Ambrose arrived a few minutes behind Fern's parents, and all three were ushered into the ER at the same time the gurney with Rita Garth was pushed through the emergency room doors, an EMT calling out her vitals and giving an update on what measures had been taken en route. A doctor shouted for an MRI, and medical personnel descended on their new patient as Pastor Taylor and his wife stood dumbfounded by the arrival of a second loved one, still unaware of the condition of the first. And then Sarah Marsden was rushing through the doors, little Tyler, wearing a pair of mud-streaked pajamas, in her arms. Becker lurked behind her, seeming distraught and ill-at-ease. When he saw Ambrose he fell back, fear and loathing curling his lip. He shoved his hands into his pockets and looked away disdainfully as Ambrose focused in on the conversation that was taking place.
“Sarah! What's happened?” Joshua and Rachel swarmed her, Rachel taking the filthy toddler from her arms, Joshua putting his arm around Sarah's shaking shoulders.
Sarah had very little to tell them, but Rachel sat with her and Becker in the waiting area, while Joshua and Ambrose went to check on Bailey's status. Pastor Joshua missed the fear that stole across Becker's face and the way his eyes slid to the exit upon the mention of Bailey's name. He also missed the two policemen that were positioned just inside the emergency room door and the cruiser that had just pulled up at the curb beyond the glass doors of the waiting room. But Ambrose didn't.
When Joshua and Ambrose were led to the little room where Bailey lay, they saw Bailey's parents gathered at his bedside, Fern huddled in the corner, and Bailey lying with his eyes closed on the hospital gurney. Someone had brought Angie Sheen a small plastic tub filled with soapy water, and with loving care, Bailey's mother was washing the mud and grime from his face and hair, gently administering to her son for the last time. It was obvious from the grieving of those gathered that Bailey was not simply resting.
Ambrose had never seen a dead body before. The man was just lying in a heap outside the south entrance to the compound. Ambrose's unit had patrol duty that morning and Paulie and Ambrose came upon him first. His face was a swollen mass of black and blue, blood was dried at the corners of his mouth and beneath his nostrils. He wouldn't have been recognizable if not for his hair. When they realized who it was, Paulie had walked away from the dead man they all knew and thrown up the breakfast he'd consumed only an hour before.
They called him Cosmo–the a mass of frizzy, curly hair that stuck up and out from his head identical to Cosmo Kramer on the popular American sitcom, Seinfeld. He'd been working with the Americans, feeding them tips here and there, giving them information on the comings and goings of certain people of interest. He was quick to smile and hard to scare, and his daughter, Nagar, was the same age as Paulie's sister, Kylie. Kylie had even written Nagar a couple of letters and Nagar had responded with pictures and a few basic words in English that her father had taught her.
They had found his bike first. It had been tossed outside the base too, its wheels spinning, handle bars buried in the sand. They checked for a flat and looked around for Cosmo, surprised that he had just abandoned it in the middle of the road that circled the perimeter beyond the Concertina wire. And then they found Cosmo. His dead fingers had been wrapped around an American flag. It was one of those little cheap ones on a wooden stick, the kind you wave at parades on the fourth of July. The message was clear. Someone had discovered Cosmo's willingness to assist the Americans. And they’d killed him.
Paulie was the most shaken of all of them. He didn't understand the hate. The Sunnis hated the Shiites. The Shiites hated the Sunnis. They both hated the Kurds. And they all hated Americans, though the Kurds were slightly more tolerant and recognized that America might be their only hope.
“Remember when that church burned down in Hannah Lake? Remember how Pastor Taylor helped organize a fundraiser and everybody kind of pitched in and the church got rebuilt? It wasn't even Pastor Taylor's church. It was a Methodist church. Half of the people who gave money or helped rebuild weren't Methodist. Heck, more than half had never set foot in any church,” Paulie had said, incredulous. “But everybody helped anyway.”
“There are scumbags in America, too,” Beans reminded gently. “We may not have seen it in Hannah Lake. But don't for one second believe there isn't evil everywhere.”
“Not like this,” Paulie whispered, his innocence making him resistant to the truth.
Ambrose never saw his friends after the blast that killed them. He never saw them laid out peacefully in death like Bailey was. They wouldn't have been laid out. No open caskets for soldiers returning from war, for soldiers who had died from an improvised explosive device that blew a two-ton Humvee into the air and sent another one careening. They wouldn't have looked like Bailey either, as if they were sleeping. Judging from the damage to his own face, they would have been ravaged, unrecognizable.
At Walter Reed, Ambrose saw soldiers who were missing limbs. He saw burn patients and soldiers with facial injuries much worse than his own. And his dreams were filled with limbs and gore and soldiers who had no faces and no arms, stumbling around in a storm of black smoke and carnage on the streets of Baghdad. He'd been haunted by the faces of his friends, wondering what had happened to them after the blast. Had they died immediately? Or had they known what was happening? Had Paulie, with his sensitivity to things of the spirit, felt death take him? Had Bailey?
Such needless death, so unnecessary, so tragic. Grief clogged Ambrose's throat as he stared at Bailey Sheen, at the dirt that matted his hair and the dried mud that Angie Sheen gently wiped from his round face. The toddler Rachel Taylor had taken from Rita's mother was smeared in the same black mud. Bailey was dead, Rita was unconscious, and the bottoms of Becker Garth's pant legs were still damp and caked in dirt. He had done something to his wife. And he had done something to Bailey, Ambrose realized in dawning horror. There was evil everywhere, Ambrose thought to himself. And he was seeing it right here in Hannah Lake.
He strode from the room, fury pounding in his temples, surging through his veins. He crossed the emergency lobby, pushing the swinging doors wide that separated the waiting room from the trauma center, causing the few people who huddled miserably on the metal chairs, waiting for admittance or word on the condition of loved ones, to look up in alarm at the angry, scarred giant who flew through the doors.
But Becker wasn't there. Rachel Taylor still waited by Sarah Marsden's side, but Ty had surrendered to exhaustion across her chest. Rachel still hadn't seen Bailey, still didn't know her nephew had been killed. She looked at him in question, her eyes wide in a face that reminded him of her daughter, reminded him that Fern sat devastated in the room where Bailey lay and he needed to go to her. Ambrose turned around and went back through the trauma doors. Landon Knudsen and another police officer Ambrose didn't know stood just outside the emergency room entrance.
“Knudsen!” Ambrose called out as he pushed through the entrance doors.
Landon Knudsen took a step back and his partner stepped forward and put a hand on his holster.
“Where's Becker Garth?” Ambrose demanded.
Knudsen's shoulders slumped as his partner's back stiffened, their opposing reactions almost comical. Landon Knudsen couldn't take his eyes off of Ambrose's face. It was the first time in three years he had laid eyes on the wrestler he had idolized in high school.
“We don't know,” Landon admitted, shaking his head and trying to hide his reaction to the change in Ambrose's appearance. “We're just trying to get a handle on what the hell is going on. We had another cruiser here, but we didn't have every entrance and exit covered. He's slipped out.”
Ambrose didn't miss the slide of Landon's eyes, the discomfort and pity that colored his gaze, but he was too upset to care. The fact that they had been watching Becker Garth confirmed his suspicions. In very few words, he laid out the mud he'd seen on the toddler and on Bailey's clothing, as well as the “coincidence” that Bailey and Rita had been brought to the emergency room within a half hour of each other. The officers didn't seem surprised by his synopsis, though they were both vibrating with adrenaline. This type of thing didn't happen in Hannah Lake.
But it had happened, and Bailey Sheen was dead.
Rita regained consciousness within hours of her surgery. She was confused and teary with a headache for the record books, but with the pressure on her brain relieved and the swelling under control, she was able to communicate and wanted to know what had happened to her. Her mother told her what she knew, reliving Becker's 911 call and the trip to the ER with little Ty almost inconsolable in his father's arms. She told Rita that Becker had not been able to rouse her.
“I was sick,” Rita said weakly. “My head hurt and I was so dizzy. I didn't want to go to Jerry's. I had bathed Ty and put him in his pajamas, and I just wanted to go to bed. But Becker wouldn't let me out of his sight. He found my stash, Mom. He knows I was planning to leave. He's convinced I have something going on with Ambrose Young.” Rita's voice became more measured as the pain killers began to pull her under. “But Fern loves Ambrose . . . and I think he loves her too.”
“Did you hit your head?” Sarah pulled Rita back on track. “The doctors said you sustained an injury on the back of your head that caused a slow bleed on the inside . . . a subdural hematoma, the doctor called it. They drilled a little hole in your skull to relieve the pressure.”
“I told Becker I wanted a divorce. I told him, Mom. He just looked at me like he wanted to kill me. It scared me, so I ran. He came after me swinging, and I hit the floor pretty hard where the tile meets the carpet. It hurt so bad. I think I passed out because Becker got off me real quick. I had a big bump there . . . but it didn't bleed.”
“When was that?”
“Tuesday, I think.” It was Friday night when Rita was brought into the ER, late Saturday morning now. Rita was lucky to be alive.
“I dreamed about Bailey,” Rita's voice was slurred and Sarah didn't interrupt, knowing she was fading fast. “I dreamed Ty was crying and Bailey came and got him and took him for a ride in his wheelchair. He said 'Let Mommy sleep.' I was so glad because I was so tired. I couldn't even lift my head. Funny dream, huh?”
Sarah just patted Rita's hand and tried not to cry. She would have to tell Rita about Bailey. But not yet. Now she had something more important to do. When she was sure her daughter was fast asleep and wouldn't miss her, she called the police.