Six Seconds

Her body began to bounce up and down slightly as she continued humming.

“I see a truck.”

Maggie caught her breath.

“A big truck,” Fatima said. “Near mountains.”

Fatima began bouncing slightly as if she were there in the cab of a rig.

Maggie felt Logan near. Felt his presence. Detectedhis scent!

“Logan! Honey, it’s Mommy! Where are you?”

“Shush.” Helga touched Maggie’s wrist.

Fatima’s humming stopped.

Maggie had trespassed on the moment.

Fatima’s work resumed. She continued rubbing the items in her outstretched hands, continued humming and bouncing as if a passenger in a rig.

Fatima’s head snapped back.

Maggie gasped.

Fatima’s body jolted as if punched by a powerful force. It jerked again, nearly throwing her from the chair. Fatima’s hands let the knife and key ring slip to the table as jolt after jolt shook her in her chair.

Maggie’s skin tingled.

Fatima’s eyes bulged to the point of nearly bursting. Her pupils rolled back in her head, leaving only the whites.

She was motionless.

Each minute melted into the next, devouring time in huge chunks before Helga blew out the candle and drew back the curtains.

Fatima began coughing.

Helga brought her a fresh glass of ice chips and Maggie watched Fatima’s jaw work as she crunched them. The older woman’s body was depleted as Helga slid her glasses back onto her head then helped replace her head scarf.

“We’re done,” Helga said. “Thank you, Maggie. You may leave.”

“Fatima, did you see my husband and son?”

“I saw nothing that will help.”

Maggie’s jaw dropped.

“You saw something, didn’t you?”

Fatima searched for her cane.

“You have to help me, please, tell me what to do?” Maggie asked.

Helga helped Fatima from the table.

“Please, Maggie.” Helga nodded toward the door. “We’re done.”

“Yes,” Fatima whispered, “I must sleep.”

“That’s it?”

“You must leave,” Helga said.

“No! Wait, please, you have to tell me what you saw. You have to help me!”

Fatima extended her shaking hand to Maggie’s, then dropped Logan’s key ring and Jake’s penknife into it. Fatima’s eyes held Maggie’s for an intense moment.

“No one can help, especially me.”

“What are you saying? What does that mean?”

“You should pray.”

“Pray for what? I don’t understand.” Helga was closing the door on her. “Please, you have to help me! You can try again! Please! I felt Logan with us! I know you saw something!”

Maggie stepped from Fatima’s mobile home and the locks clicked behind her. She leaned against the door, slid to the landing and buried her face in her hands.

16

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Jesus Rocks filled the police binoculars.

The words strained across Neil Bick’s T-shirt, advertising his tattooed physique, earned in Stony Mountain federal prison where he did three years for stealing computers from RVs, cabins and cottages.

He’d also shot at—but missed—the two Winnipeg cops who’d arrested him.

How did this ex-con’s fingerprints get on the SUV rented by the Tarver family, Graham wondered, watching through binoculars as Bick walked down a neglected southeast Calgary sidewalk and into a world of trouble.

The Calgary Police Tactical Unit had a perimeter around his ramshackle house. The street had been cleared. Far off, an unseen dog barked.

“All right, take him,” the TAC commander whispered over the radio.

Heavily armed police rushed from the cover of shrubs, alleys, porches and parked cars, putting Bick facedown on the street at gunpoint.

“What the fuck?”

They handcuffed him, patted him down and read him his Charter rights.