Chapter 10 - The Woman in the Blue Van
Chen tracked an old clinic payroll account to a recently reopened shell company. The same company leased the blue van that had followed my mother's medical transport. An officer located it outside a shuttered ferry terminal in Brooklyn.
This time we were told to stay three blocks away. I did, until I saw a stretcher wheeled through the side gate.
"That's her," I told Gideon.
"You can't run in."
"Then call Chen and tell her what I see."
He did. Officers moved on both exits. A shout came over the radio. Someone slammed a metal door. The blue van reversed, its tires squealing, and struck a concrete barrier. A man in a security jacket jumped out and ran.
I saw my mother through the rear window, strapped to the stretcher. Her eyes were open. I ran as an officer opened the doors.
"Mom. It's me."
Her fingers searched for mine. They were cold. There was a fresh bruise on her wrist, but she was breathing, and the moment her hand closed around mine the world became solid again.
"I'm here," I said. "I should have listened sooner."
She shook her head. She had been trying to tell me for years, in half-finished sentences I dismissed as confusion after the stroke.
Gideon stood back so she wouldn't feel surrounded. Then she saw him.
"Little boy," she whispered.
He knelt beside the stretcher. "Ruth?"
She touched the sleeve of his dark suit. "Evelyn said... you were scared of thunder."
A broken laugh escaped him. "I still am, sometimes."
The officer who brought the van around found its driver in custody, but Owen Pike had escaped on foot. Chen arrived with a paramedic and asked my mother whether she wanted to give a statement.
"Tomorrow," Ruth whispered. Then she pulled Gideon close enough to hear.
"Your mother made a recording," she said. "Your father heard it."
"Where is it?"
My mother closed her eyes. "Under the table... where nobody was allowed to sit."
May you like
Behind us, Gideon went very still.
"The family dining room," he said. "My father had the table destroyed after the fire."
