Blessed Child (23 page)

The spectacular footage captured by NBC's crew was broadcast live on over two hundred affiliates, and then picked up and rebroadcast on all the other major networks and cable channels before the ten-o'clock hour. By midnight Eastern time over forty million households had either seen the small boy named Caleb or heard his story.

As it turned out, it wasn't the paraplegic who'd thrown his chair, or even the sudden inexplicable crumpling of the entire audience (cameraman included), that captured the greatest attention. Although mind-numbing enough, both could have been staged, a dozen commentators quickly pointed out. But it was the small boy who'd been laid at Caleb's feet that pretty much shut the commentators up. The camera had zoomed in on his naked, twisted legs after Caleb had touched him. They all saw the bones twist and straighten and grow, close up, as if it were a special effect from a science-fiction flick.

Only it wasn't a special effect. It was live footage shot by a high-definition camera manned by a card-carrying NBC cameraman named Phillip Strantz, who'd been working for the network a good twelve years.

Shown together with the young man hurling his red chair and the wave knocking them all into a definitive silence, the footage took the country by storm.

Jason and Leiah left the Old Theater at ten that night.

It occurred to Jason that Leiah hadn't been healed of her scars. But then she'd insisted before that she didn't need anybody's help. She really didn't need to be healed, did she? No, she did not.

Stewart Long was in the garage messing with a stripped socket wrench at ten o'clock Tuesday night when Barbara hollered through the kitchen.

“Stew! Stew get in here . . . you have to see this.”

“Hold on. I'm almost finished.”

“You'll miss it! Get in here!”

“Okay . . . okay.” Stewart threw the wrench back in the toolbox with a grunt. At least it was a Craftsman, which meant he could replace it at no charge. He grabbed an old T-shirt rag and walked through the kitchen wiping his hands.

Barbara and Peter both had their eyes glued to the big Sony television in the living room. “What is it?”

They didn't respond, and he walked behind his son. Three facts settled in his mind at once—not necessarily critical facts, just the kind that police officers learn to mind. Fact one, they were watching NBC news with that Donna chick. Fact two, the Donna chick was at a meeting of some kind—a convention or a religious gathering—and she was definitely worked up. Fact three, both Peter and Barbara looked like they were watching news of a bomb's detonation or the president's assassination rather than coverage of a convention.

It struck him only then that many of the people in the picture behind Donna were on the floor. “I know this looks unusual . . .” Donna was saying. “Well, it looks impossible actually, and to be honest, I might not believe it if I wasn't here myself, but something very dramatic did indeed happen, ladies and gentlemen. And not just to the people you see behind me, but to me.” Her eyes glinted with eagerness. “We can't necessarily explain what we're seeing, but we can assure you that it is real. No tricks, no gimmicks, no wires. Just a little boy's power. Let's watch the footage again and let you experience for yourselves what we experienced.”

The picture suddenly cut to a screen with white words “recorded earlier” flashing at the upper left.

“Watch this, Stew,” Barbara said.

“I'm watching.”

He watched a little boy walk out onto the stage, stupefied, it seemed. Then he saw a teenage boy in a red wheelchair shoved onto the stage, and immediately Stewart's heart began to thump. He glanced down at Peter. His son had pursed his lips in frustration or anger.

The scene rolled on and then suddenly Stewart began to sweat because suddenly things were happening that had no business happening. When the boy took his first step, a buzz lit in Stewart's ear, and he thought that Donna was wrong. What they were watching wasn't real.

When the child began to sing and the people slumped to the floor, he knew it was fake. It had to be. He very nearly leapt up to the box and snapped it off. But then the camera wavered and showed a shot of Donna lying on the concrete, and Stewart ground his teeth. A thousand conflicting emotions collided in his mind.

They watched in stunned silence, the three of them, and then they watched the small child's leg twist and straighten before the camera. The child couldn't have been older than four. One look into his wide eyes and Stewart knew that this was real.

The screen cut back to Donna, and she continued her rambling, but Stewart wasn't hearing her. He was replaying that last scene in his mind, and he was thinking that the world had just changed. His heart was slamming in his chest, and sweat was snaking past his temples, and he knew that somehow nothing was ever going to be the same.

Peter suddenly whirled around in his wheelchair and sped down the hall to his bedroom.

17

Day 12

I
DON'T CARE IF THE NETWORKS HAVE DUBBED HIM
Boy Wonder! I don't care if he flies around in a red cape; I want him out of the country!” Crandal sounded like a bulldog on the phone.

“I know he's a problem. And it's not just the networks calling him Boy Wonder. The whole country's talking about him. Immigration's requesting clarification.”

“Then give them clarification.”

“We could do that. But not without accepting significant risks. The last thing we need is the media digging into this and going on some crusade to keep the boy in the country. You think we have problems now . . .”

The phone went silent except for the sound of steady breathing.

“How in the blazes does a punk kid go from being unknown one day to being a national buzzword the next, anyway?”

“I don't know. Maybe you should look at the footage. It's pretty . . . unusual.”

“I'm sure it is. And what do you suggest we do?”

“I suggest we go back to natural causes.”

A pause.

“That'll take a week. At least.”

“It's safe. They'll have no clue what happened to him.”

“You sure you can pull it off?”

“I'm positive. I've already set it in motion.”

“Okay. But I want a plausible plan for immediate resolution in the event the kid starts saying things. And I want that kid trailed twenty-four/seven.”

“It's already done, sir.”

Jim's Fish House buzzed with a late-lunch crowd, just enough noise to mask their own conversation without obstructing it, Jason thought. A huge blue marlin glared down at the tables from its perch above the bar, as if daring him to take a bite. The marlin obviously had, and for his appetite he'd been rewarded with a hook through the lip. Somehow Jason doubted that was the display's point. He wondered if the owner had actually caught the fish or simply bought it from the same catalog he'd bought the talking perch at the front door.

He stared at his swordfish dish and tapped his fingers on the inch-thick varnish that covered the square table. Donna was due to join them for coffee in fifteen minutes.

“Look at the bright side, Leiah. Four days ago we were losing sleep over whether he'd be snatched away and sent back to Ethiopia. We have to take this a step at a time. I mean, obviously things have gone nuts on us here, but we have to remember where this started.”

“Sure. But isn't it sorta like from the frying pan into the fire?”

“Not necessarily. Nikolous may not be an angel, but trust me, neither are the good folks down at the NSA. I guarantee you that if we remove him from Nikolous through any kind of agency he gets sent back to Ethiopia. And that would be a mistake. At least for now we have some breathing room.”

“
We
might, but meanwhile Caleb's suffocating.”

“He's alive, isn't he?”

“We should at least file a report with the state.”

“Human services? Take a month to get any response from them. No, getting an injunction was really our only short-term option, and now an injunction would harm Caleb more than help him.”

She looked at him. The light was low and her eyes were blue and bright, despite her concern. Maybe because of it. Today a black choker hid the scars on her neck, and to the person who didn't know better, she was looking very pretty. Not just her face but her whole . . . being. She had caught him looking at her white blouse once already, and he'd quickly sipped some iced tea to cover.

He'd actually spent a good hour last night tossing and turning over this very matter. This issue of his awkward interest in her. The tossing resulted in a concerted attempt to persuade himself that it wasn't more than interest. That she was clearly in some sort of a pot labeled
Untouchable
. Problem was, he was having more and more difficulty remembering exactly why having a bodysuit of scars put someone in the
Untouchable
pot.

And at the moment, sitting across the table at Jim's Fish House, with Leiah's eyes boring into his own, Jason couldn't see the scars. He couldn't even imagine what they looked like. He just saw this stunning woman before him.

She smiled softly and nodded. “You're right. I'm just worried for him. The INS may have backed off, but if anything, Nikolous has tightened the noose.”

She was right there. The Greek was going batso.

“Well, for now at least, Nikolous isn't the enemy,” Jason said.

“Don't you kid yourself. He's as much an enemy as the devil himself. There's no telling what they're doing to Caleb behind closed doors.”

“They're doing nothing. They're doing exactly what Dr. Caldwell insisted should be done with the boy. Nothing. If she's right and Caleb loses his power due to the world's influence, Nikolous loses. If anything, that plays to our advantage.”

“Having Caleb with us would play to our advantage. Not having him locked in some hole like a prize pigeon.”

“Of course, but he's not with us. We've been over this a hundred times. In the real world—the one in which his life is obviously being threatened, the one in which Nikolous
does
have custody of him—the fact that Nikolous doesn't want him to change works to our advantage. And Caleb's continued popularity also works to our advantage. Which, if you really think about it, means Nikolous is our ally, not our enemy. At least for the time being.”

She drilled him with a sharp stare and turned away. Maybe he should've been less forceful. A week ago her reaction wouldn't have bothered him; today it did.

“But you're right,” he said. “In some ways Nikolous is the enemy. Just not one we want to take on right now.”

“He's charging this time,” she said. “Twenty-five dollars a ticket.”

“He's charging? When did you hear that? Is that even legal?”

“The radio this morning. Next Tuesday night at the Old Theater— twenty-five bucks a shot. Supposedly to be put in a fund for the boy's care. The man makes me sick.”

Jason whistled. “The place holds what, ten thousand? So he's looking at two hundred fifty thousand dollars. The man's no idiot.”

“But he is the devil. He's in this for whatever he can skim, and we both know it, Jason. We may need to go along with the man for now, but we have to stop him at some point. For all we know what he's doing is illegal.”

Jason wiped at the condensation on his tea glass. “He's too smart to do something illegal unless he was sure he could get away with it.”

“So let me ask you a question, Jason.”

“What?”

“I'm not trying to be insensitive, but just to put this in perspective, how much would you have paid for Stephen's life?”

It was as if someone had hit Jason's head with a sledgehammer.

“Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? A million?” she asked.

He blinked and stared at her. He had a photo of Stephen taken on the day before he'd died. He was lying in bed with a green oxygen tube taped to his nose and he was smiling. He'd shriveled to twenty-five pounds on that hospital bed and he was smiling. Smiling, for goodness' sake! How much would he have paid? Everything. Anything. And anything he could have stolen. He might have killed another man for his son's life.

“You see my point?” she asked softly.

“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “But Nikolous wouldn't really . . . do that.”

“He
will
do that. And you're right about one thing: as long as Caleb keeps performing, the Greek will do anything, and I mean anything, to keep him performing. And when he's done with the boy, there'll be nothing left.”

“Maybe. And maybe you're overreacting just a tad.”

“Or maybe I'm not. Think about it, Jason.”

He tried to, but his mind kept wandering back to that picture of Stephen's smiling face. It was the one part of Caleb he disliked, the memories he brought back. The irony of it all. He ate a piece of cold swordfish and washed it down with a swig of tea.

“Do you mind if I ask you another question?” Leiah asked.

“Sure.”

“What's
really
happening here, Jason?”

“What do you mean?” Jason fought to check his own frustration at her line of questioning.

“It's not every day you're knocked from your feet by a boy twenty feet away.”

“He's psychic; that's what's happening.”

“Yes, I know, he's psychic. He's a freak.”

“That's not what I said.”

“No, but that's what they're all thinking. I know that because sometimes even I think it. But he's still just a boy; no one knows that better than I do. He's a simple boy with a heart as big as the sky. So then where does a simple, lovable boy really find the power to make crooked legs straight?”

“You heard Dr. Caldwell. It's not impossible.”

“Yeah, I know. But somehow getting knocked from my feet didn't feel like Dr. Caldwell's explanation to me.”