Threshold

by G. M. Ford

  The C of D got to his feet and moved over to the huge map of the city on the west wall of the office. He found the intersection of the coordinates with his finger.

  “That’s the middle of the damn river,” Nilsson said.

  “Her car is in the garage at the Royster house. There’s no record of them taking any kind of public transportation, no large withdrawals from any of the family accounts.” Dolan raised a hand. “Most of which the Missus doesn’t have access to anyway.” He flipped a page in his notebook. “The girls weren’t signed out of school or registered somewhere new. They’re not registered in any hotel or motel within a hundred-mile radius.”

  Nilsson was packing his briefcase for the night. “Which tells us what?” he growled.

  “It tells us that a bipolar woman with a six- and an eight-year-old girl managed to put all of this together on one day’s notice.” Dolan counted on his fingers. “More cash in her pocket than she actually has access to. New paperwork for all three of them. Safe transport to someplace that doesn’t keep records. Yadda yadda.”

  Nilsson snapped his briefcase closed.

  “I can’t prove the Women’s Transitional Center helped the Royster family disappear,” Dolan said, “but, as far as I’m concerned, they look like the smart money bet.”

  “And the crystal-gazer daughter?”

  “Jury’s still out on that one.”

  Nilsson shot him a look that would have wilted lettuce.

  “Just saying,” Dolan said.

  Grace handed the turbaned taxi driver another twenty and told him to keep the change.

  He hesitated, surveying the surrounding area with great trepidation.

  “Ain’t nothin’ here, Missy,” he said. “You sure you wanna get out here?”

  “I’ll be fine.” She pressed the bill into his hand.

  He took the money and managed a crooked smile. Crow Street had been built before the automobile ruled the world, back when carts and horses had moved the freight. Dark and dank and dirty, it looked like something out of a Dickens novel. For as long as anyone could remember, the neighborhood had been called Coaltown. The name seemed to fit.

  Across the street, a series of low arches defined the narrow lane. What had once been wagon-loading docks had long since been sealed up, leaving a patchwork of mismatched brickwork running as far as the eye could see. A shadow moved across one of the dirty patches of light. And then another.

  She stepped out of the cab and stood on the sidewalk. The air smelled of salt and rotting garbage. The cab driver popped his door and stepped out beside her. “Lemme take you someplace else, Missy,” he pleaded. “This ain’t no place—”

  And then they were there, by his elbows. Two of them. The one with the big bump on his nose reached up and pulled the turban from the driver’s head, and slammed it hard into his chest. The driver reflexively grabbed it with both hands. His long gray hair came loose and hung down over one ear.

  The one with the bad teeth put his face right up to the driver’s. Nose to nose.

  “Get back in the car,” he said, “and get the fuck out of here.”

  The driver shot Grace a terrified look.

  She nodded, as if to say it was all right. “Go,” she said softly.

  He was a good man. Truly concerned for her safety. But she didn’t have to ask him twice. He slid back into the cab, flipped his turban over onto the passenger seat, dropped the cab into gear and went skittering up Crow Street like a cat with its tail on fire.

  Grace stood on the sidewalk and watched the cab bounce over the cobblestones. She could see the driver’s frightened eyes in the mirror as he gunned it up the street. She waited until he was gone and then looked around. She was alone.

  She pulled off her cap and shook out her long white hair. She’d always found it ironic that this remnant neighborhood, this little puddle of puke left over from another century, was the only place where she could truly be herself. That a neighborhood where her fellow citizens wouldn’t even stop at traffic lights, for fear of being dragged from their cars and killed, was her refuge. Said something about her life, she figured.

  She stuffed the cap into her jacket pocket and walked slowly up Crow Street.

  The rain was gone, but the dampness remained. Centuries of sweat had permeated the stones beneath her feet; she could smell it as she walked along. She could feel shadows moving in the surrounding darkness, too, and hear the faint shuffle of feet, but took little notice. They were there for her.

  When she reached the T at the end of Crow Street, she turned left onto what was known simply as “the ramp.” An inclined brick plane leading up to an ancient metal door that looked like it hadn’t been opened in a couple of centuries. The door slid open just far enough for Grace to slip through. She stepped inside. The door closed.

  Directly in front of her, the yawning mouth of a freight elevator beckoned. She walked over and closed the door; the car began to rise. One floor, two, and then on to the fourth, where her mother was sitting in her wheelchair reading a book.

  She looked up when Grace stepped into the room.

  “How’d it go?” she asked.

  “About as bad as it could have,” Grace answered.

  Clouds were swallowing the city, from the top down. When the call came, Mickey Dolan was motoring down Front Street, heading for home.

  He thumbed the green “Answer” button on his cell phone.

  “Detective Dolan,” he said.

  “This is Officer Fenene.”

  “How can I help you, Officer?” Dolan asked, but groaned inwardly. Last thing on earth he needed was some cop trying to sell him raffle tickets.

  “You remember me?” the voice asked. “From earlier today. Those two skells that was following you.”

  Light bulb. It was the bruiser cop from the alley. The one with the baton.

  “Damn right I remember,” Dolan said. “I haven’t seen a swing that good since Mickey Mantle. What’s up?”

  “Me and Denny—that’s my partner—we took a call about an hour ago. Down at the hospital. Lady says this other lady assaulted her.”

  “Okay,” Dolan said tentatively.

  “So I’m doing my report and I type the assailant’s name into the system and what I get are a whole bunch of ‘contact Sergeant Michael Dolan’ notices. So that’s what I’m doing.”

  “What’s the name?”

  “Grace Pressman,” he said.

  Dolan checked the mirror. He had the street to himself, so he cut hard right, pulled to the curb, and stopped.

  “Where are you now?” he asked.

  “Still at the hospital.”

  “Stick around,” Dolan said. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  Grace made herself a BLT and then sat down at the kitchen table to eat. Across the river, the tops of the buildings were shrouded in fog. Looked like the world was upside down. Which, it occurred to her, was pretty close to how she felt.

  She was most of the way through the sandwich when Eve said, “It probably wasn’t such a good idea to have gone back there so soon.”

  Like that was news or something.

  “What I can’t get my head around,” Grace said, “is how any mother could be unhappy that her son woke up from a coma. I just can’t get it to compute. He’s been lying there in that bed breathing through a machine, and suddenly he’s back in the land of the living, and she’s angry about it. I mean . . . what’s with that?”

  “Imagine having to tell your son that you’d given up on him and wanted to pull the plug,” Eve said.

  “Awkward . . . sure. But compared to what? Compared to having him conscious and back in your life.”

  “People are strange creatures,” Eve offered.

  “Not that strange,” Grace said. “Something’s not right.”

  They settled into an
uneasy silence.

  “I called Mr. K,” Eve said, finally.

  “And?” Grace snapped, angry that her mother had changed the subject.

  “And we’re going to move the Royster family tomorrow.”

  “Where to?”

  “A new safe house. Something more permanent.”

  “What time?”

  “Between ten and eleven. He’s sending cars.”

  Grace said nothing.

  “I can count on you, right?” Eve prodded.

  “I’ll be ready,” Grace said.

  When Mickey Dolan stepped off the elevator, both uniformed officers were leaning on the nurses’ station counter, trying to make time with the duty nurse.

  First thing Dolan noticed was the smell. Something about recycled air set his nose to twitching. He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand as he strode down the hall.

  Denny, the partner, was the first to notice who was coming their way. He ran a stiff hand through his wavy hair and cleared his throat. Officer Fenene straightened up and tried to look professional. Fenene looked even bigger indoors than he had in that alley. Like being in a phone booth with a freezer.

  Dolan motioned with his head. He led them down the hall, away from prying ears. They marched, single file, down the gleaming corridor, into the waiting room, where half a dozen people had spread themselves among the dog-eared magazines and sagging plastic furniture. Looked like Edward Hopper at the hospital.

  Dolan took the uniforms to the far corner. Pulled out his notebook.

  “Who’s the victim?” he asked.

  “Roberta Reeves,” Fenene said.

  “Wants to be called Roberta Green,” Denny, the partner, said, “but I looked her up. Her legal name is still Reeves.”

  “Divorce has a way of doing that to you,” Dolan said, and then immediately wished he hadn’t. Both officers shuffled their feet and looked away.

  “What’s she say happened?” Dolan said quickly.

  “She’s got a knot the size of a softball on her head,” Fenene said.

  Denny checked his notes. “She says she went in to see her son Joseph and there was another woman in the room. Says the other woman attacked her.”

  “She say why the woman attacked her?” Dolan asked.

  “’Cause she wasn’t supposed to be there, I guess,” Fenene said.

  “Joseph’s on family-only visits,” Denny threw in.

  “What’s he in here for?”

  The two cops looked at each other. “He’s been in a coma,” Denny said.

  “How long?”

  “Better part of a year.”

  Dolan felt his skin grow cold. He was almost afraid to ask.

  “And now?”

  “This is where it gets weird,” Fenene offered. “The kid’s awake now. Seems this Pressman woman somehow woke him up.”

  “Who says?”

  “Everybody,” Fenene said. “SWAT had a call earlier today . . .” He told Dolan the story of how Joseph’s father had barricaded them in, and about the SWAT team showing up and then how Mr. Reeves surrendered, without incident, and that this pure white woman was in there with him, and everybody’s amazement when she came out and announced that the boy was awake and breathing on his own. About how pissed off Roberta Reeves had been by the whole thing, which nobody could figure out, and how the hospital wasn’t pressing charges because the father was the legal guardian. And finally about Mrs. Reeves filing an assault complaint and hospital security chasing the white-haired woman out into the street, and losing her to a passing cab.

  “How’d you know it was Grace Pressman?” Dolan asked.

  Denny shrugged. “I fed the description into the system,” he said. “You know—it’s not exactly full of six-foot albino women with felony convictions.”

  Dolan reached over and tapped Fenene’s notebook. “Find the security guys who chased her. See if they’ve got anything else they can tell us. Check the security tapes, inside and out. See if there’s anything there that’ll help us find her. See if you can get the medallion number for the cab.”

  While they scribbled in their notebooks, Dolan asked, “Any of the nurses on duty tonight the same ones who were here when all this happened?”

  “Just about all of them,” Fenene said.

  “Start with security,” Dolan said as they finished writing.

  He stood, leaning in the corner of the waiting room, and watched as the uniformed officers hurried down the corridor and disappeared into the elevator, then bounced himself off the wall and started after them.

  He pulled out his ID and badge and set them on the counter. The only nurse in sight was a young African American woman, sporting a frown and a serious set of dreadlocks. The blue name tag read: Rishanna. She wandered over.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “Were you working earlier today, when the woman was assaulted?”

  “Just came on,” she said, with a disinterested shake of the head. She picked up a metal clipboard and started to walk away.

  “Can you please get me someone who was?” Dolan said evenly.

  Her baleful expression said she didn’t like being told anything, that she had more important things to do than run errands for a cracker cop.

  “It’s police business,” he added.

  She suppressed a sneer and said, “If you’ll wait here”—she threw a glance down at Dolan’s ID—“Sergeant, I’ll get my supervisor for you.”

  Dolan rubbed his nose and looked around. Could have been a hospital anywhere. They all looked the same, as far as he was concerned. Squeaky clean and yet the place you were most likely to contract an infection that would kill you. Something ironic about that, he’d always figured.

  Took about five minutes before another nurse came out from behind the counter and walked over to Mickey Dolan. Good-looking. A slim, trim thirty-something, with even features and a head full of red hair that didn’t match her swarthy complexion. She picked up Dolan’s police ID and studied it. When she’d finished, she handed it back to Mickey and stuck out her hand. Mickey took it. Her hand was soft and dry.

  “Pamela Prentiss,” she said. “I’m the first-shift nursing supervisor for this floor.”

  Dolan handed her a business card. She gave it the once-over and stuffed it into her pocket. “How can I help you, Sergeant?” she asked.

  “Were you working earlier today when all the excitement took place?” he asked, as he slipped his badge and police ID back into his jacket pockets.

  “Yes,” she said, with an amused shake of the head. “Quite a circus.”

  “Tell me about it,” Dolan said.

  “Which part?”

  “Let’s start with the part where the boy’s father barricaded himself in his son’s room, and then it turned out that the boy had awakened from a coma.”

  She blushed and brought a hand to her throat. “I don’t quite know what to say about that,” she said. “It was totally beyond my experience.”

  “How so?”

  She sighed and thought about it. “I’ve been tending to Joseph Reeves the whole time he’s been with us,” she began. “And he’s been in an anoxic brain injury coma for the entire time.”

  “Injury from what?” Mickey asked.

  “An accident. As I understand it, he drowned in the family swimming pool.”

  “Which did exactly what to his brain?”

  “Presumably . . .” She drew the word out, as if to say they’d presumed wrong. “Presumably the lack of oxygen killed part of his brain, leaving him in a vegetative state.”

  “And?”

  “The longer a person stays in that sort of coma, the more their body functions begin to shut down, and the more artificial assistance is required to keep them alive.”

  “Where was Joseph in this process?”r />
  “At the end. Joseph was being kept alive totally by machines. None of his systems functioned independently anymore.”

  “So—what happened?” Dolan asked.

  She took a deep breath. Checked the hall. “A miracle,” she said, with a shrug. “I can’t think of any other way to describe it.”

  “The albino woman.”

  She nodded. “Don’t ask me how, but yes, somehow she brought him back.”

  “How is that possible?”

  She shook her head. “If I had an answer to that, I’d bottle it and sell it.”

  “I mean . . . how can it be that modern medical science says this kid is never going to regain consciousness and then, some . . . some amateur waltzes in out of the blue and wakes him up? It just doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Supposedly, it’s happened before with her,” Pamela said.

  “The Silver Angel thing?”

  She nodded. “That story’s been floating around for years.”

  “You believe it?”

  “I believe what I see.”

  “Which was?”

  “Which was . . . that when she walked in there, Joseph was in a vegetative state and in all probability about to die, and when she walked out, he was conscious and breathing without mechanical assistance for the first time in years.”

  Dolan cocked an eyebrow. “A miracle?”

  She made her face as bland as a cabbage. “If you’ve got an alternative explanation, Sergeant, I’m listening.”

  “And nobody else—like a third party—was in the room when this happened?”

  “Just Blondie and Joseph,” she said. “Mr. Reeves was busy holding the police at bay.”

  “The whole SWAT team thing?”

  “Just like the movies.”

  “I hear the mother was none too pleased to find her son awake.”

  “Strangest thing. She’s normally quite reserved and ladylike. I’d never seen her act like that before.”

  “Any idea what her problem was?”