by Julia Keller
She’d once asked Lily Cupp how she managed it—being here day after day, or night after night, depending on her shift, and being in the presence of all the pain and silent suffering of these infants who had done nothing to deserve their fates. “You get used to it,” Lily had said with a shrug and a wan smile. “That’s the only answer I have for you, Bell. You have a job to do and so you do it. And anyway—it’s not like your work over at the courthouse is any bed of roses, am I right?”
She was right.
Bell had thought about Abraham off and on throughout the day. She had to know how the child was faring, and just making a phone call to the facility didn’t feel right. It seemed too easy, too much like a bureaucrat going over a checklist with a sharp pencil, ticking off boxes. She needed to see for herself. To be there in person.
In the lobby, Delbert Ryerson put down his meatball sub long enough to wave her on in. The mess of beige paper wrapping on the desktop crinkled and shifted under the sudden return of the massive, dripping sandwich.
“That smells good,” Bell said. He’d spilled meat sauce on the front of his white uniform shirt. It looked like a wound.
Ryerson grunted back at her and hit the switch that opened the security door. As she walked past, she pointed to the spill on his chest. “You’ll have to soak that,” Bell said.
“Dang!” Ryerson exclaimed, noticing it for the first time. He reached for a napkin and started to wipe at the spot.
“Don’t worry, Delbert. If a meal’s worth eating, it’s worth wearing.”
Another grunt. He was back at his sub again, using two hands to wrangle it from the wrapper up to his mouth.
Lilly Cupp saw Bell right away. The nurse was standing by the supply cabinet, entering information into an iPad. “Be there in a sec,” she called, finishing off her words with a wave.
They sat for a moment, side by side on two black folding chairs. The facility was quiet now. That was less a function of the time of day—it was 9:45 P.M.—and more a matter of happenstance. Day and night had little meaning here. The infants’ needs were constant, and the moments of silence came as a consequence of the brief pockets of sleep into which these tiny patients dropped. Soon enough they would wake up, crying, thrashing, often inconsolable.
“Didn’t think I’d see you here tonight,” Lily said. “Things must’ve been slow over at the courthouse. You were looking for a little excitement, right?”
“Yeah. Right,” Bell answered. Lily knew very well what a county courthouse was like: wave after wave of people arriving, hour after hour after hour, all through the livelong day, brandishing their problems and their troubles and their concerns and their complaints and their accusations, yelling and threatening and demanding satisfaction. It was, Bell had once told Lily, like a circus without the elephants. Or the cotton candy. Or the fun.
But it was also no more and no less than what Bell had bargained for when she first ran for Raythune County prosecutor seven years ago. She’d known exactly what she was getting into. She had studied the parameters of the job, calculated the toll it might take, before she’d filed her papers.
She was a native of Raythune County, but she had moved away just after her husband finished law school. To the Washington, D.C., area where that husband—now her ex-husband—began scaling the ladder at an important lobbying firm. The better Sam Elkins did, the more restless Bell Elkins became. Finally she went to law school herself, balancing schoolwork with the care of her young daughter, Carla Jean.
And then came the day when Bell wanted to return to Acker’s Gap. She’d read about the prescription drug abuse that was ravaging the area, and she wanted to help fight the good fight.
Washington, D.C., would do just fine without her. But Raythune County, West Virginia, could use all the help it could get.
So here she was, all these years into the next phase of her life, a phase that, back when she’d first left West Virginia as a twenty-six-year-old wife and soon-to-be mother, she could never have predicted. She was forty-four now. The gray hairs she occasionally used to find in her comb? Not so occasional anymore. Time had gone from being a neutral entity to a force she was keenly aware of. A relentless one. A hungry, devouring one.
She’d managed to make a dent in the drug problem, but just that. A small dent. She hadn’t come close to solving it. If she had, there would’ve been no need for the Evening Street clinic. No need for nurses like Lily Cupp to be here, night after night, trying to untie the knot of addiction that negligent mothers had tied around their children’s throats.
“Hey, Lily,” Bell said.
Her friend said, “Mmmm?” without opening her mouth. Lily was very tired, Bell saw. Lily had mastered the nurse’s trick of dozing on her feet, during any short break she allowed herself. Bell was convinced she could even sleep with her eyes open. Once a patient needed her, of course, Lily was alert and focused.
“I did a little digging today into Abraham’s background,” Bell said. “The mother’s name is Tina Wayne.”
“She and Hinkle aren’t married, I’m guessing.”
“No. But get this: Jess Hinkle has already filed the papers requesting sole custody of Abraham.”
“He’s only two days old.” Lily was surprised. “Why would he—?”
“I don’t know. But the record’s there. He wants full custody. Which, as you know, is highly unusual. Most of the time, we have to track down the fathers and threaten them with hellfire—and with garnishing their wages, an even worse punishment in their eyes—if they don’t provide the bare minimum of financial assistance to their children.”
“Especially these children,” Lily said.
“Precisely.”
“And your point is?”
“My point is that maybe Hinkle’s a decent guy,” Bell said. “Maybe he’ll make a good dad.”
Lily looked at her friend. “Come on, Bell. You know how it goes. If a parent actually does take an interest, it rarely lasts. Just look at Abraham’s mother. I checked with the main hospital—she hasn’t even asked about him. She’ll be released anytime now, and we may not ever hear from her again.”
“That’s what I’m saying. The father—this father—is different.”
“Oh, Bell.” There was a catch in Lily’s voice. “I wish I could believe that. I really, really do. But even if Abraham pulls through, he’ll most likely have significant physical and cognitive issues for the rest of his life. Hinkle will be facing major challenges in caring for his son. And—”
“Yeah,” said another voice, a third one, interrupting Lily. “How’s that gonna work? What’s he gonna do, ride around with the kid on the back of his Harley like a sack of laundry?”
Angie Clark had come up alongside their chairs and wedged her way into the conversation. Neither Lilly nor Bell had been aware of her approach. There was a sneakiness to this woman that Bell didn’t like.
“Sorry,” Angie said. “Didn’t mean to butt in. But guys like that are bad news, through and through. Just like the mothers. If they cared about their kids, both of ’em would’ve stayed away from the pain pills. Taken care of themselves. Instead of letting the kids pay the price.”
“Do you know Hinkle?” Bell said. She remembered the look that had passed between Angie and Hinkle the night before. It might have been her imagination, but she didn’t think so.
“Never saw him before in my life.”
“Then how do you know he rides a Harley?”
Angie laughed. “That’s what everybody rides. And one low-life bastard’s the same as any other, right?”
Lily stood up. Her scrubs hung loosely on her, Bell noticed. Looser than usual. Bell hoped she was taking care of herself. “Time to check temperatures,” Lily said, a let’s-get-back-to-business brusqueness in her voice. “Angie, I need some help with Sunny.”
The two nurses repaired to the far corner of the room to resume their duties. Bell watched them go. She had the same impression she’d had the night before, when she asked Hinkle if
he knew Angie Clark: She had just been lied to.
But why?
* * *
Bell stayed much later than she’d intended. It was close to midnight by the time she finished rocking three babies and then, at last, Abraham. Lily came over and took the infant from her, holding his head with one hand and supporting his backside with the other.
“Go home, Bell. You must be beat.”
“I am.” Bell reached up and tucked a trailing bit of yellow flannel around Abraham’s tiny form. “How’s he doing?”
“Almost three hours without a seizure. That’s real progress.”
“Wonderful.” Bell stood up, or tried to. She faltered, using the armrest of the rocker to steady herself.
“Okay, that’s it,” Lily said. “I don’t want to see you back here until the end of the week. That’s an order. You have to get some rest, okay?”
Bell nodded. “But you know what it’s like, Lily. You start to root for these little guys. And even when you’re away from here, going about the regular business of your day—part of you is still back here. You wish you could hold them, just one more time. Tell them it’s all going to be okay.”
“I know. But you can’t help Abraham if you collapse from exhaustion yourself Believe me—I’ve been there.”
Bell looked over at the utility table along the far wall. “That coffeepot’s dangerously low again. Can I at least make you a fresh pot before I head out?”
“No, you can’t. Go. Get out of here, lady, before I march you out at the point of a scalpel.”
“Whoa. I’m going. No need for violence.” Bell laughed. She was standing close enough to Lily to be able to reach the tip of her right index finger toward the infant resting in her friend’s arms.
Abraham’s tiny finger stirred, bumping against Bell’s finger.
“Oh my God,” Bell said. All at once she was almost breathless, overwhelmed by the thought of what that flicker of movement meant. “He knows. He knows I’m touching him.”
“I think he does. If he had the strength, he’d probably grasp your finger. A few more days, and maybe he’ll be able to do that.”
Bell couldn’t speak for a moment. The emotion was backed up in her throat.
“Home,” Lily said. Her voice, too, didn’t sound like it normally did.
“Yeah.” Bell nodded. Lily was right. She needed to go. “Okay.”
* * *
In the lobby, Bell stopped to tell Delbert Ryerson what had just happened with Abraham, to marvel over the fact that he’d almost clasped her finger. She wanted to share it with someone—and back at her house on Shelton Avenue, there was no one. The man she was dating had been out of town all week. She could call him, of course, but she didn’t want to wake him up. And her daughter, Carla, would be asleep, too, in her apartment in Arlington, Virginia. Gone were the days when Carla stayed up till 1 or 2 A.M. She was a working girl now, with a 6 A.M. start time at the D.C. think tank at which she was an assistant to the deputy director of online research. Carla had decided to put off college for a while; Bell wasn’t thrilled about that, but she knew better than to argue the point with her daughter. She’d made a lot of mistakes, too, when she was Carla’s age. The right to make mistakes was a fundamental one. Bell sometimes thought it belonged in the Bill of Rights, alongside free speech and peaceful assembly.
“It was just—just a really special moment, Del,” she said. Fatigue was making her almost gushy. “He was trying to grab hold of my finger.”
Ryerson was not impressed. In fact, he was irritated that she’d interrupted the Clash of Clans rampage currently under way on his smartphone. He nodded without looking at her. “Gotcha,” he said.
Okay, so Delbert Ryseron maybe wasn’t the best person with whom to share an emotional epiphany. Bell shrugged and moved toward the big front door.
Before she got there, the door slammed open, hitting the cinder block wall behind it with urgent force.
Jess Hinkle took an aggressive step through the doorway. The heavy smell of alcohol crowded all around him, like an invisible posse.
A shotgun was held tightly against his abdomen. Hinkle clutched it with two hands. Those hands were trembling. The weapon was so ancient and stained that it looked like a museum piece. Bell had an impulse—one she resisted, but it occurred to her nonetheless—to grab the muzzle and order Hinkle to return it to whatever Civil War reenactor he’d swiped it from.
His eyes were enough to dissuade her. They were red-rimmed, bulging, and there was a fire burning in them. Elbowing the door shut behind him, he took two more long steps into the lobby. He stopped. He tilted the shotgun’s black-rimmed muzzle toward Ryerson’s appalled face.
“Don’t you move,” Hinkle said. His words were bleary and slurred.
Ryerson’s hand hovered near the alarm switch on the wall by the desk.
“Delbert, do what he says,” Bell called out. She willed her voice to be calm. “Just do exactly what he says.” She addressed herself to Hinkle. “Whatever’s bothering you—we can work it out, okay? Why don’t you put that shotgun down? We’ll talk.”
“Bothering me?” Hinkle said. “Bothering me? Yeah, lady, there’s something bothering me, all righty. You bet your ass there’s something bothering me.”
The alcohol smell was suddenly cut by another smell. Ryerson, Bell realized, had urinated on himself. The guard’s hand was still too close to the toggle switch. He was frozen with fright, unable to bring his hand away.
“You make a move,” Hinkle snarled at him, “and I’ll blow your pecker clean off. Swear I will.”
Ryerson’s chin wobbled. His face was drowning in sweat, and Bell was afraid he’d make a move accidentally, a gesture that Hinkle would misinterpret and react to accordingly.
“Del,” she said calmly. “Del, listen to me. Don’t move, okay?”
Hinkle talked right over her. “I know that switch ain’t connected to 911 or nothing, but I don’t want to listen to no alarm bell right now. My head feels like it’s gonna explode as it is.” His hands were shaking even harder now, making the shotgun wobble precariously.
Ryerson was too scared to pull his hand away from the switch. The fat fingers were spread out, widely spaced apart, like somebody showing off a new manicure, and he was unable to reel in his arm and tuck it safely against his side. Bell recognized the hysteria behind Ryerson’s lack of motion. He wasn’t thinking. He couldn’t respond to outside commands. The fear had taken over his body. Fear was in control. But Hinkle might not understand that. He might mistake Ryerson’s catatonic state for some kind of calculated strategy.
“Listen, Mr. Hinkle,” she said. “Del here doesn’t mean you any harm, okay? He’s not armed. Why don’t you put down the gun, and we can talk about this in a civilized manner and then we can all just—”
Beside her, Ryerson suddenly twitched. It might have been a hiccup, or a belch, or the shift of his sweaty butt in the plastic chair, but Hinkle’s temper was stretched as taut as a fishing line.
The shotgun blast was deafening.
In the small lobby, the sound bounced wildly against the block walls and careened around the space in a dizzy cavalcade of pure hot noise. The roar had nowhere to go except to fall back in on itself, and so the room was like a steep-sided mixing bowl of sound, sound that spun and churned.
The vibration knocked Bell hard against the wall. She didn’t fall, but she had no idea how she stayed on her feet. She was aware of small wet droplets slapping her face; when she opened her eyes, she was treated to a horrific sight.
Ryerson’s belly was laid open in a mess of red blood and yellow fat and shredded tissue. Still seated at his desk chair, he looked down at the hole in his gut and then he looked up again, locking eyes first with Hinkle, whose mouth hung slack in shock at what he’d done, and then with Bell. Ryerson’s eyes were growing glassy, like a mirror fogging up. He didn’t slump over; somehow he stayed upright in the chair while the blood surged forth from the wound.
Ryerson
tried to speak, tried to form words, but all that came out of him were grunts and whimpers. Animal sounds. Spit was building up on his bottom lip, spilling over.
The moisture she’d felt on her face, Bell realized, was blood spatter. It was Ryerson’s blood.
“Goddammit!” Hinkle yelled. It was as much a howl as a word. “Lookit what you made me do! I didn’t want to do that. He scared me, is all. Thought he was coming after me. You gotta believe me!”
Hinkle was shaking so badly now that it seemed as if the shotgun might rattle right out of his hands. But he held on to it, redoing his grip so that it was firmer and surer than ever.
Bell knew she had only seconds before Lily Cupp or Angie Clark, alerted by the massive concussive explosion, would open the security door to see what was going on. They wouldn’t automatically think of an armed intruder; they’d think something had happened to the building’s mechanical systems, and that Ryerson might need help with a wire or a junction box.
He needed help, all right, but not that kind. And she didn’t want the two women to blunder into the lobby, spooking Hinkle all over again.
“This man’s in trouble,” she said, talking fast, turning her head toward Hinkle but not moving any other part of her body. “And they’ve got medical supplies in there. Like you said—you didn’t mean for this to happen. So prove it.” She didn’t want Hinkle anywhere near the babies, but right now she had to balance that caution with expediency. Ryerson was dying.
Hinkle stared at her. “Nobody leaves the building. Nobody comes in from the outside.”
“Fine. But we’ve got to get him some help. Okay?”
He thought about it. He dipped his head. “Okay.”
“I can call the nurses, right? To take him in the clinic? To treat him?”
Hinkle was breathing hard and fast. Each time he swallowed the excess spit in his mouth, the effort of it caused him to stretch his neck and stick out his chin.
“Mr. Hinkle?” Bell said. “I can do that, right? Call the nurses?”
“Yeah, yeah. Okay.”
Bell slowly picked up the phone on Ryerson’s desk. She kept her eyes trained on Hinkle’s eyes. By now the security guard’s head had fallen forward on his chest, like somebody praying before a meal. He made no sound at all, not even the soft grunting noises he’d been making before.
