by Jack Hardin
They thanked her and quietly opened the door to the patient’s room. The aseptic smell of sterile sheets and disinfectants hit them as they walked in, and the steady beep of the machines and the shallow hiss of oxygen reminded Ellie how much she hated being in hospitals. Ellie’s blood heated to volcanic levels as she approached the bed. The left side of the patient’s face was covered in white gauze, the right side peppered with nicks, cuts, and burns. Her visible eye was nearly swollen shut, layered in red and purple as though the result of a horrible case of domestic abuse. The report had stated that she had burns over seventy percent of her body. She had lost the use of her left eye, and both feet would most likely need to be amputated. Heeding the nurse’s directive, Ellie stepped up close and raised her voice.
“Tricia.”
Tricia Leeland’s eye opened halfway, and no more. She looked off toward the window and then slowly found Ellie and focused in on her. “You...you’re the police?” Her voice was unnatural, harsh and raspy.
“We’re with Homeland Security. I’m Agent O’Conner. This is Agent Fiske. I know this is a difficult time for you, but we need to ask you a few questions about what happened yesterday. Is that all right?”
Tricia swallowed. “Yes.”
On their way to the sandwich shop, Hailey had accessed Greaney’s email via her iPad and read out the contents of Tricia’s file. Standing over her bed now, they knew that Tricia’s little boy, Mason, had been killed in the explosion. And they knew that more than any physical pain and shock she was experiencing over her own condition, it was surely masked by the reality that her son had been ripped from her life in the most horrendous of ways.
“I’m so sorry about Mason,” Ellie said. “We’re doing our best to find who did this.”
Tricia did not respond. Her tired gaze fell to the sheets gathered across her chest.
Ellie proceeded with her questions, all the while feeling like the most insensitive person in the building. “Do you remember what time you got on the bus yesterday?”
Tricia ran a swollen tongue over bruised lips and then swallowed again. Outside, three stories down, an ambulance turned out and sped off to an unknown emergency, its sirens wailing. “It was the four-oh-eight bus,” she said weakly. “We…we got on at the Brown Street stop.”
“And you sat in the very back row of the bus?”
“Yes. Mason...he went up to the front…wanted to spend time with the driver. A nice older man.” And then in a quiet whisper said, “Ray.”
“Were there any warnings before the bomb went off? Did anyone stand up and give notice before triggering the device?”
“No.” She licked her lips again. “It was in a bag at the front. On the seat behind Ray—oh god, I can’t believe this.”
Ellie waited a few moments before speaking again. “I know this is hard. I just have a few more questions.”
Tricia nodded her consent.
“You noticed the bag before it went off?”
“Mason—” Tricia trailed off after voicing her son’s name.
“Take your time,” Ellie said softly and cut her eyes to Hailey, who looked like she was about to tear up herself.
“Mason,” Tricia continued, “he didn’t have any men in his life. I think it was him who noticed the bag. At the next stop, the driver got up to examine it. One of Mason’s toys had fallen near my feet. I leaned down to pick it up, and that’s when it all...” A hot tear fled down her cheek. “I don’t know how to do this.”
Ellie reached out and took Tricia’s hand. She squeezed it.
“Who does something like this?” Tricia choked out. “What kind of monster?”
“I don’t know.”
Pat Lindsey’s words from their meeting in the conference room yesterday suddenly echoed in Ellie’s ears: This kind of thing isn’t supposed to happen on our watch. We’re supposed to be preventative, not janitors who come in and clean up the mess. He was right, and being here now, holding Tricia’s hand and seeing the damage wrought over her body and sensing the unseen wounds caused by the trauma of the explosion and of losing her son, Ellie found herself trying to wish away a cloud of guilt that had drifted over her. Rhodes was right; they couldn’t catch everyone intent on distributing destruction. But such axioms rang hollow as you looked into the scarred face of a victim who had suffered, and would suffer, so much.
Tricia coughed hoarsely and grimaced as pain racked her body. “I…don’t know how I’m going to do this. I don’t have insurance. I could… I could hardly pay my electric bill this month.”
“That’s the last thing you need to worry about right now,” Hailey said. “Do you have a priest or a pastor who can come see you?”
“Yes. The nurse said he would be here later. The chaplain already stopped by.”
They asked her a few questions related to Ray—whether she thought he had the chance to open the bag and if she had seen anyone that, in hindsight, may have seemed unusual or suspicious. When they were finished, Ellie gave her hand a final squeeze. “They’re going to take care of you here,” she said. “There are a lot of good people hunting down the terrorists behind this.”
“Thank you for coming. You both are very kind.”
They left the room. After thanking the nurse, Ellie and Hailey walked through the double doors of the ICU and returned to the elevator. Ellie punched the button for the ground floor. They stepped in, and the elevator doors closed. The ladies were left in silence, not even soft jazz. Finally, Hailey said, “I want to punch someone in the face.”
Ellie sighed deeply and closed her eyes. “Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”
Chapter Six
“You want to carry the five. See, like this.” Cody Weiland scratched his pencil across the top of the equation and watched as the boy’s face lifted with understanding. He pointed to the next equation. “Now, you try it with this one.”
The boy leaned forward, furrowed his brow, and concentrated as he set pencil to paper. Half a minute later, he was done and looking uncertainly at his teacher. Cody frowned, folded his arms, and shook his head. The boy’s shoulders slumped. “I’m never going to get this,” he groaned.
Cody smiled as he reached out and ruffled the boy’s curly hair. “I’m kidding, Eddie. You got it right. Great job.”
“Really?”
“I told you, stick with a concept long enough, and it will work its way into you. You just have to be patient.”
Eddie pumped his fist but then tensed as he looked up at the clock on the wall. “Oh, man. I’ve gotta go. My mom said to be home by five.” He stood up and gathered his books into his backpack. “So you think I’ll do okay on the test?”
“Work a few more equations before you go to bed tonight. You’ll do fine on the test.” “Okay.” Eddie paused on his way to the door. “Thanks again, Mr. Weiland.”
“You bet, Eddie. Have a good night.” The fifth-grader pushed open the door of the school library and disappeared into the hallway.
Cody stifled a yawn as he stood up. He grabbed up a couple of pencils from the table and placed them in a pencil holder on his way out of the Molecat Elementary library. After switching off the lights, he pushed open the door into the hallway and made his way back to his classroom. The sound of a door opening and then clicking shut echoed down the hall. His boss, principal John Merrill, appeared from around the corner. Merrill lifted a hand to Cody as he drew closer. “Just the man I was looking for,” he said. “You have a second?”
“Yes, sir.”
Merrill was in his early fifties and had a graying, receding hairline and wore a cheap brown suit fitting for a principle of an inner-city elementary school. He stopped in front of Cody wearing a coy look. “How are you enjoying teaching this year?” he asked.
“Fine, sir. I’ve got a good group of kids this go-round. Overall, they’ve been fun to teach.”
Merrill cleared his throat, clearly trying to arrive at a point. “Well, I wanted to get your thoughts about moving up around here.”
“Moving up?”
“I’m about to have a vice-principal position open up.”
A small furrow dented Cory’s brow. “Wanda’s leaving?”
“She is. Her husband’s job is relocating him to San Francisco. Would you be interested in her spot?”
Cory straightened. If it was his boss's intent to completely surprise him, he had succeeded. “Yes, sir. But I’m not done with my master’s degree yet.” And I’m young, he thought to say, but didn’t.
Merrill waved him off. “That’s not a problem. You’re working on it, and that’s what matters. Well, the kids have always thought the world of you; even the delinquents have seemed to show you a certain level of respect. All of us on the staff side love you. Having you work alongside me would be a great asset to this school.”
Cody beamed. “Sir, I’m honored. And I gladly accept.”
Merrill set a proud hand on Cody’s shoulder. “Terrific. Let me get everything finalized with the superintendent, and I’ll get with you again before the week is out.”
“Sounds great, sir.”
The men shook hands, and Cody returned to his classroom with a newfound sense of pride. He enjoyed teaching but had never given much thought to moving up on the educational ladder. Lately, much more important things than a career advancement had held his attention. He gathered his things and found his car in the near-empty parking lot.
He pulled into his driveway twenty minutes later, alongside a small craftsman-style house that hadn’t seen any updates since it was first built in the ’60s. Painted concrete steps led to the front door, and the windows were still decorated with metal canopies that had gone out of style before Cody was born. The flower garden hadn’t seen any flowers for a couple of years now and was overdue for a good weeding. Large elephant ears grew tall and wild, nearly blocking a view of the front door from the driveway. A blue Ford Focus was parked on the front curb. Cody walked up the front steps and opened the door, setting his bag down at the foot of a coat rack before heading down the hall into the living room, where a dark-skinned lady was sitting on the couch with the television remote in hand. Her hair was shot through with gray, and she wore blue scrubs. She turned off the television and stood up.
“Hi, Tasha. How did today go?”
“I gave her bath a little while ago. She was especially tired this afternoon, so I fed her an early dinner and put her to bed.”
“Thank you, Tasha, for all your help.”
She reached over and grabbed her purse from the ottoman. “Glad to. Oh, I couldn’t find the latex gloves under the sink, so I couldn’t do the dishes.” She held her hands up. “My skin breaks out with that soap.”
“No problem. I’ll get them done.”
“All right then,” she said and started toward the door. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“See you then. Enjoy the rest of your evening.” The front door clicked shut, and Cody went into the kitchen and selected a frozen dinner from the freezer. He popped it into the microwave and punched in the proper amount of time before making his way to the bedroom at the end of the hall. The door was shut, and he opened it quietly and stepped inside.
His mother was in the center of the bed, the covers pulled up just beneath her chin, her eyes closed. Her long hair was the color of mahogany and combed down on either side, flowing across the blanket like she was suspended underwater. Her breathing was quiet and steady. Cody walked around to the other side of the bed and sat into the small armchair positioned against the wall. “Hi, Mom.”
Her eyes slowly opened, but she presented no particular expression. “Hi,” she said softly. “It is morning?”
“No, Mom. It’s bedtime. You’re in bed for the night.”
“Okay.”
“How was your day?” Cody knew better than to ask her questions like that. She wouldn’t be able to answer it. Not with any kind of meaning. Her early-onset dementia had worsened dramatically these last few months.
“My day?” she asked.
Cody changed the topic. “You look nice, Mom.” He stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “Tasha said you were tired today.”
“Yes… I think I was.”
“I was offered a promotion at work today. Vice-principal.”
For no apparent reason, she frowned and stared up at the ceiling.
“Mom, you still with me?”
She turned at the neck and stared at her son. Her eyes were searching, but empty, as though everything they fell on held no meaning or recognition for her. Cody sighed deeply and tried to smile at her. But it wouldn’t come. The light in her eyes had winked out again.
He looked to the old photo sitting on the nightstand. In it, his mother had been wearing a denim skirt, a white short-sleeved blouse, and a wide-brimmed straw hat with colored bands that shaded the soft, porcelain skin of her cheeks. He was sitting on the picnic blanket next to her, leaning against her, his blond bangs cut straight across his brow and his white socks pulled up nearly to his knees.
He couldn't remember who had taken the picture. It certainly wasn’t his father; he had never been in Cody’s life. At least, not back then.
He returned the photo to its place on the nightstand. Next to it was a worn leather Bible. Cody picked it up and thumbed through its pages, stopping at the Psalms, where the edges of the pages were brown and ragged. The Psalms had always been his mother’s favorite, especially when the diagnosis came a few years ago. At first, she would ask him to read them to her. But he always declined, and she finally stopped asking. But she kept on reading them herself, gathering in hope for cloudy days ahead.
Cody shut the old book and returned it to its place as his mother stirred.
He stood up. He leaned over and placed a son’s kiss on her forehead. “I love you.” And then he repeated what she had said to him hundreds—possibly thousands—of times when he was a boy. “Sleep tight.” He walked back around the bed and shut the door quietly, then returned to the kitchen and checked his meal in the microwave. The center was still frozen, so he reviewed the instructions on the back of the box and added more time to the display.
He turned to the sink and set the stopper at the bottom before filling it with hot water. The dishcloth was lying over the faucet, dried and hardened from the last time he’d used it. Running it under the water, he poured a line of dish soap across it, then grabbed a plate from the rising water. He thought about the offer for the promotion while he rubbed out a patch of hardened spaghetti sauce and began to hum quietly to himself.
Lie la lie, lie la la la la lie la la lie...
Chapter Seven
It was after seven o’clock when Ellie dropped Hailey back off at her apartment and turned her truck around for the return trip over the Caloosahatchee Bridge and into Cape Coral. Half an hour later, she crossed Veterans Parkway and rode slowly through Matlacha, the funky little art community that served as the singular conduit on and off Pine Island.
Ellie rolled down the Silverado’s windows and let the cool zephyr drifting off the water revive her. Seafood restaurants and ancient fishing shacks that had metamorphosed into gift shops and art galleries lined both sides of the street, all painted bright, energetic colors that made you think you had time-warped back to the sixties, back when life was no less complicated but more relaxed, and people seemed to smile more. Ellie braked for a young boy and girl who were crossing the street with a Radio Flyer wagon in tow. A bucket was jostling in the back, a couple of fishing poles were sticking out—an almost novel scene in a modern culture where kids were easily seduced by smartphones and video games—and what kind of world were we living in when children no longer knew how to bait and set a hook?
The young girl waved happily at Ellie, and once they were safely across, Ellie accelerated away from the fishing hamlet and into the two-mile stretch of pristine and uninhabited wetlands that was Little Pine Island. Soon she was slowing at Pine Island Center’s four-way stop.
At seventeen miles long and tw
o miles wide, Pine Island was Florida’s largest island. Even so, it had not one stoplight, nor did its ten thousand inhabitants have any desire for one. The idyllic island’s small-town atmosphere brought associations of Old Florida to mind. With municipal restrictions in place that prevented large-scale developments and high-rises, residents felt tucked away in a rural cocoon, where life was slower and the easy pace of life could lull you to sleep in the way of a gently swaying hammock.
Ellie turned south and started the ten-minute drive into St. James City, passing up serried forests of pine, saw palmetto, and white mangrove, fields of wild grass and wax myrtle. As she got closer to town, she passed the post office, a plant nursery, and what used to be Quinton Davis’s bait shop. Slowing, she turned onto Fourth Avenue and then south onto Lime Street. Her house was the fourth one on the right. It was a narrow cottage—small, but it was just her and a hyperexcitable Jack Russell, and it fit the two of them perfectly.
She pulled into her driveway and exited the truck. She looked up. The sky was a vibrant and luminescent orange, the rays of a descending sun catching the edge of thunderheads rising high above the barrier islands in the west. A high-pitched whine greeted her as she approached the front door, and when she walked in, Citrus showcased his excitement with a zealous yip. He hurried to the back door and waited for his owner to heed his command. Ellie slid the door back, and he strutted out to do his business, all the while casting a wary eye on the villainous cat perched on the other side of the water.
Ellie set her keys and her backpack on the table and slid out the hair tie from her long blond locks. She tousled her hair and then went to the kitchen sink and poured herself a glass of water. The copper samovar Vida Murad had gifted her sat next to the coffee pot. It sat there unmoving, yet taunting her with the memories of that fateful day. Vida had used the samovar many times to fill Ellie’s cup with Kahwa, a tea made from a combination of green tea, cardamom pods, cinnamon bark, and saffron strands. In Kabul, sharing a meal together, even a cup of tea, was an indication of friendship. Vida gifted the serving pot to Ellie the night that Assam had provided Ellie the information she had moved there to attain. It had been Vida’s way of telling her American friend that she trusted her with what they had just revealed. There had been a thick sense of sobriety in the apartment that evening. Assam had given up his murderous cousin at tremendous risk to his family, and they all knew there would be no turning back. Vida had washed the samovar—a family heirloom that her mother had passed down to her—wrapped it, and given it to Ellie two days before the extraction.