Time Release (10 page)

Corbett lowered the gun, but only a couple inches. For the first time, he opened both eyes. “Been almost six weeks since,” he said. “Take you this long to find me?”

“Something I don't understand, Ron,” Downing said. “Where
are
you getting the poison? Help me out here. There's three ways I can think of. But since you're not an authorized business, and you're not a college or university, I figure you're just stealing it from somewhere. Am I close?”

Corbett raised the gun again. “What size hole you think I could make in you from here?”

“And this one wasn't your style, either, Chickie.”

“Because I didn't do nothing,” he croaked. “Never did. You got no goddamned right.” Corbett was trembling, probably more from rage than the cold. People make mistakes when they're mad, Downing thought. How far could he push?

“You're just not that smart,” Downing said. “This one was slick, boy. Not like in '86. No messy powders. No clumsy capsules. Just got the liquid stuff and squirted it right through the top.”

“You're so fucking ignorant,” Corbett said. “You got no idea.”

“Made '86 look downright inefficient. I'm no expert, Ron, but the yogurt thing seemed like a lot less work. And all that effort to get the capsules back into the bottles!”

“Fuck you.”

“Practice makes perfect, I suppose.”

“Fuck your mother,” Corbett roared. “You think somebody who filled prescriptions for a living would waste their time carving up the bottoms of sealed bottles? There's lots easier ways.”

Their eyes met and held. Downing couldn't suppress a smile. “Guess you're right, Ron. Maybe I've been too hasty.” He lowered his right arm and extended his hand to Corbett. “Best friends?”

Corbett waved him away with the shotgun. “Get the hell off my property.”

The euphoria carried Downing back to his car and down the goat path to blacktop. He stopped at the first pay phone he saw, outside a convenience store, and called his boss despite his second thoughts. He had to tell somebody.

“DeLillo around?” he asked. He was wearing one shoe; the left foot was too swollen. The sock that covered it left damp red tracks, and his pants leg was sticking to his calf.

“May I say who's calling?” The new receptionist, the councilman's niece with the tits.

“It's Grady Downing. Just put him on, would you?”

“Oh, hi! Thought you were off today.”

“I am,” he said. “Get DeLillo.”

Papers rustling. “Your wife called looking for you. And the morgue. Doctor, um, Pungpreecha-whatever-it-is said you'd know what it was about.”

“DeLillo, please. Now. Thanks.”

“Hoo-boy. Must be important. This job is so cool, like
NYPD Blue.”

“Would you put goddamned DeLillo on the phone?”

He waited, ignoring the throbbing in his leg. The pellets had gone deep. He'd just have a nasty bruise once he dug them out.

“What do you want, Grady?” His ever-cheerful boss.

“Loose shoes, tight pussy, a warm place to shit. What more can a man ask, really?”

“Don't screw around. I'm in a meeting.”

Downing cleared his throat, trying not to sound excited. “Just had some luck with Ron Corbett. Wanted to run it past you.”

“Ron Corbett?”

“I told you yesterday I was coming down to see what the Waynesburg cops had on that product tampering a few weeks back. You said it was fine.”

“I said what you do on your own time is your business, Grady, but what the fuck are you talking to Corbett for? You're supposed to steer way clear of him.”

“Pure luck. Ran into him in Waynesburg.”

“Like hell.”

“Really. You want to hear this or not?”

“I don't know,” DeLillo said. “Do I?”

Downing waited, let the anticipation build. “He knows how the loaded capsules got into the bottles in 1986. He knows about the holes in the bottoms.”

“So?”

“So, since there was a total product recall, we never released that detail. It never got into the papers. How would he know?”

Downing waited, imagining that little bombshell rolling around in DeLillo's oversized head. An immense woman waddled from her car toward the convenience-store door, eyeing Downing's leg. He gave her his best smile.

“I'm not sure I like this,” DeLillo said.

“What's not to like? It's an opening.”

“For shit, an opening. You got this conversation on videotape, did you?”

“I told you I saw him in downtown Waynesburg,” Downing said. “It's not like it was in an interrogation room.”

“Tape recorder running? Witnesses?”

“No, goddamnit. It was a fucking street conversation. Why are you chopping me here?”

“Because you've got no business talking to Ronfucking Corbett, that's why. I ought to take this to Kiger and get your ass fired, is what I ought to do.”

He could hear DeLillo opening drawers, shuffling papers, agitated. “I don't get it,” Downing said. “I bring you some pretty hairy information about the biggest unsolved case in the country and all you do is squeeze my goddamned balls?”

“First off, you got nothing,” DeLillo said. “And God only knows how you got it. If the sheriff's people have anything that seems relevant, tell me and I'll pass it along to Pawlowski to check out. But otherwise stay out of this thing, you understand? You had your shot on this one.”

The line went dead. Downing smashed the phone onto its cradle, then kicked a newspaper box so hard its door fell open. Searing pain. Wrong leg. A circle of damp red tracks around the pay phone as he walked it off. That son of a bitch. Pawlowski. Christ. Guy hadn't lifted a finger on Primenyl in two years.

Downing checked to see who was watching, grabbed the afternoon edition of the
Courier
from the box, and limped back to his car, ignoring the stare of the fat woman lumbering out of the store with a Slurpee. He scanned the headlines before starting the car, his eyes settling finally on the one above a story on the lower right corner of the front page: “Collapse of Boy, 11, Baffles Police.”

Kuhntown
—A Union Elementary fourth-grader collapsed this morning while eating a frozen confection as he walked to school, then later lapsed into a coma.

Kuhntown police described the incident as “suspicious” but offered no further comment about what may have caused Kevin Usher, 11, to suddenly fall ill.

Police say the boy was walking to school with his older sister, Staci, and eating a popsicle-type snack shortly before 8 a.m. when he complained of a severe headache and dizziness. He appeared confused, his sister told police, then fell to the ground and began convulsing.

Downing closed his eyes, squeezed them shut with all his might to blind himself to the image already forming in his mind. But it came anyway: Carole face up beside her car, gazing through clouded eyes at the overhanging trees and the stars beyond and on into the black night above where she fell. He opened his eyes and read on:

Nearby residents heard Staci Usher's screams and called for an ambulance. Paramedics arrived within minutes and rushed her brother to Washington Medical Center, where he remains comatose.

Local police cordoned off the area and an investigator from the Waynesburg Police Department arrived shortly after 10:30 a.m. to collect evidence at the scene. The investigation is continuing.

Downing checked his county map. Something didn't make sense. Waynesburg was at least twenty miles from Kuhntown. He could see the local cops treating it like a crime scene until they knew more, but why would they call in an investigator from Waynesburg, and so soon? He already knew the answer. He pulled the notebook from his jacket pocket and checked a number, then fished into his pants pocket for another quarter as he hobbled back to the pay phone.

“Detective Ramsey, please,” he said to the dispatcher.

“He's unavailable right now. Can
I
take a message?”

“Tell him it's Grady Downing, Pittsburgh PD, calling to follow up on our meeting this morning. I'll wait.”

“But he's—”

“Just tell him.”

Downing tested his leg. It was getting stiff. Ramsey picked up, humorless as ever.

“You had a busy morning after I left,” Downing said.

The young detective volunteered nothing. “You heard about the incident in Kuhntown, then?”

“Read about it.” Downing waited until he could wait no more. “So, you gonna tell me, or what?”

“Tell you what?”

“Come on, Chickie. The paper said they taped the scene and called you. They found something.”

Downing waited again. “We're not sure if it's significant,” Ramsey said finally. “And there's no reason now to think it is. We'll have a statement tomorrow morn—”

“Look, sport, you're not talking to John Q. here. I know you don't
have
to tell me what you found, but I'd like to think we can trust each other.”

“Sorry. It's just—”

“Look, the paper said the kid was eating a Popsicle or something. What's up with that?”

“I can't, you know, details like that—”

“That's all I want to know. Really.” Downing waited some more. “I've been in your shoes, you know. Maybe I can help.”

Ramsey finally sighed. “You have kids?”

“One,” Downing said. “Grown. I know what you mean, though. Cases like this hit awful close.”

“Then you know how they do stuff, goofy things you just can't figure.”

“Like?”

Downing heard riffling paper, the sound of someone flipping the pages of a spiral notebook. “Seven-thirty in the morning, right? Kid's headed to school, and it's what, thirty-five degrees outside? Cold as a well-digger's ass. And before heading out the door, his mom says he stops by the freezer and takes out a Squeezie Pop for the walk to school.”

“One of those things on a stick?” Downing leaned his head against the pay phone as he waited through the long silence.

“That's the thing,” Ramsey said. “It's different than a Popsicle, one of those push-up things in the cellophane sleeve.”

Downing flashed back to lazy summer days spent squeezing frozen tubes of neon sugar water into his mouth. He remembered his daughter's joy whenever she saw a box of those flaccid, liquid-filled sleeves in Trix's grocery bag, how she hustled them into the freezer, waited for them to get solid enough to eat. An instant later, grim possibilities crowded the memories from his mind.

His morning
Press
was still dry in its plastic wrap. A rare treat. It usually was soaked through and unreadable. A plastic bag dangling from the front doorknob diverted his attention from the headlines. It was printed with the
Press
logo and had a jumble of sample products inside. All along both sides of the street, identical bags hung from every front door. He brought it inside and laid it with the papers on the kitchen table, then returned to the bottom of the stairs.

“Let's go, ladies!” he shouted. “Last call for breakfast! It's show time!”

The second-floor bathroom door slammed, its report echoing through the quiet house. At least Melissa was up.

“Annie!” he shouted again. She'd been sitting in bed when he last saw her, groggy but awake, clutching Silkie with both hands and wondering aloud, “If a dinosaur and a giant fought, who would win?” “Get dressed so I can do your hair, okay?”

He heard her feet hit the floor, smiled, then returned to the kitchen to assess the options. The Honeycomb box was almost empty, enough for one helping for Annie. He'd long ago given up trying to enforce Molly's no-sugary-cereals rule. The only other cereal in the cupboard was his Fruit & Fibre, which Melissa detested. He thought he might assuage her with raisin toast, but a quick bread-box check ended that hope. Only the heels were left, and she hated heels. What else?
What else?
She was coming down the stairs.

“I thought I'd make some orange Danish,” he said as she collapsed into a kitchen chair. “It'll take a little longer, but we're on time this morning for once. What do you say?”

“Cereal's fine,” she said.

He lifted the Honeycomb box from the counter and gave it a shake.

“Oh,” she said. “Great.”

“Sorry.”

“Raisin toast is fine.”

“Sorry.”

She surveyed the kitchen with a predator's eyes, which settled on the sample product bag. “I'm not hungry,” she said, then stood up. “What's this?'

Christensen poured coffee, noticing too late that he'd grabbed the hand-painted “World's Best Mom” mug from the cupboard. His daughter noticed it too and looked away.

“Some promotional thing that came with the paper,” he said, holding the cup out for an arm's-length inspection. “I remember the day you brought this home. I've seen coronations with less ceremony.”

“Third grade,” she said. A slight smile. “Mother's Day.”

Neither spoke for a long time. Melissa's lips tightened and she started to get up, but he wanted desperately to keep talking.

“I think Mom used it every morning since,” he said.

“Not lately.”

Christensen set the mug on the tile countertop and crossed his arms. Enough. This had to be settled. “We need to talk, Melissa. There's too much we've left unsaid. I don't want to lose you, too.”

She dumped the plastic bag onto the table and rummaged through the product samples. A one-load box of laundry detergent, a small tube of toothpaste, a sample box of Frosted Wheat Squares cereal, dental floss, miniature glass bottles of shampoo and mouthwash. “‘Lose' is such a passive word,” she said.

“Meaning?”

She ignored him, studying the sample cereal box. She tossed it aside and picked the shampoo and mouthwash from the pile. “Nothing.”

“Meaning we didn't just ‘lose' Mom, right?” He knew he sounded defensive, but he couldn't stop himself! “Is that what you're saying?”

Melissa held his glare while bending slowly toward an electrical socket in the kitchen wall. He felt himself flinch as she pretended to pull a plug. His chest tightened and his eyes stung with sudden tears, which he wiped without embarrassment on the sleeve of his robe. He didn't try to hide the damage in his voice, either.

“That's so unfair.”

“Life's not fair sometimes,” she said. “That's what you said after the accident.”

“People can be fair, though. People have brains. People are capable of logic and rational thought. And mercy and forgiveness.”

Her face transformed into a cruel mask of wide-eyed insincerity. “Why would I need to forgive you? You said you only did what was right. I read it in the papers. I heard you say it on TV. Everybody saw you hug Brenna outside the jail when they let you go.”

He felt sick. How might her reaction to Molly's death have differed without the storm of publicity and his high-profile arrest? It hadn't mattered to her cruelest schoolmates that he was released after two days, or that Brenna was the main reason he wasn't tried on a murder charge. He steadied himself on the edge of the counter.

“I hope—,” he started to say, then stopped, trembling. “Just hope you never have to make a decision like I did.”

Melissa looked away. “I'm taking a shower,” she said, nearly knocking over her little sister as she bolted up the stairs.

Annie sat down in her chair and laid the rumpled Silkie beside her cereal bowl. He couldn't remember ever craving a dose of unconditional love more than he did at that moment.

“A dinosaur, I think,” she said.

He was still shaking from Melissa's assault, but he tried to smile as he poured her Honeycombs. Upstairs, the bathroom door slammed again.

“Not the giant?”

She shook her head decisively. “Dinosaurs have big teeth; giants just have clubs.”

“Good point. When do I get my morning hug?”

Annie stretched her arms wide. He held her until she shoved him away and demanded milk for her cereal. “And pour it on this side,” she ordered.

The pipes running behind the kitchen wall groaned as Melissa started her shower. Molly was the one who'd truly loved this old house; he'd simply learned to live with its idiosyncrasies.

“I wonder, though,” he said, “do you think fighting is the best way for the giant and the dinosaur to solve their problems?”

Annie rolled her eyes.

The bathroom door opened as violently as it had closed, and the wooden stairs creaked. Melissa appeared at the kitchen door, hair soaking wet, her blue terry-cloth bathrobe gathered loosely at her waist. She was holding her left hand palm up, and Christensen could see from across the room that something was wrong. The skin was bright red at the center, and her fingers were curled in obvious pain.

“Dad?” she said, crossing the room to him. “It burns.”

Purely by instinct, he turned the sink faucet on full cold and guided her hand beneath it. Her whole body shuddered as he held it there. The skin already was starting to blister.

“Was it the radiator in the bathroom? That thing gets hot as a griddle,” he said. “Sometimes I hate this house.”

Melissa shook her head, blinking back tears. “The shampoo,” she said. “It started as soon as I poured some into my hand.”

Christensen turned toward the kitchen table. Annie was using the tiny sample tube of toothpaste like a rocket, blasting off from the tablecloth.

“Don't touch that!” he said.

Annie dropped the tube, startled by the volume and urgency of his voice. The toothpaste splashed down in her cereal bowl. He struggled for composure as they all stared at the sample products scattered across the tabletop.

“Get away from the table, honey,” he said. “There may be something wrong with that stuff. Keep your hand under the water, Melissa.”

She was crying now, losing control, staring at the angry skin beneath the cascading water. Jesus. He snatched the handset from the wall phone and punched in 9-1-1. Annie backed away from the table and stood against the far wall, looking lost, Silkie in hand.

“It'll be okay,” he said.

Two rings. Three rings.

“We'll be fine,” he said. “It'll be okay. We'll be fine.”

The operator answered. “Allegheny County Fire. Is this an emergency?”

Up and down his street, Christensen's neighbors continued their vigil. Standing on their lawns and sitting on porch steps despite the cold, watching a scene Christensen still couldn't comprehend.

The paramedics had come, treated Melissa's hand, and left an hour ago. But still there was a lot to see. Two black-and-whites were parked out front. An ambulance idled in front of old Mrs. Donati's house three doors down, the attendants having disappeared inside twenty minutes earlier. Two blocks down, a discreet coroner's van was parked outside a house on the north side of the street. Investigators were still going door-to-door, collecting the sample bags, looking for anyone who might have seen who left them.

“Ever kill anybody?”

Annie's voice, distinct from the low murmur of the investigating officers, diverted him from the window. She was standing beside a uniformed cop in the living room, hands in the pockets of her overalls, eyes at holster level and very, very wide. The cop seemed annoyed. He looked to Christensen for direction.

“Annie, why don't we get you to Mrs. Taubman's?” he said, moving her gently toward her backpack at the base of the stairs. “I'm staying home with Melissa, but there's no reason you should. I bet Corey and the other kids are wondering where you are.”

“I'm staying,” she said. “This is so cool.”

Even the cop laughed.

“Come on, I'll walk you over,” Christensen said. He called up the stairs. “Melissa? You need me for the next few minutes? Melissa?”

He took the steps three at a time. She was curled into her beanbag chair, headphones on, studying the white gauze on her left hand.

“Lissa?” he said.

She looked up, then away, then back at him as she peeled the headphones from her ears. She must have been reading his face.

“I'm fine,” she said. “I'm missing a World Cultures test today.”

He leaned against the doorjamb. “So this isn't all bad, then?”

Ordinarily, Christensen would have interpreted her shrug as hostile indifference. But this time his attempt at humor seemed to connect. She was smiling.

“Putting it under cold water was the right thing to do. That's what the paramedic guy said.” She stopped just short of a thank-you. Christensen knew that's what it was, though.

“It just looked like a burn from the minute I saw it, and that's the best thing for burns,” he said. “Okay if I walk Annie over to day care? You need anything?”

“Don't get all spastic. I'm fine.”

The phone rang as he and Annie were halfway out the front door. He started back in to answer it, and was surprised when the plainclothes investigator answered it first.

“What have you got?” the man said. His face betrayed nothing. “That helps,” he said, hanging up.

“What helps?” Christensen asked.

The investigator wheeled and stared, seemingly annoyed at Christensen's presence in his own home. He had a broad, open Slavic face, and when he turned Christensen saw a flash of leather and metal beneath his overcoat. The man considered him for a moment before replying.

“Things sure have changed since I was a paperboy,” he said. “Used to be you just stuffed and folded the papers and threw them on the doorstep. Now they've got these poor kids doing inserts and promotions and that kind of crap. Hope the pay is better than when I was a kid.”

“That was the
Press?
” Christensen asked. “What did they say?”

“Not the
Press,
exactly. I know some of the Teamsters down there on the loading docks.”

“And?” Christensen knew the cop wasn't going to tell him anything if he didn't keep asking.

The cop nodded toward the kitchen table, where the sample products delivered that morning were gathered neatly into a see-through evidence bag. “I called to find out how promotions like that are handled. Where this stuff comes from, who bags it, who delivers it, everybody who has any contact with it along the way.”

He seemed to weigh his next thought more carefully.

“Last time the
Press
did one of these was four months ago, in July.”

“I don't get it,” Christensen said.

The man nodded again toward the evidence bag. “Somebody else delivered that.”

Nothing made sense. “To the whole city? Why?”

The man cleared his throat. “That's the other thing,” he said. “There's no real pattern so far. Just single streets in a few different neighborhoods, here and there. Bethel Park. Cranberry Township. Penn Hills. All over.”

Christensen excused himself and went to the front door, which was still wide open. To his left, three doors down, paramedics were wheeling Mrs. Donati down her front walk, a thick white bandage taped across her eyes. Her ancient husband trailed the gurney; he was fully dressed except he was still wearing bedroom slippers. A knot of neighbors gathered outside the house where the coroner's van was parked.

Annie was lying flat on her back in the yard, spread-eagle, no jacket, making a snow angel. The hell with day care, he thought. No way he was letting either girl out of his sight. At least not today.