Line of Duty

  Ashley almost couldn’t walk, but the woman led her to a room with a small table and a couple of chairs. She guided Ashley into one and gave her a box of tissues and a cup of water.

  “I hate this job,” the woman said. “I volunteered to help, and they put me here. It’s a dark day, all right.”

  Ashley wept into her hands, and the woman sat next to her, patting her back.

  “Is there anyone I could call for you, sweetheart?” she asked. “Anyone at all?”

  Ashley tried to think of someone but came up empty. “She’s all I’ve got.”

  “You don’t have a daddy?”

  “He died a long time ago.”

  “Grandparents, aunts, uncles?”

  “No.” Ashley had to get out of here, to leave this place of death. “I have to go.”

  “Of course, honey. Could you just sign this paper, saying that we’ve identified her correctly? That way we can have the funeral home come and get her, and you can go ahead and make arrangements.”

  Arrangements? For what? Was she, a sixteen-year-old girl, supposed to arrange a funeral for her own mother?

  She turned back to the table and signed the paper, then started out of the room.

  “Honey, we’ll send her to Finn and Banks Funeral Home. You just call them, and they’ll guide you through it.”

  Ashley couldn’t take it all in. She hurried out of the room, down the row of dead mothers and fathers and husbands and wives, and burst back out into daylight.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Ashley found her car still parked in the public parking lot several blocks from where the Icon Building had stood. It was covered with ashes, but it looked unharmed.

  She found the extra set of keys under the seat and started the car.

  It was just after three in the afternoon when she got to her mother’s house. She hadn’t been here in weeks. Unlocking the back door, she stepped into the kitchen and stood for a moment, trying to get her bearings before she stepped over that threshold, into the home that her mother had made for her. The home to which her mother would never return.

  The kitchen light was blaring, as if someone was home, but Ashley knew better. Her mother had a problem with turning off lights. She closed the door behind her and heard a radio on in another room. So many mornings her mother had left it playing when she rushed off to work. Ironic that it had played all through yesterday with news updates about the explosions and the deaths. And now it still played.

  She stood just inside the door for a moment, looking around the kitchen, all lit up, polished and shiny, with that music from the radio playing in that other room. For a moment she tried to imagine that her mother was back in the bedroom, that in a moment she would rush out and hold out her arms.

  Ashley, you’re home!

  What did they do when a sixteen-year-old girl was suddenly orphaned? Did they let her keep her mother’s house? Did they take it from her?

  The empty longing of her grief propelled her further into the house. She looked around the living room. Her mother had left a coffee cup on the table next to the chair where she sat to read her Bible every morning before work. Her Bible lay open on the arm of the chair—signs of life where there was none.

  She walked further into the house, past the bedroom she had abandoned when she chose to drop out of school and leave home. Her mother had kept it just as she’d left it, though a little cleaner.

  She went back to her mother’s bedroom, where the radio was playing, and stood at the entrance for a moment. The bed was made, but her mother’s pajamas lay draped over a chair, along with a skirt that she imagined her mom trying on, then discarding, before settling on the outfit she would wear to her death.

  She crossed the room, picked up those pajamas, and brought them to her face. “Mama,” she whispered.

  The praise song playing on the radio grated on her nerves, so she crossed the room and turned it off.

  Silence fell over the house. Slowly, Ashley left her mother’s room and went back into the living room, sat down in the recliner her mother enjoyed when she got off work and needed to put her feet up. She picked up the Bible and saw her mother’s prayer journal beneath it. She grabbed it, too, and opened to the first page. One of her mother’s famous prayer lists. Notes to pray for a friend going through cancer treatments. Notes to pray for her pastor’s wife who had strep throat, Francis’s cousin who had gall bladder surgery . . .

  And then she came to her own name, written three times on that list. Ashley, Ashley, Ashley.

  There was no specific request there. She could only imagine her mother writing down, from the pain in her heart, all the things Ashley had done lately. She could picture her mom contending with God for the soul of her daughter.

  She dropped the journal and her mother’s Bible into her bag, then went to her room and dug through the drawers for the clothes she would need for wherever she would go.

  She couldn’t stay here tonight. Staying here alone would be too cruel. She would keep expecting her mother to come breezing in, fussing at her about the nose ring, about the tongue stud. She turned off all the lights and, with a knot in her throat, locked the door behind her.

  She went back out to her rusted old Subaru and drove toward town. She needed to find Chris, her boyfriend, and all of her friends. Maybe she would be able to shake this feeling of sudden unbelonging.

  Maybe they could help her plan her mother’s funeral.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Ashley’s Subaru rattled into the driveway of the small, rickety house she and her friends rented. For a moment she sat behind the wheel, letting it idle as she stared up at the house that, just a few weeks ago, had seemed like such a haven to her.

  There were no rules here, and she could live with her boyfriend and all of her good friends who had the same likes and dislikes as she, and no one could tell them what to do or how to do it.

  But it wasn’t a home.

  Funny how she’d thought that her home would always be there to return to if she needed it. A base from which she could rebel.

  Now her home was empty. Just a house. And she felt as if she had dived into a free fall and didn’t know where she might land.

  The door opened, and she saw Chris look out. He had a cigarette in his mouth and looked as brooding as James Dean as he stared out at her.

  She got out of the car, pulled her bag with her. “Hey,” she said.

  He dropped the cigarette onto the ground and stomped it out. “Where have you been?”

  Did he really not know? Had it not even occurred to him? “Where do you think?”

  “Home? You were going to get money from your mother, but I thought you’d be back.”

  His ignorance made her angry, and she walked up and looked up into his face. He hadn’t shaved in days. That had always been attractive to her before, but now it repelled her.

  The feeling was mutual. “You look like death,” he said.

  That simple declaration birthed a rage inside her, and she stood looking at him, hating him for not knowing what she’d been through in the last twenty-four hours.

  “No, this isn’t what death looks like,” she bit out.

  He frowned down at her. “What’s wrong with you? Did I do something?”

  She let out a long breath and deflated against his Camaro. Looking up at him, she decided that she wasn’t being fair. She should tell him what she’d been through. Then she would get his comfort instead of his indictments.

  “Yesterday,” she said, “I went to ask my mom for the money—”

  The door swung open, and she heard raucous laughter inside. Eddie, the twenty-five-year-old out-of-work rock star, leaned out. “Hey, Ashley’s back. See, Chris, I told you she hadn’t quit you. Hey, I need to use your car, man. I have to make an emergency run to the store for some Oreos.”

  It was their favorite staple food when they got the munchies after getting high.

  Chris tossed him the keys, and Eddie staggered out and got
behind the wheel. “Hey, Ash, you’re gonna have to move your car.”

  Ashley just stood looking at Chris, who had already lit up another cigarette.

  “Ashley, come on, I’m in a hurry,” Eddie said.

  Ashley nodded. “Hold tight. I’m going.”

  She went back down the driveway to her car and started it up. It sputtered and hesitated as she backed it out. She stopped in the street and watched Eddie back out and head off to the store. Chris went back inside.

  He was waiting for her, she knew, and she would walk into that house where everyone was high and giggling, and she would tell them about her part in the explosion and how she’d just had to go and identify her mother’s remains.

  There was no reaction she could imagine from them that wouldn’t seem cruel.

  Suddenly, she wanted to be anywhere but here, with anyone but these people.

  She shifted into drive, and instead of pulling back in, she drove away. She didn’t have a clue where she would go.

  Who could she count on? Who wouldn’t let her down?

  She thought of Jill, the woman who had helped her out of the building and stayed with her for most of the night. She didn’t even remember her last name.

  She pulled the paper that Jill had given her out of her pocket. Jill Nichols, 555-6682. She had said to call if she needed her.

  Maybe she needed her now.

  It was a Newpointe number, so she got on Highway 10 and headed across Lake Pontchartrain.

  She turned on her radio and punched around for the news.

  “. . . after the Icon bombing yesterday. Sources tell us that there are ninety-seven people confirmed dead at this time. A spokesman for the FBI said that they do suspect terrorism, but they are not ruling out other possibilities. . . .”

  A rage unlike any she’d ever known stabbed through her. She pulled off the road. Gritting her teeth, she grabbed a beer bottle off of the floor and smashed it into the radio. Her beating broke the glass and the plastic plate and knobs, and she kept beating the dashboard until there was nothing left in her hand.

  She sat there for a moment, staring at the fallout of her fury.

  It hardly mattered who had done it. Whether it was an American or a foreigner or the devil himself. . . .

  She sat a moment, weeping out her rage, wishing for something else she could break. She wished for a cliff to drive off. A concrete wall to drive into at eighty miles per hour.

  After a while, she pulled back into traffic and headed toward Newpointe.

  When she reached the outskirts of the little town, she stopped at a convenience store and looked up Jill’s address in the phone book. After getting directions from the clerk, she navigated her way to the Nichols house at the end of Second Street.

  It was just after 7:00 P.M. when she reached Jill’s house. She parked her Subaru on the street and got out. For a moment she stood in the yard, looking up at the big house. She wondered whether she’d done the right thing. If Jill’s husband was all right, then probably the last thing she wanted was someone in misery getting her down again. But she had seemed like such a nice person and had offered help if Ashley needed it.

  And Ashley didn’t know where else to turn.

  She went up on the porch and knocked on the door. There was no answer, so she rang the bell and waited, then knocked again. When no one answered, she realized it was possible that Dan was still in the hospital, that Jill hadn’t even been home yet.

  Though a storm still raged in her heart, it seemed less threatening here. The thought of going back to her home or her friends was more than she could take. She would wait until Jill got home.

  The furniture on the porch looked even more comfortable than that in the house where she had been living. She went to a bench with a cushion on it and lay down. She would just wait here. And while she was waiting, she would close her eyes.

  She would wake when Jill’s car came up the driveway.

  Then she could ask Jill to help her bury her mother.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Jill felt as gutted as the Icon Building as she drove back to Newpointe that night. Her mind and heart were still at the hospital with Dan, but there had been little change since they’d checked him into ICU. There were things she needed from home, things that would make Dan more comfortable, like a pair of socks, his shaving gear, and his own clothes. She could use a change of clothes herself. She would just have to hurry back to the hospital as soon as she could. Thankfully, Allie and Mark had brought her Dan’s pickup that had been parked at their shop since yesterday. Her own car had been crushed under the building.

  She turned on the radio as she took Highway 10 over Lake Pontchartrain. Another news update rehashed the accounts of yesterday.

  “Sources tell us that the family of Donald Merritt, chief executive officer of Icon International, has contacted police regarding a hidden bank account that Merritt allegedly set up in a Swiss bank. They claim that a large sum of money disappeared from that account yesterday.Sources at the FBI tell us this may be a lead into who planted the bomb in the Icon Building.”

  Jill’s mind raced with possibilities. Who could have gotten access to Merritt’s hidden bank account? His accountant? His chief financial officer? Could any of them have been callous enough to grab his money just hours after he was killed?

  She wondered what the FBI knew. Was there more to it than simple embezzlement? Could it have been part of the plan that included blowing up the building?

  A volatile mixture of grief and rage boiled up inside her, threatening to explode. Could all the destruction really be the result of greed? Did Dan lie on the brink of death because someone wanted to get at Merritt’s money? Was there anyone that cruel, that money-hungry, that they could wipe out a hundred people, all for the almighty buck?

  She cried out to God that he would expose whomever had done this and let justice rain down upon them. In the last twenty-four hours the world had become an awful place. If only the Lord would ride in on his white horse, right now, and gather his people from the far corners of the earth. Then maybe she could put it all into perspective.

  But right now it seemed like someone else was in control.

  She reached Newpointe and drove faster than she should through the streets until she came to her own. The house that Dan had lived in when they married was much more extravagant than anything she would have chosen. His parents had deeded his childhood home to him, and since it was paid for, there seemed no reason to sell it. Still, every time Jill pulled onto their street and drove past the exclusive upscale homes, she wondered what on earth she was doing here.

  A rusty old car sat next to the curb in front of their house. Had someone’s car broken down, she wondered, or was it a client waiting for her to get home? Or worse, a reporter who needed a quote about yesterday? She should have come earlier, while it was daylight. Now darkness made coming home seem dangerous and uncertain. Bracing herself, she pulled her car into the driveway and looked up at the porch. In the light of the gas lanterns on either side of the door, she saw that someone lay curled up on the wicker loveseat, apparently asleep.

  She got out of the car and closed her door, hoping to wake them. When the person didn’t stir, she moved closer. As she went up the steps, her fears melted away.

  Ashley.

  She stepped up the front steps and quietly walked across the boards until she came to the girl. Stooping down in front of her, she pushed Ashley’s hair back from her face.

  “Hey, Ashley. Wake up, honey.”

  Ashley stirred and looked around, as if she’d forgotten where she was, and then quickly came to herself and sat up. “Hey. I didn’t hear you drive up.” In the moonlight, the girl looked paler than ever.

  “What are you doing here?” Jill asked softly. “How’d you find my house?”

  “I looked it up in the phone book. I hope you don’t mind that I came.”

  “No, of course not.” Jill sat down next to her, studying her face. There was a
chill in the air, and the girl wasn’t wearing a coat. She shivered.

  “Have you heard any word on your mother, honey?”

  Ashley’s face contorted then, and she got up and went to the rail, looked out over the street.

  “I had to identify her body.” The statement came out hoarse and broken, almost too soft to be heard. Jill felt it like an electrical shock, painful and familiar. She got up and turned the girl around, and Ashley came willingly into her arms. Jill just clung to her as they wept together.

  “You had to do that all by yourself?” Jill whispered. “Did anybody go with you?”

  Ashley shook her head. “My friends are all jerks and idiots.” She was shivering harder, and her hands were ice cold. Jill pulled her to the door, unlocked it, and took her inside. The house was just as she’d left it yesterday morning when she’d hurried off to her Icon meeting and left Dan to clean up the dishes. Who could have anticipated the events of the rest of that day?

  She turned on the light and looked fully at Ashley. The girl had taken off the chain that attached her nose and ear rings, but her piercings were still adorned with studs and loops.

  “Have you eaten anything?” Jill asked.

  Ashley shook her head. “I’m not hungry.”

  Jill didn’t listen. She pulled Ashley into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, searched the contents. “I don’t have much. I really need to go to the store.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Ashley said. She looked up at her. “How’s your husband?”

  That dull feeling of despair fell over Jill again. She closed the refrigerator and turned back to her. “He’s in really bad shape.”

  Ashley looked down at the table. “Bummer.”

  The word sounded flip, but Jill knew she didn’t mean it that way. “Yeah. Big bummer,” Jill said. She dropped down into a chair across from Ashley. “I just came home to get some things. I have to get back to the hospital in case he wakes up.”