The Surrogate, The Sudarium Trilogy - Book one (26 page)

1:46

“What do you mean? You don’t have a plan?”

Teri kicked her boots against the gas station air pump, ostensibly to dislodge the snow on the soles, but also to alleviate her frustration. She hadn’t come all this way to stand around and wait for divine inspiration. Father Jimmy’s calm unnerved her.

“We’re going to take Hannah away from here,” he said.

“That much, I’m clear on, Father. But how?”

“I guess I will have to talk to them.”

“What?” she said, wondering if she had heard correctly. “You’re going to march over there and announce you’ve come for Hannah, and these people are going to say, ‘Oh, sure, padre, what took you so long?’ Excuse me for thinking this, but are you nuts?”

“God will guide us.”

“Oh, swell! God may guide you, father. But I don’t think he’s got too many plans for me.”

“The least they can do is talk with us.”

“I hate being a party pooper, but is a social visit really what’s called for?'”

“Sometimes, you have to trust that things will work out.”

“Okay, I trust! I’d trust more if we had a plan. But, hey, I trust!”

They drove their cars mid-way down the block and parked in front of 151 Waverly.

The doorbell sounded sharply through the house. Hannah lifted her head off the bed, as Marshall got up and went downstairs. Jolene met him at the foot of the stairs, puzzlement spreading over her face.

“Be quiet and don’t answer the door,” he said.

The doorbell put out another stab of sound. “Hello?” Father Jimmy called out. “Is anyone there? I want to talk with Hannah Manning.”

There was no reply.

“I know she’s here.” He rattled the doorknob several times. He could sense people on the other side, just as a mugger can sometimes be sensed in the shadows, even though he’s dressed in black and standing immobile.

“Look, I’m not leaving until I get the chance to talk to her, so open the door now.”

A muffled voice finally spoke up. “Who is it?”

“Father James Wilde. I’m here to see Hannah Manning.”

“I’m afraid you have the wrong address.”

Teri gave Father Jimmy a quick poke in the ribs to signal her indignation.

“If you don’t let me in, I will go to the police immediately and tell them that you are holding someone against her will.”

There was a protracted silence, then the click-click of a bolt being pulled back. The door swung open.

Marshall Whitfield stood on the doorstep. “In that case, come in. The phone is in the kitchen. Please feel free to use it.” The considerate host, he stepped back to let Father Jimmy into the hall. Teri, thoroughly perplexed, followed on his heels.

“It’s that way,” Marshall said, pointing to a brightly lit room at the end of the corridor.

Seeing Jolene, Teri gave a nod of recognition, which Jolene ignored. Neither she nor Marshall offered any explanations or made an attempt to bar the way. For some reason, Marshall had simply opened the door and volunteered the use of their telephone. None of it made sense to Teri. Was this some kind of a trap they were walking into?

“You understand why we’re doing this,” Father Jimmy said, as he started down the corridor.

“Please, Father. Do whatever you have to do.”

“You can’t just hold people hostage.”

“You are quite right,” Marshall replied, wearily. “I should have called the police myself long ago. I don’t know how much longer we can protect her.”

Father Jimmy stopped walking.

“Protect her?” Teri said. “You call kidnapping someone in the middle of the night protecting her?”

“If it was for her own security, yes.”

“What do you mean?” Father Jimmy asked.

“It’s very simple. A woman is dead because of Hannah. Did she tell you that? I thought not.” Marshall seemed to relish the shocked expression on the faces of the two visitors. “We have been trying to protect her ever since, because … well, that’s a private matter. As you know, Hannah is a very high-strung girl, and her behavior during this pregnancy has become more and more erratic. The other night, I’m sorry to say, it passed over into the criminal.”

An anguished cry came from the top of the stairs, where Hannah had been listening to the exchange. “That’s not true! I heard what you’re saying. It’s not my fault about Judith. She slipped and fell down those stairs.”

“Shouldn’t you be in your room?” Jolene snapped.

“Don’t believe them, Father Jimmy” Hannah said, running to the priest.

“Then why did you run away?” Marshall retorted. “Why didn’t you stay and help her?”

“You know why.”

“Really? But what does it look like? What are the police to believe? A woman is assaulted in the middle of the night and right afterwards the assailant takes flight, leaving her victim bleeding in the snow. That’s very suspicious.”

“But she assaulted me!”

Marshall smiled thinly. “That’s what you claim. But what if there was an eye-witness to say otherwise? An eye-witness who was too scared to come forward at the time because her greatest concern was that our baby would be born in prison. A child we have given everything for, born behind bars? You can understand how intolerable that would be for this person. But what if this person now sees her duty clearly and feels she must tell the police everything she saw that night?”

“What if I tell them why you want this baby so badly?”

“Who will believe you?” Marshall said. “You’ll be considered a raving lunatic…or just an excitable young woman, petrified of giving birth.”

Marshall directed his words directly at Father Jimmy.

“So here is what I propose. Hannah will stay with us and have our baby. And you two will leave now. If you do, we will overlook this intrusion. No one will bother the police. And that way, we can all get on with our lives with a minimum of disturbance.”

“Come upstairs.” Jolene took Hannah by the arm and began to lead her away.

“Don’t touch me!” Hannah shook free and ran to the kitchen. Jolene chased after and a scuffle broke out by the kitchen table. Arms flailed wildly, like crazed windmills. “Marshall, do something!” Jolene screamed. Marshall and Father Jimmy attempted to intervene, but rather than restoring order, their efforts compounded the confusion, and the scuffle risked turning into the kind of humiliating barroom brawl that leaves egos more damaged than bodies.

The only one in real danger, Teri realized, was the baby. She watched the jostling with mounting alarm. A random blow or a misguided kick could do incalculable harm. What were they all thinking! “Leave her alone!,” she cried over the tumult.

No one paid any attention, until Jolene shouted, “Marshall! The woman is armed!”

The scuffling ceased instantly and an eerie pall fell over the kitchen, broken only by the sound of heavy panting. All four sets of eyes focused on Teri, who slowly circled the room, a gun in hand, until her back was up against the kitchen door.

“Where did you get that?” Hannah asked, dazed by the surrealistic turn of events.

“There isn’t a trucker in the country who doesn’t own a gun. Nick owns two. One for the road. One for home. It’s a dangerous world.” She turned apologetically to the priest. “I know you said God would guide us, Father, but I thought he might need a little help.”

She gestured toward the kitchen chairs with the barrel of the gun, indicating that she wanted Marshall and Jolene to sit down. “Now here’s my plan. Father Jimmy and Hannah leave right now. I’ll stay behind and have a little conversation with the Whitfields. A fifteen-minute conversation, say. That should be long enough. Why don’t you just get your coat, Hannah. It’s freezing out there. And when Jolene and Marshall and I run out of things to talk about, I’ll follow your lead.”

Like schoolchildren, forced to stay after school, Marshall and Jolene did as they were instructed, while Father Jimmy grabbed a coat from the hall closet and helped Hannah into it.

“Hurry up now,” Teri called after them. Her eyes were glued on the Whitfields, but a blast of cold air confirmed that Father Jimmy had opened the front door. As a result, she misinterpreted the surprise that briefly illuminated Marshall Whitfield’s face. Teri assumed that he was reacting to Hannah’s departure. She didn’t suspect that a figure had appeared in the kitchen door behind her.

She didn’t hear the doorknob turning, either.

But she felt the breath go out of her, as the door slammed into her back, knocking her forward. The gun clattered to the kitchen floor. For a second, her vision failed and images of Jolene and Marshall flickered in her head, as if on an old television set. By the time, she had regained her bearings, Dr. Johanson had burst into the kitchen and retrieved the gun.

It was pointed directly at her chest.

“So what have we here? Making trouble, are we? he said. “Is not wise thing to do. Is very unwise.”

Teri cast a quick look down the hall toward the front door, then bolted.

“Don’t move!”

She ignored the command and kept running.

Incensed, Dr. Johanson raised the gun and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He tried a second time, then a third with the same result. He shook the gun violently, all his fury concentrated on the malfunctioning weapon.

Before going out the front door, Teri shouted back, “Sorry! No bullets. I didn’t want anybody to get hurt.”

She reeled down the walk. Through the swirl of snow, she could see Father Jimmy’s tail-lights disappearing around the corner. She slid behind the wheel of her car and started it up. The rear end skidded, as she pulled away from the curb, determined not to lose Hannah from sight.

By the side of the house, Dr. Johanson and the Whitfields were scrambling into the mini-van.

1:47

The pace of the falling snow had picked up, which made it hard for Teri to keep Father Jimmy’s white Ford in view. Although the main drag was manageable for the time being, the roads would turn slippery before too much longer. She had no idea where Father Jimmy and Hannah were headed and didn’t want to lose them. But she didn’t exactly feel like careening into a lamppost, either.

A check of the rear view mirror revealed the headlights of several cars behind her, but she was unable to tell if the mini-van was one of them.

“Just go directly to the police station,” she exhorted the tail end of the Ford. “At least, Hannah will be safe there. Those people are nuts.”

But the Ford sailed past the Watertown Police Station and, not long after, past a fire station, too. What was Father Jimmy thinking? When she saw the sign for the turn-off to the Massachusetts Pike, she breathed easier: he intended to return to the rectory. But he drove right past the west entrance, which would have taken them toward the suburbs. Instead, he turned east, which meant he was heading into Boston.

Why Boston? What was in Boston at this time of night?

The traffic on the turnpike was moderate and seemed to be traveling at a reasonable speed, except for the usual fool, who streaked past, as if the driving conditions were ideal. With the wind, they were actually growing worse. Teri was able to approach close enough to the Ford, so that she could see the back of Father Jimmy’s head and, slouched in the seat beside him, Hannah, who had to be terrified. If she could all just hold on for a little while longer…The trouble was, ten car lengths or so back, Teri was pretty sure she recognized the mini-van.

As the odd motorcade approached the junction of I-93, Teri understood that the priest planned to take Hannah to Fall River. Probably to her place. Knowing that Nick was there with the kids, she felt a sense of relief. He was a sloppy lug, Nick, but he was tough as leather, muscular as a horse, and nobody pushed him around. Nick would know how to handle this situation.

But once again, Father Jimmy surprised her by ignoring the south turn-off. For some reason, he’d chosen to head north.

The rush of flakes coming at the windshield had a hypnotic effect on Hannah and she closed her eyes, not wanting to look any more at the snow or the disappearing road or the cars that barreled ahead anyway, as if this tunnel of whiteness would soon come to end and they would emerge into the daylight. She wished Father Jimmy would pull off the highway and wait under a bridge, until the worst of the storm abated. But she knew he wouldn’t. The Whitfields and Dr. Johanson were somewhere behind them. It would be folly to stop.

But it was folly to keep pressing forward, too.

A large trailer truck passed them on the left, the huge wheels throwing a blanket of slush over the Ford. The slapping noise startled Hannah and her eyes popped open. She didn’t know which was more nerve-wracking: looking or not looking.

When she looked, she saw the storm. But when she closed her eyes, she saw another storm, seven years earlier, beautiful at first, until it started pelting the car, and the adults in the front seat became concerned about the ice and the low visibility. She was in the back seat that time, dozing on and off, awakening to catch bits of the conversation and marvel at the millions and millions of snow flakes.

“How many millions?” she had asked her mother, and her mother had laughed. “Enough to stuff all the pillows in the world.” Hannah had laughed along with her, before falling back to sleep.

Then there had been a collision and Hannah was flung to the floor. And her mother was no longer laughing. She was pleading, “Don’t look here. Stay where you are. Don’t look.” Because the beauty had turned to horror. Her father was dead at the wheel and there was blood everywhere. Her mother would die in the hospital, but not before she took her daughter’s hand and said, “I’m so sorry, honey. I’m so sorry.”

Hannah understood what she meant now. She was so sorry that her child would have to grow up alone in the world, without parents, without a father’s protection and a mother’s love, grow up somehow all by herself. That was such a huge task to ask of a child. Even as her mother was dying, she was thinking only of her daughter, just as now Hannah thought about her child and its future, and knew if she weren’t allowed to protect, to nurture and love it, she would rather be dead.

She was feeling just what her mother had felt.

“Please slow down, Father Jimmy,” she whispered.

“I don’t think we should. They’re…” He left the sentence unfinished.

“Be very careful then.”

The trailer truck that had just passed them, had come so close. Would this be another snowy night that would change her life irrevocably?

Off to the side, a billboard, illuminated with floodlights, announced that they were crossing the state line into New Hampshire, but the storm was like an eraser, obscuring the letters, so that an oblong glow was all that Hannah could make out. And then, they’d gone by it and were riding into the falling blackness.

Teri was aware of the absurdity of the situation - Father Jimmy and Hannah in the lead car; she in the next; and right behind her now, no mistaking it, the mini-van carrying Dr. Johanson and the Whitfields. It was like one of those high-speed chases in the movies, except that the pace was turning into that of a funeral cortege.

How did those semis manage to keep up their speed? She’d have to ask Nick.

The gun hadn’t been such a bad idea, after all. She was sorry she no longer had it. Of course, Nick would be real pissed at its loss, but that was too bad. His feelings weren’t exactly foremost in her mind right now.

The air from the defroster was barely warm and the wipers were starting to leave streaks of snow on the windshield. Teri had a headache from squinting. It would certainly help if she knew where Father Jimmy was driving. Assuming he knew.

It was all well and good to place your trust in God, she thought. But someone was going to have to do something about the mini-van behind them. What would they do when they reached their destination? Argue? Fight again? Frankly, at this point she wasn’t counting on well-timed thunderbolts from the sky. Father Jimmy was a sweet man and she respected his faith. But faith wasn’t always enough; you needed a plan. Driving north into a blinding snowstorm was not, in her humble opinion, a plan!

She realized the Ford was slowing down and easing over into the right-hand lane. The interchange with I-89 lay ahead. That was vacation country. Mountains! Narrow roads! Old barns! Just the spot to be headed in the midst of a nasty nor’easter, with the snow swirling like clothes in a dryer and sleet beginning to crust on the windshield!

Well, Teri thought, if ever they got to see it, at least the landscape might be pretty. But wouldn’t it be wiser to stay where there were people, activity, the possibility of help?

The interchange was in the form of a cloverleaf, and the exit ramp curved down and around, almost making a complete circle, before it joined up with the second highway. Metal guardrails lined both sides. In normal conditions, there was space for two vehicles, side by side, but a snow plow had recently passed through, creating a single lane, lined with banks of snow.

All at once, Teri knew what to do. She took her foot off the accelerator and lightly pumped the brakes. Her speed dropped to 25 mph. At first, it appeared that she was simply negotiating the curve with caution. Then the speedometer dipped to 20 mph. Then 15 mph. The mini-van was riding her tail by now, but the white Ford had pulled ahead and was gaining distance with every second.

She took the car down to 10 mph and could actually see Dr. Johanson in the rear view mirror. He had caught on to her ploy immediately. Unable to pass, he hunched forward over the wheel and without warning floored the accelerator. The mini-van roared forward and slammed into Teri’s back bumper. She heard the crunch and felt the shock simultaneously, her head jerking forward and her chest whacking up against the wheel.

“Holy shit!” Dr. Johanson intended to blast her off the road. Nick was really going to be thrilled about this!

The Ford was still in sight, though, so she had to stick to her plan. Another minute or two would give Hannah and Father Jimmy a better chance of escaping. She brought her car to a complete stop and braced herself for the next jolt.

It was stronger than the first and the tinkle of glass indicated that her tail lights had been smashed.

“These assholes are going to kill me!” she muttered. “I am about to die right here on an exit ramp in the middle of East Bumfuck, New Hampshire.”

Already Dr. Johanson was backing up for a third assault. Clearly her flimsy rattletrap was no match for the heavy mini-van, but there was no time to get out of the car and run. She closed her eyes and braced herself as best she could for the impact to come.

The crunch of folding metal was all she heard before her car was propelled forward, as if by a giant slingshot. She felt the back end careening to the right, so that for a second the car was actually skidding sideways. Then the front end lodged deep in a snow bank, while the back end whipped around in a half circle before it, too, slammed into the snow. Teri opened her eyes and realized she was facing backwards.

There was just room enough now for the mini-van to scrape by. For a second, she had a clear view of Dr. Johanson, inches away, with nothing but a thin pane of glass separating them. She felt as if she were in an aquarium, staring at a monster. His face was scaly with hatred.

Then the mini-van was past her.

All she could do was pray Father Jimmy and Hannah had the head start they needed. Then her emotions got the better of her and she burst into tears.