A Question of Will

by Craig Spector

  Tom snickered; Paul and Dondi traded mock shocked glances. Wallace watched as if on the permanent outside of a running joke. Paul shrugged. "Sure," he said. "What kinds of books?"

  "I dunno," Joli said. "Big ones. Something to make me look smarter."

  Now Paul’s surprise was genuine. "Jeez, Joli," he replied. "I don’t know if they make books that big."

  Everyone cracked up at that; Joli looked uncharacteristically sensitive. "Fuck youze guys," he growled, then to Paul. "I’m serious."

  "What’s this about?" Paul asked. Tom chimed in, thoroughly enjoying himself. "He’s trying to impress Liiiiiza..." he chortled.

  A collective woooooo sounded in the cab; Paul looked at Dondi then turned in his seat. "No shit... nurse extraordinaire Liza?"

  "Yeah." Joli nodded sheepishly, turning noticeably red-faced. "Problem is, she only goes out with, like, geeks."

  "Lucky for you," Tom said.

  Joli ignored him. "No," he said, "I mean like, sensitive guys..."

  "Now you’re fucked," Dondi said. Paul smiled ruefully, tried to play it straight. "Seriously," he said, feeling anything but, "what kind of books do you want?"

  Suddenly Wallace spoke up. "How ‘bout poetry?"

  Everyone grinned; Joli turned to him, deadly earnest. "Yeah," he said. "What’s a good poem?"

  But before Wallace good answer, Dondi called out. "I do not like green eggs and ham..." Tom grinned and chimed in, "I do not like them, Sam I Am!!!!"

  Gales of raucous laughter sounded; Joli looked flummoxed. Paul explained. "It’s Dr. Seuss, dude..." he began.

  "Huh-uh," Joli shook his head adamantly. "No doctors," he said. "Bad enough she works in a hospital."

  Paul smacked hand to forehead. Hopeless. Just then Dondi got serious. "Heads up, people," he said.

  They had arrived.

  ~ * ~

  The Kozy Kove Motor Lodge was one of the endless parade of tacky little no-tell motels that clustered under the refineries along the rim of Route 9 like chancre sores, offering waterbeds, in-room porn and hourly rates. It was a favored haunt for truck-stop tricks and long haul drivers, horny businessmen looking to cop a quick extracurricular hump on the way home to the wife and kids, and the occasional under-aged lovers looking for a place to party, no questions asked.

  A pair of black-and-whites and an unmarked unit were already parked in the U-shape courtyard as they arrived, lights flashing ominously. Dondi slowed the rig, reversed and backed in, effectively sealing off access. In the parking lot, a plainclothes officer methodically copied down license plate numbers as Venetian blinds parted nervously from room to room, warily watching.

  "Management called and said there was a bad smell coming from number 10," the cop explained, leading them in. He was young, Irish; his name-plate read Reilly.

  "How could they tell?" Paul grimaced as they trudged up the stairs. Dondi followed behind, smoking a cigarette in purely olfactory defense, a folded sheet of zippered plastic shoved under one arm. Body bag.

  The hallway was dark and bathed in a cheesy red glow; budget mood lighting, ersatz erotic. The air was close and hot and reeked of Lysol, cheap perfume and body funk. As they cleared the landing Paul saw Steve Buscetti at the end of the hall, wrapping up questioning a swarthy Lebanese in a loud polyester shirt; the manager, judging from body language.

  The john stood nervously off to the side, hastily-buttoned shirt revealing pale middle-aged paunch. A young black TV pre-op with bad implants and press-on nails stood wrapped in a bedsheet, eyes down, teased hair atumble, looking bored and antsy. Her feet shifted nervously, doing the junkie two-step.

  Buscetti saw Paul and smiled. "We meet again."

  "Yeah," Paul sighed. "What’s up?"

  Buscetti gestured to the unhappy couple as he led them to the room. "Apparently these two were playing rump ranger, when they noticed things were getting kinda ripe. The manager says they clean thoroughly after every guest," he added, emphasizing the last word sarcastically. "But I guess housekeeping missed this." He pulled a kerchief, held it in readiness.

  "Brace yourself," he warned. They turned the corner.

  The smell was astonishing, weirdly familiar: a moist, fetid tang that clung to the palette as it clawed at their innards. Gag-reflex was automatic, instinctive. But even then they had to look.

  The room was tiny, claustrophobic vibe offset by voyeuristic mirrors that lined the walls and ceiling, lending not so much a sense of space as a magnified constriction. A police photographer maneuvered in the tight confines, snapping Polaroids. The mattress and box spring were tipped to the side, leaning against the far wall, blocking the bathroom.

  A body, wrapped in garbage bags and hotel towels, lay seeping into the carpet where the bed had been. It was female, five-foot four, and young, but anything beyond that was a guess. The face was blackened and soft with decay, rigor mortis a distant memory. Tiny skittering roaches had already gone condo in the soft tissues; its features were mashed flat by contact with the box spring, lips peeled back by friction to reveal a frozen, leering grin. It had been there a while.

  "Guess all the bouncing popped the bag," Buscetti mumbled through his kerchief. "She sprang a leak."

  Paul coughed and choked, eyes watering. "Jesus," he gasped. "Who is..." he started, stopped. "Who was she?"

  "Good question," Buscetti said. "Murdered hooker, runaway o.d., some kid on a milk carton. She obviously had help getting there."

  "How long?" Paul asked.

  "Two weeks. Maybe three," Buscetti answered. The detective gazed around at the nightmare tableau reflected off every surface; a dozen disgusted Buscettis gazed back.

  Paul noticed that the dead girl had left an indentation on the underside of the box spring, a Turin-intaglio in congealed fluids. He felt ill. "Gonna wait for the M.E.?" he asked, "or should we bag her?"

  Buscetti looked around and sighed. "Good luck finding a clue in this petri dish." Just then a little beepbeepbeep sound trilled at the detective’s belt; he reached inside his jacket and pulled his pager free, squinted to read the number.

  "Gotta go," he said, then, "Go ahead and bag her. Gonna take an autopsy to determine cause of death, anyway, probably a dental to establish positive i.d... if we ever do." He shrugged. "Either way, she’s forensics’ problem now."

  Paul nodded, and Buscetti excused himself, exiting into the hall. Paul and Dondi followed, and as they cleared the door Dondi took a great heaving breath. They both pulled out cigarettes and lit up. Dondi sucked in a deep drag, blew it out slow.

  "Whew," he gasped. "That was festive. I don’t know about you, but I ain’t going back in there without a full tank and a respirator, maybe break out the Hazmat gear. Christ..."

  Paul looked rattled, as though tuned to another channel. He fumbled inside his coat, pulled out his Nokia cellphone. "Tell Joli and the kid to get up here with the gurney," he said quietly.

  "Excuse me?" Dondi looked at him strangely; technically he outranked Paul, and it sounded too much like an order. Paul snapped back into focus.

  "Sorry," Paul said. "Dondi, please. I gotta make a call."

  Dondi picked up on the vibe, nodded. "Yeah, sure," he said. "I need the air anyway." He started down the stairs; Paul waited, then walked in the opposite direction, squeezing past the uniformed cops, the doorway, the dead girl still inside. Buscetti had already left; they were stuck with the leftovers.

  Paul glanced at his watch, fought a queasy feeling rising in his gut -- sub-rational, beyond reason -- like a cold breeze of ill intent. He found himself suddenly gripped by a dread that transcended images of missing girls and dead bodies under beds. He wanted to talk to his family, to hear Julie tell him that Kyra was back home and safe and deep in a world of sixteen year-old hurt, fretting over the inevitable grounding or passing loss of privileges that were the worst a kid should ever have to expect.

  At 10:02, Paul was suddenly overwhelmed with the irrational need to talk to his daughter, not to bitch or vent or play hell-dad, bu
t simply to hear her voice. He punched his number on the speed dial. Waited for it to connect.

  And that was when the other call came in.

  TEN

  Dondi was strong-arming him toward the truck, fingers vice-gripped onto Paul’s sleeve. Paul didn’t know what was happening, but something was terribly wrong.

  "Just get in," Dondi told him. "We gotta move."

  But Paul was already moving, driven by the cold feeling in his gut. He saw the confusion in the other men’s faces, felt his blood chill until his pallor matched their own. Paul and Dondi threw open the doors, vaulting into the cramped cab. They were off and running before his ass hit the seat cushion, siren winding up like a lost soul’s lament, lights strobing seizure-patterns off the blur of buildings racing by.

  "A call just came in," Dondi explained, eyes fixed on the road. "Domestic disturbance, officers already on the scene."

  "Yeah?" Paul’s head was spinning, free-floating anxiety waiting to ignite. "And?"

  "I don’t know," Dondi said. "But there’s been an injury..." He paused, swerved and cut dangerously close to a Volvo in the left-hand turn lane. Dondi sliced across the intersection, blatting the horn at anything that even looked as it might get in the way.

  Paul saw they were heading for the west end, away from his home, from Dondi’s, Joli’s, even the new kid’s. A fleeting rush of relief fueled the anger and confusion. "What the fuck is going on, Dondi?" Paul barked. "Why are you flipping over a Goddamned domestic?"

  "It’s the address," Dondi said, still white-knuckling the wheel. He said the next part reluctantly, as if to even voice the words gave them undue power. "It’s Marley Street, Paul. The address is 514 Marley Street."

  The logical part of Paul’s brain tried to make a pattern, failed. He didn’t understand, almost didn’t want to. Fear spread, mental kindling crackling. "Junkies got into the house again?" Dondi didn’t reply. Paul was sweating now. "Dondi, did somebody break into my fucking house?"

  "We got a description..." Dondi managed. "Caucasian female, approximate age, sixteen. Multiple blunt trauma to the face and head." He paused, throat constricting.

  "Who was?" Paul demanded. Then Dondi glanced over, and their eyes met. And just like that, it all clicked nightmarishly into place.

  "No," Paul gasped. "No..."

  "We don’t know yet," Dondi cautioned. "We don’t know anything. It could be anybody."

  He blared the horn, blew through another light, speeding up. Paul looked at him.

  Small comfort.

  ~ * ~

  The front of the house was bathed in a wash of frantic red lights; searchlight beams slashed white across the facade and lit the narrow alley on the side of the building, casting ghostly shadows through rain-spattered glass. News vans lurked on the periphery, minicam arclights giving everything a harsh, surreal aura. Neighbors hovered in doorways and peered out windows, feeding on the spectacle of a half-dozen police cruisers and unmarked units parked at odd angles in the street, on the curb, everywhere. Cops were crawling all over the place, combing the scene. Searching for someone, or something.

  But Paul couldn’t think about that. His attention was wholly focused on the ambulance, its doors open, waiting at the gate. The world around him strobed red and white and black as Paul leapt from the cab before they had even stopped, pushing his way through the knotted throng. He saw Buscetti, already on the scene. The detective’s presence served to further unnerve and disorient him; Buscetti didn’t belong there. He belonged back at the flea-pit motel, back where things, ugly as they were, made sense.

  "Stevie!" Paul cried.

  Buscetti turned. "Paul," he said, "what the hell are you doing..."

  But before he could answer, the front door opened. Paramedics emerged, wheeling a gurney. Paul caught a glimpse of dark hair, done in rows of tight little braids.

  "Oh, God," he stammered. "Kyra..."

  He pushed his way past the detective, ducking under the span of yellow crime scene tape already stretched across the perimeter. "KYRA!" he cried.

  Paul caught up just as they were loading the gurney into the ambulance. He started to follow, but the medics stopped him. They were a crew from a neighboring township, one of the sister-city resource agreements that Glendon had signed onto in the face of budget cutbacks and personnel shortages. Paul had never seen either of them.

  "She’s my daughter," Paul said. The two men looked at each other and nodded, and Paul climbed aboard, heart pounding, hands trembling with terror. The doors slammed shut.

  And that was when Paul got his first real look.

  ELEVEN

  Paul had seen a hundred times worse, a thousand times before. That wasn’t the point. This was his child laid out on the gurney, his flesh and blood at the center of the howling siren storm. Paul hunkered down next to the cold metal cart, and started to cry.

  She had been beaten savagely, a deep gash across the forehead marring her once porcelain and delicate features. Her eyes were black and bruised, her nose mashed flat, broken. Deep purplish indentations marred the soft skin of her throat. Someone had tried to strangle her. God only knew what else they’d attempted to do. But from the bloody laceration on her forehead, it was clear they had tried to bludgeon her to death, too.

  But she was still alive, he told himself. My baby is alive, she’s a Kelly and that means she’s a fighter, she’s gonna make it...

  Her arm dangled as one of the medics began taking blood pressure; Paul reached out and took her hand in his own. Her skin was cool, the knuckles abraded, one of her nails broken off. Her breathing was shallow, irregular. The medics worked quickly and professionally in the jostling confines. They pulled open her shirt, his daughter’s breasts suddenly, rudely exposed as they hooked her up, got readings on the monitors. Paul winced and leaned close.

  "I’m here, baby," he whispered. "Daddy’s here." Her hand squeezed his, ever so weakly. "She can hear me," Paul informed medics urgently. "She’s still conscious."

  "Talk to her," the first medic, a burly man named J. Jorgensen, glanced at Paul. "Keep her focused."

  "You’re gonna be alright, honey," Paul told Kyra softly. "We’re taking you to the hospital. You’re gonna be fine."

  "Pulse one-forty," the second medic, a man named Scully, called out. "Blood pressure, ninety over palp." He glanced at Paul, worried. "Is she on any medication that you know of, any drugs?"

  "What?" Paul said, shocked.

  "Her heart’s working way too hard", Scully said sternly. "She’s either on something or bleeding internally. Now, to the best of your knowledge does your daughter use drugs?"

  "No," Paul said adamantly. "No."

  The heart monitor was spiking wildly, cardiovascular rhythm horribly out-of-synch. "Notify Bergen County ER," Scully yelled to the driver, a woman named Ellis. "Tell ‘em we got an internal bleeder coming in."

  Paul looked up, alarmed. "St. Anthony’s," he countered. "Bergen doesn’t have trauma, they can’t handle this."

  "Bergen is closer," Scully argued.

  Paul shook his head adamantly. "Take Glendon Boulevard to Covington, Covington to Mansfield," he said. "Three minutes, tops."

  "What’s it gonna be?" Ellis yelled over the siren’s blare. Scully started to say something, but Jorgensen cut him off. "He’s right." He looked at Paul, then called out. "You heard the man! St. Anthony’s!"

  "You got it." Ellis nodded and radioed in the change, then floored it.

  Suddenly Kyra sputtered and coughed violently. Her chest hitching in ragged spasms. Jorgensen bagged her, trying desperately to regulate her breathing. "Pulse one-sixty, b.p. eighty-five and falling," Scully warned. "She’s slipping!"

  "She’s got fluid in her lungs," Jorgensen said. Paul looked at the man. Jorgensen desperately tried to intubate her, pressing the rubber tube past swollen and bloody lips. As he got it down her throat Kyra suddenly coughed, spraying bloody froth. "Shit, her trachea’s collapsed," he hissed.

  "Do something, dammit!" Paul cr
ied.

  Kyra’s chest was bucking and heaving now, her heart monitor beeping madly. "Pulse one-seventy," Scully warned. The men watched in horror as her flesh took on a mottled, blue-gray hue and a clammy sheen of sweat broke out.

  "Shit, she’s going dusky."

  "Move!" Paul roared into action: pushing the men out of the way, stripping off his coat and grabbing the intubation tube. His mind pushed aside the fear as he set to work, carefully worming the plastic nozzle past savaged tissues, deep into her larynx. Suddenly it stuck, would go no further.

  The monitors keened. Paul cursed, biting back panic. "We gotta do a trache," he said.

  "Here?" Scully countered. "We can’t -- " Paul shot him a lethal glance, and Scully shut up.

  Jorgensen moved in as Paul extubated the tube, then grabbed cotton gauze and a squeeze bottle of betadine from the medbox, spritzed the soft hollow of his daughter’s throat with disinfectant, stray red trickles staining milk skin jaundiced yellow. Paul handed off the intubation tube as Jorgensen passed him a swiss army knife, opened to a razor-sharp two-inch blade. Ambo crews carried no scalpels by law, but a well honed pocketknife had sufficed more than once, becoming standard unofficial issue.

  The ambulance bounced and surged. Kyra’s eyes rolled back, her body convulsing. Performing a field tracheotomy in a careening vehicle was like trying to thread a needle in a hurricane. But he had no choice.

  Paul blinked back sweat and steadied himself, the blade’s tip poised on the surface of her skin. He punched down -- a short, sharp jab. There was a wet pop, then a burbling noise like a straw sucking the bottom of an empty cup. Kyra’s chest heaved up and down again, air flooding starved cells.

  She could breathe.

  "Got it," Paul said, then to Jorgensen, "Tube." Jorgensen quickly handed off the nozzle of the intubation tube; gingerly, Paul worked it into the wound, then taped it off. His heart was pounding almost as fast as the rhythm of the rig. Kyra hitched again, her tortured breathing giving way to a wet regularity. The monitors calmed. They were going to make it.