My Soul to Keep (18 page)

I should probably convert to Catholicism. If I were Catholic, at least I’d have to go to confession. Maybe that would whip me into shape.

Whatever the problem was, I had to admit that none of my other friends seemed to attract this sort of attention. Well, except Liz and Maria. And Christine. Come to think of it, they were really my
only
friends. They were probably all just spending too much time with me. The thought depressed me thoroughly. I wasted a good hour obsessing about it before I remembered Maria had been targeted long before she met me. I’m embarrassed to admit how much that cheered me up.

I checked the clock, then picked up the phone and called her. “Any news?”

“None,” she said. “I’m resigned to it for now. I just have a feeling it’s going to be a little while longer.”

“What feeling? You mean, like he’s okay?”

“I think he is. Maybe that’s just a mother’s refusal to consider the worst. But I’m telling you, he’s out there. I can feel it. I almost hear him crying.”

“That sounds excruciating.”

“Maybe I’m kidding myself. I don’t really care. I need to believe it.”

I wasn’t going to argue with her. “What’s the FBI saying?”

“They were hoping it was a drug snatch.”

“What’s that?”

“Apparently, lots of children get kidnapped and ransomed for drug money.”

“Don’t they know Parkland doesn’t pay ransom wages?”

“They do, but they’re assuming the kidnapper might not. They also thought that maybe since I’m a doctor, someone had targeted me for OxyContin or something.”

“So is that what they think happened?”

“They told me today it’s not likely. There’s been no demand for ransom. Well, one, but it turned out to be fake. The guy had seen it on the news.”

“How do they know it was bogus?”

“They checked it out. It was just some drifter.”

“And they’re sure? Like, positive?”

“They seem quite certain.”

“And you believe them?”

“I do. They’re very good, Dylan. They know what they’re doing.”

“What happens to those kids—the drug-snatch kids?”

“If you pay up, they bring them right back. They’re usually home within twenty-four hours. Apparently it happens a lot. A lot more than you’d think, anyway.”

“I never knew.”

“Those cases never make the paper. Half of them never even get reported to the police. The kids are usually minorities from crackhouse neighborhoods.”

“What now? Are the FBI guys still at your house?”

“They left this afternoon.”

“But they’re still looking for him.”

“Of course. They’re just not waiting by the phone. Whoever has him is not going to call—I really believe that. I’d rather have them out there looking for him than sitting in my living room, you know?”

“Are your parents still there?”

“I checked them into a hotel. I can’t take care of anyone but myself right now.”

“Good decision. Can I do anything?”

“Keep me company?”

It was only ten o’clock. I’d be up for hours anyway, in my state of mind.

Maria greeted me with a glass of red, and we sat in her living room listening to music and talking. An array of trucks and dinosaurs lay
scattered under the kitchen table, where Nicholas liked to play. Maria was even tidier than me. Under normal circumstances, they’d all be in the bin in his room.

The wine was good. Round but not too fruity. I closed my eyes and let the flavor settle on my tongue. “How’s Bob?”

“The turtle?”

I nodded.

“He seems to be taking it okay,” she said. “Probably one of the advantages of being a cold-blooded creature. Escape from the curse of self-awareness. I should take him out in the yard, let him get a little exercise. Nicholas usually walks him.”

I told her about the snake in my yard.

“You have the worst luck,” she said.

“Everyone says that to me.”

She raised her glass. “To better luck.”

“For all of us.”

I told her about Christine’s tests and the tech’s pronouncement.

“He shouldn’t have said that.”

“But he’s right, isn’t he?”

“If she blew up the balloon every time, she doesn’t have asthma.”

“It’s maddening to not know what’s wrong with her.”

Maria tilted her head. “They may never figure it out. Nicholas went through something like this awhile back. We did the same routine. The whole rigmarole.”

“Does he have asthma?”

“Turned out to be panic attacks.”

“A five-year-old? I’ve never heard of that.”

She nodded. “They were triggering tracheal stenosis.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a spontaneous closing of the trachea. Tracheitis.”

“More diseases to be afraid of.”

She smiled. “I don’t think you need to worry too much. Odds are in your favor. You’re more likely to die of the flu. I bet you don’t get flu shots, do you?”

“How did you know?”

She laughed. “Um, your reflexive refusal to listen to anyone?”

“What causes it?”

“Your reflexive refusal to listen to anyone?”

I made a face at her. “Trache-whatever.”

“Some people get it from a virus. Or it can be a reaction to anesthesia or intubation.” She shrugged. “It’s rare for anxiety to trigger it, but it happens.”

I sat there a minute. The gears began to grind in my mind. “So, does Nicholas still have the panic attacks?”

“Sometimes. When he’s really afraid.”

“And when did they start?”

“Last fall. He changed schools in September. He’d been in a little private preschool until then—very structured. I moved him to Montessori. He got a little freaked out. He likes structure.”

“So you think that was it?”

“Well, nothing else was going on. Business as usual in the Chavez house. Mom’s too busy. No dad in sight. Nanny refuses to speak to him in anything other than Spanish. Bob has a fungus. Nicholas throws a fit wanting Sugar Babies for breakfast. The usual dramas.”

“Tell me about the panic attacks.”

“What do you want to know?”

“What were they like? What were his symptoms?”

“Rapid heart rate. Clammy skin. Respiratory distress. You know—that whole fear-escalation cycle.”

“Which for Nicholas went how?”

“It started with the sweating. He’d get gray and clammy, and his heart rate would go up. He called it drums in his tummy.”

“And then what?”

“Rapid breaths, increasing in frequency, decreasing in efficacy. Eventually, he’d either calm himself down or pass out. His trachea didn’t start closing until several months into it. But it was like an asthma attack. Almost exactly. I put him through the same tests Christine just went through. He blew up the balloon.”

“What time of day did his panic attacks happen?”

“Usually at night.”

“Why?”

“Nicholas is afraid of the dark.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“He can’t go into a dark room. He can’t sleep in a dark room. He won’t even go into the hallway until I turn the light on for him. He’s always been like that.”

“What, does he have a little night-light or something in his room?”

“Superman. He has a Superman night-light. He says it keeps him safe.”

“Keeps him safe? He uses those words?”

“That’s what he says exactly. ‘It keeps me safe.’ ”

I went to the kitchen, brought back the wine bottle, and filled Maria’s glass. “Maria, has anyone told you what the kidnapper said to Christine?”

“I just heard that he knew Nicholas by name.”

“She didn’t report it initially. I think she was afraid. Scared out of her mind. But she told me that when he grabbed her, he burned his hand.”

She furrowed her brow. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know it doesn’t.”

“What else did she say? You’re getting at something.”

I hesitated. “He said he didn’t want her; he only wanted Nicholas.”

“And?”

I took a breath. “And … he said he was taking him to keep him safe.”

“He used that phrase?”

“Yes. ‘To keep him safe.’ That’s what she told me. Those exact words.”

“It’s probably just a coincidence.”

“I remember your telling me that he was having nightmares.”

“About that creepy white guy with the slash in his back,” Maria said.

“Peter Terry.”

“The one you said was hunting souls.”

“Right. That’s what he does,” I said, my anger rushing up me like a gust of hard wind. “He’s out to ruin us all.” I set my glass down. “Do you still have the coloring book? That Audubon coloring book? The one where Nicholas colored the birds with the slashes in their backs?”

“I think it’s in his room.”

“Let’s take a look.”

She got the book, and we pored over each page. I hadn’t seen it since last winter. I’d forgotten how graphic the images were.

For the first half of the book, the coloring was normal for a kid his age. Scribbles in the margins. Wild, happy colors everywhere. Yellow swans, bright pink sparrows. Then a sudden change. The colors grew darker, angrier. Black parakeets, blood-red lovebirds. And then finally, a dove.

Nicholas had left the dove white but had crossed out each of the wings and drawn an angry red slash in the bird’s back, wing to wing.

“When did he do this one? Do you know?” I asked.

She picked up the book and flipped through the pages until she found the remains of a page that had been torn out, its edge still bound into the backbone of the book.

“This was December. He colored a picture and gave it to me for my birthday.” She gestured toward the bookcase, pointing out a framed hummingbird in green and blue and purple. “He looked it up in a book to get the colors right.”

The following few pages were still bright, energetic. Three pages into it, Nicholas had colored a whooping crane black.

“How often does he color?” I asked.

“Two or three times a week, probably.”

“Does he always color the pages in order and do one book at a time? Or are there several books, and he just picks one randomly?”

“Nicholas is a very meticulous child.” She smiled. “He’s a lot like you that way.”

I raised my glass. “My sympathies. Definitely in order and one book at a time, then. When’s your birthday?”

“December twelfth.”

“So sometime in the second or third week of December, his coloring changed. And then a week or so into that, he colors the dove. Do you remember a change in mood?”

“That was when the nightmares started.”

“The ones about Peter Terry.”

“Right. He’d wake up screaming.”

“I guess Superman wasn’t doing much good at that point.”

“What are you getting at, Dylan?”

“What triggered the decline? Did something happen in mid-December?”

Maria’s eyes pooled suddenly.

“It was my fault.” She wiped a tear away.

“What?”

“It was a Saturday, and I was running late, racing around getting ready for work. The nanny had just come, and she was cleaning up the breakfast dishes and starting some laundry. I thought he was with her. He always follows her around in the morning because she brings him a surprise every day. Nothing big. It could be a smiley-face Band-Aid or something. But he loves it. He can’t leave her alone until she gives it to him.”

I watched as she struggled to retain composure. Her skin began to flush, and her upper lip trembled.

“I wasn’t really tracking where he was,” she said. “I just wasn’t thinking about it. The nanny went to the laundry room to fold some towels. And I picked up my keys and left.”

“What happened?”

“I didn’t know at first. The nanny called me in a panic a few minutes later. She couldn’t find him anywhere. She thought maybe I’d taken him with me without telling her.”

“Where was he, Maria?”

She began to cry, tears glistening wet in the soft light. She dropped her head into her hands and began to sob, shoulders shaking, gasping air. The kind of crying you do maybe once or twice in your life.

I’m pretty good with crying. I watch people cry all the time in my line of work. I sat down next to her until she’d cried it out, then handed her a Kleenex and waited.

“The light goes off when the door closes.” She wiped her cheeks with her hands. “He was only in there a few minutes.” She took a rattled breath. “He couldn’t find the knob. That’s why he got so scared.”

“What happened to him, Maria? Where was he?”

“In my closet. I’d accidentally shut him in my closet.”

R
AIN DRUMMED STEADILY FROM
the night sky, thunder grumbling in the distance. Maria swiped a card to get through security and parked in the doctors’ lot at Children’s. She set the brake and was out of the car and halfway to the elevator before I’d finished admiring the covered parking space. The guard waved us through, and we walked through the double doors. I followed, almost at a trot, as Maria led us through the maze of hallways. Our wet shoes squeaked on the nonsensical painted stripes, echoing in near-empty corridors.

On the seventh floor, Maria spoke briefly with the charge nurse, then pointed me down the hall to Christine’s room and said she’d be right there.

Christine was sound asleep in her bed, sprawled sideways, clutching No-Nose. Liz sat in the Lysol chair in her jammies, flipping through a magazine. She had a stack of them on the table next to her.