Chapter 19
The snow-topped, hand-painted shingle hung from a black yard lamp, Pet’s Best Friend, Mending and Grooming, Dr. Roke Chalbee. The house behind it was an untidy ranch tucked away from the road with a novelty street sign posted over the carport: Ford Cars Only. Snowfall humped the shrubs in front so that from a distance the house looked like it was sinking in a bowl of meringue. A sore-thumb addition off one side of the house was the veterinarian’s office.
They paged Kells as soon as they arrived. He and Coe were all right. They told him what had happened at the farmhouse, about Polk and Grue, and Kells was on his way back with Coe.
Rebecca wandered from room to room with the Beretta still in her coat pocket. It would take Grue perhaps a full day to track them on foot. He had never even operated a motor vehicle and would not follow by sled. He mistrusted most machines, although there was evidence he had used a chain saw once, and wiretap records once captured his voice on the telephone. It had once seemed fitting that he would serve out his sentence trapped inside the technological fortress of ADX Gilchrist.
In the office, Polk sat next to a small steel examining table with his shirt unbuttoned. Dr. Rosen snipped away his stained T-shirt to expose his pale, protuberant gut and downturned nipples. The bandage, as it came away, was soaked with blood. Dr. Rosen cleaned the wound until it looked benign, a neat little tear in the soft handle of the old man’s lower right side, bleeding feebly.
Dogs howled behind the door leading to the kennel.
Dr. Rosen asked Polk over the din, “How’s it feel?”
The old man was ashen-faced, breathing deeply. “Oh,” he said, “not bad.”
“Numbness anywhere? Tingling? Legs moving all right?”
“Legs fine.”
“No pain, walking?”
“Put some music on, I’ll dance.”
Dr. Rosen patted his shoulder and moved to a medicine cabinet over the sink. Tom Duggan had broken the lock.
“Look at poor Tommy,” said Polk. Tom Duggan was standing in the doorway with his arms crossed. “He’s all bothered about his commission.”
Tom Duggan said, “You shouldn’t have shot at them so early.”
“Don’t measure me just yet, box maker. This is a scratch.”
Rebecca joined Dr. Rosen while the others bickered. “He’s lying about the pain,” said Dr. Rosen, selecting a glass bottle. “I’m going to give him an animal sedative. It’ll have to do.”
“What about the dogs?” she said. Their barking was like an alarm.
Dr. Rosen nodded unhappily. “The same, I guess.”
“I want you to take a look at Mia when you’re through here.”
“Why?” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just look her over, make sure she’s okay.”
Polk saw Dr. Rosen with the glass bottle in hand. “No putting me out,” said Polk. “You people need me awake.”
Dr. Rosen filled a syringe. “Some rest will do you good.”
Polk tried to stand as Dr. Rosen approached. “Don’t come at me with that,” he said.
“Your heart rate is way up. You’re wasting recuperative energy on yelling at everybody. You need to sleep.”
“Come at me with that thing,” Polk said, “and you’ll get a fight.”
Dr. Rosen stopped, needle in hand, unsure how to proceed. Tom Duggan came forward from the door. “Tell me where,” he said.
“The muscle,” said Dr. Rosen. “Anywhere.”
Tom Duggan took the syringe and faced Polk. The old man’s breathing was rapid now, blood pushing more quickly out of the tear in his side. “You need rest,” said Tom Duggan.
Polk grinned, half out of his chair. “Cadavers ever fight back, Tommy?”
Tom Duggan advanced and the old man’s arm came up. Tom Duggan grasped Polk’s wrist and twisted his arm, jabbing the needle into the man’s sagging biceps. He held him there as he emptied the barrel, then released Polk, and handed the syringe needle back to Dr. Rosen.
Polk snickered, rubbing his wrist. He looked angrily dazed. “Bet that felt good, eh, Tommy? Why don’t you take it out on me, your mother’s death. It’s your prison.” He slumped back in the chair. “She came into the post office. A cape coat she wore. Package for Tommy. From the Lionel Train company, for Tommy’s birthday.” He stared off as Tom Duggan left the room. “For Tommy’s birthday.”
Rebecca helped Dr. Rosen walk the tired, mumbling old man down the hall to the bedroom. They lay him on top of the comforter with a pillow under his legs, untucking the edges of the blanket and sheets and folding them over him. They left him wrapped tight and mumbling about Lionel Trains and overdue postage.
Rebecca returned with Dr. Rosen to the kennel. The vet had left behind three small, yipping dogs, a clumsy Newfoundland woofing in the biggest cage, and a handful of cats lounging in a carpet-lined habitat, scratching and mewling. They dosed the noisy animals’ food, and in fifteen minutes there was quiet in the house, except the Newfoundland’s snoring and the twenty-four-hour news.
The TV room blended with the decor of the rest of the house, that of the aging bachelor pad. There was a thin-cushioned den couch squared off in front of the dusty set, a stack of blank videocassettes and Sports Illustrated magazines on the crumb-covered coffee table, beer label coasters, a food-stained remote control.
The news ran footage of American servicemen camping in the Vermont snow. Eleven thousand United States Army and National Guard personnel surrounded Gilchrist. A report on “small-town paranoia,” recounted the flight to larger population centers across the country and reports of vigilante gangs roaming rural towns, looking for outsiders.
There was much more, such as the stock market, down nineteen percent since the takeover — but the usually news-hungry Rebecca did not care. Reason played no role in her vigilance as she returned to pacing the long central hallway, watching the windows for Grue. She made a detour later into the back room of slumbering animals, coming upon Mia. She had her short-nailed finger inside the wire wall of the cat cage, rubbing a kitten’s velvety snout.
Rebecca went to her, watching her baby the sleeping kitten. “Fern had a cat,” said Rebecca, remembering.
She saw suddenly how empty her life had been over the past year. How she had been hiding in Vermont, nursing her wounds — pretending to get stronger, but in truth just hiding. Polk’s secession from Gilchrist seemed reasonable to her now. He had abandoned his hometown before it could abandon him. She hadn’t walked away from Manhattan so much as she had declared war on it, the Manhattan that had once been her and Jeb’s. The Gilchrist that had once been Polk’s.
Mia withdrew her finger from the cage. “Do you think you’ll ever write about this?” she said.
The notebook computer Rebecca was lugging around everywhere with her. The novel gestating inside. The writing life seemed so far away now.
Rebecca shrugged. “Do you think I’ll ever get the chance?”
She later checked on polk at the other end of the house. Swathed in sheets and blankets, unshaven, his hair mussed and his aged skin grubby, he could have been wrapped in mover’s quilts in a doorway off Lexington Avenue. They were all homeless now.
There was a portable telephone next to a packet of Jokers on the dresser. A cartoon dog eraser capped the antenna. Rebecca could have called Jeb again, but what was the point? In theory, she could imagine the relief of hearing a familiar voice. Just not his.
Rebecca got her case and set up her laptop on the table desk inside the vet’s office. She risked tying up the phone line for a few minutes and fed her modem wire into the wall socket. Her America Online account came up and she signed on.