“After last night, there won’t be any movies for a while, chaperoned or not,” she said with a shrug. “And my parents are pretty much blowing off Erika, though my dad did nail up some boards this morning before he left.”
“Am I allowed to say I’m sorry again?”
“No.”
“Then neither are you,” he said.
She sat up and turned to face him. “I still think my mom’s beginning to like you. She’s said yes to us once, you know.”
“I know.”
“That was a big deal, her saying yes.”
“Yes,” Henry said.
She squeezed his hands and smiled. “I went to the guidance counselor today.”
“About the—” He looked around, then lowered his voice. “You know, from last night?”
She frowned but it was short-lived. “No, I wanted to ask about colleges. Ones that might end in ‘ORD.’”
“And?” he asked.
“She said Oxford first; it’s where she went.”
“Our guidance counselor went to Oxford?”
“Not that Oxford. She went to Emory, in Atlanta. But they have a two-year college called Oxford. She went there before transferring to the university.”
Drops of rain blew through the windows and Justine drew her jacket over their heads.
“You don’t think … ?” he said, hidden with her beneath the raincoat.
“Can’t hurt to check.”
He leaned back and looked at her. “Thanks.”
“Haven’t found anything yet.”
“I know.” He ran his finger down her cheek, then held her face between his palms. “Thanks for still trying.”
She closed her eyes, resting her head down on his hands for a moment. Then she smiled. “Did you ever search for Alexandra?” she asked, opening her eyes to look at him.
“No. I completely forgot by the time we got home and then, with everything else, it just slipped my mind.”
She pulled the coat closed around them and kissed him as the bus pulled up to their stop. “Then what are we waiting for?”
Together, they ran down the street, keeping under the trees to avoid the rain. In front of his house, she stopped and looked next door. “Crap, I have to go home.”
“I understand,” he said.
“I’ll call.” She gave his arm a quick squeeze and then ran home alone.
NOAA Alert: Hurricane Watch: Florida and Georgia
Miami, FL—August 28, 2009, 3:16 PM: FOR EMERGENCY RELEASE:
The National Hurricane Center has updated its Hurricane Warning for the following counties along the Florida and Georgia coastlines:
Duval and Nassau counties, Florida
Camden, Glynn, McIntosh, and Liberty counties, Georgia
Landfall is estimated late tonight on the east coast of the United States.
twenty five
The house was empty and almost chilly, the air-conditioner working through the humidity outside. Henry took the stairs two at a time, letting his backpack fall to the floor as he turned his computer on. He sat down for just a moment before pushing the chair away and pacing the confines of his room, keeping his eye on the monitor slowly coming to life. On his third circuit, he pulled the chair behind him, spinning it around.
From his backpack, he grabbed notebook paper and a pen, centered them next to his keyboard with the page of names from beneath the pillbox and sat down.
A knock, and then, “Anyone home?” Justine called from downstairs.
“Up here,” he yelled back.
She came in, dropped a large duffel bag on the floor, and sat down.
“Going somewhere?” he asked.
“My mom left a note saying she had to go into Brunswick to pick my brother up from school and then run down to St. Mary’s to get my grandparents. They don’t drive. She asked your dad if he could take me along if there’s an evacuation.” She shrugged. “Apparently he said yes.”
“Well,” Henry said, “except for the fact that my dad’s not home at the moment, that sounds good to me.”
“Where is he?”
“Unlike your mom, my dad isn’t the note-leaving type,” he said. “The last note he left me apologized for the note before.”
“I’m sure there’s a really good story behind that,” she said.
“Not really.”
“Well, in that case, what are we looking up first?” she asked.
“Google just gave me almost eighteen million hits on Victor, Alexandra, and Elizabeth. I need a last name, or maybe a city at least.
“So, Oxford it is,” Justine said.
On the screen, the Oxford alumni page loaded and he turned the monitor toward the bed so she could see.
“Do they have class listings?”
“Even better,” he said, clicking his way through the site. “It looks as though they have class pictures.”
“Individually?”
“No, split up by residential areas.”
“Do I want to know how many dorms?” she asked.
“Only four are listed.” He shrugged. “But that’s today. There might have been fewer back in the eighties. I don’t know.”
He continued clicking through the alumni section until the small black-and-white thumbnails were displayed.
“They’re not labeled all that well, are they?” Justine moved next to him, leaning on the desk to get closer to the screen.
“No.”
“The last numbers have to be the year, don’t you think? Maybe we can narrow it down a little.”
One by one, they opened pictures and read through the names at the bottom.
“Would be easier if these weren’t scanned in. The resolution isn’t that great,” she said, her fingernail running along the monitor.
After dozens of pictures, Henry stretched against the seat, his bones cracking with the motion. Outside, the rain continued, the clouds so dark it might have already been night.
“Hungry?”
“And thirsty,” she said. “But just open the next one; we can eat later.” She pushed the mouse herself as he turned back to the monitor.
“We’re up to 1983,” he said. “Are we even close to running out of pictures?”
What seemed like hundreds of grainy photographs later, Justine rested her finger on the names at the bottom of a picture, the quality so poor that faces were blurred together.
“Henry,” she said, pointing toward the faint type where Williams, Frank was listed.
Beside her, he was silent as his discolored finger rested on the monitor next to hers.
“Is that a typo?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Her voice was softer than before, her breath hot against his skin. “Your dad’s William Franks, right?”
“So he says,” Henry whispered. “I can’t see the face. It’s too blurry.”
“Google it.”
Henry opened a new window and carefully typed the name into the search field. “Williams comma Frank,” he said, the words barely spoken.
Google returned almost thirty million hits.
“Try ‘doctor’?” Justine said.
Eighteen million.
“Try it without the comma?”
Dr. Frank Williams, he typed.
Over eight million hits.
“Put it in quotations.”
He re-typed and hit enter.
NOAA Alert: Hurricane Warning: Florida and Georgia
Miami, FL—August 28, 2009, 6:57 PM: FOR EMERGENCY RELEASE:
The National Hurricane Center has issued a Hurricane Warning for the following counties along the Florida and Georgia coastlines:
Nassau County, Florida
Camden and Glynn counties, Georgia
Landfall is estimated late tonight on the east coast of the United States.
twenty six
Rain poured down in sheets. The windshield wipers put up a good fight but did little good. A line of cars snaked across the bridge off Saint Simons, and a single car drov
e slowly through the storm over the causeway onto the island. William hunched over the wheel, wiping his sleeve over the inside of the window to clear away the condensation. He followed the yellow reflectors and the streetlights, barely visible through the storm.
When he rolled down the window to try to improve visibility, the rain whipped into the car, pelting his skin. On the side of the road puddles grew large enough to have their own current, flowing across the street and cascading upwards like a fountain as he drove through them. Wind clawed at the car and whenever he sped up in frustration the car hydroplaned and he gripped tighter to the steering wheel.
The links scrolled down the screen, page after page as Henry kept hitting Next. Dr. Frank Williams, Chief Medical Examiner, Jefferson County, Alabama. Trials and evidence and citations in newspaper articles; countless tiny black-and-white pictures of his father.
“Henry?” Justine said, her hand resting on his shoulder. “CME, remember? Chief Medical Examiner. And look, University of Alabama, Birmingham. CME-U.”
He breathed. In. Out. Again. He breathed and remembered nothing.
“Henry?” she said. “Talk to me.”
He clicked on an item at random, scrolling through the windows. Link after link, Google traced his father’s history in Birmingham until the articles stopped.
“Is that you?” Justine asked, her finger resting on the screen.
“Dr. Frank Williams,” he read from the caption beneath her hand, “and his son Henry, 13, at a 10K walk/fundraiser for cancer research.”
“You’re bald,” Justine said.
With sunken eyes, a pale smooth hairless skull, and a defiant smile, thirteen-year-old Henry stared at the camera, holding tight to his father’s hand.
“Cancer?” he said, the word as quiet as a sigh.
“Google ‘Henry Williams,’” Justine said, her grip on his shoulder tightening. “In Birmingham.”
The links made for a far shorter list than that for his father.
Outside, rain patterned the windows. Dark clouds raced across the sky and the wind pushed against the house, banging the shutters that hadn’t been nailed down properly. A crash of thunder shook the room and the lightning slicing open the sky sent crazy shadows behind them.
Henry followed the links to short notices in the Birmingham News about thirteen-year-old Henry Williams: Relapsed Acute Myelogenous Leukemia and stem-cell transplants and countless sessions of chemotherapy as they walked the annual 10K. The Chief Medical Examiner and his dying son. Raising money so that, just maybe, others would live.
From around the island, evacuation sirens cut through the storm as thunder rolled across the sky.
Justine squeezed down on his shoulder, her fingernails digging into his skin through his shirt, but he didn’t feel the pain. “Henry,” she said, her voice almost drowned out by the storm, “Google Victor, Alexandra, and Elizabeth in Birmingham.”
Henry typed and hit enter. Almost three million results. On the third page, beneath the glowing blue letters, Dr. Frank Williams was also listed. Henry clicked one more link, the page loading as thunder ripped through the house and the power died, leaving them in blackness.
The transformer shot sparks into the sky with an explosive roar and the streetlights went dark. William tried his high beams but they didn’t penetrate very far into the pounding rain. The yellow line in the middle of the road was between his tires as he drove, fighting his way home. Through the storm, he could hear the sirens blaring their evacuation warnings, the sound mixing with the wind until it disappeared.
The car stalled as he pulled into Harrison Pointe, water flooding the engine. William turned the key, pounding his hand on the dashboard until the car roared back to life.
NOAA Alert: Hurricane Erika Potential Category 5; 150 Miles Southeast of Savannah, GA
Miami, FL—August 28, 2009, 7:13 PM: At 7 p.m. EDT, the National Hurricane Center is reporting that the center of Hurricane Erika is located about 150 miles southeast of Savannah, GA.
Erika is moving toward the west near 15 mph and this motion is expected to continue tonight and Saturday. On the projected path, the eye of Erika is expected to make landfall along the northern coast of Florida or the southern coast of Georgia late tonight.
Maximum sustained winds are near 150 mph with higher gusts. Erika is a potentially catastrophic Category 5 hurricane with some weakening in strength expected prior to landfall.
Hurricane force winds extend outward up to 50 miles from the center with tropical storm force winds for an additional 100 miles.
twenty seven
“We need to leave,” Justine said, but she made no move to stand up.
The hissing of the wind came alive in the dark. Henry slid out of his chair and crawled beneath the desk to unplug the laptop from the docking station. Sitting on the floor, he tugged Justine’s hand to pull her down next to him.
“This isn’t good, Henry.”
“I know.”
The last page to load glowed on his laptop, running off the battery. “Without power there’s no Internet,” he said. “So, this is it.”
His voice barely carried over the rain and wind, and the evacuation siren blared its ugly warning across the island.
On the verge of panic, William slid the car into the driveway, rolling up onto the grass. He jumped out, not even bothering to close the door as he ran up the steps, slipping in the rain and banging his knee into the wooden porch railing. The key wouldn’t fit in the lock as his hands shook, and he tried to take a deep breath to still his fingers. Up and to the right, he jerked the knob but it didn’t budge. Again, he fought to open the door.
Rain beat against him, and the wind howled in fury as the lock finally released. A branch broke off a tree, the sound echoing in the storm. The crack seemed to be right behind him and William stumbled against the door, pushing it open further. When he turned around to close it, lightning lit up the world. In the corner of his vision, he saw the shadow before anything else, long hair caught by the wind.
William opened the door wider. The rain flooded the floor until, with one more flash of lightning, the shadows were banished. The door broke halfway off its hinges with the blow as he staggered under the weight of his attacker. Long hair flew everywhere as he fell into the house and, with one final spike of lightning, William caught a single glimpse of the pipe right before it landed above his eyes.
The fury of the storm whistled up the stairs from the door, which banged open and closed downstairs. The wind seemed to be coming from all directions at once as Henry and Justine stared at the monitor.
Birmingham, AL—November 16, 2007: The bodies of Alexandra Raynes, 23, and her five-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, were discovered by Alexandra’s parents, Douglas and Cynthia Raynes of Mountain Brook, late in the afternoon of November 14. The alleged shooter in the apparent murder-suicide, Elizabeth’s father, Victor Steinlicht, 24, was rushed to Copper Green Hospital in critical condition.
“They’d just celebrated Beth’s birthday,” Cynthia Raynes said. “Everyone was there.”
“That boy just destroyed our family,” said Douglas Raynes. “Alexandra was just starting back at school, rest her soul.”
A candlelight vigil is planned for the evening of November 16 at Mountain Brook Baptist Church on Montevallo Road.
Hospital sources, who wish to remain anonymous as they are not authorized to discuss the case, are now reporting that Steinlicht died late in the day on November 15, one day after shooting himself.
“He wasn’t exactly a quiet boy-next-door type,” said Police Sergeant Ralph Simson.
The office of Jefferson County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Frank Williams released a short statement: “The body was cremated, per the wishes of the family.”
Members of the Steinlicht family were unavailable for comment and messages left at their house were not returned.
The front door swung in the wind, knocking against the wall. In the flashes of lightning, William struggled to open his e
yes, the pain of the first blow throbbing through his head. Above him, his attacker raised the pipe a second time. Thunder masked the hissing and the wind roared into the house with a vengeance. Each time he blinked, a double-image flashed across his vision, but the pipe obscured everything save for the long hair swirling around it as his sight faded away.
Shadows, confusing and out of focus, were everywhere as William fought to open his eyes again, waiting for the pipe to land one final time. A foot, indistinct in the darkness, stepped on his leg. Lightning, so close he could smell it, burned into his retinas until he couldn’t see at all. Another foot stepped on his chest, trapping the air in his lungs. He tried to breathe, to twist away from the crushing weight, but only managed a weak cough, wet with blood.
Thunder shook the house and then the weight was gone as the shadows moved closer to the front door, seeming to struggle just to lift the pipe for another blow. William tried to move, crawling across the floor, dragging his unresponsive legs toward his bedroom. Behind him, his attacker fought to stand on the rain-soaked floor by the open door. The pipe slipped, flying out into the storm, and the shadows scrambled after the weapon, leaving William alone in the darkness in a growing pool of blood.
“Henry?” Justine said.
He pushed the laptop away; the picture of Alexandra, more achingly familiar than he wanted to admit, was bright in the dark room. The sirens blared and he stood up, pulling Justine with him. He shook his head. “We need to go,” he said.
“They’ll be evacuating over one bridge, Henry. It’s going to be a parking lot.”
“Call your parents.”
She pulled the cell out of her purse, sliding it open. She turned it so he could see. “No service.”
Rain pounded into his cheek and William opened his eyes. The front door was wide open but it was too dark to see. He tried to stand, slipping on the floor, his head spinning. When he wiped his hands across his face they came away covered in blood, deep red in the stark illumination of another lightning strike.
Henry Franks Page 14
