while he was helping Nathan escape. Maybe Harry had made the wrong statement. He tried again.
“I think Mark Bailey was injured when he was helping someone escape from a prison.”
Bailey. So that’s where Harry’s coming from, Tad thought. He had heard about the kid Nathan Bailey on the news the previous night, and the staff had been talking about him all morning, but Tad had never put the names together. Nonetheless, he had no way to link the elder Bailey’s injuries with any kind of illegal activity committed by him; rather, it was tied to activities committed against him. He coughed again.
Harry looked thoroughly confused now, but Tad would have to let him sort it out alone. “I’ve got patients piling up in the waiting room, Harry,” he said apologetically as he opened the trauma room door. “Your theories are interesting. Feel free to share them with me at any time.”
With that, Tad returned to work, leaving Harry alone with his confusion.
Chapter 21
The house at 4120 Little Rocky Trail wasn’t half the size of the Nicholsons’ place, but it did afford Nathan his first experience with a water bed, and a full pantry more than compensated for the lack of a big-screen television and supersoft carpeting. After awakening around 10:30 and treating himself to another long hot shower, he’d spent what was left of the morning down in the living room, stretched out on the sofa, barefoot, watching cartoons and pigging out on Doritos and root beer.
The good cartoons ended at noon, when his only remaining options were the life sucks shows, soaps or stomach-wrenching junk like Barney and Friends or Smurfs. He turned the TV off. Within minutes, he was bored. Whoever lived in the house had no kids, he figured, because there wasn’t anything that even resembled a toy anywhere to be found, not even Nintendo. He decided to explore.
Figuring that people kept the good stuff in their bedrooms, he started there, returning upstairs to the master suite. The first order of business, before he forgot, was to strip the bed and wash the sheets. It went a long way toward easing his conscience about all this burglary stuff. One thing 4120 had over the Nicholsons’ was a laundry on the second floor. After gathering the sheets into his arms, he walked them out into the hallway and dumped them on the floor in front of the washer. He’d wash them in a minute, but first he wanted to look around.
The master suite was done in a mismatched assortment of light pine and heavy oak. Everything was immaculately clean, evidence of owners who cared about their things. Except for the bed, there were only two major pieces of furniture. The double dresser was chockfull of ladies’ things, underwear on the left and sweaters and blouses on the right. Nathan was aware of a curious stirring in his loins as he handled a bra, and he quickly tucked the garment back in the drawer and slid it shut.
On the other side of the room from the oak collection was a tall highboy. The lower drawers had men’s clothes: socks and underwear in the bottom two, and T-shirts in the next tier. The tag on one of the shirts said SIZE 44. There’d be no additions to his wardrobe from this house.
He slid the chair from a small makeup table over to the highboy to see into the upper drawers. The topmost full-size drawer held dress shirts, ties and assorted jewelry-cuff links, tie tacks, that sort of thing. The last two drawers were small ones, arranged side by side at the top. In them, he found the neatest kind of toys. The drawer on the left had a box of bullets. On the right was the revolver itself. It was big, blue-black, and heavy as a brick. Nathan had seen such things on TV and in the movies hundreds of times, but he had never actually handled one before. It was another one of those things his father had promised they would do when he got older.
He could see the heads of four bullets peeking out through the cylinder openings. There was a way to make the ammunition cylinder flop out of the side of the gun, and he was determined to find out how. Maybe you had to pull the hammer back. He rolled it back to the first click, and nothing happened. The next click took a lot of effort, but as the hammer moved, the cylinder began to turn. As it did, the fifth and sixth bullets peaked their noses out. He got nervous before he had the hammer all the way back, and eased it down slowly.
The hell with it, he thought. He could play with it just the way it was, so long as he didn’t pull the trigger for real. For the next twenty minutes, he did room searches the way he saw them done in Cops, with the weapon held at arm’s length, gripped by both hands. When he played that he was holstering the gun, he stuffed it up to the trigger guard down the back of his pants, the way Mel Gibson did it in Lethal Weapon.
With the upstairs cleared of bad guys, of which he’d had to shoot at least half a dozen while catching two bullets himself—one in each shoulder—he paused long enough to put the sheets in the washer, and took his battle to the first floor.
He noticed the telephone at about the same time that he was getting bored again. He wondered what The Bitch was talking about today. After hesitating for just a moment, he picked up the phone and dialed. This time he had to keep his pacing to a minimum, because he was tethered by a real phone cord. Like the day before, it took many tries to get through, but when he finally did, he went right to the front of the line.
Denise was talking to Quinn in Milwaukee about the caller’s fears for Nathan’s safety when she got the note that the real star of today’s show was on line fourteen.
“Hey, Quinn?” she interrupted.
“What?”
“I’ve got a surprise for you on our other line here.” She stabbed the button. “Nathan Bailey, are you there?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the voice said. This afternoon, he sounded like the boy he was, his tone free of the burdens it carried the day before.
“Try not to call me ‘ma’am,’ okay, Nathan?” Denise said. “I’ve got a reputation, you know?’
He giggled. “Yes, ma… Okay.”
“Say hi to Quinn, Nathan. She’s from Milwaukee, and she thinks you’re pretty cool.”
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi, Nathan!” Quinn nearly shouted. “I just want to tell you that I believe you, and I hope all of this works out for you. For what it’s worth, if I ever have a little boy, I hope he’s every bit as polite. As you.
“Thanks,” he said a little sheepishly. He wasn’t sure he knew what she was talking about, and he was certain that he didn’t like that “little boy” crap, but it was a nice thing for her to say.
“Listen, Quinn,” Denise said, “what do you say I hang up on you and chat with Nathan for a little while?”
“Of course,” Quinn said agreeably. “You’ve got a great show, Bitch. Keep up the good work. And Nathan, you be careful.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I’ll do my best.”
“So, have you been listening to the show this morning?” Denise asked. “You’re quite the celebrity today.”
“No, I’m sorry, I haven’t,” he said, his tone genuinely apologetic. “I’ve been sleeping.”
“Well, I don’t wonder:’ Denise laughed. “I guess doing all that laundry tires a boy out, huh?”
Nathan’s bowels turned to ice. “What?” he gasped. His voice was cold as stone. How did she know? How could…
“You didn’t see the press conference either?”
Press conference? What the hell is she talking about? His mind raced to put the pieces together, but they weren’t there. He said nothing.
“So you don’t know!” Denise announced, clearly tickled to be the one breaking the news on the air. Talk about great radio! “Your hosts from last night—the Nicholsons—came home this morning and found some things missing. Like a car. They also found your note.”
Nathan’s heart began to race. His hands were shaking. This wasn’t going right. Not the way he had planned it at all. He didn’t think they’d get home so soon. And if they got the note, then how come everyone knows? He asked them specifically…
“CNN had you tagged this morning as the world’s favorite burglar,” Denise explained. “It’s hard to think bad thoughts about a kid who does laundry.”
Nathan still didn’t see what was so funny. It was great that people thought nice things about him, but what did that matter? What it really meant was that the cops were still only a few hours behind him. How long could it
