“No,” she said, and looked at both of them. “No I don’t have any kids.”
In her mind she saw the blood transfusing out of her, flowing down the tube and away to the boy.
“I mean, you know, I’ve gotten around a little bit, you know, with the band. There could be kids in a few ports here and there that I don’t know about.”
Dr. Simpson smiled at her. She thought the smile was genuine enough, but she also detected some placation in it. She was feeling smothered again, and she pushed the sheet down past her waist. Sophie took the sheet immediately and started to rearrange it, to fold it neatly down over Liz’s thighs, and Liz was transported back to the previous night, sitting there by the pond, and she simultaneously remembered her dream, and the stars in the ink-black water.
“Yeah,” said Dr. Simpson, “my career as a movie star, you know, I may have, well—” He bobbed his head from side to side and made a funny, I’m-guilty face. “—I may have fathered one or two in Africa. But, then my movie star friends adopt them, so . . .”
He stopped and looked at Sophie who gave him a discouraging look.
Simpson reverted to his professional, how-are-you-feeling bedside manner. “Elizabeth, have you ever given up a child?”
Liz frowned. Her discomfort at having the two of them looming there, the kind of discomfort she’d felt back when she was just starting to “get better” and felt like she was going to be exposed for all of her secrets and misdeeds — that feeling shifted and was replaced by a kind of irritation. These people weren’t trying to expose her as a fraud, or liar, or make her feel helpless, weak, in need of help — they were just misinformed. Barking up the wrong tree. If they were this stupid about things, she thought, how could she trust the whole blood-type-compatibility thing? The diagnosis of the child having high sodium levels, or whatever they had said. How could she trust any of it?
“I told you,” she said, working to keep her tone pleasant, “I’ve never had any kids. I’ve never given birth. Pretty sure I’d remember that,” and she smiled to indicate she was being humorous, though she wasn’t.
Dr. Simpson nodded. It was a big, bobbing nod that shook the bed-on-wheels and made it squeak. His eyes flicked to Sophie for a fraction of a second, and then he stood up.
“Can I see him, please? Can I see the little boy? What’s his name? I helped save his life, didn’t I? I should be able to see him.”
Liz looked around the room. There was as a blue curtain on one side, to her right, about a dozen feet away, and a wall with a closed door — maybe to a bathroom, to her left, also about a dozen feet away. Beyond the foot of her bed was the door out of the room, and to the right of the door a bank of windows extended beyond the blue curtain. In the glass the windows appeared to have crosshatching, like exes, as though they were reinforced with wire. Liz realized she had no idea what time of day or night it was, and her dream of a black pond with twinkling stars had muddled her ability to judge. There was no clock she could see, and she craned her neck and arched her back and tried to look behind her. Nothing. She straightened and looked back at the doctor and the resident. They had seemed to be having a silent conversation with one another with their eyes.
“When can you let me out of here?”
“I think,” Dr. Soap Opera said, “maybe we’re giving you the wrong idea. Or asking the wrong questions.”
“Fair enough,” said Liz, “but when will you let me go?”
“That depends,” said Sophie.
Liz turned to look at the woman and instead of that attractive smile, or that haggish look of concern, Liz liked even less what she saw there now. It seemed as though the Olive Oyl of Fletcher Allen actually looked peeved at Miss Liz Goldfine.
“On?”
“It depends on whether or not we need to call your detective friend up here for a different reason,” said Sophie, and rotated at the hips to face Dr. Simpson, her binder and clipboard and notebook and whatever else all still held tight against her bustless chest. “Doctor? Maybe we should have him explain it to her.”
“Explain what? Please. Just tell me what’s going on, or I’m going to get up and walk out of here.”
Liz took the IV in her hand and sat up all of the way, looking at both of them. She was surprised; ordinarily confrontation was something she avoided like the plague, choosing to silently ride things out and then make her moves on her own terms, in her own good time. Christopher, and some other members of that initial NA group, had called it passive-aggression. That was fine by Liz. They could call it peanut butter for all she cared. What they couldn’t do, ever, was keep her where she didn’t want to be. She’d shown them that before; she’d show them that again.
“We’ve taken a sample of your DNA,” said Sophie. She blurted it out, it sounded to Liz, like someone who’d been holding something back that they hated withholding and couldn’t wait to expel.
“What? Why?”
“You’re a match for Caleb’s mother.”
It didn’t make sense to Liz. She looked from the resident to the doctor. His head was lowered and he was looking up at her from under his thick eyebrows, chewing on his lower lip, holding the clipboard to his chest like Sophie had.
“That’s his name,” said Sophie.
“Caleb? How do you — I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
And just like that, Sophie was conciliatory again. “It has happened. It’s rare, but it has happened.”
“Sometimes,” broke in Dr. Simpson, “the trauma of childbirth is so great that a woman actually blocks it out. Completely. Especially in very difficult cases, or if the mother has an active involvement with certain drugs.”
“I still don’t understand what you’re telling me,” said Liz, and truly she didn’t. It had hit her, yes, that they were telling her that the baby boy was her own child. DNA, they said, the great Pythia of the 21st Century. But it was still, to her thinking, impossible. She had only gotten pregnant once and it hadn’t ended in birth.
Simpson went on. “It’s . . . I’ve never seen it. We were preparing him for brain surgery. Giving him your blood to lower his sodium levels. But it . . . well, after the transfusion, the sodium levels are good. Even the fluid under his scalp is gone, the pressure reduced. And it . . .” Simpson looked at Sophie, who then studied the floor. “I’ve just never seen it. The holoprosencephaly is gone. Whatever trauma he experienced in the uterus has been remedied. His hemispheres are looking good, and should grow normally. No more MIHV. He appears to be . . . cured.”
“I want to see him,” Liz said, looking at both of them. “Take me down to him, wherever he is. Okay?”
They exchanged looks again, and then the doctor nodded.
“I’ll get Eddie,” he said to Sophie, and left the room.
Liz and the young female resident sat there in silence. After a little while, Liz turned to her. “What did you say his name was again?” She’d heard, and she remembered, but for some reason wanted to hear it again.
“The baby’s name is Caleb.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Tom pinched the phone between his shoulder and ear, smoked, and scratched at his paunch, watching the young kids who stood in the parking lot. Not a self-conscious man by nature, Tom was suddenly very aware of himself as he stood there near the entrance; a balding man in his late fifties with liver spots materializing on his scalp, notable gut hanging over his belt, brown dorky schoolteacher pants, pit-stained button-collar work shirt, and a hunting coat. He’d gained some significant style, he supposed, when Steph had been around (she’d bought him two sport coats and a handful of ties) but he had obviously regressed. It was a funny thing to be thinking about, given all that was going on, but it was one of those things you just couldn’t help when you were suddenly on display, people coming and going in a big public place like Fletcher Allen, and you, standing there.
“Hello,” said Tom, mashing his cigarette out on the ground. He wasn’t in a designated smoking area, he realized
, as there were no ashtrays anywhere. “Trooper Cruickshand? This is Investigator Tom Milliner.”
“Hold on, please,” said the trooper on the other end. Tom heard a clattering and what sounded like a hand smothering the receiver and some muffled talk. More scraping noises and a gruff, and then the out-of-breath voice unmistakably belonging to Jim Cruickshand said “Yeah?”
“Jim. I’ve been trying to reach you on your cell.”
“Tommy? Where the hell are you?”
Careful, said a voice.
“I’m at Fletcher Allen.”
“What the hell are you doing there? Sheriff Johnston seems pretty pissed at you, Tommy. He didn’t say for what, but Jesus.”
“What did you find out at the Kingston place?”
“What did I find out?” Jim’s voice was loud in the earpiece. “What I found was a stockpile of dead women in Kingston’s shed, is what I found out. I tracked him through the woods for half of the fucking day and when I got back — fffipp — the bodies were gone. How come you never told me what was in the shed? What’s going on with you? You on the sauce again, Tommy? You know what happens to you, Tom, we all know what ha—”
“Jim, Jim,” said Tom, lighting another cigarette, “I never went into the shed.”
“You never went into the shed?” Nearly shouting, now.
“I could smell rotten meat — the kid said he’d shot coyotes.”
“You never went into the shed?”
“Jim, I didn’t have the right to. I didn’t have any probable cause to search the place. There was no reason to suspect that the kid was lying.”
“There were dead girls in there, Milliner!”
He had heard Jim yell before. Tom was unfazed, keeping his tone conversational. “Did you get confirmation of that? Have the bodies been identified?”
The other end was silent. Tom smiled at a woman pushing an older man in a wheelchair through the entrance doors. He watched the people coming and going, scrutinizing in particular anyone around the age of twenty-five, and anyone around eleven or twelve years old, unaccompanied or not. The kids across the street were still standing there, twenty or thirty of them, lined up on the sidewalk underneath the bulbous lights. Not one of them had so much as twitched.
“You don’t know,” said Jim. He seemed to have calmed down, but Tom knew what was coming next. He’d heard it all before.
“I don’t know what, Jim?”
“You weren’t there.”
“Are we talking about the Kingston place, Jim? Is that what we’re talking about? Or aren’t we.”
“All I’m saying is, you weren’t there, Milliner. You didn’t . . . you never found that edge. You’re lucky. Those girls were in there, Milliner. I saw them. He’s working with an accomplice, the Kingston kid, moved the bodies, maybe someone giving him instruction, and—”
“Where is he now?”
“—I’m going to find out who. Where is he? The fuck you think he is? On his way to county. Let me ask you this, you old hippie—”
“I wasn’t an objector, Jim, I just was never drafted.”
“—if you didn’t snoop the shed, or anything else, the fuck were you doing out there in the first place?”
“Following a lead.”
“What lead?”
“A kid that showed up in town a couple of days ago.” Tom looked across to where the phalanx of motionless pre-teens stood.
“What kid? Who?” Cruickshand was excited again, starting to yell again. Tom could hear a whistle in his breathing, a wheeze.
“A kid, Jim, just a kid. Homeless, maybe, I don’t know. He showed up in town a couple of days ago, right before all of this started.”
“The kid who was supposedly fucking shot?” Jim was back to shouting again, like he was on the sidelines of a football game, screaming at his Patriots, or like he was in the shit again, barking orders at the squad he’d eventually commanded. “Why didn’t you tell me this before now?”
“Because it wasn’t relevant,” Tom said, “I was just following the kid, just c—”
“You listen to me, Milliner, you fucking listen to me good. Whatever you do outside the wire, that’s your business, okay? But when you find something, you fucking let me know.”
And Trooper Jim Cruickshand hung up.
“Hello?” Tom snapped his phone shut. He dragged on his cigarette. “Asshole,” he said.
A middle-aged man with his infirm wife who had a bandage over her eye, glanced over as the doors slid open to let them in. Tom smiled and dropped his cigarette butt to the ground, stubbing it out with his heel.
Then Tom had an idea. He walked closer to the doors and prepared to interrupt the next comers or goers. It happened that an older woman, maybe in her sixties, was coming out of the hospital, both of her arms hooked through the handles of her floral purse.
“Excuse me,” said Tom. “Excuse me, ma’am.”
She stopped and looked at him, scowling. Tom fumbled for his badge, fishing it out of his inner coat pocket.
“I’m Investigator Milliner.”
“Oh. Is something wrong?”
“No, no.” He put his arm gently around her shoulders and walked her away from the entrance and to the side of it. “I just need your help for one second.”
With the hand holding the badge he extended his index finger and pointed across the street. “Can you see those kids over there, standing along that sidewalk? Over there, across the way? Can you see them?”
The woman frowned and squinted, then looked at Tom apologetically and shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said, “My eyes aren’t so good. Let me get my glasses. Kids, you say? Young people?”
“Yeah,” said Tom. He watched as she opened her purse and proceeded to fumble around for her glasses. He realized he’d left his sitting in the Blazer.
He let his hand slip from the older woman’s shoulder as a pretty woman in a tracksuit came jogging up. Tom managed to step in front of her with his badge as the doors slid open, just before she could walk in. “Excuse me, sorry,” he said. “I need to ask you a question.”
“What?” The woman, mid-forties, wasn’t wearing makeup and was sweating lightly. Either she worked at the hospital or was one of these people who had no choice but to camp out here, due to whatever health issue was going on with a loved one.
“Just a question, ma’am.”
He took her too, around the shoulders, and turned her gently so that she looked across the road. “Can you see those boys across the road? Can you see them standing there?”
Nearby, the older woman was just opening her glasses case with some difficulty. The pretty woman in the tight jogging outfit looked at Tom, like she wasn’t quite sure what to think of him, if he might be some nut job, or she might be being put on as some sort of practical joke.
“Right there. See them? Standing in a row?” Tom prompted.
For a moment Tom was suspended in time, sure of what she was going to say, and sure that he was going to have to reevaluate everything. That every move he had made since first following the kid — Christopher — had been the wrong move. Off to one degree or another, and exponentially worsening. That Jim was right, that he had no edge. That maybe he was depressed, or that he was becoming schizophrenic. Christ, he’d had some sort of spell right there in front of Little Rock Hospital. It would have explained a lot.
It wouldn’t even matter if Maddy had seen things too, if any or all other people in the world had witnessed the same things, it could all merely be part of his own delusion. He could just check the box marked “crazy” and sign off on the whole thing. Maybe, just maybe, he’d even be able to get some sleep at last.
“What is it, some kind of vigil?” The pretty woman’s head was craned forward, her hands on her hips, her eyes narrowed. “Are they Boy Scouts?”
“You see them?”
And the woman looked at Tom again, gave him that same look of suspicion and said, “Unless I’m hallucinating, yes, I see them, officer.” She held
her arm out in front of her, palm of her hand at an angle, and swept through the air. “They’re standing there like little Indians.”
Next to them, the older woman had finally gotten her glasses ready and slid them over her nose, still squinting. “Yes, I see them, too.”
“Thank you,” said Tom. “Thank you, ladies.”
He turned and walked quickly away from them. He reached into the outer pocket where he had stuffed the cigarettes and pulled out one that was still intact and lit it. He wasn’t sure whether this was better or not. Whether the reality of this was better than being crazy. Or if it proved anything. Multiple people saw the same thing, but what did that show? Besides, he’d been there before, hadn’t he? The summer he and Maddy and Jim had read The Lord of the Rings. The summer they’d sat by the pond and the water itself had come alive and they’d all felt it, they’d all experienced it, and Jim Cruickshand had taken off into the woods. They hadn’t seen Jim again, either; he’d left for Vietnam, just before the war’s end.
Tom walked and smoked and kept from looking over at the far road where the kids were arranged.
“Tweens,” he muttered around the smoke. He’d heard Steph refer to Brian as a “tween” once or twice.
He thought of the kid in his car only an hour or two ago, the one who said his name was Samuel, the one saying that “they” were coming. The defectives. Why?
Kidnapping, maybe. Ransom. Who was the little boy? A neglected kid born to a young, dope addict mother. He’d come in around the same time as Tom had been there with Mark Massey, apparently the father, who had tried to kill himself and who was a dead ringer for the kid who’d been burning on Tom’s own lawn.
Wagerers, Liz had said before she’d slipped into whatever shock-induced trance. It means someone who pledges themselves for a cause, prepares for battle, prepares for death.
Hirelings, Samuel had confirmed. We can’t interfere. We can only guide.
Kids, floating in the air. In the sky. The sky, lit up like the aurora borealis. Maddy, giddy with it. Tom, feeling lighter than air as he walked among the young men as they’d stood in front of Red Rock Medical Center.
HIGHWATER: a suspense thriller you won't be able to put down Page 19
