Chris Jordan - Measure of Darkness

“But you love my sourdough bread,” she says, shaking her silver-haired head in consternation. “You love maple syrup-you put syrup on Cheerios! So what’s the problem?”

Teddy shrugs and smiles his beatific little grin. Today his hair is newly tinged with a disturbing shade of pink, and he’s swapped out his nostril ring for a small gold stud.

“It’s nothing personal,” he explains to Beasley. “I’m not eating animals today.”

“French toast is not an animal.”

“Eggs and milk,” Teddy points out. “Product of animals, and therefore animal in nature.”

Beasley takes her hands out of her apron pockets, looking stunned. “You’ve gone vegan?”

“Just for today. Cleansing.”

“You’re cleansing.” She considers that, makes some sort of calculation and nods to herself. “Fine. As it so happens, I know a special variation that will work with French toast. No eggs, no milk. No animal product of any kind. Give me ten minutes.”

“Wow,” Teddy says. “Thanks. I’ll have two slices, please.”

Nine minutes later Beasley beams as the rail-thin boy scoffs up her syrup-soaked slices in less time than it takes for Naomi to put down her newspaper and say, “No eggs? No milk? How is that possible?”

The question is purely rhetorical, since Beasley will not discuss her trade secrets while a meal is being consumed, if ever. Also, at precisely that moment a small wall-mounted bulb begins to flash, indicating an incoming call on boss lady’s private, ultra-secure landline. The one with the number restricted to a chosen few. She takes the call in an alcove off the kitchen-a pantry, really-and returns to us with a gleam in her eyes, and the trace of a smile on her lips.

“Randall Shane,” she says. “Dropped off at Mass General E.R. within the last fifteen minutes.”

And so it is that Naomi Nantz takes leave of the residence, not at a walk but at a full run. On a good day the hospital is a brisk twenty-minute saunter from the residence, but time is of the essence, so we race to Commonwealth Avenue, cross the mall at a run and hail a taxi going east. Basically we hijacked the Haitian driver, who mistakenly thought he was off duty and idling at the curb, sipping a Starbucks. Naomi, accepting no excuses, declares an emergency and directs him up Storrow Drive to Embankment Road, and around the loop to the Fruit Street entrance. Four minutes, door-to-door, and the shaken driver-instructions having been crisply issued directly into his right ear-accepts a hundred-dollar bill and flees the scene, looking shell-shocked by the experience. The sirens behind us could be from an approaching ambulance, but are more likely the local cops, having been alerted to a yellow taxi briefly hitting ninety in the Back Bay neighborhood.

We’re about to enter the E.R. when Jack Delancey screeches to a halt in his big Lincoln, activates his blinking parking lights and joins us.

“Told you I could beat a damn taxicab,” he says, straightening his tie as we step through the sliding door.

“But you didn’t.”

“Close enough,” he says. “Who was that on the phone? Who gave you the heads-up?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Naomi says, avoiding his gaze as she quickens her pace. “We haven’t much time. The police will figure it out soon enough.”

“The Benefactor,” Jack confides to me. “Mr. Big, whoever he is. That’s my guess.”

Naomi Nantz in full order-issuing mode is a thing to behold. Just as the taxi driver found himself obeying her commands to dart through city traffic, the duty nurse, a hardened soul who looks like she herself could direct battalions without flinching, is soon escorting us to a curtained cubicle, where an E.R. doc is attempting to assess the condition of the huge slab of a man more or less unconscious on the gurney, eyelids fluttering.

So far as I can tell Shane is wearing the same clothes he had on when they kicked in the windows and took him down. His shirt has been opened for examination, revealing his enormous chest and diaphragm. There are no obvious bruises, but who knows what they’ve done to him inside? His complexion is a sickening shade of gray and his eyes have sunk so deeply into his skull that he looks to have aged a decade, at least. Wherever he’s been, whatever has been done to him, it’s taken a terrible toll.

“Bastards,” Jack growls, his voice catching.

The startled doctor, a blonde, cherub-cheeked female who at first glance appears to be about twelve years old, wants to know what connection we have to the patient.

“Are you the ones who dumped this man at the curb with a note pinned to his shirt?”

Naomi soon sets her straight, without sharing any of the more interesting details. “The patient is our associate. We have reason to believe he was abducted for purposes of interrogation.”

“Interrogation?” the young doc shoots back. “More like tortured, from the look of him.”

“The note pinned to his shirt,” Naomi says. “What did it say?”

At first the young doctor seems determined not to share information but, under Naomi’s persuasive gaze, soon changes her mind. “Just three words, one of them nonsense. The first two were ‘Randall Shane,’ I’m assuming that’s his name. I put him into our database, but he’s never been admitted here.”

“The third word?”

The doc shrugs. “‘Gaba,’ whatever that means.”

“Gaba,” I say. “Like baby talk?”

“No,” says Naomi, remaining focused on the doctor. “As a matter of fact, ‘gaba’ explains it. Gamma-aminobutyric acid. If the word had been ‘GABA analogue’ or ‘GABAergic’ you’d have understood immediately, as you were intended to.”

The young E.R. doc has turned crimson. “Of course! He’s been drugged with some sort of barbiturate, or benzodiazepine.”

“Possibly both,” Naomi suggests. “He was taken down with a very powerful tranquilizer dart, just for starters.”

The doc’s jaw drops. “What! What the hell is going on here? Who is this guy?”

Before anyone can form a reply, Shane’s head lolls to one side and his sunken eyelids open. Instantly, Jack is there, crouching beside the gurney. “Randall? Can you talk? We don’t have much time, old friend. Cops are on the way.”

Shane gives him a loopy grin and says, “Bah-doo.” Working his lips, struggling to form a word.

Jack looks up. “Whatever they drugged him with, it’s starting to wear off.”

“Anything you can give him?” Naomi asks the doc. “To bring him around quicker?”

The E.R. doc looks deeply offended by the suggestion. “No way. Not without a full assessment. This man needs to be admitted and monitored.”

“He may know the location of a missing child,” Naomi says, pressing. “A five-year-old boy.”

The doc remains adamant. “I can’t treat him until I know what he’s been drugged with.”

“We’ve established that,” Naomi reminds her patiently. “One of the GABAergics.”

The doctor shakes her head, crosses her arms defensively. “Because ‘gaba’ was scrawled on a piece of paper? Not good enough. We need to determine the specific drug. Child or no child, I will not put this patient’s life at risk because you want to chat.”

“Fine,” says Naomi, turning her attention to the man on the gurney. “Mr. Shane? The clock is ticking. Very soon you’ll be taken into custody. Do you know where the boy is? Or who took him?”

Still unable to raise his head, or keep his eyes focused, the big guy is obviously concentrating, devoting all of his energy to the task of making his mouth and tongue function. “Joey,” he manages to say. “Joey Keener. Five years old.”

“Joey, yes,” says Naomi. “Is he alive?”

Shane manages to nod. “Yes,” he says. “Alive.”