Chapter 9 Small-Town Secrets
Small-town Secrets
The ambulance swerved on backcountry roads. Boba Fett turned his head and puked. A paramedic caught the vomit in a bucket, and I leaned back against the wall.
A girl. A girl had tried to drown Boba Fett. Well, the kid was pretty out of it. Probably hypoxic. That might be total bullshit, but I dug in my bag for my cell phone and called Dispatch.
“This is Lt. Koray. I’ve got a message for the deputies on the scene at Sandpiper Run.”
“Let me patch you through Bluetooth,” Dispatch said.
I didn’t know they could do that. Must have something to do with Chief’s new radios. After a moment of static, I heard a BEEP, and then Deputy Detwiler’s voice: “This is D6.”
“This is L4. Victim reports there was a girl at the scene who tried to drown him. Don’t know if she’s at risk of drowning herself, but please be advised. Victim is pretty out of it, and the info may be sketchy.”
“Affirmative, L4. We’ll be on the lookout and will also relay to DNR.”
The line clicked dead, and I heard a few notes of a distantly hummed song, as if from a radio station.
“Dispatch? Is this a secure channel?” I demanded.
The line lapsed into silence.
I hung up, chewing my lip. It wasn’t unheard-of for drowning people to grab at others and take them down with them.
I didn’t think that was what had happened here, but I couldn’t rule it out.
From the kid’s description, it seemed like an attempted drowning.
He wasn’t exactly a reliable witness, but he wasn’t with it enough to be deliberately misleading, either.
We hit a bump in the road, and a backpack rolled open at my feet.
It must have belonged to Boba Fett and have been chucked into the ambulance by his friends.
A Nintendo Switch, an energy drink, and a wallet rolled out.
I chased the energy drink can across the floor and scraped it back into the bag with the Switch. I grabbed the wallet and opened it.
According to his school ID, Boba Fett was really Ross Lister, age fifteen, a student at St. Michael’s Prep School.
Lister. Ross was Mark Lister’s son.
First Jeff Sumner’s son nearly drowned.
Then Mark Lister’s.
Totally different scenarios, but this was still a helluva coincidence.
I scrubbed my tongue on the roof of my mouth. It tasted metallic, sharply sweet, not like the soft siltiness of river water. I asked for a bottle of water to rinse my mouth as Ross babbled about a Sith Lord borrowing his Switch and not returning it.
Not the most reliable narrator, that one.
The ambulance roared up to the hospital, and I limped out and got the hell out of the way of the paramedics.
They took Ross into the ER, and I trailed behind.
I’d only taken my flip-flops and purse with me, and it was awkward, dripping in my clammy swimsuit and clutching my bag.
I made squeaking noises and dripped everywhere as I walked, scars and cellulite on full display.
I got taken to the back right away, because I had bled through my towel.
I sat on a bed with a paper cover on it, soaking it.
It tore anytime I moved. And it was cold as fuck.
I poked around the room for something to wear.
I would’ve taken the world’s ugliest hospital gown at this point, but there wasn’t anything in the staging area.
A fabric curtain separated me from the rest of the emergency room, and from Nick’s voice as he worked on Ross in the area beside me.
Ross sounded all right, but seemed unable to remember his parents’ phone number and what day it was.
He also announced that he was the leader of a cult of death-metal robots that fed on cheeseburgers.
I guess that was a step up from believing himself to be Boba Fett, bounty hunter.
Nick told one of the nurses: “He’s hypoxic, delirious. Let’s get him on oxygen, get the bleeding stopped, and then get a chest X-ray. I want to see his lungs, make sure they’re clear.”
I twiddled my thumbs until the curtain got pulled aside and Nick frowned at me.
“It’s just a scratch,” I said.
He peeled back the towel. “That’s more than a scratch. That’s about ten stitches.”
“Awesome.” I shivered.
Nick opened a drawer and handed me a hospital gown. He leaned close to me, kissed my temple, and whispered: “Stop scaring me.”
I sure wished I could. I was doing a pretty good job of scaring myself.
I waited behind the curtain for a PA to come by and sew me up, continuing to eavesdrop through the curtain. Maybe Ross had hallucinated the girl in the river, just as he was now hallucinating that he was the king of a gang of robots. That was certainly the most rational explanation.
“Where’s Ross?” a male voice demanded. I sat up a little straighter.
A nurse told him: “He’s in X-ray right now. He’ll be back soon.”
“Is he all right?”
“He’s awake and talking. You’re his father?”
“Yes.”
“You can wait here. I’ll send the doctor in when he gets test results.”
Rustling sounded in the bay beside me, as if someone sat heavily in a chair. Then the voice began again: “Jeff, this is Mark. There’s been an accident at the river.”
I leaned forward. The elusive Mark Lister. He had to be on the phone.
“Ross almost drowned. Yeah…yeah. I don’t know.”
There was a pause, and I assumed this was Jeff Sumner’s side of the conversation.
Mark’s voice sharpened. “No. Let me tell you. My son better be okay. No, I’m going to say what I want. Yeah…go fuck off.”
There was an exhalation, then the tapping of a shoe on tile.
I stared up at a fluorescent light. Mark didn’t seem to think the two near drownings were a coincidence. Maybe someone had it in for those guys and was taking it out on their kids?
Mark sounded angry. Perhaps there was a fracture in the brotherhood of the Kings of Warsaw Creek. Maybe Mark would talk.
The PA arrived to rinse out my wound, and seemed determined to chat to distract me from the pain, but I was more interested in eavesdropping on next door. I caught fragments of a tearful reunion between Ross and Mark, and a few snatches of Nick talking.
“What about…infection?” Mark asked hesitantly.
“We’ll make sure he gets a course of antibiotics to counteract any waterborne bacteria he might have inhaled,” Nick said.
“But…I keep reading about parasites and brain worms. Could something like that hurt him?”
“We don’t get brain worms in this climate. But if he starts showing any kind of unusual symptoms, I’ll have you follow up with his PCP.”
I struggled not to hiss as the PA sewed my wound together. I stared down at the angry red weal in my calf, about eight inches long.
“This is a bad spot,” she murmured. “Take it easy, and don’t flex that muscle much. No marathon running.”
“No danger of that.” Running a marathon sounded like a really bad time to me on a good day.
In the next bay, Mark whisper-yelled at Ross: “I told you not to go into the water.”
“But my friends and I were just—”
“Don’t go into the water!”
The rest of the conversation was unintelligible. I wondered what Mark knew that I didn’t.
—
Later that night I was cleared to go home, with a bottle of antibiotics and a heavy dose of my boyfriend’s worry. Monica came by to pick me up. Thankfully, she brought me the rest of my clothes from the beach.
I hopped on one foot, trying to jam my swollen leg into my jeans, wincing.
“Luckily, there were no other injuries,” Monica was telling me as she scrolled on her phone.
She was wearing her swimsuit, with a pair of cargo pants, and a pink sweatshirt jacket with Girl Power emblazoned on the back.
“Jasper’s liaising with DNR. They’re going to comb through their records, try to figure out if there have been any similar injuries recently. ”
“Anyone see anything at the beach?” I kept my voice low to prevent anyone from eavesdropping. “Any sign of the girl Ross talked about?”
Monica shook her head. “No one saw her. I interviewed Ross’s friends. They said they lost sight of him but didn’t see a girl.”
I rubbed my forehead. “I hope to hell we don’t find another body.”
My swollen leg wound up not fitting into my jeans. Monica was kind enough to use the PA’s funny bent safety scissors to cut a slit in the side.
“Fashionable,” she observed. “Kick flares are back in.”
“You should talk,” I retorted with a grin. “Y2K called and wanted their cargo pants back.”
She stuck her tongue out at me. “I’ll go get the car. See you in the pickup area.”
“I can walk,” I insisted.
“Shut it.” Her hand made a puppetlike mouth that opened and snapped closed, and then she disappeared behind the curtain.
I sighed. I probably couldn’t catch up to her. I limped out from behind the curtain, headed past the nurses’ station, and went down to the elevator banks.
An elevator’s door was open, so I called out: “Hold the door, please.”
A hand shot out to hold the door open, and I shuffled inside…to find myself face-to-face with an older version of Ross, tall and thin, with brown hair. A bit more realistic than the portrait at the car dealership.
I stuck out my hand. “Anna Koray. Nice to meet you, Mr. Lister.”
Lister swallowed and shook my hand. “Thank you for helping my boy.”
I nodded. “It’s part of the job.”
He looked at me quizzically, and his brows drew together, as if he were trying to connect my name with my visit to the dealership.
“I work for the sheriff’s office.”
“Ah.” His hand froze around mine, and then he withdrew it. “We were lucky you were there.”
I had him here, trapped. I hadn’t punched a floor button. “I have to be honest with you, Mark. There’s something weird about Ross’s accident. He said he saw a girl who tried to drown him, but there’s no sign of the girl.”
“A girl?” He seemed to pale beneath his spray tan.
“Yeah. Ross described her as a goth girl. Does he have any friends, or maybe a girlfriend, who might match that description? I’m worried about her.”
Mark’s hand slid to his mouth. “No. I don’t remember him talking about a girl. I thought…maybe he was just involved in some horseplay.”