Midas

25

He didn’t like being back at the house. For one thing, he wanted to get the hell out of Washington and back to East End Harbor. Not that East End would be any safer. But at least it was smaller. Here he felt like he was swimming around in a large fish tank, the only non-shark in the water. And all around him were people watching, just waiting for him to be eaten.

For another thing, being here felt too much like violating the dead.

Justin didn’t believe in ghosts, but sitting in his rental car, staring out at the slightly overgrown lawn with its wintery patches of brown, looking at the silent white two-story house, the suburban lot felt haunted. Justin felt haunted. Right now the whole world felt haunted.

But he knew he didn’t have much time. The place would be cleaned out soon, and Theresa Cooke was beyond caring about anything as trivial as breaking and entering, so Justin forced himself to open the car door and step out into the quiet street. Not breaking stride, determined to look as if he belonged there-as if he weren’t an intruder; as if he weren’t the reason the house was empty and silent and dead-he went up the walk to the front door. It didn’t take him long to break in. Then, inside the foyer, he closed the door behind him and stood still, just listening. All he heard was the silence.

He went upstairs. There were three bedrooms, one master and two for the girls. He was momentarily stymied; he’d only been expecting one extra room, but he figured out which one was Hannah’s-he checked the bookshelves; Reysa, the twelve-year-old, had a higher reading level-and he began his search. It didn’t take long. He tried not to disturb her things. It didn’t make sense, someone would be disturbing them soon enough, packing them up, giving them away, saving them, tossing them into the garbage, whatever, but Justin wanted no part of it. After a few minutes of combing through the dolls and toys, he shifted a large pink stuffed dog off to the side, away from the drawer it was blocking, and inside the drawer he saw what he was looking for.

He’d brought a manila envelope in his gym bag, along with a small piece of bubble wrap, and soon the envelope had a bulge in it. He’d put several dollars’ worth of stamps on it before he left home, figuring that would be plenty. Justin sealed the envelope, and left the little girl’s room, closing the door behind him. Then he was downstairs and out the front door, not bothering to lock it behind him-it made no difference now whether it was open or shut-and he walked back to the car.

Twenty minutes later, he noticed a mailbox on the street, in front of the entrance to a minimall. He pulled the car over, hopped out, and shoved the envelope into the box. He pulled into the mall when he saw a cell phone store. It took him less than fifteen minutes to buy and pay for a new phone with prepaid minutes. He didn’t want to be traced, not for this call, anyway. Using the new phone, he got the number for Bruce’s Gym in Boston. When a woman answered at the other end, Justin said, “Leyla?”

“Hold on, I’ll get her,” the voice said. And momentarily, another female voice was on, saying, “Yup?”

“I need to speak to Wanda Chinkle,” he said. “This is-”

“Bup-bup-bup-bup-bup. . no need to gimme your name,” Leyla told him. “You the troublemaker?”

“Yeah,” Justin said. “That’s me.”

“I ain’t seen Wanda lately.”

“But you know how to get in touch with her.”

“Not so much. Not for the last forty-eight hours or so.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause she ain’t where she said she’d be. And I don’t know where else she’d be goin’.”

Justin didn’t say anything for quite a while, started to hang up, remembered that this woman Leyla was still holding on at the other end, so he just said, “Thanks,” very softly and clicked the red off button on the phone.

She ain’t where she said she’d be.

Wanda was missing.

He took a deep breath, felt a sharp pain rattle his chest-realized it was pain that stemmed from fear-and exhaled, hoping the pain would go away. It didn’t. But he decided to ignore it. Decided to ignore the news about Wanda, too, because it was the only thing he could do right now. And thirty minutes after that he was at St. Joseph’s Hospital, which is where he knew he had to be, Wanda or no Wanda, because the news had reported that this was where the girl was being cared for.

At the front desk, Justin asked for the doctor who was in charge of Hannah Cooke. The nurse at the reception desk looked him over carefully, then lifted a phone and spoke into the receiver. It only took a few minutes after that for a youngish doctor to approach him, introduce himself as Dr. Graham, and say that he was looking after Hannah. Justin asked if there was a place where they might have a couple of minutes of privacy, and Dr. Graham took him into a nearby office.

Justin didn’t bother to sit down, he just said, “I want to make sure the girl gets the best care possible, and I’ll pay for it.”

“Are you a relative?” Dr. Graham asked.

“No.”

“A family friend?”

“I’ve met her,” Justin told him. “It doesn’t matter what my relationship is, does it, as long as I’m willing to pay?”

“I suppose not. But Hannah was badly injured. Parts of her body were badly burned and there’s some disfigurement-”

“Is she going to survive?”

“I don’t know yet. Not for certain. But I believe so.”

“I want her to have whatever reconstructive surgery is necessary. When this is over, if she lives, I’d like her to be as close to normal as possible.”

“The bills are going to be-”

“I don’t care what they’re going to be.” Justin handed over a credit card. “Run this through. If you reach any kind of a limit, which I don’t think you will, just let me know and I’ll provide more.”

“Mr.”-the doctor looked down at the card-“Westwood, this is fairly irregular. It would help if I had a little more information.”

“Well, you’re not going to get any. I want to be out of here in five minutes. All I want to do is make sure this little girl gets as well as she possibly can get. And I want no publicity whatsoever. This stays strictly between you and me and whatever hospital administrators you have to deal with.”

“Do you want to see her?”

“Is she conscious?”

“In and out. Not really.”

“I’d like her to have twenty-four-hour nursing. I don’t want her to be alone.”

“I understand.” The doctor kept silent for a moment, they both did, then Graham said, “So do you want to see her?”

Justin nodded, just the smallest of nods, and the doctor escorted him down the hall and down the elevator to the intensive care unit and down another hallway until he was standing not far from a bed, on it the small form of a young girl. Her face was bandaged, her head shaved, a seemingly endless maze of tubes running to and from her body. Her chest was rising and falling in short, rhythmic bursts, the only sign that inside the bandages was a living thing.

“You can talk to her,” the doctor said. “I’m a believer in that. Even if they can’t respond, sometimes they know when we talk to them. And even if they don’t know, sometimes it just makes us feel better.”

“When it’s over,” Justin said.

“When what’s over?” the doctor said.

But he didn’t get an answer. Justin was already heading back down the hall.

Graham was about to call after him, decided against it, instead he let the guy turn toward the elevator and disappear. Strange, the doctor thought. Strange guy all around. He seemed so. . tormented. So determined.

Graham decided part of the strangeness was that he couldn’t figure out exactly what this guy Justin was so determined to do.

Oh well, he thought. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Better get back on my rounds.

But as he walked off down the hall, smiling at two nurses hurrying past him, he realized he couldn’t quite get Hannah Cooke’s new benefactor out of his mind. And, turning into a patient’s room-he checked his chart to make sure he got the name right; a Mrs. Isadora Sashaman-he thought, I wonder what he meant by “over.”