The Dark Ones (13 page)
Authors: Anthony Izzo
“We’ll go,” David said. “Maybe they’ll follow us, leave these people be.”
Frank took his hands from David’s shoulders. “I’m sorry.”
David glanced over his shoulder. “Not half as sorry as I am.”
He prayed Sara was faring better than the people at the motel.
They snatched their bags from the room and after piling into the truck, tore out of the parking lot. On the highway, a shroud of fog had fallen and misted in front of the headlights. David checked the rearview mirror and saw nothing. There were no cars in front, no comforting glow of taillights to ensure him that they were not the only car out here. He suddenly missed Sara very badly and wanted to give her a hug and know she was up in her room studying. Hell, right now the stereo blasting Danzig through the floor would be welcome. David would at least know she was safe and they were together. He wouldn’t complain. And the night and the shadows would seem far away.
“He was dead. Right after you left the room, he died,” David said.
“I’m not surprised. That was a horrific wound.”
“Why that guy? Do you think they couldn’t find us?”
“I’m guessing they decided to go room by room until they did.”
David watched the road. Mile markers whizzed past. The fog rolled over the windshield. “How many you think there were?”
“May have just been the one you saw, maybe more.”
“Frank?”
“Yes?”
“You hear the screaming? As we pulled away?”
Frank remained silent.
“You heard, right?”
“I did.”
“I thought so.”
CHAPTER 10
Sara persuaded Randall Powers to drop her off six blocks from the hospital. She began the walk, feeling like it was six miles instead.
Laura stood in the hospital cafeteria line, aware that she was going to zone out again. The tray she held felt distant, the BLT and apple on the plate seemed like someone else’s. The low hiss of the fryer and the squeak of shoes on the tile floor were muffled. She had been thinking of Megan again, and the world around her seemed to exist through a filter of gauze.
A cold October day, she remembered. She wasn’t quite twenty. She wore a heavy turtleneck and cords; the temperature was in the thirties. She had bundled Megan in a heavy snowsuit for their trip to the Great Pumpkin Farm. It had been one of their first official outings. Just Laura and her plump little six-month-old.
They strolled through rows of pumpkins, around kiddie roller coasters and miniature cars that whipped around and incited squeals of joy from the riders. The crisp smell of fall hung in the air and she was looking forward to starting some Christmas shopping. It was Megan’s first, and she meant it to be the best.
They came up to a stand selling hot cider, and despite the bitter day, a throng of people in winter coats and long scarves and mittens crowded the table, their breath rising in plumes. She looked for an opening to reach the table. Stroller in front of her, she hoped to slip through and get herself a cider. No one budged, but she thought she could slip through by herself. The baby would be okay for a second, and she was only a few feet away.
She put the brakes on the stroller, then bent down and tugged Megan’s hat, making sure her ears were covered. Megan’s cheeks were pink, and Laura pressed her hand to the skin. They wouldn’t be able to stay out too much longer. She would get the cider, and she would head back to the car. Laura stroked her cheek and the baby giggled. That alone was enough to warm her.
“Be right back, sweetie.”
Laura slipped between a heavyset woman in a parka and her teenage son. She asked for a cup of cider and the clerk served her and she paid. She turned back toward the stroller. The heavyset woman cut in front of her and Laura stopped. The woman gave her a frown.
The crowd had thickened and she brushed through, feeling the scrape of a tall man’s wool scarf against her cheek, hearing a chorus of coughs and sniffles and wondering how many of these folks would be in bed with colds by next week.
She slipped through the crowd and Megan was gone. Maybe she had become disoriented in the crowd. She looked left, then right, started to make her way back into the crowd when someone plowed into her. She went down, banging her elbow on a rock. She scrambled to her feet, shoving and clawing to stand up and drawing angry looks from people.
Panic set in. The stroller and her daughter were not misplaced. She hadn’t gone far. Her daughter was gone.
She had been nineteen, young, stupid. Guilty of turning her back for a moment, but in that moment, the absolute worst had happened. The state police and the FBI had found nothing, and Laura spent the next fifteen years wondering. They never found a body, and she never received a ransom note. Her only hope was that someone had given Megan a good life. God knew Laura hadn’t. Or at least that was how she felt after the abduction.
She was jolted out of the memory by the clatter of a plastic tray on the floor. Over to her left, between a cooler and the food line, the cashier gripped a teenage girl by the arm. The girl had an apple in her opposite hand. She waved it in the air, playing keep-away with the cashier. The girl dug her feet in. The cashier pulled harder, then looked around for help. A nurse wearing a flowered shirt and blue scrubs ran out, presumably to fetch security.
Laura watched the girl. Her face was smeared with dirt and brambles filled her hair. The right knee of her pants was muddy and torn. A travel bag, slung around her back, bounced up and down as she struggled to keep the apple away.
Laura set her tray on a counter. She went and asked the cashier, “What’s the problem?”
The cashier, who looked solid enough to take on The Rock in a cage match, said, “Caught her stealing this apple.”
The girl’s gaze flicked from the cashier to Laura.
“Let her go. I’ll pay for the apple.”
The cashier arched her eyebrows.
“I can’t tolerate stealing.”
“Let her be,” Laura said. “I’ll handle it. Now how much for the apple?”
“Fifty cents.”
Laura dug two quarters from the pocket of her lab coat and handed them to the cashier. The cashier gave the girl a killer look and went back to her register.
The girl looked at Laura as if expecting to be rebuked.
“You’re welcome,” Laura said.
The nurse returned with a blue-clad security guard in tow. He approached, thumbs in his belt and said, “Problem here, Dr. Pennington?”
“I took care of it.”
The security guard looked at the girl, shrugged, and walked away.
“Sorry,” the girl said. “And thanks.”
“Do you have a name?”
“My name’s Sara.”
“Are you seeing someone in the hospital?”
“I came looking for my mother.”
“Is she a patient? Maybe I can help you locate her.”
“She’s a doctor,” Sara said.
“What’s her name?”
“Laura Pennington.”
This was a joke, and a goddamned sick one at that. Who would do such a thing?
“Who put you up to this?”
Sara set down her duffel bag. She unzipped it and pulled out a pile of newspaper articles. They were the safety tips Laura had done for the
Buffalo News
two summers ago. “What is this supposed to prove?”
Buffalo News
two summers ago. “What is this supposed to prove?”
“Do you know a man named David Dresser?”
“Never heard of him.”
“I thought he was my father, and now I’m not sure. I found these pictures. He kept another picture of my supposed real mother, but it’s a fake. You’re my mother.”
“How old are you?” Laura asked.
“Sixteen.”
She took a good hard look at the girl. She hadn’t noticed before, but the eyes were the same light blue, the hair the same shiny black. Sixteen, the right age. There was one more test she could do, one that would seal the deal. It probably wouldn’t amount to anything, and she was foolish for getting her hopes up.
Heart racing, she said to Sara, “Come with me.”
She brought Sara to Room 4 in the ER and drew the curtain around them. Sara set her bag down and propped herself on the gurney. The sheets were fresh and white, and they crinkled as she sat.
“Did someone send you here to mess with me?” Laura asked.
The girl shook her head.
Maybe it was Callahan. He was the worst joker in the hospital, one time filling her locker with roughly a hundred Super Balls. She’d spent a half hour tracking them down and throwing them in the garbage for fear of someone slipping. But to play a joke like this was monstrous, cruel, even though it wasn’t completely out of the question that her daughter might be alive somewhere. No body had been found, no suspects apprehended.
“So what’s this test you’re going to give me?” Sara asked.
“I had a daughter, but she was kidnapped as an infant. She had a birthmark on her lower back that we called ‘Australia’ because it was shaped like the continent.”
“So you want me to show you my back.”
Laura smiled. “You catch on quickly.”
The curtain was yanked aside and Carol Wardinski, one of the nurses, told Laura a multiple gunshot wound was on the way in.
Laura looked at Sara, then back at the nurse. To Sara, she said, “Stay in the waiting room. Can you do that? I’ll talk to you when my shift is up.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Sara said.
Laura’s muscles ached, her feet throbbed, and she wanted nothing more than to collapse into bed when her shift was up. The GSW had turned out to be a real hummer. Six people shot, all gangbangers. One of them had died while the trauma team worked on him; the guy had been riddled with slugs. The other five they had saved, although two of them would wind up paralyzed and one was nearly brain dead. There had been more gray matter on the gurney than in the guy’s skull.
Now, as she strode into the waiting room, she found Sara curled up in a chair with her bag propped under her head for a pillow. She shook the girl’s shoulder and Sara snored once and then snapped up to a seated position. She looked around, dazed, and then up at Laura.
She noticed Sara’s bloody knee, and took her in back. After cleaning and bandaging the wound, she said, “Ready?”
Sara nodded and picked up her bag. They walked outside into dancing leaves and a stiff October breeze. Laura buttoned her coat, pulled the collar closed.
“Warm where you came from?” Laura asked.
“Indiana, gets cold there same as here.”
“Where?”
“Little town called Lexington.”
They walked for a while in silence. The girl didn’t seem fully awake yet, and Laura didn’t tell her, but she had risked losing her wallet and watch by falling asleep in the waiting room.
As they reached Laura’s Honda, she said, “You can stay at my place for the night.”
“I’d planned on it. Got nowhere else to go, right now.”
Laura unlocked the doors and they got in. Laura pulled out. As they drove, she snuck glances at Sara, who didn’t seem to notice. She looked at the hair, the eyes, the set of jaw and the more she looked, the more it seemed possible that Sara could be hers. Or was it just the hope of a fool who wanted her child back?
It seemed she had heard if a kidnapped child were not recovered within twenty-four hours of abduction, then they were as good as gone. But still, she could hope for a miracle. They happened to other people, so why not her?
Twenty minutes later, they arrived at Laura’s place. Laura parked and they got out. They took the elevator to the building’s tenth floor and Laura took out her key and opened the apartment door. She flipped on the lights, hoping Sara wouldn’t see her hands shaking.
“Something to drink?”
“No thanks. So what is it you’re looking for. This proof?”
Laura exhaled. “A birthmark. Lower back. I thought it looked like Australia. I used to think of Megan as my ‘Down Under’ baby because of it. Corny, I know. But people can have birthmarks that are similar, right? I shouldn’t get my hopes up.”
“Well?”
“Let’s see.”
Sara set down her bag and turned around. Laura almost couldn’t bear to look. What if it wasn’t her daughter?
Sara lifted the back of her shirt up, and sure enough, a birthmark, roughly six inches by six, blotchy red, across the small of her back. And it was Australia, or at least that was how Laura perceived it. She heard herself gasp and the room began to tilt a bit as she staggered backward, her legs hitting the Queen Anne chair and forcing her to flop on her butt.
My God, she’s found me
.
My God, she’s found me
.
Sara lowered her shirt and sat on the couch, opposite Laura.
Laura said, “How?”
Sara shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Tell me what you do know.”
“My father, or the person who says he’s my father, is named David Dresser. I’ve been with him my whole life. I just found these photos the other day. He had them hidden.”
“What possessed you?”
“I needed twenty bucks until payday. He keeps a stash under his mattress, which he thinks I don’t know about. It’s money from his drywall jobs, and I was going to pay him back, just a little light though. Anyway, this manila envelope is poking out, so I tug on it and it falls and out flops these newspaper articles with your picture,” Sara said. “And a letter saying you can never find out I’m yours.”
This was getting nuttier. “Your mother? What did he tell you?”
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