If She Should Die (46 page)

“Danny, I wouldn’t have left with him without telling you.”

“That’s what Marti said. We were just getting ready to call you because we thought maybe he’d decided to walk home.”

“Three miles in the dark?” Christine’s heart had begun to race. “You know he’s got this superstition about walking at night, even though he’ll ride his bike in the dark. He didn’t have his bike with him, though. Danny, he must have left with someone.”

“Doesn’t he know not to go places with strangers?”

“He could have left with someone he knew. Have you asked around? Did anyone see him leave?”

“I’ve asked a bunch of people, but no one saw him go.” Danny took a deep breath. “Listen, Chris, maybe someone he knew
did
offer him a ride home and he’ll be there any minute.”

“
Maybe
? And what if that’s
not
what happened? Danny, I left him under your supervision,” Christine said furiously. “You were supposed to watch him.”

“I
did
watch him, Chris, but I couldn’t keep my eyes glued to him. You know I love him like a brother. God, I’m
so
sorry—”

“It’s a little late for that,” Christine snarled, and slammed down the phone receiver, knowing she was more upset with herself than with Danny. Jeremy was
her
responsibility, not Danny’s. She shouldn’t have left him for so long at the gym. Maybe he’d gotten his lost job at the jewelry store on his mind again and gone into a funk no one noticed. She should have dragged him out at three in the afternoon. She should have . . .

What? Kept him like a dog on a leash and made him feel helpless and incompetent? It was a sense of independence, of control, of responsibility, that had spurred Jeremy to accomplish all that he had in spite of his mental challenges. It had been an effort, but she’d worked hard to make herself give him enough freedom so he could develop confidence in himself.

But now what she constantly feared had happened. Jeremy was missing, and she had no idea where to look for him. Or with whom, because she knew in the core of her being that if he hadn’t left the fitness center on his own, anyone offering him an innocent ride home would have delivered him by now.

Christine immediately thought of calling Michael. But Michael was off duty, no doubt at home with his newly returned ex-wife. The image brought pain dulled only by her anxiety over Jeremy. She had to find him. And she prayed when she found him, he would be alone, not at the hands of whoever was stalking her.

“Idiot!” she said to herself when she finally remembered the policeman still keeping surveillance on her house. She ran out to the patrol car parked in front of the house. The policeman’s name was Morris, and she told him quickly that Jeremy had left the gym. Naturally he was not alarmed, giving her all the arguments Danny had already tried.

“Look, you know my brother is mentally challenged,” she said. “It’s not safe for him to be out at night without supervision. He’s afraid to walk in the dark, but he’s been upset about something going on at Prince Jewelry, where we work, and he might have gone there.”

“But the place is closed,” Morris said. “Does he have a key?”

“Yes. I’m going to the store to look for him. Will you go with me?”

“My orders are to keep an eye on you, ma’am,” he said with a smile. His face was broad and good-natured, his eyes a pleasant dark blue. “If he’s not there, we’ll just keep looking. Does he have a cell phone?”

“Yes, if he remembered to take it with him today.”

“Well, hop in the car and we’ll head for the store.”

“I’m afraid a patrol car might scare him. I’d rather drive my car and have you follow me.”

“Whatever you think is best, Miss Ireland. And you calm down. We’ll find him.”

Christine hated evenings at this time of the year, when darkness closed in around six o’clock. Summer was her favorite time of the year, when daylight lasted until nearly
nine o’clock. It was easier to find people in the daylight, and fewer dangers seemed to linger than in the spectral semidarkness of a late March evening.

Parking spaces were plentiful on downtown streets after five o’clock when the stores closed. She pulled up in front of Prince Jewelry and Morris pulled in behind her. She went to his open car window again. “I’ll only be in the store for a few minutes and I won’t leave the lighted display room, so you can just wait in the car.”

“Sure you’re not afraid to go in alone?”

“I’m sure. Thanks anyway.”

She still had her store key and unlocked the front door. Lights were always left on over the window display cases, but she turned on all of the showroom lights. “Jeremy!” she called. “Are you here?”

No answer. Christine walked to the door of the storeroom, flipped on the lights, but didn’t enter. “Are you back here?” Once again, nothing. Jeremy would not play games with her. If he were in the store, he would answer.

She heard a crash outside, metal grinding against metal, shouts, and a shrill scream. Christine ran out to see a pickup truck gouged into the side of Morris’s patrol car. The pickup had hit with such force that the patrol car had been pushed up on the sidewalk, the front rammed into a parking meter.

Morris was out of the patrol car holding a hand up to a bleeding forehead. Inside the truck, a woman with clown red hair above a ravaged face shrieked rhythmically as if for the pure drama of it. Beside the truck stood the driver—weaving, shouting, definitely drunk. His flannel shirt had been buttoned unevenly, he wore no jacket although the temperature had dropped to about forty-five, and his face looked like a water-drenched beet.

“Goddamn car stick halfway out in the street!” the drunken driver shouted. His sweaty face sported a
three-day growth of gray and black stubble. “No way I coulda missed it. Where’s the police! I wanna report an accident! Look at my truck!”

“I
am
the police!” Morris shouted back. “You hit a patrol car and you’re DWI.”

“I am
not
insane!” the driver yelled, irate. Then he bellowed at the crowd gathering in the street, “He says I’m drivin’ while insane!”

“Driving While Intoxicated, you dope!” Morris shouted back.

“Ain’t had no dope, neither. I’m clean as a whistle! Dope’ll rot your brain!”

Christine went to Morris, handing him a packet of tissues from her purse. “Press these to your forehead. I have a cell phone. I’ll call nine-one-one.”

“Thanks,” Morris said. “And tell them to send backup. This drunk is going to do more damage if he’s not put away fast.”

While Christine called, the drunk stood in the middle of the street, waving his arms in rage as he insisted this was no way to treat a veteran of Desert Storm. Christine hovered, not sure what to do next except entreat Morris to sit down in his car. “Can’t,” he said tersely. “This guy might drive away.”

“Well, you can’t stop him in your condition. Besides, I’ve written down his license plate number.”

A faint smile passed over Morris’s battered face. “Good work.” His smile passed. “God, I feel dizzy.”

Morris consented to sit in his car with the door open just as Christine’s cell phone rang. She answered with a distracted, “Hello?”

“Christine?”

“Jeremy! I’ve been looking for you! Where are you? I’ll come get you right away.”

“I . . . I’m over on the island.”

“The island?”

“Dara’s island. I came looking for her, only I fell. I think I broke my leg.”

“Jeremy!”

“You gotta come get me. I don’t think I can cling on much longer, it hurts so bad. Oh, uh, the bone’s stickin’ out.”

Christine’s hands began to tremble and perspiration popped out on her forehead in spite of the cool air. “Where are you on the island?”

“I’m not sure. Over near the river, not the creek.” His voice sounded slurry with pain. Maybe he was losing consciousness, she thought frantically. “You know where the biggest mound is, the one Dara saw the people dig into and find the bones? I think I’m near that one.”

Christine didn’t remember the exact location, but she’d find it. “All right. I want you to lie very still, Jeremy. Don’t do anything that might further injure your leg. You’re going to be all right. I’m coming to get you right now!”

“Okay, Christine. But hurry. I
really
need you.”

Christine turned to Morris. “That was my brother. He’s on the island—I mean, the land across from Crescent Creek where the Indian mounds are. He’s hurt. I have to go to him.”

“I can’t go with you.”

“It’s all right. I can find him by myself.”

“You’re not supposed to go anywhere by yourself. Let me call this in. We’ll get some other patrolman to go with you.”

“I don’t have time for that, Deputy. My brother’s leg is
broken. He’s bleeding. I’ll call nine-one-one on the way.”

“An emergency van can’t get across that old bridge. It would collapse.”

Christine was almost breathless with panic. “We’ll work out something. I have a first-aid kit in my trunk.”

“You can’t drive across the bridge, either. Don’t you understand me? The damned thing will crumble into the creek!”

“I have to go, Deputy. I have to!”

She heard him calling after her, weakly over the shouts of the drunk and his still-shrieking female companion, but Christine blocked out the words. She knew how rickety Crescent Creek Bridge was. But she couldn’t leave Jeremy over on the island, injured, bleeding. She’d drive to the bridge and walk across. Run across. Swim the creek. Anything to get to him.

As she raced through town, ignoring speed limits, she did call Streak. Maybe he had an idea. But he didn’t answer his phone, and she knew he wasn’t merely screening her out. Not for something this important.

Next she dialed 911. They told her the accident had already been reported by Deputy Morris and for her to wait at the bridge for aid. She wondered what kind of aid they could offer. Not something involving an EMS van that couldn’t cross the bridge.

Desperate, she tried Sloane Caldwell’s number. No answer. She tried Reynaldo and Tess’s number. Busy. Dammit, where was everyone when you needed them? Busy with their own lives. Busy when the life that was most important in the world to her might be fading away on an eerie deserted piece of land that should have been left to the ancient Indians who’d buried their dead there to slumber in peace.

She drove down the rutted lane to the bridge, then stopped the car. The site of the mound to which Jeremy
had referred was at least a quarter of a mile away. She could make much faster time in a car than on foot, not to mention that she would have a way to get Jeremy back to the mainland and a hospital.

Christine looked at the bridge in the car headlights. The boards were gray from years of suffering through the elements unprotected by paint or wood treatments. Part of the railing had fallen away, and a hole was visible in the flooring.

She looked back at her car. It was a Dodge Neon, one of the lightest cars made. The bridge could never support an EMS van, but possibly it could support her car. She knew trying to cross the bridge in a vehicle would be incredibly risky, but Jeremy was worth the risk.

She got back in the still-running car, put it in drive, and cautiously crept onto the bridge, cringing as it creaked beneath the car’s weight. Halfway across, something groaned and she tensed, waiting to be dumped into the high-running creek. But she had the sense not to take her foot off the accelerator. She shot forward so fast she barely knew what was happening. She felt faint with relief when she bounced off the boards and landed in the mud on the other side. Another light tap on the accelerator sent her up onto solid ground.

Christine leaned forward and rested her forehead on the steering wheel for a moment. She’d made it this far. Now all she had to do was find Jeremy.

She raised her head and looked ahead at total darkness, the moon obliterated by drifting clouds, the land growing ghostly from a fog creeping in from the river. The only light came from her headlights. She started out slowly, at first remembering only that the mound was near the Ohio River and somewhere to the north, meaning that she needed to veer right. The car bounced over ruts and holes, then over patches of smooth land, all of
which archaeologists believed had once been a Mound Builders’ village nearly 600 years ago.

Finally Christine thought she must be near the mound and stopped to get her bearings. She got out of the car, leaving the headlights on and the doors open for more light. Armed only with a flashlight, she walked around the ghostly deserted land, repeatedly calling Jeremy’s name. At last she reached the mound where Dara had watched archaeologists unearth the skeletons. Hadn’t there been eight? This place had been almost sacred to her. And to Jeremy because it had meant so much to Dara. Odd what Jeremy would latch on to as important. Singing. The mounds.
Star Trek
.

Christine stopped.
Star Trek
. When they were young, he’d thought up a secret code word for them. “Whenever one of us is in trouble and can’t say so out loud because bad people are listening, we’ll say a word from
Star Trek
,” he’d told her. “We’ll say
Klingon
. The Klingons are the big enemies of Captain Kirk.” Her mind fled back to the phone call she’d gotten from him at the store. “I don’t think I can
cling on
much longer.” And
Christine
. Twice he had called her Christine. Ever since he’d learned to talk, he’d called her Christy.
Never
Christine.

“Christine, is that you?”

She whirled and saw Sloane Caldwell. “Sloane! What are you doing out here?”

“I got a call from Jeremy. He said he was in trouble. Hurt. I came immediately.”

Christine looked at him with a rush of relief. Then her thoughts seemed to slow and reorganize themselves into a dark, damning realization. Jeremy wouldn’t have the number for Sloane Caldwell’s cell phone. Why would he? He had little contact with Sloane these days. Something was wrong. But she couldn’t show it, although her heart
felt as if it were going to crack a rib with the force of its terrified beating.

“I’m so glad he called you,” she said in a high voice. “I’ve been out here all by myself looking for him. He said he thought he broke his leg. I called nine-one-one. The police will be here any minute.”