Life Sentences (32 page)

At
some point during the night, Jack must've fallen asleep, because now here
he was, waking up with a startled jolt. The car smelled funny. He blinked
his crusty eyes. His cell phone was making a feeble sound, its battery
slowly dying. He clawed through the paperwork and fast-food wrappers scattered
over the front seat, then found his phone and held it to his ear. "Hello?"

"Detective Makowski? This is
Sheriff Lafferty. We just apprehended your fugitive…"

Jack jerked forward in his seat,
and the horn erupted. "Oops. Sorry. When did this go down?"

"About ten minutes ago. One
of our patrol officers spotted him at a gas station. I need you to come
down-to the station house and identify him for me."

"Yeah, of course. Be right
there." He hung up. He could hear the cascading sound of the
meltwater
all around him, that tickle-in-the-throat
sound as the earth absorbed the rest of last winter's excesses. The early-morning
light was faded pink, every blade of grass, every sparkling new leaf stunning
his eyes.

He got out of the car, his balls
shrinking in the cold morning air, and took a staggering step forward. It
was as if there were heavy weights on his feet. His bones ached from sitting
in an upright position all night long. Every tooth in his head wanted to
crack. What time was it? No newspaper on the front stoop yet. He checked
his watch-6:15.

Jack crossed the soggy lawn toward
the front door. Every window shade in the Hubbard house was drawn. Should
he knock? Ring the doorbell? He didn't want to wake Daisy and her mother
if he didn't have to. He didn't want to wake the baby. He stood examining
the door's painted fir panels, its brass knocker and the small window made
of rippled glass. A sticker on the window warned of armed guards and
alarms, but that was just a bluff. He'd put it there yesterday as a temporary
measure until they could get the real system installed. Now he cupped
his hands over the glass and looked into the tidy kitchen, an L-shaped room
with a self-venting
cooktop
, miniature white
roses in a blue vase, a quaint wood-handled basket on an antique sideboard.

His scalp itched, and he scratched
it violently, then took out the extra house key Daisy had given him the
night before, unlocked the door and went inside. He could hear a clock
ticking somewhere among the Colonial pieces. He tiptoed past the living
room, his brain spinning. It would make his command officers back in
L.A. very happy to hear that they'd caught the fugitive. It might even
help his case with the department. More important, Roy
Hildreth
was behind bars. For good this time.

Jack found Daisy in an upstairs
bedroom at the end of the hallway. The room had a painted hardwood floor
and those old-fashioned wide windows, gauzy white curtains tapping into
the room like nervous fingers. Scattered across the modest surfaces
of the room were the girls' childhood toys-a Magic 8 Ball, Barbie's
Dreamhouse
, a microscope and butterfly collection
that were evidence of Daisy's early infatuation with science. She was
sound asleep in one of the twin beds, and he tiptoed across the room and
knelt down before her, then rested his hand on her shoulder. "Daisy?"

She opened one eye.

"It's me."

"Jack?" She sounded
groggy. "What's it mean when you dream you've killed an angel?"

"Look at me."

Her eyes gradually focused on
his unshaven face. There was a prescription bottle of sleeping pills
next to a glass of water on her nightstand. He wondered how many pills
she had taken to knock herself out last night.

"Good news," he said.
"They found him."

She opened both eyes. "Really?"

"I'm going down to the
sherriff's
station to start the extradition process.
I wanted you to know so you wouldn't worry if you woke up and noticed my
car was gone."

"Thanks." She smiled.
"That is good news."

"Go back to sleep. I'll call
you later."

"Okay," she said, her eyelids
drooping shut. "You're my hero, Jack."

He kissed her forehead and left.

Daisy lay in bed-not yet asleep
but not fully awake-thinking she must have dreamed Jack's presence in
her room. She vaguely recalled hearing his car go roaring out of the
cul-de-sac, accompanied by that funny rattling in the rear suspension.
Sunrises in Vermont began with cautious optimism, a pale pink hue illuminating
each room before thin lines of crimson sunlight streamed across the
walls and floor, invading the house wherever the roller shades didn't
close all the way. What was that smell? She sniffed her armpit.
Oof
. She needed a shower. She should get up and take a
shower and wash off all the baby drool and sour milk, but instead, she
just lay there, stretching and yawning like a cat on a windowsill.

Yesterday's rain had left the streambeds
running full. She could hear the
meltwater
gurgling
downhill, trickling through the gullies into ditches and ponds. The
last of the winter snowpack would evaporate in today's sun.

This murmuring cacophony reminded
her of the time when a migrating flock of blackbirds rose up from the woods
one autumn day and swooped through the air, dipping their wings at the
exact same instant together. It was an exhilarating experience,
those drumming black wings blocking out the sun and jarring her sense of
equilibrium. She remembered staring in awe at the circling, swirling
birds as they moved like a single organism. The memory soared, reminding
her of the incestuous relationship between safety and danger, order
and chaos, soft and loud, light and dark.

She could hear the baby whimpering
in his makeshift nursery, and her body straightened as she prepared to
get out of bed and go to him. No, wait. That wasn't the baby. It was just the
wind sifting down the chimney. She relaxed again and listened to the
soft symphony of sounds inside the house-the toilet's leaky flush valve
stopping and starting; the water meter ticking through the copper pipes;
the familiar clank of the faulty toilet ball cock, what Mr. Barsum used
to call the water hammer. Daisy's eyes were drawn to a far corner of the
room. A draft had caught on the Pennsylvania rocker, setting it in motion.
Perhaps it was Anna's ghost watching over her. The movement of the chair
was hypnotic, and Daisy closed her eyes and listened to the soft orchestra
of the house slowly falling into ruin.

Daisy woke up moments later to
the sound of a door clicking shut and whirled upright with a sharp intake
of breath. No, it was nothing. Just the water hammer. She lay back down against
her pillow with her eyes open. Something wasn't right inside the house.

She glanced at her clock-6:30 a.m.
Jack was probably at the sheriff's office by now. The atmosphere had
lightened perceptibly. Thin beams of light came through cracks in the
roller shades, and she extended her hand so that her fingers glowed magically,
signaling the warm birth of the day. She cataloged each new sound-a
branch clawing at a window, the rattle of the baseboard heater, a floorboard
creaking.

Floorboard?

She sat up in bed. "Mom?"

There was no reply.

A small worry took root and began
to grow. Fright got her out of bed. She stood in the center of the room, listening
to her own ragged breathing, convinced that there was somebody else inside
the house with them. Now she heard footsteps-creak, creak, creak-definitely
footsteps this time.

"Mom?" she said.

The footsteps stopped.

Her brain seized:
Go get the baby
.

She pivoted around, the painted
hardwood floor chirping under the balls of her feet. She knew that sound-human
weight had created that sound. She ran down the hallway into the nursery
and was stunned to find that the crib was empty. Noah was gone. His pale
blue blanket was gone. He wasn't on the floor or snug in his stroller; she
didn't see his face among the cheery monkeys on the walls or the stuffed
teddy bears grouped together on the seat of the rocker. He wasn't folded
up inside the top drawer with his bright little outfits or tucked inside
the diaper pail.

"Mom?" she cried.
"Do you have the baby?"

A door clunked shut beneath her.

She heard a snap like twigs and
the scrape of a heel on flagstone and ran to the window, where she spotted
a figure walking away from the house. A tall man was carrying a small bundle
in his arms. As he moved out of the shadows and into the light, she could
see his frowning face as he looked up. Roy
Hildreth's
eyes were hard, his stride purposeful.

"No!" Daisy screamed.

He took off with the baby in his
arms.

Daisy raced back to her room, where
she opened the top drawer of her nightstand and grabbed the gun. The
old-style revolver with its rotating cylinder held ten rounds. Jack had
given her a box of bullets, fifty rounds of.38-caliber ammunition. She
tried to steady her hands as she plugged ten bullets into the cylinder,
dropping some on the floor. They rolled across the painted boards and
underneath the bed. She scooped out another handful, shoved them in her
pocket, stepped into a pair of Anna's slippers and flew down the stairs
and out the back door.

She darted across the backyard
and could see Roy through a line of trees. He was hurrying toward a car
parked on the abandoned dirt road that nobody used anymore. Spring was
in full riot. Wildflowers saturated the hillsides, the kind of colors
that dilated your pupils^- fuchsia, crimson, marigold. It almost hurt
to look. Her heart drummed furiously in her chest as she clambered over
the old stone wall and tromped through last year's low-bush cranberries
popping through the melted snow. Roy was only a few yards ahead of her now.

"Stop!" She gripped the
gun in both hands, aimed it at the parked car and fired wildly. The noise
was explosive.

She gave out a small cry as she cocked
the hammer and pulled the trigger again and again, firing four more
shots in rapid succession. Vibrations rolled throughout the car as
volley bursts of gunshots pierced the windshield and shattered the
headlights. The gun kept bucking in her hands. Five more rapid-fire
shots and the cylinder was empty. It all happened in a split second.

The bullet-riddled vehicle stood
rocking on its shocks, its Firestone tires leaking air. Daisy turned toward
Roy, her teeth set.

He gave her an ashen look before
he disappeared into the woods, taking the baby with him.

Jack blasted his horn at the slowpoke
pickup truck driver crawling along the road ahead of him. "Move
it!" He tailgated the truck and flashed his high beams, then got on
his cell phone and dialed the Sheriff's Department. "
Lemme
talk to Sheriff Lafferty," he said.
"It's Jack Makowski."

"He hasn't come in yet,"
the deputy said.

Jack rubbed his broad forehead
with the flat of his hand. "I don't understand. He just called
me."

"He might've called you from
home," the man said. "But I wouldn't know about that."

Something clenched in Jack's gut.
"
Lemme
talk to whoever's in charge."

"One moment, please."

Easing into a right-hand turn,
Jack lost the slowpoke driver and started gaining speed again. There
was a click at the end of the line, and a nasal voice said, "This is
Deputy Hamilton. How can I help you, sir?"

"Lafferty just called me about
my fugitive, Roy
Hildreth
."

"No, sir," he said.

"What?"

"I don't know anything about
it. The sheriff is at home, probably asleep in bed. He doesn't get in until
nine."

"Fuck!"

"Excuse me?"

Jack dropped the phone in his lap
and made a hard left turn, the car fishtailing all over the road. He tapped
his brakes to slow down, but that only caused him to slide sideways into
a ditch, where he hit a wooden post.
Think.

"Shit!" There was a sudden
ache between his eyes as if a bullet had just exited his forehead. He
couldn't believe he'd fallen for it.
We
found your fugitive
. He shifted into reverse, hit the gas and doubled
back, his right front tire squealing. Great. He'd gouged up the wheel
well. How much was that going to cost?

He could feel the rough road bumping
up the steering column while the persistent sunlight struck the last patches
of melting snow in the fields all around him. He grabbed his cell phone
and dialed Daisy's number one-handed.

It rang three times before her
mother picked up. "Hello?"

"It's Jack. Is Daisy there?"

"I heard gunshots!"

"What? Put her on."

"She's gone." Lily Hubbard's
voice was a snarl. "I saw her run out of the house, then I heard gunshots…
and the baby isn't in his crib…"

A quaking anger swept through
him. The sun shone directly into his eyes as he stomped on the gas and took
the winding route back to Daisy's house, past a checkerboard of farmland
and forest. He rose over a small knoll, flooring the gas pedal.