And soon Rose would be entering what the doctors expected would be her final two months. A period referred to in the hospitals and among professional caregivers as the suffering.
He’d planned to change something. Without knowing what or how. Change things so that he could be there. But that was before the murders at the gold farm. Before he met Cager. Before he had evidence in his hand. There was too much to do now. Too much for just himself and Captain Bartolome. The investigation would have to be expanded as soon as possible. The full extent of this abuse of power had to be exposed.
Plague profiteers.
The side trade in DR33M3R would be the tip of the iceberg. If they were selling it into restricted markets, that meant the supply was being shorted in other markets. Price manipulation for all intents and purposes.
And what else? Could it be worse?
The ability to treat the symptoms of SLP so effectively, implied mastery of several aspects of the disease. Park had heard dozens of conspiracy theories thrown about as he drove from house to house dispensing his wears. He’d heard them on the airwaves, barked and pontificated, and he’d heard them in the houses themselves, jabbered or mumbled. Inevitably Afronzo-New Day was mentioned.
A basic precept of detective work: When a crime is committed, who stands to profit?
Assuming a crime had been committed, no one had profited like A-ND. No one in the history of the world had profited as they had.
The baby slapped the bottle away from her face yet again, and Park found himself trying to shove the soft rubber nipple between her tight lips.
“Just take the damn thing!”
He froze. Pulled the bottle from her face and put it on the kitchen table. He touched his forehead to hers.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Daddy’s a little. I don’t know what. I’m tired is all. I’m sorry.”
She slapped the top of his head and began crying. He picked up the bottle and popped it into her open mouth, and her lips closed around it and she started to suck, gasping between mouthfuls, her eyes rimmed red.
He looked at the clock.
He found Rose at the bathroom sink. She’d just finished brushing her teeth, spitting water tinged dark pink by the blood that oozed from her receding gums. She splashed water on her face, blotted it away with a towel, and looked at herself in the mirror, touching a hollowed cheek.
“Did she eat?”
Just outside the doorway, Park shifted, his reflection appearing in the glass.
“It took awhile, but she did.”
Rose ran fingers tipped with chewed nails through her hair, pulling it back from her forehead, taking an elastic band from a collection of them looped around the doorknob, snapping it around an ever thinning pony-tail.
“How much?”
“Four ounces.”
She took a makeup bag from the edge of the sink and unzipped it.
“I can’t hear her.”
“She’s in her playpen out in the office. I put some music on the computer; she’s watching the visualizer. She quieted down a little. The monitor’s on in the kitchen.”
Rose uncapped a tube of brick red lipstick.
“Our psychedelic baby, tripping out on the light show. We should get some glow-in-the-dark stars for the ceiling of the nursery.”
“We did.”
She twirled the lipstick up and back down, recapped it without putting any on, and dropped it into the bag.
“Yeah. I forgot.”
She put the bag back on the sink.
“Hey, husband.”
“Wife.”
She looked at him.
“I’m kinda tired of doing the whole makeup and trying to look pretty thing. You mind if I go natural the rest of the way?”
He stepped into the bathroom and slipped his arms around her waist.
“That’s all I ever want.”
She looked up at him.
“Park.”
“Rose.”
She closed her eyes.
“I’m so tired, Park. I want to sleep so bad. And I think. I may. I just.”
She opened her mouth and muffled it against his chest and screamed.
Park held her, the vibrations from her scream cutting through him as surely as a blade.
She stopped, turned her face from his chest and gulped air.
“Okay, okay. I’m back. I’m okay. I’m okay.”
She pushed away from him, wiping her eyes.
“I just want to stop sometimes. And I can’t. And I think about. Being done. And it sounds. Not so bad.”
She touched his chin.
“It’s okay, I wouldn’t. I just. Sometimes. If I could fall asleep. And skip the rest of what’s going to happen. Sometimes. That’s all. It’s just a temptation is all. Because I’m tired.”
He spoke.
“It’s not too late to go to a hospital. They’d still accept you. You could get Dreamer.”
She raised a hand.
“Park.”
He opened his mouth, but she didn’t let him speak.
“I won’t. And then what, anyway? If I’m in the hospital and you’re on the street. And then what? Francine can’t always be here. So, what? Who takes care of her? God knows it’s not that I’m opposed to taking the drugs. But I won’t go to a hospital. I won’t leave her alone. Not while there’s no one, no one to take care of her.”
He forced his words between hers.
“I’m here. I can take care of her.”
She looked at him.
“Parker, I love you, but you’re not here. You can’t take care of her.”
Park remained utterly still, afraid that if he moved in the least he would shatter, shocked that the beating of his heart had not already turned him to shards.
When Park requested a sit-down, he never specified where; they simply met at whatever spot was next on a list they’d made at the outset of the assignment. Once used, a safe location was crossed from the list, never revisited. The track that ran around the football field at Culver City High, where the Centaurs once played, was next on the list. Within walking distance, it was, literally, a little close to home, but Park was grateful for that proximity on this occasion. The meeting would take some time, explaining to Bartolome what he’d discovered and how, but at least he wouldn’t have to worry about the hazards of traffic. He’d get home soon, just as he’d promised Rose he would.
He waited on the curve of track behind one of the field’s end zones, trying not to fidget with the thumb drive hanging around his neck, one of the ten-gig drives Rose had used for work, onto which he had loaded a copy of his reports.
Driving around the neighborhood before they bought the house, he and Rose had talked about how loud it might be on game nights, both of them enjoying the idea of hearing the dull roar on Friday evenings. But by the time the season began and many parents pulled their children out of school, and particularly off the football squad (sports in which blood was regularly spilled did not seem like a wise choice of extracurricular activities in a time of plague), there weren’t enough players to field a team. Not that they would have played more than one home game. It wasn’t long after the school year began that most districts across the country began canceling all sports, dances, clubs, band practice, theatricals, or any other event that might require students to gather after school hours. Eventually the classes themselves would be canceled. For the time being a much-reduced curriculum was still offered to students whose parents signed waivers relieving the schools of all liability for any harm that might befall their children from morning to final afternoon bell. Classes taught by teachers who had signed similar waivers for the privilege. The numbers on both sides of the classroom greatly reduced, it was, nonetheless, a sad fact that teacher-to-student ratios had not improved overall.
Park rubbed his foot back and forth on the latex track surface, the sole of his shoe squeaking. He’d taken another Dexedrine spansule before leaving home. He hadn’t felt he needed it to keep awake, having passed his window of sleep opportunity yet again, but his thoughts were unruly; he’d need to marshal them to make his case to Bartolome. Twenty-four hours of hard sleep was out of the realm of possibility, so the speed had been his best option. He’d taken the pill, recorded it in his journal, police report, and dealer inventory, and left Rose playing Chasm Tide in the office, with the baby cradled around her neck in a hammocklike carrier, both of them wide awake but neither of them crying.