Eye of the Beholder

  The boy had been read his rights and then, because he was still a minor, his mother had been allowed to accompany him to the hospital for a blood test. Sheridan would have the blood tested for drug use and a type match on the sperm samples they had taken from Zoe Caldwell. The boy had an alibi for the night of her assault, but it was from his mother, who said he’d been alone in his room, and she could easily be lying to cover for him.

  But why, if it was the boy, would she have called him? Sheridan shifted uncomfortably in the hard plastic chair outside the exam room. It was possible that she knew her son had done this and was trying to divert them away from him, but if she was making it up then she should have had a more substantial story, or at least someone to throw the suspicion on. Why bring the police into their house and call attention to the connections to the neighbor who was missing? She seemed smarter that that.

  It just didn’t add up. It couldn’t be the boy; and while he sat here, the real maniac had another victim. If it wasn’t the Whitehorse girl, if she had run away of her own accord, then Sheridan was sure that there would be another. He thought of the blistered and blackening mark on the first victim’s forehead and felt the heat of the burn in his stomach.

  She was here in the hospital—Zoe Caldwell, still in intensive care and not likely to leave it alive. He’d met the mother, a pale, tragic woman whose only hope had been that she would sneak through life unnoticed, transparent, without major incident or pain. Sheridan felt certain that this crime would kill her too. What mother could go on to live a normal life after this kind of horror? It didn’t take a detective to answer that question.

  He wanted the drug screen right away; the type match with the sperm sample would take a couple of weeks, and he didn’t know if he had that much time. He squirmed to try to ease the pain in his gut and reached into his pocket for the package of antacid, but found only an empty wrapper. He stood, intending to go to the pharmacy and buy more, when the door to the lab opened and Greer and Joshua Sands both appeared.

  The boy was holding his left arm crooked up tightly, and a wad of cotton peeked from the crease. Sheridan expected the mother to regard him with contempt, but she looked at him and smiled understandingly.

  “All done,” she said. “Now, do we go home or what?”

  “We wait a little.” Sheridan regarded the two of them, who both watched him calmly, without accusation, waiting to hear what they needed to do next, two people with the naive absolute confidence of innocence.

  Sheridan had a thought. It was no more than a hunch, but then, he didn’t have anything else. “Let’s go down to the main waiting room. I want to get the initial results right away. We’ll wait there.”

  They headed out of ER and down a long hallway, until they came to a set of double doors marked CRITICAL CARE, AUTHORIZED VISITORS AND HOSPITAL PERSONNEL ONLY. Flashing his badge at the dull-faced nurse behind the Plexiglas partition, he opened the door and he gestured for them to go through ahead of him. “We’ll cut through this way.”

  Sheridan deliberately walked a few steps behind them, not speaking, but counting the ward numbers on his left. Two more, one more—suddenly Greer pulled up, stopping so abruptly that he almost walked into her. Raising both hands to her chest, she started to breathe quickly and shallowly. She spun to face him, almost accusingly.

  “She’s here,” she whispered. “Zoe Caldwell is here.” Swiveling slowly in place as though she were turning to face a ghost, she raised one hand toward the ward door. “In there.”

  Sheridan watched as she closed her eyes and tears started in the corners, streaming almost uncontrollably down her face. “Her mother is with her.” Without warning or indication, the woman’s almost eerily green eyes flew open, and she said. “She’s going to try to kill herself.”

  Sheridan moved rapidly to the door and pushed it open. A nurse looked up quickly from where she was fastening a drip bag over the patient. In a chair next to the bed, a woman with gray hair sat with her head bowed, immobile. She seemed to be beyond noticing anyone’s presence.

  Sheridan breathed a sigh of relief, then backed away from the personal pain, letting the door swing slowly shut on the sad scenario. The woman might very well try to kill herself, but she wasn’t doing it now.

  Greer was watching her son when the detective turned to her. Her tears were still wet on her cheeks, but there was awe in her eyes. Sheridan followed her look and found himself speechless again as it began to dawn on him that he was in the presence of something more than what he could see and perceive.

  Joshua had positioned himself so that he could see through the glass in the door to the first bed in the ward. Zoe Caldwell’s bed. He was staring, but not at the scene before him. It was as though he were looking at a double image, the bed and the patient, the mother, and something else superimposed over the picture on his retinas. He could see two places at once, or rather, the same place but in two different yet very real dimensions.

  Over the white sheets and the bleeping monitors the figure of a girl hovered. She smiled down softly at the young woman on the hospital bed, and then looked up at Joshua and nodded, as though she were acknowledging him while she was patiently waiting, helping. As he watched, the girl no one else could see reached a hand down toward the patient and then scooped it toward her chest, smiling softly at Joshua, and somehow he understood. He nodded back and then turned away.

  The detective was watching him intently. Joshua tried to recover himself, to look as though nothing unusual had happened.

  Greer knew that her son had seen something she couldn’t, something present, but with great strength of will she restrained herself from asking him. Instead she turned to Detective Sheridan and tried to deflect his attention.

  “You have to try to help that woman. Please believe me; I’ve never been wrong about something like this,” she pleaded.

  But Detective Sheridan was far too steady a man to be distracted that easily. He didn’t take his gaze off of Joshua. “What did you see?” he asked him.

  Joshua felt a rising panic. He couldn’t be drawn into this. It didn’t matter what he saw; it would help nothing. He didn’t want to be on display. “Nothing,” he lied. “I mean, I saw that poor girl and her mother, and it’s terrible. I’m really sorry for them.” That much was true.

  Sheridan’s granite face regarded the boy without expression. His eyes flicked once to his mother and then back again.

  “Come with me.”

  They walked quickly to the front waiting room and then to a door marked FOR POLICE USE ONLY. The room inside was small, white, glaringly bright, and held only a few folding chairs.

  “Sit down,” ordered the detective.

  Greer and Joshua sat. She reached across to take her son’s hand; it was clammy and cold.

  “All right,” said Sheridan, “maybe there is something to all this; I don’t know. But just in case, I need to know anything you know. Any details, anything that could help me.”

  “I told you what I know—only that the burning eye was over the girl’s picture, and then . . .” Greer hesitated before going on, and Sheridan knew that the truth was in that small pause. “Then I saw the eye over Joy Whitehorse.”

  Detective Sheridan said nothing, just sat, unmoving, like a solid ton of rock until Joshua found himself wondering how the chair could possibly support him.

  The detective watched Joshua without speaking until Joshua couldn’t take it anymore. He fumbled for words. “Mom, remember you said something else? You said that you saw someone pointing up and to the left, and that it seemed like maybe Joy was somewhere dark and small, like a closet.”

  Greer was watching her son with both pride and empathy. She wanted so much to relieve the abrasive pain of discovery and guilt that she sensed he was feeling. She said slowly, “Yes, I did say that, but I didn’t tell the detective because I wasn’t sure that it would help.” She wanted to let him know that he hadn’t failed Joy—or her.

  Sheridan didn’t take his eyes off
of Joshua. He got it now. It was the kid. Both of them, but the kid was the one who could help him if this whole thing wasn’t some bullshit card trick that he was falling sucker to. His stomach felt seared at both possibilities, as though the serpents that writhed there had learned to breathe fire. “Is that all she saw?” he asked the boy.

  Joshua looked down at his hands, busted. “That’s all she told me.”

  The detective leaned back and tried to release some of the burning gas from his stomach with a long, toxic exhalation. “Go home,” he said. “Your son is not to leave the neighborhood for a few days. But as long as his blood comes out clean, I’m not pressing any charges.” A relieved cry escaped from Greer.

  “Not now, anyway,” the detective amended. “I’ve got work to do, and if either of you gets any other . . . ideas, you call me. Do you understand?”

  Greer nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “I want one question answered in return.” Sheridan rocked an inch closer to Joshua. “Who gave you the drugs?”

  Joshua looked up and saw a man who was tired and jaded but still trying to make a difference. At least he could help him this much. Maybe it was something. “Nobody gave them to me. I think that Joy hid them in my room when she was visiting. I didn’t want to say anything because I don’t want her to be in any more trouble than she is.”

  Sheridan snorted slightly. “Great. For a teenager to have that amount of ice means she’s either dealing drugs or at least scoring them for herself and some other people. But it’s very likely that the drugs are involved in some way.” He stared at the blank white wall—it offered exactly the same number of clues as he already had—before turning back to Joshua and Greer. “And if what you . . . ‘sense’ is true, then Joy Whitehorse couldn’t be in worse trouble.”

  Chapter 41

  Luke and Whitney heard Mike’s pickup truck before it got to the parking area. The whole afternoon had been spent pacing and worrying, but no news had come. They heard the sound of the heavy door open and shut.

  Luke opened the door of his house to a friend who was visibly riddled with pain and apology. “Ah, Jesus, Luke,” Mike said, his eyes filling with tears as the two men embraced. “I didn’t know if I should intrude, but I found out what was happening at the shop; everybody’s talking about it. I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

  “I wish there was,” Luke told him, his lips pulling back into a thin, grim line. He stepped aside so that Mike could come into the kitchen. Mike gave Whitney a long, rocking hug and they both wiped tears away. “Sit down. You want some tea or a beer or something?” Luke asked.

  “No, no, I’m fine. I’m just . . . well, I was working when a friend came in and told me about it, and I had to come over and see if you heard anything.” Whitney shook her head and Mike sighed. “How are you doing?” Without waiting for a response he gave a sad, mirthless laugh. “What a stupid question. Obviously not very well.”

  Taking a minute to look first at Whitney and then at Luke, he seemed to come to a decision. “Listen, I’ve known you guys for a long time—hell, I’ve known Joy since she was what? Ten?” His voice choked up a moment, and then he went on. “And this is no time to mince words, so I’m just gonna come out and say it. I think Joy’s been doing drugs. Now, I don’t know for sure; most everything I hear is from my friend Pistol, who’s a mail carrier, and he’s a real gossip. I mean, frankly, he gets a tiny bit of information from a huge number of sources and draws a lot of conclusions based on an active imagination, if you know what I mean. But if what he’s saying is true, he sees her at the high school talking with some pretty dubious characters, not all kids.” Mike paused and shrugged almost apologetically. “I don’t know if this is helpful or not—”

  Luke cut him off. “We know she’s been doing drugs. I searched her room but I didn’t find any. I think she’s been getting the money from her mother, and I think . . .” Luke swallowed and forced himself to go on. “I think she’s been buying drugs for her.”

  Mike was shaking his head. “Jesus Christ.”

  Whitney made the leap to trying to find a connection. “Is there anyone in particular? Any leads that we could tell the detective about?” she asked.

  “First thing I asked him.” Mike was nodding. “Pistol doesn’t know who the people he’s seen are, but I told him today to try to get a license plate or a name, or anything that might be helpful.”

  Luke looked less than hopeful. “The detective already talked to most of the kids she hangs out with at school; they weren’t much help. Of course, they wouldn’t volunteer anything about a drug connection.”

  Mike nodded. “Scared shitless, I would guess. Hell, I would have been at that age.” They all sat, silent and sorry, as the kitchen clock fired off its ticking and the refrigerator hollered its deafening hum into the room. When the quiet became intolerable Mike stood. “I should go back to work for a couple more hours. If there’s anything you want me to do . . . round up some guys and go out looking, break into somebody’s house—I don’t give a shit if it’s legal or not, anything. Please,” he pleaded solemnly, “ask me.”

  “Thanks, Mike,” Luke told him, and then added gravely, “Believe me, if I can think of something, I will.”

  Mike opened his mouth to ask them to let him know if they heard anything, decided that it would sound selfish to ask them to think of him at a time like this, and, with a feeble smile, turned and left Luke and Whitney to the interminable purgatory of ignorance.

  Chapter 42

  The darkness fell early, stretching the late afternoon into a limbo of twilight and gloom. But maybe it’s just me, Dario thought as he glanced at the clock on wall. Five thirty—another hour and a half until he could close up and go to Greer’s.

  He walked to the front to check his appointment book. Three more, the last one scheduled at six thirty. He asked Celia to call and see if the woman could come in earlier; he’d work fast and try to cut out as soon as possible.

  The absence of light outside turned the front windows to mirrors, and when the bells on the door jingled Dario looked up to see his own reflection, which morphed with a rapid swipe into Sterling making his way into the salon.

  “Hi,” he said to Dario, but his eyes swept the large room.

  Dario spared him the trouble. “She’s not back, but she called and said she’s home. I’m going over there as soon as I can get off.”

  “Oh.” The two men regarded each other, and then Sterling asked, “How did it go?”

  Sliding a drawer open, Dario pulled out a pack of cigarettes and removed one of the long, perfect white cylinders from its neat packaging. He knew he shouldn’t smoke, but the familiarity made the smokes seem like friends. Over the tough and lonely times they’d been there for him, more constant than a lover.

  “Come on outside while I have a smoke and I’ll tell you what I know.” He offered the pack to Sterling, who shrugged a “Why not?” and took one.

  They stepped into the cooling evening, shared a light, and Dario exhaled luxuriously.

  “Well, you were right; they thought she was crazy,” Dario said.

  “What a surprise,” Sterling commented dryly.

  “It gets worse. They suspected Joshua. But”—Dario held up his artistic fingers to stop the expletive emerging from the other man’s throat—“they don’t seem to now. Apparently there was a little incident at the hospital that convinced the detective on the case that Greer might be for real.”

  Sterling said nothing, but he shifted his weight uncomfortably.

  Dario took a slow drag on the cigarette and regarded the handsome man curiously. “You don’t think she is,” he observed without accusation. “For real.”

  Sterling looked even more uncomfortable. His tone was unconvincing as he responded, “It’s not that. I mean, I don’t really know her very well.”

  Dario’s laugh opened up with a full-throttle release. “No, you don’t. It would take a great deal more than one date to get to know that woman. Shit, I’
ve known her for fifteen years and she still mystifies me. Of course”—he looked away, and his eyes twinkled as he regarded the mist hugging the hills in the last of the day’s surrendering light—“all the good ones are like that.”

  “What makes you so sure?” In Sterling’s voice was a plea to be convinced. Dario recognized it but didn’t feel inclined to defend Greer. People either got it or they didn’t.

  But sometimes they needed a reason. Dario didn’t mind telling his story; if Sterling believed him, fine. If he didn’t, then there wasn’t any point in his hanging around anyway.

  “When Greer’s husband left her to be with me, it was hard on all of us. They fought to keep valuing each other as people and have a good relationship for Joshua’s sake. Geoffrey never doubted Greer’s ability and deferred to it often. I . . . well, frankly I resented it. I felt threatened by her and their connection. I tried to be patient and understanding, but I’m sorry to say I pretty much sucked at both. So, I fought against believing in her; I even ridiculed her.” He sighed. “I saw later how small and insecure I was acting. They were both doing something much harder, and they rose to the occasion.

  “Geoffrey was a naturalist, a scientist who did field research. One day he bought a new truck, a four-wheel-drive monster, and joked that he could drive over mountains and through lakes with it. We went to pick up Joshua, and when Greer saw the truck she went all pale. Long story short, when Geoff took Joshua out for a ride, she pulled me aside and told me to get him chains for the tires. I laughed at her, but she put her hand on my arm, looked into my eyes, and said, ‘Listen to me: He’s going to get stuck in the snow, and without them he won’t get out, and he won’t survive.’ That’s all she said. I wanted to scoff at it, but when she had touched my arm a kind of kinetic heat had raced up into my chest, and I don’t mind telling you it scared the shit out of me.