She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,248

the universe.

“You fold the blanket, I’ll put away lunch and the radio.”

Dalton frowned up at me. “I don’t know why you bring that thing. It never works out here. Next year we should bring an iPod.”

I smiled but said nothing to this. I liked that old transistor radio.

Our things gathered, I reached out and took my son’s tiny little hand in mine. We walked to the east, past several mature oaks and a small reflecting pool, to a single grave under the shade of a willow. I pulled a rag from our picnic basket and wiped off the white marble. Then I replaced the flowers in the vase with the last rose we brought along, this one yellow.

“Who is Gerdy McCowen?” Dalton asked.

“Someone special.”

“Geez, you know lots of dead people.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle at this. “Yeah, I suppose I do. Can you give me a second?”

“Will I get in trouble if I skip rocks on that pond?”

“I think you’ll be okay.”

When he was gone but still within eyeshot, I knelt down at Gerdy’s grave and closed my eyes.

“I like to think you’re with me every day. Whenever I feel the warmth of the sun, or hear someone laugh, I think of you. You were always the bright spot in one of the darkest chapters of my life, and I don’t think I would have made it out the other side if I hadn’t known you. I’m sorry I didn’t come to see you those first few years. I’ve got my head on straight now. I know what’s important. And you, Gerdy McCowen, will always be one of those important sparks in my life.” I paused for a second and looked back over one of the hills to my right. “I stopped by and said hi to Krendal and Lurline, too. I always pictured him running the cafeteria up there in heaven, with lines running out the door and around the next cloud.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

My eyes snapped open, and I spun around perhaps a little faster than I probably should have.

I found Detective Joy Fogel standing about half a dozen paces behind me.

“I’m sorry I startled you, Jack. I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“Still following me after twelve years, Detective? Maybe it’s time to give up the ghost.” I smiled. I knew she wasn’t following me, but it was always fun to take a jab at her.

“Just visiting a friend, saw you, and thought I’d say hello,” she said.

“Stack?”

She nodded.

Dalton was standing at the edge of the pond, his hand set to launch another rock across the surface. He eyed the detective suspiciously.

“It’s okay, Dalton. She’s a friend.”

“She looks like a cop.”

“Yeah, I suppose she does.”

He returned to the water.

I stood, brushed off the knees of my jeans, and went over to her.

She told me about Detective Terrance Stack years back, after the dust began to settle but hadn’t quite left the air yet. David and some of the people in white had left him tied up in one of his bedrooms. If not for his mailman, he might have died up there. The mailman knew Stack rarely left home, and when letters piled up for three days, he tried the front door, found it open, and took it upon himself to make sure everything was okay.

Everything was not okay.

Stack, still tied to a chair, was severely dehydrated, delusional, ranting about his dead partner Faustino Brier. He spent nearly a week in the hospital recuperating before being permitted back home again. He passed away six months after that. Fogel found him in his favorite chair, a beer in one hand and a cannon of a gun in the other, staring out his front window. Cause of death was ruled a stroke. The way Fogel told it, the man was waiting for death to come knocking at his door. Bored with retirement, more so after Charter fell.

The day Fogel located David’s old cell at the heart of Charter, she called in backup. She brought in the feds. They tore the place apart. Not before she was able to watch the first video tape, though. The one that showed David stepping out of his cell, entering that control room, and saying something like, “Which button activates the building’s intercom?” A man with only one remaining eye showed him, then: “Hello, everyone, my name is David Pickford. As of this moment, I’m in charge of all Charter activities. Please listen closely…” The same tape contained the deaths