The Girls He Adored

by Jonathan Nasaw

  She kept repeating variations on that theme as she helped Donna Hughes to her feet, helped her get her arms through the sleeves of an orange blouse, steadied her while she stepped into a pair of shorts, helped her up the steps and out into the moonlit meadow. A moment later Pender emerged from the hatch with Dolores Moon in his arms, still clutching her blanket around her, unwilling to give it up though Irene had brought her a selection of what appeared to be her own clothes, judging by the sizes.

  Irene herself had changed back into the cranberry cardigan, short-sleeved blouse, and white ducks she'd worn—was it only that morning? Time had ceased to have much meaning—she recognized that as a dissociative symptom.

  Pender eased little Dolores onto her feet and put his arm around her to steady her. She leaned against him, and with his help turned a full hundred and eighty degrees, turning her back to the two-horned peak to the west, facing the house at the edge of the meadow, and behind it, the full moon rising over the forested ridge.

  “Isn't that something?” she said.

  Pender looked down at her, then up at the moon. Next to him, Irene and Donna were supporting each other, their arms around each other's waists.

  “It sure is,” he agreed. He might have been suffering from a touch of acute stress disorder himself—he couldn't access his emotions, they were too big and too deep. It was as if he'd never seen that full moon before, as if he'd landed on a planet with a whole different sky.

  A lesser man, a singular man, would never even have made it into the barn, much less dragged himself all the way to the foot of the loft essentially one-armed and one-legged, and nearly bled out. It required the cooperation of all the alters except Lyssy, and the autistic Mose. Each of them took a turn, then slipped back into the darkness. In the end only blind Peter was left to drag the body the last few feet.

  “Where's the ladder?” he called—up until then he'd known only the terrain of Miss Miller's bedroom. “I can't see.”

  What was the matter with the boy? thought Miss Miller, vexed again. The barn was certainly light enough, with the moonlight pouring in through the open hayloft shutters. Still on her back, she wedged her shoulders against the barricade of books Pender had erected and began shoving against them, trying to get to the edge of the loft to guide him to the ladder.

  A paperback volume struck Peter on the back of his head. Stunned and confused, he tried to shield himself from the shower of books with his good arm as he crawled under the overhang of the loft to safety.

  “Are you all right?” she called, hearing him grunt in pain. No answer. Worried that she'd accidentally harmed him, she braced her back and shoulders against the barricade again, drew her legs up, heels against thighs, and pushed backward with all her might.

  Pender's original plan was to get the women settled at the house, find the keys to, or hotwire, the Cherokee, shoot the remaining dogs if they gave him any trouble, drive toward town until his cell phone kicked in, then drive back up to Scorned Ridge and await the ambulances or medevac choppers and the Evidence Response Team. There would be no further need for a Hostage Rescue Team, though knowing the bureau, Pender thought they would probably dispatch one anyway, with a video team, just for the image-positive footage.

  But the original plan hadn't accounted for the possibility that neither of the two original hostages would allow him out of her sight. To them, Dr. Cogan didn't count—she was just another in a parade of strawberry blonds. So, exhausted though he was, he carried the little Moon woman up the blacktop toward the barn in his arms, while Donna and Irene followed behind, their arms still around each other's waists.

  As she hiked behind Pender, sometimes supporting Donna, sometimes being supported by her, Irene couldn't shake the dreamlike feeling that when they got to the barn, Maxwell's body would be gone. It was such an overwhelmingly strange sensation, and made such an impression on her psyche, that when Pender reached the hump in the ridge first, muttered an obscenity, set Dolores on her feet, drew his gun, called to the women to wait for him there, then set off at a trot down the slope to the barn, Irene knew in advance what she'd see when she reached the hump in the ridge herself.

  Or rather, what she wouldn't see: Maxwell's body was no longer lying in the doorway where they'd left it, apparently unconscious, only fifteen or twenty minutes earlier. Where it had been, she saw only a pool of blood, black in the moonlight, and Pender slipping sideways into the barn, holding his gun at his chest.

  Seconds later he emerged waving, and called to Irene, beckoning her down the hill. She hurried down the sloping blacktop, Donna in her orange blouse and shorts and Dolores in her blanket following behind, now supporting each other.

  Pender was waiting with the lantern at the foot of the loft. Miss Miller lay atop a pile of books, her head twisted at an impossible angle. Irene kicked away a leather-bound copy of Dubliners, and several volumes of the Handyman's Encyclopedia, and knelt at her side. She lifted Miss Miller's scarred wrist and felt for a pulse, then looked up at Pender and shook her head.

  He nodded, then raised the lantern higher to cast its light on Maxwell, lying on his back in the darkest corner of the barn, under the loft.

  She hurried over to him, examined the tourniquet, tightened it one more notch.

  “Mommy,” he whimpered, reaching up to stroke her cheek.

  She started to ask him his name, then thought better of it. The childish voice, the relaxed jaw, the oval face, the wide eyes, told her all she needed to know.

  “Hello, Lyssy,” she said softly.

  “Mommy, it hurts.” He looked past her toward Pender, standing above them, holding the lantern. “That man hurted me.”

  “He didn't mean to,” said Irene. “He won't hurt you anymore.”

  “You promise? Cross your heart and hope to die?”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  89

  THE BU-CHOPPER CAME wheeling over Horned Ridge at first light, and touched down in the meadow on Scorned Ridge, discharging an Evidence Response Team complete with cadaversniffing dogs. Pender was waiting for them. He could tell by the way even the ASAC from Portland listened carefully to his every suggestion that all had been forgiven. E. L. Pender had been transformed from outcast to hero agent literally overnight.

  Pender understood the responsibilities that came with the new designation: he made sure to wear a blue windbreaker with FBI in yellow letters a foot high to the press conference later that morning and to thank, with a straight face, both the Umpqua and Monterey County sheriff's departments for their cooperation.

  Pender also understood that in addition to the responsibilities that came with being a hero agent, there were also perks. Everybody wanted a piece of Dr. Cogan—the FBI, the CHP, three sheriff's departments, and the rapidly assembling news media—but after the press conference, he used his newfound clout to protect her, insisting on interviewing her personally, in her hospital room.

  He did decide, however, to leave it to some other poor bastard to inform the families of the victims. That, and the rest of the postinvestigation, would not be his problem—he would be heading back to FBI headquarters, where he would hand over his badge to McDougal and retire as a hero, with a full pension. He would also be handing over his gun. The uglier the Waco investigation got, the more the FBI was determined to play up this lonely public success: the director wanted Pender's SIG Sauer P226 on display in the FBI museum.

  As for Pender's subsequent plans, they included sucking up his pension, possibly getting a consultant job with a private security outfit (another perk of being a hero agent), and definitely working on whittling down his handicap into the respectable teens.

  First, though, Pender had one more piece of business to take care of in Umpqua City.

  He could feel the effects of yesterday's exertions in his thighs as he trudged up the hospice stairs and rang the doorbell. The same dignified, gray-haired nurse who'd admitted him yesterday opened the door. She greeted him with a raised eyebrow. Everybody in
the state of Oregon knew who he was by now.

  “You should have told me you were FBI,” she said accusingly.

  “Would you have let me see Caz?”

  “Hell, no,” she said, on a rising inflection.

  “Then more people would have died. Listen, I promised Caz I'd stop by and tell him how it came out. Is he awake?”

  She lowered her eyes, shook her head.

  Pender understood immediately. “I'm so sorry.”

  When the nurse looked up, there were tears swimming in her eyes. Pender would have thought you'd get used to death, working in a hospice—but maybe you only got used to crying.

  “A few hours ago,” she said. “I just finished getting him ready. Would you like to see him?”

  “I'd rather remember him the way he was,” said Pender. Bullshit, of course—after discovering Tammy Brown's partially decomposed body in the privy shortly after dawn, along with several other skeletons, Pender felt he had seen his quota of dead bodies for the month. Year. Millenium. “I hope my visit didn't do him any harm.”

  “The contrary,” said the nurse. “I've never seen him so peaceful as after you left. He wouldn't tell me what the two of you talked about, but whatever it was, it helped him let go. Around here, that's a good thing.”

  “I'm glad,” said Pender, tipping his hat. It was indeed a good hat for tipping. “You take care.”

  “I do,” she said. “That's my job.”

  He thought about that on his way down the steps. “Mine too,” he said to himself. “At least it used to be.”

  Back at Umpqua General, Pender found the media feeding frenzy in full swing. News vans took up half the hospital parking lot. Microwave uplink dishes sprouted on the hospital lawn. Reporters were besieging the receptionist at the desk, while a video crew was interviewing the candy striper who'd brought Donna and Dolores their breakfasts.

  Pender nodded to the sheriff's deputy outside Irene's door. She was at the window, dressed in surgical greens, peering through the curtains at the activity in the parking lot below. Pender handed her an FBI windbreaker and a navy blue FBI cap.

  “You sure you're up for this? You want to rest a little longer, just give me the word.”

  “No, I want to get it over with,” she replied, tugging the cap over her shorn head. “I can't stand the thought of her lying up there alone.”

  Pender snuck Irene out the way he'd come in, through the hospital kitchen. One enterprising freelancer intercepted them and attempted to thrust a microphone in Irene's face as she climbed into the Intrepid, parked at the bottom of the loading ramp. Pender body-checked him halfway to the California border.

  When they reached the high school, they could see the Buchopper approaching from the east. Pender drove around the building and directly onto the football field. He parked in the end zone as the helicopter touched down on the fifty-yard line, hopped out of the car, trotted around to the passenger side, opened Irene's door for her.

  “Your chopper awaits, madame,” he yelled over the noise of the rotors, offering her his hand.

  “Thank you, kind sir,” replied Irene, taking it. It occurred to her that perhaps they were flirting—she wondered if she was doing a good job.

  Irene found herself crouching involuntarily as she trotted toward the chopper beside Pender, her left hand holding his, her right hand holding on to her cap. She had always wondered why people crouched over when they ran toward a helicopter whose rotors were a good twelve or fifteen feet off the ground. Now she knew—you couldn't help it.

  When they reached the chopper, Irene surrendered to a sudden impulse. She rose up onto her tiptoes and gave Pender a peck on the cheek.

  “I owe you my life,” she shouted into his ear.

  “It was a hell of a swan song, wasn't it?” he shouted back, as he helped her up into the helicopter. “You take care now.”

  “You too.”

  Irene watched through the bowed window as Pender turned and trotted away in an exaggerated crouch. His FBI windbreaker was puffed out like a bright blue sail from the rotor wash, and he was holding on to his white Stetson for dear life.

  When he reached the car, Pender turned back and waved, then took off his hat and waved that as the helicopter lifted off. Irene smiled at the sight of his big head shining in the sun. She was too good a psychiatrist not to know that her attraction to the fat old FBI man was more transference than romance. He was Frank, he was her father, he was safety, he was a rock—still, she couldn't wait to tell Barbara Klopfman about her little infatuation.

  The thought of Barbara, whom she'd all but given up for dead, affected Irene like a jolt of mood elevator—biochemical sunshine. For the first time, it all came together for Irene—she realized suddenly that her prayers had been answered. I did it, she told herself. I stayed alive. Then she remembered her last haiku. Strawberry Blonds Forever, she thought, taking off her long-billed FBI cap and waving it in a wide arc behind the window of the helicopter at the receding figure in the bright green field below.

  Irene knew, of course, that this feeling of exhilaration couldn't last. Sooner or later it would all catch up to her. Probably sooner— the Bu-chopper was flying Irene down to Trinity County, where a search-and-rescue team of sheriffs and park rangers was waiting for her to lead them to Bernadette Sandoval's body.

  But at the moment she felt alive, truly alive, and open to all possibilities, which was more than she could have said eight days ago, on the morning the prisoner in the orange jumpsuit first shuffled into the interview room of the Monterey County Jail on Natividad Road, fettered and manacled, with a lock of nut brown hair falling boyishly across his forehead.

  Epilogue

  Just over a year later, enjoying a complimentary continental breakfast in a hotel room, Irene Cogan was startled, while channelflipping, to see Dolores Moon being interviewed on Good Morning Portland.

  There was nothing surprising about seeing Dolores on television—she'd been on Dateline a few weeks after being rescued, and her book tour had kicked off with a long segment on the Today Show. But it was quite a coincidence that they were in the same town on the same day. Irene called the station and left her name and number. Five minutes later her phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Irene Cogan, what the hell are you doing in Portland?”

  “Hello, Dolores. Up until five minutes ago, I was watching you hawk your book.”

  “How'd I do?”

  “I'd buy it—and I know how it comes out. Do you want to have dinner tonight?”

  “I'd love to, but I'm leaving for Seattle in about an hour. No— San Francisco. Seattle was yesterday.” Dolores laughed. It was good to hear her laugh. “And when the book tour's over, I have an audition for the role of Eponine in a western tour of Les Mis. Apparently being kidnapped was a terrific career move.”

  “I'm so happy for you. How're you sleeping these days?”

  Long pause. “With the lights on, and a snootful of Valium. You know how it is.”

  “It'll get better.”

  “I know.” Quick change of subject—Dolores didn't like to dwell. “So how's your book coming?”

  “Actually, that's what I'm doing in Portland. I need one last interview with him, to give the book some closure. And me.”

  “He's here?” Dolores didn't bother hiding her alarm.

  “Miss Miller left him a substantial inheritance. He was transferred to a private hospital—pretty hotsy-totsy, from what I understand—after being found unfit to stand trial.”

  “If I'd known, I'd never have let them include Portland on the tour. Just knowing I was in the same state with him was stressful enough.”

  “There's nothing to worry about. He's on a locked ward, maximum security.”

  “As far as I'm concerned, dead is maximum security. Anything short of that is just screwing around.”

  “I understand—believe me, I understand. I'm a little conflicted about seeing him myself. A lot conflicted—which is partly why I have to
do it.”

  “Better you than me. Listen, Irene, I have to go. I definitely don't want to miss that plane out of town now.”

  “Okay, honey. It's good to hear you sounding so well. Call me some time when you get a chance. And good luck with Les Mis. I mean break a leg.”

  “You too. Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  Irene replaced the receiver in the cradle. The idea of a plane out of town sounded pretty good to her. But she'd had to go to a lot of trouble to arrange the interview with Maxwell—permission from his lawyers, who were also his guardians, as well as his doctor, and the administrators at Reed-Chase. If she chickened out now, then changed her mind again, she knew she might not be able to swing it a second time.

  After a quick pep talk in the mirror—she was a frost blond again—Irene packed her overnight bag. On the back of the door was one of those “Have you forgotten anything?” signs. She couldn't help turning around obediently to look, and discovered that she'd left her wallet on the foot of the bed. She didn't even remember taking it out of her purse—apparently her subconscious really didn't want to do this interview.

  Ever since she'd heard that little voice in her head on the riverbank, the one that had prompted her to ask Kinch his name, Irene had been paying a lot more attention to her subconscious. But she refused to be pushed around by it. One more pep talk—you have to know, she told herself; you'll feel better if you know —then she retrieved her wallet and was out the door before she could change her mind again. Or vice versa.