Nathan's Run (1996)

by John Gilstrap

  For the longest time, Hackner just stared, his fa'ce showing a combination of disbelief and disgust. He'd spent enough years on the force to know what these kids were capable of, but from his perspective, Johnstone, given the position he held, should at least be giving lip service to the goal of rehabilitation. Instead, he'd clearly given up. Every two weeks, he collected a paycheck on false pretenses. On a different case, the hypocrisy might not have registered, but on this one, it really pissed Jed off.

  "Is it standard procedure to relieve a resident of his shoes when placing them in the Crisis Unit?" Jed asked, shifting gears.

  Johnstone appeared relieved to be once again discussing factual issues instead of theoretical ones. "I wouldn't say it was common, but it certainly isn't unusual."

  "What's the purpose?"

  Johnstone spoke as though he were prepared for the question. "When residents arrive here, they arrive with nothing of their own. They're made to shower in the stall immediately adjacent to the in-processing area, after which they hand over all of their personal belongings. At that point they become dependent upon the system for everything. We give them their underwear, their clothes, their toiletries, everything. To be so dependent on others-particularly on others whom you dislike-has a severe impact on self-esteem. Beginning on that first day, they learn that dignity is a function of respecting the system. If they behave, for example, they can earn points toward the purchase of their own bar of soap, or a bottle of their favorite shampoo. These things then become status symbols. When they misbehave, however, the most basic elements of self-esteem become vulnerable. Thus, it is not uncommon for a resident to be relieved of something of importance as they're placed into the Unit. In severe cases, they must strip completely for their term in the Unit. It's all part of a behavior modification program with which we've had a great deal of success."

  Hackner launched his next question like a weapon. "Your records show that Nathan Bailey was raped with a broom handle during his first night at the JDC. Was that part of your dignity deprivation program?"

  Anger burned behind Johnstone's eyes, of a magnitude beyond hatred. "Think what you will of me and my operation here, Sergeant," he hissed through clenched teeth, "but I have never once condoned an act of violence on these premises."

  "Yeah, I'm touched," Hackner replied. "But you don't seem to do much to prevent it, either."

  "I merely live in the real world, Sergeant. 'God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.' That's not a bad prayer to live by."

  "Yeah, well, I prefer, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

  Chapter 16

  Nathan sat impassively on the sofa in the family room, using the nuclear-powered remote to thumb endlessly through the channels-all 153 of them. How on earth did these people ever decide on what to watch? Half of what he found was old crap that he'd already seen a dozen times before, and the rest was a collection of infomercials, foreign-language variety shows, news and the "life sucks" shows hosted by Phil, Oprah, Geraldo, Jenny, Sally and anybody else who could convince a group of weirdos to go on television. Even the news about him had gotten boring, with sad-faced anchor people saying the same things over and over. He did note, however, much to his relief, that at least one of the stations had found a better picture of him, the one out of his fifth-grade yearbook.

  Partly because he had been raised right, as his dad used to say, but mostly out of sheer boredom, he'd laundered the sheets from the master bedroom. It wasn't right to leave a place without making the bed. Especially if you broke a window to get in while your hosts were on vacation. He was also careful to clean up during his ongoing eating binge. He was almost sorry he'd found the Pepperidge Farm Cookies and vanilla ice cream in the freezer. Absent anyone telling him he couldn't have another helping, he'd pretty much obliterated the contents of both containers.

  Despite his desire to be a good houseguest (breaker?), he couldn't bring himself to do anything with the JDC jumpsuit, which still lay where he had shed it on the floor of the hall bathroom. That would remain behind closed doors at least until he left. He did feel sorry, though, for whoever would have to clean up the mess.

  It took enormous self-control to keep from executing his plan early. While he realized the importance of darkness to his chances of success, this was July, and it didn't get dark until almost nine, for crying out loud. But wait he would, because impatience spelled a trip back to the JDC, or maybe even worse. If all it took was a little patience to keep that from happening, he could endure the boredom.

  As he flipped mindlessly through the channels, his thoughts turned once again to the trouble he was in. He was developing a new perspective on it all. He was beginning to accept his situation as an unchangeable fact that had to be dealt with, rather than a series of events to be regretted. Okay, so he'd killed a guy and that was bad, but it really was an accident, and it really was in self-defense. In his heart, Nathan was certain that he only intended to make Ricky jump back. It might take a while for him to sleep through the nightmares of the blood and the noise, but there wasn't a lick of remorse in his heart for protecting himself.

  He conceded, however, that running away from the JDC might have been a stupid thing to do. It sure made him look guilty, and in retrospect, with Ricky dead, he probably didn't have to worry about anyone else trying to kill him. So, why had he run? The best answer he could think of was the simple truth: because he was scared, and most important of all, because the opportunity presented itself. Given those circumstances, who wouldn't run? And now that he was out, staying out seemed more important than . . . well, anything.

  What really surprised him was how quickly his list of crimes grew. He had already added burglary-he supposed that's what it was called-to the list, and within the next few hours, he was planning to steal a car. By the time he reached Canada, he figured he'd have to burgle at least two more times, and steal at least two more cars. No doubt about it, if he got caught, he'd be in deep shit.

  The only answer, then, was not to get caught.

  He stopped his tour of the channels to watch a couple of minutes of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, until he remembered how it ended, and he started flashing through the channels once again.

  It had been a long time since Michaels had heard Hackner so agitated. "Calm down, Jed. He was just telling you his opinion. You want the guy to lie?" Jed's conversation with Johnstone had put a burr six inches up his butt, and he was taking it out on his lieutenant over the phone.

  "Opinion my ass, Warren! This guy is a menace to the very kids he's supposed to be protecting. He couldn't care less about anybody in there!"

  If it had been anyone else taking up his time with such irrelevant bullshit, Michaels would have lost his temper long ago. But it was Jed, and Jed didn't go off the deep end very often. Must have struck a nerve, Michaels told himself. Something in Jed's past maybe, when he was a kid. Maybe an old man who hit first and asked questions later. Or a buddy who'd gotten the shaft. Who knew the baggage people carried around with them? Michaels decided to cut his sergeant some slack.

  "Okay, Jed, accepting the fact that he's a menace, what would you have me do about it?"

  "Get his fat ass fired!"

  "I can't do that. He doesn't work for me."

  "Jesus Christ, Warren, don't you see . . . "

  "Jed . . . Jed . . . ," Michaels tried to interrupt. "Goddammit, Jed, shut up!" That did it. "Listen, I understand that Johnstone's a hateful son of a bitch, and I'll stipulate that he's a menace to the people under his control. But the fact of the matter is, we're already up to our ass in alligators over the kid's escape, we've turned up exactly zero worthwhile leads, and I simply don't have the time to worry about the staffing of the Juvenile Detention Center right now. And, I might add, neither do you."

  When Hackner didn't respond, Michaels knew that he'd made his point. "Now, then," he continued, "do we have any evidence at all to corroborate the Bailey kid's self-defense story?"

 
; Jed sighed. "I just got finished telling you-"

  "Yeah, I know, that Johnstone's a bad guy," Michaels finished for him. "What about Ricky Harris, what did Johnstone say about him?"

  Hackner clearly didn't want to answer. "He said he was a model employee." Jed's reply was little more than a mumble.

  "And his personnel jacket?"

  "Same thing."

  "Face it, Jed," Michaels concluded. "We're still looking for a murderer. I want to give the kid the benefit of the doubt just as much as you do, but they taught us both in cop school to let the evidence guide our conclusions, not the other way around. And frankly, right now, the evidence against Nathan Bailey is pretty damning."

  Jed wouldn't let it go. "I'm telling you, Warren, there's something else here-something we're missing. We don't have any evidence as to motive. All we've got is a dead body and a very plausible story from the boy. You believe him as much as I do. You said so yourself this morning."

  This really wasn't going anywhere. "Tell you what, Jed, let's split this case into two parts. The first part: we've got to bring the kid into custody. His motivation for killing Harris doesn't affect that. Once we've got him back, we'll have all the time in the world to prepare the case against him. That's the time to hang Johnstone out in the breeze-and Harris, too-if that's what's appropriate. Fair enough?"

  Hackner was quiet again, as though he wasn't sure whether he had won or lost. "I guess it'll have to do. But I'm going to dig deeper into this guy Ricky."

  Warren smiled. Jed was too hardheaded to answer with a simple okay. "Now that that's out of the way, we've had the uncle's place under surveillance, I trust?"

  Jed was all business again. "Yep. Not a sign of either one of them."

  "Think maybe they skipped town together?"

  "I guess that's possible, but considering their history, I don't think it's likely. The uncle's the whole reason he ran away, remember?"

  Michaels thought it was a long shot as well, but he had to pursue it as an option. One of the most basic principles of investigative police work was to eliminate the obvious before searching for the obscure. And as unlikely as it might have been for Nathan to return to the uncle he purported to hate, it was a place that he knew, and where he had roots. It would have been irresponsible not to surveil the house. "So, where else might he have gone?"

  Jed answered succinctly, "I can't think of a single place where he might not have gone."

  Michaels conceded that the question was ridiculous. If the uncle were deleted from the equation, Nathan had no one left in his life. And sad as that was, it left him with limitless options. Owing allegiance to no one, without so much as an obligation to phone anyone to say he was all right, the entire world belonged to this fugitive from justice; his options were limited only by the breadth of his imagination and his cunning. If he were an adult, these conditions would add up to the most difficult type of search. Since he was just a kid-hell, Michaels didn't know what that meant. Certainly there were options available to adults that were not available to children, but on the other hand, children sort of blended into a crowd, and to a large degree, they all looked alike. Not feature for feature, of course, but human nature was such that people didn't notice children's features. Police were fortunate if people even remembered the presence of children in a crowd, let alone any specifics. Consequently, a child on the run could have options that would never be available to an adult.

  The bottom line was this: They had no way of quickly focusing their search.

  Dr. Baker's day had begun nearly eight hours ago with a SIDS baby who had arrived by ambulance, unnecessarily, as it turned out. The baby had likely been dead for hours, already showing signs of lividity and rigor mortis when he was transferred from the ambulance cot onto the gurney in the ER. Even the medics had known that there was no hope, but they weren't paid to deliver that kind of news to frightened, desperate young parents. As medical director, that was Baker's job.

  Life and death were his business, and this was neither the first nor the last time that he would hold the hands of sobbing adults, as he sewed his own emotions together with a thin suture of professional aloofness. Still, it was a shitty way to start a day.

  As of twenty minutes ago, however, the world had been brought back into balance as he delivered a very fortunate young man into this world via emergency cesarean section. Not one to show emotion on the job, he was self-conscious of the tears in his eyes as he handed the wailing infant over to his grateful mother. Somehow, it was easier to let the emotions go on the good news than on the bad. For Tad Baker, it was what had kept him coming to work every day for the past eight years.

  Between the day's two momentous events was an endless stream of broken bones and sliced flesh, all of which had to be handled in due course, prioritized in order of the injuries' threat to the longterm health of their owners. As he slipped a set of x-rays into the clips on the viewer, he frowned, instantly regretting the decision of the triage nurse to put this case at the end of the line. Ordinarily, broken fingers were, on the ER's scale, a low-priority injury, but this guy was the exception. The ghostly white hand on the screen before him was more than just broken; it had been mangled. The pain must have been excruciating, Tad thought. How odd that he would have sat so patiently in the waiting room for-he referred to the admissions chart-four hours! Cringing at the potential liability an event like this posed to his hospital, he made a mental note to follow through on it later. It was, after all, not the sort of note one would want to have in writing, in case Mr.-he referred to the chart again-Bailey turned out to be the litigious sort.

  Putting on his best clinician's face, Dr. Tad (as he was called by his staff) slid back the curtain and addressed for the first time the occupant of Bed Four. "Good afternoon, Mr. Bailey," Tad greeted his patient. "I'm Dr. Baker. I see by your chart that you've had an accident. Hand injury, huh?" Mr. Bailey looked awful. He was drawn and pale, like someone who was fast approaching the limit of his pain tolerance.

  Mark jumped at the suddenness of the doctor's entrance, mustering only a wan smile in response to Baker's clinically cheerful greeting. The intense throbbing in his hand had transported itself all the way back to his shoulder blades now, and lighthearted conversation was no longer in his repertoire.

  Tad reached gently out toward his patient. "May I see it, please?" he asked, nodding toward the hand. The look he received as his reply told him that Mark Bailey had no plans to let anyone within five feet of his injury. Tad softened his voice nearly to a whisper. "I promise I won't move anything around, okay? I'll be very, very gentle."

  Mark studied the doctor's face for a few seconds, then gently passed his right hand over, carefully supported by his left. "It really hurts, Doc," he said.

  "I bet it does," Tad agreed. "I've seen your x-rays. It's really quite a significant injury you've sustained. How did it happen?"

  The first time that question had been asked, by the triage nurse, Mark had been caught off guard, and he had stammered clumsily through the poorly formulated lie. In the ensuing hours of his wait, he had worked through most of the details, actually practicing the answer out loud once, albeit at a whisper. "I was changing out the brakes on my car when the jack slipped," he explained. Smooth as silk, he commended himself.

  Tad winced at the thought. "Didn't have it up on blocks, huh?"

  "Nah, I was too stupid to do that," Mark said. "You know. I was in a hurry; took shortcuts. Same old story I guess you guys hear every day."

  Tad smiled noncommittally, knowing right away that the story was a lie. First of all, the fingers were still on the hand; a highly unusual outcome for that particular scenario. For another, the angulation of the fractures was all wrong. An impact from a single heavy object should project a uniform force more or less perpendicular to the plane of the body part being injured. In Mark Bailey's case, the displacement of the bone ends was longitudinal in the case of the first digit, and lateral in the case of the fourth.

  The fact that pat
ients lied to him-and many of them did-was typically not a source of great concern to Tad. Quite often, he had to admit that if he were in the position of the patient, he, too, would probably try to float a story in hopes of mitigating the embarrassment. Nine times out of ten, he played Mr. Gullible. People had the right, after all, to live their lives any way they wanted to, and it wasn't his place to interfere with their fantasies, so long as they weren't harmful to others.

  But harmfulness was the key. In the medical world, as in the legal, the good of the many outweighed the privacy of the one. When a gunshot case or a case of suspected child abuse came to him, he was legally bound to report it to the police, even over the objections of the patient. The same was true for knife wounds and other acts of criminal brutality, but only when there was clear, irrefutable evidence that such acts were the source of the injury. While few doctors argued the spirit of the law, the way it was crafted put them in a very difficult position, because the burden of proof ultimately fell on the physician. Overreacting and reporting a case based merely on one's supposition of foul play would place a doctor in violation of the Hippocratic Oath if his or her suspicions proved groundless. On the other hand, ignoring a bona fide criminal act would place a doctor in violation of the criminal statutes of the Commonwealth of Virginia. In either case, the doctor's license to practice medicine would be at stake.

  There was no doubt that Mark Bailey's injuries were the result of something other than the causes described by the patient. In Tad's judgment, these fingers had been broken intentionally, by someone who seemed talented at doing such things. This judgment was not something he could prove, however; nor could he ignore his suspicions. He needed to delve a little further into the details-not because the law required it, but because it was the right thing to do. Finger-breaking was not a talent he preferred among his neighbors.