The Baby Squad

by Andrew Neiderman

  “Okay,” he said, and turned to Mr. Downing. “Thank you.” He glared at the students one more time and then walked out of the room, the back of his neck tanned with a blush of frustration and rage. One or more of those little bastards knew something, he was thinking.

  He went directly to Ted Sullivan’s office. The principal’s inner office door was open, and the moment McCalester appeared in the outer office, Ted Sullivan was up from his desk, beckoning to him to come right in. He did so and closed the door behind him.

  “She didn’t show?” Ted asked.

  He had his hands on his waist. He was a former basketball star for the Sandburg Comets and had served for five years as head coach after graduating from college and becoming a physical education teacher. He then returned to college, achieved his administration degrees, got married, and was lucky enough to have it all achieved just as the former principal, Ward Young, was about to retire. That was nearly fifteen years ago.

  Ted and his wife, Marian, didn’t apply for a parenting license until they had been married five years. They had a daughter, Sophie, in the fifth grade, and they were thinking of applying for a second child, a boy they wanted to name after his father, Eugene. Henry McCalester had been a policeman in Sandburg when Ted was in high school, so despite his status in the community, he still showed Henry deep respect.

  “Nope.”

  “Any of the other students know anything?”

  “If they do, they’re not saying.”

  Ted nodded, his eyes growing small. “I’ll keep on it.”

  “Good. I have to call Chester Marlowe.”

  “Go on. Use my phone,” Ted said, stepping aside.

  “Thanks.”

  Neither Chester nor Jennie moved when the phone rang. They looked at it and then at each other first. Chester rose slowly, took a deep breath, and lifted the receiver. He listened after saying hello.

  “I understand,” he finally said. “Thank you.”

  He hung up and turned to Jennie, shaking his head.

  “Where would she go?” he pondered.

  Both their sets of parents were thousands of miles away, his in Europe and hers in California.

  “As far as I know, she didn’t have much money,” Jennie said.

  “Makes no sense.”

  She nodded. “What are you going to do, Chester?”

  “Go to work, I guess, and wait there. I’ll just go out of my mind here.” He went to the garage door. “I’ll call you if I hear anything and you do the same.”

  “Right,” she said. She thought they should kiss, they should hug, but he walked out too quickly. She heard the garage door go up, and she heard him start the car and back out. She waited to hear the garage door come down, but she didn’t. After a few more moments, curious, she went to the door to the garage and looked in. The garage door was indeed still up, and Chester’s car was idling, but he wasn’t in it.

  “Chester?”

  She stepped into the garage and walked toward the car. Just as she reached it, he came around the corner of the house.

  “What?” she demanded, holding her breath.

  “The shed door was open. Her bike is gone!”

  They stared at each other for a moment, and then he hurried back into the house to call McCalester. He felt almost as if he were betraying his own daughter, but this wasn’t even slightly humorous anymore. In a matter of a few hours, the whole community was going to know. His only hope was to bring it to an end as quickly as he could.

  Natalie hadn’t been able to close her eyes until nearly three in the morning. The debate that raged inside her had her turning like a roast on a spit. She forced herself to remain still when Preston groaned and asked her what was wrong.

  “Maybe the food I ate was too rich,” she suggested.

  “Take something,” he advised, and she rose with the opportunity to get away from him for a while and think. She went into the kitchen and did get a glass of milk. Ever since she had concluded she was pregnant, she took great care about what she was going to eat or drink. No one even noticed how little alcohol she had consumed at the dinner. They were all too involved in their conversation, and Margaret was only concerned with what she had to drink, not Natalie.

  It would be horrible to go through with this and have a child who was somehow deformed or undeveloped because of something she had done. No, the child would have to look and act as perfectly as one of those mass-produced in the Natal Production Laboratories.

  After hearing that conversation at dinner, how could she even still be considering it? Such a revelation about herself would end Preston’s career in a New York minute and send her reeling into a maelstrom of disgrace from which she would never return. What would she have accomplished except their destruction?

  On the other hand, if Preston saw it the way she saw it, he could become very excited about it and supportive. Together, they could find a way to accomplish it, couldn’t they? Preston was so resourceful and brilliant. Look at what he had accomplished with his life already. It was not out of the question to envision him as a statewide political candidate in a matter of a few years.

  She had always felt he loved her more than most husbands loved their wives these days. He was passionate, gentle, and, most of all, really a romantic. He loved her candlelight dinners, the music, all the things she would do to make their lovemaking cozy and special. He enjoyed watching old movies with her and actually had tears in his eyes when Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman said their goodbyes on that airstrip in Casablanca. Wasn’t he always kidding her with “Here’s looking at you, kid”? Why, if anything, he would probably bawl her out for keeping it from him all this time. There was no need to sneak around. How could she even think he would give her up because she fell into some unfair and distorted terminology such as an Abnormal? Was there anything abnormal about her? How many women in this community, in this whole county, were as attractive and as intelligent as she was?

  She should go right back into that bedroom, wake him, and confess it all, she thought. For a few moments, she was actually on her way, and then she paused and thought. He would be too groggy and too confused to understand and be supportive. It was something that she had to prepare. She had to set up a nice dinner, his favorite wine, the candles lit, some music, and then she would tell him, and he would reassure her. They would never be more in love than they would be at that moment.

  Was she a foolish romantic to think so?

  She refused to believe it. She knew her man, knew how hard and how long he had courted her and how important it was for him to win her love. When he finally had proposed, he had looked as if he would shatter like brittle china if she refused. How could she have been such a trophy, so sought after, and not hold on to that endearing love?

  We’re special, she thought. Everyone envies us. They see the magic between us, how it’s not only lasted but grown stronger and stronger. All eyes are on us when we enter a party or a banquet. It’s easy to see the adoration and the jealousy in their faces and feel like celebrities. We are celebrities. We star in our own movie every day of every week, every week of every month. That, too, she was sure, was what brought Cauthers and his partners to the realization that they had better make Preston an offer now, before it was too late, before another firm appropriated him and all that came along with him, which surely meant her and their marriage.

  Confidence brought her back to the bed, and finally, after a little more thought, she closed her eyes and got some restful repose. She overslept, however, and by the time she woke and turned to look for Preston, she realized he was having breakfast. She could hear the monitor in the kitchen nook rattling off the Wall Street report. She rose, washed her face with cold water, and put on her robe. He was nearly to the door when she entered.

  “Good morning. Sorry I overslept,” she said.

  “It’s all right. I’ve got a lot to do today. You must have been dead to the world. You didn’t even wake when the phone rang.”

  “The
phone rang?”

  “Uh-huh. Bertram. That man gets the news a few seconds before it happens, I think.”

  “What news?”

  “That girl he was talking about last night, the Marlowe girl.”

  “Yes?”

  “Her parents reported her missing this morning. She was supposed to turn in the person who gave her the prenatal vitamins.”

  “That was definite? They were prenatal?”

  “Absolutely the real thing. There’s a police search under way. Bertram’s worried about it exploding the story. He said he feels like the little boy with his finger in the dyke. I’ll call you later,” he added, gave her a quick peck on the lips, and scooped up his briefcase as he reached for his sports jacket. “Oh, I guess you should call Judy Norman and set up our celebration dinner with them.”

  She nodded.

  “Looks like another unusually hot day,” he called back.

  She heard the door to the garage open and close. She still had not moved from the kitchen doorway.

  Something was tickling the back of her mind. It was like having an itch in your skull. There was no way to scratch it off.

  She finally turned and went back to their bedroom. A cold sensation began at the base of her spine. This fear that was building was surely unfounded. It was simply part of the paranoia anyone in her condition in this society today would have to feel. Ridiculous, she told herself, but nevertheless, she went to her walk-in closet and located the key to her jewelry case, which was not well hidden. She always left it on the dresser top. Once she opened the case, she lifted the top tray and looked at her pamphlets about natural birth and her two pill bottles. One was her now useless birth control pills, and the other was her prenatal vitamins. She plucked the bottle and opened it, turning it to spill the pills onto her palm. Only three came out.

  A sharp sting shot through her heart with electric speed and nearly took her breath away. She shook the bottle and turned it over, and then she put her forefinger in and felt around. That was it? Only three? At minimum, a half dozen or so were missing. When she was down to six, she would always get more.

  What did this mean?

  Who could have taken them? Who would come into my closet and look through my jewelry?

  It can’t be.

  I’m mistaken, she told herself, even though she couldn’t see how she was. She had to believe that.

  The alternative was terrifying.

  It was hard to swallow and catch her breath just thinking about it.

  She put it all away quickly and went to the phone to call her source.

  I just need more, that’s all. I just didn’t keep good track of it.

  That’s all.

  Please.

  That’s all.

  Without any confidence, she accepted the theory and went forward with all her hopes and plans as if none of this even mattered.

  Am I a foolish romantic? she wondered.

  So what? I have to be to write what I write. It’s not a fault.

  Four

  Butch Decker sat in his New York Power and Electric bubble-cab truck and reached for his lunch pail. He had gotten the order to check the line on Wildwood Drive twenty minutes ago and had driven up to pole 7001 as he was directed to do, but it was his lunch hour, and the thirty-eight-year-old lineman treated his lunch hour with a religious sanctity. They’d have him working straight through the day without a break if they could.

  The antiquated lines on this side of the community should have long since been buried, especially when the Internet, digitals, video phones, and health options with blood-pressure checks and blood and urine analysis through sensiphone chips had been added, but the loss of real estate value, the decline of the resort community, and the desertion of buildings and even some homes put the region pretty low on the totem pole.

  His grandad used to love to say, “The squeaky wheel gets the oil.”

  Well, that was still a very accurate adage, especially when it applied to work done on people’s utilities. The more complaint calls they received at the central office, the farther up the ladder the complaint rose. Practically no one complained about this zone, Butch thought. If the central office had anything else for him to do, even a routine signal check, he would not be here today. That was for sure. As Grandad would say, “You can bet the bank on it.”

  He unwrapped his sandwich and stared at it a moment. Wasn’t Vikki supposed to make him a sandwich out of that meat loaf they had last night? He was looking forward to it. It had been delicious. This looked like…damn, another liverwurst, and just because she had found that great buy on the sandwich meat at the supermarket last week. Great buys meant whatever it was would be coming out of his ears as well as his rear for days and days.

  He unscrewed his thermos and took a long gulp of the cold, fresh lemonade. He had made that himself with the lemons his sister had brought back from California. A little too tart, he thought, and shook the thermos to stir up the sugar. He sipped it again, smiled to himself, and went to bite his sandwich. Liverwurst or not, he was hungry. After he took the first bite, he sat back and stared ahead at what he knew to be the old Lakehouse. It wasn’t much different from the way it was when he was just a boy throwing rocks through the windows with his buddies.

  I’m surprised no one’s come up here and burned it down, he thought, but then he thought no one had it insured anymore, so what would be the point? The fire department would take its damn time coming up to put it out, thinking it would be easy because they could pump water from the lake and…

  He stopped thinking and sat up. The bubble cab had tinted windows but provided a nearly three-hundred-sixty-degree view of everything. It was set higher up than most vehicles, too.

  Was that a bike on the grass? He gazed harder. Yes, it was a bike, and not some old rusty thing, either. It looked like one of those very expensive ones with the computerized shifting. Who would leave a bike like that just lying there? Suddenly, his mind reeled around a possibility. He knew people saw this clearing and this view of the lake as some sort of lovers’ lane. It was that when he was a teenager himself. Someone’s probably at it in the grass, he thought, humping away in the weeds. They were so high, thick, and wild here, even with his perspective from the cab, he couldn’t see over them or through them.

  But young people should be in school now, he realized. Was it two kids playing hooky and then playing nooky? He laughed at the possibility. Maybe someone’s mother borrowed the bike. Might be even a better sight, he thought, and laid down his sandwich. Slowly, as quietly as he could, he opened the door of the cab and stepped out.

  Billy Prater would be jealous as hell. Butch had just recently told him about the Cornfield woman up at Devine Corners basking naked in the sun. All he did then was look down from the pole, and there she was as plain as day, nude, sprawled, her legs bent at the knees. He nearly dropped his tools.

  “You oughta take a camera out with you,” Chuck Stackhouse had said. “Never saw anyone as lucky as you when it comes to stumbling on things like that.”

  Billy grunted. “Maybe he’s lying,” he said.

  “Maybe, but even so, it’s a good one. I like hearing lies like that,” Chuck replied with a laugh that originated somewhere in his belly and came up like a rolling tin can because of his smoker’s cough.

  Butch moved with the grace of an Indian through the brush, pausing to listen and then walking forward as if he were walking on air. Years of hunting rabbit gave him that skill. He was about to catch two human rabbits at it, he assumed, and parted some tall weeds to peer ahead.

  When he saw her, her back was to him, and for a moment, he thought a young girl had just decided to take a nap. He stared and realized there was something not right. She was far too still for a nap. He cleared his throat loudly, but she didn’t turn or lift her head, so he kicked a stone in her direction. It rolled inches from her head, but still she did not move.

  Troubled now, he walked toward her.

  “Hey,” he cal
led. “Are you all right, miss?”

  Her immobility filled the caverns in his chest with ice water. When he stood beside her, he saw the bloodied temple and the glassy look in her eyes. A line of ants had begun to invade her open mouth, most likely harvesting any remnants of any food in her teeth. A few were coming out of her nostrils, the brown marching line so thick it looked more like a shoe lace.

  The sight turned his stomach. The little liverwurst he had eaten rose like an angry beast and filled the back of his throat with an acid that made him cough and choke until he started to heave. He turned away, ran down to the lakeside, and knelt by the water, dipping his hands in to scoop the cold, clear liquid over his face.

  He caught his breath.

  “Christ almighty,” he moaned. “Poor kid fell off her bike and got killed.”

  He rose slowly and made his way back toward his truck, avoiding the corpse. When he got into the cab, he reached for his intercom and raised the dispatcher. It was Selby Davis, Tommy’s wife. Tommy was another lineman, but they worked different shifts so one or the other could take care of their six-month-old. After nearly nine years of trying, they had finally been licensed to become parents. She had just taken her shift.

  “Call Chief McCalester for me, Selby,” Butch began.

  “Why?”

  Selby had to know everything, he thought. She might as well work for the county newspaper.

  “I’m up at the Lakehouse at pole 7001. There’s a dead girl here, lying beside her bike. Looks like she’s been dead awhile.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “I’ll wait for him.”

  “Okay. Oh, my God.”

  He sat back, glanced at his sandwich, and then, remembering how sharply it had risen in his throat, reached down, plucked it off the seat, and tossed it like a Frisbee as far and as hard as he could into the weeds.

  Lucky she didn’t make the meat loaf, he thought.

  It would have been a waste.

  The applause resounded in the lobby of Cauthers, Myerson, and Boswell. All of the secretaries and paralegals had come out the moment the elevator opened and Preston stepped into the offices. There was a monitor over the elevator door that showed who was in the elevator coming up to their plush offices in the new Towers Building in Monticello, New York, the county seat. It was actually the tallest building in southeastern upstate New York, rising to forty stories with a restaurant atop called Sky Porch. Cauthers, Myerson, and Boswell had their own lunch table reserved at the south-side window with an expansive, breathtaking view of what were known as the foothills of the Catskills.