How long was this going to go on?
She finished drying her hair, dressed, and wandered back into the bedroom area of the motel room. They were staying at a Motel Six, just off the highway, a couple miles north of town. There was a constant drone of traffic outside. Instead of finding it annoying, however, she had found it somewhat comforting, as if it helped to reassure her that she wasn't alone in this, that there were, in fact, other people just outside the door.
The boy sat up in bed, chewing on his fingernails, transfixed by an episode of Tales From The Crypt.
“You shouldn't be watching that,” Teri said.
“Why not?”
“You're too young, that's why.”
“But I'm getting older,” he said with an impish grin.
She had tried to explain it to him, the fact that he was aging prematurely, but it had proven to be a difficult concept for an eleven-year-old to grasp. Hell, it had been a difficult concept for the mother of an eleven-year-old to grasp.
“That's not funny,” she said, more sharply than she intended.
His grin disappeared. “I was just kidding.”
“I know, but it's not something you should be kidding about.”
“Why not? It's not happening to you.”
“Don't talk to me like that.” Teri sat down on the bed next to him, feeling both angry and dispirited. He was right, of course. She wasn't the one it was happening to, and she would probably never know exactly what it was like to be in his position.
“Look,” she said, recouping her composure. “I know the past couple of days haven't been much fun. And I know what the doctor said today had to be a little scary for you.”
“It wasn't scary.”
It should have been, she thought.
“I want to grow up, Mom. I'm eleven already. I'm old enough to watch Tales From The Crypt and stuff like that.” He glanced self-consciously at his hands, which were in his lap. “You used to let me watch Tales From the Darkside. It's the same thing.”
“No, it's not the same thing. And you know it isn't. Besides, that's not really the issue here.”
“Then what is the issue?”
“It's your health, Gabe. Once you start aging, there's no turning back. You're going to get older much faster than most people.”
“So?”
“So, there's no way to stop the process.”
“Yeah, but I'll be an adult, won't I?”
“You won't be any bigger, if that's what you're hoping for.”
“I won't?”
“No, you won't.”
“I don't get it. How can I get older without getting bigger?”
“That's what I've been trying to tell you.” She put her arm over his shoulder and wished she could magically make everything better. It wasn't fair, bringing him back after such a long absence and then giving him something like this. It wasn't fair at all. “This isn't the same as growing up.”
“What is it, then?”
“Well, Dr. Childs seems to think that it's something like Hutchinson-Gilford Syndrome. That's a disease that children sometimes get, and it's something that makes their bodies grow old much faster than they're supposed to.”
“Will I get gray hair and have to wear false teeth?”
“I'm not sure about the false teeth,” Teri said, actually finding a breath of humor mixed into the horror. In reality, she really wasn't sure if he'd have to wear false teeth or not. But the question caught her so completely off guard that she found herself smiling without being able to help herself.
“How about wrinkles? Am I gonna get wrinkles?”
“As I understand what the doctor said, the cells in your body will start to lose some of their regenerative abilities. What I mean by that is that they won't replace themselves as often as healthy cells are supposed to. When that happens, your body's going to wear out a little faster than everyone else's.”
“Yeah, but am I gonna get wrinkles?”
“Yes,” she said, the humor suddenly gone. “I think so.”
“Weird.”
“I know. It's very weird.”
“Am I gonna die?”
“We're all going to die, Gabe.”
“Yeah, but am I gonna die when I'm still a kid?”
“I don't know,” she said grimly.
“I don't want to die. Not yet, at least.” He glanced in the direction of the television, looking suddenly as if he were balancing the weight of the entire world on his shoulders.
Maybe Tales From The Crypt wasn't such a big deal after all, she thought solemnly.
“Mom?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What happens after we die?”
[51]
A small desk lamp cast a circular light over the console and the jumble of folders beneath Gabriel Knight's patient records. Childs stared at the bank of monitors displaying the last cell sample taken from the boy, then sat back in his chair and wondered what was going on.
It was not Hutchinson-Gilford Syndrome as he had told Teri. But it was something similar, something potentially even more devastating to the boy's body. As he might expect to find with a case of progeria, minor signs of aging had already begun to appear. The boy had visibly lost some of his body fat, especially around his abdomen and his buttocks. It seemed apparent that his skin had begun to lose some elasticity as well. It wouldn't be long before his internal organs began to suffer. Maybe only a matter of months.
The boy was aging.
He was aging at an alarming rate.
Just how fast, though, Childs couldn't say. It was going to take more time before he'd be able to hazard a guess with any accuracy, and he wanted to be sure. He wanted to be sure about how fast it was happening and what was causing it to happen.
It just didn't make any sense.
There had never been any previous symptoms. At least nothing telltale. In fact, nothing even remotely suspect for that matter. So why all of a sudden was this happening? What had triggered the change? And just as important—what was it going to take to reverse it? Was that even possible? And if it wasn't, then what was it going to take to prevent the disease from getting worse?
He wasn't sure if they could prevent it from getting worse.
No, it just didn't make any sense.
He searched out a pencil and a pad from the top drawer of his desk, and wrote a quick note to himself: Is it possible that antisense oligos or oligo subunits might have accidentally integrated themselves into healthy DNA?
He dropped the pad on the desk, searching for any other possible explanations that might come to mind, and then the phone rang. The call was from Teri. He had given her the number to call in the case of an emergency.
“I didn't really expect to catch you this late,” she said softly. She sounded as if she might have been crying.
“Well, I'm glad you did. What can I do for you?”
“I'm not sure. I guess I was just feeling a little frightened by things.”
“That's certainly understandable under the circumstances, Teri.”
“Is he going to be all right?”
“I wish I could tell you not to worry, but quite frankly, I'm not sure how this thing is going to play out. As I told you earlier, there are definite signs of premature aging beginning to show themselves. Can we halt it? I just don't know.” He leaned heavily against his elbows which were resting on the console. “Once again, I want to encourage you to consider having Gabriel moved into a facility for observation. I think that would be the most prudent way of approaching this situation. At least until we have a better picture of what's going on and how we might deal with it.”
There was silence on the other end, except for some background noise that sounded as if it might be a passing truck. Absently, he caught himself thinking: She's in a phone booth somewhere.
“Teri?”
“I'll think about it. I promise.”
“Please do.”
“How soon do you need to know?”
“Th
e sooner the better, for Gabe's sake.”
“All right.”
Childs hung up, then thought about it a moment longer. She wasn't going to submit the boy to observation. Sometimes you got a feel for these kinds of things and that was the feeling he was getting now.
“Damn it, any how,” he muttered.
Then he took another look at the boy's cells.
[52]
Teri hung up the phone, feeling as if she had been teetering on the edge of a huge hole that had finally opened wide enough to swallow her altogether. The doctor had sounded more than a little concerned. He had sounded frightened. And that had given Teri a fright of her own, a fright she could have done without.
She stepped out of the phone booth, glanced down the street, and turned in the opposite direction. It was cold out tonight. The sky was clear, the air crisp. The city lights cast a dim wash across the night that made the stars seem farther away than usual. But then, everything seemed farther away tonight.
The boy was waiting two blocks over, in the magazine section of a 7-Eleven. She went in, fighting back tears. The right thing, she supposed, would be to let them place him under observation. Anything else, and she wouldn't be fit to be his mother, would she?
No, you wouldn't, Teri thought as she spotted Gabe and went over to stand at his side.
But...
But she just got him back. And...
And she didn't want to lose him again.
Not for a second.
Not to anyone.
Oh, God. It wasn't fair. He didn't deserve this.
[53]
“Well?”
“We got it, but it's a phone booth.”
“Where at?”
“The corner of Lake and Masonic.”
“Better have someone check it out, just in case.”
“I've already got someone on it.”
“Have them check out the motels in the area, too. You never know, she might have been foolish enough to call from a booth not far from where she's staying.”
“You got it.”
[54]
“Walt? This is Teri.”
The answering machine was lying on the floor, at an angle, on a stack of file folders not far from the phone. The message light had been flashing furiously when Walt had first arrived back at the apartment. It was a solid red light now, and that meant the first of his messages had begun to play.
“If you're there, pick up, please.”
He grabbed the machine off the floor and made a place for it on the counter between the living room and the kitchen. After a short pause, the message played on uninterrupted.
“I'm not sure how to go about getting back in touch with you. We went by the apartment not long after it was trashed. I wanted you to know that we're both all right. I need to get together with you, though, and I don't want to leave anything on the tape that might give away where we're staying. I'll call back, I guess. Maybe that's the best thing to do, to just keep calling back until we connect. Hope everything's all right with you. Sorry about what happened to your apartment, Walt. I never meant for things to get this far out of hand.”
The message ended.
Walt let out a long breath, feeling a sense of urgency and an inability to do anything about it. The pressure had been mounting for a long time now, maybe as long ago as Brandon's death. Only recently it had seemed to come to the surface, like a deep bruise that marked the spot long after the pain was gone.
“Hey, chump. Guess who?”
The second message started up. The voice was instantly recognizable.
Richard Boyle
“Didn't think you could duck out that easy, did you? Been with you all along, chump old buddy. Know where you stayed last night. Know what you had for dinner. And I know why you're back in your apartment this morning.”
That was interesting. Because Walt wasn't sure exactly why he had come back. Part of it, he supposed, was that he simply resented the idea of letting Boyle force him out of his own home. The more Walt had thought about that the more it had eaten at him. He didn't want Boyle thinking he had won. He didn't want to give the man that simple pleasure. Not for a minute.
But there was more to it than that. Walt had also come back knowing that there was no other way that he'd be able to reconnect with Teri. He had hoped that she would either call or stop by and he could put this other matter aside for awhile. And, of course, she hadn't let him down, had she?
“You're back because of her, aren't you?” Boyle taunted. “Just couldn't get along without the little lady and her kid. You see? I know more than you ever imagined. Your move, Sherlock.”
The message ended, almost too abruptly for Walt's taste.
He stared down at the answering machine, feeling like a little boy who couldn't lie. Caught you, young man. Caught you red-handed and dead to rights. No sense trying to deny it. You came back looking for your friend, didn't you? You know you did, so don't you go trying to give me any excuses now.
Then, mercifully, the next message stepped in to silence the chatter.
“Me again,” Teri said, rather evenly. “Guess you're not there. I'll call back, I promise. It's almost ten-thirty now. I'll try to give you another call in an hour or so. Hope everything is all right there.”
Not exactly all right, Walt thought. But it could be worse.
He listened to three more messages, all of them from Teri and not another word from Richard Boyle, thank you, thank you, thank you. Must be my clean living, Walt thought as he reset the answering the machine and wandered back into the kitchen.
There was nothing left to do now, just wait. Her next call would eventually come, not exactly like clockwork but close enough, and when it did he was going to be here, waiting.
It was the least he could do.
He never should have left in the first place.
Not with Teri and the boy in as much danger as they were.
[55]
Richard Boyle didn't know which he liked more – the fact that he had turned the tables on that Travis chump-ass, or the idea that he was finally going to get even with Sarah for putting the chump-ass on his tail in the first place. There was a certain satisfaction in both, he supposed as he watched the little woman change lanes several cars ahead of him. The fucking bitch was long overdue for a lesson on wifely respect, 'cause it was wrong, just straight out wrong, the way she had been making his life so damn difficult of late. A woman's gotta know her place.
Boyle changed lanes, cutting behind a white Volvo and reducing his speed.
You could beat the crap out of a woman and she'd be scared right enough, scared so's maybe she might toe the line a little tighter for a while. But sooner or later she'd forget how bad it hurt. Either that... or she'd begin to like how bad it hurt. Nope... the only way to make an impression that stuck was to mess with her head. You keep the bitch off balance, always looking over her shoulder, never knowing when you might show up on her doorstep, then the fear's got her all the time. It don't ever let go. And comes the time when she can't even hear the phone ring without peeing herself.
Up ahead, the little woman stopped at a red light. She adjusted the rearview mirror, and spent a moment checking her makeup, before sitting back in the seat and waiting for the light to turn green. She looked good, Boyle thought. Better 'an she ever looked when they was married. Some mornings she'd wake up looking like she'd spent the night out back with the dogs. A woman should know to take better care of herself than that.
The light turned green.
Boyle shifted out of neutral into first, a puff of blue smoke exploding out of the tailpipe. Just a little game of cat and mouse was all. Something to make sure the little ex never forgot he was around, that he was watching. Didn't want her to forget that. Nope. Not for a moment.
[56]
Walt had been puttering around the apartment for better than an hour, only half-aware of what he was doing as he straightened things up. He had been pleased to hear that Teri and the boy were all r
ight, though it still bothered him that he had left them unguarded. It also bothered him that Teri had sounded more and more anxious with each message.
He finished in the kitchen, replacing the sugar canister on the counter next to the flour, then wandered back into the bedroom, where it seemed Boyle had enjoyed himself to the extreme. The phone was still on the floor, peeking out from beneath a pillow, and just as Walt was reaching for it, it rang. He snapped it up immediately.
“Yeah?”
“Walt?” It was Teri.
“Thank God. You sure you're all right?”
“Yeah, everything's okay here. We've been moving around from motel to motel, trying not to leave a trail.” There was a pause on the other end, and he thought he could hear her take in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I'm so sorry about what happened to your apartment.”
“It wasn't your fault, Teri. In fact, it didn't even have anything to do with you and the boy.”
“It didn't?”
“No, it was Richard Boyle, the guy I went down to the Bay Area after. Apparently, he found me before I found him. He's the one who trashed the place.”
“Why?”
“Because he's a mean son of a bitch, that's why.”
“And you're all right?”
“Yeah, I'm fine.”
“Oh, thank God.”
Walt leaned back against the wall and toed distractedly at the edge of a manila folder on the floor. He managed to get the flap open and folded back. It was a case report. He thought they had all been removed, but here it was, the one that had been left behind. He glanced down at the title page and immediately focused on the name: Richard Boyle. The man had taken all the case files, except his own. Interesting.
“I went by to see Dr. Childs again. I told you about the first visit, didn't I? That he wanted to do some additional testing?”
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