CHAPTER 31
Zach Feygen visited Nathan Pittman in the hospital in mid-afternoon.
He’d received a call twenty minutes earlier. Nathan had regained consciousness at just after two, and spoken lucidly, but then passed out again. Feygen got there as soon as he could.
He’d talked with Nathan’s doctors. The convenience store robber had used a .32 revolver, and all three of the bullets he put in Nathan had struck bone. If Nathan had been incredibly lucky, the gunshot wounds might not have been all that serious. As it was, fragments of bone had penetrated one lung and sliced a chunk out of his liver.
Feygen reached Nathan’s room and pushed the door partway open, knocking lightly. No one answered. He stepped inside and found Nathan’s parents staring at him, one standing on either side of Nathan’s bed. They had on expensive clothes but wore them badly.
The mother grunted, “Who’re you?”
Looking at the two of them, Feygen couldn’t help but think of the nursery rhyme, “Jack Spratt could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean,” except in reverse. Nathan Pittman’s father didn’t appear to have eaten anything lean in quite some time, although, judging by his wife’s brittle frailty, he might have eaten all of her food along with his.
“I’m Detective Zach Feygen, Atlanta PD,” he said. He let the door close behind him. “I was hoping to ask your son a few questions. About the Redeemer.”
The mother said, “Nathan can’t answer any questions.” The father stayed quiet. Feygen stepped farther into the room, and for the first time got a good look at Nathan Pittman.
Tubes sprouted from the boy in far too many places, and an oxygen feed ran up his nose. Feygen had seen pictures, and knew Nathan was normally very thin. Now the kid looked worse off than Chooley. His cheeks and eyes were sunken, his skin had turned the color of chalk. He looked like a corpse.
“He did regain consciousness a few minutes ago, didn’t he?” Feygen asked politely.
“Yes,” the mother said. Her expression—the kind of expression someone has right after they swallow half a glass of curdled milk—hadn’t wavered since Feygen entered the room. He began to suspect she looked like that all the time.
“For about a minute and a half, he woke up. And then he only asked for water, and I couldn’t give it to him. He’s not up for any kind of third degree.” She put her hands on her bony hips. “We’ve already talked to the police about five times, Detective. What’s the point of this?”
Feygen stuck his hands in his pockets. “I don’t intend to give your son any sort of ‘third degree,’ Mrs. Pittman. I tried talking to his friends at school, but no one there seems to know him very well. I only wanted to ask him what kind of prior contact he had, if any, with the Redeemer.”
“None, that we know about,” Mr. Pittman said, speaking for the first time. He settled heavily into a chair in the corner. His wife remained standing.
When Mr. Pittman talked he sounded as if he were gargling wet cement, and Feygen thought, Christ, what a pair. The father continued: “Far as we can tell, he went and did this all on his own, just readin’ about crap in the papers and such.” Mr. Pittman’s hairline was severely receding, and he ran one hand across it, tugged on the hair. Several strands came away with his fingers. He shook his head. “Still can’t believe he went and did this. Just can’t believe it.”
Mrs. Pittman said, “It’s practically all I’ve heard about. Whole family callin’ about it, newspapers, TV, folks at church.” She too shook her head slowly. It was like a mean-spirited parody of a Norman Rockwell painting, the two parents hovering there over their hospitalized son, shaking their heads and looking...looking how?
Mrs. Pittman’s face soured even further, and Feygen realized how they looked. His stomach rolled queasily.
Nathan’s parents weren’t grieving for their son. They were embarrassed by him.
Feygen remembered the photographs he’d seen of the boy. Head half shaved, multiple facial piercings—all of which had been removed, and he wondered if the hospital or Nathan’s parents had done that—but good Lord, was it any wonder the kid felt alienated, raised by these two? Feygen started backing slowly toward the door. Nathan Pittman’s parents both stayed silent, and both stared at him.
“Well,” Feygen said carefully, “I know you’ve both given your statements, and I really wanted to talk to Nathan, so, ah, I’ll come back once he’s awake and clear-headed.”
Neither of them moved, or spoke. They just stared at him.
He had his hand on the door when Nathan Pittman made a sound. Both his parents flinched away from him. He made the sound again, slightly louder this time.
Feygen went to his side immediately. Nathan’s eyes opened, just a tiny bit, and focused on him. Feygen said, “Nathan? Can you hear me?”
In a weak whisper: “I hear you...detective.”
Feygen glanced up at the Pittmans, neither of whom made any move to come closer to Nathan’s bed, and looked back down to Nathan. “I know this is a lousy time for it, but I need to ask you a question or two.”
Nathan nodded weakly.
“I need to know what kind of contact you had with the Redeemer. Before you got shot.”
Nathan rolled his eyes. “Never met him,” he whispered, then grimaced in pain. “Only read about him, heard about him.” He glanced down at himself as best he could without moving his head. “I really screwed up, didn’t I?”
His eyes slid closed, and his breathing evened out. Feygen figured he’d passed out again, but then the boy’s eyelids cracked back open. “Hey,” he whispered, a little more energetically. “Hey. Did they catch him?”
“The Redeemer? No, they didn’t. He’s still out there.”
Nathan smiled a little. “Good.” He swallowed, and whispered, “C’mere a second.”
Feygen bent close to him, turned his ear to the boy’s lips. So softly Feygen was sure only he heard the words, Nathan breathed, “Get these two ghouls out of my room, will you?”
Then his eyes shut again and he slept.
“What was that?” Mrs. Pittman barked. After the quiet of Nathan’s exhausted voice, his mother sounded like an air-raid siren. “What did he say to you?”
Feygen glanced from one elder Pittman to the other. “Don’t know. Couldn’t make it out.” He nodded to both of them and excused himself, and he could feel them staring at him as he headed for the door.
Feygen had the door halfway open when someone else pushed on it from outside. He backpedaled as a very tall, very thin young man in a dark gray suit entered the room. He carried a briefcase, smiled quickly at Feygen, and turned his attention to the Pittmans.
“Mr. and Mrs. Pittman?” the man asked in a smooth, practiced voice. Nathan’s parents switched their stares to the newcomer, to Feygen’s relief. “My name is Krach, and I represent the law firm of Kohler & Yurco. Mr. Pittman, Mrs. Pittman, could I talk to you about the potential legal aspect of your son’s condition?”
Feygen moved out into the corridor. The door closed slowly behind him and cut off the lawyer’s words. On another day he might have gone back in and forcibly ejected young Mr. Krach, on grounds of terminally inappropriate behavior if nothing else. Today...he was too distracted, both by Nathan Pittman’s sub-human parents and by Nathan himself.
Did they catch him?
No, he’s still out there.
Good.
Those words played on a loop in Feygen’s mind as he left the hospital.
AUTHOR’S NOTES FOLLOW IN THE COMMENT SECTION.
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1 comments:
I like this chapter, but now that I read it really closely, I think I might feel the same way about it as I did the one in which Diedra deals with the realization of what Matt can do. I don't know that I demonstrated the ghoulishness of Nathan's parents sufficiently, and what I did felt too talky and too expositional. I'm definitely going to have to give this a hard look during revisions.
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