9:23:14 a.m.
“Good thing we worked so hard to make up with the sheriff yesterday,” Ainsley remarked. Our feet crunched on the crushed stone as we marched up the long driveway.
I was surprised he got out of the van at all, after the stink he’d thrown. “Why?”
“After they arrest us, Curzon’ll have to go easy on us.”
Worst thing first, is my motto. Quick stop at the office and back out this morning, straight to a visit at the Jost farm. Farmers kept early hours, right? I shifted the binocular box under my arm to the other side.
“You think?”
“He certainly won’t want to tell his granny he just put his new girlfriend in jail.”
“Right,” I drawled. “Quit your whining. It’s not like Uncle Richie would let you rot.”
“He would if Mom told him to.” Ainsley made it sound likely. “If Jost calls the police, I’m running for the truck.”
“How’s he gonna call the police, College Boy? He’s got to go all the way out to the phone hut on the other side of the yard. Give us plenty of time to sprint to our get-away vehicle. Not that we’ll need to,” I added with all the shiny confidence of a well-practiced bluff.
“Don’t remind me. I cannot run on an empty stomach.”
Ainsley hadn’t been employed long enough to realize Monday is the work day most likely to exceed safe-living speeds.
I had a list that started at my hairline and ended where my trouser-cuff broke. We’d managed to finagle another interview with the Amish psychologist, so I could ask her about Rachel Jost’s situation. We needed to squeeze in another attempt to speak with Pat-the-fireman. And I had a conference call with New York scheduled, along with rumors of another GM visit.
Ainsley’s to-do list seemed to hold one item at a time. Currently, it read doughnuts.
“Tell you what. If there’s time, we’ll get doughnuts before we hit the hospital.”
“If we have time?” he said. “We had time to run Jenny to school.”
It was still early and I was feeling mature, so I chose not to shoot back. Points for me.
Getting Jenny to school had been even harder than usual this morning. She was slow, then she was sick, then she was “bored with school. It sucks.” I heard all about how her mother would leave her home alone if she promised to just lie on the couch and watch TV.
Right. My bullshit meter was pinging red-red-red, then she missed the bus and I saw red-red-red. I don’t really remember my mom hollering at me before eighth grade. Jenny won’t remember either.
The Jost farmhouse appeared as Ainsley and I rounded the tree line, exactly as white as the sun on a cloud, except for the windows. Glare made the glass a one-way mirror to interior shadows. I scanned the windows and continued walking. As we passed the chicken hut, there was a burst of cackling clucks and crows.
“That’s weird.” Ainsley jabbed at me with his elbow.
“The watch-chickens?”
“No. That.” A car was parked almost out of sight, around the side of the house that led to the barn. It was a modest gray Toyota-about as Amish as you could get in a car.
We both stopped to stare. Then the front door of the farmhouse banged open and out comes a guy in a suit coat with a briefcase the size of a dog kennel and a wad of manila folders. He’s clearly pissed and rushing to get out. So naturally, the folders slip and stuff shoots everywhere in a papery blizzard of fifty-two pickup.
The guy shouted something fairly common, but definitely not Plain language.
“Go help him. See what you can find out.”
“Me?”
“I’m going in to see Mr. Jost.” I held out the box in my hands.
“Trespassing, breaking and entering-” Ainsley ticked off the words on his fingers.
“Not ‘breaking.’ Guy left the door open, see?”
“-being a public nuisance.”
I blew him a kiss and stepped around the mess to get to the front door.
Behind me, I heard Ainsley offer, “Let me give you a hand.”
The door swung open with the slightest push. I could hear Rachel’s voice in the room beyond the entrance hall.
“-don’t understand.”
“Understand this!” her father shouted back. “I will have nothing of his. Nothing.”
I wonder sometimes why other people back away in retreat when they hear the sounds of an argument. Is it fear? It can’t be only that. I am something like afraid when I walk toward trouble. But I still can’t turn away. As a kid, I slept with the closet door open and staged routine falls off the bed to stare into the dark beneath.
The world is too full of things to fear. A fight gives you a chance, at least.
From the doorway of the dining room, I saw Rachel gather her apron in both hands and cover her face. She looked like a small child hiding her eyes in the hope of not being seen.
Jost was the opposite. He wore no hat now and the blunt cut of his hair and wiry beard made me think of old photos of Rasputin. His face was burning, blotchy red, squeezed in a vise-grip of strong emotion. When he looked over and saw me, I thought he’d blow his last gasket.
“What are you doing here? Get out of my house!”
Rachel dropped her apron in shock. She covered her mouth with her hand and gave the smallest shake of her head.
“I brought you something,” I said. The room was an echo chamber of flat, reflective surfaces: hardwood floors, bare walls, a long dining table with bench seating. My voice sounded loud and hollow.
Jost looked at me like I was a lunatic. “I want nothing of yours.”
“It’s not mine. It’s yours.”
10:47:41 a.m.
“The rumspringa. It’s a fascinating contradiction. Follow me. We have to be quick, I have a patient coming in fifteen minutes.” Dr. Graham pointed us up the corridor, making us work for every second we recorded. “The Amish way of turning teenagers into responsible adults is to set them free. One day they are completely under the rule of their parents and then they turn sixteen and suddenly, they aren’t.”
Ainsley danced around trying to stay ahead of her, or at least in profile. I was lugging the separate audio track. It was a good test of College Boy’s mobility skills. But I hated traipsing through the hospital. The place gave me the creeps.
“Both the boys and girls?” I asked.
“For the most part. The commitment to their church must be made by an adult. Parents cannot force children to enter the church. In a way, it’s also a test of the parents.”
“If I were sixteen and somebody said I could do all the crap I’d ever wanted, I’d have been gone.”
“That’s how a lot of boys feel,” Dr. Graham said. She stopped to let a gurney pass and smiled at Ainsley. “I knew a boy about your age who acted out quite a bit when he turned sixteen. He even bought a truck so he could be the one to haul kegs to their parties.”
“What happened?”
“He’s married. His wife gave birth to their third child last May. Cute little girl.”
Ainsley looked horrified. “Are you kidding me?”
“No.” She laughed. “That young man, everyone he knows-his family and friends, his peers-they’re all Amish. He fell in love. But there is no marriage in the Amish church until both members commit themselves to the community. The truck was sold. The keg-hauling stopped. He started a family. Life went on.”
Hospital people stopped to stare as we bumbled along the hall. The doctor walked slowly, enjoying her moment of fame. She may not care about television in general, but she enjoyed showing her colleagues that she was TV material. More power to her.
I couldn’t help wondering which of the people we passed might have known my sister, worked with her, spoken to her in this very hall only a few months ago. Focusing on the doctor, I pulled an imaginary string with my fingers, reminding her to speak in full sentences. “What about Tom and Rachel? Could they have gotten married outside the church?”
“A couple who married outside the community would be put in the bann. They would be shunned by other Amish, a very different life from the one Rachel expected. Normally, a young couple lives with their parents until a child is born, then they move to a separate household.”
“No way,” Ainsley said.
“Enough with the commentary.” I had a hand free, so I smacked him. Quietly.
“While they live with their parents, working the farm, they receive a share of any profit and save for a home or farm of their own. If it’s a dairy operation like the Jost family runs, young couples will often build on the same farmstead, so they can be nearby to help.”
Jost’s family farm was a dairy operation. But Tom was not invited to work the farm and build a home there. He’d gone off and made the fire service his home.
In the end, both families had turned on him.
The corridor the doctor led us down seemed impossibly long. On camera, it would read like the Flintstone’s house. I held that image in my head to ward off the shivers. The smell of the place reminded me of my sister’s house. She must have used the same cleaning liquid.
“Can they leave the community during the rumspringa?” I asked. “Go live in the city for a while?”
“Certainly. Many do. Especially the boys.”
“Really?” That confused me. “A man could leave the community before being baptized, go make a living in the world and then return, years later?”
“It’s possible,” Dr. Graham said. “But experience changes everything. One of the paradoxes that the community creates for itself is raising people of such strong convictions that when they choose to stand apart, it can be very difficult to heal a breach.”
Tom’s ghost must have hovered nearby. I felt the tickle of hair rising on the back of my neck.
“Especially after they’ve had cars, broadband and safety razors,” Ainsley said.
“True. The experiences of the early teen years fundamentally affect the possibilities of a person’s future. The life that looks like happiness takes on a certain shape.”
I shook off my unease. “Sounds like living in the Amish community stunts your growth.”
She stopped walking. “Don’t play ignorant with me, Ms. O’Hara. Obviously, we benefit by the choices available to us. Although, personally I can’t say I’m happier, or even more useful to the world because of them.” She pointed a scolding finger my way, although if Ainsley had the shot framed correctly, it would look as if she were pointing to the viewer. “Can you?”
As soon as we stopped, the camera drew a crowd. I felt my hackles rise again. I was monitoring the audio levels, watching the cables that tethered Ainsley to me and trying to maintain eye contact with the doctor while she lectured me. It was hard to get a good look at the people around us. Last night’s adventure had me paranoid. I could swear someone was following us. Following me.
“This is it.” The doctor stopped in front of a padlocked set of metal doors. She looked around at the people who had stopped to watch. “I’ll be signing autographs in my office later, for anyone interested.”
I heard a few chuckles. Her comments had the desired effect. The crowd moved on. Dr. Graham jangled a ring of keys, searching for the right one.
“Come on, Doctor, as a woman, would you choose that environment?”
“I agree, it’s a sexist, masculine hierarchy. But that exists everywhere. My chosen career environment for example.” She popped the lock off the cabinet. “And yours perhaps?”
“Perhaps.”
“Amish women work the system, just like you and I. Many find balance-mates, family who appreciate them, rewarding kinds of work that they enjoy. Is it really that different?”
Academic arguments only go so far with me. “Rachel had to stop attending school after eighth grade,” I said. “She told us how she enjoyed the museums and the airport and the library and the movies. It seems as if she wanted-wants-a bigger world.”
“Sadly, she can’t have both. To accept an outsider’s offer of marriage and live in this world, she’d have to leave everything behind, her father, her home, the only life she’s ever known.” The doctor glanced at her watch. “On the other hand, accepting her community’s rule means giving up the wider world forever.”
“A devil’s bargain.”
She frowned. “Only if you think in terms of this life and not the afterlife the Amish believe in. Any Amish girl has been raised to consider the eternity after death as her highest priority.”
“Eighth grade.” I frowned, too. My dad died the summer after eighth grade.
“A very formative time,” the good doctor said. “I really must say goodbye.”
“One more question? About the bann, how does it work? What does it do to you?”
She sighed. It wasn’t an easy question. “Bann is the term for prescribed shunning. Sometimes it is done as a punishment, for a term of days, to remind the one who has broken the rules what it would feel like to be left out of heaven. When the time ends the person is welcomed back into the community. Under the bann the person shunned may not speak to or eat with anyone in good standing in the church. They must sleep in a separate space, like a cot in the barn or the basement, and no one can accept money or work done of their hands. It is a state of almost complete isolation. Every schoolchild knows how it works. And how it feels. ‘You are not one of us. You can’t play. We don’t want you.’”
“Does it work? Does it really make someone change?” Ainsley chipped in.
She nodded seriously. No question was too stupid when it came to the boy. “Human beings are social animals. It’s not simply a question of wanting company, we need it. The same way we need food, water and rest.”
“People die if they don’t get food and water.”
“Exactly.”
“Tom Jost didn’t die of shunning.”
“There are stages. Like the stages of malnutrition. You don’t fall over from missing one meal, even a small amount can keep you going for a very long while. Since we are of a religious bent today, think of the monks who choose to go into retreat. They often describe a God so personal, he’s capable of conversations, touch, even sharing a meal. Not to mention the tendency to anthropomorphize their pets, the birds they feed, even the plants around them.”
Rachel had said Tom was always sneaking off to talk with the animals. Poor lonely kid.
“You’re saying, where there’s no human contact, we work to create it.”
“Exactly. People will go to great lengths to make those connections. Without them, it gets harder and harder to interact ‘normally.’” She put the little quotes around the word with her fingers. “That is, in a way which is predictable and compatible with the people around you.”
Only psychologists have to define normal.
“Believing the people around you would never respond, that you would always be an unwelcome outsider?” She grimaced and her whole body tightened with a suppressed shudder. “That would be like living death.”
Her words conjured the image of Tom standing on the pile of boxes, knowing he was being watched. The cold of that thought was enough to stop my breath.
His father, his work, his girl…how many times had Tom died inside, before he finally surrendered to the dark?
“I’m sorry.” The doctor jingled her keys like an alarm bell. “I’ll be late for my next appointment.”
“Right, right. Thank you. College, shut us down.”
Ainsley and I broke down the equipment enough to make the transport back to the truck easier.
I popped my head around the door to say goodbye and thanks again. “What is this room?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“Just a storage locker for my office.”
“What have you got there? What are those?” I pointed to a plastic bucket that held a few opened foil-blister packs like the ones I’d seen in my sister’s emergency kit, the kit Jenny had dragged out of the garage to bandage me after my fall.
“These?” The doctor held up several of the small boxes, she had obviously come to retrieve. “Medical samples provided by the pharmaceutical companies. You really shouldn’t be in here, Ms. O’Hara.”
“Sorry.” I said thanks again-despite the cold prickles her words gave me.
What was my sister doing with a bucket full of medical samples normally kept under lock and key?
11:59:32 a.m.
Back in the truck, work was the best way to improve my mood.
“Make yourself useful, College. Figure out how to get me another Amish interview and the all-doughnut lunch is yours.”
“Amish on-camera interview? No way.”
“‘No’ doesn’t get the job done.” Another hidden downside to training newbies-every once in a while, I sounded like my mother. “I worked the story over hard Saturday night. We still need meat on Tom Jost. Somebody who can explain him, build us a little sympathy.”
The shots from the sesquicentennial gave us visuals, but I needed audio. Walking, talking Amish, not just wide shots of guys in beards and hats. I wanted to understand how the Amish felt, what they thought about Tom and Rachel and all of us Englischers.
That was part of the piece I was thinking of spinning out-the blessing and danger of perspective. We know ourselves better when we look from the outside. Unfortunately, as Tom discovered, the view is not always all that flattering.
“Won’t Dr. Graham’s interview build sympathy?”
“No. She comes across as an outsider, an expert.” Empathy was the missing element. “The problem we have here is that people revere firemen. Fireman does something weird-like kill himself in Amish clothes-people are so pissed that their hero isn’t perfect, the tendency is to swing the other way and vilify him. Tom Jost, evil-weirdo, would be easy. We could stop today.”
“Why don’t we?”
Was he kidding? I wasn’t adverse to a little sex teaser, but I wasn’t going to hang a cheap resolution on Tom Jost any more than I would hang a half-ass rap on Curzon’s precious cousin.
“Easy sucks,” I said.
Ainsley’s smiling huh of approval was exactly that sort of throaty sound that drives teenage girls to their knees in adoration.
“Fuck you,” I grumbled, reaching for my notebook.
“Nice try.” He might have passed for cool-if he hadn’t turned pink paying me the compliment. “You’re rough, Maddy O’Hara, but you’re not all bad.”
What do you say to that?
Ainsley went back to making faces at the road and slapping his thigh to the music. Thinking was a full body experience for my college boy.
“Does it have to be on a farm or just talking to an Amish person?”
“It’s a visual medium, College. I want the farm.” I flipped back through my shot list notes. “But we’re fairly desperate here. Compromise is possible.”
“I got an idea. The fire chief mentioned that Tom Jost used to have dinner with a teacher of his?”
“Yeah?”
“What if I know that teacher? I think it might be Grace Ott. She grew up Amish.” He glanced at me and shrugged. “I told you, it’s a small town.”
“Why didn’t you say something sooner? Pull off at the next doughnut factory. We’ll make a few calls.”
My notes slid to the floor as Ainsley cut into the turn lane to bang a U. The kid was like a universal locator for bakeries. I tried to gather all my spilled papers in one hand and that reminded me. “Hey, who was that guy on Jost’s front porch anyway?”
“Man! I can’t believe I forgot to tell you about him. He was from some bank in town. When we finished picking up his stuff he goes, ‘That old man’s crazy.’ I said we knew the daughter and she was nice.”
“Smooth.”
“Then he says, ‘Tell Rachel to come see us at the bank. It’s her money now. She needs to come talk to me.’”
“Her money now? What money?”
Ainsley shrugged. “Weird, huh?”
“Holy shit. Do you think Tom left money to Rachel?” Out loud, it didn’t sound like much. In my head, something snapped together. “How much money?”
“Guy didn’t say.”
“We need to find out.”
“Sure. I’ll just add that to my list of calls,” Ainsley tossed off.
“Great.”
I swear he rolled his eyes. Did he think I was kidding?
The sight of Grace Ott’s home reminded me, I’m on the verge of old. I fight the slide of downhill acceleration every day: increase exercise, decrease calories. Increase sleep, decrease expectations. Occasionally, it makes me cranky. Being cooped up in a remote truck with the Boy Wonder doesn’t help. But standing on the doorstep at Grace Ott’s house did, strangely enough.
This was the house you look for when you go over the river and through the woods. The frame was a simple white clapboard saltbox. The driveway was gravel. The garage was detached with old-style sliding barn doors.
Hanging from the doorknob was a weather-faded paper daffodil. I could barely read the printing on one of the leaves. “Happy Spring! Mrs. Ott! We Love you!” On the stoop of a house like this, we were all youngsters.
Ainsley knocked.
With one glance, it was obvious Grace Ott was the kind of woman who had butter in the house and knew how to use it. Her round, sweet face contrasted nicely with the no-nonsense chin. Her hair was white, neatly curled and pinned. She studied me through the mesh of her screen door and turned to Ainsley.
He raised the wattage on his smile to tanning-bed levels.
“Come in then, Ainsley Prescott.” She sounded amused, but not fooled. I got a nod. “You come, too.”
We followed her up the hall that divided her tiny house. In my sister’s neighborhood, the garages were bigger than this house. Grace’s place smelled of time and detergent.
I kept an eye out for photos. I’ve always liked the display of past and present in an oldie’s house, but there was only one picture out-an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven black and white of a young man with a ’50s haircut that showed way too much ear.
“That’s Mr. Ott,” Grace said. “He keeps me company.”
The kitchen would have seemed smaller if it hadn’t been so spare. White cabinets. Yellow Formica. No knickknacks. No pasta-espresso-processor gadgets. No mess at all. There was a drop-leaf table and chairs, a wall-mounted phone with two yards of well-stretched spiral cord, and a calendar with a farm scene.
“I’ve got lemonade in the ice box. Sit right down.” Grace’s heavy-soled shoes clunked across the tile. “Television, hmm? Didn’t I warn you you’d come to no good without another year of history?”
“Yes, Mrs. Ott.” College hunched his shoulders humbly. She turned her back to get the lemonade out of the fridge, and he grinned at me. Thumbs up!
“So what’s all this about Thomas?” she asked.
“We’d like to do a story on him,” I explained.
“Have you heard-” Ainsley started.
“I heard.”
Even in profile, I could see how the thought stiffened her entire body. You live as many years as Grace, you’ve got to take a surrender like Tom’s personally.
“We understand from his captain at the fire station that he visited you now and then.”
“Sure. Amish leaves the community around here, they’ll need to get their GED, sometimes take tests for college and such. I help with all that.” She busied around the cabinets, taking out glasses and setting up a tray.
“How long have you been teaching over at North, Mrs. Ott?” Ainsley asked politely.
“Since before you were born.”
“You still teaching high school?” I asked.
“They put me in administration two years ago. Part-time. I do the GED paperwork for the district. Used to teach history. And German. Ainsley knows about that.”
“Ja. Himmel,” he answered.
She gave a snort at that. “What do you want to know about Thomas?”
“Whatever you can tell us,” Ainsley answered.
Preparation of the lemonade tray continued without comment. Ainsley looked at me and shrugged.
Interviewing people for a living can be a bit like burglary. What the Boy Wonder didn’t understand yet was how to slip into someone’s house. You aren’t selling vacuums. You don’t necessarily go in the front door.
“Tom seems like a good guy who got stuck.” I struggled to phrase it right. “So stuck that life ended up crushing him from opposite sides. I want to know why.”
“Oh, do you?” She turned those old eyes on me and looked hard enough to make me nervous. After a minute, like a soft dissolve, I realized she wasn’t looking at me anymore, she was looking into her own head. “It wasn’t really opposite sides, you know, more like from the inside out.”
The lemonade came to the table on a tray with extra sugar and long spoons for stirring. There was a fruit bread and jam in a lumpy glass jar. Good omens.
“Did Ainsley tell you I grew up Amish?” Grace asked. She sipped her drink with a frown, once, twice, then finally approved. “Youngest of ten. Things were different for me than for my eldest sister, of course. My mother was barely eighteen when my sister was born and nearly forty when I came along. I’ll save you the trouble of calculating. My eldest brother was sent to jail for a short while for refusing to fight in the Second World War. My husband and I both were jailed for participating in a protest against the Vietnamese War. Times change even for the Amish.”
“I thought the point was not to change.”
“The point is to stay humble, and focus on something besides yourself,” she said. Not angry, more like a teacher pinpointing the danger of a little bit of knowledge.
Ainsley coughed. “Speaking of times changing, I’ve seen guys drag racing that empty stretch of 39 in the middle of the night. They go out in horse buggies with boom boxes blaring and high-power flashlights.”
That won him a twinkle of a smile. “Sure. Those are courting buggies. Shine a light into a girls’ room at midnight, she might climb out and join you for a ride. In my day, it was pebbles against the glass. There’s another change for you.”
“I don’t get it. No electricity but halogen flashlights are acceptable?”
“Oh, heavens, I can see your hackles rising all the way over here.” Grace waved at me. “People are never as simple as rules, Ms. O’Hara. You’re old enough to know that by now. That’s why everyone has to make their own peace with the contradictions.”
“What about Tom? Did he make his peace?”
The question deflated her. “Tom was the kind of boy who needed the rules. Not because he didn’t want to do good. He needed rules to be at peace. He wasn’t like some of the ones who go away from the community. They stretch and try new things; they experiment. Tom didn’t do that. He held the Ordnung inside as a shield, and kept to much of it. The fire service was the same for him. Rules to a greater purpose. A sense of order, routine. He would have liked the military, I think, except for the fighting. Only man Tom ever hurt was himself.” She took off her glasses and pulled a tissue from up her sleeve.
Ainsley sipped his lemonade. I shook my head at the waste, of both Tom and the image of the moment. I’d never get her to tear up again, even if I could convince her to repeat the interview for the camera.
“Tom liked structure,” I restated to keep her talking. “He played by the rules.”
“Yes. It’s prideful to analyze a person too much. We can never know someone’s heart without walking in their shoes, but maybe…” She sighed in speculation. “Tom’s childhood shook him. He had good reason to wish for security. When he first came to me, I could hardly imagine how he lay down to sleep, he was so stiff.”
“Did he visit you often?”
“More so in the beginning. I gave him a list of chores I needed done and told him what time dinner would be on the table-‘If you’re late,’ I says to him, I said, ‘might be nothing left.’ He was raised on a dairy farm. He wasn’t late.”
Ainsley laughed, but Grace could see I didn’t get the joke.
“All farmers aren’t the same, you know. Dairy farmers have a schedule to keep, every twelve hours. Those cows got to be milked. Now a seed farmer, what with the equipment people have today, they barely have to show up once a week.” She curled her knobby fingers in front of her mouth and pressed, holding a memory back. She nodded until she was calm again. “Thomas would have made a good dairy farmer.”
All together, we preserved the quiet for a moment, imagining a good life un-lived.
Finally I had to ask, “Why do you think he did it?”
We locked eyes. I’ve seen the same look in women’s eyes in every part of the world I’ve stood upon-fire, flood or fighting-the pain of failing the one you’ve tended.
“I keep asking myself, why didn’t he come to me?” Grace leaned back in her chair and rested her hands in her lap. Her cotton print blouse was buttoned all the way to the neck. She was built wiry, and her collar gaped at her throat. The soft loose skin that circled her neck made her look fragile, exhausted by time. “Something happened to Thomas at the fire station, oh some weeks back. I’m sure it was before school started. I was bringing in tomatoes that day. Most of those firemen, Tom revered them. I don’t know exactly what all went on, but somebody on his shift did something that put Thomas in a real twist. Wouldn’t say much to me, but I gathered some fellow broke a rule. Something that put a terrible weight on Tom’s conscience.”
“What rule? Why Tom’s conscience?”
Grace winced as she shrugged, embarrassed or hurt not to know the answer. “He was so upset. It’s hard for Englischers to understand the feeling-”
“What feeling?”
“An Amish community watches over each other. We have the elders, yes, but we also have each other. We are each responsible and we are all responsible.”
I nodded to encourage her. Did she know she used the inclusive “we”?
“After all,” she reached out and patted Ainsley’s knee with a gnarled hand, “what would heaven be without all your loved ones around you? When someone is no longer at peace with himself, he must seek public confession. I think, maybe the fighting, even the things that happened later, maybe it was Thomas’ mixed up way to make the problem public.”
“Uh-oh,” Ainsley summarized.
“Yes. Public confession is not sod, not the worldly way. The last night I saw him, Thomas said he didn’t know if he could belong anymore.”
“At the fire station?”
“I thought he meant there, with the Englischers. I always wondered if perhaps, Thomas might wish to return to Amish ways someday. He’d hinted as much to me. Perhaps he meant something else.”
“Then what happened?”
“He left after dinner as usual.” She pressed her lips together, frustrated. “The world looked different to Thomas than it does to most. It was all a bit darker, more unpredictable. He expected bad things. They never surprised him. Rules helped keep him-” She stopped and searched for the right word.
I thought about saying “sane” but changed it to, “-on track?”
“Yes. That’s just it. When this fellow he trusted broke the rules, poor Thomas was at a loss. He seemed to feel anything could happen and all of it would be bad.”
“Did he tell you about how he was getting along with the men at the firehouse after that? Or about an incident he might have had with the police?”
“Thomas? No. Of course not.” The denial came first because that was fundamentally how Grace thought of Tom, not because she was out to fluff me. I didn’t enjoy watching her perception change. “Did something happen with police?”
“An officer found him with a girl in a parked car,” I said. “They were taken to the station because the girl appeared to be breaking curfew. And she was Amish.”
“Rachel.”
I took a breath. I liked Grace. I didn’t want her to agree to be part of this story without knowing the whole story. Being civilized was a professional liability, but there it is.
“They also found magazines in his trunk.”
“Magazines?”
“Can I have a piece of that fruit bread now?” I asked.
Grace served. It gave me a good excuse to keep my eyes on my plate.
“They were adult magazines,” I told her. “Someone at the police station found out and there was some gossip. It seemed to affect how his colleagues were treating him.”
“Mercy.” She said it softly to herself. Loud and firm, she said, “If you are here to gather information to slander that boy further, I’ll ask you to leave right now.”
“No, Mrs. Ott. I don’t want to slander anyone. I wouldn’t be here if I thought that part of the story was the whole truth.”
I looked over at Ainsley, mostly because I was wishing he wasn’t there. Right at that moment, I didn’t like doing this interview in front of him. It felt uncomfortable. I took a breath and spoke the truth, despite the audience.
“Help me understand what happened. Lots of people know what it feels like to be stuck between old ways and new ways.”
Grace stared at me, eyes large behind glasses. Her face wore a mask of age, but I sensed the empathy of recognition behind it.
“I know what it feels like,” I confessed. “Help me understand why he gave up trying.”
3:30:58 p.m.
We finished way past lunch. Since we were expected back at the office already, Ainsley was driving like a high-school boy after dark. The tires screamed at every stop light.
Bits and pieces were flying around in my head, I needed quiet to sort through the whirl.
“I can’t believe you talked her into that interview. I never thought she’d go for it.” Ainsley rattled along, doing the ten o’clock football recap. Let’s see that play again. Wasn’t that great?
“Yeah.”
“I thought we’d never get it. But you talked her into it. Man. That was great. Great stuff. The farm and teaching. Maybe I should call the high school tomorrow? I bet I can get yearbook photos of Mrs. Ott from way back. What do you think? Maddy?”
“Yeah, great.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Timing’s not right.”
“What timing? On the track?”
“No,” I snapped. “Think about this. Grace said Tom came to her to complain about feeling betrayed before school started, but he was arrested after that. Rachel said the same thing. He was upset before they got caught in the car.”
“So?”
“So something must have happened at the fire station first. Tom gets all worked up about it. He goes out with his girl-he’s frantic, he’s pushing her to marry him, give him some reason to return to the Amish-not only does she turn him down, he also gets busted with jack-off material in the trunk. Doesn’t that sound funky to you?”
“You mean like funky luck?”
“I mean like a funky-fucking-set-up. Somebody set him up with those magazines. That’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“Why?”
“To ruin his reputation?” As soon as I said it, I knew it felt right. “To make him look like a sneaky, untrustworthy bastard? To distract him? Revenge maybe? It has to be something to do with that fight at the fire station.”
The chief had said Tom and Pat were fighting right before he died. Was that what put Tom “in a twist” before he saw Rachel? Or did the boys fight later, over the magazines in the trunk? Talking to Pat just moved to the top of my list.
I jumped to Tom’s death and started playing with another idea. “How much do you think a firefighter makes a year?”
“I don’t know. Maybe 40K?”
“How much would that cheesy apartment he lived in cost a year?”
“Maybe five hundred. At most.”
“Used car. Cheap-o housing. No drugs, no expenses. He’s been working four or five years in the fire service. He could have forty, fifty grand saved. Maybe more. That might rate a personal visit from a banker.”
“Whoa.” Ainsley shook his head. “Never thought of that.”
“Oh, it’s diabolical,” I cackled as I pieced possibilities together. “Tom makes it up to his girl and sticks it to his old man all in one blow. Fucking ingenious.”
“What?” Ainsley flashed quick looks between the road and my grin. “Why is that good?”
“He’s left all that cash in Rachel’s hands. She can do whatever she wants now. If we’re right about the money, she could choose to leave her father’s farm. Buy her own place. Or go to college. Now, she has a choice.”
I sat up straight, leaning against the strap of the seatbelt. If the money went to split Rachel from her father, the binoculars went to split him from what? Peace of mind? His community? I crammed that thought under cover. Would my story make it worse for him? No room for that guilt. I had to produce a piece for television and Rachel Jost would be appearing in it. If Old Man Jost had to take the hot seat with his Amish neighbors over six minutes of pre-prime, well, maybe he deserved it.
“Tom Jost wasn’t shunned. Rachel told us that,” I calculated aloud. “He left the community and didn’t take vows.”
“Sort of the same difference, isn’t it? He never went back.”
“He never left.” It all spilled into place, his apartment, his relationship with the other firefighters, his relationship with Rachel. “That’s why Rachel said, ‘I would be his Amish.’”
What’s a guy who follows rules to do, when nobody else will play fair? The words of an Amish school ditty I’d found in my research came rushing back:
I must be a Christian child
Gentle, patient, meek and mild;
Must be honest, simple, true
In my words and actions too…
Must remember God can view
All I think, and all I do.
“‘God can view all I think, and all I do,’” I quoted for Ainsley’s benefit. Picturing those binoculars in Jost’s closet, I shivered. Could Jost have been trying to get the old man arrested? “Remind me to call our favorite sheriff when we get in. I need a little instruction on Samaritan law in this fair county.”
Ainsley looked confused, but hopeful.
Just the way I like ’em.
3:38:25 p.m.
Jenny usually walked around the playground during outside time. The school aides didn’t pay much attention to her when she walked. They were too busy yelling at the big kids.
“One at a time!”
“No chicken on the monkey bars.”
“Mulch stays on the ground.”
It was a good day to walk. Sunny, but cold. With her hands in her pockets, Jenny stopped under the twisty slide. It was shadowy there, like a cave. She could see out but it was hard for other people to see her.
There was a man watching the playground. He leaned against the hood of his big shiny car, arms across his chest.
Jenny couldn’t stop staring. Was it him?
His car was parked at the curb where other moms sometimes waited for kids after school. He looked like he was waiting for somebody.
She wasn’t sure if it was him. She decided to climb the slide tower for a better view.
She was only a second grader the last time she saw him. He came to The Funeral. He stayed at the back of the church though. One time, she waved hello but he turned his face away. She didn’t see him again after that.
Jenny thought he must be mad at her, maybe even hated her. It wasn’t her fault that Aunt Maddy moved in and took over. Thinking about it made Jenny feel like crying and wrecking something. If she thought about it too long, she got that shrinky feeling inside and couldn’t eat, until she smelled the inside of Mama’s closet for a long time.
From up on top of the slide, she could see pretty well. There were some trees and dumpsters and the grass field and then sidewalk.
He smiled at her and waved with one hand.
Jenny was surprised by how good she felt seeing him recognize her, like a happy memory coming back for no reason. She waved back at him with a small, secret bend of her wrist that hid the motion from everybody else. She smiled, too.
The kid behind her at the top of the ladder was getting impatient. “Go!”
Jenny pushed off and leaned back, speeding faster through the tunnel than she expected. Her stomach felt afraid and excited and sick and happy all at the same time.
The bell rang right as she shot off the slide onto the mulch.
Jenny looked at the blacktop where the other kids were running to line up. She looked back at him. He called her with a wave.
What a relief!
Usually grown-ups came to the door to sign out the kids who were going home. If the kids were on the playground though, parents usually signed them out first and then took kids home from the playground.
He probably signed her out already. Jenny was glad. She didn’t want to go back inside. She wanted to leave. Right now. She walked straight out to the curb across the grass.
He used to pick her up all the time, before. It wasn’t like he was a stranger or something. She knew not to get in a car with strangers. She wasn’t a baby. He knew it, too. He even let her sit in the front seat.
“Hi.”
“Look at you. You’ve been growing.”
“Yeah.”
His car was so big, it felt like sitting on top of the world. He told her to buckle up and she did. They started driving and for a long while he didn’t say anything. He only looked at her, quick, and then looked back at the road.
Was she supposed to talk? She bit her fingernail instead.
When they were almost at her house, he started asking her the usual stuff about school and how her fish was doing and if she still liked Scooby-Doo. He kept driving right past her house. Did he forget where she lived?
“Um? You passed it. That was my house.”
She got a weird feeling inside, bad weird. What could she do? She couldn’t think of one good thing. Pretty soon the worried feeling was a fuzzy feeling, almost sleepy. She wiped her hands on her jeans.
“Seen any movies lately?” he asked.
“Where’re we going?”
“You’ll see,” he answered. “I need you to understand something, Jen. Something really important. Something your mother would want you to understand.”
“Okay,” she said. Nobody talked to her about her mother. Quickly, without looking at him, she asked, “Do you think about her ever?”
He pulled over to the side of the road and snapped the stick thing between them into the slot marked P. Jenny stayed very still, wondering if she’d made him mad.
“Do I think about your mom?” Very quietly he said, “All the time.”
Jenny sighed. “Me, too.”
He turned in his seat and stared at her. “Look around. You know where you are?”
They were on the edge of the neighborhood, somewhere. She recognized the fence up the road a ways, that went around the old cemetery. She and Aunt Maddy passed it when they took walks on the Prairie Path last summer. Jenny had never gone in there.
She said yes with a tiny nod.
“You ever say anything to your aunt about me?” he demanded all of a sudden.
“Like what?”
“Like anything.” He said it in a funny tight voice.
“No.” Suddenly, it hurt her throat to say even that one word.
“Good. That’s good. I didn’t want any of this, you know.” He banged one fist against the steering wheel.
Jenny jumped. Her seatbelt got really tight. It was hard to breathe.
“Look at what I got here.” He pulled a shiny silver square out of his pocket. It was one of those medicine things with the pills in little bubbles. “You ever seen these before?”
Jenny nodded. They looked just like the ones that Tonya had for her hurting leg.
“In your house? Where?”
Jenny knew where medicine should be. “The medicine bucket?”
“No. They aren’t there.” He sounded pretty sure about that. “Where else could they be? A whole bunch of them.”
Jenny raised her shoulders up around her ears. She didn’t know. Really.
He threw the medicine in the air and said a bad word. “Okay. This is really important, Jenny. Are you listening? Don’t say anything to your aunt about me and your mother. Do you hear me? Something bad might happen if you do.”
His hand reached out, like he was going to touch her or something, and she squeezed herself against the car door. He leaned across her body to jerk her door latch. Jenny’s fingers fidgeted for her seatbelt button.
“Get out,” he said.
Jenny didn’t argue. She scrambled out, pulling at her jacket where it caught on the seatbelt.
“Take a look around. You know where you are? It’s a dangerous road. Cars everywhere. None of us are safe, Jenny.”
She shook her head yes, yes, yes, but all she could think about was getting out of that car. Her feet crunched on the gravel as she practically fell out the door. There wasn’t any sidewalk. The shoulder of the road was white gravel and weeds. The car pulled onto the road. Jenny took a few giant steps backward and fell into a tangle of bushes, poking, scratching, tearing at her clothes. The car drove away.
Jenny watched him go. She looked down at her feet and saw the packet, the silver square carrying white bubbles of medicine. It must have fallen out of the car when she opened the door.
A car whooshed by. Jenny’s heart jumped.
She picked up the medicine, turned and ran. She didn’t run toward anything. She ran away from the car, away from him. When she was tired and out of breath she stopped, sat down hard and put her head on her knees.
More cars passed. They were loud and windy and scary. Cars could hit you and kill you. They were like dinosaurs or alligators. Big, dangerous, stupid cars. Jenny crawled backward, away from the road until she bumped into a fence. She hid in a cave of branches between two big bushes.
Safe.
4:25:00 p.m.
It was one thing to see Tom Jost’s story begin to make sense. It was another thing entirely to turn what I knew into commercial television. The high that came with understanding made the crash back to WWST reality all the more painful.
“What the hell? No office?”
Barbara squinted at me over the top of her cat-eye glasses. Glasses like hers are the secretarial equivalent of a bleeding-dagger tattoo and a gold front tooth. “You got no call to use that kind of language with me.”
“What kind of language do I need to use to get an office with a fucking phone? French? I have a New York conference call coming in ten minutes. Am I supposed to take that in the lobby?”
Barbara hit the intercom. “I’m not dealing with this, Richard. She’s using the F-word again.”
“Goddamn it!” Gatt shouted in stereo. The sound of his voice came through the intercom and the wall at the same time.
The door to the inner sanctum banged open and Gatt hollered, “Get in here, O’Hara.” He stumped back behind his desk. “This, I do not need today.”
Schmed was in the office lounging in one of the faux-leather chairs. He shot me his signature snarky smile. Unpleasant memories of Saturday night’s conversation came rushing back. It was pretty clear what he and Gatt had been busy discussing. Schmed leaned back, crossing his ankle over one knee. The chair sounded like it was gasping its last fart.
“Say excuse me,” I told him.
“Why? You’re the one interrupting.”
“Quit acting like a couple of juvies,” Gatt said. “We got five minutes to resolve this. You’ve got a conference call, don’t you?”
“As a matter of fact.”
“Okay. Here’s the deal. Jim gives up one of his people’s office spots and you do his story on what-?”
Schmed jumped in right on cue. “Local car dealerships.”
“No way-”
“-I’m thinking something along the lines: The Industry that Saved the West or maybe Rotten Reputation, Respectable Reality. I’ll give you a list of contact names.”
A hairball of disgust formed at the back of my throat. I considered hocking it at Schmed. Instead I asked him, “What kind of car do you drive?”
“Like I’d tell you. You planning on putting sugar in my gas tank, O’Hara?”
Not a bad idea. “No. I’m asking what model. I’ll bet you’re an SUV man.”
“Stay away from my car,” Schmed said.
“I knew it. You and your dealership buddies are going to have to find another way to lure the suckers.” This conversation was not taking me to my happy place. I went for the door. “You’ll never sell that to network.”
“Come on, O’Hara,” Gatt whined. “Don’t bust my balls here.”
“Selling it to network is your job, honey,” Schmed said.
“No way.”
“Phone in your complaints,” he tossed back at me. “Lines are always open.”
Gatt heaved a high-drama sigh even though I didn’t bother to answer. Men with buffed nails have no power in my universe. But his jab pushed a button, and a light came on.
I spun around to stare at Gatt. “Tell me again about the Amish story. When did the tip come in?”
TV people are better than most at following quick cuts between subject matter. Gatt thought for a few seconds and said, “Right before I met with you on Thursday. Barbara passed me the call. Male. Guy said there was ‘something to see.’ Said fire and sheriff had been called. I assumed he was a bystander.”
“Why?”
“Cell phone call. Sounded like he was outside.”
“Traffic sounds?” I asked skeptically. There weren’t any cars on that road.
“No. Bugs and wind.” Gatt had a producer’s ear for audio.
“Got it. Thanks.” I turned on my heel and headed toward Barbara’s desk.
“Does this mean you’re not quitting?” Gatt called sweetly.
I raised my right hand and waved goodbye with the single most appropriate digit.
At Barbara’s desk, I stopped. She continued to ignore me, mouth in a lemon pucker.
“If I promise never again to use the F-word against you, would you please let me have four Excedrin on a pair of Tums?” Might as well take some calcium with my caffeine.
She handed me the pills but the face didn’t change. This time there was no offer of a cracker.
“Is there a phone in the big conference room?”
“Yes.”
“That’s where I’ll be.”
I’d written up a shot list for Ainsley to run down at his convenience, by tomorrow morning. I needed pick-ups logged, library materials, things we needed to review before next week’s story. My main thought was to keep him out of my hair, give me time to think. Luckily, I had a two-hour conference call ahead of me.
Part of the fun of working in television is learning to break down the world’s constant stimulus. I can block out the sight of six monitors and focus on one. I can hear both a speaking voice and the hum of an air conditioner that might ruin the audio track. To do the job right, I have to be able to see all the parts, separately, before reassembling them into something meaningful.
Having a flexible attention span is critical. Which is exactly what made conference call time so productive.
“Maddy O’Hara, this is the operator. Are you on the line?”
“Here.”
“You are the last caller being connected. Everyone is present. Your conference may begin.”
There was some opening bullshit where everyone pretended to be so glad I was “on-board,” and I had to say something cheerful. As soon as that was done, I clicked on the phone’s privacy feature and took out my cell phone.
“This is Maddy O’Hara. I need to speak to Corporal Curzon-Nicky Curzon, please.”
Ainsley pushed the AV cart with the HD8 through the door. “Where do ya want it, lady?” He made a face when he realized I was engaging in teleconference bigamy.
“Park it where I can reach it,” I told him. “Yeah, I’m still holding,” I said to the woman at the police station. “College, I’ve got a new to-do list for you.”
The speakerphone called for me and I shot Ainsley a finger shh. “Sorry, I missed that. They’ve got me working in a temporary space that’s noisy as hell. Say again?”
“We’ve got a suggestion on the table for theme weeks, set in advance that you’d customize a story for in your market. Can you get behind that, O’Hara?”
“Who decides the themes?”
“Good question,” New York answered.
“Ms. O’Hara? Are you still there?” the police operator asked.
I popped the mute on the conference speaker. “Here!” I answered and then rotated the cell phone one-hundred-eighty degrees on my ear. “Plug me in would you, College?”
“Transferring you to Corporal Curzon at extension 2-2-8.”
The speakerphone crackled. “All the producers participating will agree on themes. New York has the final say.”
Typical. I hit the voice button. “As long as they don’t ream us during sweeps with crap like Sexual Perversion in the Vatican, I’m in.” There were a few grumbled affirmatives. Somebody decided to bear witness on the topic. Mute on.
“I’m in, too,” Nicky answered. “What’s going on?”
Ainsley held up two cassettes.
“Run the stuff we shot this morning.” I twisted the cell phone down in front of my mouth. “Hey, Nicky. Thinking about something you said yesterday, that I forgot to follow up on-do you mind?”
“Shoot.”
“Is that safe to say in a police station?”
“Funny. Don’t quit your day job.”
The speakerphone called my name. “O’Hara? You with us?”
Press a button. I chided all the fellas at once. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Local and long distance-they all grumbled.
Ainsley was the only one who fully appreciated the show.
The conference call continued with the mute on, topic-satellite problems-while I continued speaking to Nicky Curzon. “I heard you say you ‘did some checking’ before you sent the letter on Jost. I haven’t found anything to support the freaky image of Jost that the magazines suggest. Can you help me out?” I left it hang for a second. “Who’d you talk to?”
“I talked to the guy’s partner at the fire station. Friend of the family knows him.”
“Really? What’d he say?”
“Said Jost was a closet kink, hiding mags everywhere, all the time. Also said he’d had girl trouble before. Jost told the guys in the firehouse he’d left the Amish community over a girl.”
Ainsley hit Play on the stuff we’d shot earlier.
“What the hell? You kidding me?” I said, mostly to my college boy. He’d played with the angle, zoom and the registration. I had the doctor in black and white as well as colorized like a bad hallucination.
“No, I’m not kidding,” Nicky said. His voice dropped. He didn’t like me getting excited about something he’d said. “Look, I gotta go, Maddy.”
“Transfer me to the sheriff, would you? I got questions for him, too.” I went into transfer limbo.
On the conference call, a sales himbo was stroking himself over the marketing pre-sales.
“College, didn’t I tell you to quit screwing around with the artsy-fartsy shit?”
“It’s only the early stuff,” Ainsley assured me. “I was experimenting.” He hit the FF button until the picture was recognizable.
“Well, cut it out. You’re making me nervous.”
“If I’m making you nervous, why would I cut it out?” Jack Curzon asked.
Shit. I hadn’t heard the pick-up. “Hello, Sheriff. How’s your day?”
“Fine. Very open over the lunch hour. My appointment didn’t show.”
“Really? Listen, Jane Citizen would like to ask a question about Samaritan law in this fair county. How’s it work?”
“That’s state law, actually. Protects a citizen who tries to help from legal action. Requires anyone who is licensed as fire, police or medical personnel to assist if they see a person who needs help.”
“And that’s all?”
“Yep.”
“Ah.” So Tom Jost wasn’t trying to get his father in trouble for being a “bad Samaritan” by providing him that timely set of binoculars.
“Why does Jane want to know?” the sheriff asked.
“Jane likes to be informed.”
“Jane needs to get her ass in here to make a report if she wants to get any more cooperation from the sheriff’s office.”
If SUV-guy was trying to scare me, the last thing I wanted to do was look like I was running to the cops. Running encourages a bully to chase you.
It’d be nice to hang the whole thing on Schmed. I figured I better throw Curzon a bone to get him off my back about the reckless driving report. “Yeah, about that-I’m fairly certain the driver was a guy from the office.” Ainsley gave me a sharp glance over the shoulder. “I’m re-thinking the whole situation. Maybe I should try and resolve it in-house. I got to work with the guy every day, you know what I mean? I’m sure we can come to some kind of peace pact.”
Curzon remained silent.
Ainsley paused the audio on the interview. The conference call expanded to fill the dead air. Voices droned on about local issues, each market forecasting inevitable success. The bullshit factor was ten-plus.
“Fine.” Curzon blinked first. “I’ll let you slide. For now.”
“That’s all I got for this week,” said the guy in Boston.
I hit the speaker button and answered them both. “Great.” New York still had to give a report, so I hung in there with Curzon. “Jane’s got one more question for you, Sheriff.”
He sniffed a laugh. “Jane doesn’t give up.”
“Admit it, you love that about her.”
Ainsley rolled his eyes in disgust. I shrugged, what?
“I don’t remember you mentioning, did Tom Jost have a phone with him when you found him?”
“A cell phone?” He thought about it and answered me with the question, “Why do you ask?”
“Curiosity.”
Another silence followed. The kind of silence that squeezes between moves when old guys play chess.
When Curzon committed to his response there was no hesitation. “We didn’t find a phone.”
“Really? Too bad. I had my next question all lined up. Thanks, Sheriff. I owe you one.”
“You owe me more than one. You’re running a tab now.”
“Bull. I got you off the hook with Grandma and the rest of the clan yesterday. I think you still owe me.” Best defense: be offensive. “And next time you need a beard, warn me so I can dress the part.”
“What you wore yesterday was fine.” His voice dropped into that dark place where whispers take root. “But I’d love to see how you’d dress the part.”
“Whoops! Boss just walked in. Gotta go.”
I could hear the man laughing as I hung up which was bad enough, then Ainsley gave me a know-it-all look that was totally inappropriate from someone his age.
“Shut up.” I pointed at his face. “You do not have time.” I flapped the shot list at him.
He skimmed my notes, top to bottom. His expression made it clear when he got to the one requiring the Dawn-pick-up. Need long, wide, establishing shot of tree where Tom died.
“Dawn? How am I going to get that?”
“I find if I set the alarm for 3 a.m. I can get camera ready in plenty of time. If I skip breakfast.”
“You’re kidding?”
“This afternoon I want you to concentrate on the firehouse. Your mom left a message that we had permission to go in and shoot interiors-his locker, his bed, whatever.” There was a definite advantage to working with someone hooked into the power loop. Not that Richard Gatt was going to hear it from me. “See if you can set up a couple match dissolves to what we’ve already got from his apartment.”
“Got it.” Ainsley nodded.
The shock of a 3 a.m. call time was passing; he was starting to get excited again which was a good sign. If he didn’t love it enough for 3 a.m., he didn’t love it enough. There are worse things about the business than an early call. Lots of them.
“I want nice clean shots, College. Nothing funky. Think journalism, not art.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Text me if you run into trouble. I’ll be here. Working.” I tipped a nod at the conference call. Sounded like they’d almost finished driveling through the LA rep’s report. My agenda had no name listed for the next spiel. Maybe they would wrap early and I could squeeze in a little studio time. “Warn Mick I might be late, would you?”
Ainsley looked wistful at the thought of the next editing session. “I’ll tell him.”
“Don’t worry. There’ll be plenty to do tomorrow.”
He smiled at the thought. “Yeah. That’s true.”
“Get out of here, College. You’re making my teeth ache.”
I went back to buzzing through the shots of Grace and Dr. Graham, looking for sound bites and jotting down times.
The conference call was still going strong. A couple major players from the top ten markets had been invited, so the grunts kept interrupting with clever comments.
Whatever. I had enough to keep me occupied.
There were a few bits I could pull out of the doctor’s interview, but even less of what Grace Ott had given me would make sense in the story I had roughly sculpted. I’d given up the salacious sex angle, but I needed something that would fit with the program. Much as I’d like to paint a picture of human isolation, Mysterious Death of an Amish Outlaw was probably my best television premise.
This is not a public service, I lectured myself. Television is a business. The purpose of business is to make money.
“O’Hara, I’ve got that office cleared for you,” Schmed wheedled from the doorway.
Speak of the devil and in he walks.
“My hero.” I had a sudden premonition I’d be carrying antacid in my wallet from now on.
“I’ll have the list of dealerships to interview on your new desk by tomorrow morning.” He winked. “Thanks, hon.”
“Getting tired of telling you to bite me, Jim. Go away.”
“GM’s in the building, by the way. She’s looking for you.”
I mumbled something creative. Schmed exited with a snicker.
New action item on my list-end Schmed’s good mood.
With the conference call as white noise, I focused on the monitor, committing some pieces to memory, watching for glitches, listening for audio errors I’d need to cut around. My brain knows how to do this stuff on autopilot. Almost like driving-there’s a part of your mind that’s totally focused and another part that’s free. I’m better at the pieces than I am at the big picture. That’s why I prefer stills to video, editing to previewing.
When it came to Tom Jost’s death, I could almost see the bits I didn’t understand coming together, spread like a collage in front of me.
I wished I had the time to follow College to the firehouse. Maybe talk to Tom’s partner Pat again. If Grace was right, Tom’s problem began there.
I still didn’t have an explanation for who’d called the station the day of Tom’s death. What kind of Samaritan would call, but not stop? If they’d only called the cops-maybe. But why call the cops and the local television station?
According to the sheriff, Tom had no phone with him. I know Tom owned a phone; we saw the empty charger in his apartment. What happened to it? I thought of Rachel sitting in the bushes with the phone pressed to her ear. She hadn’t known Tom was dead, hadn’t seen the body. She couldn’t have been the Samaritan.
I picked up my cell phone and hit the new Clarion speed dial for the private extension of Mr. Melton Shotter.
“News.”
“Hey, Melton. What news?”
“Maddy?” He sounded surprised. “How’s that story on Jost going?”
“Not bad. Question for you. How’d you get the tip on Jost? Was it off the police band or what?”
“I got called on my way into work that morning. Can you hold? I’ll check.”
“No problem.” I hit Rewind and toggled the mute button on the conference call to vote fine with me on a local weather graphic preceding local stories.
The guy from Dallas added, “People watch TV to find out what tomorrow’s weather will be. Give them what they want. Get them hooked. This ain’t brain surgery.”
Melton came back on the line with interesting news. “Someone called the paper with a tip. Said there were cop cars and fire trucks along the road. The receptionist who took the call knew I’d pass that exit on my way into work. She phoned me at home.”
“What time?”
“Must have been around ten. That’s when I leave for the office.”
I blew some exasperation his way. “Nice work if you can get it.”
“Hey, I work ’til we go to press on Thursdays. I’m here ’til midnight sometimes.”
“Midnight? That’s all?”
Melton and I traded poor-me stories until we were both sleeping on desktops, surviving on tic tacs and tap water.
The conference call got around to taking another vote.
“Thanks for the help, Melton. I got another call.” I hung up before he could pump me for more on Jost.
After I weighed in on title graphics, I tried to call Ainsley in the truck and got no answer. Either he wasn’t in the truck or couldn’t hear the ring over the downbeat of WKiSS-FM. Guess which one I was betting?
“Ms. O’Hara? I’ve been looking for you.” Shirley Shayla, my new general mother, stood there, hands on hips. She was almost eye level with me, if I slumped in my chair. Aggravation or a long day had crumpled her Donna Karan suit. Not a good sign.
“You found me.” I waved to the line of empty conference room chairs. The machine clucked into standby and the speakerphone suddenly cracked out an “O’Hara?”
I held up a one-minute finger to Shayla and answered, “Yeah. I’ve got a couple stories on the burner right now. For the first week, I like this piece on a local suicide.”
“Details,” the New York guy barked.
“Guy was a refugee from a local Amish community. The suicide had signs of being autoerotic asphyxiation.”
Bits and pieces of my colleagues’ opinions popped through: a snort, a chuckle, a drawn out shiiiit. “Sounds good,” was the final answer.
What followed was a sequence of feelings that were fairly familiar when I sold a story based on salacious spin-relief, shame, and as I met Shayla’s gaze, guilt hunkered down for the long haul.
I hit the mute. “What can I do you for?”
“That’s the story you’re putting together for the premiere?” She made a firm nod in the direction of Grace’s sweet image on my monitor cart, twitching rhythmically in freeze frame. “Former Amish Sex-Death?”
“Actually, I’m not sure what the story will be yet.” Guilt made me sound grumpier than was polite for a new boss. Thumbing toward the phone call, I tried to work the charm as I admitted, “You know how it goes. These conference calls are fairly, um, promotional. Until I have it in the can…” I let it drift into a long pause.
“That topic would certainly sell ads.” Her arms were folded across her bosom and her feet were planted wide and toe out. She was not smiling. “Although, I have to say I’m surprised. It’s not what I expected from you. Rather predictable.”
Amish autoerotic asphyxiation was predictable? Where had she been living?
I opened my mouth, hesitating to stick my foot straight back in there, when the cell phone vibrated. Saved by the bell. “Yeah?”
“Maddy? It’s me,” Ainsley whispered in his undercover voice. “I’m at the fire station.”
“Great.” I started talking, hoping Shayla would lighten up on the hairy-eyeball she was giving me. “Here’s my-”
“You won’t believe the visuals! They’re training on car fires. Torching old beaters in the back lot. It’s incredible. We can totally work it in. Tom-the-Amish-firefighter, lighting a car on fire? Get it? And Pat just came in to pick up his check.”
“What? Ask-”
Ainsley would not shut up. His whispering got fierce. “Pat got all over me when I told them about the bank guy out at the Jost farm.”
“Really?” I went to full stop.
“I’m going to try for an interview.”
“With Pat? He wants to give you an interview?”
“I can handle it. Leave time in the story. I’ll call you later.”
“Wait!” Too late. I hit ring-back and the guy at the firehouse who answered laughed loudly as he passed the phone back to Ainsley.
“That’s three, College Boy. You’re grounded. Never, ever hang up before I do.”
“Right, right. Can I go now?”
“No. Pat’s in this thing deep. Watch yourself. Ask what he fought with Tom about and find out when-before or after Rachel. Ask what he said to Nicky Curzon. And find out how the fire service call came in about Jost. Did they hear through the cops or was it direct?”
“Okay. I can handle this, Boss.”
The words “I can handle it” were a little too scary to let slide. “Don’t get fancy on me, College. Get your shots and get back here. Don’t make me give you the J-school speech again.”
“Anything else?”
He was being such a pain in the ass, I snapped, “Yeah. I need you to pick up Jenny on your way back.” Too late, I thought of Shayla and the fact that I really didn’t want to spread the word I was permanently responsible for a kid these days.
“From school?” Ainsley asked.
“Yeah,” I mumbled. It wasn’t in me to ask for a personal favor without justification but it felt tricky explaining my motives to Ainsley. “I’m going to check something out at the Jost farm and I may run late. If you get her by six, we can rendezvous back at my place and watch whatever you get at the firehouse.”
Silence.
Conference call went lull.
Shayla tapped her foot.
“You want to talk to Mr. Jost again, don’t you?” Ainsley’s mental wheels were turning. “Don’t go back there, Maddy. He’s going to call the cops or something this time.”
“He might talk now that he’s had all day to think about what I dropped off this morning.” Quietly I added, “And there’s something I need to say to him.”
“Oh, man.” Ainsley sounded worried. “Don’t make me give you the J-school speech.”
“Ha. Funny.”
Shayla stood there watching me with one eyebrow cocked, so I could only penalize the boy with the silent treatment. The conference call droned on. A close-up image of Grace flickered before me on the monitor, waiting. I felt caught in a paused moment, waiting for someone to press the button that would release me from the sameness of it all. Something had to change.
“I’ll pick up Jenny by six,” Ainsley relented. “No problem. Maybe call a pizza, too? Delivery to your place?”
Pizza, the ultimate Prescott peace offering.
All I could say was, “Thanks. I’m hanging up now. Get back to work.”
“Do I rate your attention, yet, Ms. O’Hara?” Shayla drawled.
“Absolutely.” I stood to face her.
The conference call shouted, “O’Hara?”
I tapped the mute button. “Yeah?”
It was the voice of my New York production counterpart. “Are you going to up-link your story for everybody to preview?”
“No.”
“We’d really like to see it,” the shark from Dallas cooed.
“Oh well, in that case, hell no,” I said with a smile. Shayla can vouch for me.
There was a laugh or two and then someone started to argue about how the stories would be previewed and I was off the hook again, for half a second anyway.
“Sorry. This may go on a while.” I waved at the speakerphone. “Can we schedule something later? We could preview tomorrow before the up-link.”
She wasn’t fooled, but she wasn’t a time-wasting moron either. I was hired to do a job, and she’d been doing her job long enough to recognize when to stay out of the way. “Fine. I’d prefer to see what you do for us, before we talk anyway. So, ‘get back to work,’” she mimicked.
I shot her with my pointer finger and nodded.
That I could do.
6:09:16 p.m.
The sun was all the way down and it was really cold now. It hadn’t even been warm when she got out of the car. Jenny pressed farther under the cover of the bushes. She pulled her knees against her chest.
School was really far away. Home was probably closer. Maybe.
She’d lied. She really wasn’t all that sure where she was. Luckily, she’d gotten pretty good at waiting, giving herself time to figure things out.
If she went home, Aunt Maddy would ask her why she wasn’t at school. What could she say? She had to think of something. She had to have an answer. Something bad would happen if she didn’t think of a way to explain.
Her head hurt.
Everyone at school would be mad at her too, now. Worse than when she hid in the bathroom.
She was gonna be in trouble.
Now her stomach felt horrible, too.
Why was this happening? It was all wrong. She didn’t used to get in trouble. She used to believe she was a good kid. Her mom always said it-like every day.
But that couldn’t be true, could it? Because she was the same kid, and now she was always in trouble and everybody hated her. Being a good kid must be when other people thought you were good.
Grown-ups were so tricky.
Why did he do it? Why did he make everybody mad at her? She thought he was nice. He used to bring her stuff, like candy, and tell her mom to order her a pizza with plain cheese, nothing on it. He even gave her a piggyback ride to bed that one time and everyone laughed.
Jenny felt her nose tickle because of another drip. She looked for a dry spot on her jacket sleeve.
Stranger danger was such a joke. The people she knew were the scary ones.
Her fingers were getting stiff. Jenny tried to push them into the front pockets of her jeans to warm them up and touched the square of medicine tablets. She took it out and looked at it. It was exactly like the one that Tonya had. The thought gave her such a rush of guilt and excitement she stuffed it back in her pocket and shut her eyes.
What would it be like to feel no pain?
A tornado started whirling in her stomach. The inside of her throat got all thick and sticky. If she swallowed she might even vomit.
Her mother always told her to use the word vomit. Not puke or barf. Vomit was a medical word. People got sick sometimes; it was normal. People got hurt, too. And sometimes they needed medicine to get better. Her mother told her that, too.
What time was it? The sun hadn’t quite gone down, but it was so low in the sky the tall trees made it seem like night where she sat. She couldn’t even see lights from houses or anything, only trees and fences and road.
Nothing looked the same. A car passed her on the road, fast and loud.
Jenny pressed her forehead to her knees and folded her arms tight around her legs. She sniffed and rubbed her nose on her sleeve again. It burned.
She was in so much trouble she couldn’t even think what would come next. It was like trying to imagine fifth grade. Those kids had hardcover books and homework, like, every day.
How could she ever do it all by herself?
Jenny wiggled her fingers in her pocket and felt the medicine move under fingers.
What would it be like to feel no pain?
That part wasn’t so hard to imagine.
She could try to remember.
Or she could take some medicine.
6:14:46 p.m.
I was on Peg, so there was no hiding my arrival at the Jost farm. Older bikes, like the Super X, had very little covering around the engine and pipes. Peg roared.
I shut the engine down before I turned into the driveway. I left the bike propped on the far side of the road near the cow fence. Yes, Ainsley, I can be taught.
It was third-world dark out there. No street lights. No landscape highlighting. One window in the entire house showed a glow. Anywhere else in the state of Illinois, you’d think the family had gone out, leaving nothing but a kitchen light to guide their return.
In this house it was a sign someone must be home.
I knocked hard on the front door and called out, “Mr. Jost? It’s Maddy O’Hara.”
My metabolism rarely lets me cool down, but tonight my hands felt frozen stiff. I tried stamping my feet to throw off the nervy chill creeping up my back. I knocked again with the side of my fist, bam, bam, bam.
“Mr. Jost? It’s important. It’s about Rachel.”
His face appeared through the small square of window. The white skin around his eyes and the sharp profile of his nose was all I could see.
“What about my daughter?” he said.
“Open the door, Mr. Jost. I’m not going to talk to you through a door.” The ridiculousness of the situation took some of the edge off.
The door opened slowly. He wasn’t wearing his hat or his jacket. His suspenders followed the line of his chest to the forward hunch of an older man’s shoulders. He didn’t step back. Didn’t invite me in. He was being so obvious about it, I almost laughed. Why was I so afraid of this guy?
“Look, Mr. Jost. I thought you ought to know, your daughter came and spoke to me last Friday. She seemed pretty upset.” I didn’t like narcing on Rachel, but Ainsley was right. I’d feel better knowing that somebody understood how deep she was in. The only one I could think to tell was her father. “I thought you should know, she and Tom were still pretty close. She blames herself for his death.”
“What are you saying to me? What is this?” His voice was aggressive but his eyes winced with confusion. That wiry gray hair, ringing his head from skull to chin, had a life all its own.
“Help her. She’s too young. Don’t let her blame herself.” I looked him in the eye and said it out loud-the thing he feared, the thing I feared. “You were more to blame than she was.”
He stared at me, silent.
I don’t know why I waited.
“I would do most anything for her,” he told me quietly. “For my daughter.”
“Talk to her. Let her talk to you. Did you and Tom fight before he died?”
He closed his eyes and shook his head, no. Quietly, as if he were talking to himself or thought I couldn’t understand, he mumbled, “The sinning comes with knowing.”
“You think you can avoid the sin through ignorance?”
“The road is hard enough. Turn away. Be separate. That is the choice we make.”
“But once you know, what then?” He wouldn’t answer. His whole way of understanding the world made me hot. “Once Tom knew things that no one else around him knew, what could he do? Did he tell you what it was like to be a kid and watch the whole world dissolve or did you make him hold it in to protect your separateness?”
“Not so well enough,” the old man growled. “Oh ja, it came out, all right.” His accent gave the sarcasm an edge. “How could I keep him in this house with Rachel? I had to keep her safe.”
“You brought him here. You were the only father he knew.”
“My pride brought him here. That is my shame. And my error to put right.”
“So you sent Tom away. You banished him.”
Silently, the man who gave Tom Jost a name, shook his head. No.
I couldn’t believe he would deny it. He might not have said the words out loud, but Tom had known he wasn’t welcome. I lost it. Couldn’t listen anymore, couldn’t hear his side of it. I got furious and something clicked. “The sin comes with knowing.” The next thought was whispered. “You knew. You saw him standing there on those boxes. Alone. For how long? You watched him die, didn’t you?”
His eyes popped and his whiskers twitched all directions. Then he growled at me in non-English, stepped back and slammed the door in my face.
My phone rang about three seconds later. I was still standing there facing a closed door.
“What?”
“It’s Ainsley, Maddy. I’m at the school. You won’t believe this. They can’t find Jenny.”
6:51:23 p.m.
I tried calling home, stopped there first, hoping there was some mistake, some kid-confusing explanation for why she wasn’t where I expected.
No luck.
I got to the school and all they could tell me was Jenny hadn’t been checked out of the program. The last people remembered, she was on the playground. They had tried to call me at the station and at home. Apparently, the number in the file for my cell phone was wrong. When Ainsley showed up at closing time, almost all the other kids had been picked up. The only clue they had to what happened was the word of one of the kids from the playground, who claimed Jenny had walked off the playground toward a shiny car.
“I think we should call the police,” one of the teachers suggested tentatively. “That’s the procedure at this point, isn’t it?”
I already had two of the babysitters in tears and Ainsley threatening to lock me in the car, I needed to get out there and start searching.
“I stopped at the house on my way here,” I said. “She’s not at the house.”
Ainsley interrupted, “What about friends? Could she have walked to someone else’s house?”
“Whose? There’s nobody,” I said. “Kid doesn’t have any friends.”
“One of us should wait at the house,” I told Ainsley, “and one should go out looking.”
“You want to look, right?” he answered. “I’ll go wait.”
“Thanks,” I said, stiff with gratitude. The women were conferring among themselves about what to do. “Call the police. I’m going out to look. You’ve got the right number to reach me now, yes?”
“Yes, yes,” one of them mumbled, guilty, but with an edge of evil eye.
“Good.” That made two of us.
It was maybe a mile and a half from the school to the house. There were two routes Jen and I generally took to get home, a third that the bus followed. I’d followed Ainsley back to the house, searched the backyard and wracked my brain for ideas. Nothing useful came to mind. Consequently, I was out of my mind.
Twenty minutes later, I pulled over and called Curzon.
“I need a favor.”
“My lucky day.” The shift of his attention, from work to me, was as clear as a car changing gear.
“Jenny’s gone.” It didn’t take long to explain. Curzon put me on hold twice, checking with the guys at the station about what had already been done. A car had been dispatched to the school minutes before.
“Come to the station,” Curzon ordered. “We’ll go out together in my car. I’ll have paperwork ready you can sign when you get here.”
“What paperwork?” I know I sounded irritated.
“The stuff we need to get a wider search going. Description for the radio, that kind of thing.”
“All right. Be there as soon as I can.”
The station was hustling when I arrived. I remembered the way to Curzon’s office and walked straight through. The door was open. He sat behind his computer, wearing a pair of executive style wireless-frame glasses and a white button-down that was creased and damp at the back from long hours in the big chair. Smart and hardworking looked good on him.
“You didn’t speed on the way here did you?” he asked without looking up. “I’ll be one more minute. Sit down.”
I was hoping the first thing out of his mouth would be something like, don’t worry, we’ll find her, she’s fine.
Unfortunately, Curzon was the kind of guy who didn’t do platitudes.
I didn’t sit.
From the doorway, I had an excellent view of the action in the station. There were cops going about their business with plodding intensity, and a couple of secretarial types hanging up their cardigan sweaters and putting on their jackets. Sulking against the wall were a pair of Goth-hoodlums in full-length black capes. Beside a desk, hunched an old man with a bloody head. At the farthest end of the room, four burly guys were dragging an eight-foot-high chunk of concrete up the hall on a cart.
Police stations are surrealism on testosterone.
“What’s with the road work?” I asked for distraction. “Putting in a patio out back?”
He handed me paperwork on a clipboard, pen attached. “Guy’s garage floor. Evidence.”
Translation: somebody died-bloody-on that slab of concrete.
A bolus of sick bubbled up my throat. “All this on a Monday night? Why would you ever want to leave this job?”
Curzon pointed at the paper. “Write. Give details under ‘last seen wearing.’”
There was too much pumping through my head. I had to force myself to think, to write.
Purple jacket. Jeans. White tennis shoes, pink laces.
It was impossible to believe what was happening. Less than two hours ago, I was standing in front of Tom Jost’s father, accusing him of parenting failures.
“I got a question for you.” Even to my ears, my voice shredded the words. “Do you think people have to separate to be good?”
Addresses: home, school…friends?
Had I failed Jenny already?
Curzon mumbled, “Mmduhknow.”
Names: parent or guardian. Guardian. What a terrible word for it.
A woman stuck her head in the door. Curzon stopped typing.
“Amber Alert’s been issued,” she said without looking at me.
“We’ll have the rest for you in under five.”
She walked out. Curzon went back to typing.
“I’ve always thought there’s good and bad in all of us. Everybody’s capable of going one way or another at any time.”
“Are you more capable of the ‘bad’ because you see it,” I asked him, “because it’s around you all the time?”
Without hesitation, he answered, “Yes.”
“Really?” I was unprepared for how vulnerable his honesty made me-with no camera between us. I crossed my arms over my chest and tried to argue. “I’m not so sure.”
“Yes, you are. You agree. Those Amish people agree. Pretty much everybody agrees. Same reason people move to the suburbs. It’s why we build prisons in the middle of nowhere. It’s why you live alone.”
“What?” I spluttered. “What’s my living alone got to do with anything?”
“Who’d understand what you’ve got inside your head? You said you hadn’t had a date since Sierra Leone. My guess is that’s because you can’t picture chatting your way through a meal with some guy, then going into a bedroom with him, taking off your clothes, but never being able to show,” he snorted to himself, “to talk about what’s inside.”
This conversation was rapidly deteriorating. Direct eye contact seemed dangerously inappropriate, but Curzon wouldn’t look away, so I couldn’t either.
“How would it feel to lie beside someone, go to sleep, with that innocent mind on the pillow beside you?” He turned away from me just like that, and returned to typing paperwork. His last words were not speculative at all. They were hard with personal conviction. “It’d be a sort of punishment, wouldn’t it? Hiding a part of yourself all the time. Forever.”
“Does hiding it make you more capable of wrong, bad-ness?” I floundered looking for the right word. “Evil?”
“Like I would know? I’m on the protection-clean-up detail.” He blew me off. “One thing I do know, once you realize how bad a human being can be, once you can imagine it,” he shook his head as if the rest were obvious, “you can imagine hitting back. You can imagine hurting that person sleeping next to you. You can imagine all sorts of things.”
I was imagining all sorts of bad things right now with Jenny missing.
“Aren’t you just the Philosopher King?” I tossed off after too long a silence. This conversation was not helping me worry less. Topic change. “Living alone didn’t protect Tom Jost.”
“Tom Jost didn’t want to be alone. His problem was reaching for the wrong companions. Classic mistake.” Curzon laid out his version of the facts without hesitation.
“You think so?”
“Absolutely. So says the King.” He gave me a cockeyed grin that took the edge off the certainty in his voice. “Did you bring a picture?”
“In my wallet.”
“Good.”
“Aren’t you gonna say we probably won’t need it?”
“You want me to?”
“Yeah.”
“I hope we don’t need it,” he answered carefully. “I want to know about the SUV.”
“Don’t start. It’s nothing, I’m sure.” It was my problem for now.
The SUV run-ins had to be connected to my job. Someone at the station or someone connected to the story on Tom Jost. If I dragged Curzon in at this point, he’d slap a gag on the story. I’d never make the satellite feed.
Twenty-four hours from now, I could come clean.
“It’s work related. Got nothing to do with Jenny.”
Curzon fixed me with the stare. He didn’t agree. He didn’t disagree. “So you got people from your office trying to run you down. Work is going pretty well then?”
“Work is great. Especially being here, which means I am getting jack-all done on a piece that will probably be seen by an eight share of Nielsen homes nationally, which is to say, no one, and completely submarine my career.” Saying it aloud actually made the urge to puke worse. Jenny. Jenny, where the hell are you? “Have I mentioned I’m going to kill that kid when we find her? You got any Tums?”
Curzon slid a drawer open and lobbed a bottle across the room. He didn’t prompt, didn’t offer any consolation. He waited, silent.
I knew the trick of silence, but couldn’t stop myself from saying, “It feels like I’ve stepped into a time machine.”
“Because of the Amish?”
“Of course.” The Tums dried the inside of my mouth like road salt. “And Jenny. And my sister. That house of hers.” I quit rubbing my forehead to glare at him. “You, too.”
“Me?” He sounded pleased. “Why me?”
“I don’t know.” More rubbing, less glaring. “This place, I guess.”
“Ahh. You’ve been in trouble with the law before.”
“Ha.”
He surrendered with both hands.
I tried to stay seated. Couldn’t.
“Two more minutes,” Curzon soothed. He ran Jenny’s picture through a machine at the back of his desk. No wasted motions. “Almost there.”
“I wasn’t meant for kids.” I paced the tiny rectangle of space in front of his desk. “I can’t do this anymore. It’s crazy.”
“You can,” he replied, totally calm.
To me, it sounded like, you have to. “I stink at this. I swear, when we find her-” I kicked my heel against the leg of one of the wooden chairs in frustration. “I did not ask for any of this.”
Curzon looked up from his computer, nodded pleasantly. “Done?”
“Fuck you.”
“Sure.”
I wasn’t ready to laugh, so that pissed me off, too.
He spread his hands and tilted his head exactly like a dashboard Jesus. Men rarely open their hands and show their palms. Curzon’s looked smooth and ruddy. Alive. I remembered how warm they felt and my skin prickled.
“You can’t turn your back on family,” Curzon said. “Not and keep your self-respect. There it is. Nobody said it would be easy.”
Pompous, asshole, know-it-all.
“No shit, Sheriff,” I said. “Tell me about it. Why don’t you start with your divorce from the She-bitch.”
He didn’t move an inch but suddenly the man I’d been talking to disappeared. Where does a man go when he hides behind his eyes? Curzon had retreated to that dark interior before. It came easily. His eyes narrowed. His face became impenetrable from the inside out and I watched myself change in his view.
The hurt it caused me was another surprise.
“My bad. I shouldn’t-You don’t-” I closed my eyes to escape his stare, to hide from myself. My own callused hands reached out, pleading for retraction. “Sorry, Jack. Nothing you’ve said is untrue.” I realized as I said it, how much that meant to me.
Long time ago, I gave up trying to figure out the mystery of what makes human beings connect. Friends. Neighbors. Lovers. I couldn’t say if it was dumb luck or fine timing or the science of body smells the conscious brain has no control over, somehow Curzon knew how to read me. He knew what I meant. Maybe he knew the words I didn’t say as well.
“I’m not talking about Sharon here,” he said slowly. His hands laced together and the knuckles whitened with the force of his grip. “But I know what it’s like. All that business on Sunday with Marcus and my father- it’s the same for me. What I want. What my family wants.” He pulled his hands apart. “Sometimes it’s hard to separate them.”
I don’t even know if he realized, but his right hand tightened into a fist and his left wrapped around it. I thought of that kids’ game-paper covers rock. I felt the force of his will in his eyes, hoping for my understanding. I remembered Jenny running, laughing, playing in his family’s backyard.
All I could think to say was, “Please, Curzon-Jack, please, I’ve got to find her.”
He nodded. No false promises. We’ll find her, she’ll be fine.
I was right; nothing he said to me would be untrue.
“We’ll take my car.” He stood up and pointed me to the door.
Couple of serious-looking men in uniforms called “good luck,” as they punched the clock. Curzon raised a hand.
I was going to owe him big for this. The boss did not, as a rule, drop everything for a kid missing less than two hours. Something else to worry about. Later.
In less than ten minutes, we were on our way. Probably the fastest completion of police paperwork in history, but I was still crazed. I’d have sprinted to his car if I’d have known which one it was. Instead, I trailed at his elbow.
“There’s my car.” He pointed me toward an older Audi.
“What about those?” I pointed. Two rows over sat at least five matching silver SUVs. They had no visible police markings.
“Special transport. We got a grant,” he said. “Is that the kind of car that gave you trouble?”
The parking lot was suddenly colder. I met Curzon’s narrow gaze and thought about the darkness he closed himself into so easily.
“Maybe.”
“There are a lot of silver SUVs out there.” His voice had a bland edge that wasn’t there a minute ago.
“Yeah, sure. Let’s just go.”
We were in his car and on the road in a matter of moments but Curzon wouldn’t stop glancing over to check on me. “You cold?”
“I’m fine.”
He reached over and grabbed my fingers, then let go before I could make anything of it. “Those still bend?” he asked, while punching buttons on the dash to fire up the heat.
“How’s this?” I curled my hand into a fist and shook it lightly.
“Hey! Look, kids, it’s Feisty the Snowman. Where to first?”
I resisted the smile, but his silliness struck a spark that the car’s heat built into warmth. “Let’s go back to the school.”
We drove in silence. Curzon didn’t even need directions.
What is it about the inside of a car at night? He was watching the road and I was looking out the window, eyes burning for a glimpse of purple jacket. The car wrapped a cave of safety around us. I was too worried about Jenny to resist-the comfort or the intimacy.
We cruised the neighborhood, stopping anywhere I could think Jenny might have walked so I could get out and shout her name. I saw at least two other police cars slowly driving around, which pleased me at first but gradually sent the anxiety creeping up, up, up. A lot of people were looking.
Where the hell had she gone?
“So. Only you and your sister in the family?” Curzon’s tone was an injection of calm.
“Just the two of us.”
“What neighborhood you from?”
Neighborhood, parish, high school-I gave him all the standard Chicago-locator coordinates, answered every question and more. I don’t usually talk so much. Must have been the car.
“Can we follow the bus route?” I asked. “Maybe she tried to walk home that way.”
“Good idea,” he said. “I’ll go back to the school and we’ll start from there.”
I did a couple head rolls and shoulder drops. With every zap of the police radio, I twitched. Curzon was right of course; we needed to be systematic. Systematic was taking too damn long.
“Tell me about this story you’re working on. Why’d you ask me about Samaritan law?”
It was hard shifting my brain to thinking about work, shifting tectonic plates hard. I wasn’t sure whether to call the result a headache or a headquake.
“I think somebody may have seen Jost at the tree. Setting up. Doing the deed. The whole thing.”
“He did it by the side of the road,” Curzon pointed out matter-of-factly. He flicked a glance my way. “You feeling all right?”
“Great,” I said, with one eye closed. “Don’t you think that’s weird?”
“What, the tree? No. He picked a tree on his daddy’s front lawn.”
“Okay, classic protest suicide-look what you made me do. But the more I’ve talked to people, the weirder that part seems. Amish people don’t do protest, much less suicide. And wouldn’t he have gotten the same effect if he did it in his apartment and wrote a note? So why the tree? What was he thinking?”
Curzon slowed to a stop at a yellow light. “You’re asking, what did he get by doing it in that tree?”
“Exactly.”
Curzon’s cell phone rang. He answered, “Sheriff.”
Time stopped. The street light was red.
Still red.
My night vision dissolved. All the grays of the shadows around us went black. In the distance, car headlights flashed and turned away.
Red.
“Yeah, got it. Tell them five minutes.” He snapped the phone shut with a flick, dropped it into the space beside the gear box. “They found her.”
“She’s okay, right?” Don’t bury the lead, you sadist.
The answer was hard to hear over the sudden blare of his siren.
“She’s alive.”
8:47:59 p.m.
I doubt it took us three whole minutes to get to her. Curzon drove like a bat out of hell. I was numb enough to admire the bright streak of lights we passed and the sensation of gentle compression into the Audi’s butt-warming leather seat.
As soon as he turned onto Orchard Road, I knew where we were going. Past the flashing yellow, where the edge of a golf course became a cemetery, lay the Prairie Path-an old railroad route that had been turned into a safe path for pedestrians, bikers, joggers. The Path crossed the busiest part of the road here. Cars against people.
I’d been to see the place myself several times this summer on my late-night jaunts. It was the spot where my sister died.
A squad car, wigwag lights flashing, and an ambulance were parked perpendicular to the road. Curzon pulled in next to the police cruiser. I had my door open before he’d even geared all the way down.
The night air near this narrow patch of woods had cooled faster; my breath fogged out ahead of me. I pushed between the cars, hands in my jacket pockets, cold and nervy to the core.
Trees and ancient bushes blocked most of the light around us from the houses. I could hardly see where I was walking. Dry leaves were heaped ankle high in the ditch. The crunch of my feet hustling toward the clump of emergency people was inappropriately silly.
“Jenny? Where is she? What happened?”
The cop got in my face. The paramedics were so busy they didn’t even look up.
“She’s alive.” He came toward me hands wide. “She’s unconscious. They need to know if she has a drug problem.”
“A what?” Someone moved, I could barely see her legs. “She’s eight years old!”
“Easy.” The cop body-blocked me.
I would have shoved him aside if Curzon hadn’t come up behind me and put a solid hand on my shoulder, calming, restraining. I’m too big for that move to work most of the time. It caught me off guard.
“I’m on it,” Curzon assured the guy. “Let her through.”
I shoved past the junior cop, took two steps and suddenly, I could see everything. The paramedic reaching for a hypodermic. Jenny’s face-so white it was hard to believe she was alive. Her closed eyes smudged with dirt or something darker. Leaves blanketing the edges of her body. She looked so tiny, something the wind could carry off, like the rest of autumn’s refuse.
“Oh Lord,” slipped out.
Curzon was talking and the paramedic was saying something, and all I could hear was my one, single thought: no.
She was dead. My sister was dead.
I see. I can see it now.
Memories began to flip on the screen in my head and I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes.
Stop. Stop it. My sister’s in her crib, holding on to the rail, screaming. My parents may, or may not hear her. The TV is on and they are screaming over the sound of music and gunshots and other happy voices. I’m not allowed to get my sister out of her bed. I watch her face, wetter and redder by the moment. She isn’t looking at the door, she is looking at me.
My stomach curdles. I walk the long hall, one foot at a time…um, baby’s crying?
Get back in your bed!
The pain is fast and sharp, but gone quick as a doctor’s needle. One fight ends. My father slams a door on his way out. My mother goes to the baby. I lie on the rug listening to commercials until my nausea is gone. I’m so calm, I’m invisible. I float back to my bed and…
My father laid out, dead this time, in his box. My mother is somewhere, speaking to strangers. My sister stands beside me. She is crying. This time her head is down. There is a line of white scalp where her hair parts. It is exactly the same color as the streaks her tears make on the front of her uniform blouse.
She fumbles for my hand-half my height, almost half my age-and in her face, I see all the sorrow I should feel but I am empty. Blank. I take her hand and…
They all look at me, the faces of my work. Brown skin, black skin. Hungry eyes. Haunted. They come from everywhere.
Listen to me!
I pound the heels of my hands against my eyes. Stop. Stop. Stop.
Worst of all, my family’s small pains were nothing-nothing!-in comparison to some of what I’d seen-the worst on earth. All my common pains, all Jenny’s. Not worth a photo or a sound bite’s worth of time.
Now, here in front of me, my sister’s eyes in my niece’s face. And I still felt the pain, exactly the same. Despite all I’d seen.
“Oh God,” I croaked. My stomach folded in on itself with pain.
“Maddy!” Curzon shouted through the interference. He was behind me, holding me back, or up, one arm across my chest and a hand gripping my shoulder. “She’s alive. Don’t bail. Get your ass in that ambulance.”
I did.
9:52:34 p.m.
Doctors jabbered at me in the emergency room. Their voices were hard to hold on to. The sounds of buzzers and elevator bells and metal carts kept jumping to the foreground, as if my internal audio B-track had a mind of its own. I kept nodding, hoping they’d just get the hell away from me or shut up for a minute. The last three hours had been hell.
“We’re going to transfer her to peds ICU, Ms. O’Hara. Her oxygen levels are still pretty low. The seizures will probably pass but she has to stay under observation.”
“I understand.”
“She’s all right for now. Everything seems to be stabilizing. The paramedics found the blister pack. It was some kind of trial pack of anti-anxiety medicine. Nasty stuff for a kid. Any idea where she got it?”
“No.”
“Do you take any medications?”
“I had something prescribed for my knee on Sunday. I had stitches, in the emergency room. Could she have-?”
The doctor rejected that idea. He showed me the foil packet. “This is a sample. Doctors give them out to test a medication, to see if it’s effective for a specific patient. The drug companies often provide them free of charge. This particular drug is the rage on the club scene right now. Mixed with alcohol it creates a very uninhibited evening.”
“Where did she get something like that?” I recognized the blister packaging. Tonya had something similar for her back medicine. And I’d seen some in the emergency bucket Jenny had pulled out of the garage. “A friend of mine had been visiting this weekend. She has back problems. I know Jenny saw her take something, heard us talking about painkillers.”
“…the pleasant land of counter pane.”
A grinding nausea returned to my stomach. All those questions about pain. Tonya was going to freak.
“Jenny didn’t take painkillers,” he said. “She took something a lot harder to find.”
“My sister is-was-a nurse. Here, actually. She’s got a huge bucket of medicine and stuff.” I rubbed my head. I should have taken the bucket away from Jenny. Put it somewhere safe. It never even occurred to me. “I’ll have to check. That might be where Jenny found them. How many did she take?”
“Not many. More than a couple and her liver-” He frowned, shook his head. He was a young guy with the ashy complexion of doctors indentured to the emergency room. Pale blue eyes behind glasses, he didn’t make eye contact easily; he kept looking toward the window. “She’s going to need more than my kind of doctoring when she comes around. You do understand that?”
“Her mother died a couple months ago.” There was too much to explain. It would take too long for both of us. His impatience to move along to the next patient, next crisis was like the buzz of a live current between us.
“I’ll have to report this to a social worker. She’ll be able to get you a referral.”
“I understand.” Tiredness swamped me all of a sudden. “I need to stay here. Jenny gets nightmares. I want to stay with her.”
“Of course. We’re moving her up to a room. You can stay as long as you want.” He made the effort to meet my eyes and I realized that some of the awkwardness was meant as empathy. He nodded at Curzon and left us alone. Finally.
Curzon announced he was headed down to the cafeteria and promised to return with some warm caffeine-alive, fully sugared for both of us.
Jenny was moved upstairs to a small double room with two empty beds. The last time I spent any time in a hospital, there were crucifixes over every bed. My mother was comforted by the statued suffering hanging on the wall. Jenny’s bed was surrounded by cables, electronics, tubes and sound effects. A television was mounted high on the opposite wall. I left it off, but I had to fight a constant urge to stare at the distorted gray reflection it created.
Nurses clucked in and out, double checking all Jenny’s monitors. They told me she was fine, better, not to worry.
I sat down on the second bed and watched the girl sleep, wondering how she could look so much the same after all that had happened in the last few hours.
Curzon returned with coffee, as well as cups of salty chicken soup and oyster crackers. I made room for him beside me on the bed and when he sat it was a comfort, not an intrusion.
“She’s gonna be all right,” I said, as if I’d always believed.
“That’s good.” He sipped his soup.
“Yeah.” I smiled. “Thanks. For…everything.”
We were having a moment. It’s been a long time since I made a friend. My instincts aren’t always good in that department. I wasn’t quite sure what should happen next.
Jenny’s breathing changed and it caught my attention. Her eyes shifted back and forth beneath the lids, her head twitching with tiny vibrations. Unconscious, she was on the lookout for trouble. The words Grace Ott had spoken to me earlier would not stop looping through my head.
“Do you think Jenny expects bad things to happen to her?” I asked. “Do you think she believes good things won’t ever come again?”
“Kids learn from what they see around them,” Curzon answered. “How about you? Do you expect the worst? Or something better?”
A ripple of something like panic hit me low and deep, but I pushed it off. Who was I to judge Old Man Jost? I had watched while bad things happened my whole career. My whole life.
I picked up our empty cups, stood and tossed them into the trash. He stood too, as if those kind of manners were his habit, and faced me.
“I believe there’s something better,” he said. And then he reached across the space between us. All I could see was that fine warm hand coming toward me…almost…barely, his fingertips touched my cheek.
Perhaps, I closed my eyes.
Maybe I turned my head into his hand.
It’s possible I wanted to feel him against my cheek, my lips. Touching me.
But I never asked for what I saw when my eyes opened.
Longing.
“Jack?” I whispered. “Oh come on now-”
And he did. He scooped me into the wall of his body, arms and thighs and chest making contact, following my clumsy retreat, pressing until I was against the window, nowhere else to go, the metal sill behind my thighs, cold glass at my back. His body was solid and more real than anything I’d felt in months, years, forever.
He pushed his fingers through my hair and tilted my head, my face, my lips up to him.
“You,” he whispered, and then took away those last few molecules of separation.
Mouth soft, everything else hard. What a contrast. Kissing…how long since I’d been kissed? Soft, so softly. Please? Pleasing. Hard as in inevitable. Deal with me. Now.
Just like that, I’m gone.
I don’t even know what happened next. Honestly. I couldn’t tell you. My brain reverted to something lower than lizard-level function. I was all the way back to spineless protoplasm.
Next thing I know, Curzon’s pushing himself back, eyes locked on me. The look on his face-oh! I’m not Maddy. I’m like food.
I’m survival.
I’m it.
Nobody’s ever looked at me like that. Every small hair on my skin lifted. I stood there like an idiot, mouth gaping, lips burning.
Which is right about when I realized Curzon’s cell was ringing, and here comes a nurse shoving her way through the door. I shuffled sideways, the sheriff and I still staring, not even blinking.
“Somebody’s phone is ringing,” the nurse said, glancing back and forth between us. “They will kill you dead if they catch you with that thing turned on anywhere near the telemetry machines. Sign outside says all phones off.”
“Turning it off. Right now.” Curzon pulled out his phone. Breaking the law every now and then was a law-enforcement perk, after all. “Sheriff here.”
The nurse bustled around the room, checking Jenny’s gadgets for her temperature and pulse, while I focused on getting my own vital signs back into the normal range.
“Christ, you gotta be kidding me. Who responded?” Curzon asked. He continued staring at me while listening. “On the way.” He snapped the phone shut. “I’ve got to go.”
“Okay,” I mumbled like a half-wit. “Thanks-”
For everything? The words stuck in my throat, blocking some key artery and causing my face to flush with heat. Junior high social gaff #101.
Curzon raised his hand once again and pointed at me.
You.
He turned and walked out.
I stood there. The nurse did some fiddling with Jenny’s IV. She told me they were pushing fluids to help her body flush the toxic stuff faster. I lay down on the second bed and watched it bubble and drip, counting the seconds, measuring out increments of guilt and confusion.
One one-thousand,
Two one-thousand,
Three one-thousand,
drip.
One-not again,
Two-not today,
Three-not now,
drip.
Jenny slept on. When the ten o’clock news started, I went looking for a can of pop and called Tonya. She was out, so I left a message with the bare bones of what had happened. I knew she’d probably come flying out to the hospital as soon as she heard it, but there was no holding back on this kind of info.
I went back to the room and lay down on the second bed. When pressure ratchets my world down to an impossibly narrow range of positives, my body hums with something that’s a cross between dreaming and a downhill bike ride. I’m hollow inside. My chest echoes with each heartbeat. My eyes burn the world to a soft-focus haze. As a kid it felt like going to heaven, the empty quiet gave me such relief. It still gives me relief, although it never lasts.
My head has been trained to keep busy. All my work is broken into increasingly smaller increments: quarterly, monthly, weekly. Critical. Six minutes.:30 seconds. Out.
One one-thousand,
Two one-thousand,
Three one-thousand,
drip.
Lists of things undone began to crowd my mind. I’d have to cobble together the final piece for the satellite feed tomorrow, tomorrow night latest. Network does not stop for me. Maybe Ainsley could bring the equipment to me so I wouldn’t have to leave Jenny.
A small noise, soft as a lover’s altered breath, came from the bed beside me. Jenny twitched. Her chin thrust up, then froze stiff and still. Without warning, her eyes snapped open. She looked straight up at the ceiling.
One step put me within reach. I touched her wrist with my fingertips.
“I was pretty worried about you.” My voice sounded like I smoked a pack-a-day.
Jenny blinked. I had no idea how blank-faced a child could look. I rubbed up and down her forearm, warming her skin, keeping her with me. The blank face melted as I watched, first the mouth sagged, then the eyes welled with tears.
There was that look again, the one I’d seen flash across Curzon’s face-need.
I was it.
Me? The thought echoed between my awe and panic for two, three, a dozen heartbeats. Is this what a woman feels like when she becomes a mother? When someone hands her a baby and just like that, who she’s been and who she must become are measured in the eyes of her child?
I dropped the guardrail on the bed and dragged her as close to me as the rubber tubes and strapping would allow. Something started beeping. I ignored it.
“We’ll figure this out. We’ll figure something out. You hear me?”
Her head bumped against my shoulder. I pulled back so I could see her face. Her eyes had rolled back and the whites were all that was visible. Her body shook from inside. It lasted just long enough for me to register what was happening.
Before I could panic, the nurse was standing there. “She’s had another seizure. It’s not unusual.” After checking the monitors, she helped me straighten Jenny in the bed and smooth her covers. On the way out, she added, “Why don’t you try to rest, too?”
“This is me-resting.”
As soon as the nurse was out the door, I crawled into bed with Jenny on her tubeless side. She was so slight, it was easy enough to shove her over and make a little room. I put one arm around the top of her head and propped the extra pillow behind me. Our bodies touched all down the side.
I couldn’t create the white calm of resting. It was too quiet. When I was a kid I used to pray at times like these, repeating words of comfort over and over. Without thinking, the lonely perjury of a please God slipped out. Once upon a time, I was a good Catholic girl. Until I grew up and saw what havoc it wrecked on the people around me. Total abstinence has been my answer. No more guardian angels. No more saints. No mass. No confession. No absolution. And no prayer. Still sometimes, I crave it like a junkie-just a taste of heaven, so to speak.
Listening to Rachel the other day had whetted my appetite for some reason. I thought of the pictures I’d taken of the Amish, their faces turning away even as they saw my camera. I would never use them without consent. I snapped those pictures for myself, to keep, to look at later. Sometimes pictures help me figure things out.
I got my first camera when I was eleven. Took pictures of everything-my sister’s baby toys, the tree stump in our yard, the rust on our Pinto wagon, my mom in front of the sewing machine, my dad in his work clothes, my dad on the floor. I kept them all. When things got worse, I took more. I kept those, too.
This is what I know about pictures-they can be like water, sixty percent of you, if they get inside your head. With all the things I’d seen in my career, my contents label must read at least that much in human toxins.
What had Jenny seen that had led her here?
Was it something in me?
“Want to watch a little TV?” I whispered.
The mumbling of late-night syndication emptied my head at last. Politics and laugh tracks and Old Navy, still promoting their sale. Commercial breaks-the modern consumer’s mindlessly repeated prayers.
This is what I know about words-they can be like air, everything and nothing. Hot enough to choke. Cold enough to bite. Invisible but absolutely necessary.
Why couldn’t I find the words Jenny needed?
Did I even have them in me anymore?
I drifted off, comforted by a little girl’s even breathing and the modulated sound of happy, grown-up voices coming from the television.
I’m not sure how much later the faint trill of my phone had me up and scrambling. I grabbed for my messenger bag, trying to answer it quick, before the nurses caught me with my cell phone still turned on.
“O’Hara?” Gatt’s gravelly voice was even rougher than usual. “Did you send Ainsley off on a shoot alone?”
“What?” It took me a minute to organize my head. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”
“I’m not paying you to send the kid out by himself, O’Hara,” he said, in a voice rising in volume with every sentence. “I’m paying you to work with him.”
“I am working with him. He’s on a shoot for me.”
“And you are,” Gatt finished the question himself, “-in bed?”
I was sitting on the edge of Jenny’s hospital bed actually. No way was I ready to tell that to him. Personal problems are not welcome in my workplace. “Get to the point, Gatt. What are you asking me?”
“I just got a call from my sister. She wants to know why Ainsley is out there on his own, when he’s only done two shoots in his frigging life. So my point is this-get your ass out of bed and supervise him, or you can assume I won’t be requiring your services any longer. Got it?”
“Got it,” I said. He hung up. I hit Phone-Off.
The door swooshed and Tonya entered, her footsteps soundless. Her green neon track suit glowing loudly. “Hey baby,” she said. “How’s it going?”
“She’s asleep. They said she’ll probably sleep through the night.”
“Tell me everything. What happened?”
The recap didn’t take long. I remained sitting on the edge of the bed, the phone in one hand. Tonya stood towering over me, eyes shifting between Jenny’s monitor equipment and her face. As I filled her in, her frown deepened, then she added the slow head shake and the crossed arms, and finally, the mmmghh of disapproval.
“And to top it off, Gatt just called,” I said.
“The new boss?”
“Right. He told me not to come in tomorrow if I don’t go out and hold Ainsley’s hand for a simple dawn pick-up shot. One lousy shot!”
“Shh.” Tonya pointed at Jenny.
“The man didn’t even ask me for the details.”
She must have followed my line of sight. “Does he know about Jenny?”
“No.”
“You should tell him.”
If anything, my feelings now were even more complicated. I could barely admit it to myself, much less aloud to my boss. I was ashamed.
“You need this job, Maddy.”
“I know it.”
With helpful enthusiasm, Tonya said, “Go. Check on Ainsley. I’ll stay here with Jenny.”
“No. Thanks. If Gatt decides to fire me-” I blanked. I’d never faced this kind of work dilemma before. I didn’t even have a vocabulary for this kind of scenario. “I guess I’ll figure something out. I want to stay. I want to be here when Jenny wakes up. She might need to see a friendly face, you know?”
“Sure, baby.” She didn’t smile but I heard warmth in her voice and the next thing I knew, she’d grabbed my head with her two hands and planted a big kiss on the top of my forehead. “You’re gonna do all right. You’ll do fine.”
Half a smile crooked my lips. “Took me long enough.”
“That’s true,” she admitted.
“The least you could do is argue a little.”
She took up residence in the sleeping chair and I curled up on the empty bed. And we waited.
When the phone rang the second time, it was with the brutally unfamiliar jangle of the hospital phone.
“What?” I answered in a hiss. It was still pitch dark around the curtained window and I had that nauseous disorientation that lack of sleep brings.
Across the room I could see Tonya staring. Jenny, thank goodness, didn’t budge.
“Maddy? You won’t believe it-”
“Ainsley, is that you? What the hell time is it?” My eyes were burning. My brain wouldn’t compute the numbers on my watch into anything meaningful.
“How’s Jenny?”
“She’s still asleep. They say she may sleep for hours. Where are you?”
“I’m at the Jost farm. I’m ready to go. I’ve got the camera all set and, you won’t believe this, there’s a car at the end of the driveway.”
“A car?”
“A silver SUV.” Ainsley made the words a sibilant tease. “And I saw someone get out and go around the backside of the house. What should I do? Should I go check it out?”
“No! Absolutely not. You keep recording and-” I considered and discarded a couple of options before I settled on, “Call the cops. Call Curzon.”
“What if this guy’s up to something? There are other people in there. Rachel. Her dad.”
“Call the police, Ainsley! You stay right where you are.”
“Good idea. You call Sheriff Curzon; he likes you. I’ll try to get a little closer, so I can make sure that nothing bad is happening. I’m turning off my phone now, so I can be quiet. I’ll call you back as soon as I know something.”
“Wait! No!”
Too late. He’d clicked off.
“What is it?” Tonya asked.
“Ainsley’s at the Jost farm,” I said. “He saw somebody drive up and creep around the back.”
“Who’d be driving up to an Amish house?”
“Somebody not Amish.” I started digging through my bag for my phone. “I’m calling the cops.” I tried the number I had for Curzon, got voice mail and left a message. I called emergency, made a report to the woman who answered. She seemed skeptical and definitely unconvinced of the urgency I was feeling.
“I’ll make a report to the sheriff,” she said blandly. “They’ll send a car to do a drive-by.”
“When?”
“I’m sure they will get to it as soon as possible,” she assured me.
“Crap,” I said the minute I hung up. I speed dialed Ainsley’s phone but got no answer.
“Well?” Tonya asked. She looked worried. Maybe I looked worried, too.
“I don’t like this.” I started to pace the small length of floor to the end of the bed and back. “The car he saw at the house, Ainsley said it was an SUV.”
“Same kind of car ran you off the road,” Tonya said.
“And followed us that night we went to Tom’s apartment.” Car references flipped through my head and another one clicked. “‘A shiny car.’ The little boy that saw Jenny walk off the playground today, he said she got into a ‘shiny car.’”
“Shiny meaning silver?” Tonya guessed exactly where I was going.
“Whoever he is, if he did this to Jenny, he’s dangerous. Ainsley’s in trouble. Maybe Rachel and Mr. Jost, too.” I looked at Jenny. I looked at Tonya. I felt petrified.
Jenny and Ainsley-they both needed me.
“What do I do?” I said.
“Jenny is safe here,” Tonya said. I understood her offer even before she added, “And I’m not going anywhere.”
“I don’t want Jenny to wake up without me.”
Tonya nodded. “Then hurry back.”
AUDIO (V.O.): “Tom Jost got lost somewhere between a land of black and white, good and evil, simple and worldly.”