Beyond Midnight (38 page)

She thanked him and hung up and burst into tears.

All the lessons, all the love, all the training—useless.
They might as well have been raised by wolves. Where had she gone wrong? How had she failed so thoroughly as a parent? And how could she possibly blame Nat Byrne for screwing up his family life when she was doing such a spectacular job of messing up her own?

After the tears of remorse and
self-doubt passed, Helen blew her nose, washed her face, and prepared to head out to collect her delinquents. But before she left, she detoured into the basement and hunted down every can of solvent she could find—thinner, turpentine, acetone—and packed them into a box with rags and a scrub brush. She loaded them into the trunk of the Volvo and, feeling like a terrorist on a mission, drove to the station.

The process was slightly less embarrassing than she imagined it would be; maybe it was because she was getting used to being a criminal
'
s mom. After Becky and Russell were released she hurried them out of the station and threw them into the back
seat of her car, where she conducted her own interrogation.

"
What the hell has gotten into you?
"
she demanded to know.

"
Nothing,
"
said Russ in a whiny tone.
"
We were just goofing around until
this
dufus grabbed me by my shirt and wouldn
'
t let go.
"

"
I wouldn
'
t let go because the cop told us to hold it right there!
"
Becky shouted in her brother
'
s face. She was furious.

"
I coulda made it! Everyone else did! But no-o-o, you
'
ve gotta be a guardian angel!
"

"
You are so clueless, you moron! Don
'
t you know what you
'
ve done? This could affect what college we go to! You moron!
"

"
Stop it, both of you! Start from the beginning. Becky, you first. Russ, shut up. You
'
ll get your turn after.
"

Becky, who was shivering so much that Helen had to start the engine and turn on the heat, said,
"
I heard some whispering back and forth from Russ
'
s window down to the side yard. So without turning on my light, I got up and peeked. Russell was climbing out of his window and down the trellis on the house. I saw him go out to the front and get into a black
Bronco
with wide gold stripes that was parked across the street.
"

"
It was a blue Bronco, snitch!
"
her brother interrupted.

"
Shhh! Go on, Becky.
"

"
I decided to follow him this time.
"

"
This
time!
"
Helen said, mouth agape.

Wincing, Becky went on with her tale.
"
But by the time I got my jeans on and sneaked down the stairs, they were gone. So I got in
my
car and I started driving around, looking for them. I knew they were up to something because I saw a dusty can of spray paint sticking out of Russ
'
s backpack yesterday. I figured he got it out of the basement.
"

"
You nosy rat!
"

"
Russell! Not another word!
"

"
So then,
"
Becky said, more resolutely than before,
"
I was driving through town and I saw the Bronco and I stopped where they couldn
'
t see me. And I couldn
'
t
believe
it when I saw them spraying graffiti on the statue. So I ran up to them to get Russ away, and then the patrol car came by, and then—well, you know the rest.
"

Helen nodded grimly.
"
Russell?
Let's hear it
.
"

"
This never would
'
ve happened if she just minded her own business.
"

That, apparently, was it: the sum total of his defense.

"
Excuse me? Roger Conant wouldn
'
t be defaced if your sister had just stayed in bed?
"

"
I don
'
t mean that. I mean this,
"
her son said, nodding sideways at the police station.

"
Well, this is about that, Russell Evett! And the sooner you connect crime with punishment, the better off you
'
ll be. Because they don
'
t have
Nintendo
in the slammer. Or an endless supply of chocolate-chip cookies. Or weekends off. Or sailing lessons. You
'
ll never have your own car. They
'
ll let you earn a high school equivalency, but I
'
m not so sure about med school,
"
she said scathingly.

He seized, arbitrarily, on that.
"
I don
'
t wanna go to med school,
"
he said.
"
That
'
s your idea.
"

"
Well-
l
-
l
, I was wrong about that! I think I
'
ll start pushing you into a law degree—because I know at least one fool you can take on as a client.
"

Helen swung her look, burning with anger, at her daughter.
"
Make that two,
"
she corrected.

By now Becky wasn
'
t bothering to hold back the tears.
"
Oh, Mom, can
'
t we just go home? I want to go home.
"

"
Hold that thought the next time you
'
re tempted to play Joan of Arc, young lady. Because furloughs from prison are hard to get!
"

"
Please?
"
Becky said, weeping now.

Despite her fury, Helen was in despair. The innocent one was showing remorse; the perpetrator, a sullen defiance. Was he missing a gene of some kind? How could she reach him?

"
All right,
"
she said to Becky in a voice shaking with self-imposed calm.
"
We
'
ll leave the Escort here overnight. You won
'
t be needing it for the next few weeks, anyway.
"

Resigned to the additional punishment, Becky fell back on the seat and closed her eyes.
"
Can
'
t we just go home?
"
she moaned again.

"
No,
"
said her mother grimly.
"
We have a job to do.
"

Tourist
mecca or not, before dawn the corner of Brown and
Washington Square
was usually empty. Helen hauled her kids, punchy with sleeplessness, out of the Volvo and handed them their tools.

"
Start scrubbing,
"
she said in a hushed command.

She helped them climb over the black stakes of the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the monument, an imposing bronze statue of the colonist who in 1626 led thirty men, women, and children to
Salem
from a failing colony in nearby Cape Ann. Poor Roger Conant. He was a mess.

The graffiti, done in yellow and Day-G
lo
orange, was mostly confined to the deep folds of the pilgrim
'
s cape. Russell Eve
tt'
s first initial, done in a rounded, filled-in style, was all he
'
d had time to execute. One of the other boys had settled on that old favorite, the f-word; and someone else had been about to pillory a girl named Sarah.

Under the lurid red glow pouring from the towering windows of the cathedral-like
Witch
Museum
, Helen took over as lookout while her children cleaned up the damage to the maligned settler.

She was as jumpy as a vandal.
"
For Pete
'
s sake, hurry up,
"
she said several times. The two did their best, which wasn
'
t very good—not good enough for Helen, anyway. She jumped the fence herself and went at the paint on the settler
'
s fingers with the vigor of an old-world housewife.

When the inevitable squad car approached them on
Brown Street
, Helen nearly jumped out of her skin. It was too much: the red glow, the scowling pilgrim, the murky night, and now The Law. A career criminal, she wasn
'
t. She climbed out of the fenced-in pen and went rushing up to the patrol car waving her arms in either surrender or apology, she wasn
'
t sure which.

Don
'
t put on the siren,
she begged silently.
Don
'
t make this any worse.
She put her finger to her lips as she got closer to the police car; it was the motherly instinct at work.

Mercifully, the patrol officer listened to her story without calling in reinforcements. When she finished, he said,
"
Be careful over the fence,
"
and drove silently off.

Relieved, Helen went back to gather up her equipment and her children and head on home, a mere mile away from the crime scene.

In the car, Russ, still surging with adrenaline, said,
"
I bet someone called that cop! Both times!
"

Becky said,
"
Well,
duh.
What do you expect?
"

Russ said,
"
I dunno. It was like, just as exciting this time as before. More, even, b
'
cause, like, we didn
'
t have to worry about being caught. I mean, not really worry. Because we were, like, on the right side?
"

For Russ it was a long, philosophical speech. Helen felt a glimmer of hope. Maybe he had the makings of a sheriff after all. She said,
"
We
'
re just lucky the patrolman thought so. Or we
'
d all end up spending the night in the cage.
"

After a few seconds Russ snorted and said,
"
Cool.
"

It was a bonding moment.

They piled out of the car in brighter light than they
'
d piled into it: Dawn had arrived. Obviously no one, including Helen, was in any shape for school; Helen sent her son and daughter off to bed with the promise that she
'
d call the school for them. Becky dragged herself off to her room, but Helen told her son to wait.

At the foot of the stairs he turned to face her, wary and unsure what to expect.

Ignoring the fact that he was in his no-hug years, Helen took her reluctant son in her arms and held him in a sighing embrace. If only she could make him understand; if only she could love him into a state of innocence again.

She said,
"
I want you to promise me that you
'
ll never sneak out of your room at night again.
"
She held him at arm
'
s length and looked into his green eyes, hollowed from lack of sleep.
"
Promise me? As a man?
"

His cheeks went pink; it was the first time she
'
d ever addressed him that way.
"
Yeah, okay.
"

"
All right. We
'
ve got to get through tomorrow in court. We
'
ll do it together. If your father were here, he
'
d be there, too; you know that. Now get some sleep.
"