Nine
David's cry awakened John. He got up to check on the
boy, assuming the cry to have been a nightmare and expecting to find David
sleeping peacefully. When he raced up the stairs and pushed David's door
open, his eyes fell on the empty bed, then at the pale shape sitting
cross-legged in front of the window.
"David?"
David looked around with a beatific smile, his eyes
dilated, dark, and unfocused. His face was white, beaded with
perspiration, and his lips tinged with blue.
"Oh, Christ..."
John rushed forward and scooped the boy from the
floor. David's skin was ice. He lay the boy in his bed, drew the cover
to his shoulders, and tore his way back down the stairs. He flipped on
the den lights and began to dress.
Joyce crept halfway down the stairs clutching a towel
to her breasts. "What's the matter, John?"
John grabbed for his comb and wallet. "David's
sick. I'm running him to the hospital."
By the time John was ready to leave, Joyce had
quietly slipped out the back way clutching her bloodied clothing. John
bundled David in a blanket and hurried him to the car.
He paused before slipping behind the wheel,
distracted by the strange cry of a distant hawk. He looked about the
morning sky and caught sight of a number of birds wheeling about the stand
of young spruce in the distance.
Starlings. They startled him momentarily. He had
never seen birds wheel in such tight circles. It took an effort of will
to shake off the strange sight and put himself back in motion.
He drove at sixty to the edge of town, then slowed to
the speed limit. He parked at the emergency entrance of County Central on
the far edge of Eagle Junction and carried David through the automatic
doors of the cold and sterile emergency ward. A nurse pointed to an empty
cubicle.
John had been through the routine before. In a small
town, the chronically ill were recognized by sight. He left David to the
care of the nurses and paced a waiting room. A nurse showed up within
minutes to supplement information already on record. When she left
scratching on her clipboard, he went outside to park the car, then paced
the empty waiting room until a doctor made an appearance and consulted his
clipboard. John had never met this particular man before.
"Mr. John Hartman? And your son's name is David?
I've got Dr. Varley down as his personal physician. I gave him a call and
he said to hold the boy and he'd pay a visit and have a look for himself.
I'm Dr. Andrews."
"What's wrong with David?" was all John wanted to
know.
Andrews gave a helpless shrug. "Not a whole lot I
could find. What happened this morning?"
"I found him sitting on the floor beside his bed,"
John said. "I'm not sure if he was dreaming or what. I couldn't wake him
up."
"He said he saw his mother. Is there some
significance to that?"
John waited out his moment of stunned surprise. "His
mother was killed in an automobile accident several months ago."
Andrews grimaced. "Has anything like this happened
before?"
"Nothing even close to it. He's got rheumatic heart
disease, though."
"So I see. It's something we have to contend with,
but the symptoms I'm seeing appear to be a psychological crisis or trauma
of some kind."
John grimaced. "I don't understand. He has a vivid
imagination. Maybe it was just a dream."
"It would have to have been a lot more than just a
dream to account for disorientation of this magnitude." Dr. Andrews shook
his head. "He's alert and resting now. Rather than hazard any guesses,
I'd like to wait until Dr. Varley has a chance to examine him. We'll move
him to a private room."
"I don't have insurance on the boy," John warned the
man. David's medical had slipped away from him during his own stay in the
hospital following the accident. He had given up on the legal battle to
have it reinstated and had yet to try for state or federal help.
Andrews ventured a reassuring smile. "We'll leave
that to the business office to work out. While you're waiting for Dr.
Varley, try to come up with something that David may have found
particularly upsetting or stressful to have accounted for this incident."
Left alone in the waiting room, John paced and
backtracked through his memory. He ruled out his encounter with Roy
Rockingham or Joyce Blair as a likely cause of David's upset. The visit
to the cemetery may have caused a problem. John remembered David's
unsettling dream of the green light and his wild story of Jackie Kahl
wandering the slope in the middle of the night. Maybe something peculiar
was going on in the boy's head after all.
Dr. Varley showed up within the hour. "I'd like to
keep David for the day. He's hallucinating."
John felt dizzy with confusion and panic. "Is that
part of his heart disease?"
"Not at all. I have no idea what's causing it."
"Do you suppose he's been given drugs?" John asked,
appalled that such a thing could be even remotely possible, but
remembering David's tale of two bullies picking on him. One of the boys,
the mayor's son, had already reaped the whirlwind for a previous assault.
Had they found a way to retaliate?
Dr. Varley shook his head doubtfully. "I don't think
we're dealing with illegal drugs. I can think of a few natural chemical
imbalances that cause symptoms of intoxication, but they're all
far-fetched scenarios. I'll run a few blood tests to rule out a
physiological problem."
"Something is sure as hell wrong," John said,
determined to press for concise answers.
Dr. Varley nodded absently. "He's not in any
discomfort at the moment. He says he saw his mother. What emotional
state was he in at the time you found him?"
"Emotional state?" John thought about it.
"Euphoric, I guess. He wasn't entirely awake."
Dr. Varley dropped a hand on his shoulder. "Go home
and leave the boy to me. I'll run the tests and have a talk with him.
How is your hand doing, John?"
John held the ruined hand out to view. "It hurts
like hell."
Dr. Varley took the hand in both of his own and
turned it about for a quick inspection. "Color looks good. Give it
another month or two. We don't want to make any premature decisions. If
the pain bothers you..."
"I can handle the pain."
There was nothing Dr. Varley could do for the hand.
In the end, it would have to come off entirely. With a sigh of
frustration, the doctor bid his farewell and turned away.
John drove home alone, trying to hold an anxiety
attack at bay. David was his only anchor in life, his only tie to the
past and hope for the future. Marlene had salvaged him from the downward
spiral of alcoholism. If anything happened to David, if her influence in
his life ended entirely, chronic despondency would swallow him alive. He
had all the personal resources needed to accomplish anything he wanted in
life. All he lacked was the simplest of human faith that life was worth
living.
When he returned to the house, Sheriff Gene
Packerson's patrol car blocked his driveway. John slammed on the brakes a
block away and battled a storm of rage against his run of bad luck. Until
he saw the line of deputies and civilians moved up the slope from the
treeline, he assumed someone had reported him driving the Volvo. An
arrest now would put a driver's license out of reach for the approaching
winter. He'd be forced to abandon the house and find an apartment in
town.
Maybe something else was going on. Resigning himself
to whatever fate held in store, he drove the remaining distance to the
house and pulled the Volvo off to one side of the drive.
Sheriff Gene Packerson didn't look around. He leaned
against the front fender of his patrol cruiser with a microphone held to
his lips. His eyes were on the slope as the search party approached the
crest overlooking Spruce Valley. John stopped at the man's side.
"I'm hoping you have a good reason for using the
car," was all Packerson had to say to him.
"I ran David to the hospital."
"Is it serious?"
"I don't know. I hope not."
"I can't cover for you if you're stopped and caught
driving with a suspended license, or if you're involved in an accident.
You're taking a big risk."
"Gene, I've put four miles on the car this summer."
Gene's silence meant that the transgression would be
allowed to slide.
"What's up?" John asked.
"The Kahl girl is missing."
The disclosure jolted him and left a feeling of dread
in its wake. "Jackie Kahl?"
"Seen anything of her?" Gene looked around, his
steel-gray gaze all business. He stood an even six feet in height. With
his stocky build, his square face and shock of white hair, he was an
intimidating man to deal with.
"She must have been around here somewhere yesterday,"
John admitted. "David was talking about her, and he doesn't wander too
far from the house."
"We had a report that David got into a fist fight
with the girl."
John found it hard to believe. "Even so, I can't
imagine what harm he could do as sick as he is. He's weak as a kitten."
"Thought so myself," Gene said. "I heard a strange
story from the Doran and Farley boys, though. We found their BB guns on
the slope, but no trace of the girl so far. Can I speak with David?"
"Check with Dr. Varley before you pay him a visit."
"I can wait until he gets home. What's his problem?
His heart again?"
John still felt twisted inside. He had no
explanation for David's strange behavior. "I'm not sure."
"Kids that age don't need to be sick," Gene said.
"How's the drinking problem coming along? Got a handle on it yet?"
Gene thought it his right to be so blunt because of
his own drinking problem. To Gene's mind, the difference between them was
a matter of degree. Gene's habits had never interfered with his job.
John's had all but destroyed his life. "Things are going okay, I guess,"
was the best he could do without risking dishonesty.
"It'll take time," Gene said.
John had heard the story of how Gene had lost his
wife to cancer, leaving him with two adolescent girls to raise alone.
Gene thought he qualified as a role-model because of his own personal
loss. John, though, had never explained his own circumstance, and Gene
had long since ceased hinting for an explanation. Gene knew of his
military background, but not about his three years as a mercenary in the
Middle East. Words did not exist to describe and pain and misery he had
witnessed, inflicted, and suffered in those brutal and desperate months in
the deserts of foreign lands. No one but another like himself knew how
one's soul could be lost in the veritable hell of man's inhumanity to
man. Marlene had briefly redeemed from him his conviction that he had no
a place in the world and no right to exist. In losing her, more was at
risk than his old friend and boss, Sheriff Gene Packerson, could possibly
imagine.
"Keep your eyes and ears open for me," Gene said.
"I've got to find that girl, and she had damned well better be alive. If
she's not, my ass is grass and Kahl's going to crop it mighty short."
The sheriff glanced around a second time. "We'll be
heading into the valley. Remember that cabin you and Marlene were
building? Do you suppose someone may have found it?"
And used it for their own nefarious purposes?
"Maybe, if it's still standing, bit it's a good ten miles from here,
too far for the kids to have roamed in the course of a day."
Gene nodded acknowledgment. "The girl was last seen
near here and in the presence of your son and the Doran and Farley boys,
but Kahl's got his own security to look into it, and I don't want you to
let them get to you. It's bad enough that I had to fire your ass. I
don't want you and me dueling on opposite sides of the fence."
Crossing swords with Packerson wasn't John's concern
in that moment. He was thinking about David's nightmare.
Jackie is trying to get me to go outside! It's a
trick, Dad! She's not real, just like the hawk and the cats!
He glanced into the morning sky and eyed the circling
starlings and a lone hawk. What had captivated their attention so
completely to behave this obsessively? It wasn't at all natural. Around and around they went, going nowhere, ignoring one
another, which wasn't at all typical of either species of bird. "What did
the Doran and Farley boys have to say that struck you as strange?" John
said.
Gene barked scornful laughter. "Black cats.
According to our resident juvenile delinquents, they were shooting BBs at
three black cats. They tell me the BBs went through the cats without
hurting them."
"Through them?"
"Through as in too much adolescent imagination, is my
best bet. I'm guessing they're covering something up, and I'm hoping like
hell they didn't shoot Jackie Kahl with those infernal BB guns. I suppose
they could have put one in her brain through an eye socket."
Packerson watched his men move up the slope and
sighed. "They're not going to find anything here in the open. They would
have dragged her into the trees, either in the valley or back down the
slope to the treeline. There'll be hell to pay if that's what happened."
"I'll let you know if I hear anything," John
volunteered helplessly.
"I'll be more than glad to have your help, John. You
know, I never did manage to replace you. You tackle that drinking problem
for good, and I'll have you back on the force in no time."
Which wasn't the truth, not with his bad hand.
John nodded absently, far more eager to solve a short
term problem. What had David experienced on the slopes the previous day
to have driven him to the brink of a nervous breakdown?
