by Jodi Thomas
Five
Mark Anderson plowed his fingers through his hair and leaned back in his leather chair. If the private line rang one more time, he would pull the phone from the wall and throw it out his third-floor window. No one called that line but Blaine, and he had seen his wife folded into a body bag last night. She would never call again.
When he took over the corner office, there were two phone lines. All business came through the main one, all friends knew his cell number, but Blaine liked using the private line as if it were a secret they shared. She didn’t call needlessly, so he never hesitated to pick up. Until today.
Rubbing his forehead, Mark tried to concentrate on what he had to do. Plans to be made, people to call, details that must be addressed and soon. But it had been over twenty-four hours since he’d slept, and the crank call a few minutes ago rattled him more than he wanted to admit. The voice sounded nothing like Blaine’s, but the caller had used the same words she might have said to him. “It’s me.” A coincidence that made his skin crawl.
Had it been only a day since he’d picked up the note Blaine had left by the phone and stuffed it in his pocket without reading? He’d worked all morning on a new case, barely aware of the sirens screaming through the streets of downtown Austin. At lunch he remembered one of the partners commenting on an explosion several streets away. They’d said the blast had probably been caused by faulty gas pipes, since the old clinic was in a building in need of repairs.
Mark had half listened to the conversation, as always his mind saturated with work. His only thought about the explosion had been that he hoped the emergency crews got the mess cleaned up so it didn’t tie up traffic later.
That evening, he’d pulled his car keys out of his pocket and headed toward the parking lot, focused on working for a few more hours at home, when he noticed Blaine’s crumpled message.
She had a habit of leaving notes for him. Shortened conversation, he always thought. Plus, she often said he never remembered anything unless it was written down, so even before they married, leaving notes became her habit.
As Mark unfolded the paper with one hand, he juggled his briefcase and laptop in the other. Expecting to see a reminder to pick up takeout, he was surprised when he read, “Gone to women’s clinic to get a few answers. We need to talk tonight.” She hadn’t bothered to sign the page. The word tonight had been underlined twice.
He was at the car before it dawned on him that his wife might have been at the clinic that exploded. That would be a fluke, he thought, and slid into the seat of his BMW. She might have seen the accident or talked to someone who had. He smiled, thinking he might have to postpone work for a few hours tonight so she could tell him all about it over dinner.
He flipped to the news on the radio, then punched their home number on his phone.
No answer, but the local station blared away about the problems downtown. With trouble so close to the capitol, the National Guard was being pulled in as a precaution. The explosion had not been ruled a bombing, but early reports tended to verify that as the most likely explanation. Though hundreds in the area were questioned, only one man, a security guard at the clinic, had reported seeing anything unusual.
Collecting details from the news, he dialed home again. A breaking report verified earlier fears, the clinic had been bombed, at this point there was no possibility the explosion had happened by accident. Several casualties. Investigation continuing but no clues as to who, or why.
Blaine didn’t pick up the phone at home. Mark tried her cell phone as he pulled out of the parking garage. Had she told him she’d be working late on one of her projects? He couldn’t remember. He hadn’t been listening. Had she talked about having plans when they’d had dinner last night…No, he corrected, it had been two nights, maybe three, since they’d eaten together.
No answer from her cell.
He turned his car north, trying to remember what street the clinic was on. Maybe Blaine was still there. She might be tied up giving a statement or helping out somehow. His wife was an eternal helper, always looking for something to do. He had no idea why she’d go to such a place. Probably one of her never-ending charity projects or, if the building were old enough, she might have been researching its history for her job. She was quiet, even shy, but if he encouraged her, Blaine liked to talk about her work.
Mark tried to remember how long it had been since he’d encouraged her.
Arriving near the clinic he pulled to the side when a roadblock prevented him from driving closer. Uniformed troops climbed out of an old army truck down the street, but they weren’t organized enough to notice him. He locked the car and walked toward the fire trucks, angry that he was wasting time he needed to be spending on the case going to trial in two weeks. But if Blaine was in this mess, she’d probably need him. She wasn’t good with strangers, she never had been. Since their dating days he had always taken the lead. She preferred being in the background.
As he moved closer, the street began to look like a war zone. Officers and firemen moved between trucks and ambulances. Trash and bricks littered the sidewalks. Mark headed toward the smoldering remains of a building, aware of a strange smell in the air. Tragedy, he thought. The odor of chaos.
The sun had slipped behind the buildings to the west, leaving the place in not quite light, not yet darkness. Men in huge plastic suits huddled around an open-sided Red Cross truck. The aroma of coffee flavored the smoky air. He noticed a camera crew from one of the local stations. All but a few of them appeared to be packing up, ready to move on to tomorrow’s news.
“You’re not supposed to be here, sir.” A young cop, not out of his twenties, stepped in front of Mark. “Authorized personnel only.”
The officer was respectful but firm.
“My wife may be somewhere in this mess.” Mark almost pulled the note from his pocket, showing proof. “She was at the clinic and she isn’t home.” He wanted to add that if she was here, she’d be frightened. Things scared Blaine, things like talking in public or being the center of a conversation, or giving a statement. Even if she looked all calm, he knew how she squeezed his hand at times.
He glanced around. She would be frightened now. She would need him, even if she didn’t admit it.
“They’ve taken most of the folks who were here to the station for questioning.” The policeman pointed with an open hand in the direction Mark had come from. “You could go there. It will be hours before we get everyone’s statement.”
Mark shook his head, moving closer to the building, pulling the officer in his wake. “No. If she were there, she would have called. She knows my cell-phone number.”
“They took seven injured to the hospital,” the young man said. “Maybe she’s among them?”
Mark didn’t bother to answer. She was here. He could feel it. If he kept looking, he’d run into her.
The officer reached for his arm. “Sir.”
A security guard standing a few feet away glanced up from a clipboard and stepped toward them.
Mark twisted around the hood of a police car to avoid being touched. As he straightened, he saw two long, thin bags waiting to be loaded. He knew what they were—he’d seen them a hundred times on TV—but not like this, not real.
Body bags.
He shoved away from the officer, almost knocking the security guard off his feet as he hurried past them both.
Others became aware of him, an intruder in their midst, and closed in.
Mark kept moving, running now, determined to reach a scrap of coat crumpled on the sidewalk beside one of the bags. The dark leather, the color of the fur trim. It had to be Blaine’s. Only, she would never leave her coat on the ground. She was always careful with her things.
“Hey!” a fireman yelled. “You can’t…”
“Sir! I’m afraid you’ll have to…” The policeman followed Mark.
“That’s my wife’s coat!” He stared down at the leather, now blackened and burned in places. “She’s around here.
That’s her coat.” He had proved his case. “Look, you can see her red wallet hanging out of the pocket.”
The security guard knelt down and pulled out the wallet. The cop took a step backward.
“You’ll only find her driver’s license, a gas card and one credit card in there. She never carries cash.” Mark took a deep breath as if he’d been running miles. “Is her cell phone in there? I’ve been trying to call her.”
The guard flipped open the wallet. Blaine’s picture stared up at them from her license. “This your wife?” he asked in a whisper.
Mark smiled. “See, I told you she was here.” His gaze scanned the crowd.
The guard placed the wallet back beside the coat and stared down at his clipboard. “I think I saw her,” he mumbled. “A half hour, maybe more, before the blast. I saw her go into the clinic. She smiled at me, you know, like folks do when they’re smiling at the uniform and not me.”
Mark looked back at the guard, noticing for the first time that his name tag read Frank Parker. “What time did you see her come out, Mr. Parker?” he snapped in a tone he used often in court when he wanted rapid-fire information.
Frank’s tired gaze met his. “I wasn’t really watching the door, we had some trouble in the waiting room and I was in there telling everyone to keep calm.” He let out a long breath. “I didn’t see her come out.”
The words hung in the air like the toll of a bell.
A fireman and the young cop flanked Mark, but made no effort to touch him.
“You need to leave, sir.” The policeman’s voice lowered. “This isn’t the place, or the time. You can identify the body later. They’re moving them to the morgue now.”
Mark went cold, as if all the blood had seeped out of his body. It took him a while to process what the cop was trying to tell him. Mark had been talking about a coat, a wallet, a driver’s license…not a body. He was just here to keep Blaine from being frightened. She wasn’t good with strangers. She needed him to run interference for her.
He wished the two men would pull him away, but they just stood there letting reality rain down on him.
“Open the bag,” Mark ordered.
“But…” The young policeman paled.
The fireman shook his head. “You don’t want to see.”
“Open the damn bag!” Rage built in Mark. Vaguely he was aware others watched him. People had stopped moving about. Even the men getting coffee turned in his direction. The folks from the news crew circled in the distance.
The guard knelt to one knee between the body bags and laid his clipboard aside.
The fireman glanced over at an older man then nodded to the guard. The guard unzipped the bag a few inches.
The odor of death almost knocked Mark over. For a moment, he was relieved. The blackened body couldn’t be Blaine. His beautiful wife couldn’t be so twisted and charred. Then he saw it. A tiny piece of her hair that had somehow escaped the fire. Blond hair. And in her hand, curled over her face, were the remains of the rings he’d given her the day they’d married. Gold interlocking bands with diamonds, a one-of-a-kind design.
The guard moved her hand slightly and the rings tumbled in the dirt.
Picking them up, Mark turned them over in his hand. He could still make out the initials they’d had engraved inside. When he glanced down at the guard, the man had closed the bag once more.
“Are you all right?” Frank Parker’s voice was kind, but sounded tired, as though he’d spent a lifetime living this nightmare. “Would you like to sit down for a minute?”
Mark stared at him. “That’s my wife?”
“I’m sorry. We have to take her to the morgue now.”
“That’s my wife.” Mark repeated, still feeling the warmth of the ring as he closed his fingers into a fist. “I’m going with her. She doesn’t like to be alone in strange places.”
“But…”
The older fireman stepped near. “Let him go, Frank. He’s in no shape to drive. He can ride along.”
Mark climbed into the ambulance, then jumped out and grabbed Blaine’s coat before rushing back. He rode in silence with body bags on either side of him.
He sat in the hospital hallway most of the night, waiting. A policewoman took his statement. A nurse brought him a cup of coffee. A few other people, clustered in families, wandered down the hall to the swinging doors where they’d taken the body bags. They’d return a few minutes later crying, looking pale and hanging on to one another as though, if they let go, another of their clan might disappear.
Mark didn’t go behind the doors. He’d seen all he wanted to see. Neither Blaine nor he had anyone to hold onto. They’d been each other’s family for years now. Her mother was dead, her father had disappeared years ago. Mark couldn’t remember his own mother, and last he’d heard, his father had gone back into rehab to try to sober up one more time. But parents didn’t matter, Blaine and he had one another.
About an hour after dawn, Harry Winslow, one of the older law partners, appeared, looking as if he’d just crawled from bed. He wore a suit, but he hadn’t shaved or bothered to comb his hair. He was a bull of a man with a sunburned look about him even in winter.
“Jesus, Mark, why didn’t you call me?” He sat down in the plastic chair next to Mark. “We talked about the clinic exploding at lunch and you didn’t even mention anything about Blaine being there.”
Mark stared at him, paying only passing notice to what he said. “How’d you find me?” he finally asked.
“The front desk here at the hospital called our office and left a message. Bettye Ruth had just called them back to see what was wrong, when I arrived at the office. I left her to man the ship and came straight over. They said you were down here alone and had been all night. The nurse apologized for not trying to reach someone earlier. It seems they’re short-staffed along with the coroner’s office because of this damn flu everyone has. Too late in the year for a flu to be hitting everyone. Far too late if you ask me.”
“I’m not here alone,” Mark corrected. “I’m here with Blaine.”
A huge tear bubbled from Harry’s eye and fought its way past laugh lines to his chin. “Blaine’s gone, Mark. She died in the fire.”
Mark resented being talked to like a child. “I know.” He wanted to hate Harry at that moment, but the poor man looked miserable, as if he’d had something to do with the tragedy.
“How about I drive you home?” Harry raised his hand to touch Mark’s shoulder, then reconsidered. “They’ll watch over Blaine for a while. That’s what they do here.”
Mark glanced at his watch. “All right. Time I get cleaned up, it’s almost time for work.”
For two men who could spend hours arguing a case in court, they had nothing to say to one another on the ride to Mark’s town house. Harry stayed downstairs while Mark went up to the guest room to shower and shave. He thought he heard the phone ring while he was in the shower, but Harry didn’t mention it. In less than an hour they were on their way back downtown to the office.
Bettye Ruth Moore, Mark’s secretary, looked surprised when he walked in, but years of professionalism kept her silent. She brought him a cup of coffee and waited in front of his desk with her pad in hand for instructions. He’d gone through four secretaries before he found her, but Bettye Ruth could read him like a book and had the same emotional depth as a keyboard.
“I don’t want to leave Blaine at the hospital morgue any longer than necessary,” Mark said, thumbing through his mail without seeing any of it.
“I understand.” Bettye made a note.
Years of checking his emotions kicked in, drawing Mark to action as he rattled off plans. He might be out of the office some this week and he wanted to make sure everything ran smoothly. Bettye Ruth was the best assistant he’d ever seen. She would keep the wheels turning.
Then with both Bettye and Harry in the room, the private line had rung. While the rings sounded, Bettye whispered to Harry that no one used that phone except Mark’s
wife.
Harry took a step toward the phone, but Mark held up his hand. They stared at it for a long while before Mark finally lifted the receiver. The dam broke and all control rushed out as he heard someone pretending to be Blaine.
A few minutes later, the private line sounded again. Then again. Bettye looked at him for any hint of what to do. Finally, Mark forced his hand to the phone once more.
But no one was on the line. No one at all.
Six
Blaine walked down the steps of the shelter trying to clear her mind enough to think, but the throbbing in her head, along with an ache in her throat, muddled her brain. Reaching for the handrail, she hesitated before touching it. The pain shooting through her right leg with every other step seemed preferable to sliding her fingers along a metal bar used by hundreds of people who did not bathe regularly. She felt as if she had survived a train wreck only to hear the wheels of the locomotive shifting into reverse.
Mark thought she was dead and the haunting possibility that someone had planned it to be so, gnawed at the corners of her mind. Mark and Harry Winslow were close. More than once she’d heard Mark call the old partner “the father he wished he’d had.” Could the man she’d seen outside the office doors talking to Harry be the bomber? Had she been the wife he’d “taken care of”? Did Mark know anything? She had to call him and find out. She knew he wouldn’t be involved. She just knew it. But somewhere, somehow, he was mixed up with men like Harry Winslow. And Harry Winslow knew men who killed and called it a job.
At the bottom of the stairs, Blaine crumbled, wishing she could crawl into her bed a few miles away and sleep until this nightmare was over. But she could not return, not yet, not until she knew what to do. Not until she believed both she and Mark would be safe.
The only answer she could come up with was that, no matter the cost to her, she had to disappear for a while. She drew up her knees and buried her head, curling into a human ball. A day ago she thought her world was falling apart with the possibility of a pregnancy or, even worse, cancer. Now, nothing mattered, she had no more world. The loss was too great for tears.
