"Bloodstream" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gerritsen Tess)

15

The town meeting was scheduled for seven-thirty and by seven-fifteen, every seat in the high school cafeteria was filled. People were crowding into the aisles, lining up along the walls, and spilling out the rear doors into the cold wind.

From where Claire was standing, off to the side, she had a good view of the speakers’ table at the front. There Lincoln, Fern Cornwallis, and the chairman of the Town Board of Selectmen, Glen Ryder, were seated. The five members of the board were clustered in the front row.

Claire recognized many of the faces in the audience. Most of them were other parents, whom she’d met at high school functions. She also saw a number of her colleagues from Knox Hospital. The dozen teenagers in attendance had chosen to stand at the rear of the cafeteria, and were tightly clustered together as though to ward off attack by their elders.

Glen Ryder banged his gavel, but the crowd was too large, too agitated, to hear him. The frustrated Ryder had to climb onto a chair and yell: “This meeting will come to order now!”

The cafeteria at last fell silent, and Ryder continued. “I know there aren’t enough seats for everyone in here. I know there are people outside who are upset about having to stand in eight-degree weather. But the fire chief says we’ve already exceeded this room’s occupancy limit. We just can’t allow anyone else to enter, unless someone else exits first.”

“Seems to me some of those kids in the back could leave and make room for adults,” a man grumbled.

One of the teenagers retorted: “We’ve got a right to be here too!”

“You kids’re the reason we’re here in the first place!”

“If you’re going to talk about us, then we want to hear what you’re saying!”

Half a dozen people started to speak at once.

“No one’s being kicked out of here!” yelled Ryder. “It’s a public meeting, Ben, and we can’t exclude people. Now let’s get on with it.” Ryder looked at Lincoln.

“Chief Kelly, why don’t you bring us up to date with the problems in town.”

Lincoln rose to his feet. The last few days had drained him, both physically and emotionally, and it showed in the drooping slope of his shoulders. “It hasn’t been a good month,” he said. A typical Lincoln Kelly understatement. “What everyone seems to focus on are the murders. The shooting at the high school on November second, and then the Braxtons on November fifteenth. That’s two murders in two weeks. What scares me even more is, I don’t think we’ve seen the worst of it yet. Last night, my officers responded to eight different calls involving juveniles assaulting others. I’ve never seen this before. I’ve been a cop in this town for twenty-two years. I’ve seen minor crime waves come and go. But what I’m seeing now-kids trying to hurt each other, kill each other-trying to kill the people they love…“ He shook his head and sat down without another word.

“Miss Cornwaffis?” said Ryder.

The high school principal rose to her feet. Fern Cornwallis was a handsome woman, and she had taken pains to look her best tonight. Her blond hair was swept into a gleaming French twist, and she was one of the few women in the room who’d bothered to apply makeup. But that touch of bright lipstick only emphasized the anxious pallor of her face.

“I want to echo everything Chief Kelly just said. What’s happening in this town-the anger, the violence-I’ve never seen it before, either. And it’s not just a problem in the school. It’s also a problem in your homes. I know these children! I’ve watched them grow up. I’ve seen them around town, in the school hallways. Or in my office, as the occasion warranted. And the ones who are getting into fights now, none of them are kids I would have labeled troublemakers. None of them gave any hint, in past years, of being violent. But suddenly I find I don’t know these children anymore. I don’t recognize them.”

She paused and swallowed hard. “I’m afraid of them,” she said quietly.

“So whose fault is it?” yelled Ben Doucette.

“We’re not saying it’s anyone’s fault,” Fern said. “We’re just trying to understand why this is happening. Between our school and the middle school, we’ve brought in five new guidance counselors on an emergency basis. The high school has a district psychologist, Dr. Lieberman, working intensively with our staff. Trying to come up with a plan of action.”

Ben stood up. A sour-faced bachelor in his fifties, he had lost an arm in Vietnam, and he was always clutching the stump with his good hand, as though to emphasize his sacrifice. “I can tell you what the problem is,” he said. “It’s the same problem we’ve got all over this country. No goddamn discipline. When I was thirteen, you think I’d have dared to pick up a knife, threaten my mother?

My old man woulda whapped me up the side of the head.”

“What are you suggesting, Mr. Doucette?” said Fern. “That we spank fourteen-year-olds?”

“Why not?”

“Try it!” yelled one of the teenage boys, and he was joined by the other kids in a chorus of jeers: “Try it, try it, try it!”

The meeting was out of control. Lincoln stood up, raising his hand in a plea for order. It was a measure of the respect the town held for him that the crowd finally quieted down to hear him speak.

“It’s time to talk about realistic solutions,” he said.

Jack Reid stood up. “Can’t talk about solutions till we talk about why it’s happening in the first place. I hear from my boys that it’s the new kids in school, the ones who moved here from other cities, who’re causing most of the problems. Starting up gangs, maybe bringing in drugs.”

Lincoln’s response was lost in a sudden crescendo of voices. Claire could see the frustration in his face, the deepening flush of anger.

“This is not a problem from away,” said Lincoln. “This crisis is local. It’s our problem, and our kids getting into trouble.”

“But who got them started?” said Reid. “Who got ‘em going? Some folks just don’t belong here!”

Glen Ryder’s gavel banged again and again, to no avail. Jack Reid had pushed a hot button with this crowd, and now everyone was yelling at once.

A woman’s voice cut through the bedlam. “What about the rumors of a centuries-old Satanic cult?” said Damaris Horne, rising to her feet. It was hard to miss that wild mane of blond hair. Also hard to miss were the interested glances men cast her way. “We’ve all heard about those old bones they dug up by the lake. I understand it was a mass murder. Maybe even a ritual slaying.”

“That was over a hundred years ago,” said Lincoln. “It’s completely unrelated.”

“Maybe not. New England has a long history of Satanic cults.”

Lincoln was fast losing control of his temper. “The only cult around here,” he shot back, “is the one you made up for your trashy tabloid!”

“Then perhaps you’ll explain all the disturbing rumors I’ve been hearing,” said Damaris, keeping her cool. “For instance, the number six-six-six painted on the side of the high school.”

Lincoln aimed a startled glance at Fern. Claire realized at once what that look meant. Clearly they were both surprised by the reporter’s knowledge of a real event.

“There was a barn found splashed with blood last month,” said Damaris. “What about that?”

“That was a can of red paint. Not blood.”

“And those lights flickering at night up on Beech Hill. Which, I’ve been told, is nothing but forest reserve.”

“Now wait a minute,” interjected Lois Cuthbert, one of the town selectmen. “That I can explain. It’s that biologist fella, Dr. Tutwiler, collecting salamanders at night. I almost ran over him in the dark a few weeks ago, when he came hiking back down.”

“All right,” conceded Damaris. “Forget the lights up on Beech Hill. But I still say there’s a lot of strange and unexplained things happening in this town. If anyone here wants to talk to me about it later, I’m ready to listen.” Damaris sat down again.

“I agree with her,” said a tremulous voice. The woman stood at the back of the room, a small, white-faced figure clutching at her coat. “There’s something wrong in this town. I’ve felt it for a long time. You can deny it all you want, Chief Kelly, but what we have here is evil. I’m not saying it’s Satan. I don’t know what it is. But I know I can’t live here anymore. I’ve put my house up for sale, and I’m leaving next week. Before something happens to my family.” She turned and walked out of the hushed room.

The high-pitched beeping of Claire’s pocket pager cut through the silence. She glanced down and saw it was the hospital trying to reach her. She pushed her way through the crowd and stepped outside to make the call on her cell phone.

After the overheated cafeteria, the wind felt piercingly cold, and she huddled, shivering, against the building, waiting for an answer.

“Laboratory, Clive speaking.”

“This is Dr. Elliot. You paged me.”

“I wasn’t sure if you still wanted us to call you on these results, since this patient’s deceased. But I’ve got some reports back on Scotty Braxton.”

“Yes, I want to hear all the results.”

“First, I have a final report here from Anson Biologicals on the boy’s comprehensive drug and tox screen. None were detected.”

“There’s nothing about the peak on his chromatogram?”

“Not on this report.”

“This has to be a mistake. There must be something in his drug screen.”

“That’s all it says here: ‘None detected.’ We’ve also got the final culture result on the boy’s nasal discharge. It’s a pretty long list of organisms, since you wanted everything identified. Mostly the usual colonizers. Staph epidermiclis, alpha strep. Bugs we don’t normally bother to report.”

“Is there anything unusual growing out?”

“Yes. Vibriofiscberi.”

She scribbled the name down on a scrap of paper. “I’ve never heard of that organism.”

“Neither had we. It’s never turned up in a culture here. It has to be a contaminant.”

“But I collected the specimen straight from the patient’s nasal mucosa.”

“Well, I doubt this contamination came from our lab. This bacteria isn’t something you’d find floating around in a hospital.”

“What is Vibriofischeri? Where does it normally grow?”

“I checked with the microbiologist in Bangor, where they did the cultures. She says this species is usually a colonizer of invertebrates like squid or marine worms. It forms a symbiotic relationship. The host invertebrate provides a safe environment.”

“And what does the Vibrio do in exchange?”

“It provides the power for the host’s light organ.”

It took a few seconds for the significance of that fact to sink in. She asked, sharply: “Are you saying this bacteria is bioluminescent?”

“Yeah. The squid collects it in a translucent sac. It uses the bacteria’s glow to attract other squid. Sort of like a neon sign for sex.”

“I’ve got to go,” she cut in. “I’ll talk to you later.” She disconnected and hurried back into the school cafeteria.

Glen Ryder was trying to quiet down the audience again, his gavel thumping ineffectually against a chorus of competing voices. He looked startled as Claire pushed her way to the speakers’ table.

“I have to make an announcement,” she said. “I have a health alert for the town.”

“It’s not exactly relevant to this meeting, Dr. Elliot.”

“I believe it is relevant. Please let me speak.”

He nodded and resumed banging the gavel with new urgency. “Dr. Elliot has an announcement!”

Claire moved front and center, acutely aware that everyone’s gaze was on her.

She took a deep breath and began. “These attacks are scaring us all, causing us to point fingers at our neighbors, at the school. At people from away But I believe there’s a medical explanation. I’ve just spoken to the hospital lab, and I have a clue to what’s going on.” She held up the scrap of paper with the organism’s name. “It’s a bacteria called Vibriofischeri. It was growing in Scotty Braxton’s nasal mucus. What we’re seeing now-this aggressive behavior in our children- may be a symptom of infection. Vibriofischeri could cause a case of meningitis we can’t detect with our usual tests. It could also cause what doctors call a ‘neighborhood reaction’-an infection of the sinuses, extending into the brain-”

“Wait a minute,” said Adam DelRay, rising to his feet. “I’ve been practicing medicine here for ten years. I’ve never come across an infection of this-what is it?”

“Vibriofiscberi. It’s not normally seen in humans. But the lab’s identified it as an organism infecting my patient.”

“And where did your patient pick up this bug?”

“I believe it was the lake. Scotty Braxton and Taylor Darnell both swam in that lake almost every day last summer. So did a lot of other kids in this town. If that lake has a high bacterial count of Vibrio, that could explain how they’re getting infected.”

“I went swimming last summer,” said a woman. “A lot of adults did. Why would only the kids get infected?”

“It may have to do with what part of the lake you swim in. I also know there’s a similar infectious pattern for amoebic meningitis. That’s a brain infection caused by amoebas growing in fresh water. Children and teenagers are most often infected. When they swim in contaminated water, the amoeba enters their nasal mucosa. From there it reaches the brain by passing through a porous barrier called the cribriform plate. Adults don’t get infected, because their cribriform plates are sealed over, protecting their brains. Children don’t have that protection.”

“So how do you treat this? With antibiotics or something?”

“That would be my guess.”

Adam DelRay let out an incredulous laugh. “Are you suggesting we dispense antibiotics to every irritable kid in town? You have no proof anyone’s infected!”

“I do have a positive culture.”

“One positive culture. And it’s not from the spinal fluid, so how can you call this meningitis?” He looked at the audience. “I can assure this town there is no epidemic. Last month, the Two Hills Pediatric Group got a lab grant to survey blood counts and hormone levels in kids. They’ve been drawing blood on all their teenage patients in the area. Any infection would have shown up in their blood counts.”

“What grant are you talking about?” asked Claire.

“From Anson Biologicals. To confirm baseline normals. They haven’t reported anything unusual.” He shook his head. “This infection theory of yours is the most crackpot thing I’ve heard yet, and it comes without a shred of evidence.

You don’t even know if Vibrio is growing in the lake.”

“I know it is,” said Claire. “I’ve seen it.”

“You saw a bacteria? What, do you have microscopic vision?”

“Vibrio fischeri is bioluminescent. It glows. I’ve seen bioluminescence in Locust Lake.”

“Where are the cultures to back it up? Have you collected water samples?”

“I saw it just before the lake froze over. It’s probably too cold now to grow out viable cultures. Which means we won’t have confirmation until we do water sampling in the spring. These cultures take time to grow. It could be weeks or months after that before we get an answer.” She paused, reluctant to make her next suggestion. “Until we rule out the lake as the source of this bacteria,” she said, “I recommend we keep our children from swimming in it.”

The uproar was expected and immediate.

“Are you crazy? We can’t let an announcement like that get out!”

“What about the tourists? You’ll scare off the tourists!”

“How the hell are we s’posed to make a living?”

Glen Ryder was on his feet, banging at the table. “Order! I will have order!”

His face florid, he turned to confront Claire. “Dr. Effiot, this isn’t the time or place to suggest such drastic action. It needs to be discussed by the Board of Selectmen?’

“This is a public health issue,” said Claire. “It’s a decision for the health department. Not politicians.”

“There’s no need to involve the state!”

“It’s irresponsible not to.”

Lois Cuthbert shot to her feet. “I’ll tell you what’s irresponsible! It’s getting up there, without any evidence, with all these reporters in the room, and claiming there’s some deadly bacteria in our lake. You’re going to destroy this town.”

“If there’s a health risk, we have no other choice.”

Lois turned to Adam DelRay. “What’s your opinion, Dr. DelRay? Is there a health risk?”

DelRay gave a derisive laugh. “The only risk that I can see is that we’ll be made laughingstocks if we take this seriously. Bacteria that glow in the dark?

Do they sing and dance too?”

Claire flushed as laughter burst out all around her. “I know what I saw,” she insisted.

“Right, Dr. Elliot! Psychedelic bacteria.”

Lincoln’s voice suddenly rang through the laughter. “I saw it too.”

Everyone fell silent as he rose to his feet. Startled, Claire turned to look at him and he gave her a wry nod, a gesture that said: We might as well hang together.

“I was there that night, with Dr. Effiot,” he said. “We both saw the glow on the lake. I can’t tell you what it was. It only lasted for a few minutes, and then it vanished. But there was a glow”

“I’ve lived on that lake all my life,” said Lois Cuthbert. “I’ve never seen any glow.”

“Me neither!”

“-or me!”

“Hey, Chief, you and the doe sniffing the same thing?”

New laughter erupted, and this time it was directed at both of them. The outrage had turned to ridicule, but Lincoln didn’t back down; he bore the insults with calm equanimity.

“It may be an episodic occurrence,” said Claire. “Something that doesn’t happen every year. It could be related to weather conditions. Spring flooding or a particularly hot summer-we had both this year. The very same conditions that occurred fifty-two years ago.” She paused, and her challenging gaze swept the audience. “I know there are people in this room who remember what happened fifty-two years ago.”

The crowd went silent.

The reporter from the Portland Press Herald asked, loudly: “What happened fifty-two years ago?”

Abruptly Glen Ryder shot to his feet. “The board will take it under advisement.

Thank you, Dr. Elliot.”

“This should be addressed now,” said Claire. “The health department should be called in to test the water-”

“We will discuss it at our next board meeting,” Ryder repeated firmly. “That’s all, Dr. Elliot.”

Cheeks burning, she walked away from the speakers’ table.

The meeting continued, loud and rancorous, as suggestions were tossed out. There was no further mention of her theory; they had unanimously dismissed it as not worth further discussion. Someone suggested a nine P.M. curfew-all kids off the streets. The teens protested, “Civil rights!” “What about our civil rights?”

“You kids have no civil rights!” shot back Lois. “Not until you learn responsibility!”

It went downhill from there.

At ten P.M., with everyone hoarse from shouting, Glen Ryder finally adjourned the meeting.

Claire remained standing at the side of the room, watching as the crowd exited.

No one looked at her as they filed past. I’ve ceased to exist in this town, she thought wretchedly, except as an object of scorn. She wanted to thank Lincoln for supporting her, but she saw that he was under siege, surrounded by the Board of Selectmen, who were plying him with questions and complaints.

“Dr. Elliot!” called out Damaris Home. “What happened fifty-two years ago?”

Claire fled toward the exit, Damaris and the other reporters trailing after her as she kept repeating, “No comment. No comment.” She was relieved when no one pursued her out the door.

Outside, the chill wind seemed to slice right through her coat. Her car was parked some distance from the school. Thrusting her hands in her pockets, she began to walk as quickly as she dared along the icy road, squinting against the intermittent glare of headlights as other cars pulled away By the time she reached her vehicle, she already had the keys out, and was about to unlock the door when she realized something was not right.

She took a step back and stared in shock at the pools of flaccid rubber that had been her tires. All four of them had been slashed. In fury, in frustration, she slammed her hand down on the car. Once, twice.

Across the road, a man walking back to his own car turned and looked at her in surprise. It was Mitchell Groome.

“Something wrong, Dr. Elliot?” he called out.

“Look at my tires!”

He paused to let a car drive past, then crossed the road to join her. “Jesus,” he murmured. “Someone doesn’t like you.”

“They slashed all of them!”

“I’d help you change them. But I don’t suppose you’d have four spare tires in the trunk?’

She did not appreciate his weak attempt at humor. She turned her back on him and stared down at the ruined tires. Her exposed face stung from the wind, and the chill of the frozen ground seemed to seep through the soles of her boots. It was too late to call Joe Bartlett’s garage; he wouldn’t be able to get four new tires till morning, anyway. She was stranded, furious, and growing colder by the minute.

She turned to Groome. “Could you give me a ride home?”

It was a deal with the devil, and she knew it. A journalist must ask questions, and barely ten seconds into the drive, he asked the one she’d expected:

“So what did happen in this town fifty-two years ago?”

She averted her eyes. “I’m really not in the mood for this.”

“I’m sure you’re not, but it’s going to come out eventually. Damaris Home will track it down, one way or the other.”

“That woman has no sense of ethics.”

“But she does have an inside source.”

Claire looked at him. “Are you talking about the police department?”

“You already know about it?”

“Not the name of the officer. Which one is it?”

“Tell me what happened in 1946.”

She faced forward again. “It’s in the local newspaper archives. You can look it up for yourself.”

He drove for a moment in silence. “It’s happened to this town before, hasn’t it?” he said. “The killings.”

“Yes.”

“And you believe there’s a biological reason for it?”

“It has something to do with that lake. It’s some sort of natural phenomenon. A bacteria, or an algae.”

“What about my theory? That this is another Flanders, Iowa?”

“It’s not drug abuse, Mitchell. I thought we’d turned up something in both boys’ blood-an anabolic steroid of some kind. But the final tox screens on both of them came back negative. And Taylor denies any drug abuse.”

“Kids do lie.”

“Blood tests don’t.”

They pulled into her driveway, and he turned to look at her. “You’ve picked an uphill fight, Dr. Elliot. Maybe you didn’t sense the depth of anger in that room, but I certainly did.”

“Not only did I sense it, I have four slashed tires to prove it.” She stepped out. “Thank you for the ride. Now you owe me something.”

“Do I?”

“The name of the cop who’s been talking to Damaris Horne.”

He gave an apologetic shrug. “I don’t know his name. All I can tell you is that I’ve seen them together in, shall we say, close contact. Dark hair, medium build. Works the night shift.”

She nodded grimly. “I’ll figure it out.”

Lincoln climbed the stairs to the handsome Victorian, each step bringing him closer to exhaustion. It was well past midnight. He had spent the last few hours at an emergency meeting of the Board of Selectmen, held at Glen Ryder’s house, where Lincoln had been told in no uncertain terms that his job was in jeopardy.

The board had hired him, and they could fire him. He was an employee of the Town of Tranquility, and therefore a guardian of its welfare. How could he sup port Dr. Elliot’s suggestion to close down the lake?

I was just stating my honest opinion, he’d told them.

But in this case, honesty was clearly not the best policy.

What had followed was a mind-numbing litany of financial statistics, provided by the town treasurer. How much money came in every summer from tourists. How many jobs were created as a result. How many local businesses existed only to service the visitor trade.

Where Lincoln’s salary came from.

The town lived and died by Locust Lake, and there would be no calls to close it, no health alerts, not even a whisper of public debate.

He’d left the meeting uncertain whether he still had a job, uncertain whether he even wanted the job. He’d climbed into his cruiser, had been halfway home, when he’d received the message from Dispatch that someone else wanted to speak to him tonight.

He rang the bell. As he waited for the door to open, he glanced up the street and saw that every house was dark, all the curtains drawn against this black and frigid night.

The door swung open, and Judge Iris Keating said: “Thank you for coming, Lincoln.”

He stepped into the house. It felt airless, suffocating. “You said it was urgent.”

“You’ve already met with the board?”

“A little while ago.”

“And they won’t consider closing the lake. Will they?”

He gave her a resigned smile. “Was there any doubt?”

“I know this town too well. I know how people think, and what they’re afraid of.

How far they’ll go to protect their own.”

“Then you know what I’m dealing with.”

She gestured toward the library. “Let’s sit down, Lincoln. I have something to tell you.”

A fire was dying behind the grate, only a few listless flames puffing up from the mound of cinders. Still, the room felt overwarm, and as Lincoln sank deeply into an overstuffed chair, he wondered if he could summon the energy to stay awake. To rise to his feet again and walk back out into the cold. Iris sat across from him, her face illuminated only by the fire’s glow. The dim light was kind to her features, deepening her eyes, smoothing the wrinkles of sixty-six years into velvety shadow. Only her hands, thin and gnarled by arthritis, betrayed her age.

“I should have said something at the meeting tonight, but I didn’t have the courage,” she confessed.

“Courage to say what?”

“When Claire Elliot spoke about the lake-about the night she saw the water glow-I should have added my voice to hers.”

Lincoln sat forward, the meaning of her words at last piercing his fatigue.

“You’ve seen it too.”

“Yes.”

“When?”

She looked down at her hands, grasping the armrests. “It was in late summer. I was fourteen years old, and we had a house by the Boulders. It’s gone, now. Torn down years ago.” Her gaze shifted to the fire and remained there, focused on the sputtering flames. She leaned back, her hair like a halo of silver against the dark fabric of the chair. “I remember that night, it was raining hard. I woke up, and I heard thunder. I went to the window, and there was something in the water. A light. A glow. It was there for only a few minutes, and then…“ She paused. “By the time I woke my parents, it was gone, and the water was dark again.” She shook her head. “Of course they didn’t believe me.”

“Did you ever see the glow again?”

“Once. A few weeks later, also during a rainstorm. Just the briefest shimmer, and then nothing.”

“The night Claire and I saw it, it was raining hard, too.”

Her gaze lifted to Lincoln’s. “All these years, I thought it was lightning. Or a trick of the eyes. But then tonight, for the first time, I learned I’m not the only one who’s seen it.”

“Why didn’t you say something? The town would have listened to you “And people would ask all sorts of questions. When I saw it, which year it was.”

“Which year was it, Judge Keating?”

She looked away, but he saw the flash of tears in her eyes. “Nineteen forty-six,” she whispered. “It was the summer of ‘46.”

The year Iris Keating’s parents had died at the hands of her fifteen-year-old brother. The year Iris, too, had killed, but in self-defense. She had pushed her own brother through the turret window, had watched him fall to his death.

“You understand now why I didn’t speak,” she said.

“You could have made a difference.”

“No one wants to hear about it. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“It was so long ago. Fifty-two years-”

“Fifty-two years is nothing! Look at how they still treat Warren Emerson. I’m just as guilty of it. When we were children, he and I were so close. I used to think that someday, we would…“ She suddenly stopped. Her gaze settled on the fire, by now little more than glowing ashes. “All these years, I’ve avoided him.

Pretended he didn’t exist. And now I hear it may not have been his fault at all, but merely a sickness. An infection of the brain. And it’s too late to make it up to him.”

“It’s not too late. Warren had surgery last week, and he’s fine now. You could visit him.”

“I don’t know what I’d say after all these years. I don’t know that he’d want to see me.”

“Let Warren make that decision.”

She thought it over, her eyes glistening in the dying light of the embers. Then she rose stiffly from the chair. “I believe the fire’s gone out,” she said. And she turned and left the room.

There was a car parked in Lincoln’s driveway.

He pulled up behind it and groaned. Though he had not been home all day, the lights were on in his living room, and he knew what awaited him inside the house. Not again, he thought. Not tonight.

He trudged up the steps to his porch and found the front door was unlocked. When had Doreen stolen his new key?

He found her asleep on the couch. The sour stench of liquor permeated the room.

If he woke her now, there would be another drunken scene, crying and shouting, neighbors awakened. Better to let her sleep it off, and deal with it in the morning when she was sober and he wasn’t reeling from exhaustion. He stood looking down at her, regarding, with a sense of sad bewilderment, the woman he’d married.

Her red hair was matted, shot through with gray. Her mouth hung open. Her sleep was a noisy rhythm of whistles and grunts. And yet he did not feel disgust when he looked at her. Rather he felt pity, and disbelief that he had ever been in love with her.

And a sense of stifling and never-ending responsibility for her welfare.

She would need a blanket, He turned toward the hail closet and heard the telephone ring. Quickly he answered it, afraid that it would wake Doreen and ignite the scene he dreaded.

It was Pete Sparks on the line. “I’m sorry to call you so late,” he said, “but Dr. Effiot insisted. She was going to call you herself if I didn’t.”

“Is this about the slashed tires? Mark already called me about it.”

“No, it’s something else.”

“What happened?”

“I’m at her medical building. Someone’s smashed all the windows.”