“Well, to see how you were, for one thing. All your friends have been calling the hospital, but they don’t tell us much. I talked to your dad yesterday, and I hated to keep bugging him.”
“What did he say?” Barry asked.
“That you were over the hump. Getting better. Able to see the family. Stuff like that.”
“Did he say anything about my legs?” Barry saw a shadow flicker across the green eyes. There was a slight hesitation before Ray answered.
“No.”
“You’re lying,” Barry said flatly.
“I’m not. I didn’t talk with him very long. He said you were going to be okay.”
“I’ll just bet he did.” I hate him, Barry thought. I hate him lying to me, patronizing me, standing here on his two good legs, able to turn around and walk out of here whenever he wants to. I wish somebody would shoot a bullet into his guts so he’d know what it was like to lie on the ground in the dark and yell and not have anybody hear you.
Aloud he said, “How was it in California?”
“Good in some ways, not so good in others.” Ray sounded relieved at the change in topic. “I did a lot of thinking while I was out there. There’s something about being alone with no one to fall back on. You start learning how to fall back on yourself. You settle down in your mind and get your thinking into balance. You know what I mean?”
“What sort of thinking?” Barry asked him warily.
“Oh, about right and wrong and responsibility and what’s important. Stuff like that. Look, what I’m getting at—”
“I know what you’re getting at,” Barry interrupted. “You want to blow the whistle on me about that accident. Right?”
“I don’t want to blow any whistle,” Ray said. “I just think we went off the deep end too fast. We were all shaken up that night, and we made a decision we shouldn’t have made, and now I think we ought to consider it again.”
“Go ahead and consider it,” Barry told him. “Consider it all you want to. You can’t break the pact.”
“We could dissolve the pact.”
“Only if we all agree, and I don’t.”
“Barry, look.” Ray drew closer to the bed and lowered his voice. “It’s more than just a moral thing; it’s for our own safety. Somebody’s got our number—how, we don’t know—but somebody does, and whoever it is put a bullet through you the other night. You were lucky. You lived through it. But who’s to say he’s not going to try it again when you get out of here?”
“When I get out of here,” Barry said, “I’m not going to be within range of any hothead with a gun. I’m going to be flat on my back at home in a ‘nice, restful’ newly painted green bedroom with my mom standing guard at the door.”
“Then think about the rest of us. Think about Helen.”
“You think about Helen if you want to; I’d rather not. And if you see her you can tell her to stop bothering my folks with phone messages. Girls like her are a dime a dozen, and I happen to have a pocket full of dimes.”
“Barry, listen—”
“No, you listen,” Barry said savagely. “Somebody shot me, yes, but that doesn’t mean it had anything to do with that car accident. That’s old stuff. It’s over. This was something entirely different.”
“How do you know?” Ray asked. “Did you see who did it?”
“No, but I know why he did it. I had fifty bucks in my wallet when I left the house that night. When they brought me in here, I didn’t have any cash left.”
“You mean it was robbery?” Ray exclaimed doubtfully.
“Yes, it was robbery. What else?”
“But what about the phone call? The papers said you got a call right before you went out. A couple of the guys at the frat house heard you talking to somebody, promising to meet her. Your dad says it was Helen. Helen says it wasn’t.”
“It wasn’t,” Barry said. “I told that to Dad because it was the easiest thing to say. I didn’t want to mess things up any more than they already were. This girl I was talking to is a real hot little number. I’ve been seeing her for a long time now, but I didn’t want to hurt Helen by having her find out about it.”
“This girl called and wanted you to meet her on the athletic field? Why?”
“I wasn’t meeting her there,” Barry told him. “I was just crossing the field because it was the shortest way to reach the stadium. I was going to meet her there. We were going to watch the fireworks and then go back to her place. So, I never got there. Tough luck for me.”
“You swear that?” Ray said. “You swear it was another girl you were dating?”
“Sure, I swear it, and you can tell Helen if you want to. Let her face reality for a change. I’ve got plenty of girls on the hook. Helen’s just one of them.”
“Then this had nothing to do with the Gregg kid?”
“That’s what I’m telling you. They’re two different things. You turn me in for the Gregg kid, and all you’re doing is kicking me when I’m down. I swear, Ray, if you do that to me I’ll never forgive you. We made a pact.”
“Okay,” Ray said softly. “Okay. Simmer down. I didn’t mean to get you so riled up.”
“What do you expect, throwing something like that at me?” Barry was riled up. His head was throbbing and the whole room was beginning to move out of focus. “Look, how about getting out of here? I’m not supposed to see people and I don’t feel so great.”
“Sure. I’m sorry.” Ray touched his shoulder. “I really am sorry. Get better, okay?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
Barry closed his eyes, and the room went swinging around beyond the darkness of his eyelids.
Get out of here, he shouted silently. Get out, get out, get out! Walk out of here on your good legs and go run around the block or something, you Brutus, you Judas, you faithful, loyal best friend of mine with your new “balanced” thinking and your “let’s dissolve the pact.” Get out and leave me alone!
He wished he could be there to see Helen’s face when Ray told her the story about the phone call. “It was a girl,” he would say. “Somebody he’s been seeing for a while now.” That would show her. She might as well know that she hadn’t quite made a fool of him. Maybe she was playing around on the side, but so was he, and a whole lot heavier than she was.
It could have been true. It could have been another girlfriend on the telephone. Crystal did sometimes call him, and so did some of the others. It could as easily have been one of them that night calling to ask him to meet her at the stadium.
Or it could have been Helen. That was whom he had expected. That was why the strange voice had disconcerted him so completely.
“Cox here,” he had said, and the voice, low-pitched and muffled, as though the speaker was talking through some cloth, had said, “Barry?”
“Hello? Who’s this?”
“A friend,” the voice had said. “A friend who knows about something and needs to talk to you about it.”
“About what?” Barry had known that he was reacting stupidly, but he could think of nothing else to say. “What are you talking about?”
“I think you know. Something that happened last summer.” There had been a pause. “What would you say if I told you I had a picture?”
“A picture of what?” Barry had asked, his stomach knotting.
“An action picture with a car in it. And a bicycle. Just part of the bicycle. Would you be interested in seeing it?”
“No,” Barry had said. “I wouldn’t.”
“Perhaps there might be other people I could show it to.” The voice had been calm and thoughtful. “Like, for instance, the boy’s parents. I think they might be interested.”
“You can’t take good pictures at night.” Barry had bitten before he could stop himself. Immediately, on realizing what he had done, he had been filled with fury at his own stupidity. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”
“Somebody who uses special film,” the voice had told him. “A fast film that takes great shots in dim
light, even less light than you get from headlights. I’m willing to make a deal with you. I’d like to sell this picture plus the negative. It wasn’t taken digitally, and I haven’t scanned it, so that will be the end of it. I’m not asking you to buy it sight unseen. I’m calling from here on campus. I can show you the picture.”
“I’ll just bet you can. There isn’t any film like that.” He had not been sure of his ground. He had never been interested in photography and knew little about it. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Then I’ll meet you over at the athletic field in about five minutes. Under the stands.”
“That’s fine with me,” Barry had said. “You’d better be there.” He had placed the receiver back on the hook and turned to the boys behind him. “It’s all yours.”
“Man,” one of them had said, “if I talked to my girl like that, she’d shoot me!”
Funny, Barry thought now, that he should have put it that way, like a premonition. Keeping his eyes tightly closed, he thought about the place in the bed where his feet were lying. “They’re there,” the doctor had said, and they were, for he had seen the shape of them under the sheet, sticking up like blocks of wood.
So much for you, Ray Bronson, he felt like shouting. Crashing in here, trying to pump me, making threats! So you came here to see how I was, did you? Like hell, you did! You came to get information to cover your ass. So you got it, but it wasn’t what you expected, was it? Well, suppose you figure things out for yourself with all that good thinking you taught yourself to do while you were in California. Don’t think I’m going to help you. I don’t owe you anything.
You figure things out for yourselves—you and Julie and Helen. It’ll give you something to keep you busy in the evenings. As for myself, I’ve got plenty to do with chatting up pretty nurses and being put on and off bedpans and visiting with my mother. It’s enough to keep me busy the rest of my life!
The words blurred in his head into one massive shout, and the hot tears finally came.
CHAPTER 14
Ray drew a long breath of relief as he passed through the swinging glass doors of the hospital lobby and stepped out into the warm flood of afternoon sunshine.
Well, that’s that, he told himself. Here I had myself all worked up, and there wasn’t anything to be worried about. The attack on Barry was robbery, just robbery. Nothing to do with me or with Julie or even with Helen. Nobody’s out to get any of us, at least not physically.
The relief was so great that he felt light-headed with the intensity of it. As he walked down the sidewalk he had a crazy desire to turn to everyone he passed and shout out, “Hello there! We’re okay! Everything’s okay!”
Though, of course, it wasn’t really. One terror out of the way did not mean that there were not things to be concerned about. A person existed who knew—or thought they knew—about last summer’s accident. Though Barry had now erased for them the fear that this person was out for physical revenge, there still must be some plan behind the malicious notes and clippings. No actual threat had yet been made, but soon there would have to be something. Perhaps it would be blackmail, like “Pay me this much money, or I’ll go to the police with my information.”
If that happens, Ray thought, I can go to the cops. That would be fine with me. I’m not going to hand over one dollar to get further into this mess than I am right now. If I had my way, I’d be headed straight for the police myself. If only I hadn’t let myself be talked into that damned pact, if I’d listened to Julie that night instead of to Barry—
But what was done was done. That night could not be relived by any of them. Neither could any of them dictate what was to take place from now on. Elsa—if, as Julie suspected, it was Elsa—would do that. The more he thought about it though, the harder it was for Ray to imagine Elsa in the role of blackmailer. There was nothing subtle about Elsa. If she had something to use against Helen, she would use it with full venom, he was certain, but the brains and patience necessary for this sort of cat-and-mouse play would be surprisingly out of character.
“Ray? Hey, you’re Ray Bronson, aren’t you?”
Ray was startled from his thoughts by a voice from behind him. He turned and for a moment stared without recognition at the dark-haired, square-built young man who had called out his name.
Then the realization struck him.
“Oh, hi,” he said. “Bud, isn’t it?”
“Right. I thought that was you, but I wasn’t sure. I saw you come out of the hospital. You have somebody in there?”
“A friend,” Ray said. “Barry Cox. Julie may have mentioned him to you.”
“The guy who was shot over at the college?” The older boy nodded. “That was a tough break. How is he doing? Are they allowing him to have visitors?”
“No,” Ray said. “I sort of crashed through the gates. He’s doing okay, I guess, as okay as possible under the circumstances.”
He made the statement with effort. The sight of Barry’s long, strong body laid out flat and helpless in the hospital bed had shaken him severely. Ray had little experience with hospitals. He had never even been inside one except one time to see his mother when she was hospitalized after an appendectomy. That had been different. The operation had been successfully completed, his mother had been smiling, and they all had known that she would be home within a couple of days, strong and well and ready to throw herself back into the full joy of living.
With Barry, no such guarantee existed.
“Paralysis,” Mr. Cox had said yesterday on the phone. “At the moment that condition does seem to exist, but it may only be temporary. Of course, he hasn’t been told anything about it.”
But he knows, Ray thought now. Maybe they haven’t told him, but he knows. The knowledge had been there in Barry’s eyes, and the bitterness in his voice had been only a thin mask over the sound of fear.
As though reading his mind, Bud said, “I hate hospitals.” He had moved up to fall into step beside Ray. “I’m heading down to that Starbucks on the corner to pick up some coffee cake or something. Want to join me?”
“Well—” Ray hesitated. He had had lunch and was not particularly hungry. At the same time, he had to admit to himself a painful curiosity about the guy who appeared to have taken his place in Julie’s life. She had said that she was not in love, but there had to be something in the relationship for her to continue to see him so regularly.
“Sure,” he said. “I could use a cup of coffee.”
When they entered the coffee shop, they found that it was almost deserted. Ray ordered a latte while Bud bought a croissant, then they selected a table. As they waited for the latte, Ray devoted himself to studying the face of the young man across from him. What, he wondered, did Julie see in it? Was it a face that flashed into her mind as soon as she woke up in the morning? Did it have a place in her dreams at night?
Bud was not exactly handsome, but he had an air of quiet self-confidence that a girl like Julie might find attractive. The cut of his hair and the fact that his face was closely shaven accentuated the several years between their ages. He had the strong jaw and direct, determined gaze of a young man who was used to setting a course and sticking to it.
If he decided he wanted a girl, Ray thought, he wouldn’t call it quits until he got her. The observation was more than a little disturbing.
“Are you sure you don’t want something besides coffee?” Bud asked.
“I’m sure,” Ray said. “That hospital visit got to me. Barry was my best friend in high school. We’re not so close now, but still…seeing him down flat like that—”
“I can imagine,” Bud said. “Like I told you, I hate hospitals. Just the smell of one is enough to give me nightmares.”
“Have you ever been in one?” Ray asked him.
“Yep. After Iraq.” Bud didn’t elaborate. “Say, what’s Julie’s connection with your friend? She told me she sent a plant over to the hospital. She doesn’t date him, does she?”
“God, no
,” Ray told him. “She doesn’t even like him much. We all used to hang out together—Julie and me and Barry and a girl named Helen Rivers. Then something happened and…well, we don’t anymore.”
“Helen Rivers.” Bud repeated the name slowly. “That sounds familiar. Maybe Julie’s mentioned her.”
“You could have seen her on TV. She works for one of the local stations.” Ray decided to ask the question that was uppermost in his mind. “Are you seeing a lot of Julie?”
“Quite a bit,” Bud said. “Does that bother you?”
“Sure,” Ray said wryly, “but there doesn’t seem to be much I can do about it. She used to be my girlfriend, and I’d better warn you, I’m going to do everything I can to get her back.”
“Are you now?” There was a hint of amusement in Bud’s voice. “Well, you can try, but it’s not that easy to go back and pick up a relationship once you’ve let it go down the drain. If Julie still means that much to you, why did you take off on her?”
“I didn’t take off on her,” Ray said. “I felt like I had to get away for awhile and do some thinking and kind of sort out the way I felt about things.”
“Sounds like escapism to me,” Bud said shortly. “Plain running away.”
“It was,” Ray admitted. “I know that now. That’s why I came back.”
“Expecting to find everything blown over and back to normal?”
“No. I didn’t expect that.” The subject was getting out of hand. Ray shifted uncomfortably. The last person in the world he had intended to spill his guts to was the guy who represented his competition for Julie.
“We had something pretty great going once,” he said. “Julie and I. Maybe I can get her to give it another shot. Maybe I can’t. It’ll be up to her. I guess she told you, she’s going east to college in a couple of months.”
“And you’re planning to follow her?”
“I wish I could, but I didn’t apply to any of the Ivy League schools. Probably couldn’t have gotten in if I had. I’ll be staying here. I’m going to register at the University.”
“You know what you’re going to take?”