Hannahwhere

by John McIlveen

  “Where–is–the–money?” Travis whispered in an ominous staccato.

  Terrified, Anna held his hypnotic gaze while still inching backwards.

  “Where is the money?” he screamed.

  It thawed her and she sprang backward, away from the little doorway and toward the darkness under the house. He dove through the opening, landing on his belly right in front of her.

  “Where is it, you little shit? Tell me!” he growled, spittle running over his chin and blending with her mother’s blood.

  Anna backpedaled, trying to increase the gap between them, but he lunged again and grabbed her ankle in steely hands. A small set of arms wrapped around her from behind, trying to pull her deeper into safety, but Travis was too strong, insanely strong, and he yanked her, shrieking, across the dirt surface and back to the opening. Reaching out, trying to clutch onto anything, Anna grabbed for the traitorous door. She embraced it and her arm jammed beneath it, lodging between the wood and the asphalt. He yanked her free with a feral growl, and the pain was brutal, blinding, and complete. He dragged her to Mom’s car across the searing, crumbled surface of the hot driveway.

  Mercifully, slipping into darkness, Anna lost consciousness.

  Tuesday

  March 11, 2008

  Chapter 2

  Riverside, Massachusetts

  The night nurse ran her hand gently over the boy’s head. The child gave a somber smile and then closed his eyes. It had been a long night and the child was tired but too anxious to sleep despite the sedative. Midnight had come and gone two hours ago, but the eleven-year-old boy’s legs still pedaled and his arms still twitched.

  Debbie Gillan watched him for a few moments, met the nurse’s compassionate eyes, and then closed the door, leaving only a three-inch band of the subdued hallway light swathing the child’s legs.

  Ricky Lourdes was the boy’s name. He had been rushed to Riverside Hospital earlier that evening. His frantic mother had called 911, reporting that Ricky had been playing in the living room and “just collapsed.” The paramedics found Ricky lying on his back, non-responsive. He had suffered a cardiac arrest, caused by the blunt force of a fist to the chest, bestowed by his mother’s boyfriend. The chest also bore a constellation of cigarette burns, also courtesy of the owner of the fist. Fortunately, they were able to revive Ricky. Unfortunately, the lowlife who had inflicted such pain on Ricky Lourdes had dodged a murder conviction.

  In Debbie’s six years as a caseworker for the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families, she had seen many situations. Many of them were bad—drug addicted parents, neglect, prostitution—but the physical and sexual abuse cases were always the worst.

  Debbie started down the hallway, her soft leather flats scuffing mildly along the vinyl-tiled surface. At the dimly lit nurse’s station, a pretty nursing assistant with tired eyes looked up from a computer monitor and smiled. Debbie returned the gesture and a silent nod. A second nurse, thoroughly caught up in a John Irving novel, didn’t appear to notice her pass. Debbie repositioned the strap of her laptop bag to a more comfortable spot on her shoulder and continued to the bank of elevators. She rode alone to the second floor and made her way through quiet hallways to the outpatient entrance. It was the only public point of egress not alarmed after 9 pm.

  She paused at the doorway, her apprehension keeping her from pushing her way outside. In the parking lot, her blue Honda Accord—looking brown beneath the alien aura of sodium lighting—seemed miles away. An empty ambulance idled in the rotary with open rear doors and pulsing red and white lights, its occupants now unseen somewhere beyond the emergency room entrance. The clicking of the diesel engine was muffled, but audible through the thick glass of the doors.

  “Shit,” Debbie muttered.

  At the far end of the rotary stood a dreadfully thin man wearing loose, faded jeans that somehow clung to his nonexistent hips. His tacky printed tee-shirt promoted his beer of choice, though Debbie doubted choice mattered much to him. He lifted a cigarette to his mouth, inhaled, and staggered, barely managing to regain a semblance of balance. He released a huge smoke cloud skyward and she followed the ascent until it dissipated into nothingness.

  A skunk emerged from the shrubbery on an island between the hospital and her car, sniffing along the lawn edge, seeking grubs. The skunk didn’t concern Debbie or cause her anxiety. Skunks were docile creatures that took great measures to avoid conflict and only used defensive measures in dire situations. Humans could learn a lot from skunks, she thought.

  What did concern Debbie were the dark, ambulances, and drunkards. Tonight she had all three. It was the triad, the troika, the big trifecta, and the bitch of it was, she didn’t know why the last two concerned her so much.

  Fearing the dark was credible. That’s when the bad shit happened, and where the monsters hid and the predators roamed. Millions of people were afraid of the dark. She supposed fearing drunken men was understandable, too. Besides being obnoxious, they could be intimidating with their emboldened, crass attitudes, and their lack of restraint and discretion. What baffled her was her fear of ambulances. Fear of hearses seemed more valid than fearing a vehicle created solely to benefit people, but there it was. It mocked her with its ticking time bomb engine and its doors a gaping maw into an overly bright interior. Her fear was unprecedented. She’d never ridden in or been hit by an ambulance, yet she dreaded even walking near one.

  This was one of the drawbacks of being single… having no support system. No teammate who had your back when loneliness became most palpable, and concerns that were invisible during daylight loomed huge and ravenous at night. At two o’clock in the morning, everything became threatening. Shadows turned into stygian caverns, and rows of trees became primeval forests. The absurdly immortal psychopaths of so many teen slasher flicks suddenly didn’t seem that ridiculous anymore, and a blade hacking at your heels from beneath your car didn’t just seem possible, but inevitable. The mere thought of it sent a cold rush right through her.

  Debbie searched through her laptop bag and found her keys. Bracing herself, she left the safety of plate glass and entered the balmy night. The cloying stink of cigarette smoke and diesel fumes accompanied by the significantly amplified rattle of the ambulance’s engine assaulted her senses. As the night surrounded her, she fought the temptation to make a mad dash for her car. On weak legs, she stepped forward.

  “Hey,” called the inebriated man, speaking around a dangling cigarette.

  He was about thirty feet from her, but near enough for her to see that he was most likely homeless or a vagrant, and thoroughly smashed. His beard was matted, greasy, and dark brown with a few strands of gray, matching the thinning chaos on his head. He was of indeterminable age, but furrows of exposure and addiction tracked his hollowed cheeks and sunken, sparsely toothed mouth, harshly aging him to anywhere from forty to sixty. Debbie expected him to ask for a cigarette, money, or maybe even a ride, so she began formulating a friendly but direct rejection in her mind.

  “Hey sweet-stuff, where you goin’?” he said more purposefully. He pitched toward her, trying to add an arrogant swagger to his swaying body. He was probably five-eight, and considering his stick-thin form and his condition, Debbie found him non-threatening… until:

  “Hey, Red!” he said.

  Debbie froze. Hearing the name sent a torrent of dread through her, though she wasn’t sure why. It was just a name, and she was a redhead after all. It was something that most—if not all—redheads were called eventually, and a name she’d been called before, but coming from him, and with that intonation of his, it jolted her.

  “I got a redhead right here,” he drawled, grabbing at his crotch. “Why don’t you put your pretty freckled face right here and give ’im a little kiss.”

  Even from twenty-five feet away Debbie thought she could smell his breath, rancid with beer, cigarettes, and rotting teeth. His cheap cologne seeped into her nostrils and set up camp, getting stronger and so cloying that she couldn
’t breathe. She could suddenly taste his cologne and his putrid breath in her mouth as he tried to force his tongue between her tightened lips.

  “No!” Debbie cried and stepped back, astonished that he was still twenty-five feet away. It had seemed so vivid and so authentic that it made her gag.

  “How’s that sweet little pussy of yours, honey?” he slurred. “Is it tight? You just as red down there, or do you shave it?” He flicked his tongue over the crook of his middle and index fingers, tottered, and gave Debbie a knowing smile. “Will it taste like cherry Jell-O if I lick it, or is it spicy? Will it burn my tongue? How ’bout givin’ me a little taste?”

  Debbie suddenly envisioned him above her, her little hands warding off his scrawny, naked chest as he thrust wildly into her, driving her into the rough surface beneath her. She backpedaled from him, revulsion enveloping her.

  “Stay away from me!” she said, hating herself for the fearful display. It would only encourage him. She looked back to the outpatient entrance, desperately hoping she could signal someone for help, but the room was empty, as she expected.

  “How can I resist a piece of ass like you?” he slurred and took another few steps towards her. “You and your little strawberry pie pussy. Got some nice tits on you, too… those real?”

  “Leave me alone!” she shrieked, feeling exposed and small.

  “What’s wrong, didja close up shop? Get religion?” he said and took a few more steps in her direction.

  The emergency entrance doors opened and two hospital employees jogged out and took in the situation.

  “Did someone scream?” asked a short but solid woman with a stern voice.

  “Henry, you don’t be troubling people out here or we’ll get the police on you,” said the second employee, a tall and handsome black man with huge biceps that threatened to split the sleeves of his lab coat.

  “Just talkin’ with her, doctor,” said the drunkard, raising his hands defensively.

  “He’s harmless,” the big man told Debbie. “Just gets a little mouthy once he’s been drinking.”

  “Which is usually,” added the unyielding nurse.

  The words did little to console Debbie. She wheeled and hurried for her Accord, her earlier concerns of predators in the trees and under her car now forgotten.

  “Wait! Are you okay?” called the doctor. He started after her, but the nurse halted him with a word and a hand on his back.

  Debbie triggered her door locks with her remote, scrambled into her car, and hastily relocked them. Clutching the steering wheel, she stared through the windshield, waiting for her heartbeat to settle. When her panic started to subside, she leaned her head back on the headrest and closed her eyes. “What the fuck was that all about?” she said into the silence.

  She could not recall ever having a reaction like that before, and she’d met some unsavory characters since putting on her caseworker shoes. Some of them she felt were dangerous and some she knew were, but she never felt total depravity as deeply as she had tonight. Now she felt as if she were the dirty one.

  It didn’t add up. Scrawny, trashed, and ignorant equaled pathetic, and persons like Henry the vagrant had never warranted anything more than her pity and concern for their well-being, but the terror that the man instilled in her tonight was unusual and illogical. The difference tonight was that Henry wasn’t just looking for a handout like most itinerants, Henry was perverse, obstinate, and aggressive, and his abuse was directed at her. Debbie had never seen him before, as far as she could remember, and she was quite sure she would have remembered him. He was a deviant and dangerous, without compassion or conscience. Of this, she was certain, though she didn’t know why. Debbie suddenly pictured the drunken beast staggering into a child’s room and a new level of alarm spilled over her.

  Can he get inside? The children are so helpless and vulnerable. The things he could do to them!

  She understood her fear was probably irrational, and the likelihood of Henry actually making his way inside was near to nil, but she couldn’t drive the image from her head. She didn’t want to think it wouldn’t happen; she wanted to know it couldn’t. She looked at Henry who stared right back, afloat in his intoxicated arrogance. The nurse and the doctor had since made their way back into the hospital and it was just him and her again.

  Debbie started her car, shifted into gear, and gunned forward, pulling to a stop before the outpatient entrance. As she climbed out, Henry started stumbling in her direction, a smug, conquering smile playing over his gaunt face. Debbie wanted to dive back into her car and flee, but she knew she must stand up to him. The man posed no threat to her, she could knock him over with a wish, but in her mind, he represented a threat she could not identify. To defeat her fear she must not only face it, but stand up to it without wavering.

  Debbie locked eyes with Henry over the roof of her car and spoke in as menacing a voice as she could conjure. “Take another step closer you piece of shit, I’ll put a bullet right between your fucking eyes.”

  Debbie had no gun. She had never touched a gun in her life, nor did she plan to, but ol’ Hank didn’t know that. With her heart rattling like a jackhammer, Debbie glared at him, unwavering, trying to convey a bravado she didn’t feel. She feigned reaching back into her car.

  “Hey, don’t you go all psycho-bitch on me, I’m just trying to be friendly,” Henry said, backing away, his hands raised in a compliant display that still struck Debbie as condescending.

  “You wouldn’t know friendly if it bit you on the ass,” Debbie sneered.

  She sensed the nervous tic twitching under her left eye and prayed Henry couldn’t see it. She triggered her car door locks and re-entered the outpatient area. She felt as if her shaking legs would betray her and cause her to collapse at any moment, yet she was oddly invigorated. She intended to tell her fears to the admissions attendant, hoping she could assure her that Henry would not enter the hospital, but Debbie got a better idea. Pulling her iPhone from her pocket, she dialed the Riverside Police Department and waited for the dispatcher to answer.

  When they picked up the line, she steadied her voice and said, “Hello, my name is Debbie Gillan. I wish to report a belligerently drunk man who is being aggressively vulgar and making inappropriate advances towards people outside the Riverside Hospital Emergency entrance. I’m afraid to leave the building.”

  In less than ten minutes, a cruiser pulled up. Two officers stepped out of the car and began questioning Henry. It was clear they were familiar with each other and Henry even tried to pat one on the back, but the officer pulled away. Emboldened, Debbie returned to her car, flashing Henry a self-righteous smile. Since the police had their backs to her, and reassured by the presence of her car between her and Henry, she flipped him the bird.

  “You fuckin’ bitch!” Henry yelled, lurching away from the officers. “You called the fuckin’ cops on me? You whore!”

  This was exactly what Debbie had hoped he’d do. In a matter of seconds, they cuffed Henry and stuffed him into the cruiser.

  The older of the two officers turned to face Debbie. “Probably not the best idea instigating him like that, ma’am, he’s already confrontational and stupid drunk… not that he’s all that bright when he’s sober.” He had a hint of a brogue and a voice that could lull mosquitoes. He was shorter than his colleague was, but squat and solid like a bulldog.

  “I didn’t…”

  “Ma’am, I saw your reflection in the cruiser’s window. You gave him the finger… and a rather long finger at that.”

  “Yeah, I did,” Debbie sheepishly admitted. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m Sergeant Condon and this is Officer Maplewood. Are you the woman who called?”

  Debbie nodded.

  “Figured as much. Is he your husband, ma’am?”

  “Dear God, no!” Debbie said, flabbergasted.

  “Boyfriend?” he asked. His expression had a smug know-all edge, yet there burned a boyish gleam in his eyes.

  “No!” s
aid Debbie.

  “Never know. Had to ask, ma’am. Did he attack you or hit you, or anything of that nature?”

  “Only with words. I was more concerned for other people,” Debbie said.

  “What other people, ma’am?”

  “Well, in case others came out.”

  “Did you prompt the attack, ma’am? Did you hit him?”

  “What? No!” Debbie nearly shouted, not believing her ears.

  Henry pushed his lips to the small gap in the cruiser window and hollered, “You’re a twat!”

  “Shut up and sit back!” Officer Maplewood barked at Henry and slapped the window with a heavy, thick-fingered hand. The glass, in turn, connected soundly with Henry’s face. Henry obediently sat back looking baffled and quite pissed off.

  “Would you like to file charges, bury me in more paperwork, and make my already miserable night even worse?” Sergeant Condon asked.

  “No. I’d just like him gone.”

  “Believe me, ma’am, you’re not alone. We’ll give him a place to dry out, though he never stays that way for very long.”

  “Does he do this a lot?” Debbie asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. Too often. He’ll probably be back tomorrow night.”

  “Is he dangerous?” Debbie asked.

  “Only to himself for the most part, but you’ll never see me asking him to babysit. I’d advise you not to either.”

  “Wasn’t even a consideration,” agreed Debbie.

  She noticed that the younger officer was suppressing a smile as he climbed into the passenger’s side of the cruiser and Debbie wondered what was so funny.

  “Will you be collecting him in the morning?” Sergeant Condon asked as he slid into the driver’s seat.

  “Collect him? You know this guy!” Debbie nearly yelled. “Why would you ask if I’m his wife? Are you kidding me?”