One We Love, The (28 page)

CHAPTER SIXTY FOUR

H
ad Astrid come
to the barn looking for Joyce . . . or for Mikey? As the ambulance churned its
way to Chippewa, I tried to think it through. Why would she set fire to the
barn if she’d killed Joyce? To hide the body? Was it an impulsive stab at hiding
her deed? It would be stupid, because of course it wouldn’t work, but people do
stupid things when they’re freaked out. If anyone knew Joyce best, it would be
Astrid; working together, side-by-side, each of them focused on the daily lives
of their charges. Astrid could have guessed.

Were Astrid’s hysterics guilt or fear? Or did I have it
backwards? Was there a different motivation all together for Astrid to set the
fire?

I put my brain in reverse, recasting Astrid instead of Joyce
for the role of killer.

Astrid—the nurturer, the welcomer—feeding the women “milk
and cookies and tucking them in at night.” Astrid—the only one who hadn’t
seemed embittered, burnt out. The one who’d kept her focus narrowed, inside the
walls of the shelter, turning a blind eye to the bigger picture in order to
tend to the little details in the women’s everyday lives. Had she found a
solution to the hopelessness, a way to fight back when someone she cared for
and rescued was determined to make an awful, soul-destroying choice? A choice
that would undo everything she’d spent so much time patching together,
returning to her abuser, taking the children, too, more often than not.

Was that what drove her?

Joyce had issues, sure, but did she have the wherewithal to
plan and carry out the murders? In her earlier life, Joyce’s fundamental
personality style was passivity. Until she bludgeoned her abusive husband in
his sleep, that is. Maybe I should rethink that “passive” bit.

But then why had Joyce attacked Karissa? It hadn’t been
Astrid, I’d heard her car pull up to the barn when I was hiding from Joyce. If
Joyce was coming to warn Mikey’s mother, she wouldn’t have cracked her head
open, would she? Seemed counter-productive.

Unless . . .

I thought of the blood-stained knife lying on the floor,
just a few feet away from Karissa; of Karissa meeting us at the door, the same
knife clutched at her side; of the warning we’d delivered, Paul and I, the
panic we’d instilled. Had she gone after Joyce? Was Joyce defending herself?

So, there were two choices. Joyce-the-killer attacks Karissa
and starts hunting Mikey down. Astrid comes to the rescue. There’s a mighty
battle where Joyce is killed and Astrid sets fire to the barn in remorse or
guilt or fear or something.

 Or . . .  Joyce comes to warn Karissa, is attacked and
forced to defend herself, then tries to get to Mikey before Astrid-as-killer
adds a pint-sized victim to her roster. Astrid kills Joyce and sets the barn
alight to either smoke us out or silence the only witness to her attack on Regina.
Maybe she figured Joyce would be blamed for the fire, too.

Which?

Mikey knew.

T
he ambulance
pulled into a garage bay and I was whisked down a short hall. On the way, we
passed by two glass-fronted trauma rooms. The first held a squad of medical
people working on Karissa; Mikey, in the next. They steered me into a third.

No sight of Astrid. Maybe they’d taken her to a different
hospital. From what I could remember, though, St. Joe’s was the nearest acute
care center in the area.

They hoisted me off the ambulance stretcher and onto the
hospital’s wheeled bed. Almost as soon as I settled, a nurse popped a
clip-thing on my index finger and switched me to a different oxygen mask as a
second fussed with the machinery. A third buzzed in and out, doing other
mysterious nursey-things, and when the doctor joined the mix, they moved around
and over me in such smooth synchrony, it would’ve made a water ballet team weep
with envy. With the oxygen, my coughing had lessened considerably, but I was
still hacking up phlegm and my throat felt red and itchy. After asking me a
series of questions, he ordered blood work and “chemistries” and some kind of
test that sounded like he was reading the ingredients from a box of cereal—the
kind nutrition-Nazis warn us about. And then he was out the door and gone. 

“Did someone call Mikey’s grandma?” I asked.

The nearest nurse glanced up. “The little boy? Do you have
his grandmother’s number?” he asked.

“Not exactly”—not at all, really, but I forged on—“but her
name is Bernadette . . . something. Maybe Mikey knows where she is. Is he okay?
Can I see him?”

Through the window, I saw Mikey being wheeled away. I sat
up. “Where are they taking him?” My heart started thudding. I couldn’t lose
sight of him. My sudden movement triggered a coughing spasm.

The nurses exchanged glances over the top of me. Apparently,
they’d been informed about my antics at the farm. Antics. Attempted homicide.
Whatever.

The nurse eased me back, his hand warm on my shoulder.
“Relax. He’s just going to radiology for a chest X-ray. We have one right here
in our department. Isn’t that cool? You’ll be next.”

They continued to work around and over me. I debated telling
them my suspicions, but that glance between them didn’t bode well for my
credibility. If I made them too nervous, I was afraid they’d sedate me.

I kept an eye on the hall, watching for Mikey’s return and
still trying to determine where Astrid was. The newly remodeled ER had been
designed with the nurses’ station as a central hub, allowing them a view of
most of the exam rooms. One in particular—on the far side of Mikey’s, with just
the edge of the door visible—had a decent amount of action going in and out.

“Is that where they took Astrid? The one who set the fire?”
The questions just slipped out.

Another shared glance. They didn’t answer. But they didn’t
say she
wasn’t
there, either.

Good enough.

 I became even more certain of Astrid’s whereabouts when I
saw a uniformed police officer go up to the door and look in. He strolled away
almost instantly, so I couldn’t be certain it was the cop from the farm, but if
it wasn’t, he was close enough to be his brother. If that
was
where
Astrid was being treated, it didn’t appear as though they considered her very
dangerous. An impulsive arsonist, maybe, but not a crazed killer going after a
six-year-old. Hell, she might even be a hero in their eyes, if she’d dispatched
a real murderer.  

Sooner than I expected, I saw them wheeling Mikey past my
window, back to his room. He looked so tiny, a little lump, under the
sterilized linens. His face, still smudged with soot, was turned toward me,
mouth open just enough to see a gap where a tooth was missing. Sound asleep,
too, from the look of it, and I didn’t blame him.

Somebody stopped their progress, just beyond my room. “If
he’s stable, we’re going to need help transferring the mother. She needs to go
to Luther ASAP.”

I heard them getting Mikey re-settled, and then the action
shifted to Karissa’s room. She must have needed more extensive assistance than
St. Joe’s could offer. Feeling the guilt of having led the killer straight to
her, I said a silent prayer, promising to look after her boy.

CHAPTER SIXTY FIVE

A
fter dimming the
lights and covering me with a warmed blanket—heaven—the nurse left. I hadn’t
considered that they’d leave us alone. It would be easy, so easy, to fall
asleep. A wave of exhaustion washed over me, making my arms and legs feel too
heavy to move, my brain fuzzy. I yawned.

Then, I shook myself so hard I almost heard my brain rattle.
Forcing myself to sit up, I swung my legs over the edge of the bed.

 I watched.

I
t was just a
flicker, a shadow flitting through the only bit of door to Mikey’s room that I
could see. But after what seemed like an eternity spent trying not to doze off,
I just couldn’t be sure. I pulled off all the attached medical paraphernalia
and slid off the bed—a controlled fall, might be a better term, since my legs
almost gave out—and ran to the door. I peeked out, not wanting a nurse to catch
sight of me until I was sure I wasn’t imagining things. They’d pulled the
curtains on Mikey’s windows. Astrid’s room was similarly cloaked. The nurses’
station was crawling with observant, efficient medical personnel, modern-day
sentinels over their patients. Didn’t anybody take coffee breaks anymore? If I
was wrong and they caught me sneaking around Mikey’s room, they’d decide
I
was
the dangerous one. They were already wondering, I could tell.

An alarm set off behind me, its shrill beeping designed to
alert the nurses that their patient had become untethered from her monitors.
Shit-shit-shit.

Decision made.

I dropped to the floor and belly-crawled the fifteen feet to
Mikey’s door. The tiles were freezing but very clean, I noted, then I slid
around Mikey’s door.

Astrid stood poised over Mikey’s sleeping form, a pillow
clutched in her gauzy-mitts. With a croaky roar, I scrambled to my feet and
launched myself at her.

It wasn’t anything like those choreographed, action-movie
scenes.

Astrid was far more skilled—and mentally prepared—for physical
violence, but I was psycho-pissed and at the end of my rope. It helped, too,
that she was used to having the element of surprise, sneaking up on her
victims. She clearly wasn’t used to crazed avengers screaming like banshees and
hurtling themselves across the room.

We careened into multi-million-dollar machines, tripped over
a stool, and took out a storage cabinet on wheels, shooting it across the room
and tipping it over with a horrendous crash. Mikey screamed hysterically,
adding to the bedlam. Astrid grappled for my throat, using strategic
self-defense techniques, trying to knock my feet out from under me. I bit and
scratched and gouged and kicked and went for the eyes. If she’d had balls, I
would have kicked those, too. We were both wheezing and grunting like asthmatic
pigs.

The room filled with blue-smocked beings. Astrid and I fell,
locked in each other’s arms, bringing a clatter of metal and plastic down on
top of us. Hands grabbed, pulling me off, dragging me away. I got a couple of
kicks in before they were successful. I fell against Mikey’s bed and he latched
onto me with a howl, his little fingers wrapping so tightly around my neck, he
almost finished off what Astrid started. I started coughing, my tears mixing
with his. A nurse tried to separate us, but Mikey let loose such a wail, she
gave up.

“She’s crazy! She’s trying to kill me.” Astrid got the first
preemptive accusation in, a good move. “She attacked me at the barn, too. There
were witnesses.”

“The barn
fire
, don’t you mean? You tried to kill us.
You were trying to kill Mikey.”

Mikey buried his face in my shoulder, shuddering and
sobbing, “Mama.
Mama
.” I patted his back.

“It’s going to be okay, Mikey,” I said. “It’s okay now.”

Only it wasn’t. We might have stayed in a stalemated
she-said/she-said wrangle, but just then the cop plowed in the room, way late
to this particular party and pissed as all hell. Probably embarrassed, too,
‘cause he was going to have to explain why his arsonist had been jumped by the
crazy-lady-from-the-barn-fire in the innocent child’s hospital room. Didn’t
look good for him at all.

Since he’d already witnessed my “aggression” earlier, he
zeroed in on me. He even had his hand on his Tazer, the desire to zap me
tangible in his eyes. But Mikey and I clung so tightly to each other our skin
practically grafted together, and there was no way he could risk shooting me.

“Lady, step away from the child.”

“I can’t,” I said. “He’s scared.” I clutched him tighter. I
was scared, too. Mikey kicked his wails up a notch to prove my point. Covering
Mikey’s ears, I pointed a shaky finger at Astrid. “She was trying to kill us in
that fire. She killed Joyce and Regina and a bunch of other women—
abused
women—and
she tried to kill us. And just now she was trying to kill Mikey. She had a
pillow and . . . She would have done it, too.”

Everyone turned to stare at Astrid.

She didn’t look like a killer. She’d sagged in the nurses’
grip, the gauze trailing from her hands like day-after party streamers, her
face gaunt and haggard. She looked old and bewildered. Sad.

Then, her lips pulled back from her teeth in a feral snarl.
“You stupid bitch.” Mikey twitched in my arms and burrowed his face deeper into
my breast. “Who are you trying to save?
Him?
” Astrid pointed at Mikey.
“Why even bother? That stupid cow is just going to drag him back to that
abusive asshole. And you can’t tell me that she doesn’t know better. But she’ll
still act oh, so surprised when he does it again. And again. How long do you
think it will be until big, strong Daddy starts smacking the kids around, too?
I suppose you think they can change, don’t you? That if he says he’s sorry, he
really means it. You’re as stupid as the rest of them, running around, poking
your nose into my business.”

Behind Astrid, the doctor signaled to one of the physician
assistants in the hall. The PA disappeared.

“And that little brat is just as bad,” she strained and
flailed against the hold the nurses had on her. “He’s just going to grow up
into another asshole. That’s how they make them, you know. One after the other
after the other. A little asshole assembly line. The mothers are just as
guilty, too, because they don’t
stop
it. And they could. We show them
how, so there’s no excuse for it, really. Maybe we can’t stop the men, but the
women could learn, if they wanted to. I keep telling them and showing them. And
they just don’t listen.”

The PA was back, edging around behind our group, until he
reached the doctor and handed him something. Astrid kept spewing her verbal
vomit, but the doctor moved in swiftly, a quick jab, which made Astrid squeal
in surprise. She thrashed around some more, but only for a few seconds, then
she sank, finally quiet. Blessedly quiet.

The medical team snapped back into their practiced,
efficient groove, tackling the debris scattered across the room and hauling
Astrid out. The cop trailed after. I stayed with Mikey, holding him and
crooning while he sobbed. We curled up on the cot. I thought they might try to
medicate him, but instead they rolled us into my room, hooking me up to my
oxygen and covering us with warmed blankets. They left us alone, checking
frequently, until he fell back to sleep. Then, they shifted me to another exam
room, hooked me back up to my oxygen and shuttled me down to X-ray—everything
back to business as usual.