James Patterson - When the Wind Blows

by When the Wind Blows (lit)

  The toney waiting room had warm yellow walls with bright white trim. There always seemed to be freshly cut flowers. And an array of all the right magazines, current issues, too: Mirabella, AD, Town & Country, Parents, Child.

  Best of all was the "up," positive, well-trained staff, and especially her doctor, John Brownhill. Dr. B. was talking to her now, asking all the requisite questions during her eight-month checkup. He seemed so interested in how she was feeling. Was she experiencing Braxton Hicks contractions, anything unusual?

  "No, everything is fine, knock on wood," Annie said. She smiled positively, mirrored the confidence she felt from him and the rest of the staff.

  Dr. B. smiled back. Not too much, not condescending or anything like that, just right. "That's great. Let's run a few tests and get you out of here in time for the "Rosie' show."

  Annie knew that in spite of how relatively chipper she felt, she was still a high-risk patient. Dr. Brownhill told her she had insufficient placenta. On this visit, Dr. Brownhill and his nurse, Jilly, were going to use a fetal heart monitor to check the level of stress to the fetus during contractions. The idea of the FHM test made her a little nervous, but she tried to be as upbeat as her doctor and nurse.

  Jilly squeezed electro-conductor jelly onto Annie's stomach. Annie noticed that the jelly had been pre-warmed for her comfort. They thought of everything here. Jilly then placed two wide plastic strips around her abdomen. Very gently.

  "Comfortable? Anything else we can do?" Dr. Brownhill asked.

  "I'm fine, good. Jelly's just the right temp."

  It happened so suddenly, almost as if it were a bad dream. "Baby's heart rate is dropping," Dr. Brownhill said. His voice cracked. "One hundred, ninety-seven, ninety-five." He turned to Jilly. "We have to crash her, stat. Hold on, Annie. Hold on tight."

  Everything moved so quickly after that, and efficiently, under the tense, crisis circumstances. Everything was a blur for Annie. Then she went out.

  Less than forty minutes later, much sooner than expected, Dr. John Brownhill personally brought the newborn to the preemie nursery. According to the Apgar scores from the delivery room, the boy was in excellent health, but every precaution was being taken, anyway.

  A clean tube was inserted into the infant's windpipe, a pressurized hood was fitted around the tiny head. This ensured that a continuous supply of low-pressure oxygen would be directed into the sacs of the slightly immature lungs.

  A blood analysis was done from a plastic tube inserted into the umbilicus.

  An electronic thermometer was taped to the infant's skin.

  A nasogastric feeding tube was inserted into the nose. Breast milk was fed through it, just in case the infant boy wasn't quite ready to suck.

  A neonatal intensive-care specialist hovered over Annie Hutton's precious little boy, checking everything, making sure he was okay.

  "He's doing fine. A-okay. The boy's in good shape, John," one of the specialists told Dr. Brownhill. "Head's forty-one centimeters, by the Way. Big head about himself."

  "As well he should."

  John Brownhill finally left the preemie nursery and climbed the two floors to where Annie Hutton was recovering from her C-section.

  The twenty-four-year-old mother didn't look nearly as well as her infant son. Her ash-blond hair was wet with perspiration, plastered in tight curls. Her eyes were vacant and lost. She definitely looked like someone who had recently undergone an unexpected C-section.

  Dr. Brownhill came right up to her bed. He leaned in close and spoke in his usual soft, reassuring tone. He even took her hand.

  "Annie, I'm so sorry. We couldn't save him," he whispered. "We lost your baby boy."

  Chapter 9

  THE HUTTON BABY arrived at the School within hours of its delivery in the Boulder clinic. A team outfitted in what looked like space suits rushed out to meet the Boulder Community ambulance. They hurried the infant inside. There was a high degree of excitement in the air, exultation, almost glee.

  The head doctor at the School was on premises for the exam and watched closely, supervising, lecturing at times.

  Heart rate, respiration, skin color, muscle tone, reflex responses were checked. Baby Hutton scored a perfect 10.

  The boy's length and weight were checked. Tests were performed to check for cardiac murmur, heart engorgement, subconjunctival hemorrhage, jaundice, asexuality, hip dysplasia, clavicle fractures, skin mottling.

  There was a nevus, a tiny birthmark on the right hip. It was noted as an "imperfection."

  Most of the testing involved the boy's gross and fine motor coordination, and also his ability to manipulate the environment. The head doctor remained in the lab for every test, commenting on each as it was completed.

  "The head circumference is forty-one centimeters. That would be normal for about a four-month-old. That's one reason the C-section was necessary, of course. The heart is larger as well, and more efficient. His heartbeat is under a hundred. That's simply wonderful. What a little champ.

  "But watch Baby Hutton. That's the key. That's where the real drama lies. He's listening to us, and he's paying attention. See that? Look at his eyes. Newborns don't fix and follow - never. He's actually tracking us from one to the other. Do you understand what that means?

  "Infants never remember objects after they disappear. He does. He's definitely watching us. Look at his little eyes. He already has memory.

  He's just a super baby!"

  Chapter 10

  I WOKE UP trying to catch my breath, crying softly over a horrible, crushing dream about my husband, David. It was the way I awoke almost every single morning these days.

  I missed David so much and that hadn't changed since the night a year and a half ago, when a crackhead shot him in a lonely parking lot in Boulder.

  David and I had been inseparable before his death. We skied all over Colorado and the rest of the West. Spent Sundays at a health clinic for migrants in Pueblo. Read so many books that both our small houses could have doubled as lending libraries. We had more friends than we knew what to do with sometimes. We loved and lived a full life just about every Minute of the day.

  I had a thriving big- and small-animal practice. Early each morning, I went off to farms and ranches where I took care of horses and other large animals. People from all over the county brought their smaller pets to me at the Inn-Patient. For what it was worth, I was named "Veterinarian for the '90s" by the Denver Post.

  Now, everything was changed, the arc of my life was dipping in the wrong direction, and it didn't seem reversible. I thought about David's murder all the time. I bothered the police in Boulder until they asked me to stay away. I rarely went on house calls anymore, although cases still came to me.

  I flung myself out of bed. I threw on my old faithful blue plaid robe and stuck my feet into slippers I'd been given for Christmas by a couple of cute kids whose coyote-mauled puppy I'd stitched up.

  The slippers were made to look like cocker spaniel heads. Dopey eyes staring up, pink tongues lolling, floppy ears, the works.

  I turned on the tape deck - Fiona Apple's unmistakable, throaty moan; eighteen years old and full of piss and vinegar and creative craziness. I liked that in a diva.

  I opened the door from the "master suite" and entered the lab. I was greeted by my favorite poster for this month: Fox hunting is the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable - Oscar Wilde.

  First things first, I filled the coffeepot with hazelnut vanilla. Once the java started to perk, I began to look in on my patients.

  Frannie O'Neill, this is your life.

  Ward One was a twelve-by-twelve room with a sink, a single window, two tiers of neat, clean cages. The bottom her held three boarders: two dogs and the roommate of one of them, a common leghorn chicken.

  One of the dogs, a standard poodle, had ripped his catheter out again, despite the e-collar I had on him. I chewed him out in all of the sixteen words I know in French so he'd understand me. Then I reinserted the tube in pl
ace. I ruffled his topknot and forgave him. Ve t'aime," I said.

  Ward Two is a slightly smaller replica of Ward One, but without any windows on the world. Some of my "exotics" were caged in this room: a bunny with pneumonia, not going to make it; a hamster that I received by way of UPS with no accompanying note.

  And there was a swan named Frank that my sister, Carole, rescued from a pond out by the racetrack. Carole thinks she's St. Theresa of the wilds. At the moment, my sister was off camping in one of the state parks with her daughters. I almost went with her.

  My coffee was ready. I poured myself a steaming cup, added whole milk and sugar. Mmm, mmm good.

  Pip was at my heels. Pip's a Jack Russell terrier, a funny little boy who'd been turned in as a stray but had probably been abandoned. He did a little up-on-hind-legs dance that he knows I like. I kissed him, poured out a bowl of kibble, added in the last of some Rice Cher.

  "You like?"

  "Wulf."

  "Glad to hear it."

  I strolled back out to the front of the house. That's when I saw the triple-black, macho Jeep. L. L. Bean man. Kit Whatever. The hunter was back in my yard again. He was standing beside the Jeep, rifle slung over his shoulder.

  Then I got a glimpse of a slack form lying over the hood.

  Oh, God, no! He's already shot something! He's murdered an animal on my land. That bastard! That shit!

  I had seen plenty of carcasses and dead animals up in these woods, but this was my land, my private property, and I thought of it as a sanctuary away from the world's madness.

  "Hey, you," I shouted. "Hey. Hey, there!"

  I was halfway across the front porch, in a full, huffing rage, when he stepped away and opened the Jeep door. I realized that what I thought was a body was the wrong color to be an animal.

  It was maroon. More like a duffel bag.

  He turned to face me at the sound of my voice. He half waved, smiled that nearly irresistible smile of his, which I answered with a seething look that ought to have set him on fire on the spot, burnt him right to the ground.

  "Morning," he called. "God, it's beautiful up here. This is heaven, isn't it?"

  Clutching my robe closed, I bent down, and grabbed up the "mourning" paper, as I call the Post, since it's always so full of bad news.

  Then I turned heel in my cocker spaniels and stomped inside.

  Chapter 11

  DISCRETION was critical.

  It was a very warm and sticky afternoon in Boulder, but not under the tall and stately fir trees that lined the spacious and orderly backyard of Dr. Francis Mcdonough's house. And certainly not in the sparkling blue twenty-five-yard pool, which was around seventy-two degrees, as it almost always was.

  The pool was surrounded by white wrought iron, curlicued leaf furniture, big comfortable ottomans, a settee covered in floral Sunbrella fabric. Urns of seasonal flowers were spotted around the pool as well as canvas-topped market umbrellas.

  Frank Mcdonough was doing laps, and it astonished him that almost twenty years after he'd been a Pac- 10 swimmer at California-Berkeley he still loved to swim against the pace clock.

  Dr. Mcdonough enjoyed his life in the Boulder area tremendously.

  His sprawling ranch-style house had an indelible view of the city as well as the plains to the east. He loved the bite and crispness of the air, the exquisite blueness of the sky. He had even gone to the National Center for Atmospheric Research to try and find out why it was so, why the sky out here was so blue? He had moved from San Francisco six years ago, and he never wanted to go back.

  Especially on a day like today, with the Flatiron Mountains towering in the near distance, and his wife, Barbara, due home from work in less than an hour.

  He and Barbara would probably barbecue black bass on the patio, open a bottle of Zinfandel, maybe even call the Solies over. Or see if Frannie O'Neill could be pried away from her animals out in Bear Bluff. Frannie had been a college swimmer, too, and Frank Mcdonough always enjoyed her company. He also worried about her, since David's tragic death.

  Frank Mcdonough stopped swimming in midstroke. He halted just as he was about to reach the south end of the pool and make his ninety-first flip turn of the afternoon. He'd seen a flash of hurried movement on the patio. Near the Weber grill.

  Someone was out there with him.

  No, more than one person was on his patio. There were several people, in fact. He felt a twinge of fear. What the hell was going on?

  Frank Mcdonough raised his head out of the water and flipped off his dripping Speedo goggles. Four men in casual dress -jeans, khakis, polo shirts - were hurrying toward him.

  "Can I help you guys?" he called out. It was his natural instinct to be nice, to think the best of people, to be polite and courteous.

  The men didn't answer. Odd as hell. A little irritating. Instead, they continued walking across the deck toward him. Then they started to run!

  A table went over on the deck. Votive candles broke, newspapers and magazines flopped on the deck.

  "Hey! Hey!" He looked at them in total disbelief.

  All four of them had jumped into the pool's shallow end with Frank Mcdonough.

  "What the hell is this?" Mcdonough started to yell seriously at the intruding men. He was confused about what was happening, frightened too.

  They were on him like a pack of dogs. They grabbed his arms and legs, pinned them, twisted hard. He heard a sickening crack and thought his left wrist had been broken. The fast, powerful movement hurt like hell.

  He could tell how powerful they were because he was strong, and they Put him down as if he were a ninety-pound weakling.

  "Hey! Hey!" he yelled again, choking on a nose ful of water. They had his head pushed back so that he was looking straight up into the infinite blueness of the sky.

  Then they were forcing his head under. He tried to catch a quick breath, but got a mouthful of water and chlorine, and gagged.

  They held him under the surface, wouldn't let him up. His legs and arms were caught in a powerful vise. He was being drowned. Oh God, it didn't make a shred of sense to him.

  He tried to thrash.

  Tried to break free.

  Tried to calm himself.

  Frank Mcdonough heard his neck snap. He couldn't fight them. He felt his life force ebbing, flowing out of him.

  He could see the figures in their soaking-wet clothes wavering before him in the sparkling, clear blue water. His eyes were pinned wide open.

  So was his mouth. Water flooded his throat and entered his lungs in a terrifying rush. His chest felt as if it would implode, which he actually wanted to happen. He just wanted the awful internal pressure and pain to end.

  In an instant, Dr. Frank Mcdonough understood. He saw the truth as clearly as he could see his own approaching death.

  This was about Tinkerbell and Peter Pan.

  They had escaped on his watch.

  Chapter 12

  IT IS ABOUT a forty-minute drive from Bear Bluff to Boulder, if you keep the pedal to the metal, if you really fly.

  I tried my best to make the drive in a semisane and controlled manner, but I failed miserably. Everything about the drive and the night was a ghostly blur.

  I couldn't stop seeing Frank Mcdonough as I had known him for the past six years - smiling, and incredibly full of life. I hadn't been leaving the Bluff much lately. Not for the last 493 days, anyway. Now, I had to go to Boulder.

  Frank Mcdonough was dead. His wife, Barb, had called me in tears. I couldn't make myself believe it. I couldn't bear the painful, terrifying, awful thought.

  First David, and now Frank. It didn't seem possible.

  I tried to call my best friend Gillian at Boulder Community Hospital. I got her answering machine and left a message that I hoped was coherent.

  I tried to call my sister, Carole, but Carole didn't pick up at the camping site where she was staying with her two girls. Damn, I needed her now.

  I heard awful, wailing police sirens before I actua
lly arrived at Frank and Barb Mcdonough's ranch house in Boulder. They live close to Boulder Community Hospital, which makes sense, since they both worked there. Barb is a surgical nurse and Frank is the top pediatrician.

  Frank was a pediatrician. Oh, dear God, Frank was dead now. My friend, David's friend. How could it have happened?

  The Boulder police sirens were blaring at an ear-piercing level, and they seemed so eerie, so personal, as if they were meant for me.

  Just hearing the police sirens brought back so many powerfully bad memories. I had spent months bothering the Boulder police about solving David's murder. I'd tried to solve it myself for God's sake. I had questioned parking lot attendants, doctors who used the lot late at night.