Flashback (1988) (41 page)

But there were other times, especially of late, when she had found him thrashing wildly on the floor, or pressed into a corner, his frail body cringing from the recurring horror that was engulfing him from within.

Barbara was folding the last of the linen when she began to sense trouble. It started as no more than a tic in her mind—a notion. The house was too quiet, the air too still. Like a deer suddenly alert to the hum of an engine still too distant for any man to hear, she cocked her head to one side and listened. All she could hear was the soft splash of water in the sink and the sound of the television.

Robin the Good was singing his alphabet song—a series of absurd, ill-rhymed tributes to each letter, sung to the tune of “Greensleeves.” It was a melody Barbara had actually loved before encountering the portly actors version. Now, it grated like new chalk.

“Toby? …” she called out. “Toby, can you hear me?”

There was no answer.

“Toby, honey? …”

She set aside the sheet she had been about to fold and took a tentative step toward the door. Then she began to run.

She bolted through the deserted kitchen and was halfway to the living room when she heard the crash of a lamp and her son’s terrified scream.

“Noooo! Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!” he howled. “If you touch me there, I’ll cut you. I will.… Stop it! Stop it!”

Toby was backing toward the far end of the living room, thrashing his arms furiously at assailants only he could see. It took several seconds for Barbara Nelms to realize that he was wielding a knife—a carving knife with an eight-inch blade.

Then she saw the blood.

Inadvertently, Toby had cut himself—a wide slash on the front of his thigh, just below his shorts. Crimson was flowing down his leg from the wound, but he was totally heedless of it.

“Toby!”

Barbara raced toward him, then slowed a step as his wild-eyed fury intensified.

“Stay away from me! Don’t touch me!”

“Toby, please. It’s Mommy. Please give me that knife.”

He backed into the hallway, still slashing at the air. His lips were stretched apart, his teeth bared in a frightening, snarling rictus. There was no sign that he recognized her.

His flailing sent a pair of framed photographs spinning from the wall. The glass exploded at her feet.

“Toby, please.”

All Barbara Nelms could see now was the blood, cascading down her son’s leg and over his foot, leaving grotesque crimson smears on the carpet. He was nearing the bathroom. If he reached it and locked himself inside …

There was simply no way she could let him do that.

The hallway was too narrow for any kind of attack from the side. Focusing as best she could on the knife, which Toby was slashing in wild, choppy arcs, Barbara ducked against the wall and dove at him. The point of the blade flashed down, catching her just at the tip of her shoulder and tearing through her flesh and the muscle of her arm.

Shocked by the viciousness of the pain, she dropped to her knees, clutching the wound with one hand and trying to hold onto Toby’s T-shirt with the other. Blood gushed from between her fingers.

Again, the eight-inch blade slashed down. Reflexively, she pulled away her arm. The glancing blow sliced another gash in the skin by her elbow. Before she could recover, Toby had spun away from her and lurched into the bathroom.

“Toby, no!” she screamed as the door slammed shut and the lock clicked.

Woozily, she got to her knees and pounded on the door.

“Toby, open up! Open up, please! It’s Mommy.”

The only response was the shattering of glass against tile.

Through a sticky trail of her own blood, Barbara Nelms crawled to her bedroom and dialed 911.

“This is Barbara Nelms, 310 Ridgeview,” she panted. “My eight-year-old son has locked himself in the bathroom. He has a knife and he’s already cut himself. Please, please send help.”

The walls had begun to spin.

She hung up and glanced at her arm. The larger wound, three inches or four, gaped obscenely. Beefy, bleeding muscle protruded from the cut.

The room began to dim, and Barbara knew that she was close to passing out.

She lay on her back and dialed the hospital.

“This is an emergency,” she gasped, forcing hysteria from her voice as best she could. “Please help me. I must speak to Dr. Iverson. Dr. Zachary Iverson. It is a matter of life and death.…”

25

The afternoon was oppressively warm and humid. Much to Judge Clayton Iverson’s relief, several continuances and a no-show had led to the completion of the docket of the Clarion County Court far earlier than usual.

Returning to his chambers, he slipped off his black robe and tossed it onto the brass coat rack near his desk. With two unanticipated free hours before Leigh Baron was due at the farm, he was rapidly becoming obsessed with thoughts of a shower and a cold drink or two.

His white shirt was soaked through with perspiration, and his underwear felt as though it were glued to his body.

Over the summer, BTU by BTU, the courthouse air-conditioning system had been dying. Even worse, the chances of getting it replaced before several more summers had come and gone were, the Judge knew, remote. There was a time when he would have laughed at such inconveniences. But now, he could barely keep his mind off his own discomfiture and concentrate on the cases at hand.

Perhaps, he reasoned, in what had become a recurring internal dialogue, it was time to consider retiring.

Despite frequent promises to his wife and to himself to cut back—to travel more and work less—the pace of his life had, if anything, speeded up. Since buying the house in West Palm six years before, he and Cinnie had spent exactly two weeks there, and had finally leased it out. They had no real need for the rental income, but it had made no sense to leave the place vacant.

The Judge knew that with her arthritis worsening, and her childhood roots in North Carolina, Cinnie would jump at the chance to sunbathe away at least some of the grueling New Hampshire winter. They had friends who had already made the move south and sounded ecstatic about their choice. And goodness knew, his golf game could always use some attention.

Retirement … Such a soothing notion
, he thought … 
such a frightening reality
.

It was one thing to consider leaving the bench. He had done about as much as he could do, seen about as much as he could see in that position. But it was quite another to pack up and move to the land of oversized tricycles and afternoon tea dances.

The Judge sank into his chair and mopped at his brow with a towel.

For the time being, at least, Cinnie and her arthritis would just have to make do. Bum air-conditioning or not, he had yet to reach the point where the liabilities of giving everything up and retiring to Florida were outweighed by a few less aches and pains for her and a few more rounds of golf for him.

Besides, he reflected excitedly, for the foreseeable future he had business to attend to in Sterling—important business. In what could well become a landmark move in slowing the advancing juggernaut of corporate medicine, he had elected to spearhead the repurchase of Davis Regional Hospital from the Ultramed Hospitals Corporation, and then to supervise its reorganization and transition back to community control.

Meetings … politicking … bargaining … rearranging … bending … standing firm … winning … losing … Clayton Iverson felt an almost sexual rush at the thoughts of what the months ahead held in store.

It was an ironic harbinger of things to come that, even without knowing he had already made up his mind, Leigh Baron was making the four-hour drive from Boston “just to talk.” It was also, he knew, probably not the last time Ultramed and RIATA corporate leaders would be dashing up to Sterling for a session with him.

It would be interesting to see the ploys they chose to try—interesting
and
amusing, for whatever they were, he had absolutely no intention of changing his mind.

Not that his decision to convince the board of trustees to annul the Davis sale had come easily. In fact, it had been one of the most difficult he had ever had to make. And the stickiest part of all was Frank.

Engrossed in thoughts of his son, the Judge packed Guy Beaulieu’s folder and some related documents into his briefcase and left the courthouse for the drive home.

Zack was right, he acknowledged, as he rolled down Main Street and then out of town along the Androscoggin road,
toward the tumoff to the farm; Frank
had
done an excellent job as administrator of the hospital. It wasn’t his fault he was working for a company whose policies were so self-serving that they could ultimately cause catastrophes such as Annie’s. Nor was it his fault, at least according to Zack, that the corporation had set out deliberately to destroy Guy Beaulieu.

Handling Frank just right through all of this would be a test … perhaps the hardest test of all. Still, the man was worth the effort. He had fallen on some hard times, true, made some bad decisions, but nevertheless …

The initial warning blast of the approaching tractor trailer entered Clayton Iverson’s thoughts as nothing more intrusive than the familiar drone of a distant foghorn. He was driving by rote, looking without seeing. The second blast, far more desperate and insistent, startled him from his reverie with an ugly and terrifying suddenness.

The left side of the Chrysler had drifted far across the two-lane road—so far, in fact, that the solid dividing line was streaking along underneath the very center of the car.

The semi, a monstrous, red GMC was hurtling toward him, its air brakes screeching, its grillwork gaping down at him like the balleen of a whale.

In the clamorous, surreal, frozen moments that followed, the Judge processed countless minute details of the scene before him: the high, Slavic cheekbones of the burly trucker, who was staring down at him in wide-eyed terror and fury … his green baseball cap—its gold brim … the sun, glinting off the trucks windshield … the white script
Tenby’s
on the crimson wind deflector above the cab.…

The horn … the air brakes … the face … the grill … the sun … the screeching tires …

With no conscious realization of what he was doing, Clayton Iverson whipped the wheel of the Chrysler to the right, spinning into one ninety-degree turn and then another before skidding to a stop on the gravelly soft shoulder.

Lurching and heaving from its efforts, the behemoth rig barreled past, shaking the Chrysler viciously in the vacuum of its wake.

The Judge glanced in the rearview mirror in time to see the trailer stop its pitching and level out as the trucker gradually regained control. Gasping for breath, he continued staring at the mirror until the crimson reflection disappeared around a bend.

Then he sat by the roadside, trembling mercilessly and waiting either for his heart and lungs to burst or for the adrenaline surging through his body to subside.

He had had more than his share of close calls on the road before, although none much closer than this one. And after each one, as now, he silently thanked his Higher Power for giving him reflexes quick enough to compensate for being one of the most easily distracted drivers ever set behind the wheel of a car.

He also paid brief tribute to his own foresightedness in purchasing one of the heavier models on the road.

After several minutes, his pulse had slowed and his shaking had let up enough for him to swing back onto the roadway. The rest of the drive, he promised, would be made at fifteen, twenty at the most.

The trucker, whoever he was, had earned a pass to heaven with his masterful driving.

 … and masterful it was, too
, he thought …

He fished a handkerchief from the dashboard pocket and wiped the drenching sweat from his face and hands.

 … absolutely masterful.…

He savored a deep breath, then another. His pulse returned to normal.

Now
, he thought,
where was he? … Ah, yes, Frank …

It had been a joy to hear from both Whitey Bourque and Bill Crook of their dinner session with him.