8:49:16 a.m.
“You been at it all night?” Mick popped his head through the door of edit bay one. He had a cup of coffee in one hand. With the other, he pat himself down for cigarettes and lighter.
The fresh light sliced through our privacy. It made me wince. The editing bay is a cave, no telling day or night, sun or rain, when you’re inside. Time is counted in hundredths of a second and passes without notice.
“Clock?” Ainsley asked.
“Almost nine-A,” Mick told us. “The troops are gathering. I’ve been on since midnight. Headed out. There’s a call for O’Hara on line three.”
Jenny. The fear hit me hard as I realized how completely I’d been sucked into the work. “Yeah?”
“‘Hello’ is the way the rest of the world starts a phone conversation, O’Hara.”
Curzon and relief didn’t normally combine in my head. At least five seconds of dead airtime passed while my nerves settled.
I cleared my throat with, “Ha. Thanks for the tip, Sheriff. I love a public servant who provides good service for my tax dollars.”
“How’s Jenny?”
“Better,” I said. “She’s getting out this morning. I’m headed to the hospital as soon as I send this feed.”
“And what will you be driving?”
“Holy shit! Quick, tell me. How’s my other girl?”
Curzon clucked. “Motorcycle like that is not a girl. That one is all woman. And every guy in this place has a hard-on for her, judging from the requests I’ve been getting.”
“Keep those animals away from Peg.”
“I might be able to work something out for you in that regard,” he agreed, his voice dripping the promise of slippery compromises. “With appropriate reciprocity.”
What was I doing with a guy like Curzon? Apparently, my hormonal coup had put a figurehead Maddy in charge. She appeared to be a bit of a hussy. I shifted back in my chair. Bounced out a little rhythm. Had one of those stomach-crunching after flashes that a good kiss will set off.
“Reciprocity, huh? What exactly are you looking for, Sheriff?”
“Seen any SUVs lately?”
Talk about the cold shower effect. “No. Not me.”
“What is it?” Ainsley whispered. His radar was up.
I clapped a hand over the mouth piece. “Curzon wants a report on the SUV driver. You told the guys at the fire, right?”
“I told them,” Ainsley mumbled. “For all the good it did.”
“O’Hara? You still with me?” Curzon asked.
“I’m here.” Too much at stake. Time to come clean. And the story was in the can. “You might be right, Sheriff. Maybe we should make out a report.”
“We?”
“Me and my college boy. There was another possible sighting last night, out at the Jost farm? Not sure it’s related, but my new motto is take no chances.” I filled the sheriff in on what Ainsley had seen. And told him my theory on Jenny’s shiny car as well. “If I’m paranoid, you’ve got only yourself to blame, Sheriff. You’re the one that keeps nagging me about SUVs.”
“Not paranoid enough I’d say,” Curzon said. “I’ll send a car to pick up your man Pat. See what he has to say. I still need you to come in and make a report.”
“Can you give me the forms in a handy takeout bag? I could make a quick stop on the way home from the hospital. Make sure my poor Peg isn’t subject to further harassment.”
“It ain’t harassment if she likes it. Tell you what? How about I run the paperwork out to your house later? I’ll bring a pizza and give you and Jenny a lift back to the station afterward to get the bike?”
The cold shower of disappointment did a quick reversal. If it was only work, why invite himself over?
“Sounds good,” I said. “We’ll handle the pizza though. Jenny may want to eat as soon as they spring her from the joint. Come after five.”
“You got it.” Mr. Phone Manners didn’t offer any goodbyes.
I shagged my fingers back through my hair, stretching and shaking off the work intoxication with the juice of Curzon’s interest.
Mick appeared at the door of the edit bay again. “You all done in here? I need to check a discrepancy.”
“We’re done.” I hit the rewind.
“Can I see it?”
I glanced at the clock. “There’s time before the feed. But I’ve got to run. Want to watch while we check the last dissolve?”
“Sure.” Mick settled against the dark egg-crate foam.
Ainsley rolled his chair away from the counter to stretch his legs straight out in front of him and hit Play.
The piece timed out at nine seconds under the six-minute mark. Good thing a picture’s worth a thousand words. How else could you tally the cost of isolated innocence against the price of emancipation in three hundred fifty-one seconds?
“Who wrote the copy on the voice-over?” Mick asked.
“I did.”
“Different, but it works. You done that before?”
“No. Seen it done here and there.”
Instead of the usual omniscient voice-over, I’d gone for a narrating voice that had an identity, an “I” voice-part Rod Steiger and part Laura Ingalls Wilder. Maddy O’Hara’s alter-ego.
On screen, the house melted in reverse from flame to smoke. I matched the gray-whites to a close up-zoom out we’d gathered of the Jost farm that first morning. Billowing sheets danced on a laundry line, the children weaving between. Magically, the house was restored.
Somehow the college boy had managed a racked-zoom centered on the old oak, with the children disappearing into the billowing laundry. It’s a tricky maneuver with the camera on a track-almost impossible freehand. The camera moves away from the subject at the same rate the zoom magnifies the subject closer. The picture looks as if the world behind the subject shifts, while the subject remains still.
“Nice rack.” Mick gave Ainsley a shot of praise, fist to top of the left biceps.
Ainsley mugged aw shucks and rubbed his arm with his bandaged hand.
The voice-over came in again.
“Tom Jost lost himself in that middle distance between good and evil, simple and worldly. His life served the fireman’s motto Prevent and Protect. His death did the same, a sign post at the middle distance, where some mystery always remains.”
As the children disappeared, the house and barn came into view, then the road and finally, the great old oak spreading its branches across the horizon line. Still standing.
“I didn’t think that last shot was gonna work,” Ainsley admitted. “Cutting back to the kids? But you were right. Sadder, but less depressing.”
“Yeah.” I punched the save button. “Send it.”
I tried to make it out of the building before anyone noticed me. No such luck. The wide-eyed kid from the mail room came running up behind me as I walked out the dock exit.
“Mr. Gatt wants to see you.”
“Tell him I left.”
“He said if I don’t bring you back he’ll fire me and-”
“-you’ll never work in this business again. Yeah, yeah.” I turned around. “You should take the deal, kid.”
When I passed Barbara’s desk on my way to Gatt’s inner office, she was typing ninety words a minute from dictation. Without turning her head, she pushed a folded napkin across the desk toward me. Four ibuprofen and a stack of soda crackers.
Breakfast and absolution.
“You are the effing best,” I told her sincerely.
Barbara never stopped typing, but the smug expression on her face was one of the friendliest I’d seen.
Gatt spewed a string of common and colorful obscenities as soon as I opened the door. He summed up, “Are you insane?”
“I had no idea you were in this early, Gatt. Satellites don’t wait.”
“Bullshit! Nothing gets sent unless I approve it.” He waved the remote in the direction of the largest monitor. The screen was paused over the last few seconds of my piece. It must be running on the in-house channel. Without Gatt doing anything the image suddenly reversed and played again. He clicked on the audio.
“…where some mystery always remains.”
“What the hell does that mean? Where’s the auto-shit? Where’s the erotic stuff? All I see are a bunch of kids playing with the wash.”
“Did you watch the piece from the beginning?” I propped my butt on the arm of a chair. Two all-nighters in a row; I was trashed. If I sat down now, I might not get up again.
“No, I haven’t watched the piece. Because you didn’t bother to show it to me. But I know this is not what we discussed.”
“It’s good stuff.”
“Not for pre-prime, it isn’t. Not against game shows.”
“It’s six minutes of programming, Gatt,” I snapped back. “I’m sure network has other material that can conquer the game show.”
“I want to see it. Now. And I may have changes. So you’d better stick your ass to the chair and see what happens next.”
I could see daylight through the window. The view was exactly the same as a week ago-parking lot to weed field to pasture. Today though, I wasn’t looking at a horizon line. I was looking at a time line. Present and past laid flat, right in front of me. The rest of my life started now.
“What are you worried about, Gatt?” I had switched to crisis calm, but sales-mode was hard to muster. The protective shell hadn’t hardened over my work yet. I picked up a pencil and a piece of scrap paper lying on Gatt’s enormous desk. “I’m telling you this piece has class. It’s mysterious. It’s metaphysical. It’s tragic. The target demographics are going to eat it up.”
“Network is not ‘eating it up’ after that pitch you fed them.” Gatt dug inside his desk drawer for a fistful of sweetener. He ripped half a dozen sugar packets clean through the middle. Sugar crystals exploded all over his desk. Some of them must have made it into his cup. He gulped a swallow followed by, “Jesus God, I hate freelancers.”
“You saw most of the raw stock before I cut it together. Give me some credit.” I rolled my neck and got a sound like something breaking. Deliberately, I jotted a short message on the scrap paper. “You’re pissed at me because your nephew got his fingers burned.”
“Bullshit!” he countered. There was a growing sheen to his head which was pumping red and white flashes of furious blood to his skin. “You should have shown me the finished version before you released it. Simple courtesy, even if nothing had changed. Those guys at network are going to want your ass on a platter now. Your problem is you want it both ways. You want a team position but you act like a freelancer. Here today-gone tomorrow. No respect for the team!”
Same theme, new variation. “I’ve been up two days, Gatt. Speaking of bullshit, I’m too tired to take this right now.” I stood up.
“You walk out that door, don’t think you’re coming back.”
“No, I don’t think I am.” I pushed the note across the desk. Signed and dated, it read simply, I resign.
I turned around and Ainsley was standing in the doorway, wearing his goofiest grin, carrying a VHS cassette pinched between his bandaged fingers. His face was pale, his eyes glassy, and he had a hint of manic vibration about him. Six or seven hours in the booth, running on nothing but deadline adrenaline and diet pop, and my college boy was still standing. Don’t ask me why, but I felt a little flash of pride.
Ainsley tilted his head to see around me. “Seen the story yet, Uncle Rich? It’s great.”
Gatt couldn’t speak. He pointed. His eyebrows twitched. His nostrils flared.
“Go ahead and show him,” I told Ainsley. “I’m gone.”
4:23:51 p.m.
I begged a ride off the mailroom courier to pick up the Subaru. Then drove back to the hospital, waited around for the doctor’s discharge and suffered through forty minutes of paperwork, wherein I promised to turn my entire self over to accounts receivable for parts if I forfeited on my bill.
Tonya kissed us both goodbye and went back to the city. Jenny cried.
“I’ll be back on the weekend, honey. You can count on it.” Tonya always knew the right thing to say. For both of us.
At last, Jenny and I were on the way home. It was a quiet drive. We hadn’t really been alone together since I’d shipped her off to school on Monday. The silence swirled between us, warping into an emotional black hole that sucked my energy. I wanted to pull over and slump into a long, dark nap.
I’m in this for the long haul, I reminded myself. Consider Jenny first.
As we pulled into the garage, I looked for her face in the rearview mirror. “Home at last.”
“Yeah,” she said. She didn’t sound convinced. She climbed out of the car and into the house without a glance back. It took me longer to gather up the sack of stuff from the hospital and my camera bag.
“Remember that guy we met at the picnic on Sunday-Sheriff Curzon?” I followed her inside the house. “He’s supposed to stop by later. Maybe share a pizza…what?”
She stood stock still, four feet inside the doorway. I almost stepped on her.
When she tipped her head to look up at me, I could see her eyes had dilated, the black iris swallowing up the lighter brown of her eyes. Her lips moved barely making words.
“What?”
“Someone’s here,” she whispered.
My first instinct was straight out of a bad TV movie. “Don’t be silly.” We were only four feet inside the door. They’d told me Jenny might be jittery coming home, but this was more than I expected.
“Someone’s in the house?”
Her head bobbed up and down, fast. “The TV was on when I first came in,” she said. “And the light, too. But they turned off when I opened the door.”
It sounded a little too specific to be a hallucination. I pushed her behind me.
“I put the lights on timers, remember? Wait here. I’ll check it out. Stay by the door.”
“No!” She grabbed my wrist.
“Jenny, calm down, babe. You don’t want to wait?”
She shook her head.
“You want to come?”
Nod.
No one could be in the house. The fact that my heart was beating twenty percent faster was my irrational need for excitement.
I dropped all the junk I was carrying and took Jenny’s cold hand in my warm, moist one. I led her over to the closet, quietly opened the door and removed the midwest girl’s weapon of choice-a solid oak, regulation, Louisville slugger.
In sixteen-inch softball, the balls aren’t the only things that run bigger.
Jenny appeared suitably impressed.
“Stay behind me,” I said. “But watch my bat.”
The main rooms of the house made a loop-entrance area to living room, family room, kitchen, dining room and back to the front. A hall off the living room led to the bedrooms. The garage led straight into the kitchen eating space. We walked all the way around the house once, turning on all the lights, before I said, “All clear.”
“Let’s check the bedrooms,” she whispered. “Just in case.”
Right. We walked up the hall and checked the bedrooms, too. Nothing.
Jenny tried a smile and took a big, deep breath. “Could we check the basement, too?”
I hoisted the wood onto my shoulder. “You bet. Let’s go.”
Basements can be creepy on the best of days, but ours was definitely intruder free. Jenny looked slightly embarrassed, but she was speaking to me in full sentences now, so I didn’t mind.
We stopped in front of the spare fridge and I pulled out a frozen pizza.
“Would you take this up and turn the oven on, kiddo? I’m going to throw in a load of wash, before I throw myself in the shower.”
I was still wearing the clothes I’d started with on Monday. Even black jeans can only take so much. I dropped my pants and stuffed them into the washer.
“Double-check I didn’t leave anything in the oven,” I called.
Jenny remained where I’d left her, right at the bottom of the steps. “Go upstairs…by myself?”
“I’ll be less than two minutes. You want to take this with you?” I held out the bat.
Her mouth twisted in a rising grimace. That smile of hers needed work.
“It’s heavy.” She put the pizza box under one arm and carried the bat in front of her with both hands.
“Darn right it’s heavy. What should we do tonight?” I kept talking as she went up the stairway, giving her a voice to hang on to as well. After I tossed my shirt in the washer, I dug through the hamper for other stuff that could stand a double wash. “Want to watch a movie? After Sheriff Curzon leaves, maybe we could watch some cartoons…Jen?” There were no sound effects upstairs-oven door squeaking, gas clicking as the oven fired-so I called louder, “Jenny?”
No answer.
A giant thud rocked the ceiling above my head.
My first thought was that she’d seized again and pitched a header on the kitchen floor.
I sprinted for the stairs, throwing on some old bathrobe hanging near the dryer, pounding up two at a time. As I rounded the top step, I hollered, “Jenny! What the hell was that?”
“Hello, Maddy.”
Pat the fireman was standing in our kitchen. I caught him in the act of picking up the fallen bat. He let it swing from his fingers by the cap end. “Did you send her up here to club me with a baseball bat?”
“Softball,” I corrected. Under duress, my primal nature reverts to know-it-all. “What are you doing here, Pat?”
Recognition took the edge off my shock and sharpened my anxiety until I tasted sour metal at the back of my tongue. He was wearing jeans, a leather jacket and a baseball cap-White Sox. Figures. My grandfather always said don’t trust a White Sox fan.
His eyes were glassy. The unblinking stare curdled my stomach.
“Where’s Jenny?”
“She dropped the bat and ran.” He seemed embarrassed by that thought. “I guess I scared her. I didn’t mean to. Everything’s gotten so complicated.”
“Uh-huh. How’d you get in here, Pat?”
City girls always lock the door. In the back of my mind, I figured if he broke a window to get in, he was definitely dangerous. If he got in through some other means, he might still only qualify as an idiot with really bad boundaries.
When resisting the urge to panic, go with whatever rationale works.
Pat juggled the bat to his other hand and reached down into the pocket of his jeans. As he shifted, I realized the right-hand pocket of his jacket was bulging with something large and heavy.
“I have a key.” He tossed it on the kitchen counter. It was a twin to the one I carried.
“Oh. How’d you get a key?”
“Your sister gave it to me.”
“She did?” You smell like her. “You knew Angelina.”
Pat huffed, a sad, ironic sort of laugh. The bat swung from his fingertips, side to side like a pendulum. “Jenny didn’t tell. What a kid. What an amazing kid.”
Jenny. Pat’s intrigue went right out of my head. Where was Jenny? There were four ways out of the room: past me, past Pat, out the door or up the hall. I hadn’t heard a door open or close and my ears had been primed. She must have run up the bedroom hallway. I stepped that direction.
“The wacky-intruder thing is getting old. You and my sister were friends-I get it.” My sister’s taste in men sucked. “What do you want?”
“How did your TV story turn out? What did you say about Tom and everything?” He perked up as he said it, sounded more like the Mr. Vegas I’d met before.
“Good. It turned out good.” I eased another step toward the hall.
“I heard about that fire. Heard you had your camera there. Did you put that in there? About the fire at the Jost farm?”
“Some. Yeah. Where were you that night?”
“I wasn’t on call. I was busy. Somewhere else.” He stacked the denials one on top of another.
“You know Rachel? Or her dad-Tom’s dad?”
“No. Not really. A little. She’s the one who got all Tom’s stuff.”
So much for my Tom-Rachel-Pat love triangle theory.
“Hey, did they ever find a note?” he rambled on. “A note from Tom? I was just wondering.”
“No. No note. Were you hoping they would?”
It would be hard to swing the bat in the narrow width of the hall. I took a giant step back, into the hall so Pat had to pass me to get to Jenny. He followed.
“What exactly did you say about Tom on that TV show?”
“You’ll have to wait until next Monday. Seven o’clock central time. Why don’t you watch? See for yourself.”
“Can’t wait that long.”
“Why not?” I asked.
The outer layer of my skin began to tingle with the rush of adrenaline. I backed into the hall. It was dark. Had Jenny hit the lights as she ran by? There was indirect light from the other room, but the black-and-white photos of ancestors my sister had hung along the hall-Momma, Daddy, Papa, Gran, all dead, all gone-darkened the passage with the fierce faces of family ghosts.
Pat followed me, step for step, into the hall. “I’ve got to go now. Jenny’s coming with me this time.”
The words this time rolled through my head crushing all other thoughts.
“Don’t worry. I’ll watch out for her.” He stopped advancing on me. Took off his baseball cap and rubbed a palm over his scalp. Hat in hand, he added, “I won’t put her out on the road side again, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Hat went back on, backward. There was nothing shading those glassy eyes now. He was hopped up on something.
“You took Jenny off the playground.” Everything clicked. “She knew you, because you’d been dating her mom. That’s why she went with you.”
His words popped into my head, Jenny didn’t tell.
“You threatened her, didn’t you?” I swallowed the you son of a bitch. The guy was still gripping my Louisville slugger by the cap end.
We were halfway down the hall and running out of real estate. There were three bedrooms at the end. I had a good idea which one Jenny had chosen to hide in.
“You threatened a little eight-year-old girl. What happened to ‘prevent and protect’?”
Pat propped the bat in the notch of the bathroom door molding. Big, strong firefighter didn’t need a softball bat to get what he wanted from a woman in a bathrobe.
“Don’t shout,” he cautioned me. “You’ll scare her.”
“I’m not the one she ran away from.”
“Aren’t you?”
The flip side of knowing how to charm someone was knowing how to crush them. His words closed my throat. It felt like I’d fallen from a great height and landed flat on my back.
“Aunt Maddy?” a small voice called behind me. Jenny’s bedroom was on my left, which meant she was either in my room or her mother’s old bedroom.
“Jenny?” Pat called. “It’s me. I’m sorry I scared you, honey. Will you come out so we can talk?”
“No!” I found my voice with a shout. “Stay where you are, Jenny. Don’t come out.”
“That doesn’t help.” Pat jabbed his finger at me, less than three feet from my face.
I lost it. I backhanded him at the wrist, knocking his arm into the wall. His jacket was swinging heavily on that side, and the over-burdened pocket of his coat hit the wall half a second after his hand. There was a tearing shriek as the lining of his pocket split on impact. A large halogen flashlight dropped to the ground.
It was a Scooby-Doo moment: everybody looks down, everybody looks up. Maddy looks surprised. Pat looks guilty. Oh, those meddlesome kids.
“Ainsley told me he saw a light in the farmhouse the night of the fire.” The words popped right out of my mouth. “That was you.”
“I had to know if Tom left anything else.” Pat grabbed the flashlight and stuffed it back in the opposite jacket pocket. “Any more surprises. Your camera boy came to the firehouse and told us all about the bank manager’s visit to the farm, all about the papers being delivered. I thought maybe Tom left a note. That’s all. Shit’s sake, he left enough phone messages. The stupid ass.”
“The fire?”
Pat looked disgusted. His Sox cap came off again; he was sweating now. He wiped his face with the inside of his elbow and propped his butt against the wall as if he needed to rest before putting his hat back on. I couldn’t tell if he was tired, weak or strung out.
“It was an accident,” Pat said. “Simple as that. How was I supposed to know the guy was making coffee in the middle of the night? I’ll tell you something-six months ago, I never could have believed Tom could be such a selfish asshole. Mr. Holier-than-Thou. Those magazines I put in his car were nothing. So what? He could have passed them around at the station and been a hero. No, not Tom! Here I am, busting my ass trying to improve the situation for everybody and all he does is fuck the whole thing up.” He rolled his eyes drama-queen style.
“You burned the Jost farm down-by accident?”
“Try and stay on track here, would you? Jenny and I are going someplace safe while you do something for me.”
“What?”
“You’re the one who likes finding shit. Find the bag that Gina hid from me.”
“What bag?”
He leaned toward me and smiled. “Like you don’t know. I promised I would make it right. But I’m not having a lot a luck here, so I think Jenny and I will take a little vaca-time and you can do the looking.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He nodded like I’d agreed. “Gina found that out how serious I can be. I tried to tell her to leave it alone but no, she’s on a mission.” His voice cracked. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “Nobody wanted it to end like that.”
Conspiraces and madness, barely tinted by facts. “End like what?”
“Tom was good about it at first. He knew what it felt like to lose somebody. But when he found out-”
“What?”
“I didn’t want it to go that way. It really was an accident. But she was going to the police. I had to stop her.”
“You stopped her?”
“I had to!” He smashed his fist against the wall. All the family photos banged and tilted.
I felt just as off-balance. “You were driving the car that killed my sister?”
“Tom went totally insane when he found out. Said we’d both go to hell if I didn’t make a public confession. He would find a way to bring us into the light. Like I had anything to do with his family problems.” Pat put his back to the wall. Confessing drained the little bit of spine he had. “When I saw how he’d done himself, I knew. I knew he was going to try and take me down, too.
“And then you showed up!” He pointed at me with both hands and laughed. “What are the chances? I thought for sure Tom had set it up. I thought you were after me.”
My brain continued to process. The rest of me was numb. I think I slurred my next words.
“You saw me at the tree, the day Tom died.”
Pat waved his hands like a professor repeating the facts for the slow kid. “Sure. Standing there with your camera, I recognized you right away. Gina had pictures. But there’s a family resemblance, too.”
The word family hit me like a shot to the head. Could Jenny hear him? If she made any noise, Pat would know where she was.
“You’ve been following me. You ran me off the road.”
“Oh for God’s sake, I did not.” A hand on each knee, he pushed himself upright. “I was miles away when I passed you. You slipped on the gravel. You weren’t hurt.”
“Only twelve stitches.” Pat the fireman was the fucking Moriarty of the Western Wasteland. “Jenny got the pills from you-that’s what this bag business is all about.”
“I didn’t give that stuff to her.” He seemed appalled at the suggestion. “She stole them from my car. Jenny?” he called out to her. “Tell your aunt how you took that medicine without asking.”
“Don’t answer him,” I shouted. “Jenny ended up in the hospital. Same hospital Tom Jost’s father is in. The old man saw your flashlight and thought Rachel was still in the house. Went searching for her and the smoke got him. If he dies, that’ll make you a double murderer, won’t it?”
“Shut up!” he screamed. “Shut up, shut up!” He pounded his fists against his forehead, and then squeezed them into his eye sockets. When he raised his head, he looked at me with wide, wild eyes. “I never meant for anyone to get hurt. That’s why you’ve got to help me and Jenny get out of here, right away. Right now.”
“Jenny is not going with you,” I said slow and clear.
“She has to.” He stepped forward and I stepped back, synchronized like Fred and Ginger, until we both stood in the center of my bedroom. “Nobody would want to hurt Jenny. Jenny is just a kid. If something happened to her, there’d be a lot of fuss.”
He wanted Jenny as a shield.
“Who’s after you, Pat?”
To my left, a nightstand held a paperback, a travel alarm and a glass of water. The water was in a nice, heavy glass. It might do some damage if I dropped it on his head. Nothing else weapon-worthy.
Pat glanced left, right. Pulled the bedroom door out to see the pile of dirty clothes behind it. He moved one direction, I moved the other, circling.
“Jenny?” he called, leaning over to try and see under the bed.
There was a clear path to the door. I jumped forward, shoving his butt as I passed and enjoying the thud that followed. I jerked the door shut on my way out, dashed across the hall to my sister’s room, got that door closed and locked before he slammed against it. The hollow-core door buckled like tin.
“Jenny? Jen! Come out,” I whispered. I jerked a dresser toward me, while my butt braced the door. “Little help here.”
Her face appeared, peeking around the bottom of the closet door.
“Find the phone! Quick.”
“It’s dead.” She held it up. She must have carried it into the closet with her. Realizing I needed help, Jenny scrambled out of the closet, got behind the chest and pushed.
As soon as we had the door blocked, I grabbed her hand and dragged her to the “Window! Outside. Go!”
Pat hit the door from the outside, rattling the dresser. Knobs and hinges tinkled metal on metal. The wood trim around the door jamb cracked.
I cranked open the casement window with one hand and fumbled the latches that held the screen in place with the other.
“Hurry, hurry. Out you go. I’ll keep him busy in here. You get to a neighbor’s house and call Curzon-I mean, call 9-1-1. Run. Don’t stop.” I grabbed her by the waist and swung her up, feet first, over the window frame. It wasn’t hard. Most of my shoes weighed more than Jenny.
She dropped into the shadowy space between the foundation hedge and the house with hardly a sound. I watched her get her bearings and skitter off.
“Good girl,” I whispered. Like her momma in the emergency room, Jenny didn’t freeze under pressure.
The chest of drawers gave a final creaking lurch and Pat’s hand wrapped around the door, caught the jamb and shoved it wide enough to fit his shoulder sideways. His face appeared in the crack for less than half a second. He saw me by the window and poof! he was gone.
“Shit!” I leapt over the bed, squeezed around the chest and pinched my way through the opening.
I flung myself down the hall with one thought-time. Jenny needed time to get away.
Pat must have heard me coming. He’d grabbed the bat. But his expression, as he glanced over his shoulder, was something between confused and skeptical, when the one-hundred-and-fifty-pound woman in a housecoat did her best to drive her shoulder right through his rib cage.
I’ve seen people shot, crushed and run over. I’ve seen fist fights, bar fights and concert brawls. News flash: watching and doing-very different.
Pat’s head hit the tile floor right where the hall carpet ended. Sound effects: the muffled whump of his body, followed by the melon crack of his head.
I bounced off him and landed with the small of my back against the corner of the wall. Sound effects: the oof and aaiee from your typical chop-socky martial arts movie.
The slugger clattered to the floor on the far side of Pat, then rolled toward the front door.
Pat grunted and turned over slowly-elbows, to knees, then upright.
I clawed my fingertips into the back of his pants, the plan being either to pull him down or myself up. “She’s not going anywhere with you.”
Focus on me, I thought. With my head ducked tight against his back, I kept both arms wrapped around his waist and locked my fingers. Run, Jenny, run.
“Let go-you stupid,” he grunted, “cow.” He took two steps, dragging me toward the door with him, then chopped at my hands and arms with the side of his fist. When he dug his thumbs into my wrists and twisted, my grip broke. I couldn’t stop my eyes from welling up, the tip of my nose from burning.
He reached for the bat. I dropped back on my haunches, swiveled a one-eighty on the slick wood floor, and pictured my sister when I whip-kicked into the side of his knee. Sound effects: crunchy-snapping followed by a satisfyingly high scream.
Pat’s whole body lurched in the direction of the hurt as he stumbled and fell.
Time shifted into slow motion. I couldn’t move the way my mind insisted. An angry man in pain is not a good person to be underneath.
Roaring with animal-pain, Pat grabbed for my ankles as I crab-crawled backward. He was babbling, repeating himself over and over. Saying things like, I’ll kill you. You are dead. Dead!
My robe bunched up around my waist, flashing my white, Monday underwear. For half a second covering my undies seemed like my top priority-until I saw the fist. He couldn’t reach my head, so he aimed for my stomach. The thought alone was enough to give me a puking cramp.
I shut my eyes, muscled a turn trying to protect the soft parts and screamed.
“Stop…”
Time stopped. He froze. I froze. Nothing else happened, because we both recognized the voice.
Jenny.
“No!” I cried.
Boom. Pat connected.
Sound effects: air whuffing, gagging. I lost my visual completely for a few seconds.
“Don’t!” Jenny finished, her tone more of a loud whine than a demand.
I blinked to clear my focus. Jenny was a shadowed silhouette against the open door. I could see she held the bat in the ready position-barely half his size and ready to fight.
“Jenny! You came back.” Pat almost sobbed with relief.
His reaction surprised her. She cocked her head, as if to ask why’s he happy?
A siren, getting louder by the second. Now I was the happy one.
Pat’s fist changed to a grabbing claw. He snatched the bat from her hand, upended it and levered himself to standing using the bat like a cane. He hunched forward.
“Stop,” Jenny squeaked.
Pushing up to hands and knees, past the pain, past the consequences, past everything but the present moment. “Keep away from her.”
Pat’s face was a Halloween mask of human fears. “Jenny comes with me. You stay.”
“No!”
He tried to nab her with his free hand. Jenny jolted past and into my arms. I twisted to push her behind me.
“I do not have time for this!” The siren was so loud I could hardly hear him. Pat drew back with the bat, aiming for my leg.
I covered Jenny with my body, worried he might hit her by mistake. I grabbed a shoe lying near the door, trying to block his swing.
He caught my right thigh muscle an inch above my knee and lit my entire side on fire. Nerves at the top of my head spasmed. Weird primordial sounds leaked out of my mouth. The first thing I saw, when I could see again, was Jenny’s face. She was so unnaturally pale and stiff, she looked like a mannequin.
Damn him for scaring her.
I pressed up on my arms, rolled off Jenny and curled myself in a ball breathing in short, gasping outbursts.
“See what it feels like?” Pat screamed. He stepped closer and shouted into my face, “See?”
Behind us I heard the familiar bam! of the front door slamming open. A voice I recognized called, “County Sheriff!”
Curzon.
Startled, Pat turned to look and I took that opportunity to swing around again and uncurl my good leg with every ounce of force left in me. I connected right on the bull’s-eye.
Pat screamed. Then he fell down.
Jenny screamed.
I didn’t scream, even though I wanted to-real bad.
Curzon stepped into the melee and whipped out his phone. He called everyone but his grandmother to assist, while he pinned Pat’s hands behind him in handcuffs.
“Maddy, Maddy, Mommy.” Jenny rocked herself side to side on the floor. “Mommy, Mommy.”
The sound of Jenny’s panic made it hard to feel any pain, any relief.
“Help me, Jack. Help her.” I crawled toward her. “It’s all right, Jenny. It’s all right.”
Curzon scooped her up off the floor and carried her to the couch in the family room. I got myself upright but had to lean hard on Curzon to make it there.
“I got you now. I got you, Jenny.” I pulled her into my arms. I didn’t realize tears were slipping down my face until I tasted them on my lips.
Curzon dropped in front of me and examined my leg with a light touch. “How bad?”
A creepy, unhinged laugh came out of me. “Not as bad as him.”
I pulled Jenny close. Less than half a minute after we started shivering, Curzon produced a bag of frozen peas for my leg and an afghan from my sister’s bedroom.
The ice and warmth helped my insides calm, but my hands would not be still. I petted Jenny’s back, her head, her shoulder, over and over. “So brave, you are so brave. You came to help me, didn’t you? You are so brave,” I told her. “Everything’s safe now, Jenny. We did it. We did it together.”
We shook and leaked and sniffed. And gradually, calmed.
Curzon bustled around in the kitchen. I thought I heard the microwave beep. He appeared with two warm mugs. “Drink.”
Jenny sipped hers and handed the cup back with a grimace.
I took a swig. It was warm, watered-down juice.
“I was hoping for something stronger.”
“EMTs will set you up. Drink. It’ll help.”
“Where did you come from?” My body was in full stop, but my brain was still revving on the instant replays. “How did you know?”
“Jenny flagged me down. She came running into the street, saw my car at the corner and started hopping up and down, waving her hands.”
Jenny smudged her face against my already wet robe-front and dragged the afghan over her head, hiding beneath the familiar scent of comfort. It seemed to help, so I didn’t stop her.
Curzon put a hand on my shoulder, gave it a squeeze. “Paramedics will be here any minute.”
I thought he would walk away again, but he didn’t. He let his hand fall on my head and he stroked my hair once, twice. It seemed to help, so I didn’t stop him either.
7:05:59 p.m. Sign off
The rest of our evening was a party of paperwork and helping professionals. I had to promise I’d go to the station tomorrow for more of the same.
The paramedics looked me over but nothing they said could convince me to get off the couch. The bruise was going to be awesome but nothing appeared broken. They packed me in ice and fed me eight hundred milligrams of my favorite snack. After Jenny was checked and re-checked, they took off with Pat strapped tight in the back of the ambulance. I heard the phone ring while the guys were loading. Curzon answered it.
“You want to talk to your boy at the office?” he called from the kitchen.
I held out my hands and Curzon tossed the phone to me.
“Maddy?” Ainsley sounded upset. “What’s going on? Why are the police there? Is it bad?”
“Your camera work’s passable, College, but your questioning skills suck.” It took about ninety seconds to fill him in. He supplied the “no way’s” and “oh man’s.”
“It’s been a long day, College. What do you want?”
“Well, I have good news.” Ainsley’s voice went all breathy and excited. “I talked to Uncle Rich. Everything is copacetic with network and everybody. It’s totally cool.”
“O’Hara?” Gatt’s voice interrupted. I could hear Ainsley complaining in the background about the phone being grabbed from his hand. “Why the hell didn’t you just tell me you had a kid in the hospital? Am I some kind of asshole, I can’t make exceptions for somebody who’s got a sick kid? What are you thinking?”
“Uhh-”
“That’s what I thought! Christ! Get over yourself and start acting like a team player, you hear me, O’Hara? Do I look like I’ve got time for this kind of shit? I ripped up that stupid resignation and put it where it belonged-in the garbage. You’re goddamn right, I did. Whoever heard of somebody resigning in pencil? Garbage!”
“Who’s that, Aunt Maddy?” Jenny whispered right in my ear. With her head on my shoulder, I’m sure she could hear the whole thing, loud and clear.
“That’s my boss.”
“He’s loud.”
“Yeah.” But not so bad.
Ainsley came back on the line. “There’s someone else here who wants to speak to you.”
“If you ever satellite something without my approval again I will fire you, blackball you, and badmouth you at every ITVA convention I attend for the rest of my career. Clear?” Shirley Shayla said with the kind of cold-blooded lizard directness that left no doubt of bluff.
“Uh, yeah.”
“How is your niece?”
General managers drive straight to the point.
“She’s going to be all right.” My awareness shifted from the phone conversation to the weight of Jenny fitting right against my side. It felt like having a secret, like I’d finally figured out the answer. “We’re going to be fine.”
“Good,” Shayla said and I really think she meant it.
Ainsley came back on the line suddenly. “It was Uncle Rich who talked to the guys at network. They were a bit freaked about the shift from the autoerotic angle. But everybody’s cool now. Ms. Shayla really went to bat for you, too.” His voice dropped to a half whisper. “They just walked out so I can tell you, Shayla really liked the final version. She said, ‘Now that’s what I was hoping to see.’ After everyone talked, I only had to do a couple small changes-”
“What?” I stiffened. Jenny’s head bounced lightly against my collar bone.
“-but I think you’ll like them.”
“You changed my story?”
“Only a little. Mostly audio.”
“You changed my story?”
He blew out a rush of words. “We-they thought the end was sort of preachy. I took out a couple lines of voice-over and added some music. Some good music.”
“You changed my story.” I wondered for a minute if the pain in my leg was making me delirious.
“Yeah,” Ainsley gave in. “I changed it.”
“What ‘good music’?”
“It’s instrumental. Nothing canned. It’s an old folk song that starts with a flute and ends with a full rock band. It’s cool.”
“I’m sorry? Did you say ‘full rock band’? My funky, Amish-modern-world tragedy, This American Life meets 60 Minutes, sure-bet-for-an-Emmy-nomination-at-least, now has a music video soundtrack?”
No answer.
“College, did you ever explain to me exactly why they kicked you out of school?”
“Ha,” he laughed nervously. “Funny.”
“We’re going to talk about this later. I’m hanging up now. I think I may be hallucinating.” My pride sluiced through a filter of relief. “Thanks, Ainsley. For handling stuff on the work front. I’ll call you in the morning.”
“You’re welcome, Maddy.”
Jenny decided she was hungry as soon as I got off the phone. Curzon volunteered to stick around and supervise the heating of the frozen pizza. Then he stayed while we watched a mind-numbing kids’ movie on cable. When Jenny finally fell asleep on the couch, he was the one who carried her into her room while I limped along behind them. But he left me to do the tucking in.
“You did good today, kid,” I whispered to the sleeping girl. If people in a coma can hear you, why not someone merely dreaming? I brushed the hair off her face and rubbed her forehead lightly with my thumb. Little by little the motion smoothed the furrows between her brows. “Don’t give up on me.”
She didn’t answer. She slept. Peacefully. That was enough.
For the moment.
Before I went back into the family room, I went and found my messenger bag and the large plastic storage container that my sister had filled with medicine and supplies. The same one Jenny had pulled out to treat me after my fall. Hobbling back into the family room, I set the box on the coffee table in front of Curzon. Curious, he reached for the lid. I stopped him from lifting it.
“Did you know?” I asked.
“Know?”
“Pat. My sister. He drove the car-”
“He tell you that?” he interrupted, suddenly shifting forward on the couch.
I nodded. Holding so much inside, I lost the ability to verbalize. I was afraid I’d scream if I opened my mouth.
Curzon stared at me. “He’s going to jail. For a long time.”
I hit the top of the plastic box with the flat of my hand. The sting helped. “Did. You. Know.”
“I suspected.”
I heard my breath rush out as if I’d taken a hit. “Why…why didn’t you say something?”
“I told you I hadn’t given up investigating your sister’s case.” He was completely matter of fact about it. “I’ve been watching that guy for weeks.”
“Why didn’t you tell me!” It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation.
“Same reason you didn’t you tell me, until a few hours ago, you had an SUV following you all over town!” He stood up fast and sent the box skidding across the table. “You have secrets you need to keep, Maddy O’Hara? I have mine.”
True enough. I hadn’t told him half the things I should have.
Curzon tipped his head and winced, as if he didn’t like the sound of his own words. “Nicky’s letter had the fire service people in an uproar. I couldn’t go near Pat without a written complaint, something concrete to investigate. The IAFF filed a grievance against the police department that named every man at station six. Politics muddied the water.”
I sat down on the edge of the table. “That’s why you were nagging about reporting the car that ran me off the road? Politics?”
“Pat’s connected. You know how things work.”
“Where’s the pressure coming from? The guy who brought Pat to your party? The one who’s challenging you for Sheriff?”
“Got it in one.”
“I’ll witness a complaint. But I can do concrete, as well.” I pulled the box close and took off the lid. Beneath the princess band-aids and the hot water bottle sat a gallon-sized baggie full of several dozen foil blister packs. “This is what Pat was looking for. Jenny found it out in the garage the other day. According to Pat, my sister took it from him. She was planning to turn him in.”
Curzon squeezed the bag, smooshing the foil packets around inside. “They’re samples. Handed out by the pharmaceutical companies to doctors as trial medicine for patients. Not tracked like other medication because they’re supposedly available in limited quantities.” He looked at the labels. “These are popular on the club scene.”
We both took a few calming breaths. Curzon finally sat back down on the couch.
“I have one more thing to show you.” From the bottom of my backpack I pulled out Tom Jost’s cell phone and put it on the table. “Jane Q. Public wants to turn this in.”
“Christ, O’Hara! I’ve been looking everywhere… Where did Jane get it?”
I thought of the old man in the plastic hospital tent and his daughter in Grace’s car, both struggling to heal in isolation. Curzon was right. I needed to keep their secrets. “Jane doesn’t remember.”
The sheriff did not look happy with that answer, so I kept talking. “The phone numbers in memory show that Tom Jost called the authorities and invited them to his pending suicide. He also called his dad. And Pat.”
Curzon nodded. “I looked those calls up with dispatch after Jane gave me her last tip. Didn’t know about the dad or Pat. But that fits.”
“Fits how?”
“Am I still speaking to Jane? Or am I speaking to Maddy O’Hara?”
“Maddy’s story is in the can. Jane is merely curious.”
“Tom did write a note. He mailed it to the fire chief. Didn’t say he was going to kill himself, but he confessed that he’d failed to discourage Pat from engaging in harmful activities and the fire chief might want to investigate.” Curzon waved the sample packet in the air. “Figured it was something like this. I tried to use the note as leverage for a warrant but there was too much blow-back. How could the judge trust the word of a guy who was obviously unstable?”
“Shit.”
“Pretty much.” Curzon flicked at the edge of the foil tablet packaging with his thumb, an angry, nervous gesture that reminded me of someone playing with a cigarette lighter. “In the letter, the guy apologized to the entire universe. Then he warned the chief they’d need someone to cover his shift days from now on.”
A tired sigh deflated me. “No way.”
“There are some things I will never understand.” Curzon tossed the packet into the box. He held out his empty hand.
I took it.
“There’s more to the story, isn’t there? Pat’s no evil genius. There’s no way he got into this all by himself.”
Curzon tried to stonewall but the man had just spent the last two hours eating pizza and insulting the intelligence of cartoon characters with me. The blank face no longer worked as a disguise.
“Am I wrong?”
“Press and police sit on opposite sides of the fence, O’Hara. Most of the time.” He tugged my hand and pulled me beside him on the couch. The dip in the cushion rolled me toward him. “Your sister’s death was a tragedy. The man responsible is going to jail. Don’t get focused on the wrong thing here. What happens with you and Jenny now, that’s the part you can do something about.”
I thought about the fight with Pat. Jenny’s safety, physical and mental, all that mattered. Still, “I want to know what happened. I want to know the rest of it.”
“So do I.” He said the words with quiet conviction.
I believed him. “Can I help?”
“No.”
“Can you stop me from helping?”
“No?” he replied, rhetorically, then leaned forward and oh, so gently, touched my cheek. “I haven’t done this sort of thing in a while.”
“Me neither.”
Overcome evil with good.
In Curzon’s eyes, I saw goodness. It reminded me of something I didn’t tell Ainsley. Sometimes what we see describes half-forgotten dreams of what might yet be.
“Kiss me?” he asked.
I thought of Curzon’s words and the truth he’d told me so far. This was another part that mattered, another part that I could do something about.
Slowly, I felt myself tilt toward him in a motion both grand and imperceptible as the earth shifting on its axis.
Tomorrow would be soon enough for all the unasked questions.
All the untold stories.