Which were these? Wagerers or defectives?
Tom abruptly started across the parking lot, looking for traffic, looking down where he stepped, and then, finally, up and across the way.
But he didn’t have to go anywhere. They were coming to him.
Side by side, spaced ten or fifteen feet apart, the row of kids, pre-adolescents, no more than boys really, were crossing the road, coming up onto the lawn towards him, and towards the hospital.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Liz was watching the baby boy, Caleb, sleep. They had taken out her IV and helped her out of bed. It was the only way that she would agree to cooperate, that she would tell them anything. The truth was that she had nothing to tell. Nothing that she knew of, anyway.
They watched her carefully. She felt their eyes on her. They were waiting for her to break down and start crying and tell them all what she had done. Only Maddy, her hair a bit mussed on one side from sleep, seemed to regard her in the same way as before, her face full of concern — non-judgmental.
Caleb looked peaceful. There were pillows on either side of him, but to Liz he looked too old to roll out of bed. His limbs were at a lengthening stage, she thought. Like he was in a growth spurt, or coming out of one. It just looked that way. He was still a baby, by most accounts. Not a baby in the swaddling, ga-ga-goo-goo sense of it, no, in that respect he was a little boy — but there was still baby in him. Innocent. And, if anything, wasn’t that what a baby was?
Maddy smoothed her hand over the child’s head and rested it there, looking off and up to the side, her face drawing into a little frown.
“Feel that there,” she said. “Go ahead.”
Liz took a step closer and Maddy placed Liz’s hand over her own and then slipped hers out from underneath. His hair was more like little boy hair, but it still had a delicate feel. Beneath his hair, on the scalp, she felt a little bulge. It was soft like a sack of fluid.
Liz withdrew her hand quickly. “What is it?”
“We’re not sure. The neurologist says he’s fine. The transfusion was successful, and the brain has responded. MRI is clean. His reflexes are good. All of his faculties are there . . .” Maddy looked down at the child and her large bosom heaved with a sigh.
“You don’t think it’s dangerous?” Liz could feel the other doctors, Simpson, Sophie, looming, silently examining her. Two well-dressed women with tightly pulled back hair had joined them and stood to the rear of the room.
“Well,” said Maddy, “so far he’s fine. We don’t even know if it’s a response to the holoprosencephaly or not. The MRI showed no bleeding, no trauma.” She shrugged. “He’s good.”
“Trauma? Was that what they thought at first?”
Maddy’s eyes flicked around to the entourage. “There’s a procedure to follow, honey, you know? We have to look out for the child.”
“How did his eyes—” Liz stopped herself. She still wasn’t sure whether or not she’d actually seen the child with some sort of cataract goop over his little eyes, or if it had been part of her nightmares. Best not to open her mouth now, when they all seemed skeptical of her sanity as it was.
Liz could sense the doctor behind her — Simpson — wanting to cut in and say something, but holding back. She imagined he’d been instructed to stay silent, waiting to hear what Liz had to say; to let Maddy speak with her and see if anything came out.
“Where’s his pacifier?” asked Liz, shifting gears.
Maddy looked at her and raised an eyebrow.
“At the hospital,” Liz continued, “the other one, he had a pacifier in his mouth. A red one.”
She could feel the attention of the others in the room focusing on her.
“I saw it when he was wheeled by, when we, you know, were getting ready to roll on out.” She made two gang-signs with her hands, hanging them limp in the air, a pathetic attempt at levity.
Then Liz did something she hadn’t expected to. With her back to everyone else in the room, she winked at Maddy. The matronly woman took it well, relaxed her face and her diamond-hard eyes, and turned and looked at Caleb again. Not bad, thought Liz, feeling fine, but also like her mind was suddenly a runaway horse — that disconsolate feeling of being out-of-body, or at least halfway out, not a hundred percent accountable, you might say. Like she’d been feeling ever since sitting up above the pond the other night, wadding up that blanket, dropping her wine glass, rubbing her locket, running into Christopher in the kitchen, his head lowered, unspeaking. It was uncomfortable, but also somewhat exhilarating.
The part of Liz that was detached was eager to find out where the trail led and what was going to happen next. Yet that same passenger, observer — that girl knew what was going to happen next.
They both looked down at the baby, and Liz felt sure that the doctors were going to start peppering her with questions again, that the grace period had come to an end, and their silent observation of her was over. Then the elevator down the hall made a ding, and they heard shouting.
Everyone turned.
“Call the police,” a familiar voice said. “Call the police now. Tell them that a child’s life is in jeopardy.”
Liz and Maddy looked at each other with wide eyes. They both headed towards the door. Tom Milliner appeared. His gun was out, pointed at the air.
“They’re coming,” he said.
“Sir! Sir—” Simpson clamored. He was looking at the gun.
“We need to get this room blocked off,” said Tom.
His balding head glistened with sweat. Liz could smell cigarette smoke on him, even from a distance. Tom looked at the two women standing at the back of the room.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
Good question, Liz thought.
“They’re with Child Protective Services,” said Sophie.
Liz turned and looked at Maddy, who wore a grim expression.
“Okay,” Tom said, his words coming in huffs. “CPS,” he said, “right.”
“Who’s coming?” asked Maddy. “Is it more of them?”
“Yes, but different.”
“What do you mean?”
“Younger,” said Tom. His eyes met Liz’s, and then shifted to the sleeping child.
“What are you talking about?” said Simpson. “Sophie, call security.”
“I already notified them,” said Tom, not without some measure of irritation in his tone, Liz appreciated his asperity. Dr. Soap Opera was quickly becoming a wet blanket.
“I was downstairs. I told security to stop and question them and find out who they were and not to let them up.” Tom’s eyes flicked to Maddy.
The elevator dinged again. Tom spun around, his gun still in the air, and walked out of the room. Everyone followed, Liz observed, except for the two women. So Liz stayed, too. Maddy tossed a glance back over her shoulder, and looked at Liz and then at Caleb. She pulled a pacifier from her shirt pocket and handed it to Liz. She put her hand on the baby boy’s head and said, “I’ll be right back, sweet-love.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Five boys were standing in the hallway, elevator doors now closing behind them.
Tom stood a few yards from the boys. At the nurses station, a woman with a pile of dark brown hair dropped the phone from her ear, her mouth open, watching the ensemble. They had everyone’s attention — a skinny orderly pushing a mop bucket back into a utility closet; a doctor with a dangling stethoscope standing over a stack of papers; various nurses and residents and interns at computer terminals in and around the station, standing up to look; patients on the floor; parents of children who were strolling around for some exercise; all were stopped, or slowing, and watching.
Tom understood why. It wasn’t something you saw every day. The five young boys — mostly dark-haired and olive-skinned, similar in height — resembled a pack of boy scouts. They looked dutiful, as if preparing to receive merit badges. Their expressions were all of the same kind of contentment — the rightfulness — Tom had witnessed in the faces
of the older boys at the Red Rock Medical Center.
Where this resemblance to boy scouts ended was in how they were dressed. Their uniforms, if you could call them that, bore a striking resemblance to photographs Tom had seen in his mother’s albums.
Helen Darring Milliner had come from a small, New York family, just she and her brother. Eventually they had made the journey north and her father had worked the mine in Lyon Mountain. Until then, however, she and her brother had been what Tom considered the quintessential immigrant children of the Great Depression — dressed like little adults, his mother in gowns and bows, his uncle wearing grey woolen vests, and caps that hung off the side of his head.
They looked like street urchins, like pictures of Tom’s Uncle Louis, straight out of the Depression. They seemed well-nourished enough, and their clothes were intact, but they looked to Tom like kids from tougher neighborhoods, who had to grow up too quick. If they were orphans, he figured, they came from a proper institution, if one decades out-of-date in the garment department.
It was a kind of standoff. Tom stood with Maddy behind him, the doctor in charge of the boy’s case, and his resident (the cute skinny girl named Ophelia or Sophia or something). The four of them, and the five boys. Boys who didn’t shave yet, but boys who looked like they already could have done some juvie time, Tom thought, for something seemed to burn behind the boy-scout postures and retro outfits.
The boys weren’t looking at Tom or any of the people around him. They were looking past them; they were looking at the door to the child’s room.
“Okay,” said Tom, “don’t go any further.” He wondered where security had gotten to. Then he remembered that there had been several times this number of boys out on the street, standing under the lights. The rest of them might be downstairs now, these five having snuck through. There were only three on-duty guards, Tom knew, for the whole place. Those three were probably on the ground floor right now, chasing around the rest of the boys who were creating a diversion. Tom could envision the scene: three overweight guards trying to herd cats. Still, he wondered if anyone had called the local police, perhaps the woman on the phone had.
“Boys. We’ve got enough cookies,” said Tom. Maddy nudged him in the ribs. It was okay. Tom just wanted to see if he’d get any reaction, anything at all. And, of course, he didn’t.
Tom lowered his gun, pointing it at the group of them.
“Tom,” Maddy whispered in his ear.
“Jesus,” somebody said.
“Everybody just stay cool. Just stay where you are.” Tom took a couple of steps towards the boys. He kept the gun waist-high. The woman with the big hair and phone put a hand over her mouth.
“Okay, boys. You’re making everybody anxious. I’ve got my gun out, making people anxious, too. But it’s been that kind of day. Now, you either need to tell us what you need, or you gotta get back in that elevator and get out of here. This is a hospital. There are sick people here, and they need attention. If you’re looking for attention, go get it somewhere else. Okay? You want to spend the night in jail, away from your mommies and daddies?” Tom now looked at the woman with her hand over her mouth and she nodded quickly and started dialing. “So, let’s not have to have your parents come down to the police station and get you out of jail.”
He was close now, right in front of the first boy, who continued to look beyond him and at the door, carrying that facial expression that wasn’t smug, or disrespectful, Tom had to admit, but just focused. As if nothing else existed to the boys except for what was in that room.
Tom had an idea. “He’s fine,” he said. “The baby boy,” he looked back over his shoulder at Maddy. She said, “Caleb.”
Tom looked at the boys again. “Caleb is fine. Everything went well. He’s sleeping, so let’s not wake him up.”
The boy in front suddenly moved. He reached inside his black peacoat. Tom cocked his gun, and one of the nurses cried out.
“Whoa, whoa,” said Tom.
Behind the first boy, the next one reached into his pocket — the lower pockets of a sweater vest. He stuck his hands in deep. Then they all did. Tom pointed the gun at each of them.
“Officer,” someone called out behind him, “they’re just boys.”
“You haven’t seen what I’ve seen,” Tom said quickly. Then, to the boys: “What’ve you got? Stop — let me see it — slowly.” His heart was thumping in his chest. In his mind he saw the phone dangling from the booth at the gas station all those years ago, and the kids standing around, one licking a lollipop, his tongue bright red in the sun.
The boy nearest started to pull his hand out. Tom could sense the entire floor holding its breath. As soon as Tom saw a gun, he would take the kid down. If anyone else pulled a piece or a weapon, Tom would tackle him. If that’s how it had to go, then that’s how it would go.
* * *
It wasn’t a gun. In the boy’s hand was a coin.
The coin flashed under the fluorescent lights. It was a large coin, bigger than a quarter, but copper, like a penny.
Tom squinted at it, wondering about the currency. The markings looked unfamiliar. Tokens, maybe?
At the rear of the group, nearest the elevator, another boy pulled out a roll of tape. He walked through and plucked each one of the coins from the hands of the others. He looked at the coins as he took them. He wasn’t a robot after all, Tom thought, and felt that giddiness again, that kind of high, that wild desire to start rolling around and laughing.
In fact, various onlookers on the pediatrics floor began smiling. There was something innocent, something endearing, about watching this boy proceed, taking the coins from the other boys, rounding them up like it was some sort of a game.
He continued past Tom and around Maddy. He walked around the doctor and the skinny girl with glasses. He was heading to the child’s room.
“Whoa,” Tom said, springing into action, snapping out of the trance. “Whoa, buddy.”
He jogged after him. He saw the doctor and the girl shy away from the boy as if he were something toxic. Apparently not everyone thought the situation was innocuous.
Tom reached out and lightly hooked a finger into the collar of the boy’s white shirt.
The kid didn’t resist. He just stopped.
Tom thought there was nothing that could have stopped the boy if the boy hadn’t wanted to be.
He heard sirens from outside.
“Okay, guys. See? Cops are on their way.”
Tom put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. But he felt a hand on his own chest. He looked down at the painted fingernails, and then up into Maddy’s eyes. He smelled the peppermint on her breath again, and noticed dimly that she was moving a candy around in her mouth, pushing it with her tongue. “Tommy, let’s see what he does.”
They stood there for a moment, and then Tom let go of the boy’s shoulder and collar. As if nothing had happened, the boy continued forward, the doctor and the resident giving him a wide berth. When he got to the door of Caleb’s room, he stopped again, before he crossed the threshold.
They all watched. Everyone on the floor gathered around slowly, fascinated. Liz watched from the room, sitting on the edge of Caleb’s bed,
Tom looked back at the other boys. They were as they had been, still and patient.
The sirens grew louder outside, rising shrilly up to the fifth floor.
He heard the sound of a piece of Scotch tape being peeled off. Then the boy took the coins and stuck them to the length of tape. He stuck this on the door.
Five coins of unknown origin. Tom was dying to get a closer look at them. Having taped them up, the boy just stood there in the doorway.
Liz lifted up her hand in greeting. “Hi,” she said to the boy.
The boy lifted up his hand. “Hi,” he said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Jim Cruickshand wasn’t sleeping soundly. He tossed and turned and he dreamed.
In his dream he was standing on the edge of Macmaster Pond, his bac
k to the Kingston house. The pond was far below, a craterous hole scooped out of the earth, filled with an oily, murky water. Beside him was Assistant DA Sarah Locke. Her makeup and hair made her look like a pro; thick swaths of lipstick, hair piled atop her head like the beehive hairdos long ago at Jim’s prom, where he had stood at the back of the room, dateless, in his rented tux and watched Maddy Kruger dancing. Also by him was Rory Blaine, wearing a tux. Jim, Locke, and Blaine; the three of them looking down.
In the syrupy water, something moved. Some enormous spine pressing beneath the sheath of a thick, slick skin surfaced and rolled and disappeared into the water again.
Across the dark waters, along the pond-crater’s lip, stood Tom Milliner, with a girl and a small child. Jim could see the red pacifier in the child’s mouth.
Jim called to them, but his voice was swallowed up and did not carry. He realized that in order to get to them, he would have to cross the pond; all around the edge of the excavation were birch trees like staves; an iron gate. Their roots were visible, jutting in tangled fingers from the torn earth beneath them, so that the perimeter of the pond was a crown of thorns. Yes, he would have to cross.
Instantly he was down at the water level. Sarah Locke and District Attorney Rory Blaine were forgotten behind him.
It was shallow enough to wade across. And if it wasn’t, he thought, he might be able to ride that thing moving in the water. It flopped and rolled briefly at the surface again, the rubber-leather skin as oily as the water, the ripples iridescent white; moon-reflected though it was midday in the dream, grey and dim.
Verrega.
Get them back.
Jim heard the call of a loon, but he couldn’t see one. Cattails and lily pads adorned the water which was softly lapping the bank. On Jim’s right, a red mailbox stood in the water. And a tube. He hadn’t seen it before because it was black, a tire tube, the kind kids floated on in the summer. It was a few yards away.
Bring them back to me, vacie.
HIGHWATER: a suspense thriller you won't be able to put down Page 20
