64

As evening fell, a thick fog rolled in from the bay. I guess Veronica thought it gave her enough cover to avoid being seen with me. We strolled out of Hopes hand in hand and got into her car together. As she started the engine, a couple of pedestrians strolled by, materializing out of the murk like ghosts. I could barely see two cars ahead as she groped her way toward my place.

That evening, we made love, Veronica rocking gently on top of me, doing her best not to jostle my ribs. Neither of us felt like talking. After she fell asleep in my arms, I nuzzled her hair, inhaling her familiar scent. I don’t know how long I lay there, trying to figure a way to hold on to her. Trying to figure a way to get my job back. Trying to figure a way to catch the bastards who were turning both my childhood and my future into ashes. After a while, I untangled myself from Veronica without waking her, downed a cocktail of Maalox and painkillers, sat down at the kitchen table, and started reading through my stack of notebooks once again.

Shortly after 2:00 A.M., the police radio sprang to life. “Code Red, 12 Hopedale Road.” The tenement house where I’d lived as a kid, where Aidan, Meg, and I had played hide-and-seek, where we’d watched helplessly as my dad withered away. Did I know anyone who lived there now? I couldn’t remember.

I got up and stepped into the bedroom to fetch Veronica’s car keys. She was sitting on the bed, pulling on a pair of jeans.

“No need for you to go,” she said.

“Because I’m not a reporter anymore.”

“Lie down and get some sleep, my love. I’ll be back in a while to tell you all about it.”

She stretched out her right hand for the keys. I shook my head and slid them into my pocket.

*  *  *

The fog caught the beams from our headlights and flung them back at us as I felt my way along the familiar city streets. I held my speed at 15 mph as I rolled along Camp Street, missing the turn for Pleasant. I backed up, turned right, and clipped a parked car, snapping off its side mirror. About fifty yards down the street, as I turned left onto Hopedale Road, the lights from the fire and rescue vehicles turned the fog into a red mist.

As I straightened the wheel I heard a pop, and just like that I lost control. Veronica screamed as the car veered to the left and bounced off a utility pole.

“Are you all right?”

“I think so,” Veronica said. “Are you hurt?”

My ribs were reintroducing me to real pain, so I lied. “I’m fine.”

I got out to check the damage. A cracked headlight and a crumpled fender. If it weren’t for the two flat front tires, it would have been drivable. I went around to the passenger-side door and helped Veronica out. She took a couple of steps, and I could see she was limping.

“I guess I banged my knee,” she said.

I bent down to take a look. She had a bloody rip in her jeans.

“You need to get to the hospital.”

“I’ll drive you,” someone said.

I looked up and saw Gunther Hawes, one of the DiMaggios, coming down the stairs of a weathered cottage. “My car’s parked just down the way on Pleasant Street,” he said. “Stay here and I’ll be right back.”

While we waited, I looked around to see if I could figure out what blew the tires. A pair of two-by-fours with spikes driven through them had been laid across the road. I flipped them upside down, tromped on them to bend the spikes, and dragged them onto the sidewalk. As I was finishing up, Gunther pulled up beside us, and I noticed his driver-side mirror was missing.

On the drive to the hospital, I apologized for the mirror, wrote down my insurance information for him, and told him about the booby trap.

“Somebody must have wanted to slow the fire equipment down,” he said, “but they came in from the other end of the street.”

“There was probably one there too,” I said.

“We should tell somebody,” Veronica said.

“Fire equipment’s already on the street,” I said, “so they must have already found out the hard way.”

Gunther braked in front of the Rhode Island Hospital emergency-room entrance, and we both got out to help Veronica from the car. A rescue wagon, siren screaming, pulled in behind us, and the back doors flew open. Two attendants sprinted from the hospital to help the crew unload a stretcher from the back.

The patient was strapped to a backboard, a cervical collar stabilizing her neck. Part of her uniform had been burned off. The flesh underneath looked like grilled beef. I wouldn’t have recognized her except for one thing.

The gurney was nearly half a foot shorter than she was.