Darby McCormick: Fear The Dark Part 26

Darby was about to dial information for the number of Brewster General when she felt a sick fluttering inside her chest.

The gunshot victim was transported to Brewster General and is in critical condition, the doctor had told her. The others are dead.

She had been speaking to Coop when the first gunshot went off.

Please, G.o.d, don't let him be dead.

That inner voice spoke up: You need to prepare yourself.

But you couldn't prepare yourself for something like this, even when you had time to prepare. She had been thirteen years old when her father had been shot. She'd insisted on going with her mother to the hospital. When the surgeon came into the ICU's waiting room, she saw the expression on the man's face and knew right then her father was going to die.

And then there was her mother who, at fifty-eight, had developed a stage four melanoma. A mole the size of a pinp.r.i.c.k on Sheila McCormick's back had quietly turned malignant. The surgeon had excised the mole but the cancer had already spread past the lymph nodes and into her bloodstream; it had been greedily feasting on her healthy organs for months. You need to prepare yourself, the doctor had told Darby. She'd been thirty-three.

And Darby had tried to prepare herself. Every day she reminded herself that, in an odd way, she had been handed a gift: her mother was going to die it wasn't a matter of if so much as when but at least this time there was time to come to grips with what was happening. She'd spent every available moment in her mother's company.

But another part of her had, with a childish stubbornness, refused to give up hope. Her mother's immune system was incredibly robust, the doctors said, so the special chemotherapy c.o.c.ktail might work. That new, experimental skin cancer vaccine being tested in Baltimore might save her mother and there was a chance Sheila McCormick might survive long enough to be a part of the clinical trials. Darby still remembered those long days, scouring the internet for doctors who specialized in melanoma, phoning offices all over the country and believing some sort of magic bullet existed, that all she had to do was to find it.

That was the danger of hope. It made you believe endless possibilities existed.

In its own way, hope was a form of cancer. A disease that could be eradicated only when presented with an immutable truth: death. Until that moment, hope would remain alive, even flourish, because there was always a chance, no matter how slim or remote, that the overwhelming truth you were facing was, in fact, wrong. Darby had learned that hard lesson first-hand.

She summoned the courage to dial directory a.s.sistance and ask for the number for Brewster General. The operator connected her and, after wading through the automated options, Darby finally got a live voice on the line. She explained who she was and what she wanted, and she was transferred to patient care.

Darby was on hold, waiting for someone to pick up, when Coop walked into her room.

She blinked as though he were a mirage produced by her fear. But he was there, looking real in the sunlight. His overcoat was torn in several places and spotted with dried blood along the lapels Hoder's blood but he had changed into a new suit.

Darby hung up and stared at him, her eyes wet.

When Coop sat on the side of her bed, his eyes bloodshot, the skin under them bruised from exhaustion, she leaned forward, wrapped her arms around him and, clutching him close to her, sobbed into his chest.

55.

When Darby's tears subsided, Coop gently pried himself away from her. She tried to grab him again, not wanting to let him go, but he was already shuffling towards the bathroom.

Darby heard running water. A moment later he came back and handed her a cold, damp facecloth. She wiped her eyes, careful of the wound and staples.

Coop slid out of his coat and draped it over the back of a chair. Then he returned to the warm spot he'd left on her bed. Darby stared down at the blood-stained facecloth in her hands, afraid to ask any questions.

Coop provided answers without her having to say a word. 'Hoder is in critical condition at Brewster General,' he said in quiet, weary voice. 'Fortunately Robinson had ambulances standing by. I stemmed the bleeding in his shoulder as much as I could before they arrived. Otto and Hayes are dead. As best we can tell right now, it looks like someone set fire to the trailer before it exploded.'

'The shooter?'

'Still in the wind. The explosion at the French home came from a propane tank that was sitting on the side of the house.'

'Tracer rounds,' she said.

'How do you know he was using tracer ammo?'

'I thought I saw a bright, burning white round just before it hit Hoder.' Because tracers had small pyrotechnic charges built into their base, they burned brightly when fired, which allowed the shooter to follow the projectile's trajectory and make aiming corrections. 'I heard one of the rounds strike metal, but I thought it was one of the cars.'

Coop sighed. Nodded. 'It makes sense,' he said. 'An ordinary round could pierce the tank without making it explode. A tracer, though, would.'

The room took on the sober silence of a funeral home.

'The owners of the house, the parents, Luther and Carla French, were p.r.o.nounced dead at the scene along with Sebastian, their 23-year-old son. The couple also have a 26-year-old daughter, Rita. She's a ski instructor living in Aspen. Williams talked with her. She's on her way down to Red Hill to identify the bodies.'

Darby didn't want to say the next part, but she had to. Her throat burned and her eyes filled with fresh tears.

'You were right. About the interview stirring him up.'

Coop got back to his feet.

'It was my idea,' she said. 'I'm the one who pressed Hoder to '

'It's done.'

His words echoed inside the room. Darby remained quiet.

'There's no rewind b.u.t.ton,' Coop said. He stood by the chair and, leaning forward, picked up his jacket. 'There's no way we can fix it. Hoder is as much to blame for this as '

Then he cut himself off, the unsaid you hanging in the air between them.

'Hoder could have put a stop to it and he didn't,' Coop said. 'I gave him ample opportunity.'

Me too, Darby thought.

Coop removed a thick stack of paper that had been folded so it could fit inside his inner jacket pocket. He came back to the bed and handed the pages to her.

The first page contained a laser-printed copy of a photograph from another time an ancient Polaroid of almost blurred colours showing a Caucasian girl of around seven or eight. She wore a white tank top stained with what looked like spaghetti sauce, her stringy blonde hair spilling across her tanned shoulders. The camera had captured her big blue eyes and her broad, gap-toothed smile.

Darby's scalp tightened. The skin on her face flexed and her muscles constricted, and, as her stomach went into free fall, the photograph went out of focus and her mind snapped back to her own childhood, a time when children rode their bikes after dark and wandered through neighbourhoods, malls and stores freely, without adult supervision, secure in the knowledge that the world was a good place and that monsters were nothing more than creatures relegated to bad dreams and not kindly seeming men who hunted with smiles in broad daylight.

56.

It happened on the morning of 15 August 1983. A Monday. At half past eight, Joan Hubbard loaded her seven-year-old daughter into the family's station wagon and made the 22-mile drive from her small but pleasant ranch home in El Dorado, Kansas, to the North Colony Shopping Mall in Wichita. The Carter & Sullivan circular in Sunday's paper had advertised its annual overstock sale of bed linen. Joan wanted new sheets and a comforter, maybe even a couple of decorative throw pillows, to replace the hand-me-downs given to her by her older sister.

Finances had been tight ever since Joan O'Donnell married Peter Hubbard. The first three years Peter worked as a shop sweeper at General Electric and went to school nights. It had been one h.e.l.l of a long slog, but the hard work had paid off. When Peter graduated with his engineering degree the same day Nicola turned five he was promoted to GE's jet-engine shop. The b.u.mp in pay wasn't life changing by any means, but the extra money had given them some well-deserved breathing room. No more penny-pinching on the groceries. No more Ramen Noodles and Hamburger Helper or buying second-hand clothing and used toys at the Salvation Army. Joan felt as though she'd been liberated from prison.

Then the workers went on strike. To make ends meet, Peter took a job at a local auto-parts store and drove a cab three nights a week and every other weekend.

But that was all in the past. The strike was months behind them, and Peter was back at work with GE. They could afford to celebrate a little. Instead of a night out on the town, they decided to redo their bedroom.

Joan arrived just as Carter & Sullivan was opening its doors. She parked her Buick station wagon with its wood-panel trim near the mall's south-east entrance. For the next three decades, whenever Joan was interviewed about what happened, she'd tell reporters she wished she'd parked near the store's north entrance. That way they wouldn't have pa.s.sed the toy aisle.

Nicky stopped dead in her tracks when she spotted what would become that year's popular Christmas toy: the Cabbage Patch doll. Nicky wanted to stop and look. Joan wanted to get the bedding and go home. Unlike her mother and sister, she didn't care for shopping.

'Please,' Nicky begged, tugging her mother's hand. 'Please, Mommy, pleeeeease.'

'You promise you'll stay here? Right here, in this aisle?'

'I promise.'

'You promise what?'

'To stay with the dolls.' Nicky smiled her gap-toothed smile. 'I won't walk away.'

Joan left her daughter alone without giving it a second thought. Another girl was standing in the aisle, a cute tomboy with curly black hair. It was 1983; parents left their kids alone all the time.

Joan found the comforter she wanted easily enough, but the advertised sheets were another matter. When she failed to locate them, she hunted around for a store employee. The pleasant older man she spoke with didn't know anything about the advertised linens but said they might be out back in the storeroom and went to investigate. It was 9.13 a.m.

During this time, recent high school graduate and newly minted Carter & Sullivan employee Brad Fisher was running late. He was supposed to arrive at work at 8.45, but he had somehow slept through his alarm again. He headed for the toy department, which was next to the door for the stockroom. When he cut through the aisle displaying those creepy Cabbage Patch dolls, he saw a teenager or a boy of at least twelve kneeling next to a young girl matching Nicky Hubbard's description. Brad would later tell the police he remembered the little girl clearly, because her long blonde hair was pulled back from her face and tied with a white marble elastic band. They were all the rage that summer; his younger sister wore the same sort of stupid things in her hair. The stores could barely keep them in stock.

Brad would also tell police about the teenager, who he had a.s.sumed was the girl's brother. How when the boy got to his feet he was short, barely a few inches over five feet. How he wore dirty jeans, scuffed work boots and a stained black T-s.h.i.+rt.

The boy grabbed his sister's wrist. When she tried to take her hand back, he yanked her arm, hard. When she let out a small yelp, he smiled.

A brother wouldn't act that way, an inner voice whispered.

Then another voice countered: Remember when you got so p.i.s.sed at Maggie for ratting on you when you sneaked out to meet George and Tony? What did you do?

Brad smiled at the memory. I cut the hair on all her Barbie dolls and flushed the evidence down the toilet. Maggie, with her big fat mouth, was a tattletale b.i.t.c.h. So he breezed right past the brother and sister and entered the storeroom. When he punched in, it was 9.19 a.m.

At 9.24 a.m. Joan Hubbard had her new sheets in hand. She went to collect Nicky, only to find that her daughter was no longer looking at the Cabbage Patch dolls.

She's probably wandered off to look at some other toy, Joan thought. With a frustrated sigh, she went to find Nicky, who would be spending the rest of the day inside the house, grounded, for breaking her promise not to wander off.

The frustration turned to a slow but growing fear when she failed to find the child anywhere in the toy department.

The kids' clothing section was nearby. But Joan couldn't see her daughter anywhere among the racks.

Had Nicky gone to look for her? Had she hurt herself? Joan dropped her bedding items on a nearby display table and hurried off to the customer service department at the front of the store. She bypa.s.sed the people standing in line to return items and with her voice rising in panic told the young girl working the counter that she couldn't find her daughter.

The counter girl called the manager over the loudspeaker. Joan, hysterical with nightmarish thoughts about her daughter, about her being lost or hurt or Don't say it, don't say it or it will come true darted behind the counter and pressed the microphone b.u.t.ton.

'Nicky. Nicky, it's Mom. Come to the front of the store, Nicky. Mom is at the front of the store. My daughter's name is Nicky Hubbard. She's wearing a yellow sundress and sandals. She has blonde hair. Her name is Nicky Hubbard.'

The Carter & Sullivan store manager acted quickly and promptly. He announced Nicky's name and physical description over the loudspeaker, and told his employees to stand by all the store exits and stop any little blonde girl from leaving. It was now 9.56 a.m.

Brad Fisher hadn't heard any of the announcements. He was outside, standing in the unbearably hot Kansas sun, doing the same thing he did every morning: using a utility razor to break down the mountain of empty cardboard boxes stacked next to the dumpster. He returned to the storeroom a few minutes after ten, surprised to find it empty. Usually there were employees going in and out to stock the shelves or to take one of their allotted ten-minute breaks. He ducked into the staff bathroom and splashed cold water on his face.

The moment Brad stepped back into the store he knew something was wrong. Customers were huddled together and speaking in hushed tones. Others were moving swiftly through the aisles, searching the clothing racks and looking underneath the display tables, concern and dread etched in their faces. Carter & Sullivan employees were posted near the store exits.

When Brad found out what happened, his stomach turned to ice. He would never forget that feeling or the way the polished white linoleum floor seemed to dip and sway in his vision, or how he wanted to slip inside a black hole and disappear. Brad was eighteen years old and felt like crying.

What would always come back to him what would continually haunt him was that moment in the toy aisle when the boy had grabbed the little girl's wrist. How the brother's smile hadn't been, in fact, brotherly at all but something more sinister, something more in line with the way Brad's father smiled when he discovered a racc.o.o.n caught inside a steel trap.

I should've done something, Brad Fisher would later tell himself, as he took another slug of beer stolen from his father's workshop refrigerator.

If only I had said or done something, he would later tell himself as he took another hit off the bong.

If I hadn't been so spineless, so selfish, maybe she wouldn't have been taken, he would later tell himself as he rode the needle; heroin was the only thing that banished the images from that day, the only thing that offered him comfort.

Over the ensuing years, Brad discovered that no amount or combination of heroin, booze or pills could stop him from wondering what had happened to Nicky Hubbard. Only G.o.d knew.

Sometimes he would ask G.o.d: Why didn't you help her?

Sometimes G.o.d replied, but His answer was always the same: Why didn't you help her? You were there, not me. You could have stopped it from happening, and you didn't.

Darby stopped reading and skimmed the rest of the file, glancing at its meagre offerings the pithy investigative notes and false leads, the lack of evidence. When she reached the last page, she looked up at Coop.

'Aren't you going to read the rest of it?' he asked.

'I don't need to.'

'I didn't realize you were already familiar with the case.'

'Nicky Hubbard is the nation's poster girl for missing children. She's the reason why Congress created the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in '85. People wrote books about what they think happened to her, they made a TV movie of the week.

'Why did you give me this?'

'The plastic print I found in the polyurethane along the Downes bedroom skirting board the database came back with a match,' Coop said. 'That fingerprint belongs to Nicky Hubbard.'

57.