HIGHWATER: a suspense thriller you won't be able to put down (21 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Five boys were standing in the hallway, elevator doors now closing behind them.

Tom stood a few yards from the boys. At the nurses station, a woman with a pile of dark brown hair dropped the phone from her ear, her mouth open, watching the ensemble. They had everyone’s attention — a skinny orderly pushing a mop bucket back into a utility closet; a doctor with a dangling stethoscope standing over a stack of papers; various nurses and residents and interns at computer terminals in and around the station, standing up to look; patients on the floor; parents of children who were strolling around for some exercise; all were stopped, or slowing, and watching.

Tom understood why. It wasn’t something you saw every day. The five young boys — mostly dark-haired and olive-skinned, similar in height — resembled a pack of boy scouts. They looked dutiful, as if preparing to receive merit badges. Their expressions were all of the same kind of contentment — the
rightfulness
— Tom had witnessed in the faces of the older boys at the Red Rock Medical Center.

Where this resemblance to boy scouts ended was in how they were dressed. Their uniforms, if you could call them that, bore a striking resemblance to photographs Tom had seen in his mother’s albums.

Helen Darring Milliner had come from a small, New York family, just she and her brother. Eventually they had made the journey north and her father had worked the mine in Lyon Mountain. Until then, however, she and her brother had been what Tom considered the quintessential immigrant children of the Great Depression — dressed like little adults, his mother in gowns and bows, his uncle wearing grey woolen vests, and caps that hung off the side of his head.

They looked like street urchins, like pictures of Tom’s Uncle Louis, straight out of the Depression. They seemed well-nourished enough, and their clothes were intact, but they looked to Tom like kids from tougher neighborhoods, who had to grow up too quick. If they were orphans, he figured, they came from a proper institution, if one decades out-of-date in the garment department.

It was a kind of standoff. Tom stood with Maddy behind him, the doctor in charge of the boy’s case, and his resident (the cute skinny girl named Ophelia or Sophia or something). The four of them, and the five boys. Boys who didn’t shave yet, but boys who looked like they already could have done some juvie time, Tom thought, for something seemed to burn behind the boy-scout postures and retro outfits.

The boys weren’t looking at Tom or any of the people around him. They were looking past them; they were looking at the door to the child’s room.

“Okay,” said Tom, “don’t go any further.” He wondered where security had gotten to. Then he remembered that there had been several times this number of boys out on the street, standing under the lights. The rest of them might be downstairs now, these five having snuck through. There were only three on-duty guards, Tom knew, for the whole place. Those three were probably on the ground floor right now, chasing around the rest of the boys who were creating a diversion. Tom could envision the scene: three overweight guards trying to herd cats. Still, he wondered if anyone had called the local police, perhaps the woman on the phone had.

“Boys. We’ve got enough cookies,” said Tom. Maddy nudged him in the ribs. It was okay. Tom just wanted to see if he’d get any reaction, anything at all. And, of course, he didn’t.

Tom lowered his gun, pointing it at the group of them.

“Tom,” Maddy whispered in his ear.

“Jesus,” somebody said.

“Everybody just stay cool. Just stay where you are.” Tom took a couple of steps towards the boys. He kept the gun waist-high. The woman with the big hair and phone put a hand over her mouth.

“Okay, boys. You’re making everybody anxious. I’ve got my gun out, making people anxious, too. But it’s been that kind of day. Now, you either need to tell us what you need, or you gotta get back in that elevator and get out of here. This is a hospital. There are sick people here, and they need attention. If you’re looking for attention, go get it somewhere else. Okay? You want to spend the night in jail, away from your mommies and daddies?” Tom now looked at the woman with her hand over her mouth and she nodded quickly and started dialing. “So, let’s not have to have your parents come down to the police station and get you out of jail.”

He was close now, right in front of the first boy, who continued to look beyond him and at the door, carrying that facial expression that wasn’t smug, or disrespectful, Tom had to admit, but just
focused
. As if nothing else existed to the boys except for what was in that room.

Tom had an idea. “He’s fine,” he said. “The baby boy,” he looked back over his shoulder at Maddy. She said, “Caleb.”

Tom looked at the boys again. “Caleb is fine. Everything went well. He’s sleeping, so let’s not wake him up.”

The boy in front suddenly moved. He reached inside his black peacoat. Tom cocked his gun, and one of the nurses cried out.

“Whoa, whoa,” said Tom.

Behind the first boy, the next one reached into his pocket — the lower pockets of a sweater vest. He stuck his hands in deep. Then they all did. Tom pointed the gun at each of them.

“Officer,” someone called out behind him, “they’re just boys.”

“You haven’t seen what I’ve seen,” Tom said quickly. Then, to the boys: “What’ve you got? Stop — let me see it — slowly.” His heart was thumping in his chest. In his mind he saw the phone dangling from the booth at the gas station all those years ago, and the kids standing around, one licking a lollipop, his tongue bright red in the sun.

The boy nearest started to pull his hand out. Tom could sense the entire floor holding its breath. As soon as Tom saw a gun, he would take the kid down. If anyone else pulled a piece or a weapon, Tom would tackle him. If that’s how it had to go, then that’s how it would go.

* * *

It wasn’t a gun. In the boy’s hand was a coin.

The coin flashed under the fluorescent lights. It was a large coin, bigger than a quarter, but copper, like a penny.

Tom squinted at it, wondering about the currency. The markings looked unfamiliar. Tokens, maybe?

At the rear of the group, nearest the elevator, another boy pulled out a roll of tape. He walked through and plucked each one of the coins from the hands of the others. He looked at the coins as he took them. He wasn’t a robot after all, Tom thought, and felt that giddiness again, that kind of high, that wild desire to start rolling around and laughing.

In fact, various onlookers on the pediatrics floor began smiling. There was something innocent, something endearing, about watching this boy proceed, taking the coins from the other boys, rounding them up like it was some sort of a game.

He continued past Tom and around Maddy. He walked around the doctor and the skinny girl with glasses. He was heading to the child’s room.

“Whoa,” Tom said, springing into action, snapping out of the trance. “Whoa, buddy.”

He jogged after him. He saw the doctor and the girl shy away from the boy as if he were something toxic. Apparently not everyone thought the situation was innocuous.

Tom reached out and lightly hooked a finger into the collar of the boy’s white shirt.

The kid didn’t resist. He just stopped.

Tom thought there was nothing that could have stopped the boy if the boy hadn’t wanted to be.

He heard sirens from outside.

“Okay, guys. See? Cops are on their way.”

Tom put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. But he felt a hand on his own chest. He looked down at the painted fingernails, and then up into Maddy’s eyes. He smelled the peppermint on her breath again, and noticed dimly that she was moving a candy around in her mouth, pushing it with her tongue. “Tommy, let’s see what he does.”

They stood there for a moment, and then Tom let go of the boy’s shoulder and collar. As if nothing had happened, the boy continued forward, the doctor and the resident giving him a wide berth. When he got to the door of Caleb’s room, he stopped again, before he crossed the threshold.

They all watched. Everyone on the floor gathered around slowly, fascinated. Liz watched from the room, sitting on the edge of Caleb’s bed,

Tom looked back at the other boys. They were as they had been, still and patient.

The sirens grew louder outside, rising shrilly up to the fifth floor.

He heard the sound
of a piece of Scotch tape being peeled off. Then the boy took the coins and stuck them to the length of tape. He stuck this on the door.

Five coins of unknown origin. Tom was dying to get a closer look at them. Having taped them up, the boy just stood there in the doorway.

Liz lifted up her hand in greeting. “Hi,” she said to the boy.

The boy lifted up his hand. “Hi,” he said.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Jim Cruickshand wasn’t sleeping soundly. He tossed and turned and he dreamed.

In his dream he was standing on the edge of Macmaster Pond, his back to the Kingston house. The pond was far below, a craterous hole scooped out of the earth, filled with an oily, murky water. Beside him was Assistant DA Sarah Locke. Her makeup and hair made her look like a pro; thick swaths of lipstick, hair piled atop her head like the beehive hairdos long ago at Jim’s prom, where he had stood at the back of the room, dateless, in his rented tux and watched Maddy Kruger dancing. Also by him was Rory Blaine, wearing a tux. Jim, Locke, and Blaine; the three of them looking down.

In the syrupy water, something moved. Some enormous spine pressing beneath the sheath of a thick, slick skin surfaced and rolled and disappeared into the water again.

Across the dark waters, along the pond-crater’s lip, stood Tom Milliner, with a girl and a small child. Jim could see the red pacifier in the child’s mouth.

Jim called to them, but his voice was swallowed up and did not carry. He realized that in order to get to them, he would have to cross the pond; all around the edge of the excavation were birch trees like staves; an iron gate. Their roots were visible, jutting in tangled fingers from the torn earth beneath them, so that the perimeter of the pond was a crown of thorns. Yes, he would have to cross.

Instantly he was down at the water level. Sarah Locke and District Attorney Rory Blaine were forgotten behind him.

It was shallow enough to wade across. And if it wasn’t, he thought, he might be able to ride that thing moving in the water. It flopped and rolled briefly at the surface again, the rubber-leather skin as oily as the water, the ripples iridescent white; moon-reflected though it was midday in the dream, grey and dim.

Verrega.

Get them back.

Jim heard the call of a loon, but he couldn’t see one. Cattails and lily pads adorned the water which was softly lapping the bank. On Jim’s right, a red mailbox stood in the water. And a tube. He hadn’t seen it before because it was black, a tire tube, the kind kids floated on in the summer. It was a few yards away.

Bring them back to me, vacie.

Jim began wading into the murky water. It sloshed around his legs. He was up to his knees, and then past his hips, but he knew he could make it across. Above him on the other side, the three figures — Milliner, the girl, and the child — began to recede from the precipice. Jim moved faster.

* * *

Sergeant Mahoney arrived at Fletcher Allen just before midnight. He climbed out of his patrol car. He was naturally a large man. He had been born either with an excessive number of fat cells, or extra-sized fat cells, that was how he saw it. It was how nature had made him. He wore a handlebar moustache on his otherwise smooth, benign face.

After hefting himself out of the vehicle, Mahoney put his wide-brimmed hat on top of his head, seating it to the front so that a shadow fell over his eyes. He wheezed as he shut the car door. He slid his nightstick back into the loop of his belt, and he checked his firearm.

After this ritual, Mahoney looked around. The parking lot was about thirty percent full. Even in the middle of the night, it was an indicator of a slow night for the hospital. The oddness of the recent hours didn’t stop there, though. First, there were reports of dioxin poisoning at regional farms.

Dioxin was a real bastard: waste oil spread on the road gets into the water and the animals start dropping dead. If it got into the tap water, the local families would vanish so fast that plates and forks would be left on the table for the evening meal.

The water in Lake Champlain was supposedly rising, and a levee was being built in response. There were scattered reports of the sky lighting up like morning in the middle of the night; possibly mass hysteria. Now, a small troop of boys had apparently gotten past security at Fletcher Allen.

Mahoney could take the bitter with the better like the best of them, but this night was pushing him to his limits. It was worse than Halloween.

He turned to look as a vehicle pulled in from Pearl Street and started toward the top of the underground garage. Mahoney walked over the median and along the drive up to the entrance. He watched the vehicle a moment longer, a Buick or Oldsmobile, and then he turned his attention to the large front doors and, wheezing a little harder now, entered the building as the doors slid open for him.