Chapter 12
Joe stuck a finger in his ear and pressed the cell phone tighter to the side of his head. "A Taser tag?"
He was standing near the entrance of the hospital cafeteria, unsure if cell phones were as taboo here as they were elsewhere in the building. In any case, it wasn't working very well.
Sam was telling him, "Yeah. Willy found it in the first guy's motel room-Norman Rockwell. Lester's calling him Wet Bald Rocky so we can tell him apart from Dry Hairy Fred. Anyhow, we called the company and traced the serial number on the tag to a shipment of Taser cartridges sent to the Burlington PD."
"You saying a cop Tasered Rockwell?"
A group of people, laughing and talking loudly, passed by, burying Sam's response. Joe had come both to depend on cell phones and to hate them with a passion, especially since reception across most of Vermont was rotten.
"What?" he asked.
"I said all we know is that the cartridge was sent there. I have no idea who ended up with it. Maybe it was stolen."
Joe pulled out his notepad and pen, cradling the phone awkwardly. "Okay. Give me the serial number. I can shoot up to Burlington and find out."
Sam complied before asking, "You at the hospital?"
"Yeah."
"Is everything okay?"
"He's hanging in there."
"What about the car? You find what you were after?"
"Yeah. Now we're looking into a computer we found at the garage. I'm going to the sheriff's department next to find out what they've got."
"Well," Sam said after a small pause, "good luck."
"Thanks," Joe answered her, adding, "Nice job on the tag."
"Let's see if it means anything first," she cautioned before hanging up.
Joe dropped the phone into his coat pocket with a sigh of relief.
"Everything all right?" his mother asked from beside him.
He looked down at her, her face upturned from her permanent perch in the wheelchair, and he bent over to kiss her cheek. "Yeah. I just have a brain teaser cooking in Brattleboro-seems to be getting weirder."
"Was that Sammie?" she asked.
"It was," he admitted, surprised. "How did you know that?"
She laughed. "I'm your mother. I've been watching how you react to people your whole life."
He joined her. "Good thing, too. Keep me flying straight."
She squeezed his hand. "I do what I can. It's not difficult." She gestured toward the cafeteria. "Did you get enough to eat? You didn't have much."
"I'm all set," he answered her, stepping behind her chair. "You ready to go back up?"
"Yes," she said, and faced forward, but in that one short word, he clearly heard her sadness. Leo remained inert, attached like a chrysalis to his attending instruments. Dr. Weisenbeck was still counseling them not to be alarmed, but Joe could tell that his mother was tiring of hanging in limbo.
He leaned in over her shoulder as he pushed her down the hall. "What do you say we catch a movie?"
"In the middle of the day?" she asked, startled.
"Why not? We could both do with a break."
He wheeled her over to a small bookshop off the hospital's central hallway and found a newspaper, after which they pored over the movie ads, found a comedy she'd heard about, which started in under an hour, and headed out into the parking lot after collecting their coats from upstairs and checking in on Leo one last time.
It was a bittersweet outing for both of them, playing hooky for each other's sake, not really absorbing what flickered across the screen, and yet acknowledging the moment's nostalgic richness. Only rarely had Joe and his mother ever done anything social together without Leo. He was always the glue that united them for such occasions. Now, in the movie theater, there was the lingering guilt, not only of enjoying themselves behind his back but of practicing their own companionship in his absence, as if hedging their bets against his survival.
They barely spoke on the way back to the hospital afterward.
There, they split up, returning to their separate jobs, Joe to Burlington, and his mother to her vigil. Before they parted, however, she took hold of his sleeve and gave him a long look.
"Don't keep too much of this inside, Joe. It doesn't do any good."
"I'll be okay."
"You're all alone now. If Leo doesn't make it, it'll get worse."
He thought of her in the exact same terms, of course, but couldn't utter the words.
He didn't need to. She added, "It's not the same for me. I have my own world, and not much more time to worry about anyhow. But you, now with Gail gone…" She hesitated before asking, "How's Lyn?"
He straightened, surprised. "Fine, I guess."
"When did you last see her?"
He reddened slightly. "I visited the bar she's setting up a couple of days ago."
She nodded and smiled. "Good. She likes you very much, and I think you could do a lot worse."
He laughed to cover his embarrassment. "I gotta go, Ma."
But she didn't let go of his sleeve, not quite yet. "You like her."
He let the smile fade from his face and considered her implication for a moment, before admitting, "Yes. I do."
The drive to Burlington was under ninety minutes from the hospital in Lebanon, New Hampshire, and cut through one of Joe's favorite scenic corridors-a meandering diagonal across the state's famous Green Mountains. It was a trip he'd made a thousand times since the interstate was laid out in the 1960s, and it took him by the front doors of both his organization's headquarters in Waterbury and, just southeast of there, the capital city of Montpelier, where Gail now lived full-time.
In the past he would have at least considered stopping by both places, but since, technically, he was still on leave, and, emotionally, he had no reason to see Gail, he stayed on the road. But he couldn't avoid pondering the latter situation, especially in light of his mother's parting words. He'd been struck, not just by her concern for his happiness-all the more touching when she was so distracted by Leo-but by her apparent openness toward Lyn Silva, whom she barely knew.
His mother and Gail had been the best of friends and, he presumed, still were. That she could supportively even consider his segue toward Lyn was an act of love he doubted he could have made in her place. But his mother was made of strong stuff and clearly had enough heart to encompass the inevitable changes that both time and people dished up. That included the possibility of Leo's dying-and, certainly, that Joe might find happiness with someone new.
In that way, his mother and the snow-clad, sun-bleached, timeworn mountains he was passing by were not dissimilar. Both were old, stalwart bastions of tradition and place, around which Joe had found it wise to base his values. He was no stuck-in-the-hills galoot, ignorant and distrustful of the world's offerings and mishaps. But he had come to recognize the wisdom-at least for him-of admitting his roots and honoring their more admirable customs, of which his mother represented the best.
It was of some comfort to him to reflect on this and to draw strength from it as he considered the possibilities, good and bad, that seemed to be looming before him.
The chief of the Burlington Police Department was Timothy Giordi, the son of a small-town cop who had babysat Tim by driving him around in his patrol car. Tim was the first to concede that he might as well have had a police blood transfusion at birth, given all the chance he ever had of considering a different profession.
Fortunately, he was very good at it and looked as if, like his father before him, he'd struggle to stay on the job until the day he died, even if it meant as a school crossing guard.