The Piper (CASMIRC Book 2)

by Ben Miller

  Carl had introduced his daughter to this path. They used to walk from their house, through the soccer fields, and down this path to go to the pond. He had taught her to skip stones there, and she had gotten quite proficient at it. She even beat his performance last time, posting a best of sixteen skips to his measly twelve. She used to love to throw other objects in there—rocks and sticks, mostly—and make observations about how the size and shape of the object influenced the ensuing ripples. One day they found a school of tadpoles, and Carl explained how they would transform someday into frogs. This had fascinated Danielle for the better part of an hour.

  Surely Danielle had had these memories in mind when she last walked this trail too. Her last soccer game had ended, and her team had at least an hour to wait until their next game. She had never really enjoyed soccer much, anyway, so taking a diverting walk to one of her favorite spots would have seemed like an easy decision. This, accompanied by the memory of his picking up an extra shift at work that Saturday and thus missing the soccer tournament, left Carl with his backbreaking case of depression and guilt. Had he just done one thing differently, his lovely, shy, sweet little girl would still be here.

  The only shred of consolation came from what Carl had accomplished this morning. The state justice system had failed him—and many others—today, but he had enacted his own form of justice. He hadn’t meant to shoot Victor Upshall in addition to Randall, but, in retrospect, he regarded it as a nice bonus.

  He had swapped out the hunting rifle he had used from the top level of the parking garage in Richmond for his shotgun. He had packed both in the trunk last night after Amy had gone to bed. He had the day planned out well, and, for fear of the police looking for him prior to his arrival back here in Front Royal, he didn’t want to have to go home just to switch guns. After cleaning the guns last night, he had fully loaded the rifle, but he only put one shell in the shotgun.

  He came upon the spot where Randall had attacked and strangled Danielle and stood over it for several seconds. He allowed himself to cry one last time for his daughter, not as much for how he felt he had failed her, but more for how much he missed her.

  He hoped he would see her again, and he hoped it would be soon. He hoped his pastor was wrong, that suicide did not result in eternal damnation. Surely Danielle resided in Heaven, if it existed—and he hoped it did. He wanted so badly to see her again, to tell her it’s all going to be OK.

  He sat down on the moist ground and leaned against a nearby tree. He placed the butt of the shotgun in the ground between his legs and turned the barrel towards himself. “I miss you,” he whispered aloud, small tears still trickling down his face. He opened his mouth, placed the end of the barrel against his soft palate, and with his thumb he depressed the trigger.

  DAY EIGHT:

  WEDNESDAY

  86

  Heath Reilly didn’t want to look under the sheets. He knew he needed to, and that he would eventually, but he wasn’t ready to right now.

  He had awakened over an hour ago, but he hadn’t fully emerged from his partially drug-induced slumber until probably thirty minutes ago. That was when his nurse and the team of doctors came in to round on him and delivered all the medical updates. They had mentioned that the severe crush injury to his left leg released some potentially harmful enzymes into his bloodstream. This, in combination with dehydration, caused him to have mild injury to his kidneys. They expected a full recovery, but they would need to leave a Foley catheter in his bladder to carefully measure his urine output. He could use the button beside him that resembled a contestant’s buzzer on Jeopardy! to deliver doses of IV pain medication. He could order a tray of food and eat what he wanted, and he would likely be transferred out of the ICU later tonight or tomorrow, depending on how his kidneys recovered.

  But all he really remembered from that conversation was that his left foot had been amputated.

  “BKA” the young resident doctor had called it, which the nurse had later explained meant “below knee amputation.” The safe had simply destroyed the bony structure of his ankle and foot beyond repair.

  This didn’t make any sense, though. He knew his left foot was still there. He could feel it. It hurt like hell, actually, however this pain was different from what he had experienced in Dana’s basement. This was a burning pain, with occasional shocks of electricity shooting up his leg. And it itched. He had to restrain himself from reaching down to scratch it. When he looked down, he could see his right foot tenting up the sheet and thin blanket laying over him. No such match existed on the left side of the bed, though. He knew it was gone—the doctors wouldn’t lie to him—but he couldn’t bear to get visual confirmation yet.

  He heard a rap on the glass door, and he looked up to see Jack and Camilla.

  “Hey, buddy.” Jack waved with one hand and offered a wan smile, addressing him like he might a seven-year-old nephew who had just had his tonsils removed. Reilly half-expected Jack to refer to him as “Tiger” or “Champ” before his visit ended.

  Camilla took a much different approach: she swiftly came to the side of the bed and leaned in for a hug. With one arm tethered by an IV, Reilly embraced her with the other. She released from the hug but kept her arms on his shoulders. “This sucks,” she said. Her bluntness took him by surprise, and he smiled. “How are you?” she asked.

  Reilly had to clear his throat—in addition to not talking for most of the last twenty-four hours, Camilla’s empathy had left him a little choked up. “OK. Doctors say my kidneys should recover fine. I guess that’s the biggest hurdle right now.” He looked down at the void under the sheets on the left side and forced a chuckle. “Hurdle. Poor choice of words.”

  Camilla backed off and Jack held forth an iPad. “I brought this for you. Thought it might keep you entertained.”

  “Thanks.” Reilly took it and laid it on the bed beside him. “How about Dana? Is she…?”

  Jack nodded. “Severe intracranial hemorrhage. Must have sustained it in the fall down the stairs.”

  Reilly blinked and shook his head. “God, I don’t even remember much of it.”

  “You did yesterday,” Camilla told him. “You went through the whole story on the ambulance ride here.”

  “You rode in the ambulance with me?”

  Camilla nodded. “Yep.”

  “That was amazing detective work, Heathrow,” Jack added. “You did it, man. That was all you.”

  Reilly smiled. Not only did Jack recognize his involvement in solving the kidnappings, but he had also given him a nickname. Jack had never called him by a nickname before. “What about the other babies?” he asked.

  “We’re pouring through Dana’s files,” Jack explained.

  “That’s where Jeff and Amanda are right now—they said to pass on their thoughts,” Camilla added.

  Jack continued. “And Jeff said he’d contact you soon, but he wanted to pass along his gratitude. We’ve already located one baby so far—Portia Stiles. Tina Langenbahn is going to pick her up from the hospital later today.”

  Reilly allowed himself a satisfied smile. Some good came of his horror. A thought suddenly occurred to him that faded his smile. “Has anyone talked to Corinne?”

  “I talked to her yesterday,” Jack answered. “She flew up this morning. She’s downstairs at the information desk and should be up soon.”

  Reilly sighed in relief. His eyes moistened again. “Thanks. What did she say?”

  “She’s happy you’re OK. I didn’t say anything about…” Jack trailed off as he looked down toward the bottom of Reilly’s bed. “…any details. She knows you’re OK and that you caught the Piper.”

  Reilly nodded.

  “We’re really proud of you, Heath,” Camilla said in a motherly tone that lacked any condescension.

  A knock came at the door. All three of them looked to see Corinne standing at the threshold. She hurried over and hugged Reilly. “Thank God you’re OK,” she said.

  “We’ll let you two be.”
Jack neared the bed and grasped Reilly’s hand. He gave Corinne a pat on the back. He then began moving toward the door, ushering a waving Camilla along with him. “I’m flying back home tonight. I’ll see you as soon as you get back in Virginia. Be well.”

  “Thanks,” Reilly called after them. “Thank you both so much.” He gestured toward the bedside armchair. “Hey, beautiful. Sit, please.”

  Corinne clasped his free hand, intertwining their fingers, as she sat on the front of the cushion. She leaned in close to Reilly. “Jack said you’ll be OK, right?”

  “Doctors expect a full recovery.” He didn’t know how to break the news of his lost limb. He had never lost one before and wasn’t quite sure how to talk about it. He hadn’t even said the words out loud yet. “Except…”

  “What?”

  Reilly pointed down toward the bottom of the bed. He wiggled the toes of his right foot, accentuating the emptiness on the left side.

  Corinne looked at him in shock. “What happened?!” She did not wait for him to answer. She pulled down the sheets to reveal the bandaged stump below his left knee. They gasped simultaneously, both seeing it for the first time. It was Corinne who broke the silence. “Oh, my God! Heath, what happened?!”

  Reilly relayed to her the information from the doctors. He finished with, “They said they have a great prosthetics guy here, so I got that going for me.” When he looked over at Corinne, the color had not returned to her face. She didn’t look at him or at his stump; she just stared off through the floor by the bed. “But I’ll do almost all my rehab at home, they said.” Her gaze didn’t waver. “Corinne?”

  She flashed out of her trance to look at his face briefly, but then her eyes fell to the mattress beside him. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Well, I guess you don’t have to say anything. Especially not any jokes about one-legged guys.” His effort to lighten the mood failed miserably, as she glanced at him with borderline disgust. He tried to recover. “I’m just glad you’re here.”

  He could feel her grip on his hands weaken. “I’m so sorry,” she finally said.

  “Thanks. I’ll be fine. I’ll get through this.” She still hadn’t made eye contact since pulling back the sheet. “Hey. We’ll get through this, right?” He let go of her slipping hand to cup her chin and turn her face toward him.

  Corinne met his eyes briefly before they fell again, settling somewhere near the middle of the bed. She did not look again at his shortened leg. “Right,” she finally agreed. She forced a smile and again met his gaze. “You’ll get through this.”

  Reilly halted his breathing for a minute, noticing that she replaced his “we” with a “you.” He hoped it bore no meaning. Just a matter of speaking, he wanted to believe.

  Corinne leaned forward and pulled the sheet back over his lower half. When she settled back in the chair, her eyebrows raised to project a more optimistic veneer. “Maybe you can get one of those springy attachment prosthetics, so you can jog again.”

  “Sure!” Reilly’s cheeks brightened, exhibiting the most color they had since his admission into the hospital. “I see those all the time now. I’m sure that’s standard now for those prosthetics guys.”

  “All the cool kids have ‘em,” Corinne said, cracking a smile for the first time in what seemed like a decade.

  Reilly instinctively returned a genuine smile. Maybe they would be OK after all.

  DAY NINE:

  THURSDAY

  87

  There are things in this world worse than death.

  While Jackson Byrne stood over Randall Franklin’s bed in the ICU at Virginia Commonwealth University Hospital, this phrase—one of the last sentences his father ever uttered to him—echoed through his mind. While holding his father’s hand on his deathbed, Jack had verbalized his prayers for the prolongation of his dad’s life while battling end-stage pancreatic cancer. His father’s retort had signaled his desire to end his suffering. At that point, death became preferable to the life Anthony Byrne had been living. Jack wondered if Randall would think the same thing now.

  Jack went to sit in the small, uncomfortable chair at the bedside. He was reminded of the torturous metal chairs in the jail where he had visited Randall, and the symmetry just made him shake his head.

  Despite his face being exposed, Randall was nearly unrecognizable. Thick gauze encircled his neck, with puffs extending up the left side of his face. His swollen eyes glistened with a shimmering lube slathered over them. Held in place by a foam adhesive strip around his mouth, a plastic tube coming from the respirator machine went between Randall’s teeth. Jack surveyed the several LED monitors with flashing lights, ever-changing numbers, and streaming lines. Accompanied by rhythmic beeps, they seemed oddly soothing to Jack.

  “Your theory about the attacker’s voice having greater meaning helped us catch the Piper,” Jack told Randall. “And it probably saved Heath Reilly’s life. It may have taken us much longer to get there without it. Doctors said his kidneys could have shut down. So…thanks.”

  Randall, of course, did not respond.

  “I brought you goldenrod and a 4-H stone,” Jack said, alluding to an obscure tune by singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens about visiting a dying friend. “You’re probably the only person in the world who might get that reference.” Jack watched the monitors carefully, hoping for any change in vital signs that might indicate Randall could somehow hear him. He saw none.

  “Vicki’s doing well. Better than she has in a long time, I think,” Jack continued. “I’m not sure how much—if any—of that Xanax she’s been popping, but I know she’s finally recovering. She couldn’t understand why I’d want to come see you. Frankly, I’m not sure why either.”

  A stout, white-haired woman walked into the room carrying a tote bag. Jack stood up and cleared his throat, feeling embarrassed for talking to the comatose patient.

  “Oh!” The woman startled, putting a beefy hand to her bosom. “Hi! Sorry, I wasn’t expecting anyone to be in here.”

  “That’s OK,” Jack replied.

  “Are you family?” she asked as she regained her composure.

  “No, I’m…” Jack paused. What am I, exactly? How on earth do I describe this relationship? He opted not to examine its complexities in this moment, so he finished his response with, “a friend.”

  “Oh. Well, please, enjoy your visit, then. I’m a volunteer here. I sit with patients who don’t have anyone to sit with them. I was told that Mr. Franklin didn’t have anyone, but clearly your friend here has a friend, so I’ll leave you be.”

  Dr. Franklin, Jack wanted to correct her, but he refrained. “No, please, you can stay. I don’t think I’ll be here much longer.”

  She looked at him with kind eyes, and then she shrugged as she approached with an outstretched hand. “I’m Barbara Fiedor.”

  Jack took her hand. “Jackson Byrne.”

  She set her tote down as she settled into a chair on the other side of the bed. She let out a groan as she leaned over to pull knitting needles and yarn out of her bag.

  “How did you get into this kind of work—or—volunteering?” asked Jack.

  “I’m retired and bored,” she smiled. “I used to work here, in this ICU, years ago.”

  “As a nurse?”

  She nodded. “How’d you guess?”

  “You seem to have a…a caring way about you.”

  She smiled in return.

  “Can I bother you with a few questions?”

  “Sure.” She effortlessly danced her needles through the yarn in a rhythmic fashion. “Like I said, I’m bored.”

  “They say he suffered a massive ischemic stroke. He didn’t get enough blood to half his brain for quite a while. What will that mean? Is he going to be a vegetable?”

  “I know. I watch the news.”

  “And you don’t care about who he is? What he did?”

  “Not really. Not now. Now he needs someone to sit with him, and that’s what I do. I know I’m oversimpli
fying, but I like it this way. I have had too much complexity in my life. Simple is good.

  “To answer your previous question, I’d say it’s way too soon to know. Honestly, he could still die from these injuries. Vascular trauma is very tricky. Blood gets too thick and he could have a huge clot that could kill him. Blood gets too thin and his fragile arteries could bleed again, and that could kill him. If he lives, he could be anything from very neurologically impaired—a vegetable, so you say—or have very effective rehab and go back to living a normal life. Way too soon to predict.”

  Despite her providing him with more information than anyone else had previously, Jack looked down at Randall with more confusion than before.

  The woman pointed a needle at the digital display on the respirator. “See that number there?”

  “Twelve?”

  “Yes. That’s the number of breaths per minute the ventilator is providing.” She extended her needle toward the higher monitor above. “And see this number there? The fifteen?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s how many breaths he’s actually taking,” she explained.

  “So, he’s breathing on his own, faster than the machine?” Jack concluded.

  “That’s right. If they took him off life support, he’d probably live. His brain stem is functioning well enough at this point to keep him breathing.” She went back to her knitting. “Not that it really matters anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’ll never pull the plug. Even if he shows no signs of recovery. See, he’s a ward of the state. No family has come to claim him, and, based on the scuttlebutt around her, they don’t expect any. And the state…well, the state almost never pulls the plug on somebody. And they’re certainly not going to pull the plug on someone accused of murder without having a chance to stand trial. Can you imagine the defendants’ rights protests that would happen? They’d overrun the capitol.”