Just One Look

Just One Look Page 6

Grace caught herself mid-scream. She jerked upright. The light was still on in the hallway. A silhouette stood in her doorway. But it wasn't Jack.

She awoke, still gasping. A dream. She knew that. On some elusive level, she had known that midway through. She'd had this dream before, plenty of times, though not in a long time. Must be the upcoming anniversary, she thought.

She tried to settle back. It wouldn't happen. The dream always started and ended the same. The variations occurred in the middle.

In the dream Grace was back at the old Boston Garden. The stage was directly in front of her. There was a steel blockade, short, maybe waist-high, like something you might use to lock your bike. She leaned against it.

The loudspeaker played "Pale Ink," but that was impossible because the concert hadn't even started yet. "Pale Ink" was the big hit from the Jimmy X Band, the best-selling single of the year. You still hear it on the radio all the time. It would be played live, not on some waiting-time recording. But if this dream was like some movie, "Pale Ink" was, if you will, the soundtrack.

Was Todd Woodcroft, her boyfriend at the time, standing next to her? She sometimes imagined holding his hand-though they were never the hand-holding kind of couple-and then, when it went wrong, the stomach-dropping feel of his hand slipping away from hers. In reality, Todd was probably right next to her. In the dream, only sometimes. This time, no, he was not there. Todd had escaped that night unscathed. She never blamed him for what happened to her. There was nothing he could have done. Todd had never even visited her in the hospital. She didn't blame him for that either. Theirs was a college romance already on the skids, not a soul-mate situation. Who needed a scene at this stage of the game? Who'd want to break up with a girl in the hospital? Better for both, she thought, to let it just sort of drift away.

In the dream, Grace knows that tragedy is about to strike, but she does nothing about it. Her dream self does not call out a warning or try to make for the exit. She often wondered why, but wasn't that how dreams worked? You are powerless even with foreknowledge, a slave to some advanced hardwiring in your subconscious. Or perhaps the answer is simpler: There was no time. In the dream, the tragedy begins in seconds. In reality, according to witnesses, Grace and the others had stood in front of that stage for more than four hours.

The crowd's mood had slid from excited to antsy to restless before stopping at hostile. Jimmy X, real name James Xavier Farmington, the gorgeous rocker with the glorious hair, was supposed to take the stage at 8:30 P.M., though no one really expected him before nine. Now it was closing in on midnight. At first the crowd had been chanting Jimmy's name. Now a chorus of boos had started up. Sixteen thousand people, including those, like Grace, who had been lucky enough to get standing seats in the pit, rose as one, demanding their performance. Ten minutes passed before the loudspeaker finally offered up some feedback. The crowd, having reverted to their earlier state of fevered excitement, went wild.

But the voice that came over the loudspeaker did not introduce the band. In a straight monotone, it announced that tonight's performance had been delayed again for at least an hour. No explanation. For a moment nobody moved. Silence filled the arena.

This was where the dream began, during that lull before the devastation. Grace was there again. How old was she? She had been twenty-one, but in the dream she seemed to be older. It was a different, parallel Grace, one who was married to Jack and mother to Emma and Max and yet was still at that concert during her senior year of college. Again that was how it worked in dreams, a dual reality, your parallel self overlapping with your actual one.

Was all this, these dream moments, coming from her subconscious or from what she had read about the tragedy after the fact? Grace did not know. It was, she'd long surmised, probably a combination of both. Dreams open up memories, don't they? When she was awake, she couldn't recall that night at all-or for that matter, the few days before. The last thing she remembered was studying for a political science final she'd taken five days earlier. That was normal, the doctors assured, with her type of head trauma. But the subconscious was a strange terrain. Perhaps the dreams were actual memories. Perhaps imagination. Most likely, as with most dreams or even memories, both.

Either way, be it from memory or press reports, it was at this very moment when someone fired a shot. Then another. And another.

This was before the days of metal detector sweeps when you entered an arena. Anyone could carry in a gun. For a while, there had been much debate over the origins of those shots. Conspiracy nuts still argued over the point, as if the arena had a grassy knoll in the upper tier. Either way, the young crowd, already in a frenzy, snapped. They screamed. They broke. They rushed for exits.

They rushed toward the stage.

Grace was in the wrong spot. Her waist was crushed against the top of the steel girder. It dug into her belly. She could not pry herself free. The crowd cried out and surged as one. The boy next to her-she would later learn that he was nineteen years old and named Ryan Vespa-didn't get his hands up in time. He smacked the girder at a bad angle.

Grace saw-again was it just in the dream or in reality too?-the blood shoot from Ryan Vespa's mouth. The girder finally gave way. It tilted over. She fell to the floor. Grace tried to get her footing, tried to stand, but the current of screaming humans drove her back down.

This part, she knew, was real. This part, being buried under a mass of people, haunted more than just her dreams.

The stampede continued. People stomped on her. Trampled her arms and legs. Tripped and fell, slamming down on her like stone tablets. The weight grew. Crushing her. Dozens of desperate, struggling, slithering bodies rushed over her.

Screams filled the air. Grace was underneath it now. Buried. There was no light anymore. Too many bodies on top of her. It was impossible to move. Impossible to breathe. She was suffocating. Like someone had buried her in concrete. Like she was being dragged underwater.

There was too much weight on her. It felt as if a giant hand was pressing down on her head, squashing her skull like it was a Styro-foam cup.

There was no escape.

And that, mercifully, was when the dream ended. Grace woke up, still gulping for air.

In reality, Grace had woken up four days later and remembered almost nothing. At first she thought it was the morning of her political science final. The doctors took their time explaining the situation. She had been seriously injured. She had, for one, a skull fracture. That, the doctors surmised, explained the headaches and memory loss. This was not a case of amnesia or repressed memory or even anything psychological. The brain was damaged, which is not infrequent with this kind of severe head trauma and loss of consciousness. Losing hours, even days, was not unusual. Grace also shattered her femur, her tibia, and three ribs. Her knee had split in two. Her hip had been ripped out of its joint.

Through a haze of painkillers, she eventually learned that she had been "lucky." Eighteen people, ranging in age from fourteen to twenty-six, had been killed in the stampede that the media dubbed the Boston Massacre.

The silhouette in the doorway said, "Mom?"

It was Emma. "Hi, sweetheart."

"You were screaming."

"I'm okay. Even moms have bad dreams sometimes."

Emma stayed in the shadows. "Where's Daddy?"

Grace checked the bedside clock. It was nearly 4:45 A.M. How long had she been asleep? No more than ten, fifteen minutes. "He'll be home soon."

Emma did not move.

"You okay?" Grace asked.

"Can I sleep with you?"

Plenty of bad dreams tonight, Grace thought. She pulled back the blanket. "Sure, honey."

Emma crawled onto Jack's side of the bed. Grace threw the blanket back over her and held tight. She kept her eyes on the bedside clock. At exactly 7 A.M.-she watched the digital clock switch from 6:59 A.M.-she let panic in.

Jack had never done anything like this before. If it had been a normal night, if he had come up and told her that he was going grocery shopping, if he had made some clumsy double entendre before leaving, something about melons or bananas, something funny and stupid like that, she'd have been on the phone with the police already.

But last night had not been normal. There had been that photograph. There had been his reaction. And there had been no kiss good-bye.

Emma stirred beside her. Max entered in mid-eye rub a few minutes later. Jack was usually the one who made breakfast. He was more the early riser. Grace managed to whip up the morning meal-Cap'n Crunch with sliced banana-and deflected their questions about their father's absence. While they were busy wolfing down breakfast, she slid into the den and tried Jack's office, but nobody picked up the line. Still too early.

She threw on a pair of Jack's Adidas sweats and walked them to the bus stop. Emma used to hug her before she boarded, but she was too old for that. She hurried aboard, before Grace could mumble something idiotically parental about Emma being too old for hugs but not too old to visit Mom when she was scared at night. Max still gave her a hug but it was quick and with a serious lack of enthusiasm. They both stepped inside, the bus door swooshing to a close as though swallowing them whole.

Grace blocked the sun with her hand and, as always, watched the bus until it turned down Bryden Road. Even now, even after all this time, she still longed to hop in her car and follow just to be sure that that seemingly fragile box of yellow tin made it safely to school.

What had happened to Jack?

She started back toward the house, but then, thinking better of it, she sprinted toward her car and took off. Grace caught up to the bus on Heights Road and followed it the rest of the way to Willard School. She shifted into park and watched the children disembark. When Emma and Max appeared, weighed down by their backpacks, she felt the familiar flutter. She sat and waited until they both headed up the path, up the stairs, and disappeared through the school doors.

And then, for the first time in a long time, Grace cried.

Grace expected cops in plainclothes. And she expected two of them. That was how it always worked on television. One would be the gruff veteran. The other would be young and handsome. So much for TV. The town police had sent one officer in the regulation stop-you-for-speeding uniform and matching car.

He had introduced himself as Officer Daley. He was indeed young, very young, with a smattering of acne on his shiny baby face. He was gym muscular. His short sleeves worked like tourniquets on his bloated biceps. Officer Daley spoke with annoying patience, a suburban-cop monotone, as if addressing a class of first graders on bike safety.

He had arrived ten minutes after her call on the non-emergency police line. Normally, the dispatcher told her, they would ask her to come in and fill out a report on her own. But it just so happened that Officer Daley was in the area, so he'd be able to swing by. Lucky her.

Daley took a letter-size sheet of paper and placed it out on the coffee table. He clicked his pen and started asking questions.

"The missing person's name?"

"John Lawson. But he goes by Jack."

He started down the list.

"Address and phone number?"

She gave them.

"Place of birth?"

" Los Angeles, California."

He asked his height, weight, eye and hair color, sex (yes, he actually asked). He asked if Jack had any scars, marks, or tattoos. He asked for a possible destination.

"I don't know," Grace said. "That's why I called you."

Officer Daley nodded. "I assume that your husband is over the age of emancipation?"

"Pardon?"

"He is over eighteen years old."

"Yes."

"That makes this harder."

"Why?"

"We got new regulations on filling out a missing person report. It was just updated a couple weeks back."

"I'm not sure I understand."

He gave a theatrical sigh. "See, in order to put someone in the computer, he needs to meet the criteria." Daley pulled out another sheet of paper. "Is your husband disabled?"

"No."

"Endangered?"

"What do you mean?"

Daley read from the sheet. " 'A person of age who is missing and in the company of another person under circumstances indicating that his/her physical safety is in danger.' "

"I don't know. I told you. He left here last night..."

"Then that would be a no," Daley said. He scanned down the sheet. "Number three. Involuntary. Like a kidnapping or abduction."

"I don't know."

"Right. Number four. Catastrophe victim. Like in a fire or airplane crash."

"No."

"And the last category. Is he a juvenile? Well, we covered that already." He put the sheet down. "That's it. You can't put the person into the system unless he fits in one of those categories."

"So if someone goes missing like this, you do nothing?"

"I wouldn't put it that way, ma'am."

"How would you put it?"

"We have no evidence that there was any foul play. If we receive any, we will immediately upgrade the investigation."

"So for now you do nothing?"

Daley put down the pen. He leaned forward, his forearms on his thighs. His breathing was heavy. "May I speak frankly, Mrs. Lawson?"

"Please."

"Most of these cases-no, more than that, I'd say ninety-nine out of a hundred-the husband is just running around. There are marital problems. There is a mistress. The husband doesn't want to be found."

"That's not the case here."

He nodded. "And in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases, that's what we hear from the wife."

The patronizing tone was starting to piss her off. Grace hadn't felt comfortable confiding in this youth. She'd held back, as if she feared telling the entire truth would be a betrayal. Plus, when you really thought about it, how would it sound?

Well, see, I found this weird photo from the Photomat in the middle of my pack from Apple Orchard, in Chester, right, and my husband said it wasn't him and really, it's hard to tell because the picture is old and then Jack left the house...

"Mrs. Lawson?"

"Yes."

"Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

"I think so. That I'm hysterical. My husband ran off. I'm trying to use the police to drag him back. That sound about right?"

He remained unruffled. "You have to understand. We can't fully investigate until we have some evidence that a crime has been committed. Those are the rules set up by the NCIC." He pointed to the sheet of paper again and said in his gravest tone: "That's the National Crime Information Center."

She almost rolled her eyes.

"Even if we find your husband, we wouldn't tell you where he was. This is a free country. He is of age. We can't force him to come back."

"I'm aware of that."

"We could make a few calls, maybe make a few discreet inquiries."

"Great."

"I'll need the vehicle make and license plate number."

"It's a Ford Windstar."

"Color?"

"Dark blue."

"Year?"

She didn't remember.

"License plate?"

"It begins with an M."

Officer Daley looked up. Grace felt like a moron.

"I have a copy of the registration upstairs," she said. "I can check."

"Do you use E-ZPass at tollbooths?"

"Yes."

Officer Daley nodded and wrote that down. Grace headed upstairs and found the file. She made a copy with her scanner and gave it to Officer Daley. He wrote something down. He asked a few questions. She stuck with the facts: Jack had come home from work, helped put the children to bed, gone out, probably for groceries... and that was it.

After about five minutes, Daley seemed satisfied. He smiled and told her not to worry. She stared at him.

"We'll check back with you in a few hours. If we hear nothing by then, let's talk some more."

He left. Grace tried Jack's office again. Still no answer. She checked the clock. It was nearly 10 A.M. The Photomat would be opening now. Good.

She had some questions for Josh the Fuzz Pellet.