Waking Lazarus (22 page)

Crazy, yes. But not over-the-top crazy, not beyond the realm of possibility. The kids would say he’d rescued them, wouldn’t they? And the police would confirm what the kids said with Sohler’s story and injuries. If Sohler were missing, he’d be the key link to exonerating Jude.

He tried to swallow the dry medicinal taste in his mouth. It wasn’t copper, but it worried him just the same. He felt his body collapsing in on itself, as if his bones were gone and he was just a balloon of skin filled with leaking helium. (
Dad sitting over my bed.
) An image of his father flashed into his mind for a brief moment, (
over my bed
) but it was gone in a white-hot instant. Other flashes danced before his eyes like a disastrous fireworks show—not flashes of memories but flashes of his mind misfiring. It was the brain’s equivalent of Does Not Compute, and Jude struggled to reboot. He couldn’t grasp how things had taken such a wrong turn.
Tell me if you’ve been kidnapping kids,
Mr. Gress—or whatever your real name is. Child abductors like to change
their names and use aliases, you know. What are you really hiding?

Then his eyesight cleared, and what he saw wasn’t a black cloud of pity for himself. His mind turned red, red as rage, red as blood. Jude bolted from the table, popping electrodes away from his body as he stood. This evidently wasn’t what Mr. Clean had expected; he recoiled.

Jude turned to the one-way mirror behind him. One of the electrodes— or maybe it was the blood pressure cuff—valiantly fought to stay connected. He heard the sound of the giant machine sliding across the table, trying to follow him. It fell to the floor, a final fitting sound for the world crashing down around him.

‘‘Hey, what the—’’ Mr. Clean began, but Jude wasn’t looking at the technician anymore. He was looking at his own reflection in the one-way mirror, picturing Chief Odum on the other side.

‘‘I think you and I need to talk, Chief Odum,’’ Jude said. ‘‘Now.’’

Same setup, different room. Jude sat across from Odum again, only instead of a white table, it was now Odum’s desk—a large steel desk that looked like a leftover from the 1950s.

Jude simmered. He was a suspect, and it made him mad to think anyone would accuse him of mistreating kids, locking them up the way Sohler . . . He shuddered, pushing the thought from his mind. In the meantime, he was sitting here, about to play some more cat-and-mouse with Chief Odum. If he was right, Sohler was missing; so why wasn’t Odum out there looking for the guy? He had to be the kidnapper everyone was talking about in the news.

Jude cleared his throat. ‘‘Based on your tester’s questions, I’m guessing Sohler’s gone.’’

Odum sat quietly, rocked back in his chair. After a few moments of silence, he spoke. ‘‘You’re guessing right.’’

‘‘You lost him.’’ A jab, trying to make Odum wince a bit.

Instead, Odum smiled bitterly. ‘‘I did at that, Mr.
Gress
. Had him under twenty-four-hour watch, waiting for the discharge orders.’’ Odum leaned back in his chair, seemed to consider his next words carefully. ‘‘Somebody else, though, had other ideas. Early morning hours, night before last—say about three in the morning—someone got the drop on Officer Barber, knocked him out, I’m guessing. Barber never got a look at the guy, or if he did, he can’t remember. A concussion has a way of scrambling the brain for a while. Anyway, I
L
AZARUS
thought that person might be you, in to spring your friend from the hospital.’’ Odum smacked his lips, looked at the ceiling. ‘‘Of course, you understand.’’

‘‘He’s not my friend, I told you that.’’

Odum shrugged.

‘‘So he’s been loose for—what?—a whole day?’’ Jude said.

‘‘Little more than that.’’

‘‘And you didn’t bring me in for questioning until last night.’’

Odum nodded. ‘‘We were keeping an eye on you. Thought you might be making a move, going to meet him somewhere.’’

Jude shuddered. For a few years he’d had the growing feeling he was being watched, monitored, followed. He’d been healing recently, realizing it was paranoia. Ironically, now that he’d shaken that feeling, he really was being followed.

‘‘Why haven’t I heard anything about it? Seems like it would have been all over the news by now.’’

‘‘Seems like it, doesn’t it?’’ Odum flashed another bitter grin. ‘‘One benefit to having a small police force, a
close-knit
police force.’’

Jude felt his anger rising. ‘‘But shouldn’t you be looking for him?’’

Odum closed his eyes. ‘‘I’m working on it, Mr. Gress. The entire Red Lodge police force is working on it. And then some. Feds have punched their dance card, too.’’

Jude felt the exhaustion radiating off Odum and backed off, letting his anger subside. He shook his head, trying to loosen the jumbled thoughts fastening themselves to his skull. No way he was going to figure it all out right now. Oddly, he found himself wishing Kristina were here. She would have some ideas, say something to help.

‘‘Sorry about your equipment,’’ Jude said, a mild peace offering extended to Odum.

Odum shrugged. ‘‘Polygraph results make good toilet paper, and that’s about it. Machine wasn’t even downloading data. Just an old trick to get people sweating.’’

‘‘Well, it worked.’’

‘‘Partly. I still don’t have a lot of answers I’m looking for. Some of them from you.’’

‘‘Do we really have to go into this right now?’’

Odum wiped at a line of sweat trickling down his forehead. ‘‘Sitting here trying to go toe-to-toe with me isn’t going to do much. One, you’ll lose the match—I’ve got the gun, I’ve got the badge. Two, we’ll waste a lot of time.’’

‘‘Okay, okay.’’ Jude sighed.

‘‘So who are you, really, Mr. Gress?’’

Time to trot out the lie he’d been rehearsing since last night. ‘‘My real name is Kevin Burkhart,’’ he said, pulling out the name of his childhood friend from Bingham, Nebraska.

Odum scratched down the name. ‘‘And why are you using an assumed name, Mr., uh, Burkhart?’’

‘‘I made a few bad business decisions, ended up going broke. Bankrupt, actually. So it made sense for me to just start over. New life, new place, all that.’’

‘‘And you decided to start over as a janitor?’’

‘‘Something about good, honest work, Chief Odum. Cleans the soul.’’

Odum smiled. ‘‘That it does. And where was it you made these bad business decisions?’’

‘‘I worked in Iowa for a while, but things went bad when I went back home to Nebraska. Little town named Bingham.’’

Odum’s eyes narrowed for a few seconds, and Jude could tell he was sifting through his memory banks. After a few seconds, a smile. ‘‘Bingham . . . that resurrection fella was from there, right?’’

Jude nodded. ‘‘Jude Allman. Yeah, I used to hear that all the time.’’

‘‘So did you know him, that Jude Allman guy?’’

Jude returned Odum’s smile. ‘‘Doesn’t everybody?’’

31

TREMBLING

Frank was all smiles when Jude showed up at work. ‘‘Ron, me boy,’’ he said through crooked yellow teeth when Jude walked into his office, ‘‘thought you were gonna be gone for a while. But it’s nice to have you back.’’

Jude glanced at the clock. Just after noon—the polygraph test and conversation with Odum had taken his whole morning. ‘‘Yeah,’’ he said. ‘‘Felt better than expected, so I thought I might as well come in for a bit this afternoon. Give you a hand.’’

He looked at Frank and tried a smile. It was a good thing Frank was a janitor, because he wouldn’t be able to fall back on modeling. Frank never combed his hair (or if he did, the hair ignored the comb entirely), his complexion was pockmarked, and he was about seventy pounds on the high side of husky. But the worst part was the teeth. Frank could easily have inspired the Billy Bob novelty teeth so popular in gag stores.

Still, even though Frank looked a lot like a beast, Jude thought of him as mostly harmless. Frank thought he was a comedian and always spewed odd little phrases—sticking in a ‘‘me boy’’ after everyone’s name when he hailed them being one of the more curious ones—but he was all right.

Jude started to dig into the closet for a dust broom. ‘‘Thought I’d clean the gym. That okay?’’

‘‘You want to clean the gym, I’m not gonna melt your ice cream about it.’’ Frank looked at the clock on the wall. ‘‘You takin’ some time off got me to thinking, anyway. I’ll cut out this afternoon, take off tomorrow, too. I—’’ He paused, and Jude stopped to look at him. He could tell Frank was thinking hard about something; best to encourage him a bit so he didn’t blow a gasket.

‘‘You what, Frank?’’

‘‘Well, I got some special things going on. You maybe ought to see my basement sometime. You and your boy. Love to show him sometime.’’ Frank licked his lips, his eyes glossing over.

Jude thought for a moment. He was pretty sure Frank was harmless, but he was also pretty sure he didn’t want to head over to Frank’s for tea and crumpets anytime soon. Some things were better left unknown. ‘‘Um . . . okay, Frank. I’d like that.’’ A lie, but what harm could it do?

The glassy pallor disappeared from Frank’s eyes, and Jude saw the slow gears of Frank’s brain engage again as he pushed aside a partly finished crossword puzzle and stood. ‘‘Well now, Ron, me boy,’’ he said. ‘‘You’d best get to that gym. And I’d best get home and get started.’’

Jude smiled. He’d never had any big run-ins with Frank, and he was sure he had the obligatory smile or chuckle to thank for that.

Jude grabbed the dust mop and stepped out into the hall; the hallways stood empty now that all the kids were in class. He walked down the hallway, dragging the mop behind him. He’d made it through the lie detector test okay, he thought. Had even given Chief Odum a plausible lie that would hold up under a bit of light fact checking; he felt confident that Odum was more occupied with thoughts of the escaped Kenneth Sohler and would probably abandon tracing him when he ran a check on the name
Kevin Burkhart
, finding such a person had once lived in Bingham, Nebraska.

With that bit out of the way, he could concentrate on becoming normal again. On forgetting all about visions and signs and other garbage, and just concentrate on being a dad. As he walked, he began to pack away thoughts of the last several days and put them away on a forgotten shelf—a high, out-of-the-way shelf.

He turned left at the end of the hall, heading for the gym. He liked to work in the gym, because it was usually quiet when PE classes weren’t in session. The gym was separated from the rest of the school, so you had to travel out of your way to get there. Jude reached the double doors and stepped inside. His footsteps echoed in the silence.

Dust-mopping the gym was usually good for fifteen or twenty minutes’ blissful quiet. Routine, it was all about routine. That was what he needed. (
The boy—Joey—he locked him in a cage.
) Jude shook his head and packed that thought away, banished it to a high shelf.

He placed the dust broom on the floor’s varnished surface and started a wide swath right in front of the bleachers, falling quickly into a comforting pattern. Down the floor, then back up. Down, up. (
She was chained to the bed
.) He folded the thought neatly and put it in the pile with its cousins.

He brought to mind the lie detector session with—

‘‘Hey, Mr. Gress.’’ Jude stopped, looked up. At the other end of the floor was a young boy, about Nathan’s age. The boy had to know him personally; the others mostly called him ‘‘Mr. Janitor.’’

Jude pushed the mop back toward the boy until he could get a look at the face. Yes, he did know this one. It was Bradley, Nathan’s friend. Rachel was friendly with Bradley’s mother. What was her name? Anna or something? He started digging through his memory files, and the image of the bedpost connecting with Kenneth Sohler’s head flashed before him. He shifted back into mental neutral, decided Bradley’s mom could remain known as ‘‘what’s-her-name’’ for now.

‘‘Hey, Bradley,’’ Jude said. ‘‘What are you doing down here?’’ (
Nicole, that is her name
.)

Bradley held up a backpack. ‘‘I left it here yesterday,’’ he said. ‘‘My teacher gave me a hall pass!’’ Bradley displayed the white plastic card as if it were a trophy, and his grin doubled in size.

At that moment Jude detected an odd taste in his mouth, a familiar tinge. And then it hit him full force: the coppery taste, as if all his teeth had suddenly turned to phone wire. He covered his mouth and coughed, wished he could spit.

Bradley’s grin faltered. ‘‘You okay, Mr. Gress?’’

‘‘Yeah, Bradley. Fine, just fine.’’ This was it. He could give in to the delusions, touch the kid, and get himself into more trouble convincing himself that something was about to happen to this kid. Or he could do the perfectly rational thing: ignore it all, realize it was just his mind playing tricks, and wait a few days. When nothing happened to Bradley, he’d have all the proof he needed to write it off as pure bunk. Psychobabble.

Then another thought occurred to him. If he was having seizures, and if the coppery taste of death was what brought them on, he shouldn’t be around Bradley when it happened. He could hurt the kid without realizing it.

‘‘You better get to class, don’t you think, Bradley?’’ His voice was shaky, jittery, but Bradley didn’t seem to notice.

Clouds brewed in Bradley’s eyes as he looked at Jude. It was as if the boy sensed he was in the wrong place, but also the right place.

‘‘Come on,’’ Jude said, unthinkingly reaching toward the boy. His hand came within a few inches until he recoiled, realizing what he was about to do. No touching. It was a rule he’d lived by quite well, until recently. And he was more than ready to reinstate that rule now.

Bradley looked at him a few more seconds. ‘‘Guess I’ll go now,’’ the boy said, then turned and crashed through the double doors behind him. Jude followed, watching as Bradley walked the lonely hallway, then turned a corner and disappeared.

That evening Jude returned to his home, feeling the need to lock the door and arm the security system. This hadn’t seemed as important in the last few days, but in light of his trip to the police station that morning, he felt safer knowing the system was armed.