Chapter 10 Above
Above
We don’t have many options in the area when it comes to hospitals.
Unless Terry’s gone far afield, I have about fifty--fifty odds of guessing right, and the coin flip comes up in my favor.
The front desk offers me a mask and directs me to the intermediate care unit.
When I explain to the disinterested woman at reception that I’m a concerned neighbor dropping by for a visit, she tells me to wait while they ask if he wants to see me.
I take a seat against the wall, shifting in the uncomfortable chair.
A heavily pregnant nurse in purple scrubs gives me a speculative look as she passes, and stops to talk to the woman at the desk, who has a phone pressed to her ear. I hear the name “Butler,” and the nurse’s head whips around as she reconsiders me.
A moment later, the first woman beckons me up.
“He’ll see you,” she says. “Just sign in there.”
The pregnant nurse raises her eyebrows. “You sure you want to see him?”
“Just trying to be a good neighbor,” I offer cheerfully.
She snorts. “If I was that man’s neighbor, I’d be moving in a big damn hurry,” she says. She grabs a file off the desk and gives me a better you than me look as she departs. I finish signing in and get a terse “Room seven” by way of directions.
My shoes squeak on the tile. My breath feels hot beneath my mask. The door to room seven is half open. I knock on the doorframe tentatively.
“Come in,” calls a hoarse voice. I slip inside and ease the door shut behind me.
Terry Butler lies propped up amid white sheets, a pale blue blanket laid over his frame.
With all the wires and tubes attached to him, I would expect him to look frail, but despite the deathly pallor of his skin, he’s a large man, and ropy with muscle.
His white hair is long and thin, swept back from a liver--spotted brow that creases with something like amusement when he sees me.
“So nice of my neighbor to visit,” he says, suppressing a cough. “Who the hell are you, really?”
I glance behind me.
“They can’t hear us,” he says. He waves me toward him. I step in hesitantly. His eyes are sharp and clear, even as he hacks into his fist.
“My name is Audrey Dixon,” I say, my mouth dry. I stop two feet from the end of the bed. I’ve got no desire to come any closer.
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
“No,” I say. This is about as far as I’d planned. “I—-I work with Search and Rescue. I’m looking into the disappearance of a teenage girl. Meghan Vale.”
He leans forward and makes a show of swiveling his head around the room. “Doesn’t seem to be here, sweetheart,” he says. “But feel free to look around.”
I flush and grit my teeth. “I have reason to believe she might have been on your property.”
“Trespassing, you mean.” He scratches at a scaly patch of skin along the collar of his gown. His fingernails are thick and cracked, the skin beneath them bluish. He coughs again, the racking cough of a failing heart.
“Did you see her?” I ask, leveling out my voice, trying to sound official.
He works his lips. “Hand me my water,” he says.
He lifts a finger toward the cup on the table beside the bed.
Reluctantly, I draw closer. He smells sour.
Smells like sickness past the point of a cure.
He watches me intently, with a gaze that slips beneath the skin.
I hand him the water without letting his hand touch mine and retreat half a step.
He drinks. Sits back.
“Was Meghan Vale on your land?” I ask.
He purses his lips. “No one has respect for private property anymore,” he says. “It’s mine. I own it. Those bastards might have taken everything else, but I’ll be damned if they take my last thirty acres before I’m maggot food.”
“Bastards?” I ask. “The Hills, you mean?”
“Didn’t mind the father. Knew how to mind his own business. It’s why I rented to him in the first place. Those kids, though—-those girls—-he should have kept them in line.”
“I didn’t realize the Hills were renters,” I said. “I thought they owned the land.”
“They do now,” he says. “Vultures, the lot of them.”
“Mr. Butler, Meghan—-” I begin, but he’s undeterred.
“He came to me after the wife died. Mason did, the father. Said, ‘Terry, I need a safe place to raise my family. Away from the world’s problems.’ Wickedness, he called it.
A man takes care of his family. And I needed the help, so I let him stay.
Plenty of room for both of us. Didn’t even mind the kids roaming around.
All I asked was that they respect the boundaries I set and leave me in peace. ”
“And keep their dog from barking too much,” I can’t help but interject.
He makes a sound that might be a grunt or a laugh. “That mutt? You’ve been talking to Melinda. She’s never let that go. That dog was a menace. A killer. It went after the animals every chance it got. Only one thing to do when a dog gets a taste for blood.”
“Shoot it?” I say flatly.
“It was a warning shot,” he scoffs.
A killer. A memory stirs.
I was at the vet. Our cat Pumpkin was dying.
Or rather, not dying so much as about to die.
A cancer in his gut that would kill him sooner or later but hadn’t yet.
My parents didn’t want him to suffer. Better to go a few months early and happy, they said, but truthfully Pumpkin had not been happy a day in his life, angry at the world and everyone in it.
The kind of creature who thrived on his own misery.
Still, I loved him; sometimes I wonder if he’s the one who taught me that love is devotion to someone despite their disinterest, and despite the marks they leave on your skin.
I was in the waiting room because my mother wouldn’t let me go into the room.
She supposed, wrongly, that I would be more disturbed by witnessing death than by knowing that it was occurring invisibly, just out of sight.
I was sitting on my hands, eyes fixed on the linoleum tiles, when a boy burst in.
He was younger than me—-twelve to my fourteen, if I’m doing the math right.
He clutched a shoebox in both arms, which he placed on the countertop.
He was crying so hard the receptionist could barely understand him.
A rabbit, I heard. His sister’s. It had been in a dog’s mouth—-could she help it?
The receptionist looked in the box, and her face went very still. Promises to do what they could were made, and then the box and its contents vanished into the back. The boy came and sat several seats down from me, swiping his nose with his sleeve.
“It’s my fault,” he said. “I didn’t check the hutch before I let the dogs out.”
“It’s the dog’s fault, isn’t it?” I said. At the time, I thought this would make him feel better.
He fixed me with a look that made me afraid—-not of him, but of something like a shadow behind him. “You can’t blame an animal for doing what it’s supposed to do.”
I didn’t know then why those words unsettled me so much when I knew he was right. But it was the way he said it. As if he was repeating what someone else had told him. As if there was another part to that lesson.
Man is an animal, too.
The door opened then. Andrew Hill, whom I did recognize. “Liam, what are you doing here?”
“It was hurt.” He seemed to know this wasn’t an adequate explanation.
The receptionist emerged then, along with a vet in a white coat.
“We can’t pay,” Andrew said immediately, but there wouldn’t be a payment.
The rabbit was dead when it arrived, which the vet attempted to explain kindly, but Andrew interrupted. They had to get home.
“Stop crying,” I heard Andrew say as he dragged Liam toward the door. “You don’t want Dad to see you like that.”
There was anger in his voice, but urgency, too.
I saw Liam on the television screen years later, playing the bad--boy character in a leather jacket, and I thought of the boy crying over the soft body of an animal that should have been safe.
When the headlines appeared later—-drugs, arrest, overdose, rehab, repeat—-part of me said, Of course, of course, because what is the world but a set of jaws?
Terry’s still got his eyes narrowed at me. “The Hills have been spinning stories about me for years,” he says. “While they steal my land bit by bit.”
“How’d they manage that?” I ask.
He gives a phlegmy sniff. “Got behind on my taxes. Then the medical bills—-didn’t have a choice but to sell, and they were always there to buy it up.”
“I’m not here to talk about the Hills,” I remind him. I pull up Meghan’s picture. “This is Meghan Vale. Are you sure you haven’t seen her?”
He stares at the picture, and the corners of his mouth creep up in a smile that makes my gut clench. “Pretty little thing, isn’t she?” he says. “She looks like trouble, that one.”
I start to pull the phone back, but his hand shoots out. He grips my hand in his, holding it steady.
“And lost in the woods?” he asks, as if he is enjoying my discomfort. “How long has she been gone? You think she’s all alone out there? How long do you think she can last?”
“Have you seen her or not?” I demand.
He works his lips, and his grip relents. “Could be,” he says with some reluctance.
“ ‘Could be’? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means my eyesight isn’t what it used to be. I saw someone. Could have been her. Too far off to be sure. I hollered at her and she scampered.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Just hollered? You didn’t fire a warning shot?”
“Not that I recall,” he says with a halfway grin. He settles back into the pillows and closes his eyes. “Now I’d like you to go.”
I stare at him. There is utter peace on his face. Could he look like that if he’d done something to Meghan?
I think he could. I think this man could slit someone’s throat and stroll down the street with a smile.
But if he did something to Meghan, he’s happy to take that secret to his grave—-and he won’t have long to wait.