by Tim Downs
Go back!
Get out!
Give in!
You’re going to die, Nick—this time you’re going to die.
He squeezed his eyes tight and shut out all of the voices—except for one. It was a woman’s voice, and it spoke to him quietly and clearly.
People depend on you, Nick. People depend on you.
He forced his body to hang limp in the water like a fetus in a womb, reining in his racing heart and forcing himself to think. His biggest enemies were fear and panic causing him to make stupid choices—flailing around in the water, using up his air, hurrying death along. Think, he told himself. Nick had made a living using his mind, and if he had to die, he wanted to die the same way.
He couldn’t go up again—the attic was in flames. Even if he broke through the fire and drew in a breath, the superheated air could sear his lungs and cause instant death.
He had to go out—but which direction? What if he swam into a closet or a bathroom with no way of escape? He’d better get it right the first time; he’d only have time to try once.
He opened his eyes and looked around the room. The attic was still blazing above him, casting a shaft of yellow light down through the attic doorway and faintly illuminating the room. If only he had his glasses! All he could make out were dark geometric blurs, but what did they represent? The room was like a circus funhouse—everything was inverted or out of place. He saw a big vertical rectangle on one of the walls—a doorway? But the corners looked rounded and the edges seemed to curve—a sofa, maybe, standing on end? He saw a smaller square shape along another wall, the size of a dresser or a coffee table, but it was up against the ceiling—what was it? He couldn’t be sure—and he didn’t have time to guess.
Then he spotted it—a large, horizontal rectangle near the center of one wall—a window, the quickest way out of the room and up to the surface above. He twisted off his shoes and swam toward the rectangle, wondering if he would have to smash through the glass—but what he bumped into was solid and hard. He felt along the edge; it wasn’t a window at all—it was a picture frame hanging on the wall.
He felt a dull ache starting in the pit of his lungs.
Big mistake, ace—you won’t have time for another one.
He didn’t have time to swim back across the room and try a different direction. He had committed himself, and, right or wrong, he had to keep going. He leaned back from the wall and looked again; beside the picture frame was a tall vertical rectangle. He reached out to touch it and his hand went right through—a doorway. It didn’t matter where it went—at least it led out of this room. He grabbed the edge of the doorway with both hands and pulled himself through.
The next room, whatever it was, was as black as a tomb—no light from the burning attic found its way inside. Now I’m really blind, Nick thought, and then he stopped. I’m blind—I’m just like any other blind man who has to find his way out of a strange room. What would a blind man do?
He closed his eyes again. He knew what a blind man would not do: dart back and forth across the room, ricocheting off random objects without gaining any understanding of the space around him. He turned to his immediate right and began to feel along the wall. His head bumped into something projecting from the wall. He felt it; it seemed to be some kind of cabinet. He felt around below the cabinet and found a flat, smooth surface—a Formica counter. He was in a kitchen.
The ache was growing in his chest; he felt his diaphragm contract reflexively, trying to draw breath into his starving lungs.
He grabbed the edge of the counter and pulled himself forward, feeling along the top of the counter as he went, leaving his legs hanging limp to conserve energy and reduce oxygen consumption. He found a twin-basin sink and wondered if he would come to a corner soon. He did, just as expected; he turned left and continued, constructing a mental image of the room as he went.
The counter abruptly ended and he felt metal instead. He reached up and patted the top; he felt the spiraling coils of heating elements—an oven. Beyond the oven should be the refrigerator—but when he got to the appropriate place, the space was empty. Why?
It didn’t matter. He had his mental picture, or at least a portion of it: counter, sink, corner; oven, refrigerator—and then what? Every kitchen had an exit door. Where would it be? There were only two walls left to choose from. He consulted his fragmentary mental image again and made a logical deduction—then pushed off and swam to the next wall.
More counters! Was he wrong? Was it the other wall? He felt above the counters and felt glass—a window! But it was a fixed-pane window, too hard to break and too small to pull himself through.
His lungs were on fire now. He couldn’t hold back the panic anymore—his mind felt like a wobbling wheel about to spin off into space. He started to feel along the wall, but which way—right or left? He had only seconds of consciousness left. One way meant death, the other life. But there was no way to know—it was a pure guess.
Think!
But Nick could barely hear the word above the dull buzz rising in his head. Sounds like bees, he thought—like angry honeybees. Order Hymenoptera, family Apidae, genus Apis . . . Why are the bees so angry? I like bees—I’ve always liked bees . . .
Right! Go right!
He felt furiously along the wall to the right—and found a door.
His chest was heaving, sucking like a dry pump. He let his adrenaline go now, hoping it would buy him an extra few seconds. He twisted the knob and pulled, but the door moved through the water slowly, heavily, like a spoon through jelly. He couldn’t wait for it to fully open; he wedged his body into the opening and squeezed through.
He was outdoors now, the air was just above his head—just a few more inches to go. He pushed off with his half-dead legs, launching himself upward, his lungs about to implode.
His head hit the ceiling.
The impact was crushing, but it was the despair that almost killed him. He reached up with his hands and numbly felt along the surface. The ceiling wasn’t smooth—it had ridges and grooves.
Paneling. Back porch.
The sound in his head was a rising shrill note now. He was conscious but had no discernible thoughts. He was operating on instinct; it was all he had left. He pulled his knees up and crawled along the ceiling like a spider until his head bounced against something springy and flat.
Screen.
He pushed against it and it slowly gave way, drifting off as if it were in space. He reached around the edge and felt the gutter.
He pulled with everything he had left.
37
“You look terrible,” Beth said, “the worst I’ve ever seen you—and that really says something.”
“Thanks,” Nick said. “You look terrific—but then, everything does right now. I suppose that’s what happens when you thought you’d be dead.”
“Dead? What happened?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I haven’t seen you or heard from you in two days. Where have you been? What’s going on?”
Nick looked over at J.T., who was wolfing down a Belgian waffle smothered in strawberry syrup topped with whipped cream. “I’ve seen a lot of disgusting things lately, but I’d put that near the top of the list. You doing okay?”
“Okay,” the boy said, never missing a beat.
“We had quite a night, huh, partner?”
“You left me in the boat,” J.T. said, frowning.
“I had to—otherwise who would have pulled me out of the water?”
“Spotted you when you popped up,” he said.
“It’s a good thing you did—I sure couldn’t see you.”
They sat in a booth at a Waffle House in Gonzales, just off Interstate 10 a few miles from the town of St. Gabriel. It was almost 4:00 a.m. when Beth got the call from Nick to meet him here, waking her from a fitful sleep. A FEMA trailer truck had dropped them off, he said—could she meet him right away? He needed food and coffee, and he had no money to buy them wi
th. More important, he needed a change of clothing and his extra set of glasses—and he said he didn’t want to have to answer questions from nosy DMORT personnel about his appearance. She wondered what he meant.
Now she knew. She was astonished when she first saw him; his clothes were in ruins and his face was sallow and pale. He was barefoot, and his hair was plastered to the sides of his head as if he had shampooed it but never rinsed. And most startling of all, his glasses were missing. Beth had never seen Nick without his glasses before; he was functionally blind without them—he would have to be led around by the hand. That was exactly how she found him: shuffling toward her car in the Waffle House parking lot with J.T. hanging on to his arm.
“Where is Jerry?” Beth asked.
Nick turned and looked at the boy again; he had just finished off his waffle and was leaning back against the window now, beginning to doze off. “I tell you what,” Nick said. “Beth’s car is parked right outside—why don’t you stretch out in the backseat and get some sleep?”
“Don’t need no sleep,” he said.
“Are you working with me tomorrow or not?”
“Sure I am.”
“Then get some rest. I can’t have you falling asleep on me in the middle of a job. What if we need to blow up another house?” He stood up and let the boy slide out of the booth. “Lock the doors,” Nick called after him. “I’ll be right here if you need me.” He sat down again and watched through the window until he saw the boy climb into the car and slide down into the backseat.
He motioned to the waitress and pointed to his empty coffee cup. “Okay,” he said. “We can talk now.”
“Nick, what happened? Where’s Jerry?”
“Have you heard from Jerry in the last thirty-six hours—at the DPMU, at the Family Assistance Center? Has anybody seen him or mentioned him?”
“No. What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Jerry is—missing.”
She didn’t respond. She could tell that Nick was guarding something, either to prepare her or to protect himself.
“We went to the Superdome,” he said. “We were looking for J.T.’s dad. We got separated—I stayed with the boy, Jerry went off on his own. Jerry never came back. I waited all afternoon. I haven’t seen him since.”
Her heart sank. “Oh, Nick.”
“It’s my fault,” he said. “I was responsible; I should have anticipated; if anything happened to Jerry, it’s all my fault.”
“No,” she said, “it’s mine.”
He looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“The other night, when we were driving back from the bayou—you asked me if I had heard anything from J.T.’s social worker yet. I lied. I did hear back from his social worker, Nick—she told me that J.T. has no father. He did, once, a long time ago—but his father left the family when J.T. was only four. He hasn’t been heard from since. The boy has no mother either; he’s been passed from family to family in the Lower Ninth Ward, raised by a loose-knit assembly of ‘cousins’ and neighbors who took turns taking him in.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I should have—I know that now—but I saw the connection you were making with the boy and I wanted it to continue. If I’d told you J.T. had no father, you might have sent him away. The more you’re around him, the more human you seem to become, Nick; I didn’t want that to stop. He’s the best thing that’s happened to you in a long time.”
“You had no right to make that judgment.”
“I did it for you.”
“That’s a load of crap—you did it for yourself. Do I really need to be ‘more human,’ Dr. Woodbridge, or do you just like me better that way?”
“That’s not fair.”
“Tell it to Jerry—if you can find him. If you had told me this when you first found out, Jerry and I never would have gone to the Superdome.”
“I know,” she said, “and it’s eating a hole through my stomach right now. If something has happened to Jerry, it’s my fault, not yours—how do you think that makes me feel?”
They both sat in silence, staring at the table.
“I’ve got about a thousand questions,” Nick said.
“So do I.”
“Me first: If the kid has no father, then what does he want from me?”
“He told you, Nick—he’s looking for a father.”
“Make sense, will you?”
“He has no father, so he’s looking for one—and I think he’s found one.”
“Who?”
“You, of course.”
“Me? You must be kidding.”
“For an intelligent man, you can be really thick sometimes. When I first asked J.T. to describe his father, do you remember what he said? ‘Tall; smart; with glasses.’ ‘Like Nick,’ he said. Odd, isn’t it, that his father just happens to closely resemble you? And haven’t you ever wondered why J.T. doesn’t seem to be in any particular hurry to find his father? He seems perfectly content to follow you around day after day.”
“I just thought . . . I figured that—”
“Like I said, Nick: He’s looking for a father, and he’s found one.”
Nick shook his head. “Some father. I almost got him killed tonight.”
“What happened?”
“I was set up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Somebody passed me a message about a strange body. I heard about it from a FEMA crew; they got it from the National Guard; somebody purposely fed the information to them because they knew the word would get to me. Whoever it was knew I’d go and check it out right away; when I did, somebody was waiting for me there. I was in the attic—J.T. was asleep outside in the boat. Someone approached from the opposite side—they fed a hose through the roof vent and pumped gasoline into the attic—then they dropped a match and the whole thing went off like a bomb.”
“How in the world did you get out?”
“I dived down into the house and swam out.”
“You what?”
He shrugged.
“Is that how you lost your glasses?”
He nodded.
“Then how did you ever find your way out? How could you see? Wasn’t it dark?”
“The point is, J.T. was outside in the boat—what if that guy had spotted him? He would have killed him for sure. Some father I am—he should have picked somebody else. I don’t want him to get hurt, but I’m not sure I can protect him.”
She patted his arm. “You’re talking like a father already.”
“So what do I do with him now, send him away somewhere? He has no family—where would I send him?”
“Maybe he’d be better off in Houston, with the people they’re relocating to the Astrodome.”
“They went after Jerry in the Superdome,” Nick said. “What makes you think J.T. would be safe there?”
“Do you think he’s any safer with you?”
“At least I know I’ll look out for him. Who would look out for him in Houston? I can’t protect him if he’s someplace else. No, I’m keeping him with me—but I can’t keep putting him in danger.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to expose the guy who tried to kill me tonight—it’s the only way to get rid of him. I’m betting it was the same guy who fired on us in the bayou—the same guy who killed Jerry. I know who it was, Beth.”
“Who?”
“His name is John Detwiler. He works for the DEA.”
“Detwiler? Was he one of the agents you met in Denny’s office? The ones who told you not to recover any more bodies?”
“I never saw Detwiler. I only met his partner, Frank Turlock. I think that’s why he had Detwiler follow me—he knew I wouldn’t recognize him.”
“You think the DEA is trying to kill you?”
“I don’t think, I know.”
“But why?”
“I’m not quite clear on that one yet.”
“They wouldn’t try to kill you just to
keep you from recovering bodies—that would be insane.”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On why they don’t want me to recover bodies. They told me it would interfere with a major investigation—but maybe that’s not the real reason. Maybe they don’t want me to recover bodies because they put them there.”
“Nick, if that’s true, we need to go to the authorities.”
“I plan to, the minute I have proof—and I should have it in just a few minutes.”
“What proof ?”
“Did you bring my laptop?”
She opened her briefcase and took it out. “I can’t believe you. If I went through what you did tonight, I’d be curled up in a fetal position.”
“It’s hard to type that way.” He opened the laptop and turned it so they both could see. When the desktop opened, he double-clicked on an icon with the letters GPS beneath.
“What are you doing?”
“I tagged the guy’s boat.”
“You what?”
“Somebody must have followed Jerry and me to the Superdome, Beth—that’s the only way they could have known we were there. I think the same guy has been following me around the Lower Nine—I spotted him yesterday.”
“What did you do?”
“I circled around and rammed him—knocked him right out of his boat and into the water. It was beautiful, you should have seen it. Then, when he wasn’t looking, I planted a GPS transmitter in his boat.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to keep track of him, that’s why. Are cell phones working up here yet?”
“They work pretty much everywhere except in New Orleans.”
“Good.” Nick made a cellular connection to the Internet and switched over to the GPS program. He entered the zip code 70112 and a map of the city of New Orleans appeared; he repositioned the map and zoomed in closer, focusing on the Lower Ninth Ward. Now he hit Download Data, and a series of multicolored dots began to appear like pushpins all over the map—some red, some green, some yellow, each color connected by a thin black line.