Twilight (19 page)

Cal took out the portable heart monitor. He suspected indigestion, but he would rule out anything worse. “Except for your pressure, everything’s close enough to normal. But I’m going to use this machine to check your heart function. It’ll show the rhythm.”

Harrel shot a concerned look at the contraption as Cal opened his shirt and attached the sticky pads to his chest. The monitor showed a normal rhythm. All things pointed to chest pains from gastrointestinal distress, a common side effect of Maple’s fare. Gas in the chest cavity could feel as sharp as a heart attack.

“I expect you have indigestion, but with your blood pressure up we’ll order an ambulance.” Though Cal doubted an immediate life threatening condition.

“No way. No ambulance.” Harrel belched again.

“I need to recommend—”

“No ambulance, no hospital. Dottie overreacts.”

Cal suspected that was the case, but departments had been sued over less. “Are you refusing follow-up care?”

“Dang right.”

Beth drew a legal form from Cal’s jump kit. “You’ll need to sign this. It states that by your own will you’ve refused our recommendation for medical treatment.” She handed the clipboard to Harrel. “Sign at the bottom.”

With the nearest hospital being in Melbourne, and the ambulance coming from the same, it would save Montrose the expense. Cal took the clipboard back and slid it into the bag. “There are no signs of cardiac distress. When Dottie gets you home, take some sort of antacid.” He glanced up at Maple, who stood glar ing behind the counter. “Serving last year’s turkey, Maple?”

“Very funny.”

He helped Dottie haul Harrel to his feet and murmured, “Get him to see the doc. His blood pressure’s high.” He thanked Beth and sent her back to her Thanksgiving activities.

She smiled. “I didn’t know you were back on the line.”

“Just for today.” Cal waved and climbed into the truck. He killed the emergency lights and drove back just over the speed limit.

Rob, not Laurie, was waiting in the lounge doorway when he pulled the truck in and closed the big emergency door. Cal climbed down. “Hey.”

Rob nodded. “Everything okay?”

“False alarm. Unless you consider the inherent hazard of eating at Maple’s.” Cal looked behind him into the lounge.

“She had to leave.” Rob cleared his throat. “She left you a note.” He motioned toward the table.

Cal walked past Rob and read it.
I enjoyed the show. Had to run. Laurie
. Disappointment settling in his belly, he picked up the puppet and worked the mouth up and down. “Can’t say we didn’t try, buddy.”

“You didn’t tell me your flash was Laurie.”

He turned to Rob, reading the concern in his face. “How’d she look?”

Rob leaned one outstretched arm on the wall. “She looked good.” His tone was combative, but Cal didn’t want to get into it.

“I had to run out on her. Wasn’t sure we wouldn’t find a class four substance infecting Maple’s.” He folded the puppet into the box.

“Cal …”

“You came to check on me?” Cal slid the puppet box to the shelf.

“I was done with dinner. Just thought I’d stop by.” Rob eyed him hard. “Guess I wasn’t the only one with that idea.”

“Thanks, Rob, but I can handle it now.” Cal unloaded the mice from the upper tray in the aluminum pan into their cage and dumped the ashes from the insert.

“You can, you know.”

Cal glanced up. “Can what?”

Rob’s gray eyes were intense. “Handle it.”

Cal shrugged. “It’s just this one shift.”

“Doesn’t have to be.”

Cal put the mouse paraphernalia onto the shelf. “Yeah, but can you see Perry doing Spanner? I mean we all have our strengths, don’t we?” He heard Rob’s exasperated breath, but before he could argue further, Cal added, “Thanks for coming in.”

“Yeah.”

When Rob had gone, Cal took the book Laurie had brought and opened the cover to her inscription.

To Cal. A true friend is worth more than any lover
.

He smiled grimly. “Yeah, yeah, I get the point.” He flipped to the page marker she’d inserted into the section of poems by Robert Frost. “Acquainted with the Night.” Well, it wouldn’t hurt to read it, even if he didn’t understand a word. He settled onto a cot and stretched out.
I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out
in rain—and back in rain. I have outwalked the city light …
Cal braced his head on his arm, the poem resonating already. Where did Laurie get this stuff? Maybe she knew him after all.

He finished, unsure that he got the gist, but it painted a picture of ambivalence he knew too well. Once, if he heard a cry in the street, his feet wouldn’t stop—they’d run to help, certain of success. But now? And then there were the lines,
One luminary clock against the sky proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right
. Maybe that was it. He was trapped in twilight, caught between the surety of sunlight and the dark.

Cal frowned, glancing at the next offering. “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.” He pressed his cheek back to his palm.
Whose woods these are I think I know …
Cal felt himself there among the trees, the woods filling up with snow, the scent of pine and damp leaves, the chill and silence of a winter night.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep …

There was something deeper there than the simple words implied, he suspected. But Laurie was right. He and Robert Frost did share an affinity for the woods. He glanced at the next, “The Road Not Taken.”
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood …
He read the lines, then rolled over and lay back. That was dangerous stuff. You’d walk yourself right over the edge thinking of all the alternative choices. The what-ifs. He knew about those. He closed the book and rested his head on his arms.

This time Laurie had made the overture. That had to count for something. She could have left well enough alone. She wasn’t looking to regain what they’d once had, that was clear. Then why had she come tonight? Why did Laurie do anything? She said one thing and meant another. She wanted things she didn’t even realize. He closed his eyes.
A true friend …

Cal sighed. No sense pondering what-ifs. They’d taken the road they took. His breath deepened, and he welcomed the fuzzing of his thoughts. With images of woods and roads filling his head, he surrendered to sleep.

He was jarred awake by the phone and sprang from the cot. Instantly alert, he noted the time. 3:05. The tone was not dispatch, but the business line again. “Fire department.”

No answer.

“Hello?”

The line clicked, and he heard a child crying. His pulse started to race, more than it should. “Hey, are you there? Hello …” The crying stopped abruptly, and a low gravelly whisper rasped, “Child killer.” The line went dead, and so did Cal’s fingers on the receiver.

His spine chilled through to his chest. His breath constricted as the air around him flashed orange and the cries continued even though the phone in his hand began to intone, “If you wish to make a call …”

He couldn’t breathe. His head spun. He dropped the receiver and clamped his hands to his ears, but the screams continued. Black smoke boiled two feet over the floor where he slithered spread eagle, one leg extended to the wall, the opposite arm lengthened by an ax handle. With his breath resonating inside his self-contained breathing apparatus, he focused on keeping his chest motion relaxed and shallow, stretching the air so he could search.

Had he imagined it, the cry so faint, it was hardly more than a whimper over the roar of destruction below? Somewhere in the back of his head intoned the fireman’s prayer: Give me ears to hear the weakest cry. And he did. Somewhere ahead through the murk. A tiny cry, more of a whimper now. Inching forward, gripping the ax head and probing for the soft thud against a body, he fought the heat penetrating his gloves and Nomex hood.

Sweat stung his eyes straining through the gloom for any movement, anything to direct his course. There, in the corner, caged by chair legs, a huddled form. Small, too small. No one should be so fragile. He shouted, “I have one!” and crawled, leaving the wall, but holding to the lifeline, the hose that would lead them out.

He could just make out the contorted features, limp ponytails, knees drawn to her chin, two, maybe three years old, crying. Four more feet. He stretched out his glove.
Come to me, baby
. Two more feet and they could buddy-breathe his oxygen.

Cal tensed. The air glowed orange. Oh, God! Flashover. The force of ignition blew him backwards, down the stairs …

Sweating, Cal staggered to the bathroom and ran his head under the cold water of the shower. The noises stopped, and he flattened his back against the wall. His chest heaved.

He held out his hand, fascinated by the tremor. Raising his eyes to the shiny, gray ceiling, he blinked the water from his eyes and forced his diaphragm to slow. “Okay. What do you know? There was nothing more you could do. You followed procedure. The roof venting didn’t work. That wasn’t your job. You gave it your best shot. Two more minutes …” Stifling a sob, he ran a hand over his face. “Oh, God, two more minutes, and I’d have had her out!”

He smacked the wall with his palms and pushed away. He strode to the lounge and poured a cup of coffee even though the adrenaline already had his nerves on overdrive. He drank. The receiver dangling on the wall had stopped toning, and he walked over and hung it up.

He’d thought the crying was real, a child in danger. Could he have reacted? If the voice hadn’t accused, could he have done the job? His throat ached. The click had shut off the cries like a switch. Why couldn’t he shut them out of his own head?

Who would make such a call, and why? A thought landed like a rock in his gut. No. Ashley Trainor’s family had not blamed him. That much he remembered: the grip of her father’s hand in his bandaged one as he lay in the hospital, the child’s mother sobbing but thanking him for trying to get their little girl out.

They had thanked, not condemned him. Yeah, he was drugged at the time, but that memory was clear. Even though they participated in his nightmares when he imagined himself handing the child into their arms only to have it all blow up, he could distinguish that from the memory.

He pulled off his wet shirt and tossed it. Face it. It could be anyone. Everyone knew what happened. The paper had run the story. The town had responded in typical schizophrenic fashion—some hailing him as a hero, others condemning him as inept. It didn’t matter. Nothing altered the fact that things happened as they did. And Ashley Trainor was dead.

He went upstairs to the office, dug the key out of Frank’s pencil holder, and opened the lower right drawer. He slid his fingers over the half empty bottle of Southern Comfort, twisted open the cap, and brought it to his lips.

Closing his eyes, he drank, then capped the bottle and carried it back down with him.

Reggie’s knees throbbed, but he didn’t relieve them of his weight. Suanne leaned up on her elbow in the bed. “Reg?”

“Go back to sleep, sweet. I’m about my Father’s business.”

“It’s four o’clock in the morning.”

“I know. But I haven’t been released yet.”

She lay back down, and Reggie watched her side rise and fall in an even pattern. She didn’t ask whom he prayed for. She never did. She figured that was between him and God. But Reggie guessed she knew and was adding her prayers just now in silence. She was a good woman. She held up his arms when they grew weary. Right now it was his knees troubling him.

Reggie allowed himself to shift just a little, then forced thoughts of discomfort from his mind. He armed himself and went to war for Cal.

Eight o’clock sharp the next morning, Cal put the empty bottle, his badge, and his keys on Frank’s desk. Frank stood behind the chair, still in his coat and gloves, and looked from the items to Cal and back again. “What’s this?”

“I quit.”

Frank’s cheeks were red from the crisp air, and he rubbed his running nose with his glove. “Have a seat, Cal.”

“No thanks. I’ll just be on my way.”

“We’ve got too many years between us to not hash this out.”