While they waited, Claire used Dante’s cell phone to call McKenzie’s aunt and uncle and explain what had happened. At first they were angry, an anger fed by fear, but they gradually calmed down as Claire explained what had happened. In the middle of the conversation, a vet with a dark ponytail and the nametag that read “Louise” came out. Claire handed over the phone so that Louise could talk to McKenzie’s aunt and uncle.
“Bailey’s not out of the woods yet, but he’s doing better than I would have initially expected. We’ve given him some Valium and he’s stopped seizing. We’re still running some tests, but with the clinical signs he was exhibiting, those seizures and the sawhorse stance, our best guess is strychnine poisoning. It’s possible that the squirrel may have been poisoned by strychnine, and then Bailey scavenged it and got a secondary poisoning.”
McKenzie tapped the vet’s elbow to get her attention. Claire watched the girl struggle to be brave. “Will my dog live?”
Louise put a hand on her shoulder. “I can’t promise anything honey, but I hope so. Now I need to get permission to do some more tests and pump his stomach.” She finished her business on the phone and handed it back to Claire.
Thirty minutes later, Louise reported that the dog’s vital signs had stabilized. “I’m cautiously optimistic Bailey will pull through. You should go on home now and get some rest. We’re going to keep giving drugs to make him stay asleep until tomorrow. That will keep him from having any more of those seizures. We’ll call you tomorrow first thing, or if anything changes. And of course you can call any time to see how he’s doing.”
Once they got back to McKenzie’s aunt and uncle’s house, the two grabbed the girl and held her close. McKenzie, who had been the kind of quiet that only complete exhaustion can bring, began to cry again. Claire gave them her phone number and asked them to call her with an update on the dog’s condition.
When they got back to the house, Charlie and Tom were there. Dante and Claire explained what had happened. “What kind of sick person would poison a squirrel?” Dante asked.
“Maybe it wasn’t the squirrel they were after,” Tom said. “I think strychnine is usually used to poison gophers or rats. Maybe the squirrel just got hold of some accidentally.”
“Maybe,” Claire said. “But I’ve been thinking about how many dead animals I’ve been seeing lately when I go running. Squirrels, rats, crows – and I never used to see dead things.” A memory flashed through her mind – somebody complaining about rats? – but it slipped away again before she could place it.
###
Claire had been home for a half hour before she thought to check the answering machine. The green light was blinking.
Nova Sweeney had had a second stroke, a fatal one.
The memorial service was scheduled for Riverwalk’s chapel in two days’ time.
Chapter 44
ALLMSU
Claire was asleep that night, her head on Dante’s shoulder, when a sound like a car backfiring pierced her dreams. Near and very loud, it was accompanied by the crash and tinkle of broken glass. She started up, groggily wondering if she was still dreaming. But Dante was also awake, raised up on one elbow beside her, his eyes wide.
Then Charlie began to scream.
She ran down the dark stairs, her feet unerring from years of living in the same house. Dante was one pace behind. Claire heard him trip on the last step, the grunt as he sprawled full length in the hall, but she didn’t stop, pulled on inexorably by the sound of Charlie’s screams. Was Charlie injured? Dying?
Yanking open Charlie’s bedroom door, Claire flipped on the light, then froze. Tom lay with his blood-drenched upper body sprawled across the bed, his heels drumming the floor. Charlie cradled him in her arms. There was so much blood Claire couldn’t tell whether Charlie was hurt or not. On Charlie’s face was an expression Claire had never seen there before. Fear.
“Are you all right, Charlie?” Claire shouted as Dante ran in behind her. She could her the gasp of his indrawn breath.
Charlie shook her head. “Help Thomas!” The word said the German way, with no T, Toe-mahs. “He has been shot in the chest.”
Dante knelt down in front of Tom.
Claire snatched up the phone to call 911. No dial tone.
Dante’s hands fumbled with Tom’s buttons.
Claire clicked the “talk” button off and on, off and on, but still heard only silence. She looked at it again. The power light glowed green.
Dante gave up and tore. A button bounced off Claire’s cheek.
Pressing the phone to her ear again, Claire still heard nothing. “The phone’s not working!”
“I’ll go find my cell,” Dante’s voice was measured, even though his face was pale and his fingers dripped blood onto the wood floor. “Try to find where he’s bleeding and get it to stop. Press on it hard with your hands. He’s losing too much blood. We’ve got to get an ambulance here fast.” He ran from the room.
Charlie seemed in shock, her face white. All she was doing was stroking Tom’s hair while his blood soaked into the bed and wicked up the sleeves of her pink cotton pajamas. Claire leaned over Tom. His lips were an eerie lavender, his skin gray underneath his tan. His breath came in shallow gasps. The veins in his neck bulged purple.
Tom’s eyes pleaded with her. “Can’t breathe! Can’t!” Claire grabbed a pillow and used it to wipe the blood away so she could find its source. There was a neat round hole two inches below his left nipple. Tom gasped for breath, the cords on his neck standing out. To her horror Claire saw bright red blood foam from the wound as he tried to exhale. Then came a terrible wet, sucking sound as he breathed in. On the right side, his chest rose normally, but stayed flat on the left. Claire pressed her hand over the hole and felt air bubbling out. Like some obscene mouth, the wound suckled on her palm when Tom struggled again to inhale. The blood was so red it was nearly mesmerizing. Putting one knee on the mattress to gain leverage, Claire pressed down harder, trying to seal the wound.
Tom’s lips were still moving, but there was no sound. His eyes pleaded with her.
“Don’t talk.” Somehow, Claire managed to make her voice calm, hoping her expression was reassuring. “Save your breath.” The phrase took on a new meaning.
Dante ran back into the room, his feet crunching on the splinters of broken glass. “What is the address here? I can’t remember!” Charlie told him while she kept trying – and failing – to stop the bleeding. He relayed the information, thanked the person on the other end, and then put down the phone. “Since it was a cell phone, they couldn’t use the automatic locator, but she said they should be here in a couple of minutes.”
Claire realized where Dante was standing – right next to the shattered window, its ivory curtains billowing in the breeze. “Get away from the window!” Claire yelled. Dante backed away quickly. “Whoever did this could still be out there!”
Underneath her, Tom gasped for breath again. Despite how hard she was pressing, Claire felt the flesh again draw down under her hand. The wet sound filled the room.
“That’s a sucking chest wound,” Dante said. He came to her side. “We’ve got to get it sealed up. Here. My hand’s bigger. Let me try.” Dante slid his hand under hers, then pressed so hard the skin of Tom’s chest whitened around his hand, but at least the terrible slurping sound stopped. “Quick, do you have any Saran wrap, you know, plastic wrap? And some kind of tape that will stick to his skin - medical tape or even duct tape?” He leaned in to speak to Tom, although Claire didn’t know if he was past hearing. “Tom! Try to breathe as little and as shallowly as possible. Your lung has collapsed.”
Claire ran into the kitchen, but felt like she was moving in slow motion as she fumbled open the kitchen drawer for the plastic wrap and then had to open two more drawers before she found the silver roll of duct tape. Her feet threatened to slide out from under her as she made a quick detour to throw open the front door for the paramedics. As she scrambled back to the bedroom, her mind was
filled with a wordless prayer that the ambulance would show up right now. Only when she saw Tom again, awash in blood, did Claire realize that whoever had shot him could easily have been standing on the other side of the front door. Between her shoulder blades, she felt an itching like crosshairs.
“How long a piece of plastic do you need?”
“At least two feet. And four strips of duct tape about ten or twelve inches long. Hurry.”
When she tried to tear off a piece of plastic wrap, it twisted and clung to itself. The more she tried to straighten it out, the worse it got. Finally, Claire ripped off the first balled-up piece, and started again, forcing her hands to move slowly. Then she tore off the four strips of duct tape and tacked them onto the headboard.
“That’s good. Now fold the plastic wrap in half. Okay, I’m going to lift my hand up. Charlie, I want you to wipe up the blood with a blanket or something as fast as you can. And Claire, you slap that plastic into place as soon as Tom exhales and you see his chest fall to its lowest point. Make sure it completely covers the wound. Move as fast as you can, but we want a good seal.” Dante looked at both of them to make sure they were ready. “And now!”
Everything went as smoothly as if they had done it all many times before. The blood was wiped up, the plastic slapped down. Dante quickly fastened it into place with the duct tape, but he left one corner loose. “Now he’ll be able to exhale without sucking in air when he inhales.”
Claire took a second to look at him in amazement. “How do you know all this?”
“Ex-Boy Scout who remembers the goriest lessons the best.” Something that under normal circumstances might have been a grin flashed across Dante’s face. “See if you can get his pulse.”
Claire picked Tom’s bony wrist and set her fingers on it, probing for the groove just underneath the wrist bone. Under her fingertips there didn’t seem to be even a flutter. She quickly looked up at Tom. His face didn’t look as gray, and the veins on his neck were no longer as prominent. And as she watched he drew a breath, this time a quiet one. So why couldn’t she find his pulse? She pressed harder, and there it was, weak and irregular and way too fast, so fast she had trouble counting it. Shutting out all distractions, she focused on her wristwatch for thirty seconds, then announced, “One-hundred thirty.” Claire knew her own resting pulse was around sixty, but then again, she had never taken it after having just been shot.
Charlie leaned over him. “But his color looks already better.”
Tom stirred and spoke, his words slurred. “What happened?” He blinked and looked around, tried to straighten up.
Dante put a hand on his shoulder. “Shh, stay still. You’ve been shot. The ambulance is on its way. Hang on now, don’t talk, and try to breathe slowly and shallowly. You’ve got a collapsed lung.” Dante straightened up. “Okay, okay, let me see if I can remember. I think if we prop Tom up we can make it easier for him to breathe. You guys stick those pillows behind him. I’ll go grab the cushions from the couch. We want to get him in a sitting position.”
Charlie put one arm around Tom’s shoulder while Claire picked up the three blood-spattered pillows and shoved them behind his back. Her hand came away slick with hot blood.
Oh shit. They had forgotten all about the possibility of an exit wound.
“Dante?” she called, and heard her voice rising. Tom was curled forward now, his head resting on his bent knees. She lifted his pajama top. His back looked like hamburger. It was going to take more than duct tape and plastic wrap to fix this. “Dante, can you come in here?”
At that moment, sirens converged on the house and she heard Dante yelling from the porch. Was he making himself a target? But whoever had fired a shot through a darkened window into a man dazed with sleep wouldn’t be brave enough to wait around for the cops.
Footsteps pounded down the hall and two paramedics and a cop ran in to the bedroom, with Dante on their heels. The room was suddenly too crowded. The cop was yelling, “Where’s the shooter?”
“We never saw anyone. They were outside and shot him through that window.” Dante pointed at the shattered glass. The cop turned and ran from the room, his gun drawn.
The tension in the room was escalating even as the man at the center of it seemed to be collapsing like a leaky balloon. The paramedics converged on Tom, shouting commands and facts at each other, ripping open medical supplies they yanked from their bags, barking into the two-way radios they wore on their shoulders. They pushed Claire and Dante out into the hall, where they hovered in the doorway, watching anxiously. When Claire got a glimpse of Tom’s face, it was twisted into a grimace. Charlie was still on the bed. She had refused to leave. They had made her scoot back to give them room to work. She sat now in a corner, her shoulders braced by the walls, her knees drawn up to her chest.
And then the next time one of the paramedics stood back and Claire saw Tom’s face, it was clear that he was – gone. His eyes were still open, but it was like a light behind them had been put out.
The paramedics’ rush slowed, and then stopped. They stepped away from Tom, their hands dropping to their sides.
“Can’t you do something?” Claire pleaded from the doorway, even though she knew it was hopeless. “Can’t you shock him with those paddles or something?”
The older one turned his head in her direction, but she noticed he didn’t quite meet her eye. “The bullet severed one of the main arteries. Even if he had been rushed into surgery the second after it happened, I don’t think they could have saved him. There was just too much damage, ma’am. I’m sorry.”
Charlie moved then. Across the bloody mattress, she crawled forward on her hands and knees and kissed Tom’s blue lips.
Chapter 45
For years, Charlie fought not to feel resentment toward the living. Why should they be alive when everyone else was dead?
As time passed, she got to the point where she could bear to hear someone say, “I’m starving,” as they sat down at the restaurant, their eyes scanning the menu. Or “I was so frightened,” when they spoke about a movie.
They used words so lightly, as if they were weightless. I’m hungry, I’m scared, I’m cold, I’m sick, I thought I would die.
For a long time, everything felt beside the point. Was this freedom, this unbearable solitariness? Why should she live?
In time, Charlie knew she had to choose: to die or to forget. To continue to breathe was to forget.
Even to remember was to forget.
Chapter 46
HLNBK
The police seemed to think it was likely that the person or persons who had shot Tom had been the same ones who spray-painted the house. They called it an escalation of violence, which seemed an understatement. Worried for Jason, Claire was relieved when they talked about moving the other hate-crime victims to safe houses. But most of worries were for Charlie. Claire sat next to her friend, one arm around her shoulder, one hand on her Charlie’s knee, as they answered the same questions again and again. The older woman seemed weightless, as if grief had left her an empty husk. Claire had the feeling if it hadn’t been for her, Charlie would have simply floated away.
“We were asleep,” Charlie explained again for the third time. “Then I heard a rap on the window. I was not sure if I heard it or I was dreaming it. Tom got up and went to see what the noise was. The next thing I know there was shooting and the glass, it was everywhere flying. And then Tom fell and I was holding him, I was trying to hold him.”
Since Charlie hadn’t seen anything, nor had any of the neighbors, the police had little to go on. Someone had disconnected the line at the junction box. There were no fingerprints on Charlie’s bedroom window, only smudges thought to be from gloves. Before they left, the police said they would be in touch later for more questioning, and gave Dante the name of a cleaning company that specialized in crime scenes.
“There is one thing,” Claire said on the porch as the detective was leaving. “Could you check the photos of the other crime sc
enes? The photos of the writing?”
“Why?”
“The writing on our house was both in upper and lower case. But the writing at Jason’s and Matt’s apartment is the in all capital letters. It’s probably nothing, but-.”
The detective straightened up. “You know those kids?”
“Mostly the younger one. I tutor Jason at school two days a week.”
“Did you tell us that?”
“Ours happened first, so no, I didn’t.”
“Do you know any of the other victims?”
Claire shook her head. “I don’t think so. I might have seen that one homeless guy around, but I’m not sure.”
###
Even though none of them had slept, Charlie insisted on attending Nova’s funeral. Gingerly, Claire had ventured into Charlie’s bedroom to find a black dress. Dante had paid a small fortune to arrange for the cleaning company to come in while Claire and Charlie were at the funeral. Even if they repainted it and replaced all the furniture, Claire wasn’t certain if Charlie would ever want to sleep there again.
Claire was getting to be an old hand at finding her way around the Riverwalk campus. The parking lot was crowded. Once they were out of the car, Claire had to temper her stride to match Charlie’s. The older woman moved slowly and seemed unsteady on her feet, but shrugged off all offers of assistance.
Inside, the small chapel was carefully non-denominational. The stained glass windows showed curving abstract shapes, not images of saints. In front, a lectern but no cross. There were six rows of pews on both sides of a wide aisle, carpeted in sky blue.
Given how Nova had complained about the lack of men in her life, there were an amazing number of them in the pews - silver-haired, bald, even a couple with hair the color of shoe-polish. They outnumbered the women three to two. Claire was glad to see that they had had to break out the folding chairs.