May 2
Overland Park Regional Medical Center
Overland Park, Kansas
10:57 P.M. CDT / 11:57 P.M. EDT
Piper Cameron stared at the dimly lit ceiling.
A spider had been working its way across the smooth plaster: slowly, its eight legs moving almost imperceptibly in an upside-down, gravity-defying trek toward what Piper assumed that the spider assumed was the relative safety of a corner-wall web.
Piper silently sent a warning to her roommate.
Think again, she told it, not bothering to mask the bitterness in her advice. Safety? There is no such thing…
She lay in the center of her own web, fluid-filled tubes and looping wires and chromed-steel cables. The latter were at present useful only if one were particularly optimistic; they were attached to a trapeze-like bar where outstretched arms would reach, if those arms were capable of movement.
Hers were not, at least as of yet.
Possibly, they might never be again—but that was not for certain, Piper’s surgeon had warned her, accentuating what to Piper felt was a dubious positive, given her other injuries.
Likewise, her legs—elevated by their own web strands of steel cable—“might” regain their function, or at least some semblence thereof. Much depended, the surgeon cautioned, on various factors; he had droned on, talking of intra-spinal swelling, the still-undetermined extent of trauma-induced neurological damage, potentially complicating factors like—
Piper had tuned him out. She could feel her arms, albeit only as a distant electrical-like tingling. But her legs were entrapped in rigid steel rods and encased in stiffly inflated plastic balloons; they were alien to her, sausage-shaped sandbags devoid of sensation and of doubtful ownership.
Throughout the day, Piper had been reassured—repeatedly, almost incessantly—that she was a hero.
Yeah, I’m a hero, she told the spider now, and again heard her own bitter mockery in the word. I wish I felt like one. I wish to Christ that I even knew what a ‘hero’ is … or, fuck it: was…
• • •
May 2
1198 Tulip Drive
Overland Park, Kansas
10:58 P.M. CDT / 11:58 P.M. EDT
Randi Taylor crept to the bed—a crib, really: the same one in which her daughter had slept since they had brought her home, though Donald had lowered the Pepto Bismol-colored side rails and locked them with screws—and stared at the sleeping girl nervously.
Mandi had taught herself to roll at six months, at approximately what the childcare books said was a normal schedule, and liked to do so often. That she now did it while asleep was a source of constant anxiety to mother Randi, though somewhat less so to father Donald.
Well, I sure don’t think those books are ‘just full of hooey,’ Mandi told herself, her thoughts in a defensive tone. Sleeping on their stomachs is dangerous to babies…
Gently, Randi rolled the slumbering Mandi onto her back; promptly, a closed-eye Mandi rolled right back.
Leastways, she’s sleeping okay, Randi sighed. Wish I was. After what happened—what could have happened, and almost did … oh, God … he was right there, and that gun was pointing right at my baby—
She noticed that her hands were shaking and tucked them tightly under her armpits.
That poor lady, Randi thought. News said she was all broken, probably every bone in her body. If she hadn’t been there, hadn’t done what she did … oh, God…
Randi Taylor leaned over and pulled the tiny pink blanket over her child’s peaceful form, whispering a prayer of gratitude as she did.
• • •
May 2
693 Linden Avenue
Overland Park, Kansas
10:59 P.M. CDT / 11:59 P.M. EDT
Sergeant Brian Fisker eased shut the front door of his home. Save for a low-wattage lamp on the foyer’s table, the rest of the house was dark. It was also silent, and Fisker’s soft steps were designed to keep it so.
No luck: He half-stumbled, his foot propelling the carelessly discarded lacrosse stick clattering along the hallway.
“Dad?” This, a voice from the living room; Fisker saw movement on the sofa.
“You should be up in bed, Josh.”
Joshua Fisker sat up, still only partially awake.
“I just wanted to find out if you caught her.”
“Her?”
“That girl. The one who owned the computer.”
Fisker made his way to the sofa, though cautiously. Joshua was a good kid, but one could never be sure what landmines he had left for the night-blinded unwary who might tread in his wake. The detective’s shoe touched yet another—a controller for his son’s X-Box, it felt like—as he settled in alongside the boy.
“She isn’t a perp, Josh. She only let somebody else, some guy friend, use her computer.”
“You get him?”
“He’s someplace now where he won’t make any more trouble.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah.” Fisker hesitated. “Josh, you know there are some bad people out there. On the Internet, I mean.”
An impatient sigh. “Dad, I don’t go to those sites. The dirty ones. And if they pop up anyway, I shut down the window.”
“I don’t just mean dirty pictures. But sometimes—and it may start out innocently, like somebody says they want to be your friend—sometimes people try to trick kids into doing things. Has that ever happened to you?”
“Not to me. I mean, not really. But a guy at school—he said some creep tried to chat with him. I know about those guys, Dad. Everybody does.”
Fisker sighed, himself; it was a new world, not always brave, and an untimely loss of innocence—or something even worse, as the mounting evidence in his current case was indicating—was always only a mouse-click away. There were vampires out there; every computer was an open-door invitation to enter every home, and everybody inside was nothing more than prey.
Fisker put an arm around his son’s shoulders.
“You know you can always talk to me—right, Josh? Anytime. About anything. If something doesn’t … well, doesn’t feel right to you … look, if anybody ever tries to talk you into doing something that you don’t—”
He felt his son squirm uncomfortably.
Nine years old, Fisker told himself. We haven’t even had ‘The Talk’ yet, not that one, and still I have to warn him, try to protect him, against things he shouldn’t be expected to understand at that age…
A maelstrom of thoughts, dark and sad and desperately fearful, swirled through a father’s mind: There was so much to say…
“Time to hit the hay, kiddo,” Fisker said instead. “Tomorrow’s a new day, eh?”
• • •
They left the living room together.
Unnoticed on the fireplace mantelpiece, the clock ticked ahead: 11 p.m. in the heartland, but already Saturday on the East Coast.
Whatever the new day had to offer, for good or ill, it was already upon them, upon them all.