He went up to the maternity waiting room first, but all the seats were empty, so maybe the delivery was going faster than Billy Riggins, a nervous novice at this, had expected. Ralph buttonholed a nurse and asked her to tell Betsy that he wished her all the best.
‘I will when I get the chance,’ the nurse said, ‘but right now she’s very busy. That little man is in a hurry to get out.’
Ralph had a brief image of Frank Peterson’s bloody, violated body and thought, If the little man knew what this world was like, he’d be fighting to stay in.
He took the elevator down two floors to ICU. The remaining member of the Peterson family was in room 304. His neck was heavily bandaged and in a cervical collar. A respirator wheezed, the little accordion gadget inside flopping up and down. The lines on the monitors surrounding the man’s bed were, as Jack Hoskins had said, mighty low. There were no flowers (Ralph had an idea they weren’t allowed in ICU rooms), but a couple of Mylar balloons had been tethered to the foot of the bed and floated near the ceiling. They were imprinted with cheerful exhortations Ralph didn’t like to look at. He listened to the wheeze of the machine that was breathing for Fred. He stared at those low lines and thought of Jack saying I don’t think he’s coming back.
As he sat down by the bed, a memory from his high school days came to him, back when what was now called environmental studies had been plain old Earth science. They had been studying pollution. Mr Greer had produced a bottle of Poland Spring water and poured it into a glass. He invited one of the kids – Misty Trenton, it had been, she of the deliciously short skirts – up to the front of the room and asked her to take a sip. She had done so. Mr Greer then produced an eyedropper and dipped it into a bottle of Carter’s Ink. He squeezed a drop into the glass. The students watched, fascinated, as that single drop sank, trailing an indigo tentacle behind it. Mr Greer rocked the glass gently from side to side, and soon all the water in the glass was tinted a weak blue. Would you drink it now? Mr Greer asked Misty. She shook her head so emphatically that one of her hair clips came loose, and everybody, Ralph included, had laughed. He wasn’t laughing now.
Less than two weeks ago, the Peterson family had been perfectly fine. Then had come the drop of polluting ink. You could say it was the chain on Frankie Peterson’s bike, that he would have made it home unharmed if it hadn’t broken, but he also would have made it home unharmed – only pushing his bike instead of riding it – if Terry Maitland hadn’t been waiting in that grocery store parking lot. Terry was the drop of ink, not the bike chain. It was Terry who had first polluted and then destroyed the entire Peterson family. Terry, or whoever had been wearing Terry’s face.
Strip away the metaphors, Jeannie had said, and you are left with the inexplicable. The supernatural.
Only that’s not possible. The supernatural may exist in books and movies, but not in the real world.
No, not in the real world, where drunk incompetents like Jack Hoskins got pay bumps. All Ralph had experienced in his nearly fifty years of life denied the idea. Denied there was even the possibility of such a thing. Yet as he sat here looking at Fred (or what remained of him), Ralph had to admit there was something devilish about the way the boy’s death had spread, taking not just one or two members of his nuclear family, but the whole shebang. Nor did the damage stop with the Petersons. No one could doubt that Marcy and her daughters would carry scars for the rest of their lives, perhaps even permanent disabilities.
Ralph could tell himself that similar collateral damage followed every atrocity – hadn’t he seen it time and again? Yes. He had. Yet this one seemed so personal, somehow. Almost as if these people had been targeted. And what about Ralph himself? Was he not part of the collateral damage? And Jeannie? Even Derek, who was going to come home from camp to discover that a good many things he’d taken for granted – his father’s job, for instance – were now at risk.
The respirator wheezed. Fred Peterson’s chest rose and fell. Every now and then he made a thick noise that sounded weirdly like a chuckle. As if it were all a cosmic joke, but you had to be in a coma to get it.
Ralph couldn’t stand it anymore. He left the room, and by the time he got to the elevator, he was nearly running.
17
Once outside, he sat on a bench in the shade and called the station. Sandy McGill picked up, and when Ralph asked if she’d heard anything from Canning Township, there was a pause. When she finally spoke, she sounded embarrassed. ‘I’m not supposed to talk about that with you, Ralph. Chief Geller left specific instructions. I’m sorry.’
‘That’s okay,’ Ralph said, getting up. His shadow stretched long, the shadow of a hanged man, and of course that made him think of Fred Peterson again. ‘Orders is orders.’
‘Thanks for understanding. Jack Hoskins is back, and he’s going out there.’
‘No problem.’ He hung up and started for the short-term parking lot, telling himself it didn’t matter; Yune would keep him in the loop.
Probably.
He unlocked his car, got in, and cranked the air conditioning. Quarter past seven. Too late to go home, too early to go to the Maitlands’. Which left cruising aimlessly around town like a self-absorbed teenager. And thinking. About how Terry had called Willow Rainwater ma’am. About how Terry had asked directions to the nearest doc-in-the-box, even though he’d lived in FC all his life. About how Terry had shared a room with Billy Quade, and wasn’t that convenient. About how Terry had risen to his feet to ask Mr Coben his question, which was even more convenient. Thinking about that drop of ink in the glass of water, turning it pale blue, of footprints that just ended, of maggots squirming inside a cantaloupe that had looked fine on the outside. Thinking that if a person did begin considering supernatural possibilities, that person would no longer be able to think of himself as a completely sane person, and thinking about one’s sanity was maybe not a good thing. It was like thinking about your heartbeat: if you had to go there, you might already be in trouble.
He turned on the car radio and hunted for loud music. Eventually he found the Animals belting out ‘Boom Boom.’ He cruised, waiting for it to be time to go to the Maitland house on Barnum Court. Finally it was.
18
It was Alec Pelley who answered his knock and led him across the living room and into the kitchen. From upstairs he could hear the Animals again. This time it was their biggest hit. It’s been the ruin of many a poor boy, Eric Burdon wailed, and God, I know I’m one.
Confluence, he thought. Jeannie’s word.
Marcy and Howie Gold were sitting at the kitchen table. They had coffee. There was also a cup where Alec had been sitting, but no one offered to pour Ralph a cup. I have come unto the camp of mine enemies, he thought, and sat down.
‘Thank you for seeing me.’
Marcy made no reply, just picked up her cup with a hand that wasn’t quite steady.
‘This is painful for my client,’ Howie said, ‘so let’s keep it brief. You told Marcy you wanted to talk to her—’
‘Needed,’ Marcy interrupted. ‘Needed to talk to me, is what he said.’
‘So noted. What is it you needed to talk to her about, Detective Anderson? If it’s an apology, feel free to make it, but understand that we reserve all our legal options.’
In spite of everything, Ralph wasn’t quite ready to apologize. None of these three had seen a bloody branch jutting from Frank Peterson’s bottom, but Ralph had.
‘New information has come to light. It may not be substantive, but it’s suggestive of something, although I don’t know exactly what. My wife called it a confluence.’