Gone ’Til November (14 page)

He put the Beretta in his overnight, left it unzipped, easy
to get at. The Walther went under a pillow. He lay back on the bed, drew on the joint, let the smoke relax him. The pain in his stomach began to ease. He closed his eyes and listened to the night.

After she clocked in, Sara went to the storeroom that held the SO’s single general-use computer. She signed on, typed quickly, sat back and waited, hearing voices in the corridor, a toilet flushing down the hall.

When the report came up, she scanned it, hit PRINT. Behind her, the printer chattered. She looked toward the half-closed door, hoping no one would come in, ask what she was doing.

The printer spit pages, went silent. She closed the file and signed off. She gathered the pages from the printer, went out into the hall, and closed the door behind her.

One call this morning, a lawn mower stolen from a shed in Libertyville, and since then the radio had been mercifully quiet. At ten thirty, she parked the cruiser on a dirt road that
led down to the river, lowered the window, shut the engine off. The drone of cicadas filled the silence it left.

She had a dull headache from the sleep she’d missed the night before. She had lain awake after Billy left, listening to the rain, wondering why she had let him back into her house, her bed. Not knowing the answer.

She read the report again. Little in it she didn’t already know. Appended were Billy’s statement, her statement, the medical examiner’s report, and an inventory of everything found in the car and on Willis’s body.

The wind shifted, moved the trees, brought the smell of the river. She looked through the inventory again. The recovered guns were listed by make and caliber: Ingram MAC-10 machine gun; Smith and Wesson Model 5906 semiautomatic; Heckler and Koch P7. All high-end weapons, with ammunition for each. Willis’s gun was listed as a Taurus Model 85, .38 caliber, rubber grips, serial number burned off. She paged forward to the lab report. The only prints on the weapon belonged to Willis, full finger and thumb impressions. A 100 percent match.

She remembered the Taurus lying there in the wet grass, inches from his hand. The bluing had been nicked and scratched. With those better, flashier weapons in the trunk, why was he carrying that? She looked back at the inventory of ammunition. Six boxes of 9 mm shells. Nothing in .38 caliber. The Taurus didn’t fit.

She left the papers on the seat, got out, and walked down the dirt track to the river. It was running low and muddy, wind feathering the surface. There was a clearing here, a collapsed dock, pilings protruding from the water. She realized
then where she was. As a teenager, she’d parked here with Roy in his Firebird. Senior year of high school, before she’d gone off to college up north, thinking she was leaving Hopedale for good.
You’ll be back,
he’d told her. He’d been right.

She sat on a flat rock, looked out at the river. On the opposite bank, dark trees rose like a hanging wave. A dragonfly flitted over the surface of the water, drifted on.

She picked up a stone, tossed it, watched the ripples spread.

That’s what life is. You make one decision, take one action, and it affects everything. It spreads out across your present, into your future. And it never stops
.

Life had seemed full of choices back then, opportunities. As she got older, door after door had shut. Now here she was, forty in sight, alone except for Danny.

What decision are you making now?

Had Elwood and the sheriff wondered about the Taurus, too? If not, with the investigation closed, Billy free and clear, what would be the point of bringing it up to them? What would that say about her?

She stood, dusted off her pants, and walked back to the cruiser, feeling totally and irrevocably alone.

When she got home, Danny was at the kitchen table, the Tyrannosaurus half assembled. She’d left it for him with a note, hadn’t told him where it came from.

“Hey, little guy.” She touched his hair. “How you making out?”

“Almost finished.”

“You feed the rabbits?”

“Yup.”

She got a bottle of water from the refrigerator, twisted off the top. She could hear the rumble of the dryer in the basement, JoBeth doing laundry.

There was a note on the refrigerator, held there by a parrot magnet. JoBeth’s handwriting.
Dr. Winters called. 4:45.

Shit.
She looked at her watch. Five thirty. Still a chance to catch him if he was working late.

“When did you have pizza?” Danny said.

She realized then she’d left the box in the refrigerator.

“Last night. I got hungry after you went to bed. We’ll have the rest for dinner, okay?”

“It’s cold.”

“That’s what microwaves are for, kiddo.”

She got her cell out, went to her bedroom, speed-dialed the doctor’s office. On the fourth ring, he picked up.

“Sara Cross,” she said. “Returning your call. Sorry, I just got the message.” She closed the door behind her.

“Hi, Sara. It’s okay, I’m in the office trying to get my desk cleared anyway. Danny’s lab results from last week came in, and I wanted you to know about them.”

She swallowed, felt tightness in her stomach, tasted sourness. “Go on.”

“As you know, one more treatment and we’ll be reaching the end of the induction therapy. The new lab work shows we’re on the right track as far as his T-cell count is concerned. I don’t think I’m going too far to say we could be looking at a near-total remission by the end of the therapy.”

She sat on the bed, closed her eyes. “But?” she said.

“We’re not out of the woods yet. You know some of this already, but a patient like Danny diagnosed with ALL may have a hundred billion leukemia cells. When it’s successful—and in his case it looks like it is—induction therapy destroys at least ninety-nine percent of them. At that point we say the patient is in remission. However, that could still leave as many as a hundred million leukemia cells in the body. So we have to go after those aggressively. If not, they can grow and multiply later on and lead to a relapse.”

“What are you saying?”

“That I think we should go ahead with what we talked about last time.”

“More chemo.”

“We call it consolidation therapy. It reduces and hopefully kills off the remaining cells. As I said, it takes about four to six months.”

Six more months.

“Sara, you there?”

“I’m here.”

“Consolidation therapy can be intense, especially at Danny’s age, but I think it’s the only way to go. We’ll decide on the drugs and doses later. It won’t be easy, but I think we have a good shot at whipping this.”

“When do we start?”

“I have Danny’s last induction session scheduled for two weeks from today. We’ll see how that goes, what our test readings are, then come up with a plan for the consolidation stage.”

“Okay.”

“This is progress, Sara. Trust me. This far into the treatment, Danny’s doing pretty well. The induction therapy, if it takes, leads to remission in about ninety-five percent of the children we treat. The consolidation therapy puts that figure even higher. So far, in Danny’s case, it looks like it’s taking extraordinarily well.”

She went to the door, opened it, looked down the hall. She could see Danny at the kitchen table, his back to her.

“I don’t mean to downplay the effects. The next few months will be rough. He’ll have some of the same reactions to the chemo as he’s had before, but hopefully not as pronounced or severe. We can talk more in two weeks, after his session, how’s that sound?”

“All right.”

“We’ll see how he’s feeling and take it from there.”

She thanked him, ended the call. When she went back into the kitchen, Danny was sitting forward, elbows on the table, looking down at the last unassembled pieces. The dinosaur was no further along.

“Was that Dr. Jack?” he said.

“It was.”

“Is that why you went to your room?”

“Just wanted a little privacy, that’s all.”

“Am I still sick?”

She looked at the back of his head, the patchwork of missing hair. She put her hands on his shoulders, squeezed gently, felt his warmth.

“Not for long, sweetie. Dr. Jack says you’re going to be better soon.”

He picked up a piece, placed it against another. They didn’t fit. He put them back down.

“How soon?” he said.

He’s not letting you off the hook. He never does.

“Soon.”

He fit two pieces together, clicked them into place. The tail and back legs, the dinosaur almost done.

“Hey,” she said. “I’ve got a better idea.”

“What do you mean?”

“Better than leftover pizza. How about we hit the park before it gets dark, then get some burgers at Dairy Queen?”

“Can we?”

“If we leave now, sure. I just need to get changed. Are you ready?”

He snapped the final piece into place.

“All done,” he said.

“Good job.”

“It wasn’t that hard.”

“It would be for me.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” he said. “You can fix anything.”

The sun was sinking when they got to the municipal park, the carousel lights already flashing. Tinny calliope music, the smell of cotton candy and hot dogs from the pushcarts. It was cooler now, and she’d made Danny put on a jacket before they left the house.

There were only a half-dozen kids on the carousel, all younger than him. For most of the town, the novelty of it had
worn off in the year it had been here, but it wasn’t until the past summer that she’d let Danny ride. “You baby him too much,” Billy had said once, “You can’t protect him from everything.” She’d known he was right, but he didn’t know what it was like to lie there at night, the house silent, imagining life without Danny. A life alone.

She bought tickets, helped him onto one of the horses, rode a circuit with him, and then stepped off, joining the other adults standing nearby. He waved at her as he went around, his other hand clutching the pole, his smile huge. She waved back.

A cool wind blew across the park. She turned, looked toward the dirt lot where the Blazer was parked. On the far side, a gray Toyota with Florida plates sat beneath a live oak, away from the other vehicles, a figure in shadow behind the wheel. She couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman. A parent maybe, listening to the radio, out of the wind, while their child rode the carousel.

Danny called to her as he came past again, the horse rising and falling lazily.
Love you, kid,
she thought. Then the carousel took him around again and out of sight.

Morgan watched them from the stolen car.

The woman had been easy to find. He’d taken the Toyota from the lot of an outlet mall near Arcadia, switched plates with another car, then driven down here. He’d gone to the sheriff’s office first, parked in a strip mall across the street. On the seat beside him was a newspaper clipping with photos of the woman and Flynn. A little after five, he’d watched her pull her cruiser into the lot.

He got a better look when she left, still in uniform. Midthirties maybe, a good shape, brown hair tied up behind. She’d gotten into a silver Blazer, and he’d followed at a safe distance. First to her house, where he’d parked down the block, watched her go in and then come back out in street clothes, with a little boy. Then here to the park.

The carousel slowed, children getting off, others getting on. The boy ran toward her, and she scooped him up in her arms and hoisted him onto her shoulders, the way a father might, holding on to his ankles. They crossed the lot to the Blazer. As they got closer, Morgan saw there was something wrong with the boy. He was too thin, his hair sparse and uneven. When she set him down, he looked spent, had to hold on to her while she opened the back door, helped him up and into a booster seat.

He’s sick,
Morgan thought.
Something bad. Something that won’t go away.

As the woman got behind the wheel, she looked across at Morgan. He knew he was far enough from the streetlamp that she couldn’t make him out, if she could see him at all.

He watched them drive off. He didn’t need to follow. He knew where she lived now, what she drove.

Tomorrow he would find Flynn.

Morgan parked the Toyota on a fire road, out of sight of the highway, and walked a quarter mile to where the woods ended and the dead cornfield began.

It was dusk, the shadows thickening around him. Across the cornfield, he could see lights go on in the house. It had taken him twenty minutes to find it, out here in the middle of nowhere, and he’d driven by twice, feeling exposed, before doubling back and finding this spot.

He wore a black windbreaker he’d bought in Arcadia, had zipped it halfway to cover the Beretta in his belt. He’d run the air conditioner in the car, but here in the open he was sweating under the pullover, his hands clammy inside the cotton work gloves.

As it grew darker, the woods seemed to come to life around him. The chirping of crickets everywhere, louder noises he
didn’t recognize. He found himself touching the Beretta through his jacket.

From the edge of the trees, the ground sloped down to the cornfield, giving him a clear view of the front and back of the house. A pickup truck and an old Camaro were parked in the carport.

The front door opened, and a woman came out. Late thirties, blond hair, one side braided, black T-shirt, jeans. She stood in the yard, turned back to speak to a man in the doorway. Jeans and white T-shirt, curly hair. Flynn.

The woman got behind the wheel of the Camaro, started the engine. The noise was loud, ragged, the telltale cough of a bad muffler. Flynn went back in, closing the door behind him.

When she pulled out of the carport, Morgan walked back through the woods to the car.

It was easy to pick her up again. Once back on the main road, it wasn’t long before he saw the distinctive shape of the Camaro’s taillights ahead. Little traffic, easy to keep her in sight without getting close. He thought he’d lost her on a rise once, then saw the Camaro parked outside a package goods store. He’d driven by, pulled onto the shoulder a half mile later, doused the lights. Five minutes later, the Camaro passed him. After a few moments, he pulled out after it.