Mister lullaby, p.19
Mister Lullaby, page 19
“Gideon, where are you?”
“I’m home.”
“You’re supposed to—”
“I know, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll explain it when I can, but … where are you?”
“I’m getting ready to knock on the door to the Beehive.”
“Why?”
“I’ll explain that when I can,” she said. “But what pulled you from your post?”
“Someone arrived,” he said. “From Charleston. The other from Tulsa.”
The van she’d seen in the driveway, Beth thought. “Go on.”
“Maddy, she … she was a coma patient herself up until a few weeks ago.”
“Wait, Maddy? Maddy who?”
“Maddy Boyle,” he said.
“Jesus …” From Charleston …
“What? That name ring a bell?”
It does now, Beth thought, remembering the conversation she’d had in the middle of the night with the detective from Charleston. “Go on,” she said.
“She brought with her another little girl,” Gideon said. “She’s in a coma as well, and … you’re not going to believe this, Beth, but this little girl … her name is Amy Shimp.”
“That one doesn’t register.”
“She’s one of the names Jax wrote down last night when Sully started calling them out.”
Amy Shimp? It was one of the names Jax had left on her voice mail.
“She’s here,” Gideon said. “Maddy brought her. And as soon as we placed her on the bed next to Sully, they …” He sounded like he’d just choked up and couldn’t go on.
“They what, Gideon?”
“They held hands, Beth,” he said in a gush. “Like they somehow know each other.”
Beth saw a curtain move from a third-floor window at the Beehive. She said to Gideon, “I gotta go. We’ll talk about this in a bit. Hug Brody for me.”
“Yeah, okay. Sure.”
“Gideon?”
“Yeah?”
She paused, lost her train of thought, if she’d ever had one. “Nothing. Be careful.”
“You too,” he said. “And Beth, there’s a red bus parked in the woods behind that hotel.”
Beth noticed his voice had fallen away to a hushed whisper. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Just that my mom walked back into the room. I didn’t want her overhearing me talk about the hotel.”
“Why?”
“I dunno, just can’t figure out her part in it all. You ever see her with Mickey French?”
“The owner? Yes. But they’re working together. She’s running the—”
“Marketing campaign, yeah, I got that.”
“Then what?”
“I dunno, maybe nothing. Just that I’ve been gone a while and she’s … changed.”
“We all have.”
“Maybe so, but … I can’t shake the feeling those two are more than just work partners, and Dad, he’s like a zombie. Depressed isn’t even the word for it.”
The curtain in another window moved, this time from the second floor. “I gotta go. We’ll discuss it later.”
“Look for the red bus,” Gideon said.
Beth ended the call, closed in on the hotel’s curved, brick walkway and stopped at the double front doors, one yellow, the other black, just like it had been in the 1920s. She knocked on yellow, waited a minute, knocked again, this time on black. “Open up. Sheriff’s office.” She peered through a side window. “Mickey, I know you’re in there.” She saw Gideon’s point about his mother. She was older than Mickey by ten years and the two could regularly be seen at the Dark Roast coffee shop having work meetings. Could there be more to it? She had lost weight. She had begun to dress younger, but that was nobody else’s business.
Beth was about to knock again when she heard footsteps on the other side. The yellow door opened wide enough for Mickey to show his battered face. His nose was bandaged. His lip was busted. His left eye bruised.
“Mickey? What the hell happened?”
“Nothing,” he said, looking past her, completely paranoid. “What do you want?”
“First, for you not to lie to me. Who beat the shit out of you?”
“N … nobody,” he stammered. “I fell. Down the stairs. I was tired, working too late. You know? Trying to get this place ready and I’m running out of time, so …”
“Can I come in?”
“No. Not right now.”
She held up the yellow flyer with the lullaby written on the back of it facing him. “This mean anything to you?”
“No, why would it?”
“It was written on your flyer?”
He hesitated, looked away. “So? Those were distributed all over town. Could have been anyone. Why are you really here?”
She folded the paper, slid it into her back pocket. Honestly, that was why she was here. Because of that flyer. But he was right. Anyone could have written it. “I saw someone in one of the rooms upstairs. Two, actually. One on the third floor and one on the second.”
Mickey closed his eyes for a beat, opened them annoyed. “What’d they look like?”
“Just saw curtains move.”
“We’ve been working on our air and heat system all day.”
“That’s not what I saw,” she said. “I thought you weren’t open yet.”
“I’m not.”
“Then who is upstairs in those rooms?”
“Workers. From out of town. They’re staying here while the construction is ongoing. Everyone knows this.”
“Mickey, we’ve had three murders—”
“I know about … the murders. Meeks questioned them two days ago.”
“But I haven’t,” she said. “How about you open the door and let me in so we can figure out who all we can cross off our list.”
He shook his head. “Sorry, not without a warrant.”
“Seriously, Mickey? You gonna go there?”
“If I have to,” he said. “Look, you give me a list of who all Meeks questioned, and then I’ll give you a list of all who are currently employed working on this hotel. Anybody you need to see, then I’ll send them to the station. I’ll escort them myself. Fair?”
She sighed, annoyed, but said, “Fine.”
“But nobody is getting inside this hotel until the grand opening.”
“I said fine.” Just when he looked relieved, she said, “You mind if I go take a look at that red bus behind your property?” He sighed, scratched his head. “Don’t even say what bus, Mickey. I know it’s back there.” Really, she didn’t. She hadn’t seen it with her own eyes but trusted Gideon.
“Again,” he said. “My property. You’re gonna need a warrant, Beth.”
She started down the hotel steps toward the walkway. “How about we shove the warrant up your ass, Mickey.”
“That’s professional.”
“So is that bathrobe in the middle of the day,” she said. “Is that silk?”
He closed the lapels. “Where you going?”
“Around back,” she said. “To see the bus.”
“I told you … not without a warrant. It’s on my property.”
She ignored him. It probably was. Unless it was far enough back into the trees not to be. He must have realized the same thing. He hurried down the steps after her, barefooted and rapidly tying his robe. She glanced over her shoulder at him. “What really happened to your face?”
“I told you …”
“You fell, right.” She spotted the red school bus in the trees right away. Whoever had been driving it must have had a hell of a time getting it as far back into the tree line as they had, because it looked wedged in there. Desperately, almost. Like the bus had been there even before the trees had grown up around it.
Maybe at nighttime it was concealed in the shadows, but not during daylight. Of course, nobody had been looking for it, and work trucks and vans had been in and out of these front and back lots for over a year now. Other than the ribbon cutting when they broke ground on renovations, most the action at the Beehive had been ignored by the public. There was almost a we’ll believe it when we see it vibe. Plus, most in town knew the Beehive had always been the dream of Archie Dupree, and not this out-of-town young upstart realtor who’d seemingly stolen it out from beneath Archie’s feet.
“How’s Maxine Dupree working out?” Beth asked Mickey on her way to the back of the lot toward the tree line.
“What? Fine? Why?”
“Just curious.” Beth glanced toward the windows on the back side of the hotel, and damn if she didn’t see another curtain move. “Somebody’s watching me from inside that hotel, Mickey.”
“Nobody is—”
“I want that list at the station within the hour. You got it?”
“Fine.” He caught up to her. The slap of his bare feet on the asphalt made him appear even more pathetic. “But you’re not getting on that bus.”
“What bus?” She closed in on it, studied its positioning within the trees that hugged it. Expert driver, she thought, to get it nearly hidden like that.
“Warrant.”
“These trees aren’t your property, Mickey. Your property line ends at the pavement. It was a big sticking point when you bought this place, and we all know it.”
He pointed to the front left tire, turned slightly toward them and touching the parking lot, the only part of the bus technically on the hotel’s property. “See, the tire. Show me the warrant.”
“How about I just not search that tire?” She’d already rounded the front of the bus, realizing how much time and attention had been put into painting this monstrosity. And the door, painted black? “How long has this bus been here, Mickey?”
“I don’t know.”
“If you tell me a week or more then we’re gonna have some serious problems.”
“I said I don’t know.”
“Suit yourself.” She opened the door. A moth immediately flew out. She ducked aside, let it pass, and then stepped up into the bus. She instantly smelled ammonia, cleaning solvents. “Mickey?” she shouted, only to find him right on her heels. She pulled her gun, and that halted him for a beat. She said, “Somebody just clean this bus?”
“What?”
“Did the beating you took hurt your hearing? Did somebody clean this bus?”
“I don’t know … it belongs to … one of the workers.”
“Get me the—”
“I’ll get you the list,” he said so sharply she almost laughed. “Have you seen enough? It’s a clean bus. Nothing special here.”
Beth stared down the aisle and flanking benches. Nothing to see aside from the dozens of moths inside with them, some on the seat backs, others flying around like they were in a butterfly garden. Moths just like she’d seen smothering the bark of that tree down by the tunnel. She turned toward Mickey. “One of your workers, huh? Make sure he …”—she held up a finger—“or she, although I doubt a female would paint a bus this awful color, is the first person on that list.”
“Fine.”
“An hour, Mickey.”
He nodded, stepped aside as she brushed past. She removed her phone, snapped off a couple of quick pictures of the moths on the seats, hoping to catch some in midflight. To Mickey, she said, “Smile.”
He didn’t.
She took a photo of him anyway. She stopped behind the driver’s seat. Behind the massive steering wheel, a two-foot-long section of blue painter’s tape had been stuck to the dashboard. In black Sharpie someone had written: The Lullaby Express.
She looked at Mickey again, “Make that thirty minutes. At the station.”
He didn’t fight it.
Her cell phone rang. Eyes still on Mickey, Beth answered the call.
“Beth, it’s Natalie. Sheriff Meeks, he’s … he’s talking. He’s asking for you.”
CHAPTER
31
Maddy
Now
MADDY DIDN’T WANT to let on how tired she was.
Maybe her parents had been right about one thing. Too much too soon. And the recent run of emotional events since leaving Charleston four days ago had only exacerbated things. Since her last memory dump inside the Atlanta hotel, she’d been going nonstop. She’d slept little. Eaten little. Hydrated little. Her body felt weak. And now, after running through half the list of coma patients, she was exhausted.
Turned out Archie was a wizard at tracking people, citing decades of experience researching as a history professor. Gideon had jokingly asked if he was a professional stalker. Archie hadn’t laughed. Maddy got the vibe Gideon and his father were tolerating each other just because the situation called for cooperation—and Archie Dupree had delivered.
Maddy and Archie and Gideon had gathered around the kitchen island to work.
Archie researched the names, cross-referenced events, one depressing newspaper story after another, until he’d begun to compile and narrow down and pinpoint. One by one, with Archie’s fingers click-clacking across the laptop he’d brought with him into the kitchen, he called out the cities and states and countries in which their subjects most likely lived. From cities all over the country. All over the world. One from Ireland. One from Spain. One from Mexico. Another from Italy. The rest were from right here in the States, although very few of them were within a hundred miles of Harrod’s Reach, which prompted Maddy to say, “We’ve got our work cut out for us.”
But their hunch had proven correct. They’d assumed the names were coma patients, and it turned out that every one of them was. Or had been. Out of the list of fourteen names they’d compiled, two had died suddenly in their hospital beds within the past month. One mother she’d spoken to believed someone had entered the Shreveport, Louisiana, hospital and killed her boy as he lay in bed, because he’d showed no signs of a decline. Maddy had taken that one and, politely as she could, offered condolences and eased out of the phone call, knowing nothing else to say but I’m sorry, I’m so sorry … But unless she had another memory dump, or unless Jax suddenly recalled the names he’d previously been unable to remember or write down, they were left with this list of twelve.
Eight if you left out the four from foreign countries.
And of those eight, Maddy had spoken to four, either family members or caregivers for their subjects. Gideon had spoken to three. The eighth, Helen Gathers, from Seattle, they were unable to get hold of.
She and Gideon had given the families their best pitch, with the video of Sully and Amy gripping hands being their main hook. Leaving out the urgency of why they needed these patients together—because truthfully, they didn’t yet know—they stuck to the shock factor of not only their two subjects showing life, but Maddy herself fully coming out of her coma. And while six of the seven they’d contacted were emotionally moved by the video they’d seen of Sully and Amy, the calls were awkward, full of confusion and lack of trust. Not like the cathartic moment she’d had with Tammy and Amy Shimp inside their Tulsa home. But, as she’d told Gideon and Archie before they’d begun, All we need is one.
And the one they got. A fifteen-year-old girl named Lauren Betts from Springfield, Missouri, who’d been comatose for eight months after a car wreck on the way to a high school basketball game. Lauren’s mom had been skeptical at first, even angered, until Gideon had sent the video. Mrs. Betts watched the video, started crying, and hung up without any response. Fearing he’d lost her, Gideon had been about to strike her name off the list when his cell phone rang, and it was her calling back, composed now, and asking for their address. They were gathering what they needed to transport their daughter so they could leave right away.
Gideon ended the call and hugged Maddy. Maybe this wasn’t the right time to feel a charge from the touch of another human being, but it was there even after Gideon let go, and she hoped like hell she wasn’t blushing.
“Hot damn.” Archie Dupree closed his laptop with a pop and patted Gideon on the shoulder. “One out of fourteen isn’t bad.”
As odds went, Maddy thought, it was horrible, but with what they were asking of these strangers, one out of fourteen was a good start. And if one showed up and something else happened here to give credence to their cause, then they’d have more to double back and show the others some mounting evidence. Maddy wasn’t about to say it now and break the sudden upbeat mood in the kitchen, but they needed more than three. She couldn’t recall everything from when she’d been there—Lalaland, yes, that’s what it had been called—but she knew enough to justify the feelings of anxiety and dread she’d carried since awakening from her coma a month ago.
This was real. It was bad. And something was coming.
Even though she’d yet to see this Harrod’s Reach tunnel, she’d learned enough from Gideon over the past hour to know that whatever was coming through there was from Lalaland. Because that’s what Lalaland was, the land of colorful deception, the land of wrong, the land of make-believe, the land where if you could think it, you could make it so, the land of Mr.…
Maddy went light-headed.
She braced herself against the island and tried to play it off like she was closing her eyes for a moment of rest. Right before she’d closed her eyes, she’d seen the warm look on Gideon’s face when his father patted his shoulder. She could tell that simple show of physical affection was not commonplace, and perhaps not so simple. Like Gideon had been waiting years for that pat on the shoulder, and here she was breaking up the moment with a dizzy spell. Not a memory dump like she’d had in Atlanta, but something. Crumbs, residue, more names … Not names like the ones she’d written down in Atlanta, but names that were horrifying.
Mr. Dreams …
The Nightmare Man …
Right before blacking out, she verbalized the one that struck the most fear in her: “Mr. Lullaby …”
CHAPTER
32
Beth
Now
BY THE TIME Beth made it into the hospital, Grover’s eyes had closed again.
“What happened?”
Natalie stood beside Grover’s bed, touching his shoulder. “He was talking, Beth. They think he’ll make it.” She beckoned Beth closer, but seeing Grover like this, the unshaven white stubble on his chestnut-colored skin, his chest bandaged from waist to neck, made Beth feel suddenly vulnerable. Like she might finally break down, and of all places, in public.
