Biker (35 page)

“I don't know if you're my birth mother or not but I think maybe you are.”

Sniffling, Ginger pushed herself back and smiled. “I think so too.”

Gwen tapped Pratt on the shoulder. “Help me with lunch.”

Pratt followed her into the kitchen, where she began to unload sliced deli meat and cheese from the refrigerator onto a big platter. “How on earth did you find him?”

“Moon said he'd placed the boy with a wealthy Cuban couple in Miami. I went to Miami and contacted every Cuban American agency I could, especially those dealing with families. I looked for male babies adopted sixteen years ago. At first the agencies were reluctant to help but when I explained where I was coming from they enthusiastically agreed. I went armed with news stories.

“Felipe and Isabel adopted Mario at two months—exactly the time he was stolen. They admitted to me privately that they paid a baby broker five thousand dollars. There's nothing anybody can do about it now. Of course they still have to run a test.”

They looked out the window. Ginger and Mario were deep in conversation, knee to knee.

CHAPTER 72

Morgan Teitlebaum's office was in the Psych Department in the Humanities Building, a Borg-like hive built in the seventies. Pratt parked the Road King in the State Street parking lot and walked. It was the first time he'd ridden since the storm.

Teitlebaum's office was on the sixth floor. The narrow concrete corridors were lined with bulletin boards filled with Psych Department notices, yard sales, kittens, cartoons and humorous posters. The heavy oak door to Teitlebaum's office was open.

“Come in Josh,” Teitlebaum said from her seat at the gun sight window, rotating an old oak office chair away from an antique roll-up desk. Behind her was a computer stand with computer. The bulletin board on the wall looked like a tossed paper salad with pictures and notices peeking out from six layers. There was a Karastan carpet on the floor, a bronze and ceramic hookah mounted on a cherrywood planter and a framed picture of Einstein sticking out his tongue.

Pratt sat on the old cloth sofa, which looked as if it had come from student moving day.

“Would you like an iced tea?” Teitlebaum said.

“Sure. How's it going?”

Teitlebaum bent to open a cube fridge, from which she removed two trendy green teas, handing one to Pratt. “Well the good news is that I've created a rapport with Eric and he is learning to trust me. That will take time. Trust is always the first casualty in bad parenting.”

Pratt snorted. “Bad parenting.”

“Yes, well this is an extreme case. Mostly he sits in his room and listens to songs on his iPod. He's especially fond of the Electric Light Orchestra. We did have to sedate him once, to shave the fur. As you can imagine, his skin is covered with lesions. He's responding well to antibiotics. The next step will be to get him into a dentist chair. He has some verbal skills and that puts us miles ahead.”

“Any idea who he is?”

“No. We've sent a DNA sample to the NCIC but that's a long shot. He could be anybody. Thousands of children disappear every year in this country. Some never get reported.”

“That's hard to believe.”

“So it is. I'm not saying he's about to get a job. He'll be in therapy for the rest of his life, I suspect, and may never overcome his mistrust of strangers and men in particular.”

“What I want to know, Doc, is how he tracked Moon. I don't believe it was by scent. You don't just stick your snout in the air and smell somebody two hundred miles away in a car.”

“I wondered about that too and have only a tentative explanation, which we will be investigating for years to come. Did you know our Defense Department has been conducting paranormal activity tests since the fifties?”

“Whooo-EEE-ooo,” Pratt intoned.

“The Soviets began a crash program in '53 to develop ‘mind reader' spies. We got wind of it and soon we had our own program trying to develop precognition, telepathy, telekinetics and clairvoyance. The Army has a program called ‘Silent Talk' in which soldiers will communicate telepathically on the battlefield. They hope.

“Now I don't have any better understanding of these phenomena than you. I'm not sure they even exist. But I'm not sure they don't exist, either. Is it possible that Eric and Moon formed a telepathic bond? I don't know. But consider that Moon was the only person with whom Eric came in contact … I'm not certain of that but getting that boy to talk is like pulling teeth. Bad analogy. We can be sure that they had an unusually intense relationship, particularly while Moon was grafting pieces of animal fur to the boy's skin.

Maybe Eric was able to track Moon because he had a mind image in his brain of what Moon saw, of Moon's surroundings.

“There is ample anecdotal and empirical evidence that telepathy is real. I've got reams of material. Right now that's the best I can do.”

Pratt thought about the presence he felt whenever he talked to Eric, and why Teitlebaum didn't feel it.

“You don't feel sometimes he's communicating with you via telepathy?”

Teitlebaum's bright blue eyes widened. “Why no. Do you?”

“No.”

Teitlebaum shrugged and took a slug of tea.

“God works in mysterious ways,” Pratt said.

“Amen.”

They sat in companionable silence for a minute.

“Whelp,” Pratt said rising, “thanks for your time, Doc.”

“Any time. If you want to see Eric, we can arrange that but for now I don't think he's comfortable in the company of men.”

“I understand.”

“What are you working on?”

“I have to find some stolen bikes.”

“The tabs are going to be on your ass like a hawk on a June bug. Are you ready for that? You might want to get a lawyer to deal with the shit storm headed your way. I could recommend someone if you like.”

“Thanks, Doc. I'd appreciate that.”

CHAPTER 73

On September 4 Pratt went for a run. He ran all the way to County PB and back.

It was five-thirty by the time he returned to Ptarmigan Road. McMansions sprouted on both side of his modest ranch, a pair of lions guarding a mutt. Pratt's yard was overgrown with weeds. Vines crawled up the sides and into the window slots of his Camaro. The only reason the Lowrys hadn't complained was because they were now friends. Louise was picking up his mail.

Pratt didn't doubt that whoever moved in on either side of him would waste no time forming a neighborhood association and declaring his domicile unfit.

Pratt let himself in, opened windows and took a shower. He had a frozen pizza for dinner. After dinner he cracked a Capital lager, went out on his deck. The fireflies were still at it. Looked like Indian summer, at least for a while. Pratt phoned Teitlebaum.

“Teitlebaum,” she answered.

“Doc, it's Pratt. How's Eric?”

“We are making steady progress,” she said guardedly. “He carries on conversations and makes himself understood. Better yet, he understands others. Physically he's still in a lot of pain. His physical therapist is helping with the spine but several discs are gone and they're talking about an operation. We did get him to sit still for the dentist and they're making him a new set of choppers. He asked about you.”

“He did?”

“He said, ‘Where's Pratt?'”

“You're shittin' me.”

“I shit thee not.”

“Can I see him?”

Short pause. “How about you come by tomorrow afternoon around two. You know where Nakoma State is? Ask for the K Building. I'll tell the main desk. There's a fenced enclosure in back where we'll be. Walk around so that you're outside the fence. We'll let him have a look at you and decide for himself if he wants to see you.”

Pratt fell asleep to
Antiques Roadshow
.

CHAPTER 74

September 7 was a Thursday. There was a hint of frost in the air, oak leaves turning crimson. Pratt rode his Road King clockwise around the north shore of Lake Mendota toward Nakoma State, the psychiatric and rehabilitation hospital on the northeast side.

Pratt parked in the visitor's lot and headed for the administration building. Nakoma State looked more like a college campus than a holding facility for the criminally insane, in which capacity it had functioned since its founding in 1954. Ed Gein was its most famous alumnus. Broad, sloping lawns led down to blue Lake Mendota, Governor's Island extending off a small peninsula like a dew claw.

The buildings were made of blond brick, fifties modern, one-story with flat roofs. Pratt went up three concrete steps to the entrance, let himself in through the glass double doors. Inside was a desk with a smiling, middle-aged secretary, and several benches, each with a coffee table covered with the usual institutional magazines:
JAMA, National Geo, Style
. Ceiling fans lazily stirred the air.

Pratt went to the counter.

“Yes sir?” the woman said.

“I'm Josh Pratt. Dr. Teitlebaum said she'd leave a note about me observing Eric, uh, Munz. The wild boy.”

The woman nodded, her rimless glasses momentarily reflecting the morning sun. “I'll have one of our custodians take you to them. Please have a seat.”

Pratt sat beneath a painting showing a cornfield and a red barn. He picked up a copy of
People
and read about the Kardashian sisters, who were famous for some reason that escaped him. There was an article about a woman who survived an acid attack and suddenly he realized it was only a matter of time
People
came after Eric.

And him.

He had a new phone to escape the tab hounds and badgers. The front door opened and a man wearing an institutional gray jumpsuit, his hair a rat's nest of flying blond tresses, came up to him. The nameplate on his breast said Sykes. He smelled of the outdoors.

“Mr. Pratt?”

Pratt looked up. The man had piercing blue eyes and the lean bones of an athlete. “I'm Norbert Sykes. Dr. Teitlebaum asked me to escort you back.”

Pratt flipped the mag on the table, stood, and shook hands. “Great.”

Sykes led the way to a locked door, which he opened with a key card. They walked down a spotless, disinfectant-smelling corridor past several offices, some with caseworkers. At the back of the building Sykes opened another door and they exited into the crisp fall air. Following a concrete path that wound through the park-like setting, they headed toward a building set a little ways off from the others at the north end of the compound.

Pratt saw faculty eating lunch at a picnic table, people he took to be patients. Some smoked cigarettes. Sykes led the way to a one-story red brick building with green shutters. A rectangle-shaped area enclosed by a five-foot chain-link fence extended toward the lake. Sykes stopped a hundred feet from the building and held up his hand.

“There they are,” he said in a hushed voice.

Pratt looked at the enclosure. Teitlebaum sat on a concrete bench—Pratt guessed there would be a dedication plaque behind her—while Eric sat on the ground facing her at an angle so he could see the cerulean blue lake. His profile had changed. Most of the fur was gone and he sported a shaved skull.

“No sudden movements, no loud noises,” Sykes said softly. “If there's any trouble Dr. Teitlebaum will know what to do.”

“Have you had any trouble with him?”

“No, only his weird howling at night. Dr. Teitlebaum got him a white noise generator and he stopped.”

With a slight wave Sykes turned and left. Pratt leaned against a mature oak and watched. Teitlebaum smiled and spoke, too far away for Pratt to hear. Eric gestured and it seemed so natural, so utterly human that Pratt thought a miracle had occurred. But he knew that was impossible. From time to time Eric appeared agitated and Teitlebaum would reach forward and touch him on the head or shoulder.

Teitlebaum looked up and saw Pratt, her face breaking into a big smile. She looked at Eric and pointed over his shoulder. Pratt walked toward the fence. Eric shifted around on his hands and Pratt could see that his arms and biceps were extremely well developed. Blue eyes in the sandblasted young-old face fixed on Pratt.

Eric smiled.

The words popped into Pratt's head as Eric spoke.

“Squeaky toy.”

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2016 by Mike Baron

ISBN: 978-1-5040-3956-7

Distributed in 2016 by Open Road Distribution

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