Before I Wake (11 page)

The voice stopped.

Arden held her breath, hoping it would start again.

Silence.

Silence and darkness.

A confused awareness of immediate space slowly crept into her consciousness.

A box. A container. Something coffin like.

Awareness of self slowly followed.

She
was in the box. In the darkness.

Floating.

Arden heard the sound of clanging metal. Of locks being undone.

The lid to the box lifted and bright light blinded her. She tried to raise her hand to shield her eyes, but her arms wouldn’t move.

“Turn off the overhead light,” said a voice that was so muffled Arden couldn’t tell if it belonged to a man or a woman. “It’s hurting her eyes.”

The brightness faded.

Two people, male and female, leaning over her.

Doing something to her wrists and ankles. Had she been restrained?

“Got the IV?” the woman asked.

“Out,” replied the man.

“Here’s a Band-Aid.”

Tearing paper, then something being taped to the back of her hand.

“Can you sit up?”

The woman was talking to her. To Arden.

Hands gripped her elbows and shoulders. They pulled her forward. Water gushed with the movement, following her, trying to cling but having to finally give up and settle about her waist.

“There you go,” the woman said happily.

One ear popped, and suddenly Arden could hear the hum of the room, hear the room breathing.

Cold air hit her chest. A shiver went through her.

“The sooner we get you outta here, the sooner you can have a warm shower,” the woman said.

Grasping her by both arms, they pulled her to her feet, water sloshing.

Naked.

In some far-off part of her mind, she knew her nudity was something she should care about—but she didn’t. Did a baby feel self-conscious when it was born?

They wrapped her in a blanket. It didn’t help. She was so cold. Freezing.

“Step out of the tank,” the guy told her.

She looked down.

Even though they’d dimmed the lights, Arden’s vision was all screwed up. There was a film over her eyes, and a shifting, reddish aura around everything. As if she’d been pressing her hands to her eyelids.

But she could make out a pair of pale legs that must be hers. She could feel them trembling violently.

Would they ask a newborn to stand?

“Come on,” the woman encouraged. Fingertips moved across her shoulder, pressing through the blanket.

Arden liked the woman. She had a coaxing, motherly voice. The guy, on the other hand, seemed hard. Impatient.

Like the male nurse in
Harvey
. Yeah. She loved that movie. And hadn’t Jimmy Stewart been great? They wouldn’t dare make a movie like that now. A comedy about a guy who was really nothing more than a raging alcoholic. Not PC at all.

“Come on,” the woman repeated.

I aim to please.

Arden concentrated on one leg. On lifting that leg. Getting it over the side of the tank. Her foot finally made contact with the grid of the metal platform. One more step and she was out.

They whisked her off, and suddenly the movie changed from
Harvey
to
Silkwood
. Suddenly she was Meryl Streep getting mercilessly scrubbed down by mean hands. Water poured over Arden’s face, with no concern for her eyes or nose or the fact that she might be trying to breathe.

I’m not radioactive.

She meant to speak the words out loud, but that didn’t happen.

Was she radioactive?

After the shower, they dried her with rough towels, helped her into a hospital gown, then pushed her into a chair in order to wrap a blood pressure cuff around her arm. When they’d finished taking her vitals, a tray of food appeared: turkey and mashed potatoes.

The canned, clinical smell made her gag.

“Not hungry?” Mom asked.

Arden gagged again.

The tray disappeared.

A small box was stuck in her hand.

“Juice,” Mom said. “You’d at least like some juice, wouldn’t you?”

She helped Arden lift it to her face, guiding the tiny bent straw to her mouth. Apple. Not bad. Good, actually.

“I’ll try to find something else for you to eat,” the woman said when Arden finished off the juice.

It didn’t seem that she’d even been gone when she was back with a container of yogurt.

Lemon.

Arden took three bites before her stomach cramped.

“It’s the meds,” the nurse said.

Arden’s vision was still fuzzy, but clearer than it had been. She could now see that the woman was dressed in white pants and a pale-green nurse’s smock. She was about fifty-five. A little on the heavy side.

The woman took the container from Arden. “Weil just take it slow.”

Suddenly Arden began to move and she realized she was in a wheelchair. She was being pushed from the shower room, down a long hallway to a new destination. A small room with chairs on one side and a retractable movie screen on the other.

“Sleep.” Arden’s throat was raw, and the word came out a croak. She could hardly keep her eyes open. She felt like shit. She didn’t want to watch any damn movie.

“The doctor has some things he wants you to view,” the nurse said.

“Too tired. I need to sleep.”

“I’m sorry.” The woman looked as if she meant it. Head tipped to the side, an apologetic expression on her face. “I have to follow the doctor’s orders. He doesn’t want you to sleep yet. It’s part of the protocol.”

“I can’t give anything my full attention when I’m so tired.” Arden looked down at the floor.

Wood. Hard. But maybe not
that
hard.

“When it’s over, I’ll come back and get you.”

The nurse clicked a few keys on a laptop computer, turned off the light, and left the room.

Arden took the opportunity to slip from the wheelchair to the floor. She dropped to her knees, then melted the rest of the way until she was lying on her side, her face against the floor.

It felt pretty damn good.

The stomach cramps had stopped. She was dry except for her wet hair. Somewhat dressed. Amazing how luxurious a few simple things could be.

Her eyes began to drift closed as she glanced at the screen above her.

A robin’s-egg-blue, Colonial-style farmhouse.

Her breath caught. She was suddenly transfixed.

Car doors slammed. Voices could be heard in the distance. People conversing in low tones.

The camera moved toward the house, a single pair of footsteps crunching across gravel.

The video was in color and amateur; the sudden camera movements made her feel motion-sick.

It wasn’t until she spotted the yellow crime-scene tape wrapped around the massive trunks of the trees in the front yard that she realized she was watching a crime-scene video.

The recording had a weird, almost 3-D appearance that digital often had. Objects seemed to have an outline, as if someone had drawn around them with a black felt pen. It also had a voyeuristic quality that went along with handheld cameras.

It was late summer or early fall.

Trees were thick with leaves, the leaves casting deep, contrasting shadows on the grass. Along the house, thick clusters of flowers bloomed, and a trumpet vine curled up thick creosote poles and crept along wires leading to upstairs windows where young children and babies slept in what they thought was a bucolic, idyllic slumber.

The camera’s depth of field was amazing. In the far distance, fences could be seen, along with a pasture dotted with black-and-white cattle. Nearby, round, giant hay bales waited to be moved from the field.

Grant Wood, eat your heart out.

Eat your heart out.

Why did people say that?

What did it really mean?

Eat your heart out.

The eye of the camera moved up the wooden front steps across the gray porch. A hand reached past the lens and the screen door creaked open.

A cluster of uniformed officers and a couple of detectives looked up and moved aside.

One of the officers, a female with blond hair, detached herself from the cluster. “I’ll give you the tour.”

“Did anybody feed the dog?” asked an off-camera voice.

“Dog?”

“There was a dog here earlier.”

The camera followed the blond officer through a dining room to the kitchen.

It had probably been updated twenty years ago. Fake butcher-block countertops. Double sink. Double refrigerator, the doors covered with magnets and photos. Family shots. Some of those awful school photos. A couple standing under a palm tree, wearing big straw hats and holding drinks with umbrellas. Smiling.

It was almost impossible to leave a farm for more than a couple of hours at a time. There were so many responsibilities. So many animals that required constant, vigilant care. It was probably the only vacation they’d ever taken. On a farm, you had to try to find some small measure of comfort in the day-to-day existence. Maybe the song of a bird, or the sight of a herd of deer. Because there wasn’t anything beyond those four hundred acres. Nothing anybody there would see until they reached retirement.

If they reached retirement.

Lying on the floor in a pool of blood that had hardened and turned black was a woman dressed in jeans and a green 4-H T-shirt. Her throat had been slit from ear to ear.

On the floor near the small kitchen table with a laminated top was a smaller body, this of a child of maybe eight or nine, lying facedown.

“Same MO,” their hostess said, pointing. The hair was matted with blood that looked like black tar.

It was easy to mentally re-create the domestic scene. Mom had been cooking supper while the child sat at the table doing his homework.

People can be so predictable to the point of being boring
, Albert French’s voice seemed to whisper in her ear.

The officer lifted her hand and motioned with a crook of one finger.

Follow me.

The camera followed.