“Go ahead. I’m dressed.”
He removed the lid on the back of the toilet and fished out a plastic bag with a few disposable sticks of insulin left in it. It wasn’t the most hygienic place to store medical supplies, but it kept them cold. He lifted his shirt to reveal a bony edge of fishbelly white hipbone, and dabbed at it with an antiseptic wipe.
“Ma’am,” he said, not looking at her. “You need to be careful tonight. People ain’t right. They aren’t thinking right. Allie isn’t thinking right.”
“Will you be here keeping an eye on the infirmary while I’m visiting with Carol?” Harper asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. Nick will be glad to have a pal around.”
“Ma’am? Do you hear what I’m saying? About people not thinking right? I tried to talk to Allie at breakfast. I don’t know what’s come over her. She hasn’t eaten in days and she wasn’t in any shape to be missing meals to begin with. Someone’s got to do something. I’m scared—”
“Michael Lindqvist! She can take that stone out of her mouth and have breakfast anytime she likes. I’m sorry if you want me to give her an easy out, but I am not going to encourage more of this barbaric nonsense by going along with it. If you came in here to see if you could bully me or guilt me—”
“No, ma’am, no!” he cried with real anguish. “That’s not what I’m trying to do at all! You’re not doing anything wrong. That’s not what’s worrying me. What’s worrying me is the way Carol and Ben and all Allie’s friends are cheering her on while she starves herself. You’re in the infirmary all day and all night, so you don’t see that part. You don’t see the Neighbors sisters whispering to her that she can’t give in, that the whole camp believes in her. Or the way all her friends sit with after she’s missed another meal and chant her name until her eyes start glowing and she’s in the Bright. It’s almost like she needs them to be proud of her more than she needs to eat. And none of ’em care how thin she is or how fragile she’s getting. I’m scared she’s going to go hypoglycemic and crash. Pass out and maybe swallow that stone! Christ, it’s enough—it’s enough to make a person think about just grabbing her and—you know—throwing some stuff in a suitcase.”
He was the second person in twenty-four hours to admit he had given thought to scarpering off. Harper wondered how many others were about sung out and if Carol knew how dangerously slippery her grip on the camp really was. Maybe she did. Maybe that explained everything.
Michael swallowed heavily. In a steadier, lower voice, he finished: “You do what you think is right. Just don’t get hurt, ma’am. Allie may hate your guts right now, but she’d hate herself more if you got hurt on her account.” He took a shaky breath, and then added, “I love Carol as much as I ever loved my own mother, you know that? I do! I’d die for her in a heartbeat.” His eyes were damp and pleading and an unspoken but hovered in the air between them.
There was more to say, but no time to say it. Ben and Jamie Close were waiting.
8
Ben led the way. They walked on a bridge of pine planks set end to end across the snow. There seemed to be no light in all the world except for the white disk of Ben’s flashlight. Jamie Close followed behind. She had her rifle over her left shoulder and a broom handle in her right hand, cut short, one end wrapped in tape. She whistled while she swung it back and forth.
They came out from beneath the firs and proceeded to the House of the Black Star, the cottage where Carol had wintered with her father. It was a tidy one-floor place—gingerbread shingles and black shutters—named for the enormous iron barn star that hung on its north-facing side between a pair of windows. Harper thought it was a fine bit of decoration, ideal for any inquisitor’s dungeon or torturer’s crypt. Two Lookouts sat on the single stone step, though they jumped to their feet when Ben came out of the trees. Ben didn’t acknowledge them, but only stepped past them and rapped on the door. Carol called them in.
Carol sat in an aged mission chair covered in cracked, glossy leather. The chair had surely belonged to her father: it was a place to read Milton, smoke a pipe, and think wise, kindly, Dumbledorish thoughts. There was a matching love seat with creamy pale leather cushions, but no one was seated there. Carol had a pair of Lookouts with her, but they sat on the floor, at her feet. One of them was Mindy Skilling, damp-eyed and adoring before Mother Carol. The other was a girlish male, with close-cropped pale hair, feminine lips, and a big knife on his skinny belt. Almost everyone in camp called him Bowie, but Harper wasn’t sure if that was because of the knife or be cause of his resemblance to Ziggy Stardust. He watched them enter from beneath pink, drooping lids.
Harper didn’t expect to see Gilbert Cline there, too, but he was seated on the low stone ledge in front of the fire. Red worms twisted in the heaped coals, and the warmth didn’t reach far. Frost had turned the panes of glass to brilliant squares of diamond and made Harper feel as if she had entered a cave behind a frozen waterfall.
Jamie Close banged the door shut and leaned against it. Ben heaved himself down on the love seat with a great sigh, as if he had just come in from hauling armfuls of wood. He patted the space beside him, but Harper pretended not to see. She didn’t want to sit with him, and she didn’t care to appear as a supplicant at Carol’s feet. She remained close to the wall, her back to a window, winter breathing on the nape of her neck.
Carol’s gaze drifted to Harper, her eyes glassy and feverish and bloodshot. With her shaved head and starved, wasted face, she had the look of an aged cancer patient, responding poorly to chemotherapy.
“It’s good to see you, Nurse Willowes. I’m grateful you could come by. I know you’ve been busy. We were just hearing from Mr. Cline about how he came to be hiding by South Mill Pond, not a hundred yards from the police department. Some tea? Some breakfast?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
Mindy Skilling rose without being spoken to and padded away into the darkened kitchenette.
“It seems Mr. Cline couldn’t plausibly have had anything to do with what happened to my father,” Carol went on. “And I’ve been interested to know something about who my dad risked his life for. Maybe gave his life for. You don’t mind, do you, Nurse Willowes? He was just starting to tell us the story of his escape.”
“No. I don’t mind,” Harper said. Mindy was already back, handing her a little china cup of hot tea and a plate with a thin slice of fragrant, nutty coffee cake on it. Harper’s stomach rumbled noisily. Coffee cake? It seemed only slightly less luxurious than a foaming hot tub.
“Go on. Please continue, Mr. Cline. You were saying where you and Mr. Mazzucchelli met?”
“This was in Brentwood, at the county lockup.” Cline gave Harper a lingering, curious look—What are you here for?—before turning to face Carol. “They’ve got a facility there to hold maybe forty prisoners. And they had a hundred of us there.
“There were ten cells, each about ten feet long, with ten men packed in each. They put a TV in a hall and played Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Pete’s Dragon so we’d have something to watch. All they had was kid videos they keep around for family visits. There was one guy who lost his mind down the hall. Sometimes he’d start screaming ‘I’ll be your candle on the water!’ until guys started hitting him to shut him up. After a while I started to think they were running those two videos to torture us.”