Rosemary Remembered - China Bayles 04

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Downstairs and through the house I went, calling, first with irritation, then with anger, and then, inescapably and irrevocably, with fear.

  Sheila came to the kitchen door with a tomato in her hand, and saw the look on my face.

  "Brian's gone," I said frantically.

  "Maybe he went to play at the creek," she said.

  The two of us dashed through the yard and hurtled down to the creek, calling. There was no sign of Brian. Then we ran back through the yard and up the drive into the lane. That's when we saw the first drips. Dime-sized, heart-stopping splashes in the dust. Drops of blood.

  "Brian!" I cried. But the only answer was the brilliant trill of a cardinal.

  We broke into a pounding run down the quarter-mile length of dusty lane, following the bloody trail. Finally, we reached the road. There were no more drips.

  And no Brian.

  The first county car came screaming down the lane ten minutes after I dialed 911. Blackie arrived seven minutes later. He and the two deputies searched the premises and followed the bloody trail to its stopping point, and then came back to the house.

  "You're sure he just didn't decide to go see one of his buddies?"

  I shook my head numbly. "His bike is still in the garage, and the nearest friend lives two miles away." That was Arnold. I'd already called to be sure he wasn't there. "Anyway, he knows he's not supposed to leave the house. And there's the blood." The blood. My heart was a clenched fist, throbbing, painful.

  "Since when did knowing he wasn't supposed to do something keep a kid from doing it?" Blackie asked. "But we have to go on the premise that Jacoby's got him." He added, as if to ease my fears, "That's standard procedure now. We treat every missing child report as if the child is in immediate danger. Chances are, he's not."

  I nodded, hardly hearing. My hands were clammy and my breath was ragged. If I'd taken better precautions, if I'd watched Brian more closely, if I hadn't been so busy talking to Sheila—

  "What was he wearing?"

  The question brought Brian to my mind: a small, vulnerable boy with a wide grin and freckles. With the image came the painful recollection that when I'd seen him last, he wasn't speaking to me. If Jacoby had taken him, if I never saw him again, that memory would haunt me the rest of my life.

  "The same thing he had on when he was with you." I blinked to keep the tears back. "Jeans. A Star Trek jersey. Oh, and Mr. Spock ears."

  Blackie nodded. "Shouldn't be too hard to spot him in that getup. I'll need a good photograph, without the ears." He stepped off the porch and went to his county car to put out an APB for a small boy with large pointed ears and a man with a snake tattoo, and then dispatched one of his deputies to collect drip samples for lab testing. I found the photograph to give to Blackie. I gave him one of Jacoby's mug shots, as well.

  A half hour later, a dozen men — neighbors, volunteer firemen, off-duty police—began to gather in the yard to search the rugged area between Limekiln Road and the old quarry, flooded now, on the theory that Brian might have wandered off in that direction. I couldn't believe that's what had happened, but I was too restless to simply sit and wait.

  "I'll go with the searchers," I said.

  Blackie shook his head. "I want you by the phone. Brian may call. Or Jacoby — if that's who we're dealing with here — may make a ransom demand."

  "Ransom?" I didn't believe it for a second. Jacoby didn't take Brian because he was after money. He took the boy because he wanted revenge. My blood felt cold and thin. But the mention of the phone reminded of something else, and I looked at the clock. It was nearly 7:30.

  "McQuaid's supposed to call in a couple of minutes," I said. My throat was so thick I could barely speak. "I've got to tell him what's happened."

  "Hang on," Blackie said. He put a hand on my arm. "McQuaid can't do a damned thing but worry. Let him get a night's sleep. If the boy hasn't shown up, we can tell him tomorrow."

  "The sheriffs right," Sheila agreed, as the two of us went into the kitchen to make another pot of coffee.

  "When McQuaid calls, I'll tell him that you and Brian went to a movie. Should I tell him about what we found today? The plane tickets and the hotel reservations, I mean."

  "I guess so," I said dully. "Whatever you think."

  When McQuaid phoned from Acapulco a little later, Sheila took the call in his office. I stood by the kitchen window, leaning my cheek against the glass, separated from McQuaid by a gulf of evasions and half-truths and outright lies, separated by the fact that he had been right about Jacoby while I had been arrogantly self-confident, and wrong.

  "He's been working Acapulco all day and hasn't found a trace of Jeff," Sheila said, coming into the kitchen. "I told him what we found. You're supposed to call him." She gave me a half-smile. "He says to tell you he loves you."

  Matt, Jeff, Rosemary—they seemed a thousand miles away, farther even than McQuaid. I sank down in the rocker and dropped my face in my hands. "How am I going to tell him, Sheila?" I asked bleakly. "It's exactly what he was afraid of. And it's my fault for not being more careful!"

  Sheila knelt beside me, pulled my hands down, and made me look at her. "It's not your fault Brian's gone, any more than it's McQuaid's fault for going off to Mexico, or my fault for letting Jacoby walk in and kidnap the boy while I was running the blender in the kitchen." Her voice toughened. "It happened, China. That's all. Don't beat yourself up about it."

  "I know," I said. "But the thing is . .. the thing is that I've never been able to show Brian that I care about him, Sheila. That I love him — "I doubled up over the sudden, agonizing pain in my stomach. The tears were flowing. I could taste salt on my tongue.

  Why couldn't I just have said that to him? Hey, Brian, I love you. I want you here with us, Brian. Not with your mother, just here, with the rest of the circus, Einstein and Ivan and Howard Cosell and Khat and your father and me. Such a simple thing, and I didn't do it, couldn't do it. It was the same thing with McQuaid, too. There was something lacking in me, in my soul, something not deep enough, somehow, not caring enough. I suddenly felt swamped with sorrow for my own lack, for what I had missed. For what they were missing, because of me.

  "Brian and McQuaid — " I choked out. "Both of them, they deserve more than I have to give."

  "Stop it!" Sheila stood up, her voice sharp, clear, like a knife, slicing through my pain. "Life isn't a soap opera, China. We do what we can. We give as much as we can. And we say, 'There it is, that's it, guys. That's all I can do, that's how much I have to give, and it's got to be enough, damn it.' "

  "But what if it isn't enough?"

  She looked down at me, her eyes warm and cool at the same time. "Come on, China. When you give all you have, you've given it alL When you do all you can, you've done your best. Nobody can expect any more." .

  I stared at her. A tear dripped off the end of my nose. "It can't be as simple as that."

  "Hey." She smiled a little. "I'm your friend, would I lie to you? Now quit feeling sorry for yourself and get your ass in gear. Work will help."

  Get your ass in gear. Where had I heard that before? This time, though, the other China didn't have a smart remark to make.

  I won't say that I didn't fall back into that numbed state of dazed sorrow and self-pity a half-dozen times that night, but it was never quite as bad as it was when Sheila yanked me out of it.

  For one thing, I had an idea. Southwestern Bell had made caller identification available in our area just the month before. If the system could be installed and if either Brian or Jacoby called, the originating number would be displayed on my telephone. A long shot — but if it worked, it might give us an idea of where to start looking.

  Blackie called the telephone company and pulled strings to get an immediate installation. Immediate meant something over three hours. That's how long it took to get an off-duty technician to make the necessary connections in the local phone company office. Not bad, considering that the tech had to be pulled away from the Softba
ll game she was umpiring.

  And the work did help, too. Because we wanted to keep the main telephone line free, I unplugged McQuaid's fax machine and used that phone to call the rest of Brian's friends. All I got was "Sorry, I haven't seen him," but at least I had checked. I also sat down at the computer and made up a Missing Child flyer. If Brian hadn't turned up by morning, it would be ready to go to the copy shop first thing.

  But what helped most of all was Ruby. She heard the news from a female deputy who stopped to use the bathroom at the 7-Eleven store where Ruby had gone to pick up an emergency pack of Tampax. Talk about synchron-icity. Twenty minutes later, she was on my doorstep, a six-foot-tall carrot in orange tunic and skinnies, wringing her hands.

  "Oh, God, China," she said raggedly. Her eyes were filled with tears. "I'm so sorry. What else can I say?"

  "Don't say anything else," Sheila told her practically. "Come in and have supper with us. We've been too busy to stop for a bite. Sandwiches and cucumber soup. I can guarantee the soup. I made it."

  I smiled crookedly. Smart Cookie is tough and hard as any cop, and I'd hate to run into her at midnight in a dark alley. But food comes to her mind in a crisis, just as it does to most women. What is there about sandwiches and soup that soothes the soul?

  Ruby followed us into the kitchen. "I called Ondine before I left home," she said, "long distance in California. She's going to consult La Que Sabe. Maybe we'll hear something before the night's out. Meanwhile, I've brought this." She held up a flat box for us to see.

  "A Ouija board?" Sheila demanded. "Brian's out there with a nut case, and you want to commune with spooks? Who knows what's next?"

  Ruby gave her a defensive look. "Well, we have to do something while we're waiting for the phone to ring, don't we? We can't just sit around and stare at one another. I thought this would take China's mind off — " She bit her hp, obviously not wanting to say something that would upset me.

  Sheila got the soup out of the refrigerator and ladled three bowls full. "We could play poker."

  "Poker's better than Ouija?" Ruby turned to me, solicitous. "What do you want to do, China?"

  I wanted to get in the car and drive up and down streets and roads, looking for Brian, but that was a waste of energy, and anyway, I had to stay by the phone. I wanted McQuaid to walk in the door and put his arms around me and hold me, but that wasn't going to happen, at least not tonight. I wanted to tell Ruby to stop treating me as if I were slightly dysfunctional, but that would be rude.

  "Let's go with Ruby's idea," I told Sheila. I got out the plate of ham sandwiches and set it on the table. "I don't think I can concentrate well enough to play poker."

  "There's nothing more mindless than a Ouija board," Sheila agreed.

  So after we ate, Ruby cleared off the coffee table in the living room, lit some incense, and whispered something magical over her Ouija board as she laid it out. But nothing much happened, whether it was because Sheila kept making scornful remarks or because the spirits were offended by the frequent ringing of the telephone. A half-dozen people phoned in the space of a hour: a reporter from Channel Seven in Austin, our neighbors on Limekiln Road, the chairman of McQuaid's department at CTSU, Blackie with a no-progress report. There were no calls from Ondine or La Que Sabe and none from Jacoby or from Brian, whose voice I wanted most desperately to hear. I wouldn't even mind if he'd come into the room screaming, "You're a Marcasian slime mold!"—as long as he came.

  A few minutes before ten, I suddenly thought of Sally. Keeping the situation from McQuaid didn't pose much of a problem, since it was unlikely that the news of one little boy's kidnapping would be carried in the Mexican media. But San Antonio was another story. Sally might learn about Brian from the ten o'clock television news. I was angry at myself for not calling her sooner.

  When I dialed her number, though, I got a crisply metallic voice saying in computer-chip syllables, "This number has been disconnected." And when I called San Antonio information for her new number, I got another metallic voice, informing me that as far as the phone com-

  pany was concerned, there was no such person as Sally McQuaid.

  "She's probably gone unlisted." Ruby pushed the plan-chette toward me. "Smart Cookie's too skeptical to do any good with Ouija. You try, China."

  "Yeah, China." Sheila laughed shortly. "Ask Ouija for Sally's phone number."

  "I'm no good at right-brained things. Ruby," I said. "I'm a left-brain person."

  Ruby was patient. "Everybody's brain has two halves, China. Even yours. Give it a try. You might not get anything, but it'll be good for your right brain to get a little exercise."

  I did get something, though. It was odd, the sensation of that flimsy little plastic thing tugging, almost, against my reluctant fingers. I didn't for a minute believe that there was anything to it, of course. But Ruby believed. She started writing down the letters the minute the plan-chette veered toward one.

  "G," she said excitedly. "You're onto something! You're connecting!"

  Sheila scowled. "Stop pushing that thing, China. You'll just get Ruby all worked up."

  "I'm not pushing," I said. "It's moving by itself."

  Ruby sat forward on her chair, eyes wide, pencil poised over her notepad. Her orange hair seemed to be charged with electricity. "What's that? A [/? Way to go, China! G,U. What's next?"

  "Guppy?" Sheila guessed. "Gullible?"

  Ruby's excitement ran out pretty quickly, because the silly little plastic piece was only interested in three more letters, an R, a P, an S, and then it quit. Or I quit, or something. The whole thing was stupid, anyway. I shouldn't be wasting time with something as foolish as a

  Ouija board, when Brian was out there in the dark somewhere, held captive by a man who'd already killed two people and had nothing to lose.

  "G-U-R-P-S," Ruby muttered, squinting at what she had written. "Gurps. It must be a clue to Brian's whereabouts. Maybe it's a town."

  "Maybe Ouija doesn't know how to spell," Sheila said. She pushed the board away and stood up. "Or maybe that first letter was supposed to be a B, which would make it burps, which is exactly what I feel like doing. Who wants coffee?"

  "I'll make some herb tea," I said. "I'm wired enough already. And maybe I'll have another cup of that cucumber soup."

  "Sheila," Ruby said, "you are even more left-brained than China, if that's possible. We're going to have to work on you." She looked at me. "Where's your atlas? I want to check out Gurps. I'm sure it's a town."

  But there wasn't any such town in Texas or Louisiana or Oklahoma. When Ruby looked in the dictionary and the encyclopedia, there wasn't any such word. And the telephone directory offered Gurny and Gurski, but no Gurps. So she trailed after us back to the kitchen, where I got the soup out of the refrigerator, put the kettle on the Home Comfort stove, and made chamomile and catnip tea, sweetened with honey, for Ruby and me. Sheila made coffee for herself.-

  The doorbell rang a little after eleven, sending my pulse into double time. But it was only the telephone technician, who had made the appropriate connections in the telephone company's computer and had come to install the caller ID box. A little later, the phone rang and Blackie's number appeared on the Band-Aid—sized LCD panel. He was phoning to say that he was turning the office over to the night shift, but he'd stick close to the phone. His voice sounded weary.

  "Go to bed and get some sleep, China," he said. "It'll make the time go faster." It sounded like a good idea, if oversimplified.

  Ruby took the Missing Child flyer, promising to drop it off at Quick Copy the next morning. She also promised to pick up my photos of the herb conference, which I'd left at Fox Foto, next door to the copy shop.

  "Try meditating," she instructed as she headed for the door. "Count your breaths. It'll calm your mind."

  "Which side of my mind?" I asked. "Right or left?"

  "Both." She hugged me. "When Brian calls," she added, with her normal optimism, "give him my love and tell him to come home safe. When Ondine re
lays something from La Que Sabe, I'll let you know." And then her optimism failed and the tears came to her eyes. She hugged me again. "I've got some Saturn incense that I keep for emergencies. Sandalwood and myrrh and dittany of Crete and borage, with cypress oil and patchouli oil. It's supposed to help you banish demons and bad spirits—you know, Saturn stuff. I'll burn some and visualize Brian being free."

  Sheila headed upstairs to take a shower. "Forget all that shit about meditation and incense," she said. "It's worth about as much as that Ouija board nonsense. Try a good stiff shot of that Jack Daniel's I brought."

  I turned off the lights, opened the window, and sat in the rocker, my hands in my lap, my eyes closed, trying to follow Ruby's instructions. Inhale-exhale, one-two. After a while I realized that my monkey mind wasn't going to stop swinging from tree to tree in the clamoring jungle of my thoughts, so I took Sheila's advice instead.

  I climbed the stairs with a strong nightcap in one hand and the caller ID box in the other, to plug into the telephone by my bed in case Brian called during the night.

  He didn't. La Que Sabe didn't call, either. And in spite of the whiskey, I lay wide awake for a long time, my eyes staring and gritty. My brain told me that guilt and sorrow wouldn't accomplish anything, that I should just do what had to be done minute to minute and let go of the wish that I'd done things differently. But my heart wouldn't let that happen.

  And so I lay awake in the dark, wishing I hadn't evaded the truth so often with McQuaid, wishing I'd told Brian I loved him, wishing I'd hugged both of them a little harder, a little more often.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I Borage bring alwaies courage.

  John Gerard

  John Gerard's Herbal, 1633

  Blackie woke me at seven with another no-progress report. I answered groggily, brushed the sleep out of my eyes, and carried the caller ID box downstairs to the kitchen, where Sheila was making coffee. She was dressed in white shorts and a red shirt with the tail out — hardly her work costume.