The Taker

what needed to be done because he’d been through it all just seven months earlier when his father died, but the thought of going through this again was just exhausting. It was at times like these that he most missed his ex-wife. Tricia, a nurse, had been good to have around during difficult times. She wasn’t one to lose her head, practical even in the face of grief.

This was no time to wish things were different. He was alone now and would have to manage by himself. He blushed with embarrassment, knowing how his mother had wanted him and Tricia to stay together, how she lectured him for letting her go. He glanced at the dead woman, a guilty reflex.

Her eyes were open. They had been closed a minute ago. He felt his chest squeeze with hope even though he knew it meant nothing. Just an electrical impulse running through nerves as her synapses stopped firing, like a car sputtering as the last fumes of gas passed through the engine. He reached up and lowered her eyelids.

They opened a second time, naturally, as though his mother was waking up. Luke almost jumped backward but managed to control his fright. No, not fright-surprise. Instead, he slipped on his stethoscope and leaned over her, pressing the diaphragm to her chest. Silent, no sluicing of blood through veins, no rasp of breath. He picked up her wrist. No pulse. He checked his watch: fifteen minutes had passed since he had pronounced his mother dead. He lowered her cold hand, unable to stop watching her. He swore she was looking back at him, her eyes trained on him.

And then her hand lifted from the bedsheet and reached for him. Stretched toward him, palm up, beckoning him to take it. He did, calling her by name, but as soon as he grasped her hand, he dropped it. It was cold and lifeless. Luke took five paces away from the bed, rubbing his forehead, wondering if he was hallucinating. When he turned around, her eyes were closed and her body was still. He could scarcely breathe for his heart thumping in his throat.

It took three days before he could bring himself to talk to another doctor about what had happened. He chose old John Mueller, a pragmatic GP who was known for delivering calves for his rancher neighbor. Mueller had given him a skeptical look, as though he suspected Luke might have been drinking. Twitching of fingers and toes, yeah that happens, he’d said, but fifteen minutes later? Musculoskeletal movement? Mueller eyed Luke again, as though the fact that they were even talking about it was shameful. You think you saw it because you wanted to. You didn’t want her to be gone.

Luke knew that wasn’t it. But he wouldn’t raise it again, not among doctors.

Besides, Mueller had wanted to know, what difference does it make? So the body may have moved a little-you think she was trying to tell you something? You believe in that life-after- death stuff?

Thinking about it now, four months later, still gives Luke a slight chill, running down both arms. He puts the Sudoku book on the side table and works his fingers over his skull, trying to massage out the confusion. The door to the lounge pushes back a crack: it’s Judy. “Joe’s pulling in up front.”

Luke goes outside without his parka so the cold will slap him awake. He watches Duchesne pull up to the curb in a big SUV painted black and white, a decal of the Maine state seal on the front doors and a low-profile light bar strapped to the roof. Luke has known Duchesne since they were boys. They were not in the same grade but they overlapped at school, so he’s seen Duchesne’s narrow, ferretlike face with the beady eyes and the slightly sinister nose for more than twenty years.

Hands tucked into his armpits for warmth, Luke watches Duchesne open the back door and reach for the prisoner’s arm. He’s curious to see the disorderly. He’s expecting a big, mannish biker woman, red-faced and with a split lip, and is surprised to see that the woman is small and young. She could be a teenager. Slender and boyish except for the pretty face and mass of yellow corkscrew curls, a cherub’s hair.

Looking at the woman (girl?), Luke feels a strange tingle, a buzz behind his eyes. His pulse picks up with something almost like-recognition. I know you, he thinks. Not her name, perhaps, but something more fundamental. What is it? Luke squints, studying her more closely. Have I seen her somewhere before? No, he realizes he’s mistaken.

As Duchesne pulls the woman along by the elbow, her hands tied together with a flexicuff, a second police vehicle pulls up and a deputy, Clay Henderson, gets out and takes over escorting the prisoner into the emergency ward. As they pass, Luke sees the prisoner’s shirt is wet, stained black, and she smells of a familiar blend of iron and salt, the smell of blood.

Duchesne steps close to Luke, nodding in the pair’s direction. “We found her like that walking along the logging road to Fort Kent.”

“No coat?” Coatless in this weather? She couldn’t have been out for long.

“Nope. Listen, I need you to tell me if she’s hurt, or if I can take her back to the station and lock her up.”

As far as law enforcement officers went, Luke’s always suspected Duchesne of being heavy-handed; he’s seen too many drunks brought in with lumps on their skulls or facial bruising. This girl, she’s only a kid-what in the world could she have done? “Why is she in custody? For not wearing a coat in this weather?”

Duchesne gives Luke a sharp look, unaccustomed to being mocked. “That girl is a killer. She told us she stabbed a man to death and left his body out in the woods.”

Luke goes through the motions of examining the prisoner, but he can barely think for the strange pulsing in his head. He shines a penlight into her eyes-they are the palest blue eyes he’s ever seen, like two shards of compressed ice-to see if her pupils are dilated. Her skin is clammy to the touch, her pulse low and her breathing ragged.

“She’s very pale,” he says to Duchesne as they step away from the gurney to which the prisoner has been strapped at the wrists. “That could mean she’s going cyanotic. Going into shock.”

“Does that mean she’s injured?” Duchesne asks, skeptical.

“Not necessarily. She could be in psychological trauma. Could be from an argument. Maybe from fighting with this man she says she killed. How do you know it’s not self-defense?”

Duchesne, hands on hips, stares at the prisoner on the gurney as though he can discern the truth just by looking at her. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “We don’t know anything… she hasn’t said much. Can’t you tell if she’s wounded? ’Cause if she’s not hurt I’ll just take her in…”

“I have to get that shirt off, clean off the blood…”

“Get to it. I can’t stay here all night. I left Boucher in the woods, looking for that body.”

Even with the full moon, the woods are dark and vast, and Luke knows the deputy, Boucher, has little chance of finding a body by himself.

Luke picks at the edge of his latex glove. “So go help Boucher while I do the examination…”

“I can’t leave the prisoner here.”

“For Chrissakes,” Luke says, jerking his head in the slight young woman’s direction. “She’s hardly going to overpower me and escape. If you’re that worried about it, have Henderson stay.” They both glance at Henderson tentatively. The big deputy leans against a counter, leafing through an old Sports Illustrated left in the waiting room, a cup of vending machine coffee in his hand. He’s shaped like a cartoon bear and is, appropriately, amicably dim. “He won’t be of much help to you in the woods… Nothing is going to happen,” Luke says impatiently, turning away from the sheriff as though the matter is already settled. He feels Duchesne’s stare bore into his back, unsure if he should argue with Luke.

And then the sheriff lurches away, heading for the double set of sliding doors. “Stay here with the prisoner,” he yells at Henderson as he jams the heavy, fur-lined hat onto his head. “I’m going back to help Boucher. Idiot couldn’t find his own ass with both hands and a map.”

Luke and the nurse attend to the woman strapped to the gurney. He hefts a pair of scissors. “I’m going to have to cut your shirt away,” he warns her.

“You might as well. It’s ruined,” she says in a soft voice with an accent Luke can’t place. The shirt is obviously expensive. It’s the kind of clothing you see in fashion magazines and that you would never find someone wearing in St. Andrew.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” Luke says, small talk to loosen her up.

She studies his face, evaluating whether to trust him-or so Luke assumes. “I was born here, actually. That was a long time ago.”

Luke snorts. “A long time ago for you, maybe. If you were born here, I’d know you. I’ve lived in this area almost my entire life. What’s your name?”