Stealing Childhood

by Terry Persun

  Was Mindy the gremlin in their job? Is that what was being handed him. He paged ahead and jotted down notes copied from the forward most pages. Just whatever he noticed. Sometimes when he performed Tarot card readings, he’d look at the card to see what moved, or he’d glance at an astrological chart to see what pattern he noticed. In a similar fashion, Dan pulled only the words that shot out at him and wrote them together on a separate page. Then he sat back in his chair, closed his eyes, and closed the notebook for a while. He sipped at his coffee, enjoyed listening to the people walk in and out, chatter about work, family. He thought to meditate for a short while, but the noise level was high, so he opened his eyes. He watched as several people sat down near him, one with a laptop, two with tablets, and another man with a newspaper—a real, paper one. Some of the people were dressed casually—work casual—and others in suits, others in jeans and sweaters. It was a chilly morning.

  Dan opened his notebook again to let his words roll around in his head as he read through them in several different ways. Another man walked up and said to the man sitting diagonally from him, “Hey, Rich, you have an early shift?”

  “Oh, Sam? No, no, I just couldn’t sleep and decided to get some coffee.”

  “This far from home?”

  Rich stood. He seemed nervous. “You know me, I wanted to head to the hospital and check some records. I’ll see you later.”

  “Well, have a nice day.” Sam raised his cup and sat down. He reached for the newspaper section someone had set on the table. “Anyone looking at this?” One other man and Dan both said no at the same time. Sam picked up the paper.

  Dan leaned forward for a moment. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I know that man who just left, Richard, but can’t recall from where. Could you remind me who that was?”

  “Doctor Dunst, you mean? Big name in reproductive surgery and research. You may have seen his picture if you read any of the professional journals.” He continued to stare as though waiting for a confession.

  “Sorry, I’m not a doctor.”

  “You look like you could be,” Sam said.

  “Didn’t know there was a look,” Dan said.

  “Well, maybe not.” Sam smiled and then leaned back and opened the paper.

  Dan stood, grabbed his cup, and stuffed his notebook into his jacket pocket. He recognized the initials of the doctor. R.D., or Roger D of Herder fame. The man’s nervousness almost gave Dan documented proof. He rushed back to the hotel.

  He knocked on the surveillance room door and was let in after a few moments. Agent Mercer stood next to the door. “Everything’s going okay. You’re son’s still asleep.”

  Dan held up his cup. “I went out for coffee.”

  “And didn’t get me any?” There was no one else in the room.

  “Where’s Cora?”

  “She and Blake are getting some much needed sleep, which is what you should be doing instead of pumping your system with caffeine.”

  “Jason’s in danger, grave danger.”

  Mercer closed the door and lowered his voice. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I just met with Roger D and had a very unusual journey with Mindy.”

  Mercer raised a hand and waved it in front of Dan. “I don’t want to hear about your sexual encounters with anyone.”

  “Listen, damn it. There’s something huge going on here.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know yet, but it’s not good. And I think—I’m sure—Mindy’s in on the whole thing somehow.”

  Agent Mercer grabbed his phone off the table. “Hold on.” After a moment he said, “Sorry to bother you, Cora, but you need to hear this.” He handed Dan the phone. Dan repeated what he had just told Jim Mercer.

  On the other end of the phone, he heard her groan, and he imagined her sitting up in bed with her feet over the edge. “What time is it?”

  “About six-fifteen a.m.”

  “I need coffee.” He heard her bang around, probably at the clock. “I’ll be right there.”

  Dan hung up and handed the phone back to Agent Mercer. “You’d better go down and get coffee for Cora, and you’d might as well get one for yourself.” Dan held up the cup again. “Sorry, but I didn’t expect to be standing here.”

  Before Agent Mercer returned, Cora Rafsky came through the door. “Okay, what is all this?”

  Dan explained what he knew about Dr. Dunst, then explained the journey with Mindy. He pulled his notebook open while talking and paged to his latest writings. “You may not see what I see in this.” He laid the notebook open on the desk.

  “I don’t, so interpret.” Cora’s hair was messed and her tone tired, but her eyes were wide open, and Dan could tell that she was becoming more alert by the moment.

  Mercer showed up with coffee, and Dan knew that would help.

  “We’ve been blocked or sabotaged from the beginning. Mindy was placed on that plane so that we’d talk with her. She’s the gremlin.” Cora didn’t respond, so Dan continued, “She’s working for a lawyer. Maybe that was on purpose, maybe an accident, but she’s tangled up in this.” He pointed to where he wrote about her being tangled in the honeysuckle. “Even when she journeys she can’t get away from the truth. And I haven’t had anyone get that deeply into my journeys.”

  Cora didn’t look convinced. “What else?”

  “There’s something really strange going on there with reproductive stuff. That’s what Richard Dunst does. Maybe he’s using the girls for his research, maybe they’ve all signed away their rights—the lawyers—maybe this is all being blocked by Mindy, Sarah, and, I hate to even suggest this, Richard Running Deer.”

  “Your friend?”

  “You haven’t been able to get anywhere, have you?”

  She lowered her eyes.

  “I still have some work to do. Not everything is clear yet, but we have to get Mindy out of here. She’s too close. First Sarah, Koko, infiltrated your group, then Mindy intercepted me and Jason.”

  “No, first was Richard. We had to report to him all along the way.”

  “It’s hard to believe Richard’s involved, but we have been blocked every step of the way. It’s going to stop here and now,” Dan said.

  Cora met his eyes. “They’ve got Jason, now, too.”

  “A bargaining chip,” Dan said.

  “We know that they’re willing to shoot him,” Cora said as she reached toward Dan, possibly to calm him.

  But he turned and walked away. “I have to think.” Behind him Cora ordered Mercer to get to his findings about the Herders.

  Jim Mercer cleared his throat. “He’s right about Richard Dunst. He’s pretty important at the same hospital as are Dr. Schmidt and the nurse, James Boston.”

  “And the lawyers?” Cora asked.

  “You know about Chris O’Brien, Chuck O. The other one appears to be Barbara Lancroft, or Bobbie L as they call her.” Mercer stopped there. He cleared his throat again. “We’ve never observed any of them going in or out of that building, which seems odd.”

  “There must be other ways inside,” she said. “I’ll bet you find they’ve all worked with Richard Running Deer at one time or another.”

  “You mean the lawyers? I’ll check.” Mercer sat at a computer near the end of one of the tables. He began typing.

  “What now?” Cora asked.

  Dan shook his head. “Why are things clearing up now? This new information isn’t difficult. You’ve been in a fog then passed that along to me. I have to get closer, maybe get inside.” Dan waited for someone to say something and when no one did he asked, “Who does go in and out the front door?”

  Mercer was free with his information. “Low life pimps and who we suspect are buyers’ representatives. Every once in a while, a person who appears to be a secretary or receptionist. They do run a small time import business there, remember.”

  “I remember,” Dan said, “Growers Imports. Have you tried getting in through them?”

  Cor
a stared at him. “Wasn’t that in your debriefing?”

  “I didn’t have a debriefing.”

  “We’ve tried. And, as you know, we’ve picked up several of their street merchants, as it were. And a translator. Every time we remove someone, they fill the opening with someone new.”

  Her answer sounded almost cryptic to Dan, as though she wasn’t clear herself. There was some heavy shit going down. “Yeah,” he said, “I have to get closer.”

  Cora shook her head. “If they know who Jason is, and I suspect they do, then they’ll know you, too. You’ll both get killed.”

  “Are you saying you expect them to kill Jason? Because if that’s what you’re saying, then I am going in, and I’m putting a stop to all this.”

  “Idiot,” she said while turning toward Agent Mercer.

  “Did you just call me an idiot?”

  “You can’t go in there! We have to save those girls! And you haven’t mentioned them once.” She walked over and stood close in front of him. “There are a lot of frightened young girls in there and you’re after one person. There’s more at stake here than you can fathom. Those girls are first, then the whole operation, then your son. I’m sorry, but we have to look at the big picture right now and you’re thinking small, and I know that thinking small only gets you hurt and blows the whole operation out of the water.” She turned back to Mercer. “Jim knows that we have never gotten this close. We’ll take it slow enough that we can take them all down and save the girls.”

  “And Jason.”

  Cora nodded. “Of course, Jason.”

  Dan wasn’t satisfied with the way she said it, but her commitment wasn’t necessary. “Could you have some people remove Mindy from the hotel? I don’t care what you do with her, put her jail, let her go, just get her the hell out of here.

  “We have nothing on her except what you say and that sure won’t hold up.”

  “I get that,” Dan said, “but she’s still messing with us here and now and I get the sense that proximity has something to do with it.”

  Cora sat on the edge of the table, then tapped it with a finger near Agent Mercer. “Have one of the translators get in here in case we need him. Have Bill get rid of the girl. Take her to the main office for questioning or something. Keep her busy for a day or two if possible.” She turned toward Dan. “Will that help?”

  “I hope so. She can do a lot of damage from anywhere, but the farther away from here the better.” He paced the room after that. He thought of ways to infiltrate the group through journeying, but none of his ideas felt right. There was a sensation of knowing that came over him whenever he landed on the right choice, and he wasn’t getting that feeling at the moment. Maybe it was the situation. Jason had been in dangerous positions before. Was this one more deadly than any of the others? He scratched his head and walked toward the door to leave.

  To his side, Cora stood in protest, but the door opened from the other side before he could reach for the knob anyway. Bill Blake almost walked into Dan, but stopped dead in his tracks and held Dan’s gaze for a moment, then turned to address Cora. “You won’t believe this…”

  Before Cora could answer, Dan said, “The room is blocked.”

  “You mean locked,” Cora said. “So?”

  Agent Blake shook his head. “No, he’s right, it’s blocked. I got the hotel to give me the key and it doesn’t work. I tried picking the lock, nothing. I don’t know how to explain it, but every time I get close to her door, I feel sick.”

  Cora reached for Dan’s arm. “How is that possible? This is the real world, not someone’s imagination.”

  “I can help, but I need a drum.”

  “Jesus H.,” Cora said. “You can’t be serious.”

  Dan moved Agent Blake to the side with a shove and walked down the hall toward his room. Inside he grabbed his drum and walked back to Mindy’s door. Cora and Bill Blake stood just outside the observation room door, watching from a distance. Dan began what he felt was the right pattern of drumming, faster than a heartbeat but not quite a return call. He didn’t close his eyes or go into an altered state, instead he let the pulse of his motions run through his arm and into the drum stick where he then shifted to what felt to him as the opposite of the heartbeat rhythm—whatever that was. It sounded abstract to Dan, but he followed his intuition and continued drumming until the energy began to break up. He turned his head to Agent Blake and gave him a tight smile.

  Blake walked into the hall and, with the key, unlocked the door, then swung it open quickly.

  Suddenly exhausted, Dan collapsed onto the floor. Cora ran over to help him up and reached down to him.

  When Agent Blake walked out holding Mindy’s wrist, she looked at Dan on the floor and said, “You are better than I was told.” She shook her head. “How did you do that?”

  Dan glared at her. “I trusted you.”

  “You trusted a lot of people, maybe that’s the problem.” She looked at Cora. “You can’t hold me. I’ve done nothing.”

  Cora smiled broadly. “I can hold you for questioning, but it may take a day or so for me to get around to it.”

  “I get a call,” Mindy yelled. “You’ll be in trouble.”

  Agent Blake hauled Mindy toward the observation room, but Mercer met him in the hall and cuffed her. They didn’t even take her into the room, but yanked her down the hall.

  “Don’t let her use those hands to bang on anything,” Dan said with a laugh, feeling much lighter now.

  After Mindy and Blake were gone, Cora asked, “How did you do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Dan said.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I don’t understand everything I do, just a lot of it. Sometimes, I have to go with whatever feels right.”

  “I’m not sure I like that,” she said.

  “Then you’re not going to like a lot of what’s to come.” He took a deep breath. “I need sleep.”

  “Now might be the best time, before things start going again.” Cora pointed at Mercer. “Call me if anything at all goes on, anything.” She helped Dan to his room.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I’m staying with you. You need someone to watch over you. Who knows what might go on while you’re sleeping.”

  “So, you’re starting to get the point.”

  “I don’t know what I’m getting, but you’re not staying alone.” She closed the door.

  Dan put his drum and stick on the chair next to the bed. He took off his shirt, and Cora turned away. He slipped his shoes, socks, and pants off and slipped under the covers. “No more than a few hours.”

  Cora placed his drum and stick on the desk against the wall and sat in the chair. “Just get some sleep.”

  Chapter 23

  Dan hardly ever slept without dreaming, even if it was just a replay of the day’s events. But under stress and while in the middle of a job, he was on twenty-four hour alert—particularly with other shamans in the mix. On this day, he easily fell asleep and into a deep dream where several of his past journey animals showed up together in a crowded room as though for a party. They talked among themselves. He couldn’t make out what they were talking about but, familiar as he was with lucid dreaming, he quickly took control, stepped in, and asked why they were there. None appeared to hear him and none of them answered. When he persisted, a few crows turned his way, talked all at once and in different languages, then Moose, Snake, and Mouse chimed in, all in different languages as well. He couldn’t tell the languages apart because the sounds all began to mingle and mix as though they had become one large, oval sound. Why oval? Dan followed his own thoughts, but to do so he had to let the present dream go on, so he wandered away from the animals at the party to search for something oval in the room. He checked tables, counters and, behind the sofa, ran into Cockroach, almost stepping on it. It made a sound, a tiny yell. When he bent down to listen, Cockroach was clear in its speech. “Have you met my children?” Cockroach asked. />
  “Introduce me,” Dan said, going along with the dream.

  Out of a small hole in the baseboard came one full-grown cockroach after another. They kept coming and coming and started to climb up Dan’s legs. They were whispering and moaning, but not loud enough to understand. They continued to crawl from the small hole until he could feel them all over his body. He brushed them off, but they kept coming, kept whispering. He brushed and brushed at them. He started to jump around to get them to fall off. He became worried, then frantic, losing his lucidity.

  He awoke in a sweat, sat up, and immediately looked for Cora. She wasn’t there. He got out of bed, grabbed his notebook, and sat at the desk to write down everything he could remember from his dream. “Save me,” were the first words he remembered. That must have been what Cockroach’s children were saying. Save me. He underlined it. Then he wrote the word, oval, then how the rest of the animals earlier in the dream had ignored him—were they all mirror images? He flipped back in his notebook where he had combined his past journeys and wondered how it all fit together. He was running blind. Why had Cockroach wanted him to meet its children and why weren’t they children?

  He looked around the room, still in a daze from his dream, from writing everything down, from just waking up and Cora not being there. “Shit.” He had realized why Cora wasn’t there. Something must have happened with Jason.

  Dan dressed quickly, ran a hand through his hair, and rushed out the door and down the hall barefoot. He knocked and in a moment—not quickly enough—Agent Blake opened the door. Dan shoved his way into the room.

  Cora turned from her seat at the table. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.” She looked at her watch. “But then you’ve only slept a little over two hours.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing yet. Jason’s been up a short while. His arm hurts, but he’s okay. He said that the place where he was patched up by Dr. Schmidt looked more involved than a clinic to take care of minor wounds.” She stopped talking. “You look worried.”