Left for Dead (7 page)

She felt awkward around him. They were both trying hard to ignore the tension. She’d come back from the dead, and even the familiar felt strange. She desperately wanted things to be normal again.

Harlan pulled a chair close to her bedside, then sat down.

“How’s Brian?” she asked. “Why couldn’t he come?”

Harlan cleared his throat. “You don’t remember?”

Claire shook her head. “What? Did something happen to him? They told me Brian was all right—”

“He is—as far as I know,” Harlan replied. He leaned forward in the chair. “Sweetheart, Brian ran away the night before you disappeared.”

Numbly, she stared at him. “Wh—why did he run away?”

Harlan sighed. “Beats me. Why did he take off the other two times?”

Claire rubbed her forehead. She recalled an argument between Brian and Harlan one evening, months ago. Brian had grabbed some of his things and stormed out of the house. But he’d come back the very next afternoon. A few weeks later, there had been another quarrel, and he’d run away again. He’d phoned her after the first day—to tell her he was fine. That hadn’t stopped Claire from worrying herself sick—until Brian slunk home two days later.

“Do you know where he might be?” she asked.

“I think he’s staying with one of his buddies,” Harlan muttered, slouching a bit in the chair. “Must be someone we don’t know. The high school called, and he hasn’t shown up for classes. Then again, I’m not surprised.”

“It’s been over a week,” Claire said. “What’s being done about it? Did you call the police?”

“Of course, I did. I called them about you too sweetheart. This has been—like the longest week of my life. But I found you, Claire. And don’t worry about Brian. He’s a big boy. Heck, you know how independent he is. He can take care of himself. I keep getting hang-ups whenever I answer the phone—or the machine answers. I’m sure it’s Brian, wanting to talk to you. He’ll be back—once he connects with you. He came back the other two times. Right?”

Claire couldn’t answer him. She had this awful feeling in the pit of her stomach. Something had happened to Brian, something she was blocking out.

“He’ll be home soon enough,” Harlan continued. “Now that I’ve finally found you, I’ll pour all my energy into finding Brian. You’ll see, things will be back to normal. We can put this all behind us.”

He reached for the envelope on the nightstand. “Tiffany sends her love, by the way.” He handed her the envelope. “She made this for you.”

“Oh, how—how is she?” Claire asked. She started opening the envelope. She couldn’t look Harlan in the eye. She should have asked about her six-year-old stepdaughter. Tiffany was Harlan’s only child from his first marriage. Claire hadn’t adopted her, but they were planning on it.

Tiffany had made her a “Get Well” card with watercolor flowers. She’d printed in crayon:
“To Mom—I Miss you. Love, Tiffany.”

“Oh, how sweet…” Claire started to say.

A knock on the door interrupted her.

“Am I butting in?” the woman asked, peeking past the doorway into the room. “Are you two making out?”

Claire recognized her friend, Linda Castle, whose frosted, light-brown hair was cut in a Dorothy Hammill style that had been popular in the late seventies. At forty, Linda was a couple of years older than Claire. She’d been best friends with Harlan’s first wife, and she was Tiffany’s godmother.

“The natives are getting restless out there,” she announced, breezing into the room and closing the door behind her. “I think they want ‘in.’”

She wore a pink pullover and khaki pants. A ribbon was tied around her wrist, holding a foil helium balloon of Garfield saying,
You’re Sick!
on one side, and
Get Well Soon!
on the other.

She turned to Claire, and put a hand over her heart. “Oh, Claire, you’re a sight for these sore ones. I can’t believe we finally found you—and up here in Bellingham! You should see all the “Missing” fliers we posted all over Seattle. That’s where we thought you were. Huh, only ninety miles off!”

She hurried to Claire’s bedside and planted a kiss on her cheek. “I’m so glad you’re sitting up, and—and, well I thought you’d have the IV tube in your arm and another tube up your nose. Y’know, half in a coma and drooling. Ha, ye gods, listen to me!” Linda squeezed her hand. “Anyway, I pictured you looking a lot worse, sweetie.”

“Well, thanks, Linda,” Claire said, working up a chuckle. “You should have seen me before my nurse-friend outside helped me get made-up. She also found this robe for me.”

Linda laughed. “Huh, she should stick to taking temperatures and changing bedpans.”

“I think she looks wonderful,” Harlan piped up.

Linda tied the balloon ribbon to the railing at the foot of the bed. She gave Claire a wink. “I’ll come by tomorrow with some of your things. So—how soon will they spring you from this joint? You must take this husband of yours off my hands. He’s been an absolute baby this whole week.”

“We’re still not sure when she can come home,” Harlan explained.

Claire managed to smile at them both. She imagined Linda bringing over dinners for Harlan and Tiffany. She was a terrible cook too, suffering from the delusion that her runny, fatty casseroles were just about the living end. Her husband, Ron, didn’t seem to mind though. He was a heavy-set man with a boyish face and a thick dark brown toupee that combed over to the side. Claire always thought he looked like Bob of Bob’s Big Boy. They didn’t have any children.

“Harlan, my head is splitting,” Linda said. “Could you be a doll and run down to the gift shop? I need aspirin, one of those pocket-size ones ought to do.”

“I’m sure the nurse could give you something—”

“I’m trying to get rid of you, knucklehead,” Linda said, rolling her eyes. “Claire and I need to get in a little girl-talk before that flatfoot, the doc and the nurse traipse in here. Do you mind? All we need is a couple of minutes alone.”

With a sigh, Harlan got to his feet. “You still want the aspirin?”

“No. Just keep them out for a minute or two, and I’ll be your slave for life.” Linda pulled Harlan’s chair even closer to Claire’s bed. “And don’t worry, Claire and I aren’t going to talk about you.”

Harlan gave Linda a wry smile, then he gently kissed Claire on the forehead and stepped outside,

Linda sat down. She took hold of Claire’s hand. “I wanted to talk before they come in and it all starts getting official with the questions and statements,” she whispered. “Really, how are you doing, kid?”

Claire nodded. “I’m okay, but I’m worried about Brian. I don’t remember him running away.”

Linda stared at her. “And you really can’t remember anything else that happened?”

“Well, it’s all kind of muddled.”

“You don’t remember the—plans to go into Seattle with me? You know, our
shopping
holiday?”

Claire shrugged. “I’ve been told that’s where I disappeared, but I don’t remember any of it.”

“Really?” Linda’s eyes narrowed at her. “You aren’t holding anything back, are you, Claire?”

She slowly shook her head. “No. Is there something you know that I ought to remember?”

“No, nothing,” Linda said, with a tight smile.

“Are you sure?” Claire asked. Her friend acted as if they shared some secret.

“Really, there’s nothing,” Linda repeated.

Claire wondered if, once again, a well-meaning friend felt she was better off not knowing some terrible truth.

“Anything going on?”

“Nothing, nada, bupkis. She’s asleep.”

“Did they find out anything? Did Little Girl Lost get some of her memory back?”

“Naw. Cops were in there most of the night. Her friend and her husband did all the talking. Here, you want the paper? There’s a good article about the Seahawks.”

“Thanks…”

Claire heard a newspaper rustling, then one guard said good-bye to the other. They changed shifts outside her door at eleven o’clock. She’d been wondering how long she’d been lying here in the dark, and now she knew. Just an hour. But it seemed longer.

So the guard called her
Little Girl Lost,
and he said it with a heavy dose of sarcasm. Were the police and hospital staff fed up with her?

Dr. Dwoskin and Lieutenant Elmore had spent nearly three hours tonight in this room, talking with her, Harlan, and Linda. A few other doctors and plainclothes policemen came and went during the exhausting interview. They fortified themselves with stale coffee in Styrofoam cups. At one point, Yuvraj brought in her dinner. Claire barely touched her ham, which had a rainbow gleam to it. She just picked at her mashed potatoes and carrots. She let Harlan have her Jell-O cup.

Meanwhile, Harlan and Linda gave their accounts of what had happened in the forty-eight hours prior to Claire’s disappearance. The police and the doctors kept hoping some detail in their stories might spark her memory.

“When I came back from the meeting with my civic group on Friday night, Claire was—acting a little crazy,” Harlan told them, hunched over in his chair. “Brian had run away again. He’d packed up and slipped out that afternoon, I guess. He didn’t leave a note or anything, just took off. Claire figured out he was gone, and she wouldn’t stop crying. She kept screaming at me that I must have done something to make him leave. I hadn’t, but there was no reasoning with her. She was hysterical, poor thing. I didn’t know what to do, so I called Linda and Ron, and they came over.”

Claire didn’t remember any of it.

According to Linda, Claire was
“practically bonkers”
when they arrived. “She was crying nonstop, and trying to pick a fight with Harlan. I knew she was worried sick. She’d been through this with Brian a couple of times before, and I don’t know how she kept bouncing back. I mean, Brian is a sweet kid, but well, don’t get me started on some of the pranks he’s pulled. Anyway, I could see what Claire needed was a couple of stiff drinks and a change of scenery. If she’d stayed home, all she would have done was climb the walls and keep snapping at Harlan. So—I helped her pack some overnight things, and took her back to Ron and my casa. After a couple of brandies, she slept like a baby in our guest room…”

Claire had been in Ron and Linda’s guest room, but didn’t recall ever sleeping in there. She could picture the room: Linda’s framed, ugly yarn-and-glue flower pictures that hung over the twin beds; a fake spinning wheel planter in the corner, holding a yarn-wire-and-pipe-cleaner flower arrangement; a bookcase with their collection of plastic snow globes from forty-eight states
(“All we need is Delaware and North Carolina, and we’ll have all fifty,”
Linda bragged). Some of those airport trinkets were so old, the snow had turned brown. Claire wondered how she could remember the brownish snow in those cheesy little globes, and not recall ever having slept in that guest room.

“I got up early the next morning, made hotel reservations in Seattle and bought tickets for a play.” Linda continued. “I figured a day of shopping in the city might take her mind off things. And by the time Claire got home on Sunday, Brian might come back…”

The overnight stay in a Seattle hotel made sense to Claire now. She didn’t live twenty minutes away on Cascadia Avenue any more. Harlan’s house was on one of the San Juan Islands, a ferry ride, then another seventy miles south to Seattle by car.

Ron and Linda Castle had their own boat, and kept an SUV parked in the mainland harbor. Linda and Ron had grown up on the island, and both were expert sailors. The last time Claire remembered being on Ron and Linda’s boat had been three months ago—in the middle of summer. She and Harlan had gone sailing with the Castles and spent the day in Victoria.

In a daze, she listened to Linda recount their trip across the bay to Anacortes nine days ago. Linda described the weather and sailing conditions. In the car, she and Claire had talked about what they would buy and the show they were going to see. “I know she was thinking about Brian, but I thought it best to steer clear of the subject,” Linda said with a pout.

“We arrived too early to check into the hotel, so I parked the car in a pay lot a couple of blocks from Nordstrom and Pacific Place.” She turned to Claire. “Remember? We used my coat to cover up the suitcases in the back?”

Claire just shrugged and shook her head.

“Well, anyway, we hit Nordstrom first. After a while, we decided to split up and meet again in an hour. I wanted to storm the shoe department, and I told Claire, ‘Meet you in scarves at one-fifteen.’ Claire nodded—and waved. And that was the last I saw of her—until today.”

At this point in her story, Linda became teary. She talked about how she waited and waited in the scarves department—until nearly two o’clock. She had Claire paged in the store three times—to no avail.

“I figured maybe she got tired and went to the hotel,” Linda said. “But she wasn’t there. So when I checked in, I told the desk clerk to be on the lookout for her. I didn’t know what else to do. I called Harlan from the room, and asked—very casually—if he’d heard from Claire. I didn’t want to worry him. Anyway, we had theater tickets, and when Claire didn’t show up by seven-thirty, I knew we were in trouble. I phoned Harlan again, and he called the police.”

Linda turned to Claire again. “I guess you never even made it to the hotel, did you?”

Claire didn’t know how to answer her. It was as if Linda expected her to say yes—not because she actually remembered, but more to back up what Linda was saying. Earlier, when they were alone, Linda had acted as if they shared some kind of secret. Claire had a feeling her friend was fabricating this whole
shopping
trip tale to protect that secret. Were they keeping something from Harlan? Or was he in on it?

She wondered about Brian too. It was true, he’d gotten into trouble in the past. Had he done something really awful this time, something she’d blocked out? Maybe that was why he’d disappeared. She wanted to ask them:
“Did Brian really run away? What aren’t you telling me about my son?”

But Claire couldn’t raise that question in front of the police. Still, it frustrated her. No one seemed to care about Brian’s disappearance, just her own.

“Claire, you never got to the hotel, did you?” the lieutenant asked. “Did someone approach you in the department store?”

“I really don’t recall any of this,” Claire admitted. “I’m sorry…”

They kept trying to spark her memory for another half hour. They finally called it quits at nine-thirty. Looking disappointed and depleted, Lieutenant Elmore, Dr. Dwoskin, and the two detectives who had been there for the last hour, all wandered out of her room.

Linda lingered on. Claire grabbed her hand. “Is there something you’re not telling them I should know?” she whispered, her eyes pleading.

Linda shot a look at Harlan, then glanced back at her. She let out a little laugh. “Ye gods, no. I don’t think I left out a damn thing about the entire weekend—except when I took my potty breaks.” She kissed Claire on the cheek. “See you tomorrow, Claire. Okay? Now, I’ll scram, give you and the ball and chain a little privacy.”

Once they were alone, Harlan wrapped his arms around Claire. She tried to return the hug, but it was awkward. He embraced her as if she were a frail old lady. He must have been scared of hurting her.

“Thank Tiffany for the card,” she remembered to say, patting Harlan on the back.

He started to pull away, but Claire grabbed his hand. “Harlan, were you telling the truth about Brian? Did he really run away? Or is he in some kind of trouble?”

He sighed and shook his head. “Sweetheart, it’s like I said earlier. He left without any explanation. We have the police on the island looking for him. Now the Bellingham and Seattle cops are working on it too. If Brian has gotten himself into trouble, we’ll fix it. He’ll be okay. You just think about getting well.”

Then he’d said good-bye, giving her a long, yet chaste kiss on the lips.

That had been at least two hours ago.

Now she was alone, wide awake in the hospital bed. Or had she dozed off for a bit? Images drifted in and out of her head. She could see Linda, slouching to one side in the hard-back chair with her legs crossed, talking to the police and Dr. Dwoskin. Then she saw Linda at the wheel of Ron’s Jeep. Claire occupied the passenger side. It was night. Someone stood outside the vehicle—at the driver’s window. Claire couldn’t see his face. But he had a gun. Her eyes closed, Linda was muttering something under her breath. It took Claire a moment to realize her friend was praying.

“We can’t just sit here!”
Claire remembered saying.
“We have to do something!”

Linda opened her eyes and turned to her. “Pray, Claire,” she whispered.

Claire screamed.

Suddenly, she was awake again. Had she screamed out loud, or just in her dream?

Claire started to reach for the lamp on her nightstand, but a pain shot through her chest. She’d stretched the surgical stitches. She lay back and caught her breath.

Then she heard it. A chair scraped against the tiled floor—as if someone had accidentally bumped into it. She could tell, the sound didn’t come from outside. It wasn’t the guard in his folding chair by her door. The sound came from within her room.

The hairs stood on the back of her neck. Clutching the bed sheets to her chest, Claire stayed very still. She wondered how anyone could have snuck past the guard. It didn’t make sense. Yet she could feel this person, watching her in the dark. Was it him? Was it Rembrandt?

Claire wanted to scream, but she couldn’t even get a breath. Was she dreaming again?

She blinked and tried to adjust her eyes to the darkness. Then she heard him clear his throat.
My God, this is real. Someone’s in the room with me.
She couldn’t move. Her heart was pounding. She saw a figure standing in the shadows.

“Who’s there?” she finally whispered. She barely got the words out. “Guard? Are you the guard?”

“He went to buy himself a chocolate bar,” the man whispered in a too-friendly, almost singsong voice.

Claire felt herself trembling. “I’ll scream,” she said.

“I won’t hurt you,” he cooed. “Just turn on the light. C’mon, don’t be afraid…”

She hesitated, then reached for the lamp on her nightstand. Her hand fanned at the air until she found the light switch. She turned on the lamp.

A brilliant flash blinded her, and she shrieked.

“Just one more,” she heard the man say. “C’mon, doll. I need a good shot of you.”

The camera flash went off again.

Claire covered her face. “Stop it!” she cried. “Get out! Get out of here!”

It was like another horrible nightmare. But Claire was wide, wide awake.

“We’ve confiscated the film,” Lieutenant Elmore said, sitting behind his desk. He popped a Tums in his mouth. “He and his crummy tabloid won’t be running any photos of your wife, Mr. Shaw. I assure you, we’re doing everything we can to keep her name and her face from the TV and newspaper people. They still know her as Jane Doe.”

Harlan Shaw stood in front of Elmore’s desk, having refused to sit when the lieutenant had offered him a chair. Elmore’s office had a case full of trophies and citations, and a glass wall that looked out to a bigger workspace. One woman and several men—all in plain clothes—were busy at their desks, talking on their phones, or working at computers. A couple of the younger detectives were goofing around in the corner of the big office, tossing a Nerf basketball through a hoop that hung on the wall.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Harlan said, glaring at the lieutenant. “I want to know how a reporter got into my wife’s room in the middle of the night. I understand yesterday afternoon someone left a rose under her pillow. What kind of security do you have in that hospital? Who’s in charge of my wife’s safety? I’d like to talk to this guy, because he’s not doing his job.”

“Believe me, Mr. Shaw, it won’t happen again,” Lieutenant Elmore said.

“Well, are you the one who screwed up?” Harlan pressed.

Elmore sighed, then he nodded toward the window—at the room full of detectives behind Harlan. “Detective Timothy Sullivan is in charge of security at the hospital. And I’ve already had a talk with him—”

“Is he out there?” Harlan turned to look at the people in the work area.

Elmore got up from his desk. “I’ve handled it, Mr. Shaw—”

Harlan threw open the door and stepped out of Elmore’s office. “Detective Timothy Sullivan?” he called.

Everyone stopped to stare at him. Then a couple of the plainclothes officers turned to glance back at the two younger detectives, who had been playing Nerf basketball a moment before. Harlan marched toward the two younger cops.

One of them was a short, black man. His friend was white, about thirty, and good-looking with brown hair and a little dimple in his chin. “I’m Tim Sullivan,” he said, setting the Nerf ball on his desk. “Can I help you?”

All at once, Harlan grabbed him by the shirt collar. “Yeah, you can help by doing your goddamn job!” he growled. “My wife has been through hell—”

“Whoa…wait a minute,” Tim Sullivan said, holding his hands up. “Listen—”

“No, you listen, you cocky son of a bitch.” Harlan pushed him against the wall. “You’re in charge of security at that hospital, and I swear to God, if somebody else slips by one of your so-called-guards and bothers my wife, you’ll wish you were dead!”

“What are you talking about?” the cop asked, wide-eyed. He shook his head. “Who are you?”

Lieutenant Elmore and another detective pulled Harlan away. “C’mon now, Mr. Shaw,” the lieutenant said. “We have this under control…”