“Dad used to tell me that if I told anybody what he did, it would kill my mom, and he would have to go away and I’d be all alone. And nobody would make me food. I believed him. And in a warped way, he was right.
“You know what’s crazy? I thought God knew everything, so he already knew what my dad was doing, so if I told Father Malcolm, it was nothing new under the sun for God. And if God already wasn’t doing anything about it, what the hell could Father Malcolm do? So nothing would happen.
“Boy was I wrong.
“When I came out of the confessional that time, Father Malcolm was crying, too. The cops went straight to our trailer while Mom was waiting outside the church to pick me up, and they arrested Dad right then and there. They had a search warrant, and they found some drugs, too. The social worker came and took me to a foster home.
“Father Malcolm came to see me the next day at the foster home, and I told him God had only screwed things up. He hadn’t fixed anything and Dad was right—now I was all alone. But Father Malcolm took me to A-1 that day and got me a bike. I loved that bike. It was a blue Giant mountain bike. I rode it and rode it and never quit.”
She laughed a half laugh, and she looked at both of us. “Some things pay off, I guess. I got faster and faster. And I knew how to change a tire and fix the chain before I was thirteen. That was the nicest thing anybody ever did for me, I guess. After my dad got sent to prison, I moved back home with Mom. And now I had a bike.” She grinned and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands.
“So,” she continued, “when I saw Father Malcolm beat up, I was sure my dad was out of prison. I knew he would go after him ’cause he would blame him for getting sent away. Who else would beat up a priest—a really good priest—in the middle of the woods?”
“Wow,” I said.
“I knew he’d blame me, too, and he’d never leave me alone unless I disappeared. And you couldn’t know where I was either, in case he found you.”
I reached over to rub Siren’s ears. He licked my hand. Then he turned, ears up, toward the hospital door.
Zia stepped out, looked up and down the sidewalk, and saw us. “There you are. I look and look everywhere for you. Here, finally, you are. Come in now. Say good-bye to the priest.”
Joe jumped up and then reached out two hands to pull us both to our feet. I took his hand, but Allie stood up on her own.
“We won’t be too long,” Allie said. “Siren, will you stay put if we tie you up so Joe can come in?” She tied his leash to the bike rack, triple knotting it, and kissed his nose. “We’ll be right back.”
So we followed her inside. Siren whimpered, but he didn’t howl.
We took the elevator, and during the silent ride, I thought about my mom in Egypt. I thought about how mad I’d been at her getting to go do research for the summer, and how mad I’d been at them for getting divorced. And I felt about as big as a speck of dust.
Dr. Rathburn met us at the door and said, “I don’t know what you believe about dying, but I suppose there’s some comfort in the idea that, if what the Father believed is true, he’s in a better place and out of pain.”
“I wish I believed that,” Allie said. “But I kinda doubt it. God hasn’t been too good at taking care of stuff as far as I can tell.”
The doctor gave Allie a sad smile and led us through a door. “Here he is. I’m very sorry about this. Take as much time as you need.”
The room was tiny and looked sterile. A sheet covered Father Malcolm’s face. The body’s face. Allie lifted it. It reminded me of her lifting the blue tarp off him, only much slower, and much more gently. My eyes met Joe’s. I could tell he thinking about his brother.
Father Malcolm didn’t look that different than he had in the woods. Just without all the blood and without the raspy breathing.
Joe made a choking sound, like retching. “I gotta go,” he said. He squeezed my hand and scooted out the door. I thought I should follow him. I was torn between staying and going. I needed to be both places, with Allie and with Joe. A good girlfriend should go. But I hadn’t been around for Allie lately. I ached to give Joe a hug.
I stayed with Allie.
Allie stood, stoic, beside the dead man. The first time I ever saw this guy was as the injured victim of a beating, never as a whole man, never as a priest. Then he was a mess of wounded flesh, and now he was dead flesh. I wished I’d met him before he got beaten to a pulp. This priest was the only man who was really, really good to Allie in her early life, and he was gone. Her dad had a way of taking everything good away from her.
As I looked at Father Malcolm Dykstra, I wondered if he had relatives somewhere, brothers or sisters or even ancient parents. Or if he was alone in the world except for God and the church. And of course, the nuns.
I was connected to him because of how we found him in the woods, because of waiting by his messed-up body for the ambulance, and now, now I was connected because I was here at the hospital while he died. I’d never been around somebody dying before. I thought about the Catholic mass and death and souls departing, and I stared hard at this body that had been breathing twenty minutes ago, and still would be if it weren’t for Cecil Baker.
Father Malcolm was the same tent of loose skin that he was twenty minutes ago, but now, there was no air going in and out. The system just stopped working. Like maybe talking wore out the last shred of life energy he had. Somehow, I’d always thought that if there was a God at all, then death would be spiritual, otherworldly, angelic or something. But it wasn’t, even for a priest. There sure weren’t any angels around when we were in his room. Death just put the brakes on his breathing and his heartbeat, stopping the parts that were still working. Just stopping. Twenty minutes ago his body was doing something, and now it wasn’t. Father Malcolm Dykstra just stopped being alive.
I stood in awe, waiting for Allie to be done. Allie didn’t cry. She stood there and stood there, and finally, she reached out and patted Father’s hand. “I’m sorry, Father. Thanks for everything. I’m so sorry.”
Twenty-Nine
Fireworks
The never-ending Fourth of July
I followed Allie down the stairs, saying nothing. She slid her hand along the railing and stepped with more weight in each footfall than I thought possible for her lithe body.
“Allie!” As we stepped into the lobby, Joe met us, his face full of horror. “Siren’s gone.”
“Gone? You sure? Shit!” She tore past him and would have shoved him out of the way except that he backed up against the wall to let her through. Then Joe and I were on her heels.
“Siren!” Allie screamed. “Siren!” Siren had been sitting by the bike rack when we last saw him. Now the leash dangled where Allie had so carefully triple-knotted it. “Did he chew through it?” She dashed over, bent, and picked up the end of the leash. It was cut clean through—a sharp, clear cut—nothing any dog’s teeth could manage.
“Fuck!” Allie grabbed her hair and bent over like she was about to throw up. “He fucking took Siren. God, he’ll stoop lower than I even thought. Ohmygod, I shouldn’t have left him alone! Why did I do that? I should have known! Sadie, what’s wrong with me! Ohmygod!”
“How could you have guessed that? ” I said. “You positive it was your dad?”
“YES!” She whirled on me like it was my fault, but I didn’t blame her. “Siren never lets anybody touch him or his leash unless I’m around. So somebody had to drug him o—or kill him—to take him like this. My dad is the only asshole I know mean enough to do either one, and he’s the only person who would want to.”
I said, “Like he was the only one who would beat up a priest.”
“You got it. Goddam! I know my dad well enough—I can’t believe I left Siren alone!”
Joe blew his breath out in a near whistle. “So let’s go get him.”
&n
bsp; My stomach wrenched a flip at the thought of Cecil Baker, but I nodded.
“No,” Allie said. “No, you guys don’t have to do this. I’ll go.”
“Look, Allie Baker,” Joe said, whirling on her. “You harassed me into quitting smoking. You hauled our asses around the countryside and kicked our butts up so many hills that we actually raced okay this morning. That was today, wasn’t it?” His jaw was tense and I could see a vein in his neck pulsing. “It’s so long ago, I hardly remember, but yeah. And yeah, your old man is the biggest pain-in-the-ass baddass son-of-a-bitch I’ve ever met, but we’re your friends. You’re stuck with us, and you are not doing this alone. Come on. Get in my car.”
“Wow,” Allie said, “I guess you mean it. Okay, then.” We all trotted to the trusty orange-red Grand Am. “You should call Scout. Is that cop still upstairs?”
“No, he left when I was on my way downstairs,” Joe said.
Joe unlocked the car, and Allie stepped up onto the bottom of the door frame to unlock her bike.
“Why don’t I go first on my bike and sort of catch Dad off guard, and then you can come in with the cavalry in a couple minutes. Get Scout, and maybe one of the cops. Okay?”
“Holy crap,” Joe said, ripping a note out from under his windshield wiper. “Look.”
“Allison” was scrawled across the front. Joe held it out to Allie.
She jumped down, whipped it open and read, “Your dad sent us to get your flea-bitten dog. He said if you want to see him alive again, you better come home pronto.”
“Fuck him! Fuck them!” She crumpled the note, threw it down, and stepped back up to her bike. “I don’t believe this shit! Look! My tires are flat! The son-of-a-bitches slashed my tires!” She jumped back down again. “I guess we’re all going together. That okay, Joe?”
“Get in!”
Allie jumped in the back seat. “Joe, drive fast, okay? I’m so scared for Siren.”
I grabbed the crumpled note off the pavement, just in case we needed to show it to a cop. I jumped into the front seat.
Joe slipped the Grand Am into reverse, then slammed it into drive and we peeled out of the parking lot.
“Look. There’s the last of the fireworks finale,” I said, fastening my seat belt and pointing to the MSU campus.
“Siren hates fireworks,” Allie said. “I hope he can’t hear them. Just drive, Joe, okay? Can Sadie use your phone to call Scout? And 911? Again?”
Joe handed me his phone and steered down the street, going way over the speed limit. I dialed Scout. While his phone rang, I rolled my window all the way down to let the night air rush over my face. It was still almost as hot as it had been during the race. Like riding through hell.
Joe’s radio crackled faintly, the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” while bursts of color exploded in the finale over our heads and I waited for Scout to answer his phone.
Allie groaned and slouched in the back seat. “Oh, poor Siren.”
I hung up and dialed again. “Come on, Scout, come on. Answer the—Hi! Oh, I’m so glad you answered!” I gave him the super-fast run-down. “So we need you to meet us at Allie’s. When I get off the phone, I’m calling the cops to come, too … Allie, where do you live?”
“The LeHillier trailer court. That shit hole.”
“Scout wants an address—your house number.”
I relayed the information to Uncle Scout. “Now,” I added. “We need you now. Faster than is humanly possible, please.”
I punched 9-1-1.
“Yeah. Is Rankin there? Officer Kate?...Well, tell somebody to get to 437 Sandstone Lane in LeHillier now. This is Sadie Lester … ” And I told the dispatch officer as much as I could in a hurry. “Hurry, please. This is the guy that killed Father Malcolm.”
Joe followed Allie’s directions and we turned down the gravel road toward the trailer park. Smaller fireworks popped in the sky over us, illegal blossoms of color.
“Go this way.” Allie pointed toward the dumpster cemetery route. “It’s the back way, and you’ll come out behind our place. It might be less obvious.” We were all for being less obvious, so we went the way she was pointing.
We bumped down the dirt road, which was grassy in spots, and we drove through the parting of the Red Sea, watching both sides as if expecting somebody to jump out at us from one of the rusty dead dumpsters. Joe turned the corner, which cut through a short section of the junk woods and came out in the trailer court.
He turned. The car hit two huge ruts and the bottom hit dirt with a sickening THUNK, but the car chugged on past, the bottom scraping every now and then through the ruts.
Allie directed us again, this time to the road behind her trailer. “Here,” she said. “Let me out. I’m gonna sneak around and see if Siren’s around front.”
“You nuts?” Joe said. “You’re not doing that alone.”
“Joe,” I said, “I wish Scout was already here.”
“I know,” he said. “He should be soon.”
We parked. Allie pulled something long and skinny from her backpack and stuck it in her back pocket, but I couldn’t see what it was in the dark.
We trotted through the back side of Allie’s block of trailers. “Good thing,” Joe puffed quietly, “that I quit smokin’.”
“Shh now,” Allie warned.
The place was silent, like a big sleeping pack of dangerous dogs. The fireworks popping behind us seemed like something from some other world. Here, there were no trees. There were trailers, trashed vehicles, usable vehicles, four-wheelers, and piles of junk to hide behind. Otherwise, we were out in the open.
We came to the back of Allie’s place, my heart hammering and sweat streaming down my back. I’d forgotten how tired I was. We crept through dusty weeds toward the side of her trailer. Back here, there were discarded tires, but they were in neat piles. Probably Allie’s work, I figured.
We turned the corner. On the side, a mass of sunflowers bobbed their heads, bowed in the dark. Allie motioned toward them. “In honor of the Tour de France,” she whispered. “I plant them every year. Wait! Listen.”
She stopped, frozen, held her hand up to stop me. I could hear it too. A very faint whimpering, the sound of a dog unable to make a sound but trying with everything he was worth.
Allie stepped to the front edge of the trailer, peeked around, and yanked herself back. She looked at us, eyes wild, and motioned to the front of the trailer. “He’s there,” she mouthed. “Dad has Siren. And a gun.” She held her hand to mime a pistol, a fist with pointer finger out and thumb up.
My heart was hammering. I was sure Joe and Allie and Cecil Baker himself could hear it, it was so loud. My throat wasn’t working.
“Wait here,” she mouthed at us. She whistled low, and we could hear a scrambling, scuffling, as Siren tried to respond to Allie’s whistle. The sound that wasn’t a whimper became more desperate to be one.
“Allison?” Cecil said. “Allison, I know you’re there. I knew you’d come. Come to Daddy.”
Allie breathed out, deep. She looked back at us, and motioned us to stay where we were. She put her hand over her mouth, then dropped it, ran her hand through her hair, put her shoulders back, and stepped between the house and the four-wheeler ATV I’d seen Cecil riding.
“Dad, I came—what’s wrong with Siren?”
“Nothing’s wrong. He’s just sleepy is all. Allison, come to Daddy. Come here, baby.”
“Dad, what did you do to him?”
“I didn’t do anything to him. I just put the muzzle on him.”
“What did you have them do to him, then, the two assholes you sent?”
“Aren’t you glad to see your daddy?”
I dropped flat on the ground and slid behind the four-wheeler, creeping forward just until I could see Allie an
d Cecil from underneath it. Squatted beside Siren, Cecil had a steel choke chain around the dog’s neck and a muzzle over his mouth. Siren had to be drugged, because his eyes were rolling and he was swaying as if he were drunk. Cecil was holding a pistol.
Allie moved toward Siren and Cecil stood up, letting Siren flop onto his side.
Joe hit the ground beside me, his hip and leg against mine. He grabbed my hand.
Cecil stuffed the gun into the back of his jeans and reached out to Allie. “Come to Daddy, baby.”
“Dad, what’s wrong with him? How much—what—did they give him!?”
“They gave him a tranquilizer to get him. And then when he got here, he was freaked out from the fireworks. So I put a little OxyContin in some meat,” Cecil said. “Maybe a bit much, but he’ll be okay. You know how he gets and sometimes he won’t let me get close to him otherwise. Come and give your daddy a hug.” Cecil grabbed Allie’s arm and pulled her against him. I imagined that chest as hard as rawhide.
Allie’s arms hung at her sides. “You’re not supposed to be here. Or anywhere near me. You’re breaking parole.”
“I had to see you, baby. You know that. Come on inside, though, just in case.”
“Dad, no. I have to help Siren first. Something’s really wrong with him.”
Even in his drugged state, Siren swiped a paw at the muzzle, trying to get it off.
“Give your daddy a hug first.”
Allie lifted doll-like arms, and put them around her father’s back. I couldn’t believe those sinewy arms of hers could move with such stiffness.
Siren’s body spasmed violently.
“Dad! I have to get that muzzle off him. He can’t breathe. It’s too hot. He needs to pant.” She tore herself from her father’s arms and dropped to her knees beside Siren.
“Leave the damn muzzle on. You know he bites.”
“He can’t breathe! He could die.” Allie fumbled with the buckle.
Joe poked me in the ribs. When I looked at him, he jerked his head to the left. There was Scout, out of sight, plastered as much as a man his size could be, around the corner of the trailer. He held his finger to his lips and then pointed across the yard and dirt road. Behind the Bakers’ neighbors’ trashed car and pile of anti-freeze cans and tires, overgrown with weeds, I could see Thomas, on his knees, a black powder rifle drawn and pointed straight at Cecil.
Chasing AllieCat Page 18