The Long Sleep

by Caroline Crane

  The phone rang again. Ben muted the ringer. “Ready to go?” he asked Cree. To me, he said, “Keep everything locked.”

  “I know that.” I knew my family was doing their best to keep me safe, but all that babying really got to me. How stupid did they think I was?

  Stupid enough to get mixed up with Evan in the first place. But how could I have known what he was really like? He had a way of turning on the charm and that’s what he did until he had me roped, tied, and branded.

  I almost asked if I could go with them while he took Cree home. But I didn’t want to butt in and be a clingy nuisance. He wouldn’t be gone long, and I had the two dogs and a deadbolt.

  Ben ushered Cree out the door, then looked over his shoulder. “Lock up,” he told me again. I rolled my eyes.

  I kept the phone muted and settled on the living room couch to do my trig. It seemed less isolated than my room upstairs. The dogs stretched out on the floor beside me.

  Suddenly they jumped up and ran to the door, barking.

  At the sound of a car, I turned off the light. It couldn’t be Ben already. Maybe Rhoda? I crept to a window and pulled aside the curtain.

  It wasn’t Ben’s blue truck. Or Rhoda’s ivory sedan. It looked like my red Chevy. At least it wasn’t big and yellow with oversize tires.

  It was mine. And Rick Falco was getting out of it. I unfastened both locks.

  He waved, and then swept his arm toward the car, as though presenting it. He wasn’t in uniform and the car had a new windshield. The dogs greeted him with squeals of joy.

  “Looking pretty good, don’t you think?” he said as he came in.

  “What did you do? You got it out of hock and you—got—”

  “A new windshield. You like it?”

  That car came with terrible memories and probably still a blood-soaked front seat. But it was all I had.

  “How much do I owe you?” I asked.

  “Nothing. It wasn’t really in hock, you know that, and this whole thing was not your fault.”

  He was evading me. “I mean the windshield.”

  He waved his hand dismissively.

  “Office—I mean Rick, you shouldn’t have.”

  “Why not? You took the brunt of it all. It’s the least I can do.”

  The least I could do was try again to offer him coffee. I wondered how he was going to get home. And where he lived.

  “How about a rain check?” he said. “I was thinking you should take a test drive. See if it’s running okay. You know that car better than I do.”

  I didn’t want to drive it, but I’d have to eventually. And I did like having Rick with me. An armed guard, if it was true that police officers carry their weapons at all times, even off duty.

  “It’s getting dark,” I said. “I’m not supposed to drive after dark.”

  “You can if I’m with you. Come on, let’s go.”

  It might be kind of fun, I thought. And good to have company for my first drive in that car after what happened.

  I got my coat, and let the dogs know they weren’t coming with us.

  As we settled in the car, I got self-conscious. “I’m a little nervous,” I told him. “What if you don’t like the way I drive?”

  He laughed. “I’m assuming you passed your test.”

  “Yes, but I’m not perfect.”

  “Is anybody?”

  “I’ll bet you are.” I fastened my belt and remembered that’s what Hank and I were doing when the bullet came.

  I turned on the engine. “Is there any more word about Hank Dalbeck? I called the hospital and they said he’s still unconscious.”

  “He is,” said Rick. “I really need to talk to him but they tell me he shows no sign of waking up.”

  I drove out to Lake Road and headed for Lakeside School. So far the car was okay. “You still don’t have any leads?”

  “Not one. That’s what I want to talk to him about. See if he knows anybody who’d be pissed enough to do that.”

  “Maybe they didn’t mean to actually hit him. You know, sort of like a warning. But they miscalculated.”

  Falco thought that over.

  I said, “It’s kind of far-fetched, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe not so much. We’ll see.”

  Lakeside School was white brick. It gleamed in the dusk, a low sprawling building with a lot of wings and windows. I circled the parking lot to turn around. “This is where I used to go,” I told him.

  “Nice looking place.”

  “My family,” I said, “is sure Evan Steffers fired that shot. You know, the guy who was stalking me? He won’t let up. I’ve been getting phone messages, mostly music. It’s all things that have some significance for me. And I’m sure he sent those roses.”

  “I thought they were for your mother.”

  “That was before I saw the card. He’s in New Hampshire now, they tell me, but that wouldn’t stop him from making phone calls. Or ordering flowers.” I turned in at my driveway. Nobody else was home yet.

  “You said he’s at school in New Hampshire?”

  “Garson Academy. Something like that. How are you going to get home? Do you want me to take you?”

  “Hell, no. Excuse the language. It’s too dark and you’d be coming back alone. Thanks anyway.” He took out his cell and made a brief call.

  Pocketing the phone, he said, “My buddy’ll pick me up. Before I leave, I want to see you safe inside. Garson Academy, huh?”

  “That’s what they said, but I don’t know where it is. I’m just glad he’s not still at Lakeside.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “I wish he’d get over me. Do people like that ever get over their obsession?”

  “Not often enough, from the things we hear,” he said. “Maybe you should go away somewhere.”

  “I already changed schools because of him. Why should I have to change my whole life? Why can’t somebody do something about him? Like—well, prison would be good. Maximum security.”

  “Okay, then. You stay safe,” he said, as headlights turned in at the driveway.

  It was Ben, shortly followed by Rick’s buddy. I thanked Rick again and thought about baking him some cookies. That was very generous, that thing with the windshield.

  Chapter Seven

  The nurses started looking at me funny each time I showed up at the ICU and stood gazing at Hank through his window. Luckily it wasn’t always the same nurses. I told them I represented The Tiger’s Roar and had the duty of reporting on his progress. Of which there was none to report.

  When not at the hospital making an idiot of myself, I worked on our series. By now I had it all mapped out. I would lead with the story of Hank and then segue into Paula Welbourne. Mr. Geyer gave me the names of the other staff members and I managed to find each one. There weren’t many. According to Geyer, at the beginning of the year there was usually a roomful of people, but the number would shrink as they lost interest. They’d come expecting a nice social time, not any actual work, and leave when it wasn’t like that.

  “I hope they’re interested in reading it, anyway,” I said.

  “Oh, they’ll do that. And pay their twenty-five cents.”

  That was the selling price of The Tiger’s Roar. It wasn’t much of a paper, just those eight pages stapled together. People complained that a quarter was too much, but we had expenses. It took a lot of paper, a lot of printer toner, and even the staples weren’t free. As for our time, it was a labor of love.

  Every week we went semi-pro when a digest of that week’s issue appeared in The Chronicle, the town newspaper. We had a whole page just for us in the Sunday edition.

  Our weekly meetings were on Thursday afternoon. The week after Hank was shot, all the members showed up. And Mr. Geyer, of course. He always kept in the background. I’d been the one to push for continuing, but I didn’t want to take over. It seemed presumptuous when I was so new. I found out that Ron Sullivan, a guy with blue eyes and a buzz cut, was supposed to be the assi
stant editor. He was nearly as quiet as Mr. Geyer. I asked him if he wanted to conduct the meeting.

  He smirked and waved his hand in a ‘no thanks’ gesture. “You go right ahead. You’re doing fine.”

  Shy or sly, I couldn’t tell, but I had to go ahead because nobody else did.

  First I gave them an update on Hank’s unchanged condition, and said I had seen him. I didn’t mention how many times. Then I read what I’d written about him and they approved. I did my best to make it sound like a temporary thing, not an obituary. I wrote as though he’d be coming back as soon as he recovered even though it might take a while. I had looked up “brain injury” and knew a lot depended on what part of the brain was affected.

  As I wrote the article, I felt very close to Hank. I felt it was just he and I. When I read it to those other people, he seemed farther away. As though I had to share him. Even though they’d known him longer, they didn’t feel the same personal caring that I did.

  “Next week,” I told them, “I’ll have this finished, with the stuff about Paula Welbourne, too. I need to do more research on that.”

  Cindy Belcher fluttered her hand. “What about this week?”

  “This week,” I said, “I have an eyewitness account of what happened to Hank.”

  “Who’s the eyewitness?”

  She didn’t know? I thought the whole school knew. Some of them did, but maybe Cindy didn’t care all that much.

  “I am,” I said. “He needed a ride home and we were getting into my car.”

  Her eyes widened. “How do you know they weren’t aiming at you?”

  “Why would they?” I hoped my face didn’t betray my own questions about that.

  It already struck me that it might have been because of me. Because I was with another guy and Evan was more likely to shoot the guy than me.

  But Evan was in New Hampshire. Glyn said so.

  “Why would they shoot Hank?” she countered.

  This was getting sticky. I’d wondered about Cindy herself, but no way could I even hint at that. I hoped I was being subtle when I said, “It’s possible someone didn’t like his idea for that series. Some people can get rabid on certain issues.”

  “You mean me.”

  I wasn’t subtle enough.

  “Cindy, you were here. How could you be out there at the same time?”

  She seemed okay with that, but it didn’t say anything about motive. No one pursued that angle, although Ron Sullivan turned around and chuckled at her.

  “I don’t even own a gun,” she told him icily.

  “Anybody can borrow one,” he said.

  I rapped on the desk with what I could find. It happened to be a pencil and didn’t make any noise. “Let’s not get personal,” I said. “We’re all working together on this and we have to have it ready to print. Who usually takes care of that, with the layout and stuff?”

  “Hank,” several of them said.

  Oh, great. A rudderless ship. Maybe we ought to let it sink, but I liked the things we planned. And I’d been working hard on the right-to-die series. I thought it was important, especially the part about having an advance directive. Even Cindy’s new gossip column was amusing. Pure fluff, but she did it well.

  “Does anybody know how to do layout?” I hated to admit that I didn’t, but layout was a special skill. The typing I could handle. “Ron? What about you?”

  He wiggled his eyebrows. Everything I said he took as a come-on.

  Finally we got it settled. I would type up the individual articles and email them to Ron. He would take care of the layout and the artwork, inserting photos and some of his funny little cartoon drawings.

  As we left the classroom, Mr. Geyer put his hand on my shoulder. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “We might want to go easy on the Lakeside girl. Paula. Her family lives in this area and it could be upsetting to have it all dredged up again.”

  I hadn’t thought of that, and wasn’t sure I agreed. “She was going to be the easiest to do because she is local,” I said. “I can get stuff from Lakeside and I won’t bother her family. It’s not going to be a long article. I won’t need a lot. Mostly the first installment will be about Hank, then her, and then a brief summary of the other cases coming up.”

  “Hmm.” He removed his hand. “As long as you can manage it without going too deeply.”

  He and Hank didn’t seem to be on the same wavelength. Hank was going for depth, but I knew Mr. Geyer hadn’t been wild about the idea and Hank was out of it now. Besides, we didn’t have a lot of space for much depth in our eight-page paper.

  We were going to need a photo of Hank. He was a senior, but the ones for the yearbook hadn’t been taken yet. I asked a few people if they had pictures, and they didn’t. The only thing I could do was try his family.

  I had never met them. I hoped they wouldn’t hold it against me that he was shot in my car. They didn’t know about Evan. Ben and Cree were the only ones at school who knew and I trusted them to keep quiet.

  I learned that Hank lived in what used to be the separate village of Northbridge. Now it was all pretty much the same thing but still a way off. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to miss his bus. He should have ended the meeting on time even if we hadn’t finished getting the next issue ready. How did he expect to get home?

  On Saturday morning I called the Dalbecks. A woman answered. I assumed she was his mother but it turned out to be a sister, Arianne. I didn’t know he had a sister. She sounded hesitant at first, as though she knew my name and blamed me for what happened. Or maybe that was my own guilt complex talking.

  I explained why a picture was needed. “If you have a digital one, that would be great,” I said. “But even a printed one, they can always scan it.” I knew Ben had a scanner.

  “I don’t know,” she said, still hesitant.

  “We really need it so it can come out next week. It’s the only thing we don’t have.” I should have done this sooner. Desperation made me say it. “I suppose I could take one at the hospital.”

  That got a reaction. “No, don’t do that! I’m sure we have something. I’ll look around and get back to you.”

  “I was hoping to have it today. So we can run it in the next issue.”

  She was still reluctant, but mention of the hospital worked. She told me to come on over.

  The house was an oldish one on Northbridge Avenue. It was dingy white with green trim, and carved wood curlicues on the front porch pillars. Arianne was older than I expected maybe early to mid-twenties. She had dark reddish hair, almost the same color as Cree’s, and didn’t look much like Hank. I’d hoped I could get some quotes, but she didn’t seem all that friendly.

  She’d found a packet of photos taken last summer at a family gathering. They were all group pictures but there were a couple of nice ones that Hank was in. They would have to be scanned and cropped. Ron was set up with PhotoShop, so he could do the cropping.

  The mail was just in when I got home from Northbridge. Ben grabbed it and went through it, looking for college catalogs. His heart was set on MIT but he was realistic enough not to put all his hopes in that basket.

  I took a look at the mail but mostly I was on a cloud of my own, picturing Hank growing up in that old-fashioned house with the gingerbread porch pillars. I imagined him as a little boy, those serious dark eyes. I wondered how long he’d worn glasses.

  Ben handed me an envelope. It was the right size for a college catalog, but thinner, and I hadn’t sent for any. I still had another year of high school. There was no return address and the postmark was pale and illegible.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  Ben shrugged. How would he know?

  I sliced it open and gasped. Ben had been starting away but he came back to look.

  It was photos. Evan and me and some others. In every picture, my image was marked up—a beard, blacked-out teeth, and all the dumb, childish things that get done to photos. None of the other people had been touched. I handed Ben the enve
lope and pointed to the postmark. “Can you read that?”

  He squinted. “Nope. Can’t you figure out who it’s from?”

  “I want to know where it’s from.”

  Most of those pictures, I was sure, had been taken with a digital camera. I raced upstairs and turned on my computer, going straight to email.

  Yep, they were there, too, with no message. Only the attachment. I clicked Reply and asked, Why can’t you move on, you dummy? I wouldn’t have been so confrontational face-to-face, but this was Internet. And he really pissed me off. It was so stupid to be so obsessed. If he thought he was showing his control over me, it was just the opposite. The fact that he couldn’t let go meant I had power over him. Don’t guys like that realize how pathetic they are?

  I deleted the whole message, including the images, and tossed the printed pictures.

  Ben was in his room, browsing through his new catalog. I gave him the pictures of Hank for scanning.

  “Just send them to me when you’re done,” I said, “and I’ll get them to Ron.”

  He thought The Tiger’s Roar was trivial, but promised to take care of it. There were three that I’d picked out. As soon as they arrived on my computer I sent them to Ron so he could choose and crop.

  With the pictures finished and my article to go with them already turned in, I couldn’t do any more. So I set off to visit the hospital.

  Now that I’d met Arianne I was afraid of running into her at the ICU. She would wonder what in heck I was doing there when they wouldn’t allow me in his room.

  The nurse, who now knew me by sight, greeted me with a big smile. “He’s been extubated! Only an hour ago.”

  It sounded horrible. “What’s that?”

  “The breathing tube. They took it out.”

  “Can he breathe?”

  “He’s breathing on his own. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  I walked over to the window that looked toward his bed. She was right. The tube was gone. The breathing machine was still there, but it was pushed aside and quiet.

  “That means he’s alive,” I said, mostly to myself.