Stranglehold. Part 38

She gave the woman her number.

"And could you tell him it's an emergency?"

"Your son's name is ...?"

"Robert."

"Robert. Yes, certainly. I'll have him call."

She hung up and dialed Owen Sansom, then realized she'd dialed the office number instead of his home so she hung up and dialed again. Cindy appeared from the kitchen carrying two mugs of coffee and handed her one. She tasted it. It was liberally dosed with cognac.

"And don't tell me you don't need that," Cindy said.

"h.e.l.lo?"

"Owen? Listen, Owen, he's up there."

"Up where?"

"Arthur. He's at his parents' house. He's been living there and G.o.d knows what he's been doing. They ordered me off it gunpoint. Harry did, of all people. Robert looks awful, Owen. He's terrified. We've got to get him out of there."

"I'll move on it right away. Get a judge to act ex parte to remove Robert from their care. Dammit all! It's Sat.u.r.day night! We're not going to get anything on this until Monday morning."

"It can't wait, Owen! Jesus Christ, you didn't see him. He's crazy. He could do anything!"

"Look, maybe I can find a judge who's home tonight, or maybe Andrea Stone could, somebody who'll ..."

"It won't wait! You're not hearing me! Listen, do either of you have any clout with the police?"

"Andrea might. I ..."

"Can you call her for me? I talked to an Officer Morton who was going to speak to his supervisor about getting somebody up there as soon as possible. But he said it could be hours yet before they even get back to me. Maybe you or Andrea could light some kind of fire under them. I left a message for Ralph Duggan. I'm going to wait for him to call and then I'm going back there."

"Lydia, don't. You just said they ordered you off at gunpoint. "

"They won't order Ralph Duggan off at gunpoint."

"You don't know that either. Let him handle it. Let me try to get a judge ..."

"He's my son, Owen. And the courts have already failed him twice. Call me back if you get anything, okay?"

"Lydia ..."

"Call me."

And then there was nothing to do but wait. Somehow the coffee cup had emptied.

Magic.

"You think another cup would get me loaded?"

Cindy shook her head. "With the adrenaline you're pumping, I think it would take a good quart or two to get you loaded. You practically give off sparks."

She took the cup and went to the kitchen.

"I think I'll fix this hand up now," Lydia said.

"Good idea."

The puncture wasn't deep. In the bathroom she washed her hands. The soap and water made the sc.r.a.ped wrist sting and the puncture wound throb. She poured hydrogen peroxide over each of them and wiped the white foam off with cotton b.a.l.l.s, poured and wiped again and then sprayed them both with bacitracin. She used a Band-Aid on the wrist and wrapped the hand with gauze and tied it off.

Her image in the mirror startled her. Cindy was right. She did nearly give off sparks. The eyes were wild. There were twigs and leaves in her hair and her face was smeared with mud. She wiped her face with a facecloth and brushed her hair.

She was almost finished when the phone rang.

"I've got it!" she called. She dropped the brush into the sink and ran down the hall to the phone. Cindy was already standing there with two more cups of doctored coffee.

"h.e.l.lo?"

The silence on the other end was like a weight dropping onto her chest and told her exactly who it was.

"I don't need to talk to you now, Arthur," she said. "Yes you do."

She glanced at Cindy. She'd set the coffee down on the table by the phone and was watching her intently.

"Don't hang up, Lydia. You know my parents' house, right?"

"Of course I do."

"So you know where the phones are, right?"

"Arthur, what do you want?"

"Do you know where the phones are, Lydia?"

"Yes. One is in the kitchen and the other's upstairs in Ruth's bedroom. So what?"

"So Mom took the guest room for a while. Her room is my room now. Mine and Robert's. So guess where I'm calling you from, Lyd. I mean, guess which room. And guess who's sitting right here with me. Right next to me. Right here on the bed."

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it, Arthur, if you touch him ..."

His whisper in her ear was the voice of all her fears-and she knew that somehow it was also the voice of her fate and of her doom. She heard the rest of her life hiss away through the phone line like a nest of snakes surrounding her.

"Lydia, I can do any f.u.c.king thing I want and you can't do s.h.i.t. You got that? You useless f.u.c.k. I'll be out of here tomorrow, and maybe I'll take him with me and maybe I won't. You want to make trouble about my being here? Who's to say I was here? Your word against mine. Robert's not going to say. The kid's not going to say. He told on me once and he knows where that got him. Don't you, Robert? Don't you, you miserable little c.o.c.ksucker!"

She heard a m.u.f.fled moan.

She slammed the phone down on the receiver. Coffee spilled across the rim of her mug.

"Stay here," she said. "Wait for Duggan's call. Or no-try calling him back. Tell him I'm on my way up there. If you can't reach him try the police again."

"What ...?"

"He's going to do something. Maybe he already has. I don't know. I'm going to stop him."

She ran up the stairs to her bedroom and flung open the closet door. She pushed away boots and shoes along the upper shelf until she found the cardboard shoe box with the Smith & Wesson Ladysmith .38 inside and the box of sh.e.l.ls. She opened the cylinder and saw it was loaded. She put the sh.e.l.ls in her pocket and ran back downstairs again and she was at the door and had it open before Cindy stopped her.

"Liddy, let me try the police again before you ..."

"No! G.o.dd.a.m.n it, I've gone by the book all the way on this! I've tried everything. The courts aren't protecting him, Cindy! The police aren't protecting him. If the law won't help me get Robert away from that G.o.dd.a.m.n son of a b.i.t.c.h once and for all then I'll d.a.m.n well do it myself!"

"At least let me ..."

"What would you do if you were me, Cyn? Let him spend another night getting raped? Let him go off and disappear with him for a couple of weeks so he can go on getting raped maybe every night? Stay by the phone, Cyn. See if you can reach Duggan. G.o.dd.a.m.n it, I'm going for my son."

Thirty-six.

Visitation, Part Six

Robert crouched tight to the bed board and watched his father move back and forth from one side of the bed to the other. Four pillows were spread out in front of him like sandbags-soft ammunition, but all he had if his father should try to come at him again.

His father had a gun, a pistol so shiny it looked almost white. It glinted in the lamplight. He was waving it and walking back and forth across the room.

He felt like he had to go to the bathroom but he wasn't going to ask or say anything to his father, nothing at all. He held it in.

He kept waiting for them to say it was okay to go to sleep. For the night to end.

He heard someone coming up the stairs outside the locked door. His father heard it too. He stopped and turned to the door and waited for the knock.

Instead of a knock Robert heard his grampa's voice. "Arthur?"

He heard the doork.n.o.b turn against the lock.

"Come on, son. Let me in. Your mother and I have been talking, thinking. We think y'ought to give it up, son. Take yourself on out of here-just for tonight, you see? Spend the night at your place. Live to fight another day, so to speak. You know? Like you say, as it is right now, n.o.body can even say you were here at all except her. And we all say she's a liar."

His father just stared at the door.

"Arthur?"

His father'd been acting crazy all day now. Real crazy-worse than yesterday. Talking to himself when there was n.o.body to listen. Drinking beer and whiskey. Not eating. Hiding out on Officer Duggan. Robert could tell that even his grandparents were kind of scared of him now.

His father had called him a c.o.c.ksucker. His father had pointed at him with the gun.

Think I'll shoot? his father had said. Bang. Bang.

"This isn't gettin' us anywhere, son. Duggan comes back, finds you here, it's just going to be More trouble in the courts for you. You got to see that, Arthur. Your mother and I are behind you one hundred percent, but you know Duggan's practically the most persistent man in the d.a.m.n county. You know that."

More footsteps on the stairs.

"Arthur? Open up."

His grandma.

His father took a step toward the door and then moved sideways to the night table and took the bottle on the table and drank. Robert could smell the stink of it all the way across the room over here.

"Open up the door, dammit."

He drank again.

"Go to h.e.l.l," he told her.

"What? What'd you say to me?"

"I told you to go to h.e.l.l, Ma. Hey, you can both go to h.e.l.l. I'll come out when I'm good and ready."

Robert stared at his father in shocked silence. His grandma was always bossy but he had never once heard his father say no to her. Not on anything.

It would be like Robert saying something like that to him. The same kind of thing. He'd never do it. He'd never dare. And now here was his dad telling his grandmother to go to h.e.l.l-and something about it scared him almost worse than anything.

There was nothing but silence behind the door.

He guessed they were surprised too.

His father stared at the door awhile longer and then turned to him and Robert saw that he was smiling.

"Just you and me, kid," he said quietly. And started to walk over.

When Duggan pulled up at the house, his wife was standing in the doorway with a coat over her shoulders and she wouldn't even let him get out of the car. He rolled down the window and Alice leaned in. She was holding a piece of paper, reading off it when she needed to.

"Ralph," she said, "you've been getting these emergency calls. Three in the past half hour. First from a Lydia Danse, who says her husband Arthur's at his parents' house, staying there, and she's afraid for her little boy. Then I got two more from somebody named Cindy Fortunato, who's a friend of hers and says Mrs. Danse has gone to get her son now and that she's carrying a weapon, a gun, and she wants you to call her right away. But I thought that maybe you should just go on out there and I should make the call. To save time."

"Thanks, Allie. Call her up. Tell her I'm on my way."

He leaned over and kissed her and started the car.

"You be careful," she said. "Domestic disputes, right?"