The Pet

FIFTEEN

A patrol car was parked askew at the boulevard exit, and Don started for it at Quintero’s gentle urging. Tracey was already gone, looking through the rear window of a departing cruiser, one palm pressed against the glass, her face obscured in glaring fragments by the streetlights sweeping over it. Then, as a patrolman opened the door and gestured him in, he looked up the avenue and saw two other police cars angled across the mouth of his street, lights spinning while three officers put up a sawhorse barricade.

“Mr. Quintero, what’s going on?”

“Don, please,” Quintero said.

Don gaped, then looked in the opposite direction and saw the cars, the lights, a handful of people walking hurriedly toward his block. With a cry no one heard he yanked his arm free and started to run, heedless of the traffic as he bolted across to the islands, crashed through the shrubs and out the other side. A bus swerved barely in time to avoid him. Quintero shouted several yards behind.

At the mouth of the street he vaulted the barricade and ran a dozen feet before slowing and taking to the right-hand pavement, walking stiff-legged, his arms flapping at his sides.

In the yards his neighbors were standing alone and in small groups, porch lights brightly white behind them and masking their faces; in the street was a fire engine angled in toward his driveway, and at the curb were two cruisers whose radios filled the air with abrupt bursts of static, whose lights bounced off the dead branches, flared off the windows, while an ambulance van backed onto the lawn.

He walked on, half-stumbled, until a policeman grabbed his arm and tried to turn him around. He protested and was released when Quintero barked an order; he breathed through his mouth as he stepped off the curb and stared at his house — at the ragged hole of the bay window, at the lamps on in every room with shadows on the walls, in the garage, at the roof bleached by spotlights on the sides of the cruisers.

“What?” he gasped to Quintero when the man reached his side and laid a hand on his shoulder. “What?”

A siren. Firemen standing around the engine, smoking while they waited for the word to go home. Flashlights. Voices in raised-whisper instructions.

“What, Mr. Quintero?” he said, turning to Tracey’s father with anguish in his eyes.

“It is all still very confused,” the man said, trying to watch Don and the house at the same time. “Someone — Mr. Delfield, you know him, I think — saw smoke coming out of the house a little while ago. He called us, he called the fire department.”

White-jacketed men backed out the front door, stretcher in hand, on the stretcher a green plastic bag tied shut at the top.

“Oh, my god!” Don sobbed, and took a step to run.

“No!” Quintero snapped. “Not your mother, Don.”

It was the voice, not the hand, that stopped him again; it was the voice, not the hand that told him who it was.

In his house. That bastard had been with his mother, in his house.

“H-how?”

Quintero scratched his thick mustache nervously. “I don’t know. Sergeant Verona is inside. I was for a while, and I saw no fire, nothing charred. Just …” He gestured toward the body being loaded into the van. As it pulled away and another took its place, he said, “Do you know about Tar?”

Don nodded as his hope to believe this wasn’t real failed.

“Like that.”

The window was smashed inward, and as he watched, a section of frame wobbled and broke free and tumbled to the ground.

A man in a tuxedo started up the front walk, and paused when he saw Don by the curb. He waved and hurried over, and Don felt his stomach begin to lurch. It was Dr. Naugle, and he was talking before he even reached them.

“… called me and I came right over. Donald, are you all right? Were you—” He looked to Quintero, who shook his head. Then he put a hand to Don’s face and felt the cold, the sweat, felt the chest begin to heave. “Bring him over here,” he told the policeman, and for the moment Don didn’t argue — he let them walk him to the curb, where he was forced to sit down, forced to look over his shoulder at the wreckage of the house, at the station wagon still in the drive. “I’ll be right back, Don. Stay right here. Can you hear me, Don? You stay right here.”

Don thought he nodded; he wasn’t sure.

“Mom?”

“She is not hurt,” Quintero assured him. “I promise you, she is not hurt.”

“Then where …”

“In her bedroom. The door …” He looked around, searching for someone to tell him to stop, to tell him this boy had no right to know how his mother was found behind a barricaded door that had been almost bashed in.

“Dad,” Don said suddenly, straightening and looking around.

“He’s not here.”

He stood and tried to pick out his father’s face in the crowd growing on the lawns opposite the house. The voices were clearer now, subdued and excited, a post-game show to keep their spirits high. “Where’s my father?” he demanded. “Why isn’t he here?”

“Don,” Quintero said, seeing the look on his face. “Don, do you know what happened here? Do you know who did this?”

“No!” he said, angry he should be asked, afraid he would be blamed. “No, I was with Tracey since the game ended.”

A voice stopped him. He spun to his right and saw Norman skirting the fire engine, nearly tripping over a length of thick hose being wound into place. He ran, and they collided, and his father hugged him tightly, asking over his shoulder what was going on?

“Where were you?” Don asked into the man’s neck. “God, Dad, where were you?”

Norman thumped his back a couple of times and turned him away, keeping one hand around his shoulder. “I was at the Starlite with the goddamn mayor. Your mother was supposed to — Sergeant Quintero, what’s going on? Will somebody please tell me what the hell is going on?”

The ambulance attendants reappeared at the door, Dr. Naugle beside them. Joyce was on the stretcher, only her face visible above the sheet; Norman brushed the police aside as he ran for his wife.

Don started after him, then turned to Quintero. “You said she was all right,” he accused through a spray of spittle.

“She is not hurt,” the man repeated.

“Then why …?”

The stretcher was wheeled to the ambulance’s back doors, and Norman watched helplessly as they lifted her in. Then he said a word to Naugle and returned to his son.

“She was sitting on the floor,” Quintero said, and said it a second time when Norman drew near. “Her eyes were open, but she was in shock. That is all I know, Mr. Boyd,” he said loudly when Norman started to question. “But there is still the matter of the other man. I—”

“Why didn’t you go with her?” Don asked his father. “Dad, why didn’t you go with her?”

Norman’s eyes were red-rimmed and puffed, the neck of his sweater sagging where he’d pulled on it. He looked back at Naugle standing by the van, then stiffened and Don saw Sergeant Verona making his way down the walk from the porch. The detective took his hat off when he saw the Boyds waiting, and turned it slowly in his hands.

“Who did it?” Norman demanded, one step short of grabbing the cop’s lapels. “Who the fuck did this to my house, to my wife? Was it Falcone? Did he—”

“I don’t know, Norm. I came as soon as I got word. Your wife obviously isn’t up to talking just yet, and the coroner there can only tell me Falcone was—” He stopped and looked at Don. “The place is a mess. It’s like a football team had practice in there with clubs and bats, for god’s sake.” He motioned to Quintero and they moved off, heads together.

“Dad?”

“She’s in shock, like he said,” Norman answered absently as he watched the two men conferring. “She’ll be all right. She’s just in shock. Jesus Christ, will you look at that house? They’d better the hell leave someone around to watch it or we’ll get stolen blind.”

Don moved off the verge into the lawn and stared in the window. The mantel was clear, one lamp’s shade was cockeyed, and he thought he could make out smears and stains on the back wall. A look to the policemen, the firemen climbing back onto their engine, their breath steaming, their coats rippling as the wind dropped under the trees to push down the road. His father came beside him and touched his arm.

“Jesus,” Norman said, staring at the house. “Jesus, it looks like somebody dropped a bomb on it.”

Don couldn’t think because there was too much to think, and he didn’t protest when he was pulled across to the van, helped into the van. Naugle was perched beside his mother; Norman came in behind and drew the doors shut.

He didn’t hear the siren wind up to a wailing; he didn’t see the barricades parting to let the ambulance through. He could only watch Joyce strapped under the sheet, all her hair pulled over one shoulder, an IV snaking from its stand to her hidden arm. Her eyes were closed, her complexion sallow, and every so often Dr. Naugle would pat a handkerchief to her forehead and touch a finger to her neck to check on her pulse.

“Jesus,” Norman whispered. “Jesus, what a mess.”

The waiting room was small and filled with sculpted plastic chairs, a single plastic couch, a low table stacked with magazines worn and some tattered as if they’d been read. Don stood at the window overlooking the main entrance, one foot tapping arhythmically on the checkered tiled floor. Every few seconds he wiped a hand under his nose or buried it in his hair; every few seconds he would turn to the swinging doors and stare down the hallway toward his mother’s room.

The building was quiet. The passage of a nurse or doctor was soundless, and even when one stopped to speak to another, he could see their lips moving and couldn’t hear a whisper.

He wanted to leave.

He didn’t want to know what Joyce would say when she regained consciousness and saw where she was; he didn’t want her talking about a horse or Falcone, didn’t want her judged crazy when she insisted on the truth.

And she would be. He knew it, and all of it would be his fault just because he had tried to get things running his way.

And the most terrible part wasn’t the dying. That’s what frightened him — it wasn’t the dying. Something had gone wrong, and he had somehow lost control. If, he thought with the heels of his hands to his eyes, he had even had control in the first place.

His arms lowered slowly.

He stared blindly out the window.

“Who did it?” Norman asked quietly behind him.

Don jumped and spun around, leaning back defensively against the sill. His father was jacketless now, more grey in the hair falling over his brow. “What?”

Norman glanced at the window, at the floor, and leaned a bit closer. “I’ll bet it was some of your friends, wasn’t it?”

“Friends? Dad, what are you talking about? What friends?”

Norman’s fist bunched at his sides. “What the hell did you do to Pratt this time, huh? What did you say to him now?”

“Nothing! I don’t understand. I don’t know what you mean.”

Norman grunted with the effort to open his hands, and dropped onto the couch. “Neither do I, son,” he said wearily. “Jesus, neither do I. This is …” A forearm wiped hard over his face, a hand plucked at his shirtfront. “Your mother is going to be all right. She’s … like Naugle said, she’s in shock.”

Don peered through the door panes. “Did she say anything?”

Norman shook his head. “About who did it? No. Verona’s in there now, hoping she’ll come around soon. But she isn’t going to. Naugle says it’s going to take a while.”

“Verona? The police?”

Norman leaned forward and picked up a magazine, flipped the pages and dropped it. “Yep. Why not?” He laughed bitterly. “I have drinks with the mayor and we’re talking … well, we’re talking, and the next thing I know your mother is in here and Verona is calling me from the school because Hedley—”

Don fumbled to a chair. “Mr. Hedley?”

“When it rains, it pours, and don’t you ever forget it,” he said in disgust. “D’Amato found him in the auditorium after the game. His body was on the stage, hidden in the wings.” Then he slammed his palms to the table, looked up and glared. “This is crazy! What other town gets rid of one madman and immediately replaces him with another?” He looked around the room helplessly. “It’s nuts. It doesn’t make any sense. Jesus Christ, you try to protect your family, your future, and what help do you get, huh? You don’t get any, that’s what. You get shit is what you get.”

Don pushed out of the chair.

Norman looked up at him, eyes dark with rage. “If I find out Pratt had anything to do with this, I’ll kill him, you hear me?”

“Brian doesn’t kill people,” Don said, almost shouting. “How can you—”

“It could have been an accident.”

“What?”

“Sure. The prick could have … well, it could have been something that went wrong, you know.”

“Dad—”

Norman wasn’t listening. “Damned Falcone. Can you believe it, right in my own house? It’s crazy.” He nodded, agreeing with himself. “It’s goddamn crazy!”

Don moved to the door and pushed it open.

“Where are you going!”

“Air,” he said. “I need some air.”

“Your mother’s in there. Don’t you care that your mother’s in there? We have to be here when she wakes up.”

“All I need is a little air,” he said, and let the door swing shut behind him, let his feet take him across the corridor to the elevator. He pressed the button. He watched the doors slide open in balky stages. He stepped in just as Sergeant Verona left his mother’s room. The detective raised a finger for him to wait a minute, but Don let the doors close and sagged against the rear wall.

He gave the doors a slightly skewed grin.

In a way it was kind of funny. His father was right in blaming him for what happened, but for all the wrong reasons. But that he was blaming him in the first place wasn’t funny at all.

The cage thumped to a halt, the doors opened, and he blinked at the lower floor’s glare as he followed a short hall into the main lobby. A man ran a polisher over the floors, the machine humming softly; a young woman at the reception desk was reading a book and smoking. Neither of them looked at him as he crossed the gleaming floor, and he could see no police or security guards on duty either at the reception desk or at the revolving doors as he pushed through to the outside.

Cold; it was cold, and he leaned his head back to drink the night air.

“There you are!”

He started and half-turned to retreat inside when, suddenly, Tracey was there and her arms were around him.

“I told Mother to go to hell,” she said, half-laughing, half-crying. “She said I had to stay home and I told her to go to hell. God, am I gonna get killed when I get back.”

Hesitantly his arms went around her; gratefully he lowered his face to rest against her hair. He didn’t care if anyone was watching, but he would have killed the first person who tried to break them up.

Another hug and she said, “C’mon, I want to talk to you.” She took his arm and guided him along the arc of the circular drive leading on and off the hospital grounds. To the right was the visitors’ parking lot, empty and barely lighted by three-foot pillars at the corners, and they crossed it without speaking, Don only once looking up at the building to see if he could pick out his mother’s room.

At the far, darkest side they found a concrete bench under a half-dozen skeletal cherry trees and sat down, staring across the empty blacktop to the brick posts that marked the hospital’s entrance. Across the street there were houses as black as the near-leafless trees that marked the edge of the sidewalk. No cars passed. No horns sounded. It was a hospital zone, and no celebrations were wanted.

“How’s your mother?” she asked then, covering his hand with one of hers.

Haltingly, pausing frequently to clear his throat and stretch his neck to shake loose the obstructions he found there, he explained what the police had told him and what his father had said about Mr. Hedley. Then he told her what he knew had really happened, what they wouldn’t believe even if his mother had seen it and could talk.

“But I didn’t do it!” he added heatedly, his insistence almost begging. “Trace, you know me, I wouldn’t wish my own mother …” He remembered. Suddenly, like a sharp elbow in the stomach, he remembered.

“Don?”

“My father wanted to know if it was one of my friends.”

“What? I don’t believe it.”

“I’m not lying, Trace. He wanted to know if I’d said or done something to good old Brian to make this happen.”

“He couldn’t have been serious. I mean, he’s worried and all, Don. He’s not thinking straight.”

He wasn’t sure, and was no longer sure he cared. “He was with the mayor, can you believe it? He was having drinks with the mayor while my mother almost died!”

“Mr. Falcone did,” she reminded him softly.

“I know.” He turned to her urgently. “And you know why she didn’t die?”

Tracey shook her head, changed her mind, and nodded. “The park.”

He leaned back and looked up at the sky, wondering what had happened to the rain, what had happened to the thunder. It had been all figured out, and now it was all changed. Even in his own world the Rules didn’t stay the same.

“But they do,” she said, and he blinked before realizing he had spoken aloud. “That … that thing, Don. It’s yours.”

“But I didn’t tell it to kill—”

“I know, I know,” she said. “I know, but it’s more than you think.”

His eyes closed slowly; he was tired. Ashamed because suddenly he was so tired all he wanted to do was curl up in her lap and fall asleep.

“I shouldn’t believe any of this anyway,” she said quietly, as if talking to herself. “It’s not possible. I know what I saw, and I know what you said, but it’s still not possible.”

“It is,” he said, watching stinging colors swirl across his eyelids. “Jesus, it is.”

“I thought about it all the way home, and all the way over here. I thought about you making me see things that weren’t really there. Like one of your stories. And I thought about how I wanted to help you so much that I’d even see King Kong if you told me to.”

Her breath came in harsh pants; he didn’t open his eyes.

“I thought about it, but Don, I saw it. So … so I thought about it like it was real, and what you said about it — it isn’t right, Don. It isn’t right.”

His head swiveled slowly. “It wants to help me, don’t you understand that? It came because I needed help, and it helps me. But I swear to god I didn’t say anything about—”

“No, Don,” she said, turning her head as well. “No, it’s protecting you, and that’s not the same.”

Norman didn’t think he could take another nasty surprise. He slumped back on the couch and stared at the acoustical tiles on the ceiling, only a flutter of a hand or a slight jerk of his head letting the detective know he was still listening. Though why he should, he didn’t know. Verona, for all that he was an obvious hard worker, wasn’t anywhere near finding the answer to this mess.

“All right,” he said finally, rolling to sit upright. “All right, Tom, I’ve heard enough. It’s crazy and you know it.” And: crazy, he thought, is getting to be the word around here.

“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.” Verona rubbed at a dark pouch under one eye. “But what am I supposed to think? I know it’s hard, especially now, but what in god’s name am I supposed to think?” He held up one hand and pointed with the other to a finger. “The lab tests show that Don didn’t hit that man with the tree branch like he said he did. There was nothing to indicate that Boston had been struck by a car. Adam Hedley looked just like them, and I’ll be damned if I’ll believe that a car drove into your school, down the aisle, jumped the stage, and ran him over. Then there’s Falcone—”

“Oh, Christ, Tom, will you listen to yourself?” Norman picked up a magazine as if he were going to throw it. “One — you can’t find the tests. Two — by your own admission there was nothing to show Boston hadn’t been hit by a car either. And I refuse to believe that my son, through some mysterious means, managed to subdue two men and a kid and bash them to death, one of them right in the middle of Park Boulevard.” He leaned back heavily. “Besides, he was home when Hedley was killed, and he was with Tracey Quintero when Falcone …” He choked. He refused to say it one more time.

Verona threw up his hands, more in frustration than in defeat, and Norman almost felt sorry for him. In fact, he knew he did. The man was grabbing for any straws he could find, and only Don’s encounter with the Howler and those elusive lab tests gave him any sort of connection.

“Joyce,” Verona said, “spoke his name several times.”

“Well, Jesus, man, he’s her son!”

Joyce had slipped into a deep sleep at last, and Naugle had summoned them both into the room when she began muttering in a dream.

“She also said ‘a horse,’ if you recall.” His smile was brief and mirthless. “Tell you what — I’ll go for the car in the school if you’ll go for the horse in my house.”

“She could have been talking about drugs.”

“For god’s sake, get serious!”

He was tired. He wanted to go home. The only decent news he had had all evening was that John Delfield had gotten some of the neighbors to help him erect a temporary shield of plywood across the smashed bay window. He reminded himself to drop the man a note, perhaps enclose a check to reimburse him for the materials.

A door squeaked open and Naugle came in, bringing Norman to his feet.

“I gave her an injection,” the doctor said. “Otherwise, there’s no change.”

“A shot? What for?”

“She wasn’t asleep deeply enough,” Naugle said. “She’s having some pretty hairy nightmares, and I don’t want her any weaker than she is.”

“Great,” Norman said, dropping back to his seat. “That’s just great.”

“You might as well go home.”

Norman almost agreed before shaking his head. He wanted to stay. If he left, he might check to see if Chris was still home, still in her bed, still … He shook his head and shuddered, and Naugle patted his shoulder.

A car pulled into the parking lot, blinding them with its headlamps. Don threw up a hand and cursed softly, but Tracey only patted his shoulder and stood.

“I think it’s Jeff,” she said, squinting as the beams swung away from them and the car stopped.

“Jeff?”

She started off the grass. “Yeah. I called for a ride home. I sure wasn’t going to ask my father.”

“Well, I would have taken you, you know,” he protested, following her to the door. “God, Tracey—”

She turned and put a hand to his chest. “Not now, Don, okay?”

“But what are we going to do? About—”

She sucked in her cheeks, bit down on the inside. “I don’t know. I mean … I don’t know.”

The door opened and Jeff, his glasses catching the light and turning his eyes white, smiled ruefully when Don leaned down to peer in.

“Hey, man, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. It’s … yeah, thanks.”

Tracey slid in and took hold of his hands, pulled him close and kissed him. “There,” she whispered with a small satisfied smile. “So there.”

“But I need you,” he pleaded, ignoring Jeff’s puzzled look. “What am I going to do now? I need you, Tracey!”

“I know. And I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? If I don’t go now, I won’t get out of my house until my funeral.” She kissed him again, quickly. “Please, Don, just stay here, okay? It’ll be all right if you just stay here. I’ll be back tomorrow, first thing.”

“Promise,” he said tightly.

“Promise.”

He didn’t like it, but he could do nothing about it. She was right, and he knew it, but he didn’t have to like it. As he didn’t have to like giving a quick report on his mother to Jeff, who kept leaning over Tracey and asking him questions until, at last, she poked him on the shoulder back behind the wheel.

Then they were gone.

The car swung around and they were gone, and Don tasted the memory of her kiss, the touch of her hand, and felt the frustration begin to rise in his chest.

She should have stayed!

If she loved him …

He looked away, looked back to the drive.

Love him?

But how the hell could she love him and still hurt him this way, leaving him when he needed her to keep from going crazy, leaving him when he needed her to help him escape?

His hands slammed into his jacket pockets and he watched his breath turn to fog.

She had to be right, he thought then. She had to be.

The wind tangled in the cherry trees, the thin branches snapping as if torn from their trunks.

But she should be here, he argued; she shouldn’t leave me alone when I need her the most. She shouldn’t! He raised a fist and only with an effort did he bring it to his mouth instead of shaking it at the image of Jeff’s car on the drive.

Damn you, Jeff! God damn you, you’re supposed to be my goddamned friend!

The wind keened over the hospital. A flare of water rose beneath a light, another on the drive, and he felt a raindrop on his hand.

And heard a hoofbeat behind him, soft on the grass.

He looked down at the tarmac and saw the ghost of a fog slip between his feet.

Turning slowly, he watched the cherry trees dance, narrowing his eyes against the dust the wind raised.

Then he saw the spots of green floating in the air, saw the sparks rising, saw the shadow of the stallion as it stood there unmoving.

His legs nearly gave way, but the stallion tossed its head, and he staggered toward it, ignoring the pressure growing in his chest, ignoring the needled stinging building in his eyes. He stepped onto the grass, and he reached out a hand.

And the neck was warm, and it was smooth, and the nose when it nuzzled into his palm was the comfort of velvet.

“God,” he whispered, neither a prayer nor a name.

It whickered softly, and when he turned his head sideways, he looked into the emerald fire that glowed out of the fog.

“He took her away,” he said. “He took her away, and she’s supposed to love me.” He slipped his hands into the mane untouched by the mist and stroked the neck again. A bubble in his chest around a nugget of fire. “You know what?” he said softly. “Dad thinks I did it — the house, Mr. Falcone.” He laid his cheek against the warm black mane. “The creep.” The bubble grew, and there was heat in his lungs. “The bastard. And you know what else? Do you know what else? That cop is back, and he keeps looking at me like I’m some kind of freak.” It was hard to breathe, and there in the dark were swirling spots of red. “It was my medal, my time, and Brian ruined it. Donny the fucking Duck!” He backed away, and the bubble burst. “I can’t even get a stupid medal without somebody taking it away! What the hell do I have to do, huh? What the hell do I have to do?”

He turned to walk away, turned back and pointed at the street, his arm so rigid it began to tremble.

“And she goes away with him, just when I need her! What the hell kind of love is that, huh? What the goddamned hell kind of love is that when you …”

The fog. And the red. And the black shadow in the trees.

“What am I going to do?” he asked. “What am I going to do?”

A hoof pawed at the ground (greenfire), the eyes narrowed, the head raised.

He stepped away, and blinked, and suddenly knew what he had said when the red vanished and the fire died away.

“No, wait a minute,” he said, and stretched out a hand. “God, no, I didn’t mean—”

It was gone.

Don’s mouth opened, and no sound came out.

It was gone, the fog swirling around black laced with fire, and there was no question, now, about what Tracey meant.

It wasn’t helping him at all. It was protecting him against hurt, and it didn’t make any difference whether he willed it or not. When he hurt, he was rid of whatever had caused it. Imagined or not.

Tracey? Oh Jesus, please not Tracey!

Anguish twisted his features, fear jerked him around, and whatever he cried was lost in the wind, and the sheeting cold rain that bore down on his head.