7:36:09 a.m.
It took me forever to get out to the Jost farm. Tonya’s Escort was not made for high-speed maneuvers.
The smell of smoke was apparent miles away. The first red lick of dawn was beginning to give way to a weak gray sky that was part smoke and part nasty weather.
When it finally came into view, the house was a shock. That perfect image of country life was a wreck of blackened timber bones. Smoke rose in drifting towers, solid yet impermanent.
The front porch and most of the entrance facade were intact, like an old movie sound stage. Straight through to the back, there were timbers still smoldering. The smell was intense. There was no escaping it, no shift of air current made a bit of difference. It clung to the inside of my throat and nose, rough and bitter. Coughing didn’t help. Neither did spitting. There was a low hum in the air, part buzzing sub-woofer and part baby-cry. It took me a while to figure out what I was hearing. The cows wanted milking, crisis or not.
People were everywhere. The Amish neighbors seemed focused on the animals. They moved deliberately, going about work that was as foreign to me as my camera would be to them. The county volunteer fire department had sent a pumper truck. Fire service types, easy to identify in their bulky uniforms, were raking out smoking clumps and spraying down others. I momentarily wished I had a camera in my hand when I saw a tired, dirty fireman in fifty pounds of gear standing near Rachel’s chicken shed while a rooster on the gable crowed the arrival of dawn-exhausted modern man glaring at old-time alarm clock.
I grabbed the arm of the first firefighter who passed me. “Ainsley Prescott? Have you seen him? Young, blond guy-not Amish.”
“The one who went into the fire? They’ve got him over by the ambulance.”
“Into the fire?”
The flash of the ambulance’s warning light led me over the grass, my footsteps tumbling faster and faster.
I found Ainsley sitting on the ambulance tailgate, having his hands wrapped.
“They keep slipping off,” he told the paramedic. The long shock of blond hair he usually combed so neatly off his face drooped over his eyes. He reached up to flip it back.
“Stop using your hands,” the paramedic said.
“Yeah,” I interrupted. “Try using your head.”
“Maddy!” Relief was all over his face. “What are you doing here?”
Looking at his hands bandaged like The Mummy, turned all my fear into anger. With all the trouble he was in, he should not be glad to see me. I did not understand this kid.
“How’s Jenny?” he asked, his face full of concern.
It was hard to launch into lecture mode with Jenny as the lead. “Fine. She’s going to be fine. She hasn’t woken yet. It may be a while-later this morning.”
“Good. That’s great.”
“What the hell happened to your hands, College Boy?”
He looked down at his wrappings, looked up at me and smile-shrugged. He was about as filthy as a fellow can appear in khakis and a Brooks Brothers button-down. The smear of ash on his cheek looked like the makeup department had arranged it for maximum cute with minimum muss.
The paramedic helping with his bandages jumped in. “Not to worry. Only second degree. And this guy’s a hero. Went in there and dragged the old man out.” Mr. Paramedic clapped him on the shoulder.
“I’m no hero.” Ainsley shook his head.
“Old guy might not make it,” the paramedic said to me. “Smoke. Really hard on the heart at that age. Took him to the hospital a few minutes ago.”
“Great. That’s where I’m headed next. What about Rachel?”
“She wasn’t in the house,” Ainsley answered. “It’s weird, Maddy. Nobody seems to know where she is. But nobody seems worried either.”
“That is weird,” I whispered, suddenly very aware of all the ears nearby.
“No shit,” Ainsley repeated all-seriousness.
I flashed back to the day I was hired and Uncle Richie’s concern. If teaching the kid street-French was a problem, second-degree burns acquired during unsupervised location shoots were going to be a hanging offense.
I sat down next to him and rubbed my throbbing head. “What happened here? You didn’t mention a fire on the phone. How’d it start?”
“Not sure yet,” the medic answered. “Looks like the kerosene stove had something to do with it. Everybody’s saying it started in the kitchen.” He tied off the last bandage. “No operating any heavy machinery today, got it? In a few hours, those puppies are gonna smart a bit.” For my benefit, he added, “I’d have someone at the ER give him the once-over. They can give him something for pain as well.”
“I’ll make sure he checks back.”
“Not yet,” Ainsley complained. “There’s stuff to do here.”
“Get there before nine. The wait won’t be as long,” the medic offered, before heading off to pack his gear. One guy’s emergency was another guy’s average day. I could relate.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Well?” I asked.
Ainsley held up the swaddled palm of his right hand. “I used this one to open the door.” He pantomimed reaching for a doorknob, metal no doubt, and snatching back a burned hand. “This one,” he blocked with the back of his left hand, “kept something from falling on Jost.”
“As you were dragging him out of the house?” I said, marveling at my own calm.
“But don’t worry, I remembered to leave the camera rolling. I’ve looked at some of it, Maddy, and it’s not bad. I’ve got this great idea for a dissolve. Fire into dawn? Sort of re-create a time-lapse look?” He was so excited he stood up and waved his thickly padded hands in the air.
“Go on.”
“As soon as we hung up, I saw weird lights moving around inside the house. Not the same kind of lights though. Upstairs, the light was a muted yellow-red. Downstairs it was a blue-white light.” His eyebrows emphasized the point. “Really hot.”
“Halogen?”
“Definitely. Mondo flashlight, I’d bet. Remember, the kind Mrs. Ott said they used for courting?”
“Somebody was coming for Rachel?”
I could tell he was thinking the same thing, but he shrugged. “The blue light went out. And then I saw a yellow glow downstairs. It was a fire, Maddy, I could tell by the color and the smell the minute the wind turned. So I called 9-1-1 and ran across the yard, climbed the fence, got into the house as fast as I could.”
I started shaking my head. I felt sick again-the way I had when I found Jenny in the ditch.
“As I was going in the front door, I heard a car pull out. Gravel. I know I did.”
“Did you tell the police?”
“Yeah. They acted like I was the suspect. What was I doing there? Did I have permission? All these other questions.”
“They think somebody set the fire on purpose?”
“Yeah. But why?” His voice cracked. “Why would anyone want to hurt these people? These are good people.”
My sister. Jenny. Saint Ainsley the Hero. Goodness was no shield.
“Ainsley, Ainsley, Ainsley,” I interrupted that line of thought. “What’s the rule? What is the rule?”
“Rule?” He blinked, welcoming the chance to refocus his emotions before the tears dropped. “You mean about the camera? I left it on the tripod, running the whole time. Everything’s wide, but I checked it, Maddy. We’ve got some amazing stuff. Really.”
“Not that rule.”
“Huh?”
“The one that says you report the news.” I grabbed his closest hand and held it up between us. “You don’t become the news.”
He looked confused. “What do you mean? There were people in there. They could have died.”
“You could have died. You were there to do a job. Your uncle was counting on you. I was counting on you. By all means call for backup. Call fire. Call police. Call your mom-but I can’t have you rushing into burning buildings every time I send you out. My nerves can’t take it.”
“Your nerves? That old guy may still die.” He might look like spun sugar, but it was all grit now. “What about him?”
“The rule is you stay on your side of the camera, and they stay on the other. If you can’t handle that simple instruction, I can’t work with you.” My voice got loud enough to make some crows in the trees take flight. Nice Amish country people probably never shouted loud enough to scare birds.
“That how you handle it?” Ainsley leaned into my face.
“We aren’t talking about me, College Boy.”
“Right. Television is about entertainment, Ms. O’Hara. Even I know that.” His voice stiffened. He sounded older. “Nobody dies for entertainment.”
A mental flip chart of images appeared, one I was glad he couldn’t see. “People die for it all the time, kid,” I admitted. The smoky air surrounding us felt like a rasp down my throat. “You have to be careful.”
“Careful?” He took two big steps backward. “Careful? Right. Now explain to me how I live with myself the next day?”
“If you’re alive the next day, I’m good with that.” My vision was blurring and my nose was stinging. I blinked about a hundred times to keep the view cleared.
Ainsley shook his head in disgust and backed even farther away.
“I’ll get you back to the hospital as soon as the gear’s packed,” I told him.
“Don’t bother. I’d rather go with the ambulance.” He waved a club-like hand in dismissal, turned his back and stomped off.
Damn, I hate it when other people have a point. My phone rang and it gave me an excuse to put off chasing him down and apologizing.
“Miss O’Hara?” The voice was familiar-older, female.
The first person I thought of was the nurse who’d been helping Jenny and my heart stopped for a second. “Yes?”
“This is Grace Ott. We met the other day at my house. You recall?”
I pressed my shoulders back down, out of the hunch-of-dread. “Sure. What’d you need, Mrs. Ott?”
“Oh, nothing. No, I’m fine. I’m sorry to call so early but you seemed like the type that wouldn’t lay about come morning.”
“You didn’t wake me.”
“Good. I thought you should know, Rachel Jost is here with me.”
“With you? Where?” I blurted out the next thought as the light came on, “She’s left the community.”
“Yes. I think so. She’s going to stay with me a while anyway.”
“Mrs. Ott?” I closed my eyes, ostrich-style. “I have some bad news. There’s been a fire.”
“Yah. We know,” Grace replied, her accent coming through heavily. In a hushed voice, as if she were talking to herself, came the whispered words, “Patience. Patience.”
How long since I had stood on the porch talking to Jost? “When did she come to you, Mrs. Ott?”
“Yesterday. She and her father had a bit of a to-do.” She stopped all of a sudden. “Rachel wants to talk with you. I can’t convince her to wait. The only way I could get her to rest at all, was by promising you would come soon. Is that possible?”
“Um, that could be tricky. Maybe tomorrow?”
“I was hoping we might come and meet you.”
“I’m actually out at the Jost farm right now.” I did a full three-sixty, scanning the view-singed barn, ruined house, and resisted the urge to add the obvious, what’s left of it.
“Goodness.” Grace laughed. “I will never get used to these phones.”
It seemed an odd thing to say, until I caught sight of a bundled gnome in the distance. She was near the road that led to the driveway, wearing one of those plastic rain hats old ladies always seem to have in their purses.
“Is that you?” I asked. My brain took a second to adjust. I had seen her image frozen on screen for hours yesterday. Here in this place, the real person was disconcertingly out of context.
“We’re parked across the road.” She pointed as she spoke. “I had to get out of the car to make this silly thing work. Now, what good is that?”
“Here I come.” I snapped my phone shut and walked toward the apparition of Grace at the end of the road.
She didn’t wait. At a surprisingly fast clip, she marched down the drive past the line of horse-powered vehicles parked along the country road, head down as she passed the buggies.
About a half mile up the road, an antique Ford Galaxie was parked on the shoulder. It was tan, of course, and more of a tank than a car-mostly hood and trunk, it must of packed enough steel to keep the Gary mills in business for a week. Grace got in on the driver’s side. Someone was sitting on the passenger side.
I knocked on the window.
Rachel.
She was sitting in the car. That’s why Ainsley had noticed no one was worried. Someone had seen her sitting in Grace’s car. They must have guessed that Rachel was leaving the community.
She popped the door latch and slid to the middle of the bench seat.
I climbed in beside her.
Grace didn’t speak. Rachel didn’t speak. We all sat shoulder to shoulder and stared straight out the front window.
Parochial school manners prompted my words. “Sorry for your trouble, Rachel.”
“I have something for you.”
Grace passed her the phone. Rachel passed it to me.
“A cell phone?”
“And this, too.” Rachel had wrapped herself in a giant triangle of black shawl. It covered her bonnet, her shoulders and the bulk of her plum-colored dress. She opened the shawl to reveal a pair of binoculars lying in her lap.
“Is this the phone I saw you holding that day in the bushes?”
She nodded.
“Where did you get these,” I asked gently, “the phone and the binoculars?”
“My father had them hidden in the barn. I found them both the day Thomas died.” She spoke without turning her head toward me. Her profile wore the stiff mask that covers heart-core panic.
“Do you know why he hid them?”
For a moment, her lip trembled. She reached out and took hold of Grace’s hand. “I was afraid to ask. The morning Thomas died, there was a call to the dairy. It was for my father. After that, he was gone a while. I found him in the barn, grenklich-not so good looking. So I asked, what’s the matter? He shouted me away, off to the house. ‘Back to your chores,’ he yells.
“I was pretty unhappy about that, the way he talked to me. I’m not a child anymore,” she insisted earnestly, her eyes glassy. “I went back to the house and then we all heard that big fuss with the sirens and car engines. That’s when they told us stay in the kitchen because there was Englischers everywhere with a fire truck, too.” She sniffed and raised the back of her hand against the end of her nose.
Grace clucked and dug her pocketbook from under the seat. She unsnapped the latch and passed Rachel a cloth handkerchief.
Rachel nodded her thanks. “I wasn’t so happy there were hard words between my father and me, but I wanted to know what was all that business with the fire truck. I thought maybe I would see Thomas.” She wasn’t crying yet, but her voice had gone high and light enough to break glass.
“I knew Father wasn’t in that barn anymore. He’d gone to help with cleaning the milking equipment. I went up to the loft window. From up there, I could see the lights sparkling, the fire truck, all those people. My foot kicked that,” she nodded at the binoculars, “and I found the phone buried next to it under some hay.
“I knew it was Thomas’ phone. He let me use it once. I couldn’t think how it got into the barn. I took the phone and went to call his fire station so I could leave the message I had this phone. I thought he must be working with the others over in the field. Maybe that’s what had made Father so angry.”
“That’s when I found you under the bush.”
She nodded in agreement. “I was afraid someone might find me using it if I stayed in the barn.”
Grace squeezed her hand. All three of us did some more staring out the windshield. The hood of the Galaxie stretched almost to the horizon from where I was sitting.
“How do you suppose your dad ended up with Tom’s phone?” I asked.
“Father must have seen Thomas. That’s all I can think.”
“Seen him?”
“Yah. Maybe in town? Friday is farmer’s market.”
“Maybe.” I didn’t have the heart to point out she didn’t believe it herself. “Has the phone been on the whole time?” There was enough power to read the LCD.
“No. We only turned it on to call you.”
I took a deep breath and scanned the menu for the calling record. My cell number was first, with the date and time of Grace’s call noted in the corners of the tiny screen. I hit the menu button to see previous calls, going back once, twice, and then some.
“Oh man.” I started to shake with the full-body-willies.
Seven calls were stored in the phone’s memory. On a guess, I’d say they were all placed within minutes of Tom Jost’s death. I searched my pockets for a pen and scrap of paper from Jenny’s hospital admittance. I copied all the numbers down, so I wouldn’t lose anything to the phone’s waning charge. The first and last numbers were the same. Maybe it had been busy?
One of the numbers, I didn’t need to write down. It was the number for WWST.
Rachel watched me making the list. She pointed to the number that had been called second. “That’s the number for our phone at the dairy.”
“Do you know any of the others?”
She shook her head.
I put Tom’s phone back in Rachel’s lap and took out my own.
“This’ll only take a minute.” I called each number and made a note of who answered.
The Clarion.
Police non-emergency.
Firehouse, station six.
And one number identified as no longer in service.
Television, news, police, his partners in fire-this wasn’t a call for help. This was a staged media event.
Tom himself placed the calls that brought everyone to the scene. But how had the phone gotten into his father’s hands? I mumbled to myself for a while. Yucky thoughts. It was hard to tell if Grace and Rachel were concerned or disgusted. I waited to be asked something, anything.
Nothing.
Coming up with questions is never my problem. “Rachel, why give these things to me?”
She bowed her head. “I saw the box you brought my father that day. You knew already.”
“Knew what?”
“My father had those binoculars in the barn. I think he saw Thomas die.” She was crying now, jagged glassy tears. “And he sent me off to do my chores.”
She surprised me. Naive doesn’t mean stupid, but I didn’t expect her to be able to visualize the ugliness of the situation.
“I didn’t know. I only guessed,” I whispered. “Neither of us knows what happened-not really. How your dad got the phone. Or how he felt inside.”
Grace clutched Rachel’s hand in a grip that made the knobby knuckles of her old hands bulge. “Leave God’s business in God’s hands,” she chided.
Rachel’s face showed the struggle to calm herself. “You asked me about the binoculars before, when the camera was there. I didn’t speak the whole truth. I don’t want to hide from things I know. If I will begin a new life now, I will begin right.”
Every wrinkle on Grace’s face was tight with concern.
“I’ll do what I can. To make it right.” I wanted to offer Rachel some sign of comfort but I was afraid to touch her bare hand. She seemed so new to the world I occupied, I feared the contact of my bare hand on hers might pass some unseen ruin, some Englischer pox, invisible and deadly to those historically unprotected. Instead, I leaned into her shoulder. Just for a moment.
Then I got out of the car.
Grace called out, “Wait.” She maneuvered herself out of the vehicle more slowly, no surprise. That old steel car door had to weigh more than she did.
I walked around to the trunk end and propped my butt against a back fin. Grace came around the back fender, her chin tilted high to look at me through glasses speckled with rain drops. “Rachel told me about that business with the television camera. I certainly hope we can trust you to use your better judgment regarding that recording. It wouldn’t be too good for this girl to have her private things on the TV right now.”
My “better judgment”? That would give Ainsley a laugh.
I heard the splat and ping before I felt anything. I looked up. It was raining again. I started to laugh, one of those private, unhinged sounds that cause most folks to back away. With my face raised to the drizzle, I managed the words, “I understand.”
Her thank you was crisp and perhaps, a little dubious.
“I don’t understand, Grace. What was Tom Jost trying to do? This wasn’t your typical depressive slide into suicide. He planned something. He was making a point.” My lack-of-sleep headache was becoming a full-frontal pain lobotomy. “Wasn’t he?”
“Maybe the bad things that happen in this world aren’t something we can understand. Maybe all we can do is keep walking.”
“Walking away doesn’t help. Look at the mess they got into when Tom walked away. Rachel, her dad, Tom-they had this whole community looking out for them. People keeping them in line, keeping them connected.”
Grace made a soft exhalation, the sound of someone exhausted by irony. “And so do we, Miss O’Hara. So do we. Look at all the trouble we still get into. But each time we fail, we always have the chance to start again.” Her crumpled, arthritic hand took hold of my sleeve, slid down to my fingers and gripped me there. She gave my hand a shake. “Use my old face all you want, but be careful of Rachel, you hear me?”
I did my best to nod.
I hiked back toward the grassy space where the camera sat resting on a tripod. It didn’t take long to break down the equipment for transport. A couple of fire-guys stomped into range, one of them clanking along in fifty pounds of cutting-edge fire apparatus, the other wearing only knee-high rubber boots, a heavy canvas coat and six inches of beard. Mutual aid requested and provided. I hefted the camera into place and got the shot of them walking past the smoldering ruins of the house.
It was all I could take. I shut the camera down and packed it in.
Another time, another place, I’d be rolling gobs of tape. I’d be smooth-talking the guy in charge for personal interviews. This time, the ashes of another man’s life were sticking in my throat, and all I could think of was where I’d rather be.
The hospital. Jenny.
My phone rang. Never fails. The mundane knows no rest.
“What?” I snapped the last of the camera box buckles closed.
“Don’t give me that ‘what?’ bullshit,” Richard Gatt roared right through the terrible cell signal. “Where the hell are you and why is my nephew on his way to the hospital with second-degree burns?”
At last, someone who spoke my language. “Because he thinks he’s Dudley Frickin’ Do-Right and doesn’t follow directions.”
“You’re the one who sent him there. Why weren’t you on the frickin’ scene? This is totally unacceptable…” Gatt raved on for a while.
He was right. My being there would have made a difference. My being there would have made a difference to Jenny, too. I imagined Tom Jost making those calls, calling for witnesses, right before he jumped-and I had to sit down.
The grass was wet and cool under my pants. It felt so good, I laid down. The inside of my skull pounded at the shift of altitude, then eased with the chill. The air smelled a little better down here, too. Less smoky.
Cows made noises nearby. I concentrated on the cows.
As soon as Gatt took a breath, I told him, “I’ll have a story on your desk tomorrow morning. Consider it my resignation.”
“Shut the hell up, O’Hara, I’m not finished talking. And you aren’t going anywhere until my story is one hundred percent in the can, if you ever want to work again in this business…”
Blah, blah, blah. Heard all of this before. Nice cosmic irony, though. “‘Isolation is a powerful tool for behavior modification,’” I quoted.
“Don’t try to change the subject,” Gatt yelled right back. “What the shit am I supposed to tell my sister?”
“Tell her-her son’s a hero. Tell her I’m sorry. Tell her I quit.”
11:18:44 a.m.
I could hear the television through the door when I finally made it back to Jenny’s room at the hospital. Relief and regret hit me together. Jenny had woken and I’d missed it.
I should be so lucky.
“Where have you been?” Tonya sat propped up on the second bed, reading People magazine.
I swear her lime-green sweats were glowing. They hurt my eyes.
With relief, I saw Jenny was still flat out, shut-eyed, unconscious in the bed.
The television, mounted high in the corner of the room, was tuned to reruns of Little House on the Prairie.
I laughed. “Are you watching PAX channel?”
“Shut up, you. Don’t even start with me.” Tonya snapped her words like a nun’s ruler crack. “You’ve been gone for hours. Where’ve you been?”
“There was a fire at the farm. Everything took longer than I expected.” I considered elaborating but the details were not likely to help my case.
“A fire?”
“The Jost house burned to the ground. Ainsley went in and pulled the old man out. The doofus managed to burn his hands pretty badly in the process.”
“Oh Lord.”
“And then, Gatt called while I was out there.” I plopped down on the foot of the bed. “Then, I quit.”
“You what?” Tonya said. “I thought the point in sending you out there was to keep you from losing the job?”
I’d had three hours of sleep. I stunk of smoke. My favorite black pants were covered in mud, my shoes in cow shit. My motorcycle was still sitting in Curzon’s parking lot-in the rain. And both my young charges were currently receiving emergency medical attention. I think it’s fair to say my judgment was not operating at peak performance.
On the television, Laura and Pa casually led a cow up a grassy hill. With all the things on my mind, what came out of my mouth was, “When I was a kid, I loved this show.”
“What is the matter with you!” Tonya flapped an all-inclusive hand. “How could you let this happen?”
“Let what happen?”
“That poor baby-”
“Which one?”
“That is the most lame-ass-”
“They weren’t my drugs,” I pointed out.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“They were anti-anxiety meds. And they were in a free sample pack.”
“Are you serious? Where did she get something like that?”
“I don’t know! You had a sample pack of meds in your gym bag. The stuff for your back, remember? Where did you get those?”
“From my doctor. That’s the only place you can get them.” Her voice dropped. “Oh Lord, did Jenny think she was taking something for pain?”
“That would be my bet.”
Tonya was paralyzed by the thought of contributing to Jenny’s condition. Her voice was a monotone. “I’d never forgive myself-”
“It’s not-” your fault, I started to say.
“Of course it is! Yours and mine-this child has no one else.”
“That I am fully aware of,” I said. Loudly.
We both turned and looked at Jenny. She kept right on sleeping.
“I do not understand you.” Tonya’s voice dropped to a steamy whisper. “Why do you prefer living in hell?”
How did she do that? Stick me where I never expect, and bleed a wound I didn’t even realize was open. I clapped my mouth shut and started counting to one hundred, while gesturing in large useless motions.
Tonya went into nurse-mode, fluffing pillows with double-fisted punches, snapping the sheets smooth and tucking them under the mattress with a kung-fu chop. Normally, she was the kind of person who flowed in motion, never looked off-balance or clumsy. At that moment, she looked like dry sticks animated. I didn’t get up from the bed. I made her work around me. As she jerked the blanket into position, I nearly fell off the edge.
“You have a life, a beautiful, precious girl-child put in your hands. Something other people would die for.” She waved at Jenny, laid out like an effigy. I knew she was speaking of herself. Tonya would have gladly accepted Jenny into her life. Through me, she already had.
“What else am I supposed to do, T? I don’t know how to be the mom.”
“There are only two requirements,” she said with all the patience of someone explaining the how-to of bar soap. “You commit to the long haul. And you consider her needs first. She won’t always get top priority, but she always gets first consideration.”
“I’m committed.”
“You haven’t even moved out of your apartment yet! How committed is that?” Tonya’s voice amplified with every word.
My eyes kept drifting toward the television screen. It was impossible to turn away from the flash and comfort of those familiar images-the smiling faces and sugary landscapes, figments of our collective, mass-consuming unconscious. Even knowing all that I know, doing all that I do, I sighed. Little House had shimmered before me in childhood reruns, like the mirage of heaven hammered into me on Sunday mornings. There was the wise, kind father, the patient, loving mother, and the sisters who all lived together in a land where truth was known, justice was served and love begat love, never suffering.
Behind me, Tonya spat, “If you don’t stop looking at that God-damned television and pay attention to me!” She whipped the plastic cup from Jenny’s bedside tray at my head. It clipped me, took a high bounce and smacked the bottom of the set. Must have caught the power button. The picture popped off; the screen a sudden darkling glass.
Empty.
Everything went out of me in the breath that followed. Busted, sucking comfort from a little house on the prairie. I swung my legs around to the side of the bed. The vent was blowing hospital AC right in my face. The cold burned the wet lines on my cheeks.
Tonya moved toward me, looking like she regretted every step.
“Careful,” I told her. “I stink.”
“Yeah, you do.” She put her arms around me anyway. I felt her shaking her head, her cheek pressed to my scalp.
Again, it was impossible to turn away.
Jenny woke up around lunchtime. There was a bit of bedlam at first-thrashing, tubes coming undone, machines beeping like crazy, but it didn’t last long.
The nurse said we got off easy. “Usually we see some projectile vomiting when they come around.”
Possible sign my life was on the rebound?
Hold that thought.
We had a visit from the doctor making rounds. Tonya sat in while we heard that they would probably keep her one more night “to see what happened with the seizures.” Jenny accepted it all with big eyes and nodding; she didn’t start to cry until the woman got to the part about the social worker who would be visiting before Jenny could check out of the hospital.
“Why did you leave school yesterday?” the nice-lady doctor asked.
Jenny shot me a worried look and shrugged.
“Where did you get the medicine?”
“Found it.”
“Where?”
“Mommy’s medicine box?” Jenny’s eyes filled with tears.
My sister was spinning in her grave. I could feel the breeze.
“Tell me about why you took it, honey.”
“I just…” Jenny started off strong, as if there was a way she could explain, but her voice faded, “…thought they’d make me feel better. That’s all. Really,” she added for my benefit.
“This is very serious, Jenny,” the doctor said. “Everyone here is worried about you. That’s why we’re going to have the social worker come talk to you. We all need to understand what happened so we can make sure it won’t happen again.”
“It won’t. I swear,” Jenny pleaded.
“Don’t panic, kid.” I squeezed her hand. “You don’t have to go alone if you don’t want to. I’ll go with you.”
“You will?” Jenny’s voice sounded awful. She was choked up and the tubes had scratched her throat pretty good.
“If you want.”
“I think we ought to meet this social worker before there is any talking,” Tonya said, casting serious doubt on the title social worker. “All of us.”
“Certainly,” the nice-lady doctor replied.
“Good thinking,” I said.
Tonya gave a tight-lipped nod. Everybody was in agreement.
The rest of the day was busy. Tonya yelled at me about changing channels too much, while we took turns playing cards and reading to Jenny. I pretended to nap but couldn’t stop myself from checking out the competition’s news magazine shows.
I tried not to think about work. It was impossible. Employed or unemployed, the story rattled through my head.
A long time ago, I learned that truth isn’t relative. It’s quantum. The closer you get, the smaller and infinitely more complex the related elements become. The modern world lives in smaller and smaller segments. There’s Coke, Diet Coke, Caffeine Free, and Cherry. We added to G, PG, PG-13, R, NR and NC-17 with Gens X, Y and Z on the way. Television isn’t so different from life. It’s built from bits and pieces, strung together over time, and repeated on the endless reruns of the mind.
Except for the part about things making sense by the end.
Part of my problem is that I’ve gotten too good at seeing parts. Finding a way to tell the story without exploiting Rachel, without using Nicky Curzon’s off-the-record explanation for Tom’s arrest, without relying on a little salacious conjecture about all those porn magazines…it seemed impossible. Not to mention the fact that any story I produced might become fodder against Curzon’s re-election for sheriff, which would never stop me from reporting on the story, but might qualify as a speed bump.
Editing a story together is similar to taking a photo. Shadows determine form; the light source determines the shadows. I couldn’t figure out where to shine the light on this.
“Maybe I’ll go and see about some caffeine.”
“Bring me something.” Tonya waved at the breakfast tray.
“Me too,” Jenny agreed. Her mushy fruit sat abandoned, a spoon poking out from under a paper napkin shroud.
“Caffeine and ‘somethings’ all around. I’ll be back.”
I wandered the halls, people-watching and mulling. After twenty minutes or so, it appeared the cafeteria had lost itself. The hospital had some renovation project going on and all the maps were either wrong or led to dead-ends of orange mesh. I came out of an elevator, turned a corner and found myself in a hall facing a circle of women and men in Amish dress. Two medical types were talking with them in the waiting area.
I recognized one of the men. It was the guy who’d tromped through Jost’s kitchen in knee-high dairy boots ordering me to vamoose.
The nurse behind the counter saw me gawking. “They’re Amish,” she offered. “A friend of theirs was in a fire.”
It wasn’t easy to keep it to, “Really? That’s a bummer. Was he burned?”
“No,” she assured me with a kindly, vacant frown. “A little smoke inhalation is all. Can I help you find something?”
With an opening like that, how could I not ask? I gave her Jost’s name and she didn’t appear to make the connection. She checked a chart, directed me to his room and returned to her paperwork.
The sight line between Jost’s door and the waiting area where the other Amish were listening to the doctors was blocked by the privacy curtain surrounding the nurses’ station. He was under close observation. I knocked before I entered.
Old Mr. Jost was under the clear plastic covering of an oxygen tent. They had him in a hospital gown but the whiskers still set him apart.
I stood and watched him for a while, thinking of Jenny mostly. I had no plan to ask him questions. Nothing to say to the old fart, really. I think I just wanted to look at him one more time; like the accident off to the side of the road, reminding me to slow down, wear my seatbelt and quit flipping off the other drivers.
What happened here won’t happen to me.
I wished I had my camera between us, but I forced myself to stand there and look through my own eyes.
He blinked awake. That didn’t bother me. But when his fingers flicked against the plastic, I jumped. He wanted me to lift the curtain.
“What?” I asked. I leaned over so my ear was right above his mouth.
“-ay-chel?” The word was mostly exhale.
“She’s all right.”
“Wherrre?”
I thought about lying. “She’s with Grace Ott.”
His eyes closed. He looked dead. The color of his skin, the nearly imperceptible shallowness of his breathing, his eyes didn’t even flicker. It was impossible to perceive any part of what he was thinking or feeling.
That’s when my questions came. I couldn’t stop myself. “Why did he do it, Mr. Jost? Why did Tom ask you to watch? Did he want you to stop him?”
“No.” That word was soft but clear. His eyes stayed closed. With my ear hovering, he whispered, “…maybe, die a little bit…with him.”
“The phone-how did you end up with the phone?”
“Shame,” he whispered, “my shame.”
“You took the phone from Tom.”
His eyes barely opened. They were red with smoke irritation, the skin around them gray and sagging. “Tried. Run to him…too late. Too late.” His eyes pooled with tears.
A nurse pushed into the room. “Uh, uh. Don’t disturb the tent,” she scolded. “Out, out, out of there!”
“I’m going. Sorry.”
His fingers curled and tapped across my hand like the dance of a spider’s legs, calling my attention back.
“Yes?”
“Resist not evil.” They were the clearest words he’d spoken yet.
Miracle of miracle, I remembered that one. “Turn the other cheek. Overcome evil with good.”
He tapped the back of my hand three times. Yes, that’s it.
I nodded. I think he believed that taking the phone was a way to turn the other cheek. Perhaps he meant to confess to his community and explain what happened, or save Tom from the public shame of having acted in anger. But Rachel found the phone. And the protective, controlling father took over. Until now, the only scenarios I had been able to imagine were the ones motivated by a man’s self-preservation and guilt. A hundred questions formed in my head. The nurse glared at me.
“Please, one last question. My colleague thinks there was someone in the house with you last night. Before the fire started. Did you see anyone?”
“Thought boy come for Rachel,” he struggled to say. “Englischer.”
“Did you see him?”
His eyes closed. Exhaustion or the need to keep his own council ended that line of talk.
“That’s all,” Nursey scolded. “You’re disturbing the tent. He needs to rest.”
“I’m done. I’m gone,” I told her. I touched the back of his hand. “Thank you. Be well.”
Slipping out was more nerve-wracking than going in. Through the mesh at the top of the curtain, I could see Jost’s friends and family three feet away and closing. I ducked around the curtain partition and followed it toward the nurses’ station. Just ahead of me, I could hear men on the other side of the curtain. They were having a tight-throated discussion. I froze.
I’m pretty good with voices. To the careful ear, voices are as distinct as a walk, a form of handwriting, a style of dress. Still, it surprised me-was it really that small a town? There was something familiar in those voices.
Everyone has heard the research into pheromones that sync us up with mates. I sincerely doubt that’s all the lizard brain can detect. I think we smell all sorts of crap, like lies and wickedness and trouble ahead. Maybe that explains why a person might freeze and listen to a conversation that makes very little sense at first.
Or maybe I’m just nosey.
“…tired of it, do you hear me?”
“I hear you. I’m trying-”
“I don’t want to hear how hard you are trying. You’ve turned something very simple into something complicated. Am I going to have to find someone else to help me?”
“No. No.”
“I hope not. I’ll call you.”
“Um, yeah, listen I have a new number. Old phone’s gone.”
Hello! The light went on. That was Pat talking. Fireman Pat, Tom Jost’s partner, a.k.a. Mr. Vegas. Couldn’t place the other voice. I slipped back two steps as a nurse came barging full-steam around my curtain wall.
“Whoops-sorry,” she said automatically. She followed it with a more hostile, “What are you doing here?”
“Lost.” I grimaced and backed through the curtain into the open hall area. “Cafeteria?”
“That way.” She pointed with a finger-gun toward the far end of the hall.
“Thanks.”
I caught a glimpse of someone rounding the corner at a good clip, the reflectors on his uniform jacket flashing as he passed beneath the yellow-green light of each fluorescent ceiling fixture. I looked back the other way, no sign of the second man. The only door nearby that didn’t seem to lead to a patient’s room read Restricted.
“Hey Pat!” I hollered, taking a chance that he was the man disappearing around the corner. “Wait up!” On four hours sleep, subtle Miss Nancy Drew I’m not.
Lucky for me, Mr. Vegas had a lot of friends in the hospital.
“Looking for something?” a guy in scrubs asked.
“EMS guy named Pat?” I tried.
That brought an eye roll. “Figures. Never the ugly ones. Toward the cafeteria.”
“Thanks.”
Couple of nurses pointed me, “That way.”
“Right. Thanks.”
I turned a corner into an empty hall. Quiet. No sign of anyone. My heart was pumping with adrenaline and the sudden change of pace. I’d been race-walking the halls, trying to catch up. Mounted on the wall near a frosted glass door was a small, brass plaque.
Chapel. Open 24 Hours.
It felt like a trick. I pulled the door and peeked inside.
My breathing made a surf-roar in my ears. “Hello?”
No answer. I made myself quiet-hiding quiet-and entered.
The room was shoebox small, only a dozen chairs, and a solid table with glass votives at the front. The walls were bare, the wood trim spare and nothing but a pair of dim uplights shining on the curtained wall behind the altar table. I smelled hospital cleaner and the burning sweetness of beeswax candles.
I circled the room. It was empty and then some, as non-denominational as a place of worship could be. In the Amish world, simplicity came from sameness. Funny how in our world, it was diversity that bred simplicity.
Could anyone sink low enough to hide behind an altar table? I looked and realized there was a door behind the curtained wall.
Cold rushed through my blood. Calm took effort.
Ready-I opened the door as carefully, quietly, as possible. It swung inward.
Absolute dark. I slipped my hand past the door jamb, feeling for a light switch.
Click!
The overhead blinked on. Room empty. It was a walk-in closet-cum-sacristy. A rack of vestments hung on the back wall, a small bookcase to one side. Nothing but a room.
I slipped all the way inside-
Boom!
The light snapped off as the door slammed, the sound mixing with what happened next. My face hit the wall, cheekbone first. The sudden reversal of light blinded me. My hand covered the switch, but his larger hand-sweaty and strong-pressed my palm into the toggle, biting into my skin.
Caught.
“Don’t move.”
There was nothing to move. I couldn’t even twist my head. His jaw and neck locked the threat of his body right beneath my ear. His chin dug into the top of my scalp. We were both panting, strangely synchronized with each movement of chest, and that was the most coldly frightening thing of all.
“You,” he whispered. “You smell like her.”
“Who? Pat, what the hell-?”
“Shut up.” He crushed his body against me. I stopped inhaling. “Questions don’t help. Knowing won’t help. It only makes things worse. Don’t you get that?”
“No. I don’t believe that.”
“What’s it take to teach you? They both died! Leave it alone.”
“Both?” I said.
“Tom and Gina.”
“Gina?” You smell like her. Confusion was all that kept me calm. Once again, my lizard brain jumped ahead to a place where logic feared to go. “Angelina? Do you mean my sister?” My internal temperature dropped twenty degrees. It’s a miracle my next breath didn’t fog the air.
“You are making everything worse,” he said. “You have to stop.”
Resistance bubbled up, hot and sharp. I bucked and twisted. “Get off me.”
He was as mad as I was, but a whole lot bigger. He slammed himself against me again, smashing us into the wall. All the body parts you never see, never think about, suddenly appeared on my mental map, tracing a line of vulnerability from the top of my spine, down the slope of my back, to the curve of my ass.
Nobody moved for a heavy second.
He seemed to lose track of the moment, anger suspended by a surge of hormones, or confusion, or something else. His body took over. He inhaled deeply, chest swelling, and I felt the barest suggestion of motion forward and back with his pelvis, a reaching out. His cock was big enough to make an impression. I kept very still.
“Stop,” he repeated. “Just stop.”
Too slowly, he withdrew contact with his lower body. The pressure of his hand over mine increased. It hurt.
Before I realized what he meant to do, he grabbed the back of my collar and bent my arm behind my back. With a twist, he shoved me hard from the center of my back toward the middle of the room.
I flew forward and face-planted, hands too slow to catch myself. My head re-bounded off the industrial carpet.
Pat was already out the door.
Over the sound of my ears ringing, I heard the bad news, loud and clear.
He’d jammed a chair against the outside of the door. I was locked in.
“What took you so long? Where’d you go this time?” Tonya said, in the usual way. Then she took a good look at me. “Oh Lord, what now?”
I stood in the doorway of Jenny’s hospital room, not completely in my body, or my right mind. The urge to scream, hit something, throw something, had stiffened every muscle.
Jenny sat right up in the center of the bed with the rolling table pulled across her lap. There was a bunch of balloons tied to the water pitcher and a curly haired teddy bear leaning on her pillow. A “Get Well” card from some of the hospital people her mother had known was on the bedside table.
“Did you bring us food?” Jenny asked. She was concentrating hard, trying to bridge-shuffle a deck of playing cards.
“No food.”
“Darn.”
“What’s wrong?” Tonya leaned toward me, her body alert. She’d pulled her braids behind her back and tied them with a piece of silver curling ribbon cut from the balloon streamers. Jenny wore a head band of the same ribbon. It looked like they were having a little party.
“I got lost. And I stopped to talk to someone. Remember Dr. Graham? The one I interviewed the other day. She said she’ll come down and talk to Jenny later.”
“She a social worker?” Tonya asked.
“No. The other kind.”
Psychologist. Psychiatrist. Headshrinker. Whatever. At least I knew her somewhat. She seemed normal, given her profession and all. I’d certainly trust Jenny with her, better than a stranger.
“No wonder you look a little worse for the wear,” Tonya said.
It hadn’t taken long to attract someone’s attention and break out of the chapel lockup. It took longer to convince the guy we didn’t need to call security. Afterward, I’d wandered the halls in a daze of muddy thinking.
When I recognized Dr. Graham’s offices it seemed like fate. Here was a problem I could solve. I sat in her waiting area and gathered my thoughts until she was free. “How would you like to study the effect of small families on self-actualization?” I bantered as my lead. She waited for me to come clean with the real story. It wasn’t easy. She turned those shrewd eyes on me and saw the things I didn’t headline, like admitting I’d only been on the job with Jenny four months and I’d already crashed and burned.
Everywhere I turned, I was tanking on my own ignorance.
Pat-the-paramedic knew my sister. From the hospital maybe?
You smell like her.
More than just the hospital.
Part of me wanted to call Curzon and get the asshole arrested immediately. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t get me what I wanted even more. Information.
They both died?
Turn Pat in and the sheriff would lock him up where I couldn’t talk to him. End of story.
“Your boy called,” T said. “He’s going to stop in to see Jenny in a few minutes.” She did a slide of the eyes over the shuffling cards. “You giving that boy a hard time?”
College interviewed Pat yesterday at the firehouse. I couldn’t help salivating at the thought. What the hell did he say to my boy? I needed to see that interview.
Too bad I’d quit.
“Me?”
“I’m hungry,” Jenny said again. She bounced as she waited for Tonya to finish passing out the cards. “Really hungry.”
“How many people you planning on putting in the hospital today, Ms. Maddy?” Tonya asked. She turned over her first card and cackled.
“Keep it up. I’m sure they got room for one more,” I answered. The second bed looked good. I stretched out flat and could feel the ghost of Pat’s body behind me. Pressing. “Have I mentioned that I’m tired, really tired?”
Jenny’s tongue poked out in concentration. She took another card from the deck and discarded slowly.
“What do you know?” T mumbled.
The question sunk into my silence.
Not much.
My guess was Tom Jost killed himself because he discovered Mr. Vegas scheming and scamming something big-time. They fought about it. Tom couldn’t stop him and couldn’t keep the secret inside.
Pat tried to ensure no one would believe Tom if-or when-he spilled the beans, by setting Tom up with a trunk full of porno. And the men at station six turned on Tom.
When Tom reached out for the girl he’d hung the last of his dreams on, he found himself more alone than ever and raging with despair. He phoned his father, the fire station, and the fourth estate to witness his death. He went gunning for both Pat and his daddy, with his elaborate suicide set up-calls, binoculars, trust funds.
Tom wasn’t a suicide victim. He was a suicide vigilante. This was para-misery of the sacrificial type.
And Rachel? Maybe Tom meant to give her choices by leaving Rachel all his savings. Maybe he meant to say sorry for the episode in the car, or worse, split her from her father forever.
Bits and pieces of conversations tumbled around in my head.
Number no longer in service.
Old phone’s gone, I’d heard Pat say to the man behind the curtain.
Had Pat ditched his cell phone to try and cover for Tom’s suicide calls? The first time we met, Pat seemed genuinely unhappy about Tom’s death. Maybe he didn’t mean to hurt Tom as badly as he did. For an extroverted loose-screw like Pat, a trunkload of magazines was probably the kindest way he could imagine to ruin a man’s reputation. That weird scenario in the chapel was all the proof I needed-in the planning department, Pat was an idiot.
That worried me most of all. Idiots could be tricky.
Was Pat the Player driving the silver car that College saw parked at the Jost farm, the silver car that had been following me?
What if Mr. Jost was right about Rachel having a gentleman caller?
They both died.
I traced the timeline in my head again. Pat knew my sister. She died. Player moved on. If Pat started seeing Rachel next, Tom would have been in quite a twist.
Rachel hadn’t said anything about another guy. But that girl was half clam. If she was seeing Pat, she would certainly know how to keep it to herself.
Had my story gotten between Pat and his girl?
“Anybody want a bagel?” Ainsley knocked once as he came through the door with a wave for Tonya and a full-blast smile for Jenny. He’d changed into clean clothes and his hands were freshly bandaged.
“Hallelujah and pass the bag,” Tonya said. “Welcome to the real world, where people eat food. They don’t just talk about it.”
“You talking to me? I’ve seen the shoes you wear on Saturday night. You live nowhere near reality.”
“And it ain’t heaven either. Just look at these cards.” She discarded a queen. Jenny snatched it, tucked it into her hand and threw down all of her cards.
Tonya shrieked and stamped her feet to Jenny’s obvious delight.
“Want to play?” Jenny asked. “Four people are just right. It’s crazy eights.”
“Sure,” College said. He dragged another uncomfortable chair to the side of the bed where Tonya was sitting. It took some arranging but he finally got his legs situated under the bed. What is it about long-legged boys? My legs are almost that long and you don’t see me fussing like a debutante in a ball gown.
“What’s your plan for today?” Ainsley asked.
“We’re hanging out here.”
“Jenny can’t go home ’til tomorrow,” Tonya said.
Ainsley looked at me.
“For observation,” I said.
“My turn to deal.” Jenny reached for the cards. The dark hair bordering her face exaggerated the shadows under her eyes. I wanted to carry her out into the sun and tell her every knock-knock joke I knew.
“Heard you quit,” Ainsley said.
“Yeah.”
Jenny froze, mid-deal. “I’ll figure something out,” I told her, gently pulling the card from her fingers. “Keep dealing.”
“Why didn’t you tell Uncle Rich anything about-the circumstances?”
“I was pressed for time.” I gave Ainsley the shut-the-hell-up eyeball. “We’re playing cards here, College. You in or you out?”
“In.” His cheeks darkened with the flush of self-conscious emotion. “Somebody told me the only way to survive the bad days is to get back in the game.”
Tonya snorted. I don’t think it was the cards she was holding.
“I’ve got all our raw footage with me. And a monitor and some other stuff.”
That would include Pat’s interview at the firehouse. I wanted to throw my arms around him. I shifted my cards around.
“Other stuff? Editing equipment?”
“Enough to do a rough-cut. We could set it up in here. Maybe fiddle around a little.”
“Did your uncle send you?”
“No.” He sighed. “This morning, maybe I misunderstood where you were coming from, you know?”
Tonya stared at me. Jenny stared at me. Ainsley stared at his feet.
“Yeah,” I said. “Me, too.”
“Uncle Rich said you promised him a story.” Ainsley sounded hopeful.
“Did I? Maybe after I kick your butt in crazy eights, we’ll get the tapes and give these two a private showing.”
He held up his bandaged hands. His fingers were exposed from the second knuckle down. He demonstrated button pushing and dial twisting abilities. “Ready, boss.”
“Finish the deal, Jen,” I told her.
“Eat-your-ownies round.”
Something changed in her face as she tossed cards at all of us. A shadow passed.
Finally, I’d done something right.
Uplink Telestar 2 10:59CST. 00:05:51 (“Suicide Vigilante” O’Hara/Prescott. Chicago West. Blurb: “Mystery of an Amish firefighter’s death.” No promo incl.)