No Time To Wave Goodbye Part 17

"Mom, you don't want to do that," said Blaine as though Claire were a much, much older woman.

"Yes, of course I do. It would do me good to get some air. Just let me grab a coat and my boots."

In the end, the six of them walked back down past the imposing faces of the homes on Paramount Street and around the corner where Darandella's Boutique faced both the main thoroughfare and the ascending residential road. As they shook hands, Claire said suddenly, "Wait for me here. Just for a moment." And it didn't take more than five minutes for her to emerge, with three white bags, tufted with golden tissue, looped over her arms. "Here," she said, handing them to Beth, and when Beth couldn't hold both with her mittens, to Candy.

"What are these?"

"Spring clothes. Please take them. I thought, nine months? Babies are bigger now than the age they put on the clothes. I've often thought it's so mothers can feel pride in their children getting so big. Dresses and a couple of little coats ..."

"We can't take these," Beth said gently.

"You mean, from us," Blaine said softly.

"No, I mean ..."

"Please take them, for luck," said Blaine, and Claire nodded. "Please believe she's alive, for us. Because I know my dad is crazy but I don't ever think anything would make him hurt a baby. Please help us believe she's safe."

"They'll be the first things we put on her," Candy said. They watched as the Whittiers made their way slowly back up the block to their haunted house. "Jesus," Candy said.

"I'll keep them in my room," Beth said.

"I was just going to throw them in the trunk of the rental car," Candy told her. "I don't want to look at them."

"That wouldn't be right," Beth said. "She's trying to help us believe. I ... threw away everything everyone gave me for Ben, back then. Now, I don't know if I should have shoved hope away from me so hard." She remembered how she had thought of the little pagan G.o.ds, how the Chinese believed the opposite of Westerners, that it was best to have those bored little G.o.ds catch sight of something shiny-elsewhere-than to notice a healthy child, good fortune made flesh. She thought for a moment of all the pagan ones that scarpered in these mountains and the ancient people who had prayed to them and tried to placate them. Would the bored little G.o.ds turn impa.s.sive eyes on this street where the melt.w.a.ter torrented down the drains and nod?

The group finally caught sight of the awning that announced the Lone Star Inn. On the steps, they saw a figure in white, waving and leaping. Whatever she was calling was torn away from their ears by the steady push of the wind that came down from the mountains.

"It's Eliza," Candy said, and she and Pat began to run, the bags slapping against their legs. Beth stood in the snow, her hands clasped under her chin. Had she let herself hope too much? Had she let herself hope enough?

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

It took Vincent's and Ben's combined strength to shove the door open against what was blocking it.

They glanced down when it finally budged. It was a man's leg, in denim with a flannel cuff.

"Jesus Christ," Ben murmured.

Bryant Whittier lay sprawled where he had fallen. He was dead.

Lorrie Sabo knelt and said, "I'll look for a pulse."

Vincent said, "I'm thinking that won't do much good." What had been the back of Bryant Whittier's head festooned the coat racks and one arm of the built-in benches that circled the one main room of the house.

Quickly, they turned away from the sight and examined the room. A ladder rose to a sleeping loft. Ben and Vincent nearly vaulted up. "He put the fire out first."

"Where is she? She'd be crying if she heard me!" Ben said. "Where's Stella?"

They clambered back down from the loft.

"Wait, wait," Lorrie said. She opened the door and with a cluck of her tongue, summoned Roman inside. He immediately took up his peculiar stance in front of a deep bank of recessed kitchen drawers. One of the drawers was open perhaps an inch.

Vincent pulled it out all the way and Stella kicked her feet and smiled.

"Stella bella. She wasn't afraid," Ben said, scooping up the baby, holding her close. "Stella. My baby."

"Of course she wasn't, were you?" Lorrie cooed. "You knew your dad was coming. You're a smart chick, isn't ya?" To Ben, Lorrie said, "In another life, I was a nurse. Let me just have a look at her quick." After a few deft presses and peeks, Lorrie said, "Heck, she's fine. She's not even dehydrated, though I'd like her a little bit warmer."

Ben opened his parka and shirt and tenderly zipped the baby inside, unconsciously humming the denied old song, If a bunny catch a bunny.... "My little girl. My little girl. Daddy's here. Daddy will never let you go ever again. My little heart. Mio piccolo cuore."

"You don't speak Italian," Vincent said.

"What do you know? For a guy who won an Oscar, you don't know that much," said Ben. His face was childlike with rapture.

Quickly, Vincent turned away and examined the panes of gla.s.s on the windows of the little house, each a prism in the morning light. The carol of Stella's steady stream of rolling nonsense vowels made him weak; her face was a beacon of contentment. Vincent stared around the inside of the little house-trying to take in the genius of its economy, from the built-in beds to the fold-down table. Bryant Whittier's body, with its achromatic face, took up much of the floor s.p.a.ce.

Lorrie pulled a plastic tablecloth from the head of her pack-she called that piece a "cranium," perhaps in deference to the scene-and said, "Let's see how much propane he had left." She pumped the levers to get the stove going long enough to warm water in a pan. "There we go. I knew there was a reason I kept one of Mariel's old bottles."

"What's that?"

"Ah, that would be baby formula," Lorrie said. "I fed some without iron to a mouse my daughter Dana found last winter. Now I have the fattest mouse in California. Then I just kept the formula. Who knows why? Anyhow. You think it's just your B.O. that's making her cry? Think she might be hungry?"

"Where're the bottles Whittier had?" Vincent asked.

"In the trash. They're disposables," Lorrie said. "I looked first. They're the kind they have on planes."

"We didn't think of bringing a bottle," Ben said.

"Among so much else," Lorrie said with a radiant, mischievous grin. "We have enough for one, anyhow."

They sat on the built-in bench, keeping their feet away from Bryant Whittier's corpse, while Ben fed Stella and changed her into one of two remaining disposable diapers in the cabin. Then he found an absurdly light stretchy suit, one that Eliza had brought to L.A., and dressed her. With Lorrie directing him, Vincent searched the loft and the bags for anything they could wrap around Stella. Her little hands were pale and chilled. There was a snowsuit, perhaps an eighteen-month size, that was too big, so they stuffed the legs and the feet with burp cloths and a baby blanket to make it snug. Vincent turned up the brim on his Blackhawks cap and pulled it down over Stella's black hair, leaving his own pink headband in place. Then Ben picked up his child, holding her cheek close to his own. "Do you think she's deaf?" he asked Lorrie.

"Why the heck would you think that?"

"She would have heard that gunshot."

"That drawer was probably her bed. It was lined with blankets. She probably startled and then went back to sleep. Babies don't startle that easily if they feel safe. He probably made her feel comfortable here." At that thought, Ben exhaled a long breath and rubbed his forehead. "I'll never figure this out if I live a hundred years."

Lorrie began marshaling the troops. "You don't have to. Now, Vincent, Sam, listen. I'm going to go back for help and you're staying here. You fell once and you can't fall now. We're at least fifteen miles in over rough country. But it's country I know like the back of my hand. If I hike as fast as I can, which is a lot faster than you, and given how much the snow has melted today, maybe I can make it out by sundown. There's a good chance of that. The sky's still clear. That's good as far as the likelihood of there being no more snow, but it also means it might get cold. Too cold to take a chance with Stella."

"How long?" Ben said. "Why can't we all go?"

"Your job, Ben, for your baby, is to stay here. Stay right here until I send help. I will have the FBI guy send a helicopter for you three. This is the safest place you can be. Shelter and light and water. At least enough."

"Sit here? With Whittier's body?" Vincent asked.

"Push him outside. Turn on the heat ..."

"For as long as it lasts ..." said Ben.

"You have wood," she said. And glanced at the tiny stove. "Well, a little. You have your sleeping bags too. You know how to zip them together. Get in together. Put her in the middle and just huddle if it comes to that," Lorrie said. "But it won't. You hired me to find her, didn't you? And bring her back safe? This is the only way I can do it." She stepped just outside the door for a moment and tried her cell phone. "Shoot! Nothing."

"Lorrie, just go," Vincent said. "I'll make the deciding call here."

"We can't even let Eliza know!" Ben said.

"I'll call as soon as I get a signal. That way, help might be on the way before I even get to the trailhead," Lorrie insisted. "The sooner we do this the better. I'm going to unload my pack to travel light. I'll leave you everything I don't need for an emergency. I'm going to take my phone and a few power bars. I'll take my gun. You ... obviously have one," she added, looking down at Bryant Whittier. "Let's, ah, pull him outside so that you can ... it's just better."

Lorrie held Stella while Vincent and Ben gingerly hauled the body outside the little cabin. They laid him a few feet from the door. Before they used one of the blankets from inside to cover him, Vincent looked down at Bryant Whittier's placid, businesslike face, the hole in the back of his head invisible. He had aimed the rifle up through his mouth and apparently used his toe to pull the trigger. Inside, he had set his boots carefully to one side. They were nice Merrells. Whittier wouldn't have wanted to splatter them. Vincent thought briefly of Jackie's ballet slippers. He and Ben pulled the blanket up to cover Whittier's face.

Back inside, Vincent wondered if the boots would fit him. He used the toe of his own lousy boot to bend back the boot top and see the label. They were yet another size too small.

d.a.m.n. Whittier could have done some good in death he hadn't done in life.

What had this guy's life been? Vincent wondered. What had his thoughts been?

Back inside, Lorrie was hurrying to get ready to leave. She said, "Just promise me you won't move. Promise you won't leave here. Nine of ten times that civilians go with you, they get all excited or worried and they can't wait. They go off thinking, Hey, I made it here, I can make it back. Don't. It always has a bad result. Sometimes a really bad result."

"How many times have you let civilians come with you?" Vincent asked.

"Twice. This is the second time. The first time I swore I would never do it again."

"So nine out of ten times was really one out of two times," Vincent said.

"Every tracker I know says the same thing," Lorrie told them, her mouth a grim line. "No one listens to good sense."

She began to remove items from her pack-the harness, the disgusting bags of dried goop, her little stove, one of her water bags. "Boil snow for water. This far up, you probably won't even need iodine to purify it. There's enough formula left for a couple more bottles. I'd say cut up some cloth and tape it on her for diapers. Save the one disposable. If you get a chance, cut more wood. I'm leaving you all the food I have. Romy and I will go as fast as is humanly possible. And caninely possible. You'll hear that helicopter whomping by tonight. There's more of a clearing here than I thought from what Sarah said at first."

While Roman ate the last of his high-energy kibble, Lorrie instructed the brothers, "Show me your mirrors and your lights." Dutifully, they dug out their headlamps and flashlights and mirrors. "You could use those to signal if you had to. But that's crazy. It's not as though they won't spot this place. They have super-spotter lights on helicopters, particularly the military kind. The tree cover here won't mean a thing to them."

Vincent wondered if Lorrie was talking to them anymore or to herself. Her voice seemed to have slipped down a register, into a deeper key. "I've got my groundsheet and my sleeping bag and my mirrors and headlamp. I've got water. That's it. All I ever needed and all I need now. If I get hurt, Roman knows how to go for help. But I won't get hurt. That's it."

Lorrie stood up, kissed Stella, who was now asleep, with her lips furled around the nipple, and hugged each of the brothers.

"G.o.dspeed, Lorrie," Ben said. "I owe you everything."

"Thank you. Remember what I said, now. Stay put. We got off lucky with Ben. We got our prize here. Don't rush it, now." Vincent raised his hand in a parody of the Boy Scout pledge. "If, G.o.d forbid, you had to leave, it's straight south. Straight south. You have your GPS. But don't. Wait, no matter what."

Together, with Ben straining against Vincent's hand on his arm, they watched Lorrie and the huge dog take off out of the trees and into the sunlight.

"She's something else," Ben said. They dug chocolate bars out and ate them. Stella wakened and they took out spoons for her to play with. Within ten minutes, she tired of them and began to fuss. Ben fed her the last of the bottle and mixed another with the dregs of the water from his carrier. "I wish we could set her down to play," Ben said. "But the floor's not exactly ..."

The blood on the floor had begun to freeze, crystalline and black. Stella seemed sweaty, so Ben took off the snowsuit. The two men made a cave in which Stella could crawl back and forth between them on the padded bench. Her father would pull her to her feet when she reached him, to Stella's instant hilarity. When she got back to Vincent, he would do the same thing. Her laughter sounded to Vincent like wind chimes on a summer afternoon. Finally, she visibly ran out of steam, and crawled into Ben's lap, popping her thumb into the side of her mouth. He swaddled her close. Vincent said, "It's getting cold. Let's start a fire, and put the snowsuit back on."

Ben agreed, then said, "Geez, if we had cards, we could play gin. How long has it been?"

Vincent looked at his watch. "An hour. Maybe an hour and ten minutes."

"Long time to go," Ben said.

"Six hours, easy, even if she only stops once or twice."

Suddenly, Ben asked, "What's that? Look outside the window. It looks funny ... like metal, silvery."

Vincent stepped outside, closing the door behind him.

Out of nowhere, a curdle of cloud had darkened the sky.

And it began to snow.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

For something that looked to have been built by the Three Little Pigs, the eight-by-twelve-foot cabin was startlingly well-insulated: Heat poured from the little woodstove so quickly that soon, beads of sweat curled the dark tendrils along Stella's forehead and Ben loosened her snowsuit yet again. The brothers could feel their shoulders relax almost instantly: Vincent's began to throb with a steady ache. He hadn't realized how much he had been protecting himself from the cold by holding his back rigid.

"He came all this way to do this," Ben said, as he glanced outside, pointing to how the snow began to cover Bryant Whittier. It was falling faster now. Vincent noticed that the blanket soon looked like a mound ... like a grave.

Vincent answered, "He didn't mean for it to get like this. He meant to get back down and leave Stella in a safe place, make a phone call, probably. Or have someone make it for him. Whittier obviously had a lot of checks he could cash, a lot of favors out there he could call in. My guess is that he gave it up when the snow forced him to stay up here. He's a lawyer. He would have known that if it went this far and he was found, he was in prison for life. Kidnapping is a capital crime. From what his wife said, I don't think it meant all that much to him anyhow."

Ben asked, "What?"

"His life. He didn't care."

"Then maybe he did mean for it to get like this. How the h.e.l.l did he get all this stuff up here?" Ben said.

"f.u.c.king beats me. Over from the other side."

"What other side?"

"Sarah Switch said there's always another side."

"Why'd he wait until he heard us then, if it didn't mean anything to him?" Ben asked.

"If I had to guess ..." Vincent began. He stopped then.