Gilchrist drew his weapon, but kept it pointing toward the ground. “Sir!” he barked, his sharp voice a thunderclap. “Back away from the woman!”
Gaynor looked at the cop, pointed to Marla. “That’s my son! She has my son!”
Christ on a cracker, this very bad situation was milliseconds away from getting a fuck of a lot worse. The cops had no idea what they’d walked into. They probably thought it was some kind of custody dispute. A full-scale domestic disturbance.
“Officer Gilchrist?” I said.
The man’s head snapped my way. “I know you?”
“David Harwood. Used to work for the Standard. This is my cousin, Marla. She’s under a lot of . . . stress right now, and she was just about to hand the baby to me. And I think that’s okay with Mr. Gaynor here, right?”
“Everyone just stay right where they are,” Gilchrist said as his partner came alongside. “Would you like to bring us up to speed, Harwood?”
“It’d be easier to explain once Marla hands me the baby.”
“That work for you?” Humboldt, speaking for the first time, asked Bill Gaynor.
Gaynor nodded.
“How about you, Marla?” Gilchrist asked.
Marla took four slow steps in my direction. Carefully she handed the crying child to me. I supported him against my chest with one arm, wrapped the other around him. Felt his warmth. The stirring of his small limbs.
Gilchrist holstered his weapon.
“In the house,” I said, my voice feeling as though it might break. “You have to go . . . into the house.”
“What’s in the house, sir?” Humboldt asked.
It was Gaynor who spoke. “My . . . wife.” The way he said it, the way the two words came out so brittle, neither of the cops seemed to feel the need to ask what her situation was.
Humboldt drew a weapon and slowly approached the open front door. The house swallowed him up as he entered the foyer.
Gilchrist spoke into the radio attached to his shoulder, said he was going to need more units on Breckonwood. Probably a detective and a crime-scene unit.
Marla’s red eyes looked my way. I wondered whether she would ask me what was in the house, but she didn’t.
Instead, she slowly melted to the grass. Once she was on her knees, she put her hands over her eyes and began to weep so hard her body shook.
My phone rang. Tucked into my inside jacket pocket, against my chest, it felt like I’d been hit by one of those paddles paramedics use. With a wailing Matthew pressed against me, I worked my free hand into my jacket to retrieve the phone. I saw who it was before I put the phone to my ear.
“Agnes,” I said.
“I’m at Marla’s and there’s no one here. What the hell is going on?”
Matthew cried. “We’re not there,” I said.
“Who is . . . Oh, dear God, is that the baby?”
“Yeah. Look, Agnes—”
“Where are you? Where the hell are you?”
I couldn’t even remember where I was. I was numb. I glanced at the house, read the number to her.
“A street, David? That would be enormously helpful.”
I had to think a moment. “Breckonwood. You know where that is?”
“Yes,” Agnes snapped. “What are you doing there?”
“Just come,” I said.
“Your mother said you had some wild idea that you might call the police. Whatever’s happened, you are not to call the police.”
“Aunt Agnes, we’re way past that now.”
NINE
“SO let me see if I have this right,” Barry Duckworth said, sitting across the desk from Thackeray College security chief Clive Duncomb. “You’ve got a sexual predator wandering the campus, and you’ve decided the Promise Falls police are the last people who need to know about this.”
“Not at all,” Duncomb said.
“That’s how it looks to me.”
“We’re well equipped to deal with all manner of situations,” Duncomb said. “I have a staff of five.”
“Oh, well,” Duckworth said. “And I suppose you can call on your students to pitch in as needed. Do the chemistry majors do your forensic work? You have an interrogation room somewhere, or do you just use one of the lecture halls? I guess your art students can do the fingerprint work. They’d have plenty of ink on hand.”
Duncomb said nothing. Instead, he opened the bottom drawer of his desk and brought out a file folder stuffed with about half an inch of paperwork. He opened it and began to read:
“‘January fourteenth, ten seventeen p.m., vandal throws brick though dining hall window. Call put in to Promise Falls police, told they have no one available, ask Thackeray security to e-mail them a report. February second, twelve-oh-three a.m., inebriated student shouting and taking his shirt off on steps of library. Security puts in call to Promise Falls police, told to send them a copy of the report.’ You want me to go on?”
“You think a broken window and a drunk kid equate with rape?”
Duncomb waved a finger at him. “There hasn’t been an actual rape. Which is one of the reasons why we chose not to bother the Promise Falls police.” He smiled. “We know how busy you are.”