(52)
Robert Ortiz hated the waiting. So much of police work was not what you saw on television. The car chases, the shootouts, the grappling with suspects and grilling them in stark interrogation rooms; that stuff hardly ever happened. Mostly it was a waiting game. You wait for hours for the suspect to show up. You wait for calls to be returned. You wait for trial dates to get your shot to put some scumbag away. Today, Ortiz was waiting for the woman, actually the girl, in the bed to wake up. He’d been in the stuffy, sterile room for two hours carving a path between the window and the chair by the bed. Waiting.
He rose again from the chair and retraced his footsteps to the window. Outside, Haven shimmered in the afternoon heat. People bustled around, bringing the sick into the hospital, taking the healed home. Most were unaware of the girl in the bed, Ortiz himself, and what was going on in their quiet little town. Below, in the parking lot, a boy on crutches was being helped into a car. On the street beyond, a woman dropped a bag of groceries and two boys jumped off their bikes to help her pick them up. Their normal lives ticked on, unaware of the girl and the cop.
In the bed behind Ortiz, the girl moaned softly. Ortiz turned and saw her peaceful, drug-induced sleep becoming fitful. Her moans grew louder and she began first shaking her head back and forth, then twisting her entire body from side to side. Before Ortiz could get to the side of the bed, Cheryl Peroit suddenly sat up, snapped open her eyes, and looked at Ortiz with one of the most alarming stares he had ever seen. It wasn’t the foggy, confused look he expected. It was intense, full of questions, and full of fear. “Where is Carl?”
Ortiz felt his heart drop. The waiting wasn’t the worst, he remembered. It was telling people about the death of their loved ones: in this case, her own child. But was she a victim or a perpetrator? “Miss Peroit, my name is Robert Ortiz, I’m a Haven police officer. I’d like…”
“WHERE’S MY BABY!” The woman—girl—began to take on a look Ortiz had seen before: the mixture of a memory she knew to be true and the desperate hope that it wasn’t. Before Ortiz could stop her, she ripped the IV out of her arm and threw back the bed covers. On cue, a nurse and a doctor burst into the room and restrained Cheryl Peroit; their soft cooing and gentle pushing got her back where she belonged. “My baby?” The nurse and doctor assured her everything would be fine as they settled her back in bed and re-inserted the IV. Ortiz watched helplessly, reduced to waiting once again. “Where is Carl, where is my baby?”
“Miss Peroit, we were hoping you might be able to tell us that.” Ortiz stepped closer, ignoring the disapproving looks from the hospital staff. “You were alone at the lake, unconscious and your ankle was broken. Do you remember anything?” At this, the doctor made his exit but the nurse remained sentinel.
Cheryl’s eyes glazed for a moment, almost rolled back into her head, then filled with tears. “He’s gone. The monster took him.” Tears welled in her eyes, and Ortiz waited for the breakdown, but it didn’t come. Cheryl remained calm, met Ortiz’s eyes, and spoke again with the conviction of a person who is fully in control of their faculties. “It came right out of the lake, took my baby, took Carl. For a minute, it looked at me and I was sure it was going to take me too. Did you catch it, Officer Ortiz?” Her eyes remained wet, but no teardrops escaped.
Ortiz blinked. How could a person sound so rational when what they’re saying makes no sense whatsoever? Then he thought of some conversations he’d had with Chief Crawford. To an outsider, Crawford might sound like the voice of reason. To Ortiz, he was crazier than the proverbial shithouse rat. “Miss Peroit…”
“Please, call me Cheryl. Did you catch that… that thing? Did you get my Carl back?”
“Cheryl, as I mentioned you were found alone by the lake.” Ortiz paused, not wanting to utter the next words. “There was evidence of cocaine. And there was rope. And weights.”
To his surprise, the girl did not flip out. No hysterics, no denials, no ranting. Her calmness chilled Ortiz more than any of those reactions. “I did not kill my child Officer Ortiz. Something came out of the lake and took him. Yes, I did some coke. Yes, I went to the lake with every intention of…” Finally she broke. Her sobs were those of true suffering. Her body convulsed, like her entire being was trying to squeeze the liquid from her body through her eyes. And the tears came. The nurse swooped in, preparing to add a sleep-inducing cocktail to Cheryl’s IV line. The girl saw what was about to happen and grabbed the nurse’s arm. “No more drugs. Puh-puh-please?” The nurse shot another look at Ortiz. They must practice that look at nursing school, he thought. But she did not administer whatever was in the syringe. Not yet, anyway. Cheryl regained her composure as quickly as she had lost it. And suddenly she looked older to Ortiz. Just like that. A scared girl one minute, a… what… scared adult the next. One who had experienced tragedy, seen the cold reality of the world. She wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and trudged ahead.
“I went to the lake to kill my baby. I know how that sounds, what it makes me. But I didn’t do it. I couldn’t. Something came out of the lake, Officer. In broad daylight, a monster came out of the water and stole my baby.” Her eyes were holding Ortiz’s gaze but he was sure she wasn’t seeing him. Real or a drug-induced hallucination, she was seeing a monster take her child. “It was horrible. It had… tentacles, like an octopus. But it walked. I…” She paused, realizing how absurd, how drugged out her story sounded. She shook her head. “I saw it.”
Ortiz waited. Silence was a cop’s best friend when questioning a suspect. Guilty people couldn’t seem to stand it, they had to keep talking to fill the void. And eventually they said something they wanted to hold back. But Cheryl remained silent, never breaking eye contact with Ortiz. A single tear snuck out of her left eye, blazing a wet trail down her cheek, and dropped to the white sheets. Silently.
(53)
Denny sat in the waiting area of Russell’s Barber Shop, idly flipping through a battered copy of Field and Stream. Russell’s was a mysterious glimpse into the adult world that somehow intrigued Denny at the same time it troubled him. It seemed no matter what day or time he came in, the same bunch of old guys were there talking about the same stuff. The Red Sox, politics, why don’t they put a stoplight at the intersection of Main and Hartford Street: Denny felt like he was stepping into the rerun of a television show. Today was different, though. Denny sensed it as soon as he walked in and sat down.
He’d walked into town from school, knowing full well Crawford and his gang were out to get him. With everything going on, and after what he’d done to Costa, he wasn’t afraid. Billy was at baseball practice and Denny was meeting him after his haircut and getting a ride home from Billy’s dad.
The barber chair was currently occupied by Ray Jackson, one of the mechanics from Haven Auto Repairs (Foreign cars our specialty!). Denny realized he had never seen Mr. Jackson dressed in anything other than his Haven Auto greens with “Ray” proudly stitched above his heart. In a small town like Haven, you tended to bump into people pretty much everywhere: church (well, not for Denny), the grocery store, parents’ night at school, and Denny had never seen another outfit on the guy.
Across from Denny in the waiting area, really just a bunch of chairs by the front window, sat Dom Moretti and “West End” Willy Seaver. Dom owned a television and watch repair shop in town and frequently did readings at Sunday Mass. In every town, there’s a West End Willy. Nobody seemed to know much about him, including why he was called West End, he didn’t appear to have a job, and he hung out in the barber shop or the coffee shop shooting the breeze all day. The odd thing about West End hanging at the barber shop was that he was bald as a cue ball.