43
I headed for the stairs at a run.
When I got to the ice, those two boys were at the end of the rink, opposite Sam, and my son was still sprawled face-first on the ice.
“Hey!” I tried to wave down a skating guard, but he didn’t see me.
Nobody saw me.
“Hey!” I tried again. Gave up. Stepping out onto the ice, I started off down the rink toward Sam.
The skate guard came flying at me and slid to a stop with a scrape of his blades and a shower of ice. “I’m sorry, ma’am, you can’t—”
“My son!” I pointed out to the end of the rink where a crowd was now, finally, gathering.
He skated off and soon returned with Sam.
I took Sam from him and carried him to the nearest bench. Propping him up against the wall, I knelt in front of him and pried his helmet off. “Are you all right?” I felt his head for bumps. Pressed trembling fingers to his face to feel along his jaw. “Did you know those boys? Did they hurt you?”
The buzzer sounded the end of the session and skaters exited the rink. I leaned forward, an arm on either side of him, trying to create a buffer as the bench filled. “Does anything hurt?”
He shook his head and winced.
“Where does it hurt? Can you see okay?” I rolled forward on my knees to get a better look at him. There was no bruising. No blood. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Two.”
“How old are you?”
“Six.”
“What day is it?”
“Thursday?”
Wednesday. But that wasn’t a fair question. He mixed up the days of the week on a regular basis just the same as he mixed up yesterday and tomorrow. “Can you move your arms?”
He lifted them up.
“Can you move your head? Slowly.”
He moved it up and down and then from side to side.
“Can you—” I paused, distracted by a pair of red hockey jerseys. It was those two boys. “Hey!”
I stood. Keeping one hand clamped around Sam’s forearm, I used the other to reach for them.
They glanced at me, glanced at each other, then made a break for those double glass doors.
Luckily, they ran right into that man who’d been watching them from the mezzanine.
“You! Sir!”
He glanced over at me, then quickly looked away.
“Sir! Yes, you!”
The other children on the bench were staring up at me, mouths agape. Parents, kneeling beside them, busied themselves with untying skates.
I couldn’t leave Sam by himself, and the man was standing his ground. But I was in a mood, and I could do Crazy Lady better than just about anyone. I raised my voice. “You told those kids to attack my son!”
He held up his hands as if in defense.
“I saw you! My son could have been hurt!”
The skate guard lurched over and offered an ice pack to me.
I rounded on him. “And you!”
He quailed, dropping the pack.
“You’re a skate guard! How could you not see those kids were being reckless? Did you not notice how many times they—”
He held up his hands. “I— They were practicing hockey moves—they were just deke-ing.”
“By weaving around all over the place?”
“That’s what—”
That man was steering the boys toward the doors.
“That’s what deke-ing is.” His teenage voice climbed the scale a full octave.
Bolting from Sam, I caught up with the man and grabbed him by the sleeve. “I want your name.”
He stopped. “Boys will be boys. They were just practicing.”
I tightened my grip on his sleeve. “Your name.”
“Mommy?” Sam had left the bench to follow me. He was holding a finger up to his nose. Blood was dripping out beneath it. “I think my nose is bleeding.”
Letting go of the man, I knelt beside my son, drawing him close within the circle of my arm. “Let me see.”
I’d left my purse upstairs, so all the hand sanitizer and Band-Aids and Kleenex I carried in it were useless. I shepherded him to the bathroom and used up most of a roll of toilet paper trying to stop the bleeding. By the time it had tapered off, the benches that had been filled to capacity were empty. The ice that had hosted the public skate crowd was now occupied by figure skaters executing graceful spins and effortless jumps. The Top 40 music had been replaced by a symphonic rendition of the latest Disney movie theme song. I felt as if I had emerged from a wormhole into a parallel universe.
I held out a hand to Sam. He grabbed on. “My things. They’re upstairs.” At least I hoped they still were.
The skater mom who’d been sitting beside me looked over with concern. “I saw it all. I’m sorry. Is your son okay?”
“He’s fine.” I wasn’t. My hands were shaking. My knees felt like they’d come undone. “Thanks for keeping an eye on my things.”
She smiled, then turned her gaze back to the figure skaters who were gliding across the rink.
* * *
I got Sam checked out at the emergency room. No sign of a concussion, just a mild sprain to his wrist where he’d tried to break his fall on the ice. It was soon clear my phone, however, hadn’t survived its time at the rink.
At random intervals, the alert light would blink when I had no incoming email, and the camera flash even went off once. I resigned myself to asking the tech group at work to take a look at it.
In all my time at the rink over the past year, I’d come to recognize most of the parents. But I’d never seen that lady before. She acted as if she’d watched my things, but who had watched her?
* * *
At home I texted Sean. What I really wanted to do was call him, but he was right. Even disposable phones could be identified and hacked. And people who attacked children were just the type to do it.
S got hit at rink. No accident. S fine.
I meant to get ready for bed after I tucked Sam in, but I couldn’t.
My hands were shaking too hard to brush my teeth.
The attack on Sam hadn’t been random and it hadn’t been a childish prank. It had been deliberate.
I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water. Alice followed me, pausing in the doorway as if unsure what to do.
“I don’t—I don’t—” I put down the glass and gripped the lip of the sink. I couldn’t seem to take in a breath. So I stepped back, bending over to let my head fall between my arms. “I don’t know, Alice.” I took in a deep, gasping breath and then lifted my head. “What do I do?”
Ransacking my house was one thing. But attacking Sam?
I glanced out the window over the sink, into the dark, out into the night where people were watching. Sean, perhaps. And the FBI. Or the Department of Defense. Or grown men who told their children to beat up little boys.
I grabbed my glass. Or tried to. It toppled over into the sink and shattered.
“Alice—” I couldn’t keep the sobs from coming any longer. I slid to the floor and pulled my knees to my chest.
Alice shuffled over.
I grabbed hold of her neck and buried my face in her fur.
The tears didn’t last long because I knew they wouldn’t help. And I knew it didn’t make any difference how afraid, how terrified I was. The only way out was through.
44
I was surprised to see Chris at school the next morning with his Maltipoo. Wasn’t Keith supposed to be at the Outdoor Lab overnight trip? As I bent to pull Alice’s leash from the holder, he joined me.
“Is Keith all right?”
“What? Sure. Yeah. He’s fine. Had soccer practice last night.”
We started walking. “He must be really dedicated. That’s quite a drive, isn’t it?” The lab was at least an hour west of Arlington.
He shrugged. “It’s not that bad.”
“He must have been disappointed to leave.”
“Homework waits fo
r no man. Or boy.”
“I thought—” It seemed, somehow, that he was talking about something different. Keith was in fifth grade, wasn’t he? Had I remembered wrong? That would be embarrassing. Only one way to find out: ask. “Is he worried about middle school next year?”
“Middle school!” He blew out a breath. “He’s not worried. I am, though!”
So he was in fifth grade, just like I’d thought. And if so, he should have been on that trip. Even Sam had heard about it. “Sam’s already looking forward to the Outdoor Lab.”
“Outdoor Lab? Is that in sixth grade?”
My step faltered as my blood ran cold. “Pardon me?”
“The Outdoor Lab. Sounds fun.”
He didn’t know. Chris didn’t know about the Outdoor Lab.
“I, uh—shoot! There’s something I forgot to give Sam. I’d better—” I gestured back toward the school.
“Sure. Okay. See you.” He nodded and walked off down the street.
I jogged with Alice back toward the school until he was out of sight and then I stopped. I stayed where I was until my legs stopped shaking and the fear that had broken out in a cold sweat behind my ears had evaporated. Until I could think clearly. And even then, one thought echoed in my mind.
Chris doesn’t have a son.
* * *
I forced myself through the motions of getting changed, making my lunch, getting into the car.
Two things I needed to know. Who was Chris? And who had ordered him to watch me? We’d been walking our dogs together since when? The week after Sean died? Fear stole my breath. He’d been watching me for that long and I’d never once suspected.
Halfway to work, one of those red dashboard warning lights came on. It was an exclamation point enclosed by a circle. And parentheses. At the next stoplight, I pulled the car’s manual out of the glove box.
Immediate attention was required.
Of course immediate attention was required. And I’d have to pay for it with all the money I didn’t have. I pulled off into the nearest parking lot and called my mechanic. He was happy to take my car but vague about when he’d be able to fit the work in or get it back to me.
The next call I made was to Jim. He drove out and followed me to the mechanic’s shop in his car, then dropped me off at work. He lifted a hand as I got out. “When do I pick you up?”
“I can take a taxi home.”
“Not when you’ve got me as a neighbor.”
I smiled my thanks. He’d been so good to us. They both had. “Five?”
“I’ll be here.”
By the time I got to work, I was already in a deficit. I hadn’t slept well. Again. I had to turn my cell phone over to the tech group so they could figure out what was wrong with it. And my thoughts kept jumping randomly to Jenn, to Chris, and to the problem of what had happened over in Iraq.
I pulled out Sean’s book and surreptitiously worked at deciphering his notations. It quickly became apparent that the names he’d struck through had died. Those notated with a question mark? I had no idea. So I texted him.
Looking at records. Question about ?s
His answer came a few minutes later.
Couldn’t find any info
During a conference call, I created a new email account and then sent emails to some of the people in Sean’s book. Toggling back and forth between the call and the emails didn’t do my concentration any favors.
I heard back from David Abbott. He gave me a phone number for the USO lounge at Dulles International Airport where he volunteered. I pulled out the notes I’d taken from Lee Ornofo, then I gave Mr. Abbott a call as I ate lunch at my desk.
“You want to know about Desert Sabre? What can I tell you?”
“I believe you spoke to my colleague about the war. He was working on a history of the conflict, but he died not long after you spoke to him.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“I was just wondering, could you tell me what you talked about?”
“The war. Mostly.”
“You were with Captain Slater’s company? Can you tell me about the twenty-fourth of February?”
“Day one? You want to know what it was like? Not what you expect. You think desert, you think hot. Sun. All that. Well, it wasn’t. It was rainy. Rained more there that month than it did back home. Least we didn’t get stuck like some of the other units. So, yeah. Rain, early in the day. Then the rain stops and the wind kicks up. We had us one of those desert sandstorms. Went from miserable conditions to just pure misery.”
“And what was your position?”
“I was a platoon sergeant.”
“And what were the orders for the day? Do you remember?”
“Sure wasn’t to take a mud bath. That was extra.”
“So you woke up at, when?”
“We were awake. We were all awake. Don’t think none of us slept. We knew the war was starting.”
“So what happened?”
“What happened? What didn’t! Start of a war isn’t like the start of a race. One-two-three-bang! And you’re off and running. More like one of those big marathons. Someone must be right up against the starting line ready to go, but most everyone else is piled up behind them just waiting. Sometimes takes a good twenty, thirty minutes for the guy in the back to get to the start line where he can do some running. That’s how it is. So the war starts when the general says it starts, but we didn’t get to move out until the guys in front of us started moving out because the guys in front of them had started moving. See what I mean?”
“Sure. Makes sense.”
“And even then, to start fighting, you got to get yourself to the war. We were all waiting in Saudi, right? But to fight the Iraqis and liberate Kuwait, we had to get ourselves to Kuwait. So we’re cold. We’re getting rained on. Antsy. Finally start moving. Got to get through their first defenses. Just trenches in the desert, through the sand, manned by those Iraqis. Good thing: we got lots of sand to work with. Bad thing: we just plowed them over.”
“Sorry? What did you say?”
“Plowed ’em. They wouldn’t surrender so we just went right along their trench lines and plowed all the sand they’d dug out right back on top of them. Their fault, I suppose. If they’d have thrown all that sand they dug out over on the other side of their trenches, then we couldn’t have done it. Us grunts didn’t want to say it, but it didn’t sit right. See what I mean?”
They plowed them?
“You sign on to be a soldier, you expect you might get killed by a bullet, but you don’t consider that you might be buried alive. In sand. That’s one thing I wish I’d never seen.”
I resisted the urge to shudder.
“But after that? Things opened up real nice. Guys in front of us took care of the minefields, laid lanes out over them, and we were set to go. Wasn’t that hard. The Iraqis we ran into, they weren’t the Republican Guard. Most all of them saw us coming, they surrendered. Just like that. So we were going pretty good. Rain stopped. But then the wind started. Came on something fierce toward evening. Messed with the communications. Our company commo, he was having fits, trying to keep us connected to headquarters. Terrain started changing too. More dips and valleys. Some rocks thrown in. The battalion got spread out. Wasn’t long before we were out there on our own.”
“And what happened then?”
“Well, we stopped. You have to understand that all those sand dunes look the same. Not like here: Potomac to the east. Blue Ridge Mountains to the west. You can always kind of figure out the lay of things. And if there’s any doubt, just look for the Washington Monument, right? Well, out in that desert, there was only sand. Here, you see sand like that, you look for an ocean. There? Nothing. It’s odd. It’s disorienting.”
“It must have been.”
“If you didn’t see the sun rise, you’d have no idea where east was. And if you didn’t know where east was, you didn’t know anything. Those Iraqis, though, they seemed to have a sixth sense. Had some prisoner
s by then. We were trying to pass them back but couldn’t find anyone to pass them to. Anyway, I’d noticed when we were sitting back there in Saudi two, three weeks before, didn’t matter what time of day it was, when prayer time came, those Muslims, they’d get on their knees and pray toward Mecca. Really something to see. So we’re sitting there, who knows why, night coming and I guess it’s time for prayers, ’cause all of a sudden, those guys, they’re down there in the sand. They were praying. Toward Mecca.”
“Right.” That made sense. Because Mecca for Muslims is, well, it’s Mecca.
“Mecca was south and west. It’s always south and west if you’re in Iraq.”
“Sure.” I was a little spotty on my Middle Eastern geography, but that sounded reasonable to me.
“So if they’re praying toward Mecca, and orders were that we attack from the west, we’re supposed to be heading east, right?”
I nodded.
“So they’re praying toward southwest and the company’s sitting there, middle of the desert, and we’re kind of pointed at an angle from them, maybe hundred fifty degrees, hundred sixty degrees.”
“So?”
“So Mecca is west. We were supposed to be going east. Should have been going opposite, right?”
“You’re saying that the company was going the wrong direction?”
“That’s what I’m saying. Not by much, maybe, but still.”
“Did you do anything about it?”
“Not a lot to do. I was a sergeant. Company commander was a captain. He wins. Still didn’t sit right, though. So I went up and had a word with top. That’s the company first sergeant. He said the captain was dead set we were going the right way. Top said to just go along. If it came to it, he said the captain’s the one who’d hang for it, not us.”
“Who was top? Do you know how to get ahold of him?”
“Top? That was Sergeant Wallace. First name? Sarge.” He laughed.
I wrote it down. “So it was known among the NCOs that the captain was off course?”
State of Lies Page 16