Line of Duty

by Terri Blackstock

  Ashley shrugged. “I don’t have grandparents,” she said. “No aunts and uncles. I never knew my father’s family, and my mom was an only child, like me.”

  “What about friends? Surely there’s someone who could come hold your hand while you wait.”

  “Yeah, right. If my friends pushed up in here, this whole group would start grabbing their purses.”

  “Rough crowd, huh?”

  “Yeah. They’re probably all stoned by this time of night, anyway. Riding some kind of high because of all the drama. They wouldn’t be that helpful. Most of them wish their parents were dead. They wouldn’t get it.”

  Jill studied her for a moment. “Why would you hang around with people like that?”

  “I am people like that,” she said. “If my mother wasn’t missing, if I hadn’t been in that building, I’d probably be smoking a joint and laughing about the news coverage. I wouldn’t get it, either.”

  On the television across the room, Jill saw a news alert. “Look,” she said. “It’s about the bombing.”

  Ashley rose up and moved closer to the screen. Jill followed for lack of anything better to do.

  “Three Middle Eastern men were arrested an hour ago at a motel in Newpointe, Louisiana. The FBI is investigating their possible role in the Icon International bombing today, as well as rumored ties with Al-Qaeda.”

  Ashley let out a rabid curse.

  Jill closed her eyes. Al-Qaeda . . . Middle Eastern men. How could they get away with this again? She wanted to go down to the police station, wherever they were being held, and look them in the eye and scream out that her husband was missing, that all of her hopes and dreams were on the brink of disaster, that nothing in her life would ever be the same. She wanted to ask them how they, as humans, could do this to other human beings.

  But she would never be able to get close enough to tell them anything—and besides, she couldn’t leave. Any minute now they might pull Dan out and call Issie and her colleagues to come and jump-start him back to life—or line him up in the string of corpses on the side of the road.

  The night would be long, and there would be no sleep for her.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Aunt Aggie Gaston had moped long enough. It was time to take care of her boys.

  She had gone to the prayer meeting at the church and taken a big ol’ pot of stew. She’d laid it out in the fellowship hall with homemade bread and a big pot of rice, as well.

  No one had partaken. She wondered how any of them could call theirselves Christians, eating like that. It was clear in the Bible that folks were to eat when they got together under God. There practically wasn’t a story in the Old Testament or New when somebody wasn’t eating something. Why, even the elders on Mount Sinai ate a meal after God gave Moses them tablets.

  Jacob ate with Esau when he’d been about to nuke him after he’d come back with his feuding wives. And hadn’t Abraham ate with that Abimelech fellow who thought Sarah was Abe’s sister?

  She had brought that up at the prayer meeting, only to be told that this was a serious occasion. Like she didn’t know that. Like her boys weren’t buried under a thirty-story building, waiting to be dug out.

  Implying that she was some crazy old woman who thought food would solve everything! She knew it wouldn’t solve nothing, except send up a soothing aroma to the Good Lord who invented beef stew in the first place. And it would soothe them grieving souls while they prayed.

  But she couldn’t stuff it down their throats.

  But she knew where her food would be appreciated. That was why she’d loaded the pots of food into her lavender Cadillac and commandeered Celia’s stroller to carry it to the site. Her boys from the Midtown Station in Newpointe would miss her cooking. The Lord knew they’d been working their fingers to nubs trying to get their buried brothers up out of the ashes. She hoped they didn’t have some misguided idea that they had to starve themselves like the praying saints at church to save their brothers.

  It was getting to be 1:00 A.M. by the time she got to the city, and she found a parking place as close to the ruins as she could get. She got out and set up the stroller, then loaded the pots of stew and rice into it, along with the baskets of bread.

  She had worn her black wind suit with a black turtleneck, just to look less conspicuous. She’d added gold lamé tennis shoes and a red bead necklace to the ensemble, just because a girl needed a little splash of color. After all, she had her Miss Louisiana image to keep up. She’d been the prettiest girl in the state in 1938, and she’d worked hard at her looks ever since.

  The fact that she was eighty-three was no excuse to start letting herself go. After all, Sarah had been quite a looker at age eighty, when Abraham lied about her being his sister so some king wouldn’t kill him over her. And even if she did say so herself, she could still turn heads at her age.

  She saw a couple of police officers standing on the outskirts of a glut of police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances, and she lifted her chin and kept pushing that stroller like she knew where she was going.

  “Excuse me, ma’am. You can’t go any further.”

  She smiled that Miss America smile at him, hoping he realized she still had her own teeth. “It’s okay, darlin’. I got me some food to take in. Here, have yourself a roll.”

  The cop was too skinny for his own good. How he thought he could chase down criminals with that scrawny frame baffled her. But he didn’t appear to be hungry. “Ma’am, we’ve had volunteers bringing us food all night. We don’t need any more, and I’m not allowed to let you near the site.”

  Time for the big guns. She took the top off of the stew pot. The smell wafted up on the smoky air. “You tell me—you had any food smells like that? Krystal burgers and chicken nuggets ain’t real food. My boys need some strength! I cook for the Newpointe station every night of their lives, and I ain’t about to stop taking care of my boys now.”

  The second cop came closer at the smell. “Maybe it would be okay to take it in. But we’ll have to do it for you.”

  Incensed, she slammed the top back on the pot. “What it gon’ hurt for me to go set it up? Them boys got better things to do than serving food. I can dip it out, hand it out, clean up after.”

  “Ma’am, I told you, you can’t go.”

  Aunt Aggie stood there a moment, her Cajun temper rising up inside her as she stared past them. She couldn’t see the wreckage from this vantage point, so there was no way to get in touch with Mark or Ray or Nick, or any of her other poor brokenhearted adopted sons. She couldn’t comfort them or hug them or tease a laugh out of them. She couldn’t see the pleasure on their faces as they took their first bite.

  She thought of kicking up a ruckus, but then she realized they’d had enough of a ruckus today. She would accept this like the lady she was.

  “Awright, then,” she said, thrusting the pot at the cop who seemed interested. She took the rice out of the stroller and gave it to the scrawny one. “Remember, it’s for my Newpointe boys first. ’Course them other boys need feeding too, so you just tell anybody who’s hungry to get some eats. And tell them Aunt Aggie brought it. They’ll know me.”

  She piled the bread baskets on top of the pots, then watched as they headed down the block.

  Other cops eyed her, as if ready to drag her into the pokey if she came one more step. She decided it was best not to provoke folks whose nerves were on edge.

  She turned and started pushing the stroller back to her car.

  “Lord, let it lighten their load,” she said aloud as she walked. “That Dan is hungry by now. Stomach’s prob’ly gnawing at him. Ole George is probably craving some of Aunt Aggie’s eats. You know how that boy can put it away. And the others—Jacob and Junior . . . Karen and Steve—they just as hungry, wherever they are. And they ain’t the only ones.”

  She hoped the Lord was making note of her request. She knew he had control of things, but sometimes it didn’t hurt to make suggestions.

  She made a whole list
of others as she drove back to Newpointe.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Mark had to stop digging at two o’clock in the morning. He hadn’t eaten much since breakfast yesterday, and his throat was parched. He went to the mess tent where restaurants all around the area had been bringing food all night. His stomach felt too unstable for food, but his fatigue reminded him that he had to have fuel.

  He turned his back to the corpses lining the road, even though the tent wall separated him from them. He didn’t want to think about them. They’d been trucking them off to a makeshift morgue, but every hour a new line of bodies formed. The number of those who had been pulled out of the rubble in the last few hours was probably over a hundred. All but three or four of them were dead, the rest critically, maybe even mortally, injured. He’d pulled several out himself.

  But there was still no sign of his fallen friends.

  He guzzled down a bottle of water, ate half a sandwich, then left the tent. It had been over fifteen hours since he’d breathed fresh air. Cuts stung on various parts of his body. The one on his knee probably needed stitches, but he would deal with that later.

  He stepped out of the tent and looked back at the rubble. He needed to get back.

  But he was so tired.

  Slowly, he lowered himself to the curb across from the site, resting his elbows on his knees. What he wouldn’t give to see Dan coming up over one of those mounds of rubble, full of strength and life. While Mark rested, Dan would have done push-ups to reenergize.

  Dan would have hung on Mark’s account of his own burial and his long, unlikely journey out. He would have wanted a blow by blow.

  As it stood, Mark hadn’t had time to dwell on the tomb from which he and Nick had emerged. He had given Allie a brief account by phone, then returned to the site to hunt for Dan.

  His friend probably lay in his own tomb now. Was he lying there awake, praying in the dark? Or had he given up his soul the moment the building collapsed?

  A rush of tears got a choke hold on Mark, and he slid his hands out of his filthy gloves and covered his face in anguish.

  “So you’re okay, huh?” The voice startled him, and he looked up.

  Eddie Branning—Mark’s father—stood in front of him, a one-hundred-pound six-footer who looked as if he’d lived the hardest of lives and barely lived to tell about it. Alcoholism did that to a person.

  “Dad, what are you doing here?”

  Eddie rubbed his mouth. “I came to help.” He looked even skinnier in the borrowed turnout coat he wore. He must have gone by Midtown to get it, after he’d taken a few hours to sober up.

  “How long you been here?”

  “Couple hours,” Eddie said. “I looked for you but couldn’t find you. I was . . . worried about you.”

  Mark wouldn’t have expected that. He pictured his father hearing about the building collapse only because the network interrupted Jerry Springer for a news bulletin. He’d probably still been in a stupor from the night’s drinking. Had he called Midtown to see what Mark thought of the whole thing? Had they told him that their own men were on the scene and that some of them were missing?

  Mark pulled himself up off the curb. Unexpectedly, his father took a step across the pavement and pulled him into an awkward hug. He couldn’t remember that ever happening before. He touched his father’s back, not knowing quite how to react.

  He felt Eddie’s body trembling as he held him, and he wondered if it was relief or alcohol withdrawal. The trembling reminded him that the old, retired firefighter was the weaker man, even when Mark was at his weakest.

  That old resentment tempered the feeling that hug had induced.

  He pulled back. “Well, I guess we’d better get back to work. I’ve got buddies missing.”

  Eddie nodded. “I’ll follow you and we’ll work together, Son.”

  Eddie followed him back to the line, and they went to work.

  An hour or more had passed when suddenly a voice cut across the night. “Newpointe! We’ve got some of your men!”

  Mark swung around and ran toward where the men were clustered. “Let them be alive,” he whispered. “Please, Lord, let them be alive!”

  Eddie was fast on his heels. They reached the scene and he saw Ray and Nick trying to push to the front of the crowd.

  “Let us through!” Ray cried. “Let us get our own men!” And as the crowd parted, Mark saw the face of George Broussard—bloody, charred . . . and lifeless.

  Issie was beside them in seconds, on her knees testing his pulse. After a few seconds, she looked up into Mark’s eyes. “He’s gone,” she said.

  “There’s another one under him,” someone shouted.

  They started pulling the bodies out, one by one: Jacob Baxter and Junior Reynolds. Dan would be next, Mark thought.

  Rage lifted its lethal wings inside him. They were all dead, every one of them. How was he going to tell Jill, and Jacob’s and Junior’s wives, and George’s little boy Tommy, who had already lost his mother?

  He couldn’t watch them pull his best friend out. He was no help, so he turned around and started off the mound. His father caught his arm, and Mark raised his hands. “I don’t want to see them—” His voice broke off, and he swallowed hard and tried again. “I don’t want to see them pull Dan’s body out.”

  “It’s okay, buddy.”

  He didn’t want his father’s temporary comfort, so he walked off to the side and waited, hands on hips and tears streaming down his face.

  Minutes passed . . . then half an hour . . .

  His fear of finding his friend dead turned to dread of not finding him at all. Forcing himself to do what needed to be done, Mark went back to work in the very area where the others had been found, thinking that if he had a shot at finding his friend, this would be the place.

  Chapter Twenty

  Allie’s call came at around 3:30 A.M., waking Susan from where she slept on the cot. Jill listened in as Allie broke the news about George, Jacob, and Junior.

  Dan was still unaccounted for.

  As her friend talked to Allie in a soft voice, Jill lay down on her cot and hugged her knees. She glanced up and saw Ashley, with that porcelain white face, focused on that door, as if her mother could still walk through it.

  At what point would both of them have to face the fate of their loved ones?

  It was cruel, this night. Crueler than anything she had ever experienced.

  They were newlyweds, practically. Their marriage was only two years old. They had been planning a family, had even gotten to the point where they entered each month with expectation and hope.

  God, why did you let me find love if I couldn’t keep it?

  Finally, she heard Susan say good-bye, and then her friend’s dark hands were on her shoulders, rubbing and caressing, trying to coax her out of her gloom.

  “He’s gonna be all right, sweetie. Dan’s a big ole tough guy, the way he’s always working out. He’s in better shape than any of the firefighters in Newpointe. He can make it.”

  But Jill had nothing to say in reply. She lay still, staring at the air. She imagined that phone ringing again, snatching it up, hearing Dan’s voice on the other end. Hey, baby, it’s me.

  He would tell her that he’d been working so hard that he hadn’t been able to call, that no one knew where he was, that he’d been all right all along. He would tell her he was coming to get her and take her home.

  But she knew that if that phone rang again, it wouldn’t be Dan’s voice on the other end.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  They hadn’t found any survivors in over six hours, but Mark couldn’t give up. After all, if he and Nick had been pinned and unable to move, they would probably still be alive, waiting and praying for rescue. Dan might be doing the same. Knowing him, he’d probably set up some underground triage unit and keep busy binding the wounds of other survivors. Maybe they’d find a whole busload of living, instead of enough dead to populate a graveyard.

  He told
himself these things, but deep down he knew how unlikely it was. If Dan were alive, he would have scratched and clawed his way out by now. They would have found him in the first few hours.

  “Quiet, everybody!”

  The digging stopped, and he heard a wave of yells going over the mounds, one person telling another to be quiet. He heard the dump truck engines cutting off, the machinery idling down.

  Silence fell over the night, and everyone waited.

  It had happened several times tonight as clusters of rescuers had thought they’d heard noise from deep in the debris. The others all froze where they were, waiting for more word.

  Please, God, let it be Dan.

  “Survivors!” someone yelled. “We got survivors! Medic!”

  Mark’s stomach flipped with hope, and he saw Issie and several other paramedics rushing toward the scene. He moved closer and saw them pulling out a woman. He couldn’t tell if she was conscious.

  “There’s more!” someone shouted, and the medics got busy at the mouth of a hole.

  He wanted to scream out that he needed a description. Were any of them firefighters, paramedics? Did they wear Newpointe uniforms? Were they alive or dead?

  He heard the word Newpointe, and he couldn’t wait any longer.

  He rushed down the mound he was working on and toward the crowd around the hole. He tried to push through, to see the faces of those they’d found as flashlights lit them up.

  And then he saw Dan, lying unconscious at the bottom of a hole, as if he’d been dropped there in a heap. Workers pulled debris out of the way, and Issie got to him first.

  Please don’t let him be dead.

  “There’s a pulse!” The words were the sweetest he had ever heard, and he started to cry as the crowd cheered around him.

  I need a cervical collar!” Issie called. “And hand me my megaduffel.” From her perch beside Dan, she reached up for the items she needed. Larry Jenkins, a paramedic from Hammond, brought a spineboard in behind her.