15 Seconds

Squeeze.

Wayne jerked awake, his eyes bulging. He made a gurgling noise and twisted to see what was happening. Strangled whimpers emanating from his throat as Vance tightened the noose, the boy suddenly understanding what was going on, his arms thrashing around behind him. Vance telling him in a soft voice, “No point in struggling, son. I told you plainly, you had to pay for what you’ve done.”

Wayne, grasping at Vance’s sides, jerking his head back and forth in some desperate, futile effort to say, “No, please, no…” But that just made Vance squeeze even tighter, spittle seeping out of the young man’s mouth and onto his chin. His fists striking with diminishing force against Vance’s thighs. His words barely even intelligible… His eyes stretched to the back of his head.

Please.

Vance didn’t let up. Not until there was no more fight in the boy. Or gasping for air. Not until he fell back on the floor in a curled-up heap.

He’d told him it had to be done.

Then he loosened the noose from Wayne’s blotched neck and undid the makeshift winch and pulley and set them aside. He wrapped the long rope over his arm into neat circles, unscrewed the propane tank from the welding torch, and put them carefully back into his bag.

Not much blood, he thought, pleased with his work. Just a few drops of spittle on the floor, which he wiped with a cloth and disinfectant. Then he put his arms under the dead boy’s armpits and lifted him up over his shoulders. Young Wayne was a sizable lad, though Vance had expected more of a fight out of him. Vance carried him outside and into the woods to the spot he had prepared. He’d already dug the hole, about forty yards in, amid a thicket of brush and brambles no one would ever find. Sweat picked up on Vance’s back as he carted the heavy weight in the humid night.

When he got to the hole, he was wheezing a bit. He dropped Wayne faceup, and puffed his cheeks so as to catch his breath.

He thought, Maybe I ought to say something, staring down at the young face. You probably weren’t a totally useless fool, though my daughter liked you, so who knows… Still, events don’t happen of themselves. They have a cause, and you were part of that cause, son. So here you lie…

He rolled Wayne’s torso inside the ditch and then kicked in his legs, which didn’t seem to want to go in. Then he started to fill up the hole with the shovel he had hidden here in the bushes.

When he was finished, he smoothed things out as best he could, but no one would ever find him here. No one but that tramp Brandee would even miss him likely.

Wheat from chaff, he said to himself, leaning on the shovel. The lowest rung on a tall ladder.

But he would do what he had to do and find his way to the top.

Vance took the shovel and headed back.

He had names.

Part II

Chapter Nineteen

Carrie drove to her parents’ house in Atlantic Beach after work that day. Raef had just come back from the physical therapist.

It was a small, three-bedroom ranch backing onto a public golf course near the beach, but it was near the Wolfson Children’s Hospital, where Raef went every day to the rehabilitation center. He’d gotten most of his major muscle movement back, along with the majority of his speech. The therapists were still working on the fine-motor movements, such as writing and catching a ball; running was yet to fully come. But it was all improving. The doctors thought that in a couple of weeks’ time Raef would be able to move back in with her and, after the summer, be back in school.

They were hopeful that one day he wouldn’t even show the slightest sign that his brain had been deprived of oxygen for almost two and a half minutes.

“Hi, Mommy!” He ran up to her like any happy nine-year-old, maybe showing just a little weakness on his right side.

“Hey, Tiger!” Carrie exclaimed, lifting him in the air. “Ooof, you are getting to be a real handful. You know that, guy!”

“Roberta said I was very good today.” Roberta was one of his therapists at Wolfson. “We played catch. Look…” He picked up a blue-and-red, soft-cushion baseball, tossed it in the air, and caught it in his right hand, his lagging one. Papa and I have been practicing!”

“Pretty soon we’ll see him pitching for the Marlins.” Nate, Carrie’s dad, the ex-New Hampshire police chief, walked in. Then his face became more serious. “So how’d it go, baby? Some first day back. We saw the news.”

“I’ll tell you about it,” Carrie said, with a roll of her eyes. “I’ve got quite the story. But first… I want to see my Number One Dude here in action. See if he can handle my best heater.” She took the cushiony ball and pretended to rub it up like a real pitcher. “What do you say, A-Rod…?”

“If you throw it slow, Mommy.”

“Slow it is. Just the right hand, Raef.” She went into a windup and tossed it to him underhanded from around four feet away. Raef plucked it out of the air.

“Whoa!” Carrie said, eyes wide. “Awesome job!” She turned to her dad, who was nodding with a glow of grandfatherly pride. “You’re not joking. I think he might well be filling out that pitching rotation pretty soon.”

Raef grinned proudly. Every time Carrie looked at his freckled face, she saw Rick’s smile. He surely did have her husband’s will and determination. He never once felt sorry for himself. Most of the tears he shed were when he was trying to comfort her. Even now, her thoughts roamed to the incident that had taken Rick, and as always, the memory seemed to come to her against her will.

She was down in St. John’s County. At the opening of a JSO-sponsored youth center there. She got the call from Rick. Trying his best to appear calm-that was his way, after two tours in Iraq-but it was impossible not to hear the worry in his voice. “Carrie, I don’t want you to panic, but something’s happened…” The ensuing pause became the dividing line in her life. “To Raef!”

She remembered how every nerve in her body seemed to go dead.

He’d fallen on the soccer field at school and never got up. No one was really sure what precisely had happened yet, but “his right arm started shaking and then he said his leg felt numb and then he just fell…”

Carrie knew from her husband’s tone that he was trying to hold it together as well. This was bad.

“He’s not conscious, honey,” Rick said, sucking in a bolstering breath. “But the EMTs are there. They’re taking him to Memorial Hospital.”

Oh my God! That was close to a two-hour drive from where she was. With traffic. Only about ten minutes for Rick. “I’ll meet you there,” he said. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Carrie answered shakily.

“And, Carrie, baby…”

“Yes,” she said, her eyes already overrun with tears and her heartbeat racing.

“He’s gonna make it, Carrie. I promise he will. He’s gonna come through this-you know that, don’t you?”

“I know that, Rick,” she answered weakly.

She knew it because he was saying it. Because nothing could happen to Rick. He was part of the first Marine platoon to arrive in Iraq, and he did two rotations as a field commander, ending up with the