Gone Too Far (37 page)

Apparently that was only a small part of the program. Some meetings were twelve-step meetings, some were women-only meetings, some were meetings that focused on reading from a special book, and most were closed to everyone but recovering alcoholics.

Walking in and flashing a picture and asking if anyone knew Mary Lou Starrett was not getting the response she’d hoped for. It wasn’t getting any kind of response at all. Except for being asked to leave by two very large men wearing motorcycle leather.

But Sam spoke their language. He pulled them aside and in very short order had them looking at the picture of Mary Lou and Haley that Jules had sent to Alyssa, thanks to the Internet and a brief stop at Kinko’s. But they both shook their heads no. And then Sam was walking back toward her, shaking his head, too.

He’d taken off his suit jacket because of the heat. He’d actually sewn the sleeve back on with neat, tiny stitches as they drove down from Gainesville, using a needle and thread they’d picked up at a convenience store during a stop for gas and coffee and peanut M&M’s.

His pants were a little dusty—he’d never managed to brush them off completely after wrestling with her in the back hallway of the Wal-Mart. His sleeves were rolled up, but one was higher than the other, and his tie was loosened to the point of ridiculousness.

Aside from the dust and disarray, his clothes weren’t that different from those of men who worked in offices all over this city. But were he and a businessman to stand side by side, Alyssa would have had no problem identifying the Navy SEAL. It was evident in the way Sam stood, the way he moved, the way he breathed.

“Hank and Roy have been running this particular meeting for the past four years,” he told her now. “They don’t remember seeing her. And they would have. They’re protective of the women in their group. They keep an eye out for thirteen-Steppers.” At her blank look, he explained. “Men who pretend to be part of the program but are really just trolling for vulnerable women.”

“Wow, that’s a shitty thing to do.”

“No kidding.” He led the way out of the building, back toward the car. “I don’t know if we’re on the right track here. It’s possible Mary Lou stopped attending meetings after she moved in with her sister. It’s possible she was already lying low back then. I mean, think about it. She left California the day after the Coronado attack. She must’ve known her prints were on that weapon.” He shook his head. “I just hope wherever she is, she’s not drinking again.”

Alyssa suspected Mary Lou wasn’t—because dead people couldn’t drink. But she kept that to herself as she unlocked the car and they got in.

Sam glanced briefly at the map, finding their next location, before he started the car. “So you want to hear what’s been bugging me about the Ihbraham Rahman thing?”

“Okay.”

He shot her a look. “You think this is a waste of time, don’t you?”

“Sam, I said okay.”

“You think they’re dead,” he accused her.

“I’m trying to be supportive, but . . .” She sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m . . . Look, just tell me.”

“Two things,” Sam said. “First is that I don’t believe Mary Lou would get involved with a man who wasn’t white. So whatever her connection to Rahman was, it wasn’t romantic or sexual. I’m virtually certain of that. She had strong opinions about racial separation.” He laughed in disgust. “I don’t know why I just don’t say it. She was racist, all right? I didn’t find out until a couple of months after we were married.”

Alyssa laughed softly as she looked at him in the light from the dashboard. “Oh, Sam. That must’ve hurt, huh?”

“It made her completely unattractive to me,” he admitted. “I couldn’t get past it. I tried talking to her about it, tried to widen her narrow-minded view—it just came from ignorance—but she just never wanted to talk to me about
any
thing.” He sighed. “
That
was when our marriage ended. I swear, I should’ve filed for divorce right then and there, but I was too stupid to realize it. Instead, I just stopped trying. It wasn’t conscious. I didn’t even know I gave up. I was so freaking depressed and . . . I
thought
I was still trying, but I was just kidding myself. Like I’m really going to be able to make a relationship with this woman work?”

“That would have been a hard one for me, too,” Alyssa told him. “I mean, flip flop it around a little. I’ve dated black men who are really vocal about how much they dislike interracial relationships. They start in on how their little sister better never date a white man, and I’m thinking,
Hello.
My mother was someone’s little sister, and she
married
a white man, and if she hadn’t, she never would have had me.” She shook her head. “Needless to say, there’s usually no second date.” She shot him a look. “See how smart it is to have a policy about never having sex with strangers? You never wind up married to someone you don’t want to talk to, let alone live with.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t need any policies like that anymore,” he said. “Because until I have the operation to remove my testicles from my sinuses, I won’t be able to have sex again. Which really isn’t that big a deal since it’s been so long since I’ve had sex, I’ve forgotten what it’s like.”

Alyssa snorted. “If you’re looking for sympathy, Starrett, you’re looking in the wrong place.”

“I’m not,” he said. “I’m just trying to be funny and failing. But there was nothing funny about my marriage. I mean, shit, the whole thing was a tragedy from the start. I didn’t love her, but I honestly did try to like her. But after finding out that . . .”

Sam stopped at a red light and turned to look at her. “She said something about Jazz, about how hard it must be for me to take orders from him, and I’m telling you, I didn’t get it at first,” he told her. “I honestly thought she had a problem with him because his demeanor is so, you know, grim and serious. I thought she was talking about the fact that it seems like he never smiles, but when I realized that it was because he’s black, I was blown away.”

The car in front of him was moving, but much too slowly. Sam signaled to move into the left lane so he could pass.

He glanced at Alyssa after that. “I didn’t mean to go off on a rant. I just wanted you to know why I’m having such trouble with her alleged connection to Rahman.”

“Don DaCosta did call him Mary Lou’s
friend
,” Alyssa pointed out. “And he was obviously looking for her.”

“Well, I don’t think she’d be unfriendly to him,” Sam said. “She wasn’t like my father.”

He was silent for a moment as he drove. But then he said, “You know, I’ve been thinking about the fact that Rahman was nearly killed in Coronado. That he got jumped by people in the crowd who were afraid he was armed. There were plenty of other people of Middle Eastern descent who got tackled during that attack. But they were sat on. They weren’t beaten nearly to death.”

“It happens sometimes in a crowd,” Alyssa said. “People lose control. Mob mentality, you know?”

“Yeah, okay, maybe,” Sam said. “But what if it wasn’t an accident that
he
was the one to get beaten nearly to death? One possibility is that he really
was
involved with the attack, and the FBI just hasn’t found the connection yet. But maybe someone set him up to be killed there, in Coronado. Because what if Rahman can ID the
real
terrorists—just like Donny and Mary Lou? Maybe Rahman knows this light-haired guy Donny mentioned—this alien that Don saw all the time in my driveway. You know, the same guy he saw following Rahman yesterday. Jesus, I don’t—” He stopped. Cleared his throat. Kept his eyes on the road. “Donny never hurt anyone. He was—” He stopped again. “He was a good guy. God, his family must be devastated.”

Alyssa didn’t dare touch him. “We don’t have to talk about this right now.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “We do. Because I want to catch this fucker and watch him fry.” He was holding tightly to the steering wheel. “Lys, what if Rahman’s not the tango? What if it’s Donny’s alien, the blond man—a white guy, right, so Mary Lou’s okay with sleeping with him—who brought that weapon onto the base in Mary Lou’s car?

“Maybe Rahman’s not AWOL,” Sam continued. “Maybe he’s dead. Maybe he’s in the trunk of some car somewhere, with a bullet in his head.”

Alyssa already had her phone out and open and was speed-dialing Jules.

She needed Max to hear Sam’s latest theory about Ihbraham Rahman, but she was still too angry to call him herself.

“Why not?”

“Well, to start, he hates my freaking guts.”

The baseball coach also taught history, and Noah knew that he and Ringo had clashed many times over what Ringo insisted were simplified, rich white men’s propagandistic versions of the past.

Noah set his backpack down by the stairs. “He’s not going to bring that with him onto the baseball field.”

“Want to bet?” Ringo muttered.

“You’re just paranoid.” Noah raised his voice. “Hey, we’re home!” He turned back. “Or scared.” He did a quick shuffle to get well out of Ringo’s reach. “You’re a girly man,” he said, imitating Hans and Franz from
Saturday Night Live
. “Too scared to try out for the high school baseball team, girly man?”

Roger cracked up. “Shut up, fuckhead!”

“Grandma!” Noah pretended to shout, knowing full well that Dot wasn’t wearing her hated hearing aid. “Ringo called me a
fuckhead
!” Laughing, he escaped Ringo’s skull duster by dashing down the hall to the kitchen.

“Don’t gallop in the house, young sir.” Ringo mimicked Walt’s deep voice as he followed.

“Seriously, Ringo,” Noah started to say, but then he stopped short, just in the doorway to the kitchen.

What the . . .?

“Seriously, Nos.” Ringo was behind him and didn’t see it. “If you honestly want to, I’ll go to the tryouts with you. God help us both, though.”

“Grampa?” Nos shouted, pushing past Ringo and bolting back toward the stairs.

“Holy fuck,” Ringo said as he saw it—an entire pot of bloodred tomato sauce spilled on the kitchen floor. Walt’s stool was overturned, as well as one of the kitchen chairs.

Noah took the stairs three at a time, heading for the upstairs bathroom, praying that Grandpa had burned himself cooking and that Grandma was with him in the bathroom, searching the medicine cabinet and cussing because she couldn’t find the aloe vera gel.

He could hear Ringo running through the first floor of the big house, shouting for Walt and Dot.

The bathroom was empty. All the bedrooms were, too.

Noah didn’t think of them as old, but they were. They were old, and old people died. Johnny Radford’s father had just had a fatal heart attack. And he had been younger than Walt.

Panic made his chest tight, but he forced it away as he clattered back down the stairs and pushed his way out the screen door.

Walt’s blue station wagon was still parked in the driveway.

Ringo was thinking along the same lines as Noah, and he’d already hopped the fence into the Leonards’ yard—an impressive feat that usually brought Mrs. L out of her house to chase them with her broom. She said she was tired of big boot prints in her flower bed, but that wasn’t Ringo’s fault, that was all Noah. It had been months since Ringo had failed to clear the garden.

As Noah took the long way around, Mrs. L met Ringo on the porch, wiping her hands on a dish towel.

“Please, ma’am, do you know where Walt and Dot went?” he asked.

“You missed the excitement by just half an hour,” she said, as Noah got to the gate. “Two ambulances, a firetruck, and three police cars.”

No.

“What happened?” Ringo asked. “Where are they?”

“Harris Methodist Hospital,” she told him. “I’m not really sure of the details. I think Mrs. Gaines fell or collapsed or something, and I guess Mr. Gaines called 911. I don’t know if it was a heart attack or what. But they got her out of here pretty fast. He went with her in the ambulance.”

Grandma.
Don’t let her be dead.

“Please, ma’am,” Noah called to Mrs. Leonard from the gate, “I know we’re not your favorite people in the world, but we really need to get to that hospital right away. Please, will you drive us?”

“I would if I could,” she said, “but Sherman has the car. He’ll be back around five-thirty. If you still need a ride then, just give me a shout.” She narrowed her eyes at Ringo. “But from now on use the gate.”

Noah looked at his watch. Five-thirty. It was barely even three.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Ringo said. “But I think we’ll try to find another ride.”

He headed for Noah and the gate at a dead run, and vaulted clear over the damn thing.

“
Use
the gate!” Mrs. L shouted after him. “Unlatch it. Walk through it. Like a human!”

“Let’s call the hospital,” Ringo said as they ran back to the house. “Find out what the hell’s going on.” He was trying to be reassuring, but Noah knew he was scared, too. “It’s probably nothing big. You know how sometimes old people fall and break a wrist or a hip? I’m sure she’s all right.”

“Breaking a hip is pretty big.” Noah grabbed the phone book from the shelf.

“Well, I don’t know that’s what happened.” Ringo picked up the phone. “What’s the number?”

Noah read it to him, then started cleaning up the tomato sauce while Ringo went through verbal contortions, trying to find out who he should talk to to learn Dot’s fate.

They needed to get to the hospital now. Not at five-thirty.
Now.

They could call Jolee, but it would take her just as long to get up here. Although, they needed to call her anyway to tell her Grandma was in the hospital. Noah grabbed a pencil from the cup on the kitchen desk and started one of Walt’s lists.
You can’t forget to do something if you write it down.
“Call Jolee.”

Who else could they call for a ride?

Ringo hung up the phone with a crash. “Those dickheads won’t give out any information about Aunt Dot over the telephone.”

They stared at each other.

Noah voiced what they both were wondering. “Do you think that means she’s dead?”

“Fuck, no!” Ringo said, but it was so obvious he was lying, Noah couldn’t help it. He started to cry.

“Hey, come on, Nos.” Ringo put his arms around him. “She probably just twisted her ankle.”

“Then why wouldn’t they just tell us that?”

“I don’t know! It’s probably some stupidass hospital policy. You know what Uncle Walt always says about bureaucracy. Let’s figure out a way to get to the hospital, okay? Then we can stop guessing.”

“I don’t know who to call,” Noah said. All the other neighbors were at work, except elderly Mrs. Jurgens, who had cataracts in both eyes.

“I’ll find us a ride.” Ringo had a look of sheer determination all over him. He pushed Noah toward the kitchen door. “Why don’t you go upstairs and get a bag and pack some of Walt and Dot’s stuff in it. You know, things they might need. Get Uncle Walter a change of clothes, in case he spilled that sauce on himself. And . . . and pack, you know, their toothbrushes and . . . and Walt’s razor. A warm pair of socks and a sweater for Dot, ’cause she’s always cold. And whatever book’s on her bedside table. Stuff like that.”

Noah nodded and went upstairs. Grandpa’s leather overnight bag was in the closet, and he quickly packed it and started back down the stairs.

He heard Ringo hang up the phone with a crash, heard him curse over and over. “Fuck, fuck,
fuck!
Why aren’t you home?”

Ringo picked up the phone again and dialed. “Be home, be home, be home . . .” he said. And then his next words made Noah freeze there on the bottom step of the stairs.

“Pop. It’s me. Roger.”

Ringo had actually called his father, to ask for a ride.

Noah sat down on the stairs. He hadn’t even realized that son of a bitch was in town this week. He should have recognized it, though. All of the signs were there. Ringo had disappeared during lunch—no doubt running home to make sure his mother was okay. Roger Starrett Senior had stopped beating the crap out of Ringo about a year ago, but Noah suspected that hunting season on his wife was still open.

Ringo’s father was so loud that, when combined with the extra-powerful speaker Walt had installed on the kitchen phone for Dot, his voice easily carried to where Noah sat.

“Well, now, I thought you was calling yourself Ringo or something equally foolish these days,” Starrett drawled.

“Noah and I need a ride to the hospital, sir,” Ringo told him. “You know I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t a matter of life or death—”

“You hurt?”

“No, sir. But Noah’s grandmother was taken to the hospital by an ambulance right before we got home from school—”

“You haven’t
come
home from school yet,” he said.

Unbelievable. Roger Starrett Senior knew good and goddamned well that Noah’s grandmother was his very own sister. Ringo had just told him she was in the hospital, and he was messing around with semantics.

“Excuse me, sir,” Ringo said instead of
Fuck you, you mean-spirited prick.
Noah couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He couldn’t believe Ringo was doing this for him. And it
was
for him. To get him a ride to that hospital, Ringo was willing to ask this man that he hated for a favor.

“I meant to say,” Ringo continued, “before we got to
Noah’s
house.”

“I thought I made it clear that I didn’t want you going over there.”

“Pop,” Ringo said, desperation making his voice crack. “Didn’t you hear what I told you? Aunt Dot might be
dying
.”

There was silence on the line, then, “Considering she’s been dead to me for forty years, it’s about time she was put in her grave—end the embarrassment she’s brought to her family. Get yourself on home, boy.
Now.
”

“I
am
home,” Ringo said quietly. “I won’t be bothering you anymore.”

He hung up the phone, and Noah heard him start to cry. He was trying not to, trying to hide it—typical of Roger.

Noah dried his own eyes on his sleeve, stood up, and went into the kitchen.

Ringo heard him coming and stuck his head under the kitchen faucet, letting the water run on his face and into his mouth.

“You okay?” Noah asked.

“Yeah.” Ringo pretended to be all right as he dried his face on the kitchen towel. “Lookit, I just had an idea. If I cut my hand open with one of Uncle Walt’s cooking knives, you could call an ambulance, and they’d take us to the hospital.”

He was serious.

Noah’s mouth was hanging open. “Roger, that’s completely insane.”

“So what? It’ll get us there. Fast.”

“I’m not going to let you do that,” Noah told him. “
Cut
yourself? It’s bad enough that you went and called your father—”

“Aw, shit, you heard that?” Ringo was beyond embarrassed.

“You shouldn’t have called him.”

“I thought . . .” He worked hard to keep from crying again. “Maybe he’d do something decent for once, you know?”

Noah did know. He knew that Roger was almost unbearably ashamed of his father, ashamed to be the man’s son.

“I mean, Jesus,” Ringo continued. “Even Darth Vader apologized to Luke for being such a dickhead.”

“Darth never gave Luke a ride to the hospital.”

“Luke wouldn’t have asked,” Ringo pointed out. “He didn’t need a ride anywhere. He had a speeder.” He stopped. “That’s it!”

“We’ll blow up the Death Star,” Noah mocked him, “and then when the ambulances come, we’ll get a ride to the hospital.”

Ringo laughed, which had been Noah’s intention. “Shut up, fuckhead, and help me find Uncle Walt’s car keys.”

They were, of course, in the key box.

Ringo held out his hand for them, but Noah didn’t hand them over. “This, too, is insane.”

“Everyone always says that we both look much older than fifteen.”

“Driving in a parking lot’s different than driving on the street,” Noah told him. “I wouldn’t want to do it.”

“Well, I would,” Ringo said with complete conviction. “I want to. If you want, I can go by myself and then call you from the hospital once I find out if Dot’s okay.”

Noah handed him the keys. “Like I’m going to let you do that.”

“I would,” Ringo said, heading for the door.

“Yeah, I know,” Noah said, hefting Walt’s bag and locking the door behind them.

They got into the car, and Ringo adjusted the seat and the mirrors, the way Walt had showed them.

He had to be scared shitless, just like Noah. But he put the key in the ignition, and turned it, and the engine roared to life. Ringo was going to get them to the hospital if it was the last thing he did.

“Luke Skywalker’s proof that paternity amounts to squat,” Noah told him. “And you are too my brother.”

“Fasten your seat belt,” Ringo said, and pulled out of the driveway.