“Ma’am, I’d like you to stay seated for a few more minutes. There’s an ambulance on the way,” said the uniformed officer. “And please don’t touch anything else in your car.”
“Like what? Don’t touch what?” Delia tried to remember. It was early morning but the air was warm and humid. Tennessee, she was still in Tennessee. A loud peel rang out, the cry of a raptor, likely a hawk. She looked up and a hawk sat on a telephone pole. The bird turned his head to one side and peered down at her with one eye.
The cop wore blue plastic gloves. He pointed to the passenger seat. “Like that,” he said. On the seat was her purse, a hypodermic needle, and a small packet of white powder.
She wanted her brain back again and it was apparently MIA. A sound entered her skull, rolling through it, reverberating around the rounded bones, not unlike the warning cry of a hawk or crow. What was it? It was getting louder and louder, which meant it was coming closer. It was a siren. Police, fire, or ambulance. The good guys. But these good guys only arrived when something terrible happened.
Pat put her hand on Delia’s shoulder. “Honey, I was on my way to work and I saw this little red car. Well, I wasn’t sure it was your car, but I stopped when I saw a guy peeling out and your car rolling into the bushes. I called 911 and these guys were close by. Look, I don’t know what happened or why, but we almost lost you. They just started carrying Narcan a few months ago. You were pulled back from the brink.”
She had to stand up; she had to move.
“Hold on a minute, let me take your arm. You look all wobbly,” said Pat, giving a stop hand signal to the cop. “You’re going to need your shoes. There’s a bit of everything along these shoulders, but mostly broken glass.”
“Excuse me, Pat,” said the officer, “but the shoes are evidence. Don’t touch them.”
Evidence? What the hell was going on?
“Stay here for a minute and I’ll bring you my best flip-flops, purchased for the gym that I never go to,” said Pat.
Delia slid her feet into plastic thongs that were too short, but they kept her feet from further damage. With Pat holding along one elbow, she walked to the back of the car. Yes, another car had rear-ended her. Her brain sloshed in liquid waves, forcing her to lean her entire upper body against the rear of the car. Not an unpleasant sensation at all. It felt like the car shared some its solar gain and nestled against her. She could sleep here like this, her face pressed against the warm rental car. Oh, no, the guy with the New Balance shoes, the workman from The Phoenix House. Chunks of memory danced together. She had to tell the police now, there was no turning back. What if he tried to harm Courtney? What if he already had?
Pat put her hand on Delia’s arm. “Here’s your phone. It was ringing like crazy when I stopped. After I called 911, I answered your phone. Seems like your friend, Mike Moretti, is ready for his head to explode. I like a man who can curse, and your guy is among the top contenders. If I understood him correctly, he’s going to rearrange particular body parts of whoever did this to you.”
She wished Mike were here with her right now. Why did the clarifying moments in life veer toward the disastrous? Nothing could be clearer to her; Delia wanted to stretch out her arms from this highway in Tennessee and connect with Mike. She pictured a difficult talk with Tyler, squashing his strange assumptions about them getting back together.
Her thinking was buckling back into a cohesive chronology. She pushed off the side of the car. “Officer, I need to talk to you about a case in Maine. But first, there is a woman at a treatment center in Nashville who is in danger right now. It’s called The Phoenix House. The man who hit my car and attacked me works there. He’s part of a heroin trafficking system.”
Four things happened at once. The young cop looked questioningly at Pat, Delia’s phone rang again, Pat tossed the phone to Delia, and she shouted at the cop, “Did you hear the woman? Call Nashville and get someone to The Phoenix House!”
Responding as if his high school principal had just reprimanded him, he turned away and called in the request. Graduate degrees and compassion were not the only reasons that Pat ran the department. The woman could run a Marine boot camp with that voice.
Delia looked down at the screen of her phone. It was Mike’s personal line. “I’m okay,” she said. “Please just talk to me a little before you start telling me about interfering with police business. Talk to me about the Dalai Lama, or Igor the Rabbit, or anything. I want to hear your voice.”
The pause was long enough that she wondered if he had heard her. The breath that she had been holding caught in her throat and couldn’t find its way out. “Come home, Delia. Give the local cops everything they need, then come home.”
A whoosh of breath escaped. “I should have told you everything last night.” Pat said Mike was furious. She waited for the barrage of recriminations. Surely she deserved it. What if Courtney was hurt by the man who had just assaulted her? Or what if he sent someone like him to the Phoenix House?
“Come home, Delia,” he said, softer this time. “Is there an officer there? I want to talk to him.”
CHAPTER 45
Shirley was out for her afternoon walk in Southwick, Massachusetts, with her rambunctious young dog, Chelsea. Her daughter told her that according to the Internet, no one named girls Shirley anymore, just in case she was wondering. “It’s gone out of fashion,” said her daughter on one of their weekly phone calls. “You’re the last of your kind.” So Shirley was careful to name her dog, a rascal of a labradoodle with a champagne-colored coat, a contemporary name that would have lasting power.
But how contemporary could she hope to remain? She was seventy-five this October and had arthritis in all her joints. Exercise was the best thing for arthritis, plus yoga and a cortisone shot every few months. Chelsea was her ultimate physical therapist, enticing Shirley out for walks across fields, up the steep trails, and along the dirt roads of rural Massachusetts.
Chelsea had been on edge for days, scratching at the door to go out all hours of the day and night, delivering her lead to Shirley. The usual local walks did not satisfy Chelsea’s sudden canine angst. The walk along Southwick’s Congamond Lakes had always been Chelsea’s favorite, with opportunities for swimming and stick fetching. Not this week. After a long walk along the lake, Chelsea had balked at getting back in the car. What was wrong with that dog? Her regular hike along the M&M Trail that ran from Connecticut right into Massachusetts proved disappointing as well.
In order to keep peace, Shirley picked a new place to walk, the Huddleston farm that sold six months ago. She was sure that the new owners hadn’t moved in yet, and being on the zoning board, she tried to keep tabs on every new person who moved to Southwick. She hoped this wasn’t a new owner who wanted to break up the farm and build a flotilla of houses.
The farm bordered conservation land, and she could get double her money by walking the periphery of the old tobacco fields and the protected land. Maybe that would satisfy her energetic dog.
She parked along the side of the dirt road that bordered the old farm. No one liked seeing the old farms sold. But what could you do?
Shirley opened the back door for Chelsea, and the dog sprang past her, knocking the woman to the ground. From her position on her back, she looked up at the sky. Was anything broken? If so, it could be a long time before anyone came by. She pushed up on one arm. No, nothing broken. But maybe her daughter was right; Chelsea was too much dog for a woman her age. She should have picked out a smaller dog, a basset hound with their absurdly short legs. They didn’t need so much walking.
She stood up, shaking the dirt off her backside. A flash of her cream-colored dog streaked across the field and headed for one of the old tobacco barns like a missile. She grabbed the dog’s blue lead from the front seat and swore she was taking Chelsea back to dog training school.
By the time she made it to the elongated tobacco barn, Chelsea ran to greet her, determinedly staying out of reach, then ran back to the barn door
, throwing her front paws at the door and whining. Then the dog backed up and barked.
Shirley had had dogs all her life and knew the difference between a bark of alarm and a bark of excited happiness. On a scale of one to ten, Chelsea’s bark was a ten on the alarm scale. Still, this was someone else’s property, and she had never broken into another’s person house or barn before. The dog launched her body at the old barn door again, dragged her claws, digging at it.
“Okay, girl, I guess you’re either going to break down the door or I’m going to open it for you.” Shirley lifted the long plank set in iron u-shaped hooks. She pulled one door open. Chelsea tore into the long barn, barking, heralding an announcement.
There wasn’t much to a tobacco barn. They were large, long rectangles, made to hang and dry tobacco. And here in Southwick, they grew a special leaf variety used to wrap cigars. Or they did in the days when cigar smoking was a sign of prestige. The cigar market had crashed. The sides of the barn were adjustable so that they could be opened to let in air when the weather was nice and dry. Shirley had seen enough of them over her time, growing up in Southwick. Her husband had picked tobacco when he was in high school. Stripes of light hit the dirt floor, and Chelsea kicked up a dust storm as she ran to the back of the barn.
Shirley squinted while her eyes grew accustomed to the interior light, and followed Chelsea. Someone had built a shed right in the barn. Must have been the new owner because it was new wood, full sheets of plywood with enough resin left in the sheets to give off the scent of pitch. Her nose twitched at a sewage smell. The new owners had a backed-up septic system from the smell of it.
There must have been something precious in the shed; the door had a padlock on it. And they’d even poured a section of concrete to set the whole shed on. Looked to be ten by eight. Not a very good job of it; the concrete extended past the perimeter of the shed and the edges were sloppy, not squared off like they should have been.
Chelsea barked as if the sky were falling in, scratching at the door.
“Chelsea, the door is locked! Whatever is in there will have to stay there. Now, come on! Heel!”
In a massive display of frustration, the dog complied, trotting to Shirley’s left side. But her ears were as agitated as Shirley had ever seen them, as if she was listening to something from the shed. Then she heard it too. A guttural moan and a scraping along one wall. Oh, no, someone had locked an animal in the shed and left it behind.
Another moan, this one louder, clearly human. Shirley pressed her ear to the wood. Shirley knocked on the plywood door. “Hello. Is anyone in there?”
“Help me, please help me,” said a whispered voice from the shed. Deep, rasping.
“Oh, dear God!” said Shirley, staggering back. “The door has a padlock on it,” she shouted. “I’m calling for help.”
She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. Her daughter had insisted that she take the phone with her on the daily jaunts for fear that her mother would end up in a ravine, unable to call for help. She punched in 911. “There is someone trapped in a shed in one of Huddleston’s tobacco barns. No, I don’t know how long. From the sounds of it, we’re going to need an ambulance.”
She should wait for the police and ambulance. Southwick was spread out amid old farms. The police could take up to twenty minutes. Shirley looked around for a tool, anything to dislodge the padlock. Her phone had a flashlight app, and she turned it on and shined it at the far corners of the barn, looking for anything that might have been left behind. In the far corner, her flashlight caught the outline of a wood splitting maul, likely left behind by the Huddleston family, back when they spilt and stacked wood and sold it in the spring. The head of it was rusted, but sharp as an axe on one side and thick as a sledgehammer on the other. The long handle was wood, not fiberglass like the new ones. This would do.
Shirley went straight for the padlock and after a dozen blows, each one vibrating down her arms until she feared her bones would shatter, the padlock gave up its job. She dropped the maul. “I’m coming in, I’ve got a dog with me,” as if anybody within half a mile hadn’t heard the dog barking or the crashing thud of the maul.
She pulled open the door. “Oh, no.” A woman lay on a wooden pallet covered by vinyl pillows that used to be part of someone’s lawn furniture. Her handcuffed arm was attached to a metal pipe anchored into the wall. On one side of her was a white five-gallon bucket, a slop bucket from the smell of it, and on the other were the remains of a case of bottled water and a half dozen Luna Bar wrappers. Her eyes were huge and dark, like the pictures of prisoners of war. Her skin pulled tight across her face. Her fingers on both hands were bloodied. The woman had tried to dig her way out, scratching at the unyielding plywood.
“My daughter . . . help me,” she said, croaking out the words, unable to even sit up.
CHAPTER 46
The airplane bumped to a landing in Boston.
While Delia at first tried to persuade Pat that she didn’t have to accompany her back to Boston, she was secretly relieved that Pat rebuked all of her rationale. Her initial protests about Pat traveling with her had been weak. “I’ll just sit on the plane and when I get to Boston, I’ll pick up my car and drive home.”
Throughout the protest, Pat looked unimpressed. “I might be inclined to believe you except Detective Mike made me promise to accompany you, and he said not to tell you that it was his idea. But there is only so much deception that I swallow in one day.”
Her stomach still curdled from not only the heroin, but also the Narcan. It wasn’t only the infusion of chemicals, but the shock of the assault. After working with traumatized children and parents, she knew the effects of the attack could topple her without warning, even if she denied it to Pat and Mike. The airport was an easy one hour drive.
“The doctor said it would be better if you took it easy. It’s hard to know what the effects of heroin can be. He said in rare instances, breathing can stop even after Narcan. So I’m coming with you,” said Pat, in her final, steely argument.
Delia was split between gratitude for Pat’s kindness and the need to see herself as she had been before the attack. The ease with which the man had upended her life and made her a victim of a crime was disorienting. She struggled against the feeling that the man made her less than she had been before.
Delia didn’t like being the one who needed help. It was uncomfortable, like putting on clothing that didn’t fit, studded with prickly thorns.
* * *
When the plane touched down, Delia’s phone dinged with a text from Mike. “Look for me. We’ll meet you outside security.”
Mike and Ira were meeting them at the airport. Delia insisted that she could drive her own car, thank you. Then Pat said she was fully capable of driving Delia’s car back to Portland. In the end, the two women gave in to Mike’s insistence and somehow Ira was now included.
“I’ve never been this far east,” said Pat, looking out the small airplane window. “You wouldn’t know it by my cosmopolitan airs, but I haven’t traveled all that much.” She reached across the empty seat between them and patted Delia’s hand. “I can’t wait to meet your Mike. I have the unique ability to read boyfriend potential at first glance. Not for myself, mind you, but my girlfriends use me as a litmus test all the time.”
All of Delia’s clothing, including her luggage, remained with the police in Tennessee. Pat, who was a good four inches shorter than Delia, provided black pants, underwear, and a tunic top a few sizes too big. The pants came to an ungainly high water mark, so Delia rolled them up to just below her knees, which wasn’t all that much of an improvement. J Bird recently told her that the tunic look was so over, a fashion critique that she did not share with Pat.
She couldn’t imagine what she looked like: pants rolled up like clamdiggers, Pat’s floppy tunic, plastic thongs, hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her sensitive nose was sure that her body odor, laced with fear and adrenaline, formed a pulsing, three-foot perimeter around her.
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They filed out of the plane and followed the signs to the passenger exit. “If Mike hits the gong with my boyfriend radar, I’m going to use a code word,” said Pat as they followed the herd of passengers through the corridors. “What’s a special word for you that Mike won’t know?”
“Spring lamb,” said Delia.
“Like the kind you eat rare or the Disney kind?” Pat pulled a small carry-on suitcase.
“It’s too complicated to explain. Let’s just say it has to do with my father when he was a food columnist,” said Delia. A flicker of panic gripped her stomach. What would Mike say to her?
Immediately outside the cordoned-off area for ticketed passengers, Mike and Ira stood at alert, like African meerkats on sentry duty, scanning the area for predators.
“There they are,” whispered Delia, nudging Pat’s elbow with her own.
“Which one is Mike?”
“Not the one with the mustache; that’s my boss. I can’t believe Ira drove all this way with Mike.”
As they emerged into the general area where lovers and family waited to greet the arrivals, Delia pushed the panic down, where it cowered in her lower gut. She was safe here. No one was going to stab her with a hypodermic needle; no one was going to ram her car. Although she was less sure of the latter, knowing that they would be headed into Boston traffic.
Ira pushed his way through a parade of baby carriages and pulled her into a hug. “What were you thinking? This isn’t part of your job. This was insane! If you weren’t resigning, I’d fire you right now!”
“Hello, Ira. Nice to see you too,” said Delia. They were not customarily huggers, and she wiggled out of his anxious hold.
Delia turned and looked at Mike as a river of passengers passed between them. When she saw an opening, she crossed over.
The Tiger in the House Page 24
