by Gavin Reese
He chuckled and rose unsteadily, stumbled to the kitchen, and tried to raid the fridge. Jonathan again forgot about the bicycle-cable-turned-fridge-lock, which ripped the door handle from his hand when it met the cable’s end. Damn it, fuckin’ lock! Jonathan fumbled for the key and eventually freed the leftover baked ziti from its icebox incarceration. He briefly searched for a fork and then staggered back into the living room with his chilled pasta. After he drunkenly devoured the dinner, he changed channels in search of a happier escape, and stopped on a rerun of Animal House. Smiling, Jonathan raised his right hand with each stammered chant. “Toga! Toga!” Jonathan eased back into the couch and soon passed out, the empty and overturned clear plastic Tupperware dish next to him on the cushions.
Twenty
McDougal residence. Dry Creek, Arizona.
Michael stumbled through the hallway toward the light and sounds of the living room television. He felt strange, as though he weren’t yet fully awake, but he struggled to wipe sleep from his head. Despite being so tired, he again felt uncontrollable hunger that compelled him to find food. Once in the living room, he saw his dad asleep on the couch, so he walked straight to him. As he reached the couch, he saw an empty plastic food container next to his dad, and remembered his mom had put delicious noodles and cheesy red sauce into it. Michael tried to ignore the empty container for now, and pulled on his dad’s sleeve to wake him up.
“Dad, I’m hungry.” Michael saw his dad didn’t wake up, and he noticed he smelled funny, not really bad, but not really good, either. After several attempts to wake his father, Michael eyed the empty container, and noticed it still held a small amount of noodles and sauce in its corners. He stepped around his dad’s outstretched legs, stood in front of the middle couch cushion, and slowly slid his right hand up to the container. Michael looked up, apprehensive he would be caught, and saw no movement from his dad. He waited several seconds, until his dad snored loudly again; he swiftly grabbed and retrieved the plastic container and fled the living room for the relative privacy of the kitchen. Michael's fingers dove into the corners, dug out the baked ziti deposits there, and sucked his fingers clean. Michael slowly stepped across the kitchen as he licked the plastic container clean and steered himself to the refrigerator, his hunger pains unabated.
He saw the cable lock missing from the refrigerator, and hesitantly approached it. Michael slowly pulled on the handle and jumped with surprise when it really opened. He looked around, waiting for someone to jump out, yell, and slam the door shut. When no one tried to stop him, he slowly reached for an apple and took a small bite as he again looked around the kitchen for his parents. After he heard only the television and his dad’s snoring from the living room, he began more aggressively eating the apple, which soon landed half-eaten on the tile floor. Michael moved on to a bag of five small blueberry muffins. He excitedly consumed the muffins, shoving the next bite into his mouth before fully swallowing the last. Muffin debris fell onto the front of his shirt, Batman sleep pants, the refrigerator shelves, the floor, and the already forgotten, half-eaten apple.
Unsatisfied, Michael’s frantic, scorched-shelf march through the refrigerator left almost no food item within reach untouched, and most ended up on the floor at Michael’s feet as each new craving beckoned.
Michael paused when he heard a loud truck engine outside and an unfamiliar scraping sound. He curiously leaned back away from the open refrigerator door and, to keep his balance, pulled on the condiment drawer where his dad’s brown bottles were kept. The drawer gave way and fell from its shelf, sending Michael backward and its contents to the floor.
Twenty-One
McDougal residence. Dry Creek, Arizona.
CRASH! PTSSH! PTSSH! fffssssshhhhh….
Colleen awoke suddenly to the sound of breaking glass. She immediately sat up in bed, shocked, scared, and a little disoriented. Jonathan’s side of the bed felt cold and empty.
“Jonathan?!” She whispered, afraid to move. Was someone breaking in, she wondered. Was Jonathan hurt? Did something fall in the front bathroom? “Jonathan!!!” After getting no response after she again hissed out for him, Colleen quietly rose from their bed and moved toward the doorway; she could see the living room television cast shifting light down the hallway. Michael…
Wearing only her favorite, thin white cotton t-shirt and black boyshort panties, her bare feet silently padded to the open doorway of Michael’s bedroom. His Spiderman nightlight revealed the covers pulled back and the bed empty. She moved past the empty front bathroom and continued down the hall. Nearing the living room and front hallway, Colleen heard the light tinkle of broken glass against the kitchen’s tile floor, which lay just beyond the living room and connected by the short front hallway. Where was Jonathan, she thought, looking for intruders is HIS job!! She hesitantly entered the living room and saw Jonathan lying in a very unnatural position on the couch, although his sudden, drunken snoring alleviated her momentary fear of injury. Looking around, she saw no broken glass, no broken windows, no visible sign of anything awry. Stepping gingerly across the tile, Colleen grabbed Jonathan’s shoulder and shook him; slowly at first, and then more vigorously as he failed to wake. The Tupperware lid and a half-empty glass of whiskey told Colleen everything she needed to know about his condition, even before the odor of his body-processed alcohol assaulted her nostrils.
A soft thud instantly drew her attention back to the kitchen. Realizing Jonathan was too drunk to help her, Colleen stopped shaking him and cautiously, silently, stepped toward the kitchen. Her bare feet alighted softly across the cold tile floor despite her fear of what might await her. As she got closer to the galley-style kitchen, she recognized the light cast on the far kitchen wall as that from the open refrigerator door. Suddenly afraid the danger before her far exceeded that of a common burglar, Colleen moved more quickly toward the light. As she turned the corner into the kitchen, Colleen saw one of her worst recurring nightmares materialized before her. Michael, barefoot in his Batman pajamas, stood in front of the open refrigerator door with assorted food debris splayed on every surface within a three-foot radius of him. Open Tupperware containers, apple cores, muffin wrappers and crumbs, cooked rice, ketchup splatter, macaroni and cheese, all intermingled on the floor along with a fallen plastic refrigerator drawer, broken beer bottle shards, and the remnants from bottles of salad dressing and frothy pools of spilled beer. Michael had not yet seen her and continued working his way through a Butterfinger bar that Colleen had hidden among the contents of the shelf in front of him. Colleen could see his engorged abdomen protruding from beneath his pajama top.
Colleen steadied herself despite her rising fear. “Michael, honey, don’t move.” She spoke calmly and quietly, both to quell her own panic and to avoid startling Michael; the broken glass shards at his feet could quickly and immediately exacerbate their present crisis. Michael quickly looked up at Colleen, realizing he’d been caught. He dropped the Butterfinger remains, which fell onto the top of his right foot, wiped his hands across his chest, and then used a sleeve to clean his face.
“Mommy, the fidjater was open and I was hungry.” He turned his hips and lower body to face Colleen, and the discarded buffet squished softly beneath his feet and between his toes.
“I know, baby, just…don’t…move. Stand right there…” Colleen cautiously stepped toward Michael, careful to avoid the broken glass and debris herself.
“Mommy, I don’t feel good. My tummy hurts, but I’m still hungry. Am I in trouble?” Michael sheepishly looked at Colleen and half-heartedly reached out his little arms for her to pick him up. The scene reminded Colleen of the television ads for charity donations that featured impoverished African children with enormous, protruding stomachs that always looked so painful to her.
Colleen reached Michael, knelt down and cautiously picked him up, and held him to her, carefully directing his engorged belly off to her left side to avoid putting further pressure on it. She terribly wanted to cry
from the fear of being violently awoken, searching the home for an intruder, and then finding Michael living out one of her worst fears. Aware she had to be strong for Michael and, despite his proximity, that Jonathan could not help, Colleen again swallowed her fears. Cautiously navigating out of the kitchen and its brown glass minefield, she returned to the living room, where Jonathan continued to snore on the couch. Selfish motherfucker! She wanted to yell at him, kick him, punch his face as hard as she could.
Instead, Colleen walked by Jonathan without a word, picked up the phone, and dialed 911 while retreating to her bedroom so she and Michael could dress before the paramedics showed up. Colleen hoped they were sufficiently loud that Jonathan also got to wake up in a panic.
“911, what is the location of your emergency?” A calm, reassuring female voice.
“33876 West Lafayette Drive. I need paramedics for my son, he has unregulated Prader-Willi disease and I just found him alone in the kitchen, I don’t know how much he ate or how long he was eating. He needs to go the hospital right away to get his stomach pumped.” Colleen struggled to control her emotions. Tears don’t help us, and they’ll only scare Michael, she thought. She carefully sat Michael on her side of the king-sized bed and motioned “down” with her free hand to direct him to lie there, and moved toward the closet and away from the bed to shield Michael from the conversation.
“Okay, ma’am, I understand you want paramedics to 33876 West Lafayette Drive. How old is your son, and did he get food poisoning? Why does he need his stomach pumped?”
“He’s seven and he has a disease that means he’s always hungry, and he can’t be left alone with food because he could literally eat himself sick. His stomach is very swollen right now and he has to get it pumped before it ruptures.” With the phone in her left hand, Colleen covered her nose and mouth with her right and breathed deeply; the danger to Michael’s health had just become much more real when she heard herself say it aloud, and she narrowly missed stymieing her tears.
“OK, thank you, ma’am, stay on the line with me while I transfer you to the fire department.”
Colleen put down the phone long enough to grab a sweatshirt from the top of a stack of similar tops on her dresser; without looking or caring which one she had, Colleen donned the top while striding into their walk-in closet. Between Jonathan’s military experience and Michael’s disease, Colleen had grown accustomed to calmly dealing with crisis. She knew contagious tears and hysterics only increased the chances that Michael would be hurt if she were frozen by fear, or if his own crying ruptured his stomach walls that were already stretched dangerously thin.
“Mommy, my tummy hurts…” Colleen looked to the bed and saw Michael laid in a fetal position on his right side, lightly rubbed his enlarged stomach, and periodically wiped tears from his cheeks. Her heart broke whenever Michael suffered, and this, their second such emergency room visit, forced her to struggle to keep her tears at bay. Michael needs me to be strong right now, she thought, there’ll be time to cry later.
A Dry Creek Fire Department dispatcher came on the phone line and confirmed Colleen’s address, as well as Michael’s disease and his current condition. Colleen felt better knowing that, somewhere nearby, waking paramedics were learning of Michael’s needs and would soon be on her doorstep. She pulled on the first pair of shorts she found, quickly drew her hair back into a pony tail, donned her Red Sox ball cap, and grabbed the first pair of flip-flops she saw.
Colleen left Michael on the bed and walked to the front door, which she unlocked and pulled slightly ajar. Jonathan snored on the couch and didn’t appear to have moved. Son of a bitch!
The distant, approaching sirens soon reassured her of the imminent medical help. Slightly calmer and in better control of her emotions, Colleen quickly walked back to the bedroom. Hang in there, baby.
Twenty-Two
Landon residence. Dry Creek, Arizona.
The phone woke Alex an hour before he’d set his alarm to go off. Through bleary eyes, he saw the caller ID screen showed PRIVATE. Of course, he thought. “Hello,” he offered, too tired to pretend not to have been awakened from a dead sleep.
“Landon, its Rudiger.” The Detective Sergeant’s voice drove sleep from Alex’s brain and he sat up in bed, suddenly very awake. “Sorry to wake you. I need to ask for your help, you awake enough for me to make sense?”
“Yeah, go ahead, sir.”
“I need a favor. All my other guys are tied up in training this morning and we caught a child abuse case. Wall is the lead detective, but I need someone to go with him to get the initial report at the ER. Do you mind batting clean-up for a few hours? You shouldn’t have to do more than watch his back and type a short supplement in the next day or so.”
“Yessir, no problem.”
“Great, thanks, I already spoke with Jones and let him know I needed you this morning, so no need to call him again this early. Get dressed and meet Wall at Goodyear General E-R. How long do you think it’ll take you to get there?”
“’Bout…30…45 minutes.” Although certain he could arrive well under that timeframe, Alex saw no reason to set himself up for failure.
“Make it so. Wall won’t be too far from the nurses’ station, he has a soft spot for overworked women in light blue pajamas.”
“Yessir, thanks for the call.”
“No, you’re the one helping me. Thank you.” The sergeant disconnected the line and Alex walked into the bathroom to get ready.
Grateful for the rituals learned in the police academy, Alex had ironed today’s dress shirt and dress slacks the night before. He groggily washed his face, donned the pressed shirt, slacks, and tie. After adding his silver and gold badge, portable radio, work cell phone, pistol magazines, handcuffs, and holstered Glock to his belt, he stuffed his pant pockets with a notepad, flashlight, and wallet. Even though I’m no longer in uniform, I bet I still weigh an extra twenty pounds at work.
Alex confidently and quietly navigated through the familiar layout of his darkened home, locked the front door behind him, and strode through the early morning darkness to his unmarked Dodge Charger parked in his driveway. The door locks even seemed loud, at least by comparison to the nearly silent morning. After he settled into the sedan and drove away, Alex fought to balance the victim’s need for haste with the neighborhood’s need for quiet, and erred on the side of respect for his sleeping neighbors. A minor detour through an all-night drive-through acquired an oversized cup of coffee (Probably instant, he thought), and a questionable breakfast burrito (Probably a belly bomb).
As a patrol officer, Alex had built a good reputation by working well with all the detectives, but he had spent very little time with Detective Wall. Even after being assigned to Neighborhood Enforcement, he seldom worked cases with Wall and hadn’t yet formed an opinion of the man, other than noticing his habit of being rough on the new guys. Grateful another detective caught this case, Alex hoped he could just follow Wall around for a few hours and learn something from the man.
After parking near the Emergency Department’s ambulance entrance, Alex walked to the sliding glass doors, entered the law enforcement access code, and waited for the sluggish ballistic glass panels to separate. Passing through the entryway, Alex wandered toward the Emergency Department nurses’ station and recognized Detective Wall’s pear-shaped profile as the senior investigator leaned against the counter and chatted up the nurses. Wearing his standard “uniform,” which consisted of slightly wrinkled khaki pants, faded yellow polyester polo shirt with a crumpled pack of Marlboro Lights in the left chest pocket, and a terrible comb-over, Wall almost looked the stereotype of an overworked detective. Upon first meeting him years ago, it seemed to Alex that Wall genuinely thought himself a ladies’ man and held a disproportionally high opinion of himself; now, however, Alex expected his mannerisms were actually a defense mechanism. Hard to tell if the nurse is eager to avoid work or genuinely interested in Wall’s dog-and-pony-show, he thought. W
all turned to Alex as he neared.
“There she is, Miss America.” Wall half-sung, half-spoke the joke, and clearly enjoyed calling the younger detective by various women’s names. The nurse looked up from her computer monitor, apparently curious to see who Wall spoke to, and Alex saw her smile when she realized he was “Miss America.” He had initially taken offense to it until he learned two things; first, Wall did it to everyone with less than about ten years on the job, and, second, Alex found out Wall’s first Field Training Officer made him wear an “Officer Sally Boatanchor” name plate on his patrol uniform. Alex decided Wall had earned the right to spread his hazing around, especially given that the nickname would probably outlive his career. “How was your breakfast burrito?” Wall’s question caused the nurse to hide her chuckle, which really pleased him.
“What? How did you…” Alex looked down at his shirt and saw a distinct patch of salsa and scrambled egg debris on his tie. Fucking beautiful, he thought, the price of eating fast food in the dark and speeding through freeway construction.
“That’s what happens when you get all gussied-up for work, Alexis. That’ll teach you to try to look better than me, the universe doesn’t like that kind of insubordinate shit. Hear about that shooting over in Buckeye last night?”
“No, what happened?”
“The radio said two guys broke into an ex-wife’s house, started shooting, and got greased by the SWAT team about an hour later.”
“Any good guys hurt?”
“Nope, nary a one.”
“Okay, well, sounds like a good outcome for a bad guy. What’ve we got here?” Alex tried to brush the stain off with a tissue, which quickly proved useless. The salsa was there to stay. Damn it.
“Female called 911 about five-thirty this morning and said she needed paramedics to take her son to the emergency room, kid’s got some freak illness where he can’t tell he needs to stop eating.”