Fook (40 page)

Turning back to his oldest, Phil offered a,
“Thank you.”

She wanted to tell him that they were wrong,
but given the benefits of the situation, she simply responded with,
“You’re welcome.”

His look of appreciation suddenly turned to
confused as he did a quick look around before asking, “Where’s
Derek?”

FORTY-TWO

For a second time in the last couple of days he’d
found himself in a hospital trying to obtain information he had no
right knowing.

After a three hour flight from Springfield,
Massachusetts to Tampa, Florida, Derek, using the limited
information he’d gleaned from Mr. Fook’s letter, had made his way
to St. Joseph Hospital’s maternity ward, where he’d told the nurses
that his sister had just given birth to his first nephew.
Thankfully, the flawed security had him passing right in front of
the nursery before reaching the nurse’s station where he had to
sign in, so he’d had plenty of time to pick a name from one of the
plastic bassinets before greeting the nurse behind the counter.
Luckily, this time around, she’d been closer to his age and
reasonably attractive to boot, so starting a friendly conversation
had been easy. It was clear that she was relatively new to the job
and obviously drawn to the work by her love of babies, so striking
up a flirtatious conversation had been relatively easy. Hell, he
had all the ammo he needed crying in the next room.

Within five minutes he’d earned the nurse’s
number and more importantly, her trust as she was temporarily
pulled away from her station to assist one of the other nurses in
moving one of their…larger mothers who, based on the second nurse’s
loudly whispered explanation, refused to get up and move herself
because, she quoted, “I just had my hoo-ha split in two and it’s
swollen like a mother-fucker.”

“Obviously one of the hospital’s more classy
patients,” Derek had thought as he’d added, “lucky kid,” to the
conversation, also a bit too loudly as both girls had turned and
grinned before disappearing into the eloquent woman’s room.

The yelling and complaining from the room
down the hall had assured him that he had some time, so instead of
hunting through piles of papers, he’d gone right for the computer.
Within minutes he’d found everything he needed: Jason’s birth name,
to which he’d mumbled, “poor kid,” forgetting who he was talking
about; his birth mother’s information; which room she’d been in;
which bassinet had been his and most importantly, the names of the
adopting parents and their address.

With the woman down the hall screaming that
her vagina was stuck, whatever that meant, he’d confidently taken
the time to print out a copy of the stolen records as well as
written a quick thank you note with the cartoon image of a baby
with a curly-Q strand of hair on top of its otherwise bald head.
She’d deserved some sort of thank you he’d thought, given that
this
unlawful act hadn’t ended in a brief chase through the
hospital, nor had he found himself hydroplaning across a sea of
urine this time.

Now, standing outside of the Nesbit’s house
and more importantly, Oliver…Jason’s nursery window, he was left to
wonder if he’d actually be able to follow through with what he’d
just traveled fifteen hundred miles to do.

*****

“Oh my god. Come on already,” Derek mouthed as he
continued to peer through a gap in the nursery’s curtained window,
at the man sitting across the room in a rocking chair with baby
Jason cradled in his arms.

Crash!

The lightening had been increasing ever
since he’d slipped through the neighbor’s yard and clumsily climbed
and fallen over the Nesbit’s back fence. Thankfully, it was only
that though…lightening, and the normally accompanying rain hadn’t
yet arrived. Removing his gaze from the window, Derek slid back
into the shadows of the narrow walkway between the house and
property dividing fence.

“How do people live like this, he thought?”
looking over the fence at the neighboring house no more than
fifteen feet away. He’d grown up on the south shore of
Massachusetts where most houses were relatively spread out from one
another. Sure he’d had neighbors, but if you wanted to spy on them
effectively, you had to invest in a telescope or at least a pair of
binoculars, not simply pull a chair up to the window with a bowl of
popcorn and wait for the show to begin. Sure he’d spent the last
four years living in Boston but that was different. That was a
city, and he’d been living in a dorm where privacy was a luxury
typically not afforded. It wasn’t a permanent residence. These
people practically lived right on top of one another and they’d
paid a hefty sum to do so. Florida was officially off his list of
future homes…if he ever saw home again, he thought, standing back
up to check the nursery once again.

Inside, Mr. Nesbit was finally placing Jason
into his crib, obviously nervous that his newly asleep son might
awaken at any moment.

Crash!

Mr. Nesbit froze, closing his eyes at the
thought of what the sudden boom might bring. Slowly opening them
again, it became apparent on Mr. Nesbit’s face that the lightening
had gone unheard by the baby as he let out a little smile before
turning and exiting the room.

“Finally,” Derek thought as he took a step
back to contemplate exactly how he was going to get inside the
house. He hadn’t tested the window before because of the father’s
presence, so taking a step forward he lightly pushed up on the
closed window.

Locked.

“Shit!” he exclaimed, quickly covering his
own mouth as he stared at the window horrified by his own
carelessness. He couldn’t afford to get caught. How could he
explain to the police why he was standing outside the window of a
newborn he had no relation to? He couldn’t. If he got arrested, it
meant Sarah and her sister were on their own, which meant Jason
would get what he was coming for. He couldn’t let himself get
caught, he had to get inside and put an end to this madness.

Crash!

With the latest explosion’s sound waves
rippling through his ears, he suddenly knew what to do. Looking
around his feet on the dark, shadowy ground, Derek began searching
for something, anything that could be used to break the window; a
task which proved to be relatively easy with Mr. Nesbit’s apparent
plans to replace the grass gap along the side of the house with
stone pavers. Hoisting one of the surprisingly heavy stones from
the pile, Derek positioned the smooth rock inches from the window
as he glanced toward the sky, waiting for God’s next strike.

The storm was rolling in fast, so it didn’t
take long and with a perfectly timed jerk of the hands, the small
square of glass forfeited its defense, allowing him to reach inside
and disengage the latch as the first raindrop struck the top of his
head. Carefully returning the stone to the pile, Derek again pushed
up on the window, this time slowly inching it upward in its casing,
just enough so that he could pull himself up and through the
opening, landing on the floor with a soft thud.

Freezing in his carelessness, he listened;
one for the sound of the sleeping infant beside him and two for the
returning footsteps of Mr. Nesbit who was surely on some leveling
listening to his son’s room through the baby monitor on the
changing table. Everything remained quiet, except for the soft
patter of rain against the window and roof overhead as the storm
finally decided to arrive.

“Alright dumbass,” Derek thought as he got
to his feet slowly, careful not to make any more careless noises as
he crept up to the edge of the wooden crib. On his back, Jason
slept peacefully, his pacifier tightly clenched between his tiny
lips and moving up and down with each deliberate suck.

“How could something so innocent, so
harmless turn into such evil?” he thought as his gaze traveled from
the sleeping child to the cheerful decor of the surrounding room.
It didn’t really matter how it had happened, he answered his own
question as his wandering gaze returned to Jason. All that mattered
was what Jason was going to become…had become. Something had to be
done to stop him and back at Mr. Fook’s house, he’d concluded that
this was the only way.

Quickly looking around again, he spotted a
large, pink, stuffed bunny beside the crib; probably a gift from
someone who hadn’t been briefed on the sex of the adopted child.
The color less important than its function, Derek plucked the bunny
from the nearby tabletop, his hands shaking as he held it out in
front of him.

There was no going back from this point. It
had to be done. Nonetheless, he knew that this horrible act would
haunt him for the rest of his life. With his hands shaking, he
lowered the pink animal down into the crib, positioning its white
stomach over the sleeping baby’s face and, fighting back tears,
began to press.

It took a moment for the child to respond,
the gap between reality and slumber not quite bridged until the
tiny mind acknowledged the odd sensation of the heavy object
impeding its ability to get air. Once aware of his situation, at
least on an instinctual level, Jason’s arms and legs began kicking
and flailing, though lacked any real coordination to mount any sort
of effective defense.

With his head turned and eyes closed, Derek
leaned further into the crib, pressing the pink fur harder against
the child’s face.

“Hey!”

His eyes bursting open, Derek didn’t have
time to see who had shouted the exclamatory term, but he didn’t
need eyes to figure it out. Within seconds, Mr. Nesbit had his arms
wrapped around him, tugging and pulling at his body and arms,
trying to remove him and the bunny from his son’s crib.

A blunt pain to his ribs, followed by
another and then a blow to the head almost made Derek release his
grip of the homicidal rabbit, but focusing on the task at hand, he
stood his ground as more painful blows connected with his
increasingly battered body. No matter what, he couldn’t succumb to
the all out assault launched by the irate father. As horrible an
act as he was committing, it was the only way. He could end it
right then and there, no one else would have to die. Bethany
wouldn’t end up sliced to pieces on her bed. The liquor store clerk
could continue to be the same asshole behind the counter. Mr. and
Mrs. Tillmore would get to watch their daughter grow up to become
prom queen and Sarah’s sister wouldn’t have to die. As painful as
each blow was, he had to hang on until it was done, even if it
meant he himself being killed in the process.

With another blow to his temple, the room
began to spin. That, combined with a high pitched shriek,
momentarily broke Derek’s focus as Mr. Nesbit finally managed to
pull him away from the crib and with one more devastating blow to
the face, dropped him to the floor.

Bordering on unconscious, everything seemed
to move in slow motion as Derek looked up at the hatred and
confusion in Mr. Nesbit’s eyes and then watched as the man returned
his attention to the crib, his look of confusion suddenly even more
profound.

Realizing his opportunity, Derek stumbled to
his feet and, not as shocked by the empty crib as Mr. Nesbit was,
he darted toward the door, knocking Mrs. Nesbit out of the way as
he stumbled into the hall, colliding with the opposite wall before
stabilizing himself and heading for the front of the house.
Reaching the end of the hall, the front door came into view as did
the sight of the naked infant lying on the floor in the center of
the living room. Too shaken up to even consider that this may be
his last opportunity to strike, he was out the front door and
running down the rain soaked street, adrenaline the only thing
keeping him conscious.

FORTY-THREE

“Where are you going?” Phil questioned over his
coffee mug as his daughter entered the kitchen, backpack over her
shoulder.

“School,” she answered surprised by the
question.

“Didn’t you hear what the doctor said
yesterday?”

“That I’m perfectly fine.”

“No, that you should take it easy for the
next few days. That means no school today. I want you to stay home
and rest. I’ll give you a note on Monday.”

“Dad,” Katie whined.

“Katie, I’m serious. You should take it
easy. It’s better to be safe than sorry.”

“But I’m fine. I haven’t had any more pains
and I feel fully rested. Actually, I think last night was the best
sleep I’ve ever had,” she added, realizing that she may be laying
it on a little too thick.

“I’m glad you’re feeling better, but you’re
still not going to that dance tonight,” Phil countered, knowing
full and well the true reason behind her persistence.

“That dance is the prom. Are you really
going to insist that your daughter miss her prom?”

“Junior prom. Your real prom isn't until
next year. Besides, when I was your age, there was no such thing as
a junior prom.”

“When you were my age dinosaurs still roamed
the earth,” she smiled, attempting to use humor as a way of
possibly swaying her stubbornly overprotective father.

However, his stoic expression told her that,
not even her usually well received jokes were going to persuade him
this time.

“Katie. I love you. I know that you’re upset
about missing out on the dance, but I need you to understand the
importance of your health. We’re not only talking about you right
now,” he motioned toward her stomach. “You have someone else who's
depending on you to keep her safe.”

“Now she definitely wasn’t going to win,”
she thought. He’d used the, “you’re going to be a mother,” guilt
trip on her. How could she argue with that one? So instead, she
just dropped her bag on the floor beside the barstool and took a
seat.

“Good morning,” Sarah greeted her father and
sister as she entered the room.