The Forgetting Place (21 page)

Perfect,
I thought, and was about to retrieve the wheelchair when Henry spoke up.

“Um, Mom has dementia,” he confided. “She fell out of bed this morning. I'm worried her right hip might be broken.”

My hopes sank. So much for the wheelchair.

Outside of the room, the uproar raised by my disappearance had subsided a bit. Peeking out past the curtain, I saw neither Dr. Mathers nor my nurse at the computer station, and the security guard was gone as well—
looking for me,
I thought. If I could figure out how to control the gurney, I'd have a pretty straight shot down the hall and around the corner, hopefully to another exit.

“Well, let's get you over to X-ray,” I said, giving the gurney a light push and finding that its wheels were locked. A brief inspection revealed a black lever—tilted toward LOCK—at the foot of the bed. I stepped down on it, flipped it to the neutral position, and found that the bed moved freely on all wheels. Stepping down again and tilting the lever toward STEER reduced the side-to-side play, making it easier to control the forward direction.

“You sure you know how to drive this thing?” Henry asked.

I gave him a reassuring grin. “You'd think they'd stock the same type of bed throughout the hospital. But no”—I shook my head—“they're all a little different.”

I grabbed a mask and strapped it across my mouth and nose, the elastic bands looping behind my ears to hold it in place. “Shall we?” I asked, positioning myself at the head of the gurney. Henry stood up and pulled back the curtain.

Even with the lever in the STEER position, the bed was more difficult to maneuver than I'd expected, particularly with only one good arm to do the work. The wheels at the foot—the
leading edge—were locked straight, so that any steering was done by moving the rear of the bed in the opposite direction of where I wanted to go. I hit a chair, almost toppling it, and sideswiped the bed where one of the drunks was sleeping. He awoke with a snort. “Hey, watchit,” he mumbled, reaching down with one hand and pulling the sheet over his head. “Sorry,” I told him, and pushed on.

The ER continued to buzz around me. From a curtained room to my left came a gagging sound, then retching, a nurse telling a patient, “Bear with me. You'll feel better once we get this tube in place.” As I was nearing the hall's next intersection, I could hear Dr. Mathers's voice as he approached us from around the corner. I eased the gurney toward the wall to my right, then bent over, pretended to fiddle with the oxygen tank attached to the undercarriage. Mathers rounded the corner, a portable phone held to his ear. “I don't care if she has no risk factors, she's got new ST depressions across the anterior leads,” he was telling someone on the other end, but he was walking fast—shot past me without slowing—and his voice trailed off as he continued down the hall toward the front of the ER. I stood up and gave the gurney a nudge, swung wide into the turn and bumped the far wall with the bed's left front corner.

“Ooh,” my patient remarked.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” I apologized in a low voice, forcing myself to take it slower.

This hall, I found, was more narrow and cluttered than the first, but my driving skills were improving, and I was able to negotiate the remaining obstacles without incident.

We turned another corner. There were double doors at the
end of the hall, and a push plate that I assumed would open them. Standing next to the door was a security guard.

I paused for a moment, not knowing what to do. Reversing course—trying to back up the bed in the crowded hallway—would draw even more attention to myself. Leaving the bed, turning around, and walking off in the opposite direction would be equally conspicuous. But the security guard was there for a reason, and suddenly my spur-of-the-moment disguise seemed meager at best.

In the space of time that I was considering these things, the double doors swung wide and two paramedics entered—one leading and one trailing—an empty stretcher between them. I saw my opportunity and went for it, gave the gurney a shove and moved through the doorway while the medics were between us and the security guard, partially obstructing his view. I didn't cringe, wasn't tentative, but walked quickly and confidently through the opening, knowing this was the secret to passing unchallenged through most limited-access venues. Still, I expected to hear him say, “Hold on a second. I need to check your ID,” and readied myself to run if I had to. But the doors clapped shut behind us and it was quiet in the hallway, the bustle of the ER inaudible in this section of the hospital.

“Here we are,” Henry said from beside me, and I realized he was right, that the placard hanging from the ceiling read
X-RAY
, marking the entrance to the department.

I made a right through the doorway, then brought the gurney to a stop at the counter in front of us.

“Who do you have?” the clerk asked me from behind the desk.

“Patient from the ER here for a hip X-ray,” I told her.

“Name?” she asked.

“Dorothy Jacobs,” the man volunteered.

The clerk typed the name into her computer, waited, then frowned. “It says here they ordered a portable. We could've done that in the ER.”

I shrugged. “They told me to bring her over.”

“Let me call Dr. Mathers and see what he wants,” the woman said.

I figured this was my cue to say good-bye.

“Good luck to you both,” I told the woman and her son. “Someone else will take you back when they're finished taking pictures.”

The man smiled. “You've been very kind. Good luck with everything.”

“Thank you,” I replied. I started to go, then turned back, taking the old woman by the hand. “Get well soon, Mrs. Jacobs,” I told her.

“Oh . . . well . . .” She laughed, a look of confusion passing over her face. “I don't . . .”

“It's okay,” I said. “You're in good hands now.”

“That's my daughter,” she told the clerk.

Henry stepped forward, put a hand on her shoulder. “No, Mom,” he said, exchanging a glance with me. “You don't have a daughter.”

I
found a side exit to the hospital, walked out pushing a laundry cart, a loose towel draped over the splint on my right arm. The key to being inconspicuous is not only looking like you belong someplace, but also acting the part. A busy, hardworking individual is not someone people usually pay attention to, and for the thirty minutes that had passed since I'd overheard Dr. Mathers talking about me on the phone, I was the hardest-working non-employee at Baltimore Washington Medical Center.

I didn't want to risk meeting Haden in front of the ER, but I could see the truck parked there, Haden waiting for me, leaning up against the tailgate. It took five minutes of staring at him from where I stood behind the laundry cart, but he eventually noticed me, got back in the truck, and drove over.

“What's with the gown and mask?” he asked as I climbed in, a look of amusement on his face.

I stayed low in the cab, most of my body in the passenger foot well, head below the dashboard. “Tell you later,” I said. “Let's go.”

He pulled out of the parking lot onto Hospital Drive, turned left onto Oakwood Road, then right, accelerating onto the
entrance ramp for Route 100. I sat up, buckled my seat belt, looked over at him.

“Thank you,” I said, and then because those words didn't seem like enough, I added, “You may have just saved my life.”

He nodded, as if it were no big deal—as if he were in the business of saving women's lives all the time—and drove on without saying a word. Beyond the windshield, the open road lay ahead of us, empty except for the distant red glow of a few taillights. I thought about rolling down the window to let in the night breeze, but when I lifted my arm to reach for the button I felt the weight of the splint and realized I'd have to do it with the other hand.
It's funny,
I thought,
how the brain tries to protect us sometimes. It works so hard at blocking out the bad things in life: a broken arm or a broken promise, the things we've done to ourselves and others that can never be put right. Our worst moments and deepest regrets. The things we are most ashamed of
.

We got to the end of Route 100 and merged onto Mountain Road heading east. I'd removed the cap, gown, mask, and booties, placed them on the floor of the cab near my feet.

“This used to be just one lane in either direction,” he said. “During my grandfather's time it was a dirt road.”

I squinted into the headlights of oncoming traffic. We passed a few shops, most of them dark. On either side of the road, I could make out the entrances to sporadic driveways disappearing into the woods. We drove for a while, then turned right at a sign that said
NORTH SHORE ON THE MAGOTHY
. A representation of a sailboat rode along the sign's imaginary waters. Community athletic fields stood silent in the darkness, patiently waiting for the scores of young athletes to return for another day of practice. A quarter mile farther and it was all forest now, the blacktop
winding through the trees, the reflective eyes of a possum watching us from the woods as we swept by. The truck slowed, the trees closed in even more, and I could feel the rough jounce of the suspension negotiating the potholes and uneven terrain of the gravel road we'd turned onto. There was nothing now, just the sound of pebbles beneath the tires, the pulsating symphony of crickets all around. We traveled for less than a quarter mile before the road ended, coming to a stop at a red barn. Haden put the truck in park and killed the ignition, the only sounds from the insects and the ticking metal of the engine as it cooled.

“This is it,” he said, looking over at me before opening his door and stepping out.

I stepped out myself, slid down from the height of the cab onto the dirt driveway. A motion-sensing exterior light blinked on as we approached the house, a modest one-level structure with white siding. He stuck a key in the lock, turned it, and walked in, flicking on the kitchen light.

“You want anything to eat or drink?” he asked, but I told him no, that I was feeling a little nauseated from the sedative they'd given me. Despite everything that had happened that day—or maybe because of it—all I wanted to do was sleep.

“Well, the bedroom's back there,” he told me, pointing toward a short hall and an open doorway beyond. “There's a bathroom right next to it. I'll sleep on the couch in the sunroom.”

“Thanks,” I said, suddenly feeling awkward about taking his room, about leaving him standing here in his own kitchen.

“Good night,” he replied, then he disappeared into another part of the house. I turned out the light and made my way to the bedroom, easing the door shut behind me until I heard the latch click—loud in the stillness of the house. Kicking off my shoes,
I sat on the bed, then lowered my head to the pillow. My sleep, I knew, would be fitful—my dreams plagued with nightmarish images of Menaker, the ambulance doors closing as they made off with Jason, Paul looking up at me with his swollen, beaten face, the blood flowing freely from the wound on his scalp. Regardless of my exhaustion, the night would be a long one. And with those thoughts running through my head, I fell asleep and dreamed of nothing that I could recall the following day—only the sensation of falling, of not knowing when or if I would ever land.

I
awoke the next morning in an unfamiliar house to the muffled clatter of pots and pans in the kitchen. The bedroom, I noticed as my eyes adjusted to the brightness of the sunlight passing through the window, was the room of a single man. The oak dresser was decorated with a few wood carvings, but that was all. Hanging on the wall to my right next to a large mirror was a single framed picture of Haden smiling into the camera, his arm wrapped affectionately around the shoulders of a teenage girl, presumably his daughter. In one corner of the room was a nail that he'd tapped into a wooden support beam, and several belts hung from it by their buckles like a collection of skinned snakes. There was nothing feminine here to soften the decor, and I suspected the rest of the house would be just like it.

I rose and gathered my shoes, sitting back down on the side of the bed as I slipped them on. My own face stared back at me from the lower portion of the mirror. I looked like hell and felt even worse. My back ached, and my legs and upper arms felt stiff, heavy. There were scratches on my cheeks from my harried trek through the woods. My hair was a matted, tangled mess—my
eyes weary, still reflecting the fatigue and horror from the day before. The bandaging around my right forearm had already begun to unravel.

Making my way across the room, I paused to take a closer look at the photograph of Haden and his daughter. She looked to be about seventeen here, her long brown hair pulled back from her face into a ponytail that fell across her left shoulder. It was an outdoor picture, the two of them standing on the rocks beside a river. You could make out a rowboat in the background, a few fishing poles stretching their long thin spines above the gunwale. They looked happy, the two of them, like they'd just finished laughing over some inside joke. It was something personal, this picture, something he loved. As far as I could tell, it was the only personal thing in the room.

The doorknob felt cool in my hand as I swung open the door and stepped into the hallway. Like in the bedroom, the floor here was wood, the sound of my footsteps loud and hollow in the morning stillness. The hall opened into a dining room, and here at least was the presence of a woman's touch: a thick oriental rug on which the ornate legs of the dining table rested; a glass display cabinet with an assortment of china; a decorative serving table in front of a plaque on the wall that read,
Home is slippers, laughter, and a warm cup of tea
.

“Good morning,” he said, causing me to jump. He winced, offered up a weak smile. “Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. I . . . I've gotten used to living on my own here.”

“It's okay,” I replied, feeling a little guilty. I could see that he'd showered already, his hair combed back like before but still wet. He wore a light gray T-shirt and a different pair of jeans, his feet clad in the brown cowboy boots I'd seen yesterday. A cup of
coffee was clasped in his left hand. He looked like a farmer, like he might be heading out to till the land.

“Would you like some coffee?” he offered.

“Please,” I said.

He turned and left the room, and I followed him into the kitchen. It was a well-lit space, the way kitchens are supposed to be. Sunlight filtered through a series of windows over the sink and counter. A small table stood near the wall, a folded newspaper resting on its surface. I took in the usual amenities: stove, range, a refrigerator strikingly devoid of pictures—just a single magnet with the caricature of a stern-looking turtle posing above the word
Terrapins
.

He poured me a cup of coffee, turned, and handed it to me. “There's sugar in the bowl on the counter,” he said, “some milk in the fridge.”

“Thanks.”

He gestured toward a large skillet on the range. “I was going to make some eggs and toast if you're interested.”

My stomach growled at the mention, and I suddenly realized I was ravenous. “That would be great,” I said, going to the fridge to retrieve the milk, then taking a seat at the table. I sipped my coffee and opened the newspaper, wondering if there would be anything in it about the incident at Menaker, but the paper was from yesterday and the news was the same as always: political posturing over a stalemate in Congress, more religious and ethnic violence in the Middle East, a humanitarian crisis in eastern Africa. Bad news, all of it, so I folded the paper and sat back in my chair, enjoying the smell of frying eggs and waiting for the caffeine to kick in.

He came to the table with plates and silverware, then headed
back for the toast, butter, and jam. A few minutes later, he slid two eggs onto my plate with a spatula. He was quiet through all this, and we ate in comfortable silence, listening to the distant sound of a neighbor's lawn mower.

“Thanks again for everything you did for me yesterday,” I told him, dotting my mouth with a napkin. “I realize it's probably more than you bargained for.”

“Happy to help you out,” he said, taking another sip of his coffee and looking at me over his mug.

I could tell he was prepared to leave it at that, that maybe he didn't feel it was his place to grill me with questions, but I felt the need to explain—hell, the
absolute necessity
to talk to
someone
about this. I opened my mouth to tell him only the basics, and before I knew it I was telling him
everything,
the grief and terror spilling out of me in a torrent. I spoke for a long time, unable to hold it back any longer, and he sat there listening, barely moving, until at last the pressure inside diminished enough for me to fall silent, my voice tapering away into nothing.

This is when he calls the police,
I thought,
or the hospital
.
This is when he washes his hands of the whole thing and tells me he'd rather not get involved.

“These FBI agents,” he said. “Linder and . . . I'm sorry, what were their names?”

“Special Agents Daryl Linder and Aaron Remy,” I told him.

“Right.” He nodded, fiddling with his fork for a second before looking up at me. “It seems to me that they're your greatest asset here. I mean . . . the FBI, you know. They have resources. They can help you.”

“Why didn't they answer their phones when I tried to call them?”

“I don't know,” he admitted.

“You know what I'm afraid of?”

He shook his head, watching me.

“I'm afraid that someone might have already gotten to them, that the men who kidnapped Jason from Menaker also knew about Linder and Remy's involvement—that they did something to take them out of the picture before coming for Jason and me. That's why I couldn't reach them. I'm afraid they're already dead.”

“You couldn't reach an operator at 911, either,” he reminded me. “Maybe it was just a problem with your phone. If you can pull up the numbers, we can try calling from my phone here at the house.”

I thought about this. “If the men who took Jason also got to Linder and Remy, then
they
have the agents' cell phones. If I try to call them, they could trace the call. I'd be giving away my location.”

A subtle chime sounded in the dining room, the blink of a single solitary note. Haden cocked his head at it. He stood up and went to the sink, peered out through the bay window.

“What is it?” I asked.

He was still for a few seconds before answering. “I live on a private road. Just me and one neighbor farther up. We don't get many visitors, but when we
are
expecting someone it's nice to know they've arrived before they actually pull up out front.” He shifted his position, leaning over the sink with his head closer to the window.

“You're a bit of a recluse, aren't you?” I asked, but he ignored the question.

“We have a line stretched across the dirt road at the point
where it merges with the public street. When a car rolls over it, it sends a chime to both our houses.”

“The mailman,” I suggested.

“Too early for that, and the mailboxes are out at the main road. Like I said, we really don't get many visitors. Tell me, does that phone of yours have GPS tracking?”

I thought about it for a moment. Linder had made a point of telling me that it did.

“Yes, I believe it—”

“Wait,” he said, holding up a hand. “You hear that?”

“What?” I asked, getting out of my chair and joining him at the window.

“The lawn mower. It stopped. But now it's starting back up again.”

“So?”

“So someone's coming,” he said, “and my neighbor's house is not their destination. He wouldn't still be mowing if it was.”

Despite what I'd been through the day before, I was having a hard time convincing myself there was reason for concern. Maybe I was just tired of running. “They could've just stopped by his house to drop something off,” I told him, “and now they're leaving.”

He shook his head. “No second chime. It would've sounded by now. They're coming here.” He looked at me with genuine concern on his face.
At least he believes me,
I thought.
Thank God for that
. “We should go,” he said. “Right now.”

He moved quickly then, and I did my best to keep up. He went to his bedroom, opened a large cabinet, and brought out a hunting rifle and a box of ammunition. “Oh,” I said, realizing that I'd been sleeping next to it the whole night.

“No need to lock this up,” he said, referring to the gun. We were heading through the house, entering another hall and then a sunroom that faced the water. “It's just me who lives here now,” he finished. He pushed his way through a side door and hurried down the exterior steps to a small walkway. I expected him to round the house and head for the truck, but he took the steps at the back of his property that descended toward the water, and a few seconds later we were out on a wooden pier. There was a rowboat with a small outboard motor tied up to the dock. I recognized it from the photo I'd seen in his bedroom.

“Get in,” he said, dropping to one knee and untying the rope that tethered the boat to the pier.

I looked back up at the house, thought I could hear the sound of tires pulling into the driveway.

“Get in,” he said again, sitting down on the pier and lowering himself into the boat, then steadying it as I climbed aboard. He'd placed the rifle and ammunition on the walkway and retrieved them before pushing off. I expected him to start the motor, but he handed me the rifle and box of bullets and went for the oars instead, rotating them in the oarlocks and easing the wooden blades into the water. The metal locks squeaked a bit as he did this, but it was much quieter than the motor would have been. Still, I could hear the sound of men's voices from the vicinity of Haden's house on the hillside above us.

Haden pulled on the oars, propelled us through the water, distancing us from the shoreline. We'd made it about a hundred yards—enough for me to relax slightly—before I heard shouting and then a loud crack that echoed off the creek's opposite embankment. Something splashed in the water to my right.

“Get down,” Haden instructed, pulling the oars back in and
stepping past me toward the stern. He put one hand on my shoulder and pushed me off the wooden seat and onto the bottom boards of the boat. “Do you know how to load that thing?” he asked, not bothering to look back at me as he tilted the motor's propeller into the water. The air filled with another loud crack and this time the bullet went high, smashing into the water a good hundred feet behind us. Haden flipped a switch, then jerked back on the pullcord. The motor sputtered, but didn't catch. I could hear the reports of two more gunshots from the hillside. At least one of the bullets came close, passing by my head with a
ssssszeew
that made me flinch, press my body even tighter against the floorboards. I stared at the rifle in my hands, at the box of cartridges. I'd never loaded a gun before and wasn't sure if trying to do it now with only one good hand would put us in more or less jeopardy of getting shot.

Haden jerked the pullcord again, and this time the engine caught. He eased back on the throttle, put it in Forward, then gunned it. The boat lurched ahead through the water. The men kept firing and I heard Haden grunt once. Alarmed, I looked back at him, but he shook his head, indicating that it was nothing as we angled toward the bend in the creek. There were a few more shots from the hillside behind us, but we were rounding the bend, putting earth and trees between us and the men, and for the next few minutes it was just the drone of the motor, the soft slap of water on the underside of the boat.

Haden slowed, and I came up off the floorboards and sat on the seat opposite him, the fear still pulling at me, not wanting to let go.

“Jesus! They were actually firing at us!”

“Yes, I . . . I know,” Haden answered. He was looking back at the shoreline behind us.

I was shaking, the adrenaline so thick in my system I could taste its bitter, metallic tang. We were entering the mouth of a larger body of water now, the surface choppy in the wind. The community sign I'd seen the night before had said
NORTH SHORE ON THE MAGOTHY
, and I assumed that
this
was the Magothy River. Just beyond it would be the massive Chesapeake Bay, and from there—eventually—the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. We wouldn't make it that far, I knew, but sitting in the small craft with the shores spread wide around us and the waves lapping at the thin sides of the wooden vessel, it almost felt like we could. I opened my mouth to speak, then stopped. There was blood on the sleeve of Haden's T-shirt, a line of bright red fluid coursing down the length of his arm and spilling onto the floorboards.

“
You're shot!
” I stood up and moved toward him, forgetting to keep my weight balanced. The boat tipped precariously.

“
Sit down!
” he ordered. “
It wouldn't take much to tip us over out here
.”