Mother of life, Mother of death. Mother of all, you take my breath. Mother of all our tomorrows. Give us a world without sorrows. Love is the illusion of fools. Wisdom is the power that rules. Mother bring us all together. Change this world now and forever.”
    “Doesn’t seem like it comes from a Hallmark card,” I said.
    Penny said, “It’s signed—‘Your obedient son, Shearman.’”
    From the backseat, Milo piped: “I might have blown something up that one time, but I’ve never dropped a poetry bomb like that on you.”
    “And I’m grateful, Milo,” Penny said.
    “Is Mother the woman in the four photos?” I wondered.
    “I’d bet both kidneys and a lung on it,” Penny said.

    After we had eaten a late lunch of cheeseburgers while rolling steadily south, with Penny at the wheel, I said, “I’m not sure why we’re afraid to talk about it.”
    “I’m not sure, either,” Penny said.
    “I mean, with all the horrible things we’ve learned and seen and been forced to do these last few days, this doesn’t seem scary by comparison.”
    “And yet,” Penny said, “I’m so afraid to bring it up that I’d almost rather talk about what these crazy red-arm bastards did to Henry Casas and Tom Landulf and the others.”
    “I know what you mean. I’d almost rather read Waxx’s idiotic poem a hundred times than open the door on this.”
    “And yet what could we learn that would be terrible? For some time, she’s been doing strange things, but she’s still just a dog.”
    “And such a very cute dog,” I said.
    “An adorable dog.