Ridley Pearson: The Body of David Hayes

Boldt called out, “I’ll wait and see if you need a ride home.”

Foreman trundled off, his walk giving away the lingering effect of the drugs. Boldt felt a knot in his throat, still stunned that friendship could go so far wrong, guilty for getting all the breaks while Danny Foreman had gotten none.

He hunkered down for a long wait, thinking to call Liz so she didn’t wait up. Liz lived . Boldt heard the words echo around in his head. Like it was some kind of crime .

LIZ BOLDT FINISHED HER MORNINGrun with sex on her mind. It wasn’t often she hungered for it like this, but she seized the moment, sprinting up the back steps and through the kitchen door. Her battle with lymphoma had taken some of the meat off her bones a few years earlier, but she’d filled out since and she knew her husband liked the way she looked in her running clothes. She hurried into the living room where she found Lou down on the carpet in front of a quiet television, grunting softly through a string of sit-ups. The possibility of their joining in the shower heightened her sense of urgency. The kids would be up in a matter of minutes. Lou had been out late on a call, and consequently he was running much later than usual.

“You got back late last night,” she said. “What happened?”

“Yeah, after two. It was Danny Foreman. Someone took it to him pretty badly.”

“Beat him up? Danny?”

“Drugged him. Knocked him out cold. Harborview released him and I drove him home. He’ll mend.”

“We haven’t seen him in ages.” She felt awful about it, especially given Darlene’s death. But Foreman wasn’t the only friend they’d “lost” to the shift of kids and parenting. Their social calendar, never too full to begin with, given the demanding hours of both the bank and the police department, rarely included dinner with friends outside the smallest of circles. Liz’s promotion three years earlier to executive vice president of Information Technology, a division that prior to that promotion she’d known little about, had come only months after her remission from cancer and only a year and a half behind the birth of their second child.

“Yeah.” Lou sat up and grabbed around his knees. “We talked about that a little. He’s got issues.”

“We should have had him over to dinner.”

“Him and about a dozen others.”

“No, I mean it,” she said. “As close as I was to Darlene? All those months?”

Lou stood. Liz couldn’t remember him looking this fit. He said, “Which, as it turns out, is why he wouldn’t have accepted anyway.”

“You’re not serious?”

“Totally. He resents that you lived and Darlene didn’t.”

She felt a spike of heat as a wave of indignation and guilt clouded her thought. “He said that?”

“It wouldn’t have been a pleasant dinner.”

“I should say not.”

“It isn’t aimed at you personally-”

“No, not at all,” she said sarcastically, cutting him off.

“It’s us as a couple, apparently. Understandable, when you think about it.”

“It’s not understandable, and it’s not excusable. If there’s a problem there, it’s entirely our fault for not working harder when it counted. Did we even see him after the service?”

“Of course we did. A bunch of times. But it obviously didn’t work for him.”

Liz wondered what other tragedies lay in their wake. Children caused some serious waves.

“Listen, I beat myself up over this last night, but I’m all right with it, I think. It’s all yours.”

“Thanks a lot,” she said.

She offered to shower first and take over the breakfast duty, and he thanked her for it. She had to organize Sarah’s tote, but that wouldn’t take but a minute. She caught herself laying out how to juggle the next forty-five minutes in order to carry it off smoothly. No one in the family did well when the kids turned the morning into a zoo.

While Boldt showered she dressed, taking her time to get it right. Miles entered, sleepy-eyed, awakened by the sound of the shower. The same every morning. Liz slipped into autopilot. Dress them. Brush their hair while they brushed their teeth. Beds made. Breakfast going. A pot of English Breakfast for Lou, which seemed to surprise him. She could tell she’d be a few minutes late to work this morning. But what was, was. She had no desire to change it.

Over a hurried breakfast, they managed fragments of a conversation.

“Danny’s case,” she said, moving around the kitchen, now tidying up. “Anything interesting?”

“That wire fraud case. The seventeen million.”

“ Our case?” she said, surprised. “The bank?”

“You introduced us once. The guy they caught. Remember? It was a Christmas party I think. That guy.”

“David Hayes,” she said softly.

“He’s out on parole.”

The first butterfly wings fluttered in her chest. She moved toward the wall calendar, as if interested in the week ahead: a dinner date at Jazz Alley and a church board meeting for her, piano lessons for Miles and ballet for Sarah again next Monday. Parole? Already? Was it possible ?

“You didn’t know?”

Had she spoken her thoughts aloud? She cautioned herself: Steady !

“Absolutely not.”

“I would have thought the bank would have been told. That you guys would all be up to speed. On the lookout, as it were.”

“We will. I’m sure we are.”

“Well, that’s Danny’s case. Sort of. Not really. It gets complicated.”

“Yes, it does. It must,” she said, heading for an open chair and sitting down with the kids. Some things were impossible to juggle.

A bald eagle with a wingspan of nearly six feet soared past Liz Boldt’s twenty-ninth-floor office window at eye level. She took it as an omen, even though she didn’t believe in such things. Liz’s beliefs were rooted firmly in God. And though she preached to no one, not even her children, she prayed her way through her trials and celebrations. Every day offered her an opportunity to learn something about herself, sometimes strengthening, sometimes testing that faith. She lived to see joy in the eyes of her children, to hear laughter around the house. The smallest things in life proved of the greatest significance. Selfishness, which she now felt had predestined her to cancer and to her rediscovery of faith, was a thing of the past. She had wrestled that demon free, throwing herself into service. She thought of her responsibilities in terms of a pyramid, with God at the top, her children and husband next, her church, her job, her community…

Paroled . It felt like falling out of remission. She had little doubt of where this was headed, only how to handle it.

Her family, her job, even WestCorp’s reputation and therefore possibly the upcoming merger, could all come tumbling down around her if she didn’t manage this exactly right. The eagle represented something frightening: a phoenix, David Hayes, risen from his own ashes.

Her phone rang, and she answered it.

“Elizabeth Boldt.”

“It’s me.”

Paralysis. Her breath caught in her throat like swallowing water too fast. She knew his voice instantly.

“Tommy’s cabin. Five o’clock. Watch for anyone following. Coast to the side of the road. Open the hood like there’s something wrong. Shut it if you’re in the clear and climb back inside. You’ve got to do this, Liz. Please. I’m in serious trouble.”

With the sound of the click, she too hung up the phone, her hand trembling, her mouth dry, a sickening feeling worming through her. Stunned, she sat motionless, steam wafting from the cup of decaf. Her eyes stung.

The phone purred a second time but she would not answer it. Feeling as if she might throw up, she hooked the trash can with her foot and dragged it closer. A bubble wedged in her throat.