Moonbird Boy (21 page)

"Duncan Keith!" Bird completed the limerick, giggling. "That's pretty good, Bo. That's like daddy did. Do another one."

Bird remembered the name. Charles Duncan Keith. His own name, except he probably hadn't used it since he was four, since his father renamed him Bird. Young children, Bo knew, were so psychologically flexible that they would easily adapt to new names, new identities given them before the age of five or so. But the old names would remain familiar, like names of distant relatives or characters on TV.

"Let's see," she said, enjoying the game, "pick a word."

"Pony," he said quickly. "Blue pony with wings."

"There was a blue pony with wings," Bo began, "and he dined very often with kings. He liked chocolate ice cream, and lobsters in nice steam, but..."

"But he'd rather go sing on the swings," Bird finished, delighted. "Do another one, Bo."

His flashing blue eyes looked exactly like Mort's now. Alive with an engaged intelligence. All it had taken was someone willing to speak his language, play by his rules for a change. She wished she'd known how all along. Mort had known. But then Mort was his father, and Bo had been lost in her own depression when she first met the boy. Still, she'd almost missed seeing the real child altogether.

"It's time for your dinner, Charles Duncan," she teased him. "Charles Duncan Keith, the guy the Indians call Moonbird."

"Can I stay with you, Bo?" he asked as they walked back to his hospital room. "I'm not sick and I can't stay here. They'll make me go back where those mean boys are. I want to stay with you."

Bo nodded thoughtfully, honored by his trust. "That would be fun," she agreed. "But you need a real home with your real family, where you can stay and grow up. Do you remember this Annabel Lee?"

Bird sat on the side of his bed to inspect the hot dogs and baked beans an aide had just brought in on a tray. "I think she has black hair," he said. "And a big white house."

"I'm gonna check her out," Bo said. "And don't worry, you won't go back to that group home with the mean boys. That's a promise, okay?"

"Okay, Bo." He was already distracted by the hot dogs. A good time to duck out.

"Hang in there, Bird," Bo said at the door. "Things are going to get better."

At the nurses' station Bo copied a new report from the boy's medical chart. A "psych eval," everybody called it. This one provided a guarded diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder for a male Caucasian child, Bird Wagman, aged six years, seven months. The evaluation had been done "stat" at the request of Dr. Andrew LaMarche, director of the hospital's child abuse program.

The psychiatrist recommended a trial of standard medication, such trial to be initiated only after the child was legally declared to be under the control of the juvenile court, or after a legal guardian other than the court provided permission. The evaluation also noted that while Bird couldn't read, his intelligence measured near the genius range in verbal subtests of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. Bo wasn't surprised.

From the nurses' station phone Bo called Andrew LaMarche and then Eva Broussard, neither of whom was at home. After leaving messages, Bo contemplated her options. It was after five o'clock. I-8 would be clogged until six-thirty, no point in trying to go home.

Face it, Bradley. You don't want to go home because you're afraid of what you'll find there. Somebody's trying to break your heart with reminders of Mildred. Somebody's trying to make you crazy.

"Okay, I'm scared," Bo said aloud as she left the hospital. The admission was difficult, but cleared the way to deal with the problem. She didn't have to go home. She could avoid whatever might be waiting for her there until someone was with her. The lack of independence was repugnant, but justified in this case. Meanwhile, she'd have dinner. There was a new low-fat cuisine place in Hillcrest she'd been meaning to try. And the trendy neighborhood was only minutes away.

Over eggplant steaks in a succulent tomato and roasted garlic sauce ten minutes later, Bo allowed herself to wonder who was following her, stalking her, trying to use her grief to erode her sanity. And why? It had to be someone connected to this case, she decided. Someone who knew about her manic depression, about Mildred's death, about her stay at Ghost Flower Lodge. Someone who didn't want her looking too closely at Mort Wagman's history, maybe?

Zach had access to the necessary facts about her, she thought, but he couldn't spend days and nights following her around San Diego playing tapes and leaving dog collars in trees. He had to be at the lodge most of the time. But he could pay somebody else to follow her, Bo thought. The idea was ridiculous. Zach Crooked Owl was incapable of psychological torture. He might be involved with criminals, but his motivation for that was desperate and obvious. This was different. This was sick!

Bo finished her meal certain that her tormentor wasn't Zach, and equally certain that it had to be someone close either to her or to Ghost Flower Lodge. An image of Madge

Aldenhoven lurking around foggy beaches in kid-leather pumps made her smile. Impossible. Madge would be happy to see her foaming at the mouth in some nineteenth-century Bedlam, but scarcely possessed the imagination necessary to create the dog collar scene in UCSD's grove that afternoon.

The thought reminded Bo to call the dogwash again. She'd have Jane or Mindy check out this mysterious package someone had left there before she saw it. If it were something left by the stalker, they could destroy it. And they closed their shop around seven. One of them would be happy to accompany Bo the few blocks to her apartment, just to make sure no further painful symbols were in evidence.

"Mindy," Bo explained from a pay phone in front of the restaurant, "I'm on my way there now, but will you make sure this package you've got for me isn't something awful? See, somebody's stalking me, and..."

"Oh, it's nothing awful," Mindy assured her, "but what's this about a stalker? When will you be here?"

"Half an hour," Bo told her, feeling supremely rational. The plan to enlist help was a model of sanity, she thought. An impressive step.

Her friends were scrubbing the dog tubs when she arrived, identical grins on their faces.

"Okay, what's this unknown package?" she grinned back.

"Who said package?" Mindy asked as her partner leaned to lift something from a box behind the counter. Something coppery in the bright overhead lights, with droopy hound ears and a round, pink stomach. Its tail wagged tentatively at the sound of Bo's voice.

"It's Gretel!" Bo gasped. "It's that little girl, Lindsey's puppy. What's she doing here? Where's Lindsey?"

Jane handed the dog to Bo. "Lindsey and her mother brought Gretel in yesterday morning," she said. "There's a letter from the mother for you. Lindsey wants you to adopt the puppy."

"What? No. I don't want another dog. It's too soon. I may never want another dog. Mildred was my only dog. I'm going to have her ashes buried with mine. This is Lindsey's dog. What happened to Lindsey?"

The little dog stopped licking Bo's face as if she understood what was being said, and struggled to be released.

"See?" Bo nodded at the dog. "She doesn't want me, either. She wants Lindsey. What happened?"

"It's probably all in the letter, but the mother told us everything yesterday," Mindy said, continuing to polish the interior of a tub. "She's leaving her husband. Apparently he hit the little girl, bloodied her nose. The mother said she's been afraid this was coming. He didn't do any serious damage this time, but she's not waiting to see what he does next."

"He's a vicious jerk," Bo agreed. "Mental age of two. Good for Lindsey's mother; she's doing the right thing. But why didn't they take the dog?"

"Mom's taking Lindsey to live in a mobile home the grandparents keep for winter vacations near Phoenix. They're willing to let Lindsey and her mom live there free until mom can get on her feet again financially, but the mobile home park has a no-pets restriction. Lindsey said you understood puppies. She wanted you to have this one."

Bo couldn't help rubbing her nose against the soft fur atop the little dog's head. "Well, I'm honored," she said, "but I just can't handle it. I really can't."

Jane had resumed work on one of the tubs, her back to Bo. "We thought you'd feel that way," she said. "But we didn't want to contact anybody else about adopting her until we heard from you."

"Can you find somebody?" Bo asked, admiring a fat little paw wedged in the crook of her left arm. "Somebody who'll really love her and take proper care of her, I mean."

"Sure," Mindy answered, her voice echoing from within a tub. "We'll start calling some of our customers tomorrow. They're all dog lovers."

"Great," Bo agreed, kissing the little muzzle and placing the dog carefully back in her box. "She's perfect for a home where there's a child. Uh, would one of you mind walking back to my apartment with me? Somebody's been following me and playing tapes of a terrier barking, and..."

"What!" the two women said in unison.

Bo explained the situation in detail, including her lack of clues to the possible identity of her tormentor.

"That's seriously sick!" Mindy said. "Don't worry. We'll go with you. We'll stay with you until Andy gets there no matter what time..."

"Um," Jane said, suddenly turning back to polish a gleaming tub Bo was sure needed no further attention, "remember we have to be at that Business Association meeting by seven, and then you wanted to take your brother's Jeep up to Oceanside so we don't have to get up at four in the morning."

"Oh, yeah," Mindy replied, her blond curls also again bobbing over white ceramic, her back to Bo. "Well, one of us could go to the meeting while the other one stays with Bo. And we could wait till morning to drop off the Jeep, or just go really late and stay at my brother's house. Except I think he wants to leave before dawn, anyway, so we might as well come back."

Bo felt as though she were listening to the audio of a Keystone Kops routine. A strangely rehearsed quality.

"Look, it's nothing," she said, puzzled. "You've got a meeting and then a two-hour drive. I don't want anybody to stay with me, just check my door in case this cretin's painted my name on it in paw prints. You're going to be busy until dawn. Hey, where's the puppy going to be?"

"That's a problem," Mindy acknowledged.

"I think she'll be all right in the store all night," Jane said, "although she'll be terrified here all alone."

"Is there any chance you could keep her at your place, just for tonight?" Mindy asked. "We'd get her before we open in the morning at seven-thirty."

"Well, I guess so," Bo answered. It was the least she could do for Lindsey. "I have to be at work by eight."

"No problem!" her friends agreed with a bright-eyed enthusiasm Bo found peculiar. For the moment she was just glad they'd both stopped buffing bathtubs that were already immaculately clean when she walked in the door.

"Her toys are in this bag, and I've included a couple of cans of puppy diet and some treats," Jane said, pulling a packed tote bag from under the counter. "By the way, Bo, did I mention how terrific your hair looks short?"

When the four of them arrived at Bo's apartment a few minutes later, there was something taped to the door. Mindy ripped it off with a lean, tanned hand, and stuffed it in the pocket of her bright blue dogwash T-shirt. Bo was still below urging the puppy to attend to personal matters, but heard Jane's muttered, "Oh, shit!"

"What is it?" she called up the apartment stairs.

"Just a calendar picture of some dogs," Mindy answered. "Dalmatians." She didn't mention that the dogs' eyes and tongues had all carefully been painted black.

The office was dark. Only a red indicator light on the CD system punctuated the soft gloom in which Alexander Morley stretched in his orthopedic chair, listening. The Gregorian chant's melismas, single Latin syllables sustained through ten or more musical notes, hypnotized him. In the repetitive sound his soul could breathe, even as his heart struggled to maintain the rhythm he'd felt in his chest for nearly seventy years.

That rhythm was flagging now. The best doctors money could buy had told him nothing he didn't already know. That it was time to rest, hand over the reins, retire. With a pacemaker he might live for another ten years, they told him, if he were careful. He might live if he avoided every physical and emotional stress that could, and eventually would, reduce his weakened heart to a limp bag of randomly squirming muscle fibers, and then stillness.

Morley understood his heart's condition. Everything was in place for the announcement of his retirement. All that remained was the closure of this Indian deal in California, and Henderson would manage those formalities on Wednesday, only two days in the future.

As the voices of monks rose and fell about him, Alexander Morley listened to his heart and breathed with the ancient music. He'd felt an arrhythmia earlier and carefully placed the correct medication under his tongue. Then he'd stretched out to rest in the darkening office. It was his favorite time now, the quiet hours of early evening when everyone was gone and he could feel the power MedNet commanded. It was a vibration more intellectual than visceral, a cool, deep awareness beneath the chanting, beneath everything.

There were bigger companies than MedNet, but none as perfectly tuned to the most profitable dimensions of human suffering. That was his gift, the ability to exploit hope. He'd molded MedNet from its earlier identity as a hospital management concern into a leader in the field, known for its dynamic marketing strategies and impressive profit margin.

The medical community damned him as a charlatan, but he didn't care. It didn't matter. Because the only dimension of Alexander Morley still pure and innocent enough to care about opinion was hidden safely in a fantasied monastic sanctuary only accessible through the haunting music that now bathed him. He'd cut out his soul and preserved it there, apart. Everything else was business. Everything else was money, and power.