“Hurricane Beatrice,” he whispered, so softly that even Bernard didn’t hear.
Uttering the storm’s name made Echeverria’s mouth go dry. Without realizing it, he was squeezing the tiny gold crucifix that always hung from a chain around his neck, imprinting the ball of his thumb with the image of Christ.
storm
A hare meeting a lioness one day
said reproachfully, “I have always
a great number of children, while
you have but one or two now and then. ”
The lioness replied, “It is true,
but my one child is a lion. ”
—Lokman
Ethiopian fabulist
40
Tallahassee
As usual these days, Calvin Duhart couldn’t sleep.
No one had ever accused Cal of having an easy life—not after being raised dirt-poor by two alcoholics in a rural Georgia mobile home, losing his father to a senseless bar fight and his brother to the Vietcong—but he honestly couldn’t remember a time when he’d awakened each day to find such soul-killing dread waiting for him as sure as the morning sun. He’d once felt so much hope and pure happiness every time he looked at the wooden crib he had made for his unborn child, but no more. Everything had unraveled, and life was inventing new ways to fuck with him.
As much as he’d tried to fight it, he’d gone back to beer like an apologetic lover. His mother had always been a discreet drinker, saving it for when she was alone in the house, but the past few nights Cal had felt like the very picture of his father, sitting by himself at the kitchen table while he purposefully downed at least four bottles of Corona, sometimes five. And then the last remaining bottle always looked so damned lonely sitting by itself in the breached six-pack carton, it was usually hard to find reasons not to finish that one off, too. And then keep from starting on the next.
Three nights ago, the night Nita had left, Cal had actually found himself heaving over the toilet the way he had every weekend when he was a freshman at Florida State, back when he was still trying to learn how to hold his liquor as well as dear old Dad. But the beer helped him sleep. He needed that, with Nita gone.
Cal had finally put his foot down last weekend, sending Nita back up to Chicago to spend some time with her parents. He could have tolerated her mouth and those cutting gazes of hers, but the stress of Jared’s illness had been affecting her health, giving her pains in her belly. That he couldn’t tolerate, not with his kid at stake. There was no reason for her to have to hang around and suffer alongside everyone else.
With Nita gone, Cal had gone back to work at the governor’s office to try to escape the hospital for a few hours each day. His growing morbidity affected even the most mundane assignments, such as his call to Miami today. The governor was planning to address a bunch of blue-hairs down in Boca this weekend, and now that hurricane season was under way, Cal had figured on writing him a few simple remarks on hurricane preparedness. Makes folks feel safer, as if the governor has even nature under control.
So, Cal had called his old contact down at the NHC, Rick Echeverria, a prompt and helpful kid he’d been in communication with during Hurricane Floyd. Cal had just been killing time, truth be told. He could easily have pulled out the same pamphlets they had used year after year, the same old advice: stock up on food, stock up on batteries, buy fresh water. Blah blah blah. But, no, he’d called Echeverria. And when Cal had asked what he’d meant as a rhetorical question—Anything going on?—the kid’s voice had all of a sudden gone somber on him. Real somber.
As a matter of fact, Echeverria had said, they were keeping their eye on a real mover in the Atlantic, tropical storm Beatrice. He’d launched into a bunch of meteorologist mumbo jumbo after that, about the storm’s coordinates and how its wind speed had diminished by forty miles per hour after flirting with hurricane strength. The NHC had issued tropical-storm warnings for the Bahamas, he told him. But if the storm jumped back up to hurricane strength, and if it kept up its projected course, it would be big trouble. It’s playing possum, he’d said, as if he were talking about a wily adversary. I do not trust this storm, Cal.
By the time Cal got off the phone, he’d felt his heart in his throat. Everyone around him was going nuts, he decided. It was bizarre for a straitlaced guy like Echeverria to sound so unnerved, mixing supposition with science. Just what he needed—a tropical storm and a spooked-out forecaster on top of everything else he had to worry about.
It had been a mistake to go back to work, but the only alternative was the hospital. He’d rather be just about anywhere than there.
Cal sighed. It was 10 P.M., which meant he still had a good hour of drinking ahead of him, maybe two. He pulled one of his four ice-cold mugs out of the freezer, slipped in the lime wedge waiting on the countertop, and began to pour. As usual, Cal thought about Lucas as he poured, remembering the conversation they’d had over beer the day before Lucas left. Cal wondered now if the beer might have played any role in that talk, if he’d used it to try to dull what little common sense might have been trying to break loose that day. Wouldn’t be the first time, would it?
Somehow, he’d convinced himself he was doing the right thing. It was laughable now, of course—worse than laughable, damn near criminal—but that was what Cal had believed. In reality, his best friend had been having a long-overdue nervous breakdown, and Cal had sent him merrily on his way. Sure, Lucas, take a trip around the world, knock yourself out. I’ll read Jared a few bedtime stories and hold down the fort, old buddy. Anything for a friend.
“You goddamned fucking idiot,” he berated himself, another of his nightly rituals, as he shuffled toward the living room. The usual insanity was waiting for him on television, a reality video show about car chases and accidents. Perfect. In certain moods, the only thing that could make Cal feel better was watching people who were even bigger morons than he was. Sometimes that could help him keep from sobbing the night away.
It was over now, or it might as well be. Jared was in a coma, on life support. He’d be brain-dead soon; his doctor had said that was all but certain. Since Cal had been designated guardian, the doctors had been asking him about the possibility of discontinuing life support when the time came. Death with dignity, people called it. As far as Cal was concerned, there wasn’t a bit of dignity about any of it. And he might have to fight Jared’s grandmother and uncles tooth and nail, but even if it took six months, there was no way he was going to pull the plug on this kid before Lucas got back. Cal knew perfectly well that Rachel’s family was still angry at Lucas, stemming back to the days Rachel had been sick. They were still talking about the sweat lodge as if they’d conducted blood sacrifices and the ceremony had somehow hastened her death. And sometimes, even though the thought of it made him queasy, Cal thought those people would let Jared die before Lucas got back just to spite him.
All right, maybe that wasn’t fair, but sometimes Cal thought so. Family tragedies could bring out the worst in people—he knew that much from experience, based on the way his mother had clawed at everyone around her after his brother had gotten killed. And these people were so brittle and brokenhearted that it wouldn’t surprise Cal in the least to walk into the hospital tomorrow morning and find out that someone had given the order to shut off the respirator.
Cal looked down at the mug in his lap. Already half-empty, and he hadn’t noticed.
It was all just ceremony now anyway, he knew that. Maybe he shouldn’t blame them for wanting to be free to make funeral arrangements, to find some closure to the hellish experience. If not for the respirator, Jared would have been dead forty-eight hours ago. That was the fact of it. The kid had tried, but all that was left of Jared now was those machines and a warm corpse. Whenever Lucas finally did get back, his son wouldn’t be waiting for him.
Cal rubbed his temple as if trying to massage his thoughts out of his head. Please, God, no crying jags tonight, he thought. Not again.
As low as he felt, it was no
wonder Cal thought he was hallucinating at first. He finally realized he heard a dog barking, the rottweiler that belonged to the gay couple that had moved to their street last year. The dog was well trained and wasn’t usually much of a barker, so the barking was odd. From where he sat leaning back in his recliner, Cal was at exactly the right height and angle to venture a casual glance out of his living room window. And there, just beyond the slats in his venetian blinds, he could make out a glow of light from across the street.
It wasn’t much light and it wasn’t bright, just a soft gleam that had skirted its way past the trees in his neighbor’s yard. But Cal stared at it, blinking, wondering if it was a mirage. Lucas’s house had been dark for a week, and now someone had turned on a light.
“Son of a bitch,” Cal said, lurching to his feet. His heart got such a jump-start that he felt light-headed. Most of his beer spilled to the floor when he dropped the mug on top of the coffee table.
Okay, he told himself, stop right there. Don’t get your hopes up. It might be one of Rachel’s brothers nosing around for something of Jared’s, although that was unlikely; all three times the family had asked to go into Lucas’s house, they’d asked Cal for a key and his blessing. At least they’d been respectful in that way. And it was late for those folks to be up. They were usually at Jared’s bedside by dawn, if they left the hospital at all. Ever since Jared’s coma, his family had kept him pretty much under twenty-four-hour watch.
So, who else then? It had to be Lucas. He was finally home.
Cal felt deep relief, but then the aftertaste of familiar dread. He was sure someone at the nurses’ station would have called him if Lucas had suddenly shown up, so he might not have visited Wheeler yet. Lucas had fallen off the face of the planet the very same day Jared had lost consciousness, so he might not know. It would be Cal’s job to tell him. Cal fumbled to pull on his navy blue dress slacks, part of the office monkey suit he despised, but it was the only clothing within arm’s reach. Then, bare-chested and barefoot, he started for the front door.
Until another thought brought him to a halt.
This thought made him pause in front of the coat closet, then open it up to pull out his Remington pump-action shotgun. Quickly, Cal found two shells in the box on the closet’s top shelf, pushed them into the gun’s magazine, then jacked the shells into the chamber. He couldn’t be foolish about it, after all. Crime was rare in his neighborhood, but it wasn’t unheard of. He hadn’t spent ten years in the U.S. Army Reserves and served in Desert Storm only to stroll across the street and get his head blown off by some drugged-out punks who might be ransacking his friend’s house. The fact was, Lucas would have to be pretty far gone not to have called him as soon as he landed at the airport. The Lucas he’d known would have come to his place first, even if he couldn’t quite face going to the hospital yet.
So it might not be Lucas. The longer Cal thought about it, the madder he got.
“Well, I guess I’m about to find out one way or the other,” Cal said, taking his gun outside.
The night air was typical of Tallahassee in the summertime, humid and sticky. The only car in Lucas’s driveway was his friend’s own pickup, which had been there all along. He didn’t see the rental cars Rachel’s family was using—so either Lucas had taken a cab home, or these were intruders after all. Cal’s grip tightened around the barrel of the shotgun as he marched on the soft bed of damp leaves and pine needles toward the burning light, which was brighter as he approached.
Lucas’s kitchen window cast an ethereal glow throughout Lucas’s front yard, probably lit from the living room, Cal mused. But both doors were closed, even Lucas’s ragged screen door, which made Cal more suspicious. Lucas never bothered to close that screen door, and neither had Cal on his previous visits. That in itself made Cal think it might be time to call the police.
But in part, Cal didn’t want to be bothered, and in part, he’d had one beer too many. Cal pressed on with his gun readied, walking between the trees to try to keep out of view of anyone who might glance out of the kitchen window. That morning’s Tallahassee Democrat, which Cal hadn’t had time to move yet, still lay on Lucas’s front porch. Cal felt his heart pounding. He didn’t know which prospect made him more nervous: that Lucas was home, or that he wasn’t.
His key-ring was still in his slacks, he noticed, and he considered opening the door and bursting in. Then he thought better of it. After a deep breath, he rang the doorbell, and he could hear its tinny chiming throughout the house. “Doc Shepard?” he called out. “That you?”
Keeping clear of the door in case someone tried to rush at him, Cal listened hard for any telltale scurrying noises inside. Nothing. The hinges of Lucas’s back door whined like hell, and Cal was sure he would hear if anyone tried to escape that way, toward the woods. So far, no one had.
Cal rang the doorbell a second time. When there was only silence yet again, he tentatively reached for the handle on the screen door and tugged hard to open it. It dragged slightly on the concrete doorstep, but it came free. Then, his hand shaking, Cal tried the oak door’s knob.
Unlocked. So, if Lucas was back, why didn’t he answer?
Could Cal himself have left the lights on and the door unlocked the last time he was here and just hadn’t noticed? It wasn’t likely, but it was possible. Maybe the light had been on for a day or two. Jared’s uncle Michael had come by to find some things in Jared’s room—toys, books, and clothes he thought might help reach him even in a comatose state. Cal was almost sure he’d locked up after him, but maybe not.
Taking shallow breaths, Cal pushed the door open and saw the familiar tiles in Lucas’s foyer. Jared’s basketball still sat at the foot of the stairs. Uncle Michael hadn’t wanted to take the basketball, for some reason, even though Cal had told him it was one of the kid’s favorite toys. Michael didn’t really know his nephew, not the way Cal knew Jared.
Cal felt himself relaxing. More and more, it was beginning to feel as if he’d fucked up and left the light on himself. He was on a quick jaunt down the path to the loony bin, that was all. Just as he’d told Lucas, they could be roommates at Chattahoochee one day. It was starting already.
But he still kept a firm grip on the shotgun as he walked inside the house, glancing upstairs for any shadows that might be moving in the darkness up there, peeking around the corner into the kitchen. All the dishes Lucas had left in the sink were drying on a dish towel on the counter, the work of Jared’s grandmother. The last time she’d been here, she’d fussed over the mess in the kitchen and washed every single dish, as if she thought that would make a difference. Watching, Cal had felt sorry for her.
“Lucas?” Cal called out.
The living room, itself a mess of papers and boxes, struck Cal as wrong, but he didn’t know why. Had Lucas left those two desk drawers open? He knew the papers had always been there on the floor, but they just looked . . . different.
Cal was glancing down at the papers when he knew he’d made a mistake.
He hadn’t been listening hard enough, or he hadn’t been paying enough attention to the shadows or his peripheral vision, because suddenly he knew with horrible certainty that someone was behind him, someone who didn’t want him to know he was there. And it wasn’t some drugged-out punk either; it was someone who moved like a cat.
Cal had never seen any real combat up close, but he’d often wondered what his brother had felt on that last jungle patrol, when maybe the hairs on the back of his neck had stiffened just in time to warn him that he’d walked past a sniper in a tree. But the warning for Hank had come too late. And even though Cal’s finger was ready on the shotgun’s trigger, he was facing the wrong way, and he knew the warning had come too late for him, too.
Cal’s cry of surprise was strangled as a steely arm locked around his neck, and he felt someone drive down hard into the back of his knee, cutting his legs out from under him.
Nita, he thought, full of grief as he felt the gun wrenched from his hand. His eye
s rolled upward, and he saw someone’s pale white shirt reflected from behind him in the picture window, nothing else. He scrabbled at the arm around his neck frantically, trying to get some air. He tried to lunge backward at his attacker, but that only made the arm’s grip tighter, and his tongue fell out across his bottom lip, limp. Jesus, he prayed, just don’t let me piss in my pants. Just give me that.
There were two of them, he realized. He felt a second man’s fingers probing roughly at his jaw, like a mad pianist. The fingers found a nerve, and Cal heard a muffled snapping sound and felt a sudden cramp of pain that would have made him scream if he’d had any oxygen in his lungs. Almost instantly, Cal Duhart felt nothing at all.
41
Star Island
Now, Lucas knew, he and Alexis could only wait.
The good news was, the trigger-happy Brits had never shown up during his questioning. When Alexis was brought back down to the basement, he interpreted from the look on her face that she hadn’t been touched, either. Like him, she’d been given a plain white T-shirt and gray sweatpants to wear; her clothes, obviously made for a man, were too baggy. Conversely, his sweatpants were too short for him, riding up to his calves. Her expression was drained, but she didn’t look as if she’d been raped or zapped with electric currents. That thought relieved him more than he’d known he was capable of feeling relief anymore.
They hadn’t been harmed. Not yet. But harm would certainly come soon.
The two Americans had brought them burgers for a late dinner, when the day’s overly polite, repetitive questioning was finally over. But Lucas didn’t feel any satisfaction after his meal this time. He felt as if his brain had been violated, and he was exhausted. And they still had to figure out what the hell to say tomorrow. For now, he welcomed the mattress in the dark basement, the familiar whirring of the machinery. Even in handcuffs, he felt safer here.
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