Angstrom roared, “Enter!”
Sissy did so, singing out, “Good morning!” as she placed her pistol, shield, and departmental hat on his desk. Her uniform she had paid for, and she would keep it, for all the good it might ever do her.
Angstrom scowled at the items on his desk. His formidable eyebrows, Sissy noted, adhered firmly to his forehead today. She wondered why he did not invest in a matching toupee for his bald head.
He growled, “What’s all this?”
“I’m fired,” Sissy reminded him, making a great effort not to smile.
“Oh. That. How’s about if I dock you two days’ pay instead.” He plunked her pistol and badge into her hat, making a receptacle out of it, and lifted it in her general direction, his attention on some papers on his desk. “Get back to work.”
How sweet life could be sometimes, albeit at long and unpredictable intervals.
Sissy did not lift a hand to accept her job back. “No, thanks,” she said. “I have another offer. The FBI is hiring me as a consultant.”
A kind of lightning flash reflected off Angstrom’s shiny pate as his head jerked up, and a kind of thunder sounded as the hat and its cargo fell from his slackened grip into his metal waste can. “You what?” he yelped. “What effing FBI?”
“Agent Gerardo—”
Angstrom’s next bellow brought him to his feet, knuckles on his desk to stick his face into Sissy’s. “Gerardo! So you’re quitting on me! If you go with pretty boy, don’t you ever try crawling back here!”
“Very best wishes to you too, sir,” Sissy said, turning to hide her grin as she headed out the door.
Once outside and in her car, Sissy phoned the number she had already programmed into her cell.
Two ringtones, then, “Gerardo.”
“Chappell reporting for duty, sir.”
“Good Lord, don’t ‘sir’ me, Chappell. Can you meet me at the hospital third-floor lounge? Intensive care?”
“Yes, si— Um, what am I supposed to call you?”
“Franklin Delano Gerardo. Or whatever.”
“Um, okay. On my way.”
News cameras scanned the hospital entrance, but as nobody knew Sissy was anybody, she entered without interference.
A few minutes later, her new boss was briefing her over coffee: Mrs. White was in grave condition, heavily sedated and barely conscious. She had nearly died from loss of blood before reaching the hospital. During the fairly long and serious operation to repair her injuries, both the slashed arm and the slit wrist requiring reattachment of nerves and blood vessels, she had required multiple transfusions. No sooner was she out of surgery than complications had started setting in; Dorrie’s wounds showed signs of infection, and her lupus was ravaging her body.
Sissy’s assignment was simple but important: be available to question Dorrie White if and when she became lucid. Neither Chappell nor Gerardo dwelt long on the grim possibility that she might not survive, although as professionals they had to accept it. Both hoped for a happier outcome.
In any event, Sissy would keep vigil at the hospital for days, perhaps even weeks, until she had all the necessary information for an official deposition to close the case.
“I’ve been in touch with the home office,” Gerardo explained, “and they agree that my men and I could better spend our time elsewhere. They’ve faxed paperwork for you to fill out, and once you’re sworn in by a judge, Harris and I have to head back east. We agreed we would rather turn the case over to you than to anyone else we’ve met locally, and we take responsibility for providing you with a future in the FBI. After this case is wrapped up, we’ll find you work somewhere else, or perhaps you’ll want to apply for a more formal position? Might you consider applying to the FBI school at Quantico? Maybe even eventually becoming a profiler?”
Sissy told him that yes, indeed, she very much might consider it.
* * *
Sam White dealt one minute at a time with the unthinkable: None of Dorrie’s doctors could honestly reassure him that she would not die. In a day or two they would know more, they said. A day or two! Sam did not know how he would make it through the night. From a hospital pay phone, he called his parents in Colorado; utterly shocked by the unshed tears they heard in their son’s clotted voice, they promised to be on the next airplane to Fulcrum.
Next, Sam knew, he should call Dorrie’s parents, but he could not bring himself to do it. Instead, he phoned Pastor Lewinski, hoping he might do it for him.
“Wait,” said Lewinski’s young voice as Sam attempted to explain what had happened to Dorrie. “Whoa. One crisis at a time. She’s hurt? You’re at Fulcrum Hospital? Stay put; I’m coming over.”
Only thanks to Pastor Lewinski and, later, Mom and Pop White, did Sam sleep or eat at all for the next few days. The first night, Lewinski managed to make Sam sit down in the lounge rather than hover outside his wife’s intensive care cubicle. He listened to Sam compulsively talking about events that he, Sam, apparently had experienced but even so was having difficulty believing. He brought food from the hospital cafeteria and coaxed Sam to eat some of it as he told a story very much disjointed by distress. He got Sam to stretch out on the sofa by promising that he, Lewinski, would not leave intensive care for a moment without alerting Sam.
Mom and Pop White, the cavalry that arrived at dawn, exerted more authority. Pop took Sam home and made him shower and change clothes while Mom sat in Dorrie’s cubicle and Lewinski stepped out for breakfast. Then, feeling guiltily that he really couldn’t put it off any longer, he went to make a pastoral call on the Birches.
Knocking on their front door, thinking that it could have and should have been painted almost any color except the same drab brown as the house’s shingles, Lewinski mentally prepared himself—belay that. There was no way to prepare for dealing with these particular parishioners.
He was just lifting his hand to knock again when the door was opened by Mr. Birch, who said utterly without expression, “Reverend Lewinski. You’re up early today.” He stood aside to let the pastor into a narrow passageway, then opened another dark brown door to a dim room that appeared to be a formal parlor, normally unused.
Lewinski stood feeling awkward, as if he should have a hat to remove and hold in his hands. “Would it be possible for me to see Mrs. Birch also? I’m afraid I have bad news.”
“She’s dead, then?” asked Mr. Birch without any apparent emotion.
“No! No, can you be thinking that Dorrie—your daughter—” As happened all too frequently when he spoke with the Birches, Lewinski found himself babbling. With an effort he stopped to try again. “What have you heard?” He found it incredible that they remained here, at home, if they knew their daughter lay near death in the hospital.
Mr. Birch’s mouth tightened into a straight and lipless line, like a mail slot. He seemed about to answer when Mrs. Birch came in, wearing an apron and followed by the aroma of bacon. She greeted him with no more smile than her husband, yet with hospitality. “Pastor Lewinski. Would you like to join us for a bite to eat? I have some fresh-baked coffee cake.”
“No, thank you.” He successfully controlled his voice, and his thoughts about the appropriateness of coffee cake under the circumstances. “You’ve heard about your daughter?”
Mrs. Birch’s voice became as starchy and colorless as her collar. “We have been scandalized to hear Candor’s name on the news, not only radio but television. We have been given to understand that she has disobeyed us, and she has sinned, and she is being punished.”
“But—but what Dorrie did was heroic, not a sin!”
“We ordered her never to go back there,” said Mr. Birch.
“We would rather not talk about it,” said Mrs. Birch.
The two of them stood shoulder to shoulder, facing their spiritual leader, in the middle of the dar
k parlor. No one had invited Lewinski to sit down.
“Of course we will pray for her,” Mr. Birch added.
Lewinski could see quite clearly that they wanted him to leave before their bacon and eggs got cold. Actually, he had to control an impulse to flee. But he made himself say, “Let us pray for her together.” Before they could refuse, he bowed his head and started speaking to God. In no way could they refuse to lower their heads also, and listen.
In his prayer Lewinski likened Dorrie’s self-sacrifice for the sake of another to the sufferings of sacred martyrs, stopping only a hair short of declaring her Christlike. He extolled the virtues of her quick mind and generous heart, then requested the Almighty’s aid in restoring her with due speed to health. He also implored the Almighty to soften the hearts of those who had grown hardened in their belief and remind them to judge not lest they be judged. He closed by calling for blessings on families of the faithful. He noticed without surprise that the Birches did not echo his “amen.”
He shook hands with them anyway, met their chilly stares with a smile, and left their home with a sigh, shaking his head.
* * *
Three days later, to Sam’s great relief, Dorrie was declared out of danger. Her sepsis was under control; her medications had been lightened; she was more alert and even, occasionally, able to talk. Sam felt hopeful and pleased when the hospital staff moved her out of ICU, but astonished when they put her in a generously proportioned private room. They shrugged off his questions as to whether his insurance would cover it. The father of the girl whom Dorrie had saved, they explained, insisted that Dorrie should have nothing less than the penthouse of hospital suites, and he had legally committed himself to pay for whatever expenses Sam’s insurance would not meet.
This felt a bit hard on Sam, and when Lewinski came in—Pastor Lewinski was a dependable daily presence, as much so as Mom and Dad—Sam told him about it and asked anxiously, “What do you think?”
“I think you need to put your pride aside,” Lewinski said firmly. “Dorrie deserves whatever goodness and consolation the world can bestow on her.”
* * *
Sissy, who had received frequent accurate reports of Dorrie’s condition thanks to the authority of the FBI, heard about her release from intensive care with almost as much relief as Sam. She decided it was time to get started, even if that meant no more than showing her face.
Dressed like the human being she preferred to be (T-shirt, jeans, Chucks), Sissy walked softly into Dorrie’s small kingdom, which included no less than three easy chairs. She was not at all surprised to find Sam White occupying one of them, at Dorrie’s bedside, like a permanent installation, but he did look taken aback to see her. Struggling to his feet, he inquired, “Officer Chappell?” as if he thought she might be a hallucination. Mentally, Sissy gave him points for remembering her name at all. She wondered whether he had made the acquaintance of a bed in the past three nights. He looked like a study in sleep deprivation.
“I’m not an officer anymore,” she replied, shaking his hand. “Please call me Sissy.”
“Um, okay, Sissy.” With a gesture he introduced her to another person in the room—she had walked right past his chair without seeing him. Despite chaotic red hair, he still managed to have that kind of self-effacing personality. But as he stood up to smile and shake her hand, she noticed with great approval that he wore Chucks—an old, obviously cherished pair, faded blue with white checks.
“You’re not an officer anymore?” Sam asked her. “What happened?”
Sissy decided to skip the Bud Angstrom unpleasantness. “I’ve been hired as a consultant by the FBI.” She tried to keep pride out of her voice. “I’ve been authorized to take your wife’s deposition when she’s ready. No rush, but I thought I’d come in today just to see her. May I?”
“Of course!” Sam guided her toward the bed where, covered by a white blanket, Dorrie lay very still, intravenous tubes in both arms. Circumnavigating the drip stands, Sam stood on one side of Dorrie and Sissy on the other as if at a shrine.
What Sissy saw was not what she expected. When a person is lying with her eyes closed, you don’t expect to see pus-filled blisters on her eyelids, let alone the rest of her face. “What’s wrong with her skin?” she asked, embarrassed that her voice came out as a startled squeak.
“Lupus. It’s not usually that bad, but skipping her meds on top of—well, you know—”
Sissy nodded to assure him that she understood.
“Her ordeal has caused one doozy of a flare, and it’s all over her, sores popping up on her scalp and in her mouth and ears and—and even more miserable places.”
“I hope it doesn’t feel as bad as it looks.”
“It would be uncomfortable, but her injuries where that bastard cut her with the knife would hurt worse. The doctors are keeping her bung full of pain meds and sedatives.”
“Can she hear us? Dorrie, my name’s Sissy; can you hear me?” Sistine reached for one of her hands, then saw that they too were encrusted with oozing sores. “Never mind,” she said, ashamed of calling on this woman to make the slightest effort. “It doesn’t matter.”
Sam said, “She can hear us.”
Dorrie responded to his voice with a slight movement of her head.
“That’s my brave wife. Don’t try to smile, sweetheart. Just rest and pretty soon you’ll feel better.”
Dorrie was going to be okay, Sissy knew in that moment. Dorrie had a wonderful, big warm husband and Sissy bet she had a wonderful family too. She’d be fine.
NINETEEN
Sissy started to say, “Well, I should be going—”
The sound of the door opening rather hard interrupted her. Turning, Sissy saw entering Dorrie’s room a man and woman dressed in old-fashioned black, looking eerily like Grant Wood’s American Gothic come to life—if one were to place a narrow-brimmed black hat in the man’s hand instead of a pitchfork, and a black prayer bonnet on the woman’s head.
Sam stepped forward quickly but did not offer to shake hands. Rather, he seemed to stand between them and Dorrie as if to guard his wife. “Mother and Father Birch,” he said in a carefully neutral tone. “Long time no see. I trust you’ve been sleeping well?”
These were Dorrie’s parents?
Instantly Sissy revised her rosy ideas of a moment earlier. She sensed family trouble, which was none of her business. “Um, I’d better be going,” she said, meaning it this time, and she started toward the door. But to her surprise, the young redheaded man, Pastor Lewinski, stopped her by grasping her wrist for a moment.
“Reinforcements,” he murmured very quietly, so that only she was likely to hear him.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Birch, who carried a plate swaddled in aluminum foil, sidled past Sam and advanced on Dorrie’s bed. “Candor,” she said loudly but without emotion, “I’ve brought you some cookies. Your favorite kind. Hermits.”
Whether Dorrie responded in any way, Sissy could not see.
“Thank you, Mother Birch,” said Sam, his tone a bit warmer than it had been before.
“Yes, Mrs. Birch, thank you. It seems God has answered my prayers.” Pastor Lewinski sounded as if, like a happy golden retriever, he had received his reward.
But neither of Dorrie’s parents answered him. Simultaneously they gave him a disgusted glance.
Sam went to take the plate of cookies from his mother-in-law. “Dorrie can’t eat these yet. Her throat is too sore, so she’s being fed intravenously.”
“Just as I expected,” said the old woman harshly.
Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “Expected?”
She gave him a look that said any other response wasn’t necessary. Meanwhile, Mr. Birch stood at the foot of Dorrie’s bed, regarding her with profound disapproval. Indeed, Mr. Birch seemed to swell with negative fervor like a male grackle puffing
its feathers at a rival.
Suddenly, “Candor Verity,” he proclaimed like a tent-revival preacher to a congregation, “we have come to bear witness of our condemnation of your behavior.”
“You have dragged our good name into the public cesspool,” Mrs. Birch joined in as her husband drew his next breath. “We have heard mention of you, our daughter, on the radio, the television—”
“Mr. and Mrs. Birch!” Pastor Lewinski exclaimed. “Think upon the mercy and humility of our Lord!”
He might as well not have spoken. They seemed not to hear him. Mr. Birch thundered, “You disobeyed us and now you are being punished.”
“—but we don’t watch the news. We don’t wish to know the extent of your iniquity.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Birch!” Pastor Lewinski tried again. “Examine yourselves. Are you without sin?”
Sissy watched and listened, dumbstruck. How had Dorrie survived being raised by such a pair of fanatics? Sissy made a mental note never to complain about her own mother and father again.
Mr. Birch flung his next verbal stone at—under the white blanket on the bed, Dorrie lay so still that she might as well have been made of wood. A target. “It is our misfortune that you were born to be a woman and disgrace us.”
“Stop it. Stop it!” Sam tried to forced Dorrie’s parents away from the bed, but he was only one person, and the pair of them sidestepped him relentlessly.
Whipping the air with his black hat, Mr. Birch thundered, “Candor Verity, we ordered you never, ever to go back to Appletree. It’s your own fault you experience the Lord’s vengeance.”
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