walk from the porch. The detective took his hat off when he saw the Boyds waiting, and turned it slowly in his hands.
'Who did it?' Norman demanded, one step short of grabbing the cop's lapels. 'Who the fuck did this to my house, to my wife? Was it Falcone?
Did he-'
'I don't know, Norm. I came as soon as I got word. Your wife obviously isn't up to talking just yet, and the coroner there can only tell me Falcone was-'' He stopped and looked at Don. 'The place is a mess. It's like a football team had practice in there with clubs and bats, for god's sake.' He motioned to Quintero and they moved off, heads together.
'Dad?'
'She's in shock, like he said,' Norman answered absently as he watched the two men conferring. 'She'll be all right. She's just in shock. Jesus Christ, will you look at that house? They'd better the hell leave someone around to watch it or we'll get stolen blind.'
Don moved off the verge into the lawn and stared in the window. The mantel was clear, one lamp's shade was cockeyed, and he thought he could make out smears and stains on the back wall. A look to the policemen, the firemen climbing back onto their engine, their breath steaming, their coats rippling as the wind dropped under the trees to push down the road. His father came beside him and touched his arm.
'Jesus,' Norman said, staring at the house. 'Jesus, it looks like somebody dropped a bomb on it.'
Don couldn't think because there was too much to think, and he didn't protest when he was pulled across to the van, helped into the van.
Naugle was perched beside his mother; Norman came in behind and drew the doors shut.
He didn't hear the siren wind up to a wailing; he didn't see the barricades parting to let the ambulance through. He could only watch Joyce strapped under the sheet, all her hair pulled over one shoulder, an IV snaking from its stand to her hidden arm. Her eyes were closed, her complexion sallow, and every so often Dr. Naugle would pat a handkerchief to her forehead and touch a finger to her neck to check on her pulse.
'Jesus,' Norman whispered. 'Jesus, what a mess.'
The waiting room was small and filled with sculpted plastic chairs, a single plastic couch, a low table stacked with magazines worn and some tattered as if they'd been read. Don stood at the window overlooking the main entrance, one foot tapping arhythmically on the checkered tiled floor. Every few seconds he wiped a hand under his nose or buried it in his hair; every few seconds he would turn to the swinging doors and stare down the hallway toward his mother's room.
The building was quiet. The passage of a nurse or doctor was soundless, and even when one stopped to speak to another, he could see their lips moving and couldn't hear a whisper.
He wanted to leave.
He didn't want to know what Joyce would say when she regained consciousness and saw where she was; he didn't want her talking about a horse or Falcone, didn't want her judged crazy when she insisted on the truth.
And she would be. He knew it, and all of it would be his fault just because he had tried to get things running his way.
And the most terrible part wasn't the dying. That's what frightened him-it wasn't the dying. Something had gone wrong, and he had somehow lost control. If, he thought with the heels of his hands to his eyes, he had even had control in the first place.
His arms lowered slowly.
He stared blindly out the window.
'Who did it?' Norman asked quietly behind him.
Don jumped and spun around, leaning back defensively against the sill.
His father was jacketless now, more grey in the hair falling over his brow. 'What?'
Norman glanced at the window, at the floor, and leaned a bit closer.
'I'll bet it was some of your friends, wasn't it?'
'Friends? Dad, what are you talking about? What friends?'
Norman's fist bunched at his sides. 'What the hell did you do to Pratt this time, huh? What did you say to him now?'
'Nothing! I don't understand. I don't know what you mean.'
Norman grunted with the effort to open his hands, and dropped onto the couch. 'Neither do I, son,' he said wearily. 'Jesus, neither do I. This is ...' A forearm wiped hard over his face, a hand plucked at his shirtfront. 'Your mother is going to be all right. She's ... like Naugle said, she's in shock.'
Don peered through the door panes. 'Did she say anything?'
Norman shook his head. 'About who did it? No. Verona's in there now, hoping she'll come around soon. But she isn't going to. Naugle says it's going to take a while.'
'Verona? The police?'
Norman leaned forward and picked up a magazine, flipped the pages and dropped it. 'Yep. Why not?' He laughed bitterly. 'I have drinks with the mayor and we're talking ... well, we're talking, and the next thing I know your mother is in here and Verona is calling me from the school because Hedley-'
Don fumbled to a chair. 'Mr. Hedley?'
'When it rains, it pours, and don't you ever forget it,' he said in disgust. 'D'Amato found him in the auditorium after the game. His body was on the stage, hidden in the wings.' Then he slammed his palms to the table, looked up and glared. 'This is crazy! What other town gets rid of one madman and immediately replaces him with another?' He looked around the room helplessly. 'It's nuts. It doesn't make any sense. Jesus Christ, you try to protect your family, your future, and what help do you get, huh? You don't get any, that's what. You get shit is what you get.'
Don pushed out of the chair.
Norman looked up at him, eyes dark with rage. 'If I find out Pratt had anything to do with this, I'll kill him, you hear me?'
'Brian doesn't kill people,' Don said, almost shouting. 'How can you-'
'It could have been an accident.'
'What?'
'Sure. The prick could have ... well, it could have been something that went wrong, you know.'
'Dad-'
Norman wasn't listening. 'Damned Falcone. Can you believe it, right in my own house? It's crazy.' He nodded, agreeing with himself. 'It's goddamn crazy!'
Don moved to the door and pushed it open.
'Where are you going!'
'Air,' he said. 'I need some air.'
'Your mother's in there. Don't you care that your mother's in there? We have to be here when she wakes up.'
'All I need is a little air,' he said, and let the door swing shut behind him, let his feet take him across the corridor to the elevator.
He pressed the button. He watched the doors slide open in balky stages. He stepped in just as Sergeant Verona left his mother's room. The detective raised a finger for him to wait a minute, but Don let the doors close and sagged against the rear wall.
He gave the doors a slightly skewed grin.
In a way it was kind of funny. His father was right in blaming him for what happened, but for all the wrong reasons. But that he was blaming him in the first place wasn't funny at all.
The cage thumped to a halt, the doors opened, and he blinked at the lower floor's glare as he followed a short hall into the main lobby. A man ran a polisher over the floors, the machine humming softly; a young woman at the reception desk was reading a book and smoking. Neither of them looked at him as he crossed the gleaming floor, and he could see no police or security guards on duty either at the reception desk or at the revolving doors as he pushed through to the outside.
Cold; it was cold, and he leaned his head back to drink the night air.
'There you are!'
