“Then how do you explain the dog with the positive rabies test?”
Sam couldn’t. Not yet. “One thing I do know, though, is that Morgan has a medical record for my dog and I’m going to find out why.”
“So you think Morgan’s just going to sit down and tell you her life story?”
“No,” Sam said, deflated and suddenly exhausted. She’d been so caught up in the prospect of actually being able to do something that she’d forgotten what a bitch Morgan could be. “I’ll need to persuade her.”
“With what? Your righteous indignation?”
“Not helpful, Dad.”
Her father nodded. “You’re right. That wasn’t.” He pinched his nose between his thumb and his first finger—the image of the contemplative professor. “Try this. Tell her I have a complete set of her Ramses data. If that doesn’t motivate her, nothing will.”
“What’s Ramses?”
Daniel shook his head. “She’ll know.”
“Why won’t you tell me?”
Daniel was silent for a moment and then answered in one word. “Shame.”
Sam knew her father well enough to know that he wouldn’t change his mind at this point. “Do you have a cell phone?”
Daniel shook his head.
Sam took out her cell phone and put it in her father’s hand. “In case I need to reach you. I’ll borrow one from the staff and call you with the number.”
“Are you going to tell anyone at CDC or city health about these smears?”
“Sure,” she answered. “As soon as you tell me you’re one hundred percent certain and we figure out what they’ll do with the information.” And, she thought, right after I convince myself that Tom really can be trusted.
Sam was already on the stairs before her father could respond.
28
Back in the shelter, amid the barks, yelps, and yowls coming from all directions, Sam explained her plan to Greg, Luke, Beth, and Sid. They each asked to go with her and she refused them all with, “I need your hands here.” No one was happy with Sam’s answer, but each accepted it because it was true.
“I do need to borrow a cell phone,” Sam said.
Beth placed her iPhone in Sam’s hands. “Too much of a distraction anyway.”
At the shelter entrance, Sam looked at each of them in turn, suddenly feeling very alone. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” They all nodded back. There was nothing more to say.
Sam opened the door and was about to step out into the cold night when Beth suddenly appeared beside her.
“What are you doing?” Sam asked.
“I’m going with you.”
“We went through this already. It’s more important that you help out here.”
“Let’s be honest. I’m the least valuable assistant you’ve got.”
“You’re supposed to check on Andy.”
“I already spoke to him. Twice, actually. He’s pissed, but in my professional opinion—or what’s left of it—pissed for him is good. Luke’s taking him out for an early breakfast later. Andy likes the crazy old man.”
Sam shook her head. “I don’t know what, if anything, is really going on with Morgan and these dogs, but I do know that getting her to talk to me won’t be pretty.”
“I’m good in a fight, actually. You’d be surprised.”
“I appreciate this, really, but—”
“I made a promise, Mr. Frodo… a promise. ‘Don’t you leave her, Beth.’ And I don’t mean to… I don’t mean to.”
“What the hell was that?”
Beth shrugged. “Fellowship of the Ring. Seemed appropriate.”
“You are so weird,” Sam said. She closed the shelter door behind them, grateful that Beth wouldn’t take no for an answer. “The car’s in the garage across the street. I’ll drive.”
Book III
Between, Among, Within
1
Andy woke to the darkness of the predawn hours and watched as the one-eared stray paced near the front of the cavern. He sensed that something was happening in the park—something bad.
In his experience, good had to be cajoled and, sometimes, even forcibly dragged into the vacuum created by apathy and indecision. Bad, in contrast, was an opportunist. Bad didn’t require pushing or prodding forward; it continued under the force of its own dark inertia, always and without exception expanding to fill all the cracks.
Andy heard voices. Two men at least. Sounds traveled in strange and unpredictable patterns in the cavern. He crawled up to the entrance and peeked out of the cave opening. He saw the flashlight beams of two men in canvas jumpsuits.
“This one’s been sprung too,” the taller man said, shining a light into the trap. “Bait’s not touched.”
“That makes seven,” his companion said, checking his clipboard in the light of the beam. “Someone’s screwing with us.”
“Yup. So what now?”
“Enough OT to pay for my kid’s summer camp. There have been too many reports of dogs acting strangely in the park for this to just go away.”
“That’s bullshit, though. A mutt vomits and now everyone thinks it’s rabies?”
“There’s a name for that. They call it rabies hysteria.”
“I call it, ‘The governor doesn’t want to screw up his party.’”
“Either way, the park will be closed to all dogs at some point today. Then we go tree by tree, rock by damn rock. The Guard delivers the Q sign to any unattended dogs.”
“The what?”
The other stuck his tongue out of the side of his mouth, tilted his head, and closed his eyes. “Q sign. The big sleep.”
“What a waste.”
“My conscience is clear.” He kicked the sprung trap. “Thanks to whatever group did this, there’s no alternative.”
With an agonizing jerk, Andy realized what had been nagging at him since the night before. Humanity was always determined by context and alternative. The context was sick and dying kids. And the alternative? He had taken that from them. His well-intended actions in reality had been naïve and juvenile. He had signed death warrants and now they would come for his only remaining family.
Andy pounded his forehead with the heel of his hand as he mouthed the word stupid. The violence of his movements must have surprised and alarmed the dog. She tried to lick his face, but Andy’s punishing hand did not stop.
2
It was nearing dawn by the time Sam and Beth arrived in Bedford, the heart of horse country north of New York City.
They passed mansions, rolling lawns, and huge horse paddocks almost as soon as they turned off the highway. Morgan’s place was at the end of a winding road, opposite the entrance of a large horse farm. A Mercedes-Benz convertible stood guard in Morgan’s immense circular driveway. Sid was correct, Sam thought; Morgan must have invested well.
Sam pulled into the driveway and was out of the car and pounding on the front door before Beth had unbuckled her seat belt. Morgan opened the door just as Beth joined her.
Despite the early hour, Morgan was already dressed—definitely not from Kmart, Sam noticed—with her hair pulled tight into a perfectly severe bun.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Morgan challenged.
“I came for some answers,” Sam said.
“I don’t know what your questions are and I really don’t care. Now please go away before I call the police.” Morgan attempted to close the door. Sam put her foot in the entrance to stop her, but Morgan still pushed.
“Hey, cut the crap!” Beth bellowed and slammed the door with her shoulder. Morgan stumbled backward and almost fell. The door swung open and Beth stepped in. “I told you I was good in a fight,” she whispered to Sam.
Morgan recovered quickly and walked to the phone on the hall table. “I’m calling the police.”
“That’s fine,” Sam said, hands on her hips. “We’ll wait. My father sends his regards, by the way. He says to tell you that he has a complete set of the Ramses data.” Morgan s
napped to attention at the name. Sam saw the opening and pushed. “I told him I didn’t know what that meant, but he said that you would. Do you?”
“He’s bluffing.” Morgan picked up the phone and began to dial, keeping one eye on Sam.
Sam pretended to take in the expensive artwork in the hallway as she spoke. “Maybe. I don’t know him well enough anymore to tell. But if you think he wouldn’t disclose something because it will also implicate him, I can tell you one thing: he is a man who feels he has absolutely nothing left to lose. You ever have that feeling? Really unpleasant. And if he thinks he can bring you down with him in the process, my money’s on him.”
Morgan’s face clouded over and Sam knew she’d gotten to her. Morgan slowly lowered the phone into its cradle. “Fine,” she said. “I can always call the police later.”
Beth leaned close to Sam’s ear. “That was pretty good,” she whispered.
“What do you want?” Morgan demanded.
During the ride up from the city, Sam had worked through how she’d play this. If she revealed what she knew about the records, she would disclose the office break-in. Morgan could get the cops back on the phone and in a few minutes her father would be in cuffs no matter what Kendall tried to do to protect him. She was much less worried about the prospect of a criminal record than about the police stopping her father before he had any answers. End of game.
But Sam had also realized she needed to see Morgan’s face when she asked her the question. That could tell her so much. And if Morgan really was hiding something, would she risk calling the cops to her office? Maybe, Sam realized. This was the problem when you dealt with people who had always gotten their own way—they never saw failure as a real possibility. For Sam, however, failure was a frequent visitor and she had learned to expect it.
Sam thought about her mom and her oft-repeated admonition to trust her own judgment. She stepped in close to Morgan so she could get a straight-on look at the older woman’s face. “Why do you have a medical record for my dog?”
It was present only for maybe a breath. Morgan was very very good at this. But it was there—a moment when her entire demeanor shouted one word unequivocally.
Caught.
Then it was gone and all Morgan’s facial muscles relaxed into the arrogant expression Sam knew so well. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Really? My dog, Nick, you remember him? He’s quite ill at the moment. You have a recent record of treatment for him. I want to know why.”
“You tell me. You’re the one making up records. So what does it say?”
“You know damn well all your records were deleted. I have proof of a record, but not the narrative.”
“Deleted? Clearly whatever criminal you hired to hack into my records system is lying to you to earn his fee. There is no record and was no record because there was no treatment. Perhaps you should get your money back from the hacker. Unless he is implementing your wish to frame me for something.”
“Did I mention the Ramses data set?”
“You did. That worked to keep this matter private. It does not require that I make up facts to support a record of treatment that I never had. Your father can wipe his ass with the Ramses documents if he thinks otherwise.”
So that was it, Sam realized. Whatever was going on, Morgan would risk an awful lot to keep it secret. She could do nothing more here.
Sam took Beth by the elbow and headed to the front door. “See ya around, Morgan.” At the door Sam turned back to her. “So I guess there’s no point in asking you what CVTP means either? It’s on the same record.”
There it was again—that flicker of panicked guilt. But Morgan caught herself even more quickly this time.
“No idea,” she said. “Have you tried Google?”
“I’ll do that. Good luck with that whole Ramses data set thing. I hope whatever my father does with it is not too embarrassing for you.”
“Get out!” Morgan yelled. “Get the hell out of my house!”
It was the only time Sam could recall Morgan’s losing it. She smiled at that thought and banged open the front door.
3
Look into their faces.
Gabriel woke with Channa’s admonishing voice in his ears. At some point during the long evening, he had fallen asleep on a sanctuary pew with Christ staring down at him, Eliot stretched out at his feet, and Molly dozing on his head.
He knew what Channa would have expected and the prospect terrified him.
Still, he couldn’t get the voice out of his head. It repeated mantra-like as he fed Molly and Eliot and then walked the dog along the streets of Riverside. It mocked him while he tried to cobble together a sermon. It shamed him while he swept the sanctuary floor and organized the symbols of his office.
“Damn you, Channa.”
Gabriel determined that it was useless to try to do anything else in this state. He locked the church door and began walking to clear his mind.
Fifteen minutes later the priest looked up and realized he was standing before the entrance of the one place he had avoided since Channa’s death—Riverside Hospital. He showed his clergy identification to the security guard before he could change his mind, and entered the lobby.
The hospital had the same smell that he remembered from his numerous visits with Channa. He wondered if they would ever develop an antiseptic powerful enough to overcome the odor of fear, desperation, and guilt. He took the elevator to the third floor—pediatrics.
The elevator doors opened into the waiting area. Here parents and siblings sought cold refuge from the monotonous clicks of IV drips, the smell of puke, and the feel of hot skin. They always came here when they could no longer keep up the pretense of strength, when they couldn’t bring themselves to utter another “Everything is going to be fine” or “When you get out this time we will go on that trip…” This was the truth room, where doctors came to speak to mothers and fathers in hushed tones about red blood counts, liver function, and kidney failure. This was where parents spoke to each other about the most insignificant things because the past was too painful and the future nonexistent. Here brothers and sisters wept silently behind old issues of Sports Illustrated and People magazine.
Fifteen pairs of eyes rose to follow the priest when he stepped out of the elevator. Strangers were a distraction, and any break from the tedium of waiting that didn’t cause pain was welcome. But priests were different. With the exception of the maternity floor, in the hospital the presence of a priest meant death was near, that science had failed and faith would now take center stage.
Gabriel tried to smile encouragement at a few of the faces, but he soon gave up and stared at his shoes. He turned right and read off the room numbers to himself without thinking.
He peered through a patient’s window and his heart raced. For just a moment, he saw Channa in the bed, propped up on pillows with the ever-present IV attached to her arm. He saw Sid and Channa’s sister sitting on either side of their beloved wife and sibling. Sid held a damp cloth to Channa’s head and her sister held the vomit basin. Channa waved to him from the window, beckoning him to join them, but he couldn’t bring himself to enter. Channa nodded her forgiveness.
Gabriel blinked hard and then felt the ground beneath him begin to tip. He leaned against the window to steady himself. When he made contact with the glass, a young mother and father dressed in isolation garb looked up from their ministration to their son. They were surprised at first, but surprise quickly turned to horror, as if he were the Reaper, scythe pulled back and ready to swing. Gabriel tried to mouth an apology through the glass, to explain that he wasn’t there for last rites, but that only made the situation worse.
He backed away as quickly as he could, but every window brought him fundamentally similar scenes of suffering, of mothers and fathers looking down upon the still bodies of their young sons and daughters. Gabriel could hear their despairing questions whispered in Channa’s voice: “What is wrong?” “What did we
do?” “Will you leave us?” “How can we make you stay?”
He also saw the children, enslaved by the virus ravaging their bodies. He knew they were listening to these questions, just as surely as he knew they could not answer them. Instead Gabriel heard them ask questions of their own in Channa’s exhausted voice: “Why are we here?” “Why is my family crying?” “Why are you leaving me?”
All these questions. They drowned Gabriel’s spirit. Once that vessel proved too small, they echoed across the hospital hallways and elevator shafts in a fruitless search for an understanding ear until, finding none, they dissipated with agonizing slowness.
Gabriel knew he should not have come. He staggered to the elevator and just made it through the hospital exit as he dropped to his knees. When he lifted his head, the hospital was gone and all he saw was thick gray smoke billowing against him. His breath came in ragged, gasping wheezes.
This is hell, he thought. I have arrived in my hell.
He struggled to his feet and then on through the strangling smoke. One step… another. The priest kept moving forward, oblivious to any other pedestrian. He stumbled twice, but did not fall.
After several minutes the smoke dissipated and his church rose before him. Gabriel made it to his office, where Eliot and Molly waited, and he collapsed into his chair.
He didn’t know how long he had been out before the persistent tapping on his shoulder woke him. He wanted to sleep for days.
“Father!”
Gabriel opened one eye and Andy appeared before him. The boy looked awful—dirt-encrusted fingernails, hollow eyes, three days of blond stubble.
“I’m sorry, but I really need your help, Father,” Andy said.
Andy’s plea brought the priest to his feet.
4
Beth stretched and yawned loudly once they got back into the car. “Well that went well, don’t you think?” she asked. “Would I be correct in concluding she doesn’t like us?”
Just Life Page 22