Going for Kona

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  “Did they check the trunk?”

  He radioed my question. A crackly response came back through. The officer translated. “The car left on the back of a wrecker at the same time we did. They’re trying to raise the driver on his cell phone now.” He glanced back at me and the car swerved. He corrected it. “They couldn’t get the trunk open.”

  “He could be injured! Can we catch the tow truck?”

  “They’re en route, but I can head in their direction.” He slowed down and turned the car around again. “Young and Marchetti with HPD said this wreck is part of their homicide investigation. They’ve got more resources than us, so we sent the vehicle to a yard north of downtown Houston. It’ll take ’em about forty minutes to get it over there and take us about the same from here. If he is even in there, which he may not be, ma’am. Maybe you should call the police in Seguin, too.”

  Robert yelled something I couldn’t understand.

  I took the phone off speaker and put it to my ear. “What’s that?”

  “Your parents are calling the police on the other line. What in the hell have you gotten him into, Michele?”

  “Now is not the time to point a finger at me, Robert. Luckily, I am alive to help you figure out where Sam is. There was a stalker, a killer—not to be confused with Michele, a mother, and the person who figured all this out.”

  I dropped the phone. “Sir, I had a thought. She had time to go by her house, so she could have left my son there. Could someone go check?”

  “That’s a great idea.”

  He got back on the radio and in minutes had ushered up assistance in Houston. “Give ’em about thirty minutes, ma’am. HPD said they have officers close by.”

  I closed my eyes and pictured Sam. I held his face in my mind. The pull I’d felt not to leave the accident. I held back another sob. “Hold on, Sam. I’m coming.”

  “Still no answer from the driver of that tow truck, ma’am. We’ll get there soon, though.”

  I put my phone to my ear again. “Robert, are you there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want to stay on the phone while we’re en route?”

  “I do. And Michele, I’m sorry for what I said earlier. That was out of line. I’m scared about Sam.”

  “I understand. I’m scared, too.”

  The drive seemed to take forever, but twenty minutes later we pulled into an impound lot on Dart Street, with downtown Houston looming over us in the near distance.

  The tow truck and the old Taurus had an ambulance parked beside it.

  Just then, the radio crackled to life. Garble, garble, garble.

  “What did they say?”

  “It’s the officers at the suspect’s home. They didn’t receive an answer to the knock on the door. They have entered and are searching. No sign of anyone yet.”

  In the office, the driver was logging in the Taurus. I was in his face in a split second. “Why don’t you answer your phone?”

  He scowled at me. “Who the hell are you, and what’s it to you?”

  The officer held his hand up to quiet me. “Sir, I’m Officer Dodge, and we called ahead. That’s our ambulance. We have reason to believe there’s someone in the trunk of the vehicle you towed in. We need to search it.” He turned to the desk officer and flashed his badge. “This accident occurred in my jurisdiction, and I am working in cooperation with Detectives Young and Marchetti of HPD. Can I get some help opening the trunk, please? It’s an emergency.”

  The man at the desk nodded and talked into an intercom.

  I went outside and started pacing in front of the building, where the scents of urine and gasoline assaulted me. I breathed through my mouth, trying not to hyperventilate. The tow truck driver came back out with a large man in greasy clothes wielding a crowbar and some other tool. They took Officer Dodge and me back out to the Taurus.

  The two men worked together on the trunk, grunting and straining as one worked on the lock and the other levered with the pry bar. The ambulance attendants stood beside them.

  “Sam, honey, Sam, are you in there?”

  Officer Dodge’s radio crackled to life again. This time, without the highway noise, I could understand the voices clearly.

  “No sign of anyone at the residence of Ms. Willis. The officers have completed their search. Detective Young was on the scene, and he identified pictures of the boy and his family in her things.”

  I swallowed hard and looked back at the Taurus. The roof and front end had sustained the worst damage, but two strong men couldn’t get the crumpled trunk to budge.

  I spoke into my phone. “Robert, are you there?”

  “I’m here, I heard.”

  A popping noise drew my attention to the officer working on the trunk. “I think we’ve got it. Stand clear.”

  I couldn’t swallow the enormous lump in my throat. Tears stung my eyes as I prayed, “Please, God, let him be all right. If he’s in there, let him be all right. If he’s not, let him please come home and be all right. Just please let my Sam be okay.”

  The trunk latch released, but it didn’t pop open. The officer bent his legs and positioned himself low with his hands around the bottom of the trunk lid. He pushed with his legs in a dead lift, crying out with the strain until the lid groaned, then with a long, loud creak, opened.

  My son lay motionless inside.

  I yelled so loud my voice hurt my own ears. “It’s him!”

  Robert’s voice crackled from my phone. “Michele, is he okay?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t know the answer. I watched the two paramedics as they reached into the trunk to do their work. He was wrapped in a wool blanket, with a strip of something white through his mouth. His forehead had a gash, and there was blood, a lot of blood, but I couldn’t tell how bad it was.

  One of the paramedics turned his head toward me. “We’ve got a pulse. His respiration is slow, though. We’re going to move him out of here. Please stand clear.”

  “Robert, he’s alive. They’re getting him out now.” The phone fell from my hand, and

  I dropped my head into my hands and sobbed.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  I woke with a start in a strange place. The smells were strange: antiseptic, coffee, and something vaguely unpleasant. My forehead was resting on a flat, hard surface. I lifted it and looked down. A table. A cup of coffee of suspicious origins in front of me. I sniffed. Definitely not Kona.

  An efficient female voice interrupted my thoughts. “I’m Dr. Smith. Are you Sam’s mother?”

  Hope surged in me and I leaped to my feet. “Yes, I’m Michele Lopez Hanson.”

  She waved her hand “no.” “Please, have a seat. I just wanted to update you on Sam’s condition.”

  I lowered myself back into my chair and put one hand around my cold coffee, the other in my lap. “Thank you very much. Please, how is he?”

  “Lucky, for one. Really, we can’t find any serious injuries.”

  “His head?”

  She smiled. “A concussion, but that’s it. We’d like to watch him overnight, but if all is well in the morning, you can take him home then.”

  “Oh, thank you!” I rose so quickly I jarred the table and knocked my coffee over. “I’m so sorry!” Coffee ran in every direction and soaked the tiny napkin underneath the cup.

  Dr. Smith went to the condiments bar and brought back a stack of paper towels and we both started blotting. “He woke up while we were stitching up his forehead. His head hurts and he’s pretty nauseous, but that’s to be expected. He’s on his way to a room now. You can go see him.” She gave me the room number. “I’ll finish this up.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Of course. Go.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” I said over my shoulder. I was already halfway to the door.

  I rounded the corner of the cafeteria into the hallway, where my body met a solid object. Large, unyielding, but not hard. A familiar scent. Two large hands reached for my upper arms. They were ge
ntle.

  “Sorry.”

  “Just the person I came to see.” It was Detective Young.

  “I’m on my way to Sam.” I stepped back and started around him.

  He reversed course and fell in step with me. “Good. I’d like to see him, too.”

  I bristled. “He has a concussion. He’s in no condition for questioning.”

  “I only want to see him, to tell him I’m glad he’s okay. That I’m glad this is over, and I’m sorry.”

  “Okay. Is Marchetti with you?”

  “He’s back at the station doing all the paperwork. He’ll be with me when we take Sam’s statement. Yours, too.”

  “But—”

  “Slow down, Michele. When Sam is ready.”

  “Good.”

  I pushed the call button when we reached the elevators and the doors opened immediately. We got in together and ascended, jerking and dinging, to the third floor. When the doors opened and we stepped out, I said, “Thank you. For taking it seriously this morning about Sam.”

  “I got your messages last night about Rhonda Dale and the other women, and what you’d done. That was pretty damn stupid, you know.”

  “Someone had to do something. I was right about the Taurus. And that woman won’t get the chance to kill my son like she did my husband.”

  “Point taken.”

  We turned onto Sam’s hall and I pushed ahead of Young into Sam’s room. My eyes pulled my son into me. Tall, dark, and handsome, that was my boy, even in a hospital bed. A blue flowered gown hung from his frame, and his forelock hung over his bandaged forehead. He was sitting with the head of the bed raised, clicking a remote control.

  “Sam.”

  He tracked my voice, and grinned, or tried to. His eyes were sunken and black-rimmed. “Mom.” His voice was scratchy and young.

  “How are you feeling, kiddo?”

  “Weird. Not great.”

  “You’ve got a concussion, I’m sorry to say, so it may be a long night.” I leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I love you. I’m so happy you’re okay.” I sat down in the stuffed leather chair beside the bed and took his hand. He didn’t resist.

  Young moved close to the bed. “Hi, Sam.”

  Sam looked at me. I smiled. “He’s just here to say hello.”

  Sam said, “Hello,” in a deeper voice than he’d used with me.

  “It’s good to see you’re all right. When you’re feeling a little better, I’ll come back and talk to you about what happened, but it’s all going to be okay.” Young stepped up to the bed. “Has anyone told you yet that your mother saved your life?”

  Sam shook his head, just a little, and grimaced. “No, nobody’s told me anything.”

  I patted his hand. “Do you remember what happened, honey?”

  “Uh—” He stopped and looked at the door as Robert, Papa, and Mom walked in, erupting with noise. Sam winced but smiled.

  I stood up. “Easy guys. Concussion.”

  Papa stepped in front of Robert and Mom and peered into Sam’s eyes. His hand reached into his pocket for his pen light, ever the man of medicine, even if usually with animals. He came up empty.

  My father hugged me. “Itzpa, we were worried.”

  I stood and slipped my arm around him. “He’s going to be fine, Papa.”

  Young made an “ahem” sound. Papa released me. “Tough kid you’ve got here. Good kid.”

  All heads swiveled toward the interloper’s voice.

  I gestured toward Young. “Everyone remember the detective?”

  “We’ve met over the phone.” My mother’s voice promised she had a lot to say about it, but she held it in. Robert and Papa just nodded.

  “Good to see you all again.” Young made a round of the group, shaking reluctantly proffered hands. “I have to get back to the station. Michele, Sam, I’ll see you guys later.”

  I moved back to let my mother join Papa. An arm slipped around my shoulders, and Robert squeezed me, hard. It was the first time he’d touched me since I moved out of the house we’d lived in together. I wouldn’t need a repeat for a long time, but I didn’t resist. I put my arm around his midsection and squeezed him once, too. Sam was our son. Right now, the only person in the world who felt like I did was this man beside me.

  My phone rang. I broke free of Robert and saw it was Annabelle. “Hello, Belle.” I had sent her a message earlier that Sam was in the hospital, but I’d left out the details. It was the first time she’d called or texted me in days, and I was glad to hear her voice.

  “It’s all over the news, and Facebook.” Her words ran together. “Is he all right, Michele? Is Sam going to be all right?”

  “Yes, sweet pea, he is. He can go home in the morning. Let me hand him the phone.” Smiling, I held it out to my son. “For you. It’s your sister.”

  An hour later, we had worn Sam out. Papa and Robert leaned against the window ledge and stared at the TV, a preseason NFL game. The Texans and somebody. Mom and I sat on either side of Sam, patting him. The kid would have bruises soon, but I just couldn’t stop.

  “You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to, Sam, but do you remember what happened?” I bit a fingernail on my non-patting hand.

  “Michele.” My mother shook her head, miming biting a fingernail. I pulled it away from my mouth, then hated myself for doing it.

  Sam touched the bandage on his forehead. “Yeah, umm, not a lot. I went to bed, and then I woke up because I heard something. A woman was in my room, and she had a gun. She told me to stay quiet or she’d kill my grandparents. She made me get in the trunk of her car, then she jabbed my arm with something, and I don’t remember anything after that.”

  “Well, kiddo, let me tell you the rest.” My mother’s version? I stiffened. “That same woman ran your mother off the road on her bicycle, and the car flipped and the woman died. We discovered you were missing, and no one had a clue what to do. Except your mom. She told the police you were in the trunk of that car. Nobody believed her at first. But she didn’t stop until they’d found you, right where she said you’d be.”

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard my mother talk like that about me. I put my fist to my mouth to hold in a sob.

  “Mom? How’d you know?”

  I lowered my fist slowly and relaxed my hand. “I don’t know. I just knew.”

  “She was the same woman I hit with Adrian’s car, wasn’t she?”

  I nodded but I couldn’t speak. Sam still called it Adrian’s car. He hung on to Adrian, too. Something zinged my heart. Adrian should be here.

  Mom took over the conversation and Sam hung on her words, letting her fill in the blanks for him. As much as it soothed my soul to see my boy’s brown eyes clear and my mother take rare pride in me, my mind was adrift. Adrian wasn’t with me anymore, and I wasn’t sure when I’d lost him.

  When I came to my senses after the wreck, he was gone. I thought back to the moments before the crash, to his arms around me, to his breath on my neck. To the moment I didn’t jump my bicycle.

  I hadn’t jumped my bike because I wanted to stay with Adrian, and I’d almost joined him. Instead, I lived, and because of that, my son was alive. A horror swept through me. If I’d died, no one would have found Sam. Somehow, God or fate or—who knows, maybe even Adrian—had intervened, and because of it Sam lived. Jesús Cristo, I had made a choice that almost cost Sam his life.

  Like a bulldozer, a thought crushed me: Adrian vanished when Stephanie died. I found his killer, and he was gone. The sobs I held in almost strangled me, but I could not fall apart again, not when Sam needed me, not when everyone thought I was finally back to acting like a real mother. Oh, what they didn’t know. What they didn’t know.

  And then the warmth slipped over me, the warmth of my husband. Maybe he wasn’t gone. I focused on the feeling, listening for his voice. I strained, but there was nothing. Something inside told me to me look up, look UP, and when I did, there he was, standing in the doorway to Sam
’s room, right where he should be. I stretched my hand toward him. He was so beautiful. His blond wavy hair, his sparkling green eyes. I could even smell him. He was real. The scent of tennis shoes, Old Spice, and him. Just him. I dove into his eyes, and his thoughts washed over me.

  “You’re not safe, Butterfly. It’s not over.” He disappeared.

  “Take me with you!” The warmth faded and I felt a pop, and something inside me loosened and fluttered down, down, down. I spoke aloud. “Adrian? Adrian!”

  But he was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  I spent the night with Sam in the hospital, staring into the dark, unmoving, unwound, and untethered. I couldn’t stop the images that blasted through my head one after another in an endless loop. Adrian, catapulting into the sky in a shower of sparks off the bumper of Stephanie’s car. Sam, tiny and unconscious, wrapped in a burning wool blanket. Stephanie shoving Annabelle into the airport security line as the terminal around them ignited, Stephanie holding a lighter under Scarlett’s red nails as they burst into flame, and me flying on La Mariposa toward Stephanie, a lance with a glowing hot tip gripped under my right arm and aimed for her head. The fire in my head robbed the heat from the rest of my body. I wrapped myself in every blanket I could beg from the nurses, but I couldn’t get warm. The minutes ticked by, one second at a time, hours marked into halves by the visits of the night nurse to check on Sam.

  At five fifteen the next morning, I heard a tap on the door. I jumped. My mother poked her head around the corner.

  I tried to keep my voice down. “Do you know what time it is?”

  “You don’t have to whisper, Mom,” Sam said. “Somebody comes in and wakes me up every ten seconds, so it’s not like I’m asleep.” He sounded tired and cranky.

  Mother marched to the chair on the other side of Sam’s bed and sat herself in it. “I’ll handle it from here, Michele. Call when you’re done, in case they’ve let us check Sam out.”

  “What?”

  She made a little hrmph noise. “You only have six weeks of training left until you taper. Now’s not the time to slack off.”