Bloodstream (5 page)

“Please, won’t you just sit down? I know I do things a little differently from Dr. Pomeroy, but there’s a reason for it. Antibiotics don’t stop a virus, and they can cause side effects.”

“Never caused me no side effects.”

“It only takes a day to get back the culture results. If it’s strep, I’ll give you the medicine then.”

“Gotta walk all the way into town. Takes up half my day.”

Suddenly Claire understood what the real issue was. Every lab test, every new prescription, meant a mile-long walk into town for Mairead, and then another mile walk home.

With a sigh, she pulled out a prescription pad. And for the first time that visit, she saw Mairead’s smile. Satisfied. Triumphant.

Isabel sat quietly on the couch, afraid to move, afraid to say a word.

Mary Rose was very, very mad. Their mother was not home yet, so Isabel was all alone with her sister. She had never seen Mary Rose behave this way, pacing back and forth like a tiger in the zoo, screaming at her. At her, Isabel! Mary Rose was so angry, it turned her face wrinkled and ugly, not like Princess Aurora anymore, but more like an evil queen. This was not her sister. This was a bad person inside her sister's body.

Isabel huddled deeper into the cushions, watching furtively as the bad person in Mary Rose’s body stalked through the living room, muttering.
Never get to go anywhere or do anything because of you! Stuck at home all the time. A baby-sitter slave! I wish you were dead. I wish you were dead.

But I’m your sister! Isabel wanted to wail, though she didn’t dare make a peep. She began to cry, silent tears plopping onto the cushions, making big wet stains. Oh no. Mary Rose would be mad about that, too.

Isabel waited until her sister’s back was turned, then she quietly slipped off the couch and darted into the kitchen. She would hide in here, out of Mary Rose’s way, until their mother came home. She ducked around the corner of a kitchen cabinet and sat down on the cold tiles, hugging her knees to her chest. If she just stayed quiet, Mary Rose wouldn’t find her. She could see the clock on the wall, and she knew that when the little hand was on the five, their mother would come home. She needed to pee, now, but she would just have to wait because she was safe here.

Then Rocky the parakeet began to screech. His cage was a few feet away, by the window. She looked up at him, silently imploring him to be quiet, but Rocky was not very smart and he kept screeching at her.

Their mother had said it many times: “Rocky is just a birdbrain,” and he was proving it now by all the noise he made.

Be quiet! Oh please be quiet or she'll find me!

Too late. Footsteps creaked into the kitchen. A drawer was yanked open and silverware clanged to the floor. Mary Rose was flinging around forks and spoons. Isabel wrapped herself into a ball and squeezed more tightly against the cabinet.

Rocky the traitor stared at her as he squawked, as though to shout out: “There she is! There she is!”

Now Mary Rose paced into view, but she wasn’t looking at Isabel. She was staring at Rocky. She went to the cage and stood looking at the parakeet, who continued to screech. She opened the door and thrust in her hand. Rocky’s wings flapped in panicked whooshes of flying feathers and birdseed. She captured the struggling bird, a squirming puff of powder blue, and took him out of the cage. With one quick twist, she snapped the bird’s neck.

Rocky went limp.

She flung the body against the wall. It plopped to the floor in a sad little heap of feathers.

A silent scream boiled up in Isabel’s throat. She choked it back and buried her face against her knees, waiting in terror for her sister to break her neck as well.

But Mary Rose walked right out of the kitchen. Right out of the house.

3

Noah was sitting on the front steps of the high school when Claire arrived at four o’clock. She had rushed through her last two appointments, and had driven straight to the school five miles away, but she was a half hour late, and she could see he was angry about it. He didn’t say a word, just climbed into the truck, and slammed the door shut.

“Seat belt, honey;’ she said.

He yanked on the shoulder strap and rammed the buckle in. They drove for a moment in silence.

“I’ve been sitting around forever. What took you so long?” he said.

“I had patients to see, Noah. Why were you in detention?”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“Whose fault was it, then?”

“Taylor. He’s turning into such a jerk. I don’t know what’s wrong With him.” Sighing, he slumped into his seat. “And I used to think we Were friends. Now it’s like he hates me.”

She glanced at him. “Is this Taylor Darnell you’re talking about?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“It was an accident. My skateboard ran into him. Next thing I know, he’s shoving me around. So I shoved him back, and he fell.”

“Why didn’t you call a teacher?”

“There weren’t any around. Then Miss Cornwallis comes out and suddenly Taylor starts yelling that it’s
my
fault.” He turned away from her, but not before she’d glimpsed the embarrassed swipe of his hand across his eyes. He tries so hard to be grown up, she thought with a twinge of pity; but he’s really still a child.

“She took my skateboard, Mom,” he said softly. “Can you get it back for me?”

“I’ll call Miss Cornwallis tomorrow. But I want you to call Taylor and apologize.”

“He turned on me! He’s the one who should apologize!”

“Taylor’s not having an easy time of it, Noah. His parents just got divorced.”

He looked at her. “How do you know? Is he your patient?”

“Yes.”

“What did you see him for?”

“You know I can’t talk about that.”

“Like you ever talk to me about anything,” he muttered, and turned once again to stare out the window.

She knew better than to rise to the bait, so she said nothing, preferring silence to the argument that would surely erupt between them if she allowed him to provoke her.

When he spoke again, it was so quietly she almost didn’t hear him. “I want to go home, Mom.”

“That’s where I’m taking you.”

“No, I mean
home.
To Baltimore. I don’t want to stay here anymore. There’s nothing here but trees and a bunch of old guys driving around in their pickup trucks. We don’t belong here.”

“This is our home now.”

“Not mine.”

“You haven’t tried very hard to like it here.”

“Like I had a choice? Like you asked
me
if we should move?”

“We’ll both learn to like it. I’m still adjusting, too.”

“So why did we have to move?”

Gripping the steering wheel, she stared straight ahead. “You know why.” They both knew what she was talking about. They’d left Baltimore because of
him,
because she’d taken a hard look at her son’s future and was frightened by what she saw. An enlarging circle of troubled friends. Repeated calls from the police. More courtrooms and lawyers and therapists. She had seen their future in Baltimore, and she’d grabbed her son and run like hell.

“I’m not going to turn into some perfect preppie just because you drag me up to the woods,” he said. “I can mess things up just as good right here. So we might as well go back.”

She pulled into their driveway and turned to face him. “Messing up is not going to get you back to Baltimore. Either you get your life together or you don’t. It’s your choice.”

“When is anything my choice?”

“You have lots of choices. And from now on, I want you to make the right ones.”

“You mean the ones you want.” He jumped out of the truck.

“Noah. Noah!”

“Just leave me
alone!”
he yelled. He slammed the door shut and stalked off to the house.

She didn’t follow him. She just sat clutching the steering wheel, too tired and upset at that moment to deal with him. Abruptly she shifted into reverse and backed out of the driveway. They both needed time to cool down, to get their emotions under control. She turned onto Toddy Point Road and headed along the shore of Locust Lake. Driving as therapy.

How easy it had all seemed when Peter was alive, when one of his cross-eyed looks was all that was needed to make their son laugh. The days when they were still happy, still whole.

We haven’t been happy since you died, Peter I miss you. I miss you every day, every hour Every minute of my life.

The lights from lakeside cottages shimmered through her tears as she drove. She rounded the curve, drove past the Boulders, and suddenly the lights were no longer white but blue, and they seemed to be dancing among the trees.

It was a police cruiser, and it was parked on Rachel Sorkin’s property.

She pulled to a stop in the driveway. Three vehicles were in the front yard, two police cruisers and a white van. A Maine state trooper was talking to Rachel on the porch. Beneath the trees, flashlight beams zigzagged across the ground.

Claire spotted Lincoln Kelly emerging from the woods. It was his silhouette she recognized as he passed before one of the searchlights. Though not a tall man, Lincoln was straight and solid and he moved with a quiet assuredness that made him seem larger than he was. He stopped to speak to the state trooper, then he noticed Claire and crossed the yard to her truck.

She rolled down the window. “Have you found any more bones?” she asked.

He leaned in, bringing with him the scent of the forest. Pine trees and earth and wood smoke. “Yep. The dogs led us over to the stream-bed,” he said. “That bank eroded pretty badly this spring, after all those floods. That’s what uncovered the bones. But I’m afraid wild animals have already scattered most of them in the woods.”

“Does the ME think it’s a homicide?”

“It’s no longer an ME’s case. The bones are too old. There’s a forensic anthropologist in charge now, if you’d like to talk to her. Name’s Dr. Overlock.”

He opened the truck door and Claire climbed out. Together they walked into the gloom of the woods. Dusk had rapidly thickened to night. The ground was uneven, layered with dead leaves, and she found herself stumbling in the underbrush. Lincoln reached out to steady her. He seemed to have no trouble navigating in the darkness, his heavy boots connecting solidly with the ground.

Lights were shining among the trees, and Claire heard voices and the sound of trickling water. She and Lincoln emerged from the woods, onto the stream bank. A section of the eroded bank had been cordoned off by police tape strung between stakes, and on a tarp lay the mud-encrusted bones that had already been unearthed. Claire recognized a tibia and what looked like fragments of a pelvis. Two men

wearing waders and headlamps stood knee-deep in the stream, gingerly excavating the side of the bank.

Lucy Overlock was standing among the trees talking on a cell phone. She was like a tree herself, tall and strapping, dressed in a woodsman’s wardrobe of jeans and work boots. Her hair, almost entirely gray, was tied back in a tight, no-nonsense ponytail. She saw Lincoln, gave a harassed wave, and continued with her phone conversation.

no artifacts yet, just the skeletal remains. But I assure you, this burial doesn’t fall under NAGPRA. The skull looks Caucasoid to me, not Indian. What do you mean, how can I tell? It’s obvious! The brain-case is too narrow, and the facial breadth just isn’t wide enough. No, of course it’s not absolute. But the site is on Locust Lake, and there’s never been a Penobscot settlement here. The tribe wouldn’t even fish in this lake, it’s such a taboo place.” She looked up at the sky and shook her head. “Certainly, you can examine the bones for yourself. But we have to excavate this site now, before the animals do any more damage, or we’ll lose the whole thing.” She hung up and looked at Lincoln in frustration. “Custody battle.”

“Over bones?”

“It’s that NAGPRA law. Indian graves protection. Every time we find remains, the tribes demand one hundred percent confirmation it’s not one of theirs. Ninety-five percent isn’t good enough for them.” Her gaze turned to Claire, who’d stepped forward to introduce herself.

“Lucy Overlock,” said Lincoln. “And this is Claire Elliot. The doctor who found the thigh bone.”

The two women shook hands, the no-nonsense greeting of two medical professionals meeting over a grim business.

“We’re lucky you’re the one who spotted the bone,” said Lucy. “Anyone else might not have realized it was human.”

“To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure,” said Claire. “I’m glad I didn’t drag everyone out here for a cow bone.”

“It’s definitely not a cow”

One of the diggers called out from the streambed: “We found something else.”

Lucy dropped knee-deep into the stream and aimed a flashlight at the exposed bank.

“There,” said the digger, gently prodding the soil with a trowel. “Looks like it might be another skull.”

Lucy snapped on gloves. “Okay, let’s ease it out.”

He slid the tip of his trowel deeper into the bank and gingerly pried away caked mud. The object dropped into Lucy’s gloved hands. She scrambled out of the water and up onto the bank. Kneeling down, she surveyed her treasure over the tarp.

It was indeed a second skull. Under the floodlight, Lucy carefully turned it over and examined the teeth.

“Another juvenile. No wisdom teeth,” Lucy noted. “I see decayed molars here and here, but no fillings.”

“Meaning no dental work,” said Claire.

“Yes, these are old bones. A good thing for you, Lincoln. Otherwise, this would be an active homicide case.”

“Why do you say that?”

She rotated the skull, and the light fell on the crown, where fracture lines radiated out from a central depression, the way a soft-boiled egg cracks when it is struck with the back of a spoon.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt,” she said. “This child died a violent death.”

The chirp of a beeper cut through the silence, startling them all. In the stillness of those woods, that electronic sound was strangely foreign. Disconcerting. Both Claire and Lincoln automatically reached for their respective pagers.

“It’s mine,” said Lincoln, glancing at his readout. Without another word, he took off through the woods toward his cruiser. Seconds later, Claire saw the dome light flashing through the trees as his vehicle streaked away.