F Wilson - Deep as the Marrow

How long had the whole thing took—from first brick to driving away? Like ninety seconds?

Paulie would of done it better, smoother, but what really mattered sat beside her on the seat: a whole stock bottle of Tegretol.

“Wasn’t pretty,” she said aloud, “but it worked.” She pounded on the dashboard and laughed. “It worked!” We’re in business, Katie, she thought as she picked up speed back to the motel. We can stay together as long as we want now.

24

“Here he comes,” Canney said.

Bob Decker looked at his watch: 1:28. He shifted in his seat to relieve the stiffness in his joints and watched Vanduyne shuffle down the ramp from the Maryland House. A different man from the one who’d trotted past them five hours ago.

“Poor bastard,” Bob said.

“Yeah. I tell you, I’m glad I wasn’t up there. Don’t know if I could stand watching him wait all those hours for a call that’s not coming. Rips your heart out.”

Bob stared at him. “Identifying with him, Gerry?”

“How can I help it? If that was me and it was Martha I was waiting to hear about…” He shook his head. “And you know what’s worse? We may be the reason he didn’t get his daughter back.”

Bob nodded. He’d already thought of that. “You think we were made?”

“Possible. Maybe whoever was returning the kid saw something and got spooked.”

“Or maybe the hit team got spooked.” Canney didn’t answer right away.

They both watched Vanduyne’s car pull out of the lot and head for 95 south.

“That’s a good thought,” Canney said. “I’ll keep telling myself that.

Over and over. Soon I may actually believe it.“ Bob knew the feeling.

For the past hour he’d been telling himself that they might have saved Vanduyne’s life tonight.

So why did he still feel like a bum?

1

“Another hidden cost of the war on drugs has been the accelerated spread of AIDS. Because we don’t allow IV drug users to buy clean needles legally, they reuse old needles. That’s why forty-four percent of newly reported AIDS cases last year were drug related. ‘Serves ’em right,‘ some might say, but these people pass the virus on to their sexual contacts, who then spread H IV further into the heterosexual community, and on to any children resulting from these contacts. AIDS babies are the civilian casualties of the War on Drugs.”

Look at us, John thought. We’re a Hopper painting.

He imagined himself a stranger standing in the kitchen doorway, taking in the scene. Nana sat at one end of the rectangular table, half turned away from him, her eyes fixed on the TV. Meet the Press was on but he doubted she saw Tim Russert or heard a word Heather Brent was saying.

John sat at the other end, staring out at the backyard as the morning sun poured through the windows, enveloping him without warming him. Two people in the same room, connected by ties of blood and nothing else.

Bright light and estrangement. Edward Hopper would have jumped on the scene.

But that was only the surface.

In truth, he and his mother had commiserated for so long into the night, shared so much pain, that sheer emotional and physical exhaustion demanded they withdraw into themselves for a while.

Down time.

What had been the purpose of making him go to the Maryland House last night? A cruel joke? This whole nightmare had started out seeming purely political—get Tom out of the White House—but now it had taken on an almost personal tone. What had they accomplished besides torturing him?

And it had been torture, unremitting agony hanging around that rest stop, scrutinizing every traveler hurrying to the bathrooms or buying a yogurt, hating everyone who used a phone in case the kidnappers might be trying to call on one of them.

And with each passing hour, his hope fading, progressing from growing uncertainty to devastating conviction that Katie wasn’t coming back to him.

And he’d been so sure. That woman who’d called had seemed genuinely concerned about Katie. Had she changed her mind? Or worse—one person connected with the plot was already dead… had something else gone wrong?

And even if something hadn’t, even if Katie and this woman were sitting safe and sound in another house in another town, Katie had no Tegretol.

The pill count from the bottle found in Falls Church showed only a few missing. John sighed. One more thing he’d kept from Nana, but it yawned before him like a bottomless pit: Right now, as they sat here in their desolate cocoons, Katie could be having a seizure.

The phone rang and John leapt to get it. Good news? Bad news? No news? The phone had become a loaded weapon; answering it, placing it to his ear, a form of Russian roulette.

“Good news, Doc. I think.” Bob Decker’s voice. John guessed he was supposed to ask who was talking if he didn’t recognize it. Decker tended to be deficient in the social amenities, but John appreciated his no-nonsense approach.

“You ‘think’?”

“Yeah. It’s about the toe.” Decker seemed a little unsure, and that couldn’t be good. John glanced at his mother who had straightened in her chair, listening. He waved off her questioning look and covered the receiver.

“Just an update,” he told her. “Nothing new.” She still didn’t know about the toe. He wanted to keep it than way.

As casually as he could, he stretched the phone cord and slipped around the corner into the hall. Then he leaned against the wall, bracing himself.

“What about it?”

“It’s not your daughter’s.”

“What?” John didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “How… ? I don’t…”

“Damnedest thing. I’ve already been on the phone twice to the Bureau crime lab. They say the toe you gave us is full of embalming fluid.”

“Embalming?” He had to keep his voice low—a whisper. “But there was fresh blood. I saw it.”

“That’s right. And the type matches your daughter’s, but—”

“Wait. How do you know her blood type?”

“Her hospital records—when she had that head injury.”

“Oh. Right.” Of course they’d have done an in-depth background check on Katie, trying to find out everything about her.

“Anyway, the lab is a hundred percent certain the blood on the toe didn’t come from the toe. That toe’s been dead for days.”

John took a breath. Thank God he’d spoken to Katie yesterday. If he hadn’t, he’d be convinced right now that she was dead.

“This makes no sense!”

“Tell me about it. But it gets weirder. The toe belongs to a little boy.”

“A boy? How on earth did they figure that out?”

“Did some DNA thing. Found a Y chromosome.”

John tried to slow his whirling thoughts, tried to snatch bits of coherency from the maelstrom.

A Y chromosome; females didn’t have one, so the toe couldn’t be Katie’s.

“There’s no mistake?” John said.

“That’s what I’m told. The lab boys say they’ve checked and rechecked: double X on the blood, but the cells of the toe itself are XY.”

John bit his lip. He wanted to pound the wall and shout. But confusion blunted his relief.

Why send a dead boy’s toe? The kidnappers were obviously murderous thugs—the bloody corpse in the Falls Church house was testament to that—and yet they’d sent a bogus toe rather than cut off Katie’s…

“Any of this make sense to you. Doc?”

“No. I can’t imagine…”

“Neither can I. Are you sure you can’t help us out on this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Anything you haven’t told us?”

John stiffened. Did they suspect that he’d been contacted? Had they followed him last night? He was tempted to tell Decker about speaking to Katie yesterday, but the woman had been worried about being caught. Suppose someone on Decker’s team had followed him and scared her off?