John Saul (31 page)

Physically, the boy was in good condition. Though he wasn’t large for his age—his height was actually a bit below average—his muscular development was far beyond his years, and already hair was beginning to sprout on his well-developed chest. His pulse and blood pressure were perfect, and the only abnormality about the boy was his temperature, which measured a full degree above normal. Corcoran wondered about that, and checked for any other symptoms of illness, but found none. Finally he’d taken Joey’s temperature once again, getting the same reading and noting it on the chart as an anomaly to be checked again the next time he saw Joey.

Though he hadn’t yet discovered the exact reason for
Joey’s memory lapses, he suspected he knew the answer, and it was simple enough—the loss of his parents had been a tremendous trauma to the thirteen-year-old, and there were bound to be times when the boy’s grief would simply overwhelm him, leaving his mind with no options except to close down. In Joey’s case, Clark Corcoran was almost certain he was right, for no matter from which direction the doctor approached the boy’s reaction to the loss of his parents, Joey consistently replied that he was all right, that he was adjusting to his new life, and that he liked his aunt MaryAnne. He’d even admitted to developing a crush on Alison Carpenter.

All of which, when Corcoran put it together, told him that Joey was repressing his grief; refusing to face the reality of what had happened to him, and dealing with his loss by simply pretending that nothing of terrible importance had happened.

None of which could possibly be true.

He suspected that during those times of which Joey had no memory, the boy had simply hidden himself away, unwilling to expose his pain to anyone, even himself. Corcoran was equally certain he knew the source of Joey’s unwillingness to share his pain.

“All I need is a few minutes with your aunt to fill her in on how healthy you are, then you’re off. But I’ll want to see you again next week.”

Joey’s eyes clouded with suspicion. “I thought you said I was okay.”

“You seem to be,” Corcoran assured him. “The only thing wrong with you physically is a slight temperature, which I assume will be gone by tomorrow. But we still have to find out what you were up to when you took off last night, don’t we?”

Joey was quiet for a moment, taking on the wary look of a cornered animal. “L-Lots of people can’t remember things,” he finally ventured. “What’s the big deal?”

“Who said it was a big deal?” Corcoran countered. If he lent too much importance to the memory loss, Joey would retreat even further within himself. “But aren’t you even curious? I know I am!”

An image of Bill Sikes’s corpse flashed into Joey’s mind. What if he
did
remember what he’d done last night, and it turned out that he’d—
No!
He shut the thought out of his mind before he even completed it. “I-I guess I am,” he finally said.

“Then next week we’ll work some more on figuring it out, okay?” Corcoran opened the door to the inner office and walked Joey down to the waiting room where MaryAnne Carpenter was nervously flipping through the pages of a magazine. “Would you come into my office for a couple of minutes, Mrs. Carpenter?” Corcoran asked.

As Joey settled onto the sofa she vacated, MaryAnne followed the doctor back to his office, seating herself on the very edge of the chair in front of his desk. Corcoran dropped into his chair and picked up Joey’s chart, handing it to her so she could read for herself the notations he’d made. “Except for a minor temperature,” he remarked as MaryAnne began scanning the record, “Joey’s in good shape physically. Very good shape, in fact.” For the next several minutes he spoke without a break, explaining his theory about Joey’s memory lapses.

“I wish I thought it was that simple,” MaryAnne said pensively when he was finished. She still remembered the day she had arrived in Sugarloaf, and Joey, bursting into tears, had thrown himself into her arms. “The boy you’re describing sounds a lot more—well,
stoic
is the word, I guess. And Joey isn’t stoic. If anything, he’s volatile. His moods seem to change so quickly, I sometimes wonder if I know him at all.”

“Joey’s always been like that,” Corcoran agreed. “And I’m not sure there’s a conflict. Even when he was very small, there were times when he seemed to retreat completely within himself, and other times when he could be an absolute demon.” He paused, and when he went on, his voice had taken on a guarded quality. “How well did you know Ted?”

Ted
, MaryAnne echoed silently.
With everyone I talk to, it always comes back to Ted
. “I’m beginning to wonder if I knew him at all,” she finally replied. “And I suppose I
didn’t. I mean, I’ve known him almost since Audrey married him, but I certainly never spent much time with him.”

“He was a complicated man.” Corcoran leaned back in his chair. “I liked him—I want you to understand that. But he could be very strict with Joey sometimes, and at other times he’d let him get away with murder. I always got the impression that Joey never quite knew where he stood with his father. What seemed to please Ted one day might not the next, so Joey was always kept off balance. And the last couple of years, Ted seemed to be getting harder on the boy.”

MaryAnne’s expression tightened. “Are you saying he’d gotten abusive toward Joey?” she asked, finally deciding the time had come to press the issue everyone else—from Charley Hawkins to Rick Martin, and even Olivia Sherbourne—had dodged away from.

For a long moment Clark Corcoran was silent, then he heaved a long sigh. MaryAnne could not help but notice that when he spoke, he avoided meeting her gaze. “The thing is, not many people around here were ever willing to stand up to Ted. Even me, I’m afraid.” He reached out and picked up a pencil, which he nervously twirled between his fingers as he talked. “You know that Ted was very wealthy, and a couple of years ago he established a fund to build a clinic out here. We should be ready to start construction next spring.”

He fell silent, but MaryAnne, already certain she knew what was coming next, refused to let him avoid his own guilt. “Go on,” she said.

Corcoran slumped lower in his chair. “Well, I’m afraid that while I did my best to help Joey, I wasn’t very willing to confront Ted. I’m not proud of it, but there it is. So whatever Joey’s problems may be, I’m afraid I have to share in the responsibility, too. But try not to worry too much—I’ve gotten Joey this far. I’ll get him through this, too.”

“How?” MaryAnne asked, a surge of anger coursing through her. “How do you propose to help Joey, when you knew what was going on and did nothing to stop it? Dear God, Dr. Corcoran! How could you do it? Did everyone in
town know Ted was abusing Joey? And didn’t anyone do anything about it?”

“I’m not sure anyone actually
knew
—” Corcoran began, but MaryAnne didn’t let him finish.

“Don’t split hairs, Dr. Corcoran,” she cut in. “You just told me you suspected Ted was abusing Joey. Which means that you should not only have made notations in Joey’s records, but you should have reported what you suspected to the police!” She began flipping through the records in Joey’s folder, scanning them for anything that would reflect what the doctor had just told her.

There was nothing.

Nothing at all!

Finally she came to the back of the folder where a copy of Joey’s birth certificate, Xeroxed on both sides, appeared as the first document of his medical records. She stared at it for a long moment, started to flip back through the records, then went back to the birth certificate.

Something was wrong.

She studied the document for another moment, then looked up at Clark Corcoran. “Audrey told me Joey was born prematurely,” she said. The doctor appeared totally baffled by the sudden shift in her thoughts. “Did you handle Audrey’s pregnancy?”

Corcoran shook his head. “I wasn’t here then. And Joey was born in San Francisco, wasn’t he?”

MaryAnne nodded, studying the birth certificate once more. “Audrey told me she felt lucky to be there when Joey arrived almost two months early.”

“I’d have to agree with her,” Corcoran replied. “If he’d been born that early out here, he’d have been lucky to survive.”

“But it says here he weighed eight pounds nine ounces when he was born,” MaryAnne said. “That’s awfully heavy for a seven-month preemie, isn’t it?”

Corcoran frowned and reached for the record, which MaryAnne passed across the desk. Now he studied the birth certificate, along with the records of Joey’s first few days of life. There was no evidence of his having been in an incubator, no mention of an abnormal birth or any neonatal
problem at all. “Are you sure Audrey said he was premature?”

“Absolutely,” MaryAnne replied, her heart beginning to beat faster as she calculated when Audrey must have gotten pregnant if Joey had been a full-term child. “It certainly explains why Ted would have been so hard on Joey,” she finally said, her voice trembling slightly.

“I don’t understand—” Corcoran began, but MaryAnne didn’t let him finish.

“If Joey was full-term, then Ted couldn’t possibly have been his father. Ted and Audrey only knew each other for a month before they got married, and Joey was born seven months after the wedding. Which means that if Ted was the father, Joey would have to have been no more than a month premature, and Audrey told me it was two months.”

Corcoran studied the records from the hospital in San Francisco once more, then shook his head. “Unless someone faked these records, she wasn’t telling you the truth,” he finally said. “It looks like he was full-term. In fact, if anything, his size at birth would indicate the possibility of an extra week or two. But not premature. And Audrey certainly never mentioned anything about his being a preemie to me.”

MaryAnne shook her head. “She probably didn’t tell anyone except me and a few friends back East. But if Ted wasn’t his father, who—” She went silent as she remembered the man who had been all but hidden in the trees at Ted’s and Audrey’s funeral.

The man whom both Rick Martin and Olivia Sherbourne had said must be a mountain man, living by himself up in the mountains.

The man who had been watching Joey at the funeral.

The man whose cabin Joey had awakened in only this morning?

Was it possible?

But it was insane!

Surely, whoever Joey’s father had been, he couldn’t have been living up in the mountains above Sugarloaf! Audrey would never have fallen in love with one of those men!

Unless he hadn’t been a mountain man when Audrey had met him.

Suddenly, one of Olivia Sherbourne’s fleeting remarks rose out of her memory:…
when Audrey married him a month after she met him, I had plenty to say! Told her she was just on the rebound, that she hardly knew Ted …

On the rebound.

Now MaryAnne remembered it, too. There
had
been someone, but it hadn’t lasted long. Just a few weeks. And then Audrey had never mentioned him again.

But Ted must have known the truth. MaryAnne could imagine how the knowledge would have eaten at him all these years, until he’d finally turned against the boy he knew wasn’t his son.

Suddenly everything made sense—and nothing made sense at all. A headache hammered behind her eyes. If the man she’d seen at the funeral was the same man who was living up in the cabin…

Could he be Joey’s father?

Could Joey know Ted wasn’t his father: could he have felt that Ted hated him for it?

The questions spun through her mind, building upon themselves until finally she could stand it no longer. “Dr. Corcoran,” she said carefully, her voice quavering, “if Joey’s real father were … to show up … would there be any way to prove it? Through blood tests, or something?”

Clark Corcoran shook his head. “Not through simple blood tests. All we can do is eliminate certain groups of people from paternity through impossible blood-type matches. The only way we could actively prove paternity would be through a DNA analysis. And that’s expensive.”

MaryAnne’s features set in determination. “I want you to take a sample of Joey’s blood and get a lab working on the analysis. I have a feeling we’re going to need it.”

A few minutes later, as Corcoran took the sample from a vein in Joey’s right arm, he made no mention of its true purpose, explaining only that MaryAnne was concerned about the slight temperature and they were going to run some tests. The sample, in a vial, was marked for shipment to a lab in Boise.

As MaryAnne drove Joey back up to the ranch, she wondered if she should ask him any more questions about his relationship with Ted Wilkenson. In the end, though, she decided to wait, at least until she found out whether the man who was living in the cabin had been found.

Found, and identified.

The man paused to listen.

The dogs were still far away, but they were getting closer.

He’d been stupid—right from the start. He should have stayed near the cabin, listened to what the deputy had said. Instead, intent only on staying well out of sight, he had slipped away into the forest, climbing up the cliffs to crouch on a ledge, the wolf growling softly beside him, until he had seen the man and the boy—
his
boy—working their way back down to the valley. Only then had he returned to the cabin, certain that he would find it in ruins, possibly even burned to the ground.

It had been untouched. After he’d built up the fire, knowing there was no longer any point in concealing his presence by burning the stove only at night, he’d eaten his fill of boiled potatoes from the store in the cave behind the shack, and fried rabbit from last night’s kill, for now, during the hours of daylight, the hunger for raw flesh was not upon him.

When at last he’d stretched out on the bed, he had intended to have no more than a few minutes’ rest while he decided what to do.

The cabin must be abandoned—he knew that. Surely the deputy would be back, bringing more men with him.

And dogs.

The same dogs that had been out last night—tracking Joey—losing his scent only when they came to the spot where he had found the boy wandering in the woods, his eyes glazed over as he moved through the trees, following …