Water from Stone - a Novel (19 page)

“Is she OK?”

“She’s, well, we don’t know if it is her. We’ll be doing DNA testing...”

“I asked you if she’s OK, Special Agent,” Jack snaps. “Could we start there, please?”

The FBI Agent’s voice suddenly becomes muffled as if he’s covered the receiver with his hand.

“Agent Shaheen?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” his voice comes back. “I’m sorry. Listen, Mr. Westfield, I’m sorry, I know this is sort of sudden, but we need to ask you for a blood sample.”

“Goddammit!” Jack shouts, all pretence of civility gone, “IS SHE OK?”

  “Sir,” Shaheen continues calmly from the other end. “I’m sorry. Look. We have a little girl here. There’s only a possibility that she’s your daughter, which is why we need to get a sample from you.”

“Shaheen? I get that. You need a sample, you’ll get it. Now tell me, is she OK?”

“She’s in a bad way.”

***

Fifteen minutes later, Jack is stuffing an overnight bag with a change of clothes and his and Lindsey’s medical records that he’d taken from their home office. Mortuary John and Sherri, who had, thankfully, been in the city to catch a show, are coming over to pick up DeJon. He will stay with them until Jack returns from out west.

“Why can’t I go with you, Jack?” the boy asks.

“I told you already. I take you out of state, your mom can say I kidnapped you.”

“She wouldn’t do that.”

“DJ…”

“Yeah, OK, fine. Can I help you with anything, though?”

“No. Yeah. Go to my office. In one of the drawers, I have an address book. It’s navy leather. Find it, can you?”

Jack flips through his cell phone contacts and chooses an airline. He hits send and waits for the reservations office to pick up.

DeJon is coming out of the office when the front door of the apartment slams open and a very pissed Caroline stomps inside. DeJon freezes, staring at her.

“I got to my bloody apartment and didn’t have my wallet or my keys,” she says as she strides past DeJon into the kitchen. “I left my goddamned briefcase here.”

Jack moves to follow her but stops when a reservations agent answers. “Yes, hello?” he replies.

When Caroline returns from the kitchen, briefcase in hand, DeJon still hasn’t moved. “Don’t bother to tell Jack I was here,” she storms past him, obviously not seeing Jack across the room. At the door, she stops and looks back at the boy. “What? What’s wrong?”

“It’s Mia,” DeJon manages. “They found her.”

Caroline reaches out to the wall for support. “Where? When?”

“I don’t know. Jack said out west. He’s trying to get on a plane.”

“Is she OK? Are they sure it’s her?”

DeJon shakes his head. “I don’t think so. The FBI guy just wants Jack’s DNA but Jack made him tell him where she is and he’s going out there.”

“Shit. OK, look,” Caroline says, “call the doorman and tell him to tell my cab to wait. We’ll be down in a minute. Where’s Jack?”

“There,” DeJon points at Jack who waves weakly at Caroline.

“No, I’m here,” Jack says into the phone.

Caroline starts to take off in his direction. “Wait a minute,” she pauses, “what about you?” she asks DeJon.

“Mortuary John’s coming to get me.”

She nods, “Good, that makes sense.”

“But I wanna go.”

“You can’t, DeJon. He doesn’t have custody of you.”

“But…”

“I’m sorry, no buts. Believe me, I do family law, and that would be a big mess.”

Dejected, DeJon moves to the sofa and sits, his eyes on Jack, who is speaking urgently into the phone.

“What? OK, look, this really is an emergency. What if I have the FBI call you? Can you get me on the flight? No, no, not standby. I need to be on that plane.”

“Jack,” Caroline says.

“Just a minute. No, not you,” he says into the phone. “Yes, OK, I’ll wait. What are you doing here?” he asks Caroline.

“My briefcase, I forgot it. Look, forget the airlines. We’ll take Grandfather’s jet.”

Jack’s eyes search hers. This isn’t the time to argue. “You sure?” he asks.

“I’ll call him. I’m sure it’s fine. One of the pilots is always on standby, so it’ll be faster than waiting for a commercial flight.”

Jack is in motion before her words are all out. The adrenaline that courses through his body blurs his movements as he grabs his bag and heads toward the door. “DeJon,” he barks, “you’ll be OK until John gets here, won’t you?”

“I’m cool,” he nods. “Here, here’s your book,” he continues, handing Jack his address book. “You be good, Jack. Give me a call, OK?”

Jack pauses and then turns to DeJon to give him a hug. “Thanks,” he answers the concern in the boy’s eyes and voice. “I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.”

Thirty-Nine

Jack.

The private jet certainly makes things easier, but the trip is pure hell nonetheless. Once airborne, Jack, unable to sit, paces up and down the aisle feeling like the proverbial caged animal snapping at everything in his path. It can’t have come to this, he reasons. Life can’t be so damn cruel to hand him back his daughter as she lays dying in a hospital. No fucking way.

“Jack,” Caroline tries again, “Are you sure I can’t get you something to drink? A scotch? It really will help.”

“No, nothing,” he continues pacing.

“Tell me something,” she says to his retreating back, “you’ve been snapping at me from the moment we got into the cab. Is it me in particular, or don’t you care who you fight with?”

“Goddammit, Caroline, this isn’t about you.”

Caroline finally picks up her book and Jack feels relief that he won’t be expected to have a conversation. He turns and walks back to the front of the plane.

***

Shaheen hadn’t wanted him to come, but he had had the decency to send a car when it was obvious Jack wasn’t backing down. As they speed through the city on the way to the hospital, Jack lets his head fall back. He closes his eyes and begins to pray, to pray to Lindsey to take care of their little girl.

Shaheen meets them at the entrance of the hospital, no doubt alerted by their driver. “Mr. Westfield, Special Agent Shaheen. I’m sorry we have to meet up again under these circumstances.”

“Good evening, Special Agent, I’m Caroline Carruthers,” Caroline holds out her hand when it is obvious Jack is in no shape to make introductions. “Where is she?”

“Mia,” Jack corrects.

“We’re not sure of that yet, Mr. Westfield. Everything we have is circumstantial at this point, which is why we wanted to get your DNA before having you come out here.”

“You said she’s dying, Shaheen. I don’t think we can wait for the DNA.”

“OK, fair enough. Her blood type is a definite match, though, AB-negative, which is common to only about 1% of the population.”

“That’s still about 3 million people,” Caroline says doubtfully.

“Of course. I know that,” Shaheen says. “It’s not just that, though. For several years, we’ve been tracking a ring of kidnappers who take babies and very young children and sell them to people who don’t want to wait for the normal adoption process to work. It’s incredibly lucrative work, with each kid pulling in a hundred, two hundred thousand. They were working in the New York area when your daughter was kidnapped. In fact, it was her abduction that first put us on to them. Usually, they’d buy the babies from women who didn’t want them and then re-sell them. We’ve even tracked back to a few women who are in it for the business. They allow themselves to get knocked up with the intent of selling the kid when it’s born. There’s a whole black market breeding program out there.”

“That’s sick.”

“It is. But, like I said, it was cases like Mia’s that put us on to them. In a few instances, a baby’d been promised and a deposit had been made when the mother either backed out, disappeared, or the baby died before coming to term. In a few of those cases, the middlemen had snatched a baby as a replacement. That’s what we think happened in your case, Mr. Westfield. We’ve got the people who brought her to the hospital in custody while we check out their stories.”

Jack, silent through this exchange, feels his stomach turn over. “Can you take me to her now?” he whispers. “Please?”

Shaheen looks at him and says, “You realize,” he said, “that there is still a possibility this isn’t your daughter?”

“Please?” Jack repeats.

“But…”

“Special Agent Shaheen,” Caroline cuts in, “in addition to being a close, personal friend of Mr. Westfield’s, I am also his attorney. I assure you that if it turns out that this isn’t his daughter, he won’t find you or the agency at fault. If, however, it is Mia Westfield up there in the ICU and she dies before her father gets the chance to see her…” She leaves the rest of her threat unspoken, sure that Shaheen understands.

Shaheen, for his part, seems about to protest further and then thinks better of it. “Follow me,” he instructs, and turns on his heels.

Forty

Mar.

The water is rising, she can feel it, even though it is for now a ways from the coast, washing back from the sand with every slow, heavy wave. She stands glued to the window, watching it move in, and then out again, drawing back on itself for a few beats and then pushing forward, not violently, not this time, but ponderously, inevitably.

She wonders if she should get out, if the water will make it up to her this time, or if she has time to get out of the building, flee down six flights of stairs and out to the street, go inland a few miles. But she watches the water nervously instead. Something tells her that if she runs, it will lash out angrily and rush after her, boil her up in a suffocating froth of sea foam and water, crush her beneath its weight.

And so, she watches.

Out and in…out and in…back and forth…Soon, too soon, the water has consumed the beach, just covered it up and reclaimed it for its own. It is working its way across the back patio where she used to play as a child. Where she thinks she used to play. Where she and her friends would meet after school to play volleyball or hopscotch. To flirt with the boys who would come to visit.

The patio is under water now and the water is climbing up the side of the building. She presses her face to the glass and glances to the right. Yes, the whole city is under water. It doesn’t really matter, though. She knows this is for her, knows it is coming for her, knows the rest of the city is empty, just there to give her something to think about, something to tease her mind away from the water that is coming for her.

Belatedly, she thinks to check the apartment for open windows. No sense in inviting it in. She pushes a window in the living room closed, locks it and then hurries from room to room checking the other windows, fighting the ones whose metal arms are frozen open from too much time beside the sea. Struggles to pull them in, to latch them. By the time she is satisfied she has done all she can, on this floor at least, the water has climbed to the fourth floor.

Anxiously, she looks down into it. She can see that it is still pulling back and forth, can feel it in the groaning and straining of the building around her. Its movements are not so apparent now, though, as the new shoreline is behind her somewhere, somewhere off in the city of ghosts.

She senses movement off in one of the rooms. It is the cat. Must be the cat. But then she remembers, the cat is dead. Had died years ago when it fell from the balcony, lived long enough to drag its smashed body into the bushes before dying alone and afraid, in pain. She wonders now if the cat has somehow come back, just like all the others have gone. Really, though, she is too tired to go find out, feels she should be watching the water. Someone should. And it is just her now.

“Snowy,” she calls softly. Then again, “Snoooooowyy,” but she doesn’t really think the cat will come out.

As the water creeps up the fifth floor, she can look down into it. The color is not friendly, not at all like she thinks of the sea. It is green and dark and murky and she is sure she can hear it whispering. Like the sound of a thousand insect voices, whispering from the depths.
Stop it!
she tells herself, it’s water, just water. But the just-water just keeps on coming.

Now the water is at the bottom of the floor-to-ceiling windows on her floor, on the sixth floor. If she could step out onto the ledge, her feet and calves would be under water. She can almost feel the rigid cold of it on her skin, can feel it creeping up her legs, invading her most private places. But, no, it is still outside and for now the windows are holding. Straining, but holding.

Inch-by-inch, the water climbs up the window. It had seemed to move so quickly before, but now that it is in her space, she feels time moving excruciatingly slow.
Just get it over with!
her nerves scream.
Just fucking get it over with!
She barely resists the urge to squat and look through the water that is now waist high.

The windows are bulging in from the pressure. She puts her hand out and touches the glass. It is cool to the touch. She notices a drip coming in through a seam in the metal frame, watches it turn into a thin stream. She reaches out and tastes it. Salt. Heavy with salt. The taste gags her. It is the taste of death.

She tries to spit, but her mouth is too dry and she longs for a nice cool drink. If she will just leave the sixth floor and go up to the seventh, to the top floor of the apartment, she can get a glass of water from the kitchen. The water will crash through soon anyway, where she is standing. She looks back at the stairs.

Suddenly, she sees movement out of the corner of her eye. The water has reached her eye level. She drags her eyes back to the window, dreading what she will see.

Swirling greens and grays are out there. Muck, kicked up from the land that the sea is swallowing, blurs her view, makes mushrooming clouds in the water, here and then swish, gone, sucked away by a current, leaving more green as far as her eyes can see. She turns to the stairs now, determined to get to the seventh floor. Maybe the sea will recede, maybe she can be saved.

She turns, takes several steps and puts her right foot on the bottom step, looks back. Oh, GOD! NO! She is frozen in place, her heart beating wildly. They have come, the sharks have come. Without realizing it, she has fallen to the floor. Panicked, she reaches out and grabs the railing, drags herself up a step, looks back, looks at those cold, dead eyes of the graceful creatures outside her window as they do a slow dance of death, around and around, swirling the water, faster and faster as they sense her time approaching.

She scrambles up two more steps, slipping as if the water is already underfoot, falling and catching herself, ignoring the pain of her hand snapping back, of her chin hitting the hard wood. She closes her eyes, knows what is coming and wonders how she knows, why she is so sure, but thinking if she can just keep her eyes closed, it won’t happen.