HIGHWATER: a suspense thriller you won't be able to put down (17 page)

For a moment, Tom felt that flash of fear again, suddenly certain that the fabric of reality was unraveling, and that the illusion of the world was being dispelled and, in such a case, it was only natural for a person to lose their mind.

But it passed. Instead of any feeling of fear, dread, or incomprehension, Tom felt something different from anything he’d ever experienced. It wasn’t exactly
knowing
, but a feeling akin to memory, a feeling that had little to do with being human, with thinking, with rational deduction. It was something that was not subject to investigation.

The figures were extending their arms. As Tom drove slowly along in the preternatural dawn, they all stood holding their arms straight out, palms down, fingers together.

And then they started to lift into the air.

In concert, they rose into the brightening sky. Each was individual, moving at their own speed. They didn’t go all the way up and disappear, but stopped at varying heights of what Tom figured as about fifty to a hundred feet, and there they stayed.

Tom’s cell phone buzzed. He glanced at it, and this time, he answered. It was the lead ambulance driver.

“What do I do?”

“Keep going,” said Tom.

Next to him, Maddy was crying. She was crying, and she was laughing.

Behind them, all of the cop cars had stopped. No one was following them any longer.

The ambulances picked up speed again, and Tom did as well. They drove along beneath the rolling, baleful sky, the young men floating above them, going on as far as either of them could see.

PART IV

CALEB

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

At Fletcher Allen Hospital in Burlington, there were hundreds of people standing out in front of the four stories of tinted glass, between and around the cars parked along the access road, on top of the underground parking garage, standing amongst more cars on the surface level, and along the thin sheaf of lawn on the side of the hospital. More were disposed in and around a kiosk where the smokers gathered, yet others perched on top of the rocks poking from the scant grass, and in the darkened windows, silhouettes by the dozen — some windows crowded with four or five figures — they stood and looked.

They were ordinary people. Visitors, patients, doctors, nurses, orderlies, receptionists, and security; members of the Fletcher Allen “family,” and they were watching the sky, and they were watching the twin ambulances as they came down the access road, and gawking at the Chevy Blazer, with Tom and Maddy inside of it.

Tom’s phone buzzed. “Fuck,” he said. He sighed, and answered it at last.

On the other end, Blake Johnston bellowed at him.

“I know,” said Tom. “I know.” He listened as the Sheriff read him the full riot act, and continued to drive.

The caravan of three vehicles, the state trooper, Robinsky, the two ambulances, and Tom and Maddy in the Blazer followed the access road, taking the branch that circled around to the side of the large hospital and pulled up at the emergency entrance.

“I understand,” said Tom. He hung up the phone.

Maddy looked at him expectantly. “Trouble in paradise?”

Tom rubbed a hand over his jaw “Those kids in the road. Couple of troopers must’ve been gawking at them, like we were, only they swerved off the road and had an accident.”

“Oh dear God,” said Maddy. Her face wrinkled like she was about to give him a mouthful, but Tom beat her to the punch.

“Everybody is fine. But it slowed them all up — they were coming after us, you know. And meanwhile, out at the Kingston place, there’s still no DB. Even though Jim Cruickshand had called in that there were
multiple
DBs in the shed. Now they don’t have those either.”

“Jimmy? Our Jimmy?”

Tom nodded.

“What do we do?”

“Nothing,” said Tom. “We do what we came here to do.”

“But Tommy—”

“I’ve gone over state lines with a murder suspect. But with no bodies . . .” He shrugged. “She’s just a person of interest. Still, Blake says he’s going to call the Feds—”

Maddy put her hand on his arm.

“—If I don’t have her back in twelve hours,” Tom finished.

They sat silently for a moment. Maddy raised an eyebrow. “You don’t seem too worried.”

“Go,” Tom said to Maddy, looking at the ambulance again. “Stay with them.”

Maddy looked at him. The ecstasy — if that was what it was — was still apparent on her face, like a sort of tan. Her skin appeared tautened, her blush deeper, her color stronger. Even her hair seemed to have some flourish where it hadn’t before. The nurse’s uniform she wore looked crisper, brighter. And, of course, her eyes conveyed it still.
It’s like she’s gone through the rinse cycle with color-restoring detergent
,
Tom thought.

It reminded him of Christopher, and the strange, somehow pleasing scent the kid had emitted.

He checked his own face in the rearview mirror and saw that he, too, had changed. The circles beneath his eyes had faded somewhat. The mottled pallor of his skin, dry from the winter months, seemed to have regained a kind of healthy sheen. It was as though he and Maddy had returned from a vacation in Hawaii, both of them golden and shining from sun and early-retirement sex. His hair, however, had not been restored. He ran a hand through the wisps still left on his scalp and looked away from the mirror. He focused on a group of people standing with their faces turned up to the sky.

Tom himself couldn’t help but look into the mirror again, repositioning it so that it reflected the sky out of the back window.

The floating parade of figures had eventually ended when the caravan reached the ferry to take them across Lake Champlain. It was as though the hovering queue was unable to span the water, perhaps couldn’t pass the barrier of the makeshift levy the workers had been building. Or, maybe, their work had been done. All ridiculous notions, Tom knew, but what else was there?

He and Maddy had watched ferry workers and volunteers stacking sandbags along the lake’s edge. The sky had remained illuminated and shimmering for a while, the clouds iridescent, the firmament salmon-colored with swirling lavender accents. Then it returned to the bruised black of night as they had jounced over the chopping Champlain, fins of water splashing the gunwales. Talk of a water table much higher than in years past buzzed around him when he’d gotten coffee for himself at the small canteen.

Behind him now as they approached the emergency entrance, the undulant, unreal dawn that they had driven in for the last hour and a half, was fading. Shapes like the ones kids watched for in clouds had manifested, only in the colors of the air itself, causing everyone to leave their automobiles during the ferry ride and climb to the high deck and watch.

The wind had whipped and Tom had sipped his coffee, thankful he wasn’t insane, but reminded of those ethereal inkblots he had often imagined as the residue of dreams left in motel rooms.

Now was the last of the show: the advance of darkness was like a sort of negative. It billowed back until the remaining pre-dawn pink and purple had become only a stretch of garland, a ribbon thinned out and now disappearing completely. Clouds convolved to form a storm.

And it began to rain again.

He looked back and up and saw the silhouettes fading from the windows of the hospital. Smokers put their cigarettes out and moped back toward the front entrance, talking amongst themselves. People went through the sliding front doors still throwing looks back over their shoulders.

The ambulances unloaded in front of them. Tom watched the baby boy offloaded on the gurney. He looked very small. Then the girl, Elizabeth, looking a little doped up but intact. The nurse, Myers, and Roland, the driver. They all went inside, and Maddy opened the passenger door to the Blazer and got out.

“I’ll park this in the underground lot,” said Tom, “and be right in.”

“Okay, babydoll.”

Maddy slid out of the Chevy and turned, holding the door. She blew a kiss at him. “It’s been real,” she said.

Tom had nothing to say in return. His face felt sore, as if he’d been laughing or crying for hours. She shut the door and went inside. The second she was gone, Tom rolled the window down on his side and sparked a cigarette. He inhaled deeply and exhaled. The Blazer got going — he wound around and got behind a line of cars inching down into the parking garage.

* * *

“Pretty good, huh?”

Tom jumped. As he did, he inadvertently hooked the wheel left. A horn on a maroon Dodge Caravan coming the other way blew irritably. The driver, piloting out of the top lot, gave Tom a face before driving hastily by.

Tom looked out past the opposite lane and saw a young man standing there in the rain, walking along with the Blazer.

It was the kid from Tom’s lawn in the Acres, this time without a doubt, the one with the stubble, dressed in the dark, hooded ski parka. He looked from Tom and up into the air, seeming to admire the sky. Another car, from behind, a Grey Taurus, blew its horn at him. Tom realized he’d come to a stop.

“Better get going,” said the kid. “I see a spot right there.” He pointed down the ramp into the lot, lit orange with arc-sodium lights.

Tom gaped at him. The Taurus blew the horn again and started to go around. “Hurry, they’re going to get it.” Tom dropped the Blazer into drive and lurched forward. He flicked his cigarette, half-smoked, out the window. A moment later, Tom jerked to a stop in the parking spot. He was so close on the driver’s side he might not be able to open the door, but he didn’t care. He wouldn’t have cared if he had plowed into the car sitting there. Or backed into the asshole that had been honking behind him. Nothing much seemed to matter now.

He watched the rear-view mirror. The kid in the parka appeared, and walked up along the passenger side. The door opened, and the kid got in.

“Nice night,” said Parka. He was wet.

“Uh-huh.” Though any threat seemed far-fetched, Tom found he was gripping the butt of his firearm strapped against his rib cage. He made a conscious effort to pull his hand away. Once he did, he didn’t know quite what to do with his hands. He set them, pressed together, between his legs.

“What’s your name?”

“Samuel.”

“Samuel,” Tom said, nodding. “You know, Samuel, I lost a good woman not too long ago. And I lost the boy I was coming to think of as my son.”

“I’m sorry.”

Tom licked his lips. He felt like the hairs on his neck were suddenly standing on end, but it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation. He turned and started out at the concrete wall in front of him.

“The reason is that I’m impatient. I’m trying to make up for lost time. Time when I passed the buck, waited for things to pass, missed everything around me.”

Samuel was silent, listening.

“You know what I mean, Samuel?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So I’ve let things unfold these past two days. And I’ve tried to be patient. Stephanie helped teach me that. She helped me see that saving the day wasn’t always about rushing in, shooting from the hip. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is wait, and to let things reveal themselves.”             

“I understand.”

Now Tom looked over. The kid was looking at him, his eyes were green. Very clear. “Do you? Then let me ask you — what do I do now? Huh? I’ve got people lighting on fire, disappearing, flying up into the frigging sky. I’ve got the sun coming out — or something — at nine o’clock at night. Well,” Tom glanced at his watch, “it’s almost eleven now. I’ve got a girl in there wanted for questioning, a search team combing her property for dead bodies, my job hanging by a thread. And then I’ve got you, just showing up. Pop. Talking to me, sitting there like blue isn’t blue anymore.”

Samuel said nothing. Only watched Tom.

“Who are you? Are you one of these . . . I don’t know. Fuck, I don’t know.”

“It doesn’t matter too much what you call us; speculator, wagerer. Or, hireling.”

“You’re a
mercenary
?”

The kid raised his eyebrows. “You know the word.”

“I do the crossword puzzles.”

Tom patted his hunting coat until he felt the familiar bulge of the cigarettes. He took out the pack, shook one out, and lit up a fresh one. He dragged and tilted his head back and blew out the smoke until it caught in his throat, bringing on a coughing fit. He put a curled fist to his mouth until the spasm subsided.

“It’s okay,” said Samuel.

“It is?” Tom brought his head up. “Why did you kill the power at the hospital?”

Samuel looked at him, and despite all the cool he’d conveyed so far, Tom thought he looked a little busted.
Got you
, thought Tom.

“We didn’t do that,” said Samuel, shaking his head. “Most of the time, we can’t interfere directly. We try to guide, give you a heads-up. Thankfully, he wasn’t in the middle of surgery. It’s good you’re away from there now.”

“He wasn’t in the middle of the surgery? The baby? What do you know about that kid? What have you got to do with it?”

“When you do go inside,” said Samuel, “you can make sure nothing happens to him. Make sure everything goes alright.”

“Listen.” Tom’s mind was reeling with questions. He grabbed for what he hoped was the right one. “What does the flying mean, then? I mean, Jesus Christ, I just saw a bunch of people flying.”

“That’s not the right question. You have to ask the right questions, Detective Milliner.”

Tom felt invaded, as if his thoughts had been read. A second later, the anger flared up.

“Not the right
questions
? This isn’t a game. A child’s life is at stake. A young woman’s, too — she could be in a lot of trouble. What’s going to happen?”

Samuel’s face darkened for the first time. Instead of the well-adjusted, if cryptic mien he’d had before, the young man’s face now betrayed his burden. “They’re coming,” he said.

“Who? Who’s coming?”

He lifted a hand and tapped a finger to the side of his head. It stirred a chilling memory, and Tom thought of Mark Massey. “Tom, people will be seeing things. Like they are already. Coyotes, bodies. Some things are real, even if unbelievable. Some are not.”

“That’s helpful.”

“You have to discern. You can judge the tree by the fruit it bears.”

“And who are ‘they?’”

Tom, in his mind, continued to see Mark Massey, sitting there in the hospital, haggard, his face hanging and old for his young age, his hands shaking.
Defectives
. At the same time, he remembered the movement in the trees along the Kingston property. Something high in the boughs, a reddish blur.

“You got it,” said Samuel.