فصل 16 - بخش 04

16

As he was entering the hospital’s lobby, Ralph met the department’s missing detective on his way out. Jack Hoskins was a slight man, prematurely gray, with bags under his eyes and a red-veined nose. He was still wearing his fishing outfit – khaki shirt and khaki pants, both with many pockets – but his badge was clipped to his belt.

‘What are you doing here, Jack? I thought you were on vacation.’

‘Called back three days early,’ he said. ‘Drove into town not an hour ago. My net, gumrubbers, poles, and tackle box are still in my truck. Chief thought he might like to have at least one detective on active duty. Betsy Riggins is upstairs on five, having the baby. Her labor started late this afternoon. I talked to her husband, who says she’s got a long way to go. Like he’d have any idea. As for you …’ He paused for effect. ‘You’re in a hell of a mess, Ralph.’

Jack Hoskins made no effort to hide his satisfaction. A year previous, Ralph and Betsy Riggins had been asked to fill out routine evaluation forms for Jack, when he became eligible for a pay bump. Betsy, the detective with the least seniority, had said all the right things. Ralph had turned his in to Chief Geller with only two words written in the space provided: No opinion. It hadn’t kept Hoskins from getting his bump, but it was an opinion, all the same. Hoskins wasn’t supposed to see the eval sheets, and maybe hadn’t, but word of what had been on Ralph’s had of course gotten back to him.

‘Did you look in on Fred Peterson?’

‘As a matter of fact, I did.’ Jack pursed his lower lip and blew scant hair off his forehead. ‘Lot of monitors in his room, and low lines on all of them. I don’t think he’s coming back.’

‘Well, welcome home.’

‘Fuck that, Ralph, I had three more days, the bass were running, and I’m not even going to get a chance to change my shirt, which stinks of fish guts. Got calls from both Geller and Sheriff Doolin. Have to go all the way out to that useless dustbowl known as Canning Township. I understand your buddy Sablo is already there. I probably won’t actually make it home until ten or eleven.’

Ralph could have said, Don’t blame me, but who else was this mostly useless time-server going to blame? Betsy, for getting pregnant last November? ‘What’s in Canning?’

‘Jeans, underpants, and sneakers. Kid found them in a shed or a barn while he was hunting out milk cans for his father. Also a belt with a horse’s head buckle. Of course the Mobile Crime Lab will already be there, I’ll be about as useful as tits on a bull, but the chief—’

‘There’ll be fingerprints on the buckle,’ Ralph interrupted. ‘And there may be tire tracks from the van, or the Subaru, or both.’

‘Don’t try teaching your daddy how to suck eggs,’ Jack said. ‘I was carrying a detective’s shield while you were still in uniform.’ The subtext Ralph heard was And I’ll still be carrying it when you’re working as a mall guard at Southgate.

He left. Ralph was glad to see him go. He only wished he could go out there himself. Fresh evidence at this point could be precious. The silver lining was that Sablo had already gotten there, and would be supervising the Forensics Unit. They’d finish most of their work before Jack could arrive and maybe screw something up, as he had on at least two previous occasions that Ralph knew about.

He went up to the maternity waiting room first, but all the seats were empty, so maybe the delivery was going faster than Billy Riggins, a nervous novice at this, had expected. Ralph buttonholed a nurse and asked her to tell Betsy that he wished her all the best.

‘I will when I get the chance,’ the nurse said, ‘but right now she’s very busy. That little man is in a hurry to get out.’

Ralph had a brief image of Frank Peterson’s bloody, violated body and thought, If the little man knew what this world was like, he’d be fighting to stay in.

He took the elevator down two floors to ICU. The remaining member of the Peterson family was in room 304. His neck was heavily bandaged and in a cervical collar. A respirator wheezed, the little accordion gadget inside flopping up and down. The lines on the monitors surrounding the man’s bed were, as Jack Hoskins had said, mighty low. There were no flowers (Ralph had an idea they weren’t allowed in ICU rooms), but a couple of Mylar balloons had been tethered to the foot of the bed and floated near the ceiling. They were imprinted with cheerful exhortations Ralph didn’t like to look at. He listened to the wheeze of the machine that was breathing for Fred. He stared at those low lines and thought of Jack saying I don’t think he’s coming back.

As he sat down by the bed, a memory from his high school days came to him, back when what was now called environmental studies had been plain old Earth science. They had been studying pollution. Mr Greer had produced a bottle of Poland Spring water and poured it into a glass. He invited one of the kids – Misty Trenton, it had been, she of the deliciously short skirts – up to the front of the room and asked her to take a sip. She had done so. Mr Greer then produced an eyedropper and dipped it into a bottle of Carter’s Ink. He squeezed a drop into the glass. The students watched, fascinated, as that single drop sank, trailing an indigo tentacle behind it. Mr Greer rocked the glass gently from side to side, and soon all the water in the glass was tinted a weak blue. Would you drink it now? Mr Greer asked Misty. She shook her head so emphatically that one of her hair clips came loose, and everybody, Ralph included, had laughed. He wasn’t laughing now.

Less than two weeks ago, the Peterson family had been perfectly fine. Then had come the drop of polluting ink. You could say it was the chain on Frankie Peterson’s bike, that he would have made it home unharmed if it hadn’t broken, but he also would have made it home unharmed – only pushing his bike instead of riding it – if Terry Maitland hadn’t been waiting in that grocery store parking lot. Terry was the drop of ink, not the bike chain. It was Terry who had first polluted and then destroyed the entire Peterson family. Terry, or whoever had been wearing Terry’s face.

Strip away the metaphors, Jeannie had said, and you are left with the inexplicable. The supernatural.

Only that’s not possible. The supernatural may exist in books and movies, but not in the real world.

No, not in the real world, where drunk incompetents like Jack Hoskins got pay bumps. All Ralph had experienced in his nearly fifty years of life denied the idea. Denied there was even the possibility of such a thing. Yet as he sat here looking at Fred (or what remained of him), Ralph had to admit there was something devilish about the way the boy’s death had spread, taking not just one or two members of his nuclear family, but the whole shebang. Nor did the damage stop with the Petersons. No one could doubt that Marcy and her daughters would carry scars for the rest of their lives, perhaps even permanent disabilities.

Ralph could tell himself that similar collateral damage followed every atrocity – hadn’t he seen it time and again? Yes. He had. Yet this one seemed so personal, somehow. Almost as if these people had been targeted. And what about Ralph himself? Was he not part of the collateral damage? And Jeannie? Even Derek, who was going to come home from camp to discover that a good many things he’d taken for granted – his father’s job, for instance – were now at risk.

The respirator wheezed. Fred Peterson’s chest rose and fell. Every now and then he made a thick noise that sounded weirdly like a chuckle. As if it were all a cosmic joke, but you had to be in a coma to get it.

Ralph couldn’t stand it anymore. He left the room, and by the time he got to the elevator, he was nearly running.