Nathan’s Run

by John Gilstrap

  Tad looked up from his work and smiled. “Well, if it isn’t Braddock County’s finest.” The patient—a teenage boy clad in swim trunks—tried to raise his head to see, but was gently kept in place by Tad’s gloved hand. “Jeeze, Harry, I’m sorry, all the doughnuts are gone.

  Harry flipped him off.

  “What brings you to the Band-Aid barn?” Tad inquired, returning his eyes to his work.

  “Got some questions to ask you.”

  “Official business?”

  “Yep.”

  “All right, then, let me just finish up my needlepoint on Tyler here, and I’ll be right with you.”

  “Mind if I watch?” Harry asked. Unlike so many of his colleagues who could not stomach hospital scenes, Harry was fascinated by medical procedures. Maybe they’ll hire me here after Michaels fires me this afternoon, he thought.

  “Not my call,” Tad said. “It’s really up to my patient here. Tyler, do you mind if my friend Harry watches me put you back together?”

  “Who is he?” Tyler asked, not trying a second time to see for himself.

  “He’s a cop with a big gun.”

  “If I let him watch, will he promise to give me a warning instead of a ticket?”

  Tad laughed. “Harry?”

  Harry was laughing too. “Where do you live, Tyler?” “Fairfield.”

  “Sure, no problem:’ Harry promised. Fairfield was on the far end of the county from his patrol area.

  “Fine,” Tyler said. “Let’s throw a party.”

  Harry wedged in close enough to see. Squarely on the back of the boy’s head, an area about the size of an index card had been shaved bald, exposing a smile-shaped laceration about four inches long. By Harry’s eye, it was sewn about half shut.

  “What happened?” the cop asked.

  Tad answered before Tyler had a chance. “Tyler does backflips off the diving board only slightly better than you play tennis.”

  Ten minutes and as many stitches later, Tad was done. He advised the boy to take Tylenol for the pain, to take all of the antibiotics he had prescribed, and to stay out of the water for at least two weeks while the wound healed. That done, he walked with Harry into the privacy of an empty trauma room.

  “What’s up?”

  “Did you work on a patient named Mark Bailey yesterday?” Harry asked. “He had a broken hand.”

  “Yes, he certainly did,” Tad confirmed, growing visibly uncomfortable. “Harry, you know I can’t discuss the details of patient histories.”

  “I just need a little help, that’s all,” Harry said hurriedly. “Did he tell you that he was injured when his car slipped a jack?”

  This was exactly the sort of legal pinch point that Tad worked so hard to avoid. Bailey was a scumbag, and everyone knew it. He was supposed to stay over for one more night in the hospital, but chose instead to check himself out against his doctor’s advice. Those were the actions of a person with something to hide. And he bore the injuries of someone with evil friends.

  But the sad fact was that it was Harry’s job to catch bad guys and throw them in jail, not Tad’s. Conscience aside, the doctor wasn’t going to put everything at risk just to help a friend.

  “I’m sorry, Harry, I can’t help you. All of my conversations with patients are privileged.”

  “I know, I know,” Harry said. There was an edge of desperation to his voice. “But bear with me on this. My career might be riding on it. I just want to give you some opinions of mine. If you agree, you don’t say anything. But if you don’t agree, you can cough. When we’re done, we can both swear under oath that you never gave me any information. Okay?”

  Tad had known Harry for a long time, seeing him in and out of the ER a thousand times, escorting victims and bad guys alike. He seemed to be an honest, hard-working, ethical guy. What he was proposing, though, beyond being a little childish, pushed the envelope of ethics and honesty to the breaking point.

  On the other hand, Harry’s plan had taken the downside away from the equation, hadn’t it? If he could deny honestly that he had ever given information, then an ethics case could never be brought against him. Plus, was it any less ethical than letting a scumbag wander the streets just so you can protect your own butt? He worded his answer to Harry very carefully.

  “I could never agree to do that,” he said, but his eyes said something else entirely.

  Over the course of five seconds, Harry’s face showed dejection, followed by confusion, and, finally, understanding. “Yes, of course you couldn’t,” he said. He paused for a moment to collect his thoughts. “I think Mark Bailey is lying about how he got injured.”

  Tad said nothing.

  “I think he’s afraid that we’re going to find out what really happened to his hand.”

  No response.

  “I think he broke his hand while he was committing a crime, and that he’s afraid that if we find out about the injury, we’ll find out about the crime.”

  Tad was suddenly overcome with a coughing spasm.

  Harry was stunned. His whole theory hinged on the assumption that Mark had somehow broken his fingers while he was helping Nathan escape. Maybe Harry had made the wrong statement. He tried again.

  “I think Mark Bailey was injured when he was helping someone escape from a prison.”

  Bailey. So that’s where Harry’s coming from, Tad thought. He had heard about the kid Nathan Bailey on the news the previous night, and the staff had been talking about him all morning, but Tad had never put the names together. Nonetheless, he had no way to link the elder Bailey’s injuries with any kind of illegal activity committed by him; rather, it was tied to activities committed against him. He coughed again.

  Harry looked thoroughly confused now, but Tad would have to let him sort it out alone. “I’ve got patients piling up in the waiting room, Harry,” he said apologetically as he opened the trauma room door. “Your theories are interesting. Feel free to share them with me at any time.”

  With that, Tad returned to work, leaving Harry alone with his confusion.

  Chapter 21

  The house at 4120 Little Rocky Trail wasn’t half the size of the Nicholsons’ place, but it did afford Nathan his first experience with a water bed, and a full pantry more than compensated for the lack of a big-screen television and supersoft carpeting. After awakening around 10:30 and treating himself to another long hot shower, he’d spent what was left of the morning down in the living room, stretched out on the sofa, barefoot, watching cartoons and pigging out on Doritos and root beer.

  The good cartoons ended at noon, when his only remaining options were the life sucks shows, soaps or stomach-wrenching junk like Barney and Friends or Smurfs. He turned the TV off. Within minutes, he was bored. Whoever lived in the house had no kids, he figured, because there wasn’t anything that even resembled a toy anywhere to be found, not even Nintendo. He decided to explore.

  Figuring that people kept the good stuff in their bedrooms, he started there, returning upstairs to the master suite. The first order of business, before he forgot, was to strip the bed and wash the sheets. It went a long way toward easing his conscience about all this burglary stuff. One thing 4120 had over the Nicholsons’ was a laundry on the second floor. After gathering the sheets into his arms, he walked them out into the hallway and dumped them on the floor in front of the washer. He’d wash them in a minute, but first he wanted to look around.

  The master suite was done in a mismatched assortment of light pine and heavy oak. Everything was immaculately clean, evidence of owners who cared about their things. Except for the bed, there were only two major pieces of furniture. The double dresser was chockfull of ladies’ things, underwear on the left and sweaters and blouses on the right. Nathan was aware of a curious stirring in his loins as he handled a bra, and he quickly tucked the garment back in the drawer and slid it shut.

  On the other side of the room from the oak collection was a tall highboy. The lower drawers had men’s clothes: socks and unde
rwear in the bottom two, and T-shirts in the next tier. The tag on one of the shirts said SIZE 44. There’d be no additions to his wardrobe from this house.

  He slid the chair from a small makeup table over to the highboy to see into the upper drawers. The topmost full-size drawer held dress shirts, ties and assorted jewelry-cuff links, tie tacks, that sort of thing. The last two drawers were small ones, arranged side by side at the top. In them, he found the neatest kind of toys. The drawer on the left had a box of bullets. On the right was the revolver itself. It was big, blue-black, and heavy as a brick. Nathan had seen such things on TV and in the movies hundreds of times, but he had never actually handled one before. It was another one of those things his father had promised they would do when he got older.

  He could see the heads of four bullets peeking out through the cylinder openings. There was a way to make the ammunition cylinder flop out of the side of the gun, and he was determined to find out how. Maybe you had to pull the hammer back. He rolled it back to the first click, and nothing happened. The next click took a lot of effort, but as the hammer moved, the cylinder began to turn. As it did, the fifth and sixth bullets peaked their noses out. He got nervous before he had the hammer all the way back, and eased it down slowly.

  The hell with it, he thought. He could play with it just the way it was, so long as he didn’t pull the trigger for real. For the next twenty minutes, he did room searches the way he saw them done in Cops, with the weapon held at arm’s length, gripped by both hands. When he played that he was holstering the gun, he stuffed it up to the trigger guard down the back of his pants, the way Mel Gibson did it in Lethal Weapon.

  With the upstairs cleared of bad guys, of which he’d had to shoot at least half a dozen while catching two bullets himself—one in each shoulder—he paused long enough to put the sheets in the washer, and took his battle to the first floor.

  He noticed the telephone at about the same time that he was getting bored again. He wondered what The Bitch was talking about today. After hesitating for just a moment, he picked up the phone and dialed. This time he had to keep his pacing to a minimum, because he was tethered by a real phone cord. Like the day before, it took many tries to get through, but when he finally did, he went right to the front of the line.

  Denise was talking to Quinn in Milwaukee about the caller’s fears for Nathan’s safety when she got the note that the real star of today’s show was on line fourteen.

  “Hey, Quinn?” she interrupted.

  “What?”

  “I’ve got a surprise for you on our other line here.” She stabbed the button. “Nathan Bailey, are you there?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the voice said. This afternoon, he sounded like the boy he was, his tone free of the burdens it carried the day before.

  “Try not to call me ‘ma’am,’ okay, Nathan?” Denise said. “I’ve got a reputation, you know?’

  He giggled. “Yes, ma… Okay.”

  “Say hi to Quinn, Nathan. She’s from Milwaukee, and she thinks you’re pretty cool.”

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi, Nathan!” Quinn nearly shouted. “I just want to tell you that I believe you, and I hope all of this works out for you. For what it’s worth, if I ever have a little boy, I hope he’s every bit as polite. As you.

  “Thanks,” he said a little sheepishly. He wasn’t sure he knew what she was talking about, and he was certain that he didn’t like that “little boy” crap, but it was a nice thing for her to say.

  “Listen, Quinn,” Denise said, “what do you say I hang up on you and chat with Nathan for a little while?”

  “Of course,” Quinn said agreeably. “You’ve got a great show, Bitch. Keep up the good work. And Nathan, you be careful.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I’ll do my best.”

  “So, have you been listening to the show this morning?” Denise asked. “You’re quite the celebrity today.”

  “No, I’m sorry, I haven’t,” he said, his tone genuinely apologetic. “I’ve been sleeping.”

  “Well, I don’t wonder:’ Denise laughed. “I guess doing all that laundry tires a boy out, huh?”

  Nathan’s bowels turned to ice. “What?” he gasped. His voice was cold as stone. How did she know? How could…

  “You didn’t see the press conference either?”

  Press conference? What the hell is she talking about? His mind raced to put the pieces together, but they weren’t there. He said nothing.

  “So you don’t know!” Denise announced, clearly tickled to be the one breaking the news on the air. Talk about great radio! “Your hosts from last night—the Nicholsons—came home this morning and found some things missing. Like a car. They also found your note.”

  Nathan’s heart began to race. His hands were shaking. This wasn’t going right. Not the way he had planned it at all. He didn’t think they’d get home so soon. And if they got the note, then how come everyone knows? He asked them specifically…

  “CNN had you tagged this morning as the world’s favorite burglar,” Denise explained. “It’s hard to think bad thoughts about a kid who does laundry.”

  Nathan still didn’t see what was so funny. It was great that people thought nice things about him, but what did that matter? What it really meant was that the cops were still only a few hours behind him. How long could it be before they found the Beemer, especially if they were looking for it? The good news was that people didn’t go to church in the middle of the week, and the car wasn’t visible from the road.

  It’ll be okay, he thought, calming himself down. I only need a few more hours.

  A thousand questions flooded his mind all at once. He needed to get caught up fast on what everyone else knew. So he started asking.

  Lyle Pointer watched the press conference live from his living room as he slowly and methodically reassembled his just-cleaned .357 Magnum. The Nicholsons looked like they had stepped out of Little House on the Fucking Prairie. Steve looked like the ex-college football star type, probably a quarterback or maybe a kicker. Kendra, no doubt, was the drooling cheerleader, though Pointer was willing to bet that she’d put on a good thirty pounds since they were married.

  The kids were like all other kids, nondescript. Both had dark hair and dark eyes. Jamie, the older of the two at maybe thirteen, was clearly thrilled to be on television, though like his mother he could’ve afforded to drop a few pounds. His sister, Amy, was about nine, Pointer figured, and far too shy to say anything to the reporters.

  Considering the work that had to be done, Pointer was none too pleased with the attention the Bailey kid and his antics were getting in the media. The more people watched, the tougher it was going to be to whack the kid and get out. But he had done tough hits before, and within a day or two this business would be done and Mr. Slater would be off his back. And the reporters, God love them, would have plenty to report.

  The very fact that CNN had chosen to carry the Nicholsons’ comments live spoke volumes about how out-of-control this media frenzy was spinning. The questions were all shouted at once, and each family member would take a shot at giving a rambling, disjointed answer consisting mainly of incomplete sentences. Jamie, in particular, was intent on getting his two cents’ worth in at every conceivable opportunity, and nearly beamed with pride that America’s criminal du jour had chosen to dress himself in his clothes.

  Yes, they said, Nathan had broken into their home through the French doors in the back. Except for clothes and the car, nothing appeared to have been stolen, though he had consumed three frozen pizzas. From what they could tell, Nathan had slept in the master bedroom and showered in the master bath, and believe it or not, he had washed all the linens and towels and re-made the bed before he left.

  When Jamie described the pile of bloody clothes in the downstairs bath, a huge flurry of enthusiastic questions followed, which only served to confirm that the family didn’t have any real details to share.

  Then Kendra read the note:

  Dear
Mr. amp; Mrs. Nicholson and Kids, I hope I got your name right. It was the one on your Time magazine. I’m sorry I broke into your house. I tried to be careful, but I broke a window out of your back door. I cleaned up the glass, and when I get the chance, I’ll be happy to pay you back.

  You have a really nice house. You have the best TVs I’ve ever seen. Please tell your boy that I had to take some of his clothes. Please tell him thank you and I’m sorry. I found some laundry and I did it along with the sheets I slept in last night. I didn’t use any bleach because I’m not very good with it and sometimes people don’t like it.

  I also had to take your other car. I’ve drove before and I promise I’ll be really really careful. So don’t worry. I’ll figure out a way to tell you where it is when I’m done.

  You probably figured out by now that I’m in pretty bad trouble with the police. I did some bad things but it’s not like they think, honest. If it’s okay with you, please don’t call them for a day or so or maybe even a week after you find this. I really will take care of your stuff.

  Your friend, Nathan Bailey, sorry about the mess in the bathroom. Its pretty grose.

  As soon as Kendra raised her head from the page to signal that she was finished reading, the media mob erupted with new questions. She answered them as best she could, with Jamie’s perpetual help. The note had been left on the kitchen table. It was written with a ballpoint pen on plain notebook paper. No, the paper in her hand was not the original, and she didn’t know if the press could get a copy; they’d have to talk to the police. On and on it went, simple answers to inane questions, until a single inquiry from the local paper rendered her silent.

  “In the note, Nathan asked you not to call the police for a couple of days, yet you called them right away. How does that make you feel?”

  Kendra blushed and looked to Steve for help with the answer, but he was preoccupied with the detailed study of a fingernail. Even Jamie fell silent.

  Pointer laughed out loud. “Ha! Shut you up, didn’t she, bitch?” He was still smiling as he turned his gaze down to his work and slid six Hydra-shock Magnum rounds into his weapon and squeezed the cylinder home.