She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,97

a mother to stand by while he does it.”

The delay, then: “I told him what he needed to hear.”

“You’ve been doing a lot of that lately. I bet Subject ‘S’ wanted to run out of the room when you told her you loved her. Nobody wants to be around Frankenstein’s monster when he gets all touchy-feely. You realize, as soon as they’re done with you, they’ll put you down like a rabid dog, right? Subject ‘S’ will probably be riding some guy in the back seat of a Ford when it happens. You’ll be the furtherest thing from her pretty little mind. What did you expect her to do? Slap a wet one on your lips? Drop to her knees and wet your whistle? I suppose you could tell her to do that, but it wouldn’t be the same as her wanting to do it, right? Only way someone like you will ever get laid, though.”

“You’re not a very nice man, Carl.”

“Fuck you.”

Carl stood and pulled down the blackout blind on the observation window. He flicked off each of the monitors in the observation room before turning to the camera watching him. “You want to write me up, go ahead. Cocksucking bureaucratic asshats.”

—Charter Observation Team – 309

8

The eighth of May came and went, and for the first time since 1986, an envelope containing $500 did not mysteriously appear in my life. I had been home that day, as I was most days now, and kept looking to the door, the window, my room, expecting the envelope, but it never came.

Somehow, I knew that era of my life was over, my benefactor as unknown now as the very first time one of those envelopes appeared.

I didn’t need the money.

True to his word, Mr. Matteo saw to it my bills were paid. He opened a checking account in my name and provided me with a debit card. The initial deposit was $2000, and he told me another $2000 would appear with the first of the month and every month thereafter. He also told me if $2000 proved to not be enough, he could increase the amount, I only had to ask. We were to meet at least once every three months to review my current circumstances and make adjustments as needed. More often, if my grades faltered and college appeared in jeopardy.

Considering he took care of my bills, and these funds were meant to cover my day-to-day expenses such as groceries and clothing, I couldn’t imagine spending that much. I couldn’t imagine spending close to that much, so I simply thanked him and took the debit card.

The doctors placed Dunk in a medically-induced coma for nearly a week following his final surgery, his sixth. They said unsupervised movement of any kind couldn’t be risked. His blood pressure dipped dangerously low twice on the first day, and one more time three days later. His heart stopped for nearly a minute. There was worry of brain damage. They placed him on a ventilator for the next four days. For the past week, he breathed on his own, and it appeared he would continue to do so.

I learned all of this as the rest of the city did, between the pages of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. As the sole survivor of the Massacre at Krendal’s Diner, as the press dubbed it, reporters engulfed the hospital, bribing employees for any tidbit of information they could obtain. The story remained on the first page for the first three days, then the second and third page. By two weeks, updates on Duncan Bellino faded into the local section.

The front-page story that ran on May 4, the day after the massacre, featured photos of all seven victims. Gerdy was the third image in on the first row. Lurline Waldrip was the first in the second row. The largest photo was last, an old image of Elden Krendal—no hearing aids, all his hair, and about thirty pounds lighter. Following his brief bio, the reporter included a few paragraphs on the diner’s history. Efforts were under way to try and raise funds to restore it, as a city landmark. I hoped that wouldn’t happen. I don’t think I could bring myself to look at that place ever again.

I didn’t know the people in the other photographs, not by name, anyway. A few seemed familiar, probably people I had seen at the diner. I read all their bios. I wanted to know them, felt I should.

The first few newspaper stories included something about