Picture This (29 page)

Chapter 55

Cooper

H
e had been dumped out in a parking lot. Cooper smelled the direction of the ocean and the great distance. He focused on the distant scent of the ripe sea life that washed up on the shore, factored in the powerful scent of the man, and headed toward the scent of the child. He had never walked as far as the scent led him to calculate, but it was well within his ability. If he could walk in a direct line, the distance would be nothing. If he had to maneuver roads and cars, then the trip would be more dangerous. He did not want to be apprehended by other humans; if there was any hope at all of finding the child and finding his pack again, he had to be swift. A car pulled into the paved lot. As soon as he heard the car door open, he put his nose lower to the ground and trotted off, through bushes and trees.

He smelled thick aromas of canine urine; this was where canines came with their humans. His presence would be tolerated, at least in this area. It was the roads that unsettled him. And the fences—he had never liked fences. The human propensity for fences was incomprehensible to him. He imagined that it was about humans marking their territory. All other mammals were content to mark territory with urine or musk. Birds did it with sound. No matter. He would encounter many fences and roads before he found the ocean again.

He skirted the lake, heading east and south as much as possible. He occasionally stopped at the edge of the lake, taking laps of water. Several times he spotted people sitting along the edge fishing. Each person looked up, inquiringly, and Cooper knew they were wondering where he belonged. Each time, before they could decide if they should come toward him, he moved away with deliberate speed.

Part of the agreement with humans is that canines must belong to at least one person. Cooper had no disagreement with this mandate—in fact, he longed for it. But his solitary appearance could produce impediments today.

He came to his first road crossing. The road was large enough for several cars to fit the width at one time, no larger. He suddenly felt a vibration through his pads, followed quickly by a rumbling sound. A vehicle rushed by, then another. The wind of the cars blew his ears away from his face, and he blinked as fine dust swirled. He waited. When he heard and felt nothing, he quickly crossed, diving again into the brush, orienting himself and heading east. A thread of food smells lingered from the passing cars and his belly responded, a bit of extra saliva collected in hopes of food.

He passed the same road again as it curled around in its path; each time he paused, waiting for a clear passage. He trotted around fences, the kind made of wood, barriers more than territory markers. Twice humans approached him, saying,
Here, good boy, here, fella,
calling to him with caring intentions. If this had been any other day, he would have stopped and greeted them. Dogs in fenced yards announced him, some with idiotic yammering; others simply defined their boundaries with a solid bark, acknowledging Cooper.

He crossed two more roads, and night began to descend. He had been walking for hours, and the smell of the ocean was growing stronger. A loud vibration began to strum through his body, and as he continued the vibration turned into a metallic roar. He slowed his pace as the sound grew more persistent, unending. He had come to a massive road where cars and trucks roared in a continuous torrent. Until now, it had been simple to find a pause when he could slip from one side of the road to the other. He would do no good to his people dead, and surely that was how he would end up if he misjudged the flood of vehicles. He had not accounted for their speed. His tail lowered protectively, and he made his way along a ditch by the side of the vast road, walking south, feeling pummeled by the wind from the speeding cars and trucks. There had to be a way to get across the wide expanse of road. Up ahead he saw a bridge of sorts spanning the road. To get to it he would have to cross a road coming off the giant road; he saw no other way. He could not go back the way he'd come; that would only take him farther from his pack. All that he loved and protected was on the other side of this massive road.

Without warning, cars would veer off the big road onto this smaller road, but he had no way of telling which cars would pull off. He watched the gush of cars and judged his moment, coming up from the ditch and heading across the smaller black road. He was midway across the road when a vehicle seemed to come from out of the air itself—a loud truck—and it issued a warning sound to him, sharp and urgent. The truck squealed and turned this way and that like a fish caught on a hook. Cooper stopped for an instant. Should he dive back into the ditch? Instead, he forced all of his strength into his legs and lungs. He leapt for the far side of the road, feeling the rush of metal going past him, grazing his tail. There were few things in this world that were large enough to be his predator, but all of the vehicles that screamed by on the huge road were capable of destroying him and the truck had come too close.

The rush of chemicals in his blood carried him closer to the bridge, across a large expanse of grass. He stopped to pant, to exhale the terror of the crossing. His thirst was deep and demanding. He was still close to the big road, but now he could get to the bridge crossing. He closed his eyes for a moment, imagining the last time Rocky had put her hands on him, just this morning, rubbing hard behind his ears the way he liked.

Cooper heard a man's voice. “Rosie! Hey, get back here!”

Two paws pounded into him in greeting. A voracious tongue licked his face. Who was this? A dog from the city. The sweet Rosie! He lifted his head in grateful acceptance of her licks. The man approached, Rosie's man. Cooper remembered his scent.

“What the hell are you doing out here, trying to get yourself killed? Where's your camera girl?” asked the man. He knelt down and rubbed Cooper's head. Cooper felt the man's past hurts and fears tucked tight in his middle. Rosie yipped with such happiness, inviting him to run with her. He had to decide quickly if he should trust the man.

“Let's get you some water, big guy.”

Cooper heard the wounded essence of the man and understood Rosie's job: she supplied him with the purest joy of the moment, all day long, every day. Rosie had become a missing organ for the man. As companions, they were well matched, and as a unit, he could trust them.

The man poured water into a metal cup and offered it to Cooper. He lapped gratefully. He sat down and looked up at the man.

“You can come with us. You're with Rosie and me now.”

Chapter 56

T
he yellow truck was still in the parking lot. Rocky sighed with relief when the key she had pulled off Isaiah's key ring worked. Before she and Melissa could pull out, Rocky's cell cawed, and she quickly turned off the truck. She didn't want Natalie to know that she'd found another key. Rocky turned to Melissa and put her finger to her lips in a
shhh
motion and opened the phone.

“I'm here,” said Rocky. “I'm at the Casco Bay dock. Tell me how Danielle and Cooper are doing.”

Rocky had given Natalie an instruction, a very slight instruction.
Tell me.
She'd used a warm and steady voice. Natalie had taken Rocky by surprise when she arrived on the island in waif-like distress, but now the contorted landscape of her psyche was visible to Rocky. And everything was at stake. Rocky could not bear to think about Tess and what she was going through at the moment. Rocky had taken in a damaged girl who had plotted with full intent to hurt Rocky and anything and anyone she cared about. If she made a mistake, she didn't know what Natalie would do. Right now everyone still had choices, including Natalie; no final decree had been etched by physical harm. If Rocky could keep Natalie engaged, keep her talking, they all stood a chance of emerging whole, able to limp back to their lives.

There was a pause at the other end of the phone. Rocky could almost hear Natalie reshuffling her hand. “They're both fine, although Cooper isn't really with us anymore.”

Rocky's heart twisted. What had Natalie done with Cooper? She had to ask about Danielle, about what Natalie ultimately wanted from her, but she could not keep breathing until she found out about Cooper.

Before Rocky could form a question, Natalie continued. “Let's just say he took a trip out of town, far out of town.”

Rocky clutched the steering wheel of the truck with one hand while she collapsed from the core of her belly. “Where is he? What have you done with him?” she whispered.

“He was fine the last time I saw him, before . . . well, it was a mistake, unplanned, but we'll all have to roll with it. He might be able to find his way back, but I wouldn't count on it.”

Rocky shuddered. Melissa grabbed her leg and mouthed,
What, what?
Rocky held up one hand, with her palm facing Melissa in the stop position.

“Tell me about Danielle. You have a chance to take good care of her.” Do not give her anything to push against. Natalie as caretaker—this was a stretch, but one that might reach her. This could be in Natalie's book of rules, a chance to take care of a little girl taken away from her family.

“I'm going to have to go in a minute, but the kid is fine. You are not going to be so fine. I want payment from you, payment for the time that my father could have been with me. He had to know about me. Do you think that I believed you for one second that he never mentioned me? I want what he would have given me. Gotta run. Keep your phone on. And remember that this will go very badly if you contact the police. This is between us, and we can finish our work together very quickly.”
Click.

Melissa's voice exploded. “What did she say? What did she say about Cooper? What about Danielle?” Her eyes were large and intense, and she was ready to do anything. In a moment of odd clarity it occurred to Rocky that she was in a war zone with teenage girls.

“She wouldn't tell me where Cooper is, but something wasn't right, she was lying. She said there's been a change in plans and that's why Cooper is gone,” said Rocky.

Melissa tapped the dashboard and bit her lower lip. “I'm the only one who knows she has a boyfriend. Well, now you do too. I just bet he did something with Cooper.”

Rocky factored in everything that Melissa had downloaded in one massive rush while they were on the ferry: her suspicions, the shoplifting in Portland, the man in the van, the intentional way in which Natalie had pushed Melissa out of the picture, how persistently she had attached herself to Tess and Danielle. All of it was terrifying when put together, but most terrifying of all was the realization that there was a man helping her. Should she call the police right now? Wasn't this the point at which only stupid people persisted onward without calling the police?

As if on cue, Melissa asked, “What would happen if we called the police and just told them everything we know?”

Rocky thought about Natalie and her life so filled with vengeance and rage, her belief that a good life had been denied to her and that Rocky was somehow to blame. “I think she would do something to hurt them.”

Without hesitation, Melissa said, “Then you and I have to find them.” She slipped her sandals off her feet and tucked them under her. “Is Natalie really Bob's daughter?”

“No, but Natalie believes Bob was her father. The truth is far stranger than you can imagine. But I do know who her father is, and it's the one card that I can play with her.”

“What do we do now?” Melissa said, suddenly pumped and eager, ready to break down doors.

“Now we wait until she calls again.”

Melissa slumped back into her seat. “Did you know that today was our last therapy dog training class? Caroline left me a message that said she was very disappointed that we blew off her class. Don't you hate it when someone says, ‘I'm so disappointed,' especially about Cooper.”

Rocky was more than disappointed. There were other words. Like “terrified”—now, there was a good word for how she felt.

Chapter 57

Natalie

I
t would have been sweet if she could have seen Rocky's face when she realized how thoroughly she had been played. Would Rocky have reached up and twirled her hair, the part that always fell out of the hair tie? Or would she rush out the front door, like some kind of dog warden superhero?

Natalie had been faking it that night in the bathroom when she had made herself cry just loud enough to wake up Rocky. She no longer cried—she hadn't for years—but she could create a reaction like crying, complete with tears, that sometimes offered relief, the way coughing felt good when she cleared her throat. She hadn't counted on the way Rocky would hold her hand without speaking, or the dog lodging himself in the doorway so that nothing bad could get past him. Rocky and Cooper had formed a cocoon around her. Was that what it felt like to be held, wrapped in the arms of a parent?

She shook her head as if shaking off a mosquito. She would have had a parent if Bob Tilbe had found her. Franklin would be back soon with food. She had asked him to pick up yogurt cups with fruit for Danielle. She had seen Tess give them to Danielle. Did all little kids eat as often as Danielle? And how did Tess know just when to feed her?

One crushed-up Valium would put the girl to sleep. Everyone had wanted to prescribe medication for Natalie, and she had ended up with a storehouse of medications she refused to take. How much did the kid weigh? She didn't want to give her too much, just enough to put her to sleep. Natalie broke the tablet in half and slid it into her pocket.

She heard Franklin's familiar footsteps; he tended to slide one foot, almost in a shuffle. He knocked on the door. “Come on,” he said on the other side of the door, “I've got an armload of stuff. Open up.”

Natalie reached high on the door and turned the dead bolt and unhooked the chain. Typical house for a drug neighborhood: it had enough locks to slow down the cops until evidence could be flushed away.

Franklin slid a pizza box onto the kitchen counter and dropped a white plastic bag on top of it. “You'd think it was a crime to ask for a damn plastic bag.
Do you have your own bags?
Of course I don't have my own bags. You wait and see. Pretty soon we'll be paying for these bags.”

Franklin had no future in the world of resource conservation. One of Natalie's foster families had recycled everything possible, composted their food scraps, and were elated when they, a family of five, created only two kitchen-sized garbage bags per week. It had been hard to make them give up on her, but stealing money and cutting her arms and legs with a razor had done the trick.

“So when do we call your lady on Peaks and tell her about the ransom?” asked Franklin.

Natalie nodded her head toward the bathroom and said, “Ssshhh.”

Franklin leaned against the window frame. The window was covered by a broken blind, perpetually crooked. In the short time that Franklin had been gone on the food mission, he had disengaged even further from Natalie.

Natalie turned away from Franklin and opened one of the yogurt containers. She put the tablet on the counter and crushed it with the curved side of a spoon, then scooped the pulverized Valium into the cup and stirred.

Natalie opened the door to the bathroom, where the little girl had been stationed. “Danielle, we brought food. It's time for you to eat. If you eat all of your yogurt, you can have some of the pizza.”

Danielle's hair had formed little sweaty swirls around her forehead. Her red shoulder-length hair was even curlier than usual from the heat and humidity. She twisted what used to be her bangs and clipped them back severely. “It is very hot in this bathroom, and I don't want to stay in here. I would never make you stay in a stinky old bathroom,” said Danielle. She was firm and angry.

Natalie hadn't thought about the lack of ventilation in the bathroom. “You're right. I'm sorry about that. But you and I skipped lunch, and now it's time for supper, so stop being mad at me for a minute and come eat something. I'm going to eat the other yogurt,” said Natalie. She had peeled back the aluminum covers from both yogurt containers and began to eat hers.

Danielle looked suspicious. Natalie ate her entire cup of yogurt and tossed the empty plastic cup into the open garbage bin near the sink. The little girl picked up the other yogurt container, dug a plastic spoon out of the bag, and stood next to Natalie as she ate, delicately placing a quarter-spoonful at a time into her mouth. The child leaned into Natalie's side. Danielle was mad at Natalie, but she still trusted her more than Franklin.

Yogurt was followed by pizza, followed by a request for a drink, followed by outrage that Natalie only had Coke in the fridge. “You're just like Rocky,” said the girl in a dreamy voice.

“No, sweetie, I'm nothing like Rocky,” said Natalie as she led the girl to the bedroom with the mattress on the floor. “It's okay for you to lie down and take a nap. Everything will be better when you wake up,” said Natalie.

The girl sank onto the impossibly dirty sheets. “Sit with me?” mumbled the girl, reaching for Natalie's hand. Natalie slid onto the mattress, pulled by the small hand of the girl who was about to have her first Valium-induced slumber. The girl curled around Natalie so that her head nudged into her thigh. The girl's skin, light and freckled, looked illuminated next to the darkened sheets. Her clothing was spotlessly washed, and even her backpack, which Natalie slipped off her shoulders, smelled clean.
You have a chance to take good care of her.

Franklin was back on his computers. Natalie had studied Franklin on the computer since the winter, looking over his shoulder when she brought him a beer or gave him a shoulder massage, paying far more attention to his computer monologues than he could have imagined. If he was the suspicious type, he would check to see if anyone else had been on the computers, and if he did, Natalie needed an excuse. She hadn't counted on losing her hold on Franklin. A sliver of fear cut through her.

“What did you want to tell me?” she asked him. “You said you found something new. What is it?”

Franklin looked up from the deep recesses of his Web world. He was startled; his nearly colorless eyes reflected the light of the screen. “What? Oh, I saw a different way to scramble our travel plans and a better way to make the money untraceable once we get it. I've got something I'm working on here. Nothing for you to worry about,” he said, going back to the laptop.

Liar, liar, pants on fire. Why did people think they could lie to her?

“I need about an hour or so here. Don't talk to me, okay?” he said, without bothering to look up at her.

With Franklin securely back in computer world, Natalie could risk leaving the apartment long enough to call Rocky again. Computer hacks like Franklin would inject hard drives into their brains if they could.

Natalie slipped out the door and down the three flights to the front stoop. She walked to the end of the street to stand under the one streetlight that was out, grateful to be in shadow. Natalie pulled her phone out of her pocket and punched in Rocky's number. She answered immediately. “Listen to me carefully. I want all the money from my father's life insurance and the sale of his business. You need to get it by tomorrow, and don't tell me that you can't because I know you can. I know you can get it in cash. I know more about you than you can imagine.”

“You're right, Natalie. I can do that because the most important thing is that you are taking good care of Danielle. I can help you take good care of her. But I need to tell you something. I know who your father is, and it's not Robert Tilbe. I don't know how you searched for your father, but you were very close. Your father is Richard Tilbe, Bob's uncle. I don't know very much about him except that he dated your mother when she was very young. He probably got her started on drugs. We have access to his DNA, so we can get proof very easily. I just wanted you to know.”

Natalie tasted bile in her throat. She forced it down. “Keep your phone on,” she said. She had planned on giving Rocky more instructions, but she suddenly felt sick. Rocky's voice had sounded weird, not like she had before when she tried to be pleasing and helpful to the poor foster girl. She walked around the block once, gulping in night air. The odd feeling dropped from her throat to her stomach.

N
atalie opened the door to the apartment and saw the three computers unattended. In two steps, she had a clear line of sight to the bedroom. Franklin knelt by the mattress with his hand on Danielle's hip. He turned to look up at her, asking with his eyes, then smiling. Natalie froze, her feet shackled to the floor as the panorama of her past played out in front of her: the grimy apartment, the shabby mattress, the ripped window shade. Had her mother tried to protect her in their shabby apartment? Franklin turned back to Danielle.

Her legs still felt thick and cold, but she walked toward the nearest laptop, ripped the plug from the wall and carried it to the bedroom. Franklin placed his hand on the child's leg as Natalie walked into the bedroom. Franklin rolled Danielle onto her back; the child didn't wake. He turned to look up at Natalie just before she slammed the laptop into the side of his head. She swung hard at his head again, knocking him to the foot of the mattress. He rolled to one side, tried to get up; when she hit him one last time, he deflated like a balloon, suddenly empty.

She fell to the floor, unable to breathe. Blood gushed from Franklin's white scalp, seeping along his white hair and onto the floor. She had to move him away from Danielle. He wanted to hurt little girls, and she didn't want a drop of his blood to touch the child. She grabbed his legs and pulled him to the kitchen.

Her brain pounded with fear, forming craters of darkness that pulled her into the bloody apartment where her mother had been killed. The caseworkers told her she was too young to remember being there, but they were wrong. She remembered the floorboards, sticky with blood, the terrifying sound of the fridge, the unstoppable thirst, and the endless blackness that came and lasted so long as she sat with her mother who would not waken.

Natalie had to escape and run as far away as possible. She found the tiny screwdriver that she had seen Franklin use when he built the computers from parts. She flipped over one computer to screw open the back of it, but her hands shook so badly that the screwdriver clattered around the one screw, refusing to go in. She finally got the computer open and pulled out the hard drive. She did the same with the second. Franklin had told her that the only way to truly erase information was to remove the hard drive and destroy it. “The past is never gone,” he had said, “it's only hiding.” She picked up the third laptop, the one that she used to stop Franklin. She ran it under the faucet to get rid of the blood and pulled out the hard drive. She tossed all three of the metal rectangles into her canvas bag.

Each inhale was jagged, as if the muscles in her throat and lungs were frozen. The smell of Franklin's blood filled her nose with black sludge, and if she had to smell it one minute more she might pass out.

Rocky had said that Bob was not her father and she sounded so sure. But Natalie had found the right trail, she was sure of it, the hint of R. Tilbe that had surfaced, inexplicably, when she exited the foster care system, a tendril that her last caseworker offered her. R. Tilbe, Ames, Iowa. Just the name and a phone number (long since disconnected) scrawled on a book found in her mother's few possessions. Her mother had kept one of her books from college, one item that had escaped her desperate need to sell everything possible for drugs. A thin book of poetry, inscribed to her: “With all my love, R. Tilbe.” Weird, a very weird way to sign a book to someone you're supposed to love.

She had to be right. Rocky was still lying, refusing to give her what was really hers, a legacy from her father. She needed to wash away the taste in her throat, the smell of Franklin. She went to the fridge and pulled out a can of soda. Now her hands shook so much that she couldn't open it. The can fell from her hands, and she jumped as if a bomb had exploded. She had to get out of there. Franklin had the keys to the van in his pocket. She didn't want to touch him; he was just like the boys who had hurt her, with their hard fingers and metallic eyes.

Natalie edged closer to Franklin, who was facedown on the kitchen floor. She reached under his hip and slid her hand into his pocket. Nothing. She stepped over him, straddling him, and slid her hand into his other pocket and immediately felt the hard keys. The edge of her sandals had sunk into the sludge of his blood. She scuffed her shoe furiously against the scatter rug, trying to rub off the hideous blood, the whole hideous scene, then grabbed her canvas pack and ran from the apartment. Her shirt had blood on it. She ran down the three flights of stairs, saw the van, and gulped in fresh air in desperate bursts. She ripped off the shirt, dropping it and kicking it to the curb. Once inside the van, she locked the doors, finally alone and safe, free of the death trap of the apartment where her mother lay dead. She hadn't driven the van before, but nothing mattered other than distancing herself from the horror of the apartment.

Why did Rocky sound different? Why couldn't she make her hands stop shaking? Natalie pointed the nose of the van toward the interstate.