In the Middle of the Night (7 page)

That word again.
Investigation.
Maybe that’s what had touched off the fear of answering. And the guilt. He didn’t know why he should feel any guilt.

“Did I do something wrong?” he asked.

“It’s not a question of right or wrong, John Paul. It’s a question of getting at the truth of the situation,” Adam Polansky said. “You can help us …”

A movement near the door caught John Paul’s attention. Turning his head tentatively, he saw another man, tall and thin—thin lips, thin nose—wearing a hat with a visor pulled down over his eyes. He had been standing silently near the door but came forward now, as if he had just swallowed something bitter and foul-tasting. More than sour: his eyes below the visor looked at John Paul suspiciously.

“You’re too soft, Commissioner,” the man said to Adam Polansky but still looking at John Paul.

“Take it easy, Cutter,” the commissioner said. “He’s just a kid.” Then to John Paul: “This is Detective Lawrence Cutter. With the Wickburg police …”

“Here,” the detective said, thrusting the newspaper at John Paul.

The headlines, blunt in huge black type, streamed across the top of the front page:

A smaller headline underneath:

A third headline in slightly smaller type:

S
tephen Delaney, 9.

Nancy Saladora, 6.

Kevin Thatcher, 13.

Deborah Harper, 5.

Suzanne Henault, 10.

He dropped the newspaper on the bed and closed his eyes to shut away the names, but they blazed in his mind, pulsing like neon.

Richard O’Brien, 11.

Stephanie Albertson, 9.

Arthur Campbell, 7.

Before he’d read the names in stark black type, the fact of twenty-two children dead at the Globe Theater here in Wickburg had refused to register in his mind. Tragedies like that happened in other places, faraway places.
300 DEAD
IN A PLANE CRASH IN CHICAGO. L.A. FIRE CLAIMS 50 LIVES
. Headlines he remembered. But
22 DIE IN WICKBURG
? Impossible.

Then the names.

Lucy Amareault, 10.

Daniel Kelly, 7.

James Bickley, 6.

And he remembered the faces. Was Lucy Amareault, 10, the small girl in the bright red dress, two teeth missing in front, who spilled chocolate ice cream all over herself? Or was Lucy the older girl, in charge of two small boys, acting like a grown-up mother, telling the boys to “stand up straight and behave yourselves”? Did one of those possible Lucys lie crushed and broken under the balcony a few minutes later? He twisted in the bed, trying to turn from the thought, but his mind refused to obey. Because—what about James Bickley, 6? Was he the boy with hair the color of a Sunkist orange who hadn’t quite made it to the rest room and stood in the lobby, crying, inconsolable, as a wet blotch appeared on the front of his pants?

Another terrible question that he could not avoid:

Am I to blame?

He was not sure whether he had spoken aloud. He clung to the words Commissioner Polansky had spoken after Detective Cutter had brandished the newspaper: “You are not being charged with anything, John Paul.”

John Paul had looked immediately at the detective, but did not see any mercy or gentleness in those hard eyes.

At that moment, the questioning had been interrupted
by Ellie, a kindly nurse, who said that it was time for John Paul’s treatment. Winking at John Paul, rescuing him from the clutches of the investigators. “We’ll be back,” Detective Cutter promised as he placed the newspaper on the bed, his words like a threat lingering in the air.

Now John Paul returned to the newspaper, forcing himself to read again the story of the balcony’s collapse—the fire, the smoke, the panic, the heroic efforts to rescue the children, the words at times having no meaning, as if his mind refused to translate the nightmarish parade of letters into actual words.

His own name leaped from the page:

What about Mr. Zarbor? he wondered.

He searched the story and found the following paragraphs:

John Paul reassembled the newspaper, inserting pages that had fallen aside, folding it neatly, absently, his hands working independently of his mind, his mind having itself become a haunted theater where the balcony crashed again and again, crushing the children below.

Why
had
the balcony collapsed?

Too old, too loaded with junk, he told himself.

Did the fire weaken the floor, causing whatever supported the balcony to break loose?

Was the fire to blame?

Look who started the fire.

Me, he cried silently.

Me. Me. Me. Me
.

Nighttime. Stillness pervaded in the room. No hum or beeping of the monitor. The padding of rubber soles in the corridors as the nurses glided to and from the rooms. Venetian blinds shuttered against the outside darkness.

Television voices, muted and distant, in the air, his own set suspended high in a corner of the room, like a huge blind cyclops. The monotonous voice on the intercom summoning doctors.
Dr. Conroy
 … 
Dr. Tibbets … call Central
 … Moments of sudden silence in which he could hear the soft
ding
as the elevator doors out in the corridor opened and closed.

He had dozed fitfully, dipping beneath the surface and then rising suddenly, aware of dreams but unable to recall them, only the mood, the aura, the mood black, the aura sad and dismal. All that he could remember of the dreams was the rain falling, falling everywhere, and suddenly turning to silver and then red and then from red to blood.

Emerging from yet another half-shaped dream, vestiges of sleep tugging at his eyelids, he saw an apparition at the doorway. A ghost. No, not a ghost, as he half-raised himself, squinting, but a woman in a gray raincoat, long gray hair framing her gray face, her eyes not gray but fiercely black, burning out at him, as if something behind her eyes had caught fire.

She lifted her right hand and pointed a long withering finger at him.

“You!”

He had never heard such hate and loathing in a single syllable. Then again:

“You.” Vomiting the word.

Slowly advancing into the room, her feet dragging as if she were slogging through water, she screamed: “Murderer …” Voice raspy, hoarse. The finger pointing accusingly, her face taut, terrible.

“You killed my Joey!”

He closed his eyes, as if by doing so he could rid himself of this apparition, this wretched figure from a nightmare world. Eyes tightly closed, which instantly brought on a headache, the painful tightening of his skull. Through the pain he heard other voices and rushing feet, and opened his eyes to see the woman struggling in the arms of nurses, pinning her down, the woman moaning, awful sounds coming from her, lamenting, sobbing, eyes still wild like pain made visible. Twisting and writhing, she was taken from the room, half-carried, half-dragged until, at the door, she sagged in the arms of a huge nurse and allowed herself to be taken away, wailing miserably.

Later, Ellie came in, bringing a basin and towel, to bathe his face. She was younger than his mother, but her hair was completely white.

Before he could ask her anything, she said: “Don’t let that upset you, John Paul. Poor woman. Her son died at the Globe. She can’t cope.” While she caressed his cheeks, his neck, his forehead with the damp warm cloth.

“But she thinks that I—”

“Hush, hush,” Ellie said. “You did nothing. But she’s lost all sense of reality. Relax, now. Float. I’ll give you a pill to let you sleep.”

But I did something wrong.

The matches.

The fire.

In the confusion of waking suddenly and the woman’s invading the room, he had forgotten the fire and how he had started it.

He doubted he would sleep again even if the nurse gave him a pill.

The next day, the truth was made plain. A gathering in his room: his mother and father, arms around each other near the window, Commissioner Polansky and Cutter, the sharp-voiced man, near his bed. He listened as they spoke, nodding, understanding, head clear, pain gone, but a terrible heaviness in his chest—not his chest but his heart or whatever place or space inside of him where guilt or loneliness became real. Anyway, he listened. He did not mention that small space to anyone.

He nodded, clinging to the words of the commissioner: he was not responsible for the tragedy. Yes, it had been unwise of him to light that match in the dark, in that cluttered balcony, but the fire had had nothing to do with the collapse of the balcony. In fact, the flames had sent a warning, an alarm that something was wrong in the theater, causing some children to flee immediately, probably saving their lives. “You were not to blame,” Adam Polansky said. “But …”

But.
That dangerous, sly word, slinking into the conversation like a tiny snake of accusation.

“But somebody was to blame for the collapse,” Detective Cutter interrupted. “And this is where you come in. Where you must tell the truth.”

For some reason, John Paul thought of Mr. Zarbor. Poor Mr. Zarbor. Was he still in that state of shock the newspapers mentioned?

“Mr. Zarbor …,” he said.

“Exactly,” the detective said. “You must not protect
anyone. Mr. Zarbor or anyone else. You must tell the truth, not hide anything.”

But he wasn’t hiding anything.

Detective Cutter spoke again: “Did Mr. Zarbor ever mention the condition of the balcony to you?”

“No. I put things up there. Boxes, stuff from backstage. I did not go up there when I didn’t have to. I did not like the balcony.”

“Why not?”

“It was spooky, dark. Sometimes I heard noises—like rats running around …”

“Are you sure it was rats?”

“I thought it was.” His headache was returning with a bang, like a nail being driven into his head.

“Could the sound have been something else?” “Like what?”

“Like the sound you heard just before the balcony collapsed. There’s reason to believe that the balcony had begun a slow collapse before the day of the show. Did Mr. Zarbor ever mention the condition of the balcony before that day?”

Hadn’t he asked that question a minute ago?

“No.” A hammer was pounding the nail home, high at the back of his skull.

At that moment, his father intervened.

“I think my son’s in pain,” he said. “Enough.”

The detective stepped back toward the doorway and the commissioner came to John Paul’s bedside. “Try to get some rest,” he said, kindly, gently.

“But think about those questions,” Detective Cutter
called over his shoulder as he left the room. His voice was not kind or gentle.

The next morning, a small man, so short he was barely visible over the wagon he pushed, paused at the doorway and asked John Paul if he wanted to buy any candy or gum, magazines or newspapers.

“If you’ve got no money pay me later,” he called cheerfully.

“Can I buy a newspaper?” John Paul asked, immediately regretting it. He did not really want to read more newspaper stories about the Globe. “My father left money in the drawer.” Nodding toward the bureau next to the bed.

“My name’s Mac,” the man said. “I’m three feet nine and used to be in the circus. What a juggler! I used to perform at the Globe. Before your time. How old do you think I am?”

All of this while he brought over the newspaper, took the money from the drawer, deposited change in the drawer and handed the newspaper to John Paul.

“I don’t know,” John Paul said, glad for his company, for someone in his room who was not a doctor or nurse or investigator.

“Fifty-one. Everybody says I don’t look a day over thirty.” Shaking his head: “Too bad about Mr. Zarbor. He was a nice man. Had a soft spot for jugglers …”