Charlie crept through the kitchen—like all of the rooms in this gaudy monstrosity, an oversize, overornate room that belonged in a medieval castle. From the dining room he moved noiselessly to the front sitting room, which he recognized from Foley’s drunken description. It was huge, easily the floor space of an average ranch house, and it was filled—absolutely filled—with furniture and Indian art. Charlie was overwhelmed. If what he was seeing was any indication, Wigglesworth hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d claimed to be one of the foremost private collectors in the country. Pottery, ceramics, wall rugs, figurines, headdresses, canoes, tomahawks, clubs . . . on and on, a treasure trove of Indian culture. Charlie recognized some of the styles. Sioux. Chippewa. Seneca. Cheyenne. Nothing Quidneck that he could see.
Why?
It was a question he’d pondered frequently during the trial. Why would a man so scornful of the culture be so taken with its art? Money could be only part of the answer; if art was his ticket to the big time, surely there was more money to be made in Renoirs or Picassos. Surely there was more prestige in the art-collecting world than Native American art. It must be the ultimate form of contempt. Like enslaving your enemy’s wife and children after defeating him in battle.
On the far side of the sitting room was a massive door leading to the library. Before heading toward it, Charlie strained to listen. He could hear the voices, marginally louder. Definitely from upstairs. And not two live people. There was an echoic quality that now identified them as TV voices. Good. They should help mask his movements.
Charlie glided across the sitting room to the library door. It was locked. “Son of a bitch,” he cursed. Wigglesworth supposedly kept his most valued collections in the room.
Foley must have the key.
Charlie went back through the sitting room to the mansion’s main staircase and ascended to the second floor. With the TV sounds as his guide, Charlie walked on cat feet down a corridor, around a corner into a smaller hall at the rear of the house. At the end of the hall a door was ajar, and Charlie could see the flicker of a TV. He could hear the sound track distinctly now. It was a man and a woman. A man and a woman talking dirty. A porn film.
Oh, God. He spit, sickened by the sight.
Foley was slumped into a stuffed chair, asleep—or passed out. On an end table was a pack of cigarettes, an overflowing ashtray, an empty crystal tumbler, a half-full bottle of Glenfiddich scotch, and a ring of keys with a clip to attach to a belt. Several dozen keys in all. Keys to every lock and every door and every alarm system in the house. Charlie reached for them. They jingled softly, but it was going to take a lot more than keys to rouse the caretaker. Keys in hand, Charlie went downstairs.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
Wednesday, December 24
Late Afternoon
It was long since dark when Thomasine announced: “We need gas.”
Since Macy’s the trip had been uneventful. The snow had not abated, but the highway crews seemed to have gotten a good jump on the storm, and so far they’d managed to keep the Taconic down to pavement. The ambulance was perhaps an hour from Morgantown when Thomasine, who’d been monitoring the gas gauge (and keeping her observations to herself), realized they wouldn’t make it without filling up somewhere.
“How low are we?” Brad asked from in back, where he was holding Abbie’s hand. Abbie had moaned several times but was still unconscious. Bostwick was becoming alarmed, although, like Thomasine, he’d been keeping a lid on his thoughts. If she did not wake soon, then what? Push on, knowing that the exposure, the mine, will almost certainly kill her? Readmit her to Berkshire Medical, hoping her condition improves, and if it does, try tomorrow? Abort everything, essentially throwing our last chance away? He did not have an answer.
“We’re almost on E,” Thomasine replied.
“Maybe we better turn off,” Brad said. “If we run out of gas . . . I guess I don’t have to state the obvious.”
“No,” Bostwick said, “you don’t.”
At the next exit—for a place called West Taghkanic—Thomasine left the highway. They were in luck. They’d gone barely a mile when they came up on a station. Miraculously it was still open. Not doing any business, but definitely open. Thomasine pulled in.
The jockey, a kid of about twenty, was alone. They saw him—in outline only—through the window, steamed by heat high enough to make him strip down to T-shirt and jeans. He heard the bell announcing a customer and swore. This was his idea of Nothingsville, working Christmas Eve.
He looked out into the storm to see who it was. Of all goddamn things, an ambulance. One of those old-fashioned kinds that look like a customized Cadillac hearse. Long, low hood, back big enough to hang curtains and hold a bed—might not be too tough to take, owning one of those suckers himself.
An ambulance.
He swallowed. His throat was suddenly dry.
The ambulance.
During the last two hours he’d been sneaking joints (how many, anyway? three? four? a Merry Christmas five?) and pondering the issue of the week: whether his girlfriend would be putting out this holiday eve. He’d forgotten his ghetto blaster, his usual company, and to take the edge of his loneliness, he’d kept his boss Schmidt’s Bearcat scanner on. Since about one, the state police channel had been broadcasting intermittent reports of a stolen ambulance with a kidnapped kid inside. It was not known, the dispatcher had emphasized, if the kidnappers were armed, but it was presumed they were dangerous. They’d left a hospital in New York City around noon and it was believed they were headed north to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where the ambulance had been stolen early that morning.
Just great, the jockey thought. I shoulda closed at three.
But that was immaterial now. It was slowly dawning on him that they weren’t going away. They’d seen him, he’d seen them, and obviously they needed gas . . . must need it desperately. The jockey would not go down in history as one of God’s most gifted children, but he had enough smarts to understand that his ass very quickly could be grass.
The urge to run was suddenly overwhelming. He could feel his pulse, like thunder boomers building behind his temples.
What if they do have a gun?
They’ll put a bullet in my back, that’s what.
The phone.
He could call for help.
And it’s in the garage, out of their sight.
He waved at the ambulance to let them know he’d be right with them, then disappeared around the corner. If only there was a back door . . . But there wasn’t a back door. Only a john. A smelly, dirty, windowless john.
“What’s he doing,” Brad said impatiently, “playing with himself?”
“He was just there,” Thomasine said. She leaned on the horn.
In the garage the jockey was fumbling in his pocket for change. Schmidt, the cheap son of a bitch, didn’t even have a free phone. He finally found one grease-smeared quarter, rammed it down the machine, and dialed the state police barracks. Schmidt, who’d been held up a couple of years ago, had penciled the number over the phone. The jockey was sweating, and his tongue felt like a cork wedged between his teeth by the time his call went through.
“I don’t like this,” Bostwick said.
Thomasine leaned on the horn again. And again. She was getting pissed. The Macy’s incident had left her raw; looking at her the wrong way now would be enough to set her off. She was about to hunt the idiot down when he stumbled out the door, struggling to get into his jacket, and crossed the lot to the ambulance.
“What’ll it be?” he asked, trying to mask his nervousness.
“Fill it,” Thomasine barked.
The jockey cringed. “Don’t do anything out of the ordinary. They may be armed,” the police dispatcher had advised. “We’ll have a car there in five minutes.”
“Premium?” he asked, as politely as he could.
“I don’t care. Just fill the damn thing.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The jockey walked
to the rear of the ambulance, stood dumbly a moment, then pried the license plate open. There was the clang of metal on metal as he shoved the nozzle in, then a low-pitched, steady whoosh as the gas flowed.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Thomasine said to no one in particular, “I have to use the bathroom.”
No one in particular answered. She climbed out of the ambulance. “Restroom locked?” she asked the jockey.
“No, ma’am.”
“Where is it?”
“Inside, ma’am.”
“Where inside?” she demanded. The jockey looked at her face, but he did not see beauty. He saw beast—a beast ready to pounce. His eyes traveled to her coat, a down-filled parka billowy enough to hide a shotgun. Probably exactly what she’s carrying, too, he thought, the dryness in his throat almost crippling now. A sawed-off shotgun, itching for business.
“Through—through the d-d-door and over there on the r-rright,” he blabbered. “Behind the cash r-r-register, m-m-ma’am.”
Thomasine stormed off. Stupid, she thought. She found the bathroom and went inside, locking the door behind her. It was predictably filthy.
It was the jockey who saw the cruiser first. It came down the road and slipped quietly into the station several car lengths behind the ambulance. The trooper parked at the rear of the service area, near a half dozen junked cars. He spoke quickly into his microphone, then stepped out into the cold. He slipped the safety off his revolver and moved cautiously toward the ambulance. He was a young man, even younger-looking than his twenty-six years. A rookie, pulling all the holiday shifts this year, and not complaining.
Thank the Lord, the jockey thought. All of a sudden the urge to take a leak was tremendous.
The trooper motioned for the jockey to move away from the ambulance. He did, gladly, backing up until he was behind the cruiser, where he figured he’d be safe once the firing started—and he had no doubt that firing was going to start. Crouching down, he unzipped his fly and took a long, satisfying whiz that turned the snow an off-yellow. The trooper approached the window where Brad was now sitting and rapped on it.
The chain of events that followed was fragmented, staccato, stitched together against a surreal backdrop: a stormy evening at a BestGas station, lights glaring phosphorescently into the darkness like the nighttime set of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
These were the primary elements:
Trooper asking for the license of the man in front, Brad. Trooper checking license with flashlight. Brad anxious, then angry, then verging on violence. Bostwick feeling suddenly, totally depleted, as if he’d gotten this far on sheer adrenaline, and now it had run out. Abbie lying on the stretcher, oblivious, lost in the place of shadows.
Trooper ordering Brad and Bostwick out of the ambulance, hands over their heads. Brad prepared for violence, stopping only when he sees trooper’s gun drawn and trained dead center at his heart. Bostwick protesting that he cannot leave a sick child’s side. Trooper responding that another ambulance already has been requested and that the child will be fine, she is the least of their problems now, please step outside before someone gets hurt, no one wants anyone to get hurt. Jockey daring to poke his head over the cruiser, thinking this might not turn out to be such a bad Christmas Eve, after all. What a story to tell his friends, his girl, his family. A little embellishment and he could come out the hometown hero. Yes, he could.
And Thomasine, unnoticed by all, forgotten, watching the drama unfold from inside the station. Thomasine, finding a package of distress flares, taking one, creeping outside toward the innermost island.
Thomasine lifting the nozzle to the high octane, starting the pump, hearing the motor whir, spraying gasoline all around her feet, all over the pumps, as close to the ambulance as she can before she is spotted.
The trooper, seeing her, not processing what he is seeing, finally processing and ordering her to stop.
Thomasine lighting the flare on first try and brandishing it over her head while the trooper, Brad, Bostwick, and the jockey watch, flabbergasted.
“Anyone moves and I drop it!” she shouts.
“You’ll go up, too,” the trooper says, his voice squeaky.
“I don’t fucking care! Drop the gun! Drop it!” Her voice demonic, touching a primal part of his brain, the part where the circuits for fear and cowardice and man’s million-year-old survival instinct all merge. A part far, far away from the cool techniques espoused in his police academy SWAT team class.
Bostwick numb.
Brad thinking in the insanity of the moment: Remind me never to cross her. Never, ever to say “boo” when her mind’s made up. This, neighbors and friends, is one woman you don’t want to mess with.
“Thomasine!” he shouts, purely reflexively. “Please!”
“Shut up, Brad! You! Trooper! Drop the gun! Or I drop the flare!”
Trooper knowing if he shoots her, the flare will drop, anyway. Gun tossed uncomplainingly into snow.
The jockey, meanwhile, watching, his legs and whole body jellylike, not heroic. Calculating how large the fireball will be, how far he would have to run before he would be out of harm’s way. And remembering the tanker this morning topping every tank off, five thousand gallons of gasoline, give or take a few hundred, waiting to blow a hole clear through to China.
“Into the station,” Thomasine orders the trooper.
“Think about what you’re doing,” the trooper says, his last shred of authority dribbling away. “You stop now, and everybody’s going to be OK.”
“In or everybody’s going to be dead!”
The trooper, looking at the growing ash at the end of the flare, only a question of time now before gravity pulls it off into the gas, thinking of his newlywed wife, and the fireside dinner she has planned for coming off his shift, and his $18,500 starting salary. And complying, walking as calmly as he can into the station, wondering how long it will take the backups he’s requested to make it here through the storm.
Thomasine stepping back from the gas she’s poured. “Take his gun, Brad,” she orders, “and shoot his tires out.”
Brad obeying. Stooping to get the gun, and walking toward the cruiser. “Please, no!” the jockey shouts, cowering. Brad ignores him. He puts two bullets in each of the front tires and comes back to the ambulance.
The nozzle into the ambulance the jockey had set clicks of in the thick silence that has settled back over the scene, everyone hears it. The tank is full. It has been approximately four minutes since the trooper arrived. Thomasine tosses the flare into the snow.
“Tank’s full,” she says in an eerily calm voice. She drops the nozzle and strolls toward the driver’s side of the ambulance, the trooper watching the way goldfish watch the world from inside their bowl. Brad is convinced that Thomasine has been possessed, that the spirit of a long-dead buccaneer or mercenary or French Legionnaire or . . .
. . . Quidneck warrior has taken over her body.
“Ready?” she asks, settling behind the wheel. “I’m sure Charlie’s already waiting.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
Wednesday, December 24
Early Evening
Headlights. Coming up Thunder Rise Road toward him. Charlie flicked his cigarette out the window of his Cherokee. The snow sizzled it dead. The headlights bounced, and there was the screech of tires spinning at the end of Brad’s drive. The ambulance regained traction and lurched ahead. It stopped next to the Cherokee. With so much time on his hands, Charlie had been able to keep the drive clear.
He jumped out to greet them.
“Three hours late,” he said. “I was afraid something happened.”
“Something did,” Thomasine answered. “We’ll tell you about it later. How’d you make out here?”
“Everything’s as set as it’s ever going to be.”
“What’s the road like from here on up?” Brad asked.
“Iffy. We’ll have to take the Cherokee.”
“Then let’s transfer her,” Bostwi
ck said. “Now.” He opened the ambulance doors and went inside. Brad followed.
“How is she?” Charlie whispered to Thomasine.
“Not good.”
“Is he still going ahead with it?”
“He hasn’t said no.”
“I would understand if he did.”
“I don’t think he will.”
Brad bent over his daughter, his head next to hers. He could feel her breath, labored but not alarmingly so, sweet-smelling . . . like an angel’s. How long had he been watching her face like this? Every night at the hospital. Every day. Except for the gas station, the whole trip from New York. Watching for a sign—any sign—that she had turned the corner. Watching, hypnotized, at once hopeful and terrified, as if she might slip from his grasp forever if he took his eyes off her for too long. Watching, whispering, “I love you,” and, “Everything’s going to be all right,” and, “I’m right here, honey,” because he’d always been told that even deeply comatose patients retain their hearing when all other senses have been lost. Watching, and praying with an intensity and blind faith that had deserted him along about the time, in eighth grade, that he’d stopped being an altar boy.
“We’re almost home, Apple Guy,” he whispered as he tucked blankets around her and Bostwick disconnected her IVs and monitor and rechecked the contents of his bag. “Almost home.”
She heard his voice—or did she?
Felt cold—or did she?
Her breathing clogged momentarily, making a sound like snoring. Her eyeballs rolled, as if she were emerging from REM sleep, but her eyelids did not open.
She’d been in the shadow place for an unknown period now.
Long enough to appreciate how much she liked it, how little she ever wanted to leave. The shadow place was not just comfortably shady. It was warm, the way perfect days in early fall are warm—no humidity, and only a lick of a breeze, enough to barely ruffle leaves on the trees. There were no needles in the shadow place, no sore throats, no nurses or doctors or technicians. No friendly people, either, but the longer she stayed, the less that seemed to matter. She had her memories, but they were very far off, like teeny-weeny clouds that scoot across the sky on those perfect early-fall days. Even Dad, whose voice still sometimes was carried in on the breeze, was getting farther away.
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