“Come here,” he said softly.
Somewhere in her absence, they had skipped a step. When she left Portland, Mike was still the detective, a handsome detective with a good sense of humor who was good with kids. But he was still the detective. In the twenty-four hours of her escapade in Tennessee, they had crossed over, and they both knew it. He exhaled as he wrapped his arms around her, a tremor running through him, the stale accumulation of adrenaline. With her head tucked neatly beneath his jaw, she didn’t want him to let go.
“Excuse me, gentlemen, but I’m Pat Garvey, chaperone and director of Family Services in Dalton, Tennessee.”
Delia jumped back slightly. “I’m sorry. Pat, this is Detective Mike Moretti.”
The foursome moved near a large concrete column, forming an island with their bodies and Pat’s suitcase wedged between them. “Pat, it’s good to meet you,” said Mike. He reached out and shook her hand.
“And this is my boss, Ira, who, as you can see, is a little irritated with me,” said Delia.
Pat surveyed the faces of her companions. “Well, as I see it, we have four people and two cars, and we are all driving to Portland.” The woman took control like a true director. “I have two days emergency leave from my job, and I plan to make the most of it. Ira, if you can hold off on your discussion with Delia, I’d take it as a personal favor if I could ride with you. I’ve never been to the East Coast before, and you can educate me in the ways of Maine. I’m looking for a place to dine on spring lamb while I’m here.” She looked at Delia and winked. “And lobster, of course. Who could visit Portland without trying your famed lobster?”
Ira’s mustache jumped in agitation. Delia didn’t know if he could bear delaying his lecture to her. The man might implode, and yet he took a breath and said, “I’ll be glad to have you along, Pat. But I shall not be denied my moment with you, Delia. Tomorrow morning, my office.” He reached down to grab Pat’s suitcase. “May I?”
“Why, thank you, Ira. Who said northerners lack hospitality?”
“Ira, you can drive my car back; it’s in long term parking. I’ll show you where,” said Delia. She had already made the assumption that she’d ride back with Mike. She looked over at him to double check, and he smiled. “We’ll meet at my place. Pat is staying with me,” she said.
The air around Boston airport, filled with exhaust, anxiety, and moisture from the Atlantic, smelled like heaven.
CHAPTER 47
The inside of Mike’s car felt like the cockpit of a rocket. Faint lights glowed around her feet. “Your daughter must love this car. How old did you say she was?”
Mike turned his head momentarily as they slowed through a toll booth and the green light registered his E-ZPass. “She’s old enough that even this car might not make me cool that much longer. I’m on borrowed time with the teen years on the horizon. She’s ten.”
Delia’s brain buzzed with a new chemical stowaway, and she fought to ignore it. “You deserve to feel better than this,” said the voice, whispering along her neural pathways. It must have been the safety of Mike’s car after all the hustle of the hospital and traveling with Pat that allowed her to hear the disquieting voice. It was the shadow of heroin, she was sure of it. Is this what her father battled, a voice that competed with family and friends?
“They haven’t apprehended the guy who attacked you. And Delia, this is a very large drug cartel, far beyond the likes of Raymond Blanchard. That’s why he’s dead. That’s why Emma Gilbert is dead. That’s why they tried to kill you when you meddled with their arrangement in Tennessee. And that third victim? He was likely an intermediary, trying to hone in on Raymond, someone who was expendable. The big boys didn’t like Raymond’s entrepreneurial spirit. So that is why you and Pat are not driving back alone. They could have easily found out you were on the flight to Boston,” said Mike.
He tapped the steering wheel with one finger. There was more he wanted to tell her, but he was hesitating.
“What?” she said. “What else?”
“Maine Drug Enforcement Agency has decided to keep a man at Erica’s house twenty-four seven. After you were attacked, they don’t want to take any chances with Hayley. Erica was freaked out at first until she realized that they were all a lot safer with their new resident cop. I stopped by this afternoon, and Hayley’s teaching him to draw with her marking pens.”
“Oh, my God, Hayley. This thing just keeps snowballing. Are you sure she’s okay?” Delia struggled to keep up with the thundering pace of the situation. She longed to go home, slip into her own bed.
“Believe me, South Portland PD, Maine State Police, and the MDEA are fully aware of the level of danger. And now thanks to you, the cops in Tennessee have ratcheted up their game,” he said. He merged the car into the left lane, accelerating.
She was sure that they needed to keep talking, to avoid the wordless leap that they made while she’d been in Tennessee. Now they were something not like a couple yet, but like two people who had agreed that they both wanted more.
“I’m convinced,” she said. “I don’t ever want to be that vulnerable again. I was terrified.” Delia wrapped her arms around herself and bent her head forward.
Mike set the car to drive in cruise control, and he relaxed his right leg. “You have to be careful for the next few days, and maybe longer. An attack like that can sneak up on you. Back when I worked in Rhode Island, a bunch of drunks blindsided me one night outside a club before my backup could arrive. They got in some wicked punches. I thought I was okay, no big deal, until two weeks later when I was walking through the aisles of CVS. My heart started racing and I broke out in a sweat. I thought I was having a heart attack. Or going crazy because there was nothing scary going on in the tissue aisle of the store.”
“Panic attack,” said Delia. She unfolded and turned to look at his profile in the dim light of the car. Typical panic attack, although no one liked to be told that they were typical. “Did it happen again? Once they get started, they can sort of spread like a grass fire.”
“That’s what they told me at the hospital. But they gave me good news and bad news. I was way too young to have a heart attack, that’s the good news. The bad news for me was that those idiot drunk guys could have such an effect on me. So I’m just saying, take it easy. And no, it never happened again.”
Interstate 95 was thick with large trucks and a never-ending stream of cars. The road signs offered exits for Danvers. Traffic always started to thin after Danvers, taking them due north to Maine. She could almost smell J Bird’s scones. What about J Bird? Delia should have had multiple text messages from her by now in the text pileup. She’d rather explain the whole thing in person. J Bird would insist on details.
“Was Courtney arrested? Did anyone try to harm her?” asked Delia.
“She was arrested. And you were right about her mental state. The state police have been able to get very little information from her.”
A sudden fear gripped her. “They have to put her on suicide watch!”
Mike placed his right hand on her thigh, lightly, making no assumptions. “They know that, Delia. They know how to do their job. And just in case they didn’t, John Blanchard was still at the Phoenix House when they arrived and he was as protective as a bullmastiff. He was ready to take the blame for everything that happened after Courtney surfaced in Nashville.”
“Thank you,” she said.
Mike turned his head and appeared puzzled. “Thank you for what?”
“For coming to get me. For making Pat come with me on the plane, even though I kicked up a fuss. I’m not used to people taking care of me like that. Well, except for our family friend, Ben, but we were still kids when he started taking care of us. So this feels weird. But good.” She squeezed his hand.
“Is this by any chance a date?” he asked. “I mean, it has some of the same details as a date. I picked you up in my car, we talked by phone beforehand. We could stop and get something to eat. That would really make it a date
.”
Something like a laugh worked its way up her throat. “We skipped several steps to an official date. This is more like emergency transport.”
Mike’s phone rang. “Mike here. What? Are you sure? Do they have a positive ID? What hospital? I’m still in Mass. Yeah, on 95 North. I can get there in under two hours.”
Delia’s skin prickled. “What’s happening?” she said.
Mike disabled the cruise control and accelerated. “A woman was found in an old tobacco barn in Massachusetts, north of Hartford. Some lady was out walking her dog and the dog led her to the barn. She’s in a hospital in Springfield.” He passed a row of three trucks. “We’re taking the first exit and heading back to the pike. Call Ira and tell him that we’ll meet him later.”
Mike rearranged his entire body in the driver’s seat, rolled his shoulders around, and pushed his spine into the back of the seat, like he was getting ready to ride a horse. “She’s not conscious now, but the last thing she said to her rescuers was, ‘My daughter.’ This could be Claire. How many other women could be locked up in a tobacco barn?”
Delia didn’t dare hope that this was Hayley’s mother. And yet there was nothing that she wanted more.
CHAPTER 48
Once they hit the Mass Pike, Mike flowed in and around trucks and cars, merging the way water does, going for the open spaces, the places of least resistance. They’d been thirty miles south of the Maine border when he’d taken the call. They pulled into Baystate Medical Center in Springfield in under two hours. The digital clock on the console said ten p.m.
Delia didn’t know if it was the residual effects of the attack in Tennessee that made time crack and fragment or if it was that time changed with her perception of it. Every article she’d ever read on the subject in Scientific American said time was not finite. When a five-year-old agonized about waiting thirty minutes, those minutes stretched out in unbearable Einsteinian taffy; when that same kid was engrossed in digging a hole in a sandbox with a soul mate, the thirty minutes flickered by, snap, like that. Delia speculated about this while Mike parked his car/ hovercraft and they made their way through the parking lot to the wide electronic doors of the hospital entrance.
Mike flipped open his police ID at the information desk. They took the elevator to the fourth floor. Room 417, Intensive Care.
Funny thing about hospitals; nobody really wants to be there. Every able-bodied visitor is cinched tight by concern, sadness, regret, and the field marshal, fear. Two people got off on the second floor, and one elderly man stepped on the elevator on the third. Mike said, “We’re going up.”
The man said, “It doesn’t matter.”
On the fourth floor they followed the arrows to 417, leaving the bewildered-looking man alone in the elevator.
“What if it’s not her?” said Delia. “What if it’s not Claire and it’s a homeless person who took shelter in a tobacco barn?”
The sense of timeless urgency was everywhere in the wide hallway. Patient rooms were left open, with only blanketed feet visible as they walked by. Delia still had on Pat Garvey’s flip-flops, and they made a sucking sound as she walked. They walked past the nursing station, the command central. A woman seated at the station typed into a laptop and looked up at them. They kept walking.
At the end of the hall, a uniformed police officer stood outside the room. Southwick Police. Delia’s heart raced. She wanted to run straight into the room and come to the end of not knowing. She wanted to see a woman sitting up in bed, an overbed table swung over her chest as she sipped orange juice in a plastic cup. Delia would shout, “Claire! We’ve found you. We have Hayley, we’ve got your girl!”
The cop moved into the doorway and filled the space. Mike showed his ID again: detective, South Portland, Maine.
“How did you get here so fast?” said the Southwick cop. He said his name was Rob. Officer Hernandez.
Mike said, “We were in the neighborhood. What’s the status?”
The two men moved slightly to the right and Delia saw a space open in front of her, and like water, she flowed into it, sliding along the back of Mike, skimming him with her palm as she moved into the room.
There were two beds in the room. The one by the window was empty. In the bed nearest the door, a woman lay with eyes closed, IV lines in her arms, white cotton blankets draped over her from the chest down, snug without a wrinkle. A woman in blue scrubs looked up at an array of beeps and blinks, then placed her palm on the woman’s forehead. She turned as Delia took one step closer.
“Are you a family member?”
Did she expect the woman to look like Hayley? The woman in the bed had shoulder length hair, darker than the little girl, but it was also filthy, weighing heavy on the pillow.
“No, but I’m from Foster Services in Maine. We think this might be a woman we’ve been searching for who was kidnapped. This might be her. Claire. She has a daughter who was kidnapped along with her. We’ve been taking care of the child and searching for her mother.”
Delia spoke quickly. The deeper voices from Mike and the cop rumbled outside the door. Given the guidelines of confidentiality, Delia doubted that the woman in scrubs would offer more.
Mike stepped into the room. He spoke quietly to Delia. “They found a half dozen Luna Bar wrappers and the remains of a case of bottled water. We have confirmation that Ray Blanchard owns the property where she was found. If Ray stashed her in the barn, he was planning on returning in a few days. Make his drop-off in Maine, return and check on Claire on the way back through. Given that, plus what Courtney told you, and what Rob just told me, this is our Claire.”
He showed his ID to the woman in scrubs. She looked at the Southwick cop and he nodded.
“I’m Julia, critical care nurse. I’ve been with her since she came in. We’re assessing the damage to her kidneys. Can we step outside, please? I don’t like to talk in front of patients.”
“Why is she unconscious?” asked Delia. The four of them took a few steps away from the room and spoke quietly.
“We are introducing fluids into her system but it’s going to take time to reverse the direction that her body took to cope with the lack of food and water. The human body can survive longer than you might imagine without food. A woman was lost in a wilderness area of California and survived for fifty-five days without food. Water is more critical.”
The two men and Delia leaned into Julia to catch every word. “But why is she unconscious?” repeated Delia.
“We aren’t sure. The metabolism had to slow down to deal with starvation. Her body was mining muscles and organs, primarily the kidneys, for energy, and she may have run out of steam. Or she may have given up. If someone critically ill gives up, that is the worst thing that can happen.”
“Is there any question that this is not Claire?” said Delia.
The Southwick cop pulled out his phone. “The report from the EMT said she stayed conscious long enough to say her daughter had been taken and that her name was Claire something, he couldn’t make out the last name.”
The last membrane of doubt lifted off. “Let me tell her that we have Hayley. I have to tell her,” said Delia. Without waiting for permission, she turned around and went back into the room and stood close to Claire. She bent over and put her head close to Claire’s ear. Delia wrinkled her nose and squeezed her eyes shut against a powerfully sour odor.
Julia was by her side. “The sour smell is from ketosis. The body creates toxic byproducts while it devours muscle and organs in order to survive. She’ll smell better soon.”
Delia put her lips next to the sleeping woman’s ear. “Claire, Hayley is safe. We are taking care of her. You are in a hospital and they are going to make you better again. Hayley is waiting for you. You have to wake up. Hayley made me promise that I would find you.”
Nothing. Why couldn’t Claire wake up, pop open her eyes? Julia touched Delia’s arm. “Sometimes the psychic trauma is as devastating as the physical trauma. We are doing everythin
g we can. There’s no physical reason why she can’t wake up.” Julia placed Claire’s hand in her own and squeezed gently. “Many of us are trained in therapeutic touch, or Reiki. If she was in that shed for almost three weeks, she had also been deprived of human touch.” She stroked Claire’s hand.
Delia wondered if it would be rude to touch someone she didn’t know in such an intimate way. But the desire to reunite mother and child was so strong that her bones trembled. She tried to think of the least invasive place to touch Claire. “May I touch her feet?”
Julia smiled. “Yes, I think that would be okay. Wash your hands, please.”
Delia scrubbed her hands in the bathroom sink, dried them with paper towels, and returned to the bedside. Mike leaned against the back wall, hands held together in front of his pelvis the way men do. Julia pulled back the layers of cotton blankets from Claire’s feet. It looked like her feet had been given a cursory wash, but the skin was dry and cracked. Delia rubbed her hands together to warm them. She had no idea what she was doing, yet felt compelled to try this form of touch if it would help. She gave one questioning glance at Julia, who nodded encouragement.
Hands and feet are rich with nerve endings. Every massage therapist she knew said the same thing. J Bird had suggested that Delia needed to loosen up a bit and often gave her gift certificates for massages. Delia pictured a massive nerve ending collision as she closed her eyes and pressed the heels of her palms into Claire’s arches and wrapped her fingers around the tops of the feet, feeling the thin bones that radiated down to the toes. She assumed that thinking about Hayley would be the best thing, but as she held on to Claire’s feet, she pictured bread dough, warm and filled with a universe of yeast, breathing, moving, sighing on the exhale. Bread filled her nose with its intoxicating aroma. Food. Her father exalting in the joy of eating good food. The happiness of learning to make pasta in the Italian seaside village of Minori. Her mother’s fierce love. She was filled with the opposite of what had happened to Claire.
The Tiger in the House Page 25
