Blackout (12 page)

While my thoughts ran, I’d kept the engine
running. Stupid me, wasting gas. I told myself I was testing it. It
seemed okay, so I turned around and left Barger Brothers—forever, I
hoped.

Don’t say that. Don’t say forever.

Where did that come from? I really was a
nervous wreck. Who’d have thought it? Safe, sane Maddie
Canfield.

Now that I had my car, I could go and see how
Kelsey was doing. Maybe I should pick up Glyn and take her, too.
But that would mean going all the way up to Fremont. Once there, I
might as well go home, but I wasn’t ready for that yet. I had my
car, I had freedom, and I wanted to do something. So I aimed for
the highway that went to Hudson Hills.

The trip to the hospital was a little over
four miles. My brakes held and so did the steering. It wasn’t that
I mistrusted Wally’s inspection. Call it a severe case of
paranoia.

It never occurred to me it wasn’t visiting
hours yet. I mean, I knew that, but it went right through my brain
without registering. I was preoccupied. That kept me going onto an
elevator and up one floor without a pang of guilt. No one stopped
me. So much for security.

When I got to Kelsey’s room, it was empty. I
mean really empty, with the bed stripped down to its vinyl mattress
cover and nothing there that was Kelsey’s. Not even the flowers we
sent her. She must have been released. So soon? I went out to the
nurses’ station and asked.

“Oh. Kelsey Fritz,” they said. “She’s been
transferred to Intensive Care.”

“What happened?” A turn for the worse. The
poison must have caught up with her.

When they didn’t answer right away, I tried
the obvious. “She’s alive. Isn’t she?”

Yes, she was. They didn’t say “barely,” but
refused to tell me anymore.

I knew where ICU was. I’d had a friend there
last year. I didn’t expect them to let me in, only family members
were allowed, but I knew some of the nurses, if they were still
there.

Before I reached the nurses, I passed a small
waiting room. That is, I started to pass it till I saw the person
waiting there.

She sat alone, reading a magazine, and didn’t
look up until I said, “Velda!”

“Maddie?” She was surprised, but not
excessively so.

“They told me she was transferred. What
happened? She got worse?”

“I’ll say.” Velda looked grim. “They should
have had bars on the window.”

“Bars? What
happened?
” I pictured Evan
climbing in.

Velda was sitting on a two-person sofa. She
patted the other cushion.

Closing the magazine with a finger in it to
keep her place, she said, “They called my folks in the middle of
the night. Apparently she jumped.”

“Jumped?” My slow mind tried to grasp it.

“Out the window. It must have taken her a lot
of effort to get there. She wasn’t very strong.”

“But—”

“Lucky for her, or at least for the rest of
us, the cafeteria has a roof that juts out. It broke her fall.”

I knew that cafeteria. I’d been there, with
Rick. Never thought about the roof one way or another.

“This was at night?” I asked. “How did—they
know?”

“Another lucky break. A security guard was
patrolling the grounds and just happened to see her.”

I thought of Kelsey’s state of mind. “She
must have been desperate.”

“That scene. At the party.” Velda couldn’t
say “rape.” “It was the worst thing that could have happened to
her.”

“Men can be such pigs!”

“Not all men,” she said. “Not my husband. It
doesn’t mean porker pigs. It’s just an expression for that kind of
male.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “And not my
boyfriend, either.”

He could at least answer his phone.

“And not my daddy,” I went on. “Or my
brother.” In spite of what Kelsey thought of him. “Predatory,
that’s what you mean.” I was adding it to the vocabulary for my
campaign.

“Was she badly hurt?” Stupid question. Of
course she was.

Velda leaned back her head and tried to
think. It must have been quite a list.

“Her right arm and shoulder are broken.
Several ribs. She landed a little to one side. It might not have
been so much damage if she’d been more relaxed, but of course, that
wasn’t the idea. They think she was trying to push herself out
beyond the roof but she was too weak.”

“How is she going to get over this?” I wasn’t
really asking. “It’s just so incredible.”

“We tried to get a private duty nurse for
night times,” Velda said. “We thought we had one but at the last
minute her child got sick and there wasn’t any replacement. If I’d
known, I’d have sat up with her myself.”

“The hospital must have known,” I said. “She
already tried it once. You could sue them.”

“Hospitals don’t have any money. Whatever
they do have should go for patient care.”

“That wasn’t very good care. But I know what
you mean. I hate people who try to make money by suing. But you
could threaten to sue in case they didn’t already get the
message.”

“It would have to be my parents doing that.
Let’s hope they did get the message, a little late.”

Velda looked at her watch. “I think my
fifteen minutes have arrived. That’s all I get, fifteen minutes
every two hours.”

“For that you sit here all day?” I wondered
if anyone would do that for me.

“Not all day. Only a large part of it. I need
to be on hand.”

“Is she conscious?” I asked. “Give her my
love. And Glyn’s, too.”

“Thank you. And thanks for the flowers you
sent. She enjoyed them for a while but she’s not allowed to have
them in ICU. I took them home.”

Even the flowers couldn’t cheer her up. The
monstrosity of Evan was too much.

With his unerring nose for evil, he picked
the most vulnerable person he could find. I refused to think it was
simply a matter of opportunity. He didn’t have to take the
opportunity. He was just evil.

I went out to the parking lot and studied my
car. Did anybody touch it while I was gone? I walked around it.
Tested the doors. They were still locked. Would he lock it again if
somehow he got it open and unlatched the hood?

He might, just so I wouldn’t suspect
anything. I studied the doors, not knowing how I could tell if
they’d been jimmied.

The hospital was several miles from
Southbridge. Would he even know where I was? Not unless he followed
me.

There was the time he attached a tracking
device to my car. Again, it was Ben who found it. I wouldn’t know
where to look.

Somewhere on the underside. I ran my hand
over every surface I could reach without actually getting down on
my back the way Ben did. My only result was dirty fingers.

Dammit, I was not going to live like
this!

Or maybe I wasn’t going to live, period.

If anything happened, my family would know
where to look.

So would Rick, if he still cared. I hauled
out my cell phone and tried again to reach him.

Again nothing. Dammit, Rick! I checked to see
if I still had battery power. Maybe he was the one who didn’t. I
couldn’t call 911 about this. It was only for emergencies. I had
the number for the Southbridge PD but hesitated to bother them if
they were in the middle of a hostage crisis. I only wanted to know
if the crisis was still going on. I consoled myself with the
thought that they probably wouldn’t tell me, even if I said I was
from the newspaper.

It wouldn’t be a complete lie. I was on the
staff of the Southbridge High paper,
The Tiger’s Roar.

This was ridiculous. I would get Rufus and me
home first and then worry about the police.

“Are you really a Rufus?” I asked him as I
unlocked his door.

I looked all around inside, and sniffed, to
be sure there weren’t any dangerous chemicals. I don’t know where
that idea came from. Maybe I was thinking of explosives.

Nothing, either visual or olfactory, seemed
out of the ordinary. This time I was looking for it. I hadn’t been,
that time when he cut my brake line.

What does brake fluid smell like? I got out
of the car and looked under it to see if anything dripped.

All clear underneath. I got back in and
started off for home.

Chapter
Ten

As I barreled along the highway, my thoughts
went back to Kelsey.

How could she stand it, knowing what
happened?

Obviously, she couldn’t. Many years ago,
people used to write rape romances, in which it was supposed to be
romantic to get raped by the hero. I never have been, by anyone,
but I didn’t have to be, to know it was so
not
romantic. How
could people be that deluded? Any guy who would rape is not a hero,
he’s scum. Really filthy scum.

A green sign welcomed me to Southbridge. Me
and Rufus both. I still wasn’t sure about the name, but it made him
seem companionable, having an identity like that. I didn’t feel
quite so alone. Even though Rufus couldn’t do much.

Oh, couldn’t he? Three tons of steel? Take
that, Evan Steffers (whose vehicle probably weighed a lot more than
three tons).

Evan used to drive a very conspicuous yellow
sports car with giant tires. I didn’t see anything like that when I
looked in my rearview mirror. I did see a dark, anonymous-looking
sedan that, come to think of it, had been back there for several
miles. Far enough back that I barely noticed it, until now.

Big deal. A lot of cars are dark and
anonymous-looking and a lot of them travel from Hudson Hills to
Southbridge.

Still, the car I thought I saw Evan driving
at the movie theater was a dark thing, dark brown or gray or black.
It wasn’t that yellow monstrosity that I associated with him. That,
I hadn’t seen in quite some time.

The speed limit went down as we entered
Southbridge, so I slowed. The dark thing gained on me and then it,
too, had to slow.

I didn’t feel comfortable anymore, even with
Rufus. I didn’t want to go straight home and lead them there. I
should have asked Wally to check for a tracking device but I didn’t
think of it. He’d have had a good laugh, even though it had
happened before. Wally didn’t know about that time. Ben took it off
and I gave it to Rick.

Maybe it wasn’t Evan.

But maybe it was. What could I do? I circled
Burger King. They were open for breakfast but I didn’t want to go
in and leave Rufus outside by himself. Besides, what would I do
there? I couldn’t stay all day. Unless they gave me a job.

Perrino’s pizzeria wasn’t open yet. No safety
there.

Soon I found myself passing the high school.
I saw a few cars, staff getting ready for the semester. Again, I
would have to leave Rufus exposed to the tender mercies of Evan
& Co., if it was Evan. I still wasn’t sure, so I couldn’t call
911 and tell them I was being chased.

How could I get a good look at him? What
would I do if it was Evan? I would run out of gas before I figured
that out.

I could stop at a gas station. Would he
follow me there? If he did, that in itself would tell me
something.

My gas gauge said I had a quarter of a tank.
That would last for a while. Rufus was fairly economical with
fuel.

I patted his dashboard. He was such a good
boy. I only wished he had some way of capturing Evan.

That was up to me, capturing Evan without
getting hurt myself.

The car I thought was following me seemed to
have disappeared. For good, I hoped. Did I dare try to make it
home?

I checked again in back. Checked all possible
mirrors. I even turned my head for a brief look over my shoulder.
There was nothing but a rattletrap old truck.

The truck reminded me again of Ben. Why did
he have to go off to college? It was true that we had our
differences, but he always came through when I needed him. I
wouldn’t have been afraid to go home if I knew he was there.

After another look back, I turned toward the
bridge. It was a familiar route. I took it every day. Southbridge
petered out into fewer houses and a lot more trees. There was a
swamp now filled with purple loosestrife in bloom. Which was
spectacular even though it was considered an invasive weed.

Then the bridge itself. It always clanked
when cars drove across it. Once Cree rode her bicycle over it. She
hadn’t realized it was all grillwork and she could see the Vanorden
Kill right through it. That unnerved her but it was nothing
compared to what happened after she got across.

A rock. A big boulder. It nearly flattened
her. She and the bike both fell. They lay struggling in a tangled
heap until Ben came along and rescued her. I think that must have
been the beginning of their romance.

After the bridge, the road turned left and
became a long steep hill. It was on that hill that Cree met her
boulder. I’m sure it was also on that hill that Evan meant me to
suffer the result of my cut brake line. It could so easily have
happened that way, but it didn’t. Someone must have been looking
out for me.

Were they still looking? Out for me, that is?
Even with my eyes on the road, I managed another glance into my
rear view mirror. A United Parcels truck was just starting over the
bridge. There was no dark car.

At the top of the hill, the road made a T,
with Fremont Drive going off to the left and Lake Road to the
right. As soon as I was on Lake, I checked back again, and saw UPS
heading down Fremont.

What was that in back of it? I was just
turning away when a moving object caught my attention. Quickly I
turned back.

The object was a car and it was climbing the
hill. I could have sworn it was the same car I’d seen before. I had
no choice but to keep going forward. Passed a couple of houses and
came to my driveway. I didn’t dare turn in. After mine, there were
a few more houses. Then the road ended at the Lakeside School.