Tall Man Down - 23. Chapter 23

When I woke Sunday morning, Josh was tugging at the sheet near my face. He was standing next to the bed, tugging, drooling, and making his usual sounds, kind of talking to himself.

“Cute,” I said. “Your father pay you to do this?”

But when I turned over to Pete, he was still asleep. I sat up, very quickly.

“Pete? Pete.”

He mumbled at me.

“Wake up. It’s important.”

Meanwhile, I’d pulled Josh onto the bed.

“Pete, damn it, wake up.”

“What? What? What’s the matter?”

“Have you been up yet?”

“No. Of course not. What do you think?”

“Either have I. Josh just woke me.”

“Was he crying?”

Pete seemed unconcerned, and ready to go back to sleep.

“He was standing next to the bed.”

That took only a moment to clear. He sat up, as sharply as I had.

“What? How’d he get here? Is he okay?”

“I don’t know. He seems fine.”

Pete looked at Josh, who seemed very happy to be there.

“How’d you get here?” he asked.

It’s not like he expected an answer.

By that time, I was out of bed, through the hall, and into Josh’s room. The side of his crib was still up, and it seemed secure when I pressed on it. Some of the animals he slept with were on the floor, where they often were in the morning. When he woke up before we did, one of his favorite games seemed to be throwing everything out of his crib.

I went downstairs to see if, for some dumb reason, my parents or Pete’s had arrived and were playing a joke. No one was there.

Halfway down the stairs was a small blue stuffed rabbit, another toy Josh slept with. The gate at the bottom of the stairs hadn’t been in place because Josh was in his crib when we were last awake. It hadn’t been moved to the top of the stairs for the same reason. We sometimes let him crawl around either floor when we were nearby, but never without the gate in place. A set of highly-polished, uncarpeted oak stairs connected the two levels.

Pete was at the top of the stairs, with Josh, when I came back.

“He must’ve climbed out of his crib somehow, chasing his toys.”

“What’s that doing there?”

He pointed to the rabbit.

“It must’ve fallen.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“I know.”

“What’ll we do?”

I didn’t know.

“If we spank you,” I asked Josh, “will you even know what it’s for?”

“The gate goes up from now on.”

“That won’t keep him in the crib.

“We can’t use a harness. It’ll tangle.”

“This might be a fluke.”

“Can we take that chance?”

“He’s too young for a bed. And that wouldn’t solve the problem.”

“He can’t even walk yet, not really.”

“Maybe we can find a deeper crib.”

For a moment, we just looked at each other. Josh, still making pleasant noises, reached for the rabbit I’d by then picked up.

“Jesus,” Pete said again.

“I know.”

On top of that, when we finally looked at a clock, we realized it was only six-fifty. But neither of us wanted to go back to bed.

Instead, we started puttering around the house. By nine, we’d showered, dressed, and had eaten breakfast. Josh’s mattress had been on the lowest rung possible, but I pulled his crib apart, did some simple reworking, and reinstalled the mattress eight inches lower. When I finished, we put Josh in the crib and tried to lure him out. But no matter what we offered, he couldn’t make the climb, which made him slightly crabby and us feel more secure.

Putting away my tools, I thought about trying again for sleep but decided it was too late. Instead, I went out to mow the back lawn, taking Josh and his walker with me and giving Pete a chance to quietly read the Times .

Near eleven, Don phoned with what should have been good news. “Owen did a rough check of my paperwork overnight, and he said it all seemed fine. The stuff you told me yesterday afternoon from the Catlin family helped, too. So I don’t need to come over at all.”

“Well, that’s a compliment,” I said. “Considering Owen’s sometimes so picky.”

“Yeah.”

But he didn’t seem happy, and I suspected he was still brooding about the Boston guys.

“Anyway,” he went on, “I just wanted to call and say thanks. And I owe you for this.”

“You can come over and mow my lawn. I’ve finished the back, but there’s still the front one to go.”

Instead, we both laughed.

I wanted to ask how soon the guys from Boston were coming but knew even mentioning that might piss him off. He’d said as early as Monday. I also wanted to tell him I was sure they wouldn’t find anything – at least, nothing more than he had – and they’d probably be clumsier about it, too, not knowing the people or the area. Instead, I simply said, “Have a good day off,” and he again said he’d let us know when there was anything to know.

Finished with that, I walked back into the house, carrying Josh and explained, “Don.” Pete nodded and went back to reading, and Josh and I went to fix us all an early lunch.

Still, through the afternoon, I kept thinking about Catlin. Don was thorough, and he’d done everything I thought was logical – meaning everything I would have done, even though I’d never made it to detective. Still, somehow, I thought he going about it wrong – and not just thinking the whole thing was more than an accident. And maybe I hadn’t been forceful enough in dissuading him.

I ran that by Pete, as I often did with design ideas, and he asked, “How do you mean ‘wrong’?”

“I don’t know – distorted in some way. Like even though we’re being – he’s being – logical, we’re somehow messing up.”

He took a moment to puzzle that out.

“Like what?” Then he laughed. “You think Steve’s covering something up? That he’s really living at that inn in Vermont, and that was someone else’s body in the tub?”

“Tain’t funny.”

“I don’t know – Tale of Two Massachusetts Towns.”

“You really need to see me sulk?”

“Oh, come on. You’ve been convinced this was an accident from the beginning. And you’ve absolutely persuaded me. And to make this into anything else will only unnecessarily upset a lot of people. It just seems like time for you and Don to stand back and watch the guys from Boston work.”

I had to admit they should be able to help – if only by being more objective. But I also wanted to tell Pete that higher rank and more experience – and even more expensive equipment – didn’t necessarily make better detectives. It just gave them more pieces to juggle. But that might drag me back into the thing, when I really was set in the other direction.

And underneath it all, I couldn’t forget what had almost happened to Josh that morning. I kept seeing his damned blue rabbit lying halfway down the stairs and imagining Josh broken beside it. Or at least as still. And if he died, it would shake us more than maybe either one of our sudden deaths. I could somehow survive losing Pete, as Sandra would survive losing Catlin. But without Josh, Pete and I wouldn’t be the same.

“You’re getting grass stains on his pants,” Pete told me at some point, and his voice could have come from another dimension.

Josh and I were taking advantage of the newly cut backyard lawn, and I’d been pretending to race him, throwing one of his soft toys maybe ten feet away, then crawling after it. We’d done that five or six times, and each time he seemed to enjoy it more.

After Pete joined us, for a while, Josh crawled back and forth between him and me. He’d bring me his ball, which I’d toss to Pete, then he’d go to Pete, and he’d throw the ball to me. If either of us missed, Josh crawled after the ball, and brought it back to the person closer – to start the game over. It was great fun, until I saw it as a metaphor for what Don and I had been doing. Then I tired of it quickly.

I helped Pete make dinner that evening still vaguely thinking about Catlin. Then I gave Josh a bath thinking about Don. Pete and I played again with Josh after that, then he took him up to bed. Josh must have gone to sleep quickly after all that exercise, because I only heard Pete sing to him for a few minutes, his usual “Suzanne.” Josh must have gone to sleep somewhere between “the garbage” and “the seaweed.”

Still, I couldn’t give in as easily as he had – couldn’t stop thinking just because I wanted to. I remembered Catlin as I thought I’d last seen him – romantically backlit under the trees as he maybe impulsively leaned down to kiss Elise Pelletiers. Then I corrected myself when I remembered the gurney with the body bag coming down the President’s House steps. Then I pictured Catlin, inside that bag. And I kept seeing Josh – with his rabbit.