The Light at the End of the Tunnel (21 page)

“It wasn’t locked…?”

“Who on earth would have locked it?”

“Pun intended?” asked Sikorsky, who
immediately grinned.

“’Pun intended?’”

“You said
‘who on earth,’
well, if it
had been locked it wouldn’t have been locked by anyone on
earth.

“What…? I don’t understand.”

“It was a joke, man, I said—“

“It’s okay, Sikorsky,” Nicole cut in, “My
husband sometimes lacks in the humor department. Possibly too much
time wearing the cloth.”

“
Cloth
…?”

“A man of God, Sikorsky. My husband is—was—a
prison chaplain. I think he made that pretty clear.”

“Oh, yes. He did.”

“And to continue,” the chaplain went on, “The
book was there, I opened it, and the verse was right there,
‘If
the state kills a worst-of-the-worst criminal, that person will
reincarnate to be even more evil than he was before.’
Or words
to that effect. I only read it the one time. The warden wouldn’t
stop the execution, and when I returned to the chapel basement, the
locker—and the book—no longer existed.”

“That’s one hell of a story, my man,”
Sikorsky said, “Nicole, do you believe everything? Do you go along
with…?” He nodded toward the chaplain.

“Yes, I do. I consider what happened as a
direct communication from God to my husband. Now, what about you,
young man? Why have you tracked us down?”

“It’s my lieutenant back in Brentwood.”

“The detective we spoke with.” She said as a
statement.

“Yes, he thinks you aren’t really trying to
track this kid down for the sake of his birth parents.”

“Well, he’s definitely right,” Nicole said,
“Les Paul’s birth parents abandoned him at a hospital’s back door.
He was still an infant.”

“I’d like to talk to those people, to find
out why. Normally babies are abandoned—
what
?” He glanced at
Nicole.

“The hospital determined from his weight and
general health—which was good—about two months old.”

“So what did that tiny child do to rate
abandonment?”

“I’ll tell you what he did to me!” Nicole’s
eyes snapped, “He peed in my face, twice—“

“Which babies have been known to do,”
Sikorsky offered.

“But earlier he grabbed for my boob. My
supervisor—the vicious old bag—said he was just hungry, and, for
the moment, I accepted that. But when I changed his very clean
diaper, he waited till I was wide open and then he let fly! He
waited, till he could get me good! And the second time he waited
till he was laid down in a fresh new diaper and then he peed, and
smirked!”

“Smirked? You want me to believe a
two-month-old baby smirked?”

“Believe it or not, young man. I was there.
You
weren’t
! The little bastard cost me my job!” Nicole
looked to her man and smiled, and took hold of his arm, “But if
that hadn’t happened I wouldn’t have met the chaplain here.”

“Pretty fantastic story, folks, but, I
believe you.”

“What about your lieutenant?”

“I’ll call him tonight, and I’m pretty sure I
can convince him that you folks are on the up and up—I don’t right
now know what I’ll tell him, but I
won’t
tell him
this
fantastic story.” Sikorsky grinned, then continued,
“Not yet, anyway, and maybe I can help you…like, for instance, his
birth parents. If reincarnation happened, don’t you think it would
have happened very close to where the execution took place?”

“That makes good sense, honey,” Nicole said,
“We thought about that but haven’t gotten to it yet.”

“It does,” the chaplain agreed, “If we could
find the parents we could get their DNA—could you get us Les Paul’s
DNA?” he asked Sikorsky, “I mean, the boy you have in lockup?”

“I’ll ask my lieutenant tonight.”

“And,” Nicole cut in, “As my husband and I
decided awhile back, we—all of us—should continue referring to him
only as
‘Baby Boy-Doe9,’
or, for short,
‘Baby
Boy.’
”

“You’re right. Of course.” Sikorsky, serious
again, shook his head, “I have to wonder, though, how the kid’s
doing with other kids, with a name like that. You know how kids
are.”

Chapter 34
The Tommerdahls

“Can we trust him?” Nicole wondered aloud
when they were back in their room, “He walks up to the table,
introduces himself—and first tries to
lie
to us!—and
suddenly we’re old friends.”

“Luckily, he wasn’t a very good liar, my
dear, and we didn’t have a lot of choice,” the chaplain said, “He
knows
about us. The police back in that town know about us,
and he’s probably been searching the internet for any little detail
he can find,
about
us. I mean, he pretty well covered our
movements for the last several years.”

“Yes, just by tracking your credit card
through my minivan license number. That’s scary, Radford, that our
privacy is just gone kaput!”

“Agreed, my dear, but it’s also helping
us—look!” He turned the computer screen toward Nicole.

“Great, what am I looking at?”

“I’ve narrowed it down already. First, I went
back to the date of Les Paul’s execution, both the date and the
exact time of day. There were thirty-two births that day.” He made
two clicks, “But only one at two minutes after midnight.” He
pointed, “Kenneth and Donna Tommerdahl.” He made three more clicks
on different screens, “There, they’re listed for three births.
There’s the five and seven-year-old…where’s the nine-year-old?”

“The nine-year-old has already
died…maybe…?”

“There’d be a death certificate. Maybe it’s a
computer glitch, but their first birth seems to have disappeared
into cyber-world. Maybe the parents somehow were able to erase at
least part of the record, or had a friend who could—or would—after
abandoning their first child: Les Paul.”

Nicole shook her head, “And our boy suggested
that kind of search. Why didn’t
we
think of it?”

“We kind’a did, my dear, we just hadn’t
gotten around to it, but now I think we should make a quick trip
back to my hometown of Bradleyville. We need DNA from those two
fine people.”

“If they’ll agree to it. They probably don’t
want any of this memory to ever come alive again, and what about
Baby Boy?”

“For now we’ll let Sikorsky take care of
him.”

“If he can convince his lieutenant.”

“I think he will, and I think we can trust
him, and we definitely can now use the help of someone in official
law enforcement.”

“What about your warden? You’ve always spoken
highly of him.”

“Yes, he was a friend, but after that night
of Les Paul’s execution things between us changed. Anyway, he’s
retired now, for quite a while already.”

“Well, maybe he would like to spring out of
retirement for one last run.”

“He might. We’ll check in with him. When he
hears our story he will either come aboard or report us to the
local sanity police.”

Nicole laughed but then said, “I think we
should fly out first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Agreed, my dear, right after we have
breakfast with our new partner, Officer Sikorsky.”

****

“So that’s about it, Warden Miles,” the
chaplain said, “Feel like coming out of retirement for a few
days?”

“Days?” The solemn warden had remained quiet
listening to the chaplain and Nicole tell the story of the
reincarnated Les Paul, but at the end, “How crazy do you think I
am?”

“Sir…?”

“In the first place I still don’t believe
your cockamamie reincarnation-story, and in the second place, this
boy you think is Les Paul is only nine years old. Certainly he
hasn’t done anything too bad yet, and probably won’t for a few more
years.”

“I can show you a list of what he’s done,
warden.”

“List?”

“Yes, but you’re right. Nothing too bad
yet—that we can prove—there’s two possible murders, though—but it’s
what he has done. Things simply not typical of a two-month-old
infant to a nine-year-old, unless we so-called adults are simply so
far out of the loop of what children are up to these days.”

“Let me see the list.”

Nicole produced it.

The warden took it, went to his desk and sat
down, then held it in the bright light of his desk lamp. He read
for several minutes, then placed his right hand over his mouth,
contemplating, finally said very low, “At four years old he placed
Barbie Dolls in compromising sexual positions…?”

“Yes. And if he couldn’t find a Ken Doll he
would use another Barbie Doll. One would think he had already
watched several porn films.”

“Well, according to your theory, he has.” The
warden faced them, “He’s probably watched hundreds.”

“Yes, in his prior lives. He’s doing things
he’s done before but doesn’t really understand what he’s doing—at
least not at four-years-old—but his hands remember. He probably
experiences déjà vu all the time.”

“What about the rest of us? Why don’t
we
experience déjà vu?”

“We
do
, warden. Haven’t you ever been
somewhere and felt like you’ve been there before?”

“Yes, of course. That happens to
everybody.”

“But to Les Paul I suspect it’s a nearly
daily thing, and I doubt he believes they are his own memories. If
he did, he could
learn
from them, and start living a more
respectable life.”

“God, Chaplain O’Hare, you’re as crazy as you
were nine years ago.”

The chaplain released a breath, and felt his
body drop, slightly.

“How about you, Ms. Waters—“

“I still sometimes go by my maiden name,
warden, yes, and I did with you just now, but my real name is now
Mrs. Radford O’Hare. So, what were you going to ask me?”

“I read what you claim the infant did to you,
and I was going to ask if you believe this…story?”

“I’ve been with the chaplain for nine years,
sir. Yes, I certainly believe it.”

“All right, Chaplain O’Hare, you’ve convinced
me, to a point—but two murders as a two-year-old? No. I refuse to
believe that. So what do you want from me?”

Nicole stepped up, again produced a paper,
and laid it down in front of the warden, “We need DNA, sir, from
four people. The original Les Paul, Kenneth and Donna Tommerdahl,
and their first born.”

“First born, which, according to you,
is—
was
—Les Paul.”

“Yes, but according to the information we
were able to find, that
‘first born…’
well, no longer
exists. The dates and everything are down for three births, but
then their first-born sort of disappears. We suspect there is a
birth certificate—buried somewhere—with a name on it, and also we
were unable to find a death certificate.”

“Because, according to you, they abandoned
the infant at a hospital in Nebraska. They drove clear across the
country to dump their infant son.”

“Yes.” Nicole shook her head and did not
smile, “As I said earlier, I was on duty that night and got
baptized by the little bastard.”

The warden smiled, his first, “All right,
kids. I’ll do what I can, and you two are actually going to contact
the Tommerdahls? Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“I’ll be the one to make contact,” Nicole
said, “With only the wife. I’ll observe her movements for a few
days, and, eventually, we’ll be able to talk. I just want to get a
feeling from her. She has two other children, yet she was able to
abandon her first. We need to know why.”

****

Three days passed. The chaplain, unsatisfied
but he didn’t know why, kept searching names, dates, births, and
deaths on his laptop. He knew, after nine years, that he was
getting dangerously close to obsession. Without Nicole by his side
he was pretty sure he would have given up years ago, but she
was
by his side. She made his world worthwhile, so he had to
keep going and try to prevent this evil from again befalling the
world. If he could ever prove his theory—not exactly his theory, of
course, but God’s word through him, through the book…he shook his
head! Sometimes it was so hard to keep believing, as they had
proven absolutely nothing! And he wondered if he could
ever
prove anything.

What happened nine years earlier made so
little sense: the book appeared then it disappeared. Was it just a
funny dream? A nightmare he hadn’t yet woke up from? The only real
thing in his life was his new bride. How he loved her. How he
had
loved her for nine years but denied himself, and denied
her—he choked, then settled back in his chair. So much had
happened…

Les Paul was real! Eventually they would
prove it. They had finally found him, they would get his DNA, they
would prove he was back from the dead, and eventually the whole
world would stop executing criminals. Criminals would simply start
dying of natural causes—including death by other inmates, the
thought of which made him smile, then he chided himself for such a
thought. Just a regular old age death would be fine, and then,
after how many generations he didn’t even want to think about, the
world would, finally, become a safer place. Safer for his Nicole,
and Cassandra, and a child from himself and Nicole…if she would
ever want that…

****

Nicole waited on a park bench beneath a sugar
maple tree. She noticed there were several other sugar maples and
they were all pouring forth their autumnal colors of red and pink
and gold. Only the sugar maple—and one other tree she had seen
somewhere but didn’t know the name—put out that amazing variety of
colors.

The years she had been traveling with the
chaplain they had been so focused on finding Les Paul and working
with Riley Stokes that neither had paid much attention to the
passing seasons, barely the scenery. They sometimes had been so
focused that they had not even paid that much attention to each
other. Even though—as they lately had discovered—they definitely
had
noticed each other, but there had been no hanky panky.
Not that she would have rejected him had he approached her much
earlier on, and come to think of it, he never did approach her. She
had made all the first moves. But once his genie was out of the
bottle,
wow
! Strange, too, they had been so focused, even
lately, that she hadn’t taken much time to even think, about
anything. But this watching Mrs. Tommerdahl had given her that
chance to think about so many things, like getting back to
Cassandra—they
had
to get back to her, they had to save that
little girl from
The System
!