Shine (20 page)

CHURCH WAS A MISERY.

Something happened last night at the hospital, that’s why. Verleen had the most information, because her sister was married to Deputy Carl Doyle. She told a circle of ladies all about it before the service started, her shellacked hairdo bobbing as she spoke.

“A
perpetrator
jimmied open the window to Patrick’s room,” she said. “He sliced the screen too. Carl said it hung off the window frame like a flap of skin.”

“Oh my,” a church lady named Dottie said, putting her hand to her heart.

“Uh-huh. Carl don’t know
why
someone was trying to break in, just that they was. The only reason they didn’t make it was
because of the night nurse doing her rounds. She musta scared him off, Carl says.”

“Well my goodness, Verleen. That is just
terrible
,” Dottie said.

“Uh-huh. It is. Now Carl has to do round-the-clock surveillance, sitting outside that boy’s room with his pistol in his holster.” Verleen pursed her lips. “I reckon I’ll bring him a ham sandwich later on.”

I felt ill standing on the fringes of the crowd and listening in, but I couldn’t make myself leave. Verleen said the reporters were back in flocks now, milling around the hospital and hunting for information. Only, there wasn’t much to go on. There was a single set of footprints in the dark soil below Patrick’s window, but no fingerprints, and no hints as to what the
perpetrator
had in mind to do if he’d gotten in.

The worst part was that all the commotion affected Patrick’s “stability.”

“Carl heard that from Dr. Granville,” Verleen said. “People in comas can be aware of their surroundings, you see.”

Hannah, the young mother from Coonesville, nodded. “That’s why you’re supposed to talk to them. Same with plants.”

“The doctor said he won’t wake up if he don’t feel safe,” Verleen said.

Dottie clucked her dismay.

“That poor boy,” Hannah said. “I wish they’d caught him, that fella at the window. I wish they’d just catch him and put him away.”

“
I
wish Patrick hadn’t gotten himself into this mess in the first place,” Verleen said. “Can you imagine poor Aurelia having to deal with such a mess?” Aurelia was Mama Sweetie’s given name.

“It woulda killed her if she weren’t dead already,” Dottie said. “Bless her heart.”

The ladies gave a moment of silence to Mama Sweetie’s memory.

A middle-aged woman spoke up. She was in the choir, but I couldn’t recall her name. She had a birthmark the size of a stinkbug under one eye. It pooched out like a mole, only it was the reddish-purple of the grape juice we drank at communion.

“Could have been anyone who attacked him,” she pronounced. She nodded at Verleen. “I know your Carl thinks it’s an out-of-towner, but I wouldn’t stake the farm on it.”

“Carl is doing the best he can,” Verleen said, giving the choir woman a look.

“Well, of course, he is. We all know that.” The choir woman patted Verleen’s arm. “I’m just saying—“She broke off and scanned the room. “Well, you know what I’m saying. You all do. And to think that here we are, talking about it in the house of the Lord.”

The ladies tutted. I wanted to smack them all. I wanted Aunt Tildy to smack them all, or break up the group in some other way, like by telling them that in that case, they
shouldn’t
be talking about it in the house of the Lord. But Aunt Tildy was busy in the church kitchen, arranging doughnuts on a platter.

“Sounds to me like someone don’t want Patrick waking up,” Hannah said timidly.

The ladies nodded.

“That’s why I think it was a local boy, and a smart one at that,” the choir woman said. “One who ain’t interested in getting caught.”

“We might even know him,” Hannah said with wide eyes.

“He might go to this very church,” Dottie said. “He might be in this very room with us right now.”

Everyone glanced around, myself included. I spotted old Mrs. Lawson sipping a cup of coffee, but Tommy wasn’t with her. None of the members of the redneck posse had dragged themselves out of bed for church this morning, not that I was surprised. The congregation lacked guys in that age group, period. Still, the group of ladies tightened their circle.

The choir woman eyed the ladies, her gaze coming to rest, inexplicably, on me. A bolt of alarm shot through my bones, and with it came the recollection of her name. Obedience Burwell. She went by Biddy.

“People say you’re hunting for the perpurtrator yourself,” Biddy said. She’d learned the word from Verleen, and it didn’t set comfortably on her tongue.

“No,” I said. My chest went up and down, up and down.

Biddy stared at me. Her birthmark stared at me, a fat, blood-filled sac. “If I were you, I’d leave it.”

The ladies nodded as a single unit. A flock of hens.

“Cat!” Hannah said anxiously. “Oh my gracious, you can’t
go poking around in something like this. Not when it involves criminal activity!”

“He don’t want to be found,” Dottie chimed in. She stepped closer and squeezed my shoulder. I pretended to be a statue. “And
you
don’t want to be the one who finds him. Believe me, hon.”

“You could get sliced up, like that window screen,” Hannah said. She blinked rapidly. “Or worse.”

Verleen said, “Now, Cat, I can’t believe you’d act as illafformed as that, getting into business that ain’t yours to get in. Surely you have more sense.”

“I do,” I said in a panicked, breathy voice.

But Verleen wasn’t done. “If you
are
poking around, it stops today. You hear? You leave that business to Carl and Bubba.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“That gasoline nozzle,” Hannah whispered, looking at me like I’d already gone and gotten such a thing stuck up in me.

“All right, I think we’ve said enough,” Biddy said, although I swear to God she was pleased with what she’d made. “I think we all need to be careful. A perpuhtater like that, we don’t none of us want to come face-to-face with him.”

She’d changed her pronunciation.
Purple tater
, I thought.
Purple tater, purple tater
.

“And we won’t,” Verleen said. “He’s wily enough to wipe his prints off the windowsill, he’s wily enough not to get caught.”

“Oh my,” Dottie said. “Verleen, hon, you might be bringing Carl sandwiches for a long time.”

WHEN IT WAS TIME FOR THE SERVICE, I DIDN’T file into the sanctuary with the others. Instead, I snuck into the church office. I used the slow-as-molasses computer to see if I could find out anything more about the hospital break-in.

I didn’t, but I did learn more about comas and other medical stuff. I tried to educate myself as best I could, because Patrick was
not
a plant, and I couldn’t believe that Hannah—who had a baby! an itty-bitty, crying, and smiling baby!—had said something so thoughtless.

Patrick probably had blisters erupting around his mouth, that was one thing I read on the medical sites I pulled up. Because of the gas fumes. And I learned a new word:
hypoxia
. It meant lack of oxygen, and sometimes people recovered
completely from a hypoxic hit to the brain, and sometimes they didn’t.

I also found an online Toomsboro Community College student directory, and guess whose information was listed in it? Jason Connor’s, that’s whose. He was a college boy, just like I’d suspected. He opted to “share his contact information with prospective students,” so now I had his email address as well as what dorm he lived in . He was taking summer classes, I guess. Whoop-de-doo for him.

I could take the bus into town tomorrow morning and be at Braiden Hall by nine. If he was asleep, I’d wake him up. If he was in class, I’d wait outside his room. If he never showed up at all, I’d knock on every door of every dorm room until I found someone who could lead me to him.

Given what happened at the hospital, it was time for me and Jason to have a true and real conversation.

I WAS ON MY WAY TO TOOMSBORO BY EIGHT THIRTY the next morning. There weren’t many other people on the bus. A man wearing overalls, maybe going into town to do yard work. A woman wearing an ankle-length skirt, her hair in a bun. I didn’t have a clue what her story was. Was she a day care worker? A member of one of those old-fashioned basement churches where the ministers traveled from house to house and the females weren’t allowed to wear pants?

Oh, and there was one other passenger: Robert.

Yep, scrawny, hop-about Robert was heading into Toomsboro with me. He must have been hiding a couple of yards from the bus stop, because he wasn’t in sight when I got there.

Then the bus came rumbling around the bend and wheezed to a stop. Its doors sighed open, I climbed aboard, and
woosh
. He was like a squirrel darting out of the scrub brush, hyper and gloating as he dashed on behind me. He didn’t have to pay any fare since he was only eleven.

“Robert,” I said, exasperated. “What are you doing here?”

He grinned and tried to sit down beside me. “Goin’ on a bus ride. With you. Scooch and make room.”

I blocked him by planting one foot on the floor and pressing the other against the back of the seat in front of me.

“Aw, now, why you gotta be like that? I just want to talk to you.”

“Talk to me another time. And get off the bus.”

“Ain’t have to if I don’t wanna. I got just as much right just as you do.”

The bus driver hit the gas, and Robert stumbled backward.

“Young man, sit down,” the driver commanded.

Clinging to the seats, Robert tried to haul himself back to where I was. It was like watching a fish try to swim upstream.

“Now,”
the driver growled.

Robert plunked himself down three seats behind me, on the opposite side of the aisle. He whispered, “Hey.
Hey
! Just talk to me, will ya?”

There was so much wrong with that boy, I didn’t know where to start. Following a girl five years older than him onto a bus? Hiding in the dang bushes so I wouldn’t spot him till it
was too late? Poor kid must have been awfully lonely to go to all that trouble.

“You know I didn’t mean it, Cat,” he said. “What I called you the other night.”

I faced forward. “I know, Robert. Now leave me alone.”

“Can’t I come sit with you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because once you pick your seat, you have to stay put, or they’ll kick you off.”

“For real?”

“Safety regulation. And if they kick you off, the next time you try to get a ride, they won’t let you.”

He thought about that.

“How would they know it was me?” he said.

“Because they’d take a picture of you and tape it up where the driver sits, on every single bus. Now will you please stop bugging me?”

“Yeah. Okay. But I have a secret to tell you, remember?”

I twisted to look at him. He grinned, squirming with the pleasure of being noticed.

“Okay, Robert. Tell me your secret. I’m dying to know.”

“You don’t sound like you’re dyin’.”

“I am. Believe me.”

“It’s real good, the secret. You’re gonna be real happy when you hear it.”