“No idea.” Brady is wrung out, sated. What he really wants now is to savor the death of the Robinson girl, then take a nap. There is a lot to be done, great things are afoot, but at the moment he needs rest.
“He can’t see you like this,” Babineau says. “Your skin is flushed and you’re covered with sweat. You look like someone who just ran the City Marathon.”
“Then keep him out. You can do that. You’re the doctor and he’s just another half-bald buzzard on Social Security. These days he doesn’t even have the legal authority to ticket a car at an expired parking meter.” Brady’s wondering how the nigger lawnboy will take the news. Jerome. Will he cry? Will he sink to his knees? Will he rend his garments and beat his breast?
Will he blame Hodges? Unlikely, but that would be best. That would be wonderful.
“All right,” Babineau says. “Yes, you’re right, I can do that.” He’s talking to himself as much as to the man who was supposed to be his guinea pig. That turned out to be quite the joke, didn’t it? “For now, at least. But he must still have friends on the police, you know. Probably lots of them.”
“I’m not afraid of them, and I’m not afraid of him. I just don’t want to see him. At least, not now.” Brady smiles. “After he finds out about the girl. Then I’ll want to see him. Now get out of here.”
Babineau, who is at last beginning to understand who is the boss, leaves Brady’s room. As always, it’s a relief to do that as himself. Because every time he comes back to Babineau after being Dr. Z, there’s a little less Babineau to come back to.
10
Tanya Robinson calls her daughter’s cell for the fourth time in the last twenty minutes and for the fourth time gets nothing but Barbara’s chirpy voicemail.
“Disregard my other messages,” Tanya says after the beep. “I’m still mad, but mostly what I am right now is worried sick. Call me. I need to know you’re okay.”
She drops her phone on her desk and begins pacing the small confines of her office. She debates calling her husband and decides not to. Not yet. He’s apt to go nuclear at the thought of Barbara skipping school, and he’ll assume that’s what she’s doing. Tanya at first made that assumption herself when Mrs. Rossi, the Chapel Ridge attendance officer, called to ask if Barbara was home sick. Barbara has never played hooky before, but there’s always a first time for bad behavior, especially with teenagers. Only she never would have skipped alone, and after further consultation with Mrs. Rossi, Tanya has confirmed that all of Barb’s close friends are in school today.
Since then her mind has turned to darker thoughts, and one image keeps haunting her: the sign over the Crosstown Expressway the police use for Amber Alerts. She keeps seeing BARBARA ROBINSON on that sign, flashing on and off like some hellish movie marquee.
Her phone chimes the first few notes of “Ode to Joy” and she races to it, thinking Thank God, oh thank God, I’ll ground her for the rest of the win—
Only it’s not her daughter’s smiling face in the window. It’s an ID: CITY POLICE DEPT. MAIN BRANCH. Terror rolls through her stomach and her bowels loosen. For a moment she can’t even take the call, because her thumb won’t move. At last she manages to press the green ACCEPT button and silence the music. Everything in her office, especially the family photo on her desk, is too bright. The phone seems to float up to her ear.
“Hello?”
She listens.
“Yes, this is she.”
She listens, her free hand rising to cover her mouth and stifle whatever sound wants to come out. She hears herself ask, “Are you sure it’s my daughter? Barbara Rosellen Robinson?”
The policeman who has called to notify her says yes. He’s sure. They found her ID in the street. What he doesn’t tell her is that they had to wipe off the blood to see the name.
11
Hodges knows something’s amiss as soon as he steps out of the skyway that connects Kiner Memorial proper to the Lakes Region Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic, where the walls are painted a soothing pink and soft music plays day and night. The usual patterns have been disrupted, and very little work seems to be getting done. Lunch carts stand marooned, filled with congealing plates of noodly stuff that might once have been the cafeteria’s idea of Chinese. Nurses cluster, murmuring in low tones. One appears to be crying. Two interns have their heads together by the water fountain. An orderly is talking on his cell phone, which is technically cause for suspension, but Hodges thinks he’s safe enough; no one is paying him any mind.