by Gary Braver
At about five miles down the road, Billy replaced McClinton with When It All Goes South by Alabama and began to sing along.
About six miles down the road, it crossed his mind that maybe he’d have a multidisc CD player installed so he wouldn’t have to keep changing albums by hand.
About seven miles down the road, Billy’s heart nearly stopped.
In his rearview mirror he noticed an unmarked cruiser with its dashboard cherry.
“SHIT!”
He had tried to keep under the speed limit. Maybe it was a busted taillight, but he pulled over, thinking that it could have been much worse had he gotten stopped an hour ago with a kid tied up in the back seat. Or maybe the van matched the description of a stolen vehicle.
“SHIT!”
He stuffed the package of money under the seat.
The cruiser pulled behind him, and in the mirrors Billy watched the lone cop get out of his car. He was out of uniform, which was unusual. Unmarked car okay, but with an unmarked officer? Probably off duty. Just Billy’s luck. He could get three years in the slammer for driving a stolen vehicle. Then he’d have to explain the camo suit and bag covered with bloodstains from the dog.
“SHIT!”
He rolled the window down. “Hey!” he said, real friendly.
“Would you step out of your car, please, sir?” The officer was a guy about fifty, short and stocky.
“Pretty sure I was under the limit, Officer,” Billy said, getting out.
The road was dark, and no other cars came by.
“Around this way,” the officer said. He had black driving gloves on.
“Aren’t you going to ask me for my license?” Billy said, reaching for his wallet.
“Not yet,” the officer said, and led Billy around the front of the car which was nosed into thick brush under trees just off the shoulder of the road. The officer made him place his hands on the van’s hood and spread his legs.
Shit! Billy thought.
The man patted him down. When he felt the inner pocket of his jacket, the man’s hand went inside. Billy grabbed the man’s arm to stop him when he heard snick snick.
Billy’s hands went free. He looked over his shoulder and saw the long barrel of the man’s pistol.
Just as he realized the extension was a silencer, Billy saw a flash of light go off in his face.
It was the last light he would ever see.
9
“Daddy, will you read to me?”
Wearing pajamas with big cartoon spaceships all over them, Dylan opened the door to Martin’s office, a converted bedroom on the second floor.
Martin was at his laptop looking over the dossiers of recruits, most of them senior-level information technology experts. “Hey, you little monkey,” he said with a glance.
“I’m not a monkey,” Dylan protested.
“Just kidding,” Martin said. “I’ll be right with you.” He finished what he was doing and followed Dylan to his room where he climbed into bed with a book called Elmo the Christmas Cat. It was part of a series of books about the adventures of an inimitable black-and-white cat.
“That’s a Christmas story,” Martin said, stretching himself beside his son. “Isn’t it a little early?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, it’s only June, and Christmas is in December, which is six months from now.”
“But I want Elmo the Christmas Cat.”
Martin wasn’t sure Dylan got what he meant. He had a little trouble with time abstractions. “Okay, but do you remember the months of the year?”
“Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Threesday, Foursday, Fivesday …”
“Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,” Martin corrected. “No, those are days of the week. I mean months of the year.” Feeling a little frustrated, Martin pointed to the large kid’s calendar on the wall. “You know, ‘January, February, March …’” Martin began to sing.
They had been trying to get him to learn the days of the weeks and months of the year for a while. The odd thing was Dylan could memorize things if they were set to music, which was how he could sing the alphabet correctly and why he knew the lyrics of a couple of dozen show tunes. Yet he could not recite things straight. So they had made up little jingles for the days of the week and months of the year, but at the moment he was more interested in Elmo.
Martin opened up the book and began to read, wondering when the boy would be able to do this himself.
After a couple pages, Dylan noticed the small dark blood scab on Martin’s cheek. “You cut yourself. How come?”
“Just from shaving.”
Dylan touched it gently with his finger. “Does it hurt?”
“Nah.”
“Want a kiss to make it feel better?”
“Sure.”
“Maybe I’ll be a doctor someday.” Dylan kissed the scratch. Then he lay back on his bolster.
“Maybe.” Martin read to him, thinking about his work. When he was finished, he turned out the light. “You know, hon, I’m not going to be home tomorrow night.”
“How come?”
“Well, I’ve got to be in Boston tomorrow.” He had a late conference in town and it made sense to stay over at a hotel.
“I hate Boston. You always go there.”
“I promise I won’t go back for a long time. But tomorrow you’ll have to take care of Mom, okay?”
“Tomorrow we go to the zoo.”
“You are?” Martin had forgotten that Rachel and Sheila MacPhearson were chaperoning Dells kids on a field trip to Franklin Park.
“Uh-huh. But you know what?”
“What?”
“Mom’s sad.”
“She is? Why do you say that?”
“Because I saw her crying.”
Jesus, it was getting worse, he thought. When he came home a little after seven, she said that dinner was on the stove, then announced that she wanted to lie down because she had a headache. In fact, she had been lying down for nearly two hours now. The light was out in their bedroom and the door was closed, which meant that she was probably asleep.
“Well, I’ll check in on her. I bet she was just tired.”
“Dad, do you like me?”
“Of course I like you. I love you. Why do you ask that?”
Dylan shrugged. “Lucinda doesn’t like me.”
“Sure she does. And if she doesn’t, something’s definitely wrong with her.”
“Something’s definitely wrong with her,” he repeated, and closed his eyes.
Martin had read someplace that it takes the average adult about eight minutes to fall asleep. Dylan was out in less than a minute, no doubt dreaming of some outsized cat in a Santa outfit coming down the chimney.
Martin got up and crossed the hall to their bedroom. The interior was dark, and Rachel was asleep on her side of the huge king-sized bed. Her sweatshirt was still on, but she had taken her slacks off and draped them over the footboard. The thought of her lying there in her panties produced a giddy sensation in his genitals.
He sat on the edge of the bed and she opened her eyes a slit.
“Are you in there?”
She nodded.
“How’s the head?”
She nodded to say that it was okay.
“Well, I hate to wake you but it’s nine o’clock. I thought you might want to change into your PJs.”
She nodded, and closed her eyes again.
“You know what you could use? A few pages of Elmo the Christmas Cat.”
She did not smile, or even open her eyes. She just shook her head ever so slightly.
“Swann’s Way might be more your style.”
Still nothing.
“I know,” he said and stretched himself alongside of her and put his leg across hers. “How about Mighty Marty’s Happy Beef Injection? Been known to cure PMS just like that.” He gave her a little pelvic grind.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
It was as if she had turned to wood. But in the scant ligh
t he could see tears pooling in her eyes. Martin pulled back. “Hey, girl, what’s the problem?”
She shook her head slightly.
“Rachel, I’ve known you for nearly ten years. I know when something is eating away at you. And something is, and it’s beginning to scare me. Really. I’m beginning to wonder if you have some awful disease you’re not telling me about.” Martin rubbed her shoulder. “Come on, Rache, what’s going on?”
She took his hand and muttered something he couldn’t get.
“What?” he said, and gently coaxed her face out of the pillow.
“I’m scared.”
Martin felt a cold shock pass through him. She has cancer. “About what?” He snapped on the light.
“Dylan.”
“What about Dylan?”
“His problems.”
“What problems? What are you talking about?”
Suddenly she was sharply alert. “What do you mean, what problems?” she snapped. “His learning problems. His disabilities. His dyslexia. His … impairment.”
Impairment. She had rummaged for the right word and came up with impairment. Such a clinical term, he thought. According to specialists Dylan had a language-processing problem. But that didn’t make him impaired.
“Rachel, we’ve been through all this. He hasn’t got polio, for God’s sake. He’s dyslexic, like millions of other kids in this country. We’ll get learning specialists, whatever it takes.”
“But they can’t perform miracles.”
“No, but they can help reverse the problem.”
“It’s not like having his feet straightened.”
Martin wasn’t sure what she meant. “It will take time. But we’ll do the best we can and get beyond this. It’s not the end of the world. Dyslexia can be dealt with.”
“I’m thinking of taking him out of DellKids.”
“How come? What happened?” They had waited a long time and pulled strings to get him into the program, applying months before they actually had moved to town. If it weren’t for Sheila MacPhearson, they wouldn’t have succeeded.
“It’s more than dyslexia. He’s just not in the same league as the other kids, and they’re beginning to make fun of him.”
“Make fun of him?” Rachel was like a mother bear. One of the kids must have mouthed off, Martin decided.
“Maybe if you spent a little more time with him you’d notice.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that you’re so damn absorbed with your work,” she said. Then she added, “And so damn self-congratulatory.”
He felt as if he’d been slapped. “Self-congratulatory?”
“You know what the hell I mean. Working in Cambridge in ‘the brainiest mail zone on the planet.’” Her voice had shifted to a mocking singsong.
Why the hell was she throwing his words back in his face? Of course he loved being in Cambridge and out of that garret behind the Hanover Mall. He now had a five-room suite on the seventh floor of an office building near the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Memorial Drive and a view of Boston that would make a hermit ache. In addition to the extra floor space and easier commute, he was thrilled to spend most of his day surrounded by MIT, and not just because it was his alma mater. With Harvard at one end and MIT at the other end, Mass Ave was like a giant filament blazing with the greatest concentration of mind power in the world. In those other buildings were people who prepared manned missions to Mars, spliced genes, designed robotic intelligence and nanomachines, and searched for quarks, quasars, and extraterrestrial life. Yes, 02141 glowed with the greatest cerebral wattage anywhere, and SageSearch sat at ground zero. Martin felt smarter just being here. “So, what’s your point?”
“That you’re never around long enough to realize your son’s got serious language problems.”
“But he’s younger than the others, and young for his age,” Martin protested. “Besides, wasn’t the idea to put him in there where he can learn from other kids—something about a mentoring theory?”
“Maybe you should take a few hours off some afternoon and observe them. If that’s mentoring, it’s not working.”
Martin saw that coming, but let it go. “Well, if you think it’s not working, then maybe we should find another day-care place.”
Rachel didn’t respond. She seemed too preoccupied, too on the fringes. He watched her open her night table drawer, pull out the vial of sleeping tablets, and toss a couple into her mouth, washing them down with a glass of water. “There are things we can do for him, tutors, special ed teachers,” he said, trying to make her feel better. “Even special schools if need be. We can deal with it.”
Still Rachel didn’t respond. Instead she slipped her pajamas on and got back into bed. “I wish we were back in Rockville.”
“Are you kidding? We’re living in one of the best towns on the North Shore. You should be counting your blessings. Our blessings.”
Without a word, she flicked off the light.
So that was it! he thought. Christ! He hated when she clammed up like this. “Guess it’s good night.” He hated another night going by without sex. It had been three weeks.
“G’night.” Her voice was barely audible. Then he heard her mutter something else. In a few minutes the sleeping pills would kick in and she’d be out.
As Martin went to the bathroom, he realized what she had said: I’m sorry. But by the time he returned to ask what she meant, she was asleep.
For a long moment, he stood there watching her slip deeper into her Xanax oblivion. While her breathing became more peaceful, it occurred to him that no matter how much you think you know the person you love, even after ten years, there are always those damn little black holes in their makeup from where no light ever escapes. And yet, like the ubiquitous X-ray presence around collapsed stars that astronomers talk about, what Martin detected were the subtle signatures—those microsigns in Rachel’s expression that told him she was holding something back. While she could control her wording and body language, she could not disguise that slightly askew cast of her eyes. It was there again tonight while they spoke. That look that said something was festering just beneath the skin of things.
10
Around eleven, the black Mercedes pulled into an abandoned lot about six miles west of Jacksonville.
Phillip was waiting for him. Oliver had ditched the dark blue Chevy that had doubled as an unmarked police car in the woods, then walked half a mile to the rendezvous site.
They drove another six miles to a dirt road that led to Lake Chino just below the Georgia border where they had left their DeHavilland Beaver floatplane in a black little cove.
Travis was still asleep under his blanket, and he would probably remain so for another couple hours. When he woke up, they would feed him because he probably hadn’t eaten since breakfast. On the floor under the boy sat a large Igloo filled with sandwiches and drinks. They were still cool in spite of the hours the plane had baked in the sun.
Using a self-inflating raft, they floated him to the plane in the dark and loaded him into a seat in the rear, then strapped him in securely and covered him with a blanket. The night air was cool and the plane’s heater was faulty.
Oliver, an experienced pilot, got behind the controls while Phillip took the passenger seat.
A little before midnight, in clear cloudless skies, the Beaver lifted off the black water, then banked to the right, heading northeast which would take them through Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, and, eventually, all the way up the coast to New England. It was not the kind of long haul Oliver liked to fly, especially at night. At a cruising speed of 110 knots, the flight would take about twelve hours with two stops for refueling. He had preselected small airports where you could roll up to a fuel pump and pay with a credit card like that Amoco station back there. And he had a fake credit card so he wouldn’t be tracked. Because he was flying on visual, he did not have to maintain contact with regional operations as he would were this an ins
trument flight. Which meant no record or tracking of their plane.
When they leveled off to ninety-two hundred feet someplace over the southern Georgia interior, he looked over his shoulder. The kid was in a deep slumber, but breathing normally.
“He’s got himself a good-looking kid here,” he said to Phillip.
Phillip gave a cursory glance over his shoulder. “Yeah.” He was more interested in the lights of the city in the distance.
“Too bad about the scratches on his face,” Oliver said.
“Like we’re going to have to take him back.”
“Right.”
Phillip checked his watch against the clock on the instrument panel. “Twelve hours. I’m getting tired of these long hauls,” Phillip said.
“Take a third as long in a Lear.”
“Except you can’t land on water and do midnight drops. What did you fly in the service?”
“F-1011s. Quite a comedown, huh? Doing kiddie runs in a Beaver floatplane.”
“But the pay is better.”
“There’s that.”
“But you made good money as a PI,” Phillip said, popping open a can of beer. “How come if you were such a crackerjack bringing in fugitives you stopped doing it?”
“Because it’s against the law for a convicted felon to be a detective, private or otherwise.”
“That’s what’s wrong with this country—they get everything backward. If you wanted to know how bad guys think, hire a crook, right?”
“And pay him good.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Phillip looked over his shoulder at the boy. He was sound asleep. “We got another drop tomorrow night, but the forecast calls for a storm.”
“Uh-uh,” Oliver said. “No more repeats of the last time.”
11
COLD CREEK, TENNESSEE
Vernon and Winifred Dixon lived in a single-level brick structure that could not have been more than thirty feet long and half as wide. If it had wheels, it could have been a trailer home made of brick.
